Scotland under her early kings, Volume 1 (of 2)

by Eben William Robertson

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Amm. Marc. l. 28, c. 8. In a treatise, “de situ Britanniæ,” palmed off upon Richard of Cirencester, the district beyond the northern wall is erected into a province, and called Vespasiana, a name which in itself is a palpable blunder of the age which attributed every Roman relic in Scotland to the time of Agricola. The work abounds in internal evidence of its falsity. Vespasiana is said to have received the name in honour of the Flavian family, and in compliment to Domitian “in whose reign it was conquered” (l. 2, c. 6, s. 50), and with Mæata to have been lost under Trebellius, the successor of Lucullus, who had been put to death by Domitian (l. 2, c. 2, s. 16): but of these two provinces, which must have been created by his own father-in-law, Tacitus, writing during the reign of Trajan, displays a profound ignorance. Valentia again, the creation of Theodosius, about 369, is said to have been made a consular province by Constantine, who died two and thirty years before! (l. 1, c. 6, s. 3.) Such are a few specimens of the stupid blunders of its fabricator Mr. Bertram.

[2] Nen. Geneal. The See of Dôl, in Brittany, dates its rise from the flight of Bishop Samson from York.

[3] Nen. Geneal.—Llywarch, Marwnad Urien and Taliesin, quoted by Carte, vol. i. p. 209, and by Turner, Ang. Sax., bk. 2, c. 4. A translation of the latter poem will be found in Camb. Reg. v. 3, p. 433, fully justifying the regrets of Turner “that any historical poem should be translated into verse.” A tract of hill and moor, stretching from Derbyshire into Scotland, is often known in the early chroniclers as “Desertum,” the waste or desert. The battle in which Ida fell was probably the famous “battle of Badon,” which, according to Taliesin, “avenged the blood of the lords of the north,” and Urien was, I suspect, the “good and valiant uncle,” for opposing whom Gildas blames Maelgwn Gwynnedd.

[4] Tigh. 502, 574. Adam. Vit. Col. (Reeves), App. 2, p. 435. Bed. Ecc. Hist., l. 3, c. 3. According to Beda, the grant of Iona was made by the Pictish king, and the question is a matter of dispute—as what question in early Scottish history is not? Dr. Reeves, the learned editor of Adamnan, is inclined to a compromise, Conal granting, and Bruidi confirming, the grant.

[5] An. F. M. (O’Donovan), 554, and Note; and Adam. Vit. Col. (Reeves), passim. The great family of the Hy Nial supplied the Ardrighs or kings paramount of Ireland, uninterruptedly from the dawn of authentic history, until their power was shaken by the Northmen. The northern branch was subdivided into the Cinel Eogan and Cinel Conal, more familiarly, but less accurately, known as Tyrone and Tirconnell; the southern into Clan Colman and Siol Aodh Slane.

[6] Tigh. 563. Bed. Hist. Ecc., l. 3, c. 4, 5, 26. Adam. Vit. Col. (Reeves), l. 1, c. 37; l. 2, c. 35. Craig Phadrick is supposed by Dr. Reeves to represent the Rath of Bruidi. The southern Picts had been already converted by Ninian, a British bishop, according to Beda (l. 3, c. 4); and if the conjecture is correct which assigns this conversion to the early part of the fifth century, it must have been effected during their temporary occupation of the province of Valentia. If reliance can be placed on traditional chronology, the migration of Cynedda Gwladig, the ancestor of the “noble tribes” of Wales, from Manau Guotodin—supposed to mean the “Debateable Land” between Picts, Scots, Angles, and Britons [Adam. Vit. Col. (Reeves), p. 371, d.]—must have taken place about the same period, and was caused, probably, by the encroachments of the Picts.

[7] Beda—as above.

[8] Bed. Hist. Ecc., l. 5, c. 24. Tigh. 717. The foundation of Abernethy is ascribed by the chronicle of the Picts to a Nectan, who lived 300 years before this reign, but I suspect the later builder of the “stone church” was the real founder. Innes (Ap. ii, v.) quotes from the book of Paisley, “In illa ecclesiâ (Abernethy), fuerunt tres electiones factæ quando non fuit nisi unus solus episcopus in Scociâ. Tunc enim fuit ille locus principalis regalis et pontificalis per aliqua tempora tocius regni Pictorum.” As the “primacy” originally vested in Iona, passed subsequently to Dunkeld and St. Andrews, neither of which were in existence before the early part of the ninth century, it may be inferred that, during the intervening period, it remained with Abernethy. It was usually vested in the Cowarb, or representative of the original founder; and its leading privileges were the Lex, or right to Can and Cuairt—tribute and free quarters—and other dues.

[9] Bed. Hist. Ecc., l. 3, c. 1, 3.

[10] Bed. Hist. Ecc., l. 2, c. 5; l. 3, c. 24; l. 4, c. 2, 12. Edd. Vit. Wilf., c. 19. The tenero adhuc regno of Eddius is changed by Malmesbury (de Gest. Pont.) into teneram infantiam reguli, an expression scarcely applicable to Egfrid, who was twenty-five when he ascended the throne. Thus inaccuracies creep into history.

[11] Bed. Hist. Ecc., l. 4, c. 26. Nen. Geneal. Tigh. 686. An. Ult. 685. According to Nennius, no Saxon tax-gatherer ever again took tribute from the Picts. Tribute and a foreign bishop—or abbot—were the true tests of dependence at this period. Tulachaman seems to have been the place often known as Rath-inver-aman—“the fort at the mouth of the river Almond,” where vestiges of it are I believe still traceable. Dun Ollaig was probably a place at which Talorcan of Atholl was killed some years later.

[12] Tigh. 726, 728, 729. An. Ult. 728. Bed. Hist. Ecc. Contin. 740, 750.

[13] Adam. Vit. Col. (Reeves), p. 370, note A, p. 435.

[14] Bed. Hist. Ecc., l. 1, c. 34. Uladh may be said to have had three meanings—1. Legendary Uladh, the northern kingdom of Ireland answering very nearly to modern Ulster; 2. Historical Uladh, the province lying to the eastward of Lough Neagh, and the rivers Bann and Newry; 3. Uladh proper, the southern and principal portion of the historical province, answering to the diocese of Down. The other historical divisions were, Iveagh on the south-west, answering to the diocese of Dromore, and Dal-Araidhe on the north, the “district of the Airds,” or hill-country, equivalent to the diocese of Connor. Dalaraide must not be confounded with Dalriada. It was gradually restricted to the northern portion, known as Tuisceart or the north.

[15] Tigh. 723, 726, 734. An. Ult. 730, 732, 733, 735, 742. I have touched very slightly upon the annals of Dalriada, a very vexed question, which bears about as much upon the general history of Scotland, as the early annals of Sussex might do upon the general history of England.

[16] Bed. Hist. Ecc., l. 1, c. 34; l. 2, c. 4. Nen. Geneal.

[17] Caledonia, b. 2, c. 2. One of the localities in which a battle was fought during the Northumbrian civil wars in this century is called by Sim. Dun., Eildon; by the Saxon chronicler, Edwin’s Cliff. Edwin’s burgh in Lothian has long supplanted any earlier name which the locality may have borne, but upon the borders of Selkirk forest, and in the neighbourhood of the Catrail, the British Eildon has long outlived the Anglian monarch’s Cliff.

[18] Bed. Hist. Ecc., l. 2, c. 20; l. 3, c. 1, 24. Tigh. 631, 632. Nen. Geneal. Egfrid gave to St. Cuthbert Carlisle, with a circuit of fifteen miles, Creke with three miles—in short, all the open country in the north of Cumberland which was thus interposed between that district and Strath Clyde; whilst his donations of South Gedlet and Cartmel “with its Britons,” in the north of Lancashire, together with his grants on the Ribble and elsewhere to Wilfrid, shew that the greater part of Lancashire must have intervened between the Britons of English Cumbria and North Wales. Manchester and Whalley, or Billingaheth, were also in the Northumbrian territories. Sim. Dun. Hist. Dun., l. 1, c. 9. Hist. St. Cuth., p. 69. Edd. Vit. Wilf., c. 17. Chron. Sax. 798, 923. Nennius states that Cadwallader died of the great plague in Oswy’s reign, which can only refer to the pestilence of 664, though he has been purposely confounded with the West Saxon Ceadwalla, who died at Rome in 688. In spite of the assertion of Gildas, that all the records of his countrymen had perished, it was maintained that he had written a history and then destroyed it (Gild. Capit. 20); and Walter Mapes, bringing a book (as he said) from Brittany, where no other copy has ever been found, gave it to Geoffrey of Monmouth to translate. The work is called in Welsh the Brut Tyssilio, and is attributed to a certain Tyssilio living in the seventh century, who writes familiarly of Scotland, Moray, and Normandy, and brings the “Twelve Peers of France” to Arthur’s Coronation! Granting the existence of these Twelve Peers, how could Tyssilio, living in the seventh century, have been familiar with the institution of Charlemagne, who died in the ninth? In the nineteenth century the Brut has been “done into English” with some very marvellous notes, in which the curious inquirer will find Cæsar refuted by Tyssilio, and Homer corrected by Dares Phrygius!

[19] Bed. Hist. Ecc., l. 4, c. 26; l. 5, c. 12, 23; Do. contin., 750. Sim. Dun., 756.

[20] I allude to the Lex Aodh Fin, meaning, apparently, the right of Aodh and his family to Can and Cuairt, which were amongst the leading privileges of royalty. The following may explain the succession at this period—

Fergus Feredach | | Fergus /--------------\ /-------------\ | Angus Bruidi Kenneth Alpin /--------------------\ d. 761 761–3 763–75 775–8 Eoganan---d. Constantine Angus | ============= | 789–820 820–34 Talorcan Bargoit Conal MacTeige | | | 778–82 | 784–9 Alpin Drost Eoganan | /-------------\ | 834–6 836–9 Drost Feredach Bruidi Kenneth 782–4 839–42 842–3 843

[21] Innes, bk. 1, art. 8. Caledonia, bk. 2, c. 6, p. 302, note A, with other authorities cited by both. The marriage of Kenneth’s grandfather with a sister of Constantine and Angus rests solely on tradition, but it appears the most probable solution of his peaceful accession to the throne. The examples of Talorcan, son of Eanfred, perhaps also of his cousin Bruidi son of Bili, which is a British name, shews that the alien extraction of the father was no bar to the succession of the son. Such a succession would be exactly in accordance with the old custom mentioned by Beda, that “in cases of difficulty” the female line was preferred to the male; i.e., a near connection in the female line to a distant male heir. From not attending to the expression “in cases of difficulty,” the sense of Beda’s words has been often misinterpreted.

[22] The name of Heathored occurs as the last amongst the bishops of Whithern in Flor. Wig. App., and his predecessor Badwulf is alluded to by Sim. Dun. under 796. The topography of Galloway and the language once spoken by the Galwegians (who acknowledged a Kenkinny—Cen-cinnidh—not a Pen-cenedl) distinguish them from the British race of Strath Clyde—the Walenses of the early charters as opposed to the Galwalenses. Beda, however, knew of no Picts in the diocese of Candida Casa (v. Appendix K), and consequently they must have arrived at some later period, though it would be difficult to point with certainty to their original home. Some authorities bring them from Dalaraide, making them Cruithne or Irish Picts; and the dedication of numerous churches in Galloway to saints popular in the north-east of Uladh seems to favour their conjecture. The name of Galloway is probably traceable to its occupation by Gall, in this case Anglian strangers.

[23] An. Ult. 793, 813. Sim. Dun. 793. Innes, Ap. No. V. Myln, Vit. Ep. Dunk. Ford, l. 4, c. 12. This is the earliest historical appearance of the Vikings on the Scottish coasts. The name has no connection with king, being derived from Vik a bay, Viking a baysman. By northern law, every freeman was bound to be enrolled in a Hafn, and to contribute towards building and manning a ship for the royal service, the office of Styresman being always hereditary in the family of an Odal-Bonder. Thus, the royal ship, authorized to kill, burn, and destroy in lawful warfare, sailed from the Hafn, whilst the rover on his own account, stigmatized in “degenerate days” as a pirate, put off from the Vik or open bay. He was as little likely to sail from a royal Hafn, as a Highland chieftain bent upon a creagh to issue from the royal castle of Inverness. Hence perhaps the name.

[24] It must always be remembered, that the change of name from Pict to Scot was originally merely the substitution of one arbitrarily applied name for another—a change in the names used by chroniclers and annalists, not by the people themselves. The names of Picti and Scoti may be compared with those of Germani and Alamanni, given arbitrarily to the people who called themselves by names which have now become Deutsch and Schwabe.

[25] Cæs. de B. G., l. 1, c. 16; l. 2, c. 4; l. 3, c. 17; l. 5, c. 11, 22, 25, 54; l. 6, c. 32; l. 7, c. 4, 32, 33,63. Tac. Germ., c. 12, 42. Am. Marc., l. 31, c. 3. Bed. Hist. Eccl., l. 5, c. 10. Vergobretus is evidently the Latin form of Fear-go-breith, “the Man of law,” the Breithimh, Brehon, or Breen; the Celtic judge, Toshach, is derived from the same root as the Latin Dux; the Thessalian Τάγος and the German Toga bear the same meaning. It is the title that appears on several of the early British coins under the Latin form of Tascio.

[26] Cæs de B. G., l. 6, c. 10, 11. The factio was evidently the result of Celtic policy, not of Celtic temperament, as has been too often represented. The policy may have gradually influenced the temperament rather than the temperament the policy.

[27] Cæs. de B. G., l. 7, c. 88; l. 8, c. 12.

[28] “Legibus æduorum, iis qui summum magistratum obtinuerent excedere ex finibus non liceret.”—Cæs. de B. G., l. 7, c. 33.

[29] “Convictolitanem, qui per sacerdotes more civitatis ... esset creatus.”—Cæs. de B. G., l. 7, c. 33.

[30] Some such a character still exists in Japan, which is under the divided rule of two emperors; one a sacred puppet, nominally the head of the empire, but practically kept aloof from all mundane matters; the other known as the Ziogoon, or general, and the real ruler of the empire. This example of a double head to an empire certainly bears some resemblance to the divided authority of the old Celtic system, or rather to what that divided authority might have become under certain circumstances.

[31] δημοκρατοῦνταί τε ὡς πλήθει is the expression of Dio (in Severo). Strabo (l. 4, p. 197) describes the Gallic states as Aristocracies, annually choosing “in ancient times”—i.e., before the Roman Conquest—a ruler ἡγημόνα, and a general στρατηγὸν; in other words, a Vergobreith and a Toshach.

[32] Leg. Gwyn., l. 2, c. 18. The words of Bruce’s charter (Thanes of Cawdor) are “Ita tamen quod terra quam Fergusius dictus Demster tenet ibidem respondeat eidem Willelmo (Thano de Calder) de firma quam reddere consuevit.” It is doubtful whether Vercingetorix was a name or a title, like Brennus. Cynghed in Welsh means a convention; gorsez cynghed cynnal, a convention held upon urgency. Ver-cinget-o-rix might thus mean “the man chosen king in the convention.” The authority of the Anglo-Saxon princes, sometimes known as Bretwaldas, probably resembled that of the earlier Celtic Toshach—they were supreme Heretogas rather than supreme kings. Cæsar calls Vercingetorix Imperator; commander-in-chief.

[33] The verses ascribed to Columba will be found in the various “Chronicles of the Picts,” of Innes, Pinkerton, and the “Irish Version of Nennius,” J. A. S. The rev in Murev, Fortrev is probably to be derived from reim or “realm,” the names meaning “the realms along the sea (Murray, Muireim or Armorica), and along the Forth.” Ath-Fodla is equivalent to “Fodla on this side of the Mounth,” exactly answering to the situation of Atholl, immediately to the southward of the Grampian range. Northwards of Atholl the country is still known as Badenoch, “the district of the groves,” a name singularly inapplicable to its present state, answering probably to Fidach. Fodh, a word evidently derived from the same source as the Scandinavian Odh, and meaning “earth, land,” is probably at the foot of Fodhla (Fodh-lad), or Fo’la, which seems to have answered amongst the Gael very much to Gwlad. Fodh also means “learning in Gaelic.” The close connection between “mystic lore,” or “divination,” and the possession of land, was not confined to the Gael; it thoroughly pervaded the early Scandinavians.

[34] Camb. Descr. l. 1, c. 4. Col. de Reb. Alb., p. 19, 20. Innes, “Sketches, etc.,” p. 365 et seq. In the middle of the seventeenth century, the second son of the Earl of Argyle was fostered by Campbell of Glenurchy, ancestor of the Breadalbane family. “In the Lowlands,” says Mr. Innes, “the practice was evidently common under the civil law.” In fact, fosterage was not peculiar to the Highlanders and Celtic people in particular, though, like many other old customs, it remained in force amongst them long after it had disappeared elsewhere. By Ini’s Law (63), the fosterer was one of the three dependants whom the Gesithcundman might take with him under any circumstances. The system was admirably adapted for implanting the members of a dominant amongst a subordinate race, who, in the course of a few generations, must have thus become united in the ties of interest and affection with the ruling “caste.” No such ties bound the villein to his feudal lord; and the evils and advantages arising out of each system were totally different. It was this custom which above all others tended to render the Anglo-Norman lords “beyond the pale,” Hibernis Hiberniores. As much devotion was shewn to a Geraldine as to a MacArthy.

[35] Adam. Vit. St. Col., l. 3, c. 5. It was the Vergobreith, not the Toshach, who was “consecrated” by the Druids, v. p. 28, n.†. Giraldus Cambrenses has left an extraordinary description of the barbarous rites with which the inauguration of the princes of Cinel Conal was celebrated. He wrote from hearsay, and very probably heightened the colouring of a picture that was exaggerated in the first instance; for he fully participated in that rooted antipathy which seems to have long existed between the Welsh and the Irish. Still the words of Ailred shew that certain barbarous ceremonies on such occasions lingered amongst the Scottish Gael in the twelfth century, shocking the more fastidious ideas of David after he had “rubbed off his Scottish rust.” “Unde et obsequia illa quæ a gente Scottorum in novella regum promotione more patrio, exhibentur ita exhorruit ut ea vix ab episcopis suscipere cogeretur” (Twysden, p. 348). The conspicuous part still assigned at coronations to the Scottish “Stone of Destiny” is as well known as are the numerous tales and fables connected with it. In his “Essay on Tara” Mr. Petrie impugns the identity of the stone in St. Edward’s chair with the genuine Lia Fail, upon which the Ardrighs of Ireland were inaugurated at Tara; where, in his opinion, the mystic stone of the “Tuath de Danan” still remains in spite of the claims of the Dalriads and the fables of the Connaughtmen. It indeed seems extraordinary that a small and migratory tribe from the north of Antrim should have been permitted to carry off with them the “sacred stone” of the Irish kings, and I am inclined to look upon the Scottish Lia Fail as the stone upon which the Pictish kings and their successors were consecrated, its only migration, unless it was removed from Dunfothir to Scone, having been undertaken at the order of Edward the First; though after the Gaelic people of Scotland had identified their own ancestry with that of the MacAlpin line of princes the Lia Fail necessarily became mixed up with the supposed wanderings of the latter.

[36] The early Frank kings used to migrate in this way from manor to manor, and the custom long prevailed amongst the Scandinavians. It was the origin of the “sorning,” a word derived from the same source as the French sejourner, and “Waldgastnung,” so often prohibited in the old laws of Scotland and the north. The Anglo-Saxons were perfectly well acquainted with the same custom, and lands were held for a certain number of “night’s feorm”—so many nights’ free quarters originally,—the name of the tenure being at length permanently transferred to the tenant and tenement. Hence our words Farmer and Farm.

[37] Most of the materials for this sketch have been taken from “Martin’s Western Isles,” the “Irish Annals,” and the “Works of the Irish Archæological Society,” particularly the “Hy Fiachrach,” where the subject is ably illustrated by Mr. O’Donovan in Appendix L. The “Circuit of Murketagh” contains an interesting account of the manner in which hostages and tribute were exacted, and the different methods of proceeding with kinsmen, allies, and rivals. The theory of Tanistry extended to ecclesiastical offices, and we meet with Tanist bishops and Adbhar abbots; the former signifying, apparently, the successor actually chosen, the latter one eligible to be chosen. Thus, and in many other ways, the old Celtic principle of division appears to have gradually pervaded their branch of the church. Even the careful separation of sacerdotal authority from practical power seems to have clung to the Gaelic people for some time after their conversion; for while the Hy Nial for centuries monopolized the supreme power, the Primacy was the exclusive appanage of the Clan Colla, a race excluded from the throne.

[38] A king of Atholl was amongst the rivals who succumbed to Angus (Tigh. 739), and from the foundation of Dunkeld and St. Andrews by Constantine and the second Angus, it may be gathered that the provinces connected with those monasteries were “in the crown.” In the Irish annals Fortreim is latterly almost synonymous with the kingdom of the Picts. Its capital, Dun-Fothir, was evidently the Scottish Tara, and Dundurn in the north perhaps the Scottish Cashel. Moray and Mærne seem to have long been the leading subdivisions of the north, but it would be difficult to name the corresponding divisions of the south. Abernethy appears to have been connected with Strathearn, Dunkeld with Atholl, and St. Andrews with Fife.

[39] Lodbroka Quida. Str., 12. The epithet of “the Hardy” is applied to Kenneth in the Duan. The old chronicle continues to apply the name of Pictavia to Scotland proper, or Alban, and Saxonia to the Lothians; whilst the Ulster annals call the MacAlpin dynasty “Kings of the Picts” to the close of the century.

[40] Innes App., No. 3.

[41] This expression, the “laws of Aodh,” may have found its way into the chronicle without the transcriber being aware of its meaning. In the Irish annals the lex Patricii or lex Columbæ alludes to the right of visitation and other dues belonging to the representatives or Cowarbs of those saints; and the confirmation of the “lex Aodh Fin” by the Gael may mean the recognition of the claims of his descendants, the MacAlpin family, to Can and Cuairt over the provinces of the Picts. Royal law was identical with royal supremacy.

[42] Their first arrival, or rather permanent settlement, is placed by the An. Ult. in 839. The district of Fingall may derive its name from Fine gall, “the stranger clans,” as well as from Fin-gall, “the white strangers.”

[43] The Fingall are sometimes supposed to have been Norwegians and the Dugall Danes, a fanciful distinction apparently, as Thorstein Olaveson was king of the Dugall (An. Ult. 874), and his father Olave was undoubtedly a Norwegian. The Hy Ivar, chiefs of the Dugall, were undoubtedly a Danish race, for the Northmen who slew Elli at York in 867 were Dugall, and known as Scaldings or Skioldungr of the royal race of Denmark. An. Ult. 866. Twysden, p. 70.

[44] A. F. M., 847, 849, 850, 851. Olave “took hostages from every clan, and tribute from the Gael.”

[45] Innes App., No. 3. An. Ult. 865, 869, 870, 872. Sim. Dun. de Gestis, 866. Ware. Antiq. Hib., c. 24. Ivar was unquestionably the Inguar of early English history, and perhaps Olave was the Ubba; for in the Langfedgatel quoted by Lappenberg (Eng. under Ang. Sax., vol. i., p. 114, n. 4), Olave is substituted for Uffo, evidently the same name as Ubba. The Chron. 3 ascribes the death of Olave to Constantine, whilst the Landnamaboc says he was killed in Ireland.

[46] An. Ult. 856. Laxdæla Saga and Landnamaboc in Col. de Reb. Alb., p. 65 to 69. The Gallgael must be distinguished from their rivals the Oirir-Gael, or Gael of the coasts (i.e., of Argyle). Mr. Skene (Highlanders, pt. 2, c. 2) considers them to have been identical, on the strength of a passage which, I think, scarcely bears him out. When the fleet of Turlough O’Connor ravaged Tir Conal and Inch Eogan in 1154 (A. F. M.), the clan Eogan sent to hire “Longus Gallgaidhel, Arann, Cinntire, Manann et Cantair Alban” ships of the Gallgael, Arran, Kintyre, Man, and “the coasts of Alban,” i.e. Oirir-Gael. Gallgael must here mean the Islesmen. The Orkneyinga Saga (Antiq. Celt.-Scan., p. 180) calls the Caithness men Gaddgedlar or Gallgael; in short, it was the name of the two races when blended, and in later days there was a continual struggle for superiority between the Oirir-Gael and the Gallgael—represented by the families of Somarled and of the later kings of Man,—in which the former were ultimately successful, uniting at length under one head the dominion of Argyle and the Isles. There is a slight discrepancy in the accounts of Ketil contained in the Sagas. He was leader of the Gallgael when Harfager was an infant, and appears to have succeeded Godfrey MacFergus, whose name betokens a mixed descent, and who died in 853 (A. F. M., 851). The Gallgael possessed the islands before the time of Harfager.

[47] Ekkialsbakka, according to Mr. Skene “the Mounth;” according to Johnstone, the Ochil Hills, appears to be rightly translated by Mr. Laing (Heimskringla, vol. 1., p. 291); “the banks of the Ekkial, or Oikell, a river which still marks the limits of Sutherland, the ancient Sudrland of the Orkney Jarls.

[48] Antiq. Celt.-Scand. (Landnamaboc), p. 20, 21.

[49] Chron. Sax. 875. Halfdan was a brother of Ivar. According to Sim. Dun. Hist. Dun., l. 2, c. 13, he was driven from Northumbria very soon after he settled there, and perished miserably, slain by “his own people.” He was probably the Albdan Toshach of the Dugall, who was killed in battle by the Fingall in 877 at Loch Cuan, or Strangford Lough. An. Ult. 876.

[50] Compare An. Ult. 874 with Chron. 3, Innes’ Ap. “Thorstein ruled as king over these districts, Caithness and Sutherland, Ross, Moray, and more than the half of Scotland”—Landnamaboc. “Thorstein at length became reconciled with the King of Scots, and obtained possession of the half of Scotland, over which he became king.”—Laxdæla Saga (Col. de Reb. Alb., p. 66 to 69). Such were the results of Thorstein’s victory, which were evidently admitted by the old chronicle in its brief notice, “Normanni annum integrum degerunt in Pictavia.” The half of Scotland plainly refers to the ancient territories of the Northern Picts.

[51] This account of the wars of Sigurd and Thorstein is taken from the Sagas already quoted, the Ulster annals and Chron. 3 in Innes’s Appendix. They must have occurred between the deaths of Olave, about 871, and of his son in 875; and the decisive conflict between the Picts and Dugall in 875, when the former were defeated with great slaughter (An. Ult.), the battles of Dollar and Coach-Cochlum, two years before the death of Constantine, i.e., in the same year; and finally the death of Oistin or Thorstein MacOlave, placed by the Ulster annals under the same date, all mark the year 875 to have been the era of his brief triumph. All accounts agree that Thorstein perished by unfair means. “He was betrayed by the Scots and slain in battle.”—Landnamaboc. “The Scots did not keep the treaty long, but betrayed him in confidence”—Laxdæla Saga. These authorities are confirmed by the Ulster annals, which record the death of Thorstein Olaveson per dolum.

[52] Innes’, App. 5. Wynton, bk. 6, c. 8. Fordun, l. 4, c. 16. Macpherson, in his “Geographical Illustrations of Scottish History,” explains the Werdofatha of the Register of St. Andrews and Wynton to mean Wem-du-fada, “the long black cave,” in which Constantine is supposed to have suffered the cruel death of “the spread eagle.” The period of this reign is easily ascertained. Under the first year the Chronicle No. 3 places the death of Malsechnal, king of Ireland; and as that king died on Tuesday 20th November (A.F.M.), his death must have occurred in 863. The same chronicle records the death of Aodh MacNial, king of Ireland, which happened in 879, under the second year of Eocha and Cyric (Grig), thus placing their accession, and consequently the death of Constantine’s brother Aodh, in 878. As the reign of Aodh lasted for only a year, that of his brother must have begun in 863 and ended in 877.

[53] Cyric (or Ciric, the same as the French St. Cyr) was the original name, which has been corrupted into Grig, Girg, and Gregory the Great. It seems to be a different name from Gregor, which is apparently the Scandinavian Griotgar. Eccles Girg or Grig is the modern Cyruskirk. Dundurn or Dunadeer, in the Garioch, appears long to have held the same place amongst the Northern Picts as Dunfothir or Forteviot in the South, i.e., it was the capital of the leading province. Caledonia, bk. 3, c. 7, p. 383, note I.

[54] Innes, Ap. 3, 5. Fordun, l. 4, c. 16. An. Ult. 877. Eocha is described as the alumnus of Cyric, who was evidently the real king of Scotland for the time.

[55] Innes, Ap. 5. Wynton, bk. 6, c. 9. It was probably to the gratitude of the monks, the only chroniclers of the age, that Cyric was partly indebted for some of his posthumous fame as Gregory the Great, an universal conqueror. The line of Aodh appears to have been connected with Atholl, which may account for the deposition of Dunkeld from its prominent position.

[56] Innes, Ap. 3. The title of Civitas Regalis is given to Scone early in the next reign. The palatium, or royal residence of Kenneth, was at Forteviot, the ancient Pictish capital.

[57] Innes, Ap. 3 and 5. Wynton, bk. 6, c. 9. Fordun, l. 4, c. 17, 18; l. 11 c. 40, 59. Wynton, Fordun, and the Chron. Ryth. at the end of the Chron. Mel.—the same evidently as that quoted by Wynton—agree in giving eighteen years to Cyric, and placing his death at Dundurn, Dornedeore, or Dunadeer, in the Garioch. The reigns of the three kings extended over twenty-two years, from 878 to 900, the dates in the Ulster annals of the deaths of Aodh and Donald; and as Eocha reigned for eleven years (Chron. 5), Donald must have succeeded in 889. The Chron. No. 3 places an eclipse on St. Ciric’s Day (16th June) under the ninth year of Eocha and Cyric. This actually occurred on 16th June 885, in the eighth year of their reign; and allowing for the trifling inaccuracy of a year, it is evidently the eclipse referred to. From confounding St. Ciric with St. Siriac, on whose day (8th August 891) an eclipse also happened, both Pinkerton and Chalmers have misdated all these reigns.

