September 6, 1862.
CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.
| Map of Early Kingdom | [Frontispiece] |
| CHAPTER I. | |
|---|---|
| PAGE | |
| The Early History, before 842 | [1] |
| CHAPTER II. | |
| The Early Kingdom, 843–900 | [24] |
| CHAPTER III. | |
| Progress of the Kingdom, 900–943 | [53] |
| CHAPTER IV. | |
| The Kingdom Completed, 971–995 | [79] |
| CHAPTER V. | |
| The Kingdom Contested. The line of Atholl. The lineof Moray, 1034–1040 | [110] |
| CHAPTER VI. | |
| The Line of Atholl Restored. Malcolm Ceanmore, 1058–1093 | [125] |
| CHAPTER VII. | |
| The Intermediate Period, 1093–1097 | [154] |
| CHAPTER VIII. | |
| The Feudal Kingdom. David the First, 1124–1153. | [187] |
| CHAPTER IX. | |
| The State, 1124–1153 | [235] |
| CHAPTER X. | |
| The Church, 1124–1153 | [321] |
| CHAPTER XI. | |
| Malcolm the Fourth, 1153–1165 | [345] |
| CHAPTER XII. | |
| William the Lion, 1165–1189 | [362] |
| CHAPTER XIII. | |
| William the Lion, 1189–1214 | [397] |
History of Scotland
TO THE CLOSE OF THE 13TH CENTURY.
CHAPTER I.
The Early History—Before A. D. 843.
Britain, dimly recognisable in the vague accounts given by Hecatæus of a large island off the coast of Gaul inhabited by a sacred race of Hyperboreans, and sometimes even disputing with Iceland the questionable honour of having been known as Ultima Thule, owes her first introduction within the pale of authentic history to the ambitious policy of the Cæsars. The historian, however, finds little worth recording about the northern districts during the Roman occupation of the island, and that little belongs rather to the province of the antiquary. A transitory gleam of light is shed upon the subject by the pen of Tacitus; A. D. 80–4. but the campaigns of Agricola were unproductive of results, and northern Britain again sinks into obscurity until the Emperor Hadrian deemed it necessary for the protection of the Roman province to throw up a turf rampart across the narrowest portion of the island, extending from the Solway to the Tyne. A. D. 120. Twenty years later another was added between the Forth and Clyde, connecting the old line of forts erected by Agricola, and known, from the reign in which it was built, as the Wall of Antonine; but after a fruitless struggle of sixty years the whole of the district between these walls was abandoned by Severus, when he raised a third rampart, built of stone, immediately to the northward of the original bulwark. A. D. 208. From this period the Roman province was bounded by the southern wall, and though towards the close of the fourth century the energy of Theodosius reasserted the dominion of the empire over the district between Forth and Tyne, A. D. 369. which now received the name of Valentia in honour of the Emperor Valens, the newly-established province was soon relinquished, and about the opening of the following century Britain was finally abandoned by her ancient masters. Long before this period the incursions of the northern tribes upon the Roman province A. D. 407. had become incessant, and some idea may be formed of the distance to which they occasionally penetrated, from the account left by Ammianus Marcellinus, that Theodosius, after landing at Rutupe, the modern Richborough, was obliged to fight his way through Kent, swarming with their hostile bands, before he could reach the capital, Augusta, described by the historian as “an old town formerly known as London.” Their earlier title of Caledonians had by this time disappeared, and they were generally known as Picts, a name including the two great divisions of Vecturiones and Dicaledones, answering apparently to the later confederacies of northern and southern Picts.[1]
Britain after the departure of the legionaries appears to have suffered her full share of the calamities of that disastrous epoch, and the episodes of invasion and conquest enacted throughout the continental provinces of the expiring empire were repeated with similar results, within the narrower limits of her ancient island dependency. A continuous stream of Teutonic invaders poured without ceasing upon her shores, Jutes, Saxons, and Frisians peopling the south-eastern coasts, whilst further towards the north swarmed the Anglian tribes who were destined to fix an imperishable name upon the island. Towards the middle of the sixth century an additional impetus appears to have been given to the torrent of Anglian invasion by the arrival of Ida, the reputed founder of the Northumbrian kingdom, and leader of the Bernician Angles, whose descendants formed so important an element in the Teutonic population of southern Scotland. No record of his prowess is to be found in the annals of his countrymen; his name alone survives with that of his forgotten foe, “the dark lord”—Dutigern; but the precipitate flight of the British bishop from York, the sudden extinction of Christianity throughout the diocese, the name of Gwrth Bryneich—or Bernicia’s thraldom—by which the famous fortress of Bamborough was known amongst the conquered people, and the ominous title of “the Flame-Bearer,” applied to the mighty Angle in the lays of the hostile bards, sufficiently attest the ruthless energy with which he extended the dominion of his race from the marshy plains of Holderness to the distant islets of the Forth.[2] From the Humber to the Tyne the country was known amongst the Britons as Deheubarth, or “the southern part,” whilst beyond that river and the ruins of the southern wall, the district stretching to the Forth was distinguished as Bryneich, or “the country of the braes;” and it was within the boundaries of the latter province that the Anglian population of the Lothians first established themselves as conquerors in the land which their descendants still occupy.
Ida fell in battle, slain, say the British authorities, by Owen of Reged, whose father Urien, the favourite hero of the bards, and a warrior from whom many a laurel has been stolen to adorn the chaplet of the fabulous Arthur, was hailed unanimously as leader of a confederacy which was to drive the invader from the soil. The tide of conquest was now rolled back upon the Angles, Bryneich was recovered, and the sons of Ida were driven from the land, when at the very moment of his triumph the bravest champion of his race fell by the dagger of “Llovan of the accursed hand,” and his death was fatal to his countrymen. Step by step the Angles recovered their ascendency, winning their way at the point of the sword, until the whole of the eastern coast was wrested from its original possessors, confined henceforth to the westward of “the Desert,” and the Northumbrian kingdoms of Deira and Bernicia rose out of the ruins of the conquered British principalities.[3]
A solitary entry in the annals of the Irish abbot, Tighernach, affords the earliest historical testimony of the arrival of a small, but in many respects a remarkable, band of colonists, about fifty years before the settlement of an Anglian population in the Lothians, upon the rocky and indented coasts of southern Argyle. A. D. 502. Fergus Mor MacEarca, a chieftain of the Irish Gael, was their leader, and the north-eastern extremity of the modern county of Antrim, which, at that time, formed part of the territories of the Irish Picts, was the locality which they abandoned when they crossed the channel in their leathern coracles in search of another home upon the shores of Britain. Amidst the lakes and mountains to the southward of Loch Linne, Fergus and his followers fixed their new abode; and the limits of his petty kingdom, which were never enlarged, are still traceable in the names implanted by succeeding princes upon the dependent districts of Lorn, Cowal, and Kintyre. These principalities, with a few of the islands off the coast of southern Argyle, made up, collectively, the whole of the kingdom of Dalriada—for such was its real name; though in the Latin chronicles of a later age, Fergus and his descendants invariably appear under the more familiar appellation of “Kings of the Scots.” The annals of the Dalriads are totally devoid of interest before the reign of Conal, fourth in succession from Fergus Mor, who, by the shelter he afforded to the exiled Abbot of Durrow, indirectly furthered the conversion of the northern Picts to Christianity.[4]