THE KINGDOM OF SCOTIA PASSES INTO FEUDAL SCOTLAND.
[Sidenote: Effects of King Malcolm’s death.]
The death of Malcolm Ceannmor, though his reign had been prolonged for
the unusual period of thirty-five years, was a great misfortune for
Scotland. He united in himself so many claims to the allegiance of the
heterogeneous races under his rule, that a work of consolidation had
been insensibly going on during his reign, while the influence of his
pious and accomplished queen, the Saxon Princess Margaret, equally
advanced their civilisation. His death, followed in four days by that of
his queen, who succumbed to the grief and shock caused by this
unexpected blow, arrested the progress of both, and not only retarded
the advance the kingdom had been making for a period of thirty years,
but threatened its dismemberment, till the accession of David the First
once more united all the races of its population under one vigorous
rule, and the task commenced by his father—the process of consolidation
and advancing civilisation—was again resumed.
It will be necessary for our purpose to notice the events which affected
the population of the country during this interval.
The death of Malcolm raised once more the vexed question of the
succession to the throne, and brought the laws and prepossessions of the
different races, now united under one government, into conflict. Malcolm
appears to have had two brothers, Donald Ban and Melmare, from the
latter of whom the earls of Atholl descended.[620] By his first wife
Ingibiorg, the widow of Thorfinn, earl of Orkney, he seems to have had
two sons, Duncan, who was given up to the king of England as a hostage
in 1072, and Donald, who predeceased him in 1085. By his second wife,
the Saxon Queen Margaret, he had six sons and two daughters. The sons
were Eadward, who was slain with his father at Alnwick; Eadmund;
Ethelred, who appears, while under age, as lay abbot of Dunkeld and earl
of Fife;[621] Eadgar, Alexander, and David.
By the Welsh population of the Cumbrian province belonging to Scotland,
Duncan, as the eldest son of his father, must have been regarded as the
true heir to the throne, and those parts of the kingdom which were
colonised by Norwegians, or under Norwegian influence, must have also
looked to him both on that account and as the son of the Norwegian
Ingibiorg. On the death of Thorfinn, the powerful earl of Orkney who had
brought under his rule both the Western Isles and so many earldoms on
the mainland, while his patrimonial inheritance of the Orkneys, and
probably Caithness, passed to his sons, the other districts, as well as
the Western Islands, reverted to their natural lords, and no doubt
passed under the dominion of Malcolm Ceannmor. The earldoms which lay
within the bounds of the kingdom of Alban, or Scotland proper, became
once more incorporated with it. The great district of Moravia, or Moray
and Ross, fell under the rule of his native Mormaers. The Western Isles,
with Galloway and Argyll, must still to a great extent have been
occupied by Northmen; and the revolution by which Godred Crovan, a
Norwegian, succeeded in driving out the Danish ruler, and taking
possession of the Island of Man some time between the years 1075 and
1080, appears to have led to the Western Isles passing also under his
rule, over which he placed his eldest son Lagman; while the appearance
of Magnus Barefoot, who had recently become king of Norway, with his
fleet in the autumn of the year 1093, and his conquest of the Orkneys
and the Western Isles, led to the latter being for the time transferred
from the rule of Malcolm Ceannmor, who was at the time engaged in
preparing the expedition into England which had, for him, so fatal a
termination, and could not defend these remote possessions, to that of
the king of Norway.[622] In these more remote parts of the kingdom the
claim of Duncan would be regarded with most favour.
Lothian, however, had now become a very important and influential
dependence of the kingdom, and its Saxon population must have looked
with longing eyes to the children of their revered Saxon princess Queen
Margaret as their natural lords. This is clear from the Saxon Chronicle,
which, in recording the death of Eadward, the eldest son of Malcolm by
Queen Margaret, who was slain with his father in 1093, adds ‘who should,
if he had lived, have been king after him,’ and in Lothian the claim of
Eadmund, the next surviving son, would be preferred.
Among the Gaelic tribes which still formed the main body of the
population of the districts extending from the Forth to the Spey, and
constituting the proper kingdom of Scotia, the law of Tanistry must
still have had a powerful influence, and had too recently had full sway
among them to prepare them to accept the succession of a son in
preference to a brother without difficulty; and here Donald Ban, the
brother of Malcolm Ceannmor, must have been regarded as their natural
and legitimate king, while his only competitor in their eyes, Duncan,
being still detained as a hostage at the English court, was in no
position personally to contest the succession with him.
[Sidenote: A.D. 1093.
Donald Ban, Malcolm’s brother, reigns six months.]
The Saxon Chronicle tells us that on Malcolm’s death ‘the Scots,’ by
whom the people of Scotland proper are no doubt meant, ‘then chose
Donald, Malcolm’s brother, for king, and drove out all the English who
were before with King Malcolm.’[623] He appears to have asserted his
claim with great promptitude, for John of Fordun, whom we may now accept
as a fair authority for the events of Scottish history, as being nearer
his own time, and having no longer a theory to maintain at the expense
of its true features, tells us that Donald Ban, the king’s brother,
having heard of the death of Queen Margaret, invaded the kingdom at the
head of a numerous band, and besieged the castle of Edinburgh, while her
body still remained there unburied, and where her sons, whom Fordun
terms the king’s rightful and lawful heirs, still were; but her family,
taking advantage of a thick mist, which of course he considers
miraculous, but is not an unfrequent accompaniment of an Edinburgh day,
brought down her body by a postern on the western side, and conveyed it
safely to the church of Dunfermline, where she was buried.[624] Wynton,
who wrote in the following century, repeats the same story, but says
that it was her son Ethelred who conveyed her body to Dunfermline, which
is probable enough, as that royal seat was situated within the bounds of
his earldom of Fife.[625] Eadgar Aetheling, the queen’s brother, who was
still alive, then gathered her sons and daughters together and brought
them secretly to England for the purpose of being privately educated by
their mother’s relatives.
[Sidenote: A.D. 1093-1094.
Duncan, son of Malcolm by his first wife, Ingibiorg, reigns
six months.]
Donald Ban was, however, not to escape a conflict with Duncan, the
eldest son of the deceased king, for when the news of these events
reached the English court, where he had remained since he had been given
as a hostage when a mere child, and had received his education, he went
to the king, ‘and performed such fealty as the king would have of him,
and so with his permission went to Scotland with the support he could
get of English and French, that is Normans, and deprived his kinsman
Donald of the kingdom, and was received for king.’[626] This took place
after Donald had reigned for six months. By the population of Lothian
and Cumbria, who had probably had enough of Donald and his Gaelic
followers, Duncan would no doubt be received at once; for though the
people of Lothian might have preferred a son of the Saxon queen, and
might not dislike to see him set aside for one of that family, they
would have no hesitation in supporting his cause against that of his
uncle. The Gaelic inhabitants of Scotland proper seem to have been
divided. A party of the Scots appear to have been sufficiently
favourable to him to enable him to expel the intruders, while another
section of the natives rejected him, for we are told by the same
chronicle that ‘some of the Scots afterwards gathered together and slew
almost all his followers, and he himself with few escaped. Afterwards
they were reconciled on the condition that he never again should harbour
in the land either English or French.’[627] Duncan had probably agreed
to hold the whole kingdom as a vassal of the king of England, being
himself by education a Norman, and trusting to his English and Norman
support to maintain him in his position; but he seems to have found that
his only chance of retaining his rule over the districts north of the
Forth was by claiming them as his by hereditary right. There are two
charters by him preserved: one is a grant by Duncan of the lands of
Tiningham and others in East Lothian to Saint Cuthbert, that is, to the
church at Durham, in which he styles himself ‘son of King Malcolm and by
hereditary right king of Scotland,’ It is witnessed apparently by his
brother Eadgar, and with one exception the other witnesses are all
Saxons.[628] He appears also to have granted lands in Fife to the church
of Dunfermline.[629] He is said to have married Ethreda, daughter of
Gospatric, earl of Northumberland, who took refuge in 1067 with Malcolm
Ceannmor, and was made earl of Dunbar, by whom he had a son
William.[630]
The reign of Duncan, however, did not last longer than that of his uncle
Donald; for after he had possessed the throne for six months, the Saxon
Chronicle records in the following year, ‘In this year also the Scots
ensnared and slew their king Duncan, and after took to them again, a
second time, his paternal uncle Donald for king, through whose
machinations and incitement he was betrayed to death.’[631] The Scots
who thus ensnared him were those who inhabited the districts north of
the Tay, the leaders among whom were the men of the Mearns; and Duncan
is said by our oldest chronicles to have been slain by Malpeder MacLoen,
the Mormaer, or Comes as the Mormaers were now called, of the Mearns, at
Monachedin, now Mondynes, in the Mearns or Kincardineshire, where a
large upright monolith rising six or eight feet above the surface may
commemorate the event.[632]
[Sidenote: A.D. 1094-1097.
Donald Ban again, with Eadmund, son of Malcolm, reigned three
years.]
Donald Ban, who thus a second time obtained possession of the throne,
appears to have felt that he could not maintain himself in that position
without neutralising the opposition of the Anglic inhabitants of
Lothian, and with the view of strengthening himself offered to associate
with him one of the sons of Malcolm by Queen Margaret. Eadgar, the heir,
was not likely to surrender his claims for a divided rule with his
uncle, but his brother Eadmund appears to have yielded to the temptation
and joined the party of Donald Ban. It was at the instigation of Donald
Ban and Eadmund that Duncan was slain; and while Donald Ban ruled over
the Scots north of the Firths, Eadmund was no doubt placed over Lothian,
and, as son of their revered princess Margaret, readily commanded their
allegiance.[633] Their joint reign appears to have lasted for three
years, and Lothian thus became again dissevered during that period from
the kingdom of Scotland.
Eadgar Aetheling, however, resolved now to make an effort to place his
nephew Eadgar on the throne; and we are told by the Saxon Chronicle that
in the year 1097, ‘soon after St. Michael’s Mass, or the 29th of
September, Eadgar Aetheling, with the king’s support, went with a force
into Scotland, and in a hard-fought battle won that land and drove out
the king Donald, and in King William’s vassalage set as king his kinsman
Eadgar, who was the son of King Malcolm and of Queen Margaret, and
afterwards returned to England.’ Eadmund, according to William of
Malmesbury, being taken and doomed to perpetual imprisonment, sincerely
repented, and on his near approach to death ordered himself to be buried
in his chains, confessing that he suffered deservedly for the crime of
fratricide.[634] Eadgar thus reunited Lothian with Scotland, and
subjected both to his rule, but it was not till two years after that he
succeeded in taking Donald Ban prisoner, who was blinded and condemned
to perpetual imprisonment at Roscolpin or Rescobie, where he died, and
was buried in Dunfermline.[635]
[Sidenote: A.D. 1097-1107.
Eadgar, son of Malcolm Ceanmnor by Queen Margaret, reigns
nine years.]
In the first year of Eadgar’s reign, Magnus Barefoot, the king of
Norway, again appeared in the Western Sea with his fleet. On the former
occasion he was content with merely subjecting the islands to his
authority as sovereign, without apparently disturbing their local
government. The sons of Earl Thorfinn retained their position as earls
of Orkney, and Godred Crovan remained ruler of the Isles in
subordination to the king of Norway, and died in the year 1095.
According to the Chronicle of Man, he died in Isla after a reign of
sixteen years, and his eldest son Lagman, who had ruled the Isles under
him during his life, went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where he died.
The king of Norway then sent a Norwegian named Ingemund to rule the
Isles, but he soon exasperated the islanders by his conduct, and on his
assembling the chiefs of the Isles in the island of Lewis, where he
appears to have had his seat of government, for the purpose of having
himself declared king, they surrounded his house, set it on fire, and he
and his whole retinue were destroyed either by the fire or the
sword.[636]
It was this event which probably led to Magnus’s second expedition, and
he resolved now to bring the islands under his own immediate rule.
