WILLIAM THE LION, 1189–1214 397
HISTORY OF SCOTLAND
TO THE CLOSE OF THE 13TH CENTURY.
CHAPTER I.
THE EARLY HISTORY--BEFORE A. D. 843.
Britain, dimly recognisable in the vague accounts given by Hecatæus
of a large island off the coast of Gaul inhabited by a sacred race
of _Hyperboreans_, and sometimes even disputing with Iceland
the questionable honour of having been known as _Ultima Thule_,
owes her first introduction within the pale of authentic history to
the ambitious policy of the Cæsars. The historian, however, finds
little worth recording about the northern districts during the Roman
occupation of the island, and that little belongs rather to the
province of the antiquary. A transitory gleam of light is shed upon
the subject by the pen of Tacitus; [Sidenote: A. D. 80–4.] but the
campaigns of Agricola were unproductive of results, and northern
Britain again sinks into obscurity until the Emperor Hadrian deemed
it necessary for the protection of the Roman province to throw up a
turf rampart across the narrowest portion of the island, extending
from the Solway to the Tyne. [Sidenote: A. D. 120.] Twenty years later
another was added between the Forth and Clyde, connecting the old line
of forts erected by Agricola, and known, from the reign in which it
was built, as the Wall of Antonine; but after a fruitless struggle
of sixty years the whole of the district between these walls was
abandoned by Severus, when he raised a third rampart, built of stone,
immediately to the northward of the original bulwark. [Sidenote: A. D.
208.] From this period the Roman province was bounded by the southern
wall, and though towards the close of the fourth century the energy
of Theodosius reasserted the dominion of the empire over the district
between Forth and Tyne, [Sidenote: A. D. 369.] which now received the
name of Valentia in honour of the Emperor Valens, the newly-established
province was soon relinquished, and about the opening of the following
century Britain was finally abandoned by her ancient masters. Long
before this period the incursions of the northern tribes upon the Roman
province [Sidenote: A. D. 407.] had become incessant, and some idea
may be formed of the distance to which they occasionally penetrated,
from the account left by Ammianus Marcellinus, that Theodosius, after
landing at _Rutupe_, the modern Richborough, was obliged to fight
his way through Kent, swarming with their hostile bands, before he
could reach the capital, Augusta, described by the historian as “an old
town formerly known as London.” Their earlier title of Caledonians had
by this time disappeared, and they were generally known as Picts, a
name including the two great divisions of Vecturiones and Dicaledones,
answering apparently to the later confederacies of northern and
southern Picts.[1]
Britain after the departure of the legionaries appears to have
suffered her full share of the calamities of that disastrous epoch,
and the episodes of invasion and conquest enacted throughout the
continental provinces of the expiring empire were repeated with similar
results, within the narrower limits of her ancient island dependency.
A continuous stream of Teutonic invaders poured without ceasing upon
her shores, Jutes, Saxons, and Frisians peopling the south-eastern
coasts, whilst further towards the north swarmed the Anglian tribes
who were destined to fix an imperishable name upon the island. Towards
the middle of the sixth century an additional impetus appears to have
been given to the torrent of Anglian invasion by the arrival of Ida,
the reputed founder of the Northumbrian kingdom, and leader of the
Bernician Angles, whose descendants formed so important an element
in the Teutonic population of southern Scotland. No record of his
prowess is to be found in the annals of his countrymen; his name alone
survives with that of his forgotten foe, “the dark lord”--Dutigern;
but the precipitate flight of the British bishop from York, the
sudden extinction of Christianity throughout the diocese, the name of
_Gwrth Bryneich_--or Bernicia’s thraldom--by which the famous
fortress of Bamborough was known amongst the conquered people, and
the ominous title of “the Flame-Bearer,” applied to the mighty Angle
in the lays of the hostile bards, sufficiently attest the ruthless
energy with which he extended the dominion of his race from the marshy
plains of Holderness to the distant islets of the Forth.[2] From
the Humber to the Tyne the country was known amongst the Britons as
_Deheubarth_, or “the southern part,” whilst beyond that river
and the ruins of the southern wall, the district stretching to the
Forth was distinguished as _Bryneich_, or “the country of the
braes;” and it was within the boundaries of the latter province that
the Anglian population of the Lothians first established themselves as
conquerors in the land which their descendants still occupy.
Ida fell in battle, slain, say the British authorities, by Owen of
Reged, whose father Urien, the favourite hero of the bards, and a
warrior from whom many a laurel has been stolen to adorn the chaplet of
the fabulous Arthur, was hailed unanimously as leader of a confederacy
which was to drive the invader from the soil. The tide of conquest
was now rolled back upon the Angles, Bryneich was recovered, and the
sons of Ida were driven from the land, when at the very moment of his
triumph the bravest champion of his race fell by the dagger of “Llovan
of the accursed hand,” and his death was fatal to his countrymen. Step
by step the Angles recovered their ascendency, winning their way at the
point of the sword, until the whole of the eastern coast was wrested
from its original possessors, confined henceforth to the westward of
“the Desert,” and the Northumbrian kingdoms of Deira and Bernicia rose
out of the ruins of the conquered British principalities.[3]
A solitary entry in the annals of the Irish abbot, Tighernach, affords
the earliest historical testimony of the arrival of a small, but in
many respects a remarkable, band of colonists, about fifty years before
the settlement of an Anglian population in the Lothians, upon the rocky
and indented coasts of southern Argyle. [Sidenote: A. D. 502.] Fergus
Mor MacEarca, a chieftain of the Irish Gael, was their leader, and
the north-eastern extremity of the modern county of Antrim, which, at
that time, formed part of the territories of the Irish Picts, was the
locality which they abandoned when they crossed the channel in their
leathern coracles in search of another home upon the shores of Britain.
Amidst the lakes and mountains to the southward of Loch Linne, Fergus
and his followers fixed their new abode; and the limits of his petty
kingdom, which were never enlarged, are still traceable in the names
implanted by succeeding princes upon the dependent districts of Lorn,
Cowal, and Kintyre. These principalities, with a few of the islands
off the coast of southern Argyle, made up, collectively, the whole of
the kingdom of Dalriada--for such was its real name; though in the
Latin chronicles of a later age, Fergus and his descendants invariably
appear under the more familiar appellation of “Kings of the Scots.” The
annals of the Dalriads are totally devoid of interest before the reign
of Conal, fourth in succession from Fergus Mor, who, by the shelter
he afforded to the exiled Abbot of Durrow, indirectly furthered the
conversion of the northern Picts to Christianity.[4]
It was in consequence of a feud between the leading clans of the royal
race of Ireland, that the apostle of the northern Picts first quitted
the home of his earlier years and dedicated the remainder of his life
to the labours of a missionary. On the occasion of one of those great
meetings of the clergy and laity of Ireland, to which such frequent
allusion is made in her annals, a son of Aodh, king of Connaught, who
happened to be present in full reliance upon a promise of immunity from
Columba, was seized and put to death by order of Dermot MacKerval, lord
of the southern Hy Nial, and at that time _Ardrigh_, or supreme
king of Ireland. Columba, who was then abbot of Durrow, was also a
member of the same great sept, and closely allied by birth to the king
of one of the northern branches--the Clan Conal; and his kinsmen, bound
by the usual ties of relationship to avenge the insult, uniting with
the king of Connaught, inflicted so severe a defeat upon the aggressor,
that his whole wrath was turned upon Columba, whom he caused to be
excommunicated by the leading clergy of Meath. Dreading the further
effects of his enemy’s vengeance, Columba bade adieu to his native
land; and, under the curse of man, sought those shores to which, under
the blessing of God, he was destined to become, indeed, a messenger of
good tidings.[5]
Arriving with the usual complement of twelve followers, off the coast
of Argyle, he obtained permission from Conal, king of the Dalriads, to
appropriate the little island of Iona, and after employing himself for
two years in establishing and regulating his brotherhood, he prepared
to enter upon his allotted task, and to penetrate across the mountain
barrier of Drumalban. [Sidenote: A. D. 565.] Not far from the spot
where the river Ness issues from the parent lake of which it assumes
the name, there still exist the vestiges of an ancient earthwork,
ascribed by the tradition of the country to a Pictish king; and thither
Columba and his companions bent their steps, for Bruidi MacMalcon, who
at this time held supreme sway over both divisions of the Picts, held
his court within the ramparts of this _Rath_ or _Dun_. As the
arrival of the Christian missionary appears to have been expected, he
was opposed by a number of the Pictish Druids, but as their hostility
seems to have been limited to the use of incantations and enchantments,
little real hindrance could have been offered to his progress, and he
reached, without difficulty, the residence of the king. As the gates
of the royal fortress close upon the little band, all knowledge ceases
of the further proceedings of Columba; the bare record of the success
of his mission has descended to posterity, and the people acquiescing,
as in duty bound, in their sovereign’s renunciation of idolatry, both
divisions of the Pictish people were henceforth united in belief.[6]
An interesting description of the disciples and successors of Columba
has been handed down in the pages of a writer, whose difference with
the Gaelic clergy in certain trivial points of faith did not blind him
to the virtues and real merits of the earliest apostles of Christianity
to his own heathen forefathers. Shut out in their distant northern
home from the knowledge of synodical decrees, and constrained to seek
their doctrine and rule of conduct in the writings of the prophets,
the evangelists, and the apostles, the simple denizens of the sea-girt
Iona were conspicuous for the purity of their unblemished morals, for
their fervent attachment to their divine Master, and for their strict
adherence to the precepts and traditions of the revered founder of the
brotherhood. As they preached so they practised, their own blameless
manner of life affording the best commentary on their doctrine; and
when they issued forth from their monastery to baptise and to instruct,
to convert the infidel and to strengthen the believer, the offerings
forced upon them by the gratitude of the powerful and the rich were
employed in relieving the wants of the poor and in alleviating the
sufferings of the sick--in restoring freedom to the captive and in
purchasing liberty for the slave. Such is the picture drawn by the
venerable Beda of Aidan and his fellow-labourers in the work of
converting the Angles of Northumbria; worthy inheritors of the virtues
and devotion of Columba, and bright examples of the pure and simple
piety inspired by the zeal of Patrick amongst the early fathers of his
church.[7]
For about a century and a half after the arrival of Columba, Iona
continued in the position of the leading monastery of the north,
extending her authority over many parts of Ireland, and bidding fair at
one time to establish a similar influence throughout southern Britain,
until a dispute about matters of comparatively trivial importance
abruptly severed her connection with Northumbria. A difference of
opinion had long existed between the clergy of the Picts, Britons,
and northern Irish, on the one hand, and the followers of Augustine
amongst the Anglo-Saxons, on the other, together with the ecclesiastics
of southern Ireland, who had been latterly brought to conform to
the practice authorised by the see of Rome. The proper time for the
celebration of the Easter festival, and the orthodox form of the
clerical tonsure, were the subjects in dispute; and though the former
was clearly a question of astronomical calculation, and the tonsure was
a badge of Paganism in the days of the primitive church, both points
originated frequent and animated discussions, and were debated in the
seventh century as important matters of faith. [Sidenote: A.D. 664.]
Colman and his followers, at the celebrated conference of Whitby, had
bade adieu to their adopted country sooner than relinquish the practice
they had inherited from their predecessors; and fifty years later a
similar tenacity in favour of “ancient customs” brought about the
expulsion of the clergy of Iona from the territories of the Pictish
sovereign. Nectan MacDeriloi, in consequence of a difference of opinion
with his clergy about the points in question, dispatched envoys to
Ceolfred, abbot of Wearmouth, requesting his decision upon the matters
in dispute, and, at the same time, inviting the assistance of Saxon
architects to build a stone church after the approved Roman model. The
abbot responded to both appeals, and though every vestige of the stone
church has long since disappeared, the letter of Ceolfred may still be
read in the pages of the historian Beda. It strengthened and confirmed
the king in his own convictions, and [Sidenote: A.D. 717.] he decided
that his clergy should conform accordingly; but they were as firm in
their resolution as Colman; and Nectan, summarily ordering them across
Drumalban, appears to have transferred to his recent foundation (which
seems to have been Abernethy) the pre-eminence amongst the monasteries
of northern Britain, which had hitherto been the peculiar prerogative
of Iona.[8]
Whilst the arrival of the Angles upon the coasts of Valentia is dimly
traceable in the scanty records of the period, and the settlement of
the Dalriads in a portion of Argyle is historically noticed by the
earliest annalist of Ireland, a barren and corrupt, but singularly
accurate list of uncouth names is the sole record of the Pictish
people before the opening of the seventh century, when the confusion
resulting upon the death of the Northumbrian Ethelfrith compelled his
children to seek a refuge amongst the friendly people of the north.
