But who will find _evidence to prove_ our conjectures to be even
approximately true?
Till this is done, these matters rest upon mere conjecture, based
mainly upon known Scottish policy, the name of "Magnus," and the
probable situation of the lands owned by the parent lines and the
families known afterwards to have held them, namely, the families of
Cheyne, Federeth, Sutherland, Keith, Oliphant, and Sinclair, among
whose writs or inventories of them search might be made.
CHAPTER X.
_King Hakon and the North of Scotland._
We can now turn with some sense of relief from the intricate maze
of the genealogy of the Caithness earls to the more open ground of
Scottish history, which we left at the date of the death of William
the Lion in December 1214, when he was succeeded on the throne of
Scotland by his son, Alexander II, a youth who had then just entered
his seventeenth year. We can then work the results of our genealogical
conjectures into the general history of the northern counties.
Alexander II, like his predecessors, was in the year after his
accession immediately confronted with a revolt headed by Donald Ban
MacWilliam the younger, another of the descendants of Ingibjorg of
Orkney, widow of Earl Thorfinn and first wife of Malcolm Canmore.
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