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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
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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<ro»/a/. lines 54-56. De quarto consul. Hon. Aug. lines 30-34.
2 In a well-known passage S. Jerome mentions that, as a young
man, he saw these Atecotts in Gaul, and that they were reported
to be cannibals in their own country.
34
THEODOSIUS THE ELDER
In this campaign of Theodosius we have
probably the last successful attempt to re-
establish the imperial authority in the district
between the walls. Claudian not only alludes
to fighting and slaughter in Thule, that is, the
extreme north of the island,^ but he describes
Theodosius as establishing forts amid the frosts
of Caledonia.^ These forts were probably those
on Antonine's Wall. It may be that a lauda-
tory poem is not the surest kind of historic
evidence ; but Claudian's statement is indirectly
confirmed by Ammianus, who says that
Theodosius, "after recovering the province
which he had surrendered into the keeping of
the enemy, restored it to its former con-
dition.''3
These vigorous measures proved of very
transient effect. Theodosius cleared the pro-
vince of Pictish and Scottish hordes ; but the
work was no sooner accomplished than the
legions had to be withdrawn to protect Rome
^ Thule is probably the latinised form of tuathaily meaning
"north" in Gaelic.
2 " Ille Caledoniis posuit qui castra pruinis." De quarto consul.
1. 26.
8 Ammianus Marcellinus, xxviii. c. 3.
35
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
against the gathering Goths and Vandals.
Those troops that were left to garrison Britain
revolted and elected their general, Clemens
Maximus, as emperor in a.d. 383. Prosperus
Aquitanus states that the first task of Clemens
was to repel a fresh invasion of Picts and Scots
in A.D. 384.
Probably if Clemens had been content v^ith
insular dominion the Roman government would
have been powerless to disturb him, so urgent
were the calls upon its energy and resources
upon the Danubian frontier of the empire.
Then might the whole history of these
islands have run in a far different channel to
that which it has taken, had not Clemens
Maximus aspired to continental dominion and
invaded Gaul. Here he encountered and killed
the Emperor Gratian, and, four years later,
invaded Italy, ending his days at the battle of
Aquileia in a.d. 388, where he was defeated
and slain by the Emperor Theodosius.
The British province having been drained of
fighting men to support the continental enter-
prise of Clemens, the Picts and Scots resumed
their old game of marauding and piracy, until
at length the Britons of the province induced
36
EXPEDITIONS SENT BY STILICHO
Stilicho, the guardian and powerful minister of
the puppet emperor Honorius, to send a legion
to their relief in a.d. 396. But with this and
subsequent spasmodic attempts to maintain the
imperial power in Britain, our only concern
consists in the part that our native Picts and
Atecotts bore with the Irish, Scots and Saxons
in putting an end to Roman rule in what is
now England, as they had already done in
what is now Scotland.
It is true that Dr. Skene assumes that on
this occasion, and again in a.d. 406, when
Stilicho a second time sent a strong army to
relieve the Roman Britons, that " the Province
was protected in its full extent to the frontier
of the firths of Forth and Clyde ";^ but I
venture to think he does so upon little or no
evidence. Anyhow, there is no extant descrip-
tion of the condition of the country between
the walls at this time. The Atecotts whom
Stilicho enrolled under the eagles in 396, as
Theodosius had done in 369, are described by
Orosius as " Barbarians previously admitted to
alliance " or treaty.
There is, however, one event coincident, or
^ Celtic Scotland, i. 107,
37
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
nearly so, with the expedition sent by Stilicho
in 396 which suggests an endeavour on the
part of that great minister to reclaim the
northern province to civilisation by other
means than force of arms. There is no direct
evidence to support the conjecture that the
mission of Ninian to the Picts of Galloway
was undertaken at the instance of the Roman
government. But there are certain circum-
stances tending to give rise to such conjecture.
Assuming the Atecotts to be the same as the
Picts of Galloway, they were, according to
Orosius, intermittently in alliance with or
subject to Rome. Julian the Apostate had
been dead for thirty-three years : Christianity
had been restored as the recognised religion
of Rome ; it is not improbable, therefore, that
in sending Ninian as bishop missionary to the
Picts of Galloway in or about the year 396
Pope Siricius may have been acting at the
request, or at all events with the approval,
of the Minister Stilicho, who would recog-
nise in Christianity a possible means of weaning
these truculent Atecotts from their objection-
able practices.
However, having thrown out this sugges-
38
BISHOP NINIAN IN GALLOWAY
tion, I had better not say any more, for if a
man once embarks upon the ocean of specula-
tion, there is no saying to what shores of error
he may drift on the uncharted currents of
conjecture. We part here with the dim and
intermittent light thrown by Roman annalists
upon the early history of our country. In
my next lecture I shall endeavour to deal with
more sympathetic writers of our own race.
39
II.
A.D. 400—730.
11.
A.D. 400—730.
Vague and unsatisfying as are the references
to events in northern Britain by all classical
writers except Tacitus, the final withdrawal of
the Roman legions from the province in 410
deprives us even of that uncertain light. For
a century and a half to come the darkness is
profound : there is no contemporary witness
north of the wall to explain to us what went
on when Pict and Scot and Briton were left
free to fight it out among themselves, or to
combine against the common danger from
Angle and Saxon encroachment, as it may be
supposed they must have done ; for by the
end of the sixth century these Teutonic rovers
had possessed themselves in ever-increasing
force of the best lands between the Firth of
Forth and the Straits of Dover. How com-
pletely Britain, and especially northern Britain,
43
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
was shut out from the general political move-
ment of Europe, appears from a singular passage
in the Histories of Procopius, an Eastern writer
of the sixth century :
" In this isle of Britain men of old time built a
long wall, dividing oif a great part of it ; for the
land, the men and all other things are not the same
on both sides. On the eastern (southern) side of
the wall the air is wholesome, according to the
seasons, moderately warm in summer and cool in
winter. Many men live there, much in the manner
of other people. The trees with their special fruits
flourish in season, their cornlands are as productive
as others and the land seems to be sufficiently ferti-
lised by streams. But on the western (northern) side
all is different, so much so that it would not be
possible for a man to live there for half-an-hour.^
Vipers and serpents innumerable, with all other kinds
of wild beasts, infest that region, and, what is most
strange, the natives declare that if any one cross the
wall to the other side, he would die immediately,
overpowered by the poisonous air. Death, also,
causes such cattle as go there to perish. Now as I
have come to this part of my history, 1 am obliged to
record a tradition very much of the nature of fable,
which has never seemed to me to be authentic,
^ Procopius was misled by the dislocation of Ptolemy's chart,
which shows Scotland turned eastward at a right angle to England,
so that the Mull of Galloway forms the northern and Cape Wrath
the eastern extremity of the island of Britain.
44
ABSENCE OF RECORDS
though constantly circulated by innumerable men,
who declare that they have themselves taken part in
these doings, as well as having heard the story. I
must not, however, omit to notice it, lest when thus
writing about the island of Britain, I should incur an
imputation of ignorance of certain circumstances con-
tinually taking place there. They say, then, that the
souls of men departed are always conducted to this
place." ^
It is true that Ninian, evangelist to the
Picts of Galloway, began his mission before the
Roman occupation ceased and continued his
labours in North Britain until his death about
A.D. 432. We know that his life was written
in the Anglo-Saxon vernacular and we may
imagine that it contained a good deal of infor-
mation upon the course of events and upon
social life in the fifth century. Unhappily it
has perished. Gildas, beginning his ecclesi-
astical chronicle about the middle of the sixth
century, never saw it. " I shall not follow,"
he says, " the writings and records of my own
country, which, if ever there were any of them^
have been consumed in the fires of the enemy
or have been carried by my exiled countrymen
into distant lands." Nevertheless, though
^ Bellum Got/ticum, iv. 20.
45
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
unknown to Gildas, Ninian's life survived at
all events until the twelfth century, when it
came into the hands of Ailred, Abbot of
Rievaulx, who undertook to translate it at the
instance of Bishop Christian of Whithorn.
Would that he had been content with the
duties of translator : he must needs act as an
ambitious editor also, and it is difficult to read
without impatience the pious abbot's explana-
tion to Bishop Christian of the manner he
treated the original manuscript, which may
have been five or six hundred years old when
he got hold of it.^
" Those who, because of the barbarism of their
native land, lacked the faculty of speaking gracefully
and elegantly, did not defraud posterity of an account
of persons worthy of imitation, albeit they did so in
homely terms. Hence it came to pass that the life
of the most holy Ninian was obscured by a barbarous
language, neither agreeable nor edifying to the reader.
Accordingly it pleased thy holy affection to impose
upon mine insignificance the task of rescuing from a
rustic style, as from darkness, and of bringing forth
into the clear light of Latin diction the life of this
most illustrious man, a life which had been told by
1 The MS. of Ailred's work in the British Museum is entitled :
Incipit vita Sancti Niniani epi et confemrU ab Aelredo Rieualknse
Abbate de Anglico in Latinu tnslata.
46
AILRED'S LIFE OF NINIAN
my predecessors, faithfully indeed, but in too bar-
barous a style. I embrace thy devotion, I approve
thy design, I praise thy zeal, but 1 am conscious of
my own want of skill, and I fear to strip it of the
coarse garments which have hidden it hitherto, lest I
fail to array it in more comely attire. ... In under-
taking the burden thou hast laid upon me, I will
endeavour, by the help of Him who maketh infants
eloquent, so to temper my style that neither offensive
rusticity shall obscure so high a matter nor a mis-
chievous elaboration of phrase deprive those of the
result of my labour who are uninstructed in ornate
rhetoric."
What price would we not now willingly
pay for the privilege of perusing the original
before Abbot Ailred had purged it of its
precious local colour and turned it into a mere
farrago of myth and miracle, whence but one
single grain of historical fact can be extracted,
namely, the date of Ninian's mission to the
Galloway Picts. It is herein recorded that,
having landed at Whithorn with masons
brought from the Continent, he built the first
church of stone that had been seen in Britain,
and, hearing of the death of his beloved patron.
Bishop Martin of Tours, he dedicated the
building to his memory. Now Martin's death
has been fixed between a.d. 397 and 400,
47
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
which accordingly marks the first advent of
the gospel to northern Britain.
With the gospel came the monastic system,
which was probably first established in these
islands by S. Patrick in his beehive huts at
Ardmacha, now Armagh, about simultaneously
with Ninian's mission to Galloway. Even in
this daybreak of letters, the head of every
monastery seems to have recognised and
accepted the duty of keeping some sort of
annals of the country in which it was founded,
or, at all events, of writing the lives of brethren
who attained special sanctity. The number
of religious houses founded between the sixth
and thirteenth centuries was enormous. In
1207 Gervase of Canterbury enumerates 22 in
Lothian and the earldom of Fife alone. Each
of these monasteries appointed a historio-
grapher ; the later monasteries borrowed and
copied from the annals of the older ones ; and,
as every annalist conceived it to be his duty
to start his chronicle with the Creation there
was, of course, an immense amount of repeti-
tion. Such, at least, we may conceive to have
been the origin of the monkish chronicles,
which are all that we have to rely on for
48
MONASTIC HISTORIOGRAPHERS
knowledge of the early history of our country.
They are fragmentary, they are often tedious,
and they are never impartial ; most of these
monkish writers had their own " axes to grind "
— theological or political ; it is rare, indeed,
to meet among them the convincing simplicity
of Adamnan or the broad-minded impartiality
of Bede. It is hard to sift out fragments of
genuine history from the matrix of myth and
miracle wherein they lie imbedded. Yet we
should be grateful for the industry of the com-
pilers, without which we should be destitute
of any contemporary testimony whatever.
Of events in the sixth century we receive
information almost at first hand from a Scottish
writer dwelling in what is now called Scotland.
Scotia and Scots were names still, and for long
after this period, applicable only to Ireland
and its people, including those Irish emigrants,
the Scots of Ulster, who effected a settlement
in Argyll, being already Christians, and who
were destined to engraft the name of Scotland
upon the country of their adoption. Before
going further, I must pause to notice a seri-
ous discrepancy between what are reputed
the oldest authorities for this settlement, a
D 49
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
discrepancy which, so far as I know, has
escaped the attention of historians and critics.
All accounts agree that Fergus Mor, the son of
Ere, led the first band of Scots to settle in Alba.
The Synchronisms of Flann Mainistrach, com-
piled early in the eleventh century, fix the
date as twenty years after the battle of Ocha,
which, it is well known, was fought in Ireland
in 478. According to this authority, Fergus
landed in Alba in 498, and his death is recorded
by Tighernach in 501. Compare with this a
passage in the Tripartite Life of S, Patrick
compiled by Colgan, probably in the tenth
century, from three Irish MSS. which have since
perished. This passage was quoted by the late
Dr. Skene in his Chronicles of the Picts and Scots
[p. xxx] as probably the earliest authentic notice
of the Dalriadic colony. It runs as follows :
" Patrick received welcome in that territory from
the twelve sons of Ere ; and Fergus mor, son of
Ere, said to Patrick : ' If thy reverence would
influence my brother in dividing the land, I would
give it to thee.' And Patrick granted this division
to Bishop Olcan in Airthermuighe. Patrick said
to Fergus : * Though thy land is not great at this
day among thy brothers, it is thou who shalt be
king. From thee shall descend the kings of this
50
ADAMNAN*S LIFE OF COLUMBA
territory for ever, and in Fortrenn.' And this was
fulfilled in Aedan the son of Gabran who took Alba
by force."
Now S. Patrick died in 463 at the age of
ninety, thirty-five years before the annalists
state that Fergus emigrated from Ulster. It
appears, therefore, that the passage in the
Tripartite Life is worthless, or at least worthy
of no more attention than the statement in the
Breviary of Aberdeen that S. Patrick restored
forty persons from death to life and ascended
himself to heaven at the age of 120.
In the sixth century Scotia (or, as we may
by anticipation call it, Ireland, to avoid con-
fusion) was the source and scene of extra-
ordinary missionary activity, and among the
many evangelists who went forth from that
island to convert the Picts, the British and
the Saxon peoples of Northern Britain, was
the priest Columba, whose fiery spirit had
brought him into conflict with the clergy of
Meath, resulting in his excommunication and
exile. He took refuge among his compatriots
in Argyll, and, having gained the favour of
King Conall, received from him the island of
Hy in the year 563, where he founded the
51
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
famous abbey.^ His biography has come
down to our times just as it left the hands
of his kinsman Adamnan, likewise a Scot of
Ulster. The narrative is not exactly contem-
porary, for Columba died in 597, about thirty
years before Adamnan was born ; but Adamnan
states that he received oral information from
persons who had known Columba : he had
before him the contemporary memoir written
by Comyn the Fair, who succeeded as seventh
Abbot of lona ; above all, Adamnan spent all
his life in the scene which Columba had so
recently quitted, becoming himself ninth abbot
in succession to Columba. So well did he
apply these advantages that his work received
from Pinkerton the high encomium of being
" the most complete piece of such biography
that all Europe can boast of, not only at so
early a period, but throughout the whole of
the middle ages." If Columba was fortunate
in his biographer, Adamnan has been not less
so in his editor, the late Dr. Reeves, who
prepared the life for publication by the Irish
Archaeological Society and the Bannatyne Club
in 1856, and a fresh arrangement of the same
1 Annals of Ulster, a.d. 573 ; Annals ofClonmacnoise, a.d. 569.
52
CONVERSION OF THE PAGAN PICTS
edition was published in the series of the
Historians of Scotland in 1874. Enriched by
the copious notes of Dr. Reeves, this volume
is a perfect mine of information upon the
monastic life of the period — the dress, the
offices, the manual industries of the monks.
At the time of Columba's arrival in the
Western Isles the dominion of King Conall
had extended far beyond the bounds of the
original Scottish settlement ; but the pagan
Picts still occupied the greater part of the
Highlands. It was to their conversion that
Columba applied himself from the first, and
his fame is derived chiefly from the signal
success which he achieved. His interview
with the Pictish King Brude in the stronghold
now called Craig Phadraig, a couple of miles
south of Inverness, and the competition in
which he proved himself to be a stronger
magician than King Brude's chief Druid
Broichean, reminds one of Elijah's triumph
over the priests of Baal on Mount Carmel.
Diplomatically, this mission had lasting results.
King Brude the Pict had been a dangerous
neighbour and rival of King Conall the Scot.
After Brude and his people had accepted
53
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
baptism, Brude confirmed Columba in the
possession of lona, and the ultimate union of
the Scottish and Pictish realms was brought
somewhat nearer.
The reader's patience is tried in perusing
this life by the writer's inveterate hankering
after the marvellous. A supernatural gloss is
applied to the most ordinary incidents in order
to establish the prophetic and miraculous
powers of Columba and the singular efficacy
of his prayers. Of this habit, universal in
monkish chronicles, of attributing the most
ordinary phenomena to Divine interposition,
the following may serve as an example :
"It came to pass on one occasion that a certain
brother speaking with simplicity in the presence of
the venerable and holy man, said to him — ' After thy
death all the people of these provinces will row across
to the island of Hy to celebrate thine obsequies, and
will entirely fill it.' — * Nay, my son,' replied the saint,
* what thou sayest will not come to pass, for a pro-
miscuous throng of people will by no means be able
to come to my funeral. None but the monks of my
monastery shall attend my obsequies and perform the
last sacred rites.' Which prophetic utterance was
fulfilled immediately after his death by God's omnipo-
tence ; for there arose a storm of wind without rain,
which blew so violently during those three days and
54
lONA A * GHOST NAME'
nights of his obsequies as to make it utterly impossible
for any one to cross the sound in a small boat. And
immediately after the burial was finished the storm
was quelled, the wind fell and the whole sea became
calm."^
Notwithstanding this wearisome insistence
upon and iteration of miraculous incident,
many glimpses are permitted of genuine adven-
ture, of social habits and of the peaceful industry
of a monastic community at a period before
the Church had become ambitious, or at least
before it became worldly — before it became
" rich, and increased with goods, and had need
of nothing."
In connection with Adamnan's narrative, it
may be noted that it has been the cause of
conferring a new name upon the scene of the
saint's life and death. The native name of
the island being I or Hy, Adamnan, writing in
Latin, gave it an adjectival form, and referred
to the island as loua insula — the louan island.
In transcription the vowel u was rendered as the
consonant ;;, which gave birth to what philolo-
gists term a " ghost name " — that is, lona.
While Columba was labouring as a mission-
^ Vita Columba, iii. 24.
55
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
ary among the Picts of the North, his contem-
porary Kentigern was converting the Britons
or Welsh of Strathclyde. Contemporary lives
of Kentigern have been submitted to the same
drastic and destructive ordeal as has been men-
tioned as being applied to the life of Ninian.
Towards the end of the twelfth century,
Jocelyn, a monk of Furness, undertook to
compile a new biography from two manu-
scripts before him. In a prologue dedicating
his work to another Jocelyn, Bishop of Glas-
gow, he refers to the life which " thy church
useth " as being
" marred by a rude language and obscured by an
inelegant style, and what beyond all these things any
prudent person would abhor still more, at the very
outset of the narrative there appears very plainly
something contrary to sound doctrine and the
Catholic faith. But," he continues, " I have found
another little volume written in the Scotic dialect"
[that is, in Gaelic] " teeming from end to end with
solecisms, but containing at greater length the life
and acts of the holy bishop. I confess that I was
grieved and indignant that the life of so priceless
a prelate . . . should be tainted with heretical
passages or made exceedingly obscure by barbarous
language ; wherefore I determined to recast the
matter collected out of each book and, at thy com-
56
JOCELYN OF FURNESS
mand to season the barbarous composition with
Roman salt. I deem it unseemly that so precious a
treasure should be wrapped in vile rags, wherefore I
have endeavoured to clothe it, if not in gold tissue
and silk, at least in clean linen/*
The deadly heresy herein referred to with
such abhorrence was of course the matter
which, though it appears trivial enough to
modern churchmen, threatened in the sixth
century to cause a permanent schism in the
Church, namely, the date for celebrating Easter
and the frontal tonsure of priests as enjoined
by the Church of Ireland, opposed to the date
of Easter and the coronal tonsure prescribed by
the Church of Rome.
Despite the emendation of the originals
attempted by the pious monk of Furness, the
narrative does not appear to have suffered as
much under his hands as Ninian's life did
under Ailred's. The Abbot of Rievaulx had
a literary reputation to maintain : Jocelyn of
Furness laboured under no such disability, and
we owe to him and the author of the original,
information not to be found elsewhere about
certain events in the separate kingdom of
Strathclyde, which may be taken as authentic,
57
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
seeing that statements relating to contemporary
events in Wales proper correspond with what
is known to have taken place there.
At the time of Kentigern's coming the
region of Strathclyde, extending from the
Clyde and Forth southwards to the river
Derwent, but not including the Lothians or
Galloway, appears to have comprised a num-
ber of provinces, each ruled by a so-called
king. It was inhabited by people of the
Brythonic, Cymric or Welsh branch of the
Celtic race, but the term Cumbria or Cumbra-
land was never applied to it until the tenth
century. It was always referred to as Strath-
clyde, and its people were known as Britons.
Of this district Ninian probably had touched
no more than the fringe ; and even so, the
faith which he planted had withered away
before Kentigern came to revive it about the
year 540. Some of the kinglets and their
people still professed Christianity, or, at least,
were ready to resume it : others were still
pagans. Arriving at Cathures, now called
Glasgow, Kentigern discovered a cemetery
which had been consecrated by Ninian more
than one hundred years before. Here he built
58
MEETING OF COLUMBA AND KENTIGERN
his cell on the banks of the Molendinar Burn,
and soon made himself such a reputation for
sanctity that the king of that district brought
over a bishop from Ireland to consecrate
Kentigern bishop over the whole of his king-
dom. It is specially mentioned that the
Christians at that time were few in number ;
but it may be assumed that Kentigern suc-
ceeded in bringing many into the fold during
the lifetime of the friendly king. But when
that king died, quidam tyr annus vocabulo Morken
succeeded, and so persecuted Kentigern that
he was obliged to take refuge in Wales, where
he founded the monastery of St. Asaph's.^
There he remained for many years, returning
in 573 on the summons of Rydderch Hael,
the Christian champion, who had just over- -
thrown the pagan Gwenddolew at the battle
of Arthuret, near Carlisle, and established
himself at Dunbarton as king of the united
realm of Strathclyde.
One of the most interesting episodes recorded
in this work is the visit paid by Columba to
^ Vita Kentigerni, cap. xxi., xxii., xxiii. Morken is named
Morcant Bulg in the Welsh MSB. Cf. Skene's Four Ancient
Books of Wales, i. pp. i68, 175.
59
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
Kentigern in Glasgow. He came, we are told,
with a great company of his disciples, whom
he divided into three bands. The meeting of
these two great lights of the early Church took
place on the banks of the Molendinar Burn,
where Kentigern had his residence, and after
" having first satiated themselves with a
spiritual banquet of divine words, they then
refreshed themselves with bodily food." While
these holy men were thus occupied, we are
given a fine glimpse of Celtic human nature.
Some of Columba's numerous " disciples,'*
beholding Kentigern's flocks on the rich pas-
ture-land, yielded to their inborn instinct of
sheep-stealing, for, as the chronicler observes,
" as the Ethiopian cannot change his skin, so
the man that is bred to theft and rapine findeth
it hard to alter his evil ways." An affray took
place between these lawless islesmen and the
shepherds, followed, of course, by a miracle,
which, observes the writer, " seemeth to me
in the main not inferior to that which the
book of Genesis records to have been wrought
upon Lot's wife." Observe the fine spirit of
emulation in the scribe, who is determined
not to be outdone by the Pentateuch in record-
60
S. KENTIGERN'S RAM
ing the marvellous. One of the rascals had
killed a ram and cut off its head. The ram,
however, galloped off to join the flock, leaving
its head, turned to stone, firmly fixed in the
hands of the sheep-lifter. Do as he w^ould,
the w^retch could not rid himself of it. Terror-
stricken, he and his accomplices betook them-
selves to Kentigern's cell, fell on their knees
and confessed their misdeeds. He lectured
them soundly before pronouncing absolution :
no sooner was that done than the stone head
fell to the ground; and there, declares the
chronicler, " it remaineth to this day as a
witness to the miracle, and, being mute, yet
preacheth the merit of holy Kentigern."^
By means of these three biographies —
Ailred's Life of Ninian^ Adamnan's Life of
Columba and Jocelyn's Life of Kentigern — we
arrive at a tolerably clear understanding of the
process by which the Christian religion became
predominant in North Britain. Ninian came
direct from Rome, but the success which
crowned his mission was transient, the Picts
of Galloway having relapsed into paganism
after his personal influence ceased with his
'^Vita Kenttgerni, cap. xl.
6i
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
death about 430. Seventy years later, Fergus
Mor and his Scottish colonists, settling in
Argyll, brought with them the Christian
religion from Ireland, and it was from Ireland
that the clergy of Alba or Scotland continued
to be recruited long after Columba effected
the conversion of King Brude and the Northern
Picts. But it required stimulus from another
source to establish the religion of the Cross
among the Britons of Strathclyde. It was
from their kindred in Wales that Kentigern
received the support that enabled him to
retrieve his discomfiture at the hands of the
tyrant Morken or Morcant. Christianity had
been brought to Wales by Scots invaders or
colonists from Ireland, and there it took root
and flourished as vigorously as in Ireland
itself. It was Wales that sent forth the
Christian champion Rydderch Hael, who
overthrew the forces of Paganism at Arthuret
and consolidated the petty principalities of
Strathclyde into one powerful little kingdom.
We are not behind other countries in honour-
ing the memory of our national heroes, yet
how few of us have ever paid a tribute of
respectful interest to that great stone which
62
RYDDERCH HAEL
reclines mute, yet eloquent, on the green hill-
side to the north of Lochwinnoch. Tradition
has been faithful in preserving its significance,
for it is still called Cloriddreck — the tomb of
Rydderch Hael, whose victories completed the
conversion of our country to Christianity.
Yet not of quite the whole of our country,
only the Celtic districts. Besides the Scottish
kingdom of Dalriada in the west, the Pictish
kingdom of Alba or Caledonia in the north
and the British kingdom of Strathclyde in the
south, a fourth power had established itself in
the east, namely, the Saxon king of North-
umbria. For the manner in which the Teutonic
race first obtained a footing in Britain we rely
chiefly on the authority of three writers :
namely, ist, Gildas, a Welsh monk, who was
born about a.d. 520 and died about 570 ;
2nd, Baeda, commonly known as the Vener-
able Bede, priest and Benedictine monk of
Jarrow, who was born in 673 and died in
735 ; and, 3rd, Welsh Nennius, reputed author
of the Historia Britonum^ probably compiled
during the closing years of the eighth century.
It will be seen from these dates that Gildas
was the only one of the three writers capable
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
of giving evidence at first hand about events
in the sixth century — the century of Columba
and Kentigern, so momentous in the history
of northern Britain.
And a gloomy chronicle it is.
" Alas ! " says he at the outset, " the subject of
my complaint is the general destruction of every-
thing that is good, and the general growth of evil
throughout the land. ... It is my purpose to relate
the deeds of an indolent and slothful race [namely,
his own countrymen, the Britons] rather than the
exploits of those who have been valiant in the field."
His narrative, which Bede refers to as
sermo jiebilis — a tearful treatise — deals with
the dark period following the departure of
the Romans. He has no good word for any
nation or party ; he denounces the cowardice
of the Britons, his countrymen, quite as harshly
as the cruelty and rapacity of the marauding
Picts and Scots.
