Digitized by the Internet Arcinive in 2008 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/earlychroniclesrOOmaxwrich THE EARLY CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND PUBLISHED BV JAMES MACLEHOSE AND SONS, GLASGOW, f tibUshcrs tc th« Bnibtxsit^. MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD., LONDON. New York, • • The Macntillan Co. Toronto^ - • - The Mactnillan Co. of Canada. London^ - - - Sittipkin, Hamilton and Co. Cambridge, • - Bowes and Bowes. Edinburgh, • - Douglas and Foulis. Sydney, - - ■ Angus and Robertson. MCMXII. The Early Chronicles Relating to Scotland BEING THE RHIND LECTURES IN ARCHAEOLOGY FOR 1912 IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES OF SCOTLAND BY THE RIGHT HON. SIR HERBERT EUSTACE MAXWELL BART., LL.D., D.C.L., F.R.S. PRES. SOC. ANT. SCOT. GLASGOW JAMES MACLEHOSE AND SONS PUBLISHERS TO THE UNIVERSITY I9I2 ^^'^• txr iohosz txnliiion awb imtiena toith th« unUarnei the author otoes more than he ran eber reipag, this Dolttme is ieiirateb toith atertixjttate regari) PREFACE The following lectures were undertaken with the intention and hope of furnishing a clue to the most trustworthy sources of contem- porary, or nearly contemporary, information about the early condition and history of Scotland, and of indicating the most probable line of truth among conflicting statements. Some such guidance may be found acceptable by those who, while desiring to acquire a clear general knowledge of the origin of the Scottish people and their relations with England, have not enough leisure at command for prolonged search through the printed volumes of annals and to weigh the authority which may rightly be assigned to each. It is hardly necessary that I should explain how greatly I have relied upon the labours of previous students in this field ; they are too numerous and too well known to require vii PREFACE specific mention. But among the more recent of them there are three from whose works I have derived so much immediate assistance that it will not be thought invidious if I make direct acknowledgment of the same. In chronological order of publication these works stand as follows : 1899. Scottish Kings: a revised chronology of Scottish History, a.d. 1005- 1625, by Sir Archibald H. Dunbar, Bart. 1908. Scottish Annals from English Chronicles : A.D. 500-1286, by Alan O. Anderson. 1 9 1 o. Annals of the Reigns of Malcolm and William^ Kings of Scotland^ A.D.1153-1214. Between them, these three volumes pro- vide a corpus of reference which I have found to save an infinity of trouble. HERBERT MAXWELL. MoNREiTH, March^ 191 2. Vlll CONTENTS A.D. 80-396 PAGE C. Tacitus on Julius Agricola's Caledonian campaign 2 Perplexing ethnology of Northern Britain - - 5 Uncertainty of tribal and racial names - - - 6 The Wall of Hadrian, c, a.d. 120- - - - 16 Aelius Spartianus in the Historia Augusta - - 17 The geographer Ptolemy - - - - - 17 Pausanias and Julius Capitolinus on the campaign of Lollius Urbicus - - - - - - 19 The Wall of Antonine, f. A.D. 140 - - - 19 The forged chronicle of Richard of Cirencester - 21 The campaigns of Calphurnus Agricola (a.d. 162), Marcellus Ulpius (a.d. 182) - - - - 22 The Annals of Dio Cassius, edited by Xiphilinus - 23 Herodianus, Greek historian - - - - - 25 Severus and Caracalla invade Caledonia, a.d. 208 - 26 Death of the Emperor Severus, a.d. 211 - - 29 Eumenius makes first mention of the Picts, a.d. 296 30 Chronicle of Ammianus Marcellinus - - - 31 Partition of the Roman Empire, A.D. 337 - - 31 The panegyrist Claudian on the campaign of Theo- dosius the Elder, a.d. 369 - - _ _. o^ IX CONTENTS PAGE Prosperus Aquitanus on Clemens Maximus, elected Emperor, a.d. 383 _ _ _ _ _ 36 Bishop Ninian's mission to Galloway, a.d. 396 - 38 II A.D. 410-731 Absence of all records for 150 years - - - 43 Ailred's Vita S. Nintani ----- 46 Adamnan's Vita S. Columbae - - - - - 52 lona a ' ghost name *------ 55 Jocelyn's Fita S, Kentigerni - - - - - 56 Meeting of Columba and Kentigern - - - 59 Rydderch Hael, Christian champion - - - 62 Gildas, c, A.D. 520-c. 570 - - - - - 63 Baeda, a.d. 673-735 ------ 65 His chronicle invaluable ----- 65 Nennius,^. a.d. 796 ------ 67 The Saxon invasion, a.d. 449 - - - - 68 Disputed Arthurian topography - - - - 71 The four kingdoms of Alba ----- 74 Pagan victory at Degsastan, a.d. 603 - - - 76 Separation of the Southern Britons from the Strath- clyde Britons, a.d. 613- - - - - 76 Missionaries from Zona convert the people of North- umbria ----.--82 III A.D. 685-1093 Alliance of Picts and Scots against the Saxons - - 89 Defeat of the Saxons at Dunnichen, a.d. 685 - - 90 Saxon bishopric of Whithorn, A.D. 731 - - - 91 CONTENTS PAGE War between Picts and Scots, a.d. 717-736 - - 93 The Picts subdue Dalriada, a.d. 736 ~ ~ " 93 Chronicle attributed to Simeon of Durham (y?. c. 11 30) 94 Foundation of Kilrymont, now St. Andrews, c. a.d. 761 - ~ - - - - - - 95 First recorded inroad of Northmen, a.d. 793 - - 96 Kenneth MacAlpin founds the Scottish monarchy, A.D. 841 ------- 98 Dies in 860 - - - - - . - - 100 Repeated invasion by Northmen, a.d. 860-900 - 100 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, A.D. 900-1154 - - 100 First assertion of English supremacy over Scotland, A.D. 924 ------- 105 Battle of Brunanburg, A.D. 937 - - - - no King Eadmund conquers Strathclyde and grants it to Malcolm I., a.d. 945 - - - - 112 The Scots acquire Edinburgh, c, a.d. 960 - - 115 The question of homage for Lothian - - - 116 The Pictish Chronicle - - - - - -119 The Danes invade Argyll, a»d. 986 - - - 122 Marianus Scotus, a.d. 1028- 1082 ? - - - 123 Reign of Macbeth, A.D. 1 040-1057 - _ _ 124 Reign of Malcolm Ceannmor, a.d. 1058-1093 - 125 William the Conqueror invades Scotland, a.d. 1072- 130 Ordericus Vitalis, A.D. 1075-1143 - _ _ i^i Malcolm renounces homage to William Rufus, a.d. 1092 132 IV A.D. IO93-I 174 Succession disputed by Duncan and Donald Ban, A.D. 1093 ------- 135 Forged deeds in the Durham Treasury - - - 139 Reign of Eadgar, A.D. 1097-1109 - - - - 141 CONTENTS PAGB Reign of David L, A.D. 1109-1158 _ _ - 143 The Chronicles of Ailred