History Of Scotland Vol. 1 - Part 5

( Originally Published 1909 )

Reign of Alexander III.: his Death—On the Race of Kings Succeeding to Kenneth Macalpine—Nature of their Government as distinguished from that of the Celts—Grand Division of Scotland into Celtic and Gothic; and its Consequences

EVEN before the death of Alexander H. some dispute had taken place on the old theme of the homage, the usual subject of contention. Alexander refused to submit to pay it, unless Northumberland, for which it was rendered, should be restored to him. Henry III. compounded this demand by settling on the Scottish king lands in that county to the amount of one hundred pounds per annum. This, however, was a consideration unconnected with Scot-land ; and though an inadequate one, according to our ideas, yet perfectly saved the question of national independence, Henry thereby acquiescing in the principle insisted upon by the Scottish king and statesmen, that the acknowledgment of dependence was to be rendered for something held in England. Whether the estate for which fealty was due chanced to be of great or small value could not affect the question, since homage might be rendered for a hamlet or a manor, as well as for a county or kingdom. The only difference was, that the less the value of the fief, of the smaller importance were the feudal prestations, and the consequences of the feudal forfeiture were less worthy of attention. Henry was not yet satisfied; and the insinuations of Bisset, a Scottish exile, irritated him so much against the Scottish king that he determined on an invasion of his kingdom. He was met by Alexander, at the head of a gallant army near Ponteland, in Westmoreland, and a peace was agreed upon without any further discussion about the homage.

It was clear, however, that the matter lay near to the heart of the English sovereign ; and no sooner was Alexander II. deceased, than Henry applied to the pope, praying him to interdict the solemn coronation of Alexander III. till he, as feudal superior of Scotland, should give consent. The Scottish nobility heard of this interference, and resolved to hasten the ceremony. Some difficulty occurred whether the crown could be placed on the head of one not yet dubbed knight, so essential was the rank of chivalry then considered even to the dignity of royalty. It was suggested by Comyn, earl of Monteith, that the bishop of Saint Andrew's should knight the king as well as crown him; and the proposal was agreed to. The boy was made to take the coronation oaths in Latin and in Norman-French : this was a Gothic part of the ceremony. That the Scottish or Celtic forms might also be complied with, a Highland bard, dressed in a scarlet robe, venerable for his hoary beard and locks, knelt before the young king, while seated on the fated stone, and, as at the coronation of Malcolm IV., recited the royal genealogy in a set of names that must have sounded like an invocation of the fiends.

The young king was, shortly after his coronation, married to the English princess Margaret, daughter of Henry III. In virtue of the interest thus obtained, Henry interested himself officiously in the affairs of Scotland, to the great offence of the natives. He succeeded in establishing a party within Scotland in his interests, which was strongly opposed by others of the Scottish regency ; and various struggles took place, in which no conclusive superiority was obtained by either party. The young king of Scots showed, even while a boy, much judgment and steadiness of character. He repeatedly visited the court of his father-in-law as an honored friend and relative; but testified while there a steady and honorable determination to transact no affairs of state, by which the honor of his country or its interests could be compromised, alleging that he could not do so without the advice of his national council. Peace was thus preserved, the independence of Scotland guarded from hazard, and all possibility of taking advantage of Alexander's youth and inexperience effectually averted. During one of these temporary residences in England, Queen Margaret became mother of a princess, who was named after her mother. It appears that some of these visits were made with a view to recover payment of Queen Margaret's stipulated dowry; and so poor was Henry's exchequer at the time (1263) that five hundred marks exhausted its contents; and the king of England was fain to take more distant periods to pay the remainder of the sum, being one thousand marks, still due.

Alexander III. was now a youth of twenty-two years old, fit and capable to head an army. It was well he was so, for a formidable invasion impended. This attack came from Haco, king of Norway. That warlike prince had collected a formidable fleet and army, with the determination of supporting his interest in the Hebridean islands, which had been gradually sinking under the efforts of the present king of Scotland, who pursued the policy of his father, in compelling those island lords to renounce their dependence on Norway, and hold their isles of the Scottish crown. The fleet of Haco was freighted with many thousands of those same northern warriors whose courage had been felt as irresistible on almost all the shores of Europe, and was accounted the most formidable armament that had ever sailed from Norway.

