Chapter 24

[65]An. Ult.913–917. In 888 the Irish annalists record that Sitric, thesonof Ivar, killed, or was killed by, his brother. In 919 the same authorities mention that Sitric, thegrandsonof Ivar, slew Nial, King of Ireland, in battle. Some of the Anglo-Norman chroniclers, and one late MS. of the Saxon Chronicle, evidently confounding these events, make the younger Sitric the murderer of his brother Nial.[66]Sim. Dun. Hist. Dun., l. 2, c. 16.Hist. St. Cuth., pp. 73, 74.Innes, Ap. 3.An. Ult.917. The engagement is called by Simeon the battle of Corbridge-on-Tyne, and in Chron. 3 the battle of Tynemore, evidently Tyne Moor.[67]An. Ult.920.[68]An. Ult.926.Chron. Sax.925, 926. According to the Irish annalists, Sitric diedimmaturâ aetate, and consequently his son Olave must have been too young to offer any opposition to Athelstan. The MS.C. T., B. iv., which alludes to Sitric and Godfrey, is, like the Ulster annals, a year behind the true date at this period. As Godfrey was present at a battle in Ireland, fought on 28th December 926, and left Dublin in the following year, upon hearing of the death of his brother, returning thither after an absence of six months, the transactions to which Malmesbury and the Chronicle allude must have taken place during this interval.[69]An. Ult.926.Chron. Sax.926, 927.Malm. Gesta Regum, l. 2, s. 133. The Saxon Chronicle (MS.C. T., B. iv., of the eleventh century) states that the kings met at Emmet, in Yorkshire, and renounced idolatry, a singular compact for a prince who, twenty years before, had presided at an ecclesiastical council at Scone! Malmesbury, who takes his account from an old volume containing a metrical history of Athelstan, “in quo scriptor cum difficultate materiæ luctabatur (et) ultra opinionem in laudibus principis vagatur,” places the meeting at Dacor in Cumberland, adding that Athelstan commanded the son of Constantine to be baptised! Here again the Scottish King figures as a pagan, as he also does in the same writer’s description of the battle of Brunanburgh, where he says that the survivors of the vanquished host were spared to embrace Christianity. There is an evident confusion here between the pagan Northmen, to whom all this is very applicable, and the Christian Scots. It is highly probable both that Sitric “renounced idolatry” on the occasion of his marriage with Athelstan’s sister, and that his son Olave, who ended his life in the monastery of Iona, was baptised through the intervention of the English king, but the same cannot be said of the Christian King of Scotland. From time immemorial, as we learn from Malcolm Ceanmor (Sim. Dun.1093), it was the custom of the English and Scottish kings to meet upon their respective frontiers; but though the borders of Yorkshire and Cumberland were the most appropriate places of meeting for Sitric and his English brother-in-law, they were on the Danish, not the Scottish frontier; and what should bring Constantine thither to renounce idolatry in his declining years, and baptise his son at the bidding of the English king? Much of the history of this period appears to have been derived from old songs and lays, in which due allowance must be made for the confusion and mistakes incidental to such legendary compositions, as well as for the “genus dicendi quod suffultum Tullius appellat,” especially in the struggles of the transcriber to Latinise the barbarous idioms of the vernacular, alluded to with such contemptuous pity by Malmesbury. The vague and exaggerated expressions of these old ballads were frequently copied literally, and latterly in the feudal idiom, into the dry chronicle of a subsequent era, a fate which has frequently befallen the sole Saxon record of the famous battle of Brunanburgh. In the scanty records of this, the most glorious and least known period of Anglo-Saxon history, it is very evident that Constantine has frequently usurped the place of Sitric,—just as in the Egill’s Saga Olave Sitricson figures as King of Scotland, to the total exclusion of his own father-in-law,—but it would be difficult to do more than point out the confusion. The Anglo-Norman writers, of course, take advantage of the confused and indistinct idea of a treaty between Athelstane and Constantine to turn it to their own account, but they have been far outdone by a modern historian, who has actually described the manner in which the Scottish king performed fealty to Athelstan—More Francico, in set form, as laid down in the Liber de Beneficiis—though it would be impossible to say from what source he has obtained his vivid description of the feudal ceremony, for it certainly is not contained in any of the authorities to which he refers (Malm., 27, 28.Flor., 602.Mail., 147), nor was the Frankish ceremony of homage in force amongst the Anglo-Saxons of that era.[70]Olave was Constantine’s son-in-law at the time of the battle of Brunanburgh, but as Sitric died at an early age, and Olave survived his father for nearly sixty years, it is improbable that the connection could have existed till some years after Sitric’s death, when it will explain why Constantine, who at that time was not at variance with Athelstan, and who had supported the Northumbrian Saxons against their mutual enemies the Hy Ivar, became an object of suspicion to the English king when it appeared to be his aim to favour the establishment of his son-in-law in the Danish province, as he had already secured his brother upon the throne of Strath Clyde.[71]Chron. Sax.Sim. Dun. ad an.“Athelstan went into Scotland as well with a land army as with a fleet, and thereover-harriedmuch.” Such are the expressions of theChronicle, the earliest and best authority respecting an expedition which has grown in the pages of the Anglo-Norman annalists into the complete conquest of Scotland. Simeon gives three versions: in his first, from original sources, merely mentioning the extent of the incursion to Dunfœder (or Forteviot) and Wertermore. In his second, copying Florence, he makes Constantine purchase peace at the price of his son’s captivity; and in his third, in return for the gifts of Athelstan to the shrine of St. Cuthbert—and on such occasions the chronicler is never behind-hand in liberality—Scotland is thoroughly subdued (Twysden, pp. 134, 154, 25). It is a very appropriate occasion for the exhibition of thesuffultum genus scribendiby the Anglo Norman writers; and the opportunity has not been passed over. According to Brompton (Twysden, p. 838), Athelstan demanded a sign from St. John of Beverley, “quo præsentes et futuri cognoscere possent Scotos de jure debere Anglis subjugari.” It was granted, and the king’s sword clove an ell of rock from the foundations of Dunbar Castle! “Possessiones, privilegia, et libertates,” rewarded the miracle, a price for which there was scarcely a patron saint in the country who would not have been made to confirm with signs and wonders the rightful supremacy of the English king over any people he chose to name. The monks of Newburgh outdid even Brompton, detaining Athelstan for three years in Scotland, whilst he placed “princes” over her provinces, provosts over her cities, and settled the amount of tribute to be paid from the most distant islands! (Doc. etc. Illus. Hist. Scot., No. 33.) The tale reappears, as might be expected, in the time of the first Edward, in its most exaggerated form, as “Inventa in quodum libro de vita et miraculis beati Johannis de Beverlacoquæ sunt per Romanam curiam approbata(Fœd., vol. i., p. 771). Dr. Lingard, through one of those oversights which occasionally serve to strengthen his arguments in Scottish matters, has transferred to this expedition the epithets applied by Æthelward to the battle of Brunanburgh.[72]At this time there were two prominent characters amongst the descendants of Ivar of the name of Anlaf or Olave, who have frequently been confounded. Olave, the son of Sitric, known in the Sagas under the name of Olave the Red—thean t sainnrof theA. F. M.978—sometimes as Olave Cuaran (for his son Sitric, who fought at Clontarf is called Olave Quaran’s son in the Niala Saga,Antiq. Celt.