of Riesaux, Henry of Hun- tingdon, William of Malmesbury, William of Newburgh, Roger Hoveden, and Richard of Hexham ----___ 144 Gesta Stephant - - - - - - -149 Ralph de Diceto - - - - - - -150 The Battle of the Standard, A.D. 1 138 - - - 153 Disappearance of the Scottish Chronicles - - 157 The Chronicles of Holyrood and Melrose - - 158 Reign of Malcolm the Maiden, a.d. ii 53-1 165 - 159 Reginald of Durham's Life of S. Cuthbert - - 166 Reign of William the Lyon, A.D. 1 165 - - - 167 Beginning of the Scoto-French alliance, a.d. 1173 - 167 The metrical Chronicle of Jordan Fantosme - - 171 Capture of William the Lyon, A.D. 1 1 74 - - 173 A.D. I 174-1286 The Treaty of Falaise, A.D. 1174 - - - - 180 The Chronicle of Peterborough (Benedictus Abbas) - 181 Anarchy in Scotland - - - - - -181 Resistance of the Scottish Church to English claim, A.D. 1176 - - 183 The Pope supports the Scottish Church, a.d. ii 77 - 184 Excommunication of William the Lyon, a.d. 1180 - 187 Papal charter of independence for the Scottish Church, A.D. 1 188 - - - - - 190 The Treaty of Canterbury, a.d. 1 1 89 - - - 191 King William demands Northumberland, a.d. 1193 196 Rebellion of Harald, Earl of Caithness, a.d. 1195 and 1201 ------- 198 The Orkneyinga Saga - - - - - -199 xii CONTENTS PAGE Meeting of the Kings at Norham, a.d. 1209 - - 206 The Annals of S. Edmund's ----- 206 Walter of Coventry ------ 206 Reign of Alexander II., A.D. 1214-1249 - - 207 King John invades Scotland, 121 5 - - - - 2o8 Chronicle of Matthew Paris ----- 208 King Alexander does homage to the French Dauphin, A.D. 1216 ------- 209 Marriage of Alexander II. to Joan of England, A.D. I22I ------- 210 Alexander commutes his claim to Northumberland, A.D. 1237 ------- 212 Reign of Alexander III., A.D. 1 249-1 286 - - 213 His marriage to Margaret of England, a.d. 1251 - 214 VI A.D. I265-I406 The Melrose Chronicle - - - - - 221 English writers our only guide after it ceases in A.D. 1270 ------- 222 The Register of Dunfermline - - - - 224 The claim for homage not pressed by Edward I. during Alexander III.'s life - - - - 225 The Scalacronica --_-__ 226 The Chronicle of Lanercost - - _ _ - 227 John of Fordun's Chronicle ----- 228 Walter Bower's Scotichronicon - - - - 231 John Barbour's * The Brus ' - - - - - 234 Barbour the first Scot to write in Northern English - 235 Andro of Wyntoun, * Orygynal Cronykil ' - - 253 B.C. 55 A.D. 400. B.C. 55 A.D. 400. When one reflects upon the space of time covered by modern archaeology — the science of recovering evidence of human occupation and society from the most distant period of man's existence — the thought must w^eigh heavily how relatively petty is the portion of that space covered by the written annals of the British Isles. Historical record, either graven on stone, baked in clay or inscribed on papyri, throws direct, if intermittent, light upon the polity of Ancient Egypt as far back as the close of the Third Dynasty, a date variously estimated by Egyptologists at from 4000 to 3000 years before Christ ; whereas we have no first-hand notice of Britannia until Julius Gaesar landed there in 55 b.c. Of North Britain there is no mention what- ever until 125 years later, when in the year A I CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND A.D. 80, Julius Agricola, the famous general and governor of the Britannic province under the Emperors Vespasian, Titus and Domitian, having subdued the Welsh Ordovices and Northumbrian Brigantes, novas gentes aperuit^ carried his arms against the tribes further north. This brings us to the earliest authentic chronicle relating to Scotland in the shape of the biography of Agricola written by his son- in-law, Cornelius Tacitus. It is invaluable, for Tacitus was a most accomplished writer, compiling his narrative from his father-in-law's own description ; the only complaint that can be made against him is that he is too laconic to satisfy our curiosity upon every point of interest. The exact direction taken by Agricola in invading what we now call Scotland and the sequence of his conquests in that country have been the subject of a good deal of controversy, nor need they greatly concern us at the present day. We read that in the third year of his governorship, that is a.d. 80, he "discovered new nations " and subdued the country as far as the Firth of Tay, " the Barbarians, smitten with fear, never daring to give him battle. ^ Vita Agricolaef c. xxii. 2 ♦» I JULIUS AGRICQLA The chief subject of anxiety to the com- mander of an expeditionary force must ever be his lines of communication, and to these Tacitus tells us Agricola paid special attention, securing them by erecting forts as he advanced, and providing the garrisons thereof against a siege by leaving a year's supplies in each. There can be little doubt, I think, that the great Roman station of Newstead, near Melrose, which has recently yielded such rich results to exploration, was originally one of Agricola's forts. The year 8i was spent in securing the country as far as the Firths of Forth and Clyde; and here, says Tacitus, "had it been possible to set a limit to the spirit of the troops and to the renown of Rome, might have been drawn a permanent frontier within the bounds of Britain. For Clota and Bodo- tria, running far inland from opposite seas, are separated by only a narrow strip of land, which [Agricola caused to be] strengthened by a line of forts and the whole country to the south to be occupied, the enemy being driven back as it were into another island."^ * Fita Agricolaey c. xxiii. 