Celtic Scotland

When Bede closes his history, forty-six years after the defeat and death of Ecgfrid, and we lose his invaluable guidance through the annals of this obscure period, he leaves us with this important record of the position of the four kingdoms at that time:—‘In the province of the Northumbrians, where king Ceoluulf reigns, four bishops now preside; Wilfrid in the church of York, Ediluald in that of Lindisfarne, Acca in that of Hagustald, Pecthelm in that which is called ‘Candida Casa,’ which, from the increased number of believers, has lately become an additional episcopal see, and has him for its first prelate. The Picts also at this time have a treaty of peace with the nation of the Angles, and rejoice in being united in catholic peace and truth with the universal church. The Scots that inhabit Britain, satisfied with their own territories, meditate no plots or conspiracies against the nation of the Angles. The Britons, though they, for the most part, through domestic hatred, are adverse to the nation of the Angles, and wrongfully, and from wicked custom, oppose the appointed Easter of the whole Catholic Church; yet, from both the Divine and human power firmly withstanding them, they can in no way prevail as they desire; for though in part they are their own masters, yet partly they are also brought under subjection to the Angles.’^[369]

Causes, however, had already been in operation during the latter part of this period, which were destined soon after its termination to alter very materially the relative position of these kingdoms. During the entire period of a century and a half which had now elapsed since the northern Picts were converted to Christianity by the preaching of Saint Columba, there is hardly to be found the record of a single battle between them and the Scots of Dalriada. Had they viewed each other as hostile races, it is difficult to account for the more powerful nation of the Picts permitting a small colony like the Scots of Dalriada to remain in undisturbed possession of the western district where they had settled. Prior, indeed, to the mission of Saint Columba we find the king of the northern Picts endeavouring to expel them, but after that date there existed a powerful element of peace and bond of union in the Columban Church. It was in every respect a Scottish Church, with a Scottish clergy supplied from Ireland. The Columban foundations had spread over the whole nation of the Picts. They owed their civilisation to its influence, and intrusted the education of their children to its monastic schools; and the Columban church of the Picts was, along with the Columban monasteries in the north of Ireland, under the jurisdiction of the abbot of Hii or Iona. As long, therefore, as this powerful influence lasted, the Picts were content to remain at peace with the Scots of Dalriada, and to view them as forming, as it were, one state along with the Pictish provinces in a Christian confederacy; but the king who now reigned over the Picts, Nectan, son of Derili, was led to adopt a course which worked an entire revolution in the ecclesiastical relations of the Picts and Scots, and led, as its inevitable result, to a change in their friendly relations.

In the reign of this Nectan it is reported that a missionary named Bonifacius, who came from Rome, landed in the Firth of Forth, and made his way through Pictavia till he came to a place called Restinoth. Here he met Nectan, king of the Picts, with his army, who, with his nobles and servants, received from Bonifacius the sacrament of baptism. The king gave the place of his baptism, which he dedicated to the Holy Trinity, to Bonifacius. Many people were indoctrinated there into the Christian faith, and he employed himself in the erection of churches there and in other places. The legend tells us that Bonifacius was an Israelite descended from the sister of St. Peter and St. Andrew, and a native of Bethlehem; that he was accompanied by six other bishops—Benedictus, Servandus, Pensandus, Benevolus, Madianus, and Principuus; two virgins, abbesses, Crescentia and Triduana; seven presbyters, seven deacons, seven sub-deacons, seven acolytes, seven exorcists, seven lectors, and seven door-keepers; that he founded one hundred and fifty temples of God, consecrated as many bishops, and ordained a thousand presbyters; that he converted and baptized thirty-six thousand people of both sexes, and died on the 16th of March.^[370] This is of course mere legend, and when reduced to its probable meaning amounts to no more than this, that he brought over the king of the Picts and many of his people from the Columban Church to conformity with the Church of Rome. He is termed in the calendars Kiritinus; his day is the same with that in the Irish calendars of Curitan, bishop and abbot of Rossmeinn, and he is said to have been one of the saints who became security for the Cain Adomnan,^[371] which places him at this time. Bonifacius was therefore in reality probably a missionary from that part of the Irish Church which had conformed to Rome, and the church of Restinoth or Restennet being dedicated to St. Peter is an indication of the character of his mission.

