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

by Eben William Robertson

A. D. 937.

At the head of the confederacy which was now combining to wrest Northumbria from the grasp of Athelstan, were Constantine and the two Olaves, the great-grandsons of the Danish Ivar, one of whom, the son of Sitric, was the son-in-law of the Scottish king, and the other, the son of Godfrey, had succeeded his father three years previously in the government of the Irish Norsemen.[72] A British prince, to whom the Saga gives the name of Adills, a chieftain probably of the northern Welsh, together with Yring, a Norseman from his name, though described by the same authority as also of British race, joined the ranks of Athelstan’s opponents, and Eogan, the son of the Scottish Donald, in obedience to his allegiance to his kinsman and chief, led his followers from the vale of Clyde to swell the numbers of the allies. To aid in opposing this formidable array, Athelstan had invoked the assistance of the Vikings, and the pagan rovers of the German Ocean now marched side by side in the English host with the Angles of Mercia, the Saxons of Wessex, and the Christian descendants of Guthrum’s Danes. The advantage at first leant to the side of the invaders, for in spite of his preparations for the impending contest, Athelstan appears to have been partly taken by surprise. Alfgar and Godric, his lieutenants in Northumbria, were either driven from the field or slain, and the English king was reduced to negociate with the enemy in order to gain time for the union of his whole force. The negociations were quickly broken off when the required end was attained, and after the failure of a night attack, skilfully planned by Olave Sitricson, who is said to have visited the camp of Athelstan in the disguise of a wandering harper, the rival armies met upon the long-forgotten site of Brunanburgh. The victors alone have described that celebrated battle; and whilst the Saga, forgetful alike of the English and Scottish kings, awards the palm to the Norsemen in the pay of Athelstan, the ancient ballad in the Saxon Chronicle extols the deeds of the native warriors, and renders full justice to the valour of Constantine and Olave. Five kings and seven Jarls, a son of Constantine, and two brothers of Athelstan, were left amongst the slain upon the field of Brunanburgh; and whilst the baffled survivors of the Irish Norsemen returned in their galleys to Dublin, and the remnants of the Scots with their sorrowing king mournfully withdrew beyond the Forth, the unchallenged dominion of the whole of Saxon England, the submission of the Welsh and of the Northumbrian Danes, and the alliance and admiration of Flanders, France, and Germany, rewarded the victor of this glorious day.[73]

Shortly after the battle of Brunanburgh, Eric of the Bloody Axe, the favourite son of Harald Harfager, and his successor in the Norwegian kingdom, appeared with a numerous fleet off the northern coasts of England. Driven from his native country by his half-brother Hakon, after a reign of less than a year, in which brief space he had contrived to incur the unanimous hatred of his people, he was now seeking another theatre for the display of the same qualities which had already lost him his paternal inheritance; and Athelstan, either unwilling to provoke so soon the chances of another conflict, or anxious to raise up in Eric a rival to the pretensions of the Hy Ivar, welcomed the banished prince as an ally, reminded him of the friendship existing of old between himself and his late father Harfager, and offered him an asylum in his own dominions, if he would undertake to hold the Danish province against the Olaves. Eric readily consented to the arrangement, and according to the account of the Norwegian Heimskringla such was the origin of his earliest connection with the Anglo-Danes of Northumbria.[74]

It was destined, in the first instance, to be transitory, for upon the death of Athelstan, the Northmen, refusing to acknowledge his successor, chose Olave of Ireland for their king; and the two Olaves, again uniting their forces, and with better success, relinquished their Irish home, and forced from the brother of Athelstan the cession of the whole of his dominions A. D. 940. to the north of Watling Street.[75] Eric attempted no resistance, but sailing away with his followers, he entered upon a course of piracy which carried him before long to the Western Isles, from whence he drove out a son of Reginald Hy Ivar, who was little prepared for so unexpected an attack.[76] Two years after the death of Athelstan Olave Godfreyson A. D. 941. followed him to the grave, losing his life in some obscure skirmish near Tyningham, when Reginald Godfreyson, succeeding to his brother, shared the supremacy over the north of England with the survivor of the two Olaves.[77]