According to the Saga ‘he had both a large and vigorous army and
excellent ships. King Magnus went with that army westward over the sea,
and first to Orkney. He took captive the earls Paul and Erlend, and sent
them both east to Norway, but left as a chieftain over the islands his
son Sigurd, and gave a counsel to him. He went with his whole army to
the Sudreys, but when he came there he commenced plundering immediately,
burnt the inhabited places, killed the people, and pillaged wherever he
went. But the people of the country fled to various places, some up to
Scotland or into the fiords or sea lochs, some southward to Satiri or
Kintyre; some submitted to King Magnus and received pardon.’[637] It is
obvious from this account that the objects of King Magnus’s wrath were
the original native possessors of the Isles, and not the Norwegian
Vikings who had settled there, and it is probable that the destruction
of Ingemund and his party arose from an attempt on their part to throw
off the Norwegian yoke.
After the complete subjection of the Isles, Magnus proceeded southwards
to the Isle of Man, and from thence to Anglesea, which he took
possession of after subduing two earls—Hugo the Modest and Hugo the
Stout—who governed it, and slaying one of them. On his return to the
Isles he came to terms with the king of the Scots, by which all the
islands to the west of Scotland, between which and the mainland a
helm-carrying ship could pass, were ceded to him, and it was on this
occasion that he is said to have had his ship drawn across the narrow
isthmus between east and west Loch Tarbert, and included Satiri or
Kintyre in the new kingdom of the Isles. It is probable that Eadgar did
not feel himself sufficiently secure on his throne, and had as yet
acquired too little authority over the remote parts of his kingdom to be
able to resist the Norwegian king, and had no alternative but to buy off
any attack upon the mainland by confirming the cession which his father
had been obliged to make in the last years of his reign; and the Isles
thus became entirely severed from their connection with the kingdom of
Scotland, and were not again united till after the lapse of more than a
century and a half.[638] King Magnus was slain in Ulster in the end of
August in the year 1104, after he had ruled the Isles for six years.
After his death the chiefs of the Isles appear to have endeavoured to
throw off the Norwegian yoke with the assistance of the Irish under a
leader, Donald mac Tadg, who, according to the Annals of Inisfallen,
‘carried war into the north of Ireland, and acquired the kingdom of
Insegall by force’ in 1111;[639] but two years after, Olave, the son of
Hodred Crovan, who had taken refuge with the king of England, recovered
the possession of the now independent kingdom of the Isles, and ruled
over them for forty years.[640]
Fordun tells us that while Eadgar was advancing with his uncle Eadgar
Aetheling, towards Scotland, Saint Cuthbert appeared to him in a dream,
and promised him success if he would take his standard from the church
at Durham and carry it against his foes; and that, having put Donald and
his men to flight, Eadgar then, by the favour of God and the merits of
Saint Cuthbert, happily achieved a bloodless victory, and when
established on the throne granted to the monks of Durham the lands of
Coldingham.[641] That he refounded the monastery of Coldingham, and
granted it to the canons regular of Saint Cuthbert is certain, for the
charters still exist.[642] In these charters Eadgar terms himself king
of the Scots (rex Scottorum), and addresses them to the Scots and Angles
or English (Scottis et Anglis), thus classing his subjects under these
two heads. Only one of the charters contains a list of witnesses. These
are of the same character as those of King Duncan’s charter, and equally
belong to the race of the Angles. Two of them are in part repeated;
Vinget and Aelfric, who witnessed Duncan’s charter, appear also
witnessing this charter as Unioett ghwite and Aelfric Pincerna, and
Eadgar was thus surrounded by a Saxon court. He appears too to have made
Edinburgh his residence, which as a stronghold situated near the western
boundary of Lothian and on the Firth of Forth, was well adapted to be
the seat of a king whose main supporters were in Lothian, and whose
tenure of the northern part of his kingdom was uncertain, and to have
died there on the 13th of January in the year 1107,[643] and was buried
in Dunfermline. There were only three of the sons of Queen Margaret in
life, Ethelred, Alexander, and David.[644] Ethelred was a churchman,
abbot of Dunkeld, and possessed as a further appanage of the earldom of
Fife, but seems to have made no pretension to the throne, and Alexander
appears to have regarded himself as the natural heir; but Eadgar limited
his succession to Scotland proper and its dependencies, and bequeathed
the districts south of the Firths, consisting of Lothian and the
Cumbrian province, to his youngest brother, David, with the title of
Comes or Earl.[645] His motive for making this division of the kingdom
between the two brothers was probably caused by the difficult position
in which the kingdom was placed towards the English monarch, in regard
to his claims of superiority. So far as Lothian was concerned, there was
probably no idea at this period of the history of contesting it, and
both Duncan and Eadgar seem to have purchased the assistance of the
English by a general admission that they held the kingdom under the king
of England. As soon, however, as they had obtained possession of the
throne, they found the necessity of basing their right to the throne, so
far as the districts north of the Firths were concerned, upon their
hereditary title as heirs of its ancient kings, and not upon any
concession from the king of England; but their possession of Scotland
proper as independent kings, of Lothian as vassals of the king of
England, and of Cumbria on an uncertain tenure in this respect, coupled
with the radical diversity in the races which peopled these districts,
and their mutual antagonism, made their position an anomalous one, and
tended to compromise the independence of the monarchy. Donald Ban seems
to have met the difficulty by associating a son of Queen Margaret with
him in his second usurpation; and Eadgar, probably experiencing the same
difficulty during his life, tried to obviate it after his death by
making one brother independent king of the Scots, and placing the
district more immediately affected by the English claims under the rule
of his brother David, who was so far subordinated to Alexander as to
bear the title of earl only. Such seems the natural explanation of this
strange arrangement, by which Alexander’s succession as king was limited
to the kingdom north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde, with the
debateable ground extending from the river Forth to the river Esk, and
including the strong positions of Stirling and Edinburgh; while David as
earl obtained the richer districts extending from thence to the borders
of England; and between them lay the earldom of Gospatric of Dunbar.
According to Ailred, within whose lifetime Eadgar died, he was ‘a sweet
and amiable man, like his kinsman the holy King Edward in every way;
using no harshness, no tyrannical or bitter treatment towards his
subjects, but ruling and correcting them with the greatest charity,
goodness, and loving kindness;’[646] and consistently with this
character we find few events recorded in his reign. He gives a very
different character to his brother Alexander. Although, he says, he was
humble and kind enough to the monks and the clergy, he was to the rest
of his subjects beyond everything terrible; a man of large heart,
exerting himself in all things beyond his strength. He was a lettered
man, and most zealous in building churches, in searching for relics of
saints, in providing and arranging priestly vestments and sacred books;
most open-handed, even beyond his means, to all strangers, and so
devoted to the poor that he seemed to delight in nothing so much as in
supporting them, washing, nourishing, and clothing them.[647]
[Sidenote: A.D. 1107-1124.
Alexander, son of Malcolm Ceannmor by Queen Margaret, reigns
over Scotland north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde as king
for seventeen years.]
Alexander seems to have been dissatisfied with the arrangement made by
the deceased king, and the expression in the Saxon Chronicle, coupled
with the charters by which he confirms to the monks of Durham the grants
they had received from Edgar,[648] implies that he was inclined to claim
the whole kingdom as heir to his brother, with the assistance of the
king of England, whose natural daughter Sibylla he afterwards married;
but the hearty support given by the people of Lothian to his brother
David, with the exception of Earl Gospatric, who appears among
Alexander’s adherents, was too powerful to enable him to oppose with
success the partition of the kingdom.
He soon justified that part of the character given him by Ailred which
relates to the monks and the clergy, for besides the usual grants made
by each king to Dunfermline, he, after he had reigned about seven years,
founded a monastery at Scone, the principal seat of his kingdom, and
established in it a colony of canons regular of St. Augustine, whom he
brought from the church of St. Oswald at Nastlay, near Pontefract, in
Yorkshire; and the church which had previously been dedicated to the
Holy Trinity, he placed under the patronage of the Holy Virgin Mary, and
of St. Michael, St. John, St. Laurence, and St. Augustine. The
foundation charter is granted by himself and his wife Sibylla, daughter
of Henry, king of England, as king and queen of the Scots, is confirmed
by two bishops, and the formal consent of six earls and of Gospatric,
who had also the rank of earl, is given to the grant.[649] Four can be
connected with certain districts. These are Mallus of Stratherne, Madach
of Atholl, Rothri of Mar, and Gartnach of Buchan. The older designation
of Mormaer had now passed into that of ‘comes’ or earl, but was still
more of a personal than a territorial title; and we here see Alexander,
king of the Scots, whose kingdom was limited to that of Alban or
Scotland proper, acting with a constitutional body of seven earls, six
of whom represented the older Mormaers of the Celtic kingdom. He also
founded a priory of the same canons in the island of Lochtay for himself
and the soul of his queen Sibylla, which was dedicated to the Virgin and
all saints.[650] In the same year in which Alexander founded the church
of Scone, he found himself obliged to enter upon a struggle for the
independence of the church in Scotland which indirectly involved that of
the kingdom itself. The event which gave rise to this contest was the
death of Turgot, bishop of St. Andrews. The see of St. Andrews had
remained vacant since the death, in 1093, of the last Celtic bishop,
termed in the Ulster Annals Fothudh, high bishop of Alban,[651] and in
the Register of St. Andrews, Modach, son of Malmykel, of pious memory,
bishop of St Andrews.[652] During the troubled time of the contest
between the sons and brother of Malcolm Ceannmor, and during the reign
of Eadgar, there appears to have been no consecrated bishop, but in the
first year of Alexander’s reign, Turgot, who had been Queen Margaret’s
confessor, and was now prior of Durham, was elected to fill the vacant
see on the 20th of June 1107.[653] A difficulty immediately arose as to
his consecration. The bishops of St. Andrews were at the time the sole
bishops in Scotland. The controversy which had existed between Lanfranc,
archbishop of Canterbury, and Thomas, archbishop of York, as to the
rights of their respective metropolitan jurisdiction, had terminated in
an agreement, at the council of Windsor in 1072, which conceded to York
jurisdiction over all the episcopal sees from the Humber to the farthest
limits of Scotland; and the archbishop of York now claimed the right to
consecrate the bishop of St. Andrews. The claim was not without
plausible grounds. The diocese of Wilfrid, the first bishop of York,
after the withdrawal of the Scottish clergy, had extended over the whole
of that part of Scotland which had been subjected to the Northumbrian
rule, and included the entire territory of the subsequent diocese of St.
Andrews, and that of Glasgow; and Lothian at that time annexed to St.
Andrews, and Teviotdale annexed to Glasgow, had belonged to the
bishopric of Lindisfarne. The church of St. Andrews too was founded
after the expulsion of the Columban monks and might be viewed as much an
offshoot of the Northumbrian church as the early Scottish church of
Lindisfarne was of Iona. On the other hand, the church of St. Andrews
claimed to be the representative of an older foundation, and engrafted a
legendary origin upon its true history. The diocese of Galloway had been
founded by the Northumbrians, and as to its subjection to the
metropolitan jurisdiction of York there seems never to have been any
question; but to allow it to extend over Glasgow and St. Andrews might
compromise the independence of the kingdom. Turgot, however, as prior of
Durham, would naturally be disposed to look to York for his
consecration. Alexander had apparently been no party to his election,
and seems hardly to have known thus early in his reign how to extricate
himself from the difficulty, and the matter was settled for the time by
a compromise. Turgot was consecrated at York on 1st August 1109, with
reservation of the rights of both sees.[654] It was probably with a view
to remove this difficulty that Alexander had, before the foundation of
the church of Scone, erected the two additional sees of Dunkeld and
Moray. Turgot, as the first bishop of St. Andrews of Anglic race, seems
to have found his position an uncomfortable one, and experienced
difficulty in exercising his episcopal functions; accordingly, six years
after his consecration, he asked leave to retire to Durham, and died
there on the 31st August 1115. It now became necessary to appoint a
successor. Alexander appears to have wished for an Englishman, and to
have thought that he could best defeat the pretensions of the archbishop
of York by applying to the primate of all England. He accordingly wrote
to Radulf, archbishop of Canterbury, to ask him to recommend a
successor, since, as he averred in old time the bishops of St. Andrews
were wont to be consecrated by the Pope or the archbishop of Canterbury.