3 CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND In A.D. 82 Agricola embarked on the Firth of Clyde and occupied part of the west coast, whence he could see Ireland, which he con- sidered would be well worth annexing to the empire, the harbours and approaches of that island being well known to merchantmen. " Ireland," says Tacitus, " is less than Britain, but larger than all the islands of the Mediter- ranean. ... I have often heard Agricola declare that a single legion, with a moderate force of auxiliaries, would suffice to complete the conquest of Ireland." ^ But Agricola had to postpone an expedition against Ireland because of the threatening attitude of the natives to the north of the Forth. They had composed their private feuds, and, making common cause against the invader, were massing upon the new Roman frontier. In the summer of a.d. 83 Agricola undertook a campaign for their dispersal. Although Tacitus continues to refer to the enemy collectively as Britons, he specifies the race inhabiting Caledonia (that is, the land north of the Forth) as being red-haired and powerfully built, whence he argues their ^ Vita Agricolae^ c. xxiv. 4 CALEDONIAN ETHNOLOGY affinity with the Germans. They were easily distinguished, he says, from the Silures, in- habiting the west of England, who had swarthy skins and black, curly hair, and from the inhabitants of the rest of Britain, in whom Tacitus recognised, as Caesar had formerly done, a strong similarity to the people pf Gaul. Time may be spent more profitably than in discussing the racial affinities of the Caledonians ; but I cannot help expressing surprise at the conclusion arrived at by Sir John Rhys that they were a branch of the Brythonic or Cymric division of the Celts. The Gauls certainly belonged to that divi- sion, and Sir John Rhys assumes, as I think we may safely do, that Tacitus was correct in his inference that "a colony from Gaul had taken possession of a country so inviting from its proximity," driving before them the Goi- delic Celts who had already occupied it.^ It would be in perfect accord with this hypothesis if these northern tribes — these Caledonians — were descended from the original Goidelic colonists and had retreated before the Brythonic invaders into the strong country referred to by iRhys^s Celtic Britain, pp. 158, 203. 5 CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND Tacitus as Caledonia. Two hundred years later the people of that same district became known as Picts, and when we find the Roman historian Eumenius about the year a.d. 296 not only using the phrase "the Caledonians and other Picts," ^ but also noting the very same charac- teristic in them that had attracted the attention of Tacitus, namely, the redness of their long hair,2 and when we remember that the Romans never succeeded in their attempt to dispossess or conquer the people they termed Caledonians, the inference can scarcely be avoided that the people known as Picts from the third century onwards were the same as, or included, or were closely akin to, the people known as Cale- donians in the first century, just as the district first called Caledonia afterwards was referred to as Pictavia. This confusion and the overlapping of names occur whenever civilisation encounters barbar- ism. Between the years 181 1 and 1853 Great Britain waged several wars in South Africa with native tribes collectively termed Kaffres, ^ " Non dico Caledonum aliorumque Pictorum silvas et paludes." Eumenius, c. vii. 2 " Prolixo crine rutilantia." TRIBAL AND RACIAL NAMES and all that vast territory lying between the Orange River and the Limpopo was officially termed KafFraria. But there is now no district known as KafFraria, and the term KafFre had and has no ethnological significance. It is applied by Mahommedans to all people who reject the faith of Islam, just as Christians call all people Heathens who reject the faith of Christ. The early Portuguese settlers of the seventeenth century used the term KafFre to denote the Negroid tribes whom they found in possession of the country, these Negroids being intellectually and physically superior to the Hottentots and Bosjesmans whom they had dispossessed. British colonists, following the Portuguese, adopted the name KafFre and applied it indiscriminately to the native tribes with whom they came in conflict. But in 1879 the enemy was termed Zulu, and in 1893 Matabele, both being branches of the Negroid population formerly termed KafFres. So it was in North Britain; the people whom Tacitus termed Caledonians became known later under the name of Picts. Never- theless, to this day stat nominis umbra ; the name of this indomitable red-haired race is 7 CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND preserved in Dunkeld — the dun or fortress of the Caledons, just as Dun Bretan, now Dun- barton, was the fortress of the Britons or Cymri, and Dun Fris, now Dumfries, was the fortress of the Frisian Saxons. Note, by the way, that such names were not invented and conferred by the tribe or race occupying these fortresses: their origin was external, devised by neighbouring, and normally hostile, tribes to denote the occupation of certain places by people of a race alien to their own. We do not know what was the original name of Dum- fries, or whether it had one before the Frisian settlement ; but the Britons who garrisoned Dunbarton named it descriptively Alcluith, that is, the cliff on the Clyde. It is strange to see the dim and misty dawn of our nation still reflected in the titles of such prosaic concerns as the Caledonian Railway and the Caledonian Bank, Ltd. Agricola, then, marched back to the east coast, where he met the Roman fleet of galleys, and crossed over into Fife. The Caledonians seem to have shown such activity and prowess in successful attacks upon his forts that he was strongly urged by some of his officers to fall 8 AGRICOLA IN STRATHTAY back upon the original frontier between the firths, but to this he turned a deaf ear. Dividing his army into three columns, and supported by the fleet, he advanced into lower Strathtay, encamping probably at the place known as Grassy Walls, near Perth. Then, crossing the Tay, it is supposed that he made his head- quarters at Coupar-Angus, where there are remains of a large camp. A smaller camp at Lintrose, a couple of miles to the south-east, was probably formed by the Ninth or Spanish Legion, which Tacitus mentions as being the weakest in numbers of the whole army, and which there is some reason to believe was annihilated by the natives before the advent of Hadrian in a.d. 122 as completely as Hicks Pasha's army of 10,000 was destroyed in 1883 by the Sudanese. The Caledonians, then, made a night attack upon this Ninth Legion in their camp at Lintrose, and gained an entrance, but the Spaniards made good their defence till Agricola came to their relief at daybreak, when the enemy, attacked in front and rear, was routed with much slaughter. After that the troops on both sides went 9 CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND into winter quarters, and the next we learn is about a vigorous summer campaign which Tacitus states took place in the eighth year of Agricola's administration, namely, a.d. 86.