THIS week of February was not a good one for the two Stewart Earls of Orkney, for both of them met their end in this week, the first Earl on February 4, 1593 and the second on February 6, 1615.

By common consent, these were two of the nastiest men ever to disgrace the Stewart name and while the first Earl died in his bed, the second met a very grisly end, as we shall see.

Robert Stewart was the first Earl (above), except that he wasn’t actually the first person to bear that title, as there had been dozens of “Jarls” of Orkney and Shetland under Norse rule from the ninth to the 14th centuries, followed briefly by the Sinclair or St Clair family, which was given the title by the King of Norway in 1379, the last Norse Earl being William Sinclair (1410-1484) who built Rosslyn Chapel and who became Earl of Caithness.

The earldom of Orkney went into abeyance until the rule of Mary, Queen of Scots. As an illegitimate son of King James V and his mistress Euphemia Elphinstone, Robert Stewart, who was born in 1533, was a half-brother of Queen Mary and he strongly supported the tragic monarch, who rewarded him with royal lands in Orkney and Shetland and also made him Sheriff of the two archipelagos.

After being knighted as part of the celebrations at the time of Mary’s marriage to Henry, Lord Darnley, Robert was not involved in the plotting of Darnley’s murder. He kept his estates even though Mary’s third husband, James Hepburn, fourth Earl of Bothwell, was given the title of Duke of Orkney by the Queen. Bothwell forfeited the title after he fled from Scotland and was charged with treason.

Robert proceeded to run Orkney and Shetland as if they were his personal fiefdoms, enlarging his lands and starting to build what became the Earl’s Palace at Birsay, now a ruin in the care of Historic Environment Scotland.

It was his construction methods which angered the people of Orkney and their clergy – they complained that locals were being used as slave labour by the Earl, who had arrived on Orkney in late 1567.

Tales of his cruelty and greed started to spread around the islands and his reputation was permanently damaged when he seized Kirkwall Castle, assumed the provostship and appointed his half-brother Laurence Bruce as Sheriff of Shetland. Bruce proceeded to take control of the Shetland Islands, building his own castle at Muness on Unst.

Bruce carried out many acts of piracy on passing ships and his treatment of local women – he is said to have fathered 24 illegitimate children as well as 10 legitimate ones – was a source of considerable anger locally.

Robert Stewart was caught out in 1575 when it was discovered that he had offered Orkney to the King of Denmark in return for being declared the sovereign of the islands. James Douglas, the fourth Earl of Morton, was regent for the child king James VI and he imprisoned Robert in Edinburgh, only for Robert to be allowed out – he duly got his revenge on Morton as he was one of the lords who accused Morton of having a part in the murder of Lord Darnley, the king’s father. Morton was duly tried and executed and James VI rewarded Robert by making him Earl of Orkney in 1581.

Robert Stewart continued to treat the people of Orkney and Shetland abominably, but died in his bed on February 4, 1593.

His son Patrick succeeded to the earldom, and that was bad news for Laurence Bruce as Patrick hated him with a vengeance. The islanders got no respite for Patrick was even worse than his father – he was soon nicknamed Black Patie.

In 1594 he accused his three brothers of trying to murder him, especially John Stewart, the Earl of Carrick. One of his servants, Thomas Paplay, was tortured and confessed to the “crime” of plotting the Earl’s death. He also implicated an innocent local woman, Allison Balfour, who had to watch her children being tortured before she “confessed”. Both Paplay and Balfour were executed in public, the latter by strangulation and burning.

The second Earl carried on the traditions of his father, using local slave labour to build his palace in Kirkwall. He also moved unsuccessfully against Laurence Bruce, and that proved to be a huge mistake.

A new bishop, John Law, had arrived in Orkney and in 1609 he filed a series of complaints to the privy council about the Earl who was duly taken south and imprisoned first in Edinburgh Castle and then in Dumbarton Castle. The testimony of Laurence Bruce helped convict him.

In 1614, the Earl’s son, Robert Stewart, acted on his father’s orders and led an uprising – effectively a rebellion against King James who was of course then resident in London – which was eventually repulsed by the Earl of Caithness and a royal army.

Robert Stewart was charged with treason and was hanged on January 1, 1615. He was just 22, and there was much sympathy for him as he had only been following his father’s orders.

There was no such sympathy for Black Patie who tried to blame his son for the rebellion. He was duly sentenced to death but the execution was postponed when it was found by chaplains that he did not even know the words of the Lord’s Prayer – yet another indication of his godlessness, said his enemies.

The second Earl of Orkney was beheaded in Edinburgh on February 6, 1615, and with his son already dead, the earldom died with him.

It was resurrected during the reign of William and Mary and given to Lord George Hamilton, a famous military commander. The current ninth Earl of Orkney is Peter St John, a retired lecturer from Canada who will be 82 next month, and his son and heir, Oliver Robert St John has the courtesy title Viscount Kirkwall.