Transcriber Notes
● Obvious printer typos and punctuation errors fixed.
● The page number in the index for an entry “Anne, Queen, reign of” has
been corrected from 672 to 272.
● The name Serenus has been changed to Severus on pp. 5-6 and his year
of death at York changed from 241 to 211 on p. 6. The year of 1588
for the festival day of St. Giles on p. 115 changed to 1558. The
year of 1630 on p. 124 for Montrose's execution changed to 1650.
The year of 1560 on p. 132 for fire at Holyrood Palace during
Cromwell's time changed from to 1650.
● Otherwise, variations in spelling and hyphenation, and other possible
typos or errors in dates have been left as in the original.
● The text has quotations from centuries when words were spelled
differently than today. The spelling in these quotations has been
left as is.
● Italics are represented by underscores surrounding the _italic text_.
● Underlines are represented by plus signs surrounding the +underlined+
text.
● Small capitals have been converted to ALL CAPS.
● A small decorative line at the start of the first chapter has been
replicated.
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BYGONE SCOTLAND.
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[Illustration: WEST FRONT OF HOLYROOD ABBEY CHURCH.]
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BYGONE SCOTLAND:
HISTORICAL AND SOCIAL.
BY
DAVID MAXWELL, C.E.
“Stands Scotland where it did?”
EDINBURGH:
WILLIAM BRYCE, LOTHIAN STREET.
HULL:
WILLIAM ANDREWS & CO., THE HULL PRESS.
LONDON:
SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & CO., LD.
1894.
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[Illustration: WILLIAM ANDREWS & Co. THE HULL PRESS]
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Preface.
For a country of comparatively small extent, and with a large proportion
of its soil in moor and mountain, histories of Scotland have been
numerous and well-nigh exhaustive. The present work is not a chronicle
of events in order and detail, but a series of pictures from the earlier
history, expanding into fuller narratives of the more striking events in
later times. And it includes portions of contemporaneous English
history; for the history of Scotland can only be fully understood
through that of its larger and more powerful neighbour.
The growth of a people out of semi-barbarism and tribal diversity, to
civilization and national autonomy, is ever an interesting study. This
growth in Scotland included many elements. The Roman occupation of
Southern Britain banded together for defence and aggression the northern
tribes. For centuries after the Roman evacuation the old British race
held the south-western shires, up to the Clyde; the Anglo-Saxon kingdom
of Northumbria extended to the Frith of Forth; there were Norse
settlements on the eastern coast, in Orkney, and the Hebrides. Of the
various races out of which the Scottish nation was formed, the Picts
were the most numerous; but the Scots—a kindred race, wanderers from
Ireland—were the more active and aggressive—came to assume the general
government, and gave their name to the whole country north of the Solway
and the Tweed.
It is interesting to trace how, in unsettled times, the burghs developed
into little, distinct communities, largely self-governed. And the
religious element in Scotland has been a powerful factor in shaping the
character of the people and of the national institutions; the conflict
of the Covenant was the epic in Scottish history. The rebellion of 1745,
as the last specially Scottish incident in British history, is properly
the closing chapter in _Bygone Scotland_.
D. M.
HULL LITERARY CLUB,
_St. Andrew’s Day, 1893_.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contents.
PAGE
THE ROMAN CONQUEST OF BRITAIN 1
BRITAIN AS A ROMAN PROVINCE 12
THE ANGLO-SAXONS IN BRITAIN 18
THE RISE OF THE SCOTTISH NATION 26
THE DANISH INVASIONS OF BRITAIN 38
THE LAST TWO SAXON KINGS OF ENGLAND 48
HOW SCOTLAND BECAME A FREE NATION 63
SCOTLAND IN THE TWO HUNDRED YEARS AFTER 73
BANNOCKBURN
THE OLDER SCOTTISH LITERATURE 80
THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND 85
THE RIVAL QUEENS, MARY AND ELIZABETH 102
OLD EDINBURGH 111
OFFENCES AND THEIR PUNISHMENT IN THE 134
SIXTEENTH CENTURY
OLD ABERDEEN 152
WITCHCRAFT IN SCOTLAND 160
HOLY-WELLS IN SCOTLAND 166
SCOTTISH MARRIAGE CUSTOMS 172
SCOTLAND UNDER CHARLES THE FIRST 178
SCOTLAND UNDER CROMWELL 199
SCOTLAND UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND 211
SCOTLAND UNDER JAMES THE SECOND 236
THE REVOLUTION OF 1688 252
THE MASSACRE OF GLENCOE 264
THE UNION OF SCOTLAND AND ENGLAND 270
THE JACOBITE RISINGS OF 1715 279
THE REBELLION OF 1745 289
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BYGONE SCOTLAND.
-->-•♦•-<--
The Roman Conquest of Britain.