" No sooner were the Romans gone," says he,
** than the Picts and Scots, like snakes which in the
heat of mid-day come forth from their holes, hastily
land again from their canoes . . . differing from one
another in manners, but inspired with the same
avidity for blood, and all more eager to shroud their
villanous faces in bushy hair than to cover with decent
64
CHRONICLE OF GILDAS
clothing those parts of their body which required it.
Moreover, having heard of the departure of our
friends [the Romans] and their resolution never to
return, they seized with greater boldness than before
on all the country far to the north as far as the wall.
To oppose them there was placed on the heights a
garrison equally slow to fight and ill-fitted to flee —
a useless and panic-stricken body of men, who
slumbered away days and nights on their unprofitable
watch. The hooked weapons of the enemy were
not idle, dragging our wretched countrymen from
the wall and dashing them to the ground." ^
Then, after roundly abusing his countrymen
for not defending themselves more manfully
against the Picts and Scots, he launches into
fresh invective against the " haughty tyrant "
(he will not sully his page by the name
Vortigern, although in two copies of his
manuscript the omission is supplied) for his
folly in craving help from the Saxons, " a race
hateful to both God and man." Gildas can
only be reckoned an important historian in
the absence of any more capable contemporary
writer. It is from his dismal pages that we
learn how the Saxons first became a power in
our land.
Of far higher quality are the works of Bede,
' Gildas, cap. xix.
E 65
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
the monk of Jarrow. He commands confi-
dence at once by singular impartiality, a
quality most rare in the writings of clerics
of the early Church. As an example of the
same I will take leave to quote his eulogy
upon Bishop Aidan, in which he does not
disguise the abhorrence he feels professionally
for Aidan's adherence to the Celtic observance
of Easter and the coronal tonsure.
** I have written thus much concerning the person
and works of the aforesaid Aidan, in no way com-
mending or approving what he imperfectly under-
stood about the observance of Easter : nay, very
heartily detesting the same . . . but, as an impartial
chronicler, stating what he did, commending what
was praiseworthy in his conduct and preserving the
memory thereof for the benefit of my readers — to
wit — his love of peace and charity; his continence
and humility ; his character too lofty for anger or
avarice ; his contempt for pride and vainglory ; his
diligence in keeping and teaching the divine com-
mandments ; his industry in reading and in vigils ;
his authority in reproving the haughty and powerful
(as beseemed a priest) and at the same time his
tenderness in comforting the afflicted and in relieving
or defending the poor . . . These things I much love
and admire in the aforesaid bishop, . . . but I do not
praise or approve his not observing Easter at the
66
CHRONICLE OF BEDE
proper time . . . Yet this I approve of in him, that,
in celebrating Easter, his sole object in all he said,
did or preached was the same as ours, to wit,
the redemption of mankind through the passion,
resurrection and ascension of the man Jesus Christ,
the Mediator."!
It is not every ecclesiastic who is able to
w^rite so charitably of one who has differed
with him upon doctrine held to be essential,
and the temper which enabled Bede to do so
is good warrant for his fidelity as a guide
through the labyrinth of these dark centuries.
Both Bede and Nennius largely availed
themselves of the narrative of Gildas, supple-
mented, no doubt, by other writings which
have not come down to our time, for such
part of their chronicles as were not contem-
porary with themselves. From such writings
they must have derived much information
not contained in Gildas*s chronicle, such as the
description of how the Saxons first arrived
in three long ships, were granted some terri-
tory by King Vortigern, and then, perceiving
the fertility of the country and the cowardice
of the Britons, they sent for reinforcements,
^EccL Hist. iii. 17.
67
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
until they became strong enough to take as
much as they wanted.
Bede specifies three Teutonic nations com-
posing these invaders, namely, Saxons, Angles
and Jutes, and that all the men who occupied
land north of the Humber were Angles.
There is one notable discrepancy between
the chronicles of Gildas and Bede and that of
Nennius, namely, that neither of the first two
so much as mentions the name of King Arthur,
whereas Nennius is loud in his praise, describ-
ing how he led the Britons to victory in twelve
battles. Very different from this uninterrupted
success was the state of the case according to
Gildas.
" Sometimes," says he, " our countrymen, some-
times the enemy, won the field, to the end that Our
Lord might in this land try after his accustomed
manner these his Israelites whether they loved him
or not. until the year of the siege of Mons Badoni-
cus, when there took place almost the last, but not
the least, slaughter of our cruel foes, which was, I am
certain, forty-four years after the landing of the
Saxons, and also the time of my own birth." ^
Now, as Gildas asserts that the Saxons first
landed in a.d. 449 (though there is abundant
* Gildas, cap. xxvi.
68
CHRONICLE OF NENNIUS
evidence to prove that they had obtained a
footing in some parts of the island long before
this, especially in Eastern Scotland), his reckon-
ing would date the decisive battle of Mons
Badonicus, or Badon Mount, in 493 ; but
there are grounds for believing that it took
place fifteen or twenty years later. It is the
only one of the twelve battles assigned to
Arthur by Nennius, whence it may be doubted
whether the two writers were recording the
same campaign. The doubt is strengthened
by the fact that the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle^
although it duly records the coming of the
Saxons in 449, and their subsequent successes
over the Britons, makes no mention either of
Arthur or his twelve victories. Any endeavour
to distinguish between what is mythical and
what is historical in the personality of Arthur
would lead us far from our subject ; but that
there was a British and Christian champion of
that name cannot reasonably be doubted, despite
the silence of Gildas and the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle^ nor that he obtained signal success
over the Saxon invaders. It is to be noted,
however, that, loosely as the title of " king "
was applied to the chiefs of Celtic septs,
69
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
Arthur is not so designated by Nennius. On
the contrary, he draws a clear distinction be-
tween Arthur and those whom he names as
kings. After recording the death of the Saxon
Hengist, he says that his son Octa came from
" the sinistral part of the island " (whatever
that may mean) to assume the kingship of
Kent. " Then it was," says Nennius, " that
the great-hearted Arthur, with all the kings
and fighting men of Britain fought against
the Saxons. And although there were many
more noble than he, yet he was twelve times
chosen their commander, and was as often
victorious." ^ ' Ipse dux erat bellorum ' — he
was what we should term generalissimo or
commander-in-chief of the Britons.
The late Dr. Skene and Mr. Stuart Glennie
drew the reasonable inference, in which I fully
concur, that, while Gildas and the Anglo-
Saxon Chronicle described only the struggle
between Briton and Saxon south of the
Humber, an equally fierce combat was waged
in North Britain between the Britons of Strath-
clyde, led by Arthur, and the Saxons under
Ebissa, the nephew of the departed Hengist,
'^ Hhtoria Brttonum, cap. 50.
70
ARTHURIAN TOPOGRAPHY
and that the twelve victories took place after
Octa had gone south to assume the kingship
of Kent. Geoffrey of Monmouth, Bishop of
S. Asaph, in the twelfth century wrote a
history of the Kings of Britain, which he
professed to have compiled from "a very
ancient book in the British tongue " (that is,
the Welsh), lent to him by Archdeacon Walter
of Oxford. He appears to have merged the
events of the northern and southern campaigns
into one consecutive war, laying the scene of
both in the south ; and many succeeding writers
assumed that he had authority for doing so.
But Dr. Skene was of opinion that the war
described by Nennius took place in the north ;
for Nennius distinctly states that Hengist made
a deceitful treaty with Vortigern, King of the
southern Britons, offering to send for his son
Octa and his nephew Ebissa, " who," he
assured him, " were good fighters. They will
make war on the Scots, and we can give them
(that is, Octa and Ebissa) the country in the
north near the rampart called Gual," that is,
Antonine's Wall. Vortigern agreeing, Octa
and Ebissa came in forty ships, " sailed round
the country of the Picts, laid waste the
71
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
Orkneys, and took possession of much land,
even to the Pictish boundary, beyond the
Frisian Sea, which is between us and the
Scots." ^ This clearly points to invasion and
conquest in what is now Scotland. Nennius
can hardly have invented it, and although,
writing in the eighth century, he cannot be
reckoned an original authority for what hap-
pened in the fifth century, there is no reason
to doubt the assurance that he gives in his
"Apology," namely, that he had collected his
facts " from the annals of the Scots and Saxons,
and from our ancient traditions."
If it be remembered that the Britons or
Welsh were the principal population of the
ancient Roman province, extending from the
Severn to the Clyde, it is not difficult to
imagine how the incidents of the northern war
against the Saxons became confounded with
those of the southern campaign against Hengist.
I will not follow Dr. Skene in his ingenious
identification of the twelve battlefields named
by Nennius with as many places in Scotland.
Place-names are useful guides, provided too
1 Nennius' Historia Britonum, cap. 38. The words " beyond the
Frisian Sea " do not occur in all the MSS.
72
THE CAMPAIGNS OF ARTHUR
much reliance be not laid upon them, and all I
will venture to say is that Dr. Skene makes
out a strong case for the Christian leader,
Arthur, having waged his twelve battles in the
north, and not in the south, of this island, and
that the battle of Camlan, in which both
Arthur and his enemy Modred [Medraut] are
said to have perished in 573, is more likely to
have taken place at Camelon, on the Carron,
than on the river Cambula in Cornwall, where
Geoffrey of Monmouth lays the scene. ^ Sir
Thomas Malory, writing his famous version of
the Arthurian romance in the fifteenth cen-
tury, specifies the place as " upon a down
beside Salisbury, not far from the seaside,"
which it is impossible to reconcile with the
actual topography of Wiltshire, but which has
confirmed Tennyson, and almost all other
writers, in the belief that Arthur's campaigns
were waged in the south of England. It may
be no more than a coincidence, but, if so, it is
a singular one, that the building, presumably
Roman, which stood near Camelon in Stirling-
shire, was known so long ago as 1293 ^^
Furnus Arthuri, and popularly as Arthur's O'on,
1 Geoffrey's Historia Britonum, xi. 2.
73
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
till it was barbarously demolished in 1743 to
make a dam for the Carron Ironworks.
The collation of chronicles which I have
attempted brings us down to the beginning of
the seventh century, when the races inhabiting
northern Britain may be considered as having
crystallised into four kingdoms.
1. Brude, King of the Picts, converted to
Christianity by Columba, died, according to
the Irish annalist Tighernach (d. 1088), in
584, and in the year 600 Nectan was on the
Pictish throne.
2. Aidan, whom Columba had crowned
King of the Scots of Dalriada in preference to
his brother Eaganan, was still alive in 600, and
in 575 had announced to a great council at
Drumceat the independence of his kingdom
from the parent kingdom of Irish Dalriada.
3. After his victory at Arthuret in 573
Rydderch Hael established his court at Dun-
barton, and his northern kingdom of Strathclyde
or Y Gogled became independent of Wales or
Cymru proper, which fell to the share of
Maelgwn Gwynedd. Rydderch is said to have
died in 603.
4. Lastly, there was the newly-formed Saxon
74
THE FOUR KINGDOMS
kingdom of Northumbria, already exceedingly-
formidable under its warlike king, Aedilfrith,
who, says Bede, " conquered more territories
from the Britons than any other king, either
making them tributary or expelling the inhabi-
tants and replacing them with Saxons." Aedil-
frith, whom Nennius calls Flesaurs, succeeded
his father Aethelric in 593 as King of Berneich,
which is usually latinised Bernicia, a district
extending from the Tyne to the Forth, and
including the counties of Roxburgh, Selkirk,
Berwick and part, at least, of the Lothians.
But Aethelric had also annexed the land of
Deira, which included modern Yorkshire, and
was inhabited by the southern Northumbrians,
so that Aedilfrith ruled the whole eastern
country from the Humber to the Forth.
Aedilfrith and his people were still pagans,
and, being constantly recruited from the Con-
tinent, became such an aggressive power,
menacing the territory of the other three kings
of North Britain, as well as the stability of the
Christian religion therein, that Aidan, Christian
King of Dalriada, led what Bede describes as
an immense and mighty army against King
Aedilfrith in the year 603, the year when
75
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
Rydderch Hael is said to have died. It is not
improbable that Aidan was aUied with the
Britons of Strathclyde in this expedition against
the pagans ; anyhow he was thoroughly de-
feated by Aedilfrith at Degsastan, identified by
Dr. Skene with Dawstane, one of the head
waters of Liddesdale, where are a great cairn
and some standing stones on Nine Stane Rig,
probably marking the battlefield.^ The cairn
possibly is the sepulchre of Aedilfrith's brother,
Theobald, who fell in the battle with nearly
all his band. After this, says Bede, " no King
of Scots durst come into Britain to make war
on the Angles to this day."^ After this it
appears that Aedilfrith had his first opportunity
of attending to his province of Deira, or York-
shire. He carried his arms to the west, and
by a great victory over the Welsh at Chester
in 613 extended his dominion over what are
now the northern English counties from sea to
sea. The special bearing of this event upon
Scottish history is that it severed the ancient
Roman province, completely separating the
Britons of Wales from the Britons of Strath-
clyde.
^Celtic Scotland, i. 162. ^ Ecd. Hist. i. 34.
76
GROWTH OF SAXON POWER
In possessing himself of Deira, Aedilfrith had
ousted Edwin, the rightful heir to that king-
dom ; but Edwin took refuge with Redwald,
King of the East Angles, who espoused his
cause, sent him with a powerful force against
Aedilfrith, whom he defeated and killed on the
banks of the Idle. Edwin then not only-
repossessed himself of his hereditary dominion
of Deira, but seized the whole land of Berneich
up to the Forth. Bede says of him that "with
great power he commanded all the nations, as
well of the Angles as of the British who
inhabit Britain, except only the people of Kent,
and he reduced also to dominion of the English
the Mevanian Islands of the Britons, lying
between Ireland and Britain," that is to
say, Anglesea and Man. Whether or not
Edwin, in extending his dominion in Lothian,
became the eponymus of Edinburgh, is a
problem which has been hotly disputed, and
must be left to bolder philologists than I to
decide.
Early in the seventh century the Christian
religion seemed to be on the point of extinction
in all parts of Britain where the Saxons had
established their rule. Ethelbert, King of Kent,
77
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
and Sabert, King of East Anglia, had indeed
accepted baptism at the hands of Augustine,
but Bede states that when Ethelbert died in
6i6 and Sabert shortly after, their successors
with their whole people reverted to the worship
of Thor and Wodin.^
He specially mentions the succession of
Ethelbert's son, Eadbald, to the throne of
Kent as being very unfavourable to Christi-
anity, for Eadbald refused to be baptised, and
led a highly immoral life. However, in the
nick of time, Bishop Laurentius managed to
convert Eadbald, a weak sort of creature, by
the miraculous apparition of S. Peter ; 2 "where-
fore, when Edwin, King of Northumbria, asked
for the hand of Eadbald's sister Ethelberga in
marriage, Eadbald exacted from Edwin, as a
condition of the marriage, that he would allow
her, and all that went with her, men and
women, priests or ministers, to worship after
the manner of the Christians."^
This treaty had momentous results. Dux
foeminafacti, Ethelberga took with her to the
north Bishop Paulinus in the year 625. Two
years later, on Easter Day, 627, Edwin was
^Ecd.Hist. n. 5. ^Ibid. ii. 6. Hbid. ii. 9.
78
BATTLE OF HATFIELD CHACE
baptised at York, not, it would appear, by
Paulinus, as Bede leaves us to infer. Nennius
says that 12,000 of the king's subjects were
baptised at the same time, and adds — " If any
one wishes to know who baptised them, it was
Rum Map Urbgen," who spent forty days in
the operation/
The defection of this powerful kingdom from
the Saxon faith seems to have aroused the ire of
Penda, pagan king of the newly-formed realm of
Mercia, who made alliance with the Christian
King of Wales, Cadwalla, King of North Wales.
Cadwalla in 629 had endeavoured to avenge
the battle of Chester in 613 by invading
Northumbria in 629, but had been beaten
badly by King Edwin at Morpeth. He there-
fore gladly accepted Penda's invitation to renew
the invasion, and between them they managed
to defeat and kill Edwin on Hatfield Chace in
the West Riding in 633. Nennius calls this
battle " bellum Meicen " ; a Welsh chronicle
of the tenth century refers to it as Gueith
Meiceren. The Annals of Tighernach date the
battle in 631, but the difference is unim-
portant.
* Nennius' Historia Britonuniy 63 ; Eccl. Hist. ii. 14.
79
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
Pen da's ascendancy might have proved fatal
to Christianity in Northumbria, but a fresh
turn of the vs^heel brought other actors upon
the stage.
When the redoubtable Edwin killed Aedil-
frith at the battle on the Idle in 617 and
thereby regained not only his rightful king-
dom of Deira, but the v^hole of Northumbria,
including Lothian, Aedilfrith's sons took
refuge among the Scots of Dalriada, where
they were converted to Christianity.^ Edwin
the usurper being off the scene, back came
two of these sons, Eanfrid and Oswald. Eanfrid
was accepted as king by the people of Berneich
or Bernicia, and his cousin Osric became King
of Deira. Bede tells us that they both reverted
to paganism, and traces Divine vengeance in
their fate, both of them being killed by the
British king Cadwalla. Cadwalla, though a
Christian, was far from being an exemplary
character.
" After this," says Bede, ** he ruled both provinces
of Northumbria, not like a victorious king, but as a
bloody and rapacious tyrant. That year is still
remembered as unhappy and hateful to all good
men, as well on account of the apostacy of the
^ Eccl. Hist. iii. i.
80
DEATH OF CADWALLA
English kings, who had renounced the faith as of
the outrageous tyranny of the English king. Hence
it has been agreed by all who have written about the
reigns of the kings, to abolish the memory of those
perfidious monarchs, and to assign that year to the
following king, Oswald, a man beloved by God." ^
Oswald with a small force marched to
avenge the death of his brother Eanfrid, and
did so to some purpose, defeating a much
superior force under Cadwalla, who was killed,
at a place called Denises or Denises Burn by
Bede.
" The place," says he, " is shown to this day, and
held in much veneration, where Oswald, when about
to give battle, erected the sign of the Holy Cross
and prayed to God to assist his worshippers in their
great distress. It is further reported that, the cross
being made in haste, and the hole dug in which it
was to be fixed, the king himself, full of faith, laid
hold of it and held it with both hands, till it was set
firm by throwing in the earth." ^
A passage such as this brings the distant
scene very near us, and is worth all the
miracles and apparitions that Bede thought
it necessary to record. Bede says that the
place where this battle was fought was called
'^Eccl. Hist. iii. l. "^ IbU iii. 2.
F 81
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
Hefenfelth (i,e, Heavenfield), now Hallington,
eight or nine miles north of Hexham, close to
the Roman Wall, which accounts for Nennius
calling it Catscaul, that is in Welsh Cad-ys-
gual^ the battle at the wall.
Now, all this having happened in what is
now English soil, it may be asked, what is its
bearing upon Scottish history ? Well, in the
first place, Oswald's kingdom reached to the
Forth, including a wide tract of what are now
the Scottish Lowlands, and probably the men
with whom he defeated Cadwalla were mainly
drawn from benorth the Tweed ; and in the
next place Bede tells us that, so soon as
Oswald had established himself on the throne
of Northumbria, he sent to the community
of lona for a bishop in order that his nation
might be fully converted to Christianity.
They sent him Aidan, of whose piety and
diligence Bede writes so warmly. He draws
a pretty picture of King Oswald, who had
learnt to speak Gaelic during his exile,
translating Bishop Aidan*s sermons to his
ealdormen and thegns. Aidan was only the
first of a long succession of missionaries,
monks and priests who came from lona to
82
MISSIONARIES FROM lONA
preach to King Oswald's Saxon subjects.
It is sad to read that this excellent monarch
was killed in battle with his old enemy
Penda, the pagan King of Mercia. Bede
names the place where Oswald fell Maser-
felth, but the hand that finished the history
attributed to Nennius calls it Cocboy.^ It
is believed to have been at Oswestry,
formerly Oswaldstree, in Shropshire. Oswald
died in the ninth year of his reign and the
thirty-eighth of his age. He was succeeded
by his younger brother Oswy, who began
badly by causing his brother Oswin to be
murdered in 651, in order that he might get
possession of Deira. Oswy, says Bede, reigned
for eight-and-twenty troubled years, being
incessantly harassed by the pagan King of
Mercia, Penda. At last, after Oswy had
vainly tried to purchase peace from Penda,
and had been driven into Lothian, he vowed
that, if the Lord would give him victory over
his enemy, he would not only dedicate his
daughter to perpetual virginity, but would also
give twelve farms to the Church for monas-
teries. He was as good as his word, for,
1 Historia Britoniimf c. 69.
83
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
having turned upon Penda in the neighbour-
hood of the city Juden, somewhere on the
Firth of Forth, he routed his army and cut off
his head. He then bestowed six farms in
Bernicia and six in Deira upon the Church,
shutting up his unfortunate daughter in a
monastery at Hartlepool. In narrating Oswy's
reign, Bede gives us insight into the growing
power of the Church, the increasing eagerness
of the clergy for temporal benefits, and the
dread of offending them on the part of kings
and their ministers.
Bede carries his Ecclesiastical History down
to the year 731, four years before his death.
" The Picts," he says, in conclusion, " are at peace
with the Angles at this time, and rejoice in being
united in peace with the whole Catholic Church.
The Scots that inhabit Britain [as distinguished from
the Scots of Ireland], satisfied with their own terri-
tory, meditate no hostilities against the Angles. The
Britons [that is, the Welsh] though they, for the
most part, through inborn hatred are unfriendly to
the Angles, and wrongfully and from wicked custom
oppose the appointed Easter of the whole Catholic
Church ; yet, as both divine and human forces are
against them, they cannot prevail as they would wish ;
for though in part they are independent, elsewhere they
84
BEDE'S ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
have been made subject to the Angles. Such being
the peaceable and calm character of the age, many
Northumbrians, both nobles and private persons, are
laying aside their weapons and incline rather to
dedicate themselves and their children to the tonsure
and monastic vows than to study the arts of war.
What will be the end hereof, the next age will show." ^
I am afraid I have been tempted aside from
the purpose of these lectures, which is rather
to review the character and examine the
authenticity of the early chronicles referring
to Scotland than to follow the events recorded
in them. It is difficult to avoid this fault, so
vividly does the Monk of Jarrow bring the
scenes which he describes before one, and so
fascinating are his sketches of character. In
the remaining lectures endeavour will be made
to stick closer to the text.
^ Eccl. Hist, V. 23.
8s
III.
A.D. 685—1093
III.
A.D. 685—1093.
If Bede's review of the state of Britain about
the year 731, as quoted in the last lecture, is
not to appear too optimistic, it must be read in
relation to much that had gone on before that
particular period. The tributary condition to
which King Oswy had reduced the Picts did
not endure long after his death in 670. Pict
and Scot having made alliance in an effort to
throw off the Saxon yoke. King Ecgfrith led
an expedition to quell them, in 685, of which
numerous accounts have been preserved, all
agreeing in the main.^ Bede says that Ecgfrith
went forward against the advice of his friends,
especially of Cuthbert, newly ordained Bishop
of Lindisfarne, invaded Pictland, the enemy
falling back before him till they got him
^Bede, iv. 26, Annals of Tighernachj Annals of Ulster, Simeon of
Durham, De Dunelm. Eccl. i. 9.
89
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
among the hills, when they turned, surrounded
and routed his army. Ecgfrith and most of
his people fell, the site of the battle being at
Dunnichen in Forfarshire. This was one of
the battles most decisively affecting the future
history of Scotland ; for not only was the
Pictish kingdom firmly re-established in the
north, but the Scots of Dalriada and the Britons
of Strathclyde, whose territory Ecgfrith seems
to have annexed to his dominions, regained
their independence. Further, just as Bede had
said after the defeat of King Aidan and the
Scots at Dawstane in 603 that thenceforward
no King of Scots dared to attack the Saxons, so
now the continuator of Nennius declares that
the Saxons were never again able to exact
tribute from the Picts.^
Moreover, this Pictish triumph took per-
manent effect upon the northern church as
regards its future independence of the see of
York. Under King Oswy, Northumbria had
been administered as a single diocese ; when
his son Ecgfrith expelled Bishop Wilfred from
Lindisfarne in 678, he appointed separate
bishops for Deira and Bernicia. Two more
^ Chron. Picts and Scots, p. 1 1.
90
SAXON ASCENDENCY IN GALLOWAY
dioceses were established in 68 1 , when Trumuin
was made Bishop of the Picts, the see being
fixed at Abercorn. As this was the earliest
bishopric founded in Scotland, so it was of
briefest duration. The expulsion of the Saxons
from Pictland forced Bishop Trumuin to eva-
cuate the monastery of Abercorn, which, says
Bede, " was in the country of the Angles but
close by the arm of the sea that parts the land
of the Angles from the Scots''^; thus leaving
us in no doubt that all north of the Forth was
Pictland, which was henceforth generally
referred to as the kingdom of Fortrenn.
It is to be noted, however, that the kings of
Northumbria still claimed dominion over the
Picts of Galloway. Bede notes the appoint-
ment of Pechthelm as first Bishop of Whithorn
in 731, locus ad provinciam Berniciorum per-
tinens^ concerning which episcopate William
of Malmesbury, writing before 11 25, observes
that Pechthelm's " successors were Frithwald,
Pechtwin, Ethelbert, Baldulf " [all Saxon names,
be it noted] " and beyond these I find no more
anywhere, for the bishopric soon failed, since
it was, as I have said, the furthest shore of the
^HisL Eccl iv. 26. ^Ibid. v, 23.
91
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
Angles, and open to the inroads of Scots and
Picts."^ That the Saxon kings of Northumbria
were able so long to retain the outlying
province of Galloway, notwithstanding the
independence of the Strathclyde Britons, was
owing to their possession of the ancient British
territory of Cumberland and Westmorland,
including Carlisle and the south shore of
Sol way.
Important as was the victory of Dunnichen
as the result of alliance between the Picts and
Scots and as putting an end to Saxon ascendency
in the north and west, the fusion which ultim-
ately took place between the two northern
races was delayed by the secession of Nectan,
King of the Picts, with his whole clergy and
laity, from the Columban church, and their
adoption of the Roman Easter and other obser-
vances. This event is fully described by Bede
as taking place in 710,^ and he says that the
Columban monks of lona were converted to
the same rule in 716,^ which hardly accords
with Tighernach's statement that in 717 Nectan
expelled the Columban clergy from his
1 Gesta Regum Anglorum, p. 257 (Rolls Series).
'^Hist. Eccl. V. 21. ^ Ibid. v. 22.
92
WAR BETWEEN PICTS AND SCOTS
dominions. Adopting Tighernach's statement,
it is easy to understand how Nectan's action
disturbed the amity which had prevailed,
almost without interruption, between Picts
and Scots ever since the conversion of the
Picts by Columba 150 years before. Hence-
forward the Picts waged incessant war upon
the Scots until 735-6, in which year the
Annals of Tighernach and of Ulster concur
in recording the complete conquest of Dal-
riada by Angus MacFergus, King of the
Picts ; and for the next hundred years any
glimpses afforded by the Irish Annals of affairs
in North Britain show Dalriada as a province
subject to the Picts but incessantly and violently
striving to regain independence. This was
conquest, not fusion ; but in another direction
the Picts, now the dominant race in North
Britain, had formed a connection which was
to lead to important results. Hereditary
succession among the Picts went in the female
line ; hence on the death of a king without
any brother, the crown would pass to the son
of a sister if he had one, or to the nearest male
relation on the female side. It was in accord-
ance with this law that King Brude, who
93
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
defeated Northumbrian Ecgfrith at Dunnichen,
had become king of the Picts, for we learn
from the Irish Life of Adamnan that he was
the son of Bile King of Alclyde (Strathclyde).
