On the death of Donald, by the singular law of alternate succession which was in force amongst the Gaelic people, the son and representative of Aodh was raised to the throne as Constantine the Second; and, with better fortune than his father, the earlier years of his reign were signalized by a brilliant victory. A body of the Northmen, who appear, as usual, to have landed from Ireland or the Western Isles, A. D. 903. and to have chosen Fortreim as the scene of their ravages, were defeated in Strathearn with great slaughter, and with the loss of their leader Ivar hy Ivar, A. D. 904. a grandson of the famous Northman of the same name, whose family had been recently expelled from their Irish possessions.[59] Released by his victory from all fear of further invasion, Constantine seems to have turned his attention towards regulating the affairs of the Church, for his next appearance is upon the Moot-hill of Scone, a well-known eminence in the neighbourhood of the new capital, where, in conjunction with Fothadh, the bishop of St. Andrews, he presided at the earliest ecclesiastical council recorded in the annals of Scotland.[60] A far more important object, however, in its ulterior consequences, was accomplished shortly afterwards by a bloodless revolution, which enabled him to take the first steps towards enlarging his kingdom on her southern frontiers, and to place a member of his own family upon the throne of an adjacent principality.
An occasional brief entry in the early chronicles reveals the anxiety of the rulers of the Picts and Scots to avail themselves of the gradual decline of the Northumbrian power for the purpose of extending their own influence over the neighbouring province of Strath Clyde. Some such motives may have instigated Kenneth to seek for his daughter the alliance of a British prince; and a few years later, the death of Artga, king of Strath Clyde, which is attributed by the Irish annalists to the intrigues of Constantine the First,[61] A. D. 871. may have been connected with the same policy of aggrandizement, and have furthered the claims of Eocha, the son of Constantine’s sister. The advancement of Eocha to the A. D. 878. Scottish throne was shortly followed by important consequences to his native province, and after the flight and death of the Welsh prince Rydderch ap Mervyn had deprived the northern Britons of one of their firmest supporters, a considerable body of the men of Strath Clyde, relinquishing the ancient country of their forefathers, set out, under a leader of the name of Constantine, to seek another home amongst a kindred people in the south. Constantine fell at Lochmaben in attempting to force a passage through Galloway; but his followers, undismayed at their loss, persevered in their enterprise, arriving in time to assist the Northern Welsh at the great battle of the Conway, where they won the lands, A. D. 880 as the reward of their valour, which are supposed to be occupied by their descendants at the present day.[62]
With the retreating emigrants, the last semblance of independence departed from the Britons of the north; and upon the death of their king Donald, who was probably a descendant of Kenneth’s daughter, Constantine the Second experienced little difficulty in procuring the election of his own brother Donald to fill the vacant throne.[63] A. D. 908. Henceforth a branch of the MacAlpin family supplied a race of princes to Strath-Clyde; and although for another hundred years the Britons of that district remained in a state of nominal independence, they ceased to exist as a separate people, appearing, on a few subsequent occasions, merely as auxiliaries in the armies of the Scottish kings.
Fifteen years after his victory over Ivar in Strathearn, Constantine was called upon for the last time to oppose an inroad of the Northmen. At the beginning of the tenth century by far the most celebrated of all the northern leaders were the Hy Ivar or grandsons of Ivar, and sons, apparently, of a daughter of that chieftain married to a Scottish Viking, who seems to have succeeded Ketil in the dominion of Inch Gall or the Hebrides. Driven from Dublin after its capture by the Irish king Malfinan, in 902, they appear, like Thorstein, to have sought the shelter of the Western Isles; and it was owing probably to the loss of their Irish possessions that they attempted, under the command of the younger Ivar, to establish themselves upon the Scottish coasts in 903, from whence, as has been already stated, they were expelled in the following year.[64] A. D. 904.
Ten years passed away before the Hy Ivar again appear on the scene. Reginald, who had now succeeded to the leadership of the family, defeated and destroyed the fleet of a rival Viking, Barith MacNocti, A. D. 914. in an engagement off the Isle of Man; and from the date of this victory the Norsemen again began to collect upon the Irish coasts, arriving every year in increasing numbers. Three years later, Reginald, known by this time as king of the Dugall, landed at Waterford A. D. 917. to assume the command, whilst his brother Sitric, appearing upon the coasts of Leinster, soon succeeded in re-establishing the power of his family over their former dependency of Dublin; and in the following year Reginald and his brother Godfrey, with the Jarls Ottir and Gragraba, who seem to have recently returned from an unsuccessful inroad upon the coast of Wales, leaving the harbour of Waterford, sailed for the northern shores of England to assert the claim of the king of the Dugall as heir of his kinsman, the Danish Halfdan, to the fertile lands of Northumbria.[65]