[58] Innes, Ap. 3, 5. An. Ult. 899. Fordun, l. 4, c. 20. Either this king, or one of his predecessors, must have been the sufferer at Mundingdene, a mile south of Norham, when the obedience of Guthred, son of Hardicanute (rather a mythical personage), to the dictates of Abbot Edred’s vision, in restoring the lands of St. Cuthbert between Tyne and Wear to the Church, was rewarded by the intervention of the Saint in behalf of the sacred territory, when it was invaded by a band of Scots, who were miraculously engulphed in the yawning earth! Sim. Dun. Hist. Dun., l. 2, c. 14. Leland, vol. i. p. 329. It is a pity the miracle was not repeated a few years later, when Reginald Hy Ivar divided these very lands amongst his pagan followers. What with the sac, soc and infangthief, granted by Guthred in the ninth century, the fine of 96 Anglo-Norman pounds, and the near vicinity of the Scots to St. Cuthbert’s territory, the story affords a very fair specimen of the inventions by which the monks occasionally tried to give a title to lands which they often really possessed rightfully, though without legal proof of such right. A miracle or a victory, especially if either were at the expense of the Scots, lent an air of sanctity or authority to the fabrication, which it would have been impious or unpatriotic to doubt.

[59] Innes, Ap. 3. An. Ult. 903. As the annals call the victors “the men of Fortren,” I have rendered the Sraith Eremi of Pinkerton’s version of Chron. 3, Strathearn.

[60] Innes, Ap. 3. It probably resembled those meetings of the Anglo-Saxon Witan, at which the ecclesiastical Dooms, so often preceding the secular Dooms in the Anglo-Saxon laws, were promulgated, and may have had some reference to the recent elevation of the See of St. Andrews to the primacy.

[61] An. Ult. 871. According to this authority, Constantine “procured” the death of Artga.

[62] An. Ult. 876, 877. An. Camb. and Brut y Tywys, 880. Caradoc, Hist. Wales, p. 38. Caledonia, vol. i., bk. 3, c. 5, p. 355. Chalmers gives the name of Constantine to their first leader, whilst, according to Caradoc, Hobart was their chief when they reached Wales. To some old tradition of this migration, and to the encroachments of the Galwegians, the Inquisitio Davidis probably alludes:—“Diversæ seditiones circumquaque insurgentes non solum ecclesiam et ejus possessiones destruxerunt verum etiam totam regionem vastantes ejus habitatores exilio tradiderunt” Reg. Glasg. In fact it would appear as if a Scottish party had dated its rise from the days of Kenneth MacAlpin, and secured a triumph by the expulsion of its antagonists, on the accession of Eocha to the Scottish throne, and by the election of Donald in the reign of the second Constantine.

[63] Innes, Ap. 3. Donald and Eocha, or Eogan, were the invariable family names (with only one exception) of the princes of Strath Clyde, until the extinction of the race in the time of Malcolm II.

[64] An. Ult. 901–903. The Egill’s Saga (Antiq. Celt.-Scand. p. 32), in describing Olave the Red, calls him “the son of a native Scot, by a descendant of Ragnar Lodbroc,” meaning by the expression “a native Scot,” that his father was of Scottish descent by both parents. This description cannot apply to Olave’s father Sitric and his brothers, the well-known grandsons of Ivar, whose children could not possibly have been of pure Scottish descent. It is remarkable, however, that the name of the father of Sitric and his brothers is never mentioned by the Irish annalists, who invariably call them Hy Ivar, or grandsons of Ivar (for the Hy had not yet become a family prefix), whilst they also frequently allude to Godfrey and Sitric, the sons of Ivar, and their descendants, who never attained to the same celebrity as the others. These latter more famous Hy Ivar appear to have been in some way connected with the Western Isles, where their descendants were long regarded in the light of a royal race. The first appearance of Reginald Hy Ivar is in a naval battle off the Isle of Man; and as his family had no footing at that time either in England, Scotland, or Ireland, he must have recruited his fleet from amongst the Gall-Gael. Nearly thirty years later the son of Reginald was driven from the same Western Islands, which he probably had inherited in his childhood (for Reginald and his brothers were young), when the English and Irish possessions of his father fell to the share of his uncles Sitric and Godfrey. (An. Ult. 942. An. F. M. 940.) After the death of Godfrey Mac Fergus in 853, who figures in the genealogy of Somarled, lord of the Oirir-Gael, and must have been (from his name) of Scottish descent by the father’s side, the Isles next appear under the rule of Caittil or Ketil, a Norwegian, but as his sons settled in Iceland after the expedition of Harfager (Landnamabok), he could not have transmitted his power to his descendants; and the Sagas say that the Isles then fell into the hands of Scottish and Irish Vikings. If one of these Vikings, a Scottish lord of the Gall-Gael or Oirir-Gael, had married Ivar’s daughter, the description in the Egill’s Saga would exactly apply to himself, his wife, and his sons, and it would be only necessary to suppose that the writer of the Saga, aware of Olave’s descent from a Scottish Viking and a grand-daughter of Ragnar Lodbroc, made him by mistake the son instead of the grandson of the Scot. This supposition would equally account for the connection of the Hy Ivar with the Isles, and the ignorance of the Irish annalists respecting their father’s name.

[65] An. Ult. 913–917. In 888 the Irish annalists record that Sitric, the son of Ivar, killed, or was killed by, his brother. In 919 the same authorities mention that Sitric, the grandson of Ivar, slew Nial, King of Ireland, in battle. Some of the Anglo-Norman chroniclers, and one late MS. of the Saxon Chronicle, evidently confounding these events, make the younger Sitric the murderer of his brother Nial.

[66] Sim. Dun. Hist. Dun., l. 2, c. 16. Hist. St. Cuth., pp. 73, 74. Innes, Ap. 3. An. Ult. 917. The engagement is called by Simeon the battle of Corbridge-on-Tyne, and in Chron. 3 the battle of Tynemore, evidently Tyne Moor.

[67] An. Ult. 920.

[68] An. Ult. 926. Chron. Sax. 925, 926. According to the Irish annalists, Sitric died immaturâ aetate, and consequently his son Olave must have been too young to offer any opposition to Athelstan. The MS. C. T., B. iv., which alludes to Sitric and Godfrey, is, like the Ulster annals, a year behind the true date at this period. As Godfrey was present at a battle in Ireland, fought on 28th December 926, and left Dublin in the following year, upon hearing of the death of his brother, returning thither after an absence of six months, the transactions to which Malmesbury and the Chronicle allude must have taken place during this interval.

[69] An. Ult. 926. Chron. Sax. 926, 927. Malm. Gesta Regum, l. 2, s. 133. The Saxon Chronicle (MS. C. T., B. iv., of the eleventh century) states that the kings met at Emmet, in Yorkshire, and renounced idolatry, a singular compact for a prince who, twenty years before, had presided at an ecclesiastical council at Scone! Malmesbury, who takes his account from an old volume containing a metrical history of Athelstan, “in quo scriptor cum difficultate materiæ luctabatur (et) ultra opinionem in laudibus principis vagatur,” places the meeting at Dacor in Cumberland, adding that Athelstan commanded the son of Constantine to be baptised! Here again the Scottish King figures as a pagan, as he also does in the same writer’s description of the battle of Brunanburgh, where he says that the survivors of the vanquished host were spared to embrace Christianity. There is an evident confusion here between the pagan Northmen, to whom all this is very applicable, and the Christian Scots. It is highly probable both that Sitric “renounced idolatry” on the occasion of his marriage with Athelstan’s sister, and that his son Olave, who ended his life in the monastery of Iona, was baptised through the intervention of the English king, but the same cannot be said of the Christian King of Scotland. From time immemorial, as we learn from Malcolm Ceanmor (Sim. Dun. 1093), it was the custom of the English and Scottish kings to meet upon their respective frontiers; but though the borders of Yorkshire and Cumberland were the most appropriate places of meeting for Sitric and his English brother-in-law, they were on the Danish, not the Scottish frontier; and what should bring Constantine thither to renounce idolatry in his declining years, and baptise his son at the bidding of the English king? Much of the history of this period appears to have been derived from old songs and lays, in which due allowance must be made for the confusion and mistakes incidental to such legendary compositions, as well as for the “genus dicendi quod suffultum Tullius appellat,” especially in the struggles of the transcriber to Latinise the barbarous idioms of the vernacular, alluded to with such contemptuous pity by Malmesbury. The vague and exaggerated expressions of these old ballads were frequently copied literally, and latterly in the feudal idiom, into the dry chronicle of a subsequent era, a fate which has frequently befallen the sole Saxon record of the famous battle of Brunanburgh. In the scanty records of this, the most glorious and least known period of Anglo-Saxon history, it is very evident that Constantine has frequently usurped the place of Sitric,—just as in the Egill’s Saga Olave Sitricson figures as King of Scotland, to the total exclusion of his own father-in-law,—but it would be difficult to do more than point out the confusion. The Anglo-Norman writers, of course, take advantage of the confused and indistinct idea of a treaty between Athelstane and Constantine to turn it to their own account, but they have been far outdone by a modern historian, who has actually described the manner in which the Scottish king performed fealty to Athelstan—More Francico, in set form, as laid down in the Liber de Beneficiis—though it would be impossible to say from what source he has obtained his vivid description of the feudal ceremony, for it certainly is not contained in any of the authorities to which he refers (Malm., 27, 28. Flor., 602. Mail., 147), nor was the Frankish ceremony of homage in force amongst the Anglo-Saxons of that era.

[70] Olave was Constantine’s son-in-law at the time of the battle of Brunanburgh, but as Sitric died at an early age, and Olave survived his father for nearly sixty years, it is improbable that the connection could have existed till some years after Sitric’s death, when it will explain why Constantine, who at that time was not at variance with Athelstan, and who had supported the Northumbrian Saxons against their mutual enemies the Hy Ivar, became an object of suspicion to the English king when it appeared to be his aim to favour the establishment of his son-in-law in the Danish province, as he had already secured his brother upon the throne of Strath Clyde.

[71] Chron. Sax. Sim. Dun. ad an. “Athelstan went into Scotland as well with a land army as with a fleet, and there over-harried much.” Such are the expressions of the Chronicle, the earliest and best authority respecting an expedition which has grown in the pages of the Anglo-Norman annalists into the complete conquest of Scotland. Simeon gives three versions: in his first, from original sources, merely mentioning the extent of the incursion to Dunfœder (or Forteviot) and Wertermore. In his second, copying Florence, he makes Constantine purchase peace at the price of his son’s captivity; and in his third, in return for the gifts of Athelstan to the shrine of St. Cuthbert—and on such occasions the chronicler is never behind-hand in liberality—Scotland is thoroughly subdued (Twysden, pp. 134, 154, 25). It is a very appropriate occasion for the exhibition of the suffultum genus scribendi by the Anglo Norman writers; and the opportunity has not been passed over. According to Brompton (Twysden, p. 838), Athelstan demanded a sign from St. John of Beverley, “quo præsentes et futuri cognoscere possent Scotos de jure debere Anglis subjugari.” It was granted, and the king’s sword clove an ell of rock from the foundations of Dunbar Castle! “Possessiones, privilegia, et libertates,” rewarded the miracle, a price for which there was scarcely a patron saint in the country who would not have been made to confirm with signs and wonders the rightful supremacy of the English king over any people he chose to name. The monks of Newburgh outdid even Brompton, detaining Athelstan for three years in Scotland, whilst he placed “princes” over her provinces, provosts over her cities, and settled the amount of tribute to be paid from the most distant islands! (Doc. etc. Illus. Hist. Scot., No. 33.) The tale reappears, as might be expected, in the time of the first Edward, in its most exaggerated form, as “Inventa in quodum libro de vita et miraculis beati Johannis de Beverlaco quæ sunt per Romanam curiam approbata (Fœd., vol. i., p. 771). Dr. Lingard, through one of those oversights which occasionally serve to strengthen his arguments in Scottish matters, has transferred to this expedition the epithets applied by Æthelward to the battle of Brunanburgh.

[72] At this time there were two prominent characters amongst the descendants of Ivar of the name of Anlaf or Olave, who have frequently been confounded. Olave, the son of Sitric, known in the Sagas under the name of Olave the Red—the an t sainnr of the A. F. M. 978—sometimes as Olave Cuaran (for his son Sitric, who fought at Clontarf is called Olave Quaran’s son in the Niala Saga, Antiq. Celt.-Scand., p. 108), became the head of his family upon the death of his uncle Godfrey, and to him the Sagas invariably attribute the supreme rule over the Norsemen at Brunanburgh and elsewhere. Upon the death of Athelstan, the whole of England north of Watling Street was ceded to “Olave of Ireland,” and for four years Olave Sitricson retained his hold upon the conquered districts, until the successes of Edmund drove him across the channel to Ireland. He frequently appears in English history subsequently as the opponent of Eric of the Bloody Axe and the Anglo-Saxon monarchs; but his name does not occur in the Irish annals before he was driven from Northumbria in 944; and about eight years later, relinquishing all hopes of obtaining his father’s English kingdom, he established himself permanently in Dublin, ruling the Irish Norsemen for nearly thirty years, and bequeathing his dominion to his descendants. Olave, the son of Godfrey, succeeded his father in Dublin in 934, crossed the sea in the autumn of 937, and joining in the battle of Brunanburgh, reappeared in Ireland in the following year. He again appeared in England when Olave of Ireland was chosen by the Northumbrian Danes for their king, and shared the supremacy with his kinsman until his death at Tyningham in 941. Guthferd or Godfrey, the son of Hardacanute, a personage whose existence is somewhat doubtful, but who is supposed to have succeeded Halfdan, is often confounded with either Godfrey mac Ivar or Godfrey hy Ivar. The Irish annals, sagas, and Simeon, are my authorities for this sketch.

[73] Chron. Sax. 937. Egil’s Saga, Antiq. Celt.-Scand. The story of Olave’s adventures in the camp of Athelstan is also told of Alfred, and, if I recollect aright, of others. It is probably true in one instance, and ascribed to the rest. Eogan of Strath Clyde was probably amongst the kings who fell, as his son Donald soon afterwards appears as king of Strath Clyde.

[74] Heimskringla, Saga 4, c. 3. The tie of blood was the great bond of union in these days, and a member of a “royal race” could unite the most discordant elements under his standard. The invaders of the British Isles, like their greatest leaders Olave and Ivar—the one an Ingling, the other a Skioldung—were of Norwegian and Danish race, but after the death of Thorstein, Olave’s son, without known issue, as no prominent scion of the race of Halfdan Hvitbein remained, Dane and Norwegian both looked for their leaders to the family of Ragnar Lodbroc, the Hy Ivar. Eric, however, was of the blood of Halfdan Hvitbein, and by placing him amongst the Northmen, Athelstan skilfully sowed the seeds of discord, which yielded an abundant harvest a few years later in the contests between him and Olave Sitricson.

[75] It is doubtful which Olave is meant. When Edmund regained Northumbria, Olave Sitricson and Reginald Godfreyson appear to have been joint kings, so that it is probable that the two Olaves divided the supremacy in return for the assistance of the son of Godfrey in reinstating his kinsman. The death of Athelstan is assigned to the years 939 and 941. Ethelward places his death two years after Brunanburgh, in 939, and the charter 411 (Cod. Dip. Ang. Sax., vol. ii.) would favour this date. There are many charters of Edmund in 940, none of Athelstan after 939.

[76] Heimsk., Saga 4, c. 4. An. Ult. 941. A. F. M., 940. Sacheverell, in his History of the Isle of Man, p. 25, mentions a Manx tradition that the first of a line of twelve Oirrighs or underkings was the son of a king of Denmark or Norway, whose successors Guthfert and Reginald are evidently Godfrey Haraldson and his son Reginald, kings of Man after Maccus or Magnus Haraldson, who killed Eric in 954, at which time he probably acquired the kingdom of Man and the Isles. The Irish annals mention that in 942 the son of Reginald Hy Ivar was driven from the Isles by “Gall from beyond sea;” and it seems highly probable that these were the followers of Eric, who must have established himself in the dominion of the islands about this time.

[77] Sim. Dun. de Gestis, 941.

[78] Innes, Ap. 3. A Culdee abbot was not at this time strictly an ecclesiastical dignitary. The office appears to have been frequently held by the next in consideration to the head of the family in whose province or kingdom the monastery was situated.

[79] The period of this reign has been chosen by the Anglo-Norman writers as the era in which a feudal supremacy, in a strict Anglo-Norman sense, was first acquired over Scotland by her southern neighbour; and the theory, as might be expected, is supported in an appropriate manner. Three years after the death of Reginald, the fiery Dane is resuscitated from his grave, and placed, by the fiat of the English chroniclers, side by side with Constantine and the Prince of Strath Clyde, brought, together with the whole free population of Cumbria, Scotland, and Danish Northumbria, from the borders of the Forth, the Clyde, and the Humber, to the distant Peak of Derbyshire, to tender homage to the Saxon Edward at Bakewell! Yet their submission, and even the unwonted journey so far from their respective frontiers, fail to avert their sorrowful fate; for though Reginald is permitted to return to his tomb, his luckless companions are wantonly hurled from their thrones upon the accession of Athelstan; whilst, to enhance the glory of the Saxon king, Aldred of Bamborough is made the companion of their flight. He was the faithful friend of Edward, the son of Eadulf, “the darling” of the great Alfred,—considerations which have little weight with the ruthless chroniclers; and Aldred is raised to an evanescent independence, to swell the triumph of Athelstan by being ejected from what is called “his kingdom!” As history advances, fresh links are added to the chain of bondage, and the decreasing power of the Anglo-Saxon monarchs marches hand in hand with the increasing submission of the Scottish kings. Then is exhibited the singular anomaly of an obedient and obsequious vassal appropriating without ceremony the territories of his sovereign lord, until the climax is attained in the reign of the Confessor; and at a time when the over-powerful subjects of that prince seem to have been fast verging towards independence, freely and willingly does the Scottish king tender that allegiance for his entire kingdom which the iron-willed successors of the feeble Edward in vain attempted to extort. Into such errors and inconsistencies have the great majority of Anglo-Norman chroniclers fallen in endeavouring to found a claim to a feudal supremacy over Scotland in an age in which neither amongst Scots nor Anglo-Saxons was the feudal system in force.—V. Appendix L, pt. 1.

[80] Chron. Sax. An. Ult. 943.—Roger of Wendover is the earliest authority for the tale of Edmund expelling Dunmail—hardly the same person as Donald MacEogan, who died in 975—and putting out the eyes of his two sons (vol. 1., p. 398). The story is probably about as true as the account of the same chronicler that the English king was assisted on this occasion by Llewellyn of South Wales. In 945 Howell Dha was king of South Wales, and as none of his sons bore the name of Llewellyn, the only person whom the Welsh writers can find to participate in the expedition is Llewellyn ap Sitsylt—who died 76 years later, in 1021—the father of Harold’s opponent, Griffith, and of Blethyn and Rhywallon, who figured, considerably more than a century later, in the reign of William the Conqueror. The next thing heard of this Llewellyn is in 1018, when, says Caradoc (Hist. Wales, p. 79), “Llewellyn ap Sitsylt having for some years (seventy-three) sat still and quiet, began now to bestir himself.” It was time!

[81] Sim. Dun. Twysden, pp. 14, 74.

[82] Chron. Sax. 945. Midwyrhta, “fellow workman,” is the expression used, which the feudal ideas of a later age naturally rendered fidelis; and an alliance, only lasting for the life of Malcolm, was accordingly transformed into a regular feudal transaction, existing for generations. The earlier authorities, from the chronicle and Æthelward, make no mention of any such thing; and Kenneth the Second appears to have been as ignorant of it when he harried Cumberland in 971, as Ethelred when he wasted the same province in 1000; nor could Simeon of Durham have been aware of such a compact when he wrote that, in 1072, Malcolm the Third held Cumberland “Non jure possessa sed violenter subjugata,” expressions which can scarcely be reconciled with the uninterrupted possession of the province as a feudal fief for 127 years. When John of Fordun compiled his history, he eagerly seized upon the means of escaping the numerous claims for homage put forward in the rival English chroniclers; and Cumberland, in his pages, becomes the counterpart of the earldom of Huntingdon during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Scottish king invariably granting it to the heir, or tanist, who duly performs homage to the Saxon monarch for the fief held of his crown. On one occasion a tanist is called into existence for this sole purpose, and the veracious historian, after fabricating the apocryphal being, is obliged to murder his own creation to account for his not appearing amongst the Scottish kings. The same myth, Malcolm, king of the Cumbrians, unites with Kenneth the Second in witnessing a charter which the latter is supposed to have signed as king five years before he ascended the throne, and is very appropriately placed amongst the eight oarsmen who manned the boat of Edgar in his apocryphal progress on the Dee.—V. Appendix L, pt. 1.

[83] Chron. Sax. 946, 948.

[84] Chron. Sax. 949. Innes, Ap. 3. The seventh year of Malcolm corresponds exactly with 949, the year in which Olave reappeared in Northumbria, and the curious tradition preserved in the old chronicle that Constantine resumed his authority for a week to head the Scottish army in an incursion to the Tees, must surely be connected with the arrival of his son-in-law, and the reluctance of Malcolm to break the engagement by which he held Cumberland.

[85] A. F. M., 950. Chron. Sax. 952.

[86] Tigh. 980. A. F. M., 1014. The account of Tighernach reveals both the extent of Olave’s power and the far greater importance of the first victory which broke it. The death of the old warrior is described rather quaintly by the annalist “post pœnitentiam et bonos mores.”

[87] Chron. Sax. 954. Sim. Dun. de Gestis, 1072. Wendover, vol. i., p. 402. Heimskringla, Saga 4, c. 4. The Henricus and Reginaldus of Wendover are probably the Harek and Rognwald of the Saga. Simeon calls Maco or Maccus a son of Olave, but Olave had no son of that name, and Maco was probably “Maccus Archipirata,” or Magnus Haraldson, king of Man and the Islands, who was the head of a different branch of the Hy Ivar. His father, Harald, who was killed in Connaught in 940, was the son of Sitric Mac Ivar, or the elder Sitric, who killed, or was killed by, his brother Godfrey, and was the head of the Norsemen of Limerick. The power of the Limerick Hy Ivar appears to have received a severe shock when Olave Godfreyson, shortly before the battle of Brunanburgh, destroyed all their ships and captured their leader, Olave Cen-Cairedh. A. F. M., 934, 938.

[88] Innes, Ap. 3. Wynton, bk. 6, c. 10. An. Ult. 953. The men of Mærne occasionally make their appearance in early Scottish history, and generally in company with the men of Moray. It has been frequently assumed that they belonged to a certain earldom of the Merns, comprised in modern Kincardineshire, though Mr. Skene (Highlanders, vol. ii., c. 9) places them on the western coast, where he supposes that there once existed an earldom of Garmoran. The same objection, I fear, may be raised against the earldom of Garmoran which is urged against the earldom of the Merns—the total silence of history respecting it. When a dim light is first shed upon the northern provinces, the name of Moray, which must have once been applied to the whole line of sea-coast—Armorica—in this direction, is confined to the westward of the Spey, whilst the eastern tract of country is broken up into the earldoms of Mar and Buchan, and the districts of Strathbogie and the Garioch, both “in the crown,” i.e., conquered. The name of Mærne has by this time disappeared, unless it still survived in Mar, representing only a portion of the ancient province, but I should imagine it is to be sought for in this quarter, which would account for the connection of its people with the men of Moray; and if ancient Mærne once included Kincardineshire, the name of “the Merns” may have been retained, like that of Northumberland or Cumberland, by a comparatively small portion of the original province.

[89] Innes, Ap. 3. Sim. Dun. de Gestis, 854, and p. 139.

[90] Innes, Ap. 3. Wynton, bk. 6, c. 10. Fordun, l. 4, c. 27.—The old chronicler calls the Northmen “Sumerlide”—summer army—an expression similar to the “micel sumorlida” of the Saxon Chronicle 871. In fact, piracy was the summer occupation of the Norsemen.

[91] Innes, Ap. 3. An. Ult. 964. The hostility of the house of Atholl was destined in the end to be fatal to the line of Duff.

[92] Innes, Ap. 3, 5. Fordun, l. 4, c. 28. An. Ult. 966. From the first authority it would appear as if Duff never recovered the throne, and the story of his death rather favours the idea that he was killed when in exile.

[93] Innes, Ap. 3, 5. An. Ult. 970. Wynton and Fordun give the name of Radoard to the British prince. The line of Constantine the Second generally appears in connection with the south of Scotland.

[94] Tigh. 977.

[95] Innes, Ap. 3. Kenneth’s ravages reached “ad Stammoir, ad Cluiam et ad stang na Deram,” according to Pinkerton’s version of the Chronicle. The captive is called a son of the king of the Saxons—probably of the Northumbrians.

[96] V. Chap. 2, p. 47.

[97] They were the sons of a female slave. The surviving legitimate sons of Rognwald were Thorer, who succeeded his father in Norway, and the famous Gangr Rolf, founder of the Norman dynasty, and ancestor of William the Conqueror. The Holder was the old Allodial proprietor amongst the Scandinavians of those days, answering to the Eorlcundman.

[98] Eric Blodæxe was killed in the year 954. His sons attacked Hakon the Good for the second or third time, after he had reigned twenty years, i.e., about 957. The arrival of Gunhilda and her sons in the Orkneys must have fallen between those two years.—Heimsk. Saga 4, c. 22.

[99] Hakon reigned for 26 years, and Harald Greyskin for 15, after the death of Harfager in 937, which would place the death of Harald in 978.—Heimsk. Saga 4, c. 28; Saga 6, c. 13. When the sons of Eric escaped to the Orkneys, immediately after the death of Harald, they found the sons of Thorfin in possession of the islands.—Do., Saga 6, c. 16. The Orkneyinga Saga says that Thorfin was still alive but died soon afterwards. His death must have occurred about the year 978.

[100] Ork. Saga in Col. de. Reb. Alb., p. 339.

[101] All these events must have occurred between 978 and 994, for the battle of Dungal’s Nœp was fought in or before the latter year. Kari Solmundason, and the son of Nial, were present at this engagement, and after remaining two winters and a summer with Sigurd, departed for Norway in the following summer, i.e., two years after the battle, with the tribute for Jarl Hakon, and as the Jarl’s death occurred in 996, the battle must have been fought at least two years before that date. It probably occurred a few years earlier, as the same Saga alludes to the defeat of Godred of Man, whose reign extended from the death of his brother Magnus, about 977 to 989. An. Inisf. 977. Tigh. 989. Niala Saga, Col. de Reb. Alb., p. 334, 338. The Hundi of the Sagas seems to have been Crinan. The account of these transactions is taken from the Heimskringla Saga 3, c. 27 to 32; Saga 4, c. 3, 4, 5; Saga 7, c. 99; and the Olaf Tryggvessonar Niala and Orkneyinga Sagas in Col. de Reb. Alb., p. 327, etc.

[102] Heimsk. Saga 6, c. 52; Saga 7, c. 99.

[103] The Isla and the Dee are the boundaries assigned to one of the old Pictish kingdoms in the description of Andrew, bishop of Caithness, in Innes, Ap. 2.

[104] Such is the account of Wynton, bk. 6, c. 10, and Reg. St. And., Innes, Ap. 5, with which Fordun, l. 4, c. 15, agrees. Boece of course is able to supply every deficiency in his own peculiar way.

[105] The principle of “the right of blood” latterly exercised a social influence over the ecclesiastical as over the political system of the Gaelic people, and bishops and abbots made their visitations and exacted their dues amongst a population united to them, in a certain sense, by the ties of kindred, whilst most of the superior offices in a monastery became hereditary. Not that they were invariably held from father to son, but the right of presentation to certain offices becoming vested in certain families, the people grew by degrees to be united to their abbots and other ecclesiastical dignitaries by a similar tie of blood to that which bound them to their chiefs and princes, and an abbot not chosen from one of the families of the district in which his monastery was placed, would have appeared (in an unconquered country) as great an anomaly as a chieftain or a king of alien blood—an ungecyndne cyning. When, therefore, Kenneth founded Brechin, which must undoubtedly have enjoyed the privilege of Cuairt or visitation over the same extent of country as was afterwards included in the diocese of that name, he must have possessed the power of insuring to the abbot and his monks the free exercise of their rights amongst the people of the district; in other words (as he had not inherited it), he must have conquered it. Beyond the territories over which the monastery exercised Cuairt, the country up to the Dee was placed under the jurisdiction of St. Andrews, the bishop of this diocese being the spiritual head of the conquests of the kings of Scots—as in the case of Lothian, for instance—except when it was otherwise arranged.

[106] Innes, Ap. 5. Wynton, bk. 6, c. 10. Fordun, l. 4, c. 36. Tigh. 995. The king’s visit to Fettercairn was probably a Cuairt or royal progress. The Prior of Lochleven merely says that Kenneth was slain by some members of his own court—the socii sui of Tighernach. Fordun, or rather perhaps Bowyer, names the assassins, Grim, the son of Kenneth MacDuff, and Constantine, the son of Culen, whilst he and Boece describe the machine which cost the king his life. It was as follows:—“In the middes of this hous was ane image of bras, maid to the similitude of Kenneth, with ane goldin apill in his hand, with sic ingine that als sone as any man maid him to throw this apill out of the hand of the image, the wrying of the samein drew all the tituppis of the crosbowis up at anis, and schot at him that threw the apill.” Bellenden’s Boece, bk. 11, c. 10.

[107] Fordun, l. 4, c. 30.

[108] Fordun, l. 4, c. 36. He merely alludes to the death of Malcolm MacDuff in the twentieth year of Kenneth’s reign; but Boece, bk. 11, c. 9, makes the king poison him.

[109] Boece, bk. 11, c. 8. Fordun, l. 10, c. 17. Drumlay is characteristically explained to mean (in good Lowland Scotch) Droun-it-lay! The whole description is transferred by Boece to the reign of Duncan the First, the Rex Noricus of Bowyer assuming the name of Sueno.