He must, therefore, have been the brother of
Taudar who succeeded his father Bile as King
of Strathclyde in 722, and, had Taudar died
childless, the succession would have fallen to
Brude or his children. This may have been
an agency in the network of hostilities that
prevailed in North Britain from 744 onwards,
the Picts warring now against the Britons of
Strathclyde, now against the Scots of Dalriada,
sometimes in alliance with the Saxons of
Northumbria, at other times employing their
leisure in a private civil war of their own.
Such were the throes preceding the birth of
Scotland as a single nation.
From the continuator of Bede's chronicle
we learn that Angus, King of the Picts, assisted
Eadbert, King of Northumbria, in wresting
Kyle and other western districts from the
Britons of Strathclyde in 750. Simeon of
Durham, an industrious compiler in the twelfth
century, now takes the place of the inestimable
Bede as the surest guide to events from the
94
SIMEON OF DURHAM
middle of the eighth century onwards. He
was not, indeed, contemporary ; but he seems
to have applied the materials at his disposition
to honest purpose. He probably had access to
the Annals of Tighernach^ in which we have to
deplore the loss of the years 765 to 973. He
tells how Eadbert of Northumbria and the
Pictish Angus marched as allies to complete
the conquest of Strathclyde in 756, receiving
the submission of the Britons at Dunbarton on
ist August.^
Notwithstanding this alliance, the continu-
ator of Bede, presumably a Northumbrian, in
recording Angus's death in 761 observes that
" from the beginning to the end of his reign he
continued a bloody and tyrannical butcher.**
Yet it is to him that S. Andrews, or Kilrimont
as it was then called, owes its foundation. The
authority for this is a legend, of which the
oldest extant version dates from the twelfth
century, which represents Angus, after cruelly
wasting the country of the Britons, encamping
in the Merse, where he hears the voice of
S. Andrew, bidding him, if he would con-
quer his enemies, dedicate one tenth of his
^ Hist. Dunelm. EccL vol. i. p. 48 (Rolls Series).
95
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
possessions to God and S. Andrew. The
legend is chronologically consistent with the
first mention of an abbot of Kilrymont,
which occurs in the Annals of Tighernach
in the year 747, that is, within the reign of
Angus : and further, there is appended to
one copy of Wintoun's chronicle, dated about
1530, a note to the effect that the relics of
S. Andrew were brought to Scotland in 761,
the year in which Angus died.^
Everything now pointed to the permanency
of the Pictish kingdom north of the firths,
and of the Saxon kingdom south of that
natural frontier. But in the latter half of the
century a new and most formidable factor had
to be reckoned with, namely, the roving fleets
of Northmen — the Finngall or Norwegians
and the Dubhgall or Danes.
The earliest detailed notice of this danger
is given by Simeon of Durham, who describes
the sack of Lindisfarne in 793 and the frightful
barbarities inflicted upon the people of Nor-
thumbria. The Ulster Annals record in the
following year the plunder of the Western
Isles by the Gentiles, a name commonly applied
1 Chron. Picts and Scots, 387.
96
THE HUNTINGDON CHRONICLE
to the pagan Northmen, and the annalist of
Inisfallen adds that the monastery of lona was
sacked by them. Fresh descents on the west
took place in 798, 802 and 806, lona being
utterly burnt on the last occasion and, accord-
ing to the Inisfallen annals, forty-eight monks
were butchered.
So long as the Pictish nation remained united
they were able to protect their eastern seaboard
from such attacks ; but the Picts had fallen to
fighting among themselves over a disputed
succession, with a result that is best described
in the chronicle of S. Mary's Priory of Hunt-
ingdon. This document, still preserved in a
mutilated condition in the Public Record
Office, is valuable in connection with early
Scottish history, through David's having ac-
quired the Honor of Huntingdon by his
marriage with Matilda in 1 1 14. The chroni-
cler would therefore derive information about
Scottish affairs from persons connected with
the Scottish Court. He starts with the year
834, by which time, though the annals are
silent on the subject, the Scots of Dalriada
must have so taken advantage of the civil strife
among the Picts as to reclaim their indepen-
G 97
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
dence and restore the monarchy in the person
of one Alpin, not to be confounded with
Alpin Mac Eochaidh, who was the last king
of the Dalriad Scots before the Pictish con-
quest, and who was killed in Galloway in 741.
This Alpin, says the Huntingdon chronicler,
defeated the Picts with great slaughter on
Easter Day, 834. Unduly elated by this
success, he attacked them again in August of
the same year, when he was badly beaten,
captured and beheaded. He was succeeded
by his son Kenneth, who in 841, when the
Picts were defending their shores against
Danish invaders, attacked them in rear, in-
flicted upon them a severe defeat, " and so,"
runs the narrative, " the King of Scots obtained
the monarchy of the whole of Alba, which is
now called Scotland."^ Five years later, in 846,
he vanquished the Picts finally, established his
kingdom and reigned for twenty-eight years.
There is ample confirmation of these events
in the Irish annals. For instance, they amplify
the account of the Danish invasion of Fortrenn
or Pictland, with the death of Euganan Mac
Angus, King of Fortrenn, Bran his brother,
^ Chron. of Picts and Scots^ p. 209.
98
KENNETH MACALPIN
and Aed Mac Boanta, Pictish King of Dal-
riada. The poem known as the Prophecy of
S. Berchan, composed by an Irish monk of the
eleventh century, belongs to a peculiar class of
historical literature fashionable in the eleventh
and twelfth centuries, in which the writer
casts his narrative of past or contemporary
events into the form of a prophecy purporting
to have been uttered by some individual who had
died long before. S. Berchan's prophecy con-
tains a good deal of Scottish history. His elegy
on Kenneth Mac Alpin may bear repetition.
A son of the clan of his son will possess
The kingdom of Alba by reason of his strength ;
A man who shall feed ravens, turning battles to
confusion.
His name was the Slayer.
He was the first of the men of Erin in Alba
To possess [land] in the east ;
It was by the might of spears and swords,
By sudden deaths and violent fates.
By him the fierce men in the east are deceived ;
On the floor of Scone of the high shields
By mighty craft he shall dig in the earth
Deadly blades — death and plunder ! ^
1 Referring to the treacherous slaughter of Pictish nobles, when
the seats which they occupied at a conference with the Scots were
undermined, and they, falling into the trench, were butchered.
99
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
Seventeen years of vigilant valour
In the sovereignty of Alba,
After slaughtering Picts, after chastising foreigners,
He dies on the banks of the Earn.
It went ill with Alba then ;
Long ere another like him shall appear.
This, again, is confirmed by the Pictish
Chronicle^ believed to have been compiled by
the monks of Brechin before the end of the
tenth century, w^herein is recorded the death
of Kenneth Mac Alpin, tumor e ani^ at For-
teviot, on the Earn, in February, 860.
We now come to the period of incessant
raids and settlements by Danes and Norsemen,
the Fingall and Dubhgall, vsrho appeared likely
to bring the whole of North Britain into
subjection. Simeon of Durham is our chief
guide through these terrible years. His
Historia Regum^ which bears collation with
the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the Irish
annals, is founded partly on a lost Northum-
brian chronicle written in the ninth century
in continuation of Bede's history. Further
information may be found in the Chronica
Major a of Matthew Paris, who entered as a
monk of S. Albans in 12 17. As illustrating
100
COLDINGHAM PRIORY SACKED
the dread inspired by the doings of these
merciless marauders I may quote his descrip-
tion of what took place in the Priory of
Coldingham, and, although it is not to be
found in any other independent authority (the
Flores Historiarum being merely another version
of the S. Albans chronicle), there is no reason
to doubt Paris's good faith in accepting it.
"In the year of the Lord 870 an innumerable
host of Danes landed in Scotland. Their leaders
were Inguar and Hubba, men of dreadful iniquity
and unparalleled daring. Striving to depopulate all
the districts of England, they butchered all the boys
and old men whom they found, and commanded
that the matrons, nuns and maidens should be sur-
rendered to their pleasure. And when this brutal
plundering had been going on in all parts of the
kingdom, Ebba, holy abbess of the cloister of
Coldingham, feared that she too . . . might be given
up to the lust of the heathen and lose her maiden
purity, along with the virgins under her rule. Call-
ing together all the sisters into the chapter house
she spoke to them as follows : * Of late there have
come into our parts the foulest pagans, devoid of
any kind of mercy ; going through all this district
they spare neither the sex of women nor the age of
children ; they destroy churches and clergy, violate
nuns, and break up and burn everything they come
upon. Therefore if you will follow my counsel, I
lOI
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
confidently hope that by divine mercy we may be
able both to escape the fury of these barbarians and
preserve our perpetual virginity.'
" When the whole assembly of virgins had firmly
promised to obey in all things their mother's com-
mands, that abbess of admirable heroism displayed
before all these sisters an instance of chastitv not
only exemplary for themselves but also eternally to
be followed by all succeeding virgins. She took a
sharp knife and cut off her own nose and upper lip
to the teeth, offering a dreadful spectacle of herself
to all beholders. And all these present, beholding
and approving this wondrous deed, each one inflicted
upon herself a similar act, following the example of
her mother.
** After this, the detestable bandits came upon
them next morning at dawn ; to expose to violence
these holy women, dedicated to God. . . . But when
they saw the abbess and each of the sisters so horribly
mutilated, soaked with blood from head to foot,
they hastened away from the place. . . . But in
departing, the aforesaid leaders ordered their wicked
followers to set fire to the monastery and burn it
down with all its offices and the nuns themselves.
And this was done by these servants of iniquity,
whereby the holy abbess and all the virgins with
her attained to the glory of martyrdom." ^
To trace the tangled story of the North-
men's aggression through the various monastic
'^Chronica Major a, vol. i. pp. 391-392 (Rolls Series).
102
RAIDS BY NORSEMEN
annals would be tedious, even if it could be
made intelligible. It can be studied at leisure
in the pages of Mr. Robertson, Dr. Skene, Mr.
Andrew Lang, Professor Hume Brown, and
others who have done their best to unravel it.
Constantin L, son of Kenneth MacAlpin,
succeeding as King of Alba in 863, bore the
full brunt of invasion. According to the
Ulster Annals^ Olaf the White, Norse King
of Dublin, destroyed Dunbarton after a four
months' siege in 870. The Icelandic Land-
namobok records that Olaf s son, Thorstein
the Red, conquered " Caithness, Sutherland,
Ross and more than half of Alba," while
Haldane laid waste Northumbria and subju-
gated the Picts of Galloway. King Constantin
fell in battle with the Danes in 877. Before
the end of that century the Norsemen had
made themselves also masters of Orkney, Shet-
land and the Western Isles, or, as they called
them, the Sudrey or Southern Isles, to distin-
guish them from the Orkneys. The name
Sudrey still survives but little altered in the
title of the English bishopric of Sodor and
Man.'
^ Episcopus Sodoriensis et Manniae.
103
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
About 915, as we learn from Simeon of
Durham, the Danish Ronald seized a great
part of Northumbria, driving King Elfrith to
take refuge with Constantin 11. (900-942),
King of Alba, who furnished them with troops
to dispossess the invader withal. But in this
battle, says Simeon, " by what sinful influence
I know not, the heathen Ronald was vic-
torious, putting Constantin to flight, routing
the Scots and killing Elfrith with all the best
of the Angles."^ The Saxon kingdom of
Northumbria having thus been destroyed, or
at least greatly diminished, there was indeed
little prospect except that the whole of Britain
from the Humber to the Pentland Firth
should pass permanently under Scandinavian
domination ; wherefore Constantin sought to
make terms with the enemy, giving his
daughter in marriage to Olaf Cuaran, son
of Sitriuc, Ronald's brother and successor, as
Danish King of Northumbria.
How far this proved an immediately satis-
factory settlement there is no means of ascer-
taining owing to the confusion of records ;
^ Hist, de S. Cuthberto, Sim. of Durham, vol. i. pp. 208, 209
(Rolls Series).
104
ENGLISH CLAIM TO SUPREMACY
but a new power was arising in the south
which was to range Scot and Northman
shoulder-to-shoulder against a common foe.
Alfred the Great, King of the West Saxons,
died in 901, but his good work remained.
Waging almost incessant war against the
Danes for thirty years, he had finally expelled
them from the whole of England south of the
Humber in 897, thereby establishing the West
Saxon supremacy in South Britain.
From the beginning of the tenth century,
therefore, the Winchester Chronicle^ more com-
monly known as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle^ be-
comes a valuable source of information as to
affairs in North Britain, albeit some statements
therein have to be accepted under reserve.
One such statement occurs in five out of the
six extant copies of the chronicle under the
year 924, to the effect that Edward the Elder,
King of England, caused Bakewell, a town in
Peakland (Derbyshire), to be built and forti-
fied, no doubt for the defence of his northern
frontier. "And then," the chronicle con-
tinues, " the King of Scots [Constantin II.]
and the whole nation of Scots, and Ronald,
and the son of Eadulf and all those who dwell
105
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
in Northumbria, as well English and Danes
and Northmen and others, and also the King
of the Strathclyde Welsh and all the Strath-
Clyde Welsh, chose King Edward for father
and lord."
Now this is the earliest assertion of the
supremacy of the English monarch over Scot-
land — the solitary record whereon rests what
has been known as the " Great Commendation
of Scotland," and whereon in after years
another King Edward, First after the Con-
quest, founded his claim to overlordship. It
is, to quote the words of that keen controver-
sialist, the late Dr. Freeman, " the primary
fact from which the English controversialist
starts " ; he takes " the honest English of the
Winchester chronicle " as his gospel — that is,
those copies of the chronicle which contain
the statement of the Scottish submission, and
leaving aside that copy which does not mention
it at all.
Now, I do not understand Mr. Andrew
Lang when he says \_History of Scotland^ i. 496]
that "the whole question of the English
supremacy is now of purely antiquarian in-
terest." If he means that it has no historical
106
A QUESTION OF DATES
interest, I must venture to disagree with him,
for it was round this question, and this alone,
that the whole history of Scotland revolved for
300 years. Therefore, the authenticity of the
passage above quoted from the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle invites close scrutiny. Such scrutiny
it will not bear. It represents the Danish
Regnwald, who had conquered Northumbria
and established himself as its king in 918,
as making submission to English Edward in
924, whereas the death of Regnwald is re-
corded in the Ulster Annals in 921. Dr.
Freeman thinks this must have been another
Regnwald ; or, if it was the same, then he
thinks the Irish annalist as likely to have
been mistaken as the English. But Florence
of Worcester was not so easily satisfied. Com-
piling his valuable Chronicon Chronicorum early
in the twelfth century, and relying chiefly
upon the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for events
in the first half of the tenth century, he
appears to have considered it awkward that
a discrepancy in dates should appear in the
only written authority for the submission of
the Scottish king, wherefore he altered the
date of the alleged commendation from 924 to
107
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
921, so as to bring it within the lifetime of
Regnwald,
It is believed that this part of the Anglo-
Saxon Chronicle was written, perhaps copied
from an earlier MS. about fifty years later than
the reign of Edward the Elder ; and a mistake
in the name of a king, or even a king more
or less, at a time when so-called kings were so
thick upon the ground, may not seem of much
importance ; but beyond and apart from what
may have been a clerical error in the chronicle,
there is the significant absence of any evidence,
save this single passage, that Edward the Elder
made any attempt at all to reduce Northumbria
and Scotland to submission. He had plenty
to do in putting down the rebellion of his
cousin Aethelwald and reconquering the Mer-
cian Danelaw, without making war beyond his
northern frontier. That some form of treaty
or convention may have been entered into by
the Scottish and Danish rulers with their
powerful southern neighbour is probable
enough ; but, as I have said, there is no
evidence to that effect save the single entry
in five out of the six extant copies of the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle^ which even the late
108
BATTLE OF BRUNANBURG
Dr. Freeman admitted was probably not con-
temporary.^
Matters took a different turn when Athelstan
succeeded to the English throne in 925. He
could not feel secure so long as the Northmen
possessed any base in Britain south of the
Forth, and he determined to continue the
work of his father and grandfather. Sitriuc,
indeed, the Danish King of Deira or South
Northumbria, married Athelstan's sister in
925 ; but when Sitriuc died suddenly in the
following year, Athelstan seized his kingdom of
Deira, which the Danes made great prepara-
tions to recover. Constantin II., King of
Scots, having, as aforesaid, made friends with
the Danes by marrying his daughter to
Sitriuc's son, Olaf Cuaran, prepared to support
Olaf in an expedition into Deira. Athelstan
was beforehand with him. The Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle and Simeon of Durham record how
he invaded Scotland by sea and land, laying it
waste as far as Forfar.
In A.D. 934 a counter-invasion was organised.
The Danes of Dublin came in force to support
their fellow-countrymen, allying themselves
^ Conquest of England, p. 217.
109
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
with Constantin's Scots. King Constantin
himself and his son-in-law, Olaf Cuaran,.
appeared in the Humber with a great Danish
fleet (Simeon says as many as 615 ships), while
another Olaf, son of Godfrey, King of Dublin,
led his Danes and the Welsh of Strathclyde
by land. According to the Egills Saga they
harried all the country, defeating Athelstan's
two earls ; but in 937 Athelstan himself ad-
vanced against them and utterly defeated them
in the battle of Brunanburg, which must take
its place beside that of Dawstane in 603 and
Dunnichen in 685 as among the most decisive
in early British history.' The Annals of Ulster
and those of Clonmacnoise describe the fright-
ful slaughter. Constantin and his son-in-law
Olaf escaped to the ships ; so did the other
Olaf from Dublin. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
bursts into poetry in celebration of the victory
— a long paean of victory, whereof a few
lines may suffice to indicate the character.
" The king departed
On the fallow flood,
His life preserved,
Constantin, hoary warrior.
^Florence of Worcester, vol. i. p. 132 ; Hist. Dunelm. EccL vol.
i. p. 76 ; William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, vol. i. p. 142.
no
SITE OF THE BATTLE
He had no cause to exult
In the communion of swords.
Here were his kindred bands
Of friends overthrown ;
And his son he left
On the place of slaughter,
Mangled with wounds,
Young in battle.
He had no cause to boast.
That grey-haired hero,
That old deceiver.
They left behind them
Corpses for the sallowy kite to devour,
And the swarthy raven with horny neb,
And the white-tailed eagle,
The greedy war-hawk.
And the gray beast
The wolf of the wood.
Never has there been greater carnage
In this island, since from the East hither
Came Angles and Saxons to land." ^
There has been much uncertainty as to the
site of this great battle, which, despite of
frequent subsequent revolts, fixed the destiny
of Northumberland as an English county.
Egills Saga calls the place Vinheidi, v^hich
appears as Wendun in Simeon of Durham's
chronicle. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle names
^ Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, s.a. (in four out of the six MSS.).
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
it Brunanburh, which is rendered Duinbrunde
in the Pictish Chronicle, By an exhaustive
analysis of evidence and topography, the late
Dr. Skene decided in favour of Borough-
bridge on the Ouse, about sixteen miles from
York, but I incline rather to Barnbrough,
about six miles west of Doncaster.
It is recorded in the Pictish Chronicle that
Constantine, having reigned forty years, re-
signed his kingdom to Malcolm and retired to
a monastery.
Down to this time Strathclyde had not been
incorporated in the kingdom of Alba or Scot-
land. Its Welsh population of Strathclyde
had a dynasty of their own, but their kingdom
was tributary to the Kings of Alba, and on
that account exempt from taxation by Rome.
But in 945 it is stated in the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle that King Eadmund, who succeeded
Athelstan in 940, "ravaged all Cumbraland,
and granted it wholly to Malcolm, King of
Scots, on condition that he should be his
midwyrhta (fellow worker) as well by sea as
by land."
By Cumbraland is signified the kingdom of
the Britons, who now appear in Latin chroni-
112
EADMUND HANDS OVER STRATHCLYDE
cles as Cumbri = Welsh Cymri, extending from
the Derwent to the Clyde. It can hardly be
doubted that this concession of territory was a
measure of defence against the common enemy
of both Eadmund and Malcolm, the Norse and
Danes, who from their base in the Isle of Man
had overrun the southern part of Strathclyde,
representing the modern counties of Cumber-
land and Westmorland. English historians
have interpreted the transaction as one imply-
ing homage and fealty by the King of Scots
to the King of England, and some Scottish
historians, notably the continuator of Fordun
and the late Dr. Skene, have expressed that
conclusion also. Dr. Freeman pronounced it
to be " probably the earliest instance in Britain
of a fief in the strictest sense, as opposed to a
case of commendation." I submit that the
terms " fief," " commendation," " homage,"
" vassalage," belong to Norman jurisprudence,
and that their sense has been imported into the
transaction between Eadmund and Malcolm by
later writers. The process is not difficult to
trace. First comes Florence of Worcester
(who died in 1118). He put a feudal gloss
on the term midwyrhta by rendering it Jidelis^ a
H 113
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
vassal/ Next comes Henry of Huntingdon (died
in 1 155), who states frankly that Eadmund,
because he was unable — nequibat — " thoroughly
to subdue the perfidious and lawless people of
that province, made it over — commendavit — to
Malcolm upon this understanding — pacto — that
he should be his ally by land and sea.*' ^
Lastly comes Roger of Wendover (died in
1236), who gives details not to be found else-
where, such as that Eadmund caused the two
sons of Donald, King of Strathclyde, to have
their eyes destroyed, and granted the kingdom
to Malcolm — de se tenendum — to be held from
himself, that Malcolm might protect the
northern parts of England by land and sea
from the invasion of foreign enemies. Here
we have the purpose of the grant clearly stated,
and its nature interpreted as a Norman fief,
which was the only kind of tenure wherewith
Roger of Wendover was acquainted.^
This transaction, you may be sure, was
worked for all it was worth by the Plan-
tagenets ; but the nearest contemporary records
may be searched in vain for any evidence that
"^ ChronicQUy vol. i. p. 134.. 'Hist. Anglorum, p. 162.
^Flores Historiarunty i. 398 (ed. English History Society).
114
ALLEGED CESSION OF LOTHIAN
the cession of Strathclyde was more than a
personal bargain for alliance, offensive and
defensive, between Eadmund and Malcolm
against a common foe : just as the cession of
Nice and Savoy to France in i860 did not
involve Napoleon III. in vassalage to the King
of Sardinia, but was a free grant of territory in
exchange for aid against the Austrians.
During the reign of Malcolm's successor,
Indulph, 954-962, an exceedingly important
event is noted in the Pictish Chronicle^ namely,
the evacuation of Edinburgh (pppidum Eden)
and its occupation by the Scots, who, adds the
writer, possess it to this day. There is nothing
to show whether this was an act of conquest
or of friendly cession, but the bearing of this
brief passage is very significant in relation to
other accounts of the manner in which Saxon
Lothian became part of the Scottish realm.
In a tract entitled Libellus de Primo Adventu
Saxorum^ formerly attributed to Simeon of
Durham, but now regarded as of unknown
authorship, it is stated that when the North-
umbrian kingdom was brought to an end in
954, King Edgar of England anpointed two
earls to govern it — Oslac ruling the territory
"5
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
of Deira from York, and Edulf Yvelchild that
of Bernicia from the Tees to the Forth ;
wherein his chief seat would be Bamborough.
These two earls, says the anonymous chronicler,
and the Bishop of Lindisfarne, brought Kenneth
II., King of Scots, to King Edgar ; " and when
Kenneth had done him homage, Edgar gave
him Lothian, and with great honour sent him
back to his own." ^ Not a word about this in
the contemporary Anglo-Saxon Chronicle^ nor
do any of the older annalists mention it. We
hear no more about it till we come to the
thirteenth century, more than 200 years after
the death of Kenneth II., when we find the
story repeated, with many highly-coloured
details, by Matthew Paris, his colleague Roger
of Wendover, and John of Wallingford. The
last-named writer, who lived 300 years later
and is of no reputation as an original authority,
says that Kenneth came to London to interview
Edgar (a circumstance which could hardly have
escaped notice of the Anglo-Saxon chronicler),
and that Kenneth represented to Edgar that
Lothian ought to belong to him as a hereditary
^ This tract is printed in the Rolls Series, Simeon of Durham y
vol. ii.
1x6
EDGAR OF ENGLAND AND KENNETH 11.
part of the Scottish realm, which could only
refer to Kenneth having inherited Edinburgh
from his kinsman King Indulph, the Kings of
Alba never having had possession of Lothian
before the above-mentioned surrender of Edin-
burgh. Edgar referred the question to his
councillors. Wallingford's account of the
result is imperfect owing to damage to the
MS.
" These men, being well instructed in the wisdom
of their ancestors . . . unless the King of Scotland
should consent to do homage for it to the King of
England . . . and chiefly because the means of access
to that district for defending it are very difficult, and
its possession not very profitable. . . . Howbeit
Kenneth agreed in their decision, and sought and
obtained Lothian on the understanding that he was
to do homage for it, and he did homage accordingly
to King Edgar, and further was compelled to
promise formally under pledges that he would not
deprive the people of that region of their ancient
customs, and that they would be allowed to use the
name and language of the Angles. These conditions
have been faithfully observed to the present day
{c, 1230), and thus was settled the old dispute
about Lothian, though new cause of difl^erence often
arises even now." ^
1 John of Wallingford aj>U(i Gale, p. 545.
117
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
Matthew Paris indulges in picturesque par-
ticulars, but without any hint at homage. He
represents King Edgar as giving King Kenneth
many gifts —
'* a hundred ounces of purest gold, many silken
robes, ornaments and rings with precious stones ;
and he gave besides to the said king the whole land
which in the mother-tongue is called Lothian, on
this condition that every year on the chief festivals,
when the king and his successors wore the crown,
they should come to court and celebrate the feast
with rejoicing in company of the other princes of
the realm. Moreover, the king gave him very
many dwelling-places on the route, so that he and
his successors, coming to the feast and returning,
might be able to lodge there. And these continued
in the possession of the Kings of Scotland until the
time of King Henry II." ^
It is passing strange that William of Mal-
mesbury, writing loo years before Matthew
Paris, says nothing about the cession of
Lothian, although he dwells at length upon
the acts and character of Edgar, and re-
lates some anecdotes of his dealings with
Kenneth.
I have now recounted all the authorities for
the alleged transaction. Against them are to
^ Chron, Maj. ad ann. 975.
118
THE PICTISH CHRONICLE
be set two which, in my opinion, are of
sufficient weight to outweigh the others.
First, there is the Pictish Chronicle, which
is believed to have been compiled in Gaelic
by a monk of Brechin during the reign of
Kenneth II., and is therefore contemporary
authority, though it has only come down to
us in the form of a Latin translation, tran-
scribed by a monk of York as late as the
fourteenth century.^ The compiler of the
original was probably the same monk who
recorded the occupation of Edinburgh by the
Scots fifteen years or so previously, in which
case, if a formal cession of Lothian took place
in 975, it is strange that he should pass it
in silence. The last entry in the contem-
porary Pictish Chronicle states that, just about
the time when Kenneth is alleged to have
been visiting King Edgar in London, he was
devastating Saxonia, that is Edgar's territory
of Northumberland as far as Stanmore, Cleve-
land and the Pools of Deira ; repeating the
invasion in the following year, when he carried
off the Saxon king's son. The Saxon king
can have been none other than Earl Eadulf,
1 Skene's Chron. Picts and Scots, pp. xviii, xix.
119
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
Edgar's governor of Bernicia from the Tees
to the Forth.