-Scand., p. 108), became the head of his family upon the death of his uncle Godfrey, and to him the Sagas invariably attribute the supreme rule over the Norsemen at Brunanburgh and elsewhere. Upon the death of Athelstan, the whole of England north of Watling Street was ceded to “Olave of Ireland,” and for four years Olave Sitricson retained his hold upon the conquered districts, until the successes of Edmund drove him across the channel to Ireland. He frequently appears in English history subsequently as the opponent of Eric of the Bloody Axe and the Anglo-Saxon monarchs; but his name does not occur in the Irish annals before he was driven from Northumbria in 944; and about eight years later, relinquishing all hopes of obtaining his father’s English kingdom, he established himself permanently in Dublin, ruling the Irish Norsemen for nearly thirty years, and bequeathing his dominion to his descendants. Olave, the son of Godfrey, succeeded his father in Dublin in 934, crossed the sea in the autumn of 937, and joining in the battle of Brunanburgh, reappeared in Ireland in the following year. He again appeared in England when Olave of Ireland was chosen by the Northumbrian Danes for their king, and shared the supremacy with his kinsman until his death at Tyningham in 941. Guthferd or Godfrey, the son of Hardacanute, a personage whose existence is somewhat doubtful, but who is supposed to have succeeded Halfdan, is often confounded with either GodfreymacIvar or GodfreyhyIvar. The Irish annals, sagas, and Simeon, are my authorities for this sketch.[73]Chron. Sax.937.Egil’s Saga,Antiq. Celt.-Scand.The story of Olave’s adventures in the camp of Athelstan is also told of Alfred, and, if I recollect aright, of others. It is probably true in one instance, and ascribed to the rest. Eogan of Strath Clyde was probably amongst the kings who fell, as his son Donald soon afterwards appears as king of Strath Clyde.[74]Heimskringla, Saga4, c. 3. The tie of blood was the great bond of union in these days, and a member of a “royal race” could unite the most discordant elements under his standard. The invaders of the British Isles, like their greatest leaders Olave and Ivar—the one an Ingling, the other a Skioldung—were of Norwegian and Danish race, but after the death of Thorstein, Olave’s son, without known issue, as no prominent scion of the race of Halfdan Hvitbein remained, Dane and Norwegian both looked for their leaders to the family of Ragnar Lodbroc, the Hy Ivar. Eric, however, was of the blood of Halfdan Hvitbein, and by placing him amongst the Northmen, Athelstan skilfully sowed the seeds of discord, which yielded an abundant harvest a few years later in the contests between him and Olave Sitricson.[75]It is doubtful which Olave is meant. When Edmund regained Northumbria, Olave Sitricson and Reginald Godfreyson appear to have been joint kings, so that it is probable that the two Olaves divided the supremacy in return for the assistance of the son of Godfrey in reinstating his kinsman. The death of Athelstan is assigned to the years 939 and 941. Ethelward places his death two years after Brunanburgh, in 939, and the charter 411 (Cod. Dip. Ang. Sax., vol. ii.) would favour this date. There are many charters of Edmund in 940, none of Athelstan after 939.[76]Heimsk., Saga4, c. 4.An. Ult.941.A. F. M., 940. Sacheverell, in his History of the Isle of Man, p. 25, mentions a Manx tradition that the first of a line of twelve Oirrighs or underkings was the son of a king of Denmark or Norway, whose successors Guthfert and Reginald are evidently Godfrey Haraldson and his son Reginald, kings of Man after Maccus or Magnus Haraldson, who killed Eric in 954, at which time he probably acquired the kingdom of Man and the Isles. The Irish annals mention that in 942 the son of Reginald Hy Ivar was driven from the Isles by “Gall from beyond sea;” and it seems highly probable that these were the followers of Eric, who must have established himself in the dominion of the islands about this time.[77]Sim. Dun. de Gestis, 941.[78]Innes, Ap. 3. A Culdee abbot was not at this time strictly an ecclesiastical dignitary. The office appears to have been frequently held by the next in consideration to the head of the family in whose province or kingdom the monastery was situated.[79]The period of this reign has been chosen by the Anglo-Norman writers as the era in which a feudal supremacy, in a strict Anglo-Norman sense, was first acquired over Scotland by her southern neighbour; and the theory, as might be expected, is supported in an appropriate manner. Three years after the death of Reginald, the fiery Dane is resuscitated from his grave, and placed, by the fiat of the English chroniclers, side by side with Constantine and the Prince of Strath Clyde, brought, together with the whole free population of Cumbria, Scotland, and Danish Northumbria, from the borders of the Forth, the Clyde, and the Humber, to the distant Peak of Derbyshire, to tender homage to the Saxon Edward at Bakewell! Yet their submission, and even the unwonted journey so far from their respective frontiers, fail to avert their sorrowful fate; for though Reginald is permitted to return to his tomb, his luckless companions are wantonly hurled from their thrones upon the accession of Athelstan; whilst, to enhance the glory of the Saxon king, Aldred of Bamborough is made the companion of their flight. He was the faithful friend of Edward, the son of Eadulf, “the darling” of the great Alfred,—considerations which have little weight with the ruthless chroniclers; and Aldred is raised to an evanescent independence, to swell the triumph of Athelstan by being ejected from what is called “his kingdom!” As history advances, fresh links are added to the chain of bondage, and the decreasing power of the Anglo-Saxon monarchs marches hand in hand with the increasing submission of the Scottish kings. Then is exhibited the singular anomaly of an obedient and obsequious vassal appropriating without ceremony the territories of his sovereign lord, until the climax is attained in the reign of the Confessor; and at a time when the over-powerful subjects of that prince seem to have been fast verging towards independence, freely and willingly does the Scottish king tender that allegiance for his entire kingdom which the iron-willed successors of the feeble Edward in vain attempted to extort. Into such errors and inconsistencies have the great majority of Anglo-Norman chroniclers fallen in endeavouring to found a claim to a feudal supremacy over Scotland in an age in which neither amongst Scots nor Anglo-Saxons was the feudal system in force.—V. Appendix L, pt. 1.[80]Chron. Sax.An. Ult.943.—Roger of Wendover is the earliest authority for the tale of Edmund expelling Dunmail—hardly the same person as Donald MacEogan, who died in 975—and putting out the eyes of his two sons (vol. 1., p. 398). The story is probably about as true as the account of the same chronicler that the English king was assisted on this occasion by Llewellyn of South Wales. In 945 Howell Dha was king of South Wales, and as none of his sons bore the name of Llewellyn, the only person whom the Welsh writers can find to participate in the expedition is Llewellyn ap Sitsylt—who died 76 years later, in 1021—the father of Harold’s opponent, Griffith, and of Blethyn and Rhywallon, who figured, considerably more than a century later, in the reign of William the Conqueror. The next thing heard of this Llewellyn is in 1018, when, says Caradoc (Hist. Wales, p. 79), “Llewellyn ap Sitsylt having for some years (seventy-three) sat still and quiet, began now to bestir himself.” It was time![81]Sim. Dun. Twysden, pp. 14, 74.[82]Chron. Sax.945.Midwyrhta, “fellow workman,” is the expression used, which the feudal ideas of a later age naturally renderedfidelis; and an alliance, only lasting for the life of Malcolm, was accordingly transformed into a regular feudal transaction, existing for generations. The earlier authorities, from the chronicle and Æthelward, make no mention of any such thing; and Kenneth the Second appears to have been as ignorant of it when he harried Cumberland in 971, as Ethelred when he wasted the same province in 1000; nor could Simeon of Durham have been aware of such a compact when he wrote that, in 1072, Malcolm the Third held Cumberland “Non jure possessa sed violenter subjugata,” expressions which can scarcely be reconciled with the uninterrupted possession of the province as a feudal fief for 127 years. When John of Fordun compiled his history, he eagerly seized upon the means of escaping the numerous claims for homage put forward in the rival English chroniclers; and Cumberland, in his pages, becomes the counterpart of the earldom of Huntingdon during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Scottish king invariably granting it to the heir, or tanist, who duly performs homage to the Saxon monarch for the fief held of his crown. On one occasion a tanist is called into existence for this sole purpose, and the veracious historian, after fabricating the apocryphal being, is obliged to murder his own creation to account for his not appearing amongst the Scottish kings. The samemyth, Malcolm, king of the Cumbrians, unites with Kenneth the Second in witnessing a charter which the latter is supposed to have signed as king five years before he ascended the throne, and is very appropriately placed amongst the eight oarsmen who manned the boat of Edgar in his apocryphal progress on the Dee.—V. Appendix L, pt. 1.[83]Chron. Sax.946, 948.