There comes what appears another breakdown
in the affairs of the Scots. Malcolm Canmore and his queen are dead, and the throne
is vacant. The same year (1093) died Fothad, Bishop of St Andrews, the last of the
Columban bishops, leaving vacant the chief ecclesiastical seat of the kingdom. We behold
both Church and State in Scotland at this hour without a head; and , what was strange,
there could not be got at the moment either monarch for the empty throne, or bishop for
the vacant see. This two-fold vacancy is surprising when we take into account that Malcolm
had left behind him numerous sons, and that Margaret had made it the chief business of her
life to place the ecclesiastical arrangements of her kingdom on what she deemed a proper
footing. This position of affairs was contrary to every forecast, and not more
disappointing than it was dangerous to the peace of the kingdom. Symptoms are not wanting that the popularity of the
reigning family had of late been on the wane, and that the attachment of the nation to the
throne was weakening. On the death of the king we expect to see the Scots take the eldest
surviving son of Malcolm, Eadgar, conduct him to Scone, and there anoint him as king.
Under the existing law Eadgar was the undoubted heir of the crown. So far from doing so,
the Scots elected as king the brother of the late monarch, Donald Bane, or Donald the
White, the heir under the old but not abrogated law of the royal succession. Donald Bane
is said to have seized the throne, but this he could not have done unless there had been a
powerful party in the nation in his favour. This we know there was, and we know also that
they made it a reason for rejecting the son and choosing the brother of the late king that
Malcolm "had corrupted the discipline of their ancestors."1
By adopting the measures of his queen, Malcolm had given offence to the Columban sentiment
of the He had roused a feeling which, though latent during his lifetime, showed itself now
that he was dead. Neither Malcolms valour nor Margarets virtues could make the
Scots condone the suppression of their ancient church. This policy nearly cost
Malcolms posterity the throne of Scotland. In truth they did lose it for a timer;
and if they came again to possess it, they owed their recovery of it not to any
spontaneous or repentant movement on the part of the nation, but to the interposition of
the arms of England.
Apart altogether from considerations of
religion, the policy of Malcolm Canmore and his queen was pernicious and destructive. It
turned the Scots backward on their steps, and set them moving on a path which for them
could have no ending but chaos. It struck at the roots of their unity by destroying that
which was pre-eminently and before all other things the cement and bond of their nation.
It effaced those traditions which were a record of great actions already performed, and a
perpetual inspiration to still greater achievements in time to comer, traditions which had
made grooves for thought and channels for action, and which had stamped on the nation its
strong individuality, to lose which would be to lose its manliness; traditions, in fine,
which formed the landmarks of the path by which the Scots must advance if their future was
to be worthy of their past. Malcolms policy crushed out all these mounding and
inspiring footprints. No wonder that the Scots halted four centuries on their march. But
it not Malcolm alone who must bear the blame. The shepherds of the people slumbered at
their post. The nation, there is reason to think, had become apathetic, and slumbered on
while being enclosed in the net of Rome and the chains of feudal slavery.
The years during which Donald Bane occupied
the throne were years of strife and wretchedness. He had reigned only six months when he
was expelled from his seat by Duncan, a son of Malcolm by his first marriage. Recovering
it after a year. Donald Bane reigned other three years, when he was finally driven from
the throne, and Eadgar, the son of Malcolm, got possession of it, partly by armed
assistance which his uncle Edgar Aetheling, who still lived, had influence to obtain from
the English monarch.
With Eadgar, whom we now see on the throne of
Scotland (1097), returned the policy of his father and mother. He encouraged the Saxon and
Norman nobles to settle in his kingdom, dowering them with lands, and placing them in
posts of influence. This gave umbrage to his Scottish subjects, as it had done in the days
of Malcolm his father, being one of the causes which helped to draw away the hearts of the
Scots from his house and dynasty. The measures pursued by father and son refined the
manners of the Scots and intro9duced a change of speech, the Gaelic now beginning to fall
into disuse, and the Saxon, that is, the lowland Scotch, to come in its room. These
benefits, however, had attendant upon them certain drawbacks which fully counterbalanced
them. With the Saxon tongue came Saxon institutions, and exotic plants are seldom so
vigorous or so valuable as native growths.
Eadgar was an amiable man, but a weak ruler.
He possessed in prominent degree that one of his mothers qualities, which was the
least estimable of all her many endowments. He had a superstitious piety. This proved a
source of emolument to the monks, and led Eadgar to give himself to the pious and
congenial work of the restoration of monasteries, among which was Coldingham, which had
been destroyed by the Danes. At the same time he gave the town of Swinton to the monks of
St Cuthbert, and imposed on the men of Coldinghamshire an annual tax of half a mark of
silver for each plough.2 Edgar reigned nine years, and died without issue. We
dismiss rapidly those kings in whose breasts an English education and the adoption of an
alien faith had corrupted if not extinguished the Scottish heart.