We cannot tell—it is highly improbable that we ever shall know—from
whence came the original inhabitants of the islands of Great Britain and
Ireland. Men living on the sea-coasts of the great quadrant of
continental land which fronts these islands, would, when the art of
navigation got beyond the raft and canoe, venture to cross the narrow
seas, and form insular settlements. It is indeed possible that, before
that subsidence of the land of Western Europe which separated our
islands from the mainland and from each other, was effected by the slow
but ever-acting forces of geology, men were living on the banks of
ancient rivers which are now represented by the Clyde, the Thames, and
the Shannon.
The authentic history of Britain dates from the Roman invasion; before
this event all is myth and legend. Half a century before the
commencement of our era, Julius Cæsar, whilst consolidating in strong
and durable Roman fashion his conquest of Gaul, was informed by certain
merchants of the country that on the other side of the narrow sea which
bounded them on the north, there was a fertile land called Britain, or
_the land of tin_. With his legions, in the trireme galleys of the
period, Cæsar crossed the narrow sea, and, so far as he went, he
conquered the land.
The inhabitants were in a rude condition of life; semi-barbarous
perhaps, but certainly the peoples of Fingal and Ossian in the north,
and of Caractacus and Boadicea in the south, had advanced far beyond
simple savagery. Climatic and geographical influences had moulded into a
robust, if a fierce and stubborn type, the common materials of humanity.
The ancient Britons had, in their ideas of government, advanced beyond
mere clan chieftainship. Their annals, in stone cairns and the songs of
bards, commemorated bygone battles and deeds of warrior renown. They had
a religion with its trained priesthood—it was not a religion of
sweetness and light, but of ferocity and gloom, of human sacrifices, and
mystical rites. Its temples and altars were clusters of huge stones,
arranged in forest glades on some astronomical principles. The Druidic
faith was one of the many offshoots of ignorant barbarism, in which the
celestial orbs and the forces in terrestrial nature—lightning and
tempest—life and fire—were deified. Its priesthood was a close order,
holding in their mystical gripe the minds and lives of the people. It
has been said that the ancient Britons were such firm believers in a
future state, that they would even lend each other money, to be repaid
in the spiritual world. Their language was a dialect of the Gaelic—the
language spoken in more ancient times over the greater portion of
Western Europe.
The Roman invasion under Julius was little more than a raid. He marched
his legions as far inland as the Thames, and again retired to the coast;
he left Britain without forming a Roman settlement, and for nearly a
hundred years the island remained free, and did a considerable maritime
trade with Gaul and Scandinavia. In A.D. 43, the fourth Roman emperor,
Claudius, with a large army, invaded Britain. The native tribes,
although generally inimical to the Romans, had no concerted action
amongst themselves, were often, indeed, at war with each other; and thus
the disciplined soldiers of Rome had a comparatively easy task, although
they had many fierce encounters with native bravery and hardihood. One
British chief, Caractacus, held out the longest. He was the King of the
Silurians, the dwellers in South Wales and its neighbourhood. For
several years he withstood the masters of the world, but was ultimately
defeated in battle, and he and his family were sent prisoners to Rome.
On the eastern coast, in what is now Suffolk and Norfolk, was a tribe
called the Icenians. This tribe, under Boadicea, the widow of one of its
kings, made, in the absence of the Roman governor, Suetonius, raids upon
London, Colchester, and other Roman towns. When Suetonius returned, he
defeated Boadicea in a battle near London. She killed herself rather
than submit. Agricola succeeded Suetonius as governor, and he pushed the
Roman Conquest northwards to a line between the Firths of Forth and
Clyde. Beyond this line the Romans never made permanent conquests. Along
this line Agricola built a chain of forts as a defence of the Roman
province against incursions from the northern tribes, and as a base of
operations in attempting farther conquests. In a campaign in the year
84, he was opposed by a native force under a chief called Galgacus. A
battle was fought amongst the Grampian Hills, near Blairgowrie, with a
hardly-won victory to Agricola. It was such a victory as decided him to
make the Tay the northern boundary of Roman occupation. But Roman fleets
sailed round the northern shores,—planting the Imperial Standard on
Orkney,—and returned, having proved that Britain was an island.
The northern portion of the island, beyond the line of forts, was then
called Caledonia; border fighting was the rule, and the “barbarians from
the hills” made frequent raids into the Romanized lowlands. Indeed, not
only had the Romans to build a wall connecting the forts of Agricola,
but also, as a second line of defence, one between the Tyne and the
Solway Firth. The two walls prove the determination of the Romans to
maintain their British conquests, and also at what a high rate they
estimated the native resistance.
In 208, Severus had to re-conquer the country between the walls,
restoring that of Agricola, and he carried the Roman eagles to the
farthest points north which they ever reached. The remains of Roman
roads through Strathearn to Perth, and thence through Forfar, the
Mearns, and Aberdeen to the Moray Firth, belong to this period; and they
represent attempts to subdue the whole island. Dion, the Roman
historian, ascribes the failure of this attempt to the death of Severus
at York, in 211. He describes the Caledonians as painting on their skins
the forms of animals; of being lightly armed; making rapid dashes in
battle; of having no king, only their tribal chieftains. In 305,
Constantius defeated the tribes between the walls; they are called in
the Roman records, “Caledonians and other Picts;” the latter name being
then used for the first time, and as being the more generic appellation.
