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On the demise of Malcolm, Donal-bane his brother assumed the
government; but Duncan, the son of Malcolm, who had lived many years in England, and held
a high military rank under Willian Rufus, invaded Scotland with a large army of English
and Normans, and forced Donal to retire to safety to the Hebrides. Duncan, whom some
writers suppose to have been a bastard, and others a legitimate son of Malcolm by a former
wife, enjoyed the crown only six months, having been assassintated by Maolpeder, the
Maormor of the Mearns, at Menteith, at the instigation, it is believed, of Donal. Duncan
left, by his wife Ethreda, daughter of Gospatrick, a son, William, sometimes surnamed
Fitz-Duncan.
Donal-bane again seized the sceptre, but he survived Duncan only two years. Edgar
AEtheling having assembled an army in England, entered Scotland, and made Donal prisoner
in an action which took place in September 1097. He was imprisoned by orders of Edgar, and
died at Roscobie in Forfarshire, after having been deprived of his eyesight, according to
the usual practice of the age. The series of the pure Scoto-Irish kings may be said to
have ended with Donal-bane.
The reign of Edgar, who appears to have been of a gentle and peaceful disposition, is
almost devoid of incident, the principle events being the marriage of his sister Matilda
to the English Henry, and the wasting and conquest of the Western Islands by Magnus
Olaveson and his Norwegians. This last event had but little effect on Scotland proper, as
these Islands at that time can hardly be said to have belonged to it. These Norsemen
appear to have settled among and mixed with the native inhabitants, and thus formed a
population, spoken of by the Irish Annalists under the name of Gallgael, "a horde of
pirates, plundering on their own account, and under their own leaders, when they were not
following the banner of any of the greater sea-kings, whose fleets were powerful enough to
sweep the western seas, and exact tribute from the lesser island chaieftains". Edgar
died in 1107, and was succeeded by his brother Alexander, whom he enjoined to bestow upon
his younger brother David the district of Columbia.
We have now arrived at an era in our history, when the line of demarcation between the
inhabitants of the Lowlands and Highlands of Scotland begins to appear, and when, by the
influx of a Gothic race into the former, the language of that part of North Britain is
completely revolutionized, when a new dynasty or race of sovereigns ascends the throne,
and when a great change takes place in the laws and constitution of the kingdom.
Although the Anglo-Saxon colonization of the Lowlands of Scotland does not come exactly
within the design of the present work; yet, as forming an important feature in the history
of the Lowlands of Scotland, as contradistinguished from the Highlands, a slight notice of
it may not be uninteresting.
Shortly after the Roman abdication of North Britain in the year 446, which was soon
succeeded by the final departure of the Romans from the British shores, the Saxons, a
people of Gothic origin, established themselves upon the Tweed, and afterwards extended
their settlements to the Frith of Forth, and to the banks of the Solway and the Clyde.
About the beginning of the sixth century the Dalriads, as we have seen, landed at Kintyre
and Argyle from the opposite coast of Ireland, and colonised these districts, whence, in
the course of little more than two centuries, they overspread the Highlands and western
islands, which their descendants have ever since continued to possess. Towards the end of
the eighth century, a fresh colony of Scots from Ireland settled in Galloway among the
Britons and Saxons, and having overspread the whole of that country, were afterwards
joined by the detachments of the Scots of Kintyre and Argyle, in connection with whom they
peopled that peninsula. Besides these three races, who made permanent settlements in
Scotland, the Scandinavians colonized the Orkney and Shetland islands, and also
established themselves on the coasts of Caithness and Sutherland, and in the eastern part
of the country north of the Firth of Tay.
But notwithstanding these early settlements of the Gothic race, the era of the Saxon
colonization of the Lowlands of Scotland is, with more propriety, placed in the reign of
Malcolm Ceanmore, who, by his marriage with a Saxon princess, and the protection he gave
to the Anglo-Saxon fugitives who sought an asylum in his dominions from the persecutions
of William the Conqueror and his Normans, laid the foundations of those great changes
which took place in the reigns of his successors. Malcolm, in his warlike incursions into
Northumberland and Durham, carried of immense numbers of young men and women, who were to
be seen in the reign of David I in almost every village and house in Scotland. The Gaelic
population were quite averse to the settlement of these strangers among them, and it is
said that the extravagant mode of living introduced by the Saxon followers of Queen
Margaret, was one of the reasons which led to their expulsion from Scotland, in the reign
of Donal-bane, who rendered himself popular with his people by this unfriendly act.
