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

by Eben William Robertson

It was in consequence of a feud between the leading clans of the royal race of Ireland, that the apostle of the northern Picts first quitted the home of his earlier years and dedicated the remainder of his life to the labours of a missionary. On the occasion of one of those great meetings of the clergy and laity of Ireland, to which such frequent allusion is made in her annals, a son of Aodh, king of Connaught, who happened to be present in full reliance upon a promise of immunity from Columba, was seized and put to death by order of Dermot MacKerval, lord of the southern Hy Nial, and at that time Ardrigh, or supreme king of Ireland. Columba, who was then abbot of Durrow, was also a member of the same great sept, and closely allied by birth to the king of one of the northern branches—the Clan Conal; and his kinsmen, bound by the usual ties of relationship to avenge the insult, uniting with the king of Connaught, inflicted so severe a defeat upon the aggressor, that his whole wrath was turned upon Columba, whom he caused to be excommunicated by the leading clergy of Meath. Dreading the further effects of his enemy’s vengeance, Columba bade adieu to his native land; and, under the curse of man, sought those shores to which, under the blessing of God, he was destined to become, indeed, a messenger of good tidings.[5]

Arriving with the usual complement of twelve followers, off the coast of Argyle, he obtained permission from Conal, king of the Dalriads, to appropriate the little island of Iona, and after employing himself for two years in establishing and regulating his brotherhood, he prepared to enter upon his allotted task, and to penetrate across the mountain barrier of Drumalban. A. D. 565. Not far from the spot where the river Ness issues from the parent lake of which it assumes the name, there still exist the vestiges of an ancient earthwork, ascribed by the tradition of the country to a Pictish king; and thither Columba and his companions bent their steps, for Bruidi MacMalcon, who at this time held supreme sway over both divisions of the Picts, held his court within the ramparts of this Rath or Dun. As the arrival of the Christian missionary appears to have been expected, he was opposed by a number of the Pictish Druids, but as their hostility seems to have been limited to the use of incantations and enchantments, little real hindrance could have been offered to his progress, and he reached, without difficulty, the residence of the king. As the gates of the royal fortress close upon the little band, all knowledge ceases of the further proceedings of Columba; the bare record of the success of his mission has descended to posterity, and the people acquiescing, as in duty bound, in their sovereign’s renunciation of idolatry, both divisions of the Pictish people were henceforth united in belief.[6]

An interesting description of the disciples and successors of Columba has been handed down in the pages of a writer, whose difference with the Gaelic clergy in certain trivial points of faith did not blind him to the virtues and real merits of the earliest apostles of Christianity to his own heathen forefathers. Shut out in their distant northern home from the knowledge of synodical decrees, and constrained to seek their doctrine and rule of conduct in the writings of the prophets, the evangelists, and the apostles, the simple denizens of the sea-girt Iona were conspicuous for the purity of their unblemished morals, for their fervent attachment to their divine Master, and for their strict adherence to the precepts and traditions of the revered founder of the brotherhood. As they preached so they practised, their own blameless manner of life affording the best commentary on their doctrine; and when they issued forth from their monastery to baptise and to instruct, to convert the infidel and to strengthen the believer, the offerings forced upon them by the gratitude of the powerful and the rich were employed in relieving the wants of the poor and in alleviating the sufferings of the sick—in restoring freedom to the captive and in purchasing liberty for the slave. Such is the picture drawn by the venerable Beda of Aidan and his fellow-labourers in the work of converting the Angles of Northumbria; worthy inheritors of the virtues and devotion of Columba, and bright examples of the pure and simple piety inspired by the zeal of Patrick amongst the early fathers of his church.[7]

For about a century and a half after the arrival of Columba, Iona continued in the position of the leading monastery of the north, extending her authority over many parts of Ireland, and bidding fair at one time to establish a similar influence throughout southern Britain, until a dispute about matters of comparatively trivial importance abruptly severed her connection with Northumbria. A difference of opinion had long existed between the clergy of the Picts, Britons, and northern Irish, on the one hand, and the followers of Augustine amongst the Anglo-Saxons, on the other, together with the ecclesiastics of southern Ireland, who had been latterly brought to conform to the practice authorised by the see of Rome. The proper time for the celebration of the Easter festival, and the orthodox form of the clerical tonsure, were the subjects in dispute; and though the former was clearly a question of astronomical calculation, and the tonsure was a badge of Paganism in the days of the primitive church, both points originated frequent and animated discussions, and were debated in the seventh century as important matters of faith. A.D. 664. Colman and his followers, at the celebrated conference of Whitby, had bade adieu to their adopted country sooner than relinquish the practice they had inherited from their predecessors; and fifty years later a similar tenacity in favour of “ancient customs” brought about the expulsion of the clergy of Iona from the territories of the Pictish sovereign. Nectan MacDeriloi, in consequence of a difference of opinion with his clergy about the points in question, dispatched envoys to Ceolfred, abbot of Wearmouth, requesting his decision upon the matters in dispute, and, at the same time, inviting the assistance of Saxon architects to build a stone church after the approved Roman model. The abbot responded to both appeals, and though every vestige of the stone church has long since disappeared, the letter of Ceolfred may still be read in the pages of the historian Beda. It strengthened and confirmed the king in his own convictions, and A.D. 717. he decided that his clergy should conform accordingly; but they were as firm in their resolution as Colman; and Nectan, summarily ordering them across Drumalban, appears to have transferred to his recent foundation (which seems to have been Abernethy) the pre-eminence amongst the monasteries of northern Britain, which had hitherto been the peculiar prerogative of Iona.[8]