A. D. 918.
Landing amongst the kindred Danes of the north, as a welcome auxiliary against the increasing power of Ethelfleda, Reginald marched at once upon York, seizing upon, and portioning out amongst his followers and allies, the whole of the sacred patrimony of St. Cuthbert, with many a broad acre besides. Edred, whose wide possessions reached to the Derwent, the son of that Rixinc who for three years had ruled the Northumbrian Angles under the dominion of the Danes, together with Aldred of Bamborough and his brother Uchtred, sons of Eardulf, of the old Bernician race, and lords of a territory extending from the Tyne to the Forth, abandoning their dominions at the approach of the Norsemen, implored the aid of the Scottish Constantine to stem the torrent of invasion. In Constantine they found a prompt ally, and strengthened by the support of a Scottish army, the Northumbrian leaders prepared, with renewed courage, to march against the foe.
The hostile armies met upon the moor near Corbridge-on-Tyne, where Reginald, who had decided upon awaiting the attack of the confederates, holding his immediate followers in reserve in a position where they were concealed from the assailants, had ranged the main body of his army in three divisions, under the command respectively of his brother Godfrey, the two Jarls, and the chieftains to whom the Irish annalist gives the title of “the Young Leaders.” So impetuous was the onset of the Scots and Northumbrians, that at the first shock the Norsemen were overthrown, the heaviest loss falling upon the followers of the Jarls, a contingency upon which Reginald had probably calculated, as they bore the brunt of the battle. Animated at their success, and anxious to improve their advantage, the allies pressed eagerly onwards, regardless of the enemy’s reserve, which Reginald now poured upon the flank and rear of the victors, disordered in the confusion of pursuit, inflicting, in his turn, severe loss, and retrieving the fortune of the day. Edred was slain in this final struggle, with many of his Northumbrian followers, who appear to have suffered most severely, until the approach of night separated the combatants, and put a stop to a contest which led to no decisive result. As the Norsemen remained in possession of their conquests, the historian of Durham mourns over a defeat which left the patrimony of the bishopric a prey to the heathen invaders. The Scottish chronicler claims the battle for a victory, neither king nor Mormaor falling in the engagement, and no hostile Norsemen penetrating to the banks of the “Scots-water;” and as no portion of the territories of Aldred to the northward of the Tyne was occupied by the followers of Reginald, the advance of the enemy beyond that river must have been effectually prevented; and Constantine and his surviving confederate had good reason to be satisfied with the successful issue of the engagement.[66]
The result of the battle of Corbridge-on-Tyne secured Reginald in his conquest of Danish Northumbria, where he was succeeded, upon his death, about three years later, by his brother Sitric, the Irish possessions A. D. 921. of the family reverting to Godfrey, who hastened to establish himself in Dublin.[67] The alliance of the new ruler of the Northumbrian Danes was courted by the neighbouring princes, and Athelstan, soon after his accession to the English throne, A. D. 926. bestowed his sister’s hand upon the powerful chieftain of the Norsemen; though upon the unexpected death of Sitric, who only survived this union for a few months, dying in the prime of life in 927, A. D. 927. the Saxon prince seized upon the opportunity for asserting his own authority over the province, annexing it at once to the English crown.[68] Olave Sitricson, the youthful son of the deceased king, escaped across the sea to Ireland; but Godfrey, who had quitted Dublin upon hearing of his brother’s death, endeavoured to enlist the co-operation of his ancient antagonist the Scottish king in an attempt to dispute the claims of Athelstan. Constantine, however, was not to be won over, and as the former supporter of the Northumbrian Saxons still preferred the alliance of the English king to a hazardous confederacy with the Danish adventurer, Godfrey, after a vain attempt to establish himself in York, once more left the English shores and returned to rule over the Irish Norsemen.[69]
The subsequent union of Olave Sitricson[70] with a daughter of the Scottish king endangered that alliance between the two princes which Godfrey had failed to disturb, and from this moment Constantine became an object of suspicion to his southern neighbour. A. D. 934. The unwonted spectacle of an English army appeared before long upon the Forth; and though the whole of this interesting epoch in the annals of Saxon England is enveloped in uncertainty and confusion, from the coincidence of this expedition with the death of Godfrey in Ireland, it may be conjectured that it was the policy of the English king to prevent any movement on the part of his former ally Constantine, in support of the claims of Olave, now the head of the Hy Ivar family, upon the Northumbrian possessions of his father’s family. Fortreim, as usual, was the suffering province, and the army of Athelstan, penetrating as far as Forteviot, the ancient capital, wasted the country in every direction, whilst a powerful fleet, sweeping the coast to the distant shores of Caithness, prevented the arrival of any assistance from Ireland. The limits of the incursion were now reached; and by frustrating the projects of Constantine and his new allies, its object was probably attained, though the success of Athelstan was merely temporary, and three years later the storm, which had thus been averted for a season, burst in all its fury on the English coasts.[71]