This legend is clearly connected with the statement Bede makes towards the close of his narrative—and here he is narrating events which happened during his own life—‘that at this time,’ that is, in the year 710, ‘Naitan, king of the Picts who inhabit the northern parts of Britain, taught by frequent study of the ecclesiastical writings, renounced the error by which he and his nation had till then held in relation to the observance of Easter, and submitted together with his people to celebrate the Catholic time of our Lord’s resurrection. In order that he might perform this with the greater ease and authority, he sought assistance from the nation of the Angles, whom he knew to have long since formed their religion after the example of the holy Roman and Apostolic Church. Accordingly he sent messengers to the venerable man Ceolfrid, abbot of the monastery of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul, which stands at the mouth of the river Tyne at the place called Jarrow, desiring that he would write him a letter containing arguments, by the help of which he might the more powerfully confute those that presumed to keep Easter out of the due time; as also concerning the form and manner of the tonsure for distinguishing the clergy; not to mention that he himself possessed much information in these particulars. He also prayed to have architects sent him to build a church in his nation after the Roman manner, promising to dedicate the same in honour of the blessed Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, and that he and all his people would always follow the custom of the holy Roman Apostolic Church, as far as they could ascertain the same in consequence of their remoteness from the Roman language and nation.’ Bede then gives us the letter addressed by Abbot Ceolfrid to ‘the most excellent lord and most glorious king Naitan,’ of which there is strong reason to think he was himself the author, being at the time a monk at Jarrow, and thus concludes the narrative:—‘This letter having been read in the presence of king Naitan and many others of the most learned men, and carefully interpreted into his own language by those who could understand it, he is said to have much rejoiced at the exhortation, insomuch that, rising from among his great men who sat about him, he knelt on the ground giving thanks to God that he had been found worthy to receive such a present from the land of the Angles; and, said he, I knew indeed before that this was the true celebration of Easter, but now I so fully know the reason for the observance of this time, that I seem convinced that I knew very little of it before. Therefore I publicly declare and protest to you who are here present, that I will for ever continually observe this time of Easter, together with all my nation; and I do decree that this tonsure which we have heard is most reasonable shall be received by all the clergy in my kingdom. Accordingly he immediately performed by his regal authority what he had said. For the cycles of nineteen years were forthwith, by public command, sent throughout all the provinces of the Picts to be transcribed, learnt, and observed, the erroneous revolutions of eighty-four years being everywhere obliterated. All the ministers of the altar and the monks adopted the coronal tonsure; and the nation being thus reformed, rejoiced, as being newly placed under the direction of Peter, the most blessed prince of the apostles, and made secure under his protection.’^[372]

There is strong reason for concluding that the scene of this assembly, where we see the king of the Picts surrounded by his nobles and his learned men, was no other than Scone, which had then become, as it was afterwards, the principal seat of the kingdom, and that from the Mote Hill of Scone issued now, as similar decrees issued afterwards, that public decree which regulated the form of the Christian Church among the Picts; that it was here too that Nectan dedicated his church to the Holy Trinity; and that it was from these events and the scene enacted there that the Mote Hill came to be known as the ‘Hill of Belief.’^[373]

The reference too to the provinces of the Picts, combined with the statement in the legend that the Roman mission, as it may be called, had seven bishops at its head, leads us to conclude that the division of the kingdom of the Picts into seven provinces existed at this time. A tract of the twelfth century tells us that the territory anciently called ‘Albania,’ from the Picts, ‘Pictavia,’ and now corruptly ‘Scotia,’ was in ancient times divided by seven brethren into seven parts. ‘The principal part was Enegus and Moerne (now Angus and the Mearns or Kincardineshire), so called from Enegus, the eldest of the brothers. The second part was Adtheodle and Gouerin (now Atholl and Gowry). The third, Sradeern and Meneted (now Stratherne and Menteith). The fourth, Fif and Fothreve (now Fife and Kinross). The fifth, Marr and Buchen (now Mar and Buchan). The sixth, Muref and Ros (now Moray and Ross). The seventh, Cathanesia citra montem and ultramontem (now Sutherland and Caithness). That each province had a sub-province within it, and that these seven brothers were seven kings having seven sub-kings under them.’ These seven brothers are different from the seven sons of Cruithne of the Pictish legend, as the eldest is here called Angus, but they are obviously merely the ‘eponymi’ of the people of seven provinces. That this division can belong to no later period is apparent from the omission of that part of the western districts which formed the Scottish kingdom of Dalriada; and of the sub-kings we find one noticed at this very time,—Talorgan, son of Drostan, who is mentioned by Tighernac as flourishing from 713 to 739, when his death is recorded as ‘Rex Athfhotla’ or king of Atholl.^[374] Four of these provinces composed the territory of the southern Picts, and the district of Gowrie forms the central region in which they all meet, and here on the east bank of the Tay was Scone, the principal seat at this time of the kingdom of the Picts.