Whilst the arrival of the Angles upon the coasts of Valentia is dimly traceable in the scanty records of the period, and the settlement of the Dalriads in a portion of Argyle is historically noticed by the earliest annalist of Ireland, a barren and corrupt, but singularly accurate list of uncouth names is the sole record of the Pictish people before the opening of the seventh century, when the confusion resulting upon the death of the Northumbrian Ethelfrith compelled his children to seek a refuge amongst the friendly people of the north. The bitter spirit of animosity engendered in the Angles by their incessant hostilities with the Britons is hardly traceable in their early relations with the Picts, and accordingly a ready welcome was extended to the youthful exiles, who were instructed in the knowledge of the Christian faith by the Gaelic clergy, and sheltered for fifteen years beyond the protecting barrier of the Forth. The residence of the Northumbrian Athelings amongst the Picts was productive of important consequences; Eanfred, the eldest of the brothers, became the husband of a Pictish princess—and their son Talorcan was numbered amongst the Pictish kings—whilst Oswald, after recovering his father’s throne, sought from amongst the instructors of his early youth those holy men through whose assistance he hoped to spread abroad amongst his people the blessings of the novel faith which he had learnt to prize so dearly.[9]

After the death of this amiable prince upon the fatal field of Winwed, the ties of affection and good will which had hitherto united the sons of Ethelfrith with the people who had sheltered them in adversity were severed during the reign of his harsher brother Oswy, and exchanged for the galling bonds of conquest. Province after province bowed to the Anglian yoke, until the majority of the neighbouring Pictish princes were ranged with the Dalriads, who shared the same lot, amongst the tributaries of the Northumbrian sovereign, and though they endeavoured to regain their liberty when A. D. 670. Egfrid ascended the throne, their premature attempt only served to rivet their fetters more securely. About eleven years later a yet more decisive step was taken towards the permanent annexation of the tributary Pictish provinces, and Egfrid, when he divided the overgrown diocese of Wilfrid into the Sees of York, Hexham, and Lindisfarne, appointed Trumwine to the bishopric of the Picts, choosing Abercorn, upon the southern bank of A. D. 681. the Forth, as the seat of the new Episcopate.[10]

Five years after the erection of the See of Abercorn, A. D. 685. for some unknown cause, Egfrid, repeating the ravages of his Irish expedition of the previous year, poured a mighty army across the Forth, burning the Raths of Tulach-Aman, and Dun Ollaig. His progress was unopposed, and penetrating into the neighbouring province of Angus, he crossed the Tay without resistance, and skirted the base of the Grampian range until he approached the neighbourhood of Lin Garan or Nectan’s Mere, a little lake in the modern parish of Dunnichen. Here his antagonist, who was his cousin Bruidi, awaited with his followers the hostile onset, the signal overthrow of the invading force justifying the choice of the position. The victory was as glorious as its consequences were important, Egfrid and the greater part of his army were left upon the field, whilst few escaped from the scene of slaughter to carry back to Northumbria the tidings of her monarch’s fall. All that the conquests of thirty years had wrested from the Picts was lost for ever to the race of Ida, and the Saxon bishop, abandoning in terror his See of Abercorn, never rested in his hurried flight until within the walls of Whitby he had placed the whole breadth of Bernicia between himself and his rebellious flock. The Dalriads also recovered their former liberty, and even the Britons enjoyed a momentary independence, and through the losses and embarrassments entailed upon Northumbria by the disastrous overthrow of Egfrid, the pre-eminence of the Northern Angles received a fatal shock which the utmost efforts of succeeding princes failed altogether to repair.[11]

During the forty years which elapsed after the victory of Nectan’s Mere an occasional conflict with the Angles testifies to the embittered feelings which had arisen through Northumbrian aggression; and upon the abdication of Nectan, the correspondent of Ceolfred and somewhat arbitrary reformer of the Gaelic clergy, who after a reign of eighteen years relinquished his throne for the cloister, a contest seems to have arisen between four Pictish kings, which, after five years, terminated in the undisputed ascendancy of Angus Mac Fergus. A. D. 730. Fortune proved true to her favourite, whose alliance was courted at different periods by the Mercian and Northumbrian sovereigns, and in the results of his victories over his various competitors, and of his conquests over the Dalriads and the northern Britons, may be traced apparently the germs of the future kingdom of Scotland.[12]

