CHAPTER IX.

THE KINGDOM OF SCOTIA PASSES INTO FEUDAL SCOTLAND.

[Sidenote: Effects of King Malcolm’s death.]

The death of Malcolm Ceannmor, though his reign had been prolonged for the unusual period of thirty-five years, was a great misfortune for Scotland. He united in himself so many claims to the allegiance of the heterogeneous races under his rule, that a work of consolidation had been insensibly going on during his reign, while the influence of his pious and accomplished queen, the Saxon Princess Margaret, equally advanced their civilisation. His death, followed in four days by that of his queen, who succumbed to the grief and shock caused by this unexpected blow, arrested the progress of both, and not only retarded the advance the kingdom had been making for a period of thirty years, but threatened its dismemberment, till the accession of David the First once more united all the races of its population under one vigorous rule, and the task commenced by his father—the process of consolidation and advancing civilisation—was again resumed.

It will be necessary for our purpose to notice the events which affected the population of the country during this interval.

The death of Malcolm raised once more the vexed question of the succession to the throne, and brought the laws and prepossessions of the different races, now united under one government, into conflict. Malcolm appears to have had two brothers, Donald Ban and Melmare, from the latter of whom the earls of Atholl descended.[620] By his first wife Ingibiorg, the widow of Thorfinn, earl of Orkney, he seems to have had two sons, Duncan, who was given up to the king of England as a hostage in 1072, and Donald, who predeceased him in 1085. By his second wife, the Saxon Queen Margaret, he had six sons and two daughters. The sons were Eadward, who was slain with his father at Alnwick; Eadmund; Ethelred, who appears, while under age, as lay abbot of Dunkeld and earl of Fife;[621] Eadgar, Alexander, and David.

By the Welsh population of the Cumbrian province belonging to Scotland, Duncan, as the eldest son of his father, must have been regarded as the true heir to the throne, and those parts of the kingdom which were colonised by Norwegians, or under Norwegian influence, must have also looked to him both on that account and as the son of the Norwegian Ingibiorg. On the death of Thorfinn, the powerful earl of Orkney who had brought under his rule both the Western Isles and so many earldoms on the mainland, while his patrimonial inheritance of the Orkneys, and probably Caithness, passed to his sons, the other districts, as well as the Western Islands, reverted to their natural lords, and no doubt passed under the dominion of Malcolm Ceannmor. The earldoms which lay within the bounds of the kingdom of Alban, or Scotland proper, became once more incorporated with it. The great district of Moravia, or Moray and Ross, fell under the rule of his native Mormaers. The Western Isles, with Galloway and Argyll, must still to a great extent have been occupied by Northmen; and the revolution by which Godred Crovan, a Norwegian, succeeded in driving out the Danish ruler, and taking possession of the Island of Man some time between the years 1075 and 1080, appears to have led to the Western Isles passing also under his rule, over which he placed his eldest son Lagman; while the appearance of Magnus Barefoot, who had recently become king of Norway, with his fleet in the autumn of the year 1093, and his conquest of the Orkneys and the Western Isles, led to the latter being for the time transferred from the rule of Malcolm Ceannmor, who was at the time engaged in preparing the expedition into England which had, for him, so fatal a termination, and could not defend these remote possessions, to that of the king of Norway.[622] In these more remote parts of the kingdom the claim of Duncan would be regarded with most favour.

Lothian, however, had now become a very important and influential dependence of the kingdom, and its Saxon population must have looked with longing eyes to the children of their revered Saxon princess Queen Margaret as their natural lords. This is clear from the Saxon Chronicle, which, in recording the death of Eadward, the eldest son of Malcolm by Queen Margaret, who was slain with his father in 1093, adds ‘who should, if he had lived, have been king after him,’ and in Lothian the claim of Eadmund, the next surviving son, would be preferred.

Among the Gaelic tribes which still formed the main body of the population of the districts extending from the Forth to the Spey, and constituting the proper kingdom of Scotia, the law of Tanistry must still have had a powerful influence, and had too recently had full sway among them to prepare them to accept the succession of a son in preference to a brother without difficulty; and here Donald Ban, the brother of Malcolm Ceannmor, must have been regarded as their natural and legitimate king, while his only competitor in their eyes, Duncan, being still detained as a hostage at the English court, was in no position personally to contest the succession with him.

[Sidenote: A.D. 1093. Donald Ban, Malcolm’s brother, reigns six months.]

The Saxon Chronicle tells us that on Malcolm’s death ‘the Scots,’ by whom the people of Scotland proper are no doubt meant, ‘then chose Donald, Malcolm’s brother, for king, and drove out all the English who were before with King Malcolm.’[623] He appears to have asserted his claim with great promptitude, for John of Fordun, whom we may now accept as a fair authority for the events of Scottish history, as being nearer his own time, and having no longer a theory to maintain at the expense of its true features, tells us that Donald Ban, the king’s brother, having heard of the death of Queen Margaret, invaded the kingdom at the head of a numerous band, and besieged the castle of Edinburgh, while her body still remained there unburied, and where her sons, whom Fordun terms the king’s rightful and lawful heirs, still were; but her family, taking advantage of a thick mist, which of course he considers miraculous, but is not an unfrequent accompaniment of an Edinburgh day, brought down her body by a postern on the western side, and conveyed it safely to the church of Dunfermline, where she was buried.[624] Wynton, who wrote in the following century, repeats the same story, but says that it was her son Ethelred who conveyed her body to Dunfermline, which is probable enough, as that royal seat was situated within the bounds of his earldom of Fife.[625] Eadgar Aetheling, the queen’s brother, who was still alive, then gathered her sons and daughters together and brought them secretly to England for the purpose of being privately educated by their mother’s relatives.

[Sidenote: A.D. 1093-1094. Duncan, son of Malcolm by his first wife, Ingibiorg, reigns six months.]

Donald Ban was, however, not to escape a conflict with Duncan, the eldest son of the deceased king, for when the news of these events reached the English court, where he had remained since he had been given as a hostage when a mere child, and had received his education, he went to the king, ‘and performed such fealty as the king would have of him, and so with his permission went to Scotland with the support he could get of English and French, that is Normans, and deprived his kinsman Donald of the kingdom, and was received for king.’[626] This took place after Donald had reigned for six months. By the population of Lothian and Cumbria, who had probably had enough of Donald and his Gaelic followers, Duncan would no doubt be received at once; for though the people of Lothian might have preferred a son of the Saxon queen, and might not dislike to see him set aside for one of that family, they would have no hesitation in supporting his cause against that of his uncle. The Gaelic inhabitants of Scotland proper seem to have been divided. A party of the Scots appear to have been sufficiently favourable to him to enable him to expel the intruders, while another section of the natives rejected him, for we are told by the same chronicle that ‘some of the Scots afterwards gathered together and slew almost all his followers, and he himself with few escaped. Afterwards they were reconciled on the condition that he never again should harbour in the land either English or French.’[627] Duncan had probably agreed to hold the whole kingdom as a vassal of the king of England, being himself by education a Norman, and trusting to his English and Norman support to maintain him in his position; but he seems to have found that his only chance of retaining his rule over the districts north of the Forth was by claiming them as his by hereditary right. There are two charters by him preserved: one is a grant by Duncan of the lands of Tiningham and others in East Lothian to Saint Cuthbert, that is, to the church at Durham, in which he styles himself ‘son of King Malcolm and by hereditary right king of Scotland,’ It is witnessed apparently by his brother Eadgar, and with one exception the other witnesses are all Saxons.[628] He appears also to have granted lands in Fife to the church of Dunfermline.[629] He is said to have married Ethreda, daughter of Gospatric, earl of Northumberland, who took refuge in 1067 with Malcolm Ceannmor, and was made earl of Dunbar, by whom he had a son William.[630]

The reign of Duncan, however, did not last longer than that of his uncle Donald; for after he had possessed the throne for six months, the Saxon Chronicle records in the following year, ‘In this year also the Scots ensnared and slew their king Duncan, and after took to them again, a second time, his paternal uncle Donald for king, through whose machinations and incitement he was betrayed to death.’[631] The Scots who thus ensnared him were those who inhabited the districts north of the Tay, the leaders among whom were the men of the Mearns; and Duncan is said by our oldest chronicles to have been slain by Malpeder MacLoen, the Mormaer, or Comes as the Mormaers were now called, of the Mearns, at Monachedin, now Mondynes, in the Mearns or Kincardineshire, where a large upright monolith rising six or eight feet above the surface may commemorate the event.[632]

[Sidenote: A.D. 1094-1097. Donald Ban again, with Eadmund, son of Malcolm, reigned three years.]

Donald Ban, who thus a second time obtained possession of the throne, appears to have felt that he could not maintain himself in that position without neutralising the opposition of the Anglic inhabitants of Lothian, and with the view of strengthening himself offered to associate with him one of the sons of Malcolm by Queen Margaret. Eadgar, the heir, was not likely to surrender his claims for a divided rule with his uncle, but his brother Eadmund appears to have yielded to the temptation and joined the party of Donald Ban. It was at the instigation of Donald Ban and Eadmund that Duncan was slain; and while Donald Ban ruled over the Scots north of the Firths, Eadmund was no doubt placed over Lothian, and, as son of their revered princess Margaret, readily commanded their allegiance.[633] Their joint reign appears to have lasted for three years, and Lothian thus became again dissevered during that period from the kingdom of Scotland.

Eadgar Aetheling, however, resolved now to make an effort to place his nephew Eadgar on the throne; and we are told by the Saxon Chronicle that in the year 1097, ‘soon after St. Michael’s Mass, or the 29th of September, Eadgar Aetheling, with the king’s support, went with a force into Scotland, and in a hard-fought battle won that land and drove out the king Donald, and in King William’s vassalage set as king his kinsman Eadgar, who was the son of King Malcolm and of Queen Margaret, and afterwards returned to England.’ Eadmund, according to William of Malmesbury, being taken and doomed to perpetual imprisonment, sincerely repented, and on his near approach to death ordered himself to be buried in his chains, confessing that he suffered deservedly for the crime of fratricide.[634] Eadgar thus reunited Lothian with Scotland, and subjected both to his rule, but it was not till two years after that he succeeded in taking Donald Ban prisoner, who was blinded and condemned to perpetual imprisonment at Roscolpin or Rescobie, where he died, and was buried in Dunfermline.[635]

[Sidenote: A.D. 1097-1107. Eadgar, son of Malcolm Ceanmnor by Queen Margaret, reigns nine years.]

In the first year of Eadgar’s reign, Magnus Barefoot, the king of Norway, again appeared in the Western Sea with his fleet. On the former occasion he was content with merely subjecting the islands to his authority as sovereign, without apparently disturbing their local government. The sons of Earl Thorfinn retained their position as earls of Orkney, and Godred Crovan remained ruler of the Isles in subordination to the king of Norway, and died in the year 1095. According to the Chronicle of Man, he died in Isla after a reign of sixteen years, and his eldest son Lagman, who had ruled the Isles under him during his life, went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where he died. The king of Norway then sent a Norwegian named Ingemund to rule the Isles, but he soon exasperated the islanders by his conduct, and on his assembling the chiefs of the Isles in the island of Lewis, where he appears to have had his seat of government, for the purpose of having himself declared king, they surrounded his house, set it on fire, and he and his whole retinue were destroyed either by the fire or the sword.[636]

It was this event which probably led to Magnus’s second expedition, and he resolved now to bring the islands under his own immediate rule. According to the Saga ‘he had both a large and vigorous army and excellent ships. King Magnus went with that army westward over the sea, and first to Orkney. He took captive the earls Paul and Erlend, and sent them both east to Norway, but left as a chieftain over the islands his son Sigurd, and gave a counsel to him. He went with his whole army to the Sudreys, but when he came there he commenced plundering immediately, burnt the inhabited places, killed the people, and pillaged wherever he went. But the people of the country fled to various places, some up to Scotland or into the fiords or sea lochs, some southward to Satiri or Kintyre; some submitted to King Magnus and received pardon.’[637] It is obvious from this account that the objects of King Magnus’s wrath were the original native possessors of the Isles, and not the Norwegian Vikings who had settled there, and it is probable that the destruction of Ingemund and his party arose from an attempt on their part to throw off the Norwegian yoke.