^ Sending the fleet to create a diversion on the coast, he advanced against the Caledonians, who were posted in great force under a chief named Galgach, atinised Galgacus, on an upland indicated as Mons Granpius. The wish has sometimes been expressed that Tacitus had more clearly indicated the site of the decisive engagement which followed, instead of putting prodigious and necessarily imaginary speeches into the mouths respectively of Galgach and Agricola. Yet from the speech attributed to Galgach may be obtained some interesting inference as to the relation in which the Caledonians stood to the other races in North Britain. He is made to speak of his people as the noblest sons of Britain, occupying the last recesses of the land in the very sanctuary of liberty, " without agriculture or mineral wealth to tempt the conqueror " ; to refer with con- tempt to those Britons who hire themselves out as mercenaries to the foreigner, and to 1 Vita Jgricolae, c. xxix. lO CALEDONIANS UNDER GALGACH predict that they, as well as the Gaulish and German mercenaries, will desert the Roman standard if the Caledonians bear themselves like men. The most probable theory is that Galgach took up a position among the foothills of the Grampian range north of Meikleour, and that Agricola advanced against him across the plain, with his flanks protected by the rivers Tay and Isla.^ The curious statement is made that, in order to avoid shedding Roman blood, Agricola put 8000 auxiliaries in the post of honour to lead the attack, supported by 3000 cavalry, the legions being held in reserve. The strength of the enemy was estimated at 30,000 ; if Galgach had held his ground, it might have cost the Romans dear, before they dislodged him ; but he committed the same mistake as Archibald Douglas afterwards did at Halidon Hill and James IV. repeated at Flodden, he ^ In 1852 Carolus Wex published an edition of the Vita Agncolae from two MSB. in the Vatican, in which he read the n in " Mons Granpius " as «, maintaining that the name should be " Graupius." But seeing that n and u are scarcely to be dis- tinguished from each other in early, and indeed in many modern, manuscripts, the point is not worth consideration. II CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND must e'en come down to meet Agricola's attack in the plain. This his wild troops did with splendid spirit, the armed chariots being handled so skilfully that the Roman cavalry was thrown into confusion and fell back. Agricola then strengthened the fighting line with three Dutch (Batavian) and two Tungrian cohorts — say 3000 men — which sufficed to force the Cale- donians back to the hills, still fighting fiercely ; but their long swords with blunt points and their small round targes were no match for the short cut-and-thrust weapons and long shields of the Batavians. The chariots, also, after delivering the first onslaught, became useless when the Caledonian line was driven back into rougher ground. Galgach now moved up his reserve, and detached columns to turn both flanks of the Romans, whereupon Agricola brought up his cavalry reserve consisting of four alae or squadrons, and dispersed them with much slaughter. At nightfall the Romans held possession of the field, and next morning there was no trace of the enemy in sight. Tacitus puts the Caledonian loss at 10,000 killed, but does not mention any prisoners. Of the Romans, he admits that 340 were BATTLE ON THE GRAMPIANS killed, among them being Aulus Atticus, pre- fect of a cohort — equivalent to the modern colonel of a battalion. This pitched battle on the Grampians is the only general action fought by the Romans in North Britain of which a detailed contemporary account has been pre- served. It was barren of result to the victors. The season was far advanced ; the enemy had disappeared into a region which scouts reported as desolate and inhospitable ; wherefore Agricola withdrew into the country of the Horestians, whom we may guess to be a weak tribe inhabiting the district between the Tay and the Forth.^ They submitted to him, giving hostages for their good behaviour ; after which the Roman army went into winter quarters south of the Forth. During that autumn Agricola sent the fleet to ascertain whether, as had been asserted by merchantmen, Britain was really an island. The galleys passed up the east coast and cir- cumnavigated the western and southern coasts, ^Sir John Rhys has adopted Carolus Wex's emendation by reading Boresti for Horesti; but the inscription on an altar from the Roman station of Nieder Biebr on the Rhine bears that HoR. N. Brittonvm — that is, " Horestorum Numeri Brittonum " — had been enrolled in the army of Serverus in the third century. 