After the defeat of the Gallwegian rebels, and the slaughter of Gilcolm and his followers, the earls and barons of the kingdom of Scotland proper appear to have become more reconciled to their legitimate monarch; and he felt the necessity of either slaying or expelling Macwilliam, who had now for six years maintained himself in the northern districts beyond the Spey, and been ravaging and devastating those parts of the kingdom which adhered to King William, if he would not lose his crown altogether;[[710]] but it was not till the year 1187 that he found himself in a position to advance against him. He then invaded Moravia or Moray at the head of a large army, and while he remained with the main body of the army at Inverness, sent his earls and barons with the Scots and Gallwegians to lay waste the more western parts of the province. They encountered Macwilliam in the upper part of the valley of the Spey, encamped on a moor called Mamgarvia, and a battle took place there on Friday, the 31st of July, in which Macwilliam was slain with many of his followers.[[711]] Two years after the independence of Scotland was restored by Richard the First, king of England, and the relations between the two kingdoms replaced on their former footing.
A.D. 1196. Subjection of Caithness.
The annexation of the district of Ross to the kingdom, and the suppression of this insurrection, seem, however, soon after to have brought the people of Caithness into closer contact with the royal authority. Although nominally held of the Scottish king, Caithness was possessed as an earldom by the earl of Orkney, who held his other earldom of the king of Norway, and thus the tie with Scotland was a slender one. The earl at this time was Harald, who was himself of the royal family, being son of Madach, earl of Atholl, whose father was a brother of Malcolm Ceannmor, and he had succeeded to the earldom of Orkney and Caithness through his mother, Margaret, the daughter of the Norwegian earl Hakon of Orkney, and his wife was a daughter of Malcolm mac Eth. According to Fordun, King William led an army into Caithness in the year 1196. Crossing the river Oikell, which separates Sutherland from Ross, he killed some of the disturbers of the peace, and subjected both provinces of the Caithness men—that of Sutherland and of Caithness—routing Earl Harald, who, says Fordun, had been ‘until then a good and trusty man, but at that time, goaded on by his wife, the daughter of Mached, had basely deceived his lord the king, and risen against him. Then, leaving there a garrison for the country, the king hurried back into Scotland.’[[712]] From the Chronicle of Melrose we learn that in the following year ‘a battle was fought near the Castle of Inverness, between the king’s troops, who had been probably left as a garrison there, and Roderic and Thorfinn, son of Earl Harald, in which the king’s enemies were put to flight, and Roderic slain, with many of his followers. King William then proceeded with his army to Moray, and the more remote districts’—that is, as Fordun tells us, the districts of Sutherland, Caithness, and Ross; ‘and, having taken Earl Harald prisoner, confined him in the castle of Roxburgh, where he remained till his son Thorfinn gave himself as a hostage for his father.’[[713]] Such are the Scotch accounts of these events; but Roger of Hoveden, a contemporary English writer, gives a somewhat different account. He says that, in 1196, King William entered Moray with a great army to drive out Harald, who had occupied that district, but before the king could enter Caithness, Harald fled to his ships. The king then sent his army to Thurso, and destroyed the castle. Harald then came to the king and submitted, and the king permitted him to retain half of Caithness on condition he surrendered his enemies to him in Moray, and gave the other half to Harald, grandson of Rognwald, a former earl of Orkney and Caithness. The king then returned to his own land, and Harald to Orkney. In the autumn the king returned to Moray, and went to Invernairn to receive the king’s enemies from Harald; but after bringing them to the port of Loch Loy, near Invernairn, he allowed them to escape, on which the king took him prisoner, and kept him in Edinburgh Castle till his son Thorfinn was delivered up for him. Harald the younger was afterwards slain in battle with the elder Harald, who then went to the king and offered to redeem his lands in Caithness with a sum of money. The king agreed to give him back the half of Caithness if he would put away his wife, the daughter of Malcolm Maceth, and take back his first wife, Afreka, sister of Duncan, earl of Fife; but he refused, on which the king gave Caithness to Reginald, the son of Somerled, for a sum of money, reserving the king’s annual tribute.[[714]] In consequence of an attack upon Caithness made in 1202 by Harald, in which he drove out Reginald’s men and made an outrage on the bishop, King William once more sent his army in the spring of that year to Caithness, but it was unable to penetrate beyond the border of the country, and as the king was preparing to follow by sea, Harald met him at Perth under the safe-conduct of Roger, bishop of St. Andrews, and came to an understanding with the king, by which he was restored to his earldom on payment of every fourth penny to be found in Caithness, amounting to 2000 merks of silver.[[715]]
A.D. 1211.
