On the death of King Alexander in the year 1124, the Saxon Chronicle tells us that ‘David, his brother, who was earl of Northamptonshire, succeeded to the kingdom, and had them both together, the kingdom of Scotland and the earldom in England;’ and thus the southern and northern districts, which had been severed during the whole of Alexander’s reign, were once more united under one king, and David founded a dynasty of feudal monarchs of Celtic descent in the paternal line, and in the maternal representing the old Saxon royal family, but governing the country as feudal superiors, and introducing feudal institutions. The extent to which the feudal and Norman element had already been introduced into the south of Scotland, while under the rule of earl, by David, will be apparent when we examine the relation between the Norman barons who witness his charters and the land under his sway. The most prominent of those who witness the foundation charter of Selkirk are four Norman barons, who possessed extensive lordships in the north of England. The first was Hugo de Moreville, and we find him in possession of extensive lands in Lauderdale, Lothian, and Cuningham in Ayrshire. The second was Paganus de Braosa. The third Robertus de Brus, who acquired the extensive district of Annandale in Dumfriesshire; and the fourth, Robertus de Umfraville, received grants of Kinnaird and Dunipace in Stirlingshire. Of the other Norman knights who witness this charter, and also the inquisition, Gavinus Ridel, Berengarius Engaine, Robertus Corbet, and Alanus de Perci possess manors in Teviotdale. Walterus de Lindesaya has extensive possessions in Upper Clydesdale, Mid and East Lothian, and in the latter district Robertus de Burneville is also settled. In Scotland proper the character in which David ruled will be best seen by contrasting his charters with those of his predecessors. Eadgar, who possessed the whole kingdom north of the Tweed and the Solway, addresses his charters to all his faithful men in his kingdom, Scots and Angles. Alexander, who possessed the kingdom north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde alone, to the bishops and earls, and all his faithful men of the kingdom of Scotia. A charter granted by David, in the third year of his accession to the throne, to the monks of Durham, of lands in Lothian, is addressed to all dwelling throughout his kingdom in Scotland and Lothian, Scots and Angles;^[675] but when we enter Scotland proper, and compare his foundation charter of Dunfermline with that of Scone by his predecessor, Alexander I., there is a marked contrast between them. Alexander grants his charter to Scone, with the formal assent and concurrence of the seven earls of Scotland; and it is confirmed by the two bishops of the only dioceses which then existed in Scotland proper, with exception of St. Andrews, which was vacant, and the witnesses are the few Saxons who formed his personal attendants, Edward the constable, Alfric the pincerna, and others.^[676] King David’s charter to Dunfermline, a foundation also within Scotland proper, is granted ‘by his royal authority and power, with the assent of his son Henry, and with the formal confirmation of his queen Matilda, and the bishops, earls, and barons of his kingdom, the clergy and people acquiescing.’ Here we see the feudal baronage of the kingdom occupying the place of the old constitutional body of the seven earls, while the latter appear only as individually witnessing the charter. David’s subsequent charters to Dunfermline show this still more clearly, for they are addressed to the ‘bishops, abbots, earls, sheriffs, barons, governors, and officers, and all the good men of the whole land, Norman, English, and Scotch:’ in short, the feudal community or ‘communitas regni,’ consisting of those holding lands of the crown, while the old traditionary earls of the Celtic kingdom appear among the witnesses only.^[677]

The reign of David I. is beyond doubt the true commencement of feudal Scotland, and the term of Celtic Scotland becomes no longer appropriate to it as a kingdom. Under his auspices feudalism rapidly acquired predominance in the country, and its social state and institutions became formally assimilated to Norman forms and ideas, while the old Celtic element in her constitutional history gradually retired into the background. During this and the subsequent reigns the outlying districts, which had hitherto maintained a kind of semi-independence under their native rulers, and in which they were more tenaciously adhered to, were gradually brought under the more direct power of the monarch and incorporated into the kingdom. It will be unnecessary for our purpose to continue further a detailed narrative of the reigns of the kings of this dynasty who had thus become feudal monarchs, and it only remains to notice shortly the occasional appearance of the Celtic element in her constitution, and the fitful struggles of her Celtic subjects to resist the power which was gradually but surely working out this process of incorporation and the consolidation of the various districts which composed it into one compact kingdom.