The bitter spirit of animosity engendered in the Angles by their
incessant hostilities with the Britons is hardly traceable in their
early relations with the Picts, and accordingly a ready welcome was
extended to the youthful exiles, who were instructed in the knowledge
of the Christian faith by the Gaelic clergy, and sheltered for fifteen
years beyond the protecting barrier of the Forth. The residence of
the Northumbrian _Athelings_ amongst the Picts was productive of
important consequences; Eanfred, the eldest of the brothers, became
the husband of a Pictish princess--and their son Talorcan was numbered
amongst the Pictish kings--whilst Oswald, after recovering his father’s
throne, sought from amongst the instructors of his early youth those
holy men through whose assistance he hoped to spread abroad amongst his
people the blessings of the novel faith which he had learnt to prize so
dearly.[9]
After the death of this amiable prince upon the fatal field of Winwed,
the ties of affection and good will which had hitherto united the sons
of Ethelfrith with the people who had sheltered them in adversity were
severed during the reign of his harsher brother Oswy, and exchanged for
the galling bonds of conquest. Province after province bowed to the
Anglian yoke, until the majority of the neighbouring Pictish princes
were ranged with the Dalriads, who shared the same lot, amongst the
tributaries of the Northumbrian sovereign, and though they endeavoured
to regain their liberty when [Sidenote: A. D. 670.] Egfrid ascended the
throne, their premature attempt only served to rivet their fetters more
securely. About eleven years later a yet more decisive step was taken
towards the permanent annexation of the tributary Pictish provinces,
and Egfrid, when he divided the overgrown diocese of Wilfrid into
the Sees of York, Hexham, and Lindisfarne, appointed Trumwine to the
bishopric of the Picts, choosing Abercorn, upon the southern bank of
[Sidenote: A. D. 681.] the Forth, as the seat of the new Episcopate.[10]
Five years after the erection of the See of Abercorn, [Sidenote: A.
D. 685.] for some unknown cause, Egfrid, repeating the ravages of his
Irish expedition of the previous year, poured a mighty army across
the Forth, burning the _Raths_ of Tulach-Aman, and Dun Ollaig.
His progress was unopposed, and penetrating into the neighbouring
province of Angus, he crossed the Tay without resistance, and skirted
the base of the Grampian range until he approached the neighbourhood
of Lin Garan or Nectan’s Mere, a little lake in the modern parish of
Dunnichen. Here his antagonist, who was his cousin Bruidi, awaited
with his followers the hostile onset, the signal overthrow of the
invading force justifying the choice of the position. The victory was
as glorious as its consequences were important, Egfrid and the greater
part of his army were left upon the field, whilst few escaped from the
scene of slaughter to carry back to Northumbria the tidings of her
monarch’s fall. All that the conquests of thirty years had wrested from
the Picts was lost for ever to the race of Ida, and the Saxon bishop,
abandoning in terror his See of Abercorn, never rested in his hurried
flight until within the walls of Whitby he had placed the whole breadth
of Bernicia between himself and his rebellious flock. The Dalriads
also recovered their former liberty, and even the Britons enjoyed a
momentary independence, and through the losses and embarrassments
entailed upon Northumbria by the disastrous overthrow of Egfrid, the
pre-eminence of the Northern Angles received a fatal shock which the
utmost efforts of succeeding princes failed altogether to repair.[11]
During the forty years which elapsed after the victory of Nectan’s Mere
an occasional conflict with the Angles testifies to the embittered
feelings which had arisen through Northumbrian aggression; and upon
the abdication of Nectan, the correspondent of Ceolfred and somewhat
arbitrary reformer of the Gaelic clergy, who after a reign of eighteen
years relinquished his throne for the cloister, a contest seems to have
arisen between four Pictish kings, which, after five years, terminated
in the undisputed ascendancy of Angus Mac Fergus. [Sidenote: A. D.
730.] Fortune proved true to her favourite, whose alliance was courted
at different periods by the Mercian and Northumbrian sovereigns, and
in the results of his victories over his various competitors, and of
his conquests over the Dalriads and the northern Britons, may be traced
apparently the germs of the future kingdom of Scotland.[12]
Confined within the narrow district to the southward of Loch Linne
and to the westward of the mountain range of Drumalban, the Dalriad
princes exercised but little influence upon the great confederacy of
the Picts, their usual opponents being the Britons, and in early times
the Angles, against whom both Britons and Dalriads occasionally appear
to have united. Their fleet is sometimes mentioned in the Irish annals,
a hostile expedition against the Islesmen disclosing the limited extent
of their dominion in the western seas.[13] The most prosperous era in
the annals of the little kingdom coincides with Columba’s residence
in Iona, after Conal, the early patron of the saint, was succeeded by
Aidan Mac Gauran, the enterprising and able leader of the clans of
Kintyre, the names of whose numerous battles, preserved in the annals
and biographies of the period, amply testify to his warlike qualities
without throwing much light on the causes of their display. His latest
antagonist was the Northumbrian Ethelfrith, [Sidenote: A. D. 603.] from
whom he received so severe a check at Degsa’s Stone, that the Angles
were allowed henceforth to prosecute their career of conquest over the
Britons without interference from the Dalriads, who with the exception
of an occasional contest with their neighbours on the Clyde seem to
have turned their attention to the opposite coasts of _Uladh_.[14]
For a quarter of a century and upwards they were tributaries along with
the Picts of the Northumbrian kingdom, regaining their independence
after the battle of Nectan’s Mere, though it may be gathered from the
words of Adamnan and from certain notices in the annalists, that the
predominance in the kingdom passed about this time from Kintyre to the
house of Lorn, whose chieftain, Selvach, seems to have rivalled Aidan
in the number of his battles, fought generally, as in the case of the
latter prince, against the Britons of Strath Clyde. [Sidenote: A. D.
723.] The abdication and death of Selvach were fatal to the supremacy
of his house; the authority of his son, Dungal, being quickly confined
[Sidenote: A. D. 730.] within the limits of the paternal inheritance,
which he was destined a few years later to lose through a wanton
outrage upon a connection of the formidable Angus. Bruidi, a son of the
Pictish sovereign, appears to have fled for some cause to the island
of _Toraic_, [Sidenote: A. D. 733.] where he was followed--or
found--by Dungal, who forced him from the sanctuary in which he had
taken refuge. The devastation of Lorn in the following year, and the
destruction of the two [Sidenote: A. D. 734.] _Raths_ of Dunleven
and Dunadd, attest the vigour with which Angus avenged the insult;
Dungal and his brother Feredach were carried off in chains in the
victor’s train, and two years later the defeat of Muredach, [Sidenote:
A. D. 736.] the last known member of the family, upon the shores of
Loch Linne, completed the ruin of the house of Lorn. The scanty records
of the period throw no farther light upon the subject, Lorn and its
princes disappear from history, and the success of Angus would appear
to have extended not only to the conquest of the province in question,
but to the temporary subjection of the entire kingdom of Dalriada.[15]
The alliance with Ethelbald the Proud seems to have involved Angus
in a collision at different epochs with the West Saxons and the
Northumbrians, though a connection of a more friendly nature arose
at a later period with the Bernician Eadbert, one of the greatest
restorers of the Northumbrian power, the alliance being probably based
upon the mutual spoliation of the Britons. The conquests of Ethelfrith
in the neighbourhood of Chester, and the victories of Edwin in the
south-west of Yorkshire, when he drove Ceretic, or Caradoc, from the
forest district of Elmete, appear to have made the first impression
upon the lengthened tract of country to the westward of “the Desert,”
the true home of the Cymri, extending from the Severn to the Clyde,
in which a number of petty princes and kinglets long united in paying
some sort of deference to the authority of one supreme king, or
_Unben_.[16] The faint remains of a line of defence, dictated
possibly by a recollection of imperial tactics, can still be traced
towards the north-eastern frontier of this British territory under the
name of the _Catrail or Pictswork ditch_, stretching from Peel
Fell through the south-western portion of Roxburghshire to Galashiels
in Selkirkshire; and to the westward of this barrier the Britons
long remained upon a footing of comparative independence, after they
had lost all hold upon the more open country in the vicinity.[17]
Mercia, at the period of Edwin’s reign, was under the rule of Penda,
a chieftain who, to a hatred and contempt of Christianity, joined an
ardent desire of shaking off his dependence upon the kindred Angles
beyond the Humber, and encouraging the designs of the British princes
against the conqueror of Caradoc, he united the pagan warriors of
Mercia with the Christian followers of Caswallon, re-establishing the
supremacy of the Britons over the ancient city of York, by the defeat
and death of Edwin, though the triumph was purchased at the price of
the temporary extinction of Christianity. But the alliance between
Christian and pagan was of evil omen, and the death of Caswallon in
the following year destroyed the hopes of the Britons, though they
again swelled the forces of the heathen Penda, when he lost his life
near the Broad Arc, Cadwal of Gwynneth alone escaping from the field.
Cadwallader, the last king whose authority is supposed to have been
supreme, died of the pestilence in 664; and towards the close of
the same century the conquests of Egfred extended the Northumbrian
dominions to the western coast, and with his numerous donations of
lands in the modern counties of Lancashire and Cumberland to the
Northumbrian clergy, interposed a permanent barrier between the Britons
of North Wales, Cumberland, and Strath Clyde.[18]
Henceforth the ancient confederacy of the Britons seems to have been
broken up into the separate divisions of Wales, and English and
Scottish Cumbria--or Cumberland and Strath Clyde--never again destined
to be reunited under the authority of one supreme _Unben_. During
the reign of the Northumbrian Alfred, the Angles began to extend
their encroachments from the neighbourhood of Carlisle along the
whole of the south-western coast, known in a later age as Galloway,
their possessions in this quarter having increased, shortly before
the death of Beda, to such an extent as to justify their usual policy
of establishing a bishopric; and accordingly, Whithern, or Candida
Casa, the traditional see of Ninian, was revived, and placed under
the superintendence of a line of Anglian bishops, which was abruptly
brought to a close about a century later. The successes of Eadbert
reduced the fortunes of the Britons in this quarter to the lowest ebb.
Kyle was rendered tributary to Northumbria, which already included
Cunningham; [Sidenote: A. D. 756.] and shortly after the middle of the
century, Alclyde or Dumbarton, the strongest bulwark of the Northern
Britons, surrendered to the united forces of the Northumbrians and the
Picts. The capture of Alclyde must have thrown the whole of the ancient
British territories in the Lennox, which were subsequently included in
the diocese of Glasgow, into the power of Angus, together with a great
portion of the “debateable land” between Forth and Clyde, similarly
included in the “Cumbrian” diocese; and the little principality of
Strath Clyde was now completely hemmed in and surrounded by hostile
territories, though the gradual decline of the Northumbrian power
towards the close of the eighth century, enabled the petty state to
struggle on for another hundred years in a precarious species of
nominal independence.[19]
After the death of Angus MacFergus, king of the Picts, [Sidenote: A.
D. 761.] who is stigmatized by a Saxon writer as “a bloody tyrant,”
the history of the succeeding period again becomes obscure. Bruidi his
brother followed him on the throne, which, after the death of Bruidi,
and an interval of fifteen years, during which it was again occupied
in succession by two brothers, reverted once more to the family of
Angus in the persons of his son and grandson--Constantine MacFergus,
[Sidenote: A. D. 789.] also probably a member of the same race,
acquiring the supreme power towards the close of the century by driving
out Conal MacTeige, who lost his life a few years later in Kintyre. The
names of three kings of Dalriada attest the existence of the little
kingdom, without throwing any further light upon its history, though
from the character of a subsequent reference to Aodh “the Fair,” it may
be conjectured that he was in some sense the restorer of the line of
Kintyre. [Sidenote: A. D. 792.] After the death of Doncorcin, the last
of these three princes, which happened shortly after the accession of
Constantine, no further mention of the province will be found in any of
the Irish annals which have hitherto been published.[20]
For thirty years and upwards, the supremacy of Constantine was
undisputed, and he was succeeded upon his death by his brother Angus,
his son Drost, and his nephew Eoganan in the same regular order which
is subsequently observable amongst the early kings of Scotland.