It was at Scone too that the Coronation Stone was ‘reverently kept for the consecration of the kings of Alban,’ and of this stone it was believed that ‘no king was ever wont to reign in Scotland unless he had first, on receiving the royal name, sat upon this stone at Scone, which by the kings of old had been appointed the capital of Alban.’^[375] Of its identity with the stone now preserved in the coronation chair at Westminster there can be no doubt. It is an oblong block of red sandstone, some 26 inches long by 16 inches broad, and 10½ inches deep, and the top is flat and bears the marks of chiselling. Its mythic origin identifies it with the stone which Jacob used as a pillow at Bethel, and then set up there for a pillar and anointed with oil, which, according to Jewish tradition, was afterwards removed to the second temple, and served as the pedestal for the ark. Legend has much to tell of how it was brought from thence to Scotland, but history knows of it only at Scone.^[376] It too may have been connected with the legend of Bonifacius. We find that the principal Irish missionaries frequently carried about with them a slab or block of stone, which they used as an altar for the celebration of the Eucharist, and which was usually termed a stone altar. In places where it had been used for this purpose by any celebrated saint, and remained there, it was the object of much veneration among the people, and is the subject of many of the miracles recorded in the acts of the saint. Saint Patrick’s stone altar is frequently mentioned in his acts, and, in the only strictly analogous case to the coronation stone of the Scotch kings—that of the kings of Munster, who were crowned on the rock of Cashel, sitting upon a similar stone—the belief was that this coronation stone had been the stone altar of Saint Patrick on which he had first celebrated the Eucharist after the conversion and baptism of the king of Cashel. It is therefore not impossible that the coronation stone of Scone may have had the same origin, and been the stone altar upon which Bonifacius first celebrated the Eucharist after he had brought over the king of the Picts and his people from the usages of the Columban Church to conformity with those of the Roman Church, and possibly re-baptized him. The legend that it had been the stone at Bethel, which became the pedestal of the ark in the temple, and brought from thence, may have also a connection with the statement in the legend of Bonifacius that he was an Israelite and a native of Bethlehem, and had come from thence to Rome.^[377]