[84]Chron. Sax.949.Innes, Ap. 3. The seventh year of Malcolm corresponds exactly with 949, the year in which Olave reappeared in Northumbria, and the curious tradition preserved in the old chronicle that Constantine resumed his authority for a week to head the Scottish army in an incursion to the Tees, must surely be connected with the arrival of his son-in-law, and the reluctance of Malcolm to break the engagement by which he held Cumberland.[85]A. F. M., 950.Chron. Sax.952.[86]Tigh.980.A. F. M., 1014. The account of Tighernach reveals both the extent of Olave’s power and the far greater importance of the first victory which broke it. The death of the old warrior is described rather quaintly by the annalist “post pœnitentiam etbonos mores.”[87]Chron. Sax.954.Sim. Dun. de Gestis, 1072.Wendover, vol. i., p. 402.Heimskringla, Saga4, c. 4. The Henricus and Reginaldus of Wendover are probably the Harek and Rognwald of the Saga. Simeon calls Maco or Maccus a son of Olave, but Olave had no son of that name, and Maco was probably “Maccus Archipirata,” or Magnus Haraldson, king of Man and the Islands, who was the head of a different branch of the Hy Ivar. His father, Harald, who was killed in Connaught in 940, was the son of SitricMacIvar, or the elder Sitric, who killed, or was killed by, his brother Godfrey, and was the head of the Norsemen of Limerick. The power of the Limerick Hy Ivar appears to have received a severe shock when Olave Godfreyson, shortly before the battle of Brunanburgh, destroyed all their ships and captured their leader, Olave Cen-Cairedh.A. F. M., 934, 938.[88]Innes, Ap. 3.Wynton, bk. 6, c. 10.An. Ult.953. The men of Mærne occasionally make their appearance in early Scottish history, and generally in company with the men of Moray. It has been frequently assumed that they belonged to a certain earldom of the Merns, comprised in modern Kincardineshire, though Mr. Skene (Highlanders, vol. ii., c. 9) places them on the western coast, where he supposes that there once existed an earldom of Garmoran. The same objection, I fear, may be raised against the earldom of Garmoran which is urged against the earldom of the Merns—the total silence of history respecting it. When a dim light is first shed upon the northern provinces, the name of Moray, which must have once been applied to the whole line of sea-coast—Armorica—in this direction, is confined to the westward of the Spey, whilst the eastern tract of country is broken up into the earldoms of Mar and Buchan, and the districts of Strathbogie and the Garioch, both “in the crown,”i.e., conquered. The name of Mærne has by this time disappeared, unless it still survived inMar, representing only a portion of the ancient province, but I should imagine it is to be sought for in this quarter, which would account for the connection of its people with the men of Moray; and if ancient Mærne once included Kincardineshire, the name of “the Merns” may have been retained, like that of Northumberland or Cumberland, by a comparatively small portion of the original province.[89]Innes, Ap. 3.Sim. Dun. de Gestis, 854, and p. 139.[90]Innes, Ap. 3.Wynton, bk. 6, c. 10.Fordun, l. 4, c. 27.—The old chronicler calls the Northmen “Sumerlide”—summer army—an expression similar to the “micel sumorlida” of the Saxon Chronicle 871. In fact, piracy was thesummeroccupation of the Norsemen.[91]Innes, Ap. 3.An. Ult.964. The hostility of the house of Atholl was destined in the end to be fatal to the line of Duff.[92]Innes, Ap. 3, 5.Fordun, l. 4, c. 28.An. Ult.966. From the first authority it would appear as if Duff never recovered the throne, and the story of his death rather favours the idea that he was killed when in exile.[93]Innes, Ap. 3, 5.An. Ult.970. Wynton and Fordun give the name of Radoard to the British prince. The line of Constantine the Second generally appears in connection with the south of Scotland.[94]Tigh.977.[95]Innes, Ap. 3. Kenneth’s ravages reached “ad Stammoir, ad Cluiam et ad stang na Deram,” according to Pinkerton’s version of the Chronicle. The captive is called a son of the king of the Saxons—probably of the Northumbrians.[96]V.Chap. 2, p. 47.[97]They were the sons of a female slave. The surviving legitimate sons of Rognwald were Thorer, who succeeded his father in Norway, and the famous Gangr Rolf, founder of the Norman dynasty, and ancestor of William the Conqueror. TheHolderwas the oldAllodialproprietor amongst the Scandinavians of those days, answering to theEorlcundman.[98]Eric Blodæxe was killed in the year 954. His sons attacked Hakon the Good for the second or third time, after he had reigned twenty years,i.e., about 957. The arrival of Gunhilda and her sons in the Orkneys must have fallen between those two years.—Heimsk. Saga4, c. 22.[99]Hakon reigned for 26 years, and Harald Greyskin for 15, after the death of Harfager in 937, which would place the death of Harald in 978.—Heimsk. Saga4, c. 28;Saga6, c. 13. When the sons of Eric escaped to the Orkneys, immediately after the death of Harald, they found the sons of Thorfin in possession of the islands.—Do., Saga6, c. 16. The Orkneyinga Saga says that Thorfin was still alive but died soon afterwards. His death must have occurred about the year 978.[100]Ork. Saga in Col. de. Reb. Alb., p. 339.[101]All these events must have occurred between 978 and 994, for the battle of Dungal’s Nœp was fought in or before the latter year. Kari Solmundason, and the son of Nial, were present at this engagement, and after remaining two winters and a summer with Sigurd, departed for Norway in the following summer,i.e., two years after the battle, with the tribute for Jarl Hakon, and as the Jarl’s death occurred in 996, the battle must have been fought at least two years before that date. It probably occurred a few years earlier, as the same Saga alludes to the defeat of Godred of Man, whose reign extended from the death of his brother Magnus, about 977 to 989.An. Inisf.977.Tigh.989.Niala Saga, Col. de Reb. Alb., p. 334, 338. The Hundi of the Sagas seems to have been Crinan. The account of these transactions is taken from theHeimskringla Saga3, c. 27 to 32;Saga4, c. 3, 4, 5;Saga7, c. 99; and theOlaf Tryggvessonar NialaandOrkneyinga SagasinCol. de Reb. Alb., p. 327, etc.[102]Heimsk. Saga6, c. 52;Saga7, c. 99.[103]The Isla and the Dee are the boundaries assigned to one of the old Pictish kingdoms in the description of Andrew, bishop of Caithness, inInnes, Ap. 2.[104]Such is the account ofWynton, bk. 6, c. 10, andReg. St. And., Innes, Ap. 5, with whichFordun, l. 4, c. 15, agrees. Boece of course is able to supply every deficiency in his own peculiar way.[105]The principle of “the right of blood” latterly exercised a social influence over the ecclesiastical as over the political system of the Gaelic people, and bishops and abbots made their visitations and exacted their dues amongst a population united to them, in a certain sense, by the ties of kindred, whilst most of the superior offices in a monastery became hereditary. Not that they were invariably held from father to son, but the right of presentation to certain offices becoming vested in certain families, the people grew by degrees to be united to their abbots and other ecclesiastical dignitaries by a similar tie of blood to that which bound them to their chiefs and princes, and an abbot not chosen from one of the families of the district in which his monastery was placed, would have appeared (in an unconquered country) as great an anomaly as a chieftain or a king of alien blood—anungecyndne cyning. When, therefore, Kenneth founded Brechin, which must undoubtedly have enjoyed the privilege ofCuairtor visitation over the same extent of country as was afterwards included in the diocese of that name, he must have possessed the power of insuring to the abbot and his monks the free exercise of their rights amongst the people of the district; in other words (as he had not inherited it), he must have conquered it. Beyond the territories over which the monastery exercisedCuairt, the country up to the Dee was placed under the jurisdiction of St. Andrews, the bishop of this diocese being the spiritual head of the conquests of the kings of Scots—as in the case of Lothian, for instance—except when it was otherwise arranged.[106]Innes, Ap. 5.Wynton, bk. 6, c. 10.Fordun, l. 4, c. 36.Tigh.995. The king’s visit to Fettercairn was probably aCuairtor royal progress. The Prior of Lochleven merely says that Kenneth was slain by some members of his own court—thesocii suiof Tighernach. Fordun, or rather perhaps Bowyer, names the assassins, Grim, thesonof Kenneth MacDuff, and Constantine, the son of Culen, whilst he and Boece describe the machine which cost the king his life. It was as follows:—“In the middes of this hous was ane image of bras, maid to the similitude of Kenneth, with ane goldin apill in his hand, with sic ingine that als sone as any man maid him to throw this apill out of the hand of the image, the wrying of the samein drew all the tituppis of the crosbowis up at anis, and schot at him that threw the apill.”Bellenden’s Boece, bk. 11, c. 10.