Second, there is the statement by Simeon of
Durham that when Aedulf Cudel succeeded
his brother Uthred as Earl of Northumberland
in 1016,
"being a man very cowardly and timorous, and
fearing that the Scots would avenge on him the
death of their men whom Uthred his brother had
killed " [at the siege of Durham in 1006], " he granted
to them the whole of Lothian for amends and stead-
fast peace. In this way was Lothian added to the
kingdom of the Scots." ^
The truth, however, seems to be that Mal-
colm IL obtained Lothian by conquest as the
fruits of his great victory over the English
at Carham in 1018, when, as Simeon records
in another work, '
" the entire people from the Tees to the Tweed,
with their nobility, almost wholly perished in fight-
ing against an endless host of Scots at Carham." ^
When it is thus shown that the story of the
later chroniclers is utterly inconsistent with
that of those most nearly contemporary, the
^Simeon, De obsessione Dunelmi {Ko\h Series), i. 218.
^Simeon's Hist. Dunelm. Eccl. i. 84.
120
THE DANES INVADE ARGYLL
grant of Lothian by King Edgar to King
Kenneth, with the alleged vassalage, may be
dismissed as apocryphal, invented first, prob-
ably, to cover the disgrace of defeat at
Carham, and next to strengthen the claim to
English superiority*
I have dwelt at some length on these two
transactions — the undoubted cession of Strath-
clyde by King Eadmund to King Malcolm in
945, and the alleged cession of Lothian to
Kenneth in 975, because it was upon these
that feudal lawyers chiefly founded the English
claim to suzerainty. The incorporation of
Saxon Lothian with the Scottish realm was
an event of permanent importance ; for, just
as the Scottish colonists of Fergus Mor ulti-
mately gave their name to the whole country
of Scotland, so did the Saxon speech of the
Northumbrians of Lothian become the ver-
nacular of the whole kingdom.
We have now reached a period about which
there is abundant, but hopelessly contradic-
tory, record, the attempt to unravel which
would be tedious and inconclusive. It is
difficult, but necessary, to distinguish so far as
possible between the Norwegians and the
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
Danes, who were politically and ethnologically
distinct, the Norwegians being known to the
Gaels as Fingall, or fair-haired foreigners,
and the Danes as Dubhgall, or black-haired
foreigners. Both of these nations were in-
cessantly striving for the conquest of the
British Isles, generally independently, some-
times in alliance and occasionally fighting each
other. The Danes (Daci or Danari) conquered
Dublin, Waterford and Northumbria ; the
Norwegians ruled in Orkney, Caithness and
the Western Isles. But they were far from
scrupulous in respecting each other's territory.
For instance, the Ulster Annals^ which are
perhaps the surest guide through this confused
period, record that in 986 the Danes invaded
Argyll, but were defeated, 140 of them being
hanged and the rest speared to death. On
Christmas Eve following, another party of
Danes attacked lona, killing the abbot and
fifteen monks.
The events of the war that followed between
the Danes and Norwegians are most pic-
turesquely told in the Nial Saga^ some of the
narrative dovetailing neatly with the records
of the Ulster Annals,
122
MACBETH
Early in the eleventh century the name
Scotia or Scotland became transferred from
Ireland to Alba. Heretofore, though the
Kings of Alba were sometimes termed Kings
of Scots, the name Scotia has occurred in the
chronicles only as indicating Ireland. It is
curious that its first application to Alba should
have been by the monk Marianus Scotus, so
called because he was Irish by birth. Born
in 1028, he became a recluse, spent most of
his life on the Continent and composed a
chronicle which contains only a few references
to events in North Britain. Among these,
however, is the death of Malcolm II. in 1034,
whom he terms King of Scotia — Rex Scotiae^
which is the earliest instance in literature of
the application of this name to Alba.^
According to the Ulster Annals^ this Malcolm
had killed the nearest male heir to the Scottish
throne in 1033, in order to clear the succession
for Duncan, the son of his daughter. Duncan
succeeded accordingly, and the Orkneyinga
Saga tells of the great war he waged with
his cousin, the Norse Jarl Thorfinn, for the
possession of Caithness and Sutherland. But
•• Monumenta Germaniae Historica^ vol. v.
123
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
the Saga says nothing about Duncan's murder
by his own general, Macbeth, which the con-
temporary Marianus Scotus records in 1040,
a date confirmed by the Irish Tighernach,
who specifies that Duncan was not the
aged king described in Shakespeare's im-
perishable drama, but a stripling immaturae
aetatis, Shakespeare found in Holinshead the
materials which Holinshead had transferred
from Boece.
Macbeth, also, seems not to have been as
black as he has been painted. He has had to
bear the odium incident to a usurper, and as
for a murder or two more or less, that was
a recognised expedient in party politics of the
day. But he ruled his kingdom to its advan-
tage, if we may trust the allusion to him in
S. Berchan's poem :
" After slaughter of Gaels, after slaughter of
foreigners,
The liberal king will possess Fortrenn.
This red man was fair, yellow and tall ;
Pleasant was the young man to me.
There was abundance in Alba east and west
Under the reign of the fierce Red One."
Nevertheless, by his treasonable compact with
124
MALCOLM CEANNMOR
Thorfinn, the newly knit realm of Scotland
was dismembered — Macbeth ruling for seven-
teen years south of Strathspey and the Ness,
and Thorfinn retaining the northern counties
and islands.
There is great obscurity over the expedition
led by Siward, Earl of Northumberland against
Macbeth in 1054. The contemporary Anglo-
Saxon Chronicle states that
" he went with a great army into Scotland with
both a fleet and a land force, and fought against the
Scots and put to flight King Macbeth, and slew all
that were best there in the land, and brought thence
much war spoil, such as no man obtained before.'* ^
The Irish annals amply confirm this, the
Ulster Annals putting the loss of the Scots
at 3000 killed and that of the Northumbrians
at 1500; but the battle was not decisive,
and if Siward's object was to dethrone
Macbeth in the interest of Malcolm Ceannmor,
the son of Duncan, he failed therein ; for
Macbeth remained on the throne till Malcolm
himself defeated and killed him at Lumphanan
in 1057. The statement by Florence of
Worcester (who died in 1 1 1 8) that Siward was
1 Anglo-^axon Chron. ad ann. 1054.
125
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
dieting Jussu regis, by command of King Edward
the Confessor, in order to restore Malcolm, is
destitute of any confirmation from other
sources ; but it was made much of in later
years as supporting the English claims over
Scotland.
Malcolm Ceannmor's long reign of thirty-
five years carries us far in the consolida-
tion of Scotland : indeed, I think you may
regard 15th August, 1057 — the date of Mal-
colm's victory at Lumphanan — as the real
birthday of the kingdom of Scotland. It
is true that the Norse Jarl Thorfinn
still ruled in Caithness and the Western
Isles ; but when Thorfinn died in that or
the following year, Malcolm had the poli-
tical foresight to marry his widow Ingibjorg,
thereby ingratiating himself with the Norse
element in the population. She bore him a
son, Duncan, afterwards to be King of Scots ;
but she died a few years later, leaving Malcolm
free to fall honourably in love with Margaret,
the beautiful and saintly sister of Child Eadgar,
son of the deceased Eadward Atheling and heir
to the Saxon dynasty of England. This fresh
alliance enlisted for Malcolm the goodwill and
126
MALCOLM CEANNMOR'S COURTSHIP
support of the Saxon people of Lothian and
Northumberland. In one copy of the Anglo-
Saxon Chronicle this important event is recorded
in a single sentence — "King Malcolm took
Margaret, the Child's sister, to wife " ; but
in another edition, not only is the courtship
described in considerable detail under the year
1067, but Queen Margaret's subsequent career
is passed under review :
"In the summer of the year 1067 Eadgar Child
went out [from Northumberland] with his mother
Agatha and his two sisters Margaret and Christina,
and with them Marlesweyne and many good men,
and came to Scotland under the protection of King
Malcolm, and he received them all. Then it was
that King Malcolm began to yearn after Margaret to
wife, but Eadgar Child and all his men long refused,
and she herself was unwilling, saying that she would
have neither him nor any man if the heavenly
clemency would grant that she might serve the Lord
with her natural heart in perfect continence. But
the king straitly pressed her brother till he answered
yea, and in sooth he durst not otherwise, because
they had come into his power. So that the marriage
was now fulfilled, as God had fore-ordained, and it
could not be otherwise, as he says in the Gospel that
not a sparrow falls to the ground without his fore-
showing. The prescient Creator knew long before
127
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
what he would do with her, namely that she should
increase the glory of God in this land, lead the king
out of wrong into the right path, bring him and his
people to a better way, and put down all the evil
customs which the nation formerly followed. These
things she afterwards accomplished. The king there-
fore married her, though against her will, and was
pleased with her behaviour, thanking God who had
given him such an excellent spouse. And being a
prudent man, he turned himself to God and forsook all
impurity of conduct, as S. Paul, the apostle of the Gen-
tiles saith — Salvabitur vir etc., which meaneth in our
speech — 'Full oft the unbelieving husband is sanctified
and healed through the believing wife, and so belike
the wife through the believing husband.' The Queen
above named afterwards did many things in this land
to promote the glory of God, and conducted herself
well in her noble station, as always was her custom."
Now the purpose of this long extract is
to illustrate how such chronicles as these
were compiled. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle^ in
its original form, was no doubt a contemporary
record of current events, and was copied as
the basis of the chronicles written in various
monasteries throughout the land, with such
interpolations as the historiographer chose to
insert. In the edition from which I have
quoted, the copyist was writing long after the
128
EADGAR ATHELING
date of Malcolm's marriage with Margaret,
and added to the bare statement of the other
editions facts that could not be known to the
original annalist. In this instance the inter-
polations are in accord with known facts ; but
this should not throw the student of history
off his guard so as to accept without careful
scrutiny similar interpolations in connection
with disputed events. As I have said already,
one edition of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle con-
tains no reference to the Great Commendation
of 924, though it appears in the other editions
which Mr. Green considers were written about
the year 975, fifty years after, when the
English king had formulated his claim to the
empire of Britain.
Upon Malcolm's internal government of
Scotland the chronicles throw little light,
though the writings attributed to Simeon of
Durham contain many bitter complaints of his
five invasions of Northumbria in support of
his brother-in-law, Eadgar AtheHng's, claim
to the throne of England. King Sweyn of
Denmark also espoused Eadgar's cause, and the
Winchester chronicle describes how in the
year 1069 a Danish fleet of 240 ships entered
I 129
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
the Humber in support of Child Eadgar, sacked
York and killed many hundreds of Frenchmen,
/>. Normans. This brought William the Con-
queror to the north in person to lay waste the
whole country with fire and sword. Thus the
whole of what are now Northumberland, Cum-
berland, Durham and York were alternately
harried by Malcolm the friend and King
William the enemy of Eadgar, until William,
as the Winchester chronicler records, resolved
to put an end to this state of affairs, invaded
Scotland by sea and land in 1072, and brought
Malcolm to terms, according to Florence of
Worcester at Abernethy.^ There is hopeless
confusion — endless controversy — about the
nature of these terms. The Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle merely says that " King Malcolm
came and treated with King William, and
delivered hostages and became his man, and
King William returned home with his army."
Florence of Worcester names Duncan, Mal-
colm's son by Ingibjorg, as the principal
hostage, and Duncan is stated in the Anglo-
Saxon Chronicle to have been still detained at
the court of William Rufus in 1093 — twenty-
^ Chronicon ex Chronicis, ii. 9 (English History Society).
130
MALCOLM'S HOMAGE
one years later. Assuming, as we certainly
may, that Malcolm did homage to William
the Conqueror in the full Norman sense of the
term, what was that homage for ? Ordericus
Vitalis (1075- 1 143), a monk of Saint-Evroult
in Normandy, declares it was for Lothian, but
his evidence may be dismissed, because he
makes Malcolm acknowledge Lothian to have
been granted to him on his marriage with
Margaret by Edward the Confessor. Now
Edward the Confessor died in 1066, and Mal-
colm did not marry Margaret till 1068. Mr.
Freeman relies on the bald statement in the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle^ and holds that the hom-
age was for the whole kingdom of Scotland.
Others suggest that it was a renewal of the
alleged homage exacted by Eadmund of England
from Malcolm L for Strathclyde. Mr. Robert-
son, again, argues that the homage was no
more than feudal recognition for the twelve
villae in England and the annual subsidy of
twelve marks in gold, which we know, on the
authority of Florence of Worcester, William
the Conqueror granted to King Malcolm (prob-
ably under the treaty of Abernethy) — a grant
which William Rufus renewed in 1091.
131
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
When Rufus in the following year failed to
fulfil his part of the bargain, as the Win-
chester chronicler admits that he did, Malcolm
renounced his homage, invaded Northumber-
land, fell into ambush near Alnwick, and got
killed on 13th November, 1093. The place
where he fell is still marked by a monument
called Malcolm's Cross.
I cannot pass from the personality of Mal-
colm Ceannmor without quoting the reference
to him in the Prophecy of S. Berchan.
" A king — the best that possessed Alba ;
A king of kings most fortunate.
He was a vigilant crusher of enemies.
No woman hath borne or will bear in the East
A king whose sway over Alba shall be mightier.
Nor shall there be borne for ever
One possessed of higher fortune and greatness."
132
IV,
A.D. 1093— 1 174.
IV.
I093-II74-
By the death of Malcolm Ceannmor, followed
four days later by that of his Queen Margaret,
the work of consolidating the realm of Scot-
land, which Malcolm had so successfully carried
on, was arrested, and the nation was exposed
to the evils of a disputed succession. The
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records the election of
Malcolm's brother, Donald Ban, to the throne
by the Scots. He would be reckoned the next
heir according to the Gaelic law of Tanistry.
Malcolm's son, Duncan, whom the Saxon part
of the nation esteemed the rightful heir, was
still in quasi-captivity in England, and the
Scottish chronicler, John of Fordun, states that
Donald Ban besieged Edinburgh Castle, where
Queen Margaret's body still lay unburied.
" But," says Fordun, " forasmuch as that spot is in
itself strongly fortified by nature, Donald deemed
that the gates only need be guarded, because it was
135
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
not easy to see any other entrance or outlet. When
those who were within understood this, being taught
of God through the merits, as we believe, of the holy
queen, they brought down her holy body by a postern
on the western side. Some, indeed, declare that
during the whole of that journey a thick mist sur-
rounded all this family and miraculously screened
them from the view of their foes, so that nothing
hindered them as they travelled by land or sea ; but
they succeeded in bringing her away to the place
desired as she herself had before commanded, namely,
to the Church of Dunfermline, where she now rests
in Christ. It was thus that Donald came by the king-
dom, having driven away the rightful heirs." ^
Experience has taught us to accept a fog as
a normal incident in the meteorology of Edin-
burgh. Not so Fordun, who, like most monkish
chroniclers, is always on the outlook for super-
natural portents. It may be remembered that
even John Knox interpreted the easterly haar
which greeted Mary Queen of Scots on her
arrival at Leith as a sign of divine displeasure.
Fordun devotes a chapter [iv. i] to explain-
ing that the old law of Tanistry, under which
Donald would have been the rightful heir, had
been abrogated by Malcolm II. [1005-1034],
and " that thenceforth each king after his death
'^Chronicon, v. 21.
136
DUNCAN AND DONALD BAN
should be succeeded in the government of the
realm by whoever was at the time nearest in
descent — that is, a son or daughter, a nephew
or niece — the nearest then living."
The position, then, in 1093-4 was this, that
Donald Ban was recognised as king by the
Gaelic population of the Highlands and probably
of Galloway, while the Welsh of Strathclyde
and the Saxons of Lothian looked for the return
of Duncan from captivity in England to take
up his father's realm. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
is again the chief authority for what followed.
It is stated there that in the year 1093
"Duncan came to King William [Rufus] and did
such homage as the king required \ and so, having
obtained his consent, he went off to Scotland with
such aid as he could muster, both English and
Norman ; and he deprived his kinsman Donald of
the throne and was received as king. But then
some of the Scots again gathered together and killed
nearly all his men, and he himself escaped with a
few others. Afterwards they became reconciled on
this condition that Duncan should never more bring
English or Normans into the country."
Here again the nature and extent of the
homage or troth required by King William is
left quite vague. It is likely enough that
137
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
Duncan, steeped as he had become in Nor-
man practice and unable to claim his kingdom
except on such terms as King William chose
to grant, would become William's vassal for
that kingdom. But those terms were re-
jected by the Gaelic part of the nation,
who only submitted to Duncan on condition
that he should renounce his Norman and
Saxon associates.
However, it is not of much moment to
what extent Duncan compromised the inde-
pendence of Scotland, for he only reigned six
months. He lost his life in an insurrection of
his Gaelic subjects in support of Donald Ban,
who was restored to the throne.
William of Malmesbury, writing thirty or
forty years after the event, states that Duncan's
half-brother Eadmund, the only degenerate son
of the sainted Margaret, conspired with Donald
Ban for the assassination of Duncan, and
received as his reward the kingship of Lothian.
The partnership did not long endure. In
describing what took place three years later
the Winchester chronicler, a contemporary
authority, is more explicit than hitherto about
the ^nature of King William's overlordship.
138
FORGED DEEDS
"This year [that is 1097] at Michaelmas Edgar
Atheling, with King William's aid, led an army into
Scotland and won that country by hard fighting,
driving out King Donald and establishing his kins-
man Eadgar as king in fealty to William."
Eadmund was imprisoned and died a monk.
Donald Ban was captured later, and, according
to both Irish and Scottish chronicles, was
blinded by his half-brother Eadgar and died
at Rescobie. William of Malmesbury states
that David, assisted by King William, was the
agent in Donald's doom.^
Now, the statement in the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle about Eadgar's vassalage to King
William is plain enough ; the only doubt as to
its truth arises from the spurious character of
three out of eight documents preserved in the
Treasury of Durham. Seven of these are
grants by Eadgar, King of Scots, to the monks
of Durham and Coldingham, five of which are
undoubtedly genuine. These Jive contain no
allusion whatever to King William Rufus or his
superiority. The other two will not bear
scrutiny. One of them is a conveyance of
lands to the monks of Coldingham, and purports
1 Gesta Regum, vol. ii. p. 476 (Rolls Series).
139
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
to be granted by King Eadgar acting " under
the license of William, King of England, Lord
Superior of the Kingdom of Scotland." Upon
this charter^ Dr. Raine, who was a firm believer
in the rightful claim of England to suzerainty,
pronounced as follows :
" It is a most palpable forgery, fabricated apparently
for the express purpose of establishing the superiority
of England. Never, perhaps, was there so miserable
an attempt at imitation. The parchment, unlike
that of the nth century, is thin and imperfectly
prepared . . . every characteristic of the document
belongs to a period later hy centuries than the reign
of Edgar. But the seal gives the finishing stroke to
the whole. It is, in fact, a bad imitation, upon a
very reduced scale, of the great seal of Robert I. or
Robert II. The name indicating the king is broken
away . . . The charter is probably one of the alleged
forgeries of Hardyng, the poetic chronicler, who
lived in the reign of Henry VI., and received an
annuity from the Crown for his services."
The other charter referred to [No. xv. in
Lawrie] was passed as genuine by Dr. Raine,
but contains so many discrepancies that later
students have declined to accept it. It pur-
ports to be a grant by King Eadgar, " possess-
ing the land of Lothian and the kingdom of
^ Sir A. Lawrie's Early Scottish Charters, No. xvn.
140
REIGN OF EADGAR
Scotland as a gift from my lord William King
of the English, and acting by the advice of
my aforesaid lord King William," conveying
certain lands in Scotland to Bishop William of
Durham. It is stated in the charter that the
deed wzs executed in the year v\rhen William
II. built a new castle at Bamborough ; that
W2LS 1095. Eadgar did not become King of
Scots till 1 097, and Bishop William of Durham
died in 1096. Such discrepancies certainly
tend to impugn the authenticity of the docu-
ment in v^hich they occur, and to bring it
under suspicion of belonging to that category
of forgeries w^hich w^ere so easily perpetrated,
and are knovs^n to have been perpetrated in many
instances, when very few except the clergy
could write. The eighth and last document,
the confirmation by King William of Eadgar's
grant, thereby implying William's superiority,
exists in duplicate in the Durham Treasury.
To both is appended King William's great
seal, of which only three other examples have
been preserved, and there is no reason to
suspect that the confirmation is a forgery,
except that the grant confirmed is in favour of
a bishop who died the year before it was
141
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
made, and two years before Eadgar became
king.
King Eadgar died unmarried in 1109. In
his singular testamentary disposition of the
kingdom may be traced the difficulty he had
experienced in governing in a single realm the
Gaelic people of the Highlands, who fiercely
repudiated the English claim of superiority,
and the Saxons of Lothian and Welsh of
Strathclyde, where that claim seems to have
been acknowledged. This difficulty he at-
tempted to solve by bequeathing to his brother
Alexander Scotland proper — that is, all north
of Forth and Clyde, together with Stirling-
shire and the country south of the Forth as
far as, and including, Edinburgh.
To his brother David he bequeathed Lothian
and Cumbria, with the title of Earl.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle states that Alex-
ander succeeded to the kingdom " as King
Henry granted him," implying that King
Henry's consent was necessary ; but there is
no other evidence that this was either sought
or obtained ; nor is there any further notice of
Scottish affairs in this chronicle for the follow-
ing seventeen years, when, in 1 1 24, it records
142
ANGUS OF MORAY'S REBELLION
the death of King Alexander, adding that " his
brother, then Earl of Northamptonshire, suc-
ceeded him, and held at the same time both
the kingdom of Scotland and the English
earldom." Not a word here about homage for
the kingdom of Scotland, but as David un-
doubtedly owed homage for the earldom of
Northampton and the honour of Huntingdon,
the dispute was henceforth to become more
complicated than ever.
There are but few other notices of Scottish
affairs in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle^ which ends
with year 1154. The most important refers
to the rising of Angus Mormaer, Earl of
Moray, in 11 30, when he attempted to dis-
possess David of ,the kingdom, whereof he
claimed to be rightful heir under the Gaelic
law of Tanistry, through his mother, a daughter
of Lulach, who succeeded Macbeth as King of
Scots and reigned for three months. The
fullest account of this rising is given by the
contemporary Ordericus Vitalis, who de-
scribes how Angus was attacked by King
David's cousin, Edward, Constable of Scot-
land, defeated and slain, King David him-
self being absent at the time in England,
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
a fact which is confirmed by the Exchequer
Rolls.
"Vigorously pursuing the fugitives with his
troops elated with victory and entering Moray, now
deprived of its lord and protector, by God's help he
obtained possession of all that great territory. Thus
David's dominion was enlarged, and his power in-
creased beyond any who went before him." ^
The place of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle^ in-
valuable as it must be deemed as a succinct
contemporary record of events in the eleventh
century, is now filled by a number of contem-
porary English records, among which the most
trustworthy are those of Ailred, Abbot of
Rievaulx [i 109 ?-i i66], Henry of Hunting-
don [1084 ?-i 155], William of Malmesbury
[1095 ?~ii43], William of Newburgh [1136-
1201], Roger Hoveden, or, as it should be
written, Howden, in the county of Durham
(d. 1 20 1 ?), and Richard Prior of Hexham
(fl. 1141-1160?). Abbot Ailred was the
most gifted writer of the period, but William
of Newburgh is specially worthy of atten-
tion. His Historia Rerum Anglicarum has
been pronounced to be the finest historical
^Ordericus Vitalis, viii. 21.
144
WILLIAM OF MALMESBURY
work left to us by any Englishman of the
twelfth century. Living all his days at New-
burgh in the North Riding of Yorkshire, he
was peculiarly well placed for observation on
Scottish affairs, and he displayed greater breadth
of view and tolerance for Scotsmen than his
contemporaries — Ailred excepted.
David, having become thoroughly angli-
cised during his long residence at the English
court, found high favour with these south-
country annalists. The following passage from
William of Malmesbury's Gesta Regum^ which
was finished in 1 125, is a fair sample of the
literature of the period and is a piece of dis-
cerning history.
" When Alexander went to rest with his fathers,
David, the youngest of Malcolm's sons, ascended the
throne of Scotland, whom the king [Henry I.] had
made a knight and honoured by marriage with a
lady of quality. This youth was more courtly than
the others and, having been polished from boyhood
by intercourse and familiarity with us, had rubbed off
all the rust of Scottish barbarism. When at last he
obtained the kingdom, he remitted for three years
the taxation of all those of his people who were
willing to improve their dwellings, dress more care-
fully and feed more nicely. No history has ever
K 145
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
recorded three kings being brothers who were of
equal sanctity or exhibited so much of their mother's
piety [as Eadgar, Alexander and David] ; for, besides
their temperate habits, their liberal charity and their
prayerfulness, they so completely overcame the domes-
tic vice of kings that there was not even a report of
their being unfaithful to their wives, or that any one
of them had ever been guilty of unlawful intercourse.
Edmund was the only degenerate son of Margaret,
an accomplice in his uncle Donald's crime and bar-
gaining for half his kingdom, he had been accessory
in his brother [Duncan's] death. But when he was
taken and condemned to perpetual imprisonment, he
sincerely repented, and when he drew near to death,
commanded that he should be buried in chains, con-
fessing that he had suffered deservedly for the crime
of fratricide." ^
It is curious that William of Malmesbury
has nothing to say about King David's invasion
of England in support of Empress Maud against
King Stephen, nor of the battle of the Standard,
where David was so badly defeated. His only
reference to Scottish affairs in these troubled
years is the statement that
"a little before Lent 1135 King Stephen went into
Northumberland that he might have a conference
with David king of Scotland, who was said to be
^ Geita Regum, vol. ii. /^j6-jj (Rolls Series).
146
DAVID I. AND STEPHEN
his enemy. From David he easily obtained all he
would have, because, being naturally of gentle dis-
position and feeling the approach of age, he willingly
accepted the tranquillity of peace, real or pretended." ^
What really happened was that David,
having sw^orn to his brother-in-law and ex-
cellent ally, Henry I., to maintain the succession
of Henry's daughter and David's niece, the
Empress Maud, immediately upon King Henry's
death marched an army into Northumberland,
where he took possession of all the principal
fortresses, except Bamborough, without much
opposition, Northumberland being favourable
to the Empress's cause. Henry of Hunting-
don, however, declares that this was effected
by guile. Stephen marched a large army to
oppose David, and the two kings came to an
agreement upon terms defined by Richard of
Hexham. First, King David did homage to
Stephen at York, presumably only for the
territory which Stephen was about to cede to
him, namely, Carlisle and Doncaster and all
that pertained to them. Upon David's son
and heir Stephen bestowed the Honour of
Huntingdon, and promised to consider David's
'^Historia Novella^ vol. ii. 539 (Rolls Series).
147
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
right to the earldom of Northumberland, which
he claimed through his wife Matilda, daughter
of Waltheof, Saxon Earl of Northumbria. On
the other hand, David restored to King Stephen
four castles which he had seized in Northum-
berland.
This good understanding endured but a few
months. Next Easter, Richard of Hexham
tells us. Prince Henry of Scotland was at King
Stephen's court in London, where he was
received with so much honour, being given
precedence over the Archbishop of Canter-
bury, that certain nobles openly insulted him.