After the complete subjection of the Isles, Magnus proceeded southwards to the Isle of Man, and from thence to Anglesea, which he took possession of after subduing two earls—Hugo the Modest and Hugo the Stout—who governed it, and slaying one of them. On his return to the Isles he came to terms with the king of the Scots, by which all the islands to the west of Scotland, between which and the mainland a helm-carrying ship could pass, were ceded to him, and it was on this occasion that he is said to have had his ship drawn across the narrow isthmus between east and west Loch Tarbert, and included Satiri or Kintyre in the new kingdom of the Isles. It is probable that Eadgar did not feel himself sufficiently secure on his throne, and had as yet acquired too little authority over the remote parts of his kingdom to be able to resist the Norwegian king, and had no alternative but to buy off any attack upon the mainland by confirming the cession which his father had been obliged to make in the last years of his reign; and the Isles thus became entirely severed from their connection with the kingdom of Scotland, and were not again united till after the lapse of more than a century and a half.[638] King Magnus was slain in Ulster in the end of August in the year 1104, after he had ruled the Isles for six years. After his death the chiefs of the Isles appear to have endeavoured to throw off the Norwegian yoke with the assistance of the Irish under a leader, Donald mac Tadg, who, according to the Annals of Inisfallen, ‘carried war into the north of Ireland, and acquired the kingdom of Insegall by force’ in 1111;[639] but two years after, Olave, the son of Hodred Crovan, who had taken refuge with the king of England, recovered the possession of the now independent kingdom of the Isles, and ruled over them for forty years.[640]

Fordun tells us that while Eadgar was advancing with his uncle Eadgar Aetheling, towards Scotland, Saint Cuthbert appeared to him in a dream, and promised him success if he would take his standard from the church at Durham and carry it against his foes; and that, having put Donald and his men to flight, Eadgar then, by the favour of God and the merits of Saint Cuthbert, happily achieved a bloodless victory, and when established on the throne granted to the monks of Durham the lands of Coldingham.[641] That he refounded the monastery of Coldingham, and granted it to the canons regular of Saint Cuthbert is certain, for the charters still exist.[642] In these charters Eadgar terms himself king of the Scots (rex Scottorum), and addresses them to the Scots and Angles or English (Scottis et Anglis), thus classing his subjects under these two heads. Only one of the charters contains a list of witnesses. These are of the same character as those of King Duncan’s charter, and equally belong to the race of the Angles. Two of them are in part repeated; Vinget and Aelfric, who witnessed Duncan’s charter, appear also witnessing this charter as Unioett ghwite and Aelfric Pincerna, and Eadgar was thus surrounded by a Saxon court. He appears too to have made Edinburgh his residence, which as a stronghold situated near the western boundary of Lothian and on the Firth of Forth, was well adapted to be the seat of a king whose main supporters were in Lothian, and whose tenure of the northern part of his kingdom was uncertain, and to have died there on the 13th of January in the year 1107,[643] and was buried in Dunfermline. There were only three of the sons of Queen Margaret in life, Ethelred, Alexander, and David.[644] Ethelred was a churchman, abbot of Dunkeld, and possessed as a further appanage of the earldom of Fife, but seems to have made no pretension to the throne, and Alexander appears to have regarded himself as the natural heir; but Eadgar limited his succession to Scotland proper and its dependencies, and bequeathed the districts south of the Firths, consisting of Lothian and the Cumbrian province, to his youngest brother, David, with the title of Comes or Earl.[645] His motive for making this division of the kingdom between the two brothers was probably caused by the difficult position in which the kingdom was placed towards the English monarch, in regard to his claims of superiority. So far as Lothian was concerned, there was probably no idea at this period of the history of contesting it, and both Duncan and Eadgar seem to have purchased the assistance of the English by a general admission that they held the kingdom under the king of England. As soon, however, as they had obtained possession of the throne, they found the necessity of basing their right to the throne, so far as the districts north of the Firths were concerned, upon their hereditary title as heirs of its ancient kings, and not upon any concession from the king of England; but their possession of Scotland proper as independent kings, of Lothian as vassals of the king of England, and of Cumbria on an uncertain tenure in this respect, coupled with the radical diversity in the races which peopled these districts, and their mutual antagonism, made their position an anomalous one, and tended to compromise the independence of the monarchy. Donald Ban seems to have met the difficulty by associating a son of Queen Margaret with him in his second usurpation; and Eadgar, probably experiencing the same difficulty during his life, tried to obviate it after his death by making one brother independent king of the Scots, and placing the district more immediately affected by the English claims under the rule of his brother David, who was so far subordinated to Alexander as to bear the title of earl only. Such seems the natural explanation of this strange arrangement, by which Alexander’s succession as king was limited to the kingdom north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde, with the debateable ground extending from the river Forth to the river Esk, and including the strong positions of Stirling and Edinburgh; while David as earl obtained the richer districts extending from thence to the borders of England; and between them lay the earldom of Gospatric of Dunbar. According to Ailred, within whose lifetime Eadgar died, he was ‘a sweet and amiable man, like his kinsman the holy King Edward in every way; using no harshness, no tyrannical or bitter treatment towards his subjects, but ruling and correcting them with the greatest charity, goodness, and loving kindness;’[646] and consistently with this character we find few events recorded in his reign. He gives a very different character to his brother Alexander. Although, he says, he was humble and kind enough to the monks and the clergy, he was to the rest of his subjects beyond everything terrible; a man of large heart, exerting himself in all things beyond his strength. He was a lettered man, and most zealous in building churches, in searching for relics of saints, in providing and arranging priestly vestments and sacred books; most open-handed, even beyond his means, to all strangers, and so devoted to the poor that he seemed to delight in nothing so much as in supporting them, washing, nourishing, and clothing them.[647]

[Sidenote: A.D. 1107-1124. Alexander, son of Malcolm Ceannmor by Queen Margaret, reigns over Scotland north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde as king for seventeen years.]

Alexander seems to have been dissatisfied with the arrangement made by the deceased king, and the expression in the Saxon Chronicle, coupled with the charters by which he confirms to the monks of Durham the grants they had received from Edgar,[648] implies that he was inclined to claim the whole kingdom as heir to his brother, with the assistance of the king of England, whose natural daughter Sibylla he afterwards married; but the hearty support given by the people of Lothian to his brother David, with the exception of Earl Gospatric, who appears among Alexander’s adherents, was too powerful to enable him to oppose with success the partition of the kingdom.

He soon justified that part of the character given him by Ailred which relates to the monks and the clergy, for besides the usual grants made by each king to Dunfermline, he, after he had reigned about seven years, founded a monastery at Scone, the principal seat of his kingdom, and established in it a colony of canons regular of St. Augustine, whom he brought from the church of St. Oswald at Nastlay, near Pontefract, in Yorkshire; and the church which had previously been dedicated to the Holy Trinity, he placed under the patronage of the Holy Virgin Mary, and of St. Michael, St. John, St. Laurence, and St. Augustine. The foundation charter is granted by himself and his wife Sibylla, daughter of Henry, king of England, as king and queen of the Scots, is confirmed by two bishops, and the formal consent of six earls and of Gospatric, who had also the rank of earl, is given to the grant.[649] Four can be connected with certain districts. These are Mallus of Stratherne, Madach of Atholl, Rothri of Mar, and Gartnach of Buchan. The older designation of Mormaer had now passed into that of ‘comes’ or earl, but was still more of a personal than a territorial title; and we here see Alexander, king of the Scots, whose kingdom was limited to that of Alban or Scotland proper, acting with a constitutional body of seven earls, six of whom represented the older Mormaers of the Celtic kingdom. He also founded a priory of the same canons in the island of Lochtay for himself and the soul of his queen Sibylla, which was dedicated to the Virgin and all saints.[650] In the same year in which Alexander founded the church of Scone, he found himself obliged to enter upon a struggle for the independence of the church in Scotland which indirectly involved that of the kingdom itself. The event which gave rise to this contest was the death of Turgot, bishop of St. Andrews. The see of St. Andrews had remained vacant since the death, in 1093, of the last Celtic bishop, termed in the Ulster Annals Fothudh, high bishop of Alban,[651] and in the Register of St. Andrews, Modach, son of Malmykel, of pious memory, bishop of St Andrews.[652] During the troubled time of the contest between the sons and brother of Malcolm Ceannmor, and during the reign of Eadgar, there appears to have been no consecrated bishop, but in the first year of Alexander’s reign, Turgot, who had been Queen Margaret’s confessor, and was now prior of Durham, was elected to fill the vacant see on the 20th of June 1107.[653] A difficulty immediately arose as to his consecration. The bishops of St. Andrews were at the time the sole bishops in Scotland. The controversy which had existed between Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury, and Thomas, archbishop of York, as to the rights of their respective metropolitan jurisdiction, had terminated in an agreement, at the council of Windsor in 1072, which conceded to York jurisdiction over all the episcopal sees from the Humber to the farthest limits of Scotland; and the archbishop of York now claimed the right to consecrate the bishop of St. Andrews. The claim was not without plausible grounds. The diocese of Wilfrid, the first bishop of York, after the withdrawal of the Scottish clergy, had extended over the whole of that part of Scotland which had been subjected to the Northumbrian rule, and included the entire territory of the subsequent diocese of St. Andrews, and that of Glasgow; and Lothian at that time annexed to St. Andrews, and Teviotdale annexed to Glasgow, had belonged to the bishopric of Lindisfarne. The church of St. Andrews too was founded after the expulsion of the Columban monks and might be viewed as much an offshoot of the Northumbrian church as the early Scottish church of Lindisfarne was of Iona. On the other hand, the church of St. Andrews claimed to be the representative of an older foundation, and engrafted a legendary origin upon its true history. The diocese of Galloway had been founded by the Northumbrians, and as to its subjection to the metropolitan jurisdiction of York there seems never to have been any question; but to allow it to extend over Glasgow and St. Andrews might compromise the independence of the kingdom. Turgot, however, as prior of Durham, would naturally be disposed to look to York for his consecration. Alexander had apparently been no party to his election, and seems hardly to have known thus early in his reign how to extricate himself from the difficulty, and the matter was settled for the time by a compromise. Turgot was consecrated at York on 1st August 1109, with reservation of the rights of both sees.[654] It was probably with a view to remove this difficulty that Alexander had, before the foundation of the church of Scone, erected the two additional sees of Dunkeld and Moray. Turgot, as the first bishop of St. Andrews of Anglic race, seems to have found his position an uncomfortable one, and experienced difficulty in exercising his episcopal functions; accordingly, six years after his consecration, he asked leave to retire to Durham, and died there on the 31st August 1115. It now became necessary to appoint a successor. Alexander appears to have wished for an Englishman, and to have thought that he could best defeat the pretensions of the archbishop of York by applying to the primate of all England. He accordingly wrote to Radulf, archbishop of Canterbury, to ask him to recommend a successor, since, as he averred in old time the bishops of St. Andrews were wont to be consecrated by the Pope or the archbishop of Canterbury. This appeal seems to have revived the disputes between York and Canterbury, which was probably Alexander’s object; and while they disputed as to who should consecrate the bishop, the see remained again vacant till the year 1120, when Alexander chose Eadmer, a monk of Canterbury, to be bishop of St. Andrews, and wrote to the archbishop of Canterbury to request that he might be sent to Scotland to be consecrated, who agreed to his appointment, but proposed he should be sent back to be consecrated. Eadmer went to Scotland, and was elected bishop by the clergy and people of the land, with the royal assent, but when it came to consecration the difficulty again occurred, and was again eventually settled by compromise. Eadmer received the ring from Alexander, took the pastoral staff from off the altar, and assumed the charge of the diocese. He, however, found himself quite as uncomfortable as Turgot had been. The renewed dissensions about the conflicting claims of York and Canterbury and the rights of St. Andrews retarded his consecration, and it ended in his returning the ring to Alexander, the staff to the altar, and leaving Scotland for Canterbury. When he wished, shortly afterwards, to reclaim his bishopric and return to Scotland, Alexander refused to receive him. The see again remained vacant, during which time the archbishop renewed his claim to jurisdiction over the Scottish bishops, which was supported by Pope Calixtus and steadily rejected by King Alexander; but on the death of Eadmer in the beginning of the year 1124, Robert, prior of the monastery of regular canons at Scone, was elected bishop of St. Andrews, and four years after Alexander’s death he was, in the reign of his successor, consecrated as Turgot had been by the archbishop of York, reserving the rights of both churches.[655]