His reign was unquestionably an era of considerable importance,
tradition connecting it with the termination of the Pictish monarchy,
and representing Constantine as the last of the Pictish kings--a
tradition which must have owed its origin to a vague recollection of
some momentous change about this period. He and his brother Angus
are numbered most suspiciously amongst the immediate predecessors of
Kenneth MacAlpin in the “Duan of Alban,” the oldest known genealogy of
the early kings of Scotland; whilst the name of Constantine, unknown
amongst the paternal ancestry of Kenneth, was borne by his son and many
of his race, who would thus appear to have looked for their title to
the throne quite as much to their maternal as to their paternal line of
ancestry--for the mother of Alpin, Kenneth’s father, was traditionally
a daughter of the house of Fergus.[21] The foundation of Dunkeld, in
Atholl, during the same reign, and of St. Andrews, in Fife, during the
reign of the younger Angus, point to the incorporation of both those
provinces amongst the dominions of the Pictish sovereigns; for it is
observable that the erection of a monastery was generally coincident
with the reduction under the royal authority of the province over which
the newly instituted abbot exercised jurisdiction, the authority of the
ecclesiastical superior confirming and sanctifying as it were the power
of the sovereign; and it will be found that when regular dioceses were
instituted in the twelfth century, the whole of Dalriada had long been
incorporated amongst the districts acknowledging the jurisdiction of
Constantine’s monastery of Dunkeld. The Anglian line of bishops also
disappear during the same reign from the diocese of Whithern, and a
population of Gaelic origin, distinguished from the earlier masters of
the soil, whether of Cumbrian or Northumbrian race, is subsequently
discovered in possession of the entire district.[22] The power of
Northumbria was on the wane, her people, distracted by civil contests,
were fast relinquishing the hold they had once acquired upon the
districts to the westward of the Lothians; and as the Angles, weakened
by internal discord, no longer opposed a formidable barrier to the
Northern tribes, the latter, gradually increasing in power, seem to
have been fast settling into a stronger and more compact kingdom, in
which may be traced the nucleus of modern Scotland.
The erection of Dunkeld, the sole deed of Constantine that has
descended to posterity, may be traced to the inroads of the Northern
_Vikings_, who, four years after his accession, made their first
recorded appearance upon the British coasts, ravaging in the same year
Lindisfarne and Iona. A few of the Scottish monks who escaped with
life bore with them the relics of their founder, distributing their
sacred charge between the new foundation of the Pictish sovereign and
another monastery raised at Kells in Ireland; whilst the pre-eminence
throughout North Briton, which had passed to Abernethy from Iona,
appears to have been again transferred from the former monastery, and
vested in Dunkeld, which was destined in its turn, before the close of
the century, to be eclipsed and supplanted by St. Andrews.[23]
[Sidenote: A. D. 839.]
The male line of the family of Fergus appears to have terminated in
the sons of the younger Angus, Eoganan and Bran, who were both killed
in a disastrous battle with the Northmen; and for three years the two
sons of Bargoit, Feredach and Bruidi, reigned over the Picts, the death
of Bruidi making way for the first prince of the line of Dalriada,
[Sidenote: A. D. 843.] Kenneth MacAlpin, who seems to have ascended the
throne in right of the maternal ancestry of his father. For the next
two centuries the united people of the Picts and Scots acknowledged the
dominion of the MacAlpin dynasty; and though Kenneth and his immediate
successors were still recorded in the annals of the age under the
original title of “Kings of the Picts,” from the opening of the tenth
century the ancient name of _Pict_, gradually dying out, was
superseded by the more familiar appellation of _Scot_, extending,
in course of time, to every tribe and every race from the Tweed and the
Solway to the Pentland Firth, whose chieftains and leaders, whether
native noble, or feudal baron, owned the authority and followed the
banner of the representatives of the princes of Kintyre.[24]
CHAPTER II.
THE KINGDOM OF SCOTLAND--843–900.
The history of Scotland as a kingdom may be said in general terms to
begin with the accession of the family of Kintyre; but the Scotland
of the period of the MacAlpin dynasty, both in the extent of the
territory to which Kenneth actually succeeded, as well as in the
nature of his authority over the remainder of the kingdom, bore only
a partial resemblance to the more compact feudal monarchy of a later
era. Gaul, before the achievements of Julius Cæsar annexed that
country to the dominion of Rome, must have presented an example of a
pure Celtic system of government; and the features of that system, as
described in the Commentaries of the conqueror, are plainly traceable
amongst the kindred Celtic populations of the British Isles. The
greater states, such as the Ædui, appear to have been aristocratic
confederacies, generally exercising a sort of leadership over a number
of lesser dependencies, electing annually a magistrate, judge, or
_Vergobreith_, to govern with royal authority, and the power
of life and death, and guarding, with jealous care, against the
perpetuation of this authority as a hereditary appanage in any one
family. In other confederacies this second phase had been brought about
with more or less permanent success, and Tasgetius was re-established
by Cæsar in the “_kingdom_” which his ancestors had acquired
over the Carnutes--a proceeding which within three years cost him his
life--whilst Cavarinus was confirmed in a similar hereditary authority
over the Senones, which appears to have descended to his brother
Moritasgus from their joint forefathers. Occasionally a number of the
leading states were united in one great confederacy under a temporary
head, chosen for the occasion, who was invested with royal authority
over every member of the alliance, and obedience enforced to his
behests by the exaction of hostages. As war was the bond of union in
such confederacies, the character of the supreme leader was military
not judicial; he was the _Toshach_ not the _Vergobreith_;
the _War-king_, exercising the same authority over the whole
confederacy with which every _Duke_ or _Toshach_ was invested
by each member of the alliance over their separate contingents.
Attempts had not been wanting to convert this temporary authority
into a permanent supremacy, as in the case of Celtillus, the father
of Vercingetorix; but Cæsar records no instance of success in a
course of policy which would evidently have laid the foundation of a
wider and far more formidable _kingdom_ than any that had been
established by the mere conversion of the _elective_ into the
_hereditary_ principle within the boundaries of a single state.
In all these features of the government of the greater states of Gaul,
there is nothing that can be considered peculiar to the people of that
country alone. The annual _Vergobreith_ is but the counterpart of
the _Princeps_ chosen in the German assemblies, and dispatched
with a hundred _Comites_ to administer justice amongst the
confederated clans. Aristocratic confederacies, occasionally united
under the rule of one head, or _Heretoga_, prevailed amongst the
continental Saxons in the days of Beda, and probably of Charlemagne;
a judge, perhaps elective, still governed the Visigoths at the close
of the fourth century, when an infant king was the hereditary ruler of
the Ostragoths; whilst Maraboduus is an example that the authority of
a permanent magistrate had occasionally prevailed over the elective
principle amongst the Germans, even before the days of Tacitus, when
the government of a king was not unknown amongst that people.[25]
The true peculiarity of the Celtic system, the “balance of power,” is
to be found in that singular principle of divided authority, which
is surely traceable to the original separation of the two leading
classes, and their mutual jealousy of encroachment, a jealousy
which seems to have settled into a fixed principle of policy in the
Celtic system of government long after its probable cause had been
forgotten. Every state, every group of clans, every family even, was
thus divided; _two_ confederacies took the lead amongst the whole
people; and if the Ædui or the Sequani lost their pre-eminence, the
Rhemi or the Arverni stept into the vacant place; for the undivided
supremacy of _one_ confederacy--_un_balanced power--would have been
totally contrary to all Celtic precedent.[26] Three leading characters
are traceable amongst the Gauls,--one hereditary, the _Princeps_ or
head of the race, the _Cen-Cinnitd_ or _Pen-Cenedl_ of later times;
two elective, the _Judex_, supreme magistrate or _Vergobreith_, and
the _Dux_ or _Toshach_, the leader of the host. These characters are
equally recognisable amongst the early Germans, amongst whom they
were probably known as the _Cyning_ or _Konung_, the head of the
kindred--the _Lagaman_ and the _Heretoga_; and they existed to a recent
date in every Celtic clan long after the elective had given place to
the hereditary principle, as the chief, the _Toshach_, and the judge,
_Brehon_ or _Deempster_. As amongst the Germans so amongst the Gauls,
the head of the lineage was not necessarily the leader of the host,
though the offices were not unfrequently united in the same person.
Sedulius was _dux et princeps_ (captain and chief) of the Lemovices;
and Vertiscus “_princeps_,” or chief of the confederacy of the Rhemi,
was also “_præfectus_” (captain or _toshach_) of their cavalry.[27]
But here the resemblance ceases, for the German _Lagaman_--the
_princeps_ who was elected in the assembly, and dispatched with a
hundred _Gasinds_ or _Comites_ to judge the people--never appears to
have necessarily laid aside his military authority. Athanaric was _Dux_
as well as _Judex_ of the Visigoths; and the Frank Gasind of a later
period united in his own person both military and judicial functions,
as _Graf_, _Count_ or _Judex Fiscalis_. Such was not the case amongst
the Celts, who appear to have separated the judicial from the military
office--authority from power--with all that jealous care in which
may be traced the anxiety of the original founders of the system to
preserve an equal balance between two rival castes. The _Vergobreith_
amongst the Ædui was strictly prohibited from crossing the frontiers
of the confederacy,[28] and was of course incapacitated from holding
the office of _Toshach_ during the continuance of his supreme
magistracy. That this prohibition lasted only during the year of office
is evident from the example of Cotus, who, failing in his attempt to
succeed his brother Vedeliacus as _Vergobreith_, appears immediately
afterwards as _Toshach_ of the Æduan cavalry. As the _Vergobreith_
was inaugurated by the Druids,[29] and as that class monopolized the
whole administration of the laws, it is very evident that the noble
who was chosen for the supreme magistracy resigned his military
character during his year of office, and was enrolled, as it were,
for that period amongst the ranks of the Druids. Had such a personage
existed as a permanent and hereditary _Vergobreith_ giving law to the
whole Celtic race, this sacred character would have become equally
permanent and hereditary, and the ruler of the Celtic people would have
resembled, in this respect, the monarchs of the great eastern empires
of antiquity.[30] The Gauls, however, never appear to have arrived, in
historical times, at the same point of unity in their political, as
in their religious, constitution; and the Hierophant, or Arch-Druid,
elected for life, stood alone, and without any parallel, amongst
the equestrian order. Long after the introduction of Christianity,
and a thousand years after the time of Cæsar, the old principle of
separating the judicial from the military functions is still clearly
discernible in the Welsh “Laws of Howel Dha.” Two officers were
appointed over every royal _Commot_, the _Cynghellwr_ and the _Maer_,
the former administering justice, the latter collecting the royal dues
and following the king to battle; and the same system is traceable in
Gaelic Scotland, where, under the Teutonic disguise of _Thane_ and
_Deempster_, it is easy to discover the types of the Cymric Maer and
Cynghellwr.
The Celtic principle of division, or balance of power, is recognisable
amongst the Cymri both in their older confederacies of _Deur_ and
_Bryneich_, and in the later _Gwynnedd_ and _Dyved_, or North and South
Wales; but it is in Ireland that the best examples are afforded of
this singular peculiarity of the continual subdivision of authority.
The whole country was divided as usual into North and South, or
_Leth Cuin_ and _Leth Mogh_, the latter containing _Muimhean_ and
_Laighean_--Munster and Leinster--each again subdivided into North and
South, or _Thomond_ and _Desmond_, _Tuath-Laighean_ and _Deas-gabhar_.
Ulster and Connaught were the _two_ historical provinces of the north
of Ireland, _two_ kingdoms are traceable in legendary Ulster, and
after _Uladh_ had ceased to share in the sovereignty of the North,
_two_ families, the _Dalaraide_ and _Dal-fiatach_, long contested the
supremacy within the circumscribed boundaries of the province. No
sooner had the great family of the Hy Nial succeeded in monopolizing
the supreme power than it was at once divided into the usual separate
branches of Northern and Southern Hy Nial, each gradually subdivided
into the clans of Eogan and Conal, of Colman and of Aodh Slane. The
predominance of a single race was, as of old, the signal for its
subdivision, even the smallest clan being subject to the divided
authority of a chief and a toshach.