[110] As Kenneth was the contemporary of the Anglo-Saxon Edgar, it is not to be supposed that he has escaped the claims of the Norman writers, and accordingly, at a time when he was harrying Cumberland, he figures in their pages as an attendant at the court of Edgar at Chester, forming one of a a crew of eight “underkings,” who in token of humble submission rowed the king’s barge in a triumphal procession on the Dee. During another visit to the English court at Lincoln, a crafty suggestion of the Scottish king about the difficulty and trouble of defending Lothian, is rewarded by the gift of the province as a feudal fief, to be held by various acts of homage, amongst others on condition of carrying the crown on all state occasions, whilst manors are provided to cover the expenses of the royal vassal on his progresses towards the southern court! It is curious to remark the tone of increasing feudalism pervading the fabrications of each succeeding century. The composers of the fictions about Kenneth and Edgar, which are only to be found in the later chroniclers connected with St. Albans, have been even more than usually imaginative, and their transparent fabrications remain as a warning to the impartial historian to look with mistrust upon all claims connected with such a tissue of anachronism and fable. V. Appendix L, pt. 1.

[111] Rathinveramon, “the fort at the mouth of the Almond” where it joins the Tay, is named as the place of his death in Innes, Ap. 5, the same locality as the “caput amnis Awyne” of Wynton, v. also Tigh. 997. It is said to have been the site of the ancient Bertha, and was swept away by the great flood at the close of the reign of William the Lion.

[112] Innes, Ap. 5. Wynton, b. 6, c. 10. An. Ult. 1004.

[113] Sim. Dun. de obs. Dun. (Twysden, p. 79). An. Ult. 1006. Through the error of some transcriber probably, these events are placed by Simeon in the year 969, when neither Malcolm nor Ethelred were reigning, nor was Ealdun bishop of Durham. The real date must have been in 1006, as the Ulster annals mention that in 1005 the Scots were defeated by the Saxons “with great slaughter of their nobles.” Fordun (l. 4, c. 43) has either mistaken this battle for the later one at Carham, or has unblushingly claimed it as a victory. Before the time of Canute the difference in titles of Eorl and Ealdorman, marked the different people over whom the possessor of the title was placed in authority. Oslac is addressed as Eorl, Ælfhere and Æthelwine as Ealdormen, in the Laws of Edgar, Sup. 15.

[114] Sim. Dun., as above; V. Appendix M.

[115] Olaf Tryggvessonar Saga in Col. de Reb. Alb., p. 330, and Antiq. Celt.-Scand., p. 119. The battle must have been fought after 1005, the date of Malcolm’s accession, and before 1009, the year of Thorfin’s birth. The latter was five when his father was killed at Clontarf, bearing the fatal banner himself, for it seems to have acquired an evil reputation, and Hrafn the Red, on Sigurd committing it to his charge after the death of its first bearer, refused to lift it, adding somewhat unceremoniously, “Bear thine own devil thyself.”—(Story of Burnt Njal, c. 156.)

[116] Heimsk. Saga 7, c. 99, with the Sagas already quoted; vide also the account of the battle of Clontarf in the Irish Annals.

[117] Chron. Sax. 1016. Sim. Dun. Twysden, p. 81.

[118] Innes, Ap. 4. Sim. Dun. Hist. Dun., l. 3, c. 5, 6—Do. De obs. Dun. p. 81, de Gestis 1018. On comparing the passages of Simeon it is impossible to doubt that the cession of Lothian by Eadulf Cudel was the result of the battle of Carham, though there is an evident reluctance in the English chronicler to allude to the defeat and its consequences. The men of the Lothians, according to Wallingford, retained their laws and customs unaltered, and though the authority is questionable, the fact is probably true, for Lothian law became eventually the basis of Scottish law. Conquest indeed in these times did not alter the laws and customs of the conquered, unless where they come into contact and into opposition with those of the conquerors, and the men of the Lothians remained under the Scottish kings in much the same position as the men of Kent under the kings of Mercia and Wessex, probably exchanging the condition of a harassed for that of a favoured frontier province.

[119] Chron. Sax. 1031. MS. Cot. Tib. B. iv. is the authority. Two later MSS. add the names of two other kings, Mælbeth and Jehmarc. Macbeth became Mormaor of Moray in the following year through the death of his kinsman Gilcomgain. These two kings reappear in the Heimskringla (Saga 7, vol. 2, p. 196. V. also Lodb. Quida, p. 101), as “Nordan of Skotlandi of Fifi.” If Fifi is here put for Fiord Riki, it is probably a mistake, for “the Firth kingdom” might mean Moray as well as Fife, and the name in this instance would be more appropriate to the former.

[120] An. Ult. 1033. He is called M., son of Boedhe, probably Malcolm.

[121] Tigh. 1034. Wynton, bk. 6, c. 10. Fordun, l. 4, c. 46. Angus was as fatal to Malcolm and his father Kenneth, as the neighbourhood of Forres had proved to the first Malcolm and his father Donald.

[122] Tigh. 975–997.

[123] Sim. Dun. de Gestis, 1018. Lutinenses is evidently a clerical error for Clutinenses.

[124] Flor. Wig., 1054. Malm. de Gest., l. 2., c. 196. The Cumbrensis regio was again detached and given by Edgar to his brother David, who held it, in spite of the opposition of Alexander, throughout that king’s reign. Ailred in Twysden, p. 344.

[125] Fordun, l. 4, c. 44. He connects it with a victory over the Danes. Whatever may have been the cause of its erection, the founder must have possessed an influence over the surrounding territory. In the preface to the Register of Aberdeen, the editor inclines to the opinion that Malcolm the Third was the founder of Mortlach, in which case the annexation of Strathbogie and the Garioch to the Scottish crown would have been the result of the successful northern wars of the latter king.

[126] Strathbogie and the Garioch were “in the crown” at a later period, and before the reign of David, though it would be difficult to say with certainty when these districts were annexed. Moray was forfeited under David, and the summary manner in which that king and his successors were able to deal with church property in the diocese of that name, as well as in that of Aberdeen, discloses the different relation in which the Scottish kings stood towards the people of those bishoprics and towards the population of some of the other dioceses. No Culdees appear struggling for their rights in the earlier charters of Moray and Aberdeen (though in the thirteenth century the Culdees of Monymusk tried to shake off the supremacy of St. Andrews), a proof that the powerful Gaelic families in whom these rights would have been vested, were either extinct, or so far reduced as to be in no condition to offer any resistance to the measures of David. Such was not the case in the bishoprics of Brechin and Dunblane, where the Culdees held their ground long after the time of that king, owing probably to a reluctance on his part, and on that of his successors, to alienate their great feudatories, the earls of Strathearn and abbots of Brechin, by an over prompt interference with Church property in their possession. The tradition connecting Mortlach with Malcolm the Second, has induced me to notice the annexations of these districts under this reign, in which the royal authority may have been considerably extended and consolidated in this direction, though I think it most probable that the final conquest and submission of the province was the result of the frequent and successful, though little known, northern wars of Malcolm the Third, and the subsequent successes of his son Alexander in the same quarter. The last Mormaor of the mysterious province of Mærne appears in alliance with Donald Bane; the people of the district attempted, in conjunction with the Moray men, to assassinate Alexander at Invergowrie, and then nothing more is heard either of the Mormaor or the men of Mærne; and I am inclined to connect with this disappearance the forfeiture of the ancient family, and the distribution of the ancient kingdom between Dee and Spey into the two subordinate earldoms of Mar and Buchan, and the two lordships of Strathbogie and the Garioch, long retained by a member of the royal family.

[127] This subject is further treated in Appendices D and N.

[128] Triocha-ced is the proper name, often rendered Cantred, but erroneously. The Irish Triocha-ced was supposed to be a collection of thirty Baille-biataghs, or hundreds, each supposed to contain four hundred and eighty Irish acres, thus constituting a Barony of nominally 14,400 Irish acres (A.F.M., 1225, Note S). The Cantred—the hundred trefs or villages—belonged properly to Wales, and was supposed to contain 25,600 Welsh acres, answering rather to the Continental Canton. The Irish and Welsh Cantred, therefore, must not be considered identical. For Thanes, V. Appendix N.

[129] There appears to have been the same difference amongst the ancient Irish between the Brugaidh and the Biotagh, as between the Bonder and Landbu amongst the Scandinavians. The Brugaidh was originally the free or adopted member of the Clan or Cyn, tracing his origin either really or theoretically to the founder of the race, and hence entitled to his free allotment, or duchas, of the tribe land; the freeholder, in short, deriving his name from his Brugh, Burh, or separate house, just as the Bu-ander (Bonder) from his Bu—the Hus-bond; V. “Hy Fiachrach,” passim. The Biotagh was the man who held his land by paying Biodh—Feorm or rent—the colonus Geneat or tenant farmer, dwelling in the baille or village. The Brugaidh might have complained, like his type the Bonder, at a very early period, of being changed into a Biotagh or Land-Bu—made to pay rent; when his position must have somewhat resembled that of the Kentish Alodiarius or Gaveller at the time of the Norman Conquest; but after the English invasion all distinction between the two classes was speedily forgotten, both merging in the Villeinage. In later times, indeed, the Biotagh occasionally appears to have been of more consequence than the Brugaidh, probably because members of the former class might be holders of a far wider extent of land than the small peasant proprietor, and of comparatively greater importance. Hence the Ard-Biotagh, sometimes met with in the Irish annals, was probably nothing more than “a great land-holder”,—the possessor of many “benefices” held by payment of Biodh or rent.—V. Appendix O.

[130] A.F.M., 3922. The Masters attribute the institution to Ollamh Fodla, into whose claims I will not enter; but it is very evident, I think, that they alluded to an institution well known at least in tradition. The word Toshach simply means “captain” or “leader”—dux; the Irish Taisigeacht meaning “captaincy,” “leadership,” or “precedency.” When the office of dux, originally elective, became hereditary, according to the invariable principle of “divided authority” so characteristic of all the Celtic communities, it remained permanently in the family of the eldest cadet of the clan, the Tighern farthest removed from the chieftainship. The “Captains of Galloway” and the “Thanes of Ross” were probably known in their native tongue as Toshachs—captains by right of office—for though the oldest cadet and the thane, in his military capacity, were known as Toshachs, it by no means follows that a Toshach was necessarily either one or the other.

[131] Reg. Magest. Stat. Alex. II., c. 15. In some respects the Irish Oirrigh—under-king—resembled the Mormaor; but he was a tributary king, reigning in “right of blood,” not a royal official, though in certain cases he appears to have acted as a Maor.

[132] Fordun, l. 4, c. 48. Compare Appendix N (Thanes).

[133] Reg. Prior. St. And. p. 114.

[134] Fordun, to whom such a being as a married abbot would have been an abomination, metamorphosed the ancestor of the royal family of Scotland into an Abthane, asserting that the word Abbas could only be a clerical error for Abthanus, an officer whom he places over all the king’s Thanes, l. 4., c. 43. The contemporary Tighernach, however, Wynton, and the author of the Chronicle in the Reg. Prior. St. And. (Innes, Ap. 5), were ignorant that Crinan was known under any other title but that of abbot, and though Abthanages are to be met with in the charters, I have never yet chanced to light upon an Abthane. Such a name, in fact, would have been simply applicable to the maor of an abbot instead of the king—the holder of an ecclesiastical Thanage.

[135] Heimsk. Saga 7, c. 100 to 107. Ork. Saga, in Col. de Reb. alb., p. 340.

[136] Ork. Saga, Col. de Reb. alb., p. 341.

[137] Sim. Dun. Hist. Dun., l. 3, c. 9. The fifth year of Canute’s son, Harold, fell in 1040.

[138] Dyrness appears to mean Turness, in the isle of Hoy, not Durness the north-western extremity of Sutherlandshire.

[139] Torfnes, south of Bœfiord, seems to mean Burghead on the Moray Firth; Breida Fiord was the Dornoch Firth. The account of these transactions is from the Ork. Saga, in Col. de Reb. alb., as above. Kali Hundison, the name given in the Saga to the successor of Malcolm and opponent of Thorfin, can mean no other than Duncan. Vide Appendix P.

[140] Innes, Ap. 5. Tigh. 1040. Mar. Scot. 1040. Slain “a duce suo,” writes Marianus. Tighernach adds immaturâ ætate, contrary to all modern ideas of Duncan. Marianus was born in 1028, Tighernach was his senior; their authority, therefore, at this period, as contemporaries, is very great. Bothgowanan means “the smith’s bothy,” and under this word may lurk some long forgotten tradition of the real circumstances of Duncan’s murder. The vision of a weary fugitive, a deserted king, rises before the mind’s eye, recalling “Beaton’s mill” and the fate of James the Third. Two hundred years after his death a chaplain was appointed by his descendant, Alexander the Second, to celebrate masses in Elgin Cathedral for the benefit of Duncan’s soul. No allusion is made in the Saga to any alliance between Thorfin and Macbeth, and whilst the former is described as collecting reinforcements from Ross, Sutherland, and Caithness, Duncan retires upon Moray as a friendly province in which he recruits his forces. Considering the hereditary enmity between the Jarls of Orkney and the Mormaors of Moray, it seems more probable that the ill fortune of the young king tempted Macbeth to aspire to the crown, and to murder his rival in “the Smith’s bothy,” where he was resting after retreating from the field of his last defeat. In the Saga, Kali disappears after the battle and is heard of no more, from which it would appear that the Orkneymen and their allies had nothing to do with his death, of which they were probably ignorant.

[141] Chalmers, who has traced in his Caledonia the memorials of these contests with all the zeal of an enthusiastic antiquary, is angry with Pinkerton for asserting that “there is not a shadow of authority for the Danish wars of Malcolm the Second;” remarking that “popular tradition, with well vouched remains, are historical documents of sufficient authority for narrative facts.” For the facts, undoubtedly, but not for the narratives, which have been subsequently appended. The remains, so industriously noted down by Chalmers, fully attest the frequent conflicts occurring along the Scottish coasts with the Northmen, but they do not prove the truth of minute descriptions of battles unknown before the time of Boece, who wrote in the early part of the sixteenth century.

[142] Wynton, bk. 6, c. 16, 18. Much needless confusion is thrown over the period of Macbeth by raising unnecessary questions about his birth and his rights to the crown. All the best authorities—his contemporaries Tighernach and Marianus, and the Registry of the Priory of St. Andrews, which records his gift to the Culdees of Lochleven—unite in calling him the son of Finlay, the Register describing his wife as the daughter of Boedhe, whose claims she inherited. Another difficulty is raised because Macbeth appears as the immediate successor of Malcolm the Second in Sim. Dun. de Gestis, 1034, contrary to every other authority. That this is an error, of some transcriber apparently, is very evident, for the same Simeon, in his History of Durham, l. 3, c. 9, calls Duncan the king of Scots, adding that he was defeated before Durham in the fifth year of Harald’s reign, i.e., 1040, and soon afterwards slain by his own subjects. The supposed relationship between Macbeth and Duncan may have been grounded upon the real connection between the king and Thorfin, with whom the Moray Mormaor seems to have been confounded in more ways than one.

[143] Reg. Prior. St. And., p. 114.

[144] Mar. Scot. 1050.

[145] Tigh. An. Ult. 1045. The flight of Duncan’s children—mere infants—one to Cumbria, the other to the Isles, is a fiction founded on the ideas of the time when it first appears, three or four centuries later. They probably remained amongst their hereditary partizans in Atholl and the southern provinces, occupying the same position which their cousin Lulach had done during the reign of their father—the position of the Head of the Hy Nial, when Brian Boru achieved the sovereignty of Ireland; or of a Duke of Bavaria or Austria, in the olden time, when another magnate had been elected to the empire.

[146] Flor. Wig. 1052.

[147] Tigh. An. Ult. Chron. Sax. 1054. Neither the contemporary Irish annalist, nor the two MSS. of the Chronicle which describe the expedition of Siward, allude to any cause for it, or note any result beyond the immense booty obtained. They never mention the name of Malcolm or of the Confessor, and the MS. Cot. Tib., B I, expressly adds that Macbeth escaped from the battle. It remained for the writers of the Anglo-Norman era to confound the events of two separate years for their own purposes, and to represent Siward as the slayer of Macbeth and the restorer of Malcolm to the throne of Scotland, at the command of Edward the Confessor, though the Northumbrian earl died three years before the accession of the Scottish prince. The ever ready pen of the Prior of Belvoir, to a literal transcription of Florence, adds the words “de se tenendum,” to complete the feudality of the transaction; the addition resting on grounds quite as good as the rest of the story, which almost seems to have been adapted upon the events which occurred forty years later, in the days of Malcolm Ceanmore’s sons, Edward standing in the place of Rufus, Siward in that of the Atheling, and Macbeth playing the part of Donald Bane.

[148] Tigh. An. Ult. 1058. Innes, Ap. 5. Wynton is the first to mention the popular story of Birnam Wood coming to Dunsinnan, but he places the death of Macbeth at Lumphanan, attributing it to “a knycht nowcht borne of wyf,” who is transformed by Boece into Macduff. As Fife was “in the crown” in the days of Malcolm Ceanmore, who granted the earldom to his son Ethelred, the Macduff Earl of Fife of the fabulists—a being unknown to Wynton—must be set down as a myth. Since the days of the younger Angus, the founder of St. Andrews, the province appears to have been connected with the royal family—the abbacy of the leading monastery of the district having been held by Constantine the Second, just as the abbacy of Dunkeld belonged invariably to a member of the house of Atholl—and the first earl, who cannot be traced to the reigning family, was Dufagan or Duff, a witness of the Foundation Charter of Scone in the time of Alexander the First; his immediate successors being Constantine and Gillemichael Macduff. Fife appears to have been the latest earldom held by the old Scottish tenure, and its earls, like the earls of Atholl—a branch of the reigning family—never appear in the ranks of the king’s enemies. Indeed they may be looked upon in early times as premier Earls of Scotland, with certain privileges attaching to their dignity, to account for which the legend of Macduff was probably framed; though it is not impossible that the earldom with its prominent position and privileges was granted to the historical Duff or Dufagan as a reward for his assistance in restoring the sons of Malcolm to the throne. Many examples could be given of the transposition of events from one period to another. A prominent one occurs in Norwegian history, the whole of the actions of Olaf Tryggveson in England having been transferred to Olaf the Saint.

[149] According to Tighernach, Lulach perished, per dolum, a vague word, which may imply either treachery or simply an ambuscade. The Latin chroniclers sometimes call him Lulach fatuus—the simple.

[150] Chalmers (Caledonia, vol. i., p. 422) maintains that Ingebiorge could not have been the mother of Malcolm’s eldest son Duncan, as her first husband, Thorfin, survived till 1074, and Duncan was knighted soon after 1072, when he must have been at least fifteen years of age. But Thorfin died “in the latter days of Harald Sigurdson,” whom his sons accompanied as Jarls of the Orkneys to the battle of Stanford Bridge in 1066. Malcolm was married to Margaret in 1070, Duncan was not knighted before the death of the Conqueror, in 1087, when he must have been more than fifteen; and as five or six years elapsed between the death of Thorfin and the marriage of Malcolm to Margaret, I see no reason for doubting the account of the Orkneyinga Saga, though many for hesitating to affix the stigma of illegitimacy upon Duncan, whose donations to Dunfermlyn are confirmed by David without any allusion to such a bar to his right to the crown.

[151] Sim. Dun. de Gestis 1061, 1065, 1066. Chron. Sax. 1065–66.

[152] In 1070 Malcolm held Cumberland by force (Sim. Dun.), and it was only in 1092 that Rufus drove Dolfin, apparently a son of Cospatric of Dunbar, out of the province, and rebuilt Carlisle. This part of England was not included in the Domesday Survey.

[153] Sim. Dun. de Gestis 1068–9. Hist. Dun., l. 3, c. 15. Chron. Sax. 1067–68. The dates of the Chronicle are wrong, as Easter fell on the 23d of March in 1068, and the historian of Durham is consequently correct. Indeed he is the first authority for the affairs of the north at this period. William three times entered York as a conqueror. A passage in Ordericus Vitalis is sometimes brought forward as a proof that Malcolm sent his submission to William through Aylwin, bishop of Durham, after the failure of the attempt of Edwin and Morkar in 1068. I have given the reasons why I cannot concur in this opinion in Appendix Q.

[154] Sim. Dun. de Gestis 1069. Chron. Sax. 1069.

[155] Sim. Dun. de Gestis 1070.

[156] Sim. Dun., as before.

[157] Marianus alludes to this famine. Compare the account of Simeon with Domesday in Ellis’s Introduction. At the date of the Survey, Lincolnshire contained 11,504 Socmen and 11,747 Villani and Bordarii, whilst in Yorkshire only 447 Socmen are recorded, with 6914 of the other classes. Yorkshire was the head-quarters of the Anglo-Danes of Northumbria, and as the Socmen represented the old Danish Odal-Bonders, there is no difficulty in recognising the real class that bore the brunt of the northern wars, and contributed most largely to the emigrants and outlaws.

[158] In the beginning of the century Uchtred, the son of Waltheof, seems to have married and put away his wives without the slightest scruple, nor could bishop Ealdun procure a permanent husband for his daughter Egfreda even by alienating the lands of his see in her favour. Twice was she divorced in spite of her dowry, and neither the bishop nor the chronicler who records these proceedings appear to have regarded them as extraordinary. Sim. Dun. Twysden, p. 79.

[159] Sim. Dun. de Gestis 1070. Vit. St. Marg. Edgar and his family appear to have left Scotland in 1069, and to have returned thither in the following year.

[160] Such appears to be the meaning of the expression of the Chronicler, “he found nothing there for which he was the better,” Chron. Sax. 1072. Compare Wendover ad. an. 1072.

[161] Edgar, according to the Chron. Sax., returned to Scotland from Flanders in 1074, and he probably sought refuge in the latter country at the approach of William.

[162] Lord Hailes, vol. 1, p. 17, thinks it improbable that Abernethy on the Tay can be the place intended, from its lying out of William’s probable route. He appears, however, to have forgotten that all the early invaders of Scotland who combined a fleet with their land force—and none else were successful—must have held their course along the coast, or their fleet would have been useless. Abernethy, according to Ailred, was in Scotia (Twysden, p. 340), or beyond the Forth, and it was exactly because William had succeeded in penetrating into the heart of the real kingdom of Scotland that Malcolm came to terms.

[163] Chron. Sax. 1072. Sim. Dun. de Gestis 1072–1087. An. Ult. 1072. It may be gathered from Sim. Dun. de Gestis 1091, that Malcolm held twelve manors of William and received a yearly payment of twelve marks of gold, and as the kings only met once, these grants must have been made on this occasion. The homage of Malcolm would appear to have been simple not liege, for he never seems to have been called upon to perform any feudal service; whilst his subsequent repudiation of the demands of Rufus shows that the homage was not rendered for the kingdom of Scotland, but was simply the feudal recognition of his subsidy. In short, the meeting appears to have resulted in a compromise, William endeavouring to secure the peace of his northern borders by what in the present age would take the form of a pension or subsidy, then conferred as a feudal grant, for which Malcolm performed homage, giving up his son as a hostage for his faithful observance of the treaty. Vide Appendix L, part 2.

[164] Sim. Dun. de Gestis 1072. Malm. Gesta. Regum, l. 3, sec. 253.

[165] Sim. Dun. de Gestis 1073. Chron. Sax. 1074. Malm. Gest. Reg., l. 3, sec. 251.

[166] Chron. Sax. 1077. An. Ult. 1085. Mr. Skene (Highlanders, vol. i., p. 123) supposes, on the strength of a very ambiguous entry in the Ulster Annals, that a certain Donald MacMalcolm, a son or descendant of Malcolm MacMalbride, the Mormaor of Moray who died in 1029, reigned over the north of Scotland from the death of Thorfin in 1064 to his own death in 1085. It is impossible, however, that this Donald could have been the representative of Malcolm of Moray, or he must have been Mormaor of that province in place of Macbeth, Lulach, and Malsnechtan, of whom the latter died in the same year as Donald, in the peaceful possession of Moray. Neither would Donald have had any claim upon the crown, as he was not the heir of Gruoch, and it is impossible that he could have reigned over the north of Scotland for upwards of twenty years, whilst his kinsman Malsnechtan, the real heir, was content with the province of Moray. If the entry is correct it is just as possible that the words “Donald, son of Malcolm king of Scotland” may apply to a son of Malcolm the Third; but the word Righ in the Irish Annals is very ambiguous, and ought to be translated prince rather than king, a title which answers more to the Ardrigh.

[167] Sim. Dun. de Gestis 1079–80. Chron. Sax. 1079. Fordun, l. 5, c. 21. Vide Appendix Q.

[168] Sim. Dun. de Gestis 1087.

[169] Sim. Dun. de Gestis 1091. Chron. Sax. 1091.

[170] Sim. Dun. de Gestis, Chron. Sax., and Flor. Wig., ad an. 1091. Orderic also gives an account of this expedition—as usual a gossiping mixture of truth and absurdity. Malmsbury (l. 4, sec. 311) says that “William performed nothing worthy of his greatness, whilst he lost many of his men and baggage-horses.” Wendover, from his frequent literal transcriptions of Malmsbury, must have had this passage before him when he wrote “venientes igitur rex et frater ejus Robertus in Angliam, acies duxerunt in Scotiam, unde Malcolmus nimio terrore percussus homagium regi fecit Anglorum, et fidelitatem juravit,” (vol. ii., p. 37). In a similar manner “that most authentic and valuable volume, the Book of Abingdon,” (?) expands the short sentence in which Simeon describes the abortive invasion of Scotland by Robert in 1080—“Cum pervenisset ad Egglesbreth nullo confecto negotio reversus, etc.”—into the following inflated narrative:—“Verum rex illi Lodoniis occurrens cum suis, pacisci potius quam præliari delegit. Perinde ut regno Angliæ principatus Scotiæ subactus foret, obsides tribuit. Quo pacto inito Regis filius cum exercitu ad patrem hilaris repedavit” (Vide Appendix Q). When the comparative failures of Robert and William in 1080 and 1091 are thus misrepresented—failures which were notorious, and admitted to be so by the contemporary English chroniclers—what degree of confidence can be attached to the inflated descriptions of the successes of the earlier English kings, which are to be found in the same authorities? We can only judge by results.

[171] Sim. Dun. de Gestis and Chron. Sax. 1092.

[172] Sim. Dun. de Gestis and Chron. Sax. ad an. 1093.

[173] Malcolm was evidently taken by surprise. “He sent and demanded the fulfilment of the treaty that was promised him. And the king, William, cited him to Gloucester, and sent him hostages to Scotland, and Edgar Atheling afterwards and the men returned that brought him with dignity to the king. But when he came to the king he could not be considered worthy either of our king’s speech or of the conditions that were formerly promised him.” Such are the words of the Saxon Chronicler, yet Malmesbury says (sec. 311), “Malcolm came of his own accord to Gloucester, an earnest suitor for peace on equitable conditions, but he obtained nothing, though he was permitted to return in safety, as the king disdained to capture by fraud one whom he had subdued by valour.” The safe conduct and the hostages detract something from this much vaunted magnanimity, but Malmesbury would sacrifice a good deal for the sake of a well turned period. The assertion which Simeon and Florence have placed in the mouth of Malcolm conveys a valuable piece of historical information, though it does not follow that the king spoke feudal Latin because they have written it. The presence and intervention of the leading nobles of both kingdoms at meetings on the frontier implies the independence of both kings; for if the king of Scotland had been the vassal of England for his kingdom, he and all his followers would have been liable to have been cited to the court of their suzerain at the will of the latter, as actually happened in the reign of William the Lion. In the convention between Rufus and Robert, twelve barons on each side confirmed the agreement in token of the independence of both parties (Flor. Wig. 1091). In the treaty between Richard and William the Lion four barons appear in the same way on either side (Fœd. vol. i., pt. 1, p. 50); and both Scottish and English nobles invariably affix their names to the conventions between their kings, recorded so often in the Fœdera. In attempting to force Malcolm to submit to the judgment of the English barons when he had come to Gloucester on an errand of a totally different description, William appears to have been actuated principally by overweening arrogance, though he may also have endeavoured to found a precedent injurious to Scotland; and it is singular to mark how nearly all the English authorities accuse Malcolm of “a breach of faith” because he resented the conduct of William, whilst they pass over without notice the glaring “breach of faith” on the part of their own king.

[174] Morel was king Malcolm’s “Godsib,” or, in other words, they had stood Godfathers together. This bond of spiritual relationship appears to have been thought a very sacred tie in those days, and to be unfaithful to the Godsib was considered a heinous sin, at any rate amongst the Gael; for the four Masters describe the state of the country as peculiarly wretched when “there was no protection for Church or Fortress, Gossipred or mutual oath.” An. F. M. 1050, O’Donovan.

[175] Sim. Dun. de Gestis and Chron. Sax. 1093. Fordun, l. 5, c. 25. Malm. Gesta Regum, l. 4, sec. 311. Both Malmesbury and the Saxon Chronicler imply that Malcolm lost his life by treachery, and the account of Orderic, as usual a strange mixture of truth and error, goes far to prove the existence of a tradition to this effect. He is next said to have been slain at the siege of Alnwick Castle, though it is more than doubtful if a castle then existed on the banks of the Alne. From Alnwick Castle the step was easy to the family so long connected with that border fortress, and the Scottish king was at length said to have been slain by a knight, who, issuing from the castle gate with the keys on the point of his lance in token of surrender, suddenly pierced the eye of Malcolm, acquiring from this feat the name of Pierce eye or Percy! About two centuries after the fall of Malcolm an improbable story was circulated at Tynemouth, that the body of a peasant had been palmed off upon Alexander for that of his father, Mat. Paris Addit, p. 129. The writer adds that Malcolm was conquered “by order of Henry the First,” and winds up his account of the deceit with these quaint words “ita delusa est Scottorum improbitas.” The keen relish with which he enjoys the idea of overreaching “the Scotch rogues” is amusing. Pleasures of rare occurrence are sometimes supposed to be the sweetest.

[176] Life of Margaret, ascribed to Turgot, and contained in the “Acta Sanctorum, June 10.” Malcolm was obliged to put up with his losses, but to every one else she restored twofold what she borrowed for charity.

