1143
GVDRED II (Goddard; Gødred), the son of Olave, in 1143, the founder of the royal dynasty of Man, returning from the Norwegian court where he had been left by his father, the whole Island spontaneously submitted to him; and with unanimous consent, delivered to his vengeance the three sons of Harold. The young bloods of Scandinavia had newly established their Norse kingdom in Iceland, and were huckstering and sea roving about the Baltic and among the British Isles. They had been to the Orkneys and Shetlands, and Faroes, perhaps to Ireland, certainly to the coast of Cumberland, making Scandinavian settlements everywhere. So they came to Man early in the tenth century, led by one Orry, or Gorree. He established our Constitution. It was on the model of the Constitution just established in Iceland. But besides the sea-folk of the ship-shires King Orry remembered the Church.
Returning from the Norwegian court where he had been left by his father, the whole Island spontaneously submitted to him; and with unanimous consent, delivered to his vengeance the three sons of Harold: two of whom were deprived of their eyes, and the murderer of the King publickly executed. When Gødred assumed the government of his kingdom, he was in the bloom of youth and beauty; majestic in his stature; magnanimous in his sentiments; and heroic in his actions. These graces, uniting with a remenbrance of his father's virtues, gained the adoration of his own subjects, and the admiration of the neighbouring kingdoms. From the celebrity of his virtue and heroism, the people of Dublin and the nobility of the Province of Leinster elefted him their King. But this singular honour involved him in various contests, and subjected him to future misfortunes. Murchard, King of Ireland, opposed him; but Gødred, having routed the enemy, seated himself on the throne to which he had been raised by the suffrages of the people. His absence however occasioned discontents among his hereditary subjects; which were fomented by the factious and turbulent. To calm these he returned to Man: and having severely punished some of the disaffected; Thorfinus, a subtle, sullen, and ferocious Chief, fled to Summerled, Thane of Argyle, and brother-in-law to Gødred. This bold and ambitious Prince was soon instigated by Thorfinus, to invade the Western Isles, which he soon reduced. In the mean time, Gødred equipped a fleet of eighty vessels, and engaged him at sea. A dreadful conflict ensued; which terminating in a doubtful victory, occasioned a division of the kingdom of the Isles.
1147
The people of Dublin, perhaps not unmindful of the wise conduct of his grandfather, Goddard Crownan, and the fresh memory of the virtue of his father, by the consent of the nobility of the whole province of Leinster, chose him their King, Anno 1147. Murchard, King of Ireland, alarmed with the loss of so fair a province, raised considerable forces, and sent Oselby, his brother by the mother's side, with 3,000 horse, with design to surprize the city of Dublin; but Goddard, being ready to receive him, routed the whole party, slew the general himself, and absolutely settled his new acquired Kingdom.
1158
Godred retained Man; and the other Islands were ceded to Summerled. Summerled, presuming on the factions and discontents which still existed among the natives, invaded and subdued Man. The King escaped to Norway, and Summerled with much ferocity oppressed those whom he had conquered. His ambition increasing with his success, he projected the reduction of Scotland; but in attempting to land his forces he was vanquished by a small body of the inhabitants, and with his son and the greater part of his army was sacrificed to their just vengeance. Freed from the tyranny of this usurper, the nobility and people of the Isles fondly remembered the v irtues of their hereditary Prince. His exile and sufferings had endeared him to the loyal; and from the disaffected had obliterated the remembrance of every injury. While the esteem of the people was thus directed towards Gødred, the kingdom of the Isles was invaded by his illegitimate brother, Reginald. The Manks with much bravery opposed his forces; but through the treachery of one of their leaders were defeated However, on the fourth day after the battle, Gødred with a numerous army arrived from Norway; and having vanguished Reginald, was received by his subjects with the most generous and loyal affection.. After his re-establishment on tie throne, he visited the more remote parts of his kingdom: and on his return to Man, (the usual residence of the Kings of the Isles) he devoted the residue of his reign to the welfare of his subjects*; until 1187, when he died, justly rendered and lamented by them.
1204
John Courcy who had been dispossessed of his lands in Ulster by Hugh Lacy, came into Man. John had married Africa, daughter of King Goddard, and sister to Reginald, a lady of excellent virtue and piety, who founded the Abbey of St. Mary de Jugo Domini, in which she was burried. Her husband's business was to engage Reginald in the war with Lacy, which he readily embraced, and in the yeare 1205 entered Ulster, at a port called Strangford, with a hundred sail of ships; but whilst they carelessly sat down 'before the Castle of Ruth, Lacy surprized and routed them; after which Curey never recovered his lands. Reginald, in the 6th of King John, had done homage for the Isle of Man, for which the King granted him a knight's fee in Ireland, and his protection pro feodo and servitio suo, says the record. Whether he had done anything contrary to this homage, or whether the assistance he had given Curey was interpreted in that sense, John, sailing into Ireland, with 500 ships, sent an earl, named Fulke, who grievously spoiled the whole Island; till at last, wearied with so many cruelties, he took hostages of the future fidelity of the people, and returned into Ireland, Reginald and all his principal officers being still absent.
