Question: Who prepared for an invasion by a king who had Earl Skule Bårdsson as a rival?
Context: A planned invasion of Great Britain was to be undertaken by France in 1744 shortly after the declaration of war between them as part of the War of the Austrian Succession.  A large invasion force was prepared and put to sea from Dunkirk in February 1744, only to be partly wrecked and driven back into harbour by violent storms.  Deciding that circumstances were not favourable to an invasion, the French government suspended the attempt, and deployed their forces elsewhere. The son of George Gordon, 5th Earl of Huntly, and of Anne, daughter of James Hamilton, 2nd Earl of Arran and Duke of Châtellerault, he was educated in France as a Roman Catholic.  He took part in the plot which led to the execution of James Douglas, 4th Earl of Morton in 1581 and in the conspiracy which saved King James VI from the Ruthven raiders in 1583.  In 1588 he signed the Presbyterian confession of faith, but continued to engage in plots for the Spanish invasion of Scotland.  On 28 November he was appointed captain of the guard, and while carrying out his duties at Holyrood his treasonable correspondence was discovered.  King James, however, finding the Roman Catholic lords useful as a foil to the tyranny of the Kirk, was at this time seeking Spanish aid in case Queen Elizabeth I tried to challenge his right to the English throne; Huntly, always one of his favourites, was pardoned. Earl of Roscommon was a title in the Peerage of Ireland.  It was created on 5 August 1622 for James Dillon, 1st Baron Dillon.  He had already been created Baron Dillon on 24 January 1619, also in the Peerage of Ireland.  The fourth Earl was a courtier, poet and critic.  The fifth Earl was a professional soldier, politician and courtier: he was friendly with Samuel Pepys, who refers to him several times as "Colonel Dillon" in his famous Diary.  After the death of the tenth Earl, there were two prolonged investigations by the Irish House of Lords during the 1790s to ascertain the legitimacy of his son Patrick, against the rival claim by Robert Dillon, a descendant of the seventh son of the first Earl and the next male heir in line.  These eventually found in Patrick's favour.  The titles became dormant on the death of the eleventh Earl in 1816.  However, in 1828 the United Kingdom House of Lords decided that the rightful heir to the peerages was Michael Dillon, a descendant of the seventh son of the first Earl, who became the twelfth Earl.  The House of Lords Lords decided against Francis Stephen Dillon (d 1840), an inmate of a debtors' prison who dubiously claimed descent from the third son of the first Earl.  The titles became extinct on the death of the twelfth Earl on 15 May 1850. Haakon Haakonsson (c. March/April 1204 – 16 December 1263) (Old Norse: "Hákon Hákonarson"; Norwegian: "Håkon Håkonsson"), sometimes called Haakon the Old in contrast to his son with the same name, and known in modern regnal lists as Haakon IV, was the King of Norway from 1217 to 1263.  His reign lasted for 46 years, longer than any Norwegian king since Harald I.  Haakon was born into the troubled civil war era in Norway, but his reign eventually managed to put an end to the internal conflicts.  At the start of his reign, during his minority, his later rival Earl Skule Bårdsson served as regent.  As a king of the birkebeiner faction, Haakon defeated the uprising of the final bagler royal pretender, Sigurd Ribbung, in 1227.  He put a definitive end to the civil war era when he had Skule Bårdsson killed in 1240, a year after he had himself proclaimed king in opposition to Haakon.  Haakon thereafter formally appointed his own son as his co-regent. Findlater Castle is the old seat of the Earls of Findlater and Seafield, sitting on a 50 ft -high cliff overlooking the Moray Firth on the coast of Banff and Buchan, Aberdeenshire, Scotland.  It lies about 15 km west of Banff, near the village of Sandend, between Cullen and Portsoy.  The cliffs here contain quartz; the name "Findlater" is derived not from Norse as earlier stated here, but from the Scots Gaelic words "fionn" ("white") and "leitir" ("cliff or steep slope").  The first historical reference to the castle is from 1246.  