[388] Hoveden and Chron. Mel. 1158–59. The question was probably about the nature of the homage rendered for Huntingdon, whether liege or simple. Liege homage, which was the tenure by which the English kings held their duchy of Guyenne—as Edward the Third admitted after some demur (Fœd. vol. 2, pt. 2, p. 765, 797, 813)—carried with it the obligation of liege service. The service of Malcolm, and subsequently of William, in the armies of Henry, established the fact that they held Huntingdon by liege homage; and the obligation of service was subsequently evaded by sub-infeoffing the fief, which imposed this duty upon the Vavassor, or tenant of the Holder in Chief.
[389] Hoveden 1160. Wynton, bk. 7, c. 7, l. 199 to 216. Fordun, l. 8, c. 6. The Earls of Fife and Strathearn seem to have been amongst the most influential of the old Gaelic Mormaors, the former always staunch supporters of the reigning family, of which, perhaps, like the Earls of Atholl, they were a branch—for both these earldoms, connected with the monasteries of Dunkeld and St. Andrews, were originally “in the crown;” whilst the latter, who were “Palatines,” exercising the privileges of a Regality within their earldom, and with the patronage at one time of the Bishopric of Dunblane—apparently, like the Ealdormen of Northumbria, “mediatized princes”—will be generally found at this period at the head of the discontented, rather than the disaffected, Scots. Ferquhard never seems to have suffered for his share in this conspiracy. He was either too powerful, or, more probably, not personally disaffected towards the reigning family, but discontented at their innovations. As the earldom of Ross, of which a certain Malcolm was in possession at one period of this reign (Reg. Dunf. No. 43), was granted as part of the dowry of the princess Ada on her marriage with Florence, Count of Holland, in 1162 (Doc. etc. Illust. Hist. Scot., iv. sec. 5, p. 20), it must have been at that date in the crown; and if through forfeiture, the forfeited earl may have been one of the “Mayster Men.” Mr. Skene adds the Earl of Orkney and the Boy of Egremont on the authority of Wynton and the Orkneyinga Saga, but I can find no mention of either. The Saga only says that all the Scots wished to have for their king William Odlingr—the Atheling—son of William Fitz Duncan, alluding most probably to the repeated attempts, in the succeeding reign, of Donald MacWilliam, generally known as “Mac William,” and sometimes called “William” in Ben. Ab. Six years before the conspiracy of Perth, the Boy of Egremont was old enough to witness a charter of Bolton Priory, as son and heir of his mother, Cecilia de Rumeli (Dugd. Mon., vol. 6, p. 203), and as he died in his childhood—he was the hero of the well-known tale of the Strides—he was probably dead before 1160. In the conspiracy of Perth, Mr. Skene sees an attempt of the “Seven Earls” to assert their privileges and choose the son of William Fitz Duncan in the place of Malcolm. These earls and their privileges are as profound a mystery as the conspiracy itself. Vide Appendix S.
[390] Chron. St. Crucis 1160. The names of Fergus and his son, Uchtred, occur amongst the witnesses to the grant of Perdeyc on the 7th July 1136. Reg. Glasg., No. 3, 7. The different relation in which Galloway stood to Scotland in the reigns of David and his successor, is clearly ascertained through its bishopric. Candida Casa was not amongst the sees revived by David, owing its reestablishment apparently to Fergus, Christian, the first bishop of the new see, being consecrated in 1154, when the ceremony was performed by the Archbishop of Rouen at Bermondsey (Chron. St. Crucis 1154). He was claimed as a suffragan of York after the captivity of William, and when excommunicated in 1177 by Cardinal Vivian, legate for Scotland, Ireland, and the Isles, for not attending a council of Scottish bishops, was sheltered by his metropolitan, at that time legate for England; and his successors remained suffragans of York until the fourteenth century. It may be gathered, therefore, that at the date of the revival of the see, Galloway was up to a certain point an independent principality, the Scottish claims to superiority dating from the conquest of Malcolm, the English from the captivity of William—for Gill-aldan, consecrated with other myths by Archbishop Thorstein, is an apocryphal creation of Stubbs (Twysden, p. 1720). The bishopric, which was probably commensurate with the boundaries of the principality, comprised the modern shires of Wigton and Kirkcudbright westward of the Ure, and was bounded by the deaneries of Nith and Carrick, both in the diocese of Glasgow; the former the original seat of the Randolph family, whose first known ancestor was Dungal of Stranith; the latter erected into a separate earldom for Duncan, the grandson of Fergus, on resigning all claim upon his father Gilbert’s share in the province of Galloway.