King William, dying, was succeeded by his son Alexander. who at his coronation ordered all prisoners to be released, and among the rest Olave, who returned immediately into Man, and, well attended by the nobility and good wishes of the people, presented himself to his brother Reginald, who, though troubled at his escape, received him with all seeming satisfaction, and married him to the Lord of Cantyre's daughter, named Lavon, who was sister to his own Queen, but gave them nothing but the Lewis for their subsistence. Necessity compelled Olave to accept of those conditions, since he could get no better; but he was no sooner in the Lewis, but Reginald, Bishop of those isles, called a synod, and divorced him from his new wife, as too near of kin to his former, for he had been married before. The Queen, a woman haughty, ambitious, and revengeful, interpreted this slight of her sister as an affront to herself, especially when she heard Olave had married Christiana, daughter of Ferchard, Earl of Ross. She had a son, named Goddard, who then resided in the Western Islands, to whom she wrote, in the King, his father's name, to murder Olave; but as there are few wicked designs laid so close but there are some informers, Olave just got notice time enough to save himself in a little boat, and escaped to his father-in-law, the Earl of Ross; but Goddard, immediately landing his forces in the Lewis, utterly wasted all before him.
At that same time Paul, the son of Boke, was Viscount of Skey, a man very powerful in the Isles, subtle, fierce, designing, an enemy to Reginald rather than a friend to Olave, him likewise they compelled to take shelter with the Earl of Ross, by whose advice Olave, now reduced to the last necessity, was persuaded to endeavour the recovery of his inheritance, of which he had been so many years dispossessed. By the assistance, therefore, of the Earl of Ross and the Viscount of Skey, he resolves to surprize Goddard in the Isle of St. Columbus, where they were informed he was retired with a small retinue, and but five ships with him in the harbour. Therefore, drawing together their friends and dependants, with great numbers of volunteers, they in the night seized the five Ships, and in the morning surrounded the whole island with their own fleet. Goddard and his party were amazed when they saw themselves beset, yet stood resolutely to their arms, but in vain; for, about nine o'clock they attempted the island in several places at once, and slaughtered all before them, without the bounds of the church. Goddard fell into the hands of the Viscount of Skey, who, fearing Olave's gentle temper, immediately ordered him to be deprived of his eyes and genitals, which Olave was far from consenting to, but came too late to hinder. Olave now, urged on by despair, necessity, justice, but more than all by the Viscount, of Skey, resolves to push his good fortune to the utmost; he therefore took hostages of all the great men of the Isles, and in the yeare 1215 set sail with a fleet of thirty ships, and landed at Rannesway; but the nobility and people interposing, the brothers came to an agreement, and divided the Kingdom of the Isles betwixt them, of which Reginald, besides his moiety, had the Isle of Man allotted to him. Olave, having refreshed his men, returned to his part of the Isles. But Reginald, storming in himself to be so dispossessed of above a hundred islands, of which he had been so long master, sent to Allen, Lord of Galloway, for assistance, and the yeare following rigged a great fleet, and sailed into the out-isles, with design to dispossess his brother Olave; but the people absolutely refusing to fight against their natural Prince, forced him to retire home without effecting his design. Reginald, restless and impatient with his second disappointment, pretends a necessity of a journey to England.
The people cheerfully supply him with 100 marks towards his journey; but instead of going to the Court of England, he carried his daughter into Galloway, and married her to the son of that Lord. But as nothing discontents a people more than the misapplication of public money, especially when they see themselves betrayed to a foreign power; so, considering with indignation the ingratitude of Reginald, and their own injustice to their lawful master, by universal suffrage they sent for Olave, and declared him King, in the yeare 1216. Reginald, now too late, seeing his error, to retrieve a lost game, resolves in good earnest on a voyage to the Court of King John.
1220
The Saga gives us the names of several barons who accompanied King Magnus; he brought with him his son Sigurd, then only eight years of age, in order to appoint him his lieutenant in those parts. The Chronicle is right in saying that King Magnus subdued the Orkneys, as we learn from the Saga that at his arrival he took the reigning earls, Paul and Erlend, prisoners, and sent them to Norway, whence they did not return, while he carried with him the sons of Erlend, Magnus (afterwards Saint Magnus), and Erling; the earls must therefore either have shown symptoms of disaffection or the king simply have wanted these possessions for himself or for his son. In the Saga, Magnus is said next to have attacked and ravaged Lewis, when the inhabitants were either massacred or put to flight, no doubt in retaliation of what was done to Ingemund; even Uist, Skye, Tirce, and Mull, underwent the same treatment. Iona, however, was left unhurt, because of its sanctity, and the Saga tells, that the king opened " the little church of Columkill" (now St. Oran's Chapel), and was about to enter, but stopped on the threshold, locked the door, and forbade anybody to enter it afterwards. It is added that since that time it was not opened; which, however, is only to be understood of the period before 1220, when this account appears to have been written. From Iona he went to Isla, and from there to Cantire, ravaging as well the coasts of Ireland as those of Scotland; perhaps it was at this period that he sent the Irish princess back to her father. Ordericus says that he found the coasts of Ireland too well defended to effect any great achievements; the annals of Ulster say even that three Norwegian ships were taken by the Ultonians, and the men killed.