About this time Somerled, the ambitious and powerful lord of the Isles, made another and a last attempt upon the king’s authority, Having collected a large force, chiefly in Ireland, he landed, in 1164, near Renfrew; but he was defeated by the brave inhabitants and the king’s troops in a decisive battle, in which he and his son Gillecolum were slain.
The reign of William the Lion, who succeeded his brother in 1165, was marked by many disturbances in the Highlands. The Gaelic population could not endure the new settlers whom the Saxon colonization had introduced among them, and every opportunity was taken to vex and annoy them. An open insurrection broke out in Ross-shire, headed by Donald Bane, known also as MacWilliam, which obliged William, in the year 1181, to march into the north, where he built the two castles of Eddirton and Dunscath to keep the people in check. He restored quiet for a few years; but, in 1187, Donald Bane again renewed his pretensions to the crown, and raised the standard of revolt in the north. He took possession of Ross, and wasted Moray. William lost no time in leading an army against him. While the king lay at Inverness with his army, a party of 3,000 faithful men, under the command of Roland, the brave lord of Galloway, and future Constable of Scotland, fell in with Donald Bane and his army upon the Mamgarvy moor, on the borders of Moray. A conflict ensued in which Donald and five hundred of his followers were killed. Roland carried the head of Donald to William, “as a savage sign of returning quiet.” After this comparative quietness prevailed in the north till the year 1196, when Harold, the powerful Earl of Orkney and Caithness, disturbed its peace. William dispersed the insurgents at once; but they again appeared the following year near Inverness, under the command of Torphin, the son of Harold. The rebels were again overpowered. The king seized Harold, and obliged him to deliver up his son, Torphin, as an hostage. Harold was allowed to retain the northern part of Caithness, but the king gave the southern part of it, called Sutherland, to Hugh Freskin, the progenitor of the Earls of Sutherland. Harold died in 1206; but as he had often rebelled, his son suffered a cruel and lingering death in the castle of Roxburgh, where he had been confined.
During the year 1211 a new insurrection broke out in Ross, headed by Guthred or Godfrey, the son of Donald Bane or MacWilliam, as he was called. Great depredations were committed by the insurgents, who were chiefly freebooters from Ireland, the Hebrides, and Lochaber. For a long time they baffled the king’s troops; and although the king built two forts to keep them in check, and took many prisoners, they maintained for a considerable period a desultory and predatory warfare. Guthred even forced one of the garrisons to capitulate, and burnt the castle; but being betrayed by his followers into the hands of William Comyn, Earl of Buchan, the Justiciary of Scotland, he was executed in the year 1212.
Shortly after the accession of Alexander II. in 1214, the peace of the north was attempted to be disturbed by Donald MacWilliam, who made an inroad from Ireland into Moray; but he was repulsed by the tribes of that country, led by M’Intagart, the Earl of Ross. In 1222, notwithstanding the formidable obstacles which presented themselves from the nature of the country, Alexander carried an army into Argyle, for the purpose of enforcing the homage of the western chiefs. His presence so alarmed the men of Argyle, that they immediately made their submission. Several of the chiefs fled for safety, and to punish them, the king distributed their lands among his officers and their followers. After this invasion Argyle was brought under the direct jurisdiction of the Scottish king, although the descendants of the race of Somerled, Lord of the Isles, still continued to be the chief magnates.
During the same year a tumult took place in Caithness, on account of the severity with which the tithes were exacted by Adam, the bishop, who, with his adviser, Serlo, was murdered by the bonders. The king, who was at the time at Jedburgh, hearing of this murder, immediately hastened to the north with a military force, and inflicted the punishment of death upon the principal actors in this tragedy, who amounted, it is said, to four hundred persons; and that their race might become extinct, their children were emasculated, a practice very common in these barbarous times. The Earl of Caithness, who was supposed to have been privy to the murder, was deprived of half of his estate, which was afterwards restored to him on payment of a heavy fine. The Earl is said to have been murdered by his own servants in the year 1231, and in order to prevent discovery, they laid his body into his bed and set fire to the house.
In 1228 the country of Moray became the theatre of a new insurrection, headed by a Ross-shire freebooter, named Gillespoc M’Scolane. He committed great devastations by burning some wooden castles in Moray, and spoiling the crown lands. He even attacked and set fire to Inverness. A large army of horse and foot, under the command of John Comyn, Earl of Buchan, Justiciary of Scotland, was, in 1229, sent against this daring rebel, who was captured, with his two sons, and their heads sent to the king.
The lords of Argyle usually paid homage to the king of Norway for some of the Hebrides which belonged to that monarch, but Ewen, on succeeding his father Duncan of Argyle in 1248, refused his homage to the Scottish king, who wished to possess the whole of the Western Isles. Though Ewen was perfectly loyal, and indeed was one of the most honourable men of his time, Alexander marched an army against him to enforce obedience, but his Majesty died on his journey in Kerrera, a small island near the coast of Argyle opposite Oban, on July 8, 1249, in the fifty-first year of his age, and the thirty-fifth of his reign.
According to the custom of the times, his son, Alexander III., then a boy only in his eighth year, was seated on the royal chair, or sacred stone of Scone, which was placed before the cross that stood within the burying-ground. Immediately before his inauguration, the bishop of St. Andrews girded him with the sword of state, and explained to him, first in Latin and afterwards in Norman French, the nature of the compact he and his subjects were about to enter into. The crown, after the king had been seated, was placed on his head, and the sceptre put into his hand. He was then covered with the royal mantle, and received the homage of the nobles on their knees, who, in token of submission, threw their robes beneath his feet. On this occasion, agreeably to ancient practice, a Gaelic sennachy, or bard, clothed in a red mantle, and venerable for his great age and hoary locks, approached the king, and in a bended and reverential attitude, recited, from memory, in his native language, the genealogy of all the Scottish kings, deducing the descent of the youthful monarch from Gathetus, the fabulous founder of the nation.[126] The reign of this prince was distinguished by the entire subjugation of the western islands to the power of the Scottish crown. The Scandinavian settlers were allowed to leave the islands, if inclined, and such of them as remained were bound to observe the Scottish laws.