It was on the occasion of Robert, the prior of his own monastery of Scone, becoming bishop of St. Andrews, that Alexander I. restored to the church of St. Andrews the lands called the Boar’s Chase, with many privileges, accompanied with the strange gift of the royal Arabian steed, with its trappings and silver shield and spear, which the king led up to the altar, and a splendid suit of Turkish armour.[656]

Alexander appears also in the same year to have founded a monastery of canons regular on the small island of Emonia, now called Inchcolm, in the Firth of Forth.[657] If these foundations amply justify the character given him of devotion and liberality to the church, that which Ailred likewise applies to him of being terrible towards his subjects was probably acquired by the stern manner in which he repressed the resistance of the Gaelic population of his kingdom, and forced them to submit to his rule. Fordun tells us that Alexander was surnamed Fers or the Fierce, and his interpolator Bower adds ‘that he acquired this name because he had received from his father’s brother, who was earl of Gowry, at his baptism, according to custom, the lands of Lyff and Invergowry, near Dundee;[658] that when he became king, he proceeded to erect a palace at Lyff, but was attacked by certain people of the Mearns and Moray in the night, who broke in the door, but he was brought secretly out[659] by his attendant, Alexander Carron, and having taken ship at Invergowry, he went to the south of Scotland, and having collected an army, he hastened against the rebels; that he then founded the monastery of Scone, and bestowed upon it the lands of Lyff and Invergowry. He then pursued the rebels to the river Spey, and there finding his enemies collected in great numbers on the opposite bank, and the river so swollen, and his men unwilling to cross, he gave his standard to Alexander Carron, who plunged into the stream, was followed by the army, and his enemies were put to flight.’[660] Wynton substantially narrates the same tale, but places the king’s palace or ‘maner-plas’ at Invergowry; terms his assailants ‘a multitude of Scottysmen;’ says that they fled ‘owre the Mownth,’ and removes their final dispersion from the Spey to the Beauly river, when he adds that the king

Folowyd on thame rycht fersly Owre the Stokfurd into Ros;

And that

Quhilk he oure-tuk thame at the last, And tuk and slwe thame, or he past Owt off that land, that fewe he lefft To tuk on hand swylk purpos efft. Fra that day hys legys all Oysid hym Alysandyr the Fers to call.[661]

Wynton places the foundation of Scone on his return from the north. Whether this event really took place or not, it is probably a true enough indication of what Alexander had to experience from his Gaelic subjects, and how he dealt with them, and certain it is that the foundation charter of the monastery of Scone contains a grant of the lands of Lyff and Invergowry.[662]

Alexander grants three of his charters at Strivelin, Perth, and Scone; and, in his foundation charter of the latter place, he gives the monks five dwellings in his principal towns. These are Edwinsburg or Edinburgh, Strivelin or Stirling, Inverkeithing, Perth, and Aberdon or Aberdeen. He died at Stirling in full health of body and faculties, according to Fordun, on the 24th of April in the year 1124, and was buried at Dunfermline on the day of St. Mark the Evangelist, that is, on the 25th of April, near his father, in front of the great altar.[663]

[Sidenote: A.D. 1107-1124. David, youngest son of Malcolm Ceannmor by Queen Margaret, rules over Scotland south of Forth and Clyde as earl.]

The only son of Queen Margaret now left was David, the youngest. He appears, while yet a youth, to have accompanied his sister Matilda to the English court, on her marriage with Henry the First, king of England, which took place in November 1100, during the reign of Eadgar over Scotland,[664] and here he was trained, with other young Norman barons, in all the feudal usages, so as to become, by education and association with the young English nobility, imbued with feudal ideas, and surrounded by Norman influences, or, as William of Malmesbury expresses it, ‘polished from a boy by intercourse and familiarity with us.’[665] When he reached maturity Henry I. gave him in marriage a rich young widow, Matilda, daughter and heiress of that Waltheof who was son of Siward, earl of Northumberland, and himself earl of Northampton, and had married Judith, the niece of the Conqueror, and was afterwards beheaded by him. She was the widow of Simon de Senlis, and by her David obtained during her life the earldom of Northampton and honour of Huntingdon. David was thus, to all intents and purposes, a Norman baron when the death of his brother Eadgar placed him, by his bequest, in possession of almost the entire Scottish territory south of the Firths of Forth and Clyde, with the title of earl. The districts thus possessed by him extended, on the east, from the Tweed as far at least as the Lammermoor range, beyond which was the earldom of Gospatric of Dunbar; while the district extending from the Esk to the Forth was retained by King Alexander. On the west his possessions reached from the Solway Firth to the Firth of Clyde.

Six years after he obtained these lands, he founded, in the year 1113, a monastery of Benedictine monks of Tyron, at Selkirk, on the banks of the Ettrick, and his foundation-charter will still further indicate the extent of his possessions as earl. In this charter he calls himself Earl David, son of Malcolm, king of Scots, and addressed it to all his adherents, Normans, Angles, and Scots,[666] and gives the monks the lands of Selkirk and other lands in Teviotdale, a ploughgate in Berwick, and a croft in the burgh of Roxburgh, the tenth of his ‘can’ or dues from Galweia or Galloway, and in addition some lands in his English lordship of Northampton; and he shows his independent position by adding that this grant was made while Henry was reigning in England and Alexander in Scotia, or Scotland proper.[667] Not long after he refounded the bishopric of Glasgow, to which he appointed John as first bishop, who had been his tutor. The instrument which records the restoration of the diocese, and an investigation ordered by Earl David into the possessions of the see, is still preserved, and may probably be dated some time between the years 1116 and 1120. In this document it was stated that ‘in the time of Henry, king of England, while Alexander, king of Scots, was reigning in Scotia, God had sent them David, brother-german of the king of Scotia, to be their prince and leader;’[668] and ‘David, prince of the Cumbrian region, causes inquisition to be made into the possessions of the church of Glasgow in all the provinces of Cumbria which were under his dominion and power, for he did not rule over the whole of the Cumbrian region.’[669] The kingdom of Cumbria originally extended from the Firth of Clyde to the river Derwent, including what was afterwards the dioceses of Glasgow, Galloway, and Carlisle.[670] That portion, however, which extended from the Solway Firth to the river Derwent, and afterwards formed the diocese of Carlisle, was wrested from the Scots by William Rufus in 1092, and was bestowed by Henry the First upon Ranulf de Meschines.[671] David’s possessions in Cumbria consisted, therefore, of the counties of Lanark, Ayr, Renfrew, Dumfries, and Peebles, and the inquisition contains lands in these counties. He was, as we have seen, overlord of Galloway, and his rule extended also over Lothian and Teviotdale, in the counties of Berwick, Roxburgh, and Selkirk; for, in a charter by Earl David to the monks of Durham of the lands of Swinton in Berwickshire, he addresses it to Bishop John of Glasgow, to Gospatric, Colban and Robert his brothers, and to his thanes and drengs of Lothian and Teviotdale;[672] and, in another, Thor of Ednam in Berwickshire calls him his overlord, or the superior of his lands.[673]

From these deeds we not only learn the extent of David’s possessions, but we also see that he had attached to himself not only his Anglic vassals but a large following of Norman barons. Of the witnesses to the inquisition there are, besides his countess Matilda and his nephew William, son of his brother Duncan, eight of Anglic race and fourteen who are Normans. In his foundation charter of Selkirk, besides Bishop John of Glasgow, his countess Matilda, his son Henry, his nephew William, and three chaplains, there are eleven Norman witnesses, nine Anglic, and a solitary Gillemichel to represent the Celtic race. The native Cumbrians nowhere appear as witnessing his grants, and it seems plain enough that he had largely introduced the Norman element into his territories, and ruled over them as a feudal superior basing his power and influence upon his Norman and Anglic vassals, of whom the former were now the most prominent both in weight and number.[674]

[Sidenote: A.D. 1124-1153. David reigns over all Scotland as first feudal monarch.]

On the death of King Alexander in the year 1124, the Saxon Chronicle tells us that ‘David, his brother, who was earl of Northamptonshire, succeeded to the kingdom, and had them both together, the kingdom of Scotland and the earldom in England;’ and thus the southern and northern districts, which had been severed during the whole of Alexander’s reign, were once more united under one king, and David founded a dynasty of feudal monarchs of Celtic descent in the paternal line, and in the maternal representing the old Saxon royal family, but governing the country as feudal superiors, and introducing feudal institutions. The extent to which the feudal and Norman element had already been introduced into the south of Scotland, while under the rule of earl, by David, will be apparent when we examine the relation between the Norman barons who witness his charters and the land under his sway. The most prominent of those who witness the foundation charter of Selkirk are four Norman barons, who possessed extensive lordships in the north of England. The first was Hugo de Moreville, and we find him in possession of extensive lands in Lauderdale, Lothian, and Cuningham in Ayrshire. The second was Paganus de Braosa. The third Robertus de Brus, who acquired the extensive district of Annandale in Dumfriesshire; and the fourth, Robertus de Umfraville, received grants of Kinnaird and Dunipace in Stirlingshire. Of the other Norman knights who witness this charter, and also the inquisition, Gavinus Ridel, Berengarius Engaine, Robertus Corbet, and Alanus de Perci possess manors in Teviotdale. Walterus de Lindesaya has extensive possessions in Upper Clydesdale, Mid and East Lothian, and in the latter district Robertus de Burneville is also settled. In Scotland proper the character in which David ruled will be best seen by contrasting his charters with those of his predecessors. Eadgar, who possessed the whole kingdom north of the Tweed and the Solway, addresses his charters to all his faithful men in his kingdom, Scots and Angles. Alexander, who possessed the kingdom north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde alone, to the bishops and earls, and all his faithful men of the kingdom of Scotia. A charter granted by David, in the third year of his accession to the throne, to the monks of Durham, of lands in Lothian, is addressed to all dwelling throughout his kingdom in Scotland and Lothian, Scots and Angles;[675] but when we enter Scotland proper, and compare his foundation charter of Dunfermline with that of Scone by his predecessor, Alexander I., there is a marked contrast between them. Alexander grants his charter to Scone, with the formal assent and concurrence of the seven earls of Scotland; and it is confirmed by the two bishops of the only dioceses which then existed in Scotland proper, with exception of St. Andrews, which was vacant, and the witnesses are the few Saxons who formed his personal attendants, Edward the constable, Alfric the pincerna, and others.[676] King David’s charter to Dunfermline, a foundation also within Scotland proper, is granted ‘by his royal authority and power, with the assent of his son Henry, and with the formal confirmation of his queen Matilda, and the bishops, earls, and barons of his kingdom, the clergy and people acquiescing.’ Here we see the feudal baronage of the kingdom occupying the place of the old constitutional body of the seven earls, while the latter appear only as individually witnessing the charter. David’s subsequent charters to Dunfermline show this still more clearly, for they are addressed to the ‘bishops, abbots, earls, sheriffs, barons, governors, and officers, and all the good men of the whole land, Norman, English, and Scotch:’ in short, the feudal community or ‘communitas regni,’ consisting of those holding lands of the crown, while the old traditionary earls of the Celtic kingdom appear among the witnesses only.[677]

The reign of David I. is beyond doubt the true commencement of feudal Scotland, and the term of Celtic Scotland becomes no longer appropriate to it as a kingdom. Under his auspices feudalism rapidly acquired predominance in the country, and its social state and institutions became formally assimilated to Norman forms and ideas, while the old Celtic element in her constitutional history gradually retired into the background. During this and the subsequent reigns the outlying districts, which had hitherto maintained a kind of semi-independence under their native rulers, and in which they were more tenaciously adhered to, were gradually brought under the more direct power of the monarch and incorporated into the kingdom. It will be unnecessary for our purpose to continue further a detailed narrative of the reigns of the kings of this dynasty who had thus become feudal monarchs, and it only remains to notice shortly the occasional appearance of the Celtic element in her constitution, and the fitful struggles of her Celtic subjects to resist the power which was gradually but surely working out this process of incorporation and the consolidation of the various districts which composed it into one compact kingdom.

