The archæology and prehistoric annals of Scotland

by Sir Daniel Wilson

The subject of Medieval Ecclesiology is much too comprehensive to be treated with attention proportionate to its extent, and the importance justly ascribed to it, in the compass of a single chapter. But some notice of it is indispensable to the completeness of any systematic treatise on Scottish antiquities; and in attempting this it becomes once more necessary to glance at the ethnological elements on which depend the transition from the earlier and simpler characteristics already noticed. Whatever value be attached to the attempts advanced in the previous chapter to give some precision to the history of Primitive Scottish Ecclesiology, little doubt can now be entertained that throughout the whole period of Celtic rule in Scotland and Ireland, a peculiar character pervaded the native arts, and greatly modified the forms of Christian architecture introduced from Italy along with the new faith. Long, however, before Thorfinn subjected the Celtic population of the north to the Norwegian yoke, and sanctioned Macbeth's usurpation of the throne of the Southern Picts, the Teutonic races from the south were securing a footing in the Lothians. From the middle of the seventh century the limits of the kingdom of Northumbria extended to the Forth, and though the Angles maintained their varying northern frontier only by a constant warfare with the Picts and Scots, yet the population must have become almost entirely Teutonic before the recognition of Egbert of Wessex as bretwalda or chief ruler of England, in 829. In 867, the Danes, a different branch of the Scandinavian race from the old Scottish Northmen, conquered the kingdom of Northumbria, and it is not till after the accession of the Saxon Athelstane, in 925, that we again find it partially and temporarily incorporated with the southern kingdoms. With these portions of English history we have little further to do than simply to note the evidence they furnish of the same remarkable changes having affected the population of the Scottish Lowlands which divided the races of the south into Weals and Engle-kin, or Celtic and Teutonic; Jutes, Angles, and Saxons, being comprehended from a very early period under the common name of Englen or English. The changes which followed on the Danish conquest again temporarily isolated Northumbria, where Harold Harefoot established a separate kingdom; and when Macbeth secured the concurrence of Thorfinn in his accession to Duncan's throne, he included in his dominions a large portion of the Scottish Northumbria. To this succeeded the accession of Malcolm Canmore, Duncan's eldest son, a prince of the old Celtic race, but sharing also through his mother in the Anglo-Saxon blood, educated at the Court of Edward the Confessor, and restored to the throne of his fathers chiefly by the aid of the Northumbrian Saxons.

The establishment of Malcolm on the Scottish throne dates from the year 1058; but four years prior to this he had succeeded, with the aid of his uncle, Siward, Earl of Northumberland, and a Saxon army, in driving Macbeth beyond the Forth, notwithstanding the strenuous aid of the Northmen, with whom a large portion of the native Celtic race were then closely allied. From this important epoch in our national history dates the commencement of that remarkable revolution known by the name of the "Saxon Conquest." The Norman triumph at Hastings greatly accelerated its progress. Already the Scottish Court was the resort of numerous Anglo-Saxon nobles and leaders, whose services had given them claims on the Scottish Crown, and whose retainers accompanied them to settle on their new possessions in the Scottish Lowlands. But the Norman invasion drove many more to seek from the northern ruler the shelter which he had found in his adversity at the English Court; nor must we forget that his own barbarous policy helped to colonize his southern territories. Leaguing, when it suited his purpose, against the Norman aggressors, he wasted the country as far as Durham in 1070, bringing back with him so many prisoners of both sexes, that an old chronicler remarks,—"So great was the number of captives, that for many years they were to be found not only in every Scottish village, but in every Scottish hovel."[627] Thus by the most opposite means was a Saxon population invested in the possession of the Lothians. Norman adventurers followed, dissatisfied with the Conqueror's rewards, as the Saxons of old blood were impatient of the Norman yoke. The Saxon Edward, it will be remembered, had Norman blood in his veins, spent his early years in Normandy, and when he at length attained to the English Crown, surrounded himself with Norman barons and churchmen, and bestowed on them some of the highest preferments in the kingdom. At his Court, therefore, Malcolm could acquire no such prejudices against the Norman as animated the expatriated followers of Harold. To him the discontented Norman baron with his hardy men-at-arms would be as welcome as the Saxon thane with his faithful retinue. Both found a ready portion in the fertile Lothians, in an age when even the multitude of children were "as arrows in the hands of a mighty man." It was a peaceful and nearly bloodless revolution, yet by it this northern kingdom was more completely transformed than by all the protracted struggles of Roman, Pict, or Northman. The sceptre was still swayed by a prince of the Celtic line; but the power was passing away for ever from the last independent representatives of the nomade colonists of Europe.