King David recalled his son at once, and
refused to let him obey King Stephen's sum-
mons afterwards, although as Earl of Hunting-
don Henry was under obligation to do so.
King David had made no bad bargain, for
although he could not get Stephen to recognise
his claim to Northumberland, he had been
given undisputed possession of Cumberland.
Nevertheless, the question of Northumberland
rankled with him ; it is only fair to believe
besides that this pious king's conscience pricked
him by reason of the breach of his oath to
King Henry in recognising King Stephen.
148
*GESTA STEPHANr
Anyhow he invaded Northumberland again
at Easter, 1 137, during King Stephen's absence
in Normandy. An army was quickly mus-
tered at Newcastle to oppose him, and a truce
was arranged till the following Advent. Upon
Stephen's return from Normandy, David de-
livered his ultimatum : " Give me the earldom
of Northumberland, or I must come and take
it."^ Thus far Richard of Hexham. Next,
William of Newburgh informs us that while
Stephen was striving to put down rebellion
in the south of England, " the fury of the
Scots reviving broke out again and they took
possession of Northumberland, which was
exhausted by the cruellest plundering." ^
We now come to an anonymous chronicler
in the Gesta Stephanie from whom I must make
a short quotation, because of the local colour
it reveals.
" Now Scotland, which is also called Albany, is
a district closed in by marshes and abounding in
rich forests, in milk and cattle, and begirt with safe
harbours and wealthy islands. But its inhabitants
^ De gestis Regis Stephanie in Chronicles of Stephen (Rolls Series),
vol. iii. p. 151.
^Chronicles of Stephen y vol. i. p. 33.
149
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
are barbarous and unclean, neither overcome by
bitter cold nor stunted by extreme hunger." ^
Another writer of this period, Ralph de
Diceto, Dean of S. Paul's, gives a few per-
sonal details about my immediate fellow-
countrymen in Galloway. He says they were
" agile, unclothed, remarkable for much bald-
ness ; arming their left side with knives
formidable to any armed men, most skilful
in throwing javelins to a long distance." ^
David was supported in his invasion of
England by many English barons and by the
Archbishop of York, who, Henry of Hunting-
don states, declared a holy war through the
mouth of the Bishop of Orkney. Richard
of Hexham says that David's infamous army
(infamous, of course, because it invaded Eng-
land) was composed of " Normans, Germans
[that is Saxons], Cumbrians, men from Teviot-
dale and Lothian, Picts, commonly called
Galwegians, and Scots." ^
Excellent reading is Ailred's description
of the campaign and of the general action
1 Gesfa Stephani (same series), vol. iii. p. 34.
'^Imagines Historiarum, vol. i. p. 376.
^De gestis Regis Stephanlf in Chronicles of Stephen, vol. iii. 151.
150
AILRED'S CHRONICLE
in which it culminated — to be known as the
Battle of the Standard, because the great banner
of England was displayed from the mast of a
ship mounted on wheels, and surmounted by
a silver pyx containing the body of Christ.
Ailred wrote as an eye-witness, and although
he adopts the manner of Livy and Tacitus in
giving professedly verbatim reports of long
speeches given by the principal actors, these
reports are of historical value as showing the
dilemma in which many Norman barons were
placed owing to their double allegiance — to
the King of England for lands in England,
to the King of Scots for lands in Scotland —
a dilemma which was constantly to recur
during the next two centuries. Moreover,
Ailred brings vividly before us the various
personalities — the cast of their countenances,
the colour of their hair, the very tone of their
voices. Among the speakers was Robert de
Brus, ancestor of King Robert I., the intimate
friend from boyhood of King David, who had
granted him the wide lands of Annandale, but
was also one of the leading barons of England,
in virtue of his enormous estates in Yorkshire.
*'An aged and most wealthy man," Ailred
151
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
describes him, " of grave demeanour, sparing
of speech, but, when he did speak, it was with
a certain dignity and weight ; one of much
experience in war and well versed in business
of that kind." '
Speaking on behalf of many of his brother
barons, de Brus endeavoured to dissuade David
from fighting with his surest friends. He
reminded him that it was through Norman-
English aid that his brother Eadgar had
regained the kingdom of Scotland from Donald
Ban ; and that David himself, on Eadgar's
death, had only been allowed to succeed peace-
fully to the portion of the realm bequeathed to
him through Alexander's dread of English
arms.
"When, I ask thee, hast thou ever found such
fidelity in the Scots that thou canst so boldly renounce
the counsel of the English arid the aid of the
Normans, as if Scots sufficed thee even against Scots ?
Thy confidence in the men of Galloway is somewhat
of a novelty. Thou art turning thine arms against
the very men to whose support thou owest thy king-
ship, and who have caused thee to be beloved by the
Scots and held in awe by the Galwegians."
Ailred say that de Brus ended his speech in
"^De Standardo, in Chronicles of Stephen, vol. iii. pp. 192-5.
152
BATTLE OF THE STANDARD
tears, and that King David, weeping also, was
on the point of yielding, when the king's
nephew, William Fitzduncan, whom David is
said to have created Earl of Moray, interfered,
fiercely accusing de Brus of treason. This
brought David back to his original purpose of
battle, and he bade his trumpets sound the
advance. Ailred gives interesting details about
the formation of the Scottish columns, stating
that the Galloway Picts insisted upon their
privilege (how and when established we are
not informed) of leading the attack, and how
that attack of half-naked barbarians was repulsed
by the mail-clad Norman knights and men-at-
arms, whereby the rest of David's army was
thrown into confusion and decimated by the
English archers.
More than a thousand years had passed since
Tacitus penned his description of the conflict
on Mons Granpius between Agricola's legion-
aries and the forefathers of these very Picts,
yet in all those centuries the annals of North
Britain present no passage so stirring, so vivid
and so convincing, until the Abbot of Rievaulx
sat down in his cloister to record the Battle of
the Standard.
153
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
Henry, heir-apparent to the Scottish throne,
cut his way through the Norman ranks and
rejoined his father three days later at Carlisle.
This prince is one of the romantic figures in
history, preux chevalier^ a very Flower of
Chivalry. When he died in 1152, Ailred
wrote of him : " We grew up from boyhood
together ; in our youth we were friends,
and I left him only that I might serve
Christ, but I never lost him in loving
memory."
After Henry's death, David foresaw trouble
about the succession among his Gaelic and
Pictish subjects, so he got the Earl of Fife,
head of the ancient Celtic constitutional body,
the Seven Earls, to conduct Henry's son,
Malcolm, through the kingdom for his recog-
nition as heir to the throne. This Malcolm,
fourth of the name, better known as Malcolm
the Maiden, duly succeeded as king on the
death of David in 1153, and was the first
king recorded to have been crowned at Scone,
a fact which we learn from the contemporary
English annalist John of Hexham,^ who under-
^Historia Rerum Anglicarum, in Chronicles of Stephen, vol. i.
pp. 70-72 (Rolls Series).
154
FEUDALISM ESTABLISHED
took a continuation of the valuable chronicle
attributed to Simeon of Durham.
Now we have traversed a great deal of
ground that is covered by our Scottish
chroniclers John of Fordun and Andrew of
Wyntoun. You may be disposed to ask
why their authority has not yet been cited,
and why reference has been made only to
Irish annalists and English chroniclers. As-
suredly it is from no want of a sense of their
importance as historians ; but they both lived
in the fourteenth century, long after the events
for which I have been endeavouring to eluci-
date and indicate contemporary authority.
The reign of David I. witnessed the complete
establishment of feudalism in Scotland, imply-
ing radical changes in the social habits, land
tenure and jurisprudence of the country. It
has seemed to me of greater importance to
collate the fragmentary notices of Scottish
history by writers of the period, English and
often prejudiced though they were, than to
accept without reserve the statements of clerics
viewing these events through feudal spectacles
at a distance of two or three centuries and living
under a new dynasty of kings. There will
^55
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
be plenty of occasion later for reference to
Fordun and Wyntoun ; meanwhile we have
arrived at a period when, for the first time,
we have access to chronicles compiled by
Scottish writers.
There is not the slightest reason to suppose
that Scottish clerics and monks were less
industrious than those of English monasteries
in recording the events of their time, nor to
imagine that the many religious houses founded
by Queen Margaret and her sons were not
each provided with a historiographer and
scriptorium. Unfortunately, except Adamnan's
Life of Columba^ written in the seventh century,
not a single example of annals compiled in
Scotland has been preserved until we come to
the latter half of the twelfth century, when
the Ghronicon de Mailros^ and a meagre
chronicle usually believed to have been com-
piled by a monk of Holyrood, begin to record
contemporary events.
To Scottish history the disappearance of all
the chronicles compiled in the other monas-
teries is an irreparable loss. True it is that it
would be vain to expect monkish writers to
present an impartial and dispassionate view of
156
LOSS OF EARLY CHRONICLES
the questions constantly arising between the
governments of England and Scotland; the
eagerness with which they were accustomed
to attribute a miraculous significance to any
unusual occurrence, and even to every-day
phenomena, betrays a total absence of the
critical faculty so essential in a historian. But
that applies to English monks just as much as
to Scottish, and it would greatly assist us at
this day in coming to right conclusions if the
statements of the English annalists upon those
international disputes which they discussed
with so much bitterness could be collated with
those of advocates in the Scottish interest.
The disappearance of the early Scottish
chronicles may be traced, I think, to two main
causes. First, when the death of Alexander III.
in 1286, followed by that of his grand-daughter
the Maid of Norway in 1290, landed the king-
dom in a disputed succession, it is known that
in the Scottish Treasury was stored a great
mass of State papers and records. These were
handed over by Edward I. of England, in his
capacity of Overlord and Arbiter, to John
Balliol when he was crowned at Scone in
1292. All of them are believed to have
157
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
perished in the confusion of the succeeding
century.
Second, the temporahties and movables of
the Scottish reUgious houses suffered almost as
much in the lawless years preceding the Pro-
testant Reformation as they afterwards did at
the hands of the Reformers themselves.
After the Reformation it is hard to decide
whether ecclesiastical manuscripts, which were
specially obnoxious to the Lords of the Congre-
gation and the zeal of the General Assembly,
suffered more from the illiterate haste of the
lay commendators appointed to administer the
Church revenues, or from the indiscriminate
fury of the Protestant mob. The havoc and
sack of the religious houses at Perth in 1559,
which John Knox, being present in the town,
vainly attempted to stop, was but the first act
in widespread devastation. Books and manu-
scripts went into the flames with popish
vestments and works of art. It gives one
heartache to think of the priceless treasures,
artistic, literary and historical, whereof our
country was plundered in the name of religion.^
^ In that curious anonymous tract of the sixteenth century, The
Historic of the Kennedyis, almost certainly written by Mure of
158
THE CHRONICLE OF HOLYROOD
The Chronicle of Holyrood is a mere frag-
ment, for although it starts with the invasion
of Britain by Julius Caesar, it does not appear
to have become a contemporary record until
about 1 1 50, and even then it is provokingly
laconic and far from accurate. For instance,
in recording the death of King David and the
accession of Malcolm the Maiden in 1 153, the
chronicler says that the young king was forty-
two years of age. The Melrose chronicler
correctly states that he was in his twelfth year.
Auchendrane, an accomplished assassin, we read how Gilbert,
Earl of Cassillis, Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, acquired the
temporalities of Glenluce Abbey in a manner that boded ill to the
contents of the library.
" This Gilbert was ane particuler manne, and ane werry greidy
manne, and cairitt nocht how he gatt land, sa that he culd cum
be the samin ; and for that caus he enterit in bloking with ane
Abbot of Glenluse concerning the Abacie, to tak the samin in
few ; bot, or he gatt the samin performitt, the Abott deitt. And
then he deltt with ane Monk off the samin Abacie, quha culd
counterfitt the Abottis handwritt, and all the haill Conventtis ;
and gartt him counterfitt thair subscriptiones. And quhen he
had gottine the samen done, feiring that the Monk wald reweill
itt, he causit ane cairll, quhilk thay callit Carnachaine, to stik
[him to the deid] ; and thane, for feir that cairll had reweillit, he
garit his fader-broder. Hew of Bargany, accuse this cairll for thift,
and hang him in Corsragall. And sa the landis of Glenluse wes
conqueist."
This was the same Earl Gilbert who roasted the Abbot of
Crosraguel till the wretched man consented to give up the lands
of that abbey to him.
159
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
Somerled's formidable invasion of 1 1 54 in sup-
port of the rebellion raised by the sons of
Malcolm MacEth is dismissed in three lines
by the scribe of Holyrood, and receives no
notice at all in the Melrose Chronicle ; but
both writers record the capture of Donald
MacEth at Whithorn in 1156 and his being
sent to join his father in prison at Roxburgh.
The Holyrood Chronicle contains the further
important statement that King Malcolm re-
ceived Malcolm MacEth to his peace in
1 157. I v^ill not follow Dr. Skene into the
confused issue whether, as he believed, this
rebel MacEth was the same individual who,
under the name of Bishop Wimund, raised
rebellion, and met the fate described by
William of Newburgh, who states that King
Malcolm conciliated MacEth by giving him
a province. Dr. Skene believed this province
to have been Ross, a district in which the
royal writs hardly could be said to run as
yet. Brief was MacEth's authority there, for,
as William of Newburgh tells, the people
of the country laid ambush for him, seized
him and put out his eyes, which, in the
twelfth century, seems to have been recog-
160
MALCOLM THE MAIDEN
nised as the surest way of disposing of a
political opponent.
It is to William of Newburgh that we chiefly
owe our knowledge of Malcolm IV. 's character,
and especially of the circumstances which, as
he alleges, earned him the sobriquet of the
Maiden.
"As he grew towards manhood there were not
wanting some who, sent by Satan, and careless of
their own loss of chastity, urged him with evil daring
and poisonous advice to make trial of carnal pleasure.
But he, desiring to follow the Lamb wherever he
should go, had imbibed with al] his heart the zeal of
holy purity, and knew that this treasure was to be
kept in the frail flesh as in an earthen vessel, no man
revealing this to him but God only. At first he
despised these unseemly promptings of youths of his
own age, and even of those to whom he owed
respect as his instructors ; but when they would not
be silent, he rebuked them by word and counte-
nance, so that none of them thenceforward dared to
try such things with him again.
" But the enemy thus repulsed and prompted by
hatred set craftier snares for this child of God. He
used the mother to prepare for him the secret poison,
as though by the solicitude of maternal love ; and
not only to coax him with persuasion, but even to
direct him by authority, telling him to be a king,
not a monk, and explaining how a girFs caresses
L l6l
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
were the best thing for his age and health. Yield-
ing to his mother's importunity, rather than con-
vinced by it, he feigned consent rather than vex her.
She with delight stood by her son's bed and placed
beside him a lovely and noble virgin ; nor did he
offer any opposition. When he was left alone with
the girl, fired by the flame of chastity rather than of
lust, he rose at once and during the whole night left
the maiden in the royal bed, sleeping himself under
a cloak on the pavement."
In concluding the narrative William rises
above the vulgar appetite for miracles vv^hich
was almost universal among monkish w^riters
of that period.
" Let those who observe signs and judge of merit
by miracles, awarding the title of saint only as indi-
cated by signs — let those say what they will : I
assuredly hold that a young king whose integrity was
assailed in this manner and proved invincible is a
miracle to be preferred not only to the restoring of
sight to the blind, but even to the raising of the
dead."^
Profane critics may incline to discount the
miraculous in Malcolm the Maiden's singular
continence by recalling that he was only in his
^Historia Rerum Anglicarum, in Chronicles of Stephen, vol. i.
pp. 76-78 (Rolls Series).
162
WILLIAM OF NEWBURGH
teens when it was put to the test, and that it is
evident by a charter granted by him to the
Abbey of Kelso, that he left at least one ille-
gitimate son.
Perhaps the most remarkable passage refer-
ring to Scotland in William of Newburgh's
chronicle is that relating to the cession of
Northumberland (including Lothian and Edin-
burgh Castle), Cumberland and Westmorland
in 1 1 57, and the admission by this English
historian that these counties belonged by right
to Scotland. King Malcolm was only sixteen.
The passage runs as follows :
" To the King of Scots, who possessed as his
proper right the northern districts of England,
namely Northumbria, Cumberland and Westmor-
land, formerly acquired by David, King of Scots,
in the name of Matilda, called the Empress, and
her heir, King Henry 11. took care to announce
that the King of England ought not to be de-
frauded of so great a part of his kingdom, nor
could he brook to be deprived of it. It was just
that what had been acquired in his name should be
restored.
" Malcolm prudently considered that in this
matter the King of England's superior might out-
weighed the merits of the case, although he might
have appealed to the oath which King Henry was
163
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
said to have given to David, his grandfather, when
Henry received from him the belt of knighthood.
So he [Malcolm] restored the aforesaid territories
in their entirety when Henry demanded them,
and received from him in return the earldom of
Huntingdon, which belonged to him by ancient
right." '
In truth Malcolm the Maiden had enough
to do in ruling his own kingdom, shorn though
it was of the northern counties of England.
His Celtic subjects, both in the Highlands and
in Galloway, still refused to acknowledge him
as their legitimate king, hankering after the
royal succession according to the ancient law
of Tanistry. Accordingly, it is recorded in the
contemporary chronicles of Melrose and of
Hoveden that in i i6o King Malcolm returned
from France, where he had been serving in the
siege of Toulouse as King Henry's vassal for
the earldom of Huntingdon, in order to put
down rebellion in his own kingdom. He was
besieged in Perth by six out of the Seven
Earls, representing the ancient Celtic constitu-
tion of Scotland proper, but he managed to
beat them off. Wyntoun finishes his metrical
account of this rising by the lines
^UU. pp. 105-6.
164
THE MAIDEN'S LAST WAR
" Bot the kyng rycht manlyly
Swne skalyd all that cumpany,
And tuk and slwe." ^
Turning to the Holyrood Chronicle^ we
read that in the same year, 1 1 60, Malcolm
made three expeditions into Galloway, re-
ducing it to subjection, and that Fergus,
the Celtic prince of Galloway, became a
monk in Holyrood, and gave to the convent
villain quae dicitur Dunroden — that is, Dunrod,
a parish now incorporated into Kirkcud-
bright.
The Chronicle of Melrose and the Chronicle
of Man record in similar terms the last war of
Malcolm the Maiden. In the year before his
death, at the age of twenty-five — that is, in
1 1 64 — Somerled of Argyll, Lord of the Isles,
uncle of the blind claimant, William MacEth,
landed on the coast of Renfrew with a large
force of Irish and Islesmen in 1 60 galleys, but
he was defeated and killed, with his son
Gillecolm. There is a curious rhyming Latin
poem, composed by one named William, who
claims to have been an eye-witness of the
conflict, which he describes minutely, attribu-
^ Crony kil, book v. ch. 7, lines 1395-7.
i6S
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
ting the victory of the loyal Scots to the
intervention of S. Kentigern.
** Sic detrusis et delusis hostium agminibus,
Kentegernum omne regnum laudat altis vocibus.
Caput ducis infelicis Sumerledi clericus
Amputavit, et donavit pontificis manibus."
The poem, a long one, is printed in the appendix
to the first volume of Fordun, in the Historians
of Scotland series, and is especially interesting on
account of the rarity of any native literature of
Scotland in the twelfth century. The original
is preserved in the library of Corpus Christi
College, Cambridge.
Reginald of Durham, who was really a
monk of Coldingham in Berwickshire, lived
and wrote about this time, might almost be
reckoned in the scanty list of our Scottish
historians of the twelfth century did he not
betray the strongest animosity against the
Scots.
On the whole, Malcolm the Maiden main-
tained very amicable relations with his kins-
man Henry II. When Malcolm died in
1 1 65 his praise was in the mouth of men
of both nations, the Englishman, William of
Newburgh, describing him as " a man of
166
WILLIAM THE LYON
angelic sincerity among men, and as it were
an earthly angel " ; ^ while from Ireland the
Annals of Ulster testify to him as "the best
Christian that ever was to the Gael on the
east side of the sea " — that is, to his Highland
subjects.
But William of Newburgh had occasion
to alter his friendly tone after William the
Lyon succeeded his brother Malcolm as King
of Scots. When Henry H. in 1170 made the
startling innovation of having his rebellious son
and heir. Prince Henry, crowned at West-
minster as rex Jilius — prospective king — he
caused King William and his brother David to
do homage to Prince Henry. The peculiar
character of this dual allegiance is set by the
Frenchman Jordan Fantosme, Chancellor of
Winchester, who was present on the occasion,
in his valuable metrical Chronique de la guerre
entre les Anglois et les Ecossois.
" Gentle King of England, of right gallant bearing,
Dost thou not remember that at the coronation of
thy son
Thou causedst the homage of the King of Albany
To be presented to him without breach of loyalty to
thyself.
^ Chronicles of Stephen, etc. vol. i. pp. 147-8.
167
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
Then thou saidst to both — * May God curse those
Who would disturb your love and friendship
Against all the people of the world. Be with my son
In power and aid, saving my over-lordship.' '*
Hence, when Prince Henry rebelled against
his father in 1 172-3, William the Lyon was
under obligation to both parties ; but we know
from a letter written in 1 168 by John of Salis-
bury, Bishop of Chartres, that King William
had already opened negotiations with Louis VIL
of France, offering him aid in his war against
England. This, indeed, may be taken as the
first step in the enduring league between Scot-
land and France, although attempts were made
afterwards to date it back to the days of
Charlemagne. But William had a still more
cogent reason for siding with Prince Henry.
Hoveden and the Peterborough Chronicle
(commonly, but erroneously, attributed to
Abbot Benedict as author) record that Prince
Henry, who ruled in England during his
father's absence in Normandy, had granted to
King William what Henry IL had refused,
namely, the whole of Northumberland north
of the Tyne. King Henry, on his return,
refused to acknowledge the grant, wherefore
168
ALLEGED BARBARITIES
King William invaded England in 1173 in
order to seize by force what he claimed as his
right. Diceto, Dean of S. Paul's, expressly
recognises that right, a remarkable admission
by an English chronicler. He says that
William claimed and Henry refused
"that part of Northumberland which had been
granted, given over and confirmed by charters to his
grandfather King David, and which also had long
been possessed by him.** ^
He goes on to describe horrible and Herodian
barbarities perpetrated upon v^omen and un-
born babes by the invading army — chiefly by
the men of Galloway. But, as Mr. Andrew
Lang has shrewdly pointed out, the allegation
of these atrocities forms a stereotyped para-
graph in the account of every Scottish invasion,
no doubt to stimulate the indignation of the
English levies. It is a cliche used in describing
the raids of Malcolm Ceannmor ; Henry of
Huntingdon transplants it into his record of
David I.'s invasion of 11 38 ; it reappears in
almost identical words in I173 under the hands
of the Dean of S. Paul's and William of
Newburgh. Dr. Stubbs has remarked that
'^Imagines Hutoriaruniy vol. i. p. 376.
169
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
" in the very important account of the Scottish
invasion of 1174, Benedictus Abbas [that is,
the Peterborough chronicler], instead of writing
from personal observation, actually copied ver-
batim the details given by Henry of Huntingdon
in his account of the invasion of 1 138." We
meet the familiar phrase once more as late as
1297, applied to the army of Wallace and
Andrew Moray in their march upon Hexham
and Corbridge. It is worthy of exactly as
much belief, and not a whit more, than the
preposterous miracles and portents with which
these cloistered writers so freely interlard their
narrative.
It is notable that the Scottish Fordun, or
his continuator Bower, compiling the Scoti-
chronicon in the fifteenth century from the
only extant contemporary chronicles, all of
which were English except that of Melrose,
admitted the charge, but laid the whole blame
for the atrocities upon " those Scottish hillmen
who are called brutes and Galwegians, who
knew not how to spare property or person,
but in bestial fury destroyed everything."
About the events of the invasion there is
considerable discrepancy among English writers.
170
WILLIAM THE LYON'S CAMPAIGNS
By far the most readable account, and, I think,
the most trustworthy, is the French metrical
chronicle of Jordan Fantosme.
He describes how King William, having
failed in his attempt to take Newcastle for
want of siege engines, marched off to lay siege
to Carlisle, but on the approach of an English
army from the south under Humphrey de
Bohun and Sir Richard Lucy, he raised the
siege and retreated into Lothian. The English
burnt Berwick and the surrounding country.
So far, all chroniclers agree in the main ; but
now comes a matter upon which some of
them, if they have not been misled themselves,
deliberately mislead their readers. Reginald
of Durham and Roger Wendover, compiler
of F/ores Historiarum^ represent the King of
Scots as being reduced to sue for a truce till
St. Hilary's Day (13th January). Jordan Fan-
tosme and William of Newburgh tell another
story. It was the English commanders who
sued for truce. Messengers had arrived in the
English camp announcing that the rebel Earl
of Leicester had just landed at Walton in
Suffolk, and the army was urgently summoned
south to repel his attack.
171
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
"Wherefore," says Newburgh, "the ferocity of
King Henry's enemy [William the Lyon, to wit]
was checked through caution for a time by necessary
truce, since by cunning dissimulation of our men the
news was kept hid from him."^
From this it appears that the truce was
"necessary," not for the Scots, but for the
English. Had King William but known of
Leicester's landing, he need never have con-
sented to a truce, and the frontier of Scotland
at this day might have been drawn along the
Tyne instead of the Tweed.
Further evidence is not wanting that King
William had the ball at his foot by the state-
ment in the Peterborough Chronicle that, when
the truce was drawing to a close. Bishop
Hugh of Durham sought conference with
King William at a place he calls Reve-
dale, but which is written Revedene by
Hoveden, and purchased a truce from him
until after Easter for 300 marks in silver, to
be raised from the lands of the barons
of Northumberland.^ If Revedene may be
identified with Raughton, five or six miles
^ Historia Rerum Anglicarum, in Chronicles of Stephen^ etc. vol. i.
p. ^77-
^Gesta Henrici II. vol. i. p. 64 (Rolls Series).
172
CAPTURE OF KING WILLIAM
south-west of Carlisle, it shows that William
was still master of Cumberland.
King William, having duly received pay-
ment of his 300 marks, renewed the war
immediately on the expiry of the truce. In
his spirited poem Jordan Fantosme narrates
the events of the campaign, culminating in
the capture of William the Lyon at Alnwick.
Fantosme was present at the time, witness of
the combat from the battlements of Alnwick
Castle.
*' The king of Scots was brave, haughty and bold,
Before Alnwick he stood unarmed ;
I do not tell the story merely on hearsay,
I myself was there and saw what happened.
• • . • . •
The king armed himself soon and hastily,
And mounted a horse which was not slow.
He went forward to the conflict with very great
courage,
The first whom he struck he felled to the earth.
Everything would have gone well with him, well
I know it,
Had not a sergeant rushed up to him
And ripped open his horse with the lance in his
hand.
The king falls to the ground
Great was the battle and stubborn on both sides.
173
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
You might see plenty of darts thrown and arrows
shot.
There was brave fighting and craven flight.
Of the luckless Flemings there was great slaughter.
You might see their entrails dragged out of their
carcases through the fields.
Never again in their country will they cry Arras !
The king and his horse are both upon the ground ;
He could not rise for his horse lay upon him.
He was soon taken ; with my two eyes I saw it
By Ranulf de Glanvile, to whom he surrendered."
William of Newburgh's account agrees very
closely with Fantosme's. There is a passage
therein v^hich reflects credit on the devotion
of the king's knights.