[Sidenote: A.D. 1130. Insurrection of Angus, earl of Moray, and Malcolm, bastard son of Alexander I.]

David had been barely six years on the throne of Scotland when a united attempt was made on the part of its Gaelic inhabitants to wrest the districts north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde from his dominion, and the further encroachment of the English barons with their feudal holdings. At the head of this insurrection was Malcolm, a natural son of the late King Alexander, who probably counted upon the Gaelic population of Scotland proper preferring to recognise him as his father’s heir in his limited kingdom, rather than be united with Lothian under the feudal government of David; and Angus, son of the daughter of Lulach the Mormaer of Moray, and successor of Macbeth as king of Scotia, for three months, who on the death of Lulach’s son Maelsnechtan in 1085 had succeeded to him, according to the Pictish law of succession, as Mormaer of Moray, or, as it was now termed, Earl. Orderic of Vital gives so circumstantial an account of this insurrection, that his narrative may be accepted as substantially true, supported as it is by other authorities. ‘Malcolm, a bastard son of Alexander,’ he tells us, ‘attempted to deprive his uncle of the crown, and involved him in two rather severe contests; but David, who was his superior in talent as well as in wealth and power, defeated him and his party. In the year of our Lord 1130, while King David was ably applying himself to a cause in King Henry’s court, and carefully examining a charge of treason which, they say, Geoffrey de Clinton had been guilty of, Angus, earl of Moray, with Malcolm and five thousand men, entered Scotia (or Scotland proper) with the intention of reducing the whole kingdom to subjection. Upon this Edward, the son of Siward, earl of Mercia in the time of King Edward, who was a cousin of King David and commander of his army, assembled troops and suddenly threw himself in the enemy’s way. A battle was at length fought, in which Earl Angus was slain and his troops defeated, taken prisoners, or put to flight. Vigorously pursuing the fugitives with his soldiers elated with victory, and entering _Morafia_, or Moray, now deprived of its lord and protector, he obtained, by God’s help, possession of the whole of that large territory. Thus David’s dominions were augmented, and his power was greater than that of any of his predecessors.’[678] This account is confirmed by the Saxon Chronicle, which has in the year 1130, ‘In this year Anagus was slain by the Scots army, and there was a great slaughter made with him. Thus was God’s right avenged on him, because he was all forsworn;’ and the Ulster Annals have in the same year, ‘Battle between the men of Alban and the men of Moray, in which fell four thousand of the men of Moray, with their king Oengus, son of the daughter of Lulag, a thousand also of the men of Alban in heat of battle.’[679] Fordun places the scene of this battle at Stracathro in Forfarshire.[680]

[Sidenote: A.D. 1134. Insurrection by Malcolm Maceth.]

This attempt, which ended so fatally for the Gael of Moray, was followed a few years after by one of the strangest incidents which occur in the history of Scotland at that period. It is obviously alluded to by Ailred in his eulogium upon King David, when, on telling us that ‘God gave David the affection of a son amid scourgings, that he should not murmur or backslide, but should give thanks amid “scourgings,”’ he adds, ‘These were his words, when God sent as a foe against him a certain spurious bishop, who lied and said he was the earl of Moray’s son;’ and again, ‘that the Lord had scourged with the lies of a certain monk that invincible king who had subdued unto himself so many barbarous nations, and had, without great trouble triumphed over the men of Moray and the islands.’[681]

William of Newburgh, however, who had personally known the impostor, if impostor he was, and had conversed with him, gives us a fuller account of this strange transaction. He first appears as a monk of the Cistercian monastery of Furness, which had been founded in the year 1124, as Brother Wymundus. According to William of Newburgh, ‘he possessed an ardent temper, a retentive memory, and competent eloquence, and advanced so rapidly that the highest expectations were formed of him.’ In 1134, Olave, the Norwegian king of Man, granted lands in that island to Yvo, abbot of Furness, to found an affiliated monastery at Russin, and Brother Wymund was sent with some monks to fill it; and here we are told ‘he so pleased the barbarous natives with the sweetness of his address and openness of his countenance, being also of a tall and athletic make, that they requested him to become their bishop and obtained their desire.’ Olave accordingly applied to Thurstan, archbishop of York, to consecrate him their bishop, and Wymund appears to have been consecrated by him.[682] He had no sooner obtained this position than he announced himself to be the son of the earl of Moray, who had been slain in 1130, and ‘that he was deprived of the inheritance of his father by the king of Scotland.’ Having collected a band of followers, who took an oath to him, he dropped his monastic name of Wymund for his Celtic appellation of Malcolm mac Eth, and began his career throughout the adjacent islands. His claim appears to have been recognised as genuine by the Norwegian king of the Isles, and by Somerled, the Celtic regulus of Argyll, whose sister he married. ‘Every day,’ says William of Newburgh, ‘he was joined by troops of adherents, among whom he was conspicuous above all by the head and shoulders: and, like some mighty commander, he inflamed their desires. He then made a descent on the provinces of Scotland, wasting all before him with rapine and slaughter; but whenever the royal army was despatched against him, he eluded the whole warlike preparation, either by retreating to distant forests, or taking to the sea; and when the troops had retired, he again issued from his hiding-places to ravage the provinces.’ In this career he met one check; for, invading the province of Galloway and demanding tribute from the bishop, he was encountered by him at the head of his people when attempting to ford the river Cree; and the bishop ‘having met him as he was furiously advancing and himself striking the first blow in the battle, by way of animating his party, he threw a small hatchet, and, by God’s assistance, he felled his enemy to the earth as he was marching in the van. Gladdened at this event, the people rushed desperately against the marauders, and killing vast numbers of them compelled their ferocious leader shamefully to fly,’ ‘Wymund,’ adds William, ‘himself used afterwards with much pleasantry and boastingly to relate among his friends that God alone was able to vanquish him by the faith of a simple bishop. This circumstance I learnt from a person who had been one of his soldiers, and had fled with those who had made their escape. Recovering his forces, however, he ravaged the islands and provinces of Scotland as he had done before;’[683] till at length the king, with the assistance of a Norman army, succeeded in taking him prisoner, and confined him in the castle of Marchmont or Roxburgh.[684] This took place, as we shall see, in the year 1137.[685]

[Sidenote: A.D. 1138. David invades England; position of Norman barons.]

In the following year, when King David invaded England at the head of as large a force as he could bring together from the entire country under his dominion, for the purpose of supporting the cause of his niece Matilda, the daughter of King Henry the First, and empress of Germany, he placed those Norman barons who belonged to the party of Stephen of Blois, and held possessions under King David as well as in England, in a position of great difficulty. Their feudal holdings in Scotland gave David a right as their overlord to their military service, while their policy in England was to support Stephen in his opposition to the claim of his niece Matilda to the English throne. One of the principal of these Norman barons, Robertus de Brus, who had great possessions in Yorkshire, but had adhered to King David from his youth, and held under him the extensive district of Annandale, repaired to the Scottish camp when David had advanced as far as the Tees, to remonstrate with him, and when he did not succeed, renounced his fealty to him. It is well worth quoting that part of his speech, as reported by Ailred, which details the part the Norman barons had taken in the Scottish events detailed in this chapter. ‘Against whom,’ he says to the king, ‘dost thou this day take up arms and lead this countless host? Is it not against the English and Normans? O king, are they not those from whom thou hast always obtained profitable counsel and prompt assistance? When, I ask thee, hast thou ever found such fidelity in the Scots that thou canst so confidently dispense with the advice of the English and the assistance of the Normans, as if Scots sufficed thee even against Scots? This confidence in the Galwegians is somewhat new to thee who this day turnest thine arms against those through whom thou now rulest,—beloved by Scots and feared by Galwegians. Thinkest thou, O king, that the majesty of heaven will behold thee, with unmoved eyes, do thy best to ruin those by whom the throne was gotten and secured to thee and thine? With what forces and by what aid did thy brother Duncan overthrow the army of Donald and recover the kingdom which the tyrant had usurped? Who restored Eadgar thy brother, nay more than brother, to the kingdom? was it not our army? Thou too, O king, when thou didst demand that part of the kingdom which that same brother bequeathed to thee at his death from thy brother Alexander, was it not from dread of us that thou receivedst it without bloodshed? Recollect last year when thou didst entreat the aid of the English in opposing Malcolm, the heir of a father’s hate and persecution, how keenly,—how promptly,—with what alacrity, Walter Espec and many other English nobles met thee at Carlisle; how many ships they prepared,—the armaments they equipped them with,—the youths they manned them with; how they struck terror into thy foes till at length they took the traitor Malcolm himself prisoner, and delivered him bound to thee. Thus the fear of us did not only bind his limbs but still more daunted the spirit of the Scots, and suppressed their tendency to revolt by depriving it of all hope of success. Whatever hatred, therefore,—whatever enmity the Scots have towards us, is because of thee and thine, for whom we have so often fought against them, deprived them of all hope in rebelling, and altogether subdued them to thee and to thy will.’

[Sidenote: Composition of king David’s army.]

Ailred tells us that King David’s army was composed not only of those who were subject to his dominion, but that he had been joined by many of the people of the Western Isles and the Orkneys still under Norwegian rule;[686] and the account which he gives of the different bodies of men which now formed his troops gives us a good idea of the heterogeneous elements of which the population of Scotland was at this time composed.

The first body of his army was composed of the ‘Galwenses’ or people of Galloway, who still bore the name of Picts, and who claimed to lead the van as their right. The second body was led by Henry, King David’s son, with soldiers and archers, to whom were joined the ‘Cumbrenses’ and ‘Tevidalenses,’ or the Welsh population of Strathclyde and Teviotdale. The third body consisted of the ‘Laodonenses’ or Anglic inhabitants of Lothian, with the ‘Insulani’ and ‘Lavernani’ or Islesmen and people of the Lennox; and the last body or rearguard was led by the king in person, and consisted of the ‘Scoti’ and ‘Muravenses,’ or the Scots of the kingdom proper extending from the Forth to the Spey, and the recently subdued people of Moray. Along with the king were many of the Norman and English knights who still adhered to him.[687]

During the remaining year of David’s reign he appears to have maintained his authority with a firm hand and unimpaired over these various races. We read of no further insurrections on their part against him, and all attempts to resist the encroachment of the Norman barons, with their feudal followers, on their territories seem to have been given up, though probably no great advance was made in the process of amalgamating these different nationalities into one people. In the last year of his reign, his only son, Prince Henry, died, leaving three sons, the eldest of whom, Malcolm, was only eleven years of age. The succession of a grandson to his grandfather was still a novelty to the Celtic population of the kingdom, and a greater infringement upon the law of tanistic succession than had yet been made, while the obstacle to his succession would be still greater if his grandfather’s death opened the throne to him while yet a minor. The aged monarch foresaw that after his death a conflict would once more take place between the laws and customs of the Teutonic and Celtic races, and lead to a renewed collision between them; and in order to avert this, he prevailed upon the earl of Fife, who was the acknowledged head of the constitutional body of the seven earls of Scotland, to make a progress with the youthful Malcolm through the kingdom, and obtain his recognition as heir to the throne.