David had been barely six years on the throne of Scotland when a united attempt was made on the part of its Gaelic inhabitants to wrest the districts north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde from his dominion, and the further encroachment of the English barons with their feudal holdings. At the head of this insurrection was Malcolm, a natural son of the late King Alexander, who probably counted upon the Gaelic population of Scotland proper preferring to recognise him as his father’s heir in his limited kingdom, rather than be united with Lothian under the feudal government of David; and Angus, son of the daughter of Lulach the Mormaer of Moray, and successor of Macbeth as king of Scotia, for three months, who on the death of Lulach’s son Maelsnechtan in 1085 had succeeded to him, according to the Pictish law of succession, as Mormaer of Moray, or, as it was now termed, Earl. Orderic of Vital gives so circumstantial an account of this insurrection, that his narrative may be accepted as substantially true, supported as it is by other authorities. ‘Malcolm, a bastard son of Alexander,’ he tells us, ‘attempted to deprive his uncle of the crown, and involved him in two rather severe contests; but David, who was his superior in talent as well as in wealth and power, defeated him and his party. In the year of our Lord 1130, while King David was ably applying himself to a cause in King Henry’s court, and carefully examining a charge of treason which, they say, Geoffrey de Clinton had been guilty of, Angus, earl of Moray, with Malcolm and five thousand men, entered Scotia (or Scotland proper) with the intention of reducing the whole kingdom to subjection. Upon this Edward, the son of Siward, earl of Mercia in the time of King Edward, who was a cousin of King David and commander of his army, assembled troops and suddenly threw himself in the enemy’s way. A battle was at length fought, in which Earl Angus was slain and his troops defeated, taken prisoners, or put to flight. Vigorously pursuing the fugitives with his soldiers elated with victory, and entering Morafia, or Moray, now deprived of its lord and protector, he obtained, by God’s help, possession of the whole of that large territory. Thus David’s dominions were augmented, and his power was greater than that of any of his predecessors.’^[678] This account is confirmed by the Saxon Chronicle, which has in the year 1130, ‘In this year Anagus was slain by the Scots army, and there was a great slaughter made with him. Thus was God’s right avenged on him, because he was all forsworn;’ and the Ulster Annals have in the same year, ‘Battle between the men of Alban and the men of Moray, in which fell four thousand of the men of Moray, with their king Oengus, son of the daughter of Lulag, a thousand also of the men of Alban in heat of battle.’^[679] Fordun places the scene of this battle at Stracathro in Forfarshire.^[680]

This attempt, which ended so fatally for the Gael of Moray, was followed a few years after by one of the strangest incidents which occur in the history of Scotland at that period. It is obviously alluded to by Ailred in his eulogium upon King David, when, on telling us that ‘God gave David the affection of a son amid scourgings, that he should not murmur or backslide, but should give thanks amid “scourgings,”’ he adds, ‘These were his words, when God sent as a foe against him a certain spurious bishop, who lied and said he was the earl of Moray’s son;’ and again, ‘that the Lord had scourged with the lies of a certain monk that invincible king who had subdued unto himself so many barbarous nations, and had, without great trouble triumphed over the men of Moray and the islands.’^[681]

William of Newburgh, however, who had personally known the impostor, if impostor he was, and had conversed with him, gives us a fuller account of this strange transaction. He first appears as a monk of the Cistercian monastery of Furness, which had been founded in the year 1124, as Brother Wymundus. According to William of Newburgh, ‘he possessed an ardent temper, a retentive memory, and competent eloquence, and advanced so rapidly that the highest expectations were formed of him.’ In 1134, Olave, the Norwegian king of Man, granted lands in that island to Yvo, abbot of Furness, to found an affiliated monastery at Russin, and Brother Wymund was sent with some monks to fill it; and here we are told ‘he so pleased the barbarous natives with the sweetness of his address and openness of his countenance, being also of a tall and athletic make, that they requested him to become their bishop and obtained their desire.’ Olave accordingly applied to Thurstan, archbishop of York, to consecrate him their bishop, and Wymund appears to have been consecrated by him.^[682] He had no sooner obtained this position than he announced himself to be the son of the earl of Moray, who had been slain in 1130, and ‘that he was deprived of the inheritance of his father by the king of Scotland.’ Having collected a band of followers, who took an oath to him, he dropped his monastic name of Wymund for his Celtic appellation of Malcolm mac Eth, and began his career throughout the adjacent islands. His claim appears to have been recognised as genuine by the Norwegian king of the Isles, and by Somerled, the Celtic regulus of Argyll, whose sister he married. ‘Every day,’ says William of Newburgh, ‘he was joined by troops of adherents, among whom he was conspicuous above all by the head and shoulders: and, like some mighty commander, he inflamed their desires. He then made a descent on the provinces of Scotland, wasting all before him with rapine and slaughter; but whenever the royal army was despatched against him, he eluded the whole warlike preparation, either by retreating to distant forests, or taking to the sea; and when the troops had retired, he again issued from his hiding-places to ravage the provinces.’ In this career he met one check; for, invading the province of Galloway and demanding tribute from the bishop, he was encountered by him at the head of his people when attempting to ford the river Cree; and the bishop ‘having met him as he was furiously advancing and himself striking the first blow in the battle, by way of animating his party, he threw a small hatchet, and, by God’s assistance, he felled his enemy to the earth as he was marching in the van. Gladdened at this event, the people rushed desperately against the marauders, and killing vast numbers of them compelled their ferocious leader shamefully to fly,’ ‘Wymund,’ adds William, ‘himself used afterwards with much pleasantry and boastingly to relate among his friends that God alone was able to vanquish him by the faith of a simple bishop. This circumstance I learnt from a person