In 1263, the king of Norse, with this powerful army, arrived in the bay of Largs, near the mouth of the Clyde, and attempted to effect a landing. The weather was tempestuous, and rendered their disembarkation partial, difficult, and dangerous. The Scottish forces were on foot and pre-pared. The Norwegians persisted in their attempt, and Alexander and his army made equal efforts to repulse them. The Norwegian historians have not denied that their host suffered much from the sword of the enemy, though they ascribe the total discomfiture of their undertaking to the rage of the elements. The number of defenders daily increased, and the efforts of the assailants diminished; and Haco, after a long and desperate perseverance in attempts to land, at last withdrew from his enterprise, and fled with his shattered navy through the strait between Skye and the mainland, which, since called Kyle Haken, still retains his name. Doubling the northern extremity of Scotland, the king of Norway, after much loss and suffering, reached the islands of Orkney, which then belonged to him, and yielding to the effects of an exhausted constitution, acted upon by the mortified ambition and wounded pride of a soldier, died there within a few weeks after his fatal disaster at Largs. In consequence of this decisive action, a treaty was entered into, by which Nor-way ceded to Alexander III. all islands in the western sea of Scotland, and, indeed, all lying near to that country, excepting those of Orkney and Shetland, for which resignation the Scottish king and his estates covenanted to pay four thousand marks in four several sums, and a quit-rent of one hundred marks forever.

In 1281, the league was drawn still closer by the marriage of Eric, the young king of Norway, with Margaret, daughter of Alexander III., by the English princess of that name. They had one only child, named after her mother, and called in Scottish history the Maiden of Norway, whose untimely death forms, as we shall hereafter see, a most gloomy era in Scottish history.

It is worth while to notice, that some dispute having occurred between Alexander and his clergy, the papal legate to England attempted to interfere, with the view of levying a contribution for the expense of his mission. But the king and the Scottish Church having very sagely terminated their dispute without any need of mediation, resolved, that, as the legate's commission extended to England only, he should not be permitted to enter the kingdom of Scotland or exercise authority there. In another instance, they showed the same firmness. Pope Clement the Fourth having required the Scottish ecclesiastics to pay to the king of England a tenth part of their benefices, to aid in the expense of an in-tended crusade, the Scottish Church held a general council, and resisted the demand.

Scotland did not, however, escape the epidemic rage for crusades. A multitude of her bravest barons and knights went to Palestine, and perished there.

Desolation of the- worst kind began to gather round Alexander III. His wife was dead. His only surviving son also died; another had not survived childhood. He had no issue remaining except the Maid of Norway, his granddaughter, a child, residing in a distant kingdom. To provide against the evils of a disputed succession, for he was still a man in the flower of life, the Scottish monarch married Joleta, daughter of the count of Dreux. Shortly after the wedding, as he pressed homeward by a precipitous road along the seacoast, near to Kinghorn, in Fife, his horse fell from a cliff, and the rider was killed.

The lamentation was universal; the consequences were anticipated as most disastrous.

Old men and beldames
Did prophesy about it dangerously.

Thomas the Rhymer, a poet and supposed prophet, is said to have predicted the calamity, under the metaphor of a tempest the most dreadful that Scotland ever witnessed. Others recalled an evil omen which occurred during the festivities of Alexander's second marriage; a spectre, rep-resenting Death, had closed a gallant procession of masks, and being perhaps presented with too shocking an approach to a real skeleton, had introduced grief and terror into the mirth and pomp of the bridal revelry. This was now construed into an omen of the intense calamity which was soon to silence the public rejoicings. The common people vented their sorrows for an excellent prince in simple but affecting lines, deploring his virtues, and anticipating the consequences of his death. But neither poet nor seer, in their most rapt and gloomy moments, could anticipate half the extent of the calamity with which the death of Alexander was to be followed in the kingdom which he ruled.

At this remarkable point in history, we pause to contrast the condition of Scotland as it stood in 843, when Kenneth Macalpine first formed the Picts and Scots into one people, and in the year 1286, when death deprived that people of their sovereign, Alexander III.

At the earlier term we know that the manners of those descended from the Dalriads, Scoto-Irish, or pure Scots, properly so called, must have been, as they remained till a much later period, the same with those of the cognate tribes in Ireland, the land of their descent. Their constitution was purely patriarchal, the simplest and most primitive form of government. The blood of the original founder of the family was held to flow in the veins of his successive representatives, and to perpetuate in each chief the right of supreme authority over the descendants of his own line, who formed his children and subjects, as he became by right of birth their sovereign ruler and lawgiver. A nation consisted of a union of several such tribes, having a single chief chosen over them for their general direction in war, and umpire of their disputes in peace. With the family and blood of this chief of chiefs, most of the inferior chieftains claimed a connection more or less remote. This supreme chiefdom, or right of sovereignty, was hereditary, in so far as the person possessing it was chosen from the blood royal of the king deceased; but it was so far elective that any of his kinsmen might be chosen by the nation to succeed him; and, as the office of sovereign could not be exercised by a child, the choice generally fell upon a full-grown man, the brother or nephew of the deceased, instead of his son or grandson.