David died in the following year, and, as might have been expected, the succession of Malcolm was viewed with dislike by the entire Gaelic population of the country, as well as by those districts more immediately under the power or influence of the Norwegians, and he had ere long to contend against the open revolt of the great Gaelic districts which surrounded the kingdom of Scotland proper. These were, on the north, ‘Moravia’ or Moray; on the west, ‘Arregaithel’ or Argyll; and on the south-west corner, separated from Scotland by the Cumbrian population, was the wild region of Galloway. It is remarkable that, while the race of native rulers of the first had come to an end in the preceding reign, we find the two latter suddenly starting into life under the rule of two native princes—Somerled, ‘regulus’ of Arregaithel, and Fergus, prince of Galloway, while no hint is given of the parentage of either. The Norwegians appear to have retained a hold over both districts till the beginning of the twelfth century, and it is probable that the native population had now succeeded in expelling them from their coasts, and that owing to the long possession of the country by the Norwegians, all trace of the parentage of the native leaders under whom they had risen had disappeared from the annals of the country, and they were viewed as the founders of a new race of native lords.[688]

[Sidenote: A.D. 1153-1165. Malcolm, grandson of David, reigns 12 years.]

On the death of King David, his grandson was at once taken by those who had acknowledged him as heir, and crowned at Scone, and he is the first king of whom we have the fact of his coronation at Scone stated on contemporary authority.[689]

[Sidenote: A.D. 1154. Somerled invades the kingdom with the sons of Malcolm Maceth.]

This had no sooner been accomplished, than Somerled, the regulus of Arregaithel, rose against him in conjunction with his nephews, the sons of Malcolm mac Eth, and assailed the kingdom at all quarters.[690] The civil war had lasted three years, when, in the year 1156, Donald, the eldest son of Malcolm, was taken prisoner at Whitherne, in Galloway, by some of Malcolm’s adherents, and delivered over to him, when he was imprisoned in the castle of Marchmont along with his father.[691] Somerled, however, continued the war, and Malcolm found it expedient to neutralise the support he received from those who still adhered to the cause of Malcolm Maceth, by coming to terms with him. Accordingly he liberated Malcolm in the following year. William of Newburgh tells us that ‘he gave him a certain province, which suspended the incursion he had instigated.’ There is good reason for thinking that this province was the earldom of Ross,[692] a remote district over which King Malcolm could exercise but little authority; and he may have thought that his prisoner might expend his turbulent energy there with impunity—a view so far realised, as William of Newburgh further relates, that ‘whilst he was proudly proceeding through his subject province surrounded by his army like a king, some of the people who were unable to endure either his power or his insolence, with the consent of their chiefs, laid a snare for him.’ Obtaining a favourable opportunity, when he was following slowly and almost unattended a large party which he had sent forward to procure entertainment, they took and bound him and deprived him of both his eyes, and otherwise mutilated him. ‘Afterwards he came to us,’ says William of Newburgh, ‘at Byland, and quietly continued there many years till his death. But he is reported even there to have said that had he only the eye of a sparrow, his enemies should have little occasion to rejoice at what they had done to him.’[693] In the meantime events had occurred which led to a temporary peace between the king and Somerled. Olave, the Norwegian king of the Isles, had died in the same year as King David, and his son Godred had succeeded him. Somerled had married the daughter of Olave, by whom he had a son, Dugall; and three years after Godred’s accession, when his tyrannical mode of government had excited great discontent, Somerled took advantage of it to endeavour to have his son Dugall made king of the Isles. This led to a naval engagement between Godred and Somerled on the night of the Epiphany, or 6th of January 1156, in which there was great slaughter on both sides, and an agreement was made by which the Isles were divided between them. The contest, however, continued between them, and Somerled seems to have been glad to make peace with Malcolm in 1159.[694]

The opposition to Malcolm had as yet proceeded from the western districts over which Somerled ruled, and where the family of Malcolm Maceth found support, but this had been no sooner quieted by the conclusion of peace between them and the king, than he was exposed to a greater danger from the alienation of the Gaelic population of the kingdom of Scotland proper, and their native rulers, which he appears to have provoked by his apparent attachment to the king of England. He could hardly, from his extreme youth, be held responsible for the treaty in 1157, by which Northumberland and Cumberland were surrendered to the English monarch, but he had now attained the age of seventeen. In the previous year he had gone to Chester to meet the king of England for the purpose of obtaining knighthood at his hand, which, owing to some difference between them, was refused, but he now passed over to France and joined the king, who was besieging Toulouse, and served in his army.

[Sidenote: A.D. 1160. Revolt of six earls.]

In consequence of news which reached Malcolm of the dissatisfaction in Scotland proper, he returned hastily, and on reaching the town of Perth, where according to Fordun he had summoned his nobles and clergy to meet him, he was besieged by Ferteth, earl of Stratherne, and five others of the seven earls of Scotland, who wished to take him prisoner, but failed in the attempt.[695] Neither the Chronicle of Melrose nor Fordun tells us the cause of the failure, but the latter adds that he was by the advice of the clergy brought to a good understanding with his nobles. But they soon found that he was prepared to act with vigour, and to show that he was, though young, capable of reducing all recalcitrant provinces to his authority.

[Sidenote: A.D. 1160. Subjection of Galloway.]

In the same year he thrice invaded the district of Galloway with a large army, and brought its inhabitants finally under subjection.[696]

[Sidenote: A.D. 1160. Plantation of Moray.]

According to Fordun, he likewise invaded the district of Moravia or Moray, ‘removed them all from the land of their birth, and scattered them throughout the other districts of Scotland, both beyond the hills and on this side thereof, so that not even a native of that land abode there, and he installed therein his own peaceful people.’[697] This statement is probably only so far true that he may have repressed the rebellious inhabitants of the district, and followed his grandfather’s policy by placing foreign settlers in the low and fertile land on the south side of the Moray Firth, extending from the Spey to the river Findhorn; and here he certainly did grant the lands of Innes and Etherurecard, extending from the Spey to the Lossie, to Berowald the Fleming, by a charter granted at Perth on the first Christmas after the agreement between the king and Somerled.[698]

[Sidenote: A.D. 1164. Invasion by Somerled. His defeat and death at Renfrew.]

Malcolm had to sustain one other invasion of his kingdom ere he passed from this earthly scene at the early age of twenty-five. It proceeded once more from Somerled, who had now become more powerful by the addition of one-half of the Western Isles, which he held under the king of Norway, to his possessions on the mainland. What provoked this invasion we know not, but it proved fatal to himself. Having collected forces from all quarters, including Ireland, and assembled a fleet of 160 ships, he landed at Renfrew with the intention of subduing the whole kingdom, but was suddenly attacked by the people of the district and sustained an unexpected defeat, having been slain with his son Gillecolm.[699] This took place in the year 1164, nearly two years before Malcolm’s death, and was attributed by the chroniclers to divine interposition; but the author of a curious contemporary poem claims the credit for the merits of Saint Kentigern of Glasgow.[700] The rest of the country had remained quiet during the few concluding years of Malcolm’s reign, but he appears to have conciliated its Gaelic population, and won their regard, for the Ulster Annals tell us that in 1165 ‘Malcolm Cenmor or Greathead, son of Henry the high king of Alban, the best Christian that was to the Gael on the east side of the sea for almsgiving and fasting and devotion, died.’[701]

[Sidenote: A.D. 1166-1214. William the Lyon, brother of Malcolm, reigns forty-eight years.]

Malcolm was succeeded by his brother William, commonly called the Lyon King, who was crowned at Scone on Christmas eve of the year 1165, but no particulars of the ceremony are recorded.[702] His first proceeding was to claim from the king of England the restoration of Northumberland, which had been assigned to him as his appanage by his father David, but had been surrendered along with Cumberland during his brother Malcolm’s reign in 1157, and we find him invading England in 1173, with an army consisting mainly of those Highland Scots, whom, Fordun tells, men call ‘Bruti,’ and the Gallwegians.[703] In the following year William was taken prisoner by the English, when Fordun tells us the Scots and Gallwegians ‘wickedly and ruthlessly slew their Norman and English neighbours in frequent invasions with mutual slaughter, and there was then a most woeful and exceeding great persecution of the English, both in “Scotia” or Scotland proper and Galloway.’[704]

[Sidenote: A.D. 1174. Revolt in Galloway.]

This account is confirmed by Roger of Hoveden, so far as Galloway is concerned, where he had been himself sent by the king of England. He tells us that Uchtred, son of Fergus, and Gilbert, his brother, princes of the Gallwegians, immediately after the captivity of the king entered their own land, and expelled the king’s officers from its bounds, slew the English and Normans whom they found in their lands without mercy, and took and destroyed the fortifications and castles which the king had placed in their territory. They even proposed to the king of England to pass from the dominion of the king of Scots to that of the English crown. In short, it was a resistance by the Gaelic population to encroachments of the Norman and English barons, and shows the nature of the policy adopted by the Scottish king in subjecting these districts to his authority, and the extent to which it had been carried. The liberation of William from captivity in the following year arrested the progress of the insurrection.[705] According to Fordun the king led an army into Galloway, but ‘when the Gallwegians came to meet him under Gilbert, the son of Fergus, some Scottish bishops and earls stepped in between them, and through their mediation they were reconciled; the Gallwegians paying a sum of money and giving hostages.’[706]

[Sidenote: A.D. 1179. King William subdues the district of Ross.]

Having thus quieted the Gallwegians, the king resolved to bring the district of Ross, which lay between the Moray and Dornoch Firths, under his authority. In the year 1179 he penetrated into that district at the head of his earls and barons, with a large army, subdued it, and in order to maintain his authority built two castles—one called Dunscath on the prominent hill on the north side of the entrance to the Cromarty Firth, to dominate over Easter Ross, and the other called Etherdover on the north side of the Beauly Firth, at the place now called Red Castle, to secure the district called the Black Isle.[707] Though William had thus for a time brought the northern districts under subjection to the royal authority, he was not permitted to retain them long without disturbance, and two years after he had to encounter the assault by a pretender to the crown, who found his chief support in the Gaelic population of these districts. This was Donald Ban, who called himself the son of William Fitz Duncan, and claimed the throne as lineal heir of Duncan, the eldest son of Malcolm Ceannmor, who had been himself king of Scotland.

[Sidenote: A.D. 1181. Insurrection in favour of Donald Ban Macwilliam.]

King William had purchased his liberation from captivity in England by the surrender of the independence of Scotland, and this probably created great dissatisfaction among the Celtic population of the kingdom north of the Firths, which finally broke out, in 1181, in a serious attempt to place the ancient kingdom of Alban with the northern districts under a separate monarch in the person of Donald Ban, whose descent from the marriage of Malcolm Ceannmor with the Norwegian Ingibiorg would commend his pretensions both to the native and the Norwegian leaders. He seems to have borne the name of Macwilliam, and this is the first appearance of a family name, which was to become more familiar to the kings of Scotland in connection with such insurrections. Invited, or at least encouraged, by a formidable party among the earls and barons of Scotland proper, he invaded the northern districts with a large force.[708] Fordun tells us that ‘for the whole time from the capture of the king of Scots to his liberation, the inhabitants of the southern and northern districts of the kingdom were engaged in mutual civil war with much slaughter;’ and this was probably true of the entire period from the surrender of the independence of the kingdom to its restoration, during which time Galloway and the districts beyond the Spey were more or less in insurrection, and a considerable party in Scotland proper were hostile to the king. On the 1st of January 1185, Gilbert, son of Fergus, lord of Galloway, died, and a part of the Gallwegians broke out into rebellion under a certain Gilpatrick; while Roland, the son of Uchtred, who had been slain by his brother Gilbert, espoused the cause of the king, and a battle took place between them in which Roland was victorious. One of the king’s officers, too, Gilcolm the Marescal, revolted from him and surrendered the king’s castle of Earn or Dundurn, at the east end of Loch Earn, to the king’s enemies, which shows that there was a party in Stratherne hostile to him, and infested Lothian with frequent attacks. As soon as he heard of the defeat of Gilpatrick, Gilcolm, who is termed by Fordun ‘a tyrant and robber chief,’ and whose name shows that he was of Gaelic, and probably of Gallwegian, descent, invaded Galloway with the view of putting himself at the head of the insurgents, and establishing himself as ruler in those parts of Galloway hostile to the king; but he, too, was defeated in battle by Roland on the 30th of September, and perished with many of his followers.[709]

After the defeat of the Gallwegian rebels, and the slaughter of Gilcolm and his followers, the earls and barons of the kingdom of Scotland proper appear to have become more reconciled to their legitimate monarch; and he felt the necessity of either slaying or expelling Macwilliam, who had now for six years maintained himself in the northern districts beyond the Spey, and been ravaging and devastating those parts of the kingdom which adhered to King William, if he would not lose his crown altogether;[710] but it was not till the year 1187 that he found himself in a position to advance against him. He then invaded Moravia or Moray at the head of a large army, and while he remained with the main body of the army at Inverness, sent his earls and barons with the Scots and Gallwegians to lay waste the more western parts of the province. They encountered Macwilliam in the upper part of the valley of the Spey, encamped on a moor called Mamgarvia, and a battle took place there on Friday, the 31st of July, in which Macwilliam was slain with many of his followers.[711] Two years after the independence of Scotland was restored by Richard the First, king of England, and the relations between the two kingdoms replaced on their former footing.