[107]Fordun, l. 4, c. 30.[108]Fordun, l. 4, c. 36. He merely alludes to the death of Malcolm MacDuff in the twentieth year of Kenneth’s reign; butBoece, bk. 11, c. 9, makes the king poison him.[109]Boece, bk. 11, c. 8.Fordun, l. 10, c. 17. Drumlay is characteristically explained to mean (in good Lowland Scotch)Droun-it-lay!The whole description is transferred by Boece to the reign of Duncan the First, theRex Noricusof Bowyer assuming the name of Sueno.[110]As Kenneth was the contemporary of the Anglo-Saxon Edgar, it is not to be supposed that he has escaped the claims of the Norman writers, and accordingly, at a time when he was harrying Cumberland, he figures in their pages as an attendant at the court of Edgar at Chester, forming one of a a crew of eight “underkings,” who in token of humble submission rowed the king’s barge in a triumphal procession on the Dee. During another visit to the English court at Lincoln, a crafty suggestion of the Scottish king about the difficulty and trouble of defending Lothian, is rewarded by the gift of the province as a feudal fief, to be held by various acts of homage, amongst others on condition of carrying the crown on all state occasions, whilst manors are provided to cover the expenses of the royal vassal on his progresses towards the southern court! It is curious to remark the tone of increasing feudalism pervading the fabrications of each succeeding century. The composers of the fictions about Kenneth and Edgar, which are only to be found in the later chroniclers connected with St. Albans, have been even more than usually imaginative, and their transparent fabrications remain as a warning to the impartial historian to look with mistrust upon all claims connected with such a tissue of anachronism and fable.V. Appendix L, pt. 1.[111]Rathinveramon, “the fort at the mouth of the Almond” where it joins the Tay, is named as the place of his death inInnes, Ap. 5, the same locality as the “caput amnis Awyne” of Wynton,v.alsoTigh.997. It is said to have been the site of the ancientBertha, and was swept away by the great flood at the close of the reign of William the Lion.[112]Innes, Ap. 5.Wynton, b. 6, c. 10.An. Ult.1004.[113]Sim. Dun. de obs. Dun.(Twysden, p. 79).An. Ult.1006. Through the error of some transcriber probably, these events are placed by Simeon in the year 969, when neither Malcolm nor Ethelred were reigning, nor was Ealdun bishop of Durham. The real date must have been in 1006, as the Ulster annals mention that in 1005 the Scots were defeated by the Saxons “with great slaughter of their nobles.” Fordun (l. 4, c. 43) has either mistaken this battle for the later one at Carham, or has unblushingly claimed it as a victory. Before the time of Canute the difference in titles of Eorl and Ealdorman, marked the different people over whom the possessor of the title was placed in authority. Oslac is addressed asEorl, Ælfhere and Æthelwine asEaldormen, in the Laws of Edgar, Sup. 15.[114]Sim. Dun., as above;V. Appendix M.[115]Olaf Tryggvessonar SagainCol. de Reb. Alb., p. 330, andAntiq. Celt.-Scand., p. 119. The battle must have been fought after 1005, the date of Malcolm’s accession, and before 1009, the year of Thorfin’s birth. The latter was five when his father was killed at Clontarf, bearing the fatal banner himself, for it seems to have acquired an evil reputation, and Hrafn the Red, on Sigurd committing it to his charge after the death of its first bearer, refused to lift it, adding somewhat unceremoniously, “Bear thine own devil thyself.”—(Story of Burnt Njal, c. 156.)[116]Heimsk. Saga7, c. 99, with the Sagas already quoted;videalso the account of the battle of Clontarf in the Irish Annals.[117]Chron. Sax.1016.Sim. Dun. Twysden, p. 81.[118]Innes, Ap. 4.Sim. Dun. Hist. Dun., l. 3, c. 5, 6—Do.De obs. Dun.p. 81,de Gestis1018. On comparing the passages of Simeon it is impossible to doubt that the cession of Lothian by Eadulf Cudel was the result of the battle of Carham, though there is an evident reluctance in the English chronicler to allude to the defeat and its consequences. The men of the Lothians, according to Wallingford, retained their laws and customs unaltered, and though theauthorityis questionable, thefactis probably true, forLothianlaw became eventually the basis ofScottishlaw. Conquest indeed in these times did not alter the laws and customs of the conquered, unless where they come into contact and into opposition with those of the conquerors, and the men of the Lothians remained under the Scottish kings in much the same position as the men of Kent under the kings of Mercia and Wessex, probably exchanging the condition of aharassedfor that of afavouredfrontier province.[119]Chron. Sax.1031.MS. Cot. Tib.B. iv. is the authority. Two later MSS. add the names of two otherkings, Mælbeth and Jehmarc. Macbeth became Mormaor of Moray in the following year through the death of his kinsman Gilcomgain. These two kings reappear in the Heimskringla (Saga7, vol. 2, p. 196.V.alsoLodb. Quida, p. 101), as “Nordan of Skotlandi of Fifi.” IfFifiis here put forFiord Riki, it is probably a mistake, for “the Firth kingdom” might mean Moray as well as Fife, and the name in this instance would be more appropriate to the former.[120]An. Ult.1033. He is called M., son of Boedhe, probably Malcolm.[121]Tigh.1034.Wynton, bk. 6, c. 10.Fordun, l. 4, c. 46. Angus was as fatal to Malcolm and his father Kenneth, as the neighbourhood of Forres had proved to the first Malcolm and his father Donald.[122]Tigh.975–997.[123]Sim. Dun. de Gestis, 1018.Lutinensesis evidently a clerical error forClutinenses.[124]Flor. Wig., 1054.Malm. de Gest., l. 2., c. 196. The Cumbrensis regio was again detached and given by Edgar to his brother David, who held it, in spite of the opposition of Alexander, throughout that king’s reign.Ailred in Twysden, p. 344.[125]Fordun, l. 4, c. 44. He connects it with a victory over the Danes. Whatever may have been the cause of its erection, the founder must have possessed an influence over the surrounding territory. In the preface to the Register of Aberdeen, the editor inclines to the opinion that Malcolm the Third was the founder of Mortlach, in which case the annexation of Strathbogie and the Garioch to the Scottish crown would have been the result of the successful northern wars of the latter king.[126]Strathbogie and the Garioch were “in the crown” at a later period, and before the reign of David, though it would be difficult to say with certainty when these districts were annexed. Moray was forfeited under David, and the summary manner in which that king and his successors were able to deal with church property in the diocese of that name, as well as in that of Aberdeen, discloses the different relation in which the Scottish kings stood towards the people of those bishoprics and towards the population of some of the other dioceses. No Culdees appear struggling for their rights in the earlier charters of Moray and Aberdeen (though in the thirteenth century the Culdees of Monymusk tried to shake off the supremacy of St. Andrews), a proof that the powerful Gaelic families in whom these rights would have been vested, were either extinct, or so far reduced as to be in no condition to offer any resistance to the measures of David. Such was not the case in the bishoprics of Brechin and Dunblane, where the Culdees held their ground long after the time of that king, owing probably to a reluctance on his part, and on that of his successors, to alienate their great feudatories, the earls of Strathearn and abbots of Brechin, by an over prompt interference with Church property in their possession. The tradition connecting Mortlach with Malcolm the Second, has induced me to notice the annexations of these districts under this reign, in which the royal authority may have been considerably extended and consolidated in this direction, though I think it most probable that the final conquest and submission of the province was the result of the frequent and successful, though little known, northern wars of Malcolm the Third, and the subsequent successes of his son Alexander in the same quarter. The last Mormaor of the mysterious province of Mærne appears in alliance with Donald Bane; the people of the district attempted, in conjunction with the Moray men, to assassinate Alexander at Invergowrie, and then nothing more is heard either of the Mormaor or the men of Mærne; and I am inclined to connect with this disappearance the forfeiture of the ancient family, and the distribution of the ancient kingdom between Dee and Spey into the two subordinate earldoms of Mar and Buchan, and the two lordships of Strathbogie and the Garioch, long retained by a member of the royal family.[127]This subject is further treated inAppendicesDandN.