This uncertainty of succession, which prevailed in respect to the crown itself, while Celtic manners were predominant, proved a constant source of rebellion and bloodshed. The postponed heir, when he arose in years, was frequently desirous to attain his father's power; and many a murder was committed for the sake of rendering straight an oblique line of succession, which such preference of an adult had thrown out of the direct course. A singular expedient was resorted to, to prevent or diminish such evils. A sort of king of the Romans, or Cesar, was chosen as the destined successor while the sovereign chief was yet alive. He was called the Tanist, and was inaugurated during the life of the reigning king, but with maimed rites, for he was permitted to place only one foot on the fated stone of election. The monarch had little authority in the different tribes of which the kingdom was composed, unless during the time of war. In war, however, the king possessed arbitrary power; and war, foreign and domestic, was the ordinary condition of the people. This, as described by Malcolm, is the constitution of Persia at this day.

Such was the government of the Scots when the Picts, losing their own name and existence, merged into that people. It does not appear that there existed any material difference between the Pictish form of government and that of their conquerors, nor did such distinction occur in any of the other nations which came to compose the Scottish kingdom, with the exception of the Lothians. Galloway was unquestionably under the dominion of patriarchal chiefs and clans, as we know from the patronymics current to this day, of which M'Dougal, M'Culloch, M'Kie, and other races certainly not derived from the Highlands, ascend to great antiquity. Strath-Clyde was probably under the same species of government; at least, the clan system of the Celts prevailed in the south and eastern parts of the border district until the union of the crowns; and as, had it been once disused, such a species of rule could not easily have been reconstructed, we are authorized to suppose that it had flourished there since the fall of the British kingdom. There occurs a further reason why it should have been so. The clan, or patriarchal, system of government was particularly calculated for regulating a warlike and lawless country, as it provided for decision of disputes, and for the leading of the inhabitants to war, in the easiest and most simple manner possible. The clansmen submitted to the award of the chief in peace ; they followed his banner to battle ; they aided him with their advice in council, and the constitution of the tribe was complete. The nature of a frontier country exposed it in a peculiar degree to sudden danger, and therefore this compendious mode of government, established there by the Britons, was probably handed down to later times, from its being specially adapted to the exigencies of the situation. But though the usage of clanship probably prevailed there, we are not prepared to show that any of the clans inhabiting the border country carry back their antiquity into the Celtic or British period. Their names declare them of more modern date.

Those various nations which we have enumerated had all a common Celtic descent; at least, it is yet unproved that the Picts were any other than the ancient Caledonians, who must of course have been Britons. Their manners were as simple as their form of government, exhibiting the vices and virtues of a barbarous state of society. They were brave, warlike, and formidable as light troops; but, armed with slender lances, unwieldy swords, and bucklers made of osiers or hides, they were ill qualified to sustain a lengthened conflict with the Norman warriors, who were regularly trained to battle, and entered it in close array and in complete armor. As other barbarians, the Celtic tribes were fickle and cruel at times, at other times capable of great kindness and generosity. Those who inhabited the mountains lived by their herds and flocks, and by the chase. The tribes who had any portion of arable ground cultivated it, under the direction of the chief, for the benefit of the community. As every clan formed the epitome of a nation within itself, plundering from each other was a species of warfare to which no disgrace was attached; and when the mountaineers sought their booty in the low country, their prey was richer, perhaps, and less stoutly defended, than when they attacked a kindred tribe of Highlanders. The lowlands were therefore chiefly harassed by their incursions.

The Picts seem to have made some progress in agriculture, and to have known something of architecture and domestic arts, which are earliest improved in the more fertile countries. But neither Scots, Picts, Galwegians, nor Strath-Clyde Britons, seem to have possessed the knowledge of writing or use of the alphabet. Three or four different nations, each subdivided into an endless variety of independent clans, tribes, and families, were ill calculated to form an independent state so powerful as to maintain its ground among other nations, or defend its liberties against, an ambitious neighbor. But the fortunate acquisition of the fertile province of Lothian, including all the country between the Tweed and Forth, and the judicious measures of Malcolm Cean-mohr and his successors, formed the means of giving consistency to that which was loose, and unity to that which was discordant, in the Scottish government.