[Sidenote: A.D. 1196. Subjection of Caithness.]

The annexation of the district of Ross to the kingdom, and the suppression of this insurrection, seem, however, soon after to have brought the people of Caithness into closer contact with the royal authority. Although nominally held of the Scottish king, Caithness was possessed as an earldom by the earl of Orkney, who held his other earldom of the king of Norway, and thus the tie with Scotland was a slender one. The earl at this time was Harald, who was himself of the royal family, being son of Madach, earl of Atholl, whose father was a brother of Malcolm Ceannmor, and he had succeeded to the earldom of Orkney and Caithness through his mother, Margaret, the daughter of the Norwegian earl Hakon of Orkney, and his wife was a daughter of Malcolm mac Eth. According to Fordun, King William led an army into Caithness in the year 1196. Crossing the river Oikell, which separates Sutherland from Ross, he killed some of the disturbers of the peace, and subjected both provinces of the Caithness men—that of Sutherland and of Caithness—routing Earl Harald, who, says Fordun, had been ‘until then a good and trusty man, but at that time, goaded on by his wife, the daughter of Mached, had basely deceived his lord the king, and risen against him. Then, leaving there a garrison for the country, the king hurried back into Scotland.’[712] From the Chronicle of Melrose we learn that in the following year ‘a battle was fought near the Castle of Inverness, between the king’s troops, who had been probably left as a garrison there, and Roderic and Thorfinn, son of Earl Harald, in which the king’s enemies were put to flight, and Roderic slain, with many of his followers. King William then proceeded with his army to Moray, and the more remote districts’—that is, as Fordun tells us, the districts of Sutherland, Caithness, and Ross; ‘and, having taken Earl Harald prisoner, confined him in the castle of Roxburgh, where he remained till his son Thorfinn gave himself as a hostage for his father.’[713] Such are the Scotch accounts of these events; but Roger of Hoveden, a contemporary English writer, gives a somewhat different account. He says that, in 1196, King William entered Moray with a great army to drive out Harald, who had occupied that district, but before the king could enter Caithness, Harald fled to his ships. The king then sent his army to Thurso, and destroyed the castle. Harald then came to the king and submitted, and the king permitted him to retain half of Caithness on condition he surrendered his enemies to him in Moray, and gave the other half to Harald, grandson of Rognwald, a former earl of Orkney and Caithness. The king then returned to his own land, and Harald to Orkney. In the autumn the king returned to Moray, and went to Invernairn to receive the king’s enemies from Harald; but after bringing them to the port of Loch Loy, near Invernairn, he allowed them to escape, on which the king took him prisoner, and kept him in Edinburgh Castle till his son Thorfinn was delivered up for him. Harald the younger was afterwards slain in battle with the elder Harald, who then went to the king and offered to redeem his lands in Caithness with a sum of money. The king agreed to give him back the half of Caithness if he would put away his wife, the daughter of Malcolm Maceth, and take back his first wife, Afreka, sister of Duncan, earl of Fife; but he refused, on which the king gave Caithness to Reginald, the son of Somerled, for a sum of money, reserving the king’s annual tribute.[714] In consequence of an attack upon Caithness made in 1202 by Harald, in which he drove out Reginald’s men and made an outrage on the bishop, King William once more sent his army in the spring of that year to Caithness, but it was unable to penetrate beyond the border of the country, and as the king was preparing to follow by sea, Harald met him at Perth under the safe-conduct of Roger, bishop of St. Andrews, and came to an understanding with the king, by which he was restored to his earldom on payment of every fourth penny to be found in Caithness, amounting to 2000 merks of silver.[715]

[Sidenote: A.D. 1211. Insurrection in favour of Guthred Macwilliam.]

Towards the close of William’s reign he had again to suppress a renewed attempt by the people of Ross to throw off the yoke by supporting the claims of the descendants of William Fitz Duncan. Fordun tells us that ‘Guthred, the son of Macwilliam, came about the Lord’s Epiphany (6th January), by the advice, it was said, of the Thanes of Ross, out of Ireland into that district, and infested the greater part of the kingdom of Scotland. But the king’s army was suddenly sent against him to kill him or to drive him out of the country, and King William himself went after him, and in the following summer built two towns there; but Guthred being seized and fettered through the treachery of his own men, was brought before the king’s son Alexander, at the king’s manor and place of Kincardine, and was there beheaded and hung up by the feet.’[716] An old chronicler, Walter of Coventry, represents what appears to have been the feeling of the Gaelic population towards the family of Macwilliam, and led to these frequent revolts. ‘This Guthred,’ he says, ‘was of the ancient lineage of the Scottish kings who, with the support of Scots and Irish, did, as well as his father Domnald, exercise constant hostilities against the modern kings, now secretly, now openly. For these modern kings affected more the Normans, as in race, so in customs, language, and culture, and the Scots being reduced to utter servitude admitted the Normans only to their friendship and service.’[717] During the remainder of his reign William had no further encounter with his Gaelic subjects, and died at Stirling on the 4th of December 1214.

[Sidenote: A.D. 1214-1249. Alexander the Second, son of king William the Lyon, reigned thirty-five years. Crowned by the seven earls]

He was succeeded by his son Alexander, who was then in his seventeenth year, and was crowned at Scone on the following day. We now learn some further particulars of the coronation of the Scottish kings, and we are told by Fordun that the bishop of St. Andrews, the head of the Scotch Church, and the seven earls of Scotland—the earls of Fife, Stratherne, Atholl, Angus, Menteith, Buchan, and Lothian—took Alexander, brought him to Scone, and there raised him to the throne in honour and peace, with the approval of God and man, and with more grandeur and glory than any one till then, while all wished him joy and none gainsaid him. So King Alexander, as was meet, held his feast in state at Scone on that day, viz., Friday, and the Saturday following, viz., the Feast of St. Nicholas, as well as the next Sunday.[718]

[Sidenote: A.D. 1215. Insurrection in favour of Donald Macwilliam and Kenneth Maceth.]

The young king had barely reigned a year when he had to encounter the old enemies of the crown, the families of Macwilliam and Maceth, who now combined their forces, and under Donald Ban, the son of that Macwilliam who had been slain at Mamgarvia in 1187, and Kenneth Maceth, a son or grandson of Malcolm Maceth, with the son of one of the Irish provincial kings, burst into the province of Moray at the head of a large band of malcontents. A very important auxiliary, however, now joined the party of the king. This was Ferquhard or Fearchar, called Macintagart, the son of the ‘Sagart’ or priest who was the lay possessor of the extensive possessions of the old monastery founded by the Irish Saint Maelrubha at Applecross in the seventh century. Its possessions lay between the district of Ross and the Western Sea, and extended from Loch Carron to Loch Ewe and Loch Maree, where the name of Maelrubha was long venerated as Saint Maree, and Ferquhard was thus in reality a powerful Highland chief commanding the population of an extensive western region. The insurgents were assailed by him with great vigour, entirely crushed, and their leaders taken, whom he at once beheaded, and presented their heads to the new king as a welcome gift on the 15th of June, when he was knighted by the king as the reward of his prompt assistance.[719]

[Sidenote: A.D. 1222. Subjection of Arregaithel or Argyll.]

Of the districts which still maintained a kind of semi-independence of the Scottish crown as ancient provinces of Scotland, there now only remained the extensive region of Arregaithel or Argyll, forming the entire western seaboard of the country from the Firth of Clyde to Loch Broom, the northern part of which, however—North Argyll as it was called—consisting chiefly of the possessions of the ancient monastery of Applecross, were now brought by their lay possessor Macintagart into close connection with the crown. The remote and secluded position of Galloway too rendered it little amenable to the royal authority, and the Western Isles, one half of which were under the rule of a Norwegian petty king, and the other half belonged to the family of Somerled, still belonged to the kingdom of Norway. The attention of King Alexander was strongly drawn towards the necessity of bringing Argyll under subjection from the support its people afforded to the families of Macwilliam and Maceth. The head of the former family was at this time Gillescoph Mahohegan or Gillespic mac Eochagan, and he appears to have had the support of Roderic, son of Reginald, Lord of the Isles, and other chiefs of Argyll.

The account of these transactions is to be found in Fordun and Wynton alone, but there seems no reason to doubt their authority at this period. Fordun tells us that ‘during this time,’ that is, in 1221, ‘some unrighteous men of the race of Macwilliam, viz., Gillespic and his sons and Roderic, started up in the uttermost bounds of Scotland.’[720] Alexander was at the time at York, where he was betrothed to the English king’s eldest sister Joan, as yet a girl; but on his return with his bride Fordun tells us that ‘having raised an army out of Lothian and Galloway and other outlying provinces, the king sailed for Argyll, but a storm having arisen he was obliged to put back, and brought up at Glasgow in safety but not without danger. In the following year, however, after Whitsunday, he led back the army into Argyll. The men of Argyll were frightened. Some gave hostages and a great deal of money, and were taken back in peace, while others who had more offended against the king’s will forsook their estates and possessions and fled. But our lord the king bestowed both the land and the goods of these men upon his own followers at will, and thus returned in peace with his men.’[721]

Wynton gives the following account of it:—

The kyng that yhere Argyle wan, That rebell wes till hym befor than; For wyth his ost thare in wes he, And athe tuk off thare fewté, Wyth thare serwys and thare homage, That off hym wald hald thare herytage: Bot the ethchetys off the lave To the lordys off that land he gave. Oure the Mownth theyne passyd he sene, And held hys Yhule in Abbyrdene.[722]

This expedition seems to have thus lasted from Whitsunday till near Christmas, and to have been confined to Argyll south of the Mounth, and thus was this region also brought under subjection to the crown. The rebels appear to have taken refuge in Galloway, and here we find them witnessing a charter in that year of lands in Galloway to the monks of Melrose. After the abbot of Melrose; Alan son of Roland of Galloway; Fergus son of Uchtred; Edgar son of Dovenald; Duncan son of Gilbert Earl of Carrick, all lords of Galloway, appear the following names:—‘Gileskop Macihacain; Giladuenan son of Duvegal; Gillecrist son of Kenedi; Iwan son of Alewain; Gillenef Okeueltal; Gilleroth son of Gillemartin; Makeg son of Kyin; and Gillefakeneshi son of Gillin;’[723] all no doubt fully justifying Fordun’s epithet of ‘iniquus.’ The only account he gives of their fate is that ‘God gave them over, with their abettors, into King Alexander’s hand; and thus the land was no longer troubled by their lawlessness.’[724] In the following year, while the king was keeping his birthday at Forfar, John, earl of Caithness, who was son of Earl Harald the elder, came to him there and purchased back a part of his earldom which the king had taken from him the previous year on account of his having been supposed to be privy to the outrage committed by the people of Caithness on their bishop, Adam, whom they had burned in his own house.[725]

[Sidenote: A.D. 1235. Revolt in Galloway.]

