the rovers in 875 and both the Orkneys and Shetlands to Norway. They remained under the rule of Norse earls until 1231, when the line of the jarls became extinct. In that year the earldom of Caithness was granted to Magnus, second son of the earl of Angus, whom the king of Norway apparently confirmed in the title. In 1468 the Orkneys and Shetlands were pledged by Christian I. of Denmark for the payment of the dowry of his daughter Margaret, betrothed to James III. of Scotland, and as the money was never paid, their connexion with the crown of Scotland has been perpetual. In 1471 James bestowed the castle and lands of Ravenscraig in Fife on William, earl of Orkney, in exchange for all his rights to the earldom of Orkney, which, by act of parliament passed on the 20th of February of the same year, was annexed to the Scottish crown. In 1564 Lord Robert Stewart, natural son of James V., who had visited Kirkwall twenty-four years before, was made sheriff of the Orkneys and Shetlands, and received possession of the estates of the udallers; in 1581 he was created earl of Orkney by James IV., the charter being ratified ten years later to his son Patrick, but in 1615 the earldom was again annexed to the crown. The islands were the rendezvous of Montrose’s expedition in 1650 which culminated in his imprisonment and death. During the Protectorate they were visited by a detachment of Cromwell’s troops, who initiated the inhabitants into various industrial arts and new methods of agriculture. In 1707 the islands were granted to the earl of Morton in mortgage, redeemable by the Crown on payment of £30,000, and subject to an annual feu-duty of £500; but in 1766 his estates were sold to Sir Lawrence Dundas, ancestor of the earls of Zetland. In early times both the archbishop of Hamburg and the archbishop of York disputed with the Norwegians ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the Orkneys and the right of consecrating bishops; but ultimately the Norwegian bishops, the first of whom was William the Old, consecrated in 1102, continued the canonical succession. The see remained vacant from 1580 to 1606, and from 1638 till the Restoration, and, after the accession of William II., the episcopacy was finally abolished (1697), although many of the clergy refused to conform. The topography of the Orkneys is wholly Norse, and the Norse tongue, at last extinguished by the constant influx of settlers from Scotland, lingered until the end of the 18th century. Readers of Scott’s Pirate will remember the frank contempt which Magnus Troil expressed for the Scots, and his opinions probably accurately reflected the general Norse feeling on the subject. When the islands were given as security for the princess’s dowry, there seems reason to believe that it was intended to redeem the pledge, because it was then stipulated that the Norse system of government and the law of St Olaf should continue to be observed in Orkney and Shetland. Thus the udal succession and mode of land tenure (or, that is, absolute freehold as distinguished from feudal tenure) still obtain to some extent, and the remaining udallers hold their lands and pass them on without written title. Among well-known Orcadians may be mentioned James Atkine (1613–1687), bishop first of Moray and afterwards of Galloway, Murdoch McKenzie (d. 1797), the hydrographer; Malcolm Laing (1762–1818), author of the History of Scotland from the Union of the Crowns to the Union of the Kingdoms; Mary Brunton (1778–1818), author of Self-Control, Discipline and other novels; Samuel Laing (1788–1868), author of A Residence in Norway, and translator of the Heimskringla, the Icelandic chronicle of the kings of Norway; Thomas Stewart Traill (1781–1862), professor of medical jurisprudence in Edinburgh University and editor of the 8th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica; Samuel Laing (1812–1897), chairman of the London, Brighton & South Coast railway, and introducer of the system of “parliamentary” trains with fares of one penny a mile; Dr John Rae (1813–1893), the Arctic explorer; and William Balfour Baikie (1825–1864), the African traveller.