King Alexander III of Scotland repaired this castle in the 1260s in preparation for an invasion by King Haakon IV of Norway.  The Vikings took and held the castle for some time.  The castle remains that are still there are from the 14th-century rebuilding, when the castle was redesigned based on the Roslyn Castle model. Skule Bårdsson or Duke Skule (Norwegian: Hertug Skule) (Old Norse: Skúli Bárðarson) (  1189 – 24 May 1240) was a Norwegian nobleman and claimant to the royal throne against his son-in-law, King Haakon Haakonsson.  Henrik Ibsen's play "Kongs-Emnerne" (1863) is about the dispute between Duke Skule and King Haakon. The Norman invasion of Wales began shortly after the Norman conquest of England under William the Conqueror, who believed England to be his birthright.  Initially (1067–1081), the invasion of Wales was not undertaken with the fervor and purpose of the invasion of England.  However, a much stronger Norman invasion began in 1081 and by 1094 most of Wales was under the control of William's eldest son, King William II of England.  The Welsh greatly disliked the "gratuitously cruel" Normans and by 1101 had regained control of the greater part of their country under the long reign of King Gruffudd ap Cynan, who had been imprisoned by the Normans for twelve years before his escape.  Gruffudd had some indirect help from King Magnus III of Norway (Magnus Barefoot) who attacked the Normans briefly off the Isle of Anglesey in northwest Wales near Ynys Seiriol, killing Hugh of Montgomery, 2nd Earl of Shrewsbury and leaving the Normans depleted and demoralized.  Magnus went on to take the Orkney Islands, the Hebrides, and the Isle of Man, islands north of Wales and west and north of Scotland and England, in 1098. The civil war era in Norway (Norwegian: "borgerkrigstiden") is the history of Norway between 1130 and 1240.  During this time a series of civil wars were fought between rival kings and pretenders to the throne.  The reasons for the war was the weak succession of King Sigurd the Crusader, leaving the country between his bastard son Magnus and his alleged (but uncertain) brother, Harald Gillekrist, who were on bad terms long before King Sigurd died.  The goal of the warring parties was always to put their man on the throne, starting with the death of King Sigurd the Crusader in 1130, a supposedly adored monarch.  In the first decades of the civil wars, alliances shifted and centered on the person of a king or pretender, but eventually, towards the end of the 12th century, two rival parties emerged, known as the Birkebeiner and the Bagler.  After these two parties were reconciled in 1217, a more ordered system of government centered on the king was gradually able to bring an end to the frequent risings.  The failed rising of duke Skule Bårdsson in 1240 was the final event of the civil war era. For Her Sake is a 1911 American silent short war romance film produced by the Thanhouser Company.  The film starred William Garwood as a confederate soldier who wins the love of a young Southern girl shortly before the start of the American Civil War.  His rival becomes a Union officer and the two are reunited when the Confederate is captured.  After receiving news of his capture, the girl manages to sneak through the Union lines to free him.  Together they escape and the Union officer tracks them to her home.  Prepared to apprehend his foe, he sees his rival mourning the death of the girl, fatally shot during the escape.  The two resolve their differences and the officer leaves the house, refusing to arrest the Confederate soldier.  The film was released on February 14, 1911 and was met with positive reviews despite plot holes surrounding the girl's ability to elude the guards.  The film is now presumed lost. Inge II (Norwegian: "Inge Bårdsson", Old Norse: "Ingi Bárðarson"; 1185 – 23 April 1217) was King of Norway from 1204 to 1217.  His reign was within the later stages of the period known in Norwegian history as the age of civil wars.  Inge was the king of the "birkebeiner" faction.  The conclusion of the settlement of Kvitsøy with the "bagler" faction in 1208 led to peace for the last nine years of Inge’s reign, at the price of Inge and the "birkebeiner" recognising "bagler" rule over Viken (the Oslofjord area).
Answer: King Alexander III of Scotland