Galloway appears to have been still a constant source of disquiet to the kingdom. Alan, the son of Roland, lord of Galloway and Constable of Scotland, died in the year 1234, leaving three daughters, who were married to Norman barons, and one son, considered illegitimate, who during his father’s lifetime had married the daughter of the king of Man. The Norman barons divided the territory between them; ‘but,’ we are told in the Chronicle of Melrose, ‘the inhabitants of that land preferring one master rather than several, went to our lord the king with the request that he himself would accept the lordship of that inheritance, but the king was too just to do this. Thereupon the Gallwegians were angry above measure, and prepared for war. Moreover, they devastated with fire and sword some of the royal lands contiguous to themselves,’ and the king resolved to make a final effort to reduce it entirely to obedience.

‘In the following year our lord the king,’ says the chronicler, ‘mustered an army, and entered Galloway. Having reached a spot convenient for the purpose, he determined there to pitch his tents, for the day was now drawing towards evening. The Gallwegians, however, who had all day been hiding among the mountains, knew the place better, and, trusting to their local acquaintance with its difficulties, offered the king battle. In truth, the place was filled with bogs, which were covered over with grass and flowers, amongst which the larger portion of the royal army had involved itself. At the beginning of the battle the earl of Ross, called Makintagart, came up and attacked the enemies in the rear, and as soon as they perceived this they took to flight, and retreated into the woods and mountains, but they were followed up by the earl and several others, who put many of them to the sword, and harassed them as long as daylight lasted. On the next day the king, acting upon his accustomed humanity, extended his peace to as many as came to him, and so the surviving Gallwegians, with ropes round their necks, accepted his offer.’[726]

The illegitimate son of Alan, lord of Galloway, however, Thomas, went over to Ireland with Gilrodh, who incited him to his rebellion, and was no doubt the Gilleroth, son of Gillemartin, who appears among the followers of Gillescop Mahohegan, from whence he soon after returned, bringing with him a fleet and a body of Irish, with the son of one of their chieftains. ‘The Scots,’ we are told, ‘fled before him, and in their hasty flight arrived at a piece of water, in which many perished by means of that accursed army;’ but the bishop of Galloway and the abbot of Melrose, as soon as they heard of it, went, accompanied by the earl of Dunbar and his troops, to the district of Galloway, and informed Gilrodh that he must either make his submission to the king, or engage the earl’s army in battle. Perceiving his inferiority in numbers, Gilrodh followed their advice, and the king placed him for some time in the custody of the before-mentioned earl. Being thus deprived of all counsel and assistance, the bastard was obliged to sue for the king’s peace. He was imprisoned for a short time in Edinburgh Castle, and then the king gave him his freedom; and we hear no more of any resistance to the royal authority in this quarter, and they seem to have acquiesced in their incorporation into the kingdom.

[Sidenote: A.D. 1249. Attempt to reduce the Sudreys, and death of the king at Kerrera.]

There now remained but one object to be accomplished to complete the amalgamation of the different outlying provinces of the kingdom occupied by a Celtic population, and that was to wrest the possession of the Western Isles from the kingdom of Norway. Alexander first attempted to obtain the islands by treaty, and sent two of his bishops to Hakon, king of Norway, to ascertain if he would voluntarily surrender the islands as having been unjustly wrested from the Scottish crown by Magnus Barefoot; but Hakon refused, on the ground that Magnus had won them from Godred, king of the Isles, and that his right to the Isles had been confirmed by the king of Scots. The king then proposed to purchase the Isles, but this likewise was refused; and though the negotiations were frequently renewed, the Scots received no other answer.[727] In the year 1249, however, Harald, son of Olave, the Norwegian king of Man and the Isles, died, and was succeeded by his brother Reginald, who began to reign in the Isle of Man on the sixth of May, and was slain on the thirteenth of the same month near Russin, in the Isle of Man. The succession was then claimed by Harald, son of Godred Don, whose father was brother of Olave, the father of the slain king.[728] Alexander seems to have considered this a favourable opportunity to endeavour to obtain the Isles by force of arms, and having collected forces throughout all Scotland, he prepared for a voyage to the Hebrides, and determined to subdue these islands under his dominion. According to the Saga, he declared ‘that he would not desist till he had set his standard east on the cliffs of Thurso, and had reduced under himself all the provinces which the Norwegian monarch possessed to the westward of the German Ocean.’[729] With this view he sent to one of the island kings of the family of Somerled, and appointed a meeting with him in the islands, when he endeavoured to persuade him to renounce his allegiance to King Hakon, and to surrender to him the castle of Cairnburgh, in the Treshinish Isles, on the west coast of Mull, and three other castles, but without success, and the further prosecution of his enterprise was arrested by death. He was seized with severe illness, and having been carried to the island of Kerrera, on the coast of Lorn, he died there. The Scottish army then broke up, and removed the king’s body to Scotland. The Saga reports that the king had seen a vision while lying in the Sound of Kerrera, in which Saint Olave of Norway, Saint Magnus of Orkney, and Saint Columba appeared to him, and prophesied evil to him if he would not abandon his purpose;[730] but how Saint Columba, whose successors had suffered such evils at the hands of the Northmen, should have appeared in such company is not explained.

[Sidenote: A.D. 1249-1285. Alexander the Third, his son, reigned thirty-six years.]

[Sidenote: Ceremony at his coronation.]

King Alexander was buried in the church of Melrose on the 8th of July 1249, and was succeeded by his son Alexander, a boy in his eighth year.[731] Notwithstanding his extreme youth he was crowned at Scone on the 13th of July 1249, and Fordun gives us a very graphic account of the ceremony. Walter Comyn, earl of Menteith, and all the clergy, having ‘joined unto them some earls—viz., Malcolm, earl of Fife, and Malise, earl of Stratherne, and a great many other nobles—led Alexander, soon to be their king, up to the cross which stands in the cemetery at the east end of the church. Here they placed him upon the celebrated coronation stone, which was covered with silken cloths interwoven with gold, and the bishop of St. Andrews, assisted by the rest, consecrated him king.’ The boy king then received the homage of the feudal baronage of the kingdom, and a strange ceremony followed, probably now for the first time, and intended to mark the cordial acceptance of the king by the entire Gaelic population as the heir and inheritor of a long line of traditionary Gaelic monarchs. A Highland sennachy advanced, and, kneeling before the fatal stone, hailed him as the ‘Ri Alban,’ and repeated his pedigree according to Highland tradition through a long line of Gaelic kings, partly real and partly mythic, till he reached Gaithal Glas, the ‘eponymus’ of the race.[732]

[Sidenote: A.D. 1250. Relics of Queen Margaret enshrined before the seven earls and the seven bishops.]

It is probable that the seven earls, though not specifically mentioned by Fordun, took part in this ceremony, as he tells us that in the following year, ‘on the 19th of June,’ the king and the queen, his mother, with bishops and abbots, earls and barons, and other good men, both clerics and laymen, in great numbers, met at Dunfermline, and took up, in great state, the bones of the blessed Margaret, sometime queen of Scots, out of the stone monument where they had lain through a long course of years, and them they laid with the deepest devoutness in a shrine of deal set with gold and precious stones;[733] but when we turn to the Chartulary of Dunfermline, we find from an inquisition taken in the year 1316, that the enshrining took place ‘in the presence of King Alexander the Third, the seven bishops, and the seven earls of Scotland.’[734]

During the earlier years of Alexander’s reign, the Comyns seem to have held the principal sway in Scotland, at the head of whom was Walter, earl of Menteith; but when he had reached the age of fourteen, Henry, king of England, had an interview with him at Rokesburgh, the result of which was that the bishops of St. Andrews and Glasgow, and the earl of Menteith, who were at the head of the national party, were disgraced, and a regency appointed of the earl of Dunbar and others, who were more favourable to the king of England, for the seven years that would elapse till Alexander attained majority.[735]

[Sidenote: A.D. 1263. War between kings of Norway and Scotland for the possession of the Sudreys.]

During this time no attempt appears to have been made to renew the contest for the Western Isles, but when the king attained the age of twenty-one, he announced his intention of subduing the Hebrides if life were granted to him. The war was commenced by the earl of Ross, the son of that Macintagart who had proved so important an auxiliary to the crown, with others of the Ross-shire chiefs, with a kind of guerilla warfare against the isle of Skye and those other islands which lay opposite their territories. In the summer of 1262 letters reached the king of Norway from the kings of the Sudreys complaining of these hostilities, and warning the king of King Alexander’s avowed intention of wresting the islands from him by force, upon which King Hakon resolved to anticipate by an expedition to the Sudreys with a large force to repress these hostilities, and confirm the island chiefs in their allegiance to him. He accordingly, in the beginning of 1263, issued orders for collecting his forces, which were to assemble at Bergen towards the commencement of summer.

On the 15th of July Hakon sailed with a large fleet, consisting, according to the Saga, of upwards of 120 sail, and in a few days arrived in Orkney, and anchored in Elwick harbour in Shapinshay, opposite Kirkwall. King Alexander was not idle in preparing for the impending attack. He repaired the fortifications of Inverness, Wigtown, Stirling, and other castles, and increased their garrisons. He built vessels, and strongly garrisoned the castle of Ayr, where the chief attack was expected. On the 10th of August Hakon sailed from Orkney with his fleet, which had been reinforced, doubled Cape Wrath, swept past Lewis, and entered the Sound of Skye, where he anchored south of the island of Raasay. Here he was joined by Magnus, king of Man, and other Norwegian barons. He then proceeded through the Sound of Mull to Kerrera, where the forces gathered in the Isles were already assembled. From Kerrera, he sent 50 ships under the command of King Magnus and some Norwegian barons, and of King Dugald, of the family of Somerled, to Kintyre, and 15 ships to Bute, while he himself brought up at Gigha. The castles of Dunaverty in Kintyre and Rothesay in Bute having capitulated, he now sailed with the whole fleet and anchored in Lamlash harbour in Arran. King Alexander was stationed with the greater part of his forces at Ayr, on the opposite mainland, and negotiations now commenced for a peace, in which the Norwegian endeavoured to get his right to the whole islands acknowledged, while the Scots merely protracted them till the summer should pass and the bad weather of autumn set in. In this they were successful, and it was late in September when they were broken off. King Hakon then sent 60 of his ships under leaders of Somerled’s family to sail into Loch Long and ravage the adjacent districts, while he himself prepared to land with the main force at Largs, to which place the Scottish king had moved, and was encamped there with his army. A great storm, however, broke out on the night of the 30th of September, and lasted two days. Ten of the vessels sent to Loch Long were wrecked, and the main fleet off Largs suffered greatly.[736]

Of the battle of Largs which followed we have two accounts, one in the Norse Saga of Hakon IV., the other by Fordun; and it is possible that while the one makes too light of the Norwegian loss, the other may make their defeat more complete than it really was. Fordun’s account is that, ‘on the very day that both the kings had appointed for battle, there arose at sea a very violent storm which dashed the ships together; and a great part of the fleet dragged their anchors and were roughly cast on shore whether they would or not. Then the king’s army came against them and swept down many, both nobles and serfs, and a Norwegian king; Hakon’s nephew, a man of great might and vigour, was killed. On account of this the king of the Norwegians himself, sorrowing deeply, hurried back in no little dismay to Orkney, and while wintering there, awaiting a stronger force to fight it out with the Scots, he died.’[737] Although the Saga does not admit that the Norwegians were defeated, it states that five days after the battle King Hakon departed with his fleet, and sailed through the Western Isles till he arrived in the Orkneys, where he remained while the most part of the troops sailed to Norway; and while the Saga makes the most of the grants he is said on his return to have made to those Sudreyan kings of the family of Somerled who adhered to him, and even avers that, ‘in this expedition King Hakon regained all those provinces which Magnus Barefoot had acquired and conquered from the Scotch and the Sudreyans,’ it is obvious from the results that the expedition had in reality failed. King Hakon died in the Bishop’s Palace at Kirkwall on the 15th of December 1263, and was succeeded by his son Magnus as king of Norway. The results of the battle of Largs and the death of King Hakon substantially left the Western Isles at the mercy of King Alexander; and Fordun tells us that he no sooner heard of King Hakon’s death than he got a strong army together and made ready to set out with a fleet towards the Isle of Man. When he had reached Dumfries on his way, King Magnus of Man met him, and agreed to do homage for his petty kingdom which he was to hold of him for ever. The king then sent the earls of Buchan and Mar, and Alan the Hostiary, with a band of knights and natives, to the Western Isles, ‘where they slew those traitors who had the year before encouraged the king of Norway to go to war with Scotland. Some of them they put to flight, and, having hanged some of the chiefs, they brought with them thence exceeding great plunder.’[738]

[Sidenote: A.D. 1266. Annexation of the Western Isles to the crown of Scotland.]

