In 1261 the Hebrides had been harried by William, MacFerchar, Earl of
Ross and uncle of Freskin de Moravia the younger, with great cruelty
and barbarity, and King Hakon in 1263 began to collect and equip a
fleet with a view to revenging the injury done to his subjects in the
west.[9] In the preparation for this in the spring of 1263, we find
Jon Langlifson, whose mother Langlif was Harold Maddadson's youngest
daughter, and who was thus himself a nephew of Earl John, sent over
with Henry Skot to Shetland to obtain pilots for King Hakon,[10] while
Dougal of the Isles met them in Orkney, and was let into the secret of
Hakon's intended expedition.
Meantime Earl Magnus II, being, according to our conjectures, a member
of the Angus line, whose mother was an elder sister of Harald Ungi,
and being also the husband of Earl John's daughter, had become
entitled to the earldom of Orkney soon after Earl John's death in
1231, and probably since 1236 had held part of Caithness as Earl, by
heirship, and by charter from the Scottish King. Magnus II, soon after
the earldom of Sutherland had been taken away from him, had died
in 1239. Gillebride had then succeeded to both the reduced Scottish
earldom of Caithness and the whole of the Orkney jarldom as successor
in the Angus line of Magnus II; and Gillebride had died in 1256
leaving a son Magnus III.
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