In order to settle this dispute, a great council was held in 664 at Strenaeshhalc, now Whitby, the details of which belong more to the history of the Church. Suffice it to say that it led to Osuiu submitting with his nation to Wilfrid, and conforming to the Roman customs, while Colman withdrew with his Scots and those who adhered to him, and went back to Scotia to consult with his people what was to be done in this case.[[334]] He went first to Hii or Iona on leaving Lindisfarne in 664, taking with him part of the relics of Saint Aidan, and having the rest interred in the sacristy of the church at Lindisfarne, and in 668 passed over to Ireland accompanied by the sons of Gartnaith, who took with them the people of Skye, that is the Columban clergy there, and returned two years afterwards.[[335]]
On the departure of the Scots, the episcopal see was removed from Lindisfarne to York, where it had been originally placed by Paulinus, and Wilfrid was made bishop of York, but did not obtain possession of the diocese till 669, when we find him administering the bishopric of York, and of all the Northumbrians, and likewise of the Picts, as far as the dominions of King Osuiu extended,[[336]] an expression which undoubtedly implies that the Picts were not merely tributary to the Angles, but that their territory formed at this time a constituent part of Osuiu’s dominions.
A.D. 670.
Death of Osuiu, and accession of Ecgfrid his son.
In the following year, Osuiu the king of the Northumbrians, died, and was succeeded in both Bernicia and Deira by his son Ecgfrid, whose accession was soon followed by an attempt on the part of the Picts to throw off the Anglic yoke. The account of this insurrection is preserved to us alone by Eddi, in his Life of St. Wilfrid, who wrote a few years before Bede compiled his history. |A.D. 672. Revolt of the Picts.| He tells us that ‘in the first years of his reign the bestial people of the Picts, despising their subjection to the Saxons, and threatening to throw off the yoke of servitude, collected together innumerable tribes from the north, on hearing which Ecgfrid assembled an army, and at the head of a smaller body of troops advanced against this great and not easily discovered enemy, who were assembled under a formidable ruler called Bernaeth, and attacking them made so great a slaughter that two rivers were almost filled with their bodies. Those who fled were pursued and cut to pieces, and the people were again reduced to servitude, and remained under subjection during the rest of Ecgfrid’s reign.’[[337]] Such is Eddi’s account, from which it appears to have been an insurrection of the southern Picts who were under the Anglic yoke, in which they were aided by the northern part of the nation who remained independent. The two rivers may have been either the Forth and the Teith, which join their streams a little above Stirling, or the Tay and the Earn, which unite in the Firth of Tay at Abernethy, having a low-lying plain forming the parish of Rhynd between, and the battle probably took place in the second year of Ecgfrid’s reign, as Tighernac records in that year the expulsion from the kingdom of Drost, who had succeeded his brother Gartnaith as king of the Picts.[[338]] Eddi then tells us that Ecgfrid attacked and defeated Wlfar, king of the Mercians, and drove him from his kingdom, an event not narrated by Bede, but which must have happened before Wlfar’s death in 675, and adds that ‘Ecgfrid’s kingdom was thus enlarged both in the north and the south, and that, under Bishop Wilfrid, the churches were multiplied both in the south among the Saxons, and in the north among the Britons, Scots, and Picts, Wilfrid having ordained everywhere presbyters and deacons, and governed new churches.’[[339]] It was probably at this time that the monastery of Aebbercurnig or Abercorn was founded in that part of Lothian which extends from the Esk to the Avon as a central point for the administration of the northern part of his diocese, which included the province of the Picts held by the Angles of Northumbria in subjection.
A.D. 678.
Wilfrid expelled from his diocese.
In 678 Bede tells us that a dissension broke out between King Ecgfrid and Bishop Wilfrid, who was driven from his see. His diocese was divided into two; Bosa was appointed bishop of the province of Deira, having his episcopal seat at York; and Eata over that of the Bernicians, and his seat either in the church of Hagustald or Hexham, or in that of Lindisfarne. Three years afterwards Wilfrid’s diocese was still further divided and two additional bishops added—Tunberct for the church of Hagustald, Eata remaining at Lindisfarne, and Trumuin over the province of the Picts which was subject to the Angles.[[340]]
Expulsion of Drost, king of the Picts, and accession of Brude, son of Bile.
On the failure of these great attempts to recover their independence in 672, that part of the Pictish nation which had not been brought under subjection to the Angles appears to have expelled their unsuccessful monarch, Drost, the brother and successor of Gartnaith, son of Domnall, from the kingdom, and to have elected Bredei, son of Bile, to fill the vacant throne.[[341]] Bredei was paternally a scion of the royal house of Alclyde, his father Bile appearing in the Welsh genealogies annexed to Nennius as the son of Neithon and father of that Eugein who slew Domnall Breac in 642. His mother was the daughter of Talorcan mac Ainfrait, the last independent king of the Picts before they were subjected by Osuiu.[[342]] The object in placing him on the throne may have been to put the true successor of Talorcan, according to the law of Pictish succession, in competition with any claim the Anglic monarch may have had as representing him in the male line. Bredei began his reign in the extreme north, as eight years after we find the siege of Dunbaitte or Dunbeath, in Caithness, recorded in 680. In the following year he advanced beyond the range of the Mounth toward the south, as we have in 681 the siege of Dunfoither or Dunnotter, near Stonehaven; and in 682 we are told by Tighernac that the Orkney Islands were laid waste by Bruidhe.[[343]]
In the meantime the little kingdom of Dalriada was in a state of complete disorganisation. We find no record of any real king over the whole nation of the Scots, but each separate tribe seems to have remained isolated from the rest under its own chief, while the Britons exercised a kind of sway over them, and, along with the Britons, they were under subjection to the Angles. The most northerly part of Dalriada was the small state called Cinel Baedan, or Kinelvadon, which was a part of the larger tribe of the Cinel Eochagh, one of the three subdivisions of the Cinel Loarn, but separated from the rest by the great arm of the sea called Linnhe Loch. The head of this little tribe was at this time Fearchar Fada, or the Tall, the lineal descendant of Baedan, from whom the tribe took its name, who was son of Eochaidh, grandson of Loarn.[[344]] He appears to have commenced an attempt to throw off the authority of the Britons, and with it that of the Angles, but at first unsuccessfully. The first encounter with the Britons was in 678, when the Dalriads were defeated. At the same time the battles of Dunlocho, Liaccmaelain and Doirad Eilinn were fought, the latter of which can alone be placed with any certainty, Doirad Eilinn being obviously the island of Jura.[[345]]
A.D. 684.
Ireland ravaged by Ecgfrid.