Be this as it may, the fact that Nectan and his people had at this time conformed to the Anglican Roman Church as contradistinguished from the Columban, and had issued a decree requiring the adoption of the Roman usages by the clergy of his kingdom, based as it is upon the personal knowledge of Bede, who lived at the time and records it, is undoubtedly historical. Nectan appears to have failed to obtain the submission of the Columban clergy to his decree, and some years after, in 717, he took the strong step of expelling them from the kingdom, and driving them across Drumalban, which then formed the boundary between the southern Picts and the Scots of Dalriada.^[378] This opened the Columban foundations in the territory of the Picts to Scottish clergy who belonged to that part of the Irish Church which had conformed to Rome, and were not under the jurisdiction of Hii or Iona, as well as to such clergy from the kingdom of Northumbria as were disposed to adventure themselves once more into the Pictish country; and seven years afterwards, in the year 724, Nectan himself became a cleric, and was succeeded on the Pictish throne by Druxst.^[379] The step thus taken by Nectan of dispossessing the Columban Church of the foundations it had possessed for a century and a half, and of driving its clergy out of the kingdom, naturally placed the kingdom of the Scots of Dalriada and that of the Picts in direct antagonism to each other, and arrayed the clergy under the jurisdiction of Iona against the latter, while the contest between the Dalriads and the Britons had for the time ceased. That, however, between the two great tribes of the Dalriads themselves—the Cinel Loarn and the Cinel Gabhran—still continued. In 719 Ainbhceallach, the son of Fearchar Fata, who had reigned one year after his father, and been expelled by his brother Sealbach, and sent bound to Ireland, appears to have made an effort to recover his position at the head of the Cinel Loarn, and a battle took place at Finglen on the Braes of Loarn, near Lochavich, between the brothers, in which Ainbhceallach was slain.^[380] Tradition has preserved a record of this battle in the name Blar nam braithrean, or the battle-field of the brothers. In the same year a naval battle took place between the Cinel Gabhran under Dunchadh, son of Becc, the chief of that branch of the tribe which possessed the south half of Kintyre, and were descended from Conaing, son of Aidan, and the Cinel Loarn under Sealbach, at a place called Arddanesbi, probably the Point of Ardminish on the island of Gigha, in which the latter was defeated and several of the chiefs of his vassal tribes were slain. Dunchadh did not long enjoy his victory, for his death is recorded two years after, in which he is designated king of Kintyre.^[381] In 722 the death of Beli, son of Alpin, king of Alclyde, is also recorded, and in the following year Sealbach becomes a cleric, and resigns his throne to his son Dungal.^[382] Sealbach is the first of those chiefs, subsequent to the death of Domnall Brecc in 642, who bears the title of king of Dalriada, which shows that the kingdom of Dalriada had now been reconstituted, and that the chiefs of the Cinel Loarn had made good their right to occupy the throne along with the head of the Cinel Gabhran. Of the events of the reign of Drust two only are recorded, which seem to show an opposition between the party of Nectan, the previous king, and that of Drust. In 725, Simal, the son of Drust, is taken and bound, and in 726 Drust retaliates by subjecting the cleric Nectan to a similar fate.

There now follows a revolution in the two kingdoms of the Dalriads and the Picts, which takes place simultaneously. In the one Dungal of the Cinel Loarn is driven from the throne, and Eochaidh, who now appears as the head of the Cinel Gabhran, succeeds him. In the other Drust is driven from the throne and succeeded by Alpin.^[383] These were brothers. Eochadh was the son of that Eochaidh, the grandson of Domnall Brecc, who died in 697, and Alpin was another son of the same Eochaidh, but his name shows that he had a Pictish mother, through whom he derived his claim to the Pictish throne.^[384] The expulsion of Dungal from the throne of Dalriada seems to have called forth his father Sealbach from his monastery to endeavour to regain it. In 727 there is recorded a conflict at Ross-Foichen, or the promontory of Feochan, at the mouth of Loch Feochan, between him and the family of Eachdach, the grandson of Domnall, in which several of the two Airgiallas were slain.^[385] Sealbach was unsuccessful, as Eochaidh remained in possession of the throne till his death is recorded as king of Dalriada in 733.^[386] If, however, the revolution in Dalriada in 726 led to a renewed contest between the Cinel Gabhran under Eochaidh and the Cinel Loarn under Sealbach, that which took place in the kingdom of the Picts was followed by a still more determined struggle for supremacy which broke out, apparently, between several of the Pictish tribes, and led to the final establishment of a new family on the Pictish throne, the head of which was destined to terminate the Dalriadic kingdom. The parties to this struggle were Alpin, the reigning king, and Drust, his predecessor, who seem to have had their main interest in the central region about Scone; Nectan, the son of Derili, who, once more entering into secular life, endeavoured to regain his crown; and seems to have been connected with the more northern districts; and Aengus, son of Fergus, who is identified with the province of Fortrenn, and appears to have been the founder of a new family. The first collision was at ‘Monaigh Craebi’ or Moncrieffe, a name which belongs to a hill separating the valley of the Earn from that of the Tay, not far from the junction of the two rivers, between Aengus and Alpin, in which battle Aengus was victorious, and wrested the country west of the Tay from Alpin, whose son was slain in the conflict. The second collision was between Alpin and Nectan at ‘Caislen Credi’—the Castle of Belief, or Scone, the capital of the kingdom—when Alpin was again defeated, his territories and all his men were taken, and Nectan obtained the kingdom of the Picts while Alpin fled.^[387] The sympathies of the Irish chronicler were with Alpin, as he terms this battle Cath truadh, an unfortunate battle. In the following year Angus attacked Nectan, who now bore the title of king of the Picts, and seems to have fled before him, as the final conflict took place on the bank of a lake formed by the river Spey, then termed Loogdeae, but now Loch Inch, between Nectan and an army Angus had sent in pursuit of him, in which Aengus’s family were victorious, and the officers of Nectan were slain,—Biceot son of Moneit, and his son, and Finguine son of Drostan, and Ferot son of Finguine, and many others.^[388] Angus himself, who now called himself king of the Picts, encountered Drust at a place called Dromaderg Blathmig, which has been identified as the Redhead of Angus, near Kinblethmont, where Drust was slain on the 12th day of August.^[389] The last battle fought in this struggle was in 731, between Brude, son of Aengus, and Talorcan, son of Congus, in which the latter was defeated and fled across Drumalban into Lorn,^[390] and in the following year Tighernac records the death of Nectan, son of Derili.