Alexander, another of Margarets sons,
next mounted the throne (1107). Alexander possessed in even more eminent degree than his
brother Edgar his mothers characteristic piety, but he did not add thereto, like
Edgar, her gracious disposition. His impetuous and savage temper procured for him among
his contemporaries the epithet of "fierce." "He was," says Ailred,
Abbot of Rivaux, who was his contemporary, "affable and humble to the monks and
clergy, but inexpressibly terrible to his other subjects." When the report of his
great sanctity reached the Highlands, some young nobles, believing that they had a man of
the "cowl" on the throne, thought the occasion fitting for settling their
unadjusted quarrels. The immediate result was an outbreak of violence. But they were
speedily undeceived by the arrival of Alexander amongst them. A few swift and crushing
strokes made these turbulent spirits glad to be at peace with their sovereign, and on
terms of good neighbourhood among themselves. This display of vigour at the opening of his
reign procured for himself and his kingdom tranquillity during the rest of his life.
Alexanders energy was now turned into
another channel. The exaltation of the church was henceforward the one object to which his
labours were devoted. The church, however, which Alexander wished to edify and exalt was
not the old church of his ancestors, but the new church which his mother Margaret had set
up in Scotland. Nor were his ways of working the old Columban methods, viz., transcribing
the Scriptures and circulating them among his subjects; they were the newer modes imported
from Rome, which consisted mainly in the intervention of a body of priests, who could open
the kingdom of heaven, and bestow grace and salvation on men by rites known only to
themselves, or at least efficacious only in their hands. Alexander made every provision
for the suitable and honourably maintenance of men whose services were so inestimable. He
rebuilt the church of St Michael ad Scone, and planted there a colony of canons regular of
St Augustine (1115) known as black canons, which he and his Queen Sibylla, daughter of
Henry I. of England had brought from St Oswalds monastery, near Pontefract.3
He completed the Abbey of Dunfermline, which his father had begun, and greatly enriched
its resources. He gifted, moreover the church of St Andrews, already wealthy, with the
lands of Boar-rink, so called from a dreadful boar, the terror of the neighbourhood, which
was said to infest these parts. Win ton has described the characteristic ceremony which
accompanied the gift. The kings "comely steede of Araby," magnificently
accoutred, was led up to the high altar, and his Turkish armour, his shield and his lance
of silver were presented to the church.4
The See of St Andrews may be said to have
ceased by this time to be a Columban institution without having become formally a Roman
one. It was in a state of transition, occasioning great uneasiness and trouble to
Alexander I. The plan of Romanising the Scottish Church was far from proceeding smoothly;
difficulties were springing up at every step. After the death of Bishop Fothad, who, as we
have seen, went to his grave in the same year as Malcolm and Margaret, the See of St
Andrews remained vacant for fourteen years. None of the native clergy, it would seem, were
willing to accept the dignity, and the chair went abegging. This shows, we think, how far
the Columban clergy were from sympathising with the innovations of Queen Margaret, and
that the Columban element still retained considerable strength in the nation. At last
Turgot, whom we have already met in the Dunfermline conference, was chosen by Alexander I.
to be Bishop of St Andrews. Turgot was of Saxon descent; his career had been a chequered
one, nor did his election to the episcopal chair bring him a more peaceful life, for now
the Archbishop of York and King Alexander began quarrelling over his consecration. The
Archbishop claimed the right to consecrate as the ecclesiastical superior of Scotland,
which, he affirmed, lay within his province of York. The king refused to acknowledge his
claim of jurisdiction, and Turgots consecration stood over form some years. At last
an expedient was hit upon. That expedient was the reservation of the rights of both sees,
and the consecration was proceeded with. It was now that the first step was taken towards
the suppression of the Culdees. To Turgot on his appointment as bishop was given power
over all their establishments. "In his days," we read, "the whole rights of
the Keledei over the whole kingdom of Scotland passed to the bishopric of St
Andrews." His brief occupancy of the office prevented Turgot using this power, and
for some time longer the Culdees were left in the undisturbed possession of their rights
and heritages.5 Turgot found his new dignity beset with difficulties.