King Magnus of Man died on the 24th of November 1265, and this paved the way for a treaty between the kings of Scotland and of Norway, by which, for payment of a sum of 4000 marks and an annual payment to the crown of Norway of 100 marks, the Isle of Man and all the Sudreys were finally ceded to King Alexander, the Orkneys and Shetland being excepted; and the ecclesiastical jurisdiction and metropolitan rights of the archbishop of Drontheim over Man and the Isles reserved. The treaty was concluded in July 1266, and thus were the Sudreys or Western Isles finally annexed to the kingdom of Scotland.[739]

Alexander III. had two sons, Alexander and David, and one daughter, Margaret, who was married to Eric, king of Norway, but in the course of three years he was left childless. His son David died at Stirling at the end of June in the year 1281. On the 9th of April 1283 his daughter Margaret died, leaving an only daughter Margaret, commonly called the Maid of Norway, and on the 28th of January following died Alexander, prince of Scotland.

[Sidenote: A.D. 1283. Assembly of baronage of the whole kingdom at Scone on 5th February to regulate succession.]

The king immediately summoned the Estates of Scotland to meet at Scone on the 5th of February, and there they became bound to acknowledge Margaret, princess of Norway, as the legitimate heir of their sovereign, ‘failing any children whom Alexander might have, and failing the issue of the prince of Scotland deceased, in the whole kingdom and the island of Man, and the whole other islands belonging to the kingdom of Scotland.’ The nobles present will show that the Estates now represented the entire territory of Scotland. There were the earls of Buchan, Dunbar, Stratherne, Lennox, Carrick, Mar, Angus, Menteith, Ross, Sutherland, Fife, and Atholl, of whom four were Norman intruders into Celtic earldoms, and the earl of Orkney represented the earldom of Caithness; and there were twenty-four barons, of whom eighteen at least represented the Norman baronage of the kingdom; while the Celtic element is represented only by Alexander of Argyll, Angus son of Donald, and Alan son of Rotheric, the native rulers of Argyll and the Isles.[740]

[Sidenote: A.D. 1285-6. Death of Alexander the Third.]

King Alexander, thus left childless, married Yolande, daughter of the Count de Dreux, on the 14th of October 1285, in the hope of obtaining a male heir to the Crown, but was killed on the 19th of March following, having been thrown from his horse in the dusk of the evening while riding from Queensferry to Kinghorn to visit his queen.[741]

[Sidenote: Conclusion.]

The young Maid of Norway died in Orkney, when on her passage from Norway to take possession of her kingdom, in the end of September 1290, and thus terminated the last native dynasty of Scottish monarchs of Celtic descent in the male line, and Scotland, with her united provinces, her feudal institutions, and her mixed population, now became a prize to be contested for between the English monarch, who asserted his right as her lord paramount, and the various Norman barons who claimed her as their inheritance through descent in the female line from her native monarchs. It is with the Celtic portion of her population alone that this work is now mainly concerned.

Footnote 620:

The first-known earl of Atholl was Madach Comes, who appears as witness to charters of Alexander I. and David I. He is called in the Orkneyinga Saga ‘Moddadr, Jarl af Atjoklum,’ and is there said to be son of ‘Melkolmr, brother of King Melkolf, father of David, who is now king of Scots’ (chap. lvii.). Melkolf is obviously Malcolm Ceannmor, and other MSS. read Melmare in place of Melkolmr, which is probably the true reading, as in the Book of Deer we find Malmori d’Athotla witnessing one of the charters. Wynton has a curious story that Malcolm Ceannmor was an illegitimate son of King Duncan, by the miller of Forteviot’s daughter, and that he had two legitimate brothers. The latter seems to be well founded, and the former may have been raised by the partisans of Donald to strengthen his claim upon the throne.

Footnote 621:

In the Chartulary of St. Andrews is a memorandum of a charter by ‘Edelradus vir venerande memorie filius Malcolmi regis Scotiæ Abbas de Dunkelden et insuper Comes de Fyf,’ confirmed by his brothers Eadgar and Alexander, because the lands had been granted to him by his parents ‘in juvenili etate’ (p. 115).

Footnote 622:

For Godred Crovan see Munch’s edition of _Chron. of Man_, pp. 3, 50. The Magnus Barefoot’s Saga seems to have combined the account of two expeditions of that king in 1093 and 1098 into one. But the distinct statement that he conquered the Western Isles during the reign of Malcolm, and while Godred and his son Lagman were still alive, leaves no doubt that his first expedition took place in the last year of Malcolm’s reign.

Footnote 623:

_Sax. Chron._ ad an. 1093.

Footnote 624:

Fordun, _Chron._ B. v. c. xxi. It is usually stated on Fordun’s authority that Donald Ban had obtained the assistance of Magnus, king of Norway, who had just conquered the Western Isles, but there is no expression to this effect in Fordun’s Chronicle. The words ‘auxilio regis Norwegiæ’ are interpolated by Bower.

Footnote 625:

Wynton, B. vii. c. 3.

Footnote 626:

_Sax. Chron._ ad an. 1093.

Footnote 627:

_Sax. Chron._ ad an. 1093.

Footnote 628:

Duncanus filius regis Malcolumb constans hereditarie rex Scotiæ. _Nat. MSS. of Scot._, Part i. No. ii. The authenticity of this charter was at one time doubted, but it is now recognised as genuine. See _Introduction_, p. viii.

Footnote 629:

_Chart. Dunf._ p. 3. King David I., who remodelled the foundation in his charter, confirms these lands which had been given by his brother Duncan. The appearances of Eadgar as a witness to the first charter, and the expression in this ‘dona Duncani fratris mei’ without qualification, are a strong indication that he was considered legitimate. The imputation of bastardy was first made by William of Malmesbury, and adopted from him by Fordun. It seems to have been the fruit of subsequent claims by his descendants.

Footnote 630:

_Chron. Cumbriæ_ apud Dug. _Mon._ i. p. 400; but the authority of this chronicle is not great. William Fitz Duncan is, however, historical.

Footnote 631:

_Sax. Chron._ ad an. 1094.

Footnote 632:

See _Transactions of Ant. Soc._, vol. ii. page 480, for paper by Professor Stuart ‘on the reign of Duncan the Second.’

Footnote 633:

William of Malmesbury tells us (B. v. § 400) ‘Solus fuit Edmundus Margaretæ filius a bono degener, qui Duvenaldi patrui nequitiæ particeps, fraternæ non inscius necis fuerat, pactus scilicet regni dimidium.’ This statement is confirmed by the Ulster Annals, which have ‘1094 Donnchadh mac Maelcolaim Ri Albain domarbhadh o braithribh fein i. o Domnall agus o Etmond (Duncan, son of Malcolm, king of Alban, slain by his brothers Donald and Edmund) per dolum.’

Footnote 634:

William of Malmesbury, _Hist. Regum_, B. v. § 400. The crime was the slaughter of Duncan. His language here is not very consistent with his branding Duncan as a bastard and a usurper.

Footnote 635:

_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 175. The Scalachronica says that he died at Dunkeld, and was buried in Iona, which is unlikely, as the Isles did not then belong to Scotland. The continuation of Tighernac has at 1099, ‘Domnall mac Donnchada Ri Alban do dalladh do braithribh fein.’

Footnote 636:

_Chron. of Man_, ed. Munch, p. 5. The Chronicle inserts an Irishman, Donald mcTadg, before Ingemund, but his true period was after the death of Magnus Barefoot in 1103.

Footnote 637:

_Collectanea de Rebus Albanicis_, p. 347.

Footnote 638:

It is obvious that in Magnus Barefoot’s Saga the expeditions made in the first and in the fifth years of his reign have been confounded together. Fordun in his Chronicle (vol. ii. p. 213) says in general terms:—‘While these three—namely Donald, Duncan, and Edgar too—were struggling for the kingdom in this wise, the king of the Noricans, Magnus, the son of King Olave, son of King Harold, surnamed Harfager, sweeping the gulfs of the sea with a host of seamen, subdued the Orkneys to his dominion, and the Mevanian islands both of Scotland and England, which indeed for the most part used to belong to Scotland by ancient right;’ to which Bower adds that it was by the assistance of Magnus that Donald Ban usurped the throne on the death of his brother King Malcolm. By all later writers the cession of the Isles is attributed to him, but in fact the connection between Donald Ban and the Western Isles is entirely fictitious, and belongs to our spurious history. The Saga distinctly states that the first agreement was made with Malcolm Ceannmor himself and not with Donald Ban, and this is confirmed by the Saga of Hacon IV., which tells us that Alexander II. sent an embassy to King Haco to ask ‘if he would give up the territories in the Hebrides which King Magnus Barefoot had unjustly wrested from Malcolm, predecessor to the Scottish king;’ to which Haco replied that Magnus had settled with Malcolm what districts the Norwegians should have in Scotland or in the islands which lay near it. He affirmed, however, that the kings of Scotland had no sovereignty in the Hebrides at the time when King Magnus won them from King Godred.—Johnstone, _Chronicle of Man_, p. 41.

The date of the second expedition is fixed by the Saxon Chronicle, which places the accession of Eadgar in the year 1097; and in the following year, 1098, has, ‘Earl Hugh was slain in Anglesey by Vikings.’

Footnote 639:

_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 170.

Footnote 640:

_Chron. Man_, ed. Munch, p. 7. The metrical prophecy attributed to Merlin, which seems to have been written not long after, has some lines evidently referring to Magnus’s conquest of the Isles, which may be thus translated (_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 117):—

Scotia will above all bewail the achievements of a famous leader, Who will annex to himself lands bounded on all sides by the ocean. The land, widowed of its regal lord, will be vacant Twice three years and nine months. Its ancient kings, just, bountiful, and rich, Graceful and mighty, will Scotia mournfully bewail. As Merlin says, after victorious kings The royal sceptre will be deprived of a sovereign’s rule. Through time to come, Albania, alas! by its own crime subdued, Will serve a monarch of Anglic race. That it will breathe again after the death of the miser king The ancient sibyl in ancient prophecy foretells; For a northern king of a huge fleet possessed Will press the Scots with famine, fury, and with sword. The foreign race at length will perish by the Scoti’s plot, In battle that Noric chief shall fall.

The Noric chief who acquires lands bounded on all sides by the sea and reigns six years and nine months is obviously Magnus, and the ‘rex Angligenus’ Eadgar.

Footnote 641:

Fordun, _Chronicle_, vol. ii. p. 214.

Footnote 642:

_National MSS. of Scotland_, Nos. iii. iv. v. and vi. The learned editor states in his introduction (p. viii.) that he would have included a fifth charter if the original had not been lost. Copies, however, exist, and it is printed in Raine’s _North Durham_, Ap. No.