Aengus was now firmly established on the Pictish throne, and his reign of thirty years is variously dated from 729 or from 731, according as the battles in the one or the other year are held to have finally confirmed his rule over the kingdom of the Picts. The death of Eachach, king of Dalriada, two years after, again opened the throne to the race of Loarn, and Muredach, the son of Ainbhceallach, assumed the chiefship of the Cinel Loarn, while Dungal, son of Selbaig, took possession of the throne of Dalriada; and in the same year the fleet of Dalriada was summoned to Ireland to assist Flaithbertach, king of Ireland, who had been defeated in battle by Aeda Allan, head of the Cinel Eoghan, and afterwards his successor on the throne of Ireland, and many of the Dalriads were slain and others drowned in the river Bann. Dungal, who appears to have accompanied them on his way to invade Culrenrigi, an island of the Cinel Eoghan, found Brude, the son of Aengus, in Toragh, a church founded by Saint Columba, in Tory island off the coast of Donegal, and violated the sanctuary by dragging him from it, which drew down upon him the wrath of Aengus, who in the following year invaded Dalriada and destroyed a fort called Dun Leithfinn, but which cannot now be identified, after having wounded Dungal, who fled to Ireland from his power. At the same time Tolarg, the son of Congus, was delivered into his hands by his own brother and drowned by his orders, and Talorgan, the son of Drostan, was taken near Dunolly and bound.^[391]

A still more formidable attack was made by Aengus, the Pictish king, upon Dalriada, two years after, when in 736 he is recorded to have laid waste the entire country, taken possession of its capital Dunad, burnt Creic, a fort, the remains of which are still to be seen on the promontory of Craignish, and thrown the two sons of Sealbach, Dungal and Feradach, into chains; and shortly after his son Brude, who had been taken prisoner by Dungal, the king of Dalriada, died.^[392] On this occasion Aengus appears to have obtained entire possession of Dalriada, and to have driven the two branches of its people, the Cinel Loarn under Muredach and the Cinel Gabhran under Alpin, the brother of Eochaidh, to extremity, for the former appears to have burst from Dalriada upon the Picts who inhabited the plain of Manann between the Carron and the Avon, in a desperate attempt to take possession of their country or to draw Aengus from Dalriada, and was met on the banks of the Avon at Cnuicc Coirpri in Calatros, now Carriber, where the Avon separates Lothian from Calatria, by Talorgan, the brother of Aengus, and defeated and pursued by him with his army, and many of his chief men slain.^[393]

At this time the Northumbrians were at enmity with the Picts. Ceoluulf, the king of Northumbria, had followed the fashion of the time, and become a monk in Lindisfarne in the year 737. He was succeeded by his cousin Eadberct, the son of his father’s brother; and we are told, in the short chronicle annexed to Bede, that in 740 Aedilbald, king of Mercia, unfairly laid waste part of Northumbria, its king, Eadberct, being occupied with his army against the Picts.^[394] It is probable that Aengus had excited the hostility of the king of Northumbria by stirring up the Picts of Lothian and Galloway to revolt, and that Eadberct may have encouraged if not invited the Scots of Dalriada to occupy their country. Alpin is said by all authorities to have reigned four years after Dungal, which brings us to the year 740, when he invaded Galloway with the part of the Dalriadic nation which followed him, and was slain there, after having laid waste and almost destroyed the country of the Picts. The Ulster Annals thus record it in 741:—Battle of Drum Cathmail between the Cruithnigh and the Dalriads against Innrechtach.^[395] The locality of this battle appears to have been in Galloway, not far from Kirkcudbright, and Innrechtach was probably the leader of the Galloway Picts. One of the Chronicles appears to have preserved the traditionary account of his death when it tells us that he was slain in Galloway, after he had destroyed it, by a single person who lay in wait for him in a thick wood overhanging the entrance of the ford of a river as he rode among his people.^[396] The scene of his death must have been on the east side of Loch Ryan, where a stream falls into the loch, on the north side of which is the farm of Laight, and on this farm is a large upright pillar stone, to which the name of Laight Alpin, or the grave of Alpin, is given.^[397] In the same year we have the short but significant record of the crushing of the Dalriads by Aengus, son of Fergus.^[398]