Misunderstandings sprang up between him and the king, and, after a years occupancy
of his see, he resigned it, and went back to Durham, where he was content to discharge the
office of prior, which he had held before he quitted that abbey to assume the mitre of St
Andrews. He did not long survive his retirement. He died in 1115.6
There came another long vacancy in the see of
St Andrews. At last in the year 1120, Alexander turned his eyes to Canterbury in quest of
a new bishop, but only to verify the saying that "one may go farther and fare
worse." The Scottish monarch believed that now he would be rid of the battle of the
two jurisdictions. The nearer See of York had claimed the supremacy of the Scottish
Church, but the more distant Canterbury, Alexander thought, would advance no such claim.
There was no instance on record of an Archbishop of Canterbury having consecrated a Bishop
of St Andrews, or of having claimed the right of doing so. Accordingly King Alexander
wrote to Ralph, Archbishop of Canterbury, requesting him to send him a suitable person for
his vacant See of Scotland, for the Bishop of St. Andrews was still the one bishop in
Scotland; theoretically it was the primacy of Iona transferred to St Andrews. On receipt
of the letter, Archbishop Ralph dispatched Eadmer, a monk of Canterbury, to the Scottish
monarch. Eadmer was a disciple of the great Anselm, and fully shared his masters
exalted views of the churchs jurisdiction, which had oftener than once brought down
upon him the frown of his sovereign, and compelled him to quit the kingdom. On
Eadmers arrival in Scotland, the king soon discovered that he should have to fight
the old battle of jurisdiction over again, only in a more acute form. Turgots
pretension s menaced the independence of the Scottish Church, but the pretensions of
Eadmer struck at the independence of the Scottish kingdom.
First came the investiture of the new bishop.
Eadmer refused to submit to lay investiture, by accepting the ring and crozier from the
hands of the king. The dispute was settled by a compromise. The bishop-elect took the ring
from the king in token of subjection to Alexander in temporal. The crozier was laid on the
altar, and taken thence by Eadmer himself, in token of his independence in spirituals.
Next came the question of consecration, which was a still more crucial one. Eadmer
insisted on being consecrated by the Archbishop of Canterbury, resting his plea on the
allegation that the See of Canterbury held the primacy over the whole of the British
Islands. Canterbury had been the See of Augustine, whom the Pope sent to England with full
powers, and who in virtue thereof claimed to govern with equal authority on both sides of
the Tweed, and to be the spiritual autocrat of the whole island. The Scottish king had
penetration to see what this claim amounted to, and the anomalous condition into which it
would bring his kingdom. Scotland would present the contradictory spectacle of political
independence and ecclesiastical bondage. This state of things would issue in no long time
in the destruction of both liberties, and the supremacy of the King of England, as well as
of the Archbishop of Canterbury, over the kingdom of Scotland. Although the spirit of his
mother was strong in him, Alexander was not prepared to make a concession like this to
priestly arrogance.
At an interview one day between the king and
the bishop, the matter was abruptly and conclusively brought to an issue. Eadmer was
pressing for permission to go to Canterbury and receive consecration at the hands of
Archbishop Ralph. Alexander protested in plain terms that he would never permit the
Scottish bishop to be subject to the primate of England. "Not for all Scotland,"
replied Eadmer, "will I renounce being a monk of Canterbury." "in that
case," rejoined the king, "I have gained nothing by applying to Canterbury for a
bishop." The haughty monk gave the ring back to the king, from whom he had received
it, and laid the crozier on the altar whence he had taken it with his own hand, and
quitted the kingdom.
The monk, of Canterbury had shaken the dust
from his feet and was gone but Alexanders troubles in connection with his bishopric
of St. Andrews were not yet at the end. He made other two attempts to fill the vacant see.
Fordun has given us two obscure names chosen in succession by the king for the dignity,
but in each case the bishop-elect died before consecration. Verily the epithet
"fatal" may with more propriety be applied to the "chair" of St
Andrews than to the "stone" of Scone. Death or calamity dogs the steps of all
who have to do with it. We have seen King Alexander nominate four men to this spiritual
throne, and only one of the four has been able to mount into it, and he for only a single
year. A fifth and final attempt does the king make to find a bishop. His choice now fell
on the prior of the Augustine monks, which we have seen him establish at Scone. Prior
Robert of the Augustines was an Englishman, but,. Knowing his character and
qualifications, the king thought the selection a safe one. He was consecrated in 1124 by
the Archbishop of York, the rights of both sees being reserved as in the case of Bishop
Turgot.