[66]Sim. Dun. Hist. Dun., l. 2, c. 16.Hist. St. Cuth., pp. 73, 74.Innes, Ap. 3.An. Ult.917. The engagement is called by Simeon the battle of Corbridge-on-Tyne, and in Chron. 3 the battle of Tynemore, evidently Tyne Moor.

[67]An. Ult.920.

[68]An. Ult.926.Chron. Sax.925, 926. According to the Irish annalists, Sitric diedimmaturâ aetate, and consequently his son Olave must have been too young to offer any opposition to Athelstan. The MS.C. T., B. iv., which alludes to Sitric and Godfrey, is, like the Ulster annals, a year behind the true date at this period. As Godfrey was present at a battle in Ireland, fought on 28th December 926, and left Dublin in the following year, upon hearing of the death of his brother, returning thither after an absence of six months, the transactions to which Malmesbury and the Chronicle allude must have taken place during this interval.

[69]An. Ult.926.Chron. Sax.926, 927.Malm. Gesta Regum, l. 2, s. 133. The Saxon Chronicle (MS.C. T., B. iv., of the eleventh century) states that the kings met at Emmet, in Yorkshire, and renounced idolatry, a singular compact for a prince who, twenty years before, had presided at an ecclesiastical council at Scone! Malmesbury, who takes his account from an old volume containing a metrical history of Athelstan, “in quo scriptor cum difficultate materiæ luctabatur (et) ultra opinionem in laudibus principis vagatur,” places the meeting at Dacor in Cumberland, adding that Athelstan commanded the son of Constantine to be baptised! Here again the Scottish King figures as a pagan, as he also does in the same writer’s description of the battle of Brunanburgh, where he says that the survivors of the vanquished host were spared to embrace Christianity. There is an evident confusion here between the pagan Northmen, to whom all this is very applicable, and the Christian Scots. It is highly probable both that Sitric “renounced idolatry” on the occasion of his marriage with Athelstan’s sister, and that his son Olave, who ended his life in the monastery of Iona, was baptised through the intervention of the English king, but the same cannot be said of the Christian King of Scotland. From time immemorial, as we learn from Malcolm Ceanmor (Sim. Dun.1093), it was the custom of the English and Scottish kings to meet upon their respective frontiers; but though the borders of Yorkshire and Cumberland were the most appropriate places of meeting for Sitric and his English brother-in-law, they were on the Danish, not the Scottish frontier; and what should bring Constantine thither to renounce idolatry in his declining years, and baptise his son at the bidding of the English king? Much of the history of this period appears to have been derived from old songs and lays, in which due allowance must be made for the confusion and mistakes incidental to such legendary compositions, as well as for the “genus dicendi quod suffultum Tullius appellat,” especially in the struggles of the transcriber to Latinise the barbarous idioms of the vernacular, alluded to with such contemptuous pity by Malmesbury. The vague and exaggerated expressions of these old ballads were frequently copied literally, and latterly in the feudal idiom, into the dry chronicle of a subsequent era, a fate which has frequently befallen the sole Saxon record of the famous battle of Brunanburgh. In the scanty records of this, the most glorious and least known period of Anglo-Saxon history, it is very evident that Constantine has frequently usurped the place of Sitric,—just as in the Egill’s Saga Olave Sitricson figures as King of Scotland, to the total exclusion of his own father-in-law,—but it would be difficult to do more than point out the confusion. The Anglo-Norman writers, of course, take advantage of the confused and indistinct idea of a treaty between Athelstane and Constantine to turn it to their own account, but they have been far outdone by a modern historian, who has actually described the manner in which the Scottish king performed fealty to Athelstan—More Francico, in set form, as laid down in the Liber de Beneficiis—though it would be impossible to say from what source he has obtained his vivid description of the feudal ceremony, for it certainly is not contained in any of the authorities to which he refers (Malm., 27, 28.Flor., 602.Mail., 147), nor was the Frankish ceremony of homage in force amongst the Anglo-Saxons of that era.

[70]Olave was Constantine’s son-in-law at the time of the battle of Brunanburgh, but as Sitric died at an early age, and Olave survived his father for nearly sixty years, it is improbable that the connection could have existed till some years after Sitric’s death, when it will explain why Constantine, who at that time was not at variance with Athelstan, and who had supported the Northumbrian Saxons against their mutual enemies the Hy Ivar, became an object of suspicion to the English king when it appeared to be his aim to favour the establishment of his son-in-law in the Danish province, as he had already secured his brother upon the throne of Strath Clyde.

[71]Chron. Sax.Sim. Dun. ad an.“Athelstan went into Scotland as well with a land army as with a fleet, and thereover-harriedmuch.” Such are the expressions of theChronicle, the earliest and best authority respecting an expedition which has grown in the pages of the Anglo-Norman annalists into the complete conquest of Scotland. Simeon gives three versions: in his first, from original sources, merely mentioning the extent of the incursion to Dunfœder (or Forteviot) and Wertermore. In his second, copying Florence, he makes Constantine purchase peace at the price of his son’s captivity; and in his third, in return for the gifts of Athelstan to the shrine of St. Cuthbert—and on such occasions the chronicler is never behind-hand in liberality—Scotland is thoroughly subdued (Twysden, pp. 134, 154, 25). It is a very appropriate occasion for the exhibition of thesuffultum genus scribendiby the Anglo Norman writers; and the opportunity has not been passed over. According to Brompton (Twysden, p. 838), Athelstan demanded a sign from St. John of Beverley, “quo præsentes et futuri cognoscere possent Scotos de jure debere Anglis subjugari.” It was granted, and the king’s sword clove an ell of rock from the foundations of Dunbar Castle! “Possessiones, privilegia, et libertates,” rewarded the miracle, a price for which there was scarcely a patron saint in the country who would not have been made to confirm with signs and wonders the rightful supremacy of the English king over any people he chose to name. The monks of Newburgh outdid even Brompton, detaining Athelstan for three years in Scotland, whilst he placed “princes” over her provinces, provosts over her cities, and settled the amount of tribute to be paid from the most distant islands! (Doc. etc. Illus. Hist. Scot., No. 33.) The tale reappears, as might be expected, in the time of the first Edward, in its most exaggerated form, as “Inventa in quodum libro de vita et miraculis beati Johannis de Beverlacoquæ sunt per Romanam curiam approbata(Fœd., vol. i., p. 771). Dr. Lingard, through one of those oversights which occasionally serve to strengthen his arguments in Scottish matters, has transferred to this expedition the epithets applied by Æthelward to the battle of Brunanburgh.

[72]At this time there were two prominent characters amongst the descendants of Ivar of the name of Anlaf or Olave, who have frequently been confounded. Olave, the son of Sitric, known in the Sagas under the name of Olave the Red—thean t sainnrof theA. F. M.978—sometimes as Olave Cuaran (for his son Sitric, who fought at Clontarf is called Olave Quaran’s son in the Niala Saga,Antiq. Celt.-Scand., p. 108), became the head of his family upon the death of his uncle Godfrey, and to him the Sagas invariably attribute the supreme rule over the Norsemen at Brunanburgh and elsewhere. Upon the death of Athelstan, the whole of England north of Watling Street was ceded to “Olave of Ireland,” and for four years Olave Sitricson retained his hold upon the conquered districts, until the successes of Edmund drove him across the channel to Ireland. He frequently appears in English history subsequently as the opponent of Eric of the Bloody Axe and the Anglo-Saxon monarchs; but his name does not occur in the Irish annals before he was driven from Northumbria in 944; and about eight years later, relinquishing all hopes of obtaining his father’s English kingdom, he established himself permanently in Dublin, ruling the Irish Norsemen for nearly thirty years, and bequeathing his dominion to his descendants. Olave, the son of Godfrey, succeeded his father in Dublin in 934, crossed the sea in the autumn of 937, and joining in the battle of Brunanburgh, reappeared in Ireland in the following year. He again appeared in England when Olave of Ireland was chosen by the Northumbrian Danes for their king, and shared the supremacy with his kinsman until his death at Tyningham in 941. Guthferd or Godfrey, the son of Hardacanute, a personage whose existence is somewhat doubtful, but who is supposed to have succeeded Halfdan, is often confounded with either GodfreymacIvar or GodfreyhyIvar. The Irish annals, sagas, and Simeon, are my authorities for this sketch.