With some of that craft which induced the Scottish proprietors of the Middle Ages to erect their castles on the very verge of their own property, and opposite to the residences of their most powerful neighbors, Malcolm Cean-mohr fixed his royal residence originally at Dunfermline, and his successors removed it to Edinburgh. Berwick and Dunbar were fortified so as to offer successful opposition to an invading army; and to cross the Tweed, which, in its lower course, is seldom fordable, leaving such strengths in their rear, would have been a hazardous attempt for an English invader, unless at the head of a very considerable army. The possession of Lothian, whose population was Saxon, intermingled with Danish, introduced to the king of Scotland and his court new wants, new wishes, new arts of policy, an intercourse with other countries to which they had formerly no access, and a new language to express all these new ideas. We have noticed what willing reception Malcolm, influenced by his queen, gave to the emigrant Saxons and Normans, and the envy excited in the ancient genuine Scots by the favor ex-tended to these strangers. All the successors of Malcolm (excepting the Hebridean savage Donald Bane) were addicted to the same policy, and purchased knowledge in the way in which it is most honorably obtained, by benefiting and rewarding those who are capable to impart it. Of the Nor-man barons, generally accounted the flower of Europe, Scot-land received from time to time such numerous accessions, that they may be said, with few exceptions, to form the ancestors of the Scottish nobility, and of many of the most distinguished families among the gentry; a fact so well known that it is useless to bring proof of it. These foreigners, and especially the Normans and Anglo-Normans, were superior to the native subjects of the Scottish kings, both in the arts of peace and war. They therefore naturally filled their court, and introduced into the country where they were strangers their own manners and their own Iaws, which in process of time extended themselves to the other races by which Scotland was inhabited.

The benefits received from this influx of foreigners, and their influence, were doubtless a main step toward civilizing Scotland; yet the immediate effect of their introduction had a tendency to the disunion of the state. It created in these lofty strangers a race of men acting upon different principles, and regarding themselves as entirely a separate race from the Celtic tribes, possessing jarring interests and discordant manners. The jealousy between these separate races was shown in the council of war previous to the battle of the standard, where Bruce, speaking of himself and his compeers, as being neither Scottish nor English, but Norman barons, upbraided David for bringing out against a chivalrous race which had rendered him such services the wild ferocity and uncertain faith of the Scottish tribes; while, on the other hand, Malise, earl of Stratherne, reproached the same monarch for trusting more to the mail and spear of Norman strangers than the undaunted courage of his native soldiers.

This intermixture gave a miscellaneous, and, in so far, an incoherent appearance to the inhabitants of Scotland at this period. They seemed not so much to constitute one state as a confederacy of tribes of different origin. Thus the charters of King David and his successors are addressed to all his subjects, French and English, Scottish and Galwegian. The manners, the prejudices of so many mixed races, corrected or neutralized each other; and the moral blending together of nations led in time, like some chemical mixture, to fermentation and subsequent purity. This was forwarded with the best intentions, though perhaps over-hastily, and in so far injudiciously, by the efforts of the Scottish kings, who, from Malcolm Cean-mohr's time to that of Alexander III., appear to have been a race of as excellent monarchs as ever swayed sceptre over a rude people. They were prudent in their schemes, and fortunate in the execution; and the exceptions occasioned by the death of Malcolm III. and the captivity of William can only be imputed to chivalrous rashness, the fault of the age. They were unwearied in their exercise of justice, which, in the more remote corners of Scotland, could only be done at the head of an army; and even where the task was devolved upon the sheriffs and vice-sheriffs of counties, the execution of it required frequent inspection by the king and his high justiciaries, who made circuits for that purpose. The rights of landed property began to be arranged in most of the lowland counties upon the feudal system then universal in Europe, and so far united Scotland with the general system of civilization.

The language which was generally used in Scotland, came at length to be English, as the speech of Lothian, the most civilized province of the kingdom, and the readiest in which they could hold communication with their neighbors. It must have been introduced gradually, as is evident from the numerous Celtic words retained in old statutes and charters, and rendered general by its being the only language used in writing.

We know there was at least one poem composed in English, by a Scottish author, which excited the attention of contemporaries. It is a metrical romance on the subject of Sir Tristrem, by Thomas of Erceldone, who composed it in such "quaint Inglish" as common minstrels could hardly understand or recite by heart. If we may judge of this work from the comparatively modern copy which remains, the style of the composition, brief, nervous, figurative, and concise almost to obscurity, resembles the Norse or Anglo-Saxon poetry more than that of the English minstrels, whose loose, prolix, and trivial mode of composition is called by Chaucer's Host of the Tabard, "drafty rhiming." The structure of the stanza in Sir Tristrem is also very peculiar, elliptical, and complicated, seeming to verify the high eulogy of a poet nearly contemporary, "that it is the best geste ever was or ever would be made, if minstrels could recite as the author had composed it." On the contrary, the elegiac ballad on Alexander III., already mentioned, differs only from modern English in the mode of spelling.