The victory at Hastings was far less effectual in making England Norman than in making Scotland Saxon. In this respect the usurpation of Macbeth, which drove Malcolm to seek refuge and to acquire his education at the English Court, exercised a remarkable influence on the future history of both countries, and prepared in requital, a home for the southern Saxon, which has proved the birthland of the most vigorous offshoot of the race. But chief among the Anglo-Saxon fugitives is the noble princess, sister of Edgar Atheling, who brought to the Scottish throne the civilisation as well as the hereditary rights of the race of the Confessor. The earlier years of Malcolm's reign appear to have exhibited all the fiercest characteristics of a disputed succession; and it is probable that during the long years of conflict between Northman, Celt, and Saxon, the native arts and civilisation were greatly deteriorated. Its ecclesiastical system had suffered no less than its civil arts. The church of St. Columba had been spoiled of its temporal possessions, and had parted with many of its canonical usages, including the celibacy of the clergy, that mainspring of the medieval church, which appears to have been so heartily favoured by the good Abbot of Iona. It is no part of the plan of this work to embrace ecclesiastical controversies, or to attempt to settle disputed questions relative to the precise doctrines and practice of the ancient Culdees. So interesting an inquiry could only be injured by a superficial notice of the modern disputes relative to their Episcopal or Presbyterian constitution, and the ancient ones about the tonsure and the times of observing Easter. Trivial as such controversies may be thought by some, they appear to have involved questions of higher moment, including that of the independence of the Celtic Church. The neglect, if not the entire abnegation of the celibacy of the clergy for a considerable period prior to the Saxon Conquest, is, however, indisputable; and the orthodox grandniece of the Confessor, in giving her hand to Malcolm Canmore, plighted troth with the legitimate grandchild of an Abbot of Dunkeld. To assume the primitive purity or simplicity of our early northern Church on such grounds would be erroneous. It is sufficient for our present purpose to know that it differed in various important respects from the Roman Church of western Christendom. The peculiar features which have attracted our notice in previous chapters originated chiefly from the isolation of the Scottish Church and nation; but that isolation was now to come to an end. The Princess Margaret became the queen of Malcolm Canmore, and the sharer of his throne. Her gentle spirit, not untinctured by the asceticism of the age, softened the fierce passions of her husband, and made his wild nature bend obedient to her will. The grandniece of the Confessor became the reformer of the Scottish Church, and the redresser of its abuses. Provincial councils were summoned at her command, at which Malcolm became the interpreter between the Saxon queen and his Celtic clergy. Her great aim was to assimilate the Scottish Church to that of England, and indeed of Rome, neither of which it would seem to have greatly resembled. To her we chiefly owe the eradication of the Culdees, (Gille-de, servant of God,) the successors of the first recluses and monks who established religious fraternities in Scotland, and who differed latterly from other orders probably more in their laxity as to monastic observances than on points of faith. Yet there were not wanting among them even then some worthy representatives of their primitive missionary founders. The Chartulary of St. Andrews, which furnishes some curious evidence of their absorption, partly by conformity and partly by force, into the new orders of canons regular, also affords some insight into these primitive religious societies not unsuited to awaken regrets at their arbitrary extinction. The sons of St. Margaret, Edgar, Alexander, and David, though differing in nearly every other respect, concurred in carrying out the reformation by which the Scottish Church was restored to uniformity with the ecclesiastical standards of the age. Worthy descendants of the Confessor, they not only made the Church of England their model, but frequently selected their spiritual directors from its clergy, preferred English priests to the bishoprics, and peopled their abbeys with its monks. The "Saxon Conquest" was in truth even more an ecclesiastical than a civil revolution, and the evidences of its influence are still abundant after the lapse of upwards of seven hundred years. In the period which intervened between the landing of the fugitive Saxon princess at St. Margaret's Hope and the death of her younger son David, nearly all the Scottish sees were founded or restored, many of the principal monasteries were instituted, their chapels and other dependencies erected, and the elder order of Culdee fraternities and missionary bishops for the first time superseded by a complete parochial system. It was David I. who ejected the brethren of St. Serf established on the secluded little isle of Lochleven, and merged both that and the Culdee house of Monymusk into the new priory of canons regular of St. Austin established at St. Andrews. We read with no little interest the brief inventory of the Lochleven library, thus unscrupulously seized by the "soir sanct." Among its sixteen volumes were the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and the three books of Solomon, a Commentary on the Song of Solomon, and another on the book of Genesis:[628] no discreditable indication of the studies of these recluses of Lochleven, whom some have inclined to rank among the Protestants of their age. But old things were then passing away under the guidance of reformers not less zealous than those of the sixteenth century. An entire change, moreover, necessarily resulted from the novel relations subsisting between the northern and southern kingdoms. The seat of Scottish civilisation had hitherto been chiefly in the north and west, while the Lothians and the southern dales had been but a debatable land—the battle-ground oftener than the secure possession of the Pictish or Scottish kings. On this very account great facilities existed for its settlement by the southern fugitives, ready to hold it of the Scottish crown by feudal military tenure, and to defend it against the aggressions of the new power established in England. A charter preserved in the treasury at Durham, and belonging at latest to the very commencement of the twelfth century, furnishes interesting illustration of the new elements of strength and progress infused into the kingdom by the colonization of its southern districts. The charter relates to the founding of the church of Edenham, on the north bank of the Tweed, in the rural manse of which the poet of the Seasons was born in the year 1700,—one also of the many results which have flowed from that old deed of piety, executed five centuries before. The settler is Thor the Long, probably neither of Saxon nor Norman blood, but a descendant of one of Hardacnute's Danish followers, who established himself on the banks of the Tweed by invitation of Edgar, the son and successor of Malcolm. The charter thus describes at once the royal grant and the pious gift of the new settler, and may very happily serve to illustrate the process of Teutonic colonization of the Scottish Lowlands: "To all the sons of holy mother Church, Thor the Long, greeting in the Lord: Be it known that Aedgar, my Lord, King of Scots, gave to me Aednaham, a desert; that with his help and my own money I peopled it, and have built a church in honour of St. Cuthbert; which church, with a ploughgate of land, I have given to God, and to St. Cuthbert and his monks, to be possessed by them for ever."[629] Such was in reality the process by which the "Saxon Conquest" was accomplished. No wonder that it should be unnoticed by contemporary chroniclers, and remain a puzzle to historians who esteem wars and regal successions the sole indices of the past. It was wastes not men that had to be conquered, and therefore the victory is chronicled alone in such brief parentheses as that of the Edenham charter.