Insurrection in favour of Guthred Macwilliam.
Towards the close of William’s reign he had again to suppress a renewed attempt by the people of Ross to throw off the yoke by supporting the claims of the descendants of William Fitz Duncan. Fordun tells us that ‘Guthred, the son of Macwilliam, came about the Lord’s Epiphany (6th January), by the advice, it was said, of the Thanes of Ross, out of Ireland into that district, and infested the greater part of the kingdom of Scotland. But the king’s army was suddenly sent against him to kill him or to drive him out of the country, and King William himself went after him, and in the following summer built two towns there; but Guthred being seized and fettered through the treachery of his own men, was brought before the king’s son Alexander, at the king’s manor and place of Kincardine, and was there beheaded and hung up by the feet.’[feet.’][[716]] An old chronicler, Walter of Coventry, represents what appears to have been the feeling of the Gaelic population towards the family of Macwilliam, and led to these frequent revolts. ‘This Guthred,’ he says, ‘was of the ancient lineage of the Scottish kings who, with the support of Scots and Irish, did, as well as his father Domnald, exercise constant hostilities against the modern kings, now secretly, now openly. For these modern kings affected more the Normans, as in race, so in customs, language, and culture, and the Scots being reduced to utter servitude admitted the Normans only to their friendship and service.’[[717]] During the remainder of his reign William had no further encounter with his Gaelic subjects, and died at Stirling on the 4th of December 1214.
A.D. 1214-1249.
Alexander the Second, son of king William the Lyon, reigned thirty-five years. Crowned by the seven earls
He was succeeded by his son Alexander, who was then in his seventeenth year, and was crowned at Scone on the following day. We now learn some further particulars of the coronation of the Scottish kings, and we are told by Fordun that the bishop of St. Andrews, the head of the Scotch Church, and the seven earls of Scotland—the earls of Fife, Stratherne, Atholl, Angus, Menteith, Buchan, and Lothian—took Alexander, brought him to Scone, and there raised him to the throne in honour and peace, with the approval of God and man, and with more grandeur and glory than any one till then, while all wished him joy and none gainsaid him. So King Alexander, as was meet, held his feast in state at Scone on that day, viz., Friday, and the Saturday following, viz., the Feast of St. Nicholas, as well as the next Sunday.[[718]]
A.D. 1215.
Insurrection in favour of Donald Macwilliam and Kenneth Maceth.
The young king had barely reigned a year when he had to encounter the old enemies of the crown, the families of Macwilliam and Maceth, who now combined their forces, and under Donald Ban, the son of that Macwilliam who had been slain at Mamgarvia in 1187, and Kenneth Maceth, a son or grandson of Malcolm Maceth, with the son of one of the Irish provincial kings, burst into the province of Moray at the head of a large band of malcontents. A very important auxiliary, however, now joined the party of the king. This was Ferquhard or Fearchar, called Macintagart, the son of the ‘Sagart’ or priest who was the lay possessor of the extensive possessions of the old monastery founded by the Irish Saint Maelrubha at Applecross in the seventh century. Its possessions lay between the district of Ross and the Western Sea, and extended from Loch Carron to Loch Ewe and Loch Maree, where the name of Maelrubha was long venerated as Saint Maree, and Ferquhard was thus in reality a powerful Highland chief commanding the population of an extensive western region. The insurgents were assailed by him with great vigour, entirely crushed, and their leaders taken, whom he at once beheaded, and presented their heads to the new king as a welcome gift on the 15th of June, when he was knighted by the king as the reward of his prompt assistance.[[719]]
A.D. 1222.
Subjection of Arregaithel or Argyll.