[177] Twysden, p. 367. Ailred heard this anecdote from Malcolm’s son David. It has been transferred by some later writers to the Saxon Edgar, the Scottish Kenneth playing the part of the guilty nobleman. The hunt was conducted “secundum legem venandi quam vulgus tristam vocat.” An open plain, encircled by a belt of wood, was the scene of the sport; a flowery hillock in the centre the place of rendezvous for the sportsmen; whom Malcolm placed in different commanding positions, ready to let slip their dogs upon the game as it was driven by the beaters from covert.

[178] The principal point which Margaret succeeded in carrying out was connected with Lent, which the Gaelic Church kept from Quadrigesima Sunday instead of from Ash Wednesday. The Gaelic practice was long the universal custom, and it is still doubtful who added the four days. Pope Gregory the Great speaks of the thirty-six days of abstinence, though some maintain that he was the first to begin Lent from Ash Wednesday, whilst others refer the change to the time of Gregory the Second (Bingham, bk. 21, c. 1), in which they are probably correct, as the custom would otherwise have penetrated into the Gaelic Church when it conformed to the Roman practice in the days of Nectan and Ceolfrith. The other practices which Margaret endeavoured to reform were—1. A reluctance to communicate on Easter Sunday. 2. Labour on Sundays. 3. Marriage with the widow of a father or brother. 4. The celebration of the service with barbarous rites, or, in other words, in a manner to which she was unaccustomed. In the latter point she seems to have been unsuccessful, for the Culdees still continued to celebrate their office more suo in the days of Alexander and David (Vide Margaret’s Life by Turgot, c. 2). It is worthy of remark that Margaret seems to have made no attempt to separate the Culdees from their wives; and as numbers of the Anglo-Saxon clergy were married men at that time, particularly in the provinces beyond the Humber, where the customs of the Northmen were little interfered with, it is probable that she did not consider their manner of life contrary to ecclesiastical discipline. The system of Hildebrand did not penetrate into England until after the Norman Conquest. In one of his Charters (Ancient Laws, etc., of England, vol. i., p. 495) William says, “Sciatis ... quod episcopates leges, quæ non bene nec secundum sanctorum canonum precepta usque ad mea tempora in regno Anglorum fuerunt ... emendandas judicavi.”

[179] “At least,” says the honest historian, “the dishes and vessels were gilt or silvered over.”—Hailes, vol. 1, p. 44.

[180] The diversis coloribus vestes are sometimes supposed to have been tartan. The earliest dresses of the Gael were stained of a saffron colour, which was also used at one period amongst the Rajpoots.

[181] This account of Margaret is entirely taken from her life, written by her confessor, generally ascribed to Turgot, and I think with reason. The writer was not her confessor latterly (c. 4), and as Turgot entered into orders in 1074 (not 1084 as Papenbroch says), and became Prior of Durham in 1087, six years before the death of Margaret, this would agree very well with the theory that ascribes the work to him. It must have been written in the reign of Edgar, as the messenger who brought the news of Malcolm’s death to Margaret was “the son who succeeded to the king”—not Duncan, who was neither present at the battle nor was he a son of Margaret—and as three sons succeeded, though the writer only alludes to the son who succeeded, he must have written before the second son came to the throne. Vide also Hailes’ Annals, in loc.

[182] Wherever the followers of Rufus were quartered, it was their custom to burn everything that they could neither eat, sell, nor carry off, whilst all that they could not drink in their orgies they either spilled or used to wash their horses feet. “Quæ vero in patresfamilias crudelia, quæ in uxores et filias indecentia fecerint, reminisci pudet.” Hence the approach of the court was the signal for the wretched inhabitants of the neighbourhood to fly to the woods, and leave their houses to the mercy of their oppressors. Henry endeavoured to repress the evil with the stern justice of his father, tearing out the eyes of the perpetrators of such enormities, or punishing them by amputation of the hands or feet. Ead. Hist. Novell., l. 4, p. 94.

[183] Ead. Hist. Novell., l. 3, p. 56. Malcolm seems to have been fortunate in his choice between the sisters. It may have been the influx of ladies like the Scottish princess amongst the nuns, that introduced the use of ornamented pins and gold rings amongst the sisterhood, with the wreathing and dressing the hair, forbidden in several subsequent councils. The words of Matilda convict Orderic of one of those blunders which render that chronicler such a broken reed to lean upon whenever historical accuracy is required. He says that Count Alan of Bretagne sought the hand of Matilda from Rufus, “sed morte præventus non obtinuit,” (l. 7, p. 702). As Alan died on the 19th October 1119 (L’Art de verifier les Dates, vol. ii., p. 897), it is difficult to conceive how his death could have prevented his marriage with Matilda, who had then been eighteen months in her grave (she died 1st January 1118), after having been the wife of Henry the First since November 1100! Alan’s first wife died in 1090, and he re-married in 1093, before Matilda could have sought refuge in England, for Malcolm was alive until the 13th November in that year. Alan, however, was once a suitor for the hand of Matilda, but to her father Malcolm (according to her own words) not to Rufus. This is the little grain of truth which, as usual, lurks in an infinity of error; for Orderic seems to have retailed all the gossip of the day, generally contriving to get hold of a wrong version of the story.

[184] Matilda appears to have been very amiable, very devout, very fond of music and poetry, very vain, and rather pretty; not a perfect, but a feminine and loveable character, which earned her the title of “Good Queen Maud.” The feeling which prompted her aversion to the unbecoming black hood is easily to be traced in the character which Malmesbury has left of her (Gesta Regum, l. 5, sec. 418), though the good Queen would have forgiven serious offences sooner than the lukewarm praise accorded by that writer to her personal charms, “haud usquequaque despicabilis formæ.” Like most of her family she died in the prime of life.

[185] Wynton, bk. 7, c. 3, l. 96, who says that Ethelred took advantage of a mist to convey the body of his mother out of the west gate before her death was generally known. The good prior was as ignorant of any divine agency on this occasion as Turgot was unconscious of any pretentions on the part of his royal mistress to supernatural gifts; but in the account of Fordun, l. 5, c. 26, the body of Margaret is conveyed through the host of Donald Bane under cover of a miraculous mist “That a mist on the Firth of Forth should be held miraculous,” remarks Lord Hailes, “must appear to the inhabitants of the Lothians a strange example of prepossession and credulity.”

[186] Boece palliates the usurpation of Donald by attributing it to the detestation—to use the words of his translator Bellenden—“of the pepil at the riotus and intemperat manneris brocht amang thaim be Inglismen;” the same high authority enumerating amongst the virtues of David that “he ejeckit the vennomus custome of riotus cheir quhilk was inducit afore be Inglismen.” David probably introduced the Norman habits, for at this period the Anglo-Saxons and Anglo-Danes were renowned for their love of “riotus cheir,” though they were hardly the corrupters of the austere morals of the ancient Scots. Robert de Mellent is said to have introduced the custom of one meal a day from Constantinople, for his health as he affirmed—for his niggardliness, as was grumblingly insinuated by the hungry Saxons, who loved to recall the jovial days when Hardicanute set four meals a day before his overfed dependants, and rejoiced to see the dishes carried away full, because his followers could literally eat no more. There may have been some truth in the complaints of the Saxons, for the Normans, with many high qualities, were a hard and close race in all that concerned money. “The vennomus custome of riotus cheir” among Inglismen is again attributed by Lambarde entirely to the corruptions of the Danes, probably with equal justice; and upon their shoulders must the blame rest, till some Yorkshireman, or other denizen of ancient Danelage, vindicates the character of his ancestry at the expense of some other scapegoat.

[187] Sim. Dun. de Gestis and Ch. Sax., adan. 1093. Donald reigned from Nov. 1093 till May 1094; Duncan from the latter date to the close of the same year, and Donald again from the close of 1094 till after Michaelmas in 1097.

[188] Innes, Ap. 5. Wynton, bk. 7, c. 3, l. 145. Sim. Dun. de Gestis, Chron. Sax., and An. Ult. ad an. 1094. Malm. Gesta Regum, l. 5, sec. 400.

[189] Chron. Sax. 1097.

[190] Sim. Dun. de Gestis and Chron. Sax. ad an. 1097. According to Fordun, l. 5, c. 30, the Banner of St. Cuthbert won the day, three knights, through its aid, defeating the whole of Donald’s army!

[191] Malm., as above. Innes, Ap. 4. Wynton, bk. 7, c. 3, l. 108, and c. 8, l. 49. The Prior of Lochleven tells a singular tale about Donald, how in his blindness he enticed into his power the eldest son of David “a gangand chyld ... and wyth tympanys sharpe set till hys naylis ... thrystyd and swa handlyd the chyld ... quhil he deyd at the last,” and how “the modyr than that herd the cry ... for sorow gave the gast rycht thare.” As the latter part of the story is unquestionably false, it may be hoped that the whole tale is a fabrication. In the version of the same tale recorded by Orderic, the supposed murderer is an outcast priest, a pensioner on David’s charity. Vide Hailes’ Annals, vol. i., p. 112, note.

[192] Antiq. Celt.-Scand., p. 108. Tigh. 1034. Gille, Jarl of the Sudreys, was either the nephew or the brother-in-law of Jarl Sigurd,—or both, as a marriage between an aunt and her nephew occasionally took place in the distant north.

[193] Tigh. 1052, 1061. Col. de Reb. Alb., p. 346. Seventy-five and sixty-five years have been given to Thorfin, but as he was five years of age when his father fell at Clontarf in 1014, and his own death occurred before the expedition of Harald Hardrade in 1066, he probably died at the age of fifty-five, in 1064.

[194] Chron. Man. 1047. The dates of this Chronicle are occasionally very inaccurate, but they are easily rectified. Godfrey Crovan conquered Man five years after the inroad of Malcolm the Third into Cleveland, i.e., in 1075.

[195] Tigh. 1072.

[196] Tigh. An. Ult. and A. F. M. ad an. 1075.

[197] Chron. Man. 1056. The abrogation of the Odallers’ rights appears to have been the first step invariably taken by Scandinavian conquerors. The result was taxation, the king or Jarl asserting his right to the land. This division of the island was probably the reason of the two Deemsters or Judges of Man.

[198] Chron. Man. An. Ult. and A. F. M. 1094. Godfrey is generally known in the Irish Annals as Meranach, or the Bad.

[199] An. Ult. 1087.

[200] An. Ult. and A. F. M. 1095. An. Inisf. 1078. Chron. Man. “Nullus qui fabricant navem vel scapham ausus esset plus quam tres clavos insere.” Such are the words of the Chronicle; their exact meaning I do not pretend to understand.

[201] This account of the first expedition of Magnus is taken from the Heimskringla, Saga 11, c. 9, 10, 11. Chron. Man. 1098. Chron. Sax. 1098. From his partiality to the costume of the Islesmen, he obtained the name of Magnus Barefoot. The later Scottish Chroniclers assert that the cession of the Isles was the price of the assistance of Magnus, which placed Donald Bane upon the throne. He must have been resuscitated from the grave.

[202] Heimsk. Saga 11, c. 25. An. Ult. A. F. M. 1101, 1102. According to the Chronicle of Man, Magnus sent his shoes to Murketagh, ordering that king to carry them on Christmas day, in token of his inferiority. The Irish chieftains were naturally indignant, but their king replied that he was ready to eat the shoes rather than one province of Ireland should be wasted! This singular tale was unknown to the Norse and Irish Chroniclers; and indeed, if Magnus deserved the epithet appended to his name, it would have been difficult for him to send such articles of apparel to the Irish court.

[203] Heimsk. Saga 11, c. 26–28. An. Ult. and A. F. M. 1103. Vide also Antiq. Celt.-Scand., p. 231 to p. 244.

[204] An. Inisf. 1086. Malm. Gesta Regum, l. 5, sec. 409.

[205] Fordun, l. 5, c. 34.

[206] Sim. Dun. de Gestis 1107. Ailred de Bel. Stand (Twysden, p. 344). Fordun, l. 5, c. 55.

[207] Ailred, in his Genealogia Regum (Twysden, p. 367, 368), describes the character of the three brothers, Edgar, Alexander, and David. He also relates an anecdote which he heard from David, that whilst that prince in his younger days was in attendance at the English court, he received a sudden summons, when amongst his companions, to repair to the presence of his royal sister. He found the Queen engaged in her evening occupation of washing the feet of a number of lepers, and pressing the feet of each leper to her lips as she completed the ceremony. Matilda invited her brother to follow her example, but he excused himself, not unnaturally expressing a doubt whether the royal Henry would approve of the manner in which his Queen bestowed her favours. Matilda did not press the subject, and David rejoined his companions. Wendover has copied this anecdote, dating it in 1105.

[208] Wynton, bk. 7, c. 5, l. 21 to 62. Fordun, l. 5, c. 36. Lib. de Scone, ch. 1. I have principally followed the account of Wynton. It was evidently the object of Alexander to bring the men of Moray and Mærne to an engagement where his mounted followers could act with effect, whilst it was equally the aim of his enemies to attack the king at a disadvantage, which they calculated upon doing if he attempted to cross by the usual ford. It was from no mere reckless bravado that Alexander swam across, at an unguarded spot probably, and at full tide, when he was least expected, thus out-manœuvring the enemy and falling upon them in the open country. Swimming a river was no uncommon feat amongst the heavy-armed soldiery of those days. Robert of Gloucester swam the Trent before the battle of Lincoln, when the fords were impassable from floods. Fordun (or Bowyer), frightened perhaps at the idea of the king and his men-at-arms swimming the Moray Firth, places the battle at the Spey, and divides the honour of the feat with Sir Alexander Scrimgeour. He and Boece are eloquent about the escape of Alexander from the treachery of one of his chamberlains in league with the enemy; but Wynton knew nothing of the tale, which probably rests on a very doubtful foundation. Mr. Skene (Highlanders, vol. i., p. 129) has attributed the attack on Alexander to Ladman, a son of Donald Bane, on the strength of the following entry in the Ulster Annals under the year 1116. “Ladmunn M. Dom. h ... righ Alban killed by the men of Moray.” But Ladman son of Donald, grandson of ... king of Alban, can scarcely be a description applicable to a son of Donald Bane; and the word now lost must have been the name of Ladman’s great grandfather, not the designation of his father. Donald Bane appears to have left no son, for both Wynton and the Comyn pedigree in the Fœdera, represent Bethoc as his heiress. Ladman also appears to have been at enmity with the Moraymen; but who or what he was must remain a matter of conjecture.

[209] An. Ult. 1093. Fordun supplies four bishops elect between Fothadh and Turgot; but of “Gregory, Cathrey, Edmar, and Godric,” Wynton, a canon of St. Andrews, and well read in the archives of the see, was profoundly ignorant. The words of the old MS. quoted in Selden’s preface to Twysden p. 6, “Electus fuit Turgotus ... et stetit per annos septem. In diebus illis totum jus Keledeorum per totum regnum Scotiæ transivit in Episcopatum St. Andriæ,” imply that a great change was brought about at this time.

[210] The appointment of the Archbishop of Lyons to be Metropolitan over Tours, Rouen, and Sens, by Hildebrand, in spite of the opposition of the bishops of those Metropolitan sees; and the elevation of Toledo into the Metropolitan see of Spain, by Urban II., without in any way consulting the wishes of the Spanish clergy, may be quoted as instances. The state of the Papacy in the early part of the eleventh century had been scandalous. In 1012 Benedict VIII. obtained the see through the influence of his kinsman the Marquis of Toscanella, one of a family which had influenced the elections of the bishops of Rome for upwards of a century. His brother John XIX. fairly bought the Papacy, and was in the same day a layman and the head of the Roman Church. Similar means obtained the election of his nephew, Benedict IX., a mere child, who after scandalizing Rome with his excesses, retired in favour of Gregory VII., who was in turn deposed for simony on account of the bribe by which he procured the abdication of Benedict. The latter then again reappeared to contest the popedom with two German bishops, Clement II. and Damascus II.; and after their deaths the Romans appealed to the emperor against the threatened intrusion of Benedict for the third time, and the papacy was conferred upon Leo IX. In allusion to the influence of Hildebrand, his great friend the Bishop of Ostia wrote the following lines:—

Papam rite colo, sed te prostratus adoro;

Tu facis hunc Dominum, te facit ille Deum.

[211] The reply of William was very characteristic of the great Norman: “Homage neither have I sworn, nor will I swear it, for I never promised it, nor can I find that my predecessors ever performed it to yours.” Though perfectly respectful to the Pope, he said, “If ever monk of my land carry plaint against his sovereign lord I’ll have him hanged on the tallest tree in the forest.”

[212] “Il n’y avoit pas de Royaume qu’il ne prétendit être tributaire du saint Siege, et pour le prouver, il ne craignoit point d’alléguer des titres qui se conservoient, disoit-il, dans les Archives de l’Eglise Romaine, mais qu’il n’osa jamais produire.” Such are the words of the Benedictine editor of “L’Art de verifier les Dates.” The Donation of Constantine was first openly brought forward in the letter of Leo IX. to Michael Patriarch of Constantinople, written in 1054, and it was one of the causes of the separation of the Greek Church. It is a fair specimen of the supposed contents of “the Archives of the Roman Church.”

[213] The manner of choosing a bishop, and the abuses which had sprung up in such elections, are nowhere better described than in a letter of Apollinaris Sidonius, written about 470. (Epist. l. 4. Ep. 25.)

[214] The “Pharoahs” of the age of Innocent were the temporal princes, whom the same Pope elsewhere describes as subordinate moons revolving round the papal sun, and deriving all their light from that luminary.

[215] Sim. Dun. de Gestis 1074 (p. 207). Like Boece, Stubbs, a stout partizan of York, writing at the close of the fourteenth century, was far better informed than the contemporary chronicler of all the circumstances of this dispute. Twysden, p. 1712, et seq.

[216] The deprecatory answer of Thomas to Anselm is very characteristic of the age, “The money which I had collected for coming to you—and it was a large sum for my means—was all spent at Winchester, where I stopped too long. I then hurried home to scrape together some more to send to Rome for my pallium,” adding, “and I am still seeking for money, but very little can I find, except at a grievous rate of interest,”—a complaint alas! common to those in the Archbishop’s circumstances in every age. Ead. Hist. Nov., p. 98.

[217] Sim. Dun. de Gestis 1109.

[218] Sim. Dun. de Gestis 1074 (p. 207), 1115.

[219] “Eligente eum clero et populo terræ, et concedente Rege,” are the words which seem to have rather puzzled Lord Hailes (Annals, vol. i. p. 63, note). But all bishops were originally supposed to have been chosen in this manner; though it is probable that the rights of the “clerus et populus” were at this time as exclusively possessed by the Culdees as they were subsequently vested in the Chapter.

[220] “Nolebat enim ecclesiam Cantuarensem anteferri ecclesiæ Sancti Andreæ de Scotia:”

[221] Ead. Hist. Nov., l. 5, p. 117, 130–135.

[222] Ang. Sac. ii. 234, quoted in Hailes’s Annals, vol. i., p. 66. “He said that nothing would be so conducive to soften the barbarity of the Scots, promote sound doctrine, and establish ecclesiastical discipline, as a plentiful and hospitable board.”

[223] Ead. Hist. Nov., l. 6.

[224] Sim. Dun. de Gestis 1124. Four months before his own death, i.e., in December 1123.

[225] Reg. Glasg. Inquisitio Davidis.

[226] Ead. Hist. Nov., l. 5, p. 124–126. “Romanos in causam suam, quo in quæque negotia pertrahi solent, largitatis officio transtulit,” are his words; and on another occasion he says, “literas ab ipso Calixto, more quo cuncta Romæ impetrantur, adeptus fuerat.” In short, Eadmer is continually insinuating the venality of the papal court, though of course the practice of corrupting the Roman clergy was strictly confined to the partizans of York, and never extended to the purer clergy of Canterbury. The latter, however, are represented in a very different light in the pages of the Yorkist Stubbs, who does not hesitate to charge them with forgery and the perpetration of every species of dishonesty against the immaculate clergy of York. Henry the First stands out in honourable relief, for when Pope Calixtus pressed him to break his promise to the Archbishop of Canterbury, assuring the king that he would grant him absolution, Henry replied with dignity “that it would be inconsistent with the honour of a king to agree to any such proceeding; for who would put any faith in a promise, if the royal example taught them how easily it could be set aside by absolution.”

[227] Sim. Dun. de Gestis 1122, 1123. Chron. Mel. 1123. On the 25th of April 1174, Pope Alexander III. declared Glasgow to be “Specialem filiam nostram nullo mediante.” Reg. Glasg., No. 32. Hence in after times “the two great grievances of the bishops were being forced to admit to benefices or pensions upon the dictation of the pope, and the liability to be summoned on church cases out of the kingdom.” Vide Preface to Reg. Glasg., p. 28.

[228] Sim. Dun. de Gestis 1122, 1124. Fordun, l. 5, c. 40, 41. Malm. Gesta Regum, l. 5, sec. 400.

[229] Lib. de Scone, No. 1. Six earls attest the charter; Heth (written through a clerical error Beth) of Moray, Madach of Atholl, Malise of Strathearn, Dufagan of Fife, and Gartnach and Rory, who may be assigned to Angus, Mar, or Buchan. Heth appears to have married the sister of Malsnechtan (for his successor, Angus, is described as the son of Lulach’s daughter, An. Ult. 1130), and thus to have inherited and transmitted the claims of the line of Kenneth MacDuff. He must have been an inveterate opponent of the reigning family, as his son Malcolm is described by Ailred as “the inheritor of his father’s hatred.” The real descent of the Stewarts was well known as late as the fourteenth century, when Richard Fitz-Alan, Earl of Arundel in 1336, sold the Stewardship of Scotland to Edward III., a transaction which was confirmed by Edward Balliol (Tiernay’s Hist. of Arundel, vol. i., pp. 193, 299, notes). The sale was of course a political fiction, founded on the assumed forfeiture of the Scottish branch of the earl’s family, through which their hereditary office was supposed to have reverted to their English connections. The real king and the pseudo-king united in the joint exercise of an act of shadowy sovereignty—a joint protest of their claims as vassal king and overlord of Scotland—the sole substantial gain, the purchase-money, falling to the earl; though, had the Plantagenets succeeded in conquering Scotland, the transaction would have become a reality, and the ancestry of the hereditary Earls Marshal of the present day would have lost their claim to supplant the ancestry of the reigning sovereign. The father of Alan was Flahald or Fleald, a name which reappears under the familiar form of “Fleance, son of Banquo, Thane of Lochaber.”

[230] The reign of Edgar has been occasionally regarded as the era of a thorough Saxonizing of all Scotland, except the Highlands; but with respect to this opinion I can only use the words which Father Innes applies to the laws of Aodh Fin—“De hisce...... altissimum apud scriptores nostros silentium.” If Thane and Thanage are supposed to be, not Saxon names applied to Scottish institutions, but actual Saxon institutions introduced beyond the Forth, it should be explained why the Saxon Thane was as totally different a character from the Scottish Thane as Thane-land was from a Thanage. The Saxon held by military service—cnicht-service, an expression scarcely traceable to Normandy; the Scot by Scottish service and rent—in fee-farm. Why also is only one Thane traceable in the Lothians, if all the Thanes came from the Saxons? Compare Appendices N and R.

[231] Chron. Sax. 1124, calls David Earl of Northamptonshire. If this authority is correct, he must have held that earldom as guardian of the younger St. Liz, who was Earl of Northampton at the date of his death in 1153.

[232] Malm. Hist Nov., l. 1, sec. 1–3. Chron. Sax. 1126–7. The chroniclers of that age call the empress Alicia, oftener than Matilda; perhaps to distinguish her from Stephen’s queen.

[233] Vide preceding chapter, p.184, note.

[234] Chron. Sax., Chron. St. Crucis, Chron. Mel., and An. Ult. 1130. Ord. Vit., l. 8, p. 701–3. The Saxon Chronicler declares Angus to have been “all forsworn.” The account of Orderic is, as usual, a strange mixture of truth and error. As Heth witnessed the first Dunfermlyn charter in company with Constantine Earl of Fife, who died in 1128, he must have survived David’s accession; and it was possibly on the death of the Moray chieftain that his sons broke out into rebellion.

[235] Ailred de Bel. Stand. p. 344. Chron. Mel. 1134. “Deinde cum cohortibus suis jam triumpho elatis fugientes avidé insecutus est, et Morafiam defensore dominoque vacantem ingressus est, totumque regionis spaciosæ Ducatum, Deo auxiliante nactus est.” Such are the expressions of Orderic relating to the course pursued by David after Stickathrow. There is no allusion to Malcolm suffering the usual barbarities inflicted on state prisoners, so it is to be hoped, for David’s credit, that he escaped all such tortures.

[236] John and Rich. Hexham 1136. Hen. Hunt., l. 8, p. 222. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. 1, sec. 12. Lingard has no authority for saying that “David claimed Cumberland as having formerly belonged to the heir-apparent of the Scottish kings,” c. 11, note 13. There is no allusion to any claim except upon Northumberland (in right of his wife), and this was waived at the time for the fiefs of Carlisle and Doncaster. Strictly speaking, the Scottish royal family never appear to have held the Earldom—or rather perhaps Comitatus—but the Honour of Huntingdon. A grant of the “tertius denarius de placitis,” seems generally to have entitled its holder to the earldom at this period, whilst the holder of an honour was “overlord”—or constable—of a number of knights and barons; for all the tenants of an honour held by military service, and with manorial rights. It was in the power of the king, however, to grant the dignity of an earl, or attach the dignity to any fief, without reference to the “tertius denarius.” Vide Appendix L, pt. 2.

[237] Malm. Hist. Nov., l. 1, sec. 13. There is some uncertainty about David’s age, and Lord Hailes, a little rashly, finds fault with Malmesbury for writing about “the approach of age.” But as David survived Malmesbury, the latter would hardly have written what was not true, in such a trifling point, about one who was then living. Neither Alexander nor David appear to have taken any prominent part in the events immediately occurring after the death of their father; but David was old enough to assist his brother Edgar in 1097 by his astutia (Gesta Regum, sec 400). Forty years later he must have been nearer sixty than fifty.

[238] John and Rich. Hexham 1136. Ranulph was the son and heir of Ranulph le Meschines, who obtained a grant of Cumberland, probably about the time when Rufus restored Carlisle. John of Hexham, under 1150, says, “Remisit indignationem quæ Karleol sub patrimoniali jure reposcere consueverat.”

[239] John and Rich. Hexham 1137. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. 1, sec. 17.

[240] The Germans of Richard of Hexham were probably mercenaries from the Low Countries, whose services were then, and long afterwards, at the disposal of the highest bidder. They were generally known as Reiters; and these free companies probably supplied many of the Flandrenses and Flamingi of the Scottish charters.

[241] “In curiâ contra patrium morem captus,” are the words of Ailred, p. 343. Eustace appears to have been in the actual performance of the services by which he held the fief; and in strict feudal justice he ought not to have been deprived of the fief until he had failed to render such service.

[242] The speech which Ailred has attributed to Walter Espec is valuable on account of many historical allusions which it contains; but it is not to be supposed that on such an occasion the speaker would stop to weigh his words, especially as it was his object to raise the courage of his own men by depreciating the Scots. Strict historical accuracy is hardly to be expected at such a time, even if we are to regard such speeches as real, and not the composition of the chronicler himself.

[243] The continuator of Florence of Worcester relates this fact.

[244] Lavernani. The district known as the Lennox, or Levenach, was called so from the river Leven, and from the lake which was originally named Loch Leven, and afterwards (from its principal mountain) Loch Lomond. Lavernani is evidently a clerical error for Levenani; as Linenath in the Fœdera is a mistake for Levenach.

[245] The meeting between the king and the two barons took place immediately before the battle, according to Ailred. John of Hexham writes that they met on the Tees, which David crossed a few hours before the commencement of the engagement.

[246] Such appears to be the meaning of Ailred’s description of the English position. The monkish chroniclers are seldom very clear in their accounts of battles. The species of standard used in this battle was well known in the Italian wars.

[247] Compare John and Rich. Hexham 1138. Ail. de bel. Stand. Flor. Vigorn. Contin. 1138. Hen. Hunt., l. 8, p. 222. In the description of the battle I have principally followed Ailred. A comparison between the Priors of Hexham and the Continuator of Florence, will show the difference between the chronicler who lived in the neighbourhood of the scenes he describes, and he who, a tenant of a distant monastery, probably relied upon hearsay evidence. The battle of Northallerton was naturally a disagreeable subject for the Scottish chroniclers. Wynton, with characteristic honesty, says “the Scottis ware discomfyt and mony ... in depe lowchys drownyd was.” Fordun, Major, and Buchanan, divide the battle into two, perhaps from some confusion with the fight at Clitheroe. At the battle of Northallerton the English are routed; but in the following year the Scots, through despising their enemy, who are in great numbers, receive a check at the Standard. Boece, with a soul above such half-measures, stoutly claims a victory, ransoming the English leader, the Duke of Gloucester, at an enormous sum! Ford., l. 5, c. 42. Maj., l. 3, c. 11. Buch. l. 7. Boece, bk. 12, c. 17.

[248] By old, and probably universal, custom, every freeman was bound to attend the “hosting across the frontier” once every year in arms. By Charlemagne’s law, all holders of benefices were bound by their tenure of military service to come, and all Frank-allodial proprietors of three, four, or five mansi (or hydes); every proprietor of an amount less than three mansi combining with others, so that the lowest on the list, the proprietor of half a mansus, in conjunction with five others (i.e., making up three mansi) equipped one of their number for the army. The equivalents of this latter class amongst the English seem to have formed the gemeinred or yeomanry. A less numerous, but a better armed, and probably a more orderly body of men, would be furnished by the Imperial law than by the older custom, which was preserved in Scotland under the name of Scotticanum servitium, sometimes known as forinsecum servitium (Reg. Morav. Cart. Orig. 13), the Sluagh or “hosting beyond the frontier.” The muster of the Highland clan in later times, including “Native men” as well as “Duine Uasal,” answered to the old Sluagh. The expressions Inware, and Utware, are sometimes used, the former answering, apparently, to the Welsh “Llwyd yn Wlad,” or hosting within the borders; the latter to the “Llwyd yn Orwlad,” or hosting beyond the borders. It may be gathered from Reg. Morav. Cart. Orig. 17, that “Scottish service” was rendered on foot and without defensive armour. “Non habemus jus habendi aliquod servitium de domino Willelmo de Moravia nisi forinsecum servitium Scotticanum domini regis ... et secursum ac auxilium quod nobis in defensione regni per potenciam suam armigerorum et equorum et armorum fecit ex libera voluntate sua.” The Thane of Tullibardine had assisted his lord, the Earl of Strathearn, with men-at-arms, horses, and armour, which he was not bound to do in return for his Thanedom, held by Scottish service alone. The arms required for Scottish service were probably those with which the Clans Hay and Qwhele fought on the North Inch (Reg. Morav., p. 382), bows, axes, swords, and daggers, with the addition of the long Scottish spear. The arms of the native Irish in the days of Cambrensis appear to have been a spear, two javelins (resembling the old German framea), and a formidable battle-axe introduced by the Northmen. They gloried in fighting without defensive armour, like Earl Malise.