Besides the general introduction of the English language, which spread itself gradually, doubtless, through the more civilized part of the lowlands, the Norman-French was also used at court, which, as we learn from the names of witnesses to royal charters, foundations, etc., was the resort of these foreign nobles. It was also adopted as the language of the coronation oath, which shows it was the speech of the nobles, while the version in Latin seems to have been made for the use of the clergy. The Norman-French also, as specially adapted to express feudal stipulations, was frequently applied to law proceedings.

The political constitution of Scotland had not as yet arranged itself under any peculiar representative form. The king acted by the advice, and sometimes under the control, of a great feudal council, or cour pleniere, to which vassals in chief of the crown and a part of the clergy were summoned. But there was no representation of the third estate. There was, notwithstanding, the spirit of freedom in the government; and though the institutions for its preservation were not yet finished in that early age, the great council failed not to let their voice be heard when the sovereign fell into political errors. We have already noticed that the liberties of the Church were defended with a spirit of independence hardly equalled in any other state of Europe at the time.

The useful arts began to be cultivated. The nobles and gentry sheltered themselves in towers built in strong natural positions. Their skill in architecture, however, could not be extensive, since the construction of a handsome arch, even in Alexander the Third's time, could only be accounted for by magic; ' and the few stately castellated edifices of an early date which remain in Scotland are to be ascribed to the English, during their brief occupation of that country.

Scotland enjoyed, during this period, a more extensive trade than historians have been hitherto aware of. Money was current in the country, and the payment of considerable sums, as ten thousand marks to Richard I., and on other occasions, was accomplished without national distress. The Scottish military force was respectable, since, according to Matthew Paris, Alexander II. was enabled, in 1244, to face the power of England with a thousand horse, well armed and tolerably mounted, though not on Spanish or Italian horses, and nigh to one hundred thousand infantry, all determined to live or die with their sovereign.

The household of the Scottish king was filled with the usual number of feudal officers, and there was an affectation of splendor in the royal establishment, which even the humility of the sainted Queen Margaret did not discourage. She and her husband used at meals vessels of gold and silver plate, or at least, says the candid Turgot, such as were lacquered over so as to have that appearance. Even in the early days of Alexander I., that monarch (with a generosity similar to that of the lover who presented his bride with a case of razors, as what he himself most prized) munificently bestowed on the church of Saint Andrew's an Arabian steed covered with rich caparisons, and a suit of armor ornamented with silver and precious stones, all which he brought to the high altar, and solemnly devoted to the church.

Berwick enjoyed the privileges of a free port; and under Alexander III. the customs of that single Scottish port amounted to £2,197 8s., while those of all England only made up the sum of £8,411 19s. 11¡d. An ancient historian terms that town a second Alexandria.

Lastly, we may notice that the soil was chiefly cultivated by bondmen; but the institution of royal boroughs had begun considerably to ameliorate the condition of the inferior orders.

Such was the condition of Scotland at the end of the thirteenth century ; but we only recognize laws and institutions in those parts of the kingdom to which the king's immediate authority and the influence of the more modern system and manners extended. This was exclusive of the whole Highlands and isles, of Galloway, and Strath-Clyde, till these two last provinces were totally melted into the general mass of lowland or Scoto-Saxon civilization; and probably the northern provinces of Caithness and Moray were also beyond the limits of regular government. In other words, the improved system prevailed, in whole or in part, only where men, from comparative wealth and convenience of situation, had been taught to prefer the benefits of civilized government to the ferocious and individual freedom of a savage state. The mountaineers, as they did not value the protection of a more regular order of law, despised and hated its restraint. They continued to wear the dress, wield the arms, and observe the institutions or customs of their Celtic fathers. They acknowledged, indeed, generally speaking, the paramount superiority of the kings of Scotland; but many of their high chiefs, such as Macdonell of the isles, Macdougal of Lorn, Roland of Galloway, and others, longed for independence, and frequently attempted to assert it. The king, on the other hand, could only exercise his authority in these remote districts directly by marching into them with his army, or indirectly by availing himself of their domestic quarrels, and instigating one chief to the destruction of an-other. In either case he might be the terror, but could never be esteemed the protector, of this primitive race of his subjects, the first, and for many years the only tribes over whom his fathers possessed any sway. And thus commenced, and was handed down for many an age, the distinction between the Celtic Scot and the Scoto-Saxon, the Highlander, in short, and Lowlander, which is still distinctly marked by the difference of language, and was in the last generation more strongly apparent by the distinction of manners, dress, and even laws.