Note (return) — Chapter VIII

It was, therefore, to a very much reduced territory and earldom that David succeeded in 1206, as Earl of Caithness. We hear almost nothing of him, save that for the latter part of the eight years of his rule,1 more or less inefficient probably through ill health, he shared the earldom and what had been left to him of its lands with his younger brother John. David died without issue in 12142 probably soon after Hugo Freskyn, and David was succeeded by his brother John in the jarldom of Orkney and in the reduced earldom of Caithness as sole jarl and earl.