In 360, the Scots are named for the first time. They and the Picts made
a descent upon the Roman province, and this is spoken of in terms which
imply that they had previously passed the southern wall.
For about 366 years the Romans held sway in Britain; if we think of it,
for as long a period as elapsed between Henry the Eighth’s publishing
his treatise in defence of the seven Romish sacraments, and the jubilee
of Queen Victoria. The conquest of an inferior by a superior race is
generally fraught with progressive issues to the conquered people. In
the roads and architecture, the laws and the civic institutions of the
country, the Romans left lasting memorials of their British rule. Towns
rose and flourished; marshes were drained; the land was cultivated; low-
lying coast lands were, by embankments, protected from the sea; trade
advanced; Christianity and Roman literature were introduced.
As a constituent portion of the empire, Britain occupies a place in
Roman history. A Roman commander in Britain, Albinus, had himself
nominated emperor. He carried an army into Gaul, but was there beaten
and slain in a battle with the rival emperor, Severus. Severus himself
died at York, then called Eboracum; and, in 273, Constantine, since
styled _The Great_, was born in that city, his mother, Helena, being
British. Constantius, the father of Constantine, had a long struggle for
the possession of Britain with Carausius, a Belgian-born Roman general,
who, in 286, rebelled against the authority of the empire. The usurper
formed a navy, with which he for eight years prevented Roman troops from
landing on our shores, but he lost his life through treachery, and once
more the imperial eagles floated over Britain. For a time Britain might
be said to be the head-quarters of the empire. Residing principally at
York, Constantius gave his commands to Gaul and Spain, to Italy itself,
to Syria and Greece. It was in Britain that on the death of his father,
in 306, Constantine was proclaimed emperor. He was the first Christian
emperor, and all the emperors who succeeded him professed Christianity,
except Julian, who, returning to the old gods, was called _The
Apostate_; but Julian was really a wiser ruler and a better man than
many of those who called themselves Christian. The new religion became
the official faith of the empire. Not much is known with certainty of
the early British church, but there are said to have been archbishops in
the three chief cities, London, York, and Caerleon.
The grand old Latin language, containing in its literature the garnered
up thoughts and attainments of centuries, spread its refining influences
wherever the Roman camp was pitched. Latin was the official language in
Roman Britain, and it would be known and probably spoken by the well-to-
do Britons in the towns. But it never amalgamated with the old Celtic-
Welsh of the common people. Celtic, although in many respects a well-
constructed language, is not a pliant one—is not adapted for readily
intermingling with other tongues. It has in its various dialects, which
have through the succeeding centuries maintained their existence in
Wales, in Ireland, and in the Highlands of Scotland, kept itself
altogether apart from the English language; and it has given
comparatively few of its words to the modern tongue.
In the third century the Roman empire was in its decline, and hastening
to its fall. Constantine transferred the seat of government to
Byzantium, and that city was thenceforth named from him, Constantinople;
and then the Roman power was divided—there were eastern emperors and
western emperors. In the Patriarch of the Greek Church residing in
Constantinople and the Pope of the Catholic Church in Rome, we have that
division perpetuated to this day.
The Romans had never been able to conquer more than small portions of
the great country in Central Europe which lies north of the Danube and
east of the Rhine, which we now call Germany. One Teutonic chief called
Arminius, afterwards styled _The Deliverer_, destroyed a whole Roman
invading army. Towards the end of the fourth century the Teutonic
nations began to press into the Roman empire, and one by one the
provinces were wrested from it by these incursions. The Romans hired one
tribe against another; but stage by stage the empire shrank in its
dimensions, until it came to be within the frontiers of Italy; and still
the barbarians pressed in.
On the 24th day of August, 410, the evening sun was gilding the roof of
the venerable Capitol, and peace and serenity seemed to hover over the
eternal city. But at midnight the Gothic trumpets sounded as the blasts
of doom. No devoted Horatius now kept bridge and gate as in the brave
days of old. Alaric, “the curse of God,” stormed the city, to burn and
slay and inflict all the horrors of assault; but sparing Christian
churches, monks and nuns. It is said that forty thousand slaves in the
city rose against their masters.
From the spreading of the Teutonic tribes, new nations were formed in
Western Europe. The Franks pressed into Northern Gaul. Their name
remains in Franconia, and in that portion of Gaul called France. In
Italy, Spain, and Acquitaine, the Goths and other Teutonic peoples
mingled with the Romans. From the Latin language, corrupted and mixed up
with other tongues, arose the Italian, Spanish, Provençal, and French
languages, all, from the name of Rome, called the _Romance_ languages.
The eastern empire still went on; in the sixth century it recovered for
a time Italy and Africa. Its people called themselves Romans, but were
not so much Roman as Greek. After a lengthened decline, its last
fragments were destroyed by the Turks, who took Constantinople in 1453.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Britain as a Roman Province.