13 CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND wintering at a place called by Tacitus Portus Trutulensis, which is usually interpreted as a misreading of Portus Rutupensis, that is Rich- borough in Kent ; whence in the spring of A.D. 87 the fleet sailed to resume its former station in the Firth of Forth. Whatever designs Agricola may have formed of prosecuting operations against the Cale- donians or attempting the conquest of Ireland, his military and administrative career were brought to a sudden close by his resignation, which Tacitus gives us to understand was forced upon him by the Emperor Domitian, who, he alleges, was intensely jealous of Agri- cola's fame and popularity. He even records a report that Domitian procured his death by poison, a rumour which Dio Cassius, writing a hundred years later, does not hesitate to con- firm. There is, however, another view of the case which acquits the Emperor of personal animosity against Agricola, namely, that the Senate may have become perturbed by the expense of the campaign, the indifferent success of their general against the Caledonians, and the prospect of indefinite annexation ; just as the East India Directors in 1806 caused 14 CLOSE OF AGRICOLA'S CAMPAIGN Marquess Wellesley to resign the Governor- Generalship owing to similar apprehension. With the close of Agricola's campaign and of the narrative of Tacitus, we part with the most valuable and trustworthy account of affairs in North Britain during the Roman occupation. I have dwelt longer upon this chronicle than it will be profitable to do upon the works of other Roman annalists, because I believe that Tacitus faithfully carried out the promise made at the beginning of his biography. " In treating of the land and inhabitants of Britain,'* he said, " I shall not compete either in diligence or ability with the many writers who have described them . . . but whereas those who have pre- ceded me have eloquently adorned their description with imaginary features, mine will be confined to facts." 1 Henceforward those annals which have sur- vived are so seldom contemporary, and, when they are so, often treat more fully of current scandal and personal gossip than of serious ^A loose translation, but that appears to be the sense. "Britanniae situm populosque, multis scriptoribus memoratos, non in comparationem curae ingeniive referam . . . itaque quae priores nondum comperta eloquentia pcrcoluere, rerum fide tradentur." Fita Agricolae^ c. x. 15 CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND politics, that an attempt to construct from them a consecutive narrative reminds one of one of those zigzaw puzzles which had a fleeting vogue two or three years ago. One may suc- ceed in piecing together a few fragments here and there, upon which are represented intel- ligible incidents and recognisable figures ; but so much of the original has been lost as to leave great empty spaces where conjecture itself is baffled to supply what is missing. For more than thirty years after the end of Agricola's governorship we have no informa- tion whatever about the course of events in North Britain, except what may be inferred from a passing mention by Tacitus, writing in the reign of Trajan (a.d. 98-117), that Britain had been conquered only to be lost immedi- ately.^ From this it may be assumed that the Caledonians and other northern tribes recovered all the territory that Agricola had annexed north of Tweed and Solway ; and when the Emperor Hadrian visited Britain, a.d. 120 or 122, he built the great wall extending seventy- three miles from Wallsend on Tyne to Bowness on Solway to prevent them overrunning the ^Perdomtta Britannia et statlm missa. Tac. Hist. i. 2. 16 THE WALL OF HADRIAN southern province. Of this momentous work no contemporary record has been preserved; but it is mentioned in the Historia Augusta^ a compilation of biographies by several hands covering the period from a.d. i 17 to a.d. 284, but certainly not written earlier than the reigns of Diocletian and Constantine (a.d. 284-337), or, as seems not improbable, considerably later. The memoir of Hadrian is from the hand of Aelius Spartianus, who tells us that the Emperor set affairs in order in Britain, being the first builder of a wall about eighty miles long dividing the Roman province from the Barbarians. The knowledge gained by Agricola of the inhabitants of North Britain, the itineraries of his marches and the observations made by the officers of the Roman fleet in circumnavigating the island, were turned to account in the second century a.d. by the geographer Ptolemy. His great work, the Geographia in eight books, is of incomparable value as a guide to early British topography, but as it cannot be reck- oned a chronicle of events, it hardly falls within the scope of our present inquiry. Nor need we greatly concern ourselves about the dis- B 17 CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND positions assigned to the various tribes — the Selgovae on the Solway, the Novantae on the Novios or Nith, the Damnonii in Clydesdale and Strathearn, the Vernicomes and Taexali on the east coast, the Vacomagi, represented as occupying the Highland border, probably the same people that appear as Meatae in the later writings. Next to the Vacomagi on the north lay the Caledonians, extending from Loch Long to the Beauly. The impression is conveyed of a number of tribes and groups of tribes owning no central authority, alter- nately waxing and waning, raiding and being raided, much as the Highland clans continued to do throughout the middle ages. So might they have continued to do, with- out coming into collision with Roman arms, had they been content with the limits assigned to them by the Wall of Hadrian. But they were not so content. They took to raiding across the wall, which at that time was probably only built of sods, with a wide and deep ditch ; wherefore Antoninus Pius, who succeeded to the purple on the death of Hadrian in a.d. 138, sent Lollius Urbicus to protect the Britons of the Province. We have here to 18 THE WALL OF ANTONINE rely on two brief passages, one in the history of Pausanias, a contemporary writer (viii. 43), the other in that of Julius Capitolinus, a writer in the Historia Augusta^ who concur in stating that the frontier of the province was advanced further to the north, that is, to the line of forts erected by Agricola between Forth and Clyde, and the great earthwork known as the Wall of Antonine was constructed to connect the forts and form a defensive frontier. Both writers explain that this delimitation involved the disturbance of certain native com- munities. Julius Capitolinus merely says that the Barbarians were expelled : but Pausanias is more explicit, stating that land was taken from the Brigantes, who, as Tacitus observed, were the most powerful people in the whole island, occupying in the second