It is easy to see how complete a change must necessarily have taken place on the ecclesiastical architecture of Scotland at the period of its receiving so great an impulse. The Christian arts, introduced to a great extent along with the new faith from Ireland, had hitherto been modified chiefly by local influences. The reformation effected by Queen Margaret and her sons abruptly arrested the development of a peculiar native style, and made the architecture of England as well as its ecclesiastical system supply the new Scottish model. With the elevation of the Saxon princess to the Scottish throne, we for the first time discover a chronological coincidence in the styles of the ecclesiastical architecture of Scotland and England. In the sixth year of the reign of Malcolm II., the grandfather of Duncan, i.e., in 1010, according to a charter of doubtful value, which has been the subject of no little diversity of opinion,[630] he gave to God, the blessed Mary, and all the saints, the church of Mortlach or Murthelach, in perpetual gift, erecting it into an Episcopal see, in obedience, as it is said, to a vow made in the immediate vicinity of the church when battling with the Norwegian Invaders. In its present form the charter seems to be unworthy of implicit credit, yet the circumstantial accounts of Fordun and Boece agree with it in every essential point, and it appears reasonable to assume that its most important features are not without some authority and historical value. David I. translated the see from Mortlach to Old Aberdeen in 1125, endowing it for the first time with revenues proportionate to the dignity of the bishopric. It appears, however, if we may so far trust the charter, that Mortlach was the seat of a religious foundation prior to the honours conferred on it by the victorious Malcolm, the humble church of which was elevated, in fulfilment of the royal vow, to the rank of a cathedral. At such a date we might expect a building corresponding to those of which the remarkable relics remain at Abernethy and Brechin; and even yet, though sorely defaced by modern additions, the venerable parish church of Mortlach is believed to include portions of the primitive cathedral. The holes are pointed out where the victor is affirmed to have caused the heads of three of the vanquished Norse leaders to be built into the wall as a votive offering: a singular but sufficiently characteristic memorial of the ferocious spirit of the age, though resting on little better authority than local tradition. "At whatever time," says the Old Statist, writing about 1795, "three skulls may have first been put there, there they surely were; and not longer than about thirty years ago was the last of them picked out and tossed about by the school-boys."[631] The former proportions of the church were ninety feet long, including a chancel of twenty-seven feet, while its greatest breadth was only twenty-eight feet. Within the last twelve years great alterations and additions have been made, with the usual inattention to the ancient features of the venerable edifice. The original walls are very massive. The windows, where unaltered, are extremely narrow and deeply splayed internally, the work probably of the new era which we have now to consider, though it is not impossible that some portions of the original church of Mortlach may still remain.[632]