Considering how much vexation Alexander had
had with his one Bishop of St Andrews, we should have thought that he would have been
careful not to multiply functionaries which were apt, once installed, to kick against the
power that created them. Such, however, was not the inference which the king drew from his
experience of the ways of bishops. Instead of diminishing he increased their number. To
his one bishopric of St. Andrews he added the dioceses of Mary and Dunkeld. Of the persons
appointed to these sees we know nothing besides their names. The northern diocese of Moray
was presided over by Gregorius, while Cormac ruled at Dunkeld. We hear of no disputes
respecting jurisdiction arising in either diocese, from which we infer that the holders of
these Celtic sees were more subservient to the royal will than the more powerful and less
manageable Bishop of St Andrews.
The reign of Alexander I. was now drawing to
its close; still he did not relax, but rather quickened his efforts to realise the
programme of ecclesiastical change which his mother had devised but did not live to carry
out. To make St Andrews the Canterbury of Scotland, as Canterbury was the Rome of England,
was the object of his devout ambition. He ceased not with edifying diligence to found
monasteries, to import foreign monks,--the soil of Scotland not being adapted as yet for
the rearing of that special product,--to collect relics, to provide vestment for the
priests, and vessels for the service of the churches. As the result of Alexanders
pious and unremitting labours, the land began to be cleansed from the stains which five
centuries of Columban heterodoxy had left on it. Morning and night its air was hallowed by
the soft chimes of mattins and vespers rising from convent or cell, and floating over wood
and hamlet. Its roads began to be sanctified by the holy feet of palmer and pilgrim, shod
and unshod; and its streets and rural lanes to be variegated by troops of reverend men,
cowled and uncowled, in frock of white, or black, or grey, begirt with rope, and having
rosary hung at their girdle, as men who were habitually watchful unto prayer, and ready to
respond to any sudden access of the devotional mood which might demand expression, and had
all the implements at hand to ban or bless, to sanctify the living or shrive the dying.
The long severed land, putting off its Columban weeds and decking itself in Roman attire,
was making ready to be received in the next reign into the great Church of the West.
Among the last of the pious labours of
Alexander was one undertaken in fulfilment of a vow which he had made in circumstances of
great peril. The king was crossing the forth at Queensferry on business of State, when a
violent gale sprang up in the south-west and carried his vessel down the firth. The fury
of the tempest was such that the king and his attendants gave themselves up for lost.
While tossed by the waves, the king made a vow to St Columba promising the saint, if he
should bring him safe to the island of Aemona (Inchcolme), which the sailors were toiling
to reach, he would erect there a monument which should be a lasting proof of gratitude to
his protector, and a harbour and refuge to the tempest-tossed and shipwrecked mariners.
His prayers were heard, as he believed, for soon to his glad surprise and that of his
attendants, Aemona was reached. The king on landing was welcomed by an eremite, who was
the sole inhabitant of the island. This mans whole subsistence was the milk of a
single cow, and the shell-fish picked from the rocks or gathered on the sea shore. These
dainties the king and his attendants were content to share with the solitary during the
three days the storm kept them prisoners on the island. Such is the story as told by
Bower, Abbot of Inchgcolme, who saw a miracle in the storm that led to the founding of the
monastery. We may accept the facts without granting the miracle.
After his departure from the island, the
pious king did according to his vow. He laid the foundations of a monastery on Aemona, and
dedicated it to St Columba, by whose powerful interposition he had been rescued from
perishing in the tempest. He had not the satisfaction, however, of seeing the edifice
completed, for he died in the following year (1124), and it fell to the lot of his
successor, David I., to carry out the intentions and fulfil the vow of Alexander.7 No
more grateful task could King David I. have had assigned him. The building was prosecuted
with diligence. In due course a noble pile graced the rock which had given shelter to
Alexander from the waves. A body of Augustinian canons were brought hither and put in
possession, and so amply endowed was the monastery with lands in various parts of the
kingdom, that there was not the least danger of its inmates ever being reduced to the
necessity of going in quest of shell-fish to eke out their subsistence, as the solitary
had been obliged to do whom the king found on the island when cast upon it by the storm.
In the year 1178 the monastery was confirmed by a Bull of Pope Alexander the Third. In his
Bull the Pope takes "the church of St Colmes Inch under our protection, and
that of St Peter." There follows a long list of privileges and heritageslands,
churches, tofts, multures, fishingall of which the Bull of Pope Alexander secures to
the monastery in perpetuity.8
Scotlands obligations to this monastery
are considerable. In the year 1418 we find Walter Bower occupying its chair as abbot, for
though at first Inchcolme was a priory, it ultimately became an abbey. Eschewing the pomps
and pleasures which his rank as abbot put within his read, Bower gave his time to labours
which have been fruitful to his country. He was the continuator of Forduns Scotichronicon,
indeed the compiler of the better half of it, a work which is one of the sources of
Scottish history. He was a man of true piety, despite the superstitions that flourished
all round him. He saw a miracle in the storm which led to the founding of his monastery,
but we excuse him when we read his tender and pathetic words. Writing of the year 1385, he
says: "In this same year, I, who have composed these sentences, and who throughout
the first books am called Scriptor, was born into the world. Oh! That I might ere
long leave it in purity. I die daily, seeing every day a part of my life is taken away. I
have passed through five of the great periods of mans life; and it seems to me as if
the time past of my life had glided away as yesterday; and while I spend this very day I
divide it with death."