century the north-eastern district from the Humber to the Forth. The Romans treated the Brigantes in this manner, says Pausanias, because they had attacked some friendly natives which he calls ri Tevovvla /uLoipa — the Genunian brigade or cohort, which Sir John Rhys identifies tentatively with the Selgovae or people of Galloway, to be heard of later as Atecotts and Picts. From 19 CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND the use of the military term i^olpa it would seem that these Selgovae had been enrolled as auxiliaries, and no doubt all the tribes who were content to remain within the new limits of the province would become tributary to Rome and furnish auxiliaries to the legions. Those who would not do so, the marauding Caledonians and insubordinate Brigantes, were expelled from the province. This earthern rampart, strengthened with stations and stone-built caste/la^ and extending twenty-seven miles from Carriden on the Firth of Forth to West Kilpatrick on the Clyde, remained the frontier of the Roman Province until the final withdrawal of the legions at the close of the fourth century. It is satisfactory that the statements of Julius Capitolinus and Pausanias have been confirmed by the dis- covery on the line of this wall of inscriptions bearing the names both of Antonine and his general, Lollius Urbicus. Thus far, the materials available for obtaining an insight into the affairs of North Britain in the first two centuries of our era, though meagre and fragmentary, may be accepted as genuine history. Tacitus naturally wrote with 20 * RICHARD OF CIRENCESTER' a strong prepossession for his father-in-law Agricola, but he does full justice to the courage and patriotism of the natives of North Britain, notably in the speech which he puts into the mouth of Galgach. But we have now to take note of a piece of deliberate fraud, so ingenious and unscrupulous that it has imposed upon many students of the history of Roman Britain, and gravely perverted the written conclusions of such well-known authorities as Pinkerton, Chalmers, General Roy, Dr. Lingard, and the late Sir William Fraser. The author of this forgery was one Charles Julius Bertram, Eng- lish teacher in the naval school at Copenhagen. He professed to have found in the Royal Library there the MS. of a chronicle by Richard of Cirencester, a Benedictine monk of the four- teenth century, entitled De Situ Britanniae^ con- taining an itinerary and description of the Roman stations in Britain. Richard certainly wrote a chronicle. Speculum Historiae^ covering the period from a.d. 447 to 1066, which is little more than a poor compilation from earlier writers ; but the tract De Situ Britanniae is an impudent and most skilful forgery, which deceived the very elect during more than a 21 CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND hundred years. Nay, it continues to this day a pitfall for the unwary, seeing that several editions of it have been published, and it appears in Bohn's Antiquarian Library as one of Six Old English Chronicles^ without any warning as to its real character. Julius Capitolinus, one of the authors of the Historia Augusta^ records that in a.d. 162 Calphurnius Agricola (not to be confounded with Julius Agricola, who had been dead for nearly seventy years) was sent from Rome by the new Emperor, Marcus Aurelius, to repel an attack upon the Province by the northern Bar- barians.^ Again in the year a.d. 182, when Commodus succeeded Marcus Aurelius, the Caledonians broke through the wall, killing the general commanding with many of his men, and this time the stern martinet Mar- cellus Ulpius was charged with the task of expelling them, which it took him two years* campaign to accomplish. We may assume, then, that all the country south of Antonine's Wall — that is, the line of Forth and Clyde — was once more under Roman government, those natives who accepted it settling down as citizens ^ Capitolinus, Marcus AureliuSy viii. ANNALS OF DIO CASSIUS of the Empire, or at least as tributaries, and those who rejected it being expelled as Bar- barians. For events in the reigns of the Emperors from Commodus to Alexander Severus, we have the contemporary testimony of Dio Cassius. He was praetor under Septimius Severus, and, being the trusted minister and intimate friend of that minister, he turned to good account the access which he thereby obtained to the state records in composing a history of Rome in eighty books, of which, to our irreparable loss, all but nineteen have perished. However, in the eleventh century, Xiphilinus, a monk of Constantinople, prepared an epitome of the last twenty books, which dealt with matters whereof Dio had cognisance as a contemporary, and from him we learn something more about the tribes in Caledonia beyond the wall. " The two most important tribes," he says, " are the Caledonians and the Meatae ; the names of the other tribes having been included in these. The Meatae dwell close by the wall that divides the island into two parts, the Cale- donians beyond them." These people, he continues, had no walled towns, but lived in 23 CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND tents or booths, subsisting entirely by hunting and pillage. They did not cultivate the ground, but ate wild fruits,^ rejecting fish, although there was plenty to be had for the catching. Mention is made of a special kind of com- pressed food that they carried on expeditions, a very small piece of which was enough to satisfy both hunger and thirst.^ They had wives in common, it is alleged, though that is a statement to be accepted under reserve, and so great was their hardihood that they used to conceal themselves in swamps, submerged all but their heads, and could remain so for many days, living upon roots. This also sounds like a mere traveller's tale ; but the description of their mode of fighting is probably trustworthy. They had chariots drawn by small but active horses ; they carried dirks and short spears with a bronze knob on the haft, which they ^ Hazel nuts were certainly an important article of diet, as shown by the immense deposits of nutshells found around the crannogs or lake dwellings. These crannogs have been proved to have been inhabited during the Roman occupation by the discovery in them of many articles of Roman manufacture. 