Once every year the Gallic Druids were accustomed to meet in solemn
convention at a spot within the confines of the Carnutes, which was
looked upon as the centre of Gaul, and had there been such a magistrate
as an annual _Vergobreith_ chosen to rule over the whole Gallic
race, it is probable that he would have been inaugurated in this
assembly in the same manner as the Æduan Druids consecrated the
provincial _Vergobreith_, who ruled for his allotted year over
that confederacy. A similar convention is traceable in Ireland under
the name of the _Feas Temora_, or “Feast of Tara,” a place chosen
probably for its centrical situation; and he who “held the feast” was
the acknowledged _Ardrigh_ of the whole nation, the “tribes of
Tara” originally holding their lands on condition of quartering the
king and his followers on the occasion of the great festival. This
convention, undoubtedly in its origin a Druidical meeting like the
solemn assembly within the borders of the Carnutes, was still existing
in Ireland in historical times, dying out towards the close of the
seventh century; though the Irish annalists long continued to give the
title of “king of Tara” to the _Ardrigh_, who claimed the supreme
authority over the whole Irish people.
The invariable Celtic principle of “division” is plainly traceable
amongst the population of Northern Britain in their separation
from a very early period into Caledones and Mæatæ, Dicaledones and
Vecturiones, and latterly into Northern and Southern Picts. Towards
the middle of the third century, when Dion wrote, the form of their
government was still “democratic;” in other words, the various states
or confederacies into which the Pictish people were divided, like the
early Gauls and Southern Britons, were still ignorant of the principle
of one elective or hereditary ruler.[31] The earliest bond of union
may probably be traced to the time when they united under one common
leader to resist or assail the Roman legionaries; and out of the _Dux_
or _Toshach_ elected for the occasion, like Galgacus, and exercising a
paramount though temporary authority, arose the _Ardrigh_ or supreme
king, after some popular or ambitious chieftain had prolonged his power
by successful wars, or procured his election to this prominent station
for life. The nature of the sovereignty thus established, which was
fully recognised in the days of Columba, resembled the dominion of the
Ardrigh amongst the kindred Gael of Ireland, or of the Unben amongst
the earlier Cymri, differing in a remarkable manner from the royal
authority as it existed amongst the Welsh of a later age. _Breith_,
or _Law_, was at the root of the later Welsh system. Privilege was
_Breint_, the noble or man of privilege amongst the Southern Welsh,
_Breyr_; the king, _Breen-hyn_--the senior _Brehon_ or _Lawgiver_, the
hereditary instead of the elective _Vergobreith_. In the laws of Howel
Dha, the representative of the Druid, or of the noble enrolled amongst
the Druids, the _Cynghellwr_ who “divided with the _Brenin_” evidently
took precedence of the _Maer_, the representative of the military
noble; whilst the _Rhy_, and _Twysawg_, or _Rex_ and _Dux_ (though met
with in the Welsh dictionaries), are never found in these laws. With
the Gael, however, it was the _Righ_ and the _Toshach_ who were most
prominent; the _Brehon_ had no such intimate connection with the throne
or with the privileged classes, and in the charter of king Robert Bruce
to the Thane of Cawdor, it was the _Judex_ who held his lands under
the Thane or _Toshach_. The Gaelic _Ardrigh_ represented the permanent
_Toshach_, not the _Vergobreith_, the permanent holder of the office
of _Vercingetorix_, the head of a wide confederacy bound together less
by the ties of blood, or by an authority confirmed by the sacerdotal
order, than by the actual power of the supreme ruler confirmed by the
exaction of hostages.[32]
The different tribes enumerated by Ptolemy, and subsequently known
as the Northern and Southern Picts, appear at some early period to
have coalesced into seven lesser confederacies, answering to the
“Pictish Provinces” of Beda. Allusion is evidently made to these
principalities in the old verses ascribed by tradition to Columba,
enumerating the seven sons of _Cruithne_--characters of the same
description as the sons of Hellen--“Cait, Ce, Ciric of the hundred
clans, Fiv, Fidach, Fodla, Fortreim.” In _Fiv_ “the forest,”
and in _Cait_, there is little difficulty in recognising “the
ancient kingdom of Fife,” and a province of which the north-eastern
extremity still retains the name of Caith_ness_, the point or
promontory of _Caith_. Meaningless alike in Gaelic and in Welsh,
_Caith_ is probably the Celtic form of _Ketje_, “the end” or
“extremity” in Lappish, a relic of a time when an Ugrian population
regarded this province as their northern limit. The recollection of
_Fortreim_ was long preserved in the Deanery of _Fortrev_ or
_Fotheriff_, lying along the banks of the Forth, from which river
the name was most probably derived. _Fodla_ or _Fotla_, a
word sometimes used amongst the Irish Gael as synonymous with Ireland,
or their native home, survives in _Athfodla_ or _Atholl_;
whilst the appellation of _Fidach_, or “the woody” may be safely
conjectured to have belonged to that province which was once known
to the Romans under the ancient British epithet of _Celydon_,
or “the forest district.” No clue remains to identify _Ce_ and
_Ciric_, which may have answered to the provinces upon the coast
included between the Grampian range and the eastern and northern seas.
Nothing whatever is known of these seven provinces beyond the bare fact
of their existence, though long after they had been broken up into
earldoms, or united by conquest to the possessions of the crown, the
tradition of this ancient sevenfold division of the Pictish kingdom,
and of the rights of the provincial princes in electing a paramount
_Ardrigh_, appears to have been revived amongst a party of the
Scottish nobles for the purpose of adding to their overgrown power at
the expense of their youthful king.[33]
The Pictish king was elective, unless he formed an exception to the
universal rule prevailing amongst the Teutonic as well as the Celtic
tribes in early times. The theory of election, indeed, pervaded all
the institutions of the Gaelic people, who seem to have nominally
chosen their heads of houses and chiefs of clans, as well as their
_Flaiths_, _Oirrighs_, and _Ardrigh_, or their princes, provincial
kings, and the supreme ruler of the whole nation. Brother succeeded
to brother upon the throne, and the law of primogeniture, as amongst
the early Germans, was only partially recognised, each “full-born”
son having a claim upon the inheritance of his father, though the
universal custom of “fosterage” led to the same results as Cambrensis
deplored amongst his countrymen in Wales. Each child was placed in the
family of a dependant, who regarded such a charge as a mark of the
highest confidence and honour; and even in the seventeenth century,
men of rank and station in the Scottish Highlands still esteemed it a
privilege to educate in this manner one of the children of the head of
their lineage. The child thus adopted shared in the property of his
foster-father on the same footing as his foster-brethren, who profited
in return from the protection and support of their more illustrious
connection, and thus was formed a tie which generally proved a
far surer bond of union than even the actual existence of blood
relationship. The “fosterers” of the royal race must have invariably
been chosen from amongst the greater nobles, each of whom, from mingled
motives of affection and self-interest, was ever too ready to support
the claims of his own foster-son, or _Dalt_, upon the supreme power;
and the continual contests about the succession to the throne, which
arose in this age in every country in Western Europe, are traceable
less to the inveteracy of fraternal hatred than to the jealous rivalry
of interested partizans, which must have been engendered by such a
system of fosterage. Gradually, however, except in cases of incapacity,
or where one of the junior members of the family far exceeded the rest
in prowess or popularity, the precedency of the eldest-born grew into
the rule, the contrary course becoming the exception.[34]
Upon the accession of a new monarch, he ascended the Sacred Stone,
preserved inviolate for such occasions, and was inaugurated in the
presence of the clergy and the laity by the principal bishop of the
nation. Originally it is probable that the Druids were the necessary
assistants on such occasions, their prerogatives passing to the clergy;
for Columba is said by his biographer, Adamnan, to have “ordained”
Aidan king of the Dalriads, an expression which cannot mean that
Aidan’s title to the royal dignity was based upon the authority of the
Abbot of Iona, but rather that the sanction of the sacerdotal order,
which appears to have been considered indispensable to all political
authority amongst the Celtic people from time immemorial, had been
transferred upon the fall of the old religion, from the Druidical
to the Christian priesthood.[35] Close to the _Ardrigh_, with his
right foot planted on the same stone of honour, stood the _Righdomna_
or _Tanist_, the heir-apparent of the monarchy, who seems to have
been nominated on the same occasion in pursuance of the true Celtic
principle of “a divided authority,” the office being immediately
filled up, in case of the premature death of the _Tanist_ during
the lifetime of the reigning sovereign--a fatality of very frequent
occurrence--the same rule being as applicable to the chieftain of the
smallest territory as to the chosen leader of the nation. The power of
the _Ardrigh_ over the provincial kings must have depended upon his
ability to enforce it, and to exact the hostages which were invariably
necessary to secure the obedience of the subordinate princes. _Can_ and
_Cuairt_, or tribute and visitation, were amongst his rightful dues;
in other words, in addition to the payment of a stipulated tribute,
the _Oirrighs_ were bound to entertain the _Ardrigh_ and his followers
in his annual progresses for a certain stated period in every year; a
burdensome system of free-quarters by no means peculiar to the Celtic
people, which could be exacted by every petty chieftain from the
occupants of all the territory over which his influence extended.[36]
The authority of the early Pictish kings over the various provinces of
the confederacy was probably identical with that of the Irish _Ardrigh_
over the subordinate principalities of _Leth Cuin_ and _Leth Mogh_, and
may be compared to the dominion exercised by Kent, Wessex, or Mercia,
over the remaining South Humbrian kingdoms, at a time when either
state was liable to exchange the situation of a ruling power for a
subordinate and comparatively dependent position.[37]
After the union of the two branches of the Pictish nation under one
elective sovereign, the next step in the progress of their amalgamation
was to confirm the preponderance of one state, and thus render the
elective monarchy hereditary in one family. In the attempts to
accomplish this object, which were made by the elder Angus and his
successors, the ancient sevenfold division of the nation appears to
have been broken up and destroyed, and the real conquest of the Pictish
people to have been effected. The tradition of a conquest is far too
strong to allow it to be looked upon as a mere fable, though the
total silence of all the early authorities, and the relative position
of the Picts and the Dalriads render it utterly impossible that the
insignificant tribe of Kintyre, occupying only a very small portion
of the modern county of Argyle, could have conquered and exterminated
the whole remaining population of North Britain beyond the Forth and
Clyde. A very slight acquaintance, however, with early history, where
it borders on the legendary and traditionary periods, will confirm the
truth of the remark, that events which may have really happened are
frequently misplaced and transferred to a wrong epoch, very often owing
their misplacement to a wish to build up the fame of some favourite
hero, by attributing to him the merit of every important action of
several different periods. Scottish history abounds with instances of
such misplacement, and the Scottish conquest is of the number; but by
keeping strictly to the scanty records left by the annalists who lived
nearest to the period in question, it will be found that the reign of
the elder Angus offers the closest resemblance to an era of victory and
conquest. His annexation of Atholl and the Lennox, of Lorn, and perhaps
also of Kintyre, must have extended his authority to the western coast
of Argyle, whilst his successive victories over three kings of the
Picts appear to have enlarged his frontiers in the opposite direction,
by establishing his predominance over the neighbouring district of
Fife.[38] The modern shires of Perth, Fife, Stirling, and Dumbarton,
with the greater part of the county of Argyle, may therefore be said
to have formed the actual Scottish kingdom to which Kenneth succeeded,
conquered originally by the elder Angus, and subsequently consolidated
by his successors Constantine and the younger Angus, the union of
the three provinces, of Fife, Atholl, and Fortreim under one family,
paving the way for the permanent supremacy of the princes of the ruling
race over the remaining provincial kings; and as Alpin, the father of
Kenneth, was in later days confounded with the opponent of the elder
Angus, so the triumphs of the latter monarch were gradually transferred
to the earliest prince of the MacAlpin dynasty after the numerous and
varied tribes who united in acknowledging the supremacy of Kenneth’s
successors had identified their own origin with the Dalriad ancestry of
their line of kings.
THE LINE OF KINTYRE:--
_Kenneth the First_ 843–859.
_Donald the First_ 859–863.