This appeal seems to have revived the disputes between York and
Canterbury, which was probably Alexander’s object; and while they
disputed as to who should consecrate the bishop, the see remained again
vacant till the year 1120, when Alexander chose Eadmer, a monk of
Canterbury, to be bishop of St. Andrews, and wrote to the archbishop of
Canterbury to request that he might be sent to Scotland to be
consecrated, who agreed to his appointment, but proposed he should be
sent back to be consecrated. Eadmer went to Scotland, and was elected
bishop by the clergy and people of the land, with the royal assent, but
when it came to consecration the difficulty again occurred, and was
again eventually settled by compromise. Eadmer received the ring from
Alexander, took the pastoral staff from off the altar, and assumed the
charge of the diocese. He, however, found himself quite as uncomfortable
as Turgot had been. The renewed dissensions about the conflicting claims
of York and Canterbury and the rights of St. Andrews retarded his
consecration, and it ended in his returning the ring to Alexander, the
staff to the altar, and leaving Scotland for Canterbury. When he wished,
shortly afterwards, to reclaim his bishopric and return to Scotland,
Alexander refused to receive him. The see again remained vacant, during
which time the archbishop renewed his claim to jurisdiction over the
Scottish bishops, which was supported by Pope Calixtus and steadily
rejected by King Alexander; but on the death of Eadmer in the beginning
of the year 1124, Robert, prior of the monastery of regular canons at
Scone, was elected bishop of St. Andrews, and four years after
Alexander’s death he was, in the reign of his successor, consecrated as
Turgot had been by the archbishop of York, reserving the rights of both
churches.[655]
It was on the occasion of Robert, the prior of his own monastery of
Scone, becoming bishop of St. Andrews, that Alexander I. restored to the
church of St. Andrews the lands called the Boar’s Chase, with many
privileges, accompanied with the strange gift of the royal Arabian
steed, with its trappings and silver shield and spear, which the king
led up to the altar, and a splendid suit of Turkish armour.[656]
Alexander appears also in the same year to have founded a monastery of
canons regular on the small island of Emonia, now called Inchcolm, in
the Firth of Forth.[657] If these foundations amply justify the
character given him of devotion and liberality to the church, that which
Ailred likewise applies to him of being terrible towards his subjects
was probably acquired by the stern manner in which he repressed the
resistance of the Gaelic population of his kingdom, and forced them to
submit to his rule. Fordun tells us that Alexander was surnamed Fers or
the Fierce, and his interpolator Bower adds ‘that he acquired this name
because he had received from his father’s brother, who was earl of
Gowry, at his baptism, according to custom, the lands of Lyff and
Invergowry, near Dundee;[658] that when he became king, he proceeded to
erect a palace at Lyff, but was attacked by certain people of the Mearns
and Moray in the night, who broke in the door, but he was brought
secretly out[659] by his attendant, Alexander Carron, and having taken
ship at Invergowry, he went to the south of Scotland, and having
collected an army, he hastened against the rebels; that he then founded
the monastery of Scone, and bestowed upon it the lands of Lyff and
Invergowry. He then pursued the rebels to the river Spey, and there
finding his enemies collected in great numbers on the opposite bank, and
the river so swollen, and his men unwilling to cross, he gave his
standard to Alexander Carron, who plunged into the stream, was followed
by the army, and his enemies were put to flight.’[660] Wynton
substantially narrates the same tale, but places the king’s palace or
‘maner-plas’ at Invergowry; terms his assailants ‘a multitude of
Scottysmen;’ says that they fled ‘owre the Mownth,’ and removes their
final dispersion from the Spey to the Beauly river, when he adds that
the king
Folowyd on thame rycht fersly
Owre the Stokfurd into Ros;
And that
Quhilk he oure-tuk thame at the last,
And tuk and slwe thame, or he past
Owt off that land, that fewe he lefft
To tuk on hand swylk purpos efft.
Fra that day hys legys all
Oysid hym Alysandyr the Fers to call.[661]
Wynton places the foundation of Scone on his return from the north.
Whether this event really took place or not, it is probably a true
enough indication of what Alexander had to experience from his Gaelic
subjects, and how he dealt with them, and certain it is that the
foundation charter of the monastery of Scone contains a grant of the
lands of Lyff and Invergowry.[662]
Alexander grants three of his charters at Strivelin, Perth, and Scone;
and, in his foundation charter of the latter place, he gives the monks
five dwellings in his principal towns. These are Edwinsburg or
Edinburgh, Strivelin or Stirling, Inverkeithing, Perth, and Aberdon or
Aberdeen. He died at Stirling in full health of body and faculties,
according to Fordun, on the 24th of April in the year 1124, and was
buried at Dunfermline on the day of St. Mark the Evangelist, that is, on
the 25th of April, near his father, in front of the great altar.[663]
[Sidenote: A.D. 1107-1124.
David, youngest son of Malcolm Ceannmor by Queen Margaret,
rules over Scotland south of Forth and Clyde as earl.]
The only son of Queen Margaret now left was David, the youngest. He
appears, while yet a youth, to have accompanied his sister Matilda to
the English court, on her marriage with Henry the First, king of
England, which took place in November 1100, during the reign of Eadgar
over Scotland,[664] and here he was trained, with other young Norman
barons, in all the feudal usages, so as to become, by education and
association with the young English nobility, imbued with feudal ideas,
and surrounded by Norman influences, or, as William of Malmesbury
expresses it, ‘polished from a boy by intercourse and familiarity with
us.’[665] When he reached maturity Henry I. gave him in marriage a rich
young widow, Matilda, daughter and heiress of that Waltheof who was son
of Siward, earl of Northumberland, and himself earl of Northampton, and
had married Judith, the niece of the Conqueror, and was afterwards
beheaded by him. She was the widow of Simon de Senlis, and by her David
obtained during her life the earldom of Northampton and honour of
Huntingdon. David was thus, to all intents and purposes, a Norman baron
when the death of his brother Eadgar placed him, by his bequest, in
possession of almost the entire Scottish territory south of the Firths
of Forth and Clyde, with the title of earl. The districts thus possessed
by him extended, on the east, from the Tweed as far at least as the
Lammermoor range, beyond which was the earldom of Gospatric of Dunbar;
while the district extending from the Esk to the Forth was retained by
King Alexander. On the west his possessions reached from the Solway
Firth to the Firth of Clyde.
Six years after he obtained these lands, he founded, in the year 1113, a
monastery of Benedictine monks of Tyron, at Selkirk, on the banks of the
Ettrick, and his foundation-charter will still further indicate the
extent of his possessions as earl. In this charter he calls himself Earl
David, son of Malcolm, king of Scots, and addressed it to all his
adherents, Normans, Angles, and Scots,[666] and gives the monks the
lands of Selkirk and other lands in Teviotdale, a ploughgate in Berwick,
and a croft in the burgh of Roxburgh, the tenth of his ‘can’ or dues
from Galweia or Galloway, and in addition some lands in his English
lordship of Northampton; and he shows his independent position by adding
that this grant was made while Henry was reigning in England and
Alexander in Scotia, or Scotland proper.[667] Not long after he
refounded the bishopric of Glasgow, to which he appointed John as first
bishop, who had been his tutor. The instrument which records the
restoration of the diocese, and an investigation ordered by Earl David
into the possessions of the see, is still preserved, and may probably be
dated some time between the years 1116 and 1120. In this document it was
stated that ‘in the time of Henry, king of England, while Alexander,
king of Scots, was reigning in Scotia, God had sent them David,
brother-german of the king of Scotia, to be their prince and
leader;’[668] and ‘David, prince of the Cumbrian region, causes
inquisition to be made into the possessions of the church of Glasgow in
all the provinces of Cumbria which were under his dominion and power,
for he did not rule over the whole of the Cumbrian region.’[669] The
kingdom of Cumbria originally extended from the Firth of Clyde to the
river Derwent, including what was afterwards the dioceses of Glasgow,
Galloway, and Carlisle.[670] That portion, however, which extended from
the Solway Firth to the river Derwent, and afterwards formed the diocese
of Carlisle, was wrested from the Scots by William Rufus in 1092, and
was bestowed by Henry the First upon Ranulf de Meschines.[671] David’s
possessions in Cumbria consisted, therefore, of the counties of Lanark,
Ayr, Renfrew, Dumfries, and Peebles, and the inquisition contains lands
in these counties. He was, as we have seen, overlord of Galloway, and
his rule extended also over Lothian and Teviotdale, in the counties of
Berwick, Roxburgh, and Selkirk; for, in a charter by Earl David to the
monks of Durham of the lands of Swinton in Berwickshire, he addresses it
to Bishop John of Glasgow, to Gospatric, Colban and Robert his brothers,
and to his thanes and drengs of Lothian and Teviotdale;[672] and, in
another, Thor of Ednam in Berwickshire calls him his overlord, or the
superior of his lands.[673]
From these deeds we not only learn the extent of David’s possessions,
but we also see that he had attached to himself not only his Anglic
vassals but a large following of Norman barons. Of the witnesses to the
inquisition there are, besides his countess Matilda and his nephew
William, son of his brother Duncan, eight of Anglic race and fourteen
who are Normans. In his foundation charter of Selkirk, besides Bishop
John of Glasgow, his countess Matilda, his son Henry, his nephew
William, and three chaplains, there are eleven Norman witnesses, nine
Anglic, and a solitary Gillemichel to represent the Celtic race. The
native Cumbrians nowhere appear as witnessing his grants, and it seems
plain enough that he had largely introduced the Norman element into his
territories, and ruled over them as a feudal superior basing his power
and influence upon his Norman and Anglic vassals, of whom the former
were now the most prominent both in weight and number.[674]
[Sidenote: A.D. 1124-1153.
David reigns over all Scotland as first feudal monarch.]
On the death of King Alexander in the year 1124, the Saxon Chronicle
tells us that ‘David, his brother, who was earl of Northamptonshire,
succeeded to the kingdom, and had them both together, the kingdom of
Scotland and the earldom in England;’ and thus the southern and northern
districts, which had been severed during the whole of Alexander’s reign,
were once more united under one king, and David founded a dynasty of
feudal monarchs of Celtic descent in the paternal line, and in the
maternal representing the old Saxon royal family, but governing the
country as feudal superiors, and introducing feudal institutions. The
extent to which the feudal and Norman element had already been
introduced into the south of Scotland, while under the rule of earl, by
David, will be apparent when we examine the relation between the Norman
barons who witness his charters and the land under his sway. The most
prominent of those who witness the foundation charter of Selkirk are
four Norman barons, who possessed extensive lordships in the north of
England. The first was Hugo de Moreville, and we find him in possession
of extensive lands in Lauderdale, Lothian, and Cuningham in Ayrshire.
The second was Paganus de Braosa. The third Robertus de Brus, who
acquired the extensive district of Annandale in Dumfriesshire; and the
fourth, Robertus de Umfraville, received grants of Kinnaird and Dunipace
in Stirlingshire. Of the other Norman knights who witness this charter,
and also the inquisition, Gavinus Ridel, Berengarius Engaine, Robertus
Corbet, and Alanus de Perci possess manors in Teviotdale. Walterus de
Lindesaya has extensive possessions in Upper Clydesdale, Mid and East
Lothian, and in the latter district Robertus de Burneville is also
settled. In Scotland proper the character in which David ruled will be
best seen by contrasting his charters with those of his predecessors.