2 The traditional biadh-nan-treum, the food of heroes, was said to be prepared by the Picts of pounded flesh mixed with certain restorative herbs, a small quantity of which sufficed to maintain a man's strength during prolonged exertion. 24 HERODIANUS rattled against their shields when charging an enemy. They were very fleet of foot and very brave in war, wearing hardly any clothes in order that the beasts depicted on their bodies by tattooing might be seen. When the Emperor Commodus died in A.D. 192 Clodius Albinus was Propraetor and Governor of Britain, and claimed election as emperor. The other three claimants were Didianus Julianas at Rome, Pescennius Niger, Governor of Syria, and Lucius Septimius Severus, Governor of Pannonia. Albinus defeated and slew his rival Pescennius in a.d. 194 ; Severus defeated and slew Albinus near Lyons in a.d. 197 and became sole emperor. Herodianus, a contemporary Greek historian, states that one of the first acts of Severus was to separate Britain into two provinces. Upper and Lower Britain. He does not define the boundaries, but it is supposed, the reckoning being from Rome, that Upper Britain was the settled and civilised part south of the Humber, and that Lower Britain included the remainder as far as Antonine's Wall. Virius Lupus, the governor, was hard pressed by the Caledonians and Meatae, and Severus, being engaged in a 25 CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND five years' war with the Parthians, was unable to reinforce the garrison of Britain, wherefore Virius had to purchase peace from these Meatae at a high price. Relying now upon Xiphiline's abridgment of Dio Cassius, we may assume that the Meatae broke their bargain with Governor Virius, for in A.D. 208 he wrote to the emperor announc- ing that he could no longer protect the province unless he were reinforced. Severus was old and gouty, but his soldier spirit was still unquenched. Taking with him his sons Caracalla and Geta, he travelled in a litter through Gaul, landed in Britain, collected a strong army, set Geta to govern Upper Britain, and went on with Caracalla^ to Lower or Northern Britain. He passed the wall and in- vaded Caledonia itself, opening up the country by felling the forest, making roads and bridges in preparation for a permanent occupation. He succeeded, but at a terrible cost of life ; his slow advance may be traced by the numer- ous camps and remains of roads through Strathearn to Forfar, where is the great camp now called Battledykes, and so forward through 1 Whose true name was Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. 26 SEVERUS IN CALEDONIA the counties of Kincardine and Aberdeen till, still in his invalid's litter, he reached the Moray Firth, and, believing that he had come to the Caledonian Land's End, " he took observation of the parallax and the length of day and night." Severus had now reached the northernmost limit ever touched by Roman arms, if we except the nominal annexation of the Orkneys by Agricola's fleet in the circumnavigation of A.D. 86. He had fought no pitched battles in his advance,^ but he had lost very many lives by ambuscades, disease and accident. Xiphiline puts the death casualties at the incredible number of 50,000, and declares that when men fell out on the march their comrades put them to death to save them from falling alive into the hands of the Barbarians. Neverthe- less, Severus had so thoroughly overawed the Caledonians by his drastic measures of forest clearance and road-making that he was able to exact a treaty from them, under which they ■^ Orosius, indeed, states that Severus fought many severe actions in this campaign ; but he was writing 200 years after these events, and gives the length of the wall as 132 Roman miles (equal to about 122 English miles), which is equally inconsistent with the dimensions of either wall. 27 CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND ceded some territory, probably the district between the Tay and the Forth. We have the statement of five Roman chroniclers — Aurelius Victor, Eutropius, Orosius, Eusebius and Spartianus — that he built a wall across Britain. Spartianus says that this was done after he had returned (from the north) to the nearest station [quum ad proximam mansionem redirei)^ not only victorious, but having estab- lished perpetual peace. The late Dr. Skene entertained little doubt that the extent of the province continued as I have indicated, namely, all south of Antonine's Wall, and he cites in confirmation the discovery at Cramond, the proxima mansio — the station nearest to that wall — of a coin of Severus inscribed fvndator pacis : but Dr. George MacDonald has pointed out that there is not a word in any of the Roman writers to indicate which wall it was that Severus repaired or reconstructed, and that it is possible that the Meatae, described as living next the Cale- donians on the south, occupied the region, not between the Forth and Tay, as Skene believed, but Clydesdale, Ettrick Forest and the Lammer- muirs. Moreover, the title Fundator Pacis 28 THE EMPEROR SEVERUS probably had nothing to do with the settle- ment arrived at with Caledonians and Meatae, but referred to the overthrow of the two rival emperors, Pescennius and Albinus. I am afraid we must leave it at that, for there is no infor- mation to support anything more solid than conjecture in this matter. The "perpetual peace" described by Spar- tian, writing at least seventy years later, did not last more than a few months ; for no sooner had Severus returned to York, leaving his undutiful son Caracalla in command on the wall, than the Caledonians took to raiding the territory they had been forced to cede. The emperor at once prepared for a fresh campaign against them, but while he was mus- tering his army at York, this fine old soldier died on 4th February, a.d. 211, aged 65. For