" The king," he says, " charged first upon the
enemy, and was immediately surrounded by our
men. His horse was killed ; he was thrown to the
ground and taken, with almost all his troop. For
even those who might have escaped, refused to fly
after he was taken, yielding themselves voluntarily
into the hands of the enemy. Certain nobles, also,
who chanced to be absent " [they were out foraging],
" but were not far away, when they heard what had
happened, galloped in; and throwing themselves,
rather than falling, into the hands of the enemy,
thought it honourable to share in the peril of their
lord." 1
'^Historia Rerum Anglicarum, vol. i. pp. 183-5.
174
CAPTURE OF KING WILLIAM
To estimate this devotion aright, one should
remember that capture involved payment of
ransom proportionate to the rank of the
prisoner.
The only contemporary Scottish chronicle
which has escaped destruction, that of Melrose,
devotes a single short paragraph to this national
calamity. The Holyrood Chronicle ends in the
middle of a sentence in the, year previous to
King William's capture.
175
A.D. I 174—1286.
V.
A.D. I 174-1286.
In the last lecture the narrative was brought
down to the capture of William the Lyon at
Alnwick in 1 1 74.
We Scotsmen can afford now to forgive, if
we cannot share, the jubilation of the English
chroniclers over that event, involving, as it did,
the abject surrender of the independence of his
country in order to regain his liberty from
the prison of Falaise. But it is hard to
reconcile with chivalrous usage the indignity
with which the captive king was treated.
Jordan Fantosme, describing how Bernard
de Baliol was unhorsed and taken by William
de Mortimer at Alnwick, says that he was put
on parole, " as is done with a knight." Now,
King William had probably received knight-
hood at the hands of Henry II., as his brother
David had received it in 1 170. Yet, if Roger
Hoveden is to be credited. King William was
179
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
brought before King Henry at Northampton
on the thirteenth day after his capture, namely,
on 26th July, with his feet bound under the
belly of a horse. Moreover, two English
chroniclers, Ralph Diceto^ and Roger Wend-
over,^ affirm that he was kept in chains at
Falaise until ist December. But he was
allowed to confer with Scottish ecclesiastics
and nobles who, says Diceto, advised him to
submit to the terms imposed by King Henry
for his release. No need to discuss those
terms now, for there is neither uncertainty nor
dispute about their nature. William and all
his people became vassals and liegemen of the
English crown ; the Scottish Church was made
subject to York and Canterbury ; English
garrisons were to hold the five chief fortresses
of Scotland ; the king's brother David and
twenty-one Scottish nobles were handed over
as hostages. It was a tremendous triumph for
English army and diplomacy. For fifteen
years Scotland remained an English province.
Before examining the records of the recovery
of Scottish independence I will ask you to
^Imagines Historiarum, vol. i. p. 396.
^Flores Historiarum, vol. i. p. 103.
180
ANARCHY IN GALLOWAY
glance at the deplorable effect of the king's
imprisonment upon the internal affairs of Scot-
land in general and of Galloway in particular.
It is described in most detail by the Peter-
borough chronicler. Uthred and Gilbert, sons
of the defunct Fergus, Lord of Galloway, com-
manded those Galwegian levies who formed such
an important part of King William's army.
They appear to have been scattered about the
country after plunder when King William was
taken ; when the disaster became known to
them, they marched back to Galloway, ex-
pelled all the king's officials and killed all the
English and Normans whom they could catch.
Then Uthred and Gilbert, having fallen out as
to which of them should be Lord of Galloway,
Gilbert's son, Malcolm, besieged his uncle
Uthred in the island castle of Loch Fergus,
near Kirkcudbright ; captured him, put out his
eyes, cut out his tongue and emasculated him,
leaving him to perish miserahly.^ Meanwhile
King Henry, who was Gilbert's first cousin
by marriage, had sent a priest, none other
than Roger Hoveden the chronicler, with
Robert de Vaux to negotiate a transfer of the
^ Gesta Henrici II. vol. i. pp. 79-80 (Rolls Series).
181
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
the allegiance of Galloway from Scotland to
England. Gilbert was nothing loth ; but when
the envoys found out the atrocious fate of
Uthred and reported it to King Henry, he
would make no terms with the assassins of
his cousin.
The Peterborough Chronicle states that so soon
as King William got back to his country, King
Henry gave him license for a punitive expedi-
tion against Gilbert.^ But the Scottish bishops
and nobles appear to have viewed Gilbert's crime
with strange leniency, for they interceded for
him, and persuaded William to be satisfied
with exacting a fine and taking hostages. The
fact is that Gilbert was a chief too powerful
to be made amenable to justice except at the
cost of civil war. King Henry, as overlord of
Scotland, recognised this, and overcame his
disgust for the murderer of his cousin ; for in
1 176 King William brought Gilbert to him at
Feckenham in Worcestershire to make his
peace and render homage.^ He was mulcted
in 1000 marks of silver, for the payment of
which Roger Hoveden adds that he gave his
son Duncan as hostage ; but when Gilbert died
^ Gesta Henrici II. vol. i. p. 99. ^Ibid. p. iz6.
182
THE SCOTTISH CHURCH
nine years later he had only paid 162 marks
and Duncan was still in custody.
King William might barter the indepen-
dence of his country under duresse without
doing extreme violence to the feelings of his
subjects. Scotland was too recent an entity,
its population was too composite and too
loosely knit to admit of a common bond of
patriotism inspiring the mass of the people.
The chiefs of Galloway, for instance, had
proved themselves quite ready to cancel their
allegiance to William the Lyon and transfer it
to Henry II., and Moray had long been, and
was still, chronically disaffected. But when
King William in the treaty of Falaise signed
the submission of the Church of Scotland to that
of England, he undertook more than was in his
power to do. The Scottish Church was power-
fully and perfectly organised. The Peterborough
Chronicle describes the proceedings at the Council
held at Northampton on 26th January, 1176,
to which King Henry summoned King William
and the Bishops of S. Andrews, Glasgow,
Dunkeld, Whithorn, Caithness and Moray,
and called upon them to make subjection to
the Church of England. These bishops had
183
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
all sworn and subscribed at York in the previous
year to that condition in the treaty of Falaise
which bound them to make " the same sub-
jection to the Church of England as their
predecessors had been wont to make and which
they ought to make" ; but now they told
King Henry that there never had been any
such subjection, and that none was owing.
Matters were brought to a deadlock by a hot
dispute arising between the two archbishops
as to which English see, York or Canterbury,
had the right to receive the subjection. The
council broke up without obtaining that sub-
jection, and to the Peterborough narrative,
Roger Hoveden, the king's chaplain, adds in
explanation that, as the subjection was not
to be made through Canterbury, Archbishop
Richard (ii 74-1 184) contrived, in opposition
to King Henry, that the Scottish bishops should
be allowed to return home without making
any subjection at all.^
The quarrel became famous. Pope Alex-
ander in. sent Cardinal Vivian as legate to
Scotland carrying letters assuring the bishops
Roger Hoveden's Chronica,
^Geita Henrici II. vol. i
. p. Ill
vol. ii. p. 92.
184
SUPPORT FROM THE POPE
of his displeasure with King Henry, whose
conduct in this matter he declared to be " an
injury towards God and contempt for us, to
the debasement of ecclesiastical liberty which
it is not for any king or prince to control."
On ist August, 1 177, the legate held an
ecclesiastical council in Edinburgh. Bishop
Christian of Whithorn had been squared, or
had otherwise come to the conclusion that he
was a suffragan of York, and declined to attend,
so Cardinal Vivian suspended him ; but Roger
Hoveden says that Christian paid no heed to
the suspension, being protected by Archbishop
Roger of York. Immediately after the council.
Cardinal Vivian was recalled to Rome propter
nimiam cupiditatem suam — because of his exces-
sive avarice — for, says the Peterborough
chronicler, he plundered and oppressed almost
all the ecclesiastics in his legation.^ The
Chronicle of Melrose puts the case against
Vivian still more strongly, no doubt, as Sir
Archibald Lawrie has noted, because he had
exacted tithe from the Cistercians. The Pope
afterwards directed the Scottish bishops to
cancel the legate's order.
^ Gesta Henrici //.vol, i. pp. 166-7 ; Hoveden's Chronica, ii. 135.
185
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
No sooner had the Supreme Pontiff declared
in favour of the freedom of the Scottish Church
from subjection to England, than a dispute arose
between the court of Rome and the King of
Scots as to the appointment of bishops, involv-
ing the question of the supremacy of State or
Church. Bishop Richard of S. Andrews died,
according to the Melrose Chronicle in 1178,
according to the Peterborough Chronicle in 1 180.
" And on his death," says Roger Hoveden, " there
was immediately a schism ; for the canons of the
church of S. Andrews chose for themselves as
bishop Master John, surnamed Scott ; and Wil-
liam King of Scots chose Hugh his chaplain, and
caused him to be consecrated by the bishops of
his realm." ^
John appealed to Rome : the Pope called
upon King William on pain of excommunica-
tion to receive him, and appointed Roger,
Archbishop of York, his legate in Scotland, to
carry out the sentence if necessary. We now
turn to the Peterborough Chronicle^ where we
read this :
" When William King of Scotland had heard that
Hugh, his chaplain, had been deposed, he refused to
receive John, declaring that never, so long as he lived,
■^ Hoveden's Chronica, vol, ii, p. 208,
186
KING WILLIAM EXCOMMUNICATED
should he and John dwell in the kingdom of Scotland
at the same time. And he vehemently persecuted
John to such an extent that he seized in his own hand
the episcopate of S. Andrews and all the revenues of
the diocese ; and he drove John out of the kingdom,
and Matthew, bishop of Aberdeen, uncle of John,
and all others whom he had heard to be akin to him :
and the houses of the Bishop of Aberdeen he caused
to be burnt." ^
To this Roger Hoveden adds that the Arch-
bishop of York, the Bishop of Durham and
Alexius, the Papal legate, pronounced sentence
of excommunication upon King William and
interdict upon his kingdom.
Allowing for some discrepancy in dates, this
was the state of matters in i i8o, and it is not
easy to see how they could have been settled,
had not an authority paramount alike over popes
and kings intervened. Pope Alexander III.
and the Archbishop of York both died in 1 1 8 1.
The new Pope, Lucius III., absolved King
William from excommunication and sent him
the Order of the Golden Rose, with his paternal
benediction.
It may appear strange that we have to
rely on English chroniclers of the period for
^ Gesta Henrici II. vol. i. p. 266.
187
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
full details of Scottish ecclesiastical affairs,
instead of on the Melrose Chronicle^ which is
chiefly concerned with ecclesiastical matter, to
the exclusion of current politics. It is easy to
suppose that the sympathy of the Cistercian
community of Melrose went with the Augustine
canons of S. Andrews in their conflict with
the Crown ; but there was good cause at the
moment for not offending William the Lyon.
The monks of Melrose had been in dispute
with Richard de Morville, the King's constable,
about rights of pasturage between Gala and
Leader, and in March, 1180, the king held a
court at Haddington to arbitrate between them.
Award was given in favour of Melrose ; hence,
while we find a great deal about this local
dispute, the Melrose historiographer is dis-
creetly brief and guarded in his notice of the
S. Andrews affair. He mentions that there
arose therefrom " grave contention and danger-
ous schism " ; that King William was very
angry, and would scarcely allow the papal
legate, Alexius, to enter Scotland ; and that
certain of the clergy were excommunicated ;
but he says not a word about the king's
excommunication. The bestowal of the Golden
188
PAPAL CHARTER
Rose, however, by the new pope receives
honourable mention.
In fact, the Melrose Chronicle^ precious
though it be as practically the only con-
temporary Scottish record, and as illustrating
unconsciously the grasping policy of the
Church, compares very unfavourably as a
national record with the fine chronicles of
Peterborough and Roger Hoveden.
Pope Lucius III. died in 1185 ; Urban III.
and Gregory VIII. both in 1 187 ; and Clement
III. succeeding, found matters in statu quo at
S. Andrews, Bishop Hugh, the excommuni-
cate, still holding the episcopal hood, staff and
ring, although he had been deposed by the
former pope. Peterborough and Hoveden
give a clear account of how Clement III.
solved the deadlock. He insisted on King
William receiving John, who had been ap-
pointed Bishop of Dunkeld, reminding him
" that in the case of Hugh aforesaid the Roman
Court has hitherto deferred to thy royal Serenity,
not without giving offence to many."^ King
William complied; Hugh went off to Rome
to be absolved from excommunication ; received
^ Gesta Henrici 11. vol, ii. pp. 41-43.
189
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
it, and died a few days later, with nearly all his
household. Finally, in March, 1188, King
William sent envoys to Rome, and received
from Pope Clement a charter of independence
for the Scottish Church from all subjection,
save to the Apostolic See/
It illustrates the provoking narrowness of the
Melrose chronicler that he has not a word to
bestow upon this memorable act, although he
is careful to record in this year a grant of land
to the monastery by Richard de Morville as
worthy to be held in eterna memoria. We,
however, ought never to forget that the Church
of Scotland owes her independence at the
present day to the patriotic courage of William
the Lyon, whose resolution all the thunder of
excommunication could not shake.
But William the Lyon did more than that.
If in 1 175 he did, under duresse, surrender the
political independence of his country, he lived
to regain the same in 1 189.
We do not need to be reminded how this
was done ; nor is there any occasion for critical
collation of chronicles. The original deed re-
mains — all men may peruse it as given in
'^Ibid. pp. 234-5.
190
TREATY OF CANTERBURY
facsimile — No. 46 in the National MSS. King
Richard absolutely released King William, his
heirs and successors for all time from the
homage and submission which King Henry
had extorted from him [extorsit is the term
in the original Latin) ; restored to him the
castles of Roxburgh and Berwick, and absolved
all Scottish subjects from the allegiance to the
crown of England that had been exacted from
them.
It is somewhat remarkable that there is no
mention in this important document of the
price, 10,000 marks in gold and silver, which
King William paid, as is well known from
the concurrent testimony of all contemporary
chronicles. It may have been King Richard's
chivalrous wish that the payment should pass
sub stlentio as a knightly ransom.
Reverting for a moment to the restoration
of the Scottish castles to King William under
the treaty of Canterbury, it is well to remem-
ber that three years previously, when King
William married Ermengarde de Beaumont,
Henry II, gave him back Edinburgh Castle,
on condition that he should bestow it in dowry
upon his bride. An event, one should have
191
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
thought, of sufficient national moment to
be recorded by a Scottish annalist; but the
Melrose Chronicle^ although it mentions the
marriage as taking place at Woodstock, makes
no allusion to the restoration of Edinburgh
Castle. For knowledge of that transaction we
are indebted to the Peterborough Chronicle^
Roger Hoveden, and William of Newburgh.
There is a sentence in this treaty of Canter-
bury which it was afterwards sought to construe
as a reservation of the English king's right to
homage from the King of Scots. The sentence
runs as follows :
" We have freed him [William] from all compacts
which our good father Henry King of England
extorted from him by new charters ; so to wit that
he do to us fully and entirely all that his brother
Malcolm King of Scots did of right to our prede-
cessors and ought of right to have done: and that
we do to him all that our predecessors did of right
to Malcolm aforesaid and ought to have done."
This certainly has the appearance of retain-
ing the old disputed claim to homage for the
kingdom of Scotland ; but the Peterborough
chronicler and Hoveden make it quite clear
that homage was only claimed for the Scottish
192
THE QUESTION OF HOMAGE
king's English estates. On the day after the
treaty of Canterbury was settled, namely, 6th
December, 1 189, these chroniclers say :
"The King of Scots did the King of England
homage for the holding of his dignities in England, as
the Kings of Scots his predecessors were accustomed
to hold them in the times of the Kings of England." ^
This clear statement by two English contem-
porary writers ought to nullify the claim of
superiority so persistently urged in later years.
William remained Richard's liege for his
English estates, and for no more.
But, it may be asked, what was meant by
the passage binding King Richard to do to
King William "all that his predecessors did
of right to Malcolm aforesaid and ought to
have done." King Richard had now no
property in Scottish soil ; there was there-
fore no question of allegiance from him to
King William. The King of England's obli-
gation to the King of Scots is specified in the
same clause of the treaty as consisting of
" conduct in the King of Scots coming to
court, returning from court and in his pro-
visionings, liberties, dignities and honours."
^ Gesta Ricardi, vol. ii. p. 98.
N 193
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
It is rather interesting to learn the nature
and extent of the ceremony prescribed for the
reception of the King of Scots when he should
be summoned to the English court as vassal for
his English lands. Roger Hoveden describes
it in minute detail.
The king was to be met at the Tweed by the
Bishop of Durham and the sheriff of North-
umberland, who should conduct him to the
river Tees and there hand him over to the
conduct of the Archbishop of York, and so
on, the bishops and sheriffs of each county
receiving him and passing him on to the next.
From the moment he entered England, the
King of Scots was entitled to loo shillings
daily from the King of England's purse, and
thirty shillings daily during residence at the
English court. In addition, he was to be
supplied with twelve royal wastel cakes and
twelve royal simnel loaves ; four pints of the
king's royal wine and eight pints of expensive
wine ; two pounds of pepper, four pounds of
cummin, two stones of wax or four wax
candles ; forty thick and long pieces of the
king's royal candle, and eighty pieces of other
expensive candle. For the return journey to
194
AMICABLE RELATIONS
Scotland the provision was the same as in
coming south.^
International relations between England and
Scotland were now on a most amicable foot-
ing. King Richard and King William were
kindred spirits — warlike, chivalrous and free-
handed. John of Fordun, compiling his
chronicle 150 years later, had good warrant,
no doubt, for writing as follows :
" The whole time of King Richard there was so
hearty a union between the two countries, and so
great a friendship of genuine affection knit the kings
together like David and Jonathan, that the one in
all things faithfully carried out what the other
wished : and even the two peoples were reckoned
as one and the same. The English could travel
through Scotland as they pleased with perfect safety,
afoot or on horseback, this side of the mountains
and beyond them ; and the Scots could do the like
through England, although laden with gold or any
kind of merchandise." ^
This entente cordiale was riveted by frequent
intermarriage. King William's brother married
the Earl of Chester's sister, and, as the Mel-
rose Chronicle records, William gave three of
^ Roger Hoveden's Chronica, vol. iii. p. 245.
2 Fordun's Annalia, xxi.
19s
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
his four illegitimate daughters in marriage to
as many powerful English barons, and the
fourth, Ada, to Patrick, Earl of Dunbar.
In 1 193 the same authority informs us that
King William sent 2000 marks as a contribu-
tion for the ransom of King Richard from his
fourteen months' imprisonment in Germany.
The English chroniclers do not mention this
act of grace ; but in the English Pipe Roll
for 1 193 there is the entry "Hugh Bardulf
for the carriage of moneys which were sent by
the King of Scots iocs."
There was a slight ruffle of the calm when
the monarchs met at Malton on 5th April,
between King Richard's landing at Sandwich
on 13th March and his coronation at Win-
chester on 17th April. King William, says
Hoveden, demanded the earldoms of North-
umberland, Cumberland, Westmorland and
Lancaster " to be restored to him according
to the right of his predecessors." Richard,
after taking counsel with his barons, replied
that the King of Scots ought by no means
to have made his demand, especially at a time
when war with France was threatened.
William then offered King Richard 15,000
196
WILLIAM DEMANDS NORTHUMBERLAND
marks of silver for Northumberland alone, and
Richard, after holding a council, agreed to let
him have that county, but without the castles.
King William would not accept it on those
terms, and on 22nd April returned home, says
Hoveden, "ill-pleased at the refusal he had
received." ^
We get no information about these transac-
tions from the Melrose Chronicle^ nor about
the still more important turn taken by affairs
in the following year, 11 95, whereby the
whole destiny of the Scottish realm seemed
about to be profoundly affected. Roger Hove-
den is the only contemporary authority for it.
He states that in 1 195 King William was very
ill at Clackmannan, and, having no son, deter-
mined that his daughter Margaret should
marry Otto, son of Henry, Duke of Saxony,
and nephew of King Richard, in order that
Otto should succeed to him on the Scottish
throne.
"But/* continues Roger, "although the king had
the consent of many to his will in this matter, Earl
Patrick and many others opposed it, saying that they
would not receive his daughter as queen, because it
^ Hoveden's Chronica^ vol. iii. pp. 249, 250.
197
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
was not the custom of the kingdom that a woman
should have the throne so long as there was a
brother or nephew in his family who could have the
kingdom by right."
King Richard deputed the Archbishop of
York to arrange the contract of marriage at
Christmas following, on the basis that North-
umberland and Cumberland, with the castles
thereof, should pass to the King of Scots, and
the King of England should possess Lothian
and the castles thereof. But Queen Ermen-
garde was expecting her confinement, and King
William, hoping for a son, resiled from the
contract. Having recovered his health, he
led an expedition against Harald, Norse Earl
of Orkney and Scottish Earl of Caithness,
who had defied his authority.
There is considerable discrepancy between
the Melrose Chronicle and Roger Hoveden's
as to the course of this campaign, but it would
hardly repay one to spend time in attempting
to reconcile them. Harald having surrendered
to the king's superior force, the earldom of
Caithness was taken from him and given to
Reginald, King of Man, but Harald made a
^ Ibid. vol. iii. pp. 298, 299 and 308.
198
HARALD OF CAITHNESS
descent from Orkney in 1201, expelled Regi-
nald's people, and wreaked vengeance upon the
unfortunate Bishop of Caithness, whom he
accused of having made mischief between the
king and himself. He commanded that the
bishop's eyes should be put out and his tongue
torn out ; but, as Fordun quaintly puts it, " it
turned out otherwise, for the use of his tongue
and of one eye was in some measure left to
him." '
King William immediately despatched a
punitive expedition ; but Bishop Roger of
S. Andrews "and other good men" inter-
ceded for the ferocious earl, whom, strange
to say, the king restored to his earldom on
payment of every fourth penny to be found
in Caithness, amounting to 2000 marks of
silver.
Now this bloody episode is of value to us in
estimating the reliance to be placed on the
Scottish historian, John of Fordun, compiling
his annals in the fourteenth century. The
only authority he can have had, other than
oral tradition, was the Orkneyinga Saga^ where
the treatment of the bishop is thus recorded :
^ Fordun's Jnnaliay xxiv,
199
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
** Harald prepared himself to leave the Orkneys,
and when he was quite ready he went first to Thurso
and there disembarked. A bishop was in the borg
at Skara Volstad (Scrabster), and when the men of
Caithness saw the army of Earl Harald they per-
ceived that they could not stand against him. They
were told that the earl was in such an ill temper
that no man could say what he might do. Then
said the bishop, if we can treat with him successfully,
he will give you peace. . . . Harald rushed up from
the ships to the borg. The bishop went to meet
the earl and received him with kind words ; but
their interview ended in the earl having the bishop
seized, and his tongue cut out, and then ordered a
knife to be stuck into his eyes and had him blinded.
During this torment the bishop invoked the virgin
Saint Trodlheima. Then he went up on a hill and
they set him at liberty. There was a woman on
the hill and the bishop desired her to help him.
She saw that blood was falling from his face and said
— 'Rest quiet, my lord, for I will willingly help you.'
"The bishop was brought to the place where
S. Trodlheima rests, and there he got recovery of
his speech and sight."
It will be seen from this that John of
Fordun, instead of exaggerating the narrative,
brings it into sober prose, eliminates the
miraculous element and suggests what was
probably the case, that Earl Harald's men
ACCESSION OF KING JOHN
were of milder mood than their master, who
was probably drunk, and, by wounding the
bishop in the face and mouth, deceived the
earl into the belief that his orders had been
carried out.
Meanwhile, Queen Ermengarde had borne
the wished-for heir, afterwards to become
Alexander II., and the marriage with Prince
Otto was off. It is matter for speculation
how, if it had taken place, it would have
affected Scotland, for Otto became a very
great personage, being elected King of the
Romans in 1198 and Emperor in 1209.
The death of Richard Cceur-de-lion in
1 199 and the accession of King John put an
end to the harmony between the two king-
doms. We have to rely entirely on English
chronicles for a knowledge of what took place.
According to Roger Hoveden, King William
sent envoys immediately to demand of John
the restoration of his patrimony in North-
umberland and Cumberland. The Archbishop
of Canterbury and the Marshal of England
would not allow these envoys to cross to
Normandy, but caused Earl David to inform
William that he must wait patiently until
201
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
King John came to England. Meanwhile
King John pacified King William by sending
word by Eustace de Vesci, William's son-in-
law, that all his petitions should be satisfied,
if he would keep the peace. This was in
April, 1 1 99: in May, after John had come
to England, William renewed his demand,
threatening to seize Northumberland by force.
John replied, " When the King of Scots, my
dearest cousin, comes to me, I shall do for
him what is just, in this and the rest of his
petitions." ^ John went to Northampton at
Pentecost, expecting to meet the King of
Scots there ; but William refused to come,
collected an army and sent fresh envoys to
John announcing his intention of invading
Northumberland if he did not get a favour-
able answer within forty days. John sent
no further reply ; appointed William de
Estuteville Sheriff of Northumberland and
Cumberland, and returned to Normandy.
The fat now seemed to be in the fire, or
very near it : but Hoveden declares that, on
the eve of the threatened invasion. King
William was warned in a dream to desist,
^ Hoveden's CAronka, vol. iv. pp. 89-92.
202
SALVO JURE SUO
and he did so, dismissing the army he had
assembled. Next year, the two kings met at
Lincoln on 21st November, and there, "on a
high hill outside the city, in sight of all the
people, William King of Scots became the
man of John King of England for his right and
swore fealty to him on the cross of Hubert Arch-
bishop of Canterbury . . . saving his pwn
right.'-
On all similar occasions of homage done by
Kings of Scots to Kings of England this most
ambiguous phrase occurs — sa/vo jure suo —
saving his own right. Manifestly we hold
that it meant the King of Scots' independent
right to his own kingdom, and that homage
was done by him only for his estates in
England ; and there is nothing in Roger
Hoveden's account of the meeting to indicate
any more ; but the contemporary Roger Wen-
dover goes a step further, asserting that William
did homage for all his right.^ Naturally this
statement by an irresponsible chronicler was
made the most of by English statesmen and
writers in after years, and, unhappily, the loss
^Hoveden's Chronica, vol. iv, p. 141.
2 Flores Historiaruniy i. 308.
203
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
of the Scottish chronicles leaves us without
any contemporary statement of the Scottish
side of the dispute. John of Fordun expressly
limits King William's homage as being " for
all his lands and honours which he had a right
to in England, and which his predecessors had
formerly held, without prejudice to all his
dignities.'* ^
After the ceremony at Lincoln, King
William once more demanded Northumber-
land, Cumberland and Westmorland as his
rightful heritage : John asked that his decision
on the claim should be deferred till Whitsun-
day following ; when Whitsunday came he
asked for a postponement till Michaelmas
1 20 1, in which year the priceless chronicle
of Roger Hoveden comes to an end, and for
eight years thereafter there is a total absence
of all reference to international affairs by the
other English chroniclers.
We know, indeed, from the public records
that the two kings corresponded on generally
amicable terms and met occasionally at York
for the discussion of matters of moment. In
1209, however, the current of events is
1 Fordun's Annalia, xxiii.
204
GERVASE OF CANTERBURY
restored. John had caused a great castle to
be begun at Tweedmouth, intended to over-
awe and command the Scottish fortress of
Berwick. John of Fordun states that William
could not allow this, attacked the workmen,
put them all to the sword and, twice over,
levelled the building with the ground.^
King John was under threat of excommuni-
cation : his kingdom was already under papal
interdict ; nevertheless he marched in force to
the Border, and from Gervase of Canterbury,
a monk who at that time was writing the
chronicle called Gesta Regum^ we receive a
good impression of the disaffection existing
among the royal troops.