Eadgar, who possessed the whole kingdom north of the Tweed and the
Solway, addresses his charters to all his faithful men in his kingdom,
Scots and Angles. Alexander, who possessed the kingdom north of the
Firths of Forth and Clyde alone, to the bishops and earls, and all his
faithful men of the kingdom of Scotia. A charter granted by David, in
the third year of his accession to the throne, to the monks of Durham,
of lands in Lothian, is addressed to all dwelling throughout his kingdom
in Scotland and Lothian, Scots and Angles;[675] but when we enter
Scotland proper, and compare his foundation charter of Dunfermline with
that of Scone by his predecessor, Alexander I., there is a marked
contrast between them. Alexander grants his charter to Scone, with the
formal assent and concurrence of the seven earls of Scotland; and it is
confirmed by the two bishops of the only dioceses which then existed in
Scotland proper, with exception of St. Andrews, which was vacant, and
the witnesses are the few Saxons who formed his personal attendants,
Edward the constable, Alfric the pincerna, and others.[676] King David’s
charter to Dunfermline, a foundation also within Scotland proper, is
granted ‘by his royal authority and power, with the assent of his son
Henry, and with the formal confirmation of his queen Matilda, and the
bishops, earls, and barons of his kingdom, the clergy and people
acquiescing.’ Here we see the feudal baronage of the kingdom occupying
the place of the old constitutional body of the seven earls, while the
latter appear only as individually witnessing the charter. David’s
subsequent charters to Dunfermline show this still more clearly, for
they are addressed to the ‘bishops, abbots, earls, sheriffs, barons,
governors, and officers, and all the good men of the whole land, Norman,
English, and Scotch:’ in short, the feudal community or ‘communitas
regni,’ consisting of those holding lands of the crown, while the old
traditionary earls of the Celtic kingdom appear among the witnesses
only.[677]
The reign of David I. is beyond doubt the true commencement of feudal
Scotland, and the term of Celtic Scotland becomes no longer appropriate
to it as a kingdom. Under his auspices feudalism rapidly acquired
predominance in the country, and its social state and institutions
became formally assimilated to Norman forms and ideas, while the old
Celtic element in her constitutional history gradually retired into the
background. During this and the subsequent reigns the outlying
districts, which had hitherto maintained a kind of semi-independence
under their native rulers, and in which they were more tenaciously
adhered to, were gradually brought under the more direct power of the
monarch and incorporated into the kingdom. It will be unnecessary for
our purpose to continue further a detailed narrative of the reigns of
the kings of this dynasty who had thus become feudal monarchs, and it
only remains to notice shortly the occasional appearance of the Celtic
element in her constitution, and the fitful struggles of her Celtic
subjects to resist the power which was gradually but surely working out
this process of incorporation and the consolidation of the various
districts which composed it into one compact kingdom.
[Sidenote: A.D. 1130.
Insurrection of Angus, earl of Moray, and Malcolm, bastard
son of Alexander I.]
David had been barely six years on the throne of Scotland when a united
attempt was made on the part of its Gaelic inhabitants to wrest the
districts north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde from his dominion, and
the further encroachment of the English barons with their feudal
holdings. At the head of this insurrection was Malcolm, a natural son of
the late King Alexander, who probably counted upon the Gaelic population
of Scotland proper preferring to recognise him as his father’s heir in
his limited kingdom, rather than be united with Lothian under the feudal
government of David; and Angus, son of the daughter of Lulach the
Mormaer of Moray, and successor of Macbeth as king of Scotia, for three
months, who on the death of Lulach’s son Maelsnechtan in 1085 had
succeeded to him, according to the Pictish law of succession, as Mormaer
of Moray, or, as it was now termed, Earl. Orderic of Vital gives so
circumstantial an account of this insurrection, that his narrative may
be accepted as substantially true, supported as it is by other
authorities. ‘Malcolm, a bastard son of Alexander,’ he tells us,
‘attempted to deprive his uncle of the crown, and involved him in two
rather severe contests; but David, who was his superior in talent as
well as in wealth and power, defeated him and his party. In the year of
our Lord 1130, while King David was ably applying himself to a cause in
King Henry’s court, and carefully examining a charge of treason which,
they say, Geoffrey de Clinton had been guilty of, Angus, earl of Moray,
with Malcolm and five thousand men, entered Scotia (or Scotland proper)
with the intention of reducing the whole kingdom to subjection. Upon
this Edward, the son of Siward, earl of Mercia in the time of King
Edward, who was a cousin of King David and commander of his army,
assembled troops and suddenly threw himself in the enemy’s way. A battle
was at length fought, in which Earl Angus was slain and his troops
defeated, taken prisoners, or put to flight. Vigorously pursuing the
fugitives with his soldiers elated with victory, and entering _Morafia_,
or Moray, now deprived of its lord and protector, he obtained, by God’s
help, possession of the whole of that large territory. Thus David’s
dominions were augmented, and his power was greater than that of any of
his predecessors.’[678] This account is confirmed by the Saxon
Chronicle, which has in the year 1130, ‘In this year Anagus was slain by
the Scots army, and there was a great slaughter made with him. Thus was
God’s right avenged on him, because he was all forsworn;’ and the Ulster
Annals have in the same year, ‘Battle between the men of Alban and the
men of Moray, in which fell four thousand of the men of Moray, with
their king Oengus, son of the daughter of Lulag, a thousand also of the
men of Alban in heat of battle.’[679] Fordun places the scene of this
battle at Stracathro in Forfarshire.[680]
[Sidenote: A.D. 1134.
Insurrection by Malcolm Maceth.]
This attempt, which ended so fatally for the Gael of Moray, was followed
a few years after by one of the strangest incidents which occur in the
history of Scotland at that period. It is obviously alluded to by Ailred
in his eulogium upon King David, when, on telling us that ‘God gave
David the affection of a son amid scourgings, that he should not murmur
or backslide, but should give thanks amid “scourgings,”’ he adds, ‘These
were his words, when God sent as a foe against him a certain spurious
bishop, who lied and said he was the earl of Moray’s son;’ and again,
‘that the Lord had scourged with the lies of a certain monk that
invincible king who had subdued unto himself so many barbarous nations,
and had, without great trouble triumphed over the men of Moray and the
islands.’[681]
William of Newburgh, however, who had personally known the impostor, if
impostor he was, and had conversed with him, gives us a fuller account
of this strange transaction. He first appears as a monk of the
Cistercian monastery of Furness, which had been founded in the year
1124, as Brother Wymundus. According to William of Newburgh, ‘he
possessed an ardent temper, a retentive memory, and competent eloquence,
and advanced so rapidly that the highest expectations were formed of
him.’ In 1134, Olave, the Norwegian king of Man, granted lands in that
island to Yvo, abbot of Furness, to found an affiliated monastery at
Russin, and Brother Wymund was sent with some monks to fill it; and here
we are told ‘he so pleased the barbarous natives with the sweetness of
his address and openness of his countenance, being also of a tall and
athletic make, that they requested him to become their bishop and
obtained their desire.’ Olave accordingly applied to Thurstan,
archbishop of York, to consecrate him their bishop, and Wymund appears
to have been consecrated by him.[682] He had no sooner obtained this
position than he announced himself to be the son of the earl of Moray,
who had been slain in 1130, and ‘that he was deprived of the inheritance
of his father by the king of Scotland.’ Having collected a band of
followers, who took an oath to him, he dropped his monastic name of
Wymund for his Celtic appellation of Malcolm mac Eth, and began his
career throughout the adjacent islands. His claim appears to have been
recognised as genuine by the Norwegian king of the Isles, and by
Somerled, the Celtic regulus of Argyll, whose sister he married. ‘Every
day,’ says William of Newburgh, ‘he was joined by troops of adherents,
among whom he was conspicuous above all by the head and shoulders: and,
like some mighty commander, he inflamed their desires. He then made a
descent on the provinces of Scotland, wasting all before him with rapine
and slaughter; but whenever the royal army was despatched against him,
he eluded the whole warlike preparation, either by retreating to distant
forests, or taking to the sea; and when the troops had retired, he again
issued from his hiding-places to ravage the provinces.’ In this career
he met one check; for, invading the province of Galloway and demanding
tribute from the bishop, he was encountered by him at the head of his
people when attempting to ford the river Cree; and the bishop ‘having
met him as he was furiously advancing and himself striking the first
blow in the battle, by way of animating his party, he threw a small
hatchet, and, by God’s assistance, he felled his enemy to the earth as
he was marching in the van. Gladdened at this event, the people rushed
desperately against the marauders, and killing vast numbers of them
compelled their ferocious leader shamefully to fly,’ ‘Wymund,’ adds
William, ‘himself used afterwards with much pleasantry and boastingly to
relate among his friends that God alone was able to vanquish him by the
faith of a simple bishop. This circumstance I learnt from a person who
had been one of his soldiers, and had fled with those who had made their
escape. Recovering his forces, however, he ravaged the islands and
provinces of Scotland as he had done before;’[683] till at length the
king, with the assistance of a Norman army, succeeded in taking him
prisoner, and confined him in the castle of Marchmont or Roxburgh.[684]
This took place, as we shall see, in the year 1137.[685]
[Sidenote: A.D. 1138.
David invades England; position of Norman barons.]
In the following year, when King David invaded England at the head of
as large a force as he could bring together from the entire country
under his dominion, for the purpose of supporting the cause of his
niece Matilda, the daughter of King Henry the First, and empress of
Germany, he placed those Norman barons who belonged to the party of
Stephen of Blois, and held possessions under King David as well as in
England, in a position of great difficulty. Their feudal holdings in
Scotland gave David a right as their overlord to their military
service, while their policy in England was to support Stephen in his
opposition to the claim of his niece Matilda to the English throne.
One of the principal of these Norman barons, Robertus de Brus, who had
great possessions in Yorkshire, but had adhered to King David from his
youth, and held under him the extensive district of Annandale,
repaired to the Scottish camp when David had advanced as far as the
Tees, to remonstrate with him, and when he did not succeed, renounced
his fealty to him. It is well worth quoting that part of his speech,
as reported by Ailred, which details the part the Norman barons had
taken in the Scottish events detailed in this chapter. ‘Against whom,’
he says to the king, ‘dost thou this day take up arms and lead this
countless host? Is it not against the English and Normans? O king, are
they not those from whom thou hast always obtained profitable counsel
and prompt assistance? When, I ask thee, hast thou ever found such
fidelity in the Scots that thou canst so confidently dispense with the
advice of the English and the assistance of the Normans, as if Scots
sufficed thee even against Scots? This confidence in the Galwegians is
somewhat new to thee who this day turnest thine arms against those
through whom thou now rulest,—beloved by Scots and feared by
Galwegians. Thinkest thou, O king, that the majesty of heaven will
behold thee, with unmoved eyes, do thy best to ruin those by whom the
throne was gotten and secured to thee and thine? With what forces and
by what aid did thy brother Duncan overthrow the army of Donald and
recover the kingdom which the tyrant had usurped? Who restored Eadgar
thy brother, nay more than brother, to the kingdom? was it not our
army? Thou too, O king, when thou didst demand that part of the
kingdom which that same brother bequeathed to thee at his death from
thy brother Alexander, was it not from dread of us that thou
receivedst it without bloodshed? Recollect last year when thou didst
entreat the aid of the English in opposing Malcolm, the heir of a
father’s hate and persecution, how keenly,—how promptly,—with what
alacrity, Walter Espec and many other English nobles met thee at
Carlisle; how many ships they prepared,—the armaments they equipped
them with,—the youths they manned them with; how they struck terror
into thy foes till at length they took the traitor Malcolm himself
prisoner, and delivered him bound to thee. Thus the fear of us did not
only bind his limbs but still more daunted the spirit of the Scots,
and suppressed their tendency to revolt by depriving it of all hope of
success. Whatever hatred, therefore,—whatever enmity the Scots have
towards us, is because of thee and thine, for whom we have so often
fought against them, deprived them of all hope in rebelling, and
altogether subdued them to thee and to thy will.’
[Sidenote: Composition of king David’s army.]