Never were the qualities more needed which earned for the first
Kenneth the title of “the Hardy,” than during the sixteen years of his
turbulent reign; for his kingdom was exposed to hostilities on every
side. The Britons of Strath Clyde burnt Dunblane; the Danes carried
their ravages to Dunkeld in Atholl, and to Cluny in Stormont, and if
Ragnar Lodbroc is not the mere creation of some northern scald, it
was probably under the leadership of that renowned sea-king that they
destroyed the monastery of the Pictish Constantine. The Scottish king
proved equal to the occasion, and six times leading his followers
across the “Scots-water,” he repulsed the Britons, harried the
Lothians, burnt Dunbar, and seized upon Melrose, stifling any doubts
about his claim to the throne in the plunder of the fertile lowlands of
“Saxony.”[39]
Iona, during the vicissitudes of this stormy era, had been far too much
exposed to escape the fury of the northern pirates, and the revered
asylum of Columba’s brotherhood, participating in the misfortunes
of Lindisfarne, was deserted at an early period under the repeated
attacks of the Pagan foe, neither island ever recovering the importance
that had once attached to their hallowed shores. The destruction of
Dunkeld, which had been destined by its founder to replace both Iona
and Abernethy, gave occasion to the solitary peaceful action attributed
to the Scottish sovereign, who, collecting the relics of Columba from
the localities to which they had been borne for security, enshrined
them in a new church at Dunkeld,[Sidenote: A. D. 849.] rebuilding
the monastery on the same spot as had been chosen for the original
foundation. An alliance with the Britons of Strath Clyde, whose prince,
Cu, received the hand of his daughter in marriage, completes the record
of Kenneth’s actions; and ten years after the restoration of Dunkeld he
died in his capital [Sidenote: A. D. 859.] of Dunfothir or Forteviot,
the victim of a painful and lingering disease.[40]
Donald MacAlpin succeeded his brother, and for four years filled the
throne of Scotland, nothing being recorded of his short reign with the
exception of a council at Forteviot, in which the “Laws of Aodh the
Fair,” [Sidenote: A. D. 863.] of Kintyre, were confirmed by “the Gael”
and their king.[41]
_Constantine the First_, 863–877.
Constantine, the son of Kenneth, and the first inheritor of the name of
his Pictish ancestor, ascended the throne of Scotland at an era when
the efforts of Gorm, Eric, and Harald Harfager to consolidate the
petty states of Scandinavia into the respective kingdoms of Denmark,
Sweden, and Norway, had given a fresh stimulus to the incursions of
the Vikings upon the British Isles, by dispossessing and driving from
their homes many of the minor chieftains who refused to submit to their
authority. Ireland as well as Britain had suffered from the attacks of
these marauders as early as the close of the eighth century, but it was
not before the middle of the following century that the Northmen first
established themselves permanently in the former country, principally
in Dublin and its neighbourhood, where the recollection of one branch
of the invaders is still retained in the name of the adjacent district
of Fingall.[42]
[Sidenote: A. D. 850]
About ten years after the first settlement of the Norsemen a fresh
fleet arrived off the Irish coasts, under the command of leaders
claiming to belong to “the royal race of Lochlan,” to whom the
native annalists have given the name of Du Gall, or Black Strangers,
in contradistinction to their predecessors the Fin Gall or White
Strangers, epithets which were derived probably from some long
forgotten distinction in dress or armour rather than from any
difference in personal appearance or in nationality.[43] Driven from
Dublin and from their settlements upon the coast of Uladh, the Fingall
collected in great numbers from every quarter, and soon returned with
their whole force to re-assert their lost ascendancy; but a combat
between the two fleets, which is said to have lasted during three days
and nights, confirmed the superiority of their rivals, and in the
following year Olave the Fair, the son of Ingiald, an Upland chieftain
of the same race as Harald Harfager, landed with his followers
[Sidenote: A. D. 854.] amongst his countrymen, and at once assumed the
lead over all the Northmen of Ireland. In alliance with the Norwegian
Olave was the Danish Ivar or Ingvar, the most renowned warrior amongst
all the northern chieftains, whom tradition has made a son of Ragnar
Lodbroc, and the ruthless avenger of his slaughter.[44]
For several years after the arrival of the confederates their ravages
were confined to the provinces of Ireland, until at length, in the
same year in which Ivar and Halfdan first established themselves upon
[Sidenote: A. D. 866.] the coasts of East Anglia, the storm burst
upon the dominions of Constantine, and from the 1st of January to St.
Patrick’s day, Olave and Auisle carried fire and sword throughout the
region bordering on the Forth. [Sidenote: A. D. 870.] After a lapse of
four years Olave again revisited the Scottish shores, and in company
with Ivar laid siege to the rock of Dumbarton, capturing and destroying
the ancient bulwark of the Britons of Strath Clyde after a lengthened
blockade of four months, the sole means available to an unskilful
age against a _Dun_ so strongly situated. The confederates then
marched southwards to join their countrymen in England; once more a
king of Saxon race was sacrificed to the manes of Ragnar, and the fate
of the Northumbrian Elli was inflicted upon the East Anglian martyr
Edmund; nor was it until the close of the following year [Sidenote:
A. D. 871.] that the allies returned to Dublin laden with the spoil of
the Saxon, the Briton, and the Scot, and leaving behind them a fearful
track of misery and bloodshed to mark the most lengthened and direful
of all their inroads. Olave lost his life shortly afterwards in an
obscure skirmish, fought, according to some accounts, in Scotland; and
the death of Ivar in 873, [Sidenote: A. D. 873.] after surviving his
confederate for only a few months, released the Saxon and Scottish
princes from the ablest and most ruthless of their foes.[45]
Amongst the earlier opponents of Olave and Ivar in the course of their
Irish wars was a certain Caittil the Fair, [Sidenote: A. D. 857.]
probably the same person as Ketil Biornson, who established himself in
independence amongst the islands along the western coasts of Scotland
belonging to the mixed Scandinavian and Gaelic race who were known
under the name of the Gallgael. His daughter Auda was subsequently
married to his former rival Olave, and upon the death of her husband
after his return to Dublin she sought the protection of Ketil in the
Hebrides, whilst her son, Thorstein the Red, early treading in the
footsteps of his father, pursued the career of a Viking.[46]
After the establishment of the power of Harald Harfager by the
successful battle of Hafursfiord, many of his vanquished opponents
fled to the Orkneys and the Shetland isles, periodically infesting the
Norwegian coasts in revenge for their defeat and expulsion; and to
put an end to these piratical inroads Harald at length fitted out a
numerous fleet, devoting an entire summer to extirpating the hostile
Vikings from the creeks and bays in which they sought shelter from
his vengeance. In one of the numerous conflicts occurring during this
expedition, Ivar, a son of Harald’s favourite and most trusted friend
Rognwald, Jarl of Mœri, lost his life, and as some compensation for
the death of his son the king bestowed his own conquests upon the
father. Rognwald, however, preferring to return to his Norwegian
home, transferred the royal donation to his brother Sigurd, who was
accordingly confirmed as Jarl, and left behind, on the departure of the
king, in possession of the Orkneys and the Shetland isles.
Not content with his newly acquired island territories Jarl Sigurd
was ambitious of a wider dominion, and entering into an alliance with
Thorstein Olaveson, the confederates employed their united force in
invading the northern provinces of Scotland. The whole of the country
as far as the banks of the Oikel,[47] embracing the modern counties of
Caithness and Sutherland, was overrun and conquered by the allies, two
Scottish magnates falling in an unavailing resistance; Meldun, whose
wife, the daughter of an Irish king, became with her son the slave of
Auda,[48] affording in their altered fortunes a striking example of the
strange vicissitudes of the age; and Malbride “with the buck-tooth,”
whose singular fate--if the Saga can be relied upon--avenged him after
death upon the author of his misfortunes. Sigurd is said to have slain
the last-named chieftain in single combat, and with the savage ferocity
of the times to have cut off the head of his victim, suspending it in
triumph from his saddle-bow, in which position the projecting tooth of
the slaughtered chieftain is supposed to have inflicted so severe a
wound upon the Jarl’s leg as ultimately to cause his death, and he was
buried by his followers upon the banks of the Oikel, at the extreme
limits of his conquests.
Though deprived of his ally, the Jarl of Orkney, Thorstein failed
not to follow up his success, and whilst victory attended the banner
of the king of the Dugall in the extreme north, the difficulties
of Constantine must have been materially increased by the inroads
of Halfdan [Sidenote: A. D. 875.] upon his opposite frontiers, who
established himself in Northumbria during the same year, and made
incessant incursions upon the neighbouring “Picts” and Britons.[49] A
decisive defeat at Dollar, on the borders of Perthshire and Fife, at
length forced the Scottish king to submit to the alternative imposed at
a later period upon both the English Edmunds, the whole of the northern
provinces were made over to the son of Olave, and Constantine purchased
a temporary peace at the price of half of his dominions.[50]
The success of Thorstein was destined to be ephemeral, the very year of
his triumph witnessing the close of his adventurous career. Attacked
unexpectedly by the followers of Constantine, he appears to have
fallen in an unequal contest; Halfdan was driven from his Northumbrian
conquests, perishing soon afterwards in Ireland, and the death of
Sigurd’s son Guttorm delivering his father’s earldom once more into the
hands of the independent Vikings, the power of the Norsemen was broken
up for a time, and the threatening cloud which had loured so darkly
over Scotland melted away from the horizon.[51]
[Sidenote: A. D. 877.]
But the career of Constantine was also approaching its conclusion, and
he had little time to profit by the events which had released him from
his enemies. As his whole reign had been passed in a continual struggle
to protect his country from the Northmen, so it was at length closed
with honour on the battle-field in repulsing a hostile landing upon the
coast of Fife; though tradition has hinted at a darker tale, that after
repelling with success the enemy’s attack he was captured by a party of
the retreating Norsemen, and sacrificed by a lingering and cruel death
in the gloomy recesses of the Black Cave near Crail.[52]
_Aodh (Hugh)_ 877–878.
_Eocha_ } { 878–889.
_Cyric (Grig)_ } { 878–896.
_Donald the Second_ 889–900.
In the British Islands, as indeed in every quarter to which the
Norsemen penetrated, a change may be dated from their earliest
incursions; and whilst in Ireland they broke the power of the Hy Nial,
and taught the dynasties of Munster and of Connaught to aspire to the
supremacy which had hitherto been the undisputed prerogative of the
princely families of Ulster and of Meath; in England the remnants
of independent sovereignty were overwhelmed and swallowed up in the
flood, the line of Cerdic in Wessex, which alone was strong enough to
bear up against the torrent, becoming from that very cause the sole
representative in the eyes of the Saxon people of the ancient royalty
of their race. Scotland, where the monarchy, though of comparatively
recent date, was destined eventually to survive the crisis, appeared
towards the close of the ninth century to be fast verging towards
the fate of Ireland; for though Thorstein perished before his power
was consolidated, the cession of the northern provinces to that
enterprising sea-king revived the recollection of former independence,
and many years elapsed before the authority of the Scottish kings
was once more successfully asserted over the ancient territories
of the northern Picts. On the accession of Aodh, or Hugh, the
surviving son of Kenneth, his pretensions were disputed by Cyric--or
Grig--MacDungal, a chieftain whose residence at Dundurn, or Dunadeer,
in the Garioch, marks his pre-eminence amongst the northern magnates
whose allegiance had been transferred to Thorstein.[53] The contest for
superiority between north and south was decided in the neighbourhood
of Strathallan, the locality of the battle-field, [Sidenote: A. D.
878.] within the dominions of Aodh, appearing to point to Cyric as
the aggressor: victory declared in favour of the northern leader,
and his opponent, wounded and a prisoner, was conveyed for security
to the fortress of Inverury, where he died of his wounds after a few
weeks’ captivity. Either the victor was content with asserting his own
independence, or policy may have prevented him from aspiring to the
vacant throne; for he appears to have been satisfied with reviving
the divided sovereignty of former times; and by associating in the
government a scion of the royal race of Kenneth, Eocha of Strath Clyde,
a son of the British prince Cu, he may have sought to propitiate the
hostile chieftains of the south, whilst the real authority over both
kingdoms must have remained with the conqueror of Strathallan.[54]
Similar motives may possibly have dictated the benefaction to the
church of St. Andrews, which has caused the name of Cyric to be handed
down in the register of the ancient priory as “the Liberator of the
Scottish Church, which had hitherto remained in a dependant and
subservient position, according to the prevailing custom of the Picts.”