" When the King of England," says he, "advanced
with a numerous army to Scotland, the knights who
were in the army murmured, saying — 'Where are
we going ? what are we doing ? We are as Pagans,
unchristian, without the law of God. What chance
have we, then, against that holy man, the King of
Scotland ? Assuredly God will fight for him against
us, for he has done several miracles on his behalf*
So when these and other murmurs of his soldiers
had been reported to the English king, he directed
Geoffrey Fitz Peter prefect of England and certain
other earls to apply their whole minds to peace." ^
'^Jnnalia, xxv. ^ Qgjta Rfgum, vol. ii. 102-3 (Rolls Series).
205
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
Nor was the old lion William as eager for
battle as of yore. The two kings concluded
peace at Norham : the obnoxious castle at
Tweedmouth was abandoned, William agree-
ing to pay 15,000 marks indemnity, to give
hostages and to entrust his two daughters to
John, who undertook to find them suitable
husbands. The Melrose Chronicle states that
the Scots were greatly displeased with this
treaty.
The same authority dismisses very briefly
the insurrection raised in the north by Guthred,
son of the Celtic pretender, Donald Ban Mac-
William. There is more about it in the
English chronicles. The Annals of S, Edmund's^
a contemporary authority, states that King John
sent a contingent of Brabantines under an Eng-
lish noble to assist King William in putting
down the rebellion, and Walter of Coventry,
also contemporary, declares that John went
there in person, which cannot be true.^ It is
a confusion with John's journey to meet the
King of Scots at Norham. But Walter gives
a shrewd suggestion as to the source of this
rebellion.
1 Memorials ofS. EdmuncPs Abbey, vol. ii. p. 20 (Rolls Series).
206
KING ALEXANDER II.
" Guthred," says he, " was of the ancient line of
Scottish kings, and, supported by Scots and Irish, had
long practised hostility against the modern kings, as
had also his father Donald. For the later Kings of
Scots boast of being French [Norman] in race and
manners, in language and culture ; and after reducing
the Scots [Celts] to utter servitude, they admit only
Normans to their friendship and service.*' ^
Henceforward, until King William's death
in 1214, within five days of completing his
jubilee, he and John remained on excellent
terms ; but matters took an unfavourable turn
when his son, a lad of sixteen, succeeded as
Alexander II. There was the usual Celtic
insurrection in the north in favour of Donald
Ban Mac William, but it was put down, as the
Melrose Chronicle records, with more than
usual promptitude by Macintagart, Earl of
Ross, who was able to send a sackful of rebel
heads as a coronation gift to the young king.
In 1 2 1 5 Alexander, taking advantage of King
John's controversy with his barons after Runny-
mede, endeavoured to make good his claim to
Northumberland by force of arms. The Mel-
rose Chronicle states that he besieged Norham
Castle for forty days from 19th October, but
^ Memoriak, vol. ii. p. 206 (Rolls Series).
207
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
failed to take it ; yet that on 22nd of that
month he received the homage of the Northum-
brian barons at Feltoun. This brought King
John to the north, sending word to Alexander,
says Matthew of Paris, that " he would hunt
that red fox from his lair." He burnt Berwick,
the chief seaport of Scotland, and, adds Mat-
thew, " would have wrought much slaughter
and destruction, had not great need recalled
him, brooking no delay." ^ The Melrose
chronicler describes the devastation wrought
by the English as fearful and unprecedented —
mira et inaudita. He declares that the Scottish
barons burnt their own villages and crops lest
they should be to the profit of the enemy. He
says that John burnt Mitford and Morpeth on
the 7th January, Alnwick on the 9th, Wark
on the nth, and Roxburgh on the i6th after
sacking Berwick on the 15 th, where many of
the inhabitants were put to shameful torture.
From Berwick he marched to Haddington and
Dunbar, which were burnt on 19th January,
and in returning Coldingham Priory was
plundered. All this is greatly in excess of
anything indicated by Matthew Paris : the
^ Chronica Majora^ vol. ii. pp. 641-2.
208
MATTHEW PARIS
Melrose chronicler, however, must have seen
the glare of the fires he describes.
Matthew Paris becomes at this period a
most valuable source of information. He was
a monk of S. Albans, where Roger Wendover
was historiographer ; he succeeded to that
office when Roger died in 1236, and his
Chronica Majora contains matter not to be
found elsewhere.
The great need, referred to by Matthew as
recalling King John from the invasion of
Scotland, indeed brooked no delay. John's
disaffected barons had repudiated their allegi-
ance, and elected the French Dauphin, after-
wards Louis VIII., King of England. Next,
in August, 12 1 6, Roger Wendover informs us
that King Alexander " came with a large army,
through fear of King John, and did homage to
Louis at Dover for the possessions which he must
hold of the King of 'England'' ^ The limitation
is important. The homage was for Alexander's
English estates, and not, as in later years it was
attempted to prove, for his realm of Scotland.
The Melrose Chronicle confirms in every
respect this remarkable march of a Scottish
^Flares Historiarunty vol. ii. pp. 193-4.
o 209
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
army as far south as Dover, but there is inter-
polated in a hand of the fifteenth century a
note to the effect that the King of Scots did
homage to Louis in London, not Dover.
King John died suddenly on 19th October,
much to the relief of both nations.
Henry III. v^as only twelve years old v^hen
he succeeded, and the Regent, William Mar-
shall, Earl of Pembroke, was far too wise to
continue hostilities with Scotland, which was
therefore included in the treaty of peace which
was purchased from the Dauphin for ^10,000.
Thereafter there is no mention of Scottish
affairs in the English chronicles until the year
1220, when the two kings met at York to
arrange King Alexander's marriage with King
Henry's sister, the Princess Joanna. The
marriage took place next year, according to
the Melrose Chronicle on 19th June, according
to Matthew Paris on 25 th June, and according
to Abbot Ralph of Coggeshall on 30th May.
But ten years later, when King Henry wished
further to cement the alliance by marrying
Margaret, the younger sister of the King of
Scots, Matthew of Paris says that the English
barons indignantly objected, holding it to be
210
OUTRAGE IN CAITHNESS
unfitting that the younger sister should be
crowned Queen of England when her elder
sister was only the wife of Hubert de Burgh,
the king's justiciar.
Much uncertainty hangs over the part which
John, Earl of Orkney, had in the horrible out-
rage perpetrated in 1222 on Adam, Bishop of
Caithness, formerly Abbot of Moray. It seems
that he had allowed the tithes to fall heavily in
arrear, and when he tried to collect them, a
gang of 300 ruffians beset his palace at Halkirk,
beat him cruelly, bound him and burnt him to
death in his own kitchen. The contemporary
Annals of Dunstable state that the earl was
present, killed the bishop's chaplain with his
own hand, and, when the bishop escaped out
of the fire, caused him to be thrown back into
it and consumed. ^ The Melrose Chronicle does
not mention the earl ; Fordun and Wyntoun
say that he was at hand, and insinuate that
the crime was not done without his ap-
proval. Anyhow, King Alexander punished
him severely for not keeping better order in
his earldom. He fined him heavily, and for-
feited half his lands. Wyntoun declares that
"^ Annaies Monasticiy vol. iii. pp. 77-78.
211
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
the earl was " nere by," but not actually present ;
and that the king was compelled by the indig-
nation of the Scottish clergy to do this justice
upon him.^
In April, 1236, King Alexander had to put
down an insurrection in Galloway, consequent
upon the death of Alan, lord of that province.
Rebellion among the Galloway Picts would
scarcely be worth special notice, so frequently
did it occur, but for a curious passage in
Matthew Paris's chronicle describing a pagan
ceremony observed by the conspirators, which
he says was the custom of their forefathers.
" All these barbarians, and their chiefs and magis-
trates, were bled from the precordial vein into a large
vessel, stirring and mixing it after it was drawn ; and
afterwards they offered it, mixed, to one another in
turn, and drank it as a sign that they were thenceforth
bound in indissoluble brotherhood, united through
good and ill fortune even to laying down their lives." ^
In the same year King Alexander renewed
his demand for Northumberland and Cumber-
land, but on 25th September, 1237, he agreed
at York to commute his claim for a grant of
land worth ^C^oo a year, and thus was closed
^Wyntoun's Cronyki/, book vii. ch. 9, lines 2735-2774.
^Chronica Majoray vol. iii. p. 365.
212
ALEXANDER III.'S MARRIAGE
this ancient dispute, arising out of David I.'s
marriage lOO years before with the heiress of
Waltheof, Earl of Northumberland.
Notwithstanding this settlement, the subse-
quent treaty of Newcastle in 1244 and the
contract of marriage therein arranged between
the heir-apparent of Scotland (afterwards Alex-
ander III., but at that time a child of three
years) and Margaret, Princess Royal of England,
Henry III. never trusted his brother-in-law,
Alexander II., whose second wife was a French-
woman, and war was more than once imminent
between the two countries. But when Alex-
ander II. died in 1249, leaving the crown to
his son, Alexander III., a boy of eight years,
Henry III. acted an honourable and friendly
part, earning thereby warm eulogium from the
Scottish chronicler, John of Fordun.
" Never," says he, " did any of the English or
British kings in any time past, keep his pledges
towards the Scots more faithfully and steadfastly than
this Henry. For nearly the whole of his reign he
was looked upon by the Kings of Scotland, father and
son, as their most faithful neighbour and counsellor :
a thing which never or seldom had happened, save in
the days — alas, so few ! — of Richard Coeur de Lion." ^
^ Annaliay xlix.
213
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
King Alexander's marriage to Princess
Margaret at York on the day after Christmas,
1 25 1, is described in lively detail by Matthew
Paris. He tells how the numerous retinue of
the King of Scots were all lodged together in
one street as a precautionary measure ; which
notwithstanding they came to blows with the
retainers of the English lords, " first with their
fists, then with their nails and afterwards with
cudgels. . . . There were so many numerous
hosts of nobles of English, French and Scots,
so many large troops of knights, adorned with
wanton robes, vain in their silks and changes
of raiment, that their profane and wanton
vanity, if it were fully described, would fill
the hearers with wonder and disgust. For a
thousand knights and more appeared at the
wedding on behalf of the English king clothed
in silk . . . and on the morrow they threw all
those aside and presented themselves at court
in new robes." Little King Alexander, we
are told, did homage to King Henry " for the
possessions which he holds of the King of
England — to wit, in the Kingdom of England
— to wit, for Lothian and the other lands." ^
^ Chronica Majqra^ vol. v. pp. 266-270.
214
ALEXANDER REFUSES HOMAGE
I make no comment upon this, except that
Matthew Paris must have been misinformed
about Lothian, which we must believe was
ceded to Malcolm II. by Eadulf Cudel after
the Scottish victory at Carham in 1018. Even
if homage had been claimed and paid sub-
sequently to that event, it was utterly
renounced by Richard for himself and his
successors under the treaty of Canterbury, 5th
December, 1 189.
Paris adds that when King Henry went on
to demand that Alexander should do homage
for his kingdom, the royal lad replied that he
had come to England to be married, and not
to argue about such a difficult question.
Which question King Henry did not press
further, but, says Paris, " dissembled every-
thing, passing over it for the time in silence."
This avoidance of a thorny subject may per-
haps be traced to the anxiety of Queen Eleanor
for the future tranquillity of her daughter ;
because, as all men know, and as the chronicles
abundantly testify, Queen Eleanor was the real
ruler of England in those days. She might
well feel uneasy about her daughter's welfare in
Scotland. The outset of Alexander III.'s reign
215
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
of thirty-six years presented little augury of its
subsequent auspicious course. Party faction
and court intrigue took the place of dynastic
rebellion. Robert de Ross and John de Balliol
were sent with the child couple to Edinburgh
as their guardians. Matthew Paris gives a
dismal account of their sojourn, which was
practically imprisonment " in that castle, a
dreary and solitary place," he says, " wholly
without wholesome air or verdure, as being
near the sea." Queen Eleanor, concerned at
rumours about her daughter's health, sent a
physician, Reginald of Bath, to ascertain the
truth. He spoke his mind freely about the
disgraceful state in which he found the young
king and queen — too freely, it seems, for he
presently fell sick and died, as was roundly
asserted, by poison. This brought King
Henry to the Border in person : Ross and
Balliol were dismissed in disgrace ; Ross's
estates being forfeited, but, says Paris, " Balliol
prudently made peace for himself by satisfying
the king's needs with money, which he had in
abundance." ^
The Scottish Council was dismissed, says
'^Ibid, pp. 501-502.
216
THE LAST KING OF PEACE
Fordun, and a fresh one appointed, one of
whom was Robert de Ross, King Alexander's
cousin, which is diametrically opposed to
Paris's statement, i
" But," continues Fordun, " these councillors
were so many kings. For in those days one
who saw the poor crushed down, nobles
ousted from their inheritance, citizens forced
into drudgery, churches violated, might with
good reason exclaim — ' Woe unto the kingdom
where the king is a boy.' " Yet this boy was
to prove the best king that had reigned or
was to reign over Scotland as a separate realm ;
a ruler whose subjects enjoyed such peace and
prosperity as their posterity were not to know
again for full four hundred years : a monarch
for whom the chronicler Wyntoun lamented
in the well-known stanza :
" Quhen Alysaunder cure Kyng was dede
That Scotland led in luwe and le,
Away wes sons off ale and brede,
Off wyne and wax, ojfF gamyn and gle.
Oure gold wes changyd into lede ;
Christ, born into Vyrgynitie,
Succoure Scotland and remede,
That stad is in perplexit6." ^
"^ Annalia, i. ^ Crony ki/^ book vii. chap. lo, at the end.
217
VI.
A.D. 1265— 1406.
VI.
A.D. 1265— 1406.
In this, the last lecture of the present series,
we reach a period when the unification of
Scotland was completed by the defeat of King
Hako at Largs in 1263, and the annexation of
the Isle of Man and the Western Isles in 1266.
The Melrose Chronicle continues to be the
only contemporary Scottish authority, whence
we learn that it was a monk of Melrose, Regi-
nald by name, who was sent to Norway in
1265 to negotiate with Magnus VL, successor
of Hako, for the cession of the islands, whereby
the realm of Scotland became what it is now,
plus the Isle of Man and minus Orkney and
Shetland.
Now, although the reign of Alexander III.
was most momentous and beneficent to the
Scottish nation, I only propose to call your
221
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
attention to one matter connected with it —
the question of homage to England. The
Chronicle of Melrose ends abruptly in the
middle of a sentence in 1270, consequently
we have to rely entirely on English authorities
for King Alexander's doings when he attended
the Parliament of Edward I. in 1278. In the
Annals of Waver ley (contemporary) it is stated
simply that in the middle of October he did
homage,! as he would naturally do to the feudal
superior of his lands in England. Another
contemporary authority, Thomas Wykes,
canon-regular of Osney Abbey, says that King
Alexander came, "whether willingly or un-
willingly I wit not," in response to King
Edward's summons, " to renew in his presence
the homage which he had done to King
Henry for lands which he owes to hold of
him, neighbouring upon the kingdom of
Scotland."
Now note the different gloss put upon the
transaction in the Annals of Worcester^ which
were not compiled until early in the fourteenth
century, after King Edward had assumed the
overlordship of Scotland. This writer states
^ Annales Monastici, vol. ii. p. 390.
222
RENEWED CLAIM OF HOMAGE
that Alexander " did homage to my lord the
King of England for the lands which he holds
in Tynedale and Westmorland, saving, how-
ever, to the King of England his right which
he says he has in the land of Scotland and
Lothian."
Among the Close Rolls of 6 Edward I. is
a memorandum of fealty sworn by Robert
de Brus, Earl of Carrick, on behalf of King
Alexander, "for the services due on account
of lands and tenements which I hold of the
King of England." King Edward's acceptance
is recorded, " saving the claim of homage for
the kingdom of Scotland, whenever they should
choose to discuss that." This minute bears
the date of Michaelmas, i,e. 29th September,
but it cannot be accepted as genuine, seeing
that among the Patent Rolls is another memo-
randum or minute, dated 17th October, stating
that the King of England declares that King
Alexander came before him at Tewkesbury on
the previous day, offering to do him homage,
but as King Edward had not his council with
him, he deferred the ceremony to another
occasion. There is no record of any such
subsequent occasion, whence the assumption
223
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
is not unfair that the memorandum purporting
to be of 29th September is not genuine, but
was concocted to meet the demand made by-
King Edward in 1291 for documentary evi-
dence in support of his claim to overlordship.
Finally, there is the Scottish version of
this transaction, preserved as No. 321 in
the Register of Dunfermline^ which gives the
date as 28th October, quite consistent with
the postponement at Tewkesbury on 17th
October. According to the Dunfermline docu-
ment. King Alexander tendered his homage
through Bruce, Earl of Carrick, for the lands
he held in England, saving my own kingdom.
The Bishop of Norwich, it is stated, inter-
rupted by exclaiming, " and saving the right
of my lord King Edward to homage for your
kingdom " ; upon which King Alexander
answered in a loud voice, "That is due to
God only, for it is from him alone that I hold
my crown."
For my own part, I cannot entertain any
doubt whatever that, although ambitious
prelates like the Bishop of Norwich hankered
after the old claim of superiority, which
implied the subjection of the Scottish Church
224
' THE INTERREGNUM
to the Church of England, King Edward was
far too friendly with his brother-in-law, King
Alexander, to allow that claim to be revived
during Alexander's life ; nor did he make any
attempt to establish it until it was forced upon
his notice by the appeal of Bishop Eraser and
the Legitimist party in Scotland, who besought
him to save their country from civil war after
the death of the Maid of Norway. Then,
when it was evident that intervention was the
only way, Edward acceded to the appeal, and
did his best to make good the ancient, though
as I believe groundless, claim to overlordship.
And we may assume that some of those whom
he employed to collect documentary evidence
in support of his claim were not very scrupu-
lous about authenticity of the material.
I must now pass in silence over what must
be regarded as the most crucial period in the
history of Scotland, embracing the interregnum
caused by the death of the Maid of Norway,
the wars of Wallace and Bruce, and the ulti-
mate surrender of the claim to overlordship by
Edward III. in 1327. And if you think it
strange why I have nothing to say about so
momentous a period, I may explain that, with
p 225
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
the close of the Melrose chronicle in 1270, we
are left without light from any contemporary-
Scots writer. English chronicles remain in
plenty, but they give only one side of the
question, and that at a time when international
animosity ran higher than at any previous
period.
One exception must be made by referring
to the Scalacronica of Sir Thomas Gray. It
is true that Gray did not begin to compile
his narrative till after 1355, when he lay for
two years a prisoner in Edinburgh Castle and
beguiled his tedium by studying in the library
there, which seems to have been better fur-
nished than one might have expected. It is
true that much of the said narrative, which is
written in Norman French (the language of the
court and the law at the time), is of no original
value, being, as Gray frankly says in his prologue,
a mere transcript of passages from Gildas, Bede,
Higden and other chroniclers ; but it possesses
a peculiar, indeed a unique, value in being the
work of a soldier who knew what he was
writing about in describing military matters.
Moreover, Gray's father, also named Sir
Thomas, saw forty-six years' almost continuous
226
< SCALACRONICA '
active service in the Scottish war beginning
with the rising of Wallace in 1297. For the
greater part of that period he v^as Constable
of Norham Castle, a much disputed fortress in
the very cockpit of Britain ; he marched with
Edward II. to Bannockburn, and, being taken
prisoner on the day before the battle, witnessed
the action from within the Scottish camp. As
he lived until 1343, his son, the chronicler,
must have framed his narrative of the wars
of Wallace and Bruce largely upon what his
father told him. And whereas his description
of the battle of Bannockburn differs in many
important particulars from the accounts given
by monkish writers of the period, I do not
think anyone can have a clear impression of
the disposition of the forces in that engage-
ment, or of the various passages in the conflict,
without studying Gray's narrative on the
battlefield itself.
A further exception must be made in favour
of the compilation known as the Chronicle of
Lanercost^ which, whether it was executed
at Lanercost Priory or, as Father Stevenson
believed, was the work of a Franciscan friar of
Carlisle, is a fine compendium of ecclesiastical
227
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
myth, historical fact and partisan invective
from the hand of a person or persons in a good
position to watch the course of events on the
Border in the reigns of the first three Edv^ards
of England. So far as it deals with that
period, it appears to have been compiled from
contemporary narratives.
But the time left at my disposal must be
given to consideration of the Scottish chroniclers
of the fourteenth century. First and foremost
of these stands John of Fordun, a chantrey
priest of Aberdeen, about whose life nothing
is known save what can be gathered from
prologues and colophons in the various copies
of his Scotichronicon. These copies are twenty-
one in number, all but six being abbreviations
of the original. It is in the prologue to one
of these abridged editions, now in the Advo-
cates' Library, that we get the fullest account
of the author. It is stated therein how " that
truculent tormentor Edward the first after the
Conquest, King of England named Lang-
schankis and a tyrant," caused all the libraries
in the kingdom to be searched for authentic
chronicles, and, having got them into his
hands, " took some of them away to England
228
JOHN OF FORDUN
and committed the others to the flames.
Thereafter," continues the transcriber, " a
certain reverend Scottish priest, Sir John
Fordun, set his hand to the task of recovering
the lost chronicles, travelling afoot through
England and Ireland, visiting towns, univer-
sities, colleges, churches and monasteries,
collating chronicles and collecting information
from learned persons, and taking copious notes
in a book carried in his bosom." The late
Dr. Skene has given ground for his belief that
this peregrination took place betwreen the
years 1363 and 1385, and that the material
collected had been vsrorked up into five books
called Cronica Gentis Scotorum before the author's
death in or about 1385.
Fordun's intention, as shown in one of the
extant copies, was to imitate Higden by
dividing his work into seven books. Among
the English authorities consulted, he seems
to have relied chiefly on the chronicle of S.
Mary of Huntingdon, which has been already
referred to as a useful source of information
as to Scottish affairs in the twelfth century,
owing to the earldom of Huntingdon being
an appanage of the Scottish royal family.
229
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
Fordun also quotes William of Malmesbury.
In Ireland he would find great activity pre-
vailing in historic literature, for it was at this
time that the Leabhar gabhala^ or Book of
Conquests^ was being composed, and John
O'Dugan, who died in 1372, is the reputed
author of the tract, the Men of Alba — Alba
being the ancient name of Scotland. Except
Adamnan's Life of S, Columba and the chronicles
of Melrose and Holyrood, such historical
literature as Fordun may have found in Scot-
land itself cannot now be consulted, for it has
disappeared. The only books which can be
identified from his reference to them is a Lfe
of S. Brandan^ corresponding to neither of the
two lives of that saint in the Brussels MS.,
and the Great Register of the Priory of S,
Andrews^ which has not been seen since the
year 1660.
After all, if we had nothing but the five
books and part of the sixth which Fordun had
written before his death, his chronicle would
carry no more weight than any of the many
other retrospective medieval compilations ;
especially as, besides recording the usual pro-
portion of miracles, he expects his readers to
230
WALTER BOWER
accept a complete genealogy of David I. which
he carries back as far as Japhet, the son of
Noah, without a single link missing ! For-
tunately, besides the five completed books,
which end with the death of David I. in 1 153,
he left a great mass of material classed as Gesta
Annalia^ with which he had intended to con-
tinue his chronicle, and it is from these Gesta
that we learn Scottish history in the fourteenth
century from a Scottish point of view.
Sixty years after Fordun's death his work
was made public under the name of Scoti-
chronicon in sixteen books. Unfortunately, it
was not left as he wrote it. It had come into
the hands of Walter Bower, Abbot of Inch-
colm, who made extensive interpolations upon
Fordun's five completed books, and extended
the Gesta Annalia down to the death of
James I. in 1437. It has often been asserted
that Fordun bequeathed his MSS. to Bower,
and committed to him the task of finishing
what he had begun ; but that is impossible,
because Bower tells us that he was not born till
1385, which was just about the time of Fordun's
death. Bower finished his Scotichronicon in 1 447
and died in 1449. Many historians have fallen
231
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
into the error of quoting the Scotichronicon as
synonymous with Fordun ; but it is very
important to keep Fordun's text distinct from
the manipulated versions and additions by
Bower and other continuators, for Bower has
not only made large additions to Fordun's work,
but has altered the narrative itself in several
passages. " This," observed Dr. Skene, " can
only be viewed as intentional falsification of
history to suit a purpose."
The purpose of such falsification may be
inferred from the ethnology of the Scottish
people. Writing 200 years before Bower, in
the reign of Alexander III., Matthew Paris
testifies to the intense jealousy of the Celtic
nobles and people of the foreigners — Normans
and Flemings — who had supplanted them in all
the richest lands and highest offices of state.
He assigns this racial animosity as the cause of
the insurrection of Comyn, Earl of Menteith,
in 1257, ^^^ ^^ kidnapping of the young
king.^ Fordun does not attempt to explain the
motives of this rebellion, which, if he knew
them, he prudently suppressed out of deference,
no doubt, to the royal dynasty under which he
1 Chronica Majora^ vol. v. p. 656.
232
BOWER ALTERS FORDUN'S NARRATIVE
lived, which was of Norman descent. But Bower
goes a step further. Not content with suppressio
veri^ he has no scruples about suggestio falsi,
James III. was then on the throne, the son of
a Flemish lady and the husband of a Danish
princess: Celtic tradition had become unfashion-
able and Celtic customs obsolete in court circles,
and Bower takes upon himself to garble For-
dun's account of the succession of the kings
from Malcolm IV. in 1153 to David 11. in
1329. Fordun expressly states that David II.
was anointed and crowned by the Bishop of
S. Andrews, " specially appointed thereunto by
a Bull of the most holy Father John XXII.,"
adding, " it is not recorded that any of the
Kings of Scotland, before this David, were
anointed or with so much solemnity crowned."^
Pope John's bull is in the Advocates' Library
to confirm Fordun's accuracy; but such ac-
curacy did not suit Bower's purpose, which
was to exalt the dignity of the reigning house,
and to make the enthronement of the Scottish
kings conform to that of continental monarchs.
The Celts were wont to elect their kings
without any formal coronation, but the Seven
1 Jnnalia, cxlv.
233
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
Earls set him on the Lia Fail — the Stone of
Destiny at Scone. Bower lays stress on the
ceremony of coronation ; in the case of Alex-
ander II. he names only five earls, whereas
Fordun names the constitutional seven. In the
case of Alexander III., Bower has the hardi-
hood to declare that he was anointed by the
Bishop of S. Andrews, which is manifestly
false.
Although Fordun's chronicle is largely com-
piled from English MSS., as are also the
Annalia^ from which he intended to complete
the chronicle (so far as they relate to events
before his own time), still John of Fordun
must be honoured as the Father of Scottish
history. Our gratitude is also due in no small
measure to the late Dr. Skene, who first pre-
pared an edition of Fordun's work free from
Bower's interpolations and the additions by
him and later writers. That edition forms
Volumes I. and IV. of the Historians of Scotland
series, published by Edmonstone and Douglas
in 1871-72.