Ailred tells us that King David’s army was composed not only of those
who were subject to his dominion, but that he had been joined by many of
the people of the Western Isles and the Orkneys still under Norwegian
rule;[686] and the account which he gives of the different bodies of men
which now formed his troops gives us a good idea of the heterogeneous
elements of which the population of Scotland was at this time composed.
The first body of his army was composed of the ‘Galwenses’ or people of
Galloway, who still bore the name of Picts, and who claimed to lead the
van as their right. The second body was led by Henry, King David’s son,
with soldiers and archers, to whom were joined the ‘Cumbrenses’ and
‘Tevidalenses,’ or the Welsh population of Strathclyde and Teviotdale.
The third body consisted of the ‘Laodonenses’ or Anglic inhabitants of
Lothian, with the ‘Insulani’ and ‘Lavernani’ or Islesmen and people of
the Lennox; and the last body or rearguard was led by the king in
person, and consisted of the ‘Scoti’ and ‘Muravenses,’ or the Scots of
the kingdom proper extending from the Forth to the Spey, and the
recently subdued people of Moray. Along with the king were many of the
Norman and English knights who still adhered to him.[687]
During the remaining year of David’s reign he appears to have maintained
his authority with a firm hand and unimpaired over these various races.
We read of no further insurrections on their part against him, and all
attempts to resist the encroachment of the Norman barons, with their
feudal followers, on their territories seem to have been given up,
though probably no great advance was made in the process of amalgamating
these different nationalities into one people. In the last year of his
reign, his only son, Prince Henry, died, leaving three sons, the eldest
of whom, Malcolm, was only eleven years of age. The succession of a
grandson to his grandfather was still a novelty to the Celtic population
of the kingdom, and a greater infringement upon the law of tanistic
succession than had yet been made, while the obstacle to his succession
would be still greater if his grandfather’s death opened the throne to
him while yet a minor. The aged monarch foresaw that after his death a
conflict would once more take place between the laws and customs of the
Teutonic and Celtic races, and lead to a renewed collision between them;
and in order to avert this, he prevailed upon the earl of Fife, who was
the acknowledged head of the constitutional body of the seven earls of
Scotland, to make a progress with the youthful Malcolm through the
kingdom, and obtain his recognition as heir to the throne.
David died in the following year, and, as might have been expected, the
succession of Malcolm was viewed with dislike by the entire Gaelic
population of the country, as well as by those districts more
immediately under the power or influence of the Norwegians, and he had
ere long to contend against the open revolt of the great Gaelic
districts which surrounded the kingdom of Scotland proper. These were,
on the north, ‘Moravia’ or Moray; on the west, ‘Arregaithel’ or Argyll;
and on the south-west corner, separated from Scotland by the Cumbrian
population, was the wild region of Galloway. It is remarkable that,
while the race of native rulers of the first had come to an end in the
preceding reign, we find the two latter suddenly starting into life
under the rule of two native princes—Somerled, ‘regulus’ of Arregaithel,
and Fergus, prince of Galloway, while no hint is given of the parentage
of either. The Norwegians appear to have retained a hold over both
districts till the beginning of the twelfth century, and it is probable
that the native population had now succeeded in expelling them from
their coasts, and that owing to the long possession of the country by
the Norwegians, all trace of the parentage of the native leaders under
whom they had risen had disappeared from the annals of the country, and
they were viewed as the founders of a new race of native lords.[688]
[Sidenote: A.D. 1153-1165.
Malcolm, grandson of David, reigns 12 years.]
On the death of King David, his grandson was at once taken by those who
had acknowledged him as heir, and crowned at Scone, and he is the first
king of whom we have the fact of his coronation at Scone stated on
contemporary authority.[689]
[Sidenote: A.D. 1154.
Somerled invades the kingdom with the sons of Malcolm
Maceth.]
This had no sooner been accomplished, than Somerled, the regulus of
Arregaithel, rose against him in conjunction with his nephews, the sons
of Malcolm mac Eth, and assailed the kingdom at all quarters.[690] The
civil war had lasted three years, when, in the year 1156, Donald, the
eldest son of Malcolm, was taken prisoner at Whitherne, in Galloway, by
some of Malcolm’s adherents, and delivered over to him, when he was
imprisoned in the castle of Marchmont along with his father.[691]
Somerled, however, continued the war, and Malcolm found it expedient to
neutralise the support he received from those who still adhered to the
cause of Malcolm Maceth, by coming to terms with him. Accordingly he
liberated Malcolm in the following year. William of Newburgh tells us
that ‘he gave him a certain province, which suspended the incursion he
had instigated.’ There is good reason for thinking that this province
was the earldom of Ross,[692] a remote district over which King Malcolm
could exercise but little authority; and he may have thought that his
prisoner might expend his turbulent energy there with impunity—a view so
far realised, as William of Newburgh further relates, that ‘whilst he
was proudly proceeding through his subject province surrounded by his
army like a king, some of the people who were unable to endure either
his power or his insolence, with the consent of their chiefs, laid a
snare for him.’ Obtaining a favourable opportunity, when he was
following slowly and almost unattended a large party which he had sent
forward to procure entertainment, they took and bound him and deprived
him of both his eyes, and otherwise mutilated him. ‘Afterwards he came
to us,’ says William of Newburgh, ‘at Byland, and quietly continued
there many years till his death. But he is reported even there to have
said that had he only the eye of a sparrow, his enemies should have
little occasion to rejoice at what they had done to him.’[693] In the
meantime events had occurred which led to a temporary peace between the
king and Somerled. Olave, the Norwegian king of the Isles, had died in
the same year as King David, and his son Godred had succeeded him.
Somerled had married the daughter of Olave, by whom he had a son,
Dugall; and three years after Godred’s accession, when his tyrannical
mode of government had excited great discontent, Somerled took advantage
of it to endeavour to have his son Dugall made king of the Isles. This
led to a naval engagement between Godred and Somerled on the night of
the Epiphany, or 6th of January 1156, in which there was great slaughter
on both sides, and an agreement was made by which the Isles were divided
between them. The contest, however, continued between them, and Somerled
seems to have been glad to make peace with Malcolm in 1159.[694]
The opposition to Malcolm had as yet proceeded from the western
districts over which Somerled ruled, and where the family of Malcolm
Maceth found support, but this had been no sooner quieted by the
conclusion of peace between them and the king, than he was exposed to a
greater danger from the alienation of the Gaelic population of the
kingdom of Scotland proper, and their native rulers, which he appears to
have provoked by his apparent attachment to the king of England. He
could hardly, from his extreme youth, be held responsible for the treaty
in 1157, by which Northumberland and Cumberland were surrendered to the
English monarch, but he had now attained the age of seventeen. In the
previous year he had gone to Chester to meet the king of England for the
purpose of obtaining knighthood at his hand, which, owing to some
difference between them, was refused, but he now passed over to France
and joined the king, who was besieging Toulouse, and served in his army.
[Sidenote: A.D. 1160.
Revolt of six earls.]
In consequence of news which reached Malcolm of the dissatisfaction in
Scotland proper, he returned hastily, and on reaching the town of Perth,
where according to Fordun he had summoned his nobles and clergy to meet
him, he was besieged by Ferteth, earl of Stratherne, and five others of
the seven earls of Scotland, who wished to take him prisoner, but failed
in the attempt.[695] Neither the Chronicle of Melrose nor Fordun tells
us the cause of the failure, but the latter adds that he was by the
advice of the clergy brought to a good understanding with his nobles.
But they soon found that he was prepared to act with vigour, and to show
that he was, though young, capable of reducing all recalcitrant
provinces to his authority.
[Sidenote: A.D. 1160. Subjection of Galloway.]
In the same year he thrice invaded the district of Galloway with a large
army, and brought its inhabitants finally under subjection.[696]
[Sidenote: A.D. 1160. Plantation of Moray.]
According to Fordun, he likewise invaded the district of Moravia or
Moray, ‘removed them all from the land of their birth, and scattered
them throughout the other districts of Scotland, both beyond the hills
and on this side thereof, so that not even a native of that land abode
there, and he installed therein his own peaceful people.’[697] This
statement is probably only so far true that he may have repressed the
rebellious inhabitants of the district, and followed his grandfather’s
policy by placing foreign settlers in the low and fertile land on the
south side of the Moray Firth, extending from the Spey to the river
Findhorn; and here he certainly did grant the lands of Innes and
Etherurecard, extending from the Spey to the Lossie, to Berowald the
Fleming, by a charter granted at Perth on the first Christmas after the
agreement between the king and Somerled.[698]
[Sidenote: A.D. 1164.
Invasion by Somerled. His defeat and death at Renfrew.]
Malcolm had to sustain one other invasion of his kingdom ere he passed
from this earthly scene at the early age of twenty-five. It proceeded
once more from Somerled, who had now become more powerful by the
addition of one-half of the Western Isles, which he held under the king
of Norway, to his possessions on the mainland. What provoked this
invasion we know not, but it proved fatal to himself. Having collected
forces from all quarters, including Ireland, and assembled a fleet of
160 ships, he landed at Renfrew with the intention of subduing the whole
kingdom, but was suddenly attacked by the people of the district and
sustained an unexpected defeat, having been slain with his son
Gillecolm.[699] This took place in the year 1164, nearly two years
before Malcolm’s death, and was attributed by the chroniclers to divine
interposition; but the author of a curious contemporary poem claims the
credit for the merits of Saint Kentigern of Glasgow.[700] The rest of
the country had remained quiet during the few concluding years of
Malcolm’s reign, but he appears to have conciliated its Gaelic
population, and won their regard, for the Ulster Annals tell us that in
1165 ‘Malcolm Cenmor or Greathead, son of Henry the high king of Alban,
the best Christian that was to the Gael on the east side of the sea for
almsgiving and fasting and devotion, died.’[701]
[Sidenote: A.D. 1166-1214.
William the Lyon, brother of Malcolm, reigns forty-eight
years.]
Malcolm was succeeded by his brother William, commonly called the Lyon
King, who was crowned at Scone on Christmas eve of the year 1165, but no
particulars of the ceremony are recorded.[702] His first proceeding was
to claim from the king of England the restoration of Northumberland,
which had been assigned to him as his appanage by his father David, but
had been surrendered along with Cumberland during his brother Malcolm’s
reign in 1157, and we find him invading England in 1173, with an army
consisting mainly of those Highland Scots, whom, Fordun tells, men call
‘Bruti,’ and the Gallwegians.[703] In the following year William was
taken prisoner by the English, when Fordun tells us the Scots and
Gallwegians ‘wickedly and ruthlessly slew their Norman and English
neighbours in frequent invasions with mutual slaughter, and there was
then a most woeful and exceeding great persecution of the English, both
in “Scotia” or Scotland proper and Galloway.’[704]
[Sidenote: A.D. 1174. Revolt in Galloway.]
This account is confirmed by Roger of Hoveden, so far as Galloway is
concerned, where he had been himself sent by the king of England. He
tells us that Uchtred, son of Fergus, and Gilbert, his brother, princes
of the Gallwegians, immediately after the captivity of the king entered
their own land, and expelled the king’s officers from its bounds, slew
the English and Normans whom they found in their lands without mercy,
and took and destroyed the fortifications and castles which the king had
placed in their territory. They even proposed to the king of England to
pass from the dominion of the king of Scots to that of the English
crown. In short, it was a resistance by the Gaelic population to
encroachments of the Norman and English barons, and shows the nature of
the policy adopted by the Scottish king in subjecting these districts to
his authority, and the extent to which it had been carried. The
liberation of William from captivity in the following year arrested the
progress of the insurrection.[705] According to Fordun the king led an
army into Galloway, but ‘when the Gallwegians came to meet him under
Gilbert, the son of Fergus, some Scottish bishops and earls stepped in
between them, and through their mediation they were reconciled; the
Gallwegians paying a sum of money and giving hostages.’[706]
[Sidenote: A.D. 1179.
King William subdues the district of Ross.]