[249] J. and R. Hexham. Ailred, as above.

[250] The Bishop of Glasgow was not present at the dedication of his own Cathedral Church on 17th July 1136. Vide Reg. Glasg., ch. 3, in which his name does not occur.

[251] Edgar, a natural son of Earl Cospatric, and Robert and Uchtred, sons of Maldred, were the offenders on this occasion—all Saxon names, and from the Lothians apparently, so that for once at any rate those scapegoats, the Picts of Galloway, may be acquitted from blame.

[252] J. and R. Hexham 1138. The 10th and 11th November, and 3d March, are all festivals of St. Martin. The truce probably extended to the latest date, for Alberic did not bring the subject before Stephen until Christmas, after the other dates.

[253] J. and R. Hexham 1138.

[254] J. and R. Hexham 1138. “Fœminca calliditate atque protervitate instante,” are the words of Prior Richard.

[255] J. and R. Hexham 1139. The hostages were the sons of Earls Cospatric and Fergus, of Hugh de Moreville and of Mac. and Mel. (supposed to mean Macduff of Fife and Malise of Strathearn), whom Prior Richard calls five earls of Scotland. Moreville was hardly an earl, though he was probably amongst those greater barons who had “the freedom and custom of an earl.” Assize Dav. 16.

[256] Hen. Hunt., l. 8, p. 223. J. Hexham 1141. All the occurrences in John of Hexham after 1140 are misdated one year, owing to the insertion of the passage “Anno MCXLI. Calixtus Papa concilium Remis instituit xiii. Kal Nov.” This council was held in 1119. Thorstein, whose death is placed in 1141, died on Thursday 8th February 1140, and the battle of Lincoln was fought in the following year.

[257] J. Hexham 1142. The name has been changed into Oliphant.

[258] J. Hexham 1143–45. Fordun, l. 5, c. 43, confounding William Comyn the Chancellor, with William the Treasurer, Archbishop of York, relates his supposed death by poison, with a rather ambiguous comment of his own, “Hic Willelmus Comyn Archiepiscopus Eboracensis, ad missam suam in ecclesiâ Sancti Petri a ministris altaris pecuniis corruptis, venenis potionatus est; qui licet venenum videret in calice nihilominus illud fide fervens sumpsit, et non diu post supervixit, Deo Gratias!”

[259] J. Hexham 1150. Hen. Hunt., l. 8, p. 226. R. Hoveden 1148, p. 280.

[260] It is singular how Wimund has been confounded, by nearly every historian down to the present day, with Malcolm MacHeth. Newbridge, who relates his adventures at length, l. 1, c. 23, 24, and who had often seen him in his blindness and captivity at Biland, merely says that he was born at some obscure spot in England, and pretended to be “a son of the Earl of Moray.” Ailred (quoted in Fordun, l. 5, c. 51) also alludes to him as an impostor, “Cum misisset ei Deus inimicum quemdam pseudo-episcopum qui se filium Comitis Moraviensis mentiebatur,” and again (Dominus regem) “monachi cujusdem mendaciis flagellavit.” But in l. 8, c. 2, Fordun treats MacHeth himself as an impostor, “erat enim iste Malcolmus filius MacHeth, sed mentiendo dicebat se filium Angusii Comitis Moraviæ.” Here begins the confusion; but it can be clearly shown that Wimund and MacHeth were totally different persons. Malcolm MacHeth, “the heir of his father’s hatred,” was captured in 1134 and confined in Roxburgh Castle until 1157, when he was liberated by Malcolm the Fourth and attested one of the Dunfermlyn Charters (Ailred, p. 344. Chron. Mel. 1134. Chron. St. Crucis 1157. Reg. Dunf. No. 40). Wimund could not have gone to Rushen, at the very earliest, before the year of its foundation, 1134; he was a monk before that date, and could not have been made bishop until after the imprisonment of MacHeth. From an entry in Wendover under 1151, “Eodem anno Johannes ..... factus est secundus antistes Monæ insulæ ..... Primus autem ibi fuerat episcopus Wimundus ..... sed propter ejus importunitatem privatus fuit oculis et expulsus,” it may be gathered that the career of Wimund was brought to a close at least six years before the liberation of MacHeth, and the Bishop of Man, who probably enacted his singular vagaries about 1150, may have personated the son, the brother, the nephew, of the real claimant of the earldom—or even that very claimant—but it is impossible to identify him with the solitary captive in Roxburgh Castle without attributing to one, or both, ubiquity.

[261] J. Hexham 1152. In the words of Newbridge (l. 1, c. 22), “aquilonalis regio, quæ in potestatem Domini regis Scottorum usque ad fluvium Tesam cesserat, per ejusdem Regis industriam in pace agebat.” Wynton, therefore, was justified in saying (bk. 7, c. 6, l. 241), “In swylk dissentyowne De kyng Dawy wan till his crown All fra the Wattyr of Tese of brede North on till the Wattyr of Twede, And fra the Wattyr of Esk the Est, Til of Stanemoor the Rere-Cors West.” The Esk was the river flowing into the sea at Whitby, and Stanemoor is on the borders of Yorkshire, Durham, and Westmoreland. As late as 1258 a bishop of Glasgow claimed jurisdiction as far as “the Rere-Cross,” and singularly enough he was an Englishman (Chron. Lanerc. 1258). Camden (Brit., p. 987) mentions the Brandreth Stone in Westmoreland as a meer-stone between Scots and English; but it probably was only a boundary of the lands held by the Scottish kings near Penrith. Alice de Rumeli was the daughter of William Meschines and Cecilia de Rumeli, who founded the Priory of Emmesey, which Alice removed to Bolton. Vide Bolton Priory Charters, Dugd Monas, vol. 6, p. 203. William of Egremont lost his life through his greyhound pulling him over “the Strides.”

[262] Chron. St. Crucis 1152. J. Hex. 1153. Newbridge, l. 1, c. 23. Ailred (Twysden), p. 368. Fordun, l. 5, c. 43. St. Bernard Vit. Mal., quoted by Hailes, vol. i. p. 103, note.

[263] Malcolm was born in 1141, William in 1142, and David in 1143. Fordun, in l. 5, c. 43, places David before William, but in l. 6, c. 1, David is rightly called the younger son. Wynton has been wrongly accused by Lord Hailes of countenancing this mistake, for he says nothing of the kind. “Sownys thre on hyr he had, Malcolme, Wyllame, and Dawy,” are his words; and though he subsequently calls William “the yhowngare brodyr,” it is only with reference to Malcolm. bk. 7, c. 6, l. 144–5, 353–65.

[264] J. Hex. 1153. Jorval, quoted in Lytt. Hist., vol. ii. p. 243.

[265] Fordun, 1. 5, c. 55, sec. 9. From c. 45 to c. 60 he is quoting Ailred, the friend and contemporary of David and his son Henry, and the principal authority to whom I am indebted for most of the features of the private character of the king.

[266] Act. Parl. Scot. As. Dav., 24, 30. Fordun, as above.

[267] Fordun, as above. Malm. Gest. Reg., l. 4, sec. 400. As. Dav., 26–29. Strictly speaking most of the agricultural laws are in the assize of William, and the statutes of Alexander the Second; but many of the laws of these kings are to be regarded as simply the enforcement of principles of policy laid down by David and his brother Alexander.

[268] There is an allusion to the University, and the Rector of the Schools of Abernethy, in the Confirmation Charter of Admore. Reg. Prior. St. And., p. 116.

[269] Vide also Appendix R.

[270] Act. Parl. Scot Assiz. Will. 3, 4, 16. The northern limits of Scottish Argyle were identical with those of the subsequent Sheriffdom or modern county. Argyle in Moravia, or northern Argyle, was afterwards in the Sheriffdom of Inverness and earldom of Ross. The lands of Dingwall and Fern-Croskry in “the county of Sutherland,” were made over to the Earl of Ross by Robert Bruce in 1308. (Acta, etc., p. 117). The name of Dingwall tells of the Norsemen, and Ross is frequently claimed for the Jarls of Orkney in the Sagas. In fact, the kings of Scotland at a certain period seem to have favoured their pretensions in this quarter as a counterpoise to the power of the Moray family.

[271] In Stat. Alex. II. 2, Gavel, or Cavel, is the word used for “holding,” and Loth and Cavil, Share and Holding, occur in the Burgh Laws. All the authorities for what is here advanced will be found in Appendices D, E, F, and N. The tenure of the West Saxon “Ceorl upon Gafol-land,” seems to have been very similar, if not identical, with that of the Celtic Gavel.

[272] The Irish Adbhar probably answered to the Welsh Aelodeu, or all the members of a family within the fourth degree.

[273] In 1275–6 Alexander II., and subsequently, in 1372, Robert II. confirmed a grant by which Niel, Earl of Carrick, had conferred upon Roland de Carrick, “ut ipse et heredes sui sint capud tocius progenie sue, tam in calumpniis quam aliis articulis et negotiis ad Kenkynoll pertinere valentibus,” with the office of Bailliary (Seneschalship) of the Earldom of Carrick, and “the leading of the men thereof,” under the earl and his heirs (Robertson’s Index, 134. 6). The earldom went to Niel’s grandson, Robert Bruce. So MacDougal of Dunolly, the male heir of the de Ergadia family, was hereditary Bailie of Lorn. “The MacDuff” seems also to have been the next of kin to the Earl of Fife for the time being. The office of Tanist must have become obsolete when the heir was declared by the Probi homines of the Visnet instead of by the Kin. A royal grant, very similar to that of the Earl of Carrick, was in one celebrated case the cause of a feud lasting for centuries. As the Toshach seems originally to have been the second personage in the clan, so the Senior often appears to have monopolized the ecclesiastical preferment. The kings of the MacAlpin race were Cowarbs of St. Andrews; of the Atholl family, Cowarbs of Dunkeld; the Earls of Ross were descended from “Mac-in-Sagart”—the priest’s son—and it is highly probable that the older chiefs of Clan Chattan and representatives of Gillie-Chattan-More were also “Cowarbs of St. Chattan.” When the clan, after the breaking up of the confederacy of Donald Balloch, made its peace with the king, the headship was, for some unknown reason, conferred, not on the Senior, but the Toshach, and accordingly a constant state of hostility existed between the Captain of Clan Chattan by royal grant—“the Mac-in-Toshach”—and the claimant of the chieftainship by right of blood—“the Mac-in-Pherson,” filius personæ, or son of the Cowarb. The Macphersons are neither mentioned amongst the “Landislordis and Bailies,” nor “the Roll of Clans” appended to “the General Band;” but only amongst “the brokin men of the surname of Macinpherson.” (Col. de Reb. Alb., p. 35, et seq.) Nothing but the tenacity with which the “old Clan Chattan” clung to their “chiefe” (do., p. 207) could have prevented a family, representing, probably, the ancient line of MacHeth, from sinking to the condition of Og-tiernach under a junior branch.

[274] Grand Coutumier, c. 30. Vide Appendix D.

[275] Act. Parl. Scot. As. Wil. 9.

[276] Lib. de Beneficiis.

[277] Appendix D.

[278] Chron. Lanercost. 1268.

[279] Stat. Alex. II. 1. It shows how stationary—or rather retrograde—was the condition of Scotland in consequence of the disastrous English wars, and the weakness of the sovereign authority at a later period, that in the reign of James I., two hundred years after Alexander endeavoured to settle the agricultural population, a statute was passed to prohibit the lords spiritual and temporal from removing from their lands “colonos et husbandos pro anno futuro,” unless they required the land “ad usos suos proprios.”—Act. Jac. I., 1429; Act. Par. Scot. vol. 2, p. 17.

[280] Reg. Morav. No. 76. Assize Wil. 28.

[281] Reg. St. And. quoted by Pinkerton, Inquiry, Appendix 7, pt. 2 s. 3. Such were the Irish Charters in the Book of Kells (Miscell., I A S, vol. 1, No. x., p. 127), the Welsh in the Book of Llandaff, and the Memoranda in the Reg. Prior. St. And., p. 113, et seq.

[282] Assize Dav. 26–28. For examples of Manred, Vide Col. de Reb. Alb., passim. The word is often written Man-rent, but the tie had nothing to do with Rent or any species of tenure. The red is simply a termination, as in gossip-red, gemein-red, equivalent to the modern ry in such words as infantry, cavalry.

[283] Ini, 36·50. Edg. II. 5. C.S. 18. The Vicarius seems to have been the original deputy of the Frank Graphio, and the Gingra, or junior, of the king’s Ealdorman, Alf. 38. Both were replaced by the royal Vicecomes and Gerefa; amongst the Franks probably when the Comes became a hereditary noble instead of an official.

[284] Stat. Alex. II. 5. Reg. Dunf., No. 79. Amongst the privileges of the Earls of Fife was numbered the Lex Clan Macduff, by which “when ony man-slayer being within the ninth degree of kin and bluid to Macduffe, sumtime Earle of Fife, came to that croce (the cross of Macduff ‘above the Newburgh beside Lundoris’), and gave nine kye and ane colpindach, he was free of the slauchter committed be him.” It saved the life of Hugh de Arbuthnot as late as 1421 (Innes’s Sketches of early Scottish History, p. 215, note 1). It was probably a relic of the old “right” once belonging to every Mormaor or Oirrigh, of retaining all his kindred in his mund; for amongst the rights of the Welsh Brenhin were all causes appertaining to the crown, king, or royal family. Another right belonging to the Welsh king was the patronage of all the abbeys, which, though not retained by the Earls of Fife, was certainly vested in those of Strathearn.

[285] Assize Wil. 3, 4. Reg. Dunf., Nos. 13, 23, 43, 45, 56. I have rendered Probi homines by Proprietary. Probus has passed into the French language as Preux; probus homo, as Preud-homme. They are continually found in the Frank laws and capitularies as Meliores pagenses, the class furnishing the Scabini, the Mediocres of some of the other early laws. In burghs they were the class from which echevins, bailies, and aldermen were chosen. They represented the leading members of all that part of the communitas which was not comprised in the clergy, greater barons, and royal officials, answering very much to the class from which in modern times—whether in burgh or upland—the grand jury, magistrates, and members of Parliament are supposed to be chosen. Amongst the old Saxons the Scepenbar man—he who was qualified to be chosen for a Scabinus—was required to be “probus, prudens, indigena, ingenuus, et quatuor avis natus, liber et opulentus;” in other words, the qualifications for a Probus homo were supposed to be birth, property, and character. In the old Scottish laws the probus homo is always rendered “good man”—and the gude-man is still the equivalent of “the master” in a certain class—the probus homo et fidelis, “the good man and true,” being a man of a class superior to the simple fidelis or “leal man.” The good equally appears in his equivalents amongst the Welsh,—the Gwr dha “bonus homo;” and amongst the Spaniards—the Hidalgo, “fijos d’algo,” or “filius boni hominis.” Amongst the Northmen he appears seemingly as the Danneman, and amongst the Irish Gael as the Saoi. The Scabinus derived his name from the same source as the Scop; both were Makers—to use the old English word answering exactly to ποιητης—and in times when an unwritten code was preserved in the memory by such verses as “the father to the bough, the son to the plough;” by a sort of memoria technica like the Welsh Triads; or by a quaint system of question and answer, as is traceable amongst the Irish; the qualifications to constitute a good “law maker” may have often produced a good “maker” of poetry.

[286] 14 Edwd. III., Stat. 1, c. 7. In Scotland the same tendency to act by deputy is observable as on the Continent, and the Lord Justice Clerk and Lord Clerk Registrar—the deputies of the Justiciary and Registrar—appear in the place of their principals, just as in the case of the sheriff-depute.

[287] Assize Dav. 18. Will. 6.

[288] Assize Dav. 14, 15. I have adopted the reading of the Ayr MS.; xx.^ix. instead of xxix., as 180 cows—nine times twenty—were paid as manbote for homicide throughout Scotia. According to the other reading, the fine for homicide “in the king’s gryth” would have been less than elsewhere. Vide Act. Parl. Scot., vol. 1, p. 3.

[289] Assize Will. 13. This was known as Berthynsak. Cases of this description and Blodwite—petty thefts and assaults—long continued to be tried in the lesser courts.

[290] Assize Dav. 33. Wil. 11. Leg. Wil. Conq. 1, 28. For the Hundred, vide Appendix F.

[291] Thorpe’s Ancient Laws, Ed. 1. Ath. I. 10, 12, 24, v. 10. Edm. C. 5. Edg. Sup., 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10. C. S., 24, and Gloss in voc Team. By the laws of Edward and Athelstan none were to buy or sell except “in Port,” and before the Port-Reeve; but after the institution of the Hundred, purchases and sales might be made, in conformity with the legal forms, in the upland as well as in burgh. The regulations about warranty first appear in the laws of Kent, the king’s Wic-gerefa of Lunden-wic being the personage in authority, the king’s hall in the wic, the place of trial. H. and E. 16.

[292] Wootton Welsh Laws, l. 2, c. 4; l. 5, c. 5, s. 79, 80. Leg. Wil. Conq., 1, 21. Lex. Sal. Tit. 49. Assize Wil. 5. The Frank Hamallus was the “super quem res primitus agnita fuerit, vel intertiata,” the “third hand,” apparently, of the Welsh bargain. From the Conqueror’s laws it would appear that the Norman Hemold-borh was not identical with the Getyma, but he was a character of a similar description. As late as the seventeenth century, the Borch Hamel was well known in the Scottish Highlands, and no cattle was bought without “sufficient caution of burgh and hamer.” Innes’ Sketches, etc., p. 382, note 1.

[293] Assize Wil., 3, 4, 5, 16. Lex. Sal. Tit. 49. Leg. Hen. I. xli. The Welsh gave, for finding witnesses, three days within the Commot, nine if in the neighbouring Commot, and a fortnight beyond that distance or across an estuary.—Wootton, l. 2, c. 10.

[294] Assize Wil. 18.

[295] Assize Dav., 1, 13, 16. Wil. 20. Slat, Alex. II. 4. The three Thanedoms are evidently the same as the three Baronies, so continually met with in later laws. Both are evidently counterparts of the “three tuns” amongst the Anglo-Danish confederacy of Mercia, and the “three Dorfern” amongst the Saxons, with whom it was lawful, “if a theft be committed hand-habend, or a robbery in which the offender is taken, to choose a Go-graf” from at least three villages (Dorfern), “and they shall form a court and judge the case, provided the judge who has the office in fee (belehenten Richter) cannot be had.” Leg. Eth. III. 15, and Sach. Spieg., l. 1, c. 55, quoted in note d. The fine of 34 cows is called in William’s laws (14), the thief’s wergild. By a law of Chlovis whoever saved a man from the gallows paid his wergild.

[296] Eth. I. 1. Wil. Conq., I. 11. Leg. Hen., I. lxvi., 8–10. Lex. Sax. Tit. 2. As the penalties of this period, when not capital, were invariably fines, it is probable that the expression “a pound oath,” or “swearing for so many hydes,” meant that the compurgator, like the modern bail, was to be up to a certain point “a man of substance.”

[297] Lib. de Ben. 98.

[298] Assize Wil. 15. This was not the result of “Celtic barbarism;” for two centuries after the reign of William the Frisons still claimed their right to “blood for blood.” Leg. Fris. Tit. 2, n. 5, (Canc.) Vide also Appendix E.

[299] Lex. Sax. Tit. 2.

[300] According to the laws of Athelstan, iv. 7, the simple ordeal of water was to take a stone out of boiling water as deep as the wrist; the triple ordeal deepened the water to the elbow. The ordeal of iron was to walk nine feet over hot iron; sometimes to carry it, probably the same distance. In all cases the hand or foot was bound up and inspected three days afterwards. If it had healed, the man was pronounced innocent. The ordeal of cold water was the dyke-pot, to which poor wretches accused of witchcraft were too often subjected.

[301] Velleius Paterculus, l. 2, c. 118 (quoted by Blackstone).

[302] Assize Wil. 7. Ath. v. 8. I. 11.

[303] A passage in the laws of Childeric ad an. 550, somewhat unintelligible indeed, seems to point to this, where, in reference to the “duodecim juratores,” it is said, “Propterea non est sacramentum in Francis, quando illi legem composuerunt, non erant Christiani.” Pertz. Leg., vol. 2, p. 6, c. 4. The only meaning I can make out of it is, “For this cause there is no oath amongst the Franks—no provision for compurgation in their code—when they made their laws they were not Christians.” The passage has rather a colloquial form, like the Welsh Triads or the Irish laws, so often framed in question and answer; pointing to an age in which the law was not written but committed to memory.

[304] On such occasions, by Welsh law, if an Alltud joined in the combat to make up the necessary number of combatants, and escaped with life, he ranked as a full-born member of the kindred for whom he had entered the lists. In the battle on the North Inch of Perth thirty men appeared on each side, armed with bows, axes, swords, and daggers, but without defensive armour. The number resembles the triple oath of “three Thanes and twenty-seven leil men,” by which the lord of the prison from which a thief escaped was bound to clear himself; the equipment was probably that required in the old “Scottish service.” It is generally supposed that the contest was for the chieftainship of the Clan Chattan, but it seems very doubtful that this was the case. The oldest account of the battle, which took place on 28th September 1396, is contained in a memorandum in the Reg. Morav. p. 382, which says that thirty of the Clan Hay fought thirty of the Clan Qwhwle “quia firma pax non poterat intra duas parentelas.” Four years previously, in the second year of Robert III., the latter clan had figured as the Clan Qwhevil under Slurach and his brothers, in the raid upon Angus, celebrated by Wynton, bk. ix., c. 14. Act. Parl. Scot., v. 1, p. 217. They were the victors, and the Clan Hay disappears for ever; but the Clan Chewill figures in a Roll of Clans of the sixteenth century as a distinct family from the Clan Chattan and Macphersons. Col. de Reb. Alb., p. 39.

[305] Heimsk. St. Olaf. Saga, c. 76, 80.

[306] Capit. Carl. Mag. Pertz. Leg., vol. 1, p. 121.

[307] Arch. Adm. de Rheims, vol. 1, p. 35. The seven assessors of the Graphio seem to have been originally known as Rachimburgii, who, according to Edict. Chilp. 7 (Pertz. Leg., vol. 2, p. 10), were to be “Antrustiones boni credentes.” They were afterwards known more generally as Scabini, and numbered twelve in the Carlovingian era. Cap. Leg. Sal. Add. ad an. 819, 1, 2, (Do. vol. 1, p. 227). Vide also Ap. Form. Marc. Canc. vol. 2, p. 247, note 3. The number of compurgators appears to have been occasionally seven as well as twelve (Cap. Add. Leg. Rip. ad an. 803, s. 10. Canc. vol. 2, p. 320), and a similar number is also sometimes assigned to the mystic “Peers of Charlemagne,” a body which perhaps may have owed its creation to some confused idea in later times that the Graphio and his assessors were but the reflection of “nostrum placitum generale.” The Sagibaro seems to have been of a lower class than the Rachimburg or Scabinus, for the latter was necessarily an Antrustion or nobleman, the former if ingenuus was raised to this rank by his office, and might be a Lœt (V. Wergilds). As any cause decided by the three Sagibarones could not be reopened before the Graphio, it is evident that they sat in the lesser Courts. Lex. Sal. 56.

[308] Canc, vol. 1, p. 236. Magn. Chart. II., s. 39, 52. No freeman was to be dispossessed of his freehold, liberties, or customs, “nisi per legale judicium parium suorum vel per legem terræ.” The former still continues to be the privilege of the “Majores Barones,” or House of Lords, the latter belongs to the “Minores Barones,” or the rest of “the Community.” Had not the old “judicium per pares” been superseded in the case of “the Community” by the “Jugement del Pais,” the Pares would now be counted by millions!

[309] Leg. Ath., iv. 6. Eth., iii. 3, 13. The Folk-mote was probably the meeting of the whole people in early times, but after a king’s Ealdorman presided at it, it was surely only a meeting of the Folk under his special jurisdiction. It is last alluded to in the laws of Athelstan, being replaced probably by the biennial Shire-gemote provided by Edgar’s laws, in which the Bishop and the Ealdorman were the leading personages (Edg. ii., 5. C.S. 18). These Moots had nothing whatever to do with the government of the kingdom, which was vested in the king and his Witan,—his Court or Privy Council, not his Parliament; for the voice of “the Community” was unheard in the Witanagemote. Self-government up to a certain point is traceable in the institutions of this period, but not beyond it. The Londoners might choose their Tything-men and manage their own affairs, but the right to do so was laid down in “the ordinance which the Bishops and Reeves belonging to London ordained;” the Reeves being appointed by the Crown, and Bishops, Reeves, and Ealdormen being answerable for holding the Frith “as I and my Witan have commanded” (Ath. v. 11). It is in vain to attempt to trace the germs of the English parliamentary system in the Anglo-Saxon Witan. Our modern Parliament was gradually developed out of the right, acknowledged by “Norman feudalism,” of the whole community of freeholders to gather round the sovereign. The Majores Barones still exercise the right, once belonging to the whole community, of assembling in person; the lesser barons, and the rest of the community, whether in burgh or upland, assemble by their representatives, chosen originally by “the Reeve;” but from the reign of Henry IV. (who appears to have finally carried out the intentions of his grandfather, after a lapse of thirty years), by all freemen of a certain standing. The government of a king and his Witan—his Court or Privy Council—could only have been developed in course of time into, either a powerful but irresponsible despotism, or a feeble monarchy torn by the dissensions of a few powerful magnates contending for the real power. Such was the phase it assumed in England, unless the history of that period is gravely in error.

[310] Wootton, l. 4. Triad 85.

[311] Malcolm IV., according to John of Hexham, was chosen in an assembly of this description, or rather, as amongst the Germans in the days of Tacitus, the assembly ratified the choice of their Seniors. “Tollens igitur omnis populus terræ Malcholmum ... apud Scotiam, sicut consuetudo illius nationis ... constituerat regem pro David avo suo.” J. Hex. 1154.

[312] Reg. Prior. St. And., p. 117. This meeting must have taken place early in the reign of David, as the signature of Earl Constantine is soon replaced in the charters of the period by that of Earl Gillemichael.

[313] Stat. Alex., II., 2–3. Assize Will. 26. Vide also Will. 22.

[314] Assize David, 4–8, 12, 24, 25, 35. If the law about Mortancestrie and Novel Disseisin is correctly ascribed to David, it would be not a little remarkable, for the change was only introduced into the English law by Henry the Second, according to the highest testimony, Glanville (l. 1, c. 11–21, quoted by Blackstone). Such changes generally travelled northwards, and will be found in England before they took root in Scotland. Thus the attempt of James I. to establish a representative system amongst the lesser freeholders in Scotland is surely traceable to his residence in England, where a similar system was actually established by Henry IV. The regulation ascribed to David, however, is not identical with “the Grand Assize,” which was constituted by appointing four knights in every sheriffdom, who were to choose twelve others. By the Scottish law such questions were to be decided by the ordinary “Assize of the good country of twelve men.” By Welsh law all questions relating to succession to property were to be decided by the Henduriad Gwlad—the senior Gwrdha, or good men of the country—the judge pronouncing according to their decision, which was known as Dedfryd Gwlad, or the verdict of the country (Wootton, l. 2, c. 10). Whether this regulation was original, or derived from the principle introduced by Henry II., I cannot say.

[315] Amongst the Fragmenta, Act. Parl. Scot., vol. 1, p. 383, s. 29, is one which lays down the rules for the judicial combat, adding that in cases of Disseisin it was optional for the parties to choose the Wager of battle or the Verdict of the good country, either course to be decisive. It is difficult to determine whether this must be regarded as a fragment of Galloway law, or as one of those retrogressions which were incidental to the state of Scottish society after the English wars. The Quon. Attach., 35, 36, however, allude to the Breve de Disseisin et de Mortancestrie as the only familiar legal process, which would appear to place the fragment in question amongst the Galloway laws.

[316] As the founders of the Norman kingdoms southward of the Alps were ignorant of the hereditary feud; as no charters are traceable in the Norman duchy until many years after the Conquest; and as the charters by which the Anglo-Normans held their English possessions were unquestionably framed upon the Anglo-Saxon model; it would appear as if such documents, familiar to the Anglo-Saxons, were comparatively unknown to, or unused by, their conquerors. In the thirteenth century, when Earl Warenne was called upon to produce the title by which he held his lands, he laid his sword upon the table; nor can the few remaining holders of lands, which their ancestors possessed at the date of Domesday, show any other title than that of the great Earl. Yet are we generally told that the Normans oppressed the Anglo-Saxons by the introduction of novel feudal tenures. Sac and Soc, Tol and Team, Infangthief and Outfangthief, were scarcely brought from Normandy.

[317] The charters will be found in the Introduction to “Robertson’s Index.” The witnesses, all of whom have Saxon or Danish names, are sometimes supposed to represent the Scottish Court; and the total absence of all Gaelic names is assumed as a proof of the total exclusion of the native race from the court and councils of their sovereign. But this total absence is in itself suspicious. Where are the Gaelic Earls who were invariably the first to attest the great charters of Alexander and David? In the Foundation Charter of Dunfermlyn, David confirms the grants of his father Malcolm, his mother Margaret, and of his brothers Duncan, Edgar, Ethelred, and Alexander; all of which must have been made according to “ancient custom,” or the charters, would have been forthcoming in the Dunfermlyn Registry; and as the sole known charters of Duncan and Edgar are connected with Durham, whilst their grants made beyond the Forth were not confirmed by any written document, it would appear as if these Durham charters had been written and witnessed at Durham, and that no argument can be drawn from the names of the attesting witnesses about the composition of the Scottish Court. The title of “Basileus Scottorum,” applied to Edgar, will never be found in any Scottish charter, but it occurs frequently in Anglo-Saxon documents. It was the policy of the Scottish kings of that period to keep up a connection with Durham; and it must be always recollected that there was less difference between the Angles separated by the Tweed, than between the Angles and Anglo-Danes separated by the Tees. The chosen standard of David—the Dragon of Wessex—speaks volumes of the pretensions which the sons of Margaret were very ready to keep alive amongst a population, which was not included in the Domesday survey.