As no allusion is made to Constantine in connection with the second expedition of the Olaves, it must remain a matter of conjecture whether any assistance on his part contributed to its successful issue; though the previous career of the Scottish king, as well as his conduct on a subsequent occasion, might almost warrant such a supposition. The remembrance of Brunanburgh, however, may possibly have deterred him from such a step, and by this time age and its accompanying infirmities must have begun to weigh heavily upon the venerable monarch; for nearly seventy years had now elapsed since the death of his father Aodh. It was an era in which the sword in a vigorous hand was necessary for the defence of the crown; and Constantine may have been actuated by prudent motives when he resigned the sceptre before it slipped from his grasp, and retiring to the seclusion of the monastery of St. Andrews, A. D. 943. relinquished the cares and duties of his kingdom to assume the office of abbot.[78]

Throughout a reign extending over forty years and upwards, Constantine wielded his authority with vigour, if not always with success, and even in his declining years maintained the reputation of a valiant and experienced warrior. The most important event in his career, and that which exercised the greatest influence over the future prospects of his kingdom, was the establishment of a branch of his own family over the British principality of Strath Clyde, as it unquestionably tended to the gradual amalgamation of the inhabitants of that district with their more numerous and powerful Scottish neighbours, and prepared the way for the permanent annexation of the province during the reign of Malcolm II. In his efforts to assist another member of his family in obtaining a footing in Danish Northumbria he was not equally successful; but though his connection with Olave Sitricson embroiled him with the warlike Athelstan, it relieved his kingdom from the incursions of the Northmen, for with the exception of the contests which arose in later times between the Jarls of Orkney (a different race from the Hy Ivar), and the lords of the northern provinces—a rivalry which incidentally tended to strengthen the authority of the Scottish kings at the expense of their too powerful dependants—no further allusion is made to the attacks of the Scandinavians beyond an occasional and isolated inroad upon the eastern coasts of Scotland. The contemporary of four of the Anglo-Saxon kings, Constantine, during the course of his lengthened and chequered reign, was a witness of momentous changes; the enemies of his youth and manhood became the firm allies of his later years, and the neighbouring monarchy, which had been rescued from ruin by the genius of the great Alfred, strengthened by the steady policy of Edward and his talented sister, and raised to an unexampled pitch of glory by the energy and valour of the indomitable Athelstan, threatened, before the close of his eventful career, to relapse into its original disunion when no longer upheld by the arm of the mightiest warrior who ever sat upon the throne of Saxon England. The dynasty of Wessex, indeed, survived the crisis; but the permanent settlement of the Northmen during these reigns, in the southern division of ancient Northumbria, introduced a foreign element between Bernicia and the Southumbrian provinces, thus preventing the consolidation of the Anglo Saxon kingdom, and contributing materially to the success of those incessant encroachments of the Scottish kings upon the Northumbrian Saxons, which were only checked by the Norman Conquest.[79]

Malcolm the First. 943–954.

A. D. 943.

Malcolm, the first of his name, and a son of the second Donald, succeeded to the authority relinquished by his venerable kinsman, whilst the brother of Athelstan step by step was winning back the territories ceded to the Northmen at the commencement of his reign. The great Mercian confederacy of “the Five Burghs” was first reduced to submission, and Northumbria ere long again acknowledging the authority of the English king, A. D. 944. Olave Sitricson abandoned the province, driving Blacar Godfreyson out of Dublin, and establishing his authority over the Irish Norsemen, whilst his confederate Reginald, Blacar’s brother, disappears from history, and Edmund, released from his Danish foes, was at liberty to turn his arms against Cumberland.[80]

Much confusion has arisen from the ambiguous use of the appellations of Cumbria and Cumberland. The former name was undoubtedly applied at one time to a wide extent of country stretching at least from Dumbartonshire to North Wales, from which district it was early separated when the greater part of modern Lancashire was added to the Northumbrian dominions. A little later the grants of Egfrid to St. Cuthbert must have severed the modern counties of Cumberland and Westmoreland from the northern Cumbria or Strath Clyde, which was still further curtailed by the settlements of the Angles in the diocese of Candida Casa, a district of which the greater part, if not the whole, had by this time probably fallen into the hands of the ancestors of the Picts of Galloway.