Extending along the eastern coast of Scotland was a district of which the whole or part was known as Angus, though it would be difficult to define its ancient limits with accuracy. In later days the name of Angus has been looked upon as equivalent to Forfarshire, but the old Pictish kingdom may once have reached to the Isla and the Tay, on its southern frontiers, whilst towards the north it bordered on the marches of Mar, or by whatever name the district may have been known, which was once the principality of Cyric.[103] Originally an independent province, it probably became subordinate at some remote period to the kingdom of which the foundations were laid by the elder Angus and Constantine, in other words, the lord of the district paid can or cios to the king of Scots in peace, or acknowledged his authority in some similar manner, and led his followers to support the royal cause in war; but beyond such vague tokens of dependence he ruled with undiminished authority over all who acknowledged his claim to be their Cen-cinneth, or the head of their race by “right of blood.”
During the earlier reigns of the kings of the line of Kintyre, the “Mormaors” of Angus were evidently personages of considerable importance, as their deaths are occasionally entered in the oldest existing chronicle, the latest notice of a member of the family occurring during the reign of Colin. In the time of Kenneth the direct male line appears to have ended in Cunechat or Connor, who transmitted his rights to a daughter of the name of Finella, and she hoped in her turn to bequeath them to her son. In this expectation she was disappointed, for upon some long forgotten pretext the heir of Angus was condemned and executed at Dunsinnan;[104] and as the greater part of this province was included in the deaneries of Gowrie, Angus, and the Merns, which, after the changes introduced into the constitution of the Scottish church by David the First, appear under the episcopal jurisdiction of St. Andrews, it is highly probable that the “Bishop of the Scots” first acquired his spiritual authority in this direction when “the King of Scots” cut off the last heir of the ancient line of princes and annexed his province to the crown, exercising the rights of a conqueror by “giving Brechin to the Lord.”[105]
The bereaved mother never forgave the outrage, and the scene of Kenneth’s death, Fettercairn in Kincardineshire, where he is said to have perished through the treachery of his immediate attendants, favours the tradition connecting the catastrophe with the vengeance of Finella. If any credit can be attached to the accounts of authorities who wrote four centuries after the occurrence, policy induced her to wear the appearance of forgetfulness until she had succeeded in persuading the king to entrust himself within the walls of her “castle of Fettercairn,” where he lost his life by a curious and complicated machine, most ingeniously contrived for the fatal deed! A. D. 995. Be this as it may, Kenneth was assassinated after a reign of twenty-four years, and if Finella, as is not improbable, was the author of his death, it is likely that her purpose was accomplished without the aid of any very elaborate mechanical contrivance, and scarcely within the walls of a feudal castle.[106]
Fordun has attributed to this king the idea of limiting the succession to his immediate family, gravely adding, that the example of the German empire exercised much influence in deciding Kenneth to adopt this line of policy.[107] The fate of Olave MacIndulf, at the commencement of this reign, lends some degree of probability to the suggestion of the historian, though the king was hardly successful in his supposed policy, as the usual order of succession was preserved, and two princes intervened before the accession of his son Malcolm. More than one fabrication has been palmed upon this reign, and the memory of the king has been needlessly blackened by the assumed murder of Malcolm MacDuff, a personage of more than questionable reality, for whose existence Fordun is the earliest authority; though it is possible that some confusion may have arisen between the imaginary king of the Cumbrians and the real Olave, whose death is noticed by Tighernach the Irish annalist, a few years after the accession of Kenneth to the throne.[108]
Hector Boece is the first writer who places the victory of Loncarty in this reign, for Fordun makes no allusion to it, though his continuator Walter Bowyer mentions “the wonderful battle of Loncarty,” fought at a time when a Norwegian army, after ravaging the country in every direction, had shut up a Pictish king within the ancient city of Perth. The provisions of the besieged were upon the point of failing, when the wily Pict, by a judicious present of his two last casks of wine, reduced his enemies to a state that ensured him an easy victory. A successful sortie was directed against the invaders’ camp, their ships were burnt and sunk at the mouth of the Tay, obstructing the river, and originating the sandbanks of Drumlay, and every subsequent invasion of the northern foe, down to the expedition of Haco, in the reign of Alexander the Third, was supposed to have been undertaken in revenge for this fatal disaster.[109]
Such is the earliest account of the famous battle of Loncarty. There can be little doubt about its real occurrence, and it was fought probably upon the occasion of one of the earlier inroads of the Northmen at the most formidable epoch of their power. The recollection of a great victory gained upon this spot would long be preserved in the traditions of the surrounding neighbourhood, but for the circumstantial narrative embellishing the pages of Boece, that ingenious historian was probably indebted to the same sources from which he procured such accurate information about the elaborate machine for accomplishing the vengeance of Finella.[110]
| Constantine the Third | 995–997. |
| Kenneth the Third | 997–1005. |
The assassination of Kenneth at Fettercairn raised Colin’s son Constantine to the throne of Scotland. The last inheritor of the blood of the second Constantine, his reign, like his father’s, was short and troubled, as he lost his life two years after his accession, in a vain attempt to resist the pretensions of Kenneth MacDuff.[111] A. D. 997. Upon the extinction of the Scottish branch of the “Clan Aodh MacKenneth,” the radical defect of the old system of succession was at once developed in the immediate division of the “Clan Constantine MacKenneth,”—hitherto united by a common enmity,—into two hostile “factions,” headed respectively by the grandsons of the first Malcolm. Nothing whatever is recorded of the reign of Kenneth the Third, sometimes known as Grim or Græme, a name supposed to signify the profession of great strength, or a certain sternness of character. The chronicles are silent beyond the barren facts of his accession and death, A. D. 1005. placing the latter at Monaghvaird in Strathearn, where his defeat eight years after his victory over Constantine raised his cousin Malcolm, the son of Kenneth the Second, to the vacant throne of Scotland.[112]
Malcolm the Second. 1005–1034.
In imitation apparently of the example of his father, Malcolm signalized his accession by one of those inroads upon Northumbria which point significantly to the gradual extension of the Scottish kingdom on her southern frontier. Borne down by the weight of years, Ealdorman Waltheof, shutting himself up within the walls of Bamborough, placidly let the storm sweep by; but his son Uchtred, who had married the daughter of the bishop, was neither of an age nor of a temperament to look quietly on while the broad lands he had received in dowry with his bride were wasted by the northern invaders. Summoning the men of Northumberland and Yorkshire to join his standard, he soon collected a numerous force, A. D. 1006. and suddenly attacking Malcolm before the gates of Durham drove him from the territory of St. Cuthbert.[113]