The boon thus vaguely recorded by the grateful monks of the priory
appears to have been nothing more than the transfer of the privileges
which had latterly belonged to Dunkeld to the monastery endowed by
the younger Angus; and St. Andrews, a diocese of the southern Picts,
and often known in later days as pre-eminently the “bishopric of the
Scots,” owed her primacy over the other Scottish bishoprics to the
donation of a prince of the northern provinces.[55]
[Sidenote: A. D. 889.]
Upon the death of Eocha after an eventless career of eleven years,
Donald, the son of Constantine, assumed his cousin’s place, and for
seven years shared with Cyric the supreme authority over Scotland, on
the same terms, apparently, as his predecessor the British prince. A
decisive victory over a body of the Northmen, who were defeated at
Collin on the banks of the Tay, signalized the commencement of the new
reign, avenging the destruction of the Scottish capital of Forteviot,
burnt by the invaders in the course of their inroads; and as the
situation of the ruined town must have exposed it to the attacks of
the pirates of the western seas, it appears to have been abandoned
from this period, and the residence of the sovereign being transferred
for security to the eastern bank of the Tay, the dignity of “the Royal
City” belonged henceforth to Scone.[56]
The few remaining years of the century passed away without events--none
at least have been recorded--Cyric died peacefully at Dunadeer after
a [Sidenote: A. D. 896.] reign of eighteen years, and it was left for
the chroniclers of a later age to encircle his memory with a halo of
fabulous glory, and to oppose his triumphs, as the conqueror of England
and Ireland, to the pretensions founded by the first Edward upon the
exploits of the British Arthur.[57] No successor arose amongst the
Northern Picts to emulate the policy of their departed leader, and
Scotland, gradually recovering from the shock of Thorstein’s conquests,
ceased for ever after the death of Cyric to be subject to a divided
authority. Henceforth Donald ruled without a rival during the brief
remainder of his reign; but though no competitor appeared from beyond
the Grampian range to assert his equality with the representative of
Constantine and Kenneth, the recollection of their early independence
long survived in full force amongst the northern clans, and a continual
struggle between the divisions of the ancient Pictish kingdom can
still be traced after the lapse of centuries. The death of Donald,
[Sidenote: A. D. 900.] who survived Cyric for only four years, would
appear to have been brought about through this inveterate feud, for
he is supposed to have been killed in the town of Forres, and he may
have lost his life in the hostile province of Moray in attempting to
re-establish the royal authority over the revolted districts of the
north.[58]
CHAPTER THE THIRD.
CONSTANTINE THE SECOND--A. D. 900-943.
On the death of Donald, by the singular law of alternate succession
which was in force amongst the Gaelic people, the son and
representative of Aodh was raised to the throne as Constantine the
Second; and, with better fortune than his father, the earlier years
of his reign were signalized by a brilliant victory. A body of the
Northmen, who appear, as usual, to have landed from Ireland or the
Western Isles, [Sidenote: A. D. 903.] and to have chosen Fortreim as
the scene of their ravages, were defeated in Strathearn with great
slaughter, and with the loss of their leader Ivar hy Ivar, [Sidenote:
A. D. 904.] a grandson of the famous Northman of the same
name, whose family had been recently expelled from their Irish
possessions.[59] Released by his victory from all fear of further
invasion, Constantine seems to have turned his attention towards
regulating the affairs of the Church, for his next appearance is upon
the Moot-hill of Scone, a well-known eminence in the neighbourhood of
the new capital, where, in conjunction with Fothadh, the bishop of St.
Andrews, he presided at the earliest ecclesiastical council recorded
in the annals of Scotland.[60] A far more important object, however,
in its ulterior consequences, was accomplished shortly afterwards by a
bloodless revolution, which enabled him to take the first steps towards
enlarging his kingdom on her southern frontiers, and to place a member
of his own family upon the throne of an adjacent principality.
An occasional brief entry in the early chronicles reveals the anxiety
of the rulers of the Picts and Scots to avail themselves of the gradual
decline of the Northumbrian power for the purpose of extending their
own influence over the neighbouring province of Strath Clyde. Some
such motives may have instigated Kenneth to seek for his daughter the
alliance of a British prince; and a few years later, the death of
Artga, king of Strath Clyde, which is attributed by the Irish annalists
to the intrigues of Constantine the First,[61] [Sidenote: A. D. 871.]
may have been connected with the same policy of aggrandizement, and
have furthered the claims of Eocha, the son of Constantine’s sister.
The advancement of Eocha to the [Sidenote: A. D. 878.] Scottish throne
was shortly followed by important consequences to his native province,
and after the flight and death of the Welsh prince Rydderch ap Mervyn
had deprived the northern Britons of one of their firmest supporters,
a considerable body of the men of Strath Clyde, relinquishing the
ancient country of their forefathers, set out, under a leader of the
name of Constantine, to seek another home amongst a kindred people
in the south. Constantine fell at Lochmaben in attempting to force
a passage through Galloway; but his followers, undismayed at their
loss, persevered in their enterprise, arriving in time to assist the
Northern Welsh at the great battle of the Conway, where they won the
lands, [Sidenote: A. D. 880] as the reward of their valour, which are
supposed to be occupied by their descendants at the present day.[62]
With the retreating emigrants, the last semblance of independence
departed from the Britons of the north; and upon the death of their
king Donald, who was probably a descendant of Kenneth’s daughter,
Constantine the Second experienced little difficulty in procuring the
election of his own brother Donald to fill the vacant throne.[63]
[Sidenote: A. D. 908.] Henceforth a branch of the MacAlpin family
supplied a race of princes to Strath-Clyde; and although for another
hundred years the Britons of that district remained in a state of
nominal independence, they ceased to exist as a separate people,
appearing, on a few subsequent occasions, merely as auxiliaries in the
armies of the Scottish kings.
Fifteen years after his victory over Ivar in Strathearn, Constantine
was called upon for the last time to oppose an inroad of the Northmen.
At the beginning of the tenth century by far the most celebrated of all
the northern leaders were the Hy Ivar or grandsons of Ivar, and sons,
apparently, of a daughter of that chieftain married to a Scottish
Viking, who seems to have succeeded Ketil in the dominion of Inch Gall
or the Hebrides. Driven from Dublin after its capture by the Irish
king Malfinan, in 902, they appear, like Thorstein, to have sought the
shelter of the Western Isles; and it was owing probably to the loss
of their Irish possessions that they attempted, under the command of
the younger Ivar, to establish themselves upon the Scottish coasts in
903, from whence, as has been already stated, they were expelled in the
following year.[64] [Sidenote: A. D. 904.]
Ten years passed away before the Hy Ivar again appear on the scene.
Reginald, who had now succeeded to the leadership of the family,
defeated and destroyed the fleet of a rival Viking, Barith MacNocti,
[Sidenote: A. D. 914.] in an engagement off the Isle of Man; and from
the date of this victory the Norsemen again began to collect upon the
Irish coasts, arriving every year in increasing numbers. Three years
later, Reginald, known by this time as king of the Dugall, landed at
Waterford [Sidenote: A. D. 917.] to assume the command, whilst his
brother Sitric, appearing upon the coasts of Leinster, soon succeeded
in re-establishing the power of his family over their former dependency
of Dublin; and in the following year Reginald and his brother Godfrey,
with the Jarls Ottir and Gragraba, who seem to have recently returned
from an unsuccessful inroad upon the coast of Wales, leaving the
harbour of Waterford, sailed for the northern shores of England to
assert the claim of the king of the Dugall as heir of his kinsman, the
Danish Halfdan, to the fertile lands of Northumbria.[65]
[Sidenote: A. D. 918.]
Landing amongst the kindred Danes of the north, as a welcome auxiliary
against the increasing power of Ethelfleda, Reginald marched at once
upon York, seizing upon, and portioning out amongst his followers and
allies, the whole of the sacred patrimony of St. Cuthbert, with many
a broad acre besides. Edred, whose wide possessions reached to the
Derwent, the son of that Rixinc who for three years had ruled the
Northumbrian Angles under the dominion of the Danes, together with
Aldred of Bamborough and his brother Uchtred, sons of Eardulf, of the
old Bernician race, and lords of a territory extending from the Tyne to
the Forth, abandoning their dominions at the approach of the Norsemen,
implored the aid of the Scottish Constantine to stem the torrent of
invasion. In Constantine they found a prompt ally, and strengthened by
the support of a Scottish army, the Northumbrian leaders prepared, with
renewed courage, to march against the foe.
The hostile armies met upon the moor near Corbridge-on-Tyne, where
Reginald, who had decided upon awaiting the attack of the confederates,
holding his immediate followers in reserve in a position where they
were concealed from the assailants, had ranged the main body of his
army in three divisions, under the command respectively of his brother
Godfrey, the two Jarls, and the chieftains to whom the Irish annalist
gives the title of “the Young Leaders.” So impetuous was the onset
of the Scots and Northumbrians, that at the first shock the Norsemen
were overthrown, the heaviest loss falling upon the followers of the
Jarls, a contingency upon which Reginald had probably calculated, as
they bore the brunt of the battle. Animated at their success, and
anxious to improve their advantage, the allies pressed eagerly onwards,
regardless of the enemy’s reserve, which Reginald now poured upon the
flank and rear of the victors, disordered in the confusion of pursuit,
inflicting, in his turn, severe loss, and retrieving the fortune of
the day. Edred was slain in this final struggle, with many of his
Northumbrian followers, who appear to have suffered most severely,
until the approach of night separated the combatants, and put a stop to
a contest which led to no decisive result. As the Norsemen remained in
possession of their conquests, the historian of Durham mourns over a
defeat which left the patrimony of the bishopric a prey to the heathen
invaders. The Scottish chronicler claims the battle for a victory,
neither king nor Mormaor falling in the engagement, and no hostile
Norsemen penetrating to the banks of the “Scots-water;” and as no
portion of the territories of Aldred to the northward of the Tyne was
occupied by the followers of Reginald, the advance of the enemy beyond
that river must have been effectually prevented; and Constantine and
his surviving confederate had good reason to be satisfied with the
successful issue of the engagement.[66]
The result of the battle of Corbridge-on-Tyne secured Reginald in
his conquest of Danish Northumbria, where he was succeeded, upon his
death, about three years later, by his brother Sitric, the Irish
possessions [Sidenote: A. D. 921.] of the family reverting to Godfrey,
who hastened to establish himself in Dublin.[67] The alliance of the
new ruler of the Northumbrian Danes was courted by the neighbouring
princes, and Athelstan, soon after his accession to the English
throne, [Sidenote: A. D. 926.] bestowed his sister’s hand upon the
powerful chieftain of the Norsemen; though upon the unexpected death
of Sitric, who only survived this union for a few months, dying in
the prime of life in 927, [Sidenote: A. D. 927.] the Saxon prince
seized upon the opportunity for asserting his own authority over
the province, annexing it at once to the English crown.[68] Olave
Sitricson, the youthful son of the deceased king, escaped across the
sea to Ireland; but Godfrey, who had quitted Dublin upon hearing of
his brother’s death, endeavoured to enlist the co-operation of his
ancient antagonist the Scottish king in an attempt to dispute the
claims of Athelstan. Constantine, however, was not to be won over, and
as the former supporter of the Northumbrian Saxons still preferred the
alliance of the English king to a hazardous confederacy with the Danish
adventurer, Godfrey, after a vain attempt to establish himself in York,
once more left the English shores and returned to rule over the Irish
Norsemen.[69]
The subsequent union of Olave Sitricson[70] with a daughter of the
Scottish king endangered that alliance between the two princes which
Godfrey had failed to disturb, and from this moment Constantine became
an object of suspicion to his southern neighbour. [Sidenote: A. D.
934.] The unwonted spectacle of an English army appeared before long
upon the Forth; and though the whole of this interesting epoch in the
annals of Saxon England is enveloped in uncertainty and confusion,
from the coincidence of this expedition with the death of Godfrey
in Ireland, it may be conjectured that it was the policy of the
English king to prevent any movement on the part of his former ally
Constantine, in support of the claims of Olave, now the head of the
Hy Ivar family, upon the Northumbrian possessions of his father’s
family. Fortreim, as usual, was the suffering province, and the army of
Athelstan, penetrating as far as Forteviot, the ancient capital, wasted
the country in every direction, whilst a powerful fleet, sweeping the
coast to the distant shores of Caithness, prevented the arrival of any
assistance from Ireland. The limits of the incursion were now reached;
and by frustrating the projects of Constantine and his new allies,
its object was probably attained, though the success of Athelstan was
merely temporary, and three years later the storm, which had thus been
averted for a season, burst in all its fury on the English coasts.[71]
[Sidenote: A. D. 937.]