It was fortunate for Britain that it came under the rule of Rome, not in
the time of the Republic, when the conquered peoples were ruined by
spoliation and enslavement; nor yet in the earlier years of the empire,
a time of conflict and unsettlement, but after the death of the infamous
Caligula, when Claudius had assumed the purple. At the beginning of the
second century the Roman Empire was, under Trajan, at its culminating
point of magnitude and power. Trajan was succeeded by Hadrian, whose
governmental solicitude was shown in continuous journeying over his vast
empire; and by the general construction of border fortification, of
which the wall in Britain, linking the Tyne with the Solway Firth, is an
example. Antoninus followed Hadrian, and of him it has been said: “With
such diligence did he rule the subject peoples that he cared for every
man of them, equally as for his own nation; all the provinces flourished
under him.” His reign was tranquil, and his fine personal qualities
obtained for him the title of _Pius_. Of course for Britain it was the
rough rule of military conquest; but it prevented tribal conflicts,
secured order, and encouraged material development; corn was exported,
the potter’s wheel was at work, there was tin-mining in Cornwall, and
lead-mining in Northumberland and Somerset; iron was smelted in the
Forest of Dean.
But distance from the seat of government, as well as its murky skies,
and wintry severity—no vines, no olive or orange trees in its fields—
made Britain an undesirable land for Roman colonisation; it was held
chiefly as a military outpost of the empire.
Whilst the more intimate Roman rule in South Britain gave there its
civilizing institutions, its Latin tongue, its arts, laws, and
literature, and in the fourth century Christianity, these results became
less emphasized northwards—hardly reaching to the wall of Hadrian. The
country between the walls remained in the possession of heathen semi-
barbarians, scarcely more civilized or trained in the arts of civil
government than were the Celtic tribes of the north. There were no Roman
towns, and very few remains of Roman villas have been found, beyond
York: remains of roads and camps, of altars and sepulchral monuments are
found. To the south of York, Britain was a Roman settlement; north of
York it was a military occupation.
In spite of its roads, its towns, and its mines, Britain was still, at
the close of the Roman rule, a wild, half-reclaimed country; forest and
wasteland, marsh and fen occupied the larger portion of its surface. The
wolf was still a terror to the shepherd; beavers built their dams in the
marshy streams of Holderness.
Unarmed, and without any military training, feeling themselves weak and
helpless in the presence of the dominant race, the Britons of the
province were yet sufficiently patriotic, to give negative help at least
to the Pictish tribes who were ever making incursions into the district
between the walls, and even at times penetrating into the heart of the
province. One of these inroads in the reign of Valentinian all but tore
Britain from the empire: an able general, Theodosius, found southern
Britain itself in the hands of the invaders; but he succeeded in driving
them back to their mountains, winning back for Rome the land as far as
the wall of Agricola, and the district between the walls was constituted
a fifth British province, named after the Emperor, Valentia.
And whilst the Pictish clans were thus making wild dashes over the
walls, the sea-board of the province was harrassed by marauders from the
sea. Irish pirates called Scots, or “wanderers,” harried the western
shores; whilst on the eastern and southern coast, from the Wash to the
Isle of Wight, a stretch of coast which came to be called the Saxon
Shore, Saxon war-keels were making sudden raids for plunder, and for
kidnapping men, women, and children, to be sold into slavery. They also
intercepted Roman galleys in the Channel, which were engaged in
commerce, or on imperial business. In the year 364, a combined fleet of
Saxon vessels for a time held the Channel.
And now the Romanized British towns began to shew their lack of faith in
imperial protection, by strengthening themselves by walls. A special
Roman commander was appointed, charged with the defence of the Saxon
shore. The shore was dotted by strong forts, garrisoned by a legion of
ten thousand men. The thick forests which lined the coast to the
westward of Southampton water were considered sufficient guards against
invasion in that quarter. As long as the Romans remained in Britain they
were able to repel the attacks of their barbarous assailants. But when
the fated hour came—when Rome in her death-struggle with the Teutonic
hordes, whose gripe was at her throat in every one of her dominions in
western Europe, and even in Italy itself, had to recall her troops from
Britain—then the encircling foes closed in upon their prey.
In withdrawing, in 410, his troops from Britain, the Emperor Honorius,
grandson of the general Theodosius we have mentioned, told the people in
a letter to provide for their own government and defence. We may imagine
how ill prepared, after ten generations of servitude, the Romanized
Britons were for such an emergency. But they had fortified towns with
their municipal institutions, and under the general sway of Rome they
had lost their tribal distinctions, and become a more united people; and
not in any one of the Romanized lands which became a prey to the
barbarians did these encounter so prolonged and so energetic a
resistance as in Britain. For some thirty years after the Roman
evacuation of the province, it held out or maintained a fluctuating
struggle with its enemies. The Scoto-Irish bucaneers were not only
continuing their raids upon the western coast, but they planted
settlements in Argyle to the north of Agricola’s wall, and in Galloway—
between the two walls. And the Picts were ever making incursions from
the north. The policy was tried of hiring barbarian against barbarian.
