Prince?

["John S. Quarterman" <jsq@quarterman.org>]

As for whether Henry first Sinclair Earl of Orkney was a Prince or not,
I do not know.  I also do not know why it took two years for a simple
question to elicit any kind of answer, nor why investigation of such
an inquiry might be considered by any parties as any sort of attack.

If all the parties desire to bring credit to the name of Henry Sinclair
or simply to the name of Sinclair may I suggest they stop discussing who
doesn't like whom and proceed with straightforward examination of evidence
*and its sources*, bringing forth such evidence when they have it and
are confident of its providence and veracity, regardless of who is asking
or who is answering.

Nor do I know why at least four different issues are being conflated:

1) Did Henry first Sinclair Earl of Orkney have the formal title of Prince,
inherited or conferred upon him by someone with the authority to do so.

2) Was Henry Sinclair called a Prince by contemporaries
while he was Earl of Orkney.

3) Is there good reason to call Henry Sinclair a Prince today
as the appropriate modern equivalent of whatever titles he held.

4) Is there good reason to call Henry Sinclair a Prince today
in the sense of prince among men.

All these questions are interesting to explore, and every one of them
has produced interesting illumination on the life and times of Henry
Sinclair, not to mention on previous and later times.  Can we have more
of that, please.

If I may add a few comments on what I have seen thus far on each of these
four issues:

1) Did Henry first Sinclair Earl of Orkney have the formal title of Prince,
inherited or conferred upon him by someone with the authority to do so.

Thus far I have seen no evidence whatever that this was the case,
whether we ask for Prince, princeps, or Fuerst.  There is nonetheless
the ambiguity of what does the title Jarl as applied to that county
and that person at that time mean in English today; see (3) below.

If some evidence turns up that Henry was actually Duke of Oldenburg,
as Pete Cummings asserted, then a case can be made that he was a prince,
depending on when one considers the Dukes of Oldenburg to have become
princes of the Holy Roman Empire.

There is also another approach, which is whether the Jarldom of Orkney
and Shetland was considered a principality.  There appears to be some
evidence that earlier and later rulers of Orkney were called princes,
and when Orkney was annexed by the Scottish crown it was a dowry for
a princess (daughter of a king) and was later awarded to a prince
(son of a king).  If this line of investigation can be supported
with evidence from contemporary sources, then if Orkney was thus
a principality, Henry, as ruler of a principality, was by the
primary dictionary definition a prince.

It might be worth considering whether there is a parallel with a marcher
principality at the other end of Scotland: Northumberland,

Finally, the modern dictionary definition isn't the only one of interest.
Have we considered the medieval definition of the word that would have
been used in the international language of the day, i.e., princeps in
Latin?  Here is the definition from a medieval Latin dictionary:

``princeps, -is 1 de eo qui regnum, terram, provinciam gubernat a nude b
c.gen. 2 de magnatibus, proceres a nude b c.gen. 3 i.q. auctor a de Deo,
(princeps summus = deus Gertz S 70, 11) ; b de rebus humanis; principes
celestes = angeli et sancti''

 http://www.rostra.dk/latin/saxo.html

Someone with more Latin than my none may want to translate this.
Does it perhaps say that a prince is someone who governs a kingdom,
land, or province?

2) Was Henry Sinclair called a Prince by contemporaries
while he was Earl of Orkney.

Thus far the main evidence I've seen has been the Zeno Narrative.
This is of course requires accepting that Henry Sinclair was the
Zichmni of that narrative, and that the narrative is authentic.

There is also the evidence of Father Hay, but that is not contemporary,
and it seems widely accepted that Father Hay's writings are not very
reliable.

3) Is there good reason to call Henry Sinclair a Prince today
as the appropriate modern equivalent of whatever titles he held.

As I pointed out early on, and as Lena has recently noted,
there is considerable linguistic ambiguity as to what Prince means
and as to what Jarl means.

No one objects to referring to a Roman emperor as "emperor" in English,
even though the actual title in Latin was Augustus.  Is it appropriate
to call a Norwegian Jarl of the fourteenth century a prince?
My previous musings on this subject are here:

 http://sinclair.quarterman.org/archives/2001/12/msg00447.html

I won't repeat all of it here.  However, it is worth repeating that
while many people today assume Prince means son of a king or queen,
this is not the only meaning even by modern dictionaries, and on the
continent there were many princes in Germany and Russia in particular
who were not sons of kings or queens.  For example it was enough to hold
a hereditary territory independent of the monarch.

Henry Root notes that William P L Thomson in his book
'The New History of Orkney', Mercat Press, ISBN 184183 0224,
says that since Henry was bound by an installation charter he
could not have been an independent prince.  See:

 http://sinclair.quarterman.org/archives/2002/01/msg00013.html

Why then, did Henry proceed almost immediately to build a castle that
he was prohibited from building by that same charter?  Charters may
require many things; the reality of degree of independence may be another.
And the fact that Henry held lands in fief to two different monarchs,
of Norway and Scotland, meant that he had great opportunity to play one
off against the other.  Only a few generations before, Scottish barons
and earls who held land from both Scotland and England had certainly
done so repeatedly.

According to Henry Root, the same author notes that:

``In 1308 Hakon V had abolished the title of earl with the exception of
the royal princes and the Earl of Orkney.  As the only person entitled to
the dignity of earl outside the immediate royal family, the Earl of Orkney
occupied a unique if somewhat anomalous position.  His role, however,
was confined to ceremonial occasions and brought him no extra wealth or
power. In the main Henry fulfilled this limited role in a conscientious
way, and was quite frequently to be found in Scandinavia.''

This passage seems to assume that only royal princes, by which I am
guessing he means sons of the king, were princes.  We know that is
not the only kind of prince.  And a unique position classed along with
no one else but royal princes is practically a definition of prince.
Also, while Henry's ceremonial role in Norway may not have in itself
brought him extra wealth or power, being ruler of Orkney, Shetland,
and Caithness certainly did.

Note the difference here between evidence and conclusions.
I don't contest Thomson's evidence, but I do question his conclusions.

4) Is there good reason to call Henry Sinclair a Prince today
in the sense of prince among men.

Everyone who has posted recently seems agreed upon this one, although
I suspect some would question even this.

It is unlikely that the rest of these questions will ever have
answers even this close to black and white.

The process of investigation is, or can be, in itself a kind of truth.

John S. Quarterman <jsq@quarterman.org>
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