We learn from Madox [q], that this king gave, at one time, one hundred
shillings to master Henry, his poet: also the same year he orders this
poet ten pounds.
[FN [q] Page 268.]
It appears from Selden, that, in the forty-seventh of his reign, a hundred and fifty temporal, and fifty spiritual barons were summoned to perform the service due by their tenures [r]. In the thirty-fifth of the subsequent reign, eighty-six temporal barons, twenty bishops, and forty-eight abbots, were summoned to a Parliament convened at Carlisle . [FN [r] Titles of Honour, part ii. Chap. 3. Parl. Hist. vol. i. p. 151.]
NOTES.
NOTE [A]
This question has been disputed with as great zeal and even acrimony, between the Scotch and Irish antiquaries, as if the honour of their respective countries were the most deeply concerned in the decision. We shall not enter into any detail on so uninteresting a subject, but shall propose our opinion in a few words. It appears more than probable, from the similitude of language and manners, that Britain either was originally peopled, or was subdued, by the migration of inhabitants from Gaul, and Ireland from Britain: the position of the several countries is an additional reason that favours this conclusion. It appears also probable, that the migration of that colony of Gauls or Celts, who peopled or subdued Ireland, was originally made from the north-west parts of Britain; and this conjecture (if it do not merit a higher name) is founded both on the Irish language, which is a very different dialect from the Welsh, and from the language anciently spoken in South Britain; and on the vicinity of Lancashire, Cumberland, Galloway, and Argyleshire, to that island. These events, as they passed long before the age of history and records, must be known by reasoning alone, which in this case seems to be pretty satisfactory: Caesar and Tacitus, not to mention a multitude of other Greek and Roman authors, were guided by like inferences. But besides these primitive facts, which lie in a very remote antiquity, it is a matter of positive and undoubted testimony, that the Roman province of Britain, during the time of the lower empire, was much infested by bands of robbers or pirates, whom the provincial Britons called Scots or Scuits; a name which was probably used as a term of reproach, and which these banditti themselves did not acknowledge or assume. We may infer from two passages in Claudian, and from one in Orosius, and another in Isidore, that the chief seat of these Scots was in Ireland. That some part of the Irish freebooters migrated back to the north-west parts of Britain, whence their ancestors had probably been derived in a more remote age, is positively asserted by Bede, and implied in Gildas. I grant that neither Bede nor Gildas are Caesars or Tacituses; but such as they are, they remain the sole testimony on the subject, and therefore must be relied on for want of better: happily, the frivolousness of the question corresponds to the weakness of the authorities. Not to mention, that if any part of the traditional history of a barbarous people can be relied on, it is the genealogy of nations, and even sometimes that of families. It is in vain to argue against these facts from the supposed warlike disposition of the Highlanders, and unwarlike of the ancient Irish. Those arguments are still much weaker than the authorities. Nations change very quickly in these particulars. The Britons were unable to resist the Picts and Scots, and invited over the Saxons for their defence, who repelled those invaders: yet the same Britons valiantly resisted for one hundred and fifty years, not only this victorious band of Saxons, but infinite numbers more, who poured in upon them from all quarters. Robert Bruce, in 1322, made a peace, in which England, after many defeats, was constrained to acknowledge the independence of his country: yet in no more distant period than ten years after, Scotland was totally subdued by a small handful of English, led by a few private noblemen. All history is full of such events. The Irish Scots, in the course of two or three centuries, might find time and opportunities sufficient to settle in North Britain, though we can neither assign the period nor causes of that revolution. Their barbarous manner of life rendered them much fitter than the Romans for subduing these mountaineers. And, in a word, it is clear from the language of the two countries, that the Highlanders and the Irish are the same people, and that the one are a colony from the other. We have positive evidence which, though from neutral persons, is not perhaps the best that may be wished for, that the former, in the third or fourth century, sprang from the latter: we have no evidence at all that the latter sprang from the former. I shall add, that the name of Erse or Irish given by the low-country Scotch to the language of the Scotch Highlanders, is a certain proof of the traditional opinion delivered from father to son, that the latter people came originally from Ireland.
NOTE [B]
There is a seeming contradiction in ancient historians with regard to some circumstances in the story of Edwy and Elgiva. It is agreed that this prince had a violent passion for his second or third cousin, Elgiva, whom he married, though within the degrees prohibited by the canons. It is also agreed, that he was dragged from a lady on the day of his coronation, and that the lady was afterwards treated with the singular barbarity above mentioned. The only difference is, that Osberne and some others call her his strumpet, not his wife, as she is said to be by Malmesbury. But this difference is easily reconciled; for if Edwy married her contrary to the canons, the monks would be sure to deny her to be his wife, and would insist that she could be nothing but his strumpet; to that, on the whole, we may esteem this representation of the matter as certain, at least, as by far the most probable. If Edwy had only kept a mistress, it is well known that there are methods of accommodation with the church, which would have prevented the clergy from proceeding to such extremities against him: but his marriage contrary to the canons, was an insult on their authority, and called for their highest resentment.
NOTE [C]
Many of the English historians make Edgar's ships amount to an extravagant number, to three thousand, or three thousand six hundred: see Hoveden, p. 426. Flor. Wigorn. p. 607. Abbas Rieval. p. 360. Brompton, p. 869, says, that Edgar had four thousand vessels. How can these accounts be reconciled to probability, and to the state of the navy in the time of Alfred? W. Thorne makes the whole number amount only to three hundred, which is more probable. The fleet of Ethelred, Edgar's son, must have been short of one thousand ships; yet the Saxon Chronicle, p. 137, says, it was the greatest navy that ever had been seen in England.