It was about the year 1070—the precise date is uncertain—that Malcolm Canmore wedded the gentle and pious Saxon princess, whose amiable disposition insensibly softened the rugged nature of her husband, and swayed him by the influence of a most sincere affection, till he became the docile minister of her will. We possess a narrative of the private life of Malcolm and his Queen, on the authority of Turgot the confessor of the latter, who had frequent opportunities of intimate intercourse with both. Amid the austerities and superstitions which belonged less to the individuals than the age, it is impossible not to admire the rare picture of domestic charity and kindly affections which it discloses. It was at Dunfermline, according to Turgot, that the auspicious marriage of Malcolm and Margaret took place; and one of the first works of the queen was to found a church in the place where her nuptials had been celebrated, which she dedicated to the Holy Trinity, and enriched with many costly gifts. Such was the origin of the Benedictine Abbey of Dunfermline, though it can scarcely admit of doubt that some church or chapel existed at this chosen place of royal residence prior to the foundation of St. Margaret. The editor of the "Registrum de Dunfermelyn" remarks, "The original church of Canmore, perhaps hot of stone, must have been replaced by a new edifice when it was dedicated in the reign of David I. If any part of that structure remain, it must be little more than the foundations. Age, or the accidents of a rough time, or the increasing consequence of the house, gave rise to an enlarged and more magnificent structure about the middle of the thirteenth century."[633] It cannot be difficult, I think, to shew that such conclusions are erroneous, and at least totally inadmissible in reference to the sombre and impressive nave of Dunfermline, the oldest and perhaps most interesting specimen of the Romanesque style now remaining in Scotland. But the whole reasoning proceeds on the imperfect views hitherto entertained of the state of civilisation and the progress of the arts in Scotland previous to the commencement of its medieval era, dating from the reign of Malcolm, when for the first time both its civil and ecclesiastical institutions were assimilated to the rest of Europe.

So far from Malcolm Canmore's church being probably of wood, there are some of the most substantial early Romanesque structures in England which there is good reason for ascribing to the same builders who erected the Church of the Holy Trinity at Dunfermline, in the lifetime of its pious foundress. Malcolm was present at the laying of the foundation stone of Durham Cathedral by the confessor and biographer of his own pious queen, on the 11th of August 1093, shortly before his last fatal rupture with England; and his son Alexander witnessed the deposition of the relics of St. Cuthbert in the same sacred edifice in 1104. No one who has had the opportunity of examining both Durham and Dunfermline, can have failed to observe the remarkable correspondence of their character and details. The same massive and dissimilar piers: the same chevron, spiral, and billet mouldings distinguishing the compartments of the nave: the same chamfered cushion capitals to the heavy cylindrical shafts: as well as a marked conformity in many minor details, all point to a common origin for Durham Cathedral and Dunfermline Abbey. St. Finnan, a monk of Iona, is said to have built the first church of Lindisfarne, a timber erection, and the original seat of the see of Durham, in the seventh century. Scottish missionaries twice introduced the faith into Northumberland; Iona and Melrose supplied successive heads to the southern house; and even after the Conqueror compelled the chapter to receive a bishop of his appointment of Norman blood, the intimate relations between the see and the northern abbeys appear to have been very temporarily interrupted. In so far as greater plainness and massive simplicity afford any ground for assigning priority of date, the argument is in favour of the greater antiquity of Dunfermline Abbey, which must have been far advanced, if not indeed finished, according to the original design, before the foundation of the Cathedral at Durham was laid in 1093, as the death of both of the royal founders took place before the close of the year; and they were buried there before the rood altar. Perhaps the fact of their interment there, and not in the choir,—to which the bodies of both were translated with solemn ceremonial and, according to the old chroniclers, with miraculous attestations of their enduring affection,[634] four years after the canonization of St. Margaret in 1246,—may be thought to afford presumptive evidence that the abbey choir was then incomplete. This, however, is by no means probable, as the choir was always the part of the church first built. But it was no doubt with a view to receive into a structure worthy of so sacred a depository the relics of the sainted queen that the choir was remodelled according to the prevailing First-pointed style of the thirteenth century. We possess a curious proof that even the reconstruction of the choir was effected, not by demolishing and rebuilding the whole, but merely by remodelling the original masonry of the eleventh and twelfth centuries,—a process of common occurrence with nearly all the large cathedral and abbey churches; for by a bull of Pope Innocent IV., dated September 15, in the seventh year of his pontificate,[635] (1250,) he dispenses with the reconsecration of the abbey, because the walls of the former church for the most part still remained.[636] No doubt the nave also underwent some modifications, of which it now bears evidence, but all its essential features can be assigned to no other period than that of the original foundation.