[73]Chron. Sax.937.Egil’s Saga,Antiq. Celt.-Scand.The story of Olave’s adventures in the camp of Athelstan is also told of Alfred, and, if I recollect aright, of others. It is probably true in one instance, and ascribed to the rest. Eogan of Strath Clyde was probably amongst the kings who fell, as his son Donald soon afterwards appears as king of Strath Clyde.

[74]Heimskringla, Saga4, c. 3. The tie of blood was the great bond of union in these days, and a member of a “royal race” could unite the most discordant elements under his standard. The invaders of the British Isles, like their greatest leaders Olave and Ivar—the one an Ingling, the other a Skioldung—were of Norwegian and Danish race, but after the death of Thorstein, Olave’s son, without known issue, as no prominent scion of the race of Halfdan Hvitbein remained, Dane and Norwegian both looked for their leaders to the family of Ragnar Lodbroc, the Hy Ivar. Eric, however, was of the blood of Halfdan Hvitbein, and by placing him amongst the Northmen, Athelstan skilfully sowed the seeds of discord, which yielded an abundant harvest a few years later in the contests between him and Olave Sitricson.

[75]It is doubtful which Olave is meant. When Edmund regained Northumbria, Olave Sitricson and Reginald Godfreyson appear to have been joint kings, so that it is probable that the two Olaves divided the supremacy in return for the assistance of the son of Godfrey in reinstating his kinsman. The death of Athelstan is assigned to the years 939 and 941. Ethelward places his death two years after Brunanburgh, in 939, and the charter 411 (Cod. Dip. Ang. Sax., vol. ii.) would favour this date. There are many charters of Edmund in 940, none of Athelstan after 939.

[76]Heimsk., Saga4, c. 4.An. Ult.941.A. F. M., 940. Sacheverell, in his History of the Isle of Man, p. 25, mentions a Manx tradition that the first of a line of twelve Oirrighs or underkings was the son of a king of Denmark or Norway, whose successors Guthfert and Reginald are evidently Godfrey Haraldson and his son Reginald, kings of Man after Maccus or Magnus Haraldson, who killed Eric in 954, at which time he probably acquired the kingdom of Man and the Isles. The Irish annals mention that in 942 the son of Reginald Hy Ivar was driven from the Isles by “Gall from beyond sea;” and it seems highly probable that these were the followers of Eric, who must have established himself in the dominion of the islands about this time.

[77]Sim. Dun. de Gestis, 941.

[78]Innes, Ap. 3. A Culdee abbot was not at this time strictly an ecclesiastical dignitary. The office appears to have been frequently held by the next in consideration to the head of the family in whose province or kingdom the monastery was situated.

[79]The period of this reign has been chosen by the Anglo-Norman writers as the era in which a feudal supremacy, in a strict Anglo-Norman sense, was first acquired over Scotland by her southern neighbour; and the theory, as might be expected, is supported in an appropriate manner. Three years after the death of Reginald, the fiery Dane is resuscitated from his grave, and placed, by the fiat of the English chroniclers, side by side with Constantine and the Prince of Strath Clyde, brought, together with the whole free population of Cumbria, Scotland, and Danish Northumbria, from the borders of the Forth, the Clyde, and the Humber, to the distant Peak of Derbyshire, to tender homage to the Saxon Edward at Bakewell! Yet their submission, and even the unwonted journey so far from their respective frontiers, fail to avert their sorrowful fate; for though Reginald is permitted to return to his tomb, his luckless companions are wantonly hurled from their thrones upon the accession of Athelstan; whilst, to enhance the glory of the Saxon king, Aldred of Bamborough is made the companion of their flight. He was the faithful friend of Edward, the son of Eadulf, “the darling” of the great Alfred,—considerations which have little weight with the ruthless chroniclers; and Aldred is raised to an evanescent independence, to swell the triumph of Athelstan by being ejected from what is called “his kingdom!” As history advances, fresh links are added to the chain of bondage, and the decreasing power of the Anglo-Saxon monarchs marches hand in hand with the increasing submission of the Scottish kings. Then is exhibited the singular anomaly of an obedient and obsequious vassal appropriating without ceremony the territories of his sovereign lord, until the climax is attained in the reign of the Confessor; and at a time when the over-powerful subjects of that prince seem to have been fast verging towards independence, freely and willingly does the Scottish king tender that allegiance for his entire kingdom which the iron-willed successors of the feeble Edward in vain attempted to extort. Into such errors and inconsistencies have the great majority of Anglo-Norman chroniclers fallen in endeavouring to found a claim to a feudal supremacy over Scotland in an age in which neither amongst Scots nor Anglo-Saxons was the feudal system in force.—V. Appendix L, pt. 1.

[80]Chron. Sax.An. Ult.943.—Roger of Wendover is the earliest authority for the tale of Edmund expelling Dunmail—hardly the same person as Donald MacEogan, who died in 975—and putting out the eyes of his two sons (vol. 1., p. 398). The story is probably about as true as the account of the same chronicler that the English king was assisted on this occasion by Llewellyn of South Wales. In 945 Howell Dha was king of South Wales, and as none of his sons bore the name of Llewellyn, the only person whom the Welsh writers can find to participate in the expedition is Llewellyn ap Sitsylt—who died 76 years later, in 1021—the father of Harold’s opponent, Griffith, and of Blethyn and Rhywallon, who figured, considerably more than a century later, in the reign of William the Conqueror. The next thing heard of this Llewellyn is in 1018, when, says Caradoc (Hist. Wales, p. 79), “Llewellyn ap Sitsylt having for some years (seventy-three) sat still and quiet, began now to bestir himself.” It was time!

[81]Sim. Dun. Twysden, pp. 14, 74.

[82]Chron. Sax.945.Midwyrhta, “fellow workman,” is the expression used, which the feudal ideas of a later age naturally renderedfidelis; and an alliance, only lasting for the life of Malcolm, was accordingly transformed into a regular feudal transaction, existing for generations. The earlier authorities, from the chronicle and Æthelward, make no mention of any such thing; and Kenneth the Second appears to have been as ignorant of it when he harried Cumberland in 971, as Ethelred when he wasted the same province in 1000; nor could Simeon of Durham have been aware of such a compact when he wrote that, in 1072, Malcolm the Third held Cumberland “Non jure possessa sed violenter subjugata,” expressions which can scarcely be reconciled with the uninterrupted possession of the province as a feudal fief for 127 years. When John of Fordun compiled his history, he eagerly seized upon the means of escaping the numerous claims for homage put forward in the rival English chroniclers; and Cumberland, in his pages, becomes the counterpart of the earldom of Huntingdon during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Scottish king invariably granting it to the heir, or tanist, who duly performs homage to the Saxon monarch for the fief held of his crown. On one occasion a tanist is called into existence for this sole purpose, and the veracious historian, after fabricating the apocryphal being, is obliged to murder his own creation to account for his not appearing amongst the Scottish kings. The samemyth, Malcolm, king of the Cumbrians, unites with Kenneth the Second in witnessing a charter which the latter is supposed to have signed as king five years before he ascended the throne, and is very appropriately placed amongst the eight oarsmen who manned the boat of Edgar in his apocryphal progress on the Dee.—V. Appendix L, pt. 1.

[83]Chron. Sax.946, 948.

[84]Chron. Sax.949.Innes, Ap. 3. The seventh year of Malcolm corresponds exactly with 949, the year in which Olave reappeared in Northumbria, and the curious tradition preserved in the old chronicle that Constantine resumed his authority for a week to head the Scottish army in an incursion to the Tees, must surely be connected with the arrival of his son-in-law, and the reluctance of Malcolm to break the engagement by which he held Cumberland.

[85]A. F. M., 950.Chron. Sax.952.

[86]Tigh.980.A. F. M., 1014. The account of Tighernach reveals both the extent of Olave’s power and the far greater importance of the first victory which broke it. The death of the old warrior is described rather quaintly by the annalist “post pœnitentiam etbonos mores.”