The Picts were the nearest and most persistent danger; and the marauders
from over the North Sea,—Saxons, Angles, and Jutes, were, if not hired
as mercenaries, permitted to hold a footing in the land, as a defence
against Pictish invasion. About 450, three keels filled with Jutes,
under two brothers, Hengist and Horsa, with a white horse as their
cognisance, came by invitation from their own home—which is from them
called Jutland—and landed on the Isle of Thanet on the eastern Kentish
shore, making this their base for further conquests.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Anglo-Saxons in Britain.
The Teutonic nations from mid-Europe which, in their various tribes,
conquered Italy, Spain, and Gaul, had had previous intercourse with the
empire. Many had become Christians, and in their conquests they did not
destroy. Their kings ruled the invaded lands, and their chiefs seized
large portions of soil; but they adopted the provincial Latin tongues,
and the general government was by Roman law. The clergy were mostly
Romans, and they retained considerable power and estates. Thus the
Goths, Visigoths, and Vandals did not become the peoples of the
countries which they overran. The Teutonic element was absorbed into the
national elements, largely resembling what afterwards took place in
England, under the Norman Conquest.
But it was very different in Britain. Its Teutonic invaders—Jutes,
Angles, and Saxons, had lived outside the influence of the empire; and
indeed we know very little about them before they came to Britain. With
the landing of Ella, in 477, Anglo-Saxon history may be said to begin.
They were still heathens, and they knew nothing, and they cared nothing
for the arts, the laws, or the language of Rome. Their object was not
merely rule and authority over the Romanized Britons, but their
destruction, and the entire occupation of the land. As they conquered,
they killed the Britons or made them slaves, or drove them into Cornwall
and Wales in the west, and into Caledonia in the north. They came over
the North Sea in families, and thus propagated largely as an unmixed
Anglo-Saxon race. But doubtless there were many more men than women in
their bands, and there would be marriages with native women. Thus
strains of British and Roman blood were left in the new occupants of
what came to be England, and the lowlands of Scotland. The Anglo-Saxon
tribes in Britain thus became a nation with its own language and laws,
manners and customs. From the name of one tribe—the Angles—the southern
and larger portion of the island came to be called _England_. _English_
is the common language of Britain, and of its many off-shoots scattered
over the habitable globe.
Kent—the nearest British land to the continent—bore the first brunt of
Anglo-Saxon, as it had done of Roman, conquest. Then came Sussex (South
Saxon). But the third settlement, that of Wessex (West Saxon), was a far
larger one; taking in at least seven shires. It began in Hampshire,
under Cedric, and his son Cynric—then styled Ealdermen—and gradually
extended over all south-western Britain, and stretching northwards over
Oxford and Buckingham shires. This was the era assigned to the legendary
British King Arthur, fighting strongly for his native soil and his
Christian faith, against the heathen invaders.
Another, the fourth Saxon kingdom, was that of Essex. And then there
were three Anglian kingdoms—East Anglia, Northumbria and Mercia. East
Anglia comprised Suffolk (South-folk), Norfolk (North-folk), and
Lincolnshire. Northumbria included the country north of the Humber, as
far as the Frith of Forth. That portion of Northumbria now known as
Yorkshire was then called Deira, with York, then named Eboracum, its
chief town; the portion north of the Tees was named Bernicia. The
kingdom of Mercia, that is, of the _March_, had its western frontier to
Wales, being thus the midlands of England.
And besides South Wales, including Cornwall, Devonshire, and the greater
portion of Somersetshire, the old race still held a large district to
the north of Wales, called Strathclyde, taking in Galloway and other
districts in the south-east of what is now Scotland; together with
Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Lancashire, down to the river Dee, and the
city of Chester; they, even to the end of the sixth century, held
portions of west Yorkshire, including Leeds.
The Anglo-Saxon occupation having thus at the close of the sixth century
resolved itself into seven independent governments, is hence called the
Heptarchy. But the division was not a lasting one. The conquerors,
although a kindred race—with one understood language—and one old
Scandinavian faith, were far from being a homogeneous people. They had
tribal proclivities, and were generally at war with each other—“battles
of kites and crows,” Milton wrote. At times one king was powerful, or of
such personal superiority to his neighbours, that he assumed a
suzerainty over them, and was called a _Bretwalda_. But the Anglo-Saxon
kings were not autocrats; they had to consult their Witans—their council
of “witty or wise ones.” And there was in society the elements of what
came to be feudalism. The King had his Thanes, or Earls; and these had
their _churls_, who, holding lands under their lords, were expected to
follow him in the wars. And there was slavery; men were made slaves who
committed crimes, or were taken prisoners in war.
The seventh century witnessed in Anglo-Saxon Britain the conversion from
the old Norse belief in Odin, Thor, and Fries to the Christian faith.
Not from their British slaves, nor from the independent British of Wales
and Strathclyde, did the new faith reach them. In 597, Pope Gregory sent
Augustine and a number of other monks to preach Christianity in England.
The most powerful ruler in Britain at this time was the Kentish king,
Ethelbert; he was Bretwalda, exercising some authority over all the
kings south of the Humber; and he had married a Frankish wife who was a
Christian. The King received the missionaries kindly; and they preached
to him and his chief men through interpreters. In a short time the King
and a number of his people were baptized. Augustine made Canterbury his
headquarters, and it has ever since been the chief See of the Anglican
Church.