To the same early period must be assigned the erection of the interesting little chapel of St. Margaret in the Castle of Edinburgh, which it was my good fortune to rediscover a few years since, when converted to the vile use of a powder magazine, after its very existence had been lost sight of for upwards of a century.[637] Some of its characteristic details have been thought rather to belong to the later period of the Romanesque style; but a careful examination of the simple capitals of the jam-shafts, and the low relief of the mouldings on the chancel arch, has satisfied me that there is no evidence in its structure inconsistent with the idea of its being the oratory of Queen Margaret, which, according to Barbour, she caused to be decorated with a painting of prophetic import, still remaining in his day,[638] (obiit 1396.) The plain coved vault of the apse, and the small roundheaded and entirely unornamented windows, so different from the later work of Dalmeny or Leuchars, confirm this opinion. By a charter bearing date 14th February 1390, King Robert II. endowed the altar of the chapel of St. Margaret the Queen, in Edinburgh Castle, with a yearly rental of eight pounds, but which was subsequently transferred to the chapel of St. Mary the Virgin, in the same fortress, probably erected at that period, and only demolished towards the close of the last century.[639] The great improbability of the oratory of Queen Margaret having been demolished, and so small and plain a chapel built in her honour either in the reign of Alexander or David, seems to render the conclusion unavoidable, that the interesting little chapel of St. Margaret is directly associated with the pious queen, to whom there can be little doubt Shakespear alludes in Macbeth, though he makes Macduff speak of her not as the wife but the mother of Malcolm:—

"The queen, that bore thee,
Oftener upon her knees than on her feet,
Died every day she lived."[640]

The portions which remain of the original Romanesque structure of Alexander I.'s foundation on Inchcolm, erected about 1123, are characterized by the same unornate simplicity; nor is it till the reign of David I. that we have any certain examples of the highly decorated late Romanesque work. Even in the Abbey of Jedburgh much of the original work is heavy and plain, compared with the singularly rich details which lighten the solid masses of Kelso Abbey. Of Holyrood Abbey, founded by David I. in the same year with that of Kelso, comparatively little use can be made in fixing the chronology of Scottish medieval architecture. From its vicinity to the capital, and its long occupation by the Court, every invading army spoiled or burnt it, and almost every abbot made some new additions or repairs, till it has become a complete ecclesiological enigma. In the cloister doorway, on the south side of the nave, it presents undoubted remains of the original foundation of David I. The west tower, the arcades in the aisles, and various other portions, indicate that the main walls of the building belong to the transition-period, prior to the complete development of the First-pointed style; most probably in the minority of Alexander III. The great west doorway and the centre aisle are in the very best style of late First-pointed; while the external north wall and its richly decorated buttresses, as well as various additions on the south side, are reconstructions of Abbot Crawfurd, who succeeded to the abbacy in 1457, as appears from his arms still visible on various parts of the new work. The unique windows of the west front, with segmental arches and nondescript tracery, though bearing some resemblance to portions of the palace in Stirling Castle, ascribed to the reign of James IV., will, we suspect, be more correctly assigned to the era of his unfortunate descendant, Charles I., whose cipher is carved on the beam of the great doorway below. The beautiful arcade of early but unusually rich First-pointed work, and with sculptured heads in the spandrils, which adorns the west front of the tower, is in some respects unique, and is certainly unsurpassed in the richness of its details by any contemporary work.