By all the Chronicles compiled subsequent to the eleventh century, Alpin, son of Eochaidh, is made the last of the kings of Dalriada; but the century of Dalriadic history which follows his death in 741 is suppressed, and his reign is brought down to the end of the century by the insertion of spurious kings. The true era of the genuine kings who reigned over Dalriada can be ascertained by the earlier lists given us by Flann Mainistrech and the Albanic Duan in the eleventh century, and the Annals of Tighernac and of Ulster, which are in entire harmony with each other. These earlier lists place nine kings during this century which followed the death of Alpin, whose united reigns amount to ninety-eight years. There is unfortunately a hiatus in the Annals of Tighernac from the year 765 to the year 973; but during the thirty years from 736 to 765 Tighernac records no king of Dalriada. In the remaining seventy-six years of the suppressed century, the Annals of Ulster mention only three kings of Dalriada, the first of whom corresponds with the second name in the list of nine kings given by the earlier Chroniclers, and he may have been a Scot;^[399] but the seven who follow him bear the most unequivocal marks of having been Picts, and this shows us that the effect of Aengus’s repeated invasions and final conquest of Dalriada was to make it a Pictish province: his entire possession of the country having led the remains of both the Cinel Loarn and the Cinel Gabhran to seek settlements elsewhere; while during the reign of his successor one attempt only appears to have been made to restore the Scottish kingdom of Dalriada.^[400]

The list of Pictish kings in the later Chronicles bears also marks of having been manipulated for a purpose, but here fortunately we have the trustworthy guide of the Pictish Chronicle, which belongs to the tenth century, and is evidently untainted. For the Anglic history our invaluable guide Bede leaves us in 731, and the short chronicle annexed to his work in 765, as does also the continuator of Nennius in 738; and we have now to resort to the works of Simeon of Durham, as the best source remaining to look to for Northumbrian events. For the Britons of Alclyde we have merely the short notices contained in the chronicle annexed to Nennius, usually termed the Annales Cambriæ, and the Welsh Chronicle called the Brut y Tywysogyon.

These nations had now resumed their normal relation to each other—east against west—the Picts and Angles again in alliance, and opposed to them the Britons and the Scots. Simeon of Durham tells us that in 744 a battle was fought between the Picts and the Britons, but, by the Picts, Simeon usually understands the Picts of Galloway, and this battle seems to have followed the attack upon them by Alpin and his Scots. It was followed by a combined attack upon the Britons of Alclyde by Eadberct of Northumbria, and Aengus, king of the Picts. The chronicle annexed to Bede tells us that in 750 Eadberct added the plain of Cyil with other regions to his kingdom.^[401] This is evidently Kyle in Ayrshire, and the other regions were probably Carrick and Cuninghame, so that the king of Northumbria added to his possessions of Galloway on the north side of the Solway the whole of Ayrshire. In the same year the Picts of the plain of Manann and the Britons encountered each other at Mocetauc or Magedauc, now Mugdoch in Dumbartonshire, where a great battle was fought between them, in which Talorgan, the brother of Aengus, who had been made king of the outlying Picts, was slain by the Britons.^[402] Two years after, Teudubr, the son of Bile, king of Alclyde, died, and a battle is fought between the Picts themselves at a place called by Tighernac ‘Sreith,’ in the land of Circin, that is, in the Strath in the Mearns, in which Bruide, the son of Maelchu, fell. As his name is the same as the Bruide, son of Maelchu, who was king of the northern Picts in the sixth century, this was probably an attack upon Aengus’s kingdom by the northern Picts.^[403]