[318] Assize Will. 8.

[319] Stat Alex. II. 8, 15. The two classes were “Miles vel filius militis, vel aliquis libere tenens in feodo militari, vel aliquis alius terram suam aliquo modo tenens per cartam in feodo, per liberum servitium, vel per fie de hauberk, vel eorum filii;” and “Firmarii de rusticis nati, vel qui in vili prosapia fuerint sive rustici, vel aliqui alii qui liberum tenementum non habent, nec libertatem prosapiæ.”

[320] Quon Attach. 18. Act. Parl. Scot., p. 91–92. So when it was proved to the satisfaction of a similar jury that Crane, his son Sweyn, and his grandson Simon, had held, uninterruptedly, the office of Janitor of Montrose Castle, with the lands attached to it (originally a grant of William to Crane), the five daughters of Simon—the fourth in descent—were pronounced heiresses in fee.—Ib., p. 90. The invariable three descents appear to have conferred hereditary right.

[321] A Thane of Haddington is the sole instance that I am aware of in the Lothians; and yet the Scottish Thane is often derived from a Saxon original! For “Scottish Service,” Vide ch. viii. p. 208, note. As Scotus as much meant a Gael as Flandrensis meant a Fleming, or Galweiensis a native of Galloway, the great Border clan of Scott must have been settlers from beyond the Forth.

[322] Mat. Par. ad an. 1251, p. 554.

[323] Appendix D.

[324] Col. de Reb. Alb., p. 35, No. viii.

[325] I allude to names like Mac Caillin More, Vich Alaister More, Mac Connuil Dhuy, and others distinct from surnames. In Appendix R I have given my reasons at greater length for doubting the theory which assumes that the first holder of a charter was always a foreign settler, and that every territorial name—every name with a de—necessarily implies a foreign descent. De Ergadia, de Insulis, de Carrick, de Galloway, de Strathbogie, de Atholia, de Abernethy, de Ogilvy, and many others, attest the contrary.

[326] Asser. in Mon. Hist. Brit., vol. 1, p. 474, 492, 493. Also Appendix F. Defence seems everywhere to have been the original bond of union in burghs—defence against the Moors, for instance, in Spain; but where the Goth and the Roman had dwelt, in a certain sense, on an equality long before they amalgamated, an intramural population, with Roman traditions and Roman law, must have existed many a year before it was recognised as a separate “Estate” in return for defending towns against the infidel. In the great German Burghs the Traders were originally a separate class from the Burghers, and the distinction is still traceable in those regulations of the Scottish burghs which denied admittance to the Guild privileges to all who worked at certain trades with their own hands. What was the previous condition of the Traders—what their state before their town became a Burh with privileged defenders, amongst whom they were gradually enrolled? At the best, it must have resembled that of other Fiscalini, and few “full-born” Teutons could have entered willingly into such communities until they went as free and privileged defenders of a Burh, rather than as members of a class which they looked upon as inferior and unprivileged. Their arms and their free rights they carried with them—the one was identical with the other in the olden time—becoming free members of a civic, as they had previously been of a rural association, and following such civic occupations as were not considered derogatory to the dignity of a Freeman. Germanic law long ignored written documents, and the customs of the Burgh were mostly in accordance with that older allodial system which the progress of Roman innovation stamped as Roturier. Men possessed property in land long before it was secured by written documents, and many a burgh had been in the enjoyment of rights and privileges by unwritten law long before it was thought necessary to obtain the sanction of a feudal charter, which must no more be regarded as necessarily creating a new burgh, than as necessarily introducing a foreign settler into Scotland, and eradicating a native proprietor. In both cases the charter was often only confirmatory of pre-existing rights. But it would be erroneous to imagine that the Teutonic Burghs ever existed as independent associations against “the tyranny of the noble class.” Some notice of such a state of society, had it existed, would surely be traceable in the regulations of the Carlovingian era. It was this very class, lay or ecclesiastical, who joined with the sovereign in building Burghs for defence, or introducing free burghers into towns which had hitherto been unfree and comparatively defenceless. The spirit of antagonism arose with the increasing power of the greater burghs. In England the Burgh arose out of the necessities of the Danish invasion; and if a Teutonic element existed previously amongst the resident intramural population, it was scarcely on the footing of Burgh-Thegns. There is no word in the Anglo-Saxon language expressive of a free and trading community associated within walls. The Burh was originally the place of strength, and the inhabitants of Bebba’s Burh were surely not traders. Wic is a very vague word, and Ceaster unquestionably of Roman origin. The latter is the word most often found in the translation of Beda—as in London-Ceaster, and Eofer-wic-ceaster—and as the Wealh remained at the basis of the population in the rural districts, a similar element probably supplied the bulk of the inhabitants of the Ceaster before its conversion into a Burh introduced the Teutonic Burh-Thegn.

[327] Leg. Burg 70, 71. The Hanse was simply that kindred association, known as the Hant-Gemahl, without which no Teuton seems in early times to have been entitled to “free right.” (Appendix F.) The Northerns carried with them into the Burh their old customs, this association amongst the number. A Hanse seems strictly to have been an association of four; there were four classes of towns in the great Hanseatic League, of which Hamburg, Bremen, Lubeck, and Cologne were “the Four Burghs.” When Roxburgh and Berwick fell into the hands of the English, Lanark and Linlithgow were added to complete the necessary number of four Scottish Burghs. The Northern Burgh seems to have been simply the reproduction of the rural system within the walls, the Burgh-Thanes, or probi homines, of London, who chose their Tything-men and Hynden-men—representing the Tuns-men of the country districts—who also chose their Head-borough and Hundred’s Ealdor. Neither originally chose their Gerefa. I cannot look upon the Northern Burgh as simply a repetition of the Roman city, or the Roman city, with its Roman customs, enfranchised, and its citizens, living by Roman law, converted into burghers. The Hanse was scarcely Roman, but it was a necessary ingredient in the free right of every “full-born” Teuton. “Bare is back without brother behind it,” says the old northern proverb. The Echevin was a thoroughly Teutonic personage, the Scabinus, or Scepen, of the rural district; and wherever such features are traceable “in-burgh,” I must look upon the original burghers, not as a trading class enfranchised, but rather as a class of free Teutons introduced above the traders for defence—carrying arms for the defence of the country being the mark of freedom—and introducing with them the free allodial customs of the rural districts. The Anglo-Saxon Burgher, and the member of the great Hanseatic Burghs of northern Germany, were thoroughly Teutonic personages, owing little, if anything, directly to Rome and her municipal institutions, in early times, I should imagine.

[328] Leg. Burg, 1, 2, 6, 7, 10, 15, 17, 98, 101, 106, 107, 110, 112. Such seems to have been the real meaning of this provision—it eliminated the servile element from amongst the burgherhood. A native-man might run away from his district, but how could he take with him the property to purchase a burgage-tenement? Stock was his property, and it is difficult to conceive how he could carry the stock with him, or sell it, unknown to his lord, with all the machinery of witnesses and warrenter required for sales and purchases. But it is easy to imagine how the settlement of native-men in the towns may have been encouraged by their lords as a source of private profit. The whole trading class was once probably on such a footing, and the greater the wealth acquired by the trader, the more would he have paid for permission to remain away from his district—for he was not necessarily a slave in the modern acceptation of the word, but “inborn” to a certain district, from which he could not separate himself without his lord’s permission. He who settled in a town, and prospered in his unfree condition, if he aspired to become a free burgher, must, in all ordinary cases, have bought his freedom from his lord—as in the case of Renald prepositus of Berwick in 1247—and after enjoying his tenement for a year and a day no further claim could be raised against him. Vide Scotland in the Middle Ages, p. 142. It was admission to the Guild in a Free burgh that conferred the same privileges in England. Vide Glanville, l. 5. c. 5.

[329] Leg. Burg., 3, 8, 9, 20, 47, 54, 59, 60, 67, 75, 81, 86, 94, 103. Scotland in the Middle Ages, p. 159–162. The full forfeiture in Burgh amounted to 8 shillings, or one-quarter of the ordinary fine of 8 cows—the half leod-gild—levied in the country districts. Washing the feet, in the olden time, implied an intention of stopping and accepting hospitality; and the Dustyfoot got his name from passing onwards. The follower of the Celtic lord was sometimes known as the Gillie-wetfoot, from wearing no shoes or stockings, a practice to which the Scottish peasantry long clung—an incidental testimony of the prevalence of the native element amongst that class.

[330] Leg. Burg. 58. Assize Dav. 3.

[331] Leg. Burg. 3, 33, 46, 55, 102. Mag. Chart. ii. 29. Act. Parl. Scot., vol. 1, p. 87, 88.

[332] Leg. Burg. 99. This is clearly shown by Mr. Innes in his “Scotland in the Middle Ages,” p. 154.

[333] Leg. Burg. 13. Appendix F.

[334] Newbridge, l. 2, c. 24. He is quite borne out by the Chartularies. Malmesbury gives a description of Ireland in the reign of Henry the First, which, with a due allowance for the prejudices of the historian, was probably not inapplicable at one time to Scotland. “Ita pro penuria imo pro inscientia cultorum, jejunum omnium bonorum solum, agrestem et squalidam multitudinem Hibernensium extra urbes producit; Angli vero et Franci, cultiore genere vitæ, urbes nundinarum commercio inhabitant.”—Gest. Reg., l. 5, sec. 409.

[335] Counts and judges (Scabini) were to name the law they would live by, and judge accordingly—“Comites et judices confiteantur qua lege vivere debent, et secundum ipsam judicent,” Pertz. Leg., vol. 1, Capit. p. 101, sec. 48. So the Romans were to choose the law they would live by—Do. Hlot. Const. Rom., ad an 824, p. 239–40. Hundred Court and Tithing Court, Scabinus and Sagibaro, all the machinery of the free Salic law, gradually disappeared, until the government of the people, whose very name was once synonymous with freedom, was expressed in the words “l’etat c’est moi.” It must always be recollected that our Third Estate differs in a most important particular from the Tiers Etat, or Bourgeoisie, of the Continent. It includes the Minores Barones, the representatives of the Meliores pagenses or Probi homines; to whose keeping the free institutions of our ancestors were committed long before the existence of a Burgherhood.

[336] Fordun, l. 4, c. 43. Appendix E. Welsh Gwerth.

[337] Leg. Ini, 23. The Wealh-gerefa occurs in the Saxon Chronicle, and had no reference to Wales. The meaning of Seneschal and Mareschal has been generally sought in the Teutonic dialects; but perhaps they are to be numbered amongst those composite words so often met with. March is certainly more Celtic than Teutonic; and Sen is very like the Celtic word for Senior. Steel-bow, that mysterious appellation for ferreum perus, is another instance in which the first part is Teutonic, the last the Celtic Bo, or cattle.

[338] Const. Hloth. ad an 823. Pertz Leg. vol. 1. p. 232.

[339] Cod. Dip. Sax. No. 813. Osgar, “regiæ procurator aulæ,” is styled in 855 and 872, Osgar Stallr. The office was held previously by Osgod Clapa, a great Dane, who was outlawed in 1046 (Sax. Chron.) It may have been introduced by Canute; but the district, over which the Constable subsequently held jurisdiction, is first alluded to in the laws of Athelstan.

[340] Ad Scotos in Christum credentes, ordinatur a Papa Cælestino Palladius, et primus episcopus mittitur. Such are the words of Prosper of Aquitaine in his Chronicle, ad an. 431. Not only were there believers amongst the Irish at this time, but heretics, according to Jerome. The Pelagian heresy was sometimes called Pultis Scottorum. Vide the authorities, etc., quoted by O’Connor in Rer. Hib. Scrip. Vet., vol. i. p. lxxi.

[341] The date 432 is usually assigned to the arrival of St. Patrick in Ireland. There is nothing by which the real accuracy of this date can be tested, and it wears a very suspicious appearance, as if it had been originally fixed upon to favour the usual story of Patrick’s ordination by Pope Celestine, who died in that year. One of the earliest traditions about the Irish Saint—that contained in Nennius—couples “Bishop Germanus,” with Pope Celestine, and “Victor the Angel of God,” as the originators of Patrick’s mission, adding, that Germanus sent “Bishop Severus” with Patrick. Severus was the companion of Germanus in his second expedition into Britain. In the old poem ascribed to Fiech (given by O’Connor as above, p. xc.) Patrick is said to have remained in southern Gaul and studied the Canons with Germanus. The fable of the Angel Victor is evidently founded on the following passage in the Confession of Patrick:—“Et ibi scilicet vidi in visu, nocte, virum venientem quasi de Hiberione, cui nomen Victoricius, cum epistolis innumerabilibus, et dedit mihi unam ex illis, et legi principium epistolæ continentem Vox Hiberionacum.” The saint’s dream of the arrival of the human Victoricius from Ireland with a letter, bearing the prayers of the Irish to convert them, was magnified in after times into the miraculous appearance of the angel Victor from heaven.

[342] Prosper, Chron. 431. He affirms that Pope Celestine deputed Germanus at the instance of Palladius (Chron. 429). Constantius of Lyons, in his life of Germanus, never alludes to the Pope, but attributes the mission of Germanus and Lupus to a Council of Gallican Bishops, assembled on account of the representations of the British Church. Beda, who must have had both accounts before him (for he quotes from both authorities), has literally transcribed the narrative of Constantius; and as he must have had some reason for this preference, I do not feel inclined to dissent from the venerable historian. Some clue may perhaps be afforded to the reasons for such opposite versions of the same story, by the remark of the Benedictine compiler of L’Art de verifier les Dates, etc., “Ce pape (Zozimus) l’année précédente (i.e., 417) avait accordé le Vicariat du Saint Siege dans les Gaules à Patrocle, Evêque d’Arles; c’était une nouveauté pour les Gaules, ou elle excita de grandes contestations.” Prosper may have chosen to give a colouring to the proceeding which the Gallican Bishops would have been unwilling, at that time, to admit.

[343] The scene of the labours of Palladius has been transferred to Scotland, a change of which Prosper appears to have been profoundly ignorant.

[344] “Ingenuus fui secundum carnem, Decorione patre nascor,” are the words in his epistle to Coroticus. According to the Confession, Patrick was about sixteen years old when he was carried off to Ireland, whither he returned to preach Christianity about thirty years afterwards. It is curious to contrast the numerous miracles ascribed to his early youth and childhood by Jocelyn and others with the ingenuous admission in the Confession, of the temporary errors of his youthful days, and of his carelessness and unbelief from infancy until his captivity. The Confession and Epistle to Coroticus will be found in Rer. Hib. Scrip. Vet., vol. i. p. cvii.

[345] Vit. St. Cudb., cap. 16.

[346] It is difficult to conceive how the sister of the Pannonian Martin could have been the wife of the British Calphurnius; and the story probably arose from the spiritual relationship of St. Martin to the Apostle of Ireland. Ninian, the converter of the southern Picts, is also sometimes called a nephew of Martin. The dedication of the churches of Canterbury, Whithern, and Hereford, with the Irish Abbey at Cologne, to St. Martin, together with “the Gospel of St. Martin,” long preserved at Derry, and supposed to have been brought from Tours by St. Patrick, attest the veneration in which the name of the founder of monachism in Gaul was held throughout Britain and Ireland in early times.

[347] Mabillon, Hist. Bened., l. x. c. 17. In the Rule of St. Columba, the first injunction is, “Be alone in a separate place near a chief city.”—Colton’s Visitation, I. A. S., Appendix D.

[348] The Bishops of the Gaelic Church were ordained in the usual manner. Thus Finan, when he ordained Cedd, called in two other bishops to assist in performing the ceremony—Beda, Hist. Eccl., l. iii., c. 22. But many probably were chorepiscopi, at whose ordination it was only requisite for one bishop to officiate. It was this order, long suppressed and forgotten in the Roman Church, that scandalized Lanfranc, Anselm, and others, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. That the leading bishops of the Gaelic Church at this time were regularly ordained, may be inferred from the fact that there is no allusion to any re-ordination of bishops at the time when the Churches of Scotland and Ireland were remodelled. Perhaps “the dignity of Noble Bishop” (Uasal Escop., Vide A. F. M., 1106), may allude to the superior or episcopal order, as opposed to the inferior or chorepiscopal. The want of a fixed diocese must have contributed to impress the Irish bishops with that character for wandering which was so much complained of in the ninth century. Bishops without a diocese, however, were not confined to the Irish Church, as at a much later period, Olaf the Saint had his “Hird-Bishop,” whose peculiar duties must have attached him to the royal household. The necessity of episcopal ordination for the priesthood is implied in the story related of Columba by Adamnan, in his life of that saint. Upon hearing that Findchan, a priest, had “laid his hands” on the head of Aodh Dubh, to complete the ordination which the bishop had refused to proceed with, Columba exclaimed, “Illa manus dextra quam Findchanus, contra fas et jus ecclesiasticum, super caput filii perdicionis imposuit, mox computrescit.” Much information about the early Irish Church is contained in Dr. Reeves’ Ecclesiastical Antiquities of Down, etc., Appendix A. The custom of Iona, in the seventh century, as described by Beda, seems to have resembled the ancient custom of the Church of Alexandria, by which, “not the bishops, but twelve presbyters were the electors, nominators, and (according to Eutychius) consecrators.—(Stanley’s East. Church, p. 266, note 2.) These twelve presbyters are very like the twelve Culdees who formed, as it were, the Staff of every Gaelic monastery.

[349] As tithes were unknown, as a fixed payment, in Gaul for some time after the mission of St. Patrick, it is not surprising that the Scots and Irish were ignorant of them in the twelfth century. It was the custom of Aidan and his followers to build churches “per loca” (Bed. Ecc. Hist., l. 3, c. 3), which appear to have been dependant on the monastery of the district. Thus, on the foundation of the regular diocese of Aberdeen, the monastery of Mortlach, with five churches and their lands, was made over to the new see. Reg. Aberd., vol. 1, p. 5, 6. From the same Registry, p. lxxvii., it appears that the Cuairt was eventually compounded for by the payment of Procurationes.

[350] Mr. Petrie (Tara, p. 172) enumerates four Cains—1. Cain Patraic, not to kill the clergy. 2. Cain Daire Chailleach (the nun), not to kill cows. 3. Cain Adomnan, not to kill women. 4. Cain Domnaig, or Sunday law. The Riar Patraic (Patrick’s demand) is explained by Tighernach (ad an. 986), to mean Cuairt eitir Cill ⁊ Tuaith, “the Right of Visitation over Church and State” (or over Clergy and Laity). Dr. Reeves’ preface to “Primate Colston’s Visitation,” IAS., contains very full information on the subject of the early Irish Visitations. Inmesach is said to have introduced the custom in 721 (Tigh.), a few years after the Northern Irish, Pictish, and Scottish Churches had relinquished their early Cycle and Tonsure. The Cuairt was probably unknown to Patrick or Columba.

[351] Thus Lorcan O’Tuathal preferred the abbacy to the bishopric of Glendalough, though it may be questioned whether the choice of the Saint was as purely disinterested as is sometimes asserted. “In hac autem ecclesiâ et Episcopatus erat et Abbatia; sed Abbatia quoad temporales divitias longé erat Episcopatu opulentior.”—Ware Antiq., vol. 1, p. 312, 372.

[352] The first allusion to a Herenach occurs in Tigh. 605, An. Ult. 604, A.F.M. 601, but the office is not again met with before the close of the eighth century. Vide Mr. O’Donovan’s Note O to A.F.M., 1179; though the description of the Herenach there quoted from Sir John Davies—paying a yearly rent to the Bishop, a fine upon the marriage of his daughter, and a subsidy to every Bishop on his first entry into the diocese; in other words, holding in fee-farm, with merchet, and relief, or payment for a renewal of his lease—applies rather to his character after the English settlement had reduced Cowarbs and Herenachs to a very different footing from their position in early times. The name of Aircinneach, meaning Princeps, “Head of the Kin,” or Overlord (Reeves, Adamn. N. p. 364, note M), points to a high position. In a charter of the time of Otho I., dated in 952, a Count Hohold founds a convent, of which his sister is to be the first abbess, that dignity being always to be filled by a member of his race as long as it exists. He appoints himself Advocatus Monasterii, stipulating that the office should also be hereditary in his family (Ducange in voc. Advocatus). In Gaelic phraseology, then, the family of Hohold were hereditary Cowarbs and Herenachs of the monastery founded by their ancestor. The Advocatus first made his appearance in the church about the beginning of the fifth century—“post consulatum Stilliconis” (Lind. Gloss. in Advocatus), and the “tertia pars bannorum et tertius denarius” were amongst his privileges. From “Colton’s Visitation” it is evident that the old Termon, or Church lands, were divided into three portions, two belonging to the rector and his vicar, and the remaining third to the Herenach under the Bishop, to whom also belonged the “blood-fines,” or Eric, the overlord’s prerogative. From a charter quoted by Harris, c. 35, p. 233, it would appear that in the Anglo-Irish period, the Rector was often identical with the Cowarb, so that the two-thirds belonging to the Rector and Vicar represented the Abbot’s portion of the Termon lands; and as in the Gaelic period the Bishop had no claim on the temporalities of the Church, it seems probable that the Herenach was originally the lay-lord of the Termon lands, holding them of the Abbot by the usual tenure of retaining a third of the fines and profits—tertia pars bannorum, et tertius denarius. After the Cowarbs became very generally laymen, they retained their portion of the Termon lands in their own hands, under the superintendence of their own stewards and deputies, and the office of Herenach, declining in importance, probably fell into the hands of less exalted members of the family. When the Gaelic Church system was superseded, the Herenach lands—Church lands held by a layman—appear to have been confiscated to supply an income for the Bishop, the former holders losing all their former claims upon “the thirds,” and retaining only that small portion of the land which was their actual duchas, or freehold; whilst as the families of the greater Cowarbs were generally very powerful, they were often, probably, allowed to retain the patronage to the Rectory in their family, provided it was presented to an ecclesiastic.

[353] Vide the Catalogus Sanctorum Hiberniæ (attributed to Tirechan), in O’Connor’s Annotationes ad Sæculum VI. Rer. Hib. Script. Vet., vol. 2, p. 162. In the British monasteries the monks devoted themselves to manual labour, as at Bangor (Bed. Hist. Eccl., l. 2, c. 2); but the Irish monks were generally of the contemplative order, as at Louth, the monastery of Mochta, the disciple of Patrick (Tigh. 534).In this they strictly followed the rule of St. Martin, in whose monastery at Tours contemplation was the business of the senior monks, whilst the younger brethren were employed in writing. Vide Sulp. Sev. Vit. St. Martin, c. 7. The contemplative life long continued to be the characteristic of the Gaelic monks. The Gallican Liturgy (Cursus Gallicanus) appears to have been in general use both in the British and Gaelic Churches; and according to an old MS. quoted by Usher, Prim. p. 185, it was introduced by Germanus and Lupus. The diversity of Rules remained to astonish the Papal Legate in the twelfth century, who mentions a singular fact that shows how deeply wedded the Irish monks must have been to their peculiar Rule. “Quid enim magis indecens aut schismaticum dici poterit, quam doctissimum unius ordinis in alterius Ecclesia idiotam et laicum fieri” (Usher’s Sylloge, p. 77); by which the Bishop of Limerick seems to imply that the ordination of one order of monks was not acknowledged by another. This tendency to cling to a particular Rule was probably amongst the causes which led to the predominance over the Bishop of the Abbot, whose special duty was to preserve strictly the Rule of the Founder. There is no trace of any such narrow prejudice in favour of “the Rule,” as that to which Bishop Gillebert alludes, to be found in the early Gaelic Church.

[354] The arguments of Laisren, Abbot of Lethglin, at the Synod held at that place, are said to have induced the Southern Churches to abandon the Cycle and Tonsure of their predecessors about 629–30. Usher Primord. p. 936. This Laisren has been erroneously confounded with Laistranus, one of the abbots addressed by Pope John about 640. Bed. Eccl. Hist., l. 2, c. 19. Compare Bed. Hist. Eccl., l. 3, c. 26, l. 5, c. 15, 23. Saint Fintan was the opponent of Laisren, and tradition has ascribed to him a singular method of upholding his opinions. He offered three alternatives to Laisren—1. To throw two copies of the old and the new systems into a fire, to test which would remain unburnt. 2. To shut up two monks in a burning house, and submit them to the same ordeal! 3. Or to raise a monk from the dead and abide by his decision. Laisren declined the trial through fear of Fintan’s superior sanctity; and, at any rate, the two monks must have felt relieved by his humility. Cummian, however, appears to have been totally ignorant that any such alternatives were offered to Laisren during the Synod of Lethglin; for he represents the arguments of the principal opponent of the new system (whom he hesitates not to stigmatise as a whited wall) to have been based upon an appeal to the traditions and practice of their forefathers. Usher Brit. Eccl. Antiq., c. 17, p. 485; and Sylloge, p. 33.

[355] In his epistle to Bishop Egbert of York.

[356] The Cowarb was supposed to be the successor of the earliest abbot, or ecclesiastical founder of the monastery; but in process of time he appears rather to have been the representative of the lay founder, or, in other words, of the prince or chieftain who granted the Termon lands to the monastery. Thus most of the Cowarbs of St. Patrick (or Abbots of Armagh) can be traced to one of the various families of Oirgialla, of which race was Daire, who originally granted to St. Patrick the land for founding the monastery (A.F.M., 457); though in the ninth century the Hy Nial made several attempts to obtain the appointment for their own nominees. The whole monastery gradually became filled with “Founder’s kin,” and each leading family appears to have possessed the patronage of the monastery of the district. Nor was this custom confined to the Gaelic Church, for it existed in Wales, Bretagne, Auvergne (vide Goodall’s Preface to Keith), and in many parts of England, where the sons of priests were accustomed to inherit their father’s churches. Vide Ead. Hist. Nov., l. 3, p. 67. Instances still exist of the union of ecclesiastical and temporal power; for the Vladika of Montenegro is invariably the bishop, as well as the prince, of his wild country.

[357] The word Culdee signifies nothing more than clergyman, and it was the general name for the clergy amongst the Gael. The Culdees can be traced in Ireland, just the same as in Scotland, and they were replaced by regular canons in the same manner. The Oratories and Culdees of Armagh are mentioned A.F.M. 919, An. Ult. 920. The Oratories were probably the seven churches, or chapels, which appear to have belonged to all the larger Gaelic monasteries, and the Culdees were the officiating ministers. The Prior and Culdees of Armagh retained many of their privileges down to the Reformation. Culdees were the ministers of York Cathedral, from the date of Oswald’s foundation until after the Conquest; and they probably inherited their privileges from the time of Bishop Aiden. Vide Ware’s Antiquities (Harris), vol. 1, p. 236. The old canons of Durham were exactly in the same position as the Irish or Scottish Culdees. They were the descendants of the bearers of St. Cuthbert’s body during the early Danish wars, inheriting their canonries by right of blood, and claiming to elect the bishop from their own body. In short, the see was in the hands of certain privileged families until the Anglo-Saxon Church beyond the Humber was remodelled after the Conquest. Vide Hist. Dun. (Twysden), l. 2, c. 6; l. 3, c. 6, 18. It is worthy of notice that a Hospital is generally to be found where Culdees can be traced to have existed, and this hospital is generally dedicated to St. Leonard.

[358] The power of the monastery depended very much on that of the chieftain of the district, and varied accordingly. Thus, in early times, Clonmacnois appears to have claimed the tribute of Connaught, though the primacy was eventually transferred to Tuam. Like St. Andrews in Scotland, Armagh had become far the most powerful abbey in Ireland in the twelfth century.

[359] Ailred (Twysden), p. 348. David found three or four, and left nine sees.

[360] Gregory and Cormac, the Bishops of Moray and Dunkeld, attested the Foundation Charter of Scone. At that time St Andrews was vacant.

[361] Myln, Vit. Dunk. Ep., pp. 5–10. Reg. Aberd., vol. i. p. 76, note; vol. ii. p. 58. Reg. Morav., Nos. 46, 47, 48. Keith, Pref. p. 10. According to Fordun, l. viii. ch. 73, Earl Gilbert gave a third of his earldom to Inch Affray, a third to the bishopric of Dunblane, and only retained a third for himself and his heirs; and the same earl is often described as the Founder of the see. In a strict sense this is doubtful, for Dunblane was undoubtedly amongst the nine Sees existing, according to Ailred, at David’s death; and the poverty of the bishopric five years after Gilbert’s death, in 1223, hardly agrees with the supposed donation of a third of his earldom. Inch Affray was the Foundation of Gilbert, upon which he lavished the tithes of his Can, his rents, his fines, and his offerings. Yet that the bishopric was endowed by the earls is a certainty, because in 1442 James II. declared, that the temporalities of the bishopric, hitherto held of the Earl of Strathearn, were henceforth to be held of the Crown. When the Pope granted to the Bishop a fourth of the tithes of the whole diocese for the support of himself, a Dean, and Canons, the Bishop seems to have abandoned “all right of pension out of the lands or churches of the Earl of Menteith,” who was permitted to found a house for Regular Canons at Inch Mahomoc, making over the church of Kippen to found a Canonry in Dunblane Cathedral, and the church of Callander for the Bishop himself. This arrangement wears very much the appearance of a compromise; as if, at the revival of the see, David had assigned the earldoms of Strathearn and Menteith to the bishop as his diocese, neither of the earls, in the first instance, resigning the church-lands in their possession, until the Earl of Menteith waived all claim to the patronage of the See, in return for the permission to found the family Priory of Inch Mahomoc; whilst the bishop waived all further claim upon the earldom of Menteith, in return for the churches of Kippen and Callander. The diocese was thenceforth confined, in point of fact, to the earldom of Strathearn, in which all its temporalities were situated; and in return for the patronage of the see, no longer disputed by the Earls of Menteith, the successors of Gilbert would have no longer had any reluctance to carry out his intentions.—Vide Innes’ Sketches, etc.; Inch Affray, pp. 204 to 219. In earlier times each earl would have placed his bishop in the family establishments of Inch Affray and Inch Mahomoc.