At the head of the confederacy which was now combining to wrest
Northumbria from the grasp of Athelstan, were Constantine and the two
Olaves, the great-grandsons of the Danish Ivar, one of whom, the son
of Sitric, was the son-in-law of the Scottish king, and the other, the
son of Godfrey, had succeeded his father three years previously in the
government of the Irish Norsemen.[72] A British prince, to whom the
Saga gives the name of Adills, a chieftain probably of the northern
Welsh, together with Yring, a Norseman from his name, though described
by the same authority as also of British race, joined the ranks of
Athelstan’s opponents, and Eogan, the son of the Scottish Donald, in
obedience to his allegiance to his kinsman and chief, led his followers
from the vale of Clyde to swell the numbers of the allies. To aid in
opposing this formidable array, Athelstan had invoked the assistance
of the Vikings, and the pagan rovers of the German Ocean now marched
side by side in the English host with the Angles of Mercia, the Saxons
of Wessex, and the Christian descendants of Guthrum’s Danes. The
advantage at first leant to the side of the invaders, for in spite
of his preparations for the impending contest, Athelstan appears to
have been partly taken by surprise. Alfgar and Godric, his lieutenants
in Northumbria, were either driven from the field or slain, and the
English king was reduced to negociate with the enemy in order to
gain time for the union of his whole force. The negociations were
quickly broken off when the required end was attained, and after the
failure of a night attack, skilfully planned by Olave Sitricson, who
is said to have visited the camp of Athelstan in the disguise of a
wandering harper, the rival armies met upon the long-forgotten site of
Brunanburgh. The victors alone have described that celebrated battle;
and whilst the Saga, forgetful alike of the English and Scottish kings,
awards the palm to the Norsemen in the pay of Athelstan, the ancient
ballad in the Saxon Chronicle extols the deeds of the native warriors,
and renders full justice to the valour of Constantine and Olave. Five
kings and seven Jarls, a son of Constantine, and two brothers of
Athelstan, were left amongst the slain upon the field of Brunanburgh;
and whilst the baffled survivors of the Irish Norsemen returned in
their galleys to Dublin, and the remnants of the Scots with their
sorrowing king mournfully withdrew beyond the Forth, the unchallenged
dominion of the whole of Saxon England, the submission of the Welsh and
of the Northumbrian Danes, and the alliance and admiration of Flanders,
France, and Germany, rewarded the victor of this glorious day.[73]
Shortly after the battle of Brunanburgh, Eric of the Bloody Axe, the
favourite son of Harald Harfager, and his successor in the Norwegian
kingdom, appeared with a numerous fleet off the northern coasts of
England. Driven from his native country by his half-brother Hakon,
after a reign of less than a year, in which brief space he had
contrived to incur the unanimous hatred of his people, he was now
seeking another theatre for the display of the same qualities which
had already lost him his paternal inheritance; and Athelstan, either
unwilling to provoke so soon the chances of another conflict, or
anxious to raise up in Eric a rival to the pretensions of the Hy Ivar,
welcomed the banished prince as an ally, reminded him of the friendship
existing of old between himself and his late father Harfager, and
offered him an asylum in his own dominions, if he would undertake to
hold the Danish province against the Olaves. Eric readily consented
to the arrangement, and according to the account of the Norwegian
Heimskringla such was the origin of his earliest connection with the
Anglo-Danes of Northumbria.[74]
It was destined, in the first instance, to be transitory, for upon
the death of Athelstan, the Northmen, refusing to acknowledge his
successor, chose Olave of Ireland for their king; and the two Olaves,
again uniting their forces, and with better success, relinquished their
Irish home, and forced from the brother of Athelstan the cession of the
whole of his dominions [Sidenote: A. D. 940.] to the north of Watling
Street.[75] Eric attempted no resistance, but sailing away with his
followers, he entered upon a course of piracy which carried him before
long to the Western Isles, from whence he drove out a son of Reginald
Hy Ivar, who was little prepared for so unexpected an attack.[76] Two
years after the death of Athelstan Olave Godfreyson [Sidenote: A. D.
941.] followed him to the grave, losing his life in some obscure
skirmish near Tyningham, when Reginald Godfreyson, succeeding to his
brother, shared the supremacy over the north of England with the
survivor of the two Olaves.[77]
As no allusion is made to Constantine in connection with the second
expedition of the Olaves, it must remain a matter of conjecture whether
any assistance on his part contributed to its successful issue; though
the previous career of the Scottish king, as well as his conduct on
a subsequent occasion, might almost warrant such a supposition. The
remembrance of Brunanburgh, however, may possibly have deterred him
from such a step, and by this time age and its accompanying infirmities
must have begun to weigh heavily upon the venerable monarch; for nearly
seventy years had now elapsed since the death of his father Aodh. It
was an era in which the sword in a vigorous hand was necessary for
the defence of the crown; and Constantine may have been actuated by
prudent motives when he resigned the sceptre before it slipped from his
grasp, and retiring to the seclusion of the monastery of St. Andrews,
[Sidenote: A. D. 943.] relinquished the cares and duties of his kingdom
to assume the office of abbot.[78]
Throughout a reign extending over forty years and upwards, Constantine
wielded his authority with vigour, if not always with success, and
even in his declining years maintained the reputation of a valiant and
experienced warrior. The most important event in his career, and that
which exercised the greatest influence over the future prospects of
his kingdom, was the establishment of a branch of his own family over
the British principality of Strath Clyde, as it unquestionably tended
to the gradual amalgamation of the inhabitants of that district with
their more numerous and powerful Scottish neighbours, and prepared
the way for the permanent annexation of the province during the reign
of Malcolm II. In his efforts to assist another member of his family
in obtaining a footing in Danish Northumbria he was not equally
successful; but though his connection with Olave Sitricson embroiled
him with the warlike Athelstan, it relieved his kingdom from the
incursions of the Northmen, for with the exception of the contests
which arose in later times between the Jarls of Orkney (a different
race from the Hy Ivar), and the lords of the northern provinces--a
rivalry which incidentally tended to strengthen the authority of the
Scottish kings at the expense of their too powerful dependants--no
further allusion is made to the attacks of the Scandinavians beyond an
occasional and isolated inroad upon the eastern coasts of Scotland.
The contemporary of four of the Anglo-Saxon kings, Constantine, during
the course of his lengthened and chequered reign, was a witness of
momentous changes; the enemies of his youth and manhood became the firm
allies of his later years, and the neighbouring monarchy, which had
been rescued from ruin by the genius of the great Alfred, strengthened
by the steady policy of Edward and his talented sister, and raised
to an unexampled pitch of glory by the energy and valour of the
indomitable Athelstan, threatened, before the close of his eventful
career, to relapse into its original disunion when no longer upheld
by the arm of the mightiest warrior who ever sat upon the throne of
Saxon England. The dynasty of Wessex, indeed, survived the crisis; but
the permanent settlement of the Northmen during these reigns, in the
southern division of ancient Northumbria, introduced a foreign element
between Bernicia and the Southumbrian provinces, thus preventing the
consolidation of the Anglo Saxon kingdom, and contributing materially
to the success of those incessant encroachments of the Scottish kings
upon the Northumbrian Saxons, which were only checked by the Norman
Conquest.[79]
_Malcolm the First._ 943–954.
[Sidenote: A. D. 943.]
Malcolm, the first of his name, and a son of the second Donald,
succeeded to the authority relinquished by his venerable kinsman,
whilst the brother of Athelstan step by step was winning back the
territories ceded to the Northmen at the commencement of his reign. The
great Mercian confederacy of “the Five Burghs” was first reduced to
submission, and Northumbria ere long again acknowledging the authority
of the English king, [Sidenote: A. D. 944.] Olave Sitricson abandoned
the province, driving Blacar Godfreyson out of Dublin, and establishing
his authority over the Irish Norsemen, whilst his confederate Reginald,
Blacar’s brother, disappears from history, and Edmund, released from
his Danish foes, was at liberty to turn his arms against Cumberland.[80]
Much confusion has arisen from the ambiguous use of the appellations
of Cumbria and Cumberland. The former name was undoubtedly applied
at one time to a wide extent of country stretching at least from
Dumbartonshire to North Wales, from which district it was early
separated when the greater part of modern Lancashire was added to
the Northumbrian dominions. A little later the grants of Egfrid to
St. Cuthbert must have severed the modern counties of Cumberland and
Westmoreland from the northern Cumbria or Strath Clyde, which was still
further curtailed by the settlements of the Angles in the diocese of
Candida Casa, a district of which the greater part, if not the whole,
had by this time probably fallen into the hands of the ancestors of the
Picts of Galloway.
Southern Cumbria or Cumberland does not appear to have been included
amongst the conquered districts recovered by the Britons after the
defeat and death of Egfrid at the battle of Nectan’s Mere. When Eardulf
the bishop carried off the relics of St. Cuthbert and St. Oswald from
the profane violence of a pagan as fierce as Penda, the most trusted
companion of his hurried flight was Edred, the Saxon Abbot of Carlisle;
and there is little reason to doubt that at this time the descendants
of the men who won the land in the days of Egfred still peopled the
broad acres granted to the monastery of St. Cuthbert. Forty years later
it is told how Edred, the son of Rixinc, the foremost chieftain amongst
the nobility of Deira, rode “westward over the hills,” slew the Lord
Eardulf, a prince of the Bernician race of Ida, carried off his wife
“in spite of the Frith and the people’s wishes,” and held forcible
possession of territories reaching from Chester le Street to the
Derwent, till he lost both lands and life in the battle of Corbridge
Moor.[81] All these names are genuine Saxon, and though the original
British population may still have lingered amidst the lakes and
mountains of their picturesque region, it may be safely doubted whether
they paid either tribute or submission to the Scoto-British prince who
yet retained some vestiges of authority over the fertile valley of the
Clyde; and whilst Scottish Cumbria or Strath Clyde continued under
the rule of a branch of the MacAlpin family from the opening of the
tenth century till the reign of Malcolm the Second, English Cumbria
or Cumberland, when it was not under the authority of the Northumbrian
earls, in whose province it was included, may be said to have remained
in a state of anarchy till the conquest.
The numerous lakes of the latter district, and its situation upon the
north-western coast of England, must have offered at this time an
admirable retreat to the Vikings from Ireland and the Islands; and
Edmund, after clearing the province of these dangerous intruders,
[Sidenote: A. D. 945.] made it over to the Scottish king, on condition
that Malcolm should become his faithful “fellow-worker” or ally, by
land and sea.[82] Upon the death of Edmund, the same arrangement was
renewed with his successor Edred, when he received the submission of
the Northumbrian Danes; [Sidenote: A. D. 948.] and when Eric attempted
to re-establish himself in York, he received no assistance from
Malcolm, and was hardly chosen king before he was again driven from the
province.[83] The case was different in the following year, when Olave
Sitricson returned for the last time [Sidenote: A. D. 949.] to claim
the inheritance of his father; for though the Scottish king was bound
by his oath to be faithful to his alliance with Edred, the weight of
years had not yet quenched the fire of his aged predecessor, nor had
the peaceful life of the cloistered monk obliterated the recollections
of the soldier. Roused at the approach of his relative and ancient
ally, Constantine, to satisfy the scruples of his kinsman, resumed for
a time the sceptre he had relinquished, and forgetting the abbot in the
king, he once more led his countrymen against the foe, and they long
recounted with exultation and pride how royally their veteran leader
swept the patrimony of St. Cuthbert to the distant borders of the Tees.
Returning in triumph from his successful foray, the warrior-abbot
resigned for the last time his ephemeral authority, and again assuming
the character of a churchman, ended his days three years later, within
the walls of the monastery of St. Andrews.[84]
[Sidenote: A. D. 952.]