Eadberct, king of Northumbria, and Aengus, king of the Picts, now united for the purpose of subjecting the Britons of Alclyde entirely to their power, and in 756 they led an army to Alclyde, and there received the submission of the Britons on the first day of August in that year. Ten days afterwards, however, Simeon of Durham records that almost the whole army perished as Eadberct was leading it from Ovania, probably Avendale or Strathaven in the vale of the Clyde, through the hill country to Niwanbyrig or Newburgh.^[404] The Britons of Alclyde thus passed a second time under subjection to the Angles, which continued some time, as in 760 the death of Dunnagual, the son of Teudubr is recorded, but he is not termed king of Alclyde.^[405] In the year 761 Tighernac records the death of Aengus mac Fergus, king of the Picts, after a reign of thirty years; and the chronicle annexed to Bede, which places his death in the same year, adds that ‘from the beginning of his reign to the end of it he showed himself a sanguinary tyrant of the most cruel actions.’^[406]

Nevertheless, it is to the reign of this Angus, son of Fergus, that the foundation of the monastery of Kilrimont or St. Andrews properly belongs. According to the earliest form of the legend, the king of the Picts, Ungus son of Uirguist by name, with a large army, attacks the Britannic nations inhabiting the south of the island, and cruelly wasting them arrives at the plain of Merc (Merse). There he winters, and being surrounded by the people of almost the whole island with a view to destroy him with his army, he is, while walking with his seven ‘comites,’ surrounded by a divine light, and a voice, purporting to proceed from St. Andrew, promises him victory if he will dedicate the tenth part of his inheritance to God and St. Andrew. On the third day he divides his army into twelve bodies, and proving victorious returns thanks to God and St. Andrew for the victory, and wishing to fulfil his vow, he is uncertain what part of his territory he is especially to dedicate as the principal city to St. Andrew, when one of those who had come from Constantinople with the relics of St. Andrew arrives at the summit of the King’s Mount, which is called Rigmund. The king comes with his army at a place called Kartenan, is met by Regulus the monk, a pilgrim from Constantinople, who arrives with the relics of St. Andrew, at the harbour called Matha. They fix their tents where the royal hall now is, and King Aengus gives the place and city to God and St. Andrew to be the head and mother of all the churches in the kingdom of the Picts.^[407] The later and more elaborate legend contained in the Register of St. Andrews tells substantially the same tale, but adds that Hungus, the great king of the Picts, fought against Adhelstan, king of the Saxons, and was encamped at the mouth of the river Tyne, and that St. Andrew appeared to him in a dream; that the king of the Picts divided his army into seven bodies, and defeated the Saxons, slaying their king Adhelstan, whose head he cut off. King Hungus returns with his army to his own country, taking Adhelstan’s head with him, and affixed it on a wooden pillar at the harbour called Ardchinnechun, now the Queen’s Harbour, after which the Saxons never ventured to attack the Picts. In the meantime Regulus the bishop, with the relics of St. Andrew, arrives in the land of the Picts, at a place formerly called Muckros, and now Kilrimont. From thence they go to Fortevieth, where they find the three sons of Hungus, Howonam and Nectan and Phinguineghert, and because their father was then engaged in an expedition into the regions of Argathelia and they were anxious for his life, they dedicate to God and St. Andrew the tenth part of the city of Fortevieth. They then go to Moneclatu, now called Monichi, and here they find Queen Finche, who bears a child to King Hungus called Mouren, and Queen Finche gives the house and whole royal palace to God and St. Andrew. They then cross the Mounth, and come to a lake called Doldencha, now Chondrochedalvan. Here they meet King Hungus returning from his expedition, who does honour to the relics of St. Andrew, and gives that place to God and St. Andrew, and builds a church there. The king then crosses the Mounth and comes to Monichi, where he builds a church, and then to Fortevieth, where he also builds a church, and after that to ‘Chilrymont,’ where he dedicates a large part of that place to God and St. Andrew for the purpose of building churches and oratories.^[408] It is unnecessary to follow this legend further. The places here mentioned can be identified without difficulty, and are simply those where churches dedicated to St. Andrew existed. Chilrymont is the modern St. Andrews, the principal church dedicated to the apostle St. Andrew in honour of his relics. Monichi is Eglis Monichti in the county of Forfar, also dedicated to St. Andrew, and Chondrochedalvan is Kindrochet in Braemar, which is also dedicated to him. The war with the Saxons refers to that period in the reign of Aengus when he was at war with Eadberct, king of Northumberland; the expedition into Argathelia, to his invasion of Dalriada in 736. His sons living at Fortevieth, and giving a tenth part of the city, shows his connection with the province called Fortrenn, in which it was situated; and the appearance for the first time during Aengus’s reign of an abbot of Ceannrigmonaidh, whose death Tighernac records in 747, fixes the foundation to his reign.^[409]