Bibliography.—The Orkneyinga Saga, ed. G. Vigfusson, translated by Sir George Dasent (1887–1894), and the edition of Dr Joseph Anderson (1873); James Wallace, Account of the Islands of Orkney (1700; new ed., 1884); George Low, Tour through the Islands of Orkney and Shetland in 1774 (1879); G. Barry, History of Orkney (1805, 1867); Daniel Gorrie, Summers and Winters in the Orkneys (1868); D. Balfour, Odal Rights and Feudal Wrongs (1860); J. Fergusson, The Brochs and Rude Stone Monuments of the Orkney Islands (1877); J. B. Craven, History of the Episcopal Church in Orkney (1883); J. R. Tudor, Orkney and Shetland (1883).
ORLÉANAIS, one of the provinces into which France was
divided before the Revolution. It was the country around
Orleans, the pagus Aurelianensis; it lay on both banks of the
Loire, and for ecclesiastical purposes formed the diocese of
Orleans. It was in the possession of the Capet family before
the advent of Hugh Capet to the throne of France in 987, and in
1344 Philip VI. gave it with the title of duke to Philip (d. 1375),
one of his younger sons. In a geographical sense the region
around Orleans is sometimes known as Orleanais, but this is
somewhat smaller than the former province.
See A. Thomas, Les États provinciaux de la France centrale (1879).
ORLEANISTS, a French political party which arose out of
the Revolution, and ceased to have a separate existence shortly
after the establishment of the third republic in 1872. It took
its name from the Orleans branch of the house of Bourbon, the
descendants of the duke of Orleans, the younger brother of
Louis XIV., who were its chiefs. The political aim of the
Orleanists may be said to have been to find a common measure
for the monarchical principle and the “rights of man” as set
forth by the revolutionary leaders in 1789. The articles on
Philippe, nicknamed Égalité (see Orleans, L.P.J., duke of), and
his son Louis Philippe, king of the French (1830–1848), will show
the process of events by which it came to pass that the Orleans
princes became the more or less successful advocates of this
attempted compromise between old and new. It may be noted
here, however, that a certain attitude of opposition, and of
patronage of “freedom,” was traditional in this branch of the
house of Bourbon. Saint-Simon tells us that the regent Orleans
who died in 1723 was in the habit of avowing his admiration for
English liberty—at least in safe company and private conversation.
Égalité, who had reasons to dislike King Louis XVI.
and his queen, Marie Antoinette, stepped naturally into the
position of spokesman of the liberal royalists of the early revolutionary
time, and it was a short step from that position to the
attitude of liberal candidates for the throne, as against the elder
branch of the royal house which claimed to reign by divine
right. The elder branch as represented by Louis XVIII. was
prepared to grant (octroyer), and did grant, a charter of liberties.
The count of Chambord, the last of the line (the Spanish Bourbons
who descended directly from Louis XIV. were considered to be
barred by the renunciation of Philip V. of Spain), was equally
ready to grant a constitution. But these princes claimed to
rule “in chief of God” and to confer constitutional rights on
their subjects of their own free will, and mere motion. This
feudal language and these mystic pretensions offended a people
so devoted to principles as the French, and so acute in drawing
deductions from premises, for they concluded, not unreasonably,
that rights granted as a favour were always subject to revocation
as a punishment. Therefore those of them who considered a
monarchical government as more beneficial to France than a
republic, but who were not disposed to hold their freedom
subject to the pleasure of a king, were either Bonapartists who
professed to rule by the choice of the nation, or supporters of the
Orleans princes who were ready to reign by an “original compact”
and by the will of the people. The difference therefore
between the supporters of the elder line, or Legitimists, and
the Orleanists was profound, for it went down to the very
foundations of government.
The first generation of Orleanists, the immediate supporters of Philippe Égalité, were swamped in the turmoil of the great revolution. Yet it has been justly pointed out by Albert Sorel in his L’Europe et la revolution française, that they subsisted under the Empire, and that they came naturally to the front when the revival of liberalism overthrew the restored legitimate monarchy of Louis XVIII. and Charles X. During the Restoration, 1815–1830, everything tended to identify the liberals with the Orleanists. Legitimism was incompatible with constitutional freedom. Bonapartism was in eclipse, and was moreover essentially a Caesarism which in the hands of the great Napoleon