In 635, Oswald, King of Northumbria, routed a British Strathclyde army,
largely shattering this kingdom of the older race; it was as much as the
Welsh could do to hold the country west of the Severn.
In this seventh century, Devon and the whole of Somersetshire became
English. Oswald was now Bretwalda, and Northumbria, in the struggles for
supremacy of the Saxon kingdoms, was for a generation the foremost
power. It also became Christian, but more from the labours of Scottish
missionaries from Iona, than from the successors of Augustine.
In early life, Oswald, during an exile amongst the Scots, had visited
Iona, and there became acquainted with Christianity. On his return he
founded a monastery on Lindisfarne, thence called Holy Isle; a Scottish
Bishop, Aidan, he placed at its head; a succeeding Bishop, Cuthbert, was
the most famous of the saints of Northern England. And the Christianity
which came to Scotland from Ireland through Columba, himself a Dalriadan
Scot, differed in many ways from that which had come from Rome. Not only
did they differ in ritual, in dates of festivals, and in the shape of
the monkish tonsure, but in what was of more political importance—
ecclesiastical discipline and organization. The Church of Augustine
implied dioceses, bishops in gradation of rank and authority,
culminating in the Bishop of Rome as the head of the Church. The Church
of Columba was a network of monasteries, a missionary church full of the
zeal of conversion, but wanting in the power of organization. And thus
there was conflict between the two churches, and this conflict was an
important factor in the political history of the times. Ultimately the
policy of Rome prevailed. The country was divided into dioceses, the
loose system of the mission-station sending out priests to preach and
baptize as their enthusiasm led them, gave place to the parish system
with its regular incumbency, and settled order.
In the beginning of the ninth century the strife for headship over the
others, which had been long waged by the kings of the stronger kingdoms,
was terminated by the Northumbrian Thanes owning Egbert, King of Wessex,
as their over-lord. Egbert defeated the Britons in Cornwall, brought
Mercia under his rule, and united all the territories south of the
Tweed. The Kings of Wessex were henceforth, so far as Anglo-Saxon rivals
were concerned, Kings of England.
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The Rise of the Scottish Nation.
In the second century, Ptolemy, the Egyptian astronomer, composed the
first geography of the world, illustrated by maps. He would probably get
his information about Britain—which was still called Albion—from Roman
officers. What is now England, is shown with fair accuracy; but north of
the Wear and the Solway it is difficult to identify names, or even the
prominent features of the country; and the configuration of the land
stretches east and west, instead of north and south.
The Celts were not indigenous to Britain. It is hardly possible to trace
in any—in the very earliest peoples, of whom history or archæology can
speak—the first occupants of any one spot on the earth. Science is ever
pushing back, and still farther back, the era of man’s first appearance
as fully developed man upon the globe. And in his families, his tribes,
and his nations, man has ever been a migrant. Impelled by the
necessities of life, or by his love of adventure or of conquest, he has
changed his hunting and grazing grounds, made tracks through forests,
sought out passes between mountains; and the great, all-encompassing sea
has ever been a fascination; the sound of its waves a siren-song
inciting him to make them a pathway to new lands beyond his horizon.
Before the Celtic Britons dwelt in this island in the northern seas,
which they have helped to a great name, there were tribes here who had
not yet learned the uses of the metals, whose spear-heads and arrow-tips
were flints, their axes and hammers of stone. But the Celts were of that
great Aryan race, tribes of which, spreading westwards over Europe, had
carried with them so much of the older civilization of Persia, that they
never degenerated into savagedom. The Britons were probably in pre-Roman
times the only distinctive people upon the island.
How came the Celts to Britain? Probably colonies from Old Gaul first
took possession of the portions of Britain nearer to their own country;
and gradually spreading northwards, came in time to be scattered over
what is now England and Wales, and the Lowlands of Scotland. Ireland
being in sight of Britain from both Wigton and Cantyre, adventurers
would cross the North Channel, and become the founders of the Irish
nation.
The Picts—a Latin name for the first northern tribes whom the Romans
distinguished from the Britons—called themselves _Cruithne_. Their
earliest settlements in and near Britain appear to have been in the
Orkneys, the north-east of Ireland, and the north of Scotland. They must
then have made considerable advancement in the art of navigation. At the
time of the Roman invasion, the southern Britons called the dwellers in
the northern part of the island _Cavill daoin_, or “people of the
woods,”—and thus the Romans named the district Caledonia. It has been
surmised that the Picts of ancient Caledonia were a colony of Celtic-
Germans; for such offshoots from the parent race occupied portions of
central Europe. There was the same element of Druidism; but the Druids
in Caledonia declined in influence and authority at an earlier date than
did their brethren in Wales and South Britain. The bards took their
place in preserving and handing down—orally and in verse—the traditions
of their tribes—the heroism and virtues, the loves and adventures, of
their ancestors. It may be noted that whilst in this early poetry the
spirits of the dead are frequently introduced, and the powers of nature—
sun, moon, and stars, the wind, the thunder, and the sea—are
personified, there is no mythology,—no deities are called in to aid the
heroes in battling with their foes.