These legends must, of course, be taken only for what they are worth, and in analysing them it is necessary to distinguish between that portion which belongs to the history of the relics of St. Andrew and what is obviously connected with the foundation of St. Andrews. The events in this portion of the legend are thus not inconsistent with those of the reign of Aengus, son of Fergus, and we may accept them so far as to conclude that, as in the reign of Nectan, son of Derili, the Columban monks had been superseded by a clergy from that portion of the Irish Church which had conformed to the Roman usages, and from the Anglic Church established by Wilfrid, and the veneration of Saint Peter, the prince of the apostles, had replaced the dedication of the churches to their local founders, according to the custom of the Columban Church; so in the reign of Aengus, son of Fergus, another clerical immigration from the same quarter had brought in the veneration of St. Andrew, and founded a church in honour of his relics at the place first called ‘Ceannrighmonaigh,’ and afterwards from the church ‘Cellrighmonaidh,’ corrupted to Kilrymont, which commended itself so much to the Pictish nation that it, in its turn, superseded the veneration of St. Peter. St. Andrew was adopted as their patron saint, and the church of St. Andrews became their national church; and these legends emerged from this church in the form we have them, as they felt the importance of claiming for its foundation an antiquity superior to that of Iona.

Aengus was succeeded, in accordance with the Pictish law, by his brother Bruide, who reigned only two years, and died in 763. He is termed by Tighernac king of Fortrenn.^[410] |A.D. 763-775.
Ciniod, son of Wredech, king of the Picts.| His successor was Ciniod, son of Wredech, who reigned twelve years. Eadberct, the king of Northumbria, abdicated his throne in 758, and was succeeded by his son Osulf, who had reigned only one year when he was slain, and by his own people; and in 759, Ethelwald, called Moll, became king; and in the third year Simeon tells us a battle was fought between him and Oswine, one of his generals, at Eldun near Melrose,^[411] in which Oswine was slain, which shows that Ethelwald’s kingdom still extended at least as far as East Lothian. After a six years’ reign, Ethelwald was succeeded in 765 by Alcred, a descendant of Ida through a concubine. Ciniod had reigned only five years over the Picts, when a battle is recorded in Fortrenn between him and Aedh.^[412] This is the first appearance of that Aed called by Flann Mainistrech the plunderer, and by the Albanic Duan the high lord,^[413] and is the first of those kings of Dalriada who appear in the Annals of Ulster, where he is termed Aed Finn, son of Ecdach. He was probably a Scot who attempted to restore the Dalriadic kingdom after the strong grasp of Angus mac Fergus over it was withdrawn. Aedh’s death is recorded in 778, and in 781 that of his brother Fergus, but the latter does not appear among the list of kings in Flann Mainistrech and the Albanic Duan, and therefore was either only nominally king or reigned in Irish Dalriada, and three years after the last tie which bound the Scots to Dalriada was severed. The founders of the colony, the three sons of Erc, are stated in all the chronicles to have been buried in Iona, and in 784 their remains were exhumed and carried to the city of Taillten, in Meath, in Ireland, the ancient cemetery of the kings of Ulster.^[414]

Ciniod, the king of the Picts, appears at this time to have been in close connection with the Angles, for Simeon of Durham tells us that in 774 King Alcred, by the design and consent of all his connections, being deprived of the society of the royal family and princes, changed the dignity of empire for exile. He went with a few of the companions of his flight first to the city of Bamborough, and afterwards to the king of the Picts, Cynoth by name; and Ethelred, the son of his predecessor, occupied the throne of Northumbria for six years; and in the following year he tells us that ‘Cynoth, king of the Picts, was taken from the whirl of this polluted life.’^[415] His death in the same year is more quietly recorded in the Ulster Annals.