[87]Chron. Sax.954.Sim. Dun. de Gestis, 1072.Wendover, vol. i., p. 402.Heimskringla, Saga4, c. 4. The Henricus and Reginaldus of Wendover are probably the Harek and Rognwald of the Saga. Simeon calls Maco or Maccus a son of Olave, but Olave had no son of that name, and Maco was probably “Maccus Archipirata,” or Magnus Haraldson, king of Man and the Islands, who was the head of a different branch of the Hy Ivar. His father, Harald, who was killed in Connaught in 940, was the son of SitricMacIvar, or the elder Sitric, who killed, or was killed by, his brother Godfrey, and was the head of the Norsemen of Limerick. The power of the Limerick Hy Ivar appears to have received a severe shock when Olave Godfreyson, shortly before the battle of Brunanburgh, destroyed all their ships and captured their leader, Olave Cen-Cairedh.A. F. M., 934, 938.

[88]Innes, Ap. 3.Wynton, bk. 6, c. 10.An. Ult.953. The men of Mærne occasionally make their appearance in early Scottish history, and generally in company with the men of Moray. It has been frequently assumed that they belonged to a certain earldom of the Merns, comprised in modern Kincardineshire, though Mr. Skene (Highlanders, vol. ii., c. 9) places them on the western coast, where he supposes that there once existed an earldom of Garmoran. The same objection, I fear, may be raised against the earldom of Garmoran which is urged against the earldom of the Merns—the total silence of history respecting it. When a dim light is first shed upon the northern provinces, the name of Moray, which must have once been applied to the whole line of sea-coast—Armorica—in this direction, is confined to the westward of the Spey, whilst the eastern tract of country is broken up into the earldoms of Mar and Buchan, and the districts of Strathbogie and the Garioch, both “in the crown,”i.e., conquered. The name of Mærne has by this time disappeared, unless it still survived inMar, representing only a portion of the ancient province, but I should imagine it is to be sought for in this quarter, which would account for the connection of its people with the men of Moray; and if ancient Mærne once included Kincardineshire, the name of “the Merns” may have been retained, like that of Northumberland or Cumberland, by a comparatively small portion of the original province.

[89]Innes, Ap. 3.Sim. Dun. de Gestis, 854, and p. 139.

[90]Innes, Ap. 3.Wynton, bk. 6, c. 10.Fordun, l. 4, c. 27.—The old chronicler calls the Northmen “Sumerlide”—summer army—an expression similar to the “micel sumorlida” of the Saxon Chronicle 871. In fact, piracy was thesummeroccupation of the Norsemen.

[91]Innes, Ap. 3.An. Ult.964. The hostility of the house of Atholl was destined in the end to be fatal to the line of Duff.

[92]Innes, Ap. 3, 5.Fordun, l. 4, c. 28.An. Ult.966. From the first authority it would appear as if Duff never recovered the throne, and the story of his death rather favours the idea that he was killed when in exile.

[93]Innes, Ap. 3, 5.An. Ult.970. Wynton and Fordun give the name of Radoard to the British prince. The line of Constantine the Second generally appears in connection with the south of Scotland.

[94]Tigh.977.

[95]Innes, Ap. 3. Kenneth’s ravages reached “ad Stammoir, ad Cluiam et ad stang na Deram,” according to Pinkerton’s version of the Chronicle. The captive is called a son of the king of the Saxons—probably of the Northumbrians.

[96]V.Chap. 2, p. 47.

[97]They were the sons of a female slave. The surviving legitimate sons of Rognwald were Thorer, who succeeded his father in Norway, and the famous Gangr Rolf, founder of the Norman dynasty, and ancestor of William the Conqueror. TheHolderwas the oldAllodialproprietor amongst the Scandinavians of those days, answering to theEorlcundman.

[98]Eric Blodæxe was killed in the year 954. His sons attacked Hakon the Good for the second or third time, after he had reigned twenty years,i.e., about 957. The arrival of Gunhilda and her sons in the Orkneys must have fallen between those two years.—Heimsk. Saga4, c. 22.

[99]Hakon reigned for 26 years, and Harald Greyskin for 15, after the death of Harfager in 937, which would place the death of Harald in 978.—Heimsk. Saga4, c. 28;Saga6, c. 13. When the sons of Eric escaped to the Orkneys, immediately after the death of Harald, they found the sons of Thorfin in possession of the islands.—Do., Saga6, c. 16. The Orkneyinga Saga says that Thorfin was still alive but died soon afterwards. His death must have occurred about the year 978.

[100]Ork. Saga in Col. de. Reb. Alb., p. 339.

[101]All these events must have occurred between 978 and 994, for the battle of Dungal’s Nœp was fought in or before the latter year. Kari Solmundason, and the son of Nial, were present at this engagement, and after remaining two winters and a summer with Sigurd, departed for Norway in the following summer,i.e., two years after the battle, with the tribute for Jarl Hakon, and as the Jarl’s death occurred in 996, the battle must have been fought at least two years before that date. It probably occurred a few years earlier, as the same Saga alludes to the defeat of Godred of Man, whose reign extended from the death of his brother Magnus, about 977 to 989.An. Inisf.977.Tigh.989.Niala Saga, Col. de Reb. Alb., p. 334, 338. The Hundi of the Sagas seems to have been Crinan. The account of these transactions is taken from theHeimskringla Saga3, c. 27 to 32;Saga4, c. 3, 4, 5;Saga7, c. 99; and theOlaf Tryggvessonar NialaandOrkneyinga SagasinCol. de Reb. Alb., p. 327, etc.

[102]Heimsk. Saga6, c. 52;Saga7, c. 99.

[103]The Isla and the Dee are the boundaries assigned to one of the old Pictish kingdoms in the description of Andrew, bishop of Caithness, inInnes, Ap. 2.

[104]Such is the account ofWynton, bk. 6, c. 10, andReg. St. And., Innes, Ap. 5, with whichFordun, l. 4, c. 15, agrees. Boece of course is able to supply every deficiency in his own peculiar way.

[105]The principle of “the right of blood” latterly exercised a social influence over the ecclesiastical as over the political system of the Gaelic people, and bishops and abbots made their visitations and exacted their dues amongst a population united to them, in a certain sense, by the ties of kindred, whilst most of the superior offices in a monastery became hereditary. Not that they were invariably held from father to son, but the right of presentation to certain offices becoming vested in certain families, the people grew by degrees to be united to their abbots and other ecclesiastical dignitaries by a similar tie of blood to that which bound them to their chiefs and princes, and an abbot not chosen from one of the families of the district in which his monastery was placed, would have appeared (in an unconquered country) as great an anomaly as a chieftain or a king of alien blood—anungecyndne cyning. When, therefore, Kenneth founded Brechin, which must undoubtedly have enjoyed the privilege ofCuairtor visitation over the same extent of country as was afterwards included in the diocese of that name, he must have possessed the power of insuring to the abbot and his monks the free exercise of their rights amongst the people of the district; in other words (as he had not inherited it), he must have conquered it. Beyond the territories over which the monastery exercisedCuairt, the country up to the Dee was placed under the jurisdiction of St. Andrews, the bishop of this diocese being the spiritual head of the conquests of the kings of Scots—as in the case of Lothian, for instance—except when it was otherwise arranged.

[106]Innes, Ap. 5.Wynton, bk. 6, c. 10.Fordun, l. 4, c. 36.Tigh.995. The king’s visit to Fettercairn was probably aCuairtor royal progress. The Prior of Lochleven merely says that Kenneth was slain by some members of his own court—thesocii suiof Tighernach. Fordun, or rather perhaps Bowyer, names the assassins, Grim, thesonof Kenneth MacDuff, and Constantine, the son of Culen, whilst he and Boece describe the machine which cost the king his life. It was as follows:—“In the middes of this hous was ane image of bras, maid to the similitude of Kenneth, with ane goldin apill in his hand, with sic ingine that als sone as any man maid him to throw this apill out of the hand of the image, the wrying of the samein drew all the tituppis of the crosbowis up at anis, and schot at him that threw the apill.”Bellenden’s Boece, bk. 11, c. 10.