A yet higher distinction may the Monastery of
Inchcolme claim: it gave a martyr to the Reformation. Thomas Forret, better known as the
Vicar of Dollar, was one of the canons of Inchcolm. His pure character, his benevolent
life, and his tragic fate, have invested his memory with a touching interest. While in the
monastery, unlikely as the place was, he lighted on a spring, the waters of which were
sweeter than any he had tasted heretofore. The circumstances attending this discovery were
far enough from giving promise of any such blissful results as that to which they
ultimately led. A dispute had broken out between the canons and the abbot, the former
affirming that the latter had fraudulently deprived them of a portion of their daily
maintenance. The Foundation Book of the monastery was appealed to. The book was produced,
and the canons fell to searching this charter of their rights, not doubting that it would
enable them to make good their plea against their abbot. The abbot, however, had the art
to wile the book from the canons and to give them instead a volume of Augustine. Forret
gave himself diligently to the reading of this book, and found in it what was infinitely
more precious to him than if it had made him abbot of Inchcolme and of every monastery in
the kingdom to boot. He saw it in the Way of Life, through the obedience and blood of
Jesus Christ. Forret sought to communicate to his brother canons a knowledge of his great
discovery, that they too might repair to the same fountain and partaker with him of the
heavenly joys. The abbot took alarm; he saw the plague of heresy about to break out in his
community. The Monastery of Inchcolme, of so ancient and orthodox a lineage, a school of
Lutheranism! Rather the waves should cover it, or was raze it to its foundations, than
that the stigma of heresy should be affixed to it. The abbot, however, gave Forret an
honourable dismissal. He sent him to serve the landward Church of Dollar, where he might
vent his Lutheran notions in the sequestered air of the Ochils without bringing an evil
report upon his monastery. The sequel is well known. The Vicar of dollar preached the
doctrine of a free justification to his parishioners of the valley of the Devon, and after
a brief ministry he sealed his doctrine with his blood at the stake. The glory of the
Monastery of Inchcolme, is not that it had a king for its founder, but that it had a
Walter Bower in the list of its Abbots, a volume of Augustine in its library, and, last
and highest, a Thomas Forret among its canons
FOOTNOTES
1. Buchanan, Hist. Scot., Lib. vii. c. 87.
2.
National MSS., Part i. p. 5; Skenes Celtic Scotland, ii. 367.
3.
Fordun,Scotichron., v. 37.
4.
Winton, i. 285, 286.
5.
Reeves, British Culdees, pg. 36; Stubbs and Haddans Councils, p.
178.
6.
Chronica de Mailros, p. 65; Simeon of Durham, p. 208.
7.
The researchers of Dr William Ross in the charters of the Monastery of Inchcolme and
Donbibristle MS. Make it undoubted that the monastery was founded by Alexander I. in 1023.
"Statements," says Dr Ross, "are to found in the charters of the Monastery,
which point to possessions owed by the canons as far back as the reign of Alexander the
First." Aberdour and Inchcolme: Being Historical Notices of the Parish and
Monastery.
By the Rev. William Ross, LL.D. Edin., 1885,
p. 61. A work which contains much interesting, curious, and original information regarding
the Monastery of Inchcolme.
8.
Inchcolme was visited and explored by Sir James Simpson. The great physician, it is well
known, relieved the strain of professional duty by occasional and successful incursions
into the antiquarian field. We find Dr William Ross saying: "A small building in the
garden of the Abbey has lately attracted a good deal of notice, and has even gone through
something like restoration, in the belief that it is the identical oratory in which the
Columban eremite worshipped before the monastery was founded. It was through the
enlightened antiquarian zeal of Sir James Simpson that this discovery was made. On
architectural grounds, some of the highest authorities on such matters have acquiesced in
the conclusion come to by Sir James. And on the supposition that they are correct, the
little chapel is probably the oldest stone-roofed building in Scotland."Ross,
Aberdour and Inchcolme: Being Historical Notices of the Parish and Monastery, p. 58.
Edin., 1885. |