nearly a century after the death of Severus there is a complete absence of mention of the affairs of North Britain. Severus's son, the brutal Caracalla, who had attempted his father's life in Caledonia, and who succeeded afterwards in murdering his brother Geta, became emperor, patched up a peace with the Caledonians, and departed for the Continent, 29 CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND never to return. This break in the chronicle may be accounted for by the severance of the British provinces under the usurping rebels Carausius and AUectus, both of whom assumed the purple, from the rest of the empire under Maximian, legitimate colleague of Diocletian. The Roman Empire had become unwieldy, its central authority uncertain and intermit- tent. Carausius, and his murderer AUectus, being both probably of British blood, maintained their authority by enlisting the natives of Britain in their armies, and appear to have managed to keep the Caledonians in good humour ; but after the Emperor Constantius Chlorus had invaded Britain and put an end to the independent rule of these usurpers by defeating and killing AUectus in a.d. 296, the old trouble broke out again, and in A.D. 306 Constantius had to invade Cale- donia in order to drive back the northern tribes whom Eumenius describes as " Caledonians and other Picts," ^ This, then, is the first mention of any in- habitants of North Britain under the name of Picts, and we shall hear plenty about their ^ Eumenius y c. vii. 30 AMMIANUS MARCELLINUS legendary origin when we come to examine the Irish, Welsh and Scottish chronicles. For our present purpose, which is to collect what information can be had from Roman writers about events in North Britain, it is enough to note that, after the name of Pict first occurs in the chronicle of Eumenius in A.D. 296, there is no further mention of these northern tribes for more than fifty years, until the narrative is reopened by Ammianus Mar- cellinus. This distinguished man was a Greek by birth and saw much active service in the east under the Emperors Constantius II. and Julian the Apostate. Returning to Rome he under- took to write a history of the empire, which he accomplished in thirty-one books, whereof the first thirteen are lost. Fortunately the remaining eighteen cover the period from A.D. 354 to 378, when the author was alive. His chronicle is of special value as having been written by an experienced soldier. It may be remembered that when Constantine the Great died in a.d. 337 the empire was divided between his three sons — Constantinus II., Constans and Constantius II. 31 CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND Britain fell to the share of Constantine II. : when he was killed in a.d. 340, Constans, as Emperor of the West, became ruler of Britain, and we know from an allusion in one of the surviving books of Ammianus that Constans had to go over to Britain in order to repel the incursions of the Barbarians. He says that he had recorded that campaign in one of the books which have perished.^ Constans was murdered a.d. 350, when the whole empire became once more united under Constantius II. It is apparent that Constans brought the Picts to terms, because Ammianus tells us that in A.D. 360 the fierce nations of the Scots and Picts had broken the peace he had concluded with them, had plundered the districts near the wall, and that the people of the province were greatly alarmed, being worn out by these incessant raids. He says that Constantius, who was wintering in Paris, had too many cares upon his shoulders to allow him to go to Britain in person, but he sent a general named Lupicinus. This is the first appearance of the Scots upon the scene of history, but they only con- 1 Ammianus Marcellinus, xx. i. 32 CAMPAIGN OF LUPICINUS cern us here because they were acting, if not in concert, at all events simultaneously with the Picts. They came from Ireland, and it is believed that in these years their attack was directed upon the Welsh coast, while the independent tribes of the north, now col- lectively known as Picts, overran the province as far, at least, as the Wall of Hadrian. Lupicinus was powerless to dislodge them. For four years they held their ground until, in A.D. 364, Ammianus Marcellinus records that two fresh bands of invaders appeared on the scene, attracted by the waning imperial power, to ravage what had become one of the richest provinces of Rome.^ These were the Saxons, who effected landings on the southern and eastern shores of Britain, and a people called Atecotts, whom Sir John Rhys concludes to have been the inhabitants of Galloway, formerly tributary to Rome.'' The whole of Britain, north and south, now seeming to be at the ^ Ammianus Marcellinus, xxvi. 4. 2 The prefix " A " in the name " Atecotti " suggests the Gaelic prefix ua, signifying a family or sept. This prefix in Irish names is rendered O by English writers, as in O'Gorman, O'Neill, etc. ; but in Galloway surnames it appears as A, as in Adair, Achanna (now Hannay), etc. c 33 CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND mercy of these four bodies of invaders, Valen- tinian. Emperor of the West, resolved upon vigorous measures, and in a.d. 369 commis- sioned his most illustrious general, Theodosius the Elder, to restore order. Landing at Rich- borough in Kent, he found London was in the hands of the Barbarians, marched upon it, and drove them out in a campaign whereof his panegyrist Claudian gives a vivid but very brief summary. He records how the Picts, whom Ammianus states to have consisted of two main bodies, Dicaledones and Vecturiones, were subdued and Thule was imbrued with their blood ; the Scots were driven back to Ireland at the point of the sword, while the Orkneys were drenched with Saxon gore.^ The Ate- cotts were enrolled in the Roman army, four cohorts of them being named in the official Notitia^ compiled shortly after, as being sta- tioned in Gaul.^ The province, thus restored, was renamed Valentia in honour of the Emperor Valentinian and his brother Valens, Emperor of the East. ^ Z)^/^r//o