[107]Fordun, l. 4, c. 30.

[108]Fordun, l. 4, c. 36. He merely alludes to the death of Malcolm MacDuff in the twentieth year of Kenneth’s reign; butBoece, bk. 11, c. 9, makes the king poison him.

[109]Boece, bk. 11, c. 8.Fordun, l. 10, c. 17. Drumlay is characteristically explained to mean (in good Lowland Scotch)Droun-it-lay!The whole description is transferred by Boece to the reign of Duncan the First, theRex Noricusof Bowyer assuming the name of Sueno.

[110]As Kenneth was the contemporary of the Anglo-Saxon Edgar, it is not to be supposed that he has escaped the claims of the Norman writers, and accordingly, at a time when he was harrying Cumberland, he figures in their pages as an attendant at the court of Edgar at Chester, forming one of a a crew of eight “underkings,” who in token of humble submission rowed the king’s barge in a triumphal procession on the Dee. During another visit to the English court at Lincoln, a crafty suggestion of the Scottish king about the difficulty and trouble of defending Lothian, is rewarded by the gift of the province as a feudal fief, to be held by various acts of homage, amongst others on condition of carrying the crown on all state occasions, whilst manors are provided to cover the expenses of the royal vassal on his progresses towards the southern court! It is curious to remark the tone of increasing feudalism pervading the fabrications of each succeeding century. The composers of the fictions about Kenneth and Edgar, which are only to be found in the later chroniclers connected with St. Albans, have been even more than usually imaginative, and their transparent fabrications remain as a warning to the impartial historian to look with mistrust upon all claims connected with such a tissue of anachronism and fable.V. Appendix L, pt. 1.

[111]Rathinveramon, “the fort at the mouth of the Almond” where it joins the Tay, is named as the place of his death inInnes, Ap. 5, the same locality as the “caput amnis Awyne” of Wynton,v.alsoTigh.997. It is said to have been the site of the ancientBertha, and was swept away by the great flood at the close of the reign of William the Lion.

[112]Innes, Ap. 5.Wynton, b. 6, c. 10.An. Ult.1004.

[113]Sim. Dun. de obs. Dun.(Twysden, p. 79).An. Ult.1006. Through the error of some transcriber probably, these events are placed by Simeon in the year 969, when neither Malcolm nor Ethelred were reigning, nor was Ealdun bishop of Durham. The real date must have been in 1006, as the Ulster annals mention that in 1005 the Scots were defeated by the Saxons “with great slaughter of their nobles.” Fordun (l. 4, c. 43) has either mistaken this battle for the later one at Carham, or has unblushingly claimed it as a victory. Before the time of Canute the difference in titles of Eorl and Ealdorman, marked the different people over whom the possessor of the title was placed in authority. Oslac is addressed asEorl, Ælfhere and Æthelwine asEaldormen, in the Laws of Edgar, Sup. 15.

[114]Sim. Dun., as above;V. Appendix M.

[115]Olaf Tryggvessonar SagainCol. de Reb. Alb., p. 330, andAntiq. Celt.-Scand., p. 119. The battle must have been fought after 1005, the date of Malcolm’s accession, and before 1009, the year of Thorfin’s birth. The latter was five when his father was killed at Clontarf, bearing the fatal banner himself, for it seems to have acquired an evil reputation, and Hrafn the Red, on Sigurd committing it to his charge after the death of its first bearer, refused to lift it, adding somewhat unceremoniously, “Bear thine own devil thyself.”—(Story of Burnt Njal, c. 156.)

[116]Heimsk. Saga7, c. 99, with the Sagas already quoted;videalso the account of the battle of Clontarf in the Irish Annals.

[117]Chron. Sax.1016.Sim. Dun. Twysden, p. 81.

[118]Innes, Ap. 4.Sim. Dun. Hist. Dun., l. 3, c. 5, 6—Do.De obs. Dun.p. 81,de Gestis1018. On comparing the passages of Simeon it is impossible to doubt that the cession of Lothian by Eadulf Cudel was the result of the battle of Carham, though there is an evident reluctance in the English chronicler to allude to the defeat and its consequences. The men of the Lothians, according to Wallingford, retained their laws and customs unaltered, and though theauthorityis questionable, thefactis probably true, forLothianlaw became eventually the basis ofScottishlaw. Conquest indeed in these times did not alter the laws and customs of the conquered, unless where they come into contact and into opposition with those of the conquerors, and the men of the Lothians remained under the Scottish kings in much the same position as the men of Kent under the kings of Mercia and Wessex, probably exchanging the condition of aharassedfor that of afavouredfrontier province.

[119]Chron. Sax.1031.MS. Cot. Tib.B. iv. is the authority. Two later MSS. add the names of two otherkings, Mælbeth and Jehmarc. Macbeth became Mormaor of Moray in the following year through the death of his kinsman Gilcomgain. These two kings reappear in the Heimskringla (Saga7, vol. 2, p. 196.V.alsoLodb. Quida, p. 101), as “Nordan of Skotlandi of Fifi.” IfFifiis here put forFiord Riki, it is probably a mistake, for “the Firth kingdom” might mean Moray as well as Fife, and the name in this instance would be more appropriate to the former.

[120]An. Ult.1033. He is called M., son of Boedhe, probably Malcolm.

[121]Tigh.1034.Wynton, bk. 6, c. 10.Fordun, l. 4, c. 46. Angus was as fatal to Malcolm and his father Kenneth, as the neighbourhood of Forres had proved to the first Malcolm and his father Donald.

[122]Tigh.975–997.

[123]Sim. Dun. de Gestis, 1018.Lutinensesis evidently a clerical error forClutinenses.

[124]Flor. Wig., 1054.Malm. de Gest., l. 2., c. 196. The Cumbrensis regio was again detached and given by Edgar to his brother David, who held it, in spite of the opposition of Alexander, throughout that king’s reign.Ailred in Twysden, p. 344.

[125]Fordun, l. 4, c. 44. He connects it with a victory over the Danes. Whatever may have been the cause of its erection, the founder must have possessed an influence over the surrounding territory. In the preface to the Register of Aberdeen, the editor inclines to the opinion that Malcolm the Third was the founder of Mortlach, in which case the annexation of Strathbogie and the Garioch to the Scottish crown would have been the result of the successful northern wars of the latter king.

[126]Strathbogie and the Garioch were “in the crown” at a later period, and before the reign of David, though it would be difficult to say with certainty when these districts were annexed. Moray was forfeited under David, and the summary manner in which that king and his successors were able to deal with church property in the diocese of that name, as well as in that of Aberdeen, discloses the different relation in which the Scottish kings stood towards the people of those bishoprics and towards the population of some of the other dioceses. No Culdees appear struggling for their rights in the earlier charters of Moray and Aberdeen (though in the thirteenth century the Culdees of Monymusk tried to shake off the supremacy of St. Andrews), a proof that the powerful Gaelic families in whom these rights would have been vested, were either extinct, or so far reduced as to be in no condition to offer any resistance to the measures of David. Such was not the case in the bishoprics of Brechin and Dunblane, where the Culdees held their ground long after the time of that king, owing probably to a reluctance on his part, and on that of his successors, to alienate their great feudatories, the earls of Strathearn and abbots of Brechin, by an over prompt interference with Church property in their possession. The tradition connecting Mortlach with Malcolm the Second, has induced me to notice the annexations of these districts under this reign, in which the royal authority may have been considerably extended and consolidated in this direction, though I think it most probable that the final conquest and submission of the province was the result of the frequent and successful, though little known, northern wars of Malcolm the Third, and the subsequent successes of his son Alexander in the same quarter. The last Mormaor of the mysterious province of Mærne appears in alliance with Donald Bane; the people of the district attempted, in conjunction with the Moray men, to assassinate Alexander at Invergowrie, and then nothing more is heard either of the Mormaor or the men of Mærne; and I am inclined to connect with this disappearance the forfeiture of the ancient family, and the distribution of the ancient kingdom between Dee and Spey into the two subordinate earldoms of Mar and Buchan, and the two lordships of Strathbogie and the Garioch, long retained by a member of the royal family.

[127]This subject is further treated inAppendicesDandN.

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