This expulsion was, however, soon rendered nugatory, for on the accession of Edgar, the
first sovereign of the Scoto-Saxon dynasty, many distinguished Saxon families with their
followers settled in Scotland, to the heads of which families the king made grants of land
of considerable extent. Few of these foreigners appear to have come into Scotland during
the reign of Alexander I, the brother and successor of Edgar; but vast numbers of
Anglo-Saxons, Anglo-Normans, and Flemings, established themselves in Scotland in the reign
of David I. That prince had received his education at the court of Henry I, and had
married Maud or Matilda, the only child of Waltheof, Earl of Northumberland and
Huntingdon, by Judith, niece to William the Conqueror on the mother's side. This lady had
many vassals, and when David came to the throne, in the year 1124, he was followed by a
thousand Anglo-Normans, to whom he distributed lands, on which they and their followers
settled. Many of the illustrious families in Scotland originated from this source.
Malcolm Ceanmore had, before his accession to the throne, resided for some time in England
as a fugitive, under the protection of Edward the Confessor, where he acquired a knowledge
of the Saxon language; which language, after his marriage with the princess Margaret,
became that of the Scottish court. This circumstance made that language fashionable among
the Scottish nobility, in consequence of which and of the Anglo-Saxon colonization under
David I, the Gaelic language was altogether superseded in the Lowlands of Scotland in
little more than two centuries after the death of Malcolm. A topographical line of
demarcation was then fixed as the boundary between the two languages, which has ever since
been kept up, and presents one of the most singular phenomena ever observed in the history
of philogy.
The change of the seat of government by Kenneth, on ascending the Pictish throne, to
Abernethy, also followed by the removal of the marble chair, the emblem of
sovereignty,
from Dunstaffnage to Scone, appears to have occasioned no detriment to the Gaelic
population of the Highlands; but when Malcolm Ceanmore transferred his court, about the
year 1066, to Dunfernline, which also became, in place of Iona, the sepulchre of the
Scottish kings, the rays of royal bounty, which had hitherto diffused their protecting and
benign influence over the inhabitants of the Highlands, were withdrawn, and left them a
prey to anarchy and poverty. "The people", says General David Stewart, "now
beyond the reach of the laws, became turbulent and fierce, revenging in person those
wrongs for which the administrators of the laws were too distant and too feeble to afford
redress. Thence arose the institution of chiefs, who naturally became the judges and
arbiters in the quarrels of their clansmen and followers, and who were surrounded by men
devoted to the defence of their rights, their property, and their power; and accordingly
the chiefs established within their own territories a jurisdiction almost wholly
independent of their liege lord".
The connection which Malcolm and his successors maintained with England, estranged still
further the Highlanders from the dominion of the sovereign and the laws; and their history,
after the population of the Lowlands had merged into and adopted the language of the
Anglo-Saxons, presents, with the exception of the wars between rival clans which will be
noticed afterwards, nothing remarkable till their first appearance on the military theatre
of our national history in the campaigns of Montrose, Dundee, and others.
On the accession of Alexander I, then, Scotland was divided between the Celt and the
Saxon, or more strictly speaking, Teuton, pretty much as it is at the present day, the
Gaelic population having become gradually confined very nearly to the limits indicated in
the first chapter. They never appear, at least until quite recently, to have taken kindly
to Teutonic customs and the Teutonic tongue, and resented much the defection of their king
in court, in submitting to Saxon innovations. Previous to this the history of the
Highlands has been, to a very great extent, the history of Scotland, and even for a
considerable time after this, Scotia was applied strictly to the country north of the
Forth and Clyde, the district south of that being known by various other names. During and
after Edgar's time, the whole of the country north of the Tweed became more and more a
counterpart of England, with its thanes, its earls, and its sheriffs; and even the
Highland maormors assumed the title of earl, in deference to the new customs. The
Highlanders, however, it is well known, for centuries warred against these Saxon
innovations, becoming more and more a peculiar people, being, up till the end of the last
century, a perpetual thorn in the flesh of their Saxon rulers and their Saxon
fellow-subjects. They have a history of their own, which we deem worthy of narration. |