Having thus quieted the Gallwegians, the king resolved to bring the
district of Ross, which lay between the Moray and Dornoch Firths, under
his authority. In the year 1179 he penetrated into that district at the
head of his earls and barons, with a large army, subdued it, and in
order to maintain his authority built two castles—one called Dunscath on
the prominent hill on the north side of the entrance to the Cromarty
Firth, to dominate over Easter Ross, and the other called Etherdover on
the north side of the Beauly Firth, at the place now called Red Castle,
to secure the district called the Black Isle.[707] Though William had
thus for a time brought the northern districts under subjection to the
royal authority, he was not permitted to retain them long without
disturbance, and two years after he had to encounter the assault by a
pretender to the crown, who found his chief support in the Gaelic
population of these districts. This was Donald Ban, who called himself
the son of William Fitz Duncan, and claimed the throne as lineal heir of
Duncan, the eldest son of Malcolm Ceannmor, who had been himself king of
Scotland.
[Sidenote: A.D. 1181. Insurrection in favour of Donald Ban Macwilliam.]
King William had purchased his liberation from captivity in England by
the surrender of the independence of Scotland, and this probably created
great dissatisfaction among the Celtic population of the kingdom north
of the Firths, which finally broke out, in 1181, in a serious attempt to
place the ancient kingdom of Alban with the northern districts under a
separate monarch in the person of Donald Ban, whose descent from the
marriage of Malcolm Ceannmor with the Norwegian Ingibiorg would commend
his pretensions both to the native and the Norwegian leaders. He seems
to have borne the name of Macwilliam, and this is the first appearance
of a family name, which was to become more familiar to the kings of
Scotland in connection with such insurrections. Invited, or at least
encouraged, by a formidable party among the earls and barons of Scotland
proper, he invaded the northern districts with a large force.[708]
Fordun tells us that ‘for the whole time from the capture of the king of
Scots to his liberation, the inhabitants of the southern and northern
districts of the kingdom were engaged in mutual civil war with much
slaughter;’ and this was probably true of the entire period from the
surrender of the independence of the kingdom to its restoration, during
which time Galloway and the districts beyond the Spey were more or less
in insurrection, and a considerable party in Scotland proper were
hostile to the king. On the 1st of January 1185, Gilbert, son of Fergus,
lord of Galloway, died, and a part of the Gallwegians broke out into
rebellion under a certain Gilpatrick; while Roland, the son of Uchtred,
who had been slain by his brother Gilbert, espoused the cause of the
king, and a battle took place between them in which Roland was
victorious. One of the king’s officers, too, Gilcolm the Marescal,
revolted from him and surrendered the king’s castle of Earn or Dundurn,
at the east end of Loch Earn, to the king’s enemies, which shows that
there was a party in Stratherne hostile to him, and infested Lothian
with frequent attacks. As soon as he heard of the defeat of Gilpatrick,
Gilcolm, who is termed by Fordun ‘a tyrant and robber chief,’ and whose
name shows that he was of Gaelic, and probably of Gallwegian, descent,
invaded Galloway with the view of putting himself at the head of the
insurgents, and establishing himself as ruler in those parts of Galloway
hostile to the king; but he, too, was defeated in battle by Roland on
the 30th of September, and perished with many of his followers.[709]
After the defeat of the Gallwegian rebels, and the slaughter of Gilcolm
and his followers, the earls and barons of the kingdom of Scotland
proper appear to have become more reconciled to their legitimate
monarch; and he felt the necessity of either slaying or expelling
Macwilliam, who had now for six years maintained himself in the northern
districts beyond the Spey, and been ravaging and devastating those parts
of the kingdom which adhered to King William, if he would not lose his
crown altogether;[710] but it was not till the year 1187 that he found
himself in a position to advance against him. He then invaded Moravia or
Moray at the head of a large army, and while he remained with the main
body of the army at Inverness, sent his earls and barons with the Scots
and Gallwegians to lay waste the more western parts of the province.
They encountered Macwilliam in the upper part of the valley of the Spey,
encamped on a moor called Mamgarvia, and a battle took place there on
Friday, the 31st of July, in which Macwilliam was slain with many of his
followers.[711] Two years after the independence of Scotland was
restored by Richard the First, king of England, and the relations
between the two kingdoms replaced on their former footing.
[Sidenote: A.D. 1196. Subjection of Caithness.]
The annexation of the district of Ross to the kingdom, and the
suppression of this insurrection, seem, however, soon after to have
brought the people of Caithness into closer contact with the royal
authority. Although nominally held of the Scottish king, Caithness was
possessed as an earldom by the earl of Orkney, who held his other
earldom of the king of Norway, and thus the tie with Scotland was a
slender one. The earl at this time was Harald, who was himself of the
royal family, being son of Madach, earl of Atholl, whose father was a
brother of Malcolm Ceannmor, and he had succeeded to the earldom of
Orkney and Caithness through his mother, Margaret, the daughter of the
Norwegian earl Hakon of Orkney, and his wife was a daughter of Malcolm
mac Eth. According to Fordun, King William led an army into Caithness in
the year 1196. Crossing the river Oikell, which separates Sutherland
from Ross, he killed some of the disturbers of the peace, and subjected
both provinces of the Caithness men—that of Sutherland and of
Caithness—routing Earl Harald, who, says Fordun, had been ‘until then a
good and trusty man, but at that time, goaded on by his wife, the
daughter of Mached, had basely deceived his lord the king, and risen
against him. Then, leaving there a garrison for the country, the king
hurried back into Scotland.’[712] From the Chronicle of Melrose we learn
that in the following year ‘a battle was fought near the Castle of
Inverness, between the king’s troops, who had been probably left as a
garrison there, and Roderic and Thorfinn, son of Earl Harald, in which
the king’s enemies were put to flight, and Roderic slain, with many of
his followers. King William then proceeded with his army to Moray, and
the more remote districts’—that is, as Fordun tells us, the districts of
Sutherland, Caithness, and Ross; ‘and, having taken Earl Harald
prisoner, confined him in the castle of Roxburgh, where he remained till
his son Thorfinn gave himself as a hostage for his father.’[713] Such
are the Scotch accounts of these events; but Roger of Hoveden, a
contemporary English writer, gives a somewhat different account. He says
that, in 1196, King William entered Moray with a great army to drive out
Harald, who had occupied that district, but before the king could enter
Caithness, Harald fled to his ships. The king then sent his army to
Thurso, and destroyed the castle. Harald then came to the king and
submitted, and the king permitted him to retain half of Caithness on
condition he surrendered his enemies to him in Moray, and gave the other
half to Harald, grandson of Rognwald, a former earl of Orkney and
Caithness. The king then returned to his own land, and Harald to Orkney.
In the autumn the king returned to Moray, and went to Invernairn to
receive the king’s enemies from Harald; but after bringing them to the
port of Loch Loy, near Invernairn, he allowed them to escape, on which
the king took him prisoner, and kept him in Edinburgh Castle till his
son Thorfinn was delivered up for him. Harald the younger was afterwards
slain in battle with the elder Harald, who then went to the king and
offered to redeem his lands in Caithness with a sum of money. The king
agreed to give him back the half of Caithness if he would put away his
wife, the daughter of Malcolm Maceth, and take back his first wife,
Afreka, sister of Duncan, earl of Fife; but he refused, on which the
king gave Caithness to Reginald, the son of Somerled, for a sum of
money, reserving the king’s annual tribute.[714] In consequence of an
attack upon Caithness made in 1202 by Harald, in which he drove out
Reginald’s men and made an outrage on the bishop, King William once more
sent his army in the spring of that year to Caithness, but it was unable
to penetrate beyond the border of the country, and as the king was
preparing to follow by sea, Harald met him at Perth under the
safe-conduct of Roger, bishop of St. Andrews, and came to an
understanding with the king, by which he was restored to his earldom on
payment of every fourth penny to be found in Caithness, amounting to
2000 merks of silver.[715]
[Sidenote: A.D. 1211.
Insurrection in favour of Guthred Macwilliam.]
Towards the close of William’s reign he had again to suppress a renewed
attempt by the people of Ross to throw off the yoke by supporting the
claims of the descendants of William Fitz Duncan. Fordun tells us that
‘Guthred, the son of Macwilliam, came about the Lord’s Epiphany (6th
January), by the advice, it was said, of the Thanes of Ross, out of
Ireland into that district, and infested the greater part of the kingdom
of Scotland. But the king’s army was suddenly sent against him to kill
him or to drive him out of the country, and King William himself went
after him, and in the following summer built two towns there; but
Guthred being seized and fettered through the treachery of his own men,
was brought before the king’s son Alexander, at the king’s manor and
place of Kincardine, and was there beheaded and hung up by the
feet.’[716] An old chronicler, Walter of Coventry, represents what
appears to have been the feeling of the Gaelic population towards the
family of Macwilliam, and led to these frequent revolts. ‘This Guthred,’
he says, ‘was of the ancient lineage of the Scottish kings who, with the
support of Scots and Irish, did, as well as his father Domnald, exercise
constant hostilities against the modern kings, now secretly, now openly.
For these modern kings affected more the Normans, as in race, so in
customs, language, and culture, and the Scots being reduced to utter
servitude admitted the Normans only to their friendship and
service.’[717] During the remainder of his reign William had no further
encounter with his Gaelic subjects, and died at Stirling on the 4th of
December 1214.
[Sidenote: A.D. 1214-1249.
Alexander the Second, son of king William the Lyon, reigned
thirty-five years. Crowned by the seven earls]
He was succeeded by his son Alexander, who was then in his seventeenth
year, and was crowned at Scone on the following day. We now learn some
further particulars of the coronation of the Scottish kings, and we are
told by Fordun that the bishop of St. Andrews, the head of the Scotch
Church, and the seven earls of Scotland—the earls of Fife, Stratherne,
Atholl, Angus, Menteith, Buchan, and Lothian—took Alexander, brought him
to Scone, and there raised him to the throne in honour and peace, with
the approval of God and man, and with more grandeur and glory than any
one till then, while all wished him joy and none gainsaid him. So King
Alexander, as was meet, held his feast in state at Scone on that day,
viz., Friday, and the Saturday following, viz., the Feast of St.
Nicholas, as well as the next Sunday.[718]
[Sidenote: A.D. 1215.
Insurrection in favour of Donald Macwilliam and Kenneth
Maceth.]
The young king had barely reigned a year when he had to encounter the
old enemies of the crown, the families of Macwilliam and Maceth, who now
combined their forces, and under Donald Ban, the son of that Macwilliam
who had been slain at Mamgarvia in 1187, and Kenneth Maceth, a son or
grandson of Malcolm Maceth, with the son of one of the Irish provincial
kings, burst into the province of Moray at the head of a large band of
malcontents. A very important auxiliary, however, now joined the party
of the king. This was Ferquhard or Fearchar, called Macintagart, the son
of the ‘Sagart’ or priest who was the lay possessor of the extensive
possessions of the old monastery founded by the Irish Saint Maelrubha at
Applecross in the seventh century. Its possessions lay between the
district of Ross and the Western Sea, and extended from Loch Carron to
Loch Ewe and Loch Maree, where the name of Maelrubha was long venerated
as Saint Maree, and Ferquhard was thus in reality a powerful Highland
chief commanding the population of an extensive western region. The
insurgents were assailed by him with great vigour, entirely crushed, and
their leaders taken, whom he at once beheaded, and presented their heads
to the new king as a welcome gift on the 15th of June, when he was
knighted by the king as the reward of his prompt assistance.[719]
[Sidenote: A.D. 1222.
Subjection of Arregaithel or Argyll.]
Of the districts which still maintained a kind of semi-independence of
the Scottish crown as ancient provinces of Scotland, there now only
remained the extensive region of Arregaithel or Argyll, forming the
entire western seaboard of the country from the Firth of Clyde to Loch
Broom, the northern part of which, however—North Argyll as it was
called—consisting chiefly of the possessions of the ancient monastery of
Applecross, were now brought by their lay possessor Macintagart into
close connection with the crown. The remote and secluded position of
Galloway too rendered it little amenable to the royal authority, and the
Western Isles, one half of which were under the rule of a Norwegian
petty king, and the other half belonged to the family of Somerled, still
belonged to the kingdom of Norway. The attention of King Alexander was
strongly drawn towards the necessity of bringing Argyll under subjection
from the support its people afforded to the families of Macwilliam and
Maceth. The head of the former family was at this time Gillescoph
Mahohegan or Gillespic mac Eochagan, and he appears to have had the
support of Roderic, son of Reginald, Lord of the Isles, and other chiefs
of Argyll.