[362] The Seven Churches, for instance, at Clonmacnois and Glendalough, in Ireland. According to Beda, Hist. Eccl., l. 2, cap. 2; the Welsh monastery of Bangor was divided into seven portions, each containing three hundred monks, under a prior (præpositus). This arrangement may have had some connection with the peculiarity of Seven Churches. Seven British bishops are said to have attended the conference at Augustine’s Oak, and seven bishops are said to have preached the Faith in Gaul.—(Hist. Eccl. Franc., l. 1, cap. 28).

[363] This description is taken from the “History of St. Rule,” etc. (Pinkerton’s Dissertation, vol. 2, Ap. No. 7, sec. 3, and Jamieson’s Culdees, Appendix No. 7), written by a contemporary of the kings Alexander and David. Like most tradition it is a singular mixture of truth and error. The Hungus filius Ferlon, and his son Howonan, contemporaries of Constantine the Great, are evidently Angus Mac Fergus, who reigned from 820 to 834, and his son Eoganan, who was killed in 839. The “Devotion to St. Andrew”—(Pinkerton, No. 12)—exemplifies the growth of error in such traditions, for it represents the saint bidding Angus dedicate to the Church the tithes of his possessions.

[364] Such were the Abbots of Dunkeld, ancestors of the royal line of Atholl, and those of Abernethy, ancestors of the family of that name. From the name of the first Earl of Ross, Ferquhard Mac-in-Sagart (the son of the priest), he was probably of a clerical family of this description. The lay Abbots of Brechin witness many charters. The Abbacy of St. Andrews was vested in the king.

[365] This difference between the Irish and Scottish Churches may probably be traced to the time when Nechtan drove the monks of Iona out of his dominions, and transferred the superiority to Abernethy. It was adopted, most likely, from the Anglo-Saxons, amongst whom I cannot trace the advocatus any more than the Herenach amongst the Scottish Gael. The character may have existed amongst both people, but I am not aware of any name for it; nor has any word like Vogt penetrated into either English or Scottish, as it has into the Germanic and Scandinavian languages.

[366] Reg. Prior. St. And., p. 186. Vide also p. 48, and other papal confirmations.

[367] Reg. Prior. St. And., pp. 43–188. The little Abbey of St. Servans belonged to the bishop, as the brotherhood had, on its first establishment, made over their possessions to the bishop, according to the usual Gaelic custom, in return for food and clothing.—Reg. Prior. St. And., p. 113.

[368] Reg. Aberd., vol. 2, p. 264.

[369] Vide Goodall’s Preface to Keith’s Catalogue of Bishops. When David revived the See of Brechin, he merely granted to the Bishop and Culdees the right of holding a Sunday market in their Vill of Brechin. The Church-lands, originally “given to the Lord” by Kenneth II., were probably in the possession of the Cowarbs, long represented by the lay Abbots of Brechin. Leod is the first known member of the family, attesting charters of David, as “Abbas de Brechin,” amongst the laity; and the form of Abbe so often appears after the names of the family, that it has been taken for a surname; though, as the same individuals appear with Abbas or Abbatis appended to their names, it is evidently only a contraction. Morgund appears to have been the last direct heir-male—(Reg. de Brech. Pref., p.v., and No. 1. Reg. Vet. Arbr., No. 1, 70, 72, 73, 74—1, 2, 3). About the opening of the thirteenth century, other clerks appear in the Chapter; and as the charters quoted by Goodall mention “the Prior, Culdees, and others of the Chapter of Brechin,” it is possible that these “others” were the Canons, who now began to share the privileges of the Culdees. The latter disappear towards the close of the reign of Alexander II., and their place is supplied by the ordinary “Dean and Chapter.” Morgund died in the same reign, and the property appears to have passed to Henry, an illegitimate offshoot from the royal family, who transmitted the name of de Brechin to his descendants. In a charter, about the year 1267, his son, William de Brechin, couples with the name of his father Henry that of his mother Juliana. In 1232 Alexander granted certain lands to Gillandrys Mac Leod, to be held by the service of one knight, “saving the rights of the clergy of Brechin, and the annual rent of 10 solidi, due from a portion to the Abbot of Brechin,” together with other lands, to be held per forinsecum servitium, “infra dictum servitium unius militis.” From all this, I think, it is allowable to suppose, that on the death of Morgund the king bestowed Juliana, the heiress of the last Abbot, on his kinsman Henry, with the proviso that the Culdees should be suppressed, or converted into the Chapter, at the same time erecting the lands of Gillandrys, the heir-male, hitherto held of the Abbot and Clergy, into a barony, held by charter of the Crown.—Reg. de Brech., Nos. 2, 3; Innes’ Sketches, etc., p. 156.

[370] Reg. Prior. St. And. p. 318.

[371] Vide Charters in Reg. Prior. St. And., from p. 362 to p. 376. Reg. Aberd., vol. 2, p. 264.

[372] Reg. Morav., No. 260. Vide also Hailes’ Annals, vol. 3, Appendix No. 4. The passage is curious, “Clerici vero uxorati ejusdem regni qui clericalem deferentes tonsuram clericati gaudere solent privilegio, et cum bonis suis sub ecclesiastice protectionis manere presidio ab antiquo, solite immunitatis beneficiis exuuntur et sub nova rediguntur onera servitutis.” As the date of this singular document is 31st May 1251, it must have been issued against Durward and his party, who at that time were in power.

[373] Reg. Prior. St. And., p. xxxv, No. 16, xxxvii, No. 30, 32. Denmylne Charters, No. 19, 39. Amongst the Culdees who were converted into the Provost and Chapter of St. Mary’s was William Wishart, afterwards Bishop of St. Andrews. If Robert Wishart, afterwards Bishop of Glasgow, was also a Culdee—a clericus uxoratus—it may explain the passage in which Hemingburgh throws an aspersion on his morals, “filios etiam episcopi nepotum nomine nuncupatos.” Vide Innes’ Sketches, p. 50, note 4.

[374] The Culdees were excluded from participating in the election of William Wishart in 1272 (Fordun, l. 6, c. 43). Every papal confirmation, however, in the Reg. Prior. St. And. proves that the right of electing the bishop was confined to the Canons Regular of the Priory, the Culdees apparently having first been deprived of their right in the days of Turgot (Twysden, Preface, p. vi.) The expressions of Fordun can, therefore, only be explained on the supposition that they had recovered their original privileges for a short time about this period.

[375] Fordun, l. 6, c. 44. Palgrave’s Documents, etc., cxlvii. cxlix.

[376] Reg. Prior. St. And., p. xxxi.

[377] Chron. St. Crucis, 1153. Boece attributes the rising of Somarled to a famine and pestilence, which the Chronicle places in the following year—the result rather than the cause of the invasion.

[378] Chron. Man, p. 8, 9. An. F. M., 1106. An. Inisfal, 1094. The chronology, though very defective up to this point, is easily rectified. As Olave Godfreyson died in 1152, after a reign of forty years, he must have succeeded in 1112. Lagman, who was king at the time of Magnus Barefoot’s expedition, reigned seven years, which, added to the six years of Sigurd’s rule in the Orkneys, places his death thirteen years after that of his father, which occurred in 1095—or in 1108. The remaining four years are accounted for by Donald’s regency, and the interval before the arrival of Ingemund.

[379] Chron. Man, p. 12, 13. The character of Olave is described in a passage redolent of the spirit of the age:—“Dedit ecclesiis insularum terras et libertates, et erat circa cultum divinum devotus et fervidus, tam Deo quam hominibus acceptabilis, propter quod isti domestico vitio Regum indulgebant.” The privileges of Furness Abbey were confirmed by a Bull of Pope Celestine, quoted in Camd. Brit., p. 1450. Wimund is one of the bishops called into existence by Stubbs, to be consecrated with the apocryphal Michael of Glasgow, by Archbishop Thomas of York, who died in 1114—(Twysden, p. 1713). It is scarcely necessary to point out the discrepancy of this date with the real period of Wimund’s adventures, as detailed by the contemporary Newbridge. Wendover calls Wimund the first Bishop of Man, and he is probably right in a certain sense; for the bishopric seems to have been revived or remodelled, as in the cases of Glasgow and Galloway, when Olave solicited a colony of monks from Furness; and as the Irish Northmen looked upon their bishops as members of the Anglo-Norman rather than of the Irish Church, Olave would naturally turn to the Archbishop of York to consecrate the first bishop of his newly-created diocese, which soon afterwards became dependant upon the Archbishop of Drontheim.

[380] Chron. Man, p. 13–15.

[381] Chron. Man, p. 15, 10.

[382] An. F. M., 1142, 1146, 1160, 1167, 1170, 1171.

[383] Chron. Man, p. 16, 17.

[384] Chron. St. Crucis and Chron. Mel., 1156.

[385] Chron. St. Crucis, 1157. Reg. Dunf., No. 40.

[386] Newbridge, l. 2, c. 4. Hoveden, a confidential servant of the English king, distinctly states that Henry made oath at Carlisle that if he ever ascended the throne of England, he would make over to David and his heirs Newcastle and Northumberland, and allow the kings of Scotland to possess without reserve all the lands between Tyne and Tweed (ad an. 1148–49). Diceto, who had no object in favouring the Scottish claims, says as decidedly that Northumberland had not only been long in the possession of David, but that it had been granted and confirmed to him by charter (ad an. 1173). Newbridge is more guarded, remarking that Malcolm might have brought forward the oath which Henry is said to have sworn—ut dicitur—to David. John of Hexham does not allude to the agreement, for it was probably kept secret, and could hardly have transpired when he closed his history four years later; but he incidentally confirms its existence when he states that the Earl of Chester waived his claim upon Carlisle in favour of David, receiving the Honor of Lancaster in exchange, for which he performed homage to the Scottish king. At this time, then, Carlisle must have been the acknowledged property of David, and the homage of Ranulph in connection with the Honor of Lancaster, the subsequent claim raised by William in 1196 upon the same fief, and the grant of Furness to Wimund, look very much as if Lancashire, or its northern frontier, was also in the hands of David. His authority, however, extended far beyond the Tyne, and the possession of the castles of Carlisle, Bamborough, and Newcastle, goes far to prove that whilst he held all beyond that river in the name of the Empress Queen, he had stipulated that the earldom, which he looked upon as the rightful inheritance of his wife, should be permanently made over to himself and his heirs. Small facts are sometimes significant, and as most of the important meetings between the English and Scottish kings were held near their mutual frontiers, it is worth noticing that though Henry subsequently met Malcolm at Carlisle, the cession of the northern counties was made—at Chester. The possession of the northern counties was a matter of grave importance to both kings, for had they been held hereditarily by the Scottish princes, they would from their local position have undoubtedly become gradually incorporated with the Scottish kingdom. It was naturally the policy of the English kings to throw every obstacle in the way of such a contingency, and in estimating Henry’s conduct on this occasion, it would be the safest course for those who seek to palliate it, to ground their defence on the plea of “expediency.”

[387] Newbridge, l. 2, c. 4. Hoveden 1157. Wendover 1157. Matthew of Westminster, far better informed than any contemporary authority, fabricates an invasion of England in order that Henry may be introduced as “vigorously repulsing” the Scots. This recalls the practice of some of the earlier chroniclers, who invariably raise a rebellion of the Scots at the commencement of every fresh reign, that they may easily and effectually crush the revolt with the same weapon that raised it—the pen. To the fiefs surrendered by Malcolm according to the contemporary authorities, Wendover adds “the whole county of Lothian,” a passage appearing also in Diceto; but I have given my reasons in Appendix L, pt. 2, for regarding it as an interpolation upon the “Imagines Historiarum,” and of no authority in either case. The meaning of a reservation in Malcolm’s homage, “salvis dignitatibus suis,” has occasioned some controversy, and has sometimes been considered equivalent to a reservation of the independence of his kingdom. I should be more inclined to regard the saving clause as applicable to all those points which, at the time of William’s homage to Richard at Canterbury, were left for the decision of four barons of each kingdom, and subsequently confirmed by a charter from the English king. Compare Appendix L, pt. 2.

[388] Hoveden and Chron. Mel. 1158–59. The question was probably about the nature of the homage rendered for Huntingdon, whether liege or simple. Liege homage, which was the tenure by which the English kings held their duchy of Guyenne—as Edward the Third admitted after some demur (Fœd. vol. 2, pt. 2, p. 765, 797, 813)—carried with it the obligation of liege service. The service of Malcolm, and subsequently of William, in the armies of Henry, established the fact that they held Huntingdon by liege homage; and the obligation of service was subsequently evaded by sub-infeoffing the fief, which imposed this duty upon the Vavassor, or tenant of the Holder in Chief.

[389] Hoveden 1160. Wynton, bk. 7, c. 7, l. 199 to 216. Fordun, l. 8, c. 6. The Earls of Fife and Strathearn seem to have been amongst the most influential of the old Gaelic Mormaors, the former always staunch supporters of the reigning family, of which, perhaps, like the Earls of Atholl, they were a branch—for both these earldoms, connected with the monasteries of Dunkeld and St. Andrews, were originally “in the crown;” whilst the latter, who were “Palatines,” exercising the privileges of a Regality within their earldom, and with the patronage at one time of the Bishopric of Dunblane—apparently, like the Ealdormen of Northumbria, “mediatized princes”—will be generally found at this period at the head of the discontented, rather than the disaffected, Scots. Ferquhard never seems to have suffered for his share in this conspiracy. He was either too powerful, or, more probably, not personally disaffected towards the reigning family, but discontented at their innovations. As the earldom of Ross, of which a certain Malcolm was in possession at one period of this reign (Reg. Dunf. No. 43), was granted as part of the dowry of the princess Ada on her marriage with Florence, Count of Holland, in 1162 (Doc. etc. Illust. Hist. Scot., iv. sec. 5, p. 20), it must have been at that date in the crown; and if through forfeiture, the forfeited earl may have been one of the “Mayster Men.” Mr. Skene adds the Earl of Orkney and the Boy of Egremont on the authority of Wynton and the Orkneyinga Saga, but I can find no mention of either. The Saga only says that all the Scots wished to have for their king William Odlingr—the Atheling—son of William Fitz Duncan, alluding most probably to the repeated attempts, in the succeeding reign, of Donald MacWilliam, generally known as “Mac William,” and sometimes called “William” in Ben. Ab. Six years before the conspiracy of Perth, the Boy of Egremont was old enough to witness a charter of Bolton Priory, as son and heir of his mother, Cecilia de Rumeli (Dugd. Mon., vol. 6, p. 203), and as he died in his childhood—he was the hero of the well-known tale of the Strides—he was probably dead before 1160. In the conspiracy of Perth, Mr. Skene sees an attempt of the “Seven Earls” to assert their privileges and choose the son of William Fitz Duncan in the place of Malcolm. These earls and their privileges are as profound a mystery as the conspiracy itself. Vide Appendix S.

[390] Chron. St. Crucis 1160. The names of Fergus and his son, Uchtred, occur amongst the witnesses to the grant of Perdeyc on the 7th July 1136. Reg. Glasg., No. 3, 7. The different relation in which Galloway stood to Scotland in the reigns of David and his successor, is clearly ascertained through its bishopric. Candida Casa was not amongst the sees revived by David, owing its reestablishment apparently to Fergus, Christian, the first bishop of the new see, being consecrated in 1154, when the ceremony was performed by the Archbishop of Rouen at Bermondsey (Chron. St. Crucis 1154). He was claimed as a suffragan of York after the captivity of William, and when excommunicated in 1177 by Cardinal Vivian, legate for Scotland, Ireland, and the Isles, for not attending a council of Scottish bishops, was sheltered by his metropolitan, at that time legate for England; and his successors remained suffragans of York until the fourteenth century. It may be gathered, therefore, that at the date of the revival of the see, Galloway was up to a certain point an independent principality, the Scottish claims to superiority dating from the conquest of Malcolm, the English from the captivity of William—for Gill-aldan, consecrated with other myths by Archbishop Thorstein, is an apocryphal creation of Stubbs (Twysden, p. 1720). The bishopric, which was probably commensurate with the boundaries of the principality, comprised the modern shires of Wigton and Kirkcudbright westward of the Ure, and was bounded by the deaneries of Nith and Carrick, both in the diocese of Glasgow; the former the original seat of the Randolph family, whose first known ancestor was Dungal of Stranith; the latter erected into a separate earldom for Duncan, the grandson of Fergus, on resigning all claim upon his father Gilbert’s share in the province of Galloway.

[391] Hoveden 1163.

[392] Wendover 1163. This is another passage found in the “Imagines,” but not in the “Capitula,” of Diceto. (Vide Appendix L, pt. 2). According to Diceto, the clergy swore fealty to the younger Henry in 1162, and according to the Annales Cambriæ, Rhys of South Wales was in England with Henry in 1164, after the expedition in which Henry reached Pencadair, which is usually placed in 1162. It is singular that Newbridge, the principal authority for the Welsh wars, should not have alluded to the homage at Woodstock. Sir Francis Palgrave, in his “Proofs and Illustrations,” seems to lay some stress on the omission of the saving clause, “salvis dignitatibus,” in the homage said to have been rendered by Malcolm to the younger Henry on this occasion. It was simply a repetition of his original homage, not a fresh act; and as he was in the enjoyment of his “dignities” at this time, where was the necessity of the saving clause?

[393] Hoveden, 1164, p. 283. Wynton, bk. 7, c. 7, l. 307. Chron. Mel. 1164. Fordun, l. 8, c. 6. The Innes Charter was granted at Christmas “post concordiam Regis et Sumerledi” (Reg. Morav. p. 453). Amongst the witnesses was William, Bishop of Moray and papal legate, an office which he held from 1159 till his death in 1162. Between these dates Somerled and Malcolm must have come to terms. Fordun calls the son who was killed with his father Gillecolum. He is nowhere else mentioned, and none of the ancestry of the great western clans traced to him.

[394] Chron. Mel. 1165. Newbridge, l. 2, c. 29. Wynton, bk. 7, c. 9, l. 321, etc. Fordun, l. 8, c. 6, etc. Lord Hailes has ruthlessly destroyed the fable which was founded upon the king’s soubriquet of “the Maiden.” Annals, vol. 1, p. 123.

[395] Fordun, l. 8, c. 6, is the earliest authority who alludes to the supposed transplantation of the Moraymen. Mr. Skene (Highlanders, vol. 2, p. 167) seems to think that the Moraymen took advantage of the conspiracy of Perth to rise under Kenneth Mac Heth, and that Malcolm, after a violent struggle, crushed their rebellion; but I cannot find any notice of such occurrences in the historians of this period. Malcolm’s struggle was in Galloway, and the greater part of Moray, with the exception of the more inaccessible Highland districts, was by this time in the iron grasp of the great feudal proprietors established in the forfeited earldom by David. Kenneth Mac Heth was the companion of Donald Bane, the son of Donald Mac William, when he rose against Alexander the Second in 1215, fifty-five years after the conspiracy of Perth. It is possible that he may have shared in the earlier risings, but it is hardly probable.

[396] Hoveden, 1166, p. 289. Chron. Mel. 1166. “Ob negotia Domini sui,” says the latter authority; in other words, he performed service for Huntingdon. There is no actual allusion to the grant of this fief to William, but it is evident that he possessed it and sub-infeoffed it to his brother David. Newbridge, l. 2, c. 37, speaks of Earl David holding the castle of Huntingdon at the time of William’s capture; and in c. 31 he calls the same prince Earl of Huntingdon. Hoveden and Abbot Benedict, under the year 1184, mention that Henry gave back (reddidit) the fief to William, who granted it (dedit) to his brother. What was given back must have been previously taken away; and William must have been in possession of the fief before his capture. According to Fordun, l. 8, c. 12, 13, he was refused Northumberland; and this refusal Diceto, ad an. 1173, places amongst the causes of the subsequent war.

[397] The Bishop of Hereford, an austere priest, who imagined himself fully qualified for the primacy, remarked with a sneer, in allusion to some of Becket’s antecedents, that the king had wrought a miracle when he converted a man-at-arms into an Archbishop.

[398] Ep. St. T. Cant., l. 1, 44; l. 2, 32, quoted by Lord Lyttleton, Hist. Hen. II., vol. 4, p. 218–20. In 1166 William was at Mont St. Michael (Chron. Robt. de Monte ad an.), and there came with him the Bishop of Man and thirty-one other islands, all of which, adds the chronicler, the king of the Isles holds of the king of Norway by paying ten marks of gold to every new king. No other payment is made during the life of that king, or until the appointment of a successor.

[399] Ben. Ab. and Hoveden 1170.

[400] Hoveden 1173, p. 305. According to Diceto, William demanded Northumberland from the elder Henry, and on being refused, led his army into England. But the account of Hoveden is more likely to be correct. Wendover copied Diceto word for word, with the characteristic omission of the Dean of St. Paul’s words “quæ fuerant regi David, donata, tradita, cartis confirmata.”

[401] Diceto 1173.

[402] Hoveden 1173, p. 307. Newbridge, l. 2, c. 30. Diceto 1173. The latter makes William beg for a truce from the triumphant English nobles; but both the other writers maintain that the proposal first came from the English leaders, on hearing of the arrival of the Earl of Leicester. “Timuerunt valde,” writes Hoveden; “Cum eum (William) callida nostrorum dissimulatione laterent adhuc quæ nuntiabantur,” are the words of Newbridge. In the same chapter that historian speaks of Tweed dividing the kingdoms of England and Scotland—a clear proof that Lothian had not been restored to Henry seventeen years previously.

[403] Newbridge, l. 2, c. 30.

[404] Hoveden, 1174, p. 307.

[405] Newbridge, l. 2, c. 32.

[406] Hoveden 1174, p. 307. Newbridge, l. 2, c. 31, 32.

[407] Ben. Ab. 1174. Hoveden 1174, p. 308. Newbridge, l. 2, c. 32.

[408] I have here followed the account of Abbot Benedict, which appears to have been copied into the chronicle of Croyland Abbey. Compare it with Doc. etc. Illust. Hist. Scot., No. xxiv., p. 79, Benedict expressly says that William dispatched the two Earls and de Moreville from Alnwick “fere cum toto exercitu ... et ibi remansit cum privata familia sua.”

[409] “Nam predicti Duces, cum audissent quod Rex Scotiæ ... misisset exercitum suum ab eo, cum festinacione secuti sunt.” Such are the words of Benedict, which prove that the enterprise of the English leaders was entirely based upon their knowledge of the dispersion of the Scottish army, and their hope of surprising the king whilst he was only surrounded “privata familia sua.” This view of the case must enhance our opinion of their judgment, though somewhat at the expense of the miracle. Robert d’Estoteville, Bernard de Balliol, Ranulph de Glanville, and William de Vesci, were the principal barons in favour of the enterprise.

[410] Some idea might be formed of the rate of progression of a knight in full armour, were it not for the ambiguity of the expression of Newbridge, “ante horam quintam viginti quatuor millia passuum transmearent”—“before five o’clock;” or “under five hours,” as some translate it. But this forced march was looked upon as an almost incredible performance; and if our forefathers required supernatural assistance (tanquam propellente vi aliqua properantes) to accomplish five miles an hour, their ordinary movements must have been leisurely indeed.

[411] Ben. Ab. 1174. Hoveden 1174, p. 308. Newbridge, l. 2, c. 33. The veracious Wendover represents the capture of William as the result of a battle, in which such multitudes of the Scots were slain that it was impossible to number their dead!

[412] Ben. Ab. 1174. Hoveden 1174, p. 308. Newbridge, l. 3, c. 35. Diceto and Chron. Gerv. 1174. (Twysden, p. 577, 1427.) Facts have been a little strained to represent William’s capture as a miracle. All contemporary accounts agree that Henry sailed from Barfleur on Monday the 8th July, landing the same evening at Southampton, and hurrying to Canterbury without delay, where they make him do penance immediately on his arrival, dating it on Friday the 12th, and bring him to London on the Saturday, without accounting for the intermediate days. A journey from Southampton to Canterbury would scarcely require three days’ and nights’ hard riding. Lord Hailes, according to Dr. Lingard, “contradicts the king, and says that one of these events occurred on a Thursday, and the other on a Saturday.” Lingard himself makes Henry spend two days on the passage—a way of accounting for the intermediate days which seems not to have occurred to the earlier authorities—land on the 10th, ride all night, reach Canterbury and do penance on the 11th, and proceed to London on the 12th (Hist. Engl., vol. 2, c. 5); and as William was captured on Saturday the 13th, his own account, singularly enough, bears out the assertion of Lord Hailes, “that Henry was scourged on a Thursday and William made prisoner on a Saturday!” It was quite in accordance with the spirit of the age to regard the capture of William as the reward of Henry’s penance, and it can scarcely be questioned that such was the case in England; whilst the foundation of Arbroath, dedicated to Thomas of Canterbury, seems to attest William’s concurrence in this feeling. The age was ready to accept a miracle and it was framed accordingly.

[413] Hoveden 1174, p. 308. Newbridge, l. 2, c. 34, 37. Diceto improves upon the miracle of William’s capture by adding that on the very same day the Count of Flanders and the younger Henry dismissed the fleet which they had assembled at Gravelines. To make the story still better, Wendover raises a tempest and sinks most of the vessels. As the allies left Gravelines on account of a message from Louis, who had received intelligence of William’s capture (Hoveden), the knowledge of an event in France, on the very day on which it happened in Northumberland, would, in those days, have been undeniably miraculous.

[414] Newbridge, l. 2, c. 38.

[415] Fœdera, vol. 1, pt. 1, p. 30. Though five castles are mentioned in this convention, only three appear to have been given up—Roxburgh, Berwick, and Edinburgh. The latter was given back as the dowry of Ermengarde, and the two others were restored by Richard. As Stirling and Jedburgh are never alluded to, it is to be presumed that, for some cause, they were not claimed by Henry; indeed Newbridge, l. 2, c. 38, writes that only the three other castles were made over to the English king; and Wynton follows him, bk. 7, c. 8, l. 159. The treaty in the Fœdera is dated at Falaise; but a passage in Diceto (to which no allusion is made in the Capitula) states that the Convention took place near Valognes in the Cotentin; and in the version of the treaty given in the same passage, the castles of Roxburgh and Berwick only are mentioned. These were the two castles restored after the death of Henry, and the writer must have been ignorant not only that Stirling, Jedburgh, and Edinburgh, were also amongst the fortresses stipulated to be made over by the Scots, but that the latter was actually given up. This is another proof, I think, that the passages in Diceto, to which no allusion is made in the Capitula, are by another hand. Vide Diceto 1174, p. 584, and Appendix L, pt. 2.

[416] Ben. Ab. 1175.

[417] In 1123–24 Alexander, just before his death, appointed Robert of Scone to the bishopric of St. Andrews, and he appears to have deputed John of Glasgow to maintain the liberties of the Scottish Church at the court of Rome. In 1124–25 John of Crema, the papal legate, was empowered to settle the points in dispute, subject to the final approval of the pope; and in 1128 Archbishop Thorstein consecrated Robert “Sine professione et obbediente pro Dei amore et Regis Scotiæ ... salva querela Eboracensis Ecclesiæ et justitia Ecclesiæ Sancti Andreæ.” Sim. Dun de Gestis, 1124, 1125. Ang. Sac., vol. 2, p. 237, quoted in Hailes’ Annals, vol. 1, p. 76. It is curious to contrast the account of Simeon with that of Stubbs (Twysden, p. 1719). According to the chronicler who wrote two centuries and a half after the events which he describes, Thorstein grounded his claims upon the assertion that the king of Scotland was the liegeman of the king of England; whilst the contemporary Simeon confines the dispute strictly to ecclesiastical points; though the ill success of the English advocates provoked him into writing “Scotti dicebant stulta garrulitate, etc.!”

[418] The letter of the pope to Henry is preserved in Diceto, ad an. 1154, p. 529.

[419] Chron. St. Crucis, 1159, 1162. Chron. Mel. 1161.

[420] Extr. ex Chron. Scot., p. 75. Chron. Mel. 1164. Fordun, l. 8, c. 15. Vide also Hailes’ Annals, vol. 1, p. 120.

[421] Fordun, l. 8, c. 26, makes Gilbert Moray the spokesman of the Scots.

[422] Hoveden 1176, p. 314, gives the fullest account of these occurrences.

[423] Ben. Ab. 1176. Wynton, bk. 7, c. 8, l. 185 to 258.

[424] Reg. Glasg., No. 38.

[425] Hoveden 1188, p. 371. This privilege was confirmed by many subsequent bulls.

[426] The best account of these transactions is given by Abbot Benedict, 1174. He says that Henry made the first overtures through Hoveden. Hoveden himself is very reserved on the subject, makes no allusion to his own mission, and declares that the Galwegian princes solicited the intervention of Henry. Looking at the result of the mission, I think it very probable that there were some reasons for the reserve of Hoveden, and I am inclined to adopt the version of Benedict.

[427] Ben. Ab. 1175. This is another incidental proof of the complete feudal independence of the kingdom of Scotland at all other times; for no rebellion could have been put down without the permission of the English overlord, by whose court the rebels would have been tried; and Malcolm IV. would have had no more right to conquer and annex Galloway to his kingdom, than the Earl Palatine of Chester to conquer and annex Wales to his earldom.

[428] Ben. Ab. 1176. The policy of Gilbert in driving out all “foreigners”—all who had not a “right of blood” to hold land in Galloway—was simply a repetition of the course adopted under Donald Bane and Duncan II. Galloway, in short, was a century behind Scotia.

[429] “On the Sunday which happens in the middle of Lent, the pope was wont to bear in his hand a rose of gold, enamelled red, and perfumed; this he bestowed as a mark of grace.... By the rose Christ was figured, by the gold, his kingly office; by the red colour, his passion; and by the perfume, his resurrection. This is no impertinent Protestant gloss,” adds Lord Hailes, “it is the interpretation given by Alexander III., when he sent the mystical present to Lewis VII., king of France.” Hailes’ Annals, vol. 1, p. 140, note.