By the end of the Roman occupation, the Caledonian Picts had spread down
east and central Scotland as far as Fife. And there are Pictish traces
in Galloway on the west coast; probably a migration from Ireland. After
the Romans left, the Picts, in their southern raids, so often crossed
and made use of Hadrian’s wall, that the Romanized-Britons came to call
it the Pictish wall. Their language was a dialect of Celtic, afterwards
coalescing with, or being absorbed in, the Gaelic of the Scots, and
which came to be the common tongue in the Highlands and western isles;
but it was never a spoken tongue in the Scottish Lowlands.
The Scots are first found historically in Ireland; and they were there
in such numbers and influence, that one of the names of Ireland from the
sixth to the twelfth century was Scotia. Irish traditions represent the
Scotti as “Milesians from Spain;” Milesia was said to be the name of the
leader of the colonizing expedition. But their Celtic name of Gael
sounds akin to Gaul. Their history in Ireland forms an important factor
in the annals of that country. Those of the Irish people who considered
themselves the descendants of the earlier colonists of the island never
came heartily to recognise as fellow-countrymen,—although these had been
for many generations natives of the land,—the descendants of those who
settled at a later date. On the other hand—and similarly keeping up old
race hatreds and lines of demarcation—the descendants of the later
settlers looked upon themselves as a superior race, and never heartily
called themselves Irishmen. This restricted and mock patriotism,
aggravated by religious differences, has almost made of the Irish people
two nations.
The Scotti must have made considerable settlements in North Britain in
the second or third century, or they would not have been in a position
to join the Picts in attacks upon the Roman province in the fourth
century. When we come to enquire who were the peoples associated with
the Christian missionary Columba in the latter half of the sixth
century, we find that the districts bordering the east coast down to the
Firth of Forth, and the central Highlands, with the chief fort at
Inverness, were peopled by Picts; and that Scots were in Argyle and the
Isles as far north as Iona. Their settlement around the shores of Loch
Linnhe—the arm of the sea at the entrance to which Oban now stands—
became in time a little kingdom called Dalriada, which gradually shook
off the over-lordship of the Scotic kings in Ireland, and maintained
itself against the Picts on its northern and eastern borders. A British
king ruled in Strathclyde, which included the south-west of Scotland up
to the Clyde; and, bordering on Strathclyde, Anglo-Saxon Northumbria
included the east of Scotland up to the Forth. Up to this time the Celts
in North Britain had left no written history behind them; indicating
that they were less civilized than their Welsh and Irish kin. It is in
the annals of Beda and other Anglo-Saxon writers that we find anything
like trustworthy history after the departure of the Romans. The
Romanized Britons got Christianity from their rulers, but subjection to
the Bishop of Rome was not transmitted with the faith. The British
bishops, at their meeting under St. Augustine’s oak, declined to submit
to the missionary from Rome.
It is usually said that Scotland gave Patrick to Ireland. It was a
strange kind of _giving_. Shortly after the Roman exodus, amongst a
number of Britons taken captive by a Scotti-Irish raid on the banks of
the Clyde, was a young lad of sixteen, who was sent as a slave to tend
sheep and cattle in Antrim. The people round him were idolators; but in
the solitude of the pastures he nursed the Christian faith of his
childhood, and burned with the zeal of a young apostle for the
conversion of the land. For ten years he remained in captivity, then he
made his escape, and after many wanderings, reached his old home.
Ordained a priest, and in time a bishop, he set manfully to realize in
Ireland the dream of his youth, and he had abundant success. He founded
churches, seminaries, and monasteries; the new faith spread like
wildfire over the land.
And a century later, in 563, thirty-three years before the Roman mission
of Augustine, Ireland sent over Columba to Britain. He, with twelve
companion monks, founded on the little isle of Iona a monastery, which
became the centre of Christianity in North Britain. The Scotti who had
settled in the neighbouring islands, and on the nearest mainland, were
already Christians. But Columba visited and converted the Pictish King
Bruda, and founded a number of churches and monasteries. Than Iona there
is no spot of greater historical interest in the United Kingdom; but
none of the ecclesiastical ruins found there date from Columba. The
first buildings were of wood, but the original foundations in Skye and
Tiree were his work. Columba was also a warrior, taking a strong part in
several campaigns in Ireland, as a liegeman of the Scotic King. The
disciples of Columba were called Culdees, meaning, from their monastic
life, “sequestered persons.” The Pictish bard Ossian is said, when blind
and in old age, to have met and conversed with one of these Culdees.