[391] Hoveden 1163.
[392] Wendover 1163. This is another passage found in the “Imagines,” but not in the “Capitula,” of Diceto. (Vide Appendix L, pt. 2). According to Diceto, the clergy swore fealty to the younger Henry in 1162, and according to the Annales Cambriæ, Rhys of South Wales was in England with Henry in 1164, after the expedition in which Henry reached Pencadair, which is usually placed in 1162. It is singular that Newbridge, the principal authority for the Welsh wars, should not have alluded to the homage at Woodstock. Sir Francis Palgrave, in his “Proofs and Illustrations,” seems to lay some stress on the omission of the saving clause, “salvis dignitatibus,” in the homage said to have been rendered by Malcolm to the younger Henry on this occasion. It was simply a repetition of his original homage, not a fresh act; and as he was in the enjoyment of his “dignities” at this time, where was the necessity of the saving clause?
[393] Hoveden, 1164, p. 283. Wynton, bk. 7, c. 7, l. 307. Chron. Mel. 1164. Fordun, l. 8, c. 6. The Innes Charter was granted at Christmas “post concordiam Regis et Sumerledi” (Reg. Morav. p. 453). Amongst the witnesses was William, Bishop of Moray and papal legate, an office which he held from 1159 till his death in 1162. Between these dates Somerled and Malcolm must have come to terms. Fordun calls the son who was killed with his father Gillecolum. He is nowhere else mentioned, and none of the ancestry of the great western clans traced to him.
[394] Chron. Mel. 1165. Newbridge, l. 2, c. 29. Wynton, bk. 7, c. 9, l. 321, etc. Fordun, l. 8, c. 6, etc. Lord Hailes has ruthlessly destroyed the fable which was founded upon the king’s soubriquet of “the Maiden.” Annals, vol. 1, p. 123.
[395] Fordun, l. 8, c. 6, is the earliest authority who alludes to the supposed transplantation of the Moraymen. Mr. Skene (Highlanders, vol. 2, p. 167) seems to think that the Moraymen took advantage of the conspiracy of Perth to rise under Kenneth Mac Heth, and that Malcolm, after a violent struggle, crushed their rebellion; but I cannot find any notice of such occurrences in the historians of this period. Malcolm’s struggle was in Galloway, and the greater part of Moray, with the exception of the more inaccessible Highland districts, was by this time in the iron grasp of the great feudal proprietors established in the forfeited earldom by David. Kenneth Mac Heth was the companion of Donald Bane, the son of Donald Mac William, when he rose against Alexander the Second in 1215, fifty-five years after the conspiracy of Perth. It is possible that he may have shared in the earlier risings, but it is hardly probable.
[396] Hoveden, 1166, p. 289. Chron. Mel. 1166. “Ob negotia Domini sui,” says the latter authority; in other words, he performed service for Huntingdon. There is no actual allusion to the grant of this fief to William, but it is evident that he possessed it and sub-infeoffed it to his brother David. Newbridge, l. 2, c. 37, speaks of Earl David holding the castle of Huntingdon at the time of William’s capture; and in c. 31 he calls the same prince Earl of Huntingdon. Hoveden and Abbot Benedict, under the year 1184, mention that Henry gave back (reddidit) the fief to William, who granted it (dedit) to his brother. What was given back must have been previously taken away; and William must have been in possession of the fief before his capture. According to Fordun, l. 8, c. 12, 13, he was refused Northumberland; and this refusal Diceto, ad an. 1173, places amongst the causes of the subsequent war.
[397] The Bishop of Hereford, an austere priest, who imagined himself fully qualified for the primacy, remarked with a sneer, in allusion to some of Becket’s antecedents, that the king had wrought a miracle when he converted a man-at-arms into an Archbishop.