Next in date to Fordun's chronicle comes
John Barbour's metrical story of The Brus^ a
work quite invaluable to our knowledge of the
234
JOHN BARBOUR
War of Independence, and possessing the rare
merit of being the first example by a Scottish
writer in Northern English or Lowland Scots,
instead of the usual monkish Latin. He was
the contemporary of Chaucer, and although he
cannot be accounted a rival of the author of
Canterbury Tales^ there are passages of deep
feeling here and there in his poem which reveal
that he was capable of more than the ordinary
task of chronicler. His theme was the winning
of the independence of his country ; accord-
ingly he set freedom above every other earthly
boon.
" A ! fredom is ane nobile thing ;
Fredom mais man to have liking ;
Fredom all solas to man gifis,
He lifis at es that frely lifis.
Ane nobile hart may haf nane es,
Na ellis nocht that may him pies,
Gif fredom falyhe, for fre liking
Is yharnit our all othir thing." ^
Although Barbour was probably twenty
years older than Chaucer, it is a curious coinci-
dence that the first notice we have of either
of them occurs in the year 1 357. Chaucer
appears in that year as a page in the household
1 The BruSf iv. lines 47-54.
235
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, third son of
Edward III. ; and Barbour, already Archdeacon
of Aberdeen, acted in the same year as proxy
for the Bishop of Aberdeen at the council held
in Edinburgh to devise means for raising the
ransom of David II. Later in the year he
went to study at Oxford with three scholars
under safe-conduct from King Edward. As-
suming, then, that as an archdeacon he could
not have been much less than forty, his boy-
hood would fall within the reign of his hero,
King Robert ; he may have seen him, and he
certainly became acquainted with many of
those who had shared his adventures. The
good Sir James of Douglas was not one of
those, however ; nevertheless Barbour obtained
and has transmitted a life-like description of
one of the noblest characters in Scottish history.
This is how he portrays the Black Douglas.
" Bot he was nocht sa fair that we
Suld spek gretly of his beaute.
In visage was he sumdele gray,
And had blak har, as I herd say ;
Bot of limmis he was wele mad,
With banis gret and schuldris brad ;
His body was wele mad and lenyhe,
As tha that saw him said to me.
236
*THE BRUS'
Quhen he was blyth he was lufly,
And mek and suet in cumpany ;
Bot quha in battale micht him se
All othir contenans had he;
And in spek ulispit he sumdele,
Bot that sat him richt wondir wele.*'
If James Douglas was Robert de Brus's right
hand, gallant Randolph, Earl of Moray, was
so effective a left hand, that the king might be
considered ambidexter. Of Moray, who lived
till 1332, Barbour has drawn the portrait from
life.
" He was sa curageous ane knicht,
Sa wise, sa worthy and sa wicht,
And of sa soverane great bounte,
That mekill of him may spokin be.
And, for I think of him to red
And to schaw part of his gud ded,
1 will descrif yhou his fassoun
And part of his condicioun.
He was of mesurabill statur,
And portrait wele at all mesur,
With brad visage plesand and far,
Curtas at poynt and debonair,
And of richt seker contening.
Lawte he lufit atour all thing.
In company solacious . . .
He was, and tharwith amorous ;
237
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
And gud knichtis he lufit ay,
And gif that I the suth sail say
He was fulfillet of all bounte
And of all vertues mad was he."
Barbour set about his work with a high pur-
pose, which he thus explains in his prologue :
" Story is to red ar delitabill,
Suppos that tha be nocht bot fabill.
Than suld storyis that suthfast wer
(And tha wer said on gud maner),
Haf doubill plesans in hering.
The first plesans is the carping,
And the tothir the suthfastnes
That schawls the thing richt as it wes :
Tharfor I wald fane set my will
Gif my wit micht suffis thartill
To put in writ ane suthfast story,
Thet it lest ay furth in memory ;
Sa that na lenth of tym it let,
Na gar it haly be foryet."
It is unfortunate that, after such a lofty
exordium, the archdeacon should have devoted
the first ten stanzas of his poem to a glaring
falsification of fact, rolling three personages
into one ideal hero. That is what he did
with father, son and grandson, all of whom
bore the name of Robert de Brus, gravely
238
BARBOUR'S ONE MIS-STATEMENT
presenting them to his readers as one and the
same individual. He represented Robert de
Brus "the Competitor" as being that Robert
de Brus, Earl of Carrick, who became King
of Scots in 1306, and thrust into the same
personality the intermediate Robert de Brus
" le Viel," Lord of Annandale, who was King
Edward's governor of Carlisle during John
Balliol's brief war. Now it is impossible to
conceive that one so diligent and well-informed
as Barbour should have fallen into this blunder
by inadvertence. He was composing his poem,
he tells us, in 1375, forty-six years after King
Robert's death. Probably Cosmo Innes did
Barbour no injustice when, as editor of this
national epic for the Spalding Club in 1859 he
»
wrote :
" It suited Barbour's purpose to place Bruce alto-
gether right, Edward outrageously wrong, in the
first discussion of the disputed succession. It suited
his views of poetical justice that Bruce, who had been
so unjustly dealt with, should be the Bruce who took
vengeance for that injustice at Bannockburn ; though
the former was the grandfather, the other the grand-
son. His hero is not to be degraded by announcing
that he had once sworn fealty to Edward, and once
done homage to Balliol, or ever joined any party
but that of his country and freedom."
239
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
Such a deliberate fabrication placed in the
forefront of a historical work might well
render all that follows of no historical import-
ance. Barbour's spirited narrative has been
denounced as being of no more value to history
than the romances of Walter Scott or Alexandre
Dumas. But once we get past the initial
figment — once the real Bruce has thrown
down the gauntlet by openly repudiating
allegiance to the English king, Barbour's state-
ments will stand the test of examination in
the light of such State papers and other docu-
ments as have been preserved, to which, of
course, the Archdeacon of Aberdeen had no
access.
Take, for example, the early months of 1307
when Brus was closely beset on all sides of his
hiding place in Glentrool. No other writer
has given such a minute account of the inci-
dents of that critical time. He estimates the
number of the king's followers at 150 or 200,
which is certainly nearer the truth than the
guess of the contemporary English chronicler,
Walter of Hemingburgh, who puts them at
10,000. Walter never saw our Galloway
hills, else he would have been puzzled to
240
SIR AYMER DE VALENCE
account for King Robert's success in feeding
such a host in the heart of them.
It is well known that Sir Aymer de Valence,
King Edward's lieutenant-governor of Scotland,
concentrated his forces, placing strong detach-
ments under Percy, Macdowall, de Botetourte,
de Clifford and de Wigtown to guard all the
passes. Barbour thus describes the matter :
" And of Vallanch Sir Amer
Assembllt ane gret cumpany
Of nobill men and of worthy
Of Ingland and of Lowdiane ;
And he has alsua with him tane
Johne of Lome and all his micht
That had of worthy men and wicht
With him aucht hundreth men and ma."^
Barbour here gives the exact strength of
Lorn's Highland contingent. De Valence's
warrant is still preserved among the Exchequer
Rolls, written at Dalmellington and authoris-
ing pay and victuals for twenty-two men-at-
arms and 800 foot with John of Argyll.
Barbour's version of the events which led up
to the fatal meeting of Bruce and Comyn in
the church of Greyfriars at Dumfries is prac-
tically identical with Fordun's. Bruce and
1 The Brus, lii. lines 26-33.
Q 241
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
Comyn are represented as having entered into
a compact, confirmed by sealed endentures,
binding one of them to support the other in
seizing the throne of Scotland, in consideration
whereof he should receive all the private estates
of the other in Scotland. Fordun makes the
proposal come from Bruce, Barbour from
Comyn ; both agree that Comyn preferred to
take the lands, leaving the throne to Bruce,
and went off to denounce Bruce to King
Edward as a traitor. Upon this King Edward
resolves to put Bruce to death ; but, says
Fordun, " he delayed doing so until he could
get the rest of this Robert's brothers together,
and sentence them all to death in one day."
Still following Fordun, we learn that the Earl
of Gloucester, a warm friend of Bruce, warned
him of what was impending, so that Bruce
left London secretly by night, and rode to his
own castle of Lochmaben, which, says Barbour,
he reached on the fifteenth day. This is
leisurely speed for a man flying for his life,
being at the rate of no more than twenty-
one miles a day. The whole story of King
Edward's anger and contemplated revenge is
discredited by the fact that on 8th February,
242
THE MURDER OF COMYN
that IS, two days before the murder of Comyn,
he remitted the scutage due to him by Bruce
on succeeding to his father's estates in England.
Bower has added a preposterous detail to
Fordun's narrative, to the effect that as there
was a heavy fall of snow before Bruce left
London, he caused his horse's shoes to be
reversed, in order to elude pursuit. Modern
historians, from Lord Hailes downwards, have
done Fordun the injustice of attributing this
childish bit of embroidery to him, instead of
his continuator Bower. It is remarkable, also,
that neither Fordun nor Barbour mention
Kirkpatrick as giving Comyn the coup-de-
grace. Fordun says the friars laid the wounded
man behind the altar and asked him whether
he could live. He answered — " I can," where-
upon Bruce's friends (no names mentioned)
stabbed him to death.
The English chroniclers — Hemingford,
Trivet and Matthew of Westminster — being
contemporary, as neither Fordun nor Barbour
were — might have been able to give an exact
account of this central tragedy and the cir-
cumstances which brought it about : but it
is hopeless to expect impartiality from the
243
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
historians of either nation at this time. Scottish
writers exalt the patriotism of Bruce : English
authorities denounce him as a traitor to
Edward. Both aspects of his character are
justifiable ; but history is terribly garbled by
partisan writers unable to take a comprehensive
view. Accordingly, Hemingford and the
others represent Bruce as deliberately plotting
with his brothers, Nigel and Thomas, to get
Comyn into his power that he might kill him.
The truth can never be ascertained until the
secrets of all hearts are known, and we must
leave it at that. But it is interesting to note
a difference between Fordun's and Barbour's
view of Bruce's act. Fordun has no word of
disapproval : on the contrary, he attributes
Bruce's escape from London and from Edward's
wrath to the miraculous grace of God, and he
has no better word to apply to Comyn than
maledicens — evil speaker. Maledicenti in eccksia
fratrum laetale vulnus infligitur. Barbour, on
the other hand, admits that his hero was to
blame, not indeed for the murder, which he
seems to have considered justifiable homicide,
as for the sacrilege involved in violating the
sanctuary of the altar.
244
TRUSTWORTHINESS OF BARBOUR
He also admits that there was considerable
doubt about the real cause of dispute. After
repeating the version which best suited his
purpose and would be most acceptable to his
king and countrymen, he adds conscientiously :
" Nocht forthi yhet sum men sais
That that debat fell othir wais ;
Bot quhatsaevir mad the debat,
Thare throuch he deit wele I wat."^
From this time forward we may safely
entrust ourselves to the guidance of John
Barbour, and with him follow King Robert
through the most adventurous and perilous
period of his life. Plenty of miraculous and
fanciful incidents wove themselves into the
story under the hands of later writers, but
none of these, not even that of Bruce and the
Spider, can be traced to Barbour's authority.
It is in the hardships of the winter of 1306-7,
when King Robert and his followers were
sorely bested for sustenance in the Highland
hills, that James of Douglas first comes on the
scene, hereafter to be ranked by Barbour as
Jonathan to Bruce's David. It is impossible
to doubt the fidelity of the following sketch :
1 The Brusy xi. lines 39-42.
245
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
" Than to the hill tha rad thar way,
Quhar gret defalt of met had tha :
Bot worthy James of Douglas
Ay travaland and besy was
For to purchas the ladyis met,
And it on mony wis wald get :
For quhile he venesoun tham brocht,
And with his handis quhile he wrocht
Gynnis to tak geddis and salmounis,
Troutis, elis and als menounis.
And quhile he went to the foray ;
And sa thar purchasing mad tha.
Ilk man travalit for to get
And purchas tham that tha micht et :
Bot of all that evir tha war
Thar was nocht ane among them thar
That to the ladyis profit was
Mar than James of Douglas :
And the king oft comfort wes
Throu his wit and besynes." ^
The English historian Fabyan, writing more
than 150 years after these events, asserts that
King Robert escaped to Norway and there
spent the winter of 1306-7 ; but I prefer to
accept Barbour's statement that he took refuge
in Rathlin Island, and lay in hiding there till
his descent upon Carrick in the spring of
1307. Barbour could have no reason to
'^Ibid. xvii. lines 63-80.
246
BRUCFS ADVENTURES
suppress such a romantic episode as a voyage
to Norway ; and there is documentary evidence
that the EngHsh government believed him to
be somewhere among the islands, for there is
extant King Edward's orders, dated January,
1307, to Hugh Bysset, of the Glens of Antrim,
to join Menteith and Montacute with a fleet
" to put down Robert de Brus and destroy his
retreat in the isles between Scotland and Ire-
land." Fabyan's story was probably invented
to screen the failure of King Edward's officers
to apprehend the fugitive.
Fordun's narrative of King Robert's move-
ments during this period of adversity is brief
and dry compared with Barbour's glowing
story ; but Fordun has preserved the name of
one who befriended him whom the poet does
not mention, namely, " a certain noble lady
Christiana of the Isles."
Barbour, we may feel sure, lovingly collected
and treasured all the reminiscences he could
obtain from those who knew the king ; but
there is one that he missed, which Sir Thomas
Gray in his Scalachrontca says that he found
among the records of King Robert's adven-
tures. It is so lively that I venture to repeat
247
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
a translation of it from Sir Thomas's Norman
French :
" Robert de Brus came to a passage between two
islands all alone, and when he was in a boat with
two seamen they asked him for news — whether he
had heard anything about what had become of
Robert de Brus. ' Nothing whatever/ quoth he.
* Sure/ said they, * we would like to have hold of
him at this moment, so that he might die by our
hands.' — * And why so ? ' asked de Brus. — * Because/
said they, ' he murdered our lord John Comyn.'
They put him ashore where they had agreed to do,
when he said to them — * Good sirs, ye were wishing
that ye had hold of Robert de Brus — behold him !
if that pleases you ; and were it not that ye had done
me the courtesy to set me across this passage, ye
should have had your wish/ So he went on his way." ^
The importance of Barbour's poem as the
earliest still extant in the Scottish vernacular
deserves more than passing notice. It is true
that the only tw^o existing MSS., one in the
library of St. John's College, Cambridge, dated
1487, another in the Advocates' Library, Edin-
burgh, dated 1489, are both transcripts made
about 100 years after the poem v^as composed.
Doubt has been expressed v^hether these tran-
scripts represent the exact language used by
^ Scalacronica^ folio 203^.
248
TEXT OF *THE BRUS'
the poet, seeing how rapidly the vernacular
changes in that state of society where few
individuals can read or write. We are able,
however, to check that by comparing with the
extant text of the Brus those 260 lines which
Andro of Wyntoun copied into his Cronykil
out of Barbour's original about fifty years
before the existing transcripts were made.
It has been pointed out by Sir James Murray,
editor of the Oxford English Dictionary^ and
by Professor Skeat, who has edited Barbour's
Brus for the Early English Text Society and
for the Scottish Text Society, that, in the
fourteenth century, the whole eastern country,
from the Humber to the Aberdeenshire Dee,
spoke one uniform vernacular called " Inglisch,"
as distinguished from "Scottis," which was
the Gaelic of the Highlanders, Islanders and
Galloway Picts. Further, that this vernacular
was what philologers term Middle Northern
English, and may now be heard in its least
altered form on the lips of our Lowland
Scots.
So great was the difference between Northern
English and the speech of the southern counties
of England that John of Trevisa, a Cornish-
249
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
man, writing in 1387, and therefore contem-
porary with Barbour, stated as follows :
"All the language of the Northumbrians, especially
at York, is so sharp, slitting, grating and unshapen
that we Southerners can scarcely understand that
speech."
Now the language of the Northumbrians
was the language of all Teutonic Scotland.
Richard the Hermit lived near Doncaster, con-
temporary with Barbour, where the northern
dialect prevailed. Take his description of
heaven, written about 1340, and you will
find his language indistinguishable from Bar-
bour's as it has been translated to us :
" Alle maner of joyes are in that stede,
Thare es ay lyfe withouten dede ;
Thare es yhowthe ay withouten elde,
Thare es alkyn welth ay to welde.
Thare es rest ay withouten trauayle,
Thare es alle gudes that never sal fail ;
Thare es pese ay, withouten stryf,
Thare es alle manere of lykyng of lyfe ;
Thare es, withouten myrknes, lyght,
Thare es ay day and never nyght ;
Thare es ay somer ful bryght to se,
And never mare wynter in that centre."
It is surprising how very few people seem
250
LANGUAGE OF THE NORTHUMBRIANS
to understand that the frontier dividing Scot-
land from England was never racial or linguistic,
but merely political. Yet it is more than forty
years since Sir James Murray w^rote as follows
in his Dialect of the Southern Counties of
Scotland :
" I have repeatedly been amused on reading
passages from Cursor Mundi (a poem written at or
near Durham in the fourteenth century) and Ham-
pole, to men of education, both English and Scots,
to hear them all pronounce the dialect ' Old Scotch.'
Great has been the surprise, of the Scotsmen especially,
on being told that Richard of Hampole wrote in the
extreme south of Yorkshire, within a few miles of a
locality so thoroughly English as Sherwood Forest,
with its memories of Robin Hood. Such is the
difficulty which people have in separating the natural
and ethnological relations in which national names
originate from the accidental values which they acquire
through political complications and the fortunes of
crowns and dynasties, that oftener than once the pro-
test has been made — ' Then Richard must have been
a Scotchman settled in Yorkshire.' "
It was therefore no shadowy or illusory
claim that our early Scottish kings maintained
to Northumbria as an integral part of the
northern realm. The natural frontier dividing
Northern from Southern Britain — the natural
251
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
and racial as distinct from the political frontier
— was and is the Humber. Barbour's epic,
therefore, possesses the incalculable merit, and
to its author is due the unrivalled credit, not
only of having preserved a record, not to be
found elsewhere, of the deeds of Robert the
Bruce and his companions in arms, but the
very speech of countrymen and townsfolk at
a time when Latin was the language of the
Church, and French that of the court, the law
and the great barons.
Ay, but Barbour might have done still more
for us than he did. There is a tantalising
passage in 123rd canto where he rehearses
three points of war, each achieved with fifty
men. The first two he describes in detail;
but when he comes to the third, in which Sir
John de Soulis with fifty men waylays and
routs Sir Andrew de Harcla's squadron of
" Thre hundreth horsit jolely,"
he breaks off, saying :
" I will nocht rehers the maner,
For quhasa likis, tha may her
Yhoung wemen, quhen tha will pla,
Sing it amang them ilke day.''
252
ANDREW OF WYNTOUN
" Quhasa likis ! " You and I would like well
enough to hear it, but that ballad has been
allowed to pass out of Scottish literature for
ever and a day.
Coming to the next Scottish chronicler,
Andrew of Wyntoun (and he shall be the last
on my list), we realise what a loss would have
been ours had Barbour's poem by any mischance
been allowed to perish; because Wyntoun,
besides incorporating in his Crony kil 260 lines
taken from Barbour (and frankly acknowledged)
when he comes to the reign of Robert the
Bruce, passes over it altogether with this excuse.
" Quhat that folwyd efFtyrwert,
How Robert oure Kyng recowered his land
That occupyid with his fays he fand,
And it restoryd in all fredwme,
Qwhit til hys ayris off all threldwme,
Quha that lykis that for to wyt
To that Buke I tham remyt,
Quhare Maystere Jhon Barbere off Abbyrdene
Archeden, as mony has sene,
Hys dedis dytyd mare wertusly
Than I can thynk in all study,
Haldand in all lele suthfastness
Set all he wrat noucht half his prowes."
Again, he breaks off in Chap. xix. of the
Eighth Book to warn his readers that what
253
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
follows is not his own composition, but the
work of an author whose name he does not
know. This includes the whole reigns of
David 11. and Robert II. — 1329-90. He
makes handsome acknowledgment.
" And For he wald usurp na fame
Langare, na wald bare na blame
Than he deserwyd, this poyntment
Here he made in that entent
Tyll hys purpos accordand
Before hym wryttyn he redy fand,
That in Kyng Dawys days ware dwne
The Brws, and Robertis, his systyr swne.
Quha that dyde, he wyst rycht noucht,
Bot that till hym on case wes browcht."
And again, after he resumes his own narra-
tive, he says :
" This part last tretyd beforne
Wyt yhe welle, wes noucht my dyte ;
TharofF I dare me welle acqwte.
Quha that it dyted, nevyrtheles,
He schawyd him of mare cunnandnes
Than me commendis this tretis
• ••..••
And I that thoucht for to mak end
Off that purpos I tuk on hand,
254
ANDREW OF WYNTOUN
Saw it was welle accordand
To my matere. I was rycht glade,
For I wes in my trawale sade ;
I ek^d 't here to this dyte,
For to mak me sum respyte."
The portion thus frankly appropriated in-
cludes all between Chap. xx. of Book viii. to
Chap. X. of Book ix., covering about i8o pages
of print in David Laing's edition of 1879.
Almost all that is know^n of Andrew de
Wyntoun is gathered from asides, as it were,
in the course of his metrical chronicle. He
tells us that he was a Canon-regular of S.
Andrews, and that he was appointed Prior of
the monastery of S. Serf on the island in Loch-
leven. This appointment was made not later
than 1395, and Innes states that his name
appears in various documents as publicly acting
in that capacity till 1413. From this it may
be inferred that he was born not later, and
probably earlier, than 1350, especially as he
complains pathetically of age in the prologue
to his Ninth Book.
" For, as I stabil myne intent,
OfFt I fynd impediment
Wyth sudane and fers maladis,
That me cumbris mony wis ;
255
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
And elde me mastreis wyth hir brevis,
like day me sare aggrevis.'*
However, it is well to remember that in
those days men were without the palliatives of
old age that we now enjoy. Few, except those
naturally myopic, can read without spectacles
after the age of forty-five ; and although we
know that Roger Bacon in the thirteenth
century enabled himself to read MS. by laying
a glass prism on the page, and that spectacles
were invented about the beginning of the four-
teenth century, it is scarcely probable that they
had come into general use during Wyntoun's
life.
Another drawback to Wyntoun's studies in
the cloistered solitude of S. Serfs Island was
the lack of works of reference :
" For few wrytys I redy fande
That I couth drawe to my warande ;
Part off the Bybill, with that that Perys
Comestor ekyde in his yheris.
Orosius and Frere Martyne,
Wyth Ynglis and Scottis stories syne."
Piers Comestor was a vigorous commentator
of the Scriptures called Comestor^ because he
devoured them. He died in 1178. The
Scots stories Wyntoun refers to must have
256
^ORYGYNAL CRONYKIL'
been in Gaelic, for he himself claims to write
English.
Eleven transcripts of Wyntoun's Orygynal
Cronykil of Scotland are known to exist, the
best of which, known as the Royal Manuscript,
was presented to the British Museum by
George II. in 1757. It appears to be a tran-
script made about 1460 or 1470. There is an
older copy, probably dating from 1440, among
the Cottonian MSS., but it is imperfect,
wanting a few leaves at both ends. The title
of the work, Orygynale Cronykil^ does not imply
any claim to originality on the author's part,
but is explained by him as follows :
" The tytill of this tretis hale
I wyll be caulde Orygynale ;
For that begynnyng sail mak clere
Be playne proces owre matere,
As of Angelis and of Man
Fyrst to rys the kinde began."
Hence we have to wade, or as some will
prefer not to wade, through the reputed history
of the world from the creation, not omitting
the mythical Gathelus, who wedded Scota the
daughter of Pharaoh, and so became the
founder of the Scottish race.
R 257
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
The chief merit of this author lies in his
delightful discursiveness — the introduction into
his narrative of all sorts of matter which he
has heard, seen or imagined. He throws a
good deal of light upon the origin of some of
the principal families of Scotland. He tells
us, for instance, that there was in his day much
dispute about the alleged descent of the Murray
and the Douglas from a common Flemish
ancestor, Beroald, who received a grant from
King Malcolm in 1 1 60 of the lands of Innes
in Strathspey. Writing at a time when
heraldry was a living science, he makes a
strong point by citing the silver stars on an
azure field, which were and are the bearings
of both families :
" Of Murrawe and the Douglas,
How that thare begynnyng was,
Syn syndry men spekis syndryly
I can put that in na story.
But in thare armeyis bath thai here
The sternis set in lyk manere ;
Til mony men it is yhit sene
Apperand lyk that thai had bene
Of kyn be descens lyneale,
Or be branchys collaterele."
But we should beware of taking Wyntoun
258
SURNAMES
as a guide to the origin of surnames. He
assigns a very comical one to the name of
Comyn, although he is probably right in his
account of the origin of the family :
" Thar cam thre bredyr off Normandy,
Fayre yhong persownis and joly,
With the Kyng Rychard off Ingland.
The eldast dwelt tharfurth byeland ;
In till Ireland past the tothire ;
In Scotland cam the yhongast brodyr ;
Willame wes his propyre name.
Thare duelt he wyth Kyng Willame.
The quhilk saw hym a fayr persowne :
Tharfore in gret affectyowne
The Kyng than had this ilk man.
For wertu that wes in hym than
He made hym, syn he was stark and sture,
Kepare off his chaumbyre dure.
Na langage cowth he spek clerly,
Bot his awyn langage off Normandy.
Nevyrtheles yhit quhen he
Oppynyd the dure till mak entre,
* Cwm in, cwm in,' he wald ay,
As he herd othir abowt him, say ;
Be that oys than othir men
Willame Cwmin cald hym then."
I have quoted this passage at length in
order that you might see that Wyntoun's
259
CHRONICLES RELATING TO SCOTLAND
verse was not of a high order. Intended, as
his poem no doubt was, for oral recitation as
well as for perusal, the absence of punctuation
must have been a serious difficulty. And so
David Macpherson must have found it, when
he edited the first printed edition in 1795.
There is not, he tells us, a single mark of
punctuation in the whole of the Royal Manu-
script from which he worked. When David
Laing undertook a fresh edition for the His-
torians of Scotland Series in 1879, ^^ ^^^
nothing but praise for conscientious diligence
and acumen of Macpherson, who was the son
of a tailor in Edinburgh.
I have mentioned more than once in the
course of these lectures, that I confine myself
chiefly to contemporary chroniclers, or as
nearly contemporary as possible. But these
ancient writers appear to have been as sensible
as any one of us moderns who has tried
his hand at history can be, of the ticklish-
ness of dealing with the acts of living men.
Wyntoun was not exempt from this feeling,
and acted accordingly, for although he prob-
ably lived till 1420, he cannot be held respon-
sible for anything later than 1406, the two last
260
CONCLUSION
chapters of Book ix. appearing to have been
added by another hand.
And now we have arrived at a period when
what are termed chronicles merge into history
proper. In bidding you farewell, and offering
you humble thanks for the amazing patience
with which you have listened to me, I desire
not to be inferior in frankness to Prior Andrew
of Wyntoun. Little, very little indeed, of
what I have put before you is my own, or
entitled by any strain upon language to be
termed original. It has been no more than a
survey and recension, such as any patient
student might undertake, of the laborious
researches of such pioneers as Thomas Innes,
David Macpherson, David Laing, William
Skene, Cosmo Innes and Joseph Stevenson
among the departed, and our own Joseph
Anderson among those happily still with us.
Without the fruit of the labours of these
men, and men like them, knowledge of the
early history of our country would be a sorely
ravelled yarn.
FINIS
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