After ten years of prosperous rule in Iona, Columba contributed to start
into greater unity and more vigorous life the Scotic settlement of
Dalriada. He consecrated a young chieftain, Aedhan, as king; and Aedhan
drove the Bernicians from the debatable land south of the head-waters of
the Forth, and formed a league of Scots and Strathclyde Britons against
Northumbria itself. But the league was, in 603, defeated by the
Northumbrian King Ethelfrith in a great battle. The Scots were thrown
back into their Highland fastnesses, and Beda says, writing a hundred
years later, “From that day to this no Scot King has dared to come into
battle with the English folk.” Ethelfrith, by another victory over the
Welsh at Chester, in 611, and further successes up to Carlisle, divided
by a great gap the Kingdom of Strathclyde from North Wales, and it
became tributary to Northumbria. On the decline of Northumbria, in the
eighth century, Strathclyde re-asserted its independence; and, in a
restricted sense, its extent, more nearly answered to its name, “The
Valley of the Clyde.” With Galloway, it continued under its own rulers,
until, in the tenth century, it was connected with the Kingdom of Scone
by the election to its throne—if it could afford a throne—of Donald,
brother of Constantine II., King of Scots.
The Picts whom Columba converted appear to have been then consolidated
under one monarch, Brude; his rule was from Inverness to Iona on the
west; on the north to the Orkneys—probably including Aberdeen; its
southern boundary is undefined. Of succeeding kings to Brude, there is a
list of names; but little is known of the men themselves until, in 731,
we come to Angus Mac-Fergus. In reprisal for the capture of his son by
Selvach, King of the Dalriad Scots, he attacked Argyle, and reduced the
whole western highlands. The Strathclyde Britons were assailed by a
brother of Angus, in 756, and their chief town, Alclyde, destroyed. In
the beginning of the ninth century, the seat of the Pictish government
appears to have migrated from Inverness into Perthshire,—Scone becoming
its political capital.
The history of the Dalriadan Scots, although interwoven with that of the
Picts, and meeting at many points with the histories of the Britons of
Strathclyde, and the Angles of Northumbria, is yet misty and legendary.
True, there is a list of kings, and their stalwart portraits hang in the
great hall of Holyrood; so extensive is this list, that if they had
reigned for anything like an average period, it would carry the history
back to about three hundred years B.C.
We find something like a trustworthy beginning in Fergus, the son of
Earac, in 503. From this date for upwards of two hundred years, down to
Selvach, who was conquered by the Pictish King Angus Mac-Fergus, there
is from the _Irish Annals_, and the _Church History_ of Beda, a
reasonable certainty. After this there is another century of hazy
legend. If, as seems probable, Dalriada continued through the latter
seventy years of the eighth, and the first half of the ninth century,
under Pictish rule, it is not easy to see how, in the middle of the
ninth century, Kenneth Mac-Alpine, called in the _Irish Annals_ a king
of the Picts, founded, as there is no doubt he did, a line of Scottish
monarchs on the throne of Scone. One hypothesis is, that Kenneth was the
son of a Pictish king by a Scottish mother, and by the Pictish law, the
mother’s nationality determined that of the children. Whatever the
circumstances of the case, the accession of Kenneth Mac-Alpine
represents an era in Scottish history. There was thenceforth such a
complete union of Scots and Picts, that as separate races they lost all
distinctiveness. But it certainly appears that, both by numerical
superiority and historical prestige, the country should have been
Pictland, rather than Scotland.
The kingdom of Kenneth included central Scotland from sea to sea, Argyle
and the Isles, Perthshire, Fife, Angus, and the Mearns. Lothian was
still Northumbrian. The Vale of the Clyde, Ayr, Dumfries, and Galloway,
were under a British king at Dumbarton. There were several independent
chieftains in Moray and Mar; and Orkney and the northern and north-
western fringes of the country, were dominated by Norsemen.
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The Danish Invasions of Britain.
In the first quarter of the ninth century, invaders from lands farther
north than Jutland—hence called Norsemen—played broadly the same parts
in Britain as the Angles and Saxons had played three hundred years
previously. These Norsemen, in their war galleys, prowled over the
Northern Seas, plundering the coasts, and making first incursions and
then settlements in Muscovy, Britain, and Gaul. They discovered and
colonised Iceland. Many centuries before Columbus, they had sailed along
the coast of North America, and even attempted settlements thereon. On
the northern coast of France, Normandy, under its powerful dukes, had
become almost an independent state.
In their English invasions they are commonly called Danes, but in their
own homes they formed three kingdoms, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark.
Probably the invaders of England were mainly Danes. They were still
“heathens,” _i.e._, of the old Scandinavian faith; and they held the
Christian faith in supreme detestation. They were daring, fierce, and
cruel; but still people of a kindred race, speaking dialects of the same
Teutonic tongue; and when they settled in the land and became
Christians, their language and manners differed so little from those of
the Anglo-Saxons, that they did not remain a separate nation, as the
Anglo-Saxons did from the British. It was more as if another Teuton
tribe had come over and become joint occupants of the land. But, to
begin with, they came as plunderers, taking their booty home. They
ravaged Berkshire, Hampshire, and Surrey, destroying churches and
monasteries. They invaded and took possession of East Anglia. They
penetrated into Mercia; at Peterborough they burned the minster, slaying
the abbot and his monks. They made extensive settlements in Yorkshire
and Lincolnshire.