The account of these transactions is to be found in Fordun and Wynton
alone, but there seems no reason to doubt their authority at this
period. Fordun tells us that ‘during this time,’ that is, in 1221, ‘some
unrighteous men of the race of Macwilliam, viz., Gillespic and his sons
and Roderic, started up in the uttermost bounds of Scotland.’[720]
Alexander was at the time at York, where he was betrothed to the English
king’s eldest sister Joan, as yet a girl; but on his return with his
bride Fordun tells us that ‘having raised an army out of Lothian and
Galloway and other outlying provinces, the king sailed for Argyll, but a
storm having arisen he was obliged to put back, and brought up at
Glasgow in safety but not without danger. In the following year,
however, after Whitsunday, he led back the army into Argyll. The men of
Argyll were frightened. Some gave hostages and a great deal of money,
and were taken back in peace, while others who had more offended against
the king’s will forsook their estates and possessions and fled. But our
lord the king bestowed both the land and the goods of these men upon his
own followers at will, and thus returned in peace with his men.’[721]
Wynton gives the following account of it:—
The kyng that yhere Argyle wan,
That rebell wes till hym befor than;
For wyth his ost thare in wes he,
And athe tuk off thare fewté,
Wyth thare serwys and thare homage,
That off hym wald hald thare herytage:
Bot the ethchetys off the lave
To the lordys off that land he gave.
Oure the Mownth theyne passyd he sene,
And held hys Yhule in Abbyrdene.[722]
This expedition seems to have thus lasted from Whitsunday till near
Christmas, and to have been confined to Argyll south of the Mounth, and
thus was this region also brought under subjection to the crown. The
rebels appear to have taken refuge in Galloway, and here we find them
witnessing a charter in that year of lands in Galloway to the monks of
Melrose. After the abbot of Melrose; Alan son of Roland of Galloway;
Fergus son of Uchtred; Edgar son of Dovenald; Duncan son of Gilbert Earl
of Carrick, all lords of Galloway, appear the following names:—‘Gileskop
Macihacain; Giladuenan son of Duvegal; Gillecrist son of Kenedi; Iwan
son of Alewain; Gillenef Okeueltal; Gilleroth son of Gillemartin; Makeg
son of Kyin; and Gillefakeneshi son of Gillin;’[723] all no doubt fully
justifying Fordun’s epithet of ‘iniquus.’ The only account he gives of
their fate is that ‘God gave them over, with their abettors, into King
Alexander’s hand; and thus the land was no longer troubled by their
lawlessness.’[724] In the following year, while the king was keeping his
birthday at Forfar, John, earl of Caithness, who was son of Earl Harald
the elder, came to him there and purchased back a part of his earldom
which the king had taken from him the previous year on account of his
having been supposed to be privy to the outrage committed by the people
of Caithness on their bishop, Adam, whom they had burned in his own
house.[725]
[Sidenote: A.D. 1235.
Revolt in Galloway.]
Galloway appears to have been still a constant source of disquiet to the
kingdom. Alan, the son of Roland, lord of Galloway and Constable of
Scotland, died in the year 1234, leaving three daughters, who were
married to Norman barons, and one son, considered illegitimate, who
during his father’s lifetime had married the daughter of the king of
Man. The Norman barons divided the territory between them; ‘but,’ we are
told in the Chronicle of Melrose, ‘the inhabitants of that land
preferring one master rather than several, went to our lord the king
with the request that he himself would accept the lordship of that
inheritance, but the king was too just to do this. Thereupon the
Gallwegians were angry above measure, and prepared for war. Moreover,
they devastated with fire and sword some of the royal lands contiguous
to themselves,’ and the king resolved to make a final effort to reduce
it entirely to obedience.
‘In the following year our lord the king,’ says the chronicler,
‘mustered an army, and entered Galloway. Having reached a spot
convenient for the purpose, he determined there to pitch his tents, for
the day was now drawing towards evening. The Gallwegians, however, who
had all day been hiding among the mountains, knew the place better, and,
trusting to their local acquaintance with its difficulties, offered the
king battle. In truth, the place was filled with bogs, which were
covered over with grass and flowers, amongst which the larger portion of
the royal army had involved itself. At the beginning of the battle the
earl of Ross, called Makintagart, came up and attacked the enemies in
the rear, and as soon as they perceived this they took to flight, and
retreated into the woods and mountains, but they were followed up by the
earl and several others, who put many of them to the sword, and harassed
them as long as daylight lasted. On the next day the king, acting upon
his accustomed humanity, extended his peace to as many as came to him,
and so the surviving Gallwegians, with ropes round their necks, accepted
his offer.’[726]
The illegitimate son of Alan, lord of Galloway, however, Thomas, went
over to Ireland with Gilrodh, who incited him to his rebellion, and was
no doubt the Gilleroth, son of Gillemartin, who appears among the
followers of Gillescop Mahohegan, from whence he soon after returned,
bringing with him a fleet and a body of Irish, with the son of one of
their chieftains. ‘The Scots,’ we are told, ‘fled before him, and in
their hasty flight arrived at a piece of water, in which many perished
by means of that accursed army;’ but the bishop of Galloway and the
abbot of Melrose, as soon as they heard of it, went, accompanied by the
earl of Dunbar and his troops, to the district of Galloway, and informed
Gilrodh that he must either make his submission to the king, or engage
the earl’s army in battle. Perceiving his inferiority in numbers,
Gilrodh followed their advice, and the king placed him for some time in
the custody of the before-mentioned earl. Being thus deprived of all
counsel and assistance, the bastard was obliged to sue for the king’s
peace. He was imprisoned for a short time in Edinburgh Castle, and then
the king gave him his freedom; and we hear no more of any resistance to
the royal authority in this quarter, and they seem to have acquiesced in
their incorporation into the kingdom.
[Sidenote: A.D. 1249.
Attempt to reduce the Sudreys, and death of the king at
Kerrera.]
There now remained but one object to be accomplished to complete the
amalgamation of the different outlying provinces of the kingdom occupied
by a Celtic population, and that was to wrest the possession of the
Western Isles from the kingdom of Norway. Alexander first attempted to
obtain the islands by treaty, and sent two of his bishops to Hakon, king
of Norway, to ascertain if he would voluntarily surrender the islands as
having been unjustly wrested from the Scottish crown by Magnus Barefoot;
but Hakon refused, on the ground that Magnus had won them from Godred,
king of the Isles, and that his right to the Isles had been confirmed by
the king of Scots. The king then proposed to purchase the Isles, but
this likewise was refused; and though the negotiations were frequently
renewed, the Scots received no other answer.[727] In the year 1249,
however, Harald, son of Olave, the Norwegian king of Man and the Isles,
died, and was succeeded by his brother Reginald, who began to reign in
the Isle of Man on the sixth of May, and was slain on the thirteenth of
the same month near Russin, in the Isle of Man. The succession was then
claimed by Harald, son of Godred Don, whose father was brother of Olave,
the father of the slain king.[728] Alexander seems to have considered
this a favourable opportunity to endeavour to obtain the Isles by force
of arms, and having collected forces throughout all Scotland, he
prepared for a voyage to the Hebrides, and determined to subdue these
islands under his dominion. According to the Saga, he declared ‘that he
would not desist till he had set his standard east on the cliffs of
Thurso, and had reduced under himself all the provinces which the
Norwegian monarch possessed to the westward of the German Ocean.’[729]
With this view he sent to one of the island kings of the family of
Somerled, and appointed a meeting with him in the islands, when he
endeavoured to persuade him to renounce his allegiance to King Hakon,
and to surrender to him the castle of Cairnburgh, in the Treshinish
Isles, on the west coast of Mull, and three other castles, but without
success, and the further prosecution of his enterprise was arrested by
death. He was seized with severe illness, and having been carried to the
island of Kerrera, on the coast of Lorn, he died there. The Scottish
army then broke up, and removed the king’s body to Scotland. The Saga
reports that the king had seen a vision while lying in the Sound of
Kerrera, in which Saint Olave of Norway, Saint Magnus of Orkney, and
Saint Columba appeared to him, and prophesied evil to him if he would
not abandon his purpose;[730] but how Saint Columba, whose successors
had suffered such evils at the hands of the Northmen, should have
appeared in such company is not explained.
[Sidenote: A.D. 1249-1285.
Alexander the Third, his son, reigned thirty-six years.]
[Sidenote: Ceremony at his coronation.]
King Alexander was buried in the church of Melrose on the 8th of July
1249, and was succeeded by his son Alexander, a boy in his eighth
year.[731] Notwithstanding his extreme youth he was crowned at Scone on
the 13th of July 1249, and Fordun gives us a very graphic account of the
ceremony. Walter Comyn, earl of Menteith, and all the clergy, having
‘joined unto them some earls—viz., Malcolm, earl of Fife, and Malise,
earl of Stratherne, and a great many other nobles—led Alexander, soon to
be their king, up to the cross which stands in the cemetery at the east
end of the church. Here they placed him upon the celebrated coronation
stone, which was covered with silken cloths interwoven with gold, and
the bishop of St. Andrews, assisted by the rest, consecrated him king.’
The boy king then received the homage of the feudal baronage of the
kingdom, and a strange ceremony followed, probably now for the first
time, and intended to mark the cordial acceptance of the king by the
entire Gaelic population as the heir and inheritor of a long line of
traditionary Gaelic monarchs. A Highland sennachy advanced, and,
kneeling before the fatal stone, hailed him as the ‘Ri Alban,’ and
repeated his pedigree according to Highland tradition through a long
line of Gaelic kings, partly real and partly mythic, till he reached
Gaithal Glas, the ‘eponymus’ of the race.[732]
[Sidenote: A.D. 1250.
Relics of Queen Margaret enshrined before the seven earls and
the seven bishops.]
It is probable that the seven earls, though not specifically mentioned
by Fordun, took part in this ceremony, as he tells us that in the
following year, ‘on the 19th of June,’ the king and the queen, his
mother, with bishops and abbots, earls and barons, and other good men,
both clerics and laymen, in great numbers, met at Dunfermline, and took
up, in great state, the bones of the blessed Margaret, sometime queen of
Scots, out of the stone monument where they had lain through a long
course of years, and them they laid with the deepest devoutness in a
shrine of deal set with gold and precious stones;[733] but when we turn
to the Chartulary of Dunfermline, we find from an inquisition taken in
the year 1316, that the enshrining took place ‘in the presence of King
Alexander the Third, the seven bishops, and the seven earls of
Scotland.’[734]
During the earlier years of Alexander’s reign, the Comyns seem to have
held the principal sway in Scotland, at the head of whom was Walter,
earl of Menteith; but when he had reached the age of fourteen, Henry,
king of England, had an interview with him at Rokesburgh, the result of
which was that the bishops of St. Andrews and Glasgow, and the earl of
Menteith, who were at the head of the national party, were disgraced,
and a regency appointed of the earl of Dunbar and others, who were more
favourable to the king of England, for the seven years that would elapse
till Alexander attained majority.[735]
[Sidenote: A.D. 1263.
War between kings of Norway and Scotland for the possession
of the Sudreys.]