In the year in which his aged predecessor at length sunk to rest,
Malcolm, uniting with the Saxons and Britons, opposed an inroad of the
Northmen, and on this occasion he may have faithfully fulfilled the
compact which he appears formerly to have evaded. The Northmen were
victorious over the united forces of the allies, and the result of the
battle probably re-established Eric in Danish Northumbria.[85] His
arrival was fatal to the supremacy of Olave, who, quitting England for
the last time, settled finally in Dublin, where he soon acquired an
ascendency surpassing that of all his predecessors, establishing his
family as the rulers of the Irish Norsemen, and exacting hostages and
levying tribute over the whole extent of Ireland, from the Shannon to
the sea. [Sidenote: A. D. 980.] For nearly thirty years his power was
unbroken, until the decisive victory of Tara first re-established the
superiority of the native Irish, which the more celebrated but less
important battle of Clontarf [Sidenote: A. D. 1014.] was destined
subsequently to confirm. Olave, who was not present at the battle, did
not long survive its issue. The spirit of the aged Northman was broken
by the death of many of his sons, and relinquishing his authority
to Sitric, one of the survivors, he quitted the scene of his former
triumphs, and the last days of the most formidable opponent of the
great Athelstan were passed in the seclusion of Iona.[86] Long before
the death of Olave, the career of his rival Eric had been brought to
a close. Driven from Northumbria after a reign of only two years, he
appears to have fallen in a skirmish on Stanemoor, slain by Magnus
Haraldson, through the treachery of Osulf, who was rewarded with the
Eorldordom of Northumbria, whilst Man and the Hebrides fell to the
share of Magnus.[87]
[Sidenote: A. D. 954.]
Two years after the death of Constantine, Malcolm followed him to the
grave. He was slain at Ulurn, not far from Forres, in the vicinity of
the same spot where his father had perished upwards of half a century
previously. The northern districts appear to have been peculiarly fatal
to this branch of the reigning family, and Malcolm’s death may probably
be attributed to the vengeance of the men of Mærne, for the death of
Cellach, a northern Mormaor, whose defeat in the earlier years of the
king’s reign is amongst the occasional vague notices in the Scottish
chronicles, which alone remain to shed a dim light upon the incessant
contest waged for many generations between the northern and southern
provinces of Scotland.[88]
_Indulf_ 954–962.
_Duff_ 962–967.
_Culen or Colin_ 967–971.
Three kings followed in the usual alternate succession during the next
seventeen years, half of that period being comprised in the reign of
Indulf, the son of Constantine the Second. The grant of Cumberland was
not renewed, either on account of the distracted state of England after
the death of Edred, or possibly because of the somewhat doubtful manner
in which the former king fulfilled his engagements, and the connection
of his successor with the still formidable ruler of the Dublin
Norsemen; but the loss of the English province was soon compensated by
the capture of Edinburgh, the first known step in the progress of the
gradual extension of the Scottish kingdom between the Forth and Tweed.
A century previously the jurisdiction of the successor of St. Cuthbert
still reached as far as Abercorn upon the Forth, but henceforth it was
bounded by the Pentland hills until about fifty years later, when the
historian of Durham has to record a more important loss, and to mourn
over the contraction of the diocese within still narrower limits.[89]
Twice was Indulf called upon to repel the inroads of the Northmen, who
appear to have crossed the eastern seas, and endeavoured to effect a
landing upon the coasts of Buchan and Banff. On both occasions he was
successful, driving the invaders to their ships, the latest victory,
however, costing him his life, for he fell in opposing the descent of
the Norsemen at Invercullen.[90]
Sufficient time had now elapsed since the accession of the Dalriad
princes to the throne of Scotland to develope the principle of division
inseparable from the Gaelic system of government, each branch of
Kenneth’s family endeavouring, after the lapse of a few generations,
to shut out the other from the throne, and to monopolize the right
to the alternate succession as the exclusive prerogative of their
own peculiar line. Accordingly the reign of Duff, the eldest son of
Malcolm the First, and representative of the senior branch of the royal
family, appears to have been passed in a continual struggle against
the pretensions raised by the now rival line of Aodh in the person of
Indulf’s son Colin, and though at first successful, defeating Colin at
the battle of Duncrub, [Sidenote: A. D. 965.] in which the Mormaor of
Atholl and the Abbot of Dunkeld, partizans apparently of the defeated
prince, were numbered amongst the slain,[91] he was subsequently less
fortunate, and was driven by his rival from the throne, losing his life
on a later occasion at Forres, a place so disastrous to every member
of his family, where his body is said to have been hidden under the
bridge of Kinloss, [Sidenote: A. D. 967.] tradition adding that the sun
refused to shine until the dishonoured remains of the murdered monarch
received the burial of a king.[92]
An uneventful reign of four or five years is assigned to his successor
Colin, terminated as usual upon the field of battle, where he is said
to have fallen with his brother Eocha in a battle fought against the
Britons of Strath Clyde. [Sidenote: A. D. 971.] Such at least is
the account left by the earlier authorities, though he is generally
represented in the pages of later chronicles as the victim of private
revenge, assassinated in the Lothians by Andarch MacDonald, a British
prince, who avenged in the blood of the king an insult offered to his
daughter.[93]
CHAPTER IV.
KENNETH THE SECOND--971–995.
No opposition seems to have been offered upon the death of Colin
to another son of Malcolm the First, [Sidenote: A. D. 971.] who
ascended the throne as Kenneth the Second; though the subsequent
death of Colin’s brother Olave, about six years later, may point to a
continuance of the struggle between the rival branches of the reigning
family, and appears to have established Kenneth for the remainder
of his life in undisputed possession of the throne.[94] Immediately
upon his accession, after providing for the safety of his kingdom
by throwing up entrenchments at the fordable points of the Forth,
he followed up the successes of his predecessor Indulf, ravaging
Cumberland to Stanemoor and Deerham, and carrying off a captive of high
rank amongst the neighbouring Saxons of Northumbria.[95] Unfortunately
the old chronicle, which has hitherto so faithfully noted down the
events of this distant period, breaks off abruptly at the approach of
a more interesting epoch, and the history of Scotland must for many
years be sought for principally in the chronicles of other countries.
Considerable light is thrown upon the state of the extreme northern
districts during the reign of Kenneth by the accounts in the Norwegian
Sagas, as in the time of this king the powerful Jarls of Orkney were
first brought into collision with the neighbouring Mormaors on the
mainland.
[Sidenote: A. D. 875.]
When Rognwald, Jarl of Mæri, heard of the death of his nephew Guttorm
Sigurdson,[96] he immediately dispatched Hallad, one of his own sons,
to take possession of the Orkneys; but after a year’s experience of the
troublesome acquisition the newly appointed Jarl abruptly relinquished
his dominions, preferring the comparative peace of a _Holder’s_
life in Norway to the arduous dignity of a Jarl amongst the Vikings.
Vehemently incensed at his return, Rognwald bitterly reproached Hallad
and his brother with inheriting the servile blood of their mother,[97]
upon which Einar, hitherto conspicuous only for his excessive ugliness,
and the harshness of whose features was increased by the loss of
an eye, professed his readiness to undertake the government of the
Orkneys, remarking that he should relinquish a home which he had little
cause to love, and only requiring to be supplied with a ship and a
sufficient force to enable him to assert his claims successfully. He
added a promise, that if his offer were accepted his father should see
his face no more, a stipulation, as he drily observed, that was likely
to prove the most gratifying part of the arrangement. In his estimate
of his father’s feelings he was not mistaken, Rognwald frankly avowing
that were it for this sole purpose he should be provided with a ship,
though he feared little honour would result from the expedition. Such
were the circumstances under which the ancestor of the powerful Jarls
of Orkney first set sail from his native shores of Norway.
Arrived amongst the islands he soon cleared them of the Vikings, who
found in Einar a far more formidable opponent than the indolent and
peaceful Hallad. His promise to his father he kept to the letter,
and he saw his face no more; though when the increasing favour shewn
to Rognwald so provoked the jealousy of two of Harold’s sons that
they burnt the Jarl in his own house, Einar gloried in becoming his
avenger. Halfdan, one of the murderers, flying from the vengeance of
his incensed father, arrived so unexpectedly at the Orkneys that Einar
was taken by surprise and had barely time to escape to the mainland;
but his absence was of short duration, and surprising Halfdan in his
turn, he seized upon the wretched prince, inflicting on him the cruel
death of the Spread-eagle. Whatever punishment Harfager might have
intended for his son, he was exasperated on learning that Einar had
forestalled him, and immediately prepared a fleet for an expedition
against the Orkneys; but he suffered himself in the end to be diverted
from his intention, and was eventually satisfied with the exaction of a
heavy fine from the islands. Einar, however, turned even the intended
punishment to his own advantage, undertaking to pay the whole sum on
condition that the Odallers or Freeholders resigned their Odal rights
in his favour, or in other words submitted to be taxed and to hold
their lands of the Jarl; and from the date of this arrangement all the
lands in the earldom remained for many years the sole property of the
Jarls.
The rest of Einar’s life was passed in undisturbed possession of the
earldom he had so unexpectedly acquired; and upon his death it was
equally divided, according to the ancient custom, amongst his three
surviving sons. Arnkel and Erlend, the two eldest, followed the
fortunes of Eric Blodæxe, losing their lives in his service, when
the whole earldom was again reunited under the sole authority of the
surviving brother Thorfin the Skull-cleaver. In spite of his formidable
name, Thorfin was of a peaceful character, resembling his uncle Hallad
in his aversion to war, rather than his father Einar; and when the
sons of Eric arrived in the Orkneys with the shattered remnants of
their followers, he at once acknowledged their claim to his allegiance,
submitting without a struggle to their authority;[98] though they soon
released him from further annoyance by sailing for Norway to try their
fortunes in their ancestral dominions, when Thorfin ruled his earldom
in peace, dying about the commencement of Kenneth’s reign.[99] He
married Grelauga, a daughter of Duncan Mormaor of Caithness, by Groa,
the sister of Thorstein Olaveson, and upon his death left five sons
to inherit his island earldom, and possibly with some claims upon the
mainland inheritance of their maternal grandfather.[100]
Three of the brothers in succession married Ragnhilda, the daughter
of Eric and Gunhilda. The mother had been celebrated as the most
treacherous, as well as the most beautiful woman of her time, and the
daughter appears to have inherited a full share of both the maternal
qualities. After contriving the murder of her first husband Arnfin, she
married his brother Havard, but soon repenting of her second choice,
she released herself with as little compunction as before, exerting her
influence over the Jarl’s favourite nephew with such success that the
luckless Havard was surprised and put to death by a kinsman of whom he
harboured not the remotest suspicion; and the scene of the foul murder,
the mysterious and once sacred “stones of Stennis” are still sometimes
known as Havard-Steigr. The first to exclaim against the treacherous
deed was the widowed consort of the Jarl, and Ragnhilda’s whole soul
appeared absorbed in a burning desire for vengeance, until the hope of
winning the favour of the beautiful mourner induced another relative
to undertake the sacred duty of revenge. Upon his return to claim the
promised reward--a fair wife and an earldom--he found them both in
the possession of the third brother Liotr, and he lost his life in a
vain attempt to wrest, at least the latter, from the more fortunate
son of Thorfin. Whilst Liotr was in possession of the earldom, Skuli,
one of his surviving brothers, presented himself at the court of the
Scottish king Kenneth, and obtained from him either a grant of the
possessions of his maternal ancestor the Mormaor of Caithness, or a
promise to support the pretensions he was encouraged to raise upon the
island dominions of his brother. Collecting an army in Caithness, Skuli
crossed the Pentland Firth to establish his claim upon the Orkneys,
but he failed in his attempt and was driven out of the islands; when
Liotr, emboldened by success, passed over to the mainland and again
defeated his brother in the Dales of Caithness, where Skuli lost his
life, continuing to fight bravely after the rout and dispersion of his
army. Liotr then subdued the whole of Caithness, a proceeding which
aroused the jealousy of his powerful neighbour Malbride MacRory the
“Earl,” or rather perhaps the “Oirrigh of Moray,” and both parties
preparing for a contest, Malbride advanced to Skida Moor to drive the
intruder from the country. The struggle was obstinate, victory in the
end declaring for the Orkneymen, though it was purchased with their
leader’s life, Liotr dying soon afterwards of a wound he received in
the battle. Lodver, the last surviving son of Thorfin, now succeeded
to the earldom, bequeathing it very shortly to his son Sigurd. He was
the only member of his family who died a peaceful death, owing perhaps
to his marriage with Auda, a daughter of an Irish king Kerval, an
alliance through which he was fortunate enough to escape the dangerous
fascinations of Ragnhilda.