[430] The whole account of these transactions will be found—at far greater length than is accorded to matters of far greater importance—in Hoveden, 1180, p. 341–342; 1181, p. 350–351; 1182, p. 351–352; 1183, p. 354; 1186, p. 360–361; 1188, p. 368–369–370. I need hardly add that it will scarcely repay the perusal. The death of Hugh, of malaria, at Rome in 1188, may have been the real cause of the conclusion of the dispute. It was on the occasion of this visit of William to Normandy that Diceto has recorded his astonishment at the unwonted spectacle of a meeting between four kings passing over without a quarrel, “pacificos convenisse, pacificos recessisse!”

[431] Donald filius Willelmi filii Duncani, qui sæpius calumniatus fuerat Regnum Scotiæ, et multitotiens furtivas invasiones in regnum illud fecerat, per mandatum quorundam potentium virorum de Regno Scotiæ, cum copiosa multitudine armata applicuit in Scotia. Ben. Ab. 1181.

[432] Ben. Ab. 1181. Chron. Mel. 1179. Fordun, l. 8, c. 28. The first is supposed to have been Redcastle; the second was in the neighbourhood of Cromarty, commanding the entrance of the Firth, and securing that part of the province which was the seat of the bishopric of Rosmarkinch.

[433] Ben. Ab. 1184. Strictly speaking, Matilda was no longer duchess of Saxony, as her husband, Henry the Lion, had been forfeited five years previously by the Emperor Frederic, who gave his duchy of Saxony to Bernard of Anhalt, son of Albert the Bear, first Margrave of Brandenburg. But Bernard never made good his claims over the Saxons on the Weser, the tenants of the Allodial lands to which Henry had succeeded in right of his mother Gertrude, heiress of the Saxon Emperor Lothaire.

[434] Ben. Ab. 1185. Hoveden 1184, p. 355.

[435] Ben. Ab. 1185.

[436] Ben. Ab. 1185. Fordun, l. 8, c. 39. There is no actual mention made of the residence of Roland at the Scottish court; but his marriage with the daughter of one of William’s firmest adherents, and the favour subsequently shown to him by the king, afford very fair evidence that he was closely connected with Scotland; so that during his exile he most probably resided in the country from which he drew a great part of the army with which he re-established himself in Galloway.

[437] Ben. Ab. 1185. Fordun, l. 8, c. 39. Chron. Mel. 1185. From the latest of Mr. Innes’ interesting contributions to Scottish history it may be gathered that this Gillecolm was probably a certain Gillecolm Mariscall, who “rendered up the king’s castle of Heryn feloniously, and afterwards wickedly and traitorously went over to his mortal enemies, and stood with them against the king, to do him hurt to his power.”—Sketches of Early Scottish History, p. 208.

[438] Ben. Ab. 1186.

[439] Ben. Ab. 1186. Fordun, l. 8, c. 40. Chron. Mel. 1186.

[440] Fordun, l. 8, c. 40, 50.

[441] Ben. Ab. 1186. Chron. Mel. 1186.

[442] Fordun, l. 8, c. 28, 43.

[443] “Et multa incommoda faciebat sæpe Willelmo Regi Scotiæ per consensum et concilium Comitum et Baronum Regni Scotiæ,” are the words of Ben. Ab.

[444] Ad cujus nutum omnium pendebat sententia, Ben. Ab. Roland was not yet Constable of Scotland, so that he was not acting in an official capacity. He succeeded to the hereditary dignity of his wife’s family on the death of his brother-in-law, William de Moreville in 1196. (Chron. Mel.)

[445] Ben. Ab. 1187. Fordun, l. 8, c. 28. Chron. Mel. 1187. I have followed the account of Benedict, which is very full and interesting. The whole of Galloway was made over to Roland immediately after the death of Henry; and as William made this grant at the expense of creating the earldom of Carrick for Duncan, it may well be inferred that the donation of the whole principality to Roland was a reward for his invaluable services. At this period of Scottish history the historian has much cause to regret the loss of “the Roll, in eleven parts, of recognitions and old charters, of the time of William and his son Alexander, and of those to whom the said kings formerly gave their peace, and of those who stood with Mac William.”—(Robertson’s Index, p. xvi.)

[446] Et propter mala quæ fecerat neque luctus neque clamor, sed nec ullus dolor de morte ejus factus est—Ben. Ab. The words of the historian display the indifference with which many at that time looked upon the success or ill fortune of either party.

[447] Ben. Ab. 1188. Hoveden 1188, p. 366. Such, I think, is the purport of what may be gathered from the accounts of these two authorities, who at first sight appear to contradict each other. Hoveden appears to have confined his account to the actual meeting between William and the bishop of Durham; whilst the narrative of Benedict refers rather to the preceding negotiations.

[448] Fœd., vol. 1, pt. 1, p. 48. William does not appear to have been implicated. He had probably suffered enough already.

[449] Hoveden 1189, p. 374–77.

[450] Ben. Ab. 1189. Hoveden 1189, p. 377. Fœd., vol. 1, pt. 1, p. 50.

[451] Chron. Mel. 1193. Hoveden 1190, p. 387; 1194, p. 418. The 2000 marks were, probably, the usual feudal aid towards ransoming the superior of his fiefs in England.

[452] Hoveden 1194, p. 419. Fœdera, vol. 1, pt. 1, p. 62.

[453] Hoveden 1194, p. 420.

[454] Hoveden 1195, p. 430. Fordun, l. 8, c. 56, alludes to the occurrences at Clackmannan, but he confounds the princess Margaret with one of William’s illegitimate daughters of the same name who was married to Eustace de Vesci. Margaret afterwards married Hubert de Burgh, and Otho subsequently became emperor as Otho IV. His nephew Otho was the first duke of Brunswick and Luneburg.

[455] Hoveden 1196, p. 432.

[456] Heimsk. vol. 3, Saga xi., c. 12; Saga xii., c. 2. Antiq. Celt.-Scand., p. 239.

[457] Torf. Orc., l. 1, c. 18. It would be difficult to say who canonized Magnus. Pope Alexander III. placed canonization “inter majores causas.” Before his time any metropolitan might make a saint.

[458] The lands of Dingwall and Ferncrosky in Sutherland were granted in 1308 to the earl of Ross. Act Parl. Scot., vol. 1, p. 117.

[459] Torf. Orc., l. 1, c. 19. Antiq. Celt.-Scand., p. 250, 254.

[460] Torf. Orc., l. 1, c. 20, 21. She must have been an ancient lady, for Ronald the Second died before Thorfin!

[461] Torf. Orc., l. 1, c. 21, 22, 24, 25. Antiq. Celt.-Scand., p. 254–55.

[462] Torf. Orc., l. 1, c. 21, 22, 24, 25. A mark for every plough-gang is said to have been the amount of the contribution.

[463] Antiq. Celt.-Scand., p. 256–57.

[464] He is called Bishop John. The only Bishop John at that time was the Bishop of Glasgow.

[465] So, in 1308, during the minority of the Earls of Fife, Menteith, Mar, Buchan, and Caithness, the “Communitates Comitatum” represented the earldoms. Act. Parl. Scot., vol. 1, p. 99. In fact, in a certain state of society, when the power of the crown, though acknowledged, was comparatively feeble, the community had still practically a voice in the appointment of their Senior, and the heir could not hold his ground without, on the one hand, their consent, and on the other, the confirmation, of the crown. Such was the case at this period in the north and west of Scotland; and a similar state of affairs is more or less traceable in Saxon Northumbria, and apparently in the Danelage, before the Conquest.

[466] Antiq. Celt.-Scand., 257–89. The dates of these occurrences are easily ascertained. Harald Mac Madach died in 1206 (Chron. Mel.) For twenty years he ruled the Orkneys in conjunction with Ronald, whom he survived for forty-eight years. He was five years of age when he received the title of earl; and as he reached the Orkneys in the year after the expedition of Bishop John, Ronald must have held the earldom at that time for three years. (Vide Flatey Book in Col. de Reb. Alb., p. 354.) Harald was therefore born in 1133, and succeeded to his share in the earldom in 1138. Ronald must have ruled from 1135 to 1158.

[467] Heimsk. Saga xiv. c. 17. Antiq. Celt.-Scand., p. 264–65.

[468] Heimsk. Saga xiv. c. 20. Antiq. Celt.-Scand., p. 267. Marks “in gold” i.e. paid according to the value of gold, on account of the depreciation of the silver currency.

[469] Wilson’s Archæology, etc., of Scotland, p. 429. Torf. Orc., l. 1, c. 32.

[470] Torf. Orc., l. 1, c. 33.

[471] Torf. Orc., l. 1, c. 36.

[472] Antiq. Celt.-Scand. p. 261.

[473] Torf. Orc., l. 1, c. 34 to 37. Sweyne eventually lost his life in an attempt to restore Asgal Mac Ragnal to Dublin, on which occasion his desperate courage earned the respect of his opponents, the English invaders. A. F. M. 1171, where he is called Eoan, or John. A comparison of the coasts of Norway and Denmark with the western coasts of Scotland will at once point out the reason of that similarity which long existed between the respective inhabitants in their manners of life. Local circumstances have far more influence in forming the character of primitive, or semi-barbarous nations, than any fancied peculiarity of race. Like the coasts of Norway and the isles of Scotland, the eastern shores of the Adriatic and the Archipelago seem to have been formed by nature for the haunts of pirates.

[474] Hoveden 1196, p. 436. Fordun, l. 8, c. 59. According to Torfæus (Orc., l. i., c. 38), Harald’s first wife, Afreca, was dead before his second marriage with “the Earl of Moray’s daughter,” by whom he had his sons, Thorfin, David, and John.

[475] Chron. Mel. 1197. Fordun, l. 8, c. 59. This battle must have occurred in 1196, for as Thorfin was given up as a hostage for his father at the close of that year, he could not have fought against the royal forces in the following year.

[476] Hoveden 1196, p. 436.

[477] “Quod si tradidissem eos vobis non evaderent manus vestras,” means, I suppose, a discreet insinuation that the king intended to consign “his enemies” either to immediate execution or to a hopeless captivity. When he said that Thorfin was his only heir, either the earl was deceiving the king, or his sons, John, David, and Henry, were by the second marriage. The port of Lochloy was a spot not far from Nairn, now covered by the sea.

[478] Hoveden 1196, p. 436.

[479] Hoveden 1196, p. 346. He calls the king of Man, Reginald, son of Somarled. Reginald, the son of Godfrey, was at that time king of Man; and the son of Somarled was hardly more than a subordinate king of the Sudreys, as he had been defeated in a contest for superiority by his brother Angus in 1192 (Chron. Man). An account of some of these transactions is also contained in the Flatey Book (Col. de Reb. Alb., p. 351–54), but it is confused. For instance, after beginning with the death of Harald the younger, the book makes the elder Harald yield Caithness to Harald the younger after the expedition of William to Eystein’s Dal. The account of this expedition must therefore have been misplaced; and it probably ought to be referred to the time of William’s first invasion of Caithness. Some idea may be formed of the formidable power of these northern magnates from the fact that Harald collected 6000 men to oppose William; whose army when he invaded England in 1174, only appears to have numbered 8000.

[480] “His tongue was cut out, and a knife stuck into his eyes. The bishop invoked the Virgin Saint Trodlheima during his torments. Then he went up a hill, and a woman brought him to the place where St. Trodlheima rests. There the bishop got recovery both of his speech and sight”—Flatey Book. Ignorant of the merits of the Virgin Saint, Fordun only says, “Usus linguæ et alterius occulorum in aliquo sibi remansit.” A certain Dr. John Stackbolle profited by a similar miracle in Ireland, he having recovered his sight and speech before the altar of our Lady of Novan, after his tongue had been cut out, and his eyes torn out, by order of Sir Thomas Bathe. (Statute of Kilkenny, p. 25, note U; in Tracts relating to Ireland, I.A.S., vol. 2.)

[481] Fordun, l. 8, c. 59–62. Flatey Book, Col. de Reb. Alb., p. 351–54.

[482] Chron. Mel. 1198, 1201, 1205.

[483] Hoveden 1199, p. 450–51.

[484] Hoveden 1199, p. 451.

[485] Hoveden 1199, p. 453.

[486] Hoveden 1200, p. 454, 461. From the distinguished deputation which John dispatched to William when the king of Scotland came to Lincoln, it is not improbable that one of the reasons why William had hitherto refused to meet John was a reluctance on the part of the latter to carry out Richard’s Charter of Privileges. In the Introduction to Robertson’s Index, p. xii., No. 3, is the following entry:—“Charta Johannis Regis Angliæ, missa Willielmo Regi Scotiæ de tractatu maritagii inter Regem Franciæ et filiam Willielmi Regis Scotiæ.” There is some mistake here (probably an error of a copyist), for Philip Augustus was never in a condition during the reign of John to marry one of William’s daughters. But if the tractatus maritagii alludes to the proposed betrothal of Alexander to a French princess, the charter may have been a confirmation by John of Richard’s Charter of Privileges, dispatched in haste with the deputation to bring about a reconciliation with William, and to break off the proposed alliance with France.

[487] Hoveden 1200, p. 461. William swore upon the archbishop’s cross, because there was no “sacred book” at hand, says the Bridlington Chronicle in Documents, etc., relating to Hist. Scot., No. xxi., sec. 35, p. 66. The decision of the question about the counties was again put off till the following Michaelmas, and it is difficult to say whether it was ever again raised during the reign of William, as after the conclusion of Hoveden’s work, no other chronicler alludes to the subject. Wendover succeeds to Hoveden, whose loss is great for the historian of Scotland; as the manner in which Wendover supplies his place can be appreciated from the description of the meeting at Lincoln, in which the latter, after copying the account of his predecessor, characteristically omits the reservation, “Salvo jure suo!” The want of a northern chronicler is very much felt, as it will be generally found that the monastic writers are most accurate in their narration of events that occurred in their own neighbourhood. From exalting Brompton, who wrote at the close of the fourteenth century, to the position of a contemporary writer, and from some other similar oversights, Dr. Lingard’s version of these transactions is singularly inaccurate. Vide Appendix L, pt. 2.

[488] Fordun, l. 8, c. 64. He places these occurrences in 1203; but as he describes the capture of Falaise and other places at the same time—and they were taken in 1204—and as John only reached England on 6th December 1203, I have placed them under 1204. William was frequently in England after this meeting at Norham. £10 were paid for his expenses in 1206; £15 when he was at York on 20th June, and £30 when he was at the same place on 16th August 1207. In July 1205 John wrote to William, thanking him for the favourable answer which he had received on the subject of their negotiations, and alluding to the lands of Tynedale, of which William was seized, and of which no mention had been made in their convention. Rot Claus., p. 43 b., 86, 90 b. These lands in Tynedale appear to have been held by simple homage. Vide Doc. etc. Illust. Hist. Scot. Introd., p. vii.

[489] Fordun, l. 8, c. 66–67.

[490] Trivet 1209, and the Bridlington Chronicle (in Documents, etc., relating to Hist. Scot., No. xxi., sec. 26, p. 66) state that William was going to marry one of his daughters to the Count of Boulogne. Hemingburgh, vol. 1, p. 242, affirms that the princess was to have been united to the Count of Flanders. Ida, who brought the earldom of Boulogne to her husband, Reginald de Dammartin, and whose heiress, Mahout, was married to Prince Philip of France, was married about 1191, and survived till 1216. There was no Count of Flanders in 1209. Baldwin of Hainault, who ascended the imperial throne of Constantinople in 1204, and was slain in the following year, left by Margaret his wife, who brought him the earldom of Flanders, two daughters, who became the wards of Philip Augustus. By that king the eldest, Jane, was given to Ferrand of Portugal in 1211, who in her right became Count of Flanders and Hainault. It is very clear, then, that William could not have been negotiating a marriage for one of his daughters with either a Count of Boulogne, or of Flanders, at that period; and if any negotiation on such a subject had been set on foot, it must have been respecting an alliance between the prince of Scotland and the heiress of Flanders and Hainault. Such a project would have suited well with the endeavours of Philip to enlist allies against John, and it would undoubtedly have brought the latter king in all haste to the northern frontier.

[491] Chron. Mel. 1209. Fordun, l. 8, c. 69. Some of the sentences in the Melrose Chronicle would almost appear to have been transposed. Their general sense seems to be that “John marched to Norham and summoned William to meet him at Newcastle. Thither went William, and both in going and returning, defrayed his own expenses at Alnwick, etc.”—the latter observation referring to an infringement of the Charter of Privileges, a sure sign of a want of cordiality between the kings, which was not restored until William recovered the “Benevolentia domini nostri.”

[492] Fifteen hundred English knights and their retainers, 7000 crossbowmen and Branchii (?), 13,000 Welshmen, and an overwhelming force of all arms.

[493] Fordun, l. 8, c. 70.

[494] These hostages were the sons of the Earl of Winchester, of William de Vetere Ponto, of William de Vallibus, of Philip de Mowbray, of Gervase Avenel, of David Lindsay, of Gilbert Earl of Strathearn, of Lawrence Abernethy, of Thomas of Galloway, of Earl Patrick of Dunbar, and of William Comyn, with the brothers of Robert de Bruce, and of Walter Clifford, and a daughter of Alan of Galloway, who died in England.—Rot. Claus., p. 137 b. They were given “et pro hac pecunia et ad prædictos terminos reddendâ, et pro eisdem terminis fideliter tenendis.” An attempt is sometimes made to include the princesses amongst the hostages. This is contradicted, both by the words of William, “exceptis duabus filiabus nostris quas ei liberavimus,” and by the omission of their names in the Close Rolls. These hostages were given as “security” for the money—warranters—and returned of course when the debt was acquitted. The princesses were given up to be married, and remained in England long after the death of John.

[495] Chron. Mel. 1209. Fordun, l. 8, c. 71. Fœdera, vol. 1, pt. 1, p. 103. Robertson’s Index Introd., p. xx. Neg. tang. Ang. No. 3. Such is the account of these transactions preserved in the Scottish authorities, and the correctness of their dates is confirmed by the Fœdera and the Patent Rolls. Wendover is decidedly wrong in referring the whole transaction to one meeting only, and in placing the treaty, etc., before 28th June. The Bridlington Chronicle states that John built a castle at Berwick (i.e., Tweedmouth) in June, and that the kings came to terms in August (Documents, etc., xxi., sec. 26–27), Hemingburgh asserts that John at first demanded Alexander as a hostage for his father, the “plura et inaudita” perhaps of Fordun. In spite of the attempt of Fordun to represent the peace as the result of the interference of the principal men of both countries, it was evidently brought about through William’s aversion to war. The message that excited the wrath of John was dictated in the Council of Stirling; the envoys to deprecate his indignation were dispatched by William; and the Melrose chronicler concludes his account with the significant sentence, “It was done against the wishes of the Scots.” The extreme secrecy about the tenor of these “mutual charters” is worthy of remark. The Scots always maintained that one of the princesses was to have married the heir of the English crown, and Alexander II. afterwards obtained a grant of lands in satisfaction for his claims upon the northern counties, and for the alleged infringement of the terms of this arrangement (Fœd., vol. 1, pt. 1, p. 233). In the Patent Rolls (An. 21, Hen. III.) there is the following remark on this latter treaty, “Inter cœtera apparet quod concordia fuit quod Rex Angliæ duceret Marger’ sororem dicti Regis Scotiæ, quod modo relaxatum fuit ac al’.” All this tells for the Scottish account. On the other hand, when Hubert de Burgh was charged with preventing this marriage—in consideration of which William had agreed to waive his claims on the northern counties—the Earl of Kent replied that he knew of no such agreement, and appealed to the letters of Pandulf and others to prove that his own marriage with the princess Margaret was brought about with the full knowledge and consent of the English magnates (Mat. Par. Addit. p. 99); and the Rot. Pat. ad an. 4 Hen. III., mention an arrangement at York before Pandulf, in which it was agreed that the sisters of Alexander should be married “infra Regnum Angliæ ad honorem suum.” Hubert’s statement, however, only had reference to a guarded defence of his own conduct, and throws no light upon the events of John’s reign. It is very probable that John retained the princesses at his court for the purpose of marrying them to his own sons if anything happened to the sole male heir of Scotland; and that may have been the reason why they remained unmarried until after his death. It is not to be supposed that Hubert de Burgh overlooked the proximity of Margaret to the Scottish throne when he married her, and it must be acknowledged that his interpretation of the secret treaties, if he was really aware of their existence, was very much to his own advantage. The wording of the letter of William in the Fœdera contradicts the supposition that the payment of 15,000 marks “pro benevolentia domini nostri habendâ, et pro conventionibus tenendis,” etc., was a simple fine imposed by John on the Scottish king.

[496] Robertson’s Index Introd. xx. Negot. tang. Ang., Nos. 7, 36, 40. Fordun, l. 8, c. 72. One of the Melrose charters (No. 168) proves the date of this homage of Alexander, and a fragment in the Documents, No. xl., sec. 19, p. 136, states that the homage was performed “pro omnibus rectitudinibus pro quibus pater suus fecerat homagium Henrico Regi patri ejusdem Johannis.” Libertates et rectitudines—privileges and rights—are the words in Richard’s Charter of Privileges to William. As half the money—one year’s payment—was remitted, and the whole sum was to have been paid off in two years, it is allowable to infer that one year after the treaty, i.e., in 1210, John must have waived his claim to the payment of the remainder.

[497] Chron. Mel. 1210. Fœd., vol. 1, pt. 1, p. 120.

[498] Chron. Mel. 1211. Fordun, l. 8, c. 76. The Thanes of Ross invited him over, says Fordun.

[499] Fordun, l. 8, c. 72. The “Mons in ea diruens” of Fordun was evidently the old Rath-inver-Amon. Boece drowns a youthful prince John and his nurse—very apocryphal characters—and rebuilds Perth upon its present site.

[500] These castella appear to have been built of wood, as one was burnt in the following year.

[501] Fordun, l. 8, c. 76.

[502] Fordun, l. 8, c. 76.

[503] Fordun, l. 8, c. 76. Walter of Coventry, ad an. 1212. The words of this writer are, “Scotorum Rex Willelmus jam ætatis provectæ, cum interioris regni sui partes seditione turbatas pacificare non posset, ad Anglorum Regem confugiens, se et regnum filiumque quem unicum habibat, ejus commisit provisioni. At ille, cingulo militari commendatum sibi adolescentem donans, in partes illas cum exercitu proficiscens, dimissis per interiora regni suis Guthredum cognomento Mac William, seditionis ducem, cepit et patibulo suspendit. Erat hic de Scotorum Regum antiquâ prosapiâ, qui Scotorum et Hibernensium fretus auxilio, longas contra modernos Reges, sicut et pater suus Duvenaldus, nunc clàm nunc palàm exercuit inimicitias. Moderniores enim Scotorum Reges magis se Francos fatentur, sicut genere, ita moribus, linguâ, cultu; Scotisque ad extremam servitutem redactis, solos Francos in familiaritatem et obsequium adhibent.” This account, as is so often the case, contains a mixture of truth and error. The flight of William to John, and John’s campaign in the Highlands of Scotland during the summer of 1212 (for Godfrey was given up at that time), are apocryphal, for he was at that time engaged in his expedition against the Welsh, from which he returned so suddenly, through fear of treachery. He may have assisted William—perhaps with some of his foreign Reiters—though he was hardly in a condition at that time to yield much assistance to any one. The distinction between the “ancient and modern kings” of Scotland is also imaginary, for William and his rivals were cousins, equally claiming to represent the race of Malcolm Ceanmore; though the assertion that their kings were “Normans, not Scots,” is exactly what the disaffected subjects of the reigning family would have urged against them. Even the last sentence is only partially true, for out of the leaders employed in this very war, the Earls of Fife and Atholl, and Malcolm, son of Morgund of Mar, were of native Scottish origin; the Earl of Buchan owed his earldom to his wife, the heiress of a native earl; and Thomas the Durward was also apparently of a Scottish rather than of a foreign family. In fact, the feudalized upper classes of Scotia and the lowlands of Moray, were at this time looked upon as “Normans;” the mountaineers who clung to “ancient custom,” as the real Scots; their position being reversed a few generations later, when the former claimed to be “Scots,” regarding the latter as “Erse” or Irish. There is much truth, however, in this passage, though it must be taken cum grano.

[504] Fordun, l. 8, c. 77. Chron. Mel. 1212. Wendover 1212 (vol. 3, p. 238). Fœdera, vol. 1, pt. 1, p. 104. “Ubi voluerit ad fidem ipsius domini Regis, ita quod non disparagetur,” are the words. The result of this treaty relieved John from any fears lest Alexander should contract any alliance with his enemies. The “liege homage” rendered by William and his son to the prince Henry, was upon the same principle as he and his brother David, and, at an earlier period, Malcolm had performed homage to the eldest son of Henry the Second. Had this homage been rendered—as some seem to suppose—for the kingdom of Scotland, it is almost needless to observe that such a stipulation would have been carefully entered in the treaty, and the Scottish barons would have been summoned to attend the councils of the English king—as in the latter part of Henry’s reign—and to aid him in his wars.

[505] Fordun, l. 8, c. 76.

[506] If the story told by Hemingburgh is true (ad an. 1215, vol. 1, p. 247)—that John’s anger against Eustace de Vesci was occasioned by the rejection of his suit by that baron’s beautiful wife—William may have acquired his knowledge of the disaffection of the English nobles through that very lady, who was his own natural daughter Margaret.

[507] Fordun, l. 8, c. 78. He is the only writer who notices these transactions, but his account is strongly borne out by a letter in the Fœdera, vol. 1, pt. 1, p. 108, to the emperor Otho, dated at Bamborough 28th January 1213, in which John writes that he has been detained in the north by arrangements for the security of that part of his kingdom. It is clear, therefore, that he was upon the northern frontier in the early part of that year; and his abortive negotiations with the Scottish king might have easily escaped the notice of the English chroniclers amidst the important events that occurred so soon afterwards. From the commencement of the thirteenth century the authority of Fordun is of far greater weight than before, and I have found his statements frequently corroborated by the Fœdera and the Rolls. In the latter part of William’s reign can be traced the elements of those parties which appear in the subsequent reigns (but more especially in that of Alexander the Third) as the English and Scottish factions.

[508] Flatey Book in Col. de Reb. Alb., p. 354.

[509] Chron. Mel. 1214. Fordun, l. 8, c. 79. The latter historian alludes to an old tradition that Stirling was once the spot where the territories of the Scots (i.e., Picts) marched with those of the Britons.

[510] Newbridge, l. 2, c. 19. As he concluded his history in 1195, the later years of William must refer to Richard’s reign. The influence of good Queen Margaret appears to have died out in the days of her great-grandchildren, and it is to this probably that the historian alludes, insinuating that it arose through the fault of their mother, Ada de Warenne. William left several illegitimate children. His sons were Robert de Lundoniis and Henry Gellatly, of whom little or nothing is known. His daughters were—1. Isabella, married in 1183 to Robert de Bruce, and in 1191 to Robert de Ros. 2. Ada, married in 1184 to Earl Patrick of Dunbar. 3. Margaret, married in 1192 to Eustace de Vesci; and 4. Aufrida, married to William de Say. Vide Hailes’ Annals, vol. 1, p. 156.

[511] The passage occurs in the “Instructio Principis” of Girald. Camb. “Distinctio prima;” but I quote it from “Innes’s Sketches,” etc., p. 144, note 2. Giraldus probably wrote feelingly, for though twice elected to the see of St. Davids, the choice of the Chapter was not confirmed. Right or wrong, the Scottish sovereigns seem to have persevered in William’s policy, and when Robert Bruce conferred the earldom of Moray upon Randolph “in libero comitatu et in liberâ regalitate,” the church patronage was expressly reserved. Reg. Morav. No. 264.

[512] Innes’s Appendix, No. 1, sec. 3. Wynton (Macpherson), note to bk. 7, c. 8, l. 20.

[513] Assize Will., 9, 29, 15, 8, 22, 23, 37, 38, 42. Assize David, 26, 27, 28. The right of the heir to inherit, in spite of the felony of his ancestor or kinsman, will be found in the old Germanic laws as well as in the Gavelkind tenure, which was originally allodial.

[514] Assize Will. 12. Assize David 12. In David’s time it was frequently “the royal judge” who sat in the lesser courts. The sheriffdom was not universally established, at any rate, before the close of his reign. From the wording of his enactment, “prepositus vel ballivus ville,” it would appear that before his reign every “lord of a vill,” in other words, every “lord of the manor,”—or his equivalent—had the power of life and death.

[515] Assize Will. 20. Hoveden 1197 (p. 440). His words are, “Eodem anno Willielmus rex Scottorum de bono sumens exemplum, fecit homines regni sui jurare quod pacem pro posse suo servarent, et quod nec latrones, nec robatores, nec utlagi nec receptatores eorum essent, nec in aliquo eis consentirent, et quod cum hujusmodi malefactores scire potuerint, illos pro posse suo caperent et destruerent,” exactly tallying with the regulations of the Council of Perth. From the expression de bono sumens exemplum, it would appear that he followed some English example.

[516] Assize Will. 25, 19. Assize David 25. In the reign of David all the greater magnates attended in person the royal Moots, held every forty days, which in William’s reign probably became Sheriffs’ Moots. The expression “all who have the freedom and custom of an earl,” occurs Assize David 16.

[517] Vide the earlier charters in the Registers of Moray, Aberdeen, and Glasgow, particularly Reg. Morav. No. 5. Glas. 13, 70.

[518] Vide chap. 10, p. 352, 357, notes. Chron. Lanerc. 1213.

[519] Assize Will. 40.

[520] Robertson’s Index Introd. p. xx. Neg. tang. Angl. No. 4. Scone was probably the port to which foreign traders brought their wares in the days of Malcolm and Margaret. A very full and interesting account of the Scotch Burghs will be found in “Innes’s Sketches, etc.,” c. 5.

Transcriber’s Notes:
1. Obvious printers’, punctuation and spelling errors have been corrected silently.
2. Where hyphenation is in doubt, it has been retained as in the original.
3. Some hyphenated and non-hyphenated versions of the same words have been retained as in the original.
4. New partial original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.