Confined within the narrow district to the southward of Loch Linne and to the westward of the mountain range of Drumalban, the Dalriad princes exercised but little influence upon the great confederacy of the Picts, their usual opponents being the Britons, and in early times the Angles, against whom both Britons and Dalriads occasionally appear to have united. Their fleet is sometimes mentioned in the Irish annals, a hostile expedition against the Islesmen disclosing the limited extent of their dominion in the western seas.[13] The most prosperous era in the annals of the little kingdom coincides with Columba’s residence in Iona, after Conal, the early patron of the saint, was succeeded by Aidan Mac Gauran, the enterprising and able leader of the clans of Kintyre, the names of whose numerous battles, preserved in the annals and biographies of the period, amply testify to his warlike qualities without throwing much light on the causes of their display. His latest antagonist was the Northumbrian Ethelfrith, A. D. 603. from whom he received so severe a check at Degsa’s Stone, that the Angles were allowed henceforth to prosecute their career of conquest over the Britons without interference from the Dalriads, who with the exception of an occasional contest with their neighbours on the Clyde seem to have turned their attention to the opposite coasts of Uladh.[14] For a quarter of a century and upwards they were tributaries along with the Picts of the Northumbrian kingdom, regaining their independence after the battle of Nectan’s Mere, though it may be gathered from the words of Adamnan and from certain notices in the annalists, that the predominance in the kingdom passed about this time from Kintyre to the house of Lorn, whose chieftain, Selvach, seems to have rivalled Aidan in the number of his battles, fought generally, as in the case of the latter prince, against the Britons of Strath Clyde. A. D. 723. The abdication and death of Selvach were fatal to the supremacy of his house; the authority of his son, Dungal, being quickly confined A. D. 730. within the limits of the paternal inheritance, which he was destined a few years later to lose through a wanton outrage upon a connection of the formidable Angus. Bruidi, a son of the Pictish sovereign, appears to have fled for some cause to the island of Toraic, A. D. 733. where he was followed—or found—by Dungal, who forced him from the sanctuary in which he had taken refuge. The devastation of Lorn in the following year, and the destruction of the two A. D. 734. Raths of Dunleven and Dunadd, attest the vigour with which Angus avenged the insult; Dungal and his brother Feredach were carried off in chains in the victor’s train, and two years later the defeat of Muredach, A. D. 736. the last known member of the family, upon the shores of Loch Linne, completed the ruin of the house of Lorn. The scanty records of the period throw no farther light upon the subject, Lorn and its princes disappear from history, and the success of Angus would appear to have extended not only to the conquest of the province in question, but to the temporary subjection of the entire kingdom of Dalriada.[15]

The alliance with Ethelbald the Proud seems to have involved Angus in a collision at different epochs with the West Saxons and the Northumbrians, though a connection of a more friendly nature arose at a later period with the Bernician Eadbert, one of the greatest restorers of the Northumbrian power, the alliance being probably based upon the mutual spoliation of the Britons. The conquests of Ethelfrith in the neighbourhood of Chester, and the victories of Edwin in the south-west of Yorkshire, when he drove Ceretic, or Caradoc, from the forest district of Elmete, appear to have made the first impression upon the lengthened tract of country to the westward of “the Desert,” the true home of the Cymri, extending from the Severn to the Clyde, in which a number of petty princes and kinglets long united in paying some sort of deference to the authority of one supreme king, or Unben.[16] The faint remains of a line of defence, dictated possibly by a recollection of imperial tactics, can still be traced towards the north-eastern frontier of this British territory under the name of the Catrail or Pictswork ditch, stretching from Peel Fell through the south-western portion of Roxburghshire to Galashiels in Selkirkshire; and to the westward of this barrier the Britons long remained upon a footing of comparative independence, after they had lost all hold upon the more open country in the vicinity.[17] Mercia, at the period of Edwin’s reign, was under the rule of Penda, a chieftain who, to a hatred and contempt of Christianity, joined an ardent desire of shaking off his dependence upon the kindred Angles beyond the Humber, and encouraging the designs of the British princes against the conqueror of Caradoc, he united the pagan warriors of Mercia with the Christian followers of Caswallon, re-establishing the supremacy of the Britons over the ancient city of York, by the defeat and death of Edwin, though the triumph was purchased at the price of the temporary extinction of Christianity. But the alliance between Christian and pagan was of evil omen, and the death of Caswallon in the following year destroyed the hopes of the Britons, though they again swelled the forces of the heathen Penda, when he lost his life near the Broad Arc, Cadwal of Gwynneth alone escaping from the field. Cadwallader, the last king whose authority is supposed to have been supreme, died of the pestilence in 664; and towards the close of the same century the conquests of Egfred extended the Northumbrian dominions to the western coast, and with his numerous donations of lands in the modern counties of Lancashire and Cumberland to the Northumbrian clergy, interposed a permanent barrier between the Britons of North Wales, Cumberland, and Strath Clyde.[18]