During this time no attempt appears to have been made to renew the
contest for the Western Isles, but when the king attained the age of
twenty-one, he announced his intention of subduing the Hebrides if life
were granted to him. The war was commenced by the earl of Ross, the son
of that Macintagart who had proved so important an auxiliary to the
crown, with others of the Ross-shire chiefs, with a kind of guerilla
warfare against the isle of Skye and those other islands which lay
opposite their territories. In the summer of 1262 letters reached the
king of Norway from the kings of the Sudreys complaining of these
hostilities, and warning the king of King Alexander’s avowed intention
of wresting the islands from him by force, upon which King Hakon
resolved to anticipate by an expedition to the Sudreys with a large
force to repress these hostilities, and confirm the island chiefs in
their allegiance to him. He accordingly, in the beginning of 1263,
issued orders for collecting his forces, which were to assemble at
Bergen towards the commencement of summer.
On the 15th of July Hakon sailed with a large fleet, consisting,
according to the Saga, of upwards of 120 sail, and in a few days arrived
in Orkney, and anchored in Elwick harbour in Shapinshay, opposite
Kirkwall. King Alexander was not idle in preparing for the impending
attack. He repaired the fortifications of Inverness, Wigtown, Stirling,
and other castles, and increased their garrisons. He built vessels, and
strongly garrisoned the castle of Ayr, where the chief attack was
expected. On the 10th of August Hakon sailed from Orkney with his fleet,
which had been reinforced, doubled Cape Wrath, swept past Lewis, and
entered the Sound of Skye, where he anchored south of the island of
Raasay. Here he was joined by Magnus, king of Man, and other Norwegian
barons. He then proceeded through the Sound of Mull to Kerrera, where
the forces gathered in the Isles were already assembled. From Kerrera,
he sent 50 ships under the command of King Magnus and some Norwegian
barons, and of King Dugald, of the family of Somerled, to Kintyre, and
15 ships to Bute, while he himself brought up at Gigha. The castles of
Dunaverty in Kintyre and Rothesay in Bute having capitulated, he now
sailed with the whole fleet and anchored in Lamlash harbour in Arran.
King Alexander was stationed with the greater part of his forces at Ayr,
on the opposite mainland, and negotiations now commenced for a peace, in
which the Norwegian endeavoured to get his right to the whole islands
acknowledged, while the Scots merely protracted them till the summer
should pass and the bad weather of autumn set in. In this they were
successful, and it was late in September when they were broken off. King
Hakon then sent 60 of his ships under leaders of Somerled’s family to
sail into Loch Long and ravage the adjacent districts, while he himself
prepared to land with the main force at Largs, to which place the
Scottish king had moved, and was encamped there with his army. A great
storm, however, broke out on the night of the 30th of September, and
lasted two days. Ten of the vessels sent to Loch Long were wrecked, and
the main fleet off Largs suffered greatly.[736]
Of the battle of Largs which followed we have two accounts, one in the
Norse Saga of Hakon IV., the other by Fordun; and it is possible that
while the one makes too light of the Norwegian loss, the other may make
their defeat more complete than it really was. Fordun’s account is that,
‘on the very day that both the kings had appointed for battle, there
arose at sea a very violent storm which dashed the ships together; and a
great part of the fleet dragged their anchors and were roughly cast on
shore whether they would or not. Then the king’s army came against them
and swept down many, both nobles and serfs, and a Norwegian king;
Hakon’s nephew, a man of great might and vigour, was killed. On account
of this the king of the Norwegians himself, sorrowing deeply, hurried
back in no little dismay to Orkney, and while wintering there, awaiting
a stronger force to fight it out with the Scots, he died.’[737] Although
the Saga does not admit that the Norwegians were defeated, it states
that five days after the battle King Hakon departed with his fleet, and
sailed through the Western Isles till he arrived in the Orkneys, where
he remained while the most part of the troops sailed to Norway; and
while the Saga makes the most of the grants he is said on his return to
have made to those Sudreyan kings of the family of Somerled who adhered
to him, and even avers that, ‘in this expedition King Hakon regained all
those provinces which Magnus Barefoot had acquired and conquered from
the Scotch and the Sudreyans,’ it is obvious from the results that the
expedition had in reality failed. King Hakon died in the Bishop’s Palace
at Kirkwall on the 15th of December 1263, and was succeeded by his son
Magnus as king of Norway. The results of the battle of Largs and the
death of King Hakon substantially left the Western Isles at the mercy of
King Alexander; and Fordun tells us that he no sooner heard of King
Hakon’s death than he got a strong army together and made ready to set
out with a fleet towards the Isle of Man. When he had reached Dumfries
on his way, King Magnus of Man met him, and agreed to do homage for his
petty kingdom which he was to hold of him for ever. The king then sent
the earls of Buchan and Mar, and Alan the Hostiary, with a band of
knights and natives, to the Western Isles, ‘where they slew those
traitors who had the year before encouraged the king of Norway to go to
war with Scotland. Some of them they put to flight, and, having hanged
some of the chiefs, they brought with them thence exceeding great
plunder.’[738]
[Sidenote: A.D. 1266.
Annexation of the Western Isles to the crown of Scotland.]
King Magnus of Man died on the 24th of November 1265, and this paved the
way for a treaty between the kings of Scotland and of Norway, by which,
for payment of a sum of 4000 marks and an annual payment to the crown of
Norway of 100 marks, the Isle of Man and all the Sudreys were finally
ceded to King Alexander, the Orkneys and Shetland being excepted; and
the ecclesiastical jurisdiction and metropolitan rights of the
archbishop of Drontheim over Man and the Isles reserved. The treaty was
concluded in July 1266, and thus were the Sudreys or Western Isles
finally annexed to the kingdom of Scotland.[739]
Alexander III. had two sons, Alexander and David, and one daughter,
Margaret, who was married to Eric, king of Norway, but in the course of
three years he was left childless. His son David died at Stirling at the
end of June in the year 1281. On the 9th of April 1283 his daughter
Margaret died, leaving an only daughter Margaret, commonly called the
Maid of Norway, and on the 28th of January following died Alexander,
prince of Scotland.
[Sidenote: A.D. 1283.
Assembly of baronage of the whole kingdom at Scone on 5th
February to regulate succession.]
The king immediately summoned the Estates of Scotland to meet at Scone
on the 5th of February, and there they became bound to acknowledge
Margaret, princess of Norway, as the legitimate heir of their sovereign,
‘failing any children whom Alexander might have, and failing the issue
of the prince of Scotland deceased, in the whole kingdom and the island
of Man, and the whole other islands belonging to the kingdom of
Scotland.’ The nobles present will show that the Estates now represented
the entire territory of Scotland. There were the earls of Buchan,
Dunbar, Stratherne, Lennox, Carrick, Mar, Angus, Menteith, Ross,
Sutherland, Fife, and Atholl, of whom four were Norman intruders into
Celtic earldoms, and the earl of Orkney represented the earldom of
Caithness; and there were twenty-four barons, of whom eighteen at least
represented the Norman baronage of the kingdom; while the Celtic element
is represented only by Alexander of Argyll, Angus son of Donald, and
Alan son of Rotheric, the native rulers of Argyll and the Isles.[740]
[Sidenote: A.D. 1285-6.
Death of Alexander the Third.]
King Alexander, thus left childless, married Yolande, daughter of the
Count de Dreux, on the 14th of October 1285, in the hope of obtaining a
male heir to the Crown, but was killed on the 19th of March following,
having been thrown from his horse in the dusk of the evening while
riding from Queensferry to Kinghorn to visit his queen.[741]
[Illustration:
FEUDAL
SCOTLAND
_W. & A. K. Johnston Edinburgh & London._
]
[Sidenote: Conclusion.]
The young Maid of Norway died in Orkney, when on her passage from Norway
to take possession of her kingdom, in the end of September 1290, and
thus terminated the last native dynasty of Scottish monarchs of Celtic
descent in the male line, and Scotland, with her united provinces, her
feudal institutions, and her mixed population, now became a prize to be
contested for between the English monarch, who asserted his right as her
lord paramount, and the various Norman barons who claimed her as their
inheritance through descent in the female line from her native monarchs.
It is with the Celtic portion of her population alone that this work is
now mainly concerned.
-----
Footnote 620:
The first-known earl of Atholl was Madach Comes, who appears as
witness to charters of Alexander I. and David I. He is called in the
Orkneyinga Saga ‘Moddadr, Jarl af Atjoklum,’ and is there said to be
son of ‘Melkolmr, brother of King Melkolf, father of David, who is now
king of Scots’ (chap. lvii.). Melkolf is obviously Malcolm Ceannmor,
and other MSS. read Melmare in place of Melkolmr, which is probably
the true reading, as in the Book of Deer we find Malmori d’Athotla
witnessing one of the charters. Wynton has a curious story that
Malcolm Ceannmor was an illegitimate son of King Duncan, by the miller
of Forteviot’s daughter, and that he had two legitimate brothers. The
latter seems to be well founded, and the former may have been raised
by the partisans of Donald to strengthen his claim upon the throne.
Footnote 621:
In the Chartulary of St. Andrews is a memorandum of a charter by
‘Edelradus vir venerande memorie filius Malcolmi regis Scotiæ Abbas de
Dunkelden et insuper Comes de Fyf,’ confirmed by his brothers Eadgar
and Alexander, because the lands had been granted to him by his
parents ‘in juvenili etate’ (p. 115).
Footnote 622:
For Godred Crovan see Munch’s edition of _Chron. of Man_, pp. 3, 50.
The Magnus Barefoot’s Saga seems to have combined the account of two
expeditions of that king in 1093 and 1098 into one. But the distinct
statement that he conquered the Western Isles during the reign of
Malcolm, and while Godred and his son Lagman were still alive, leaves
no doubt that his first expedition took place in the last year of
Malcolm’s reign.
Footnote 623:
_Sax. Chron._ ad an. 1093.
Footnote 624:
Fordun, _Chron._ B. v. c. xxi. It is usually stated on Fordun’s
authority that Donald Ban had obtained the assistance of Magnus, king
of Norway, who had just conquered the Western Isles, but there is no
expression to this effect in Fordun’s Chronicle. The words ‘auxilio
regis Norwegiæ’ are interpolated by Bower.
Footnote 625:
Wynton, B. vii. c. 3.
Footnote 626:
_Sax. Chron._ ad an. 1093.
Footnote 627:
_Sax. Chron._ ad an. 1093.
Footnote 628:
Duncanus filius regis Malcolumb constans hereditarie rex Scotiæ. _Nat.
MSS. of Scot._, Part i. No. ii. The authenticity of this charter was
at one time doubted, but it is now recognised as genuine. See
_Introduction_, p. viii.
Footnote 629:
_Chart. Dunf._ p. 3. King David I., who remodelled the foundation in
his charter, confirms these lands which had been given by his brother
Duncan. The appearances of Eadgar as a witness to the first charter,
and the expression in this ‘dona Duncani fratris mei’ without
qualification, are a strong indication that he was considered
legitimate. The imputation of bastardy was first made by William of
Malmesbury, and adopted from him by Fordun. It seems to have been the
fruit of subsequent claims by his descendants.
Footnote 630:
_Chron. Cumbriæ_ apud Dug. _Mon._ i. p. 400; but the authority of this
chronicle is not great. William Fitz Duncan is, however, historical.
Footnote 631:
_Sax. Chron._ ad an. 1094.
Footnote 632:
See _Transactions of Ant. Soc._, vol. ii. page 480, for paper by
Professor Stuart ‘on the reign of Duncan the Second.’
Footnote 633:
William of Malmesbury tells us (B. v. § 400) ‘Solus fuit Edmundus
Margaretæ filius a bono degener, qui Duvenaldi patrui nequitiæ
particeps, fraternæ non inscius necis fuerat, pactus scilicet regni
dimidium.’ This statement is confirmed by the Ulster Annals, which
have ‘1094 Donnchadh mac Maelcolaim Ri Albain domarbhadh o braithribh
fein i. o Domnall agus o Etmond (Duncan, son of Malcolm, king of
Alban, slain by his brothers Donald and Edmund) per dolum.’
Footnote 634:
William of Malmesbury, _Hist. Regum_, B. v. § 400. The crime was the
slaughter of Duncan. His language here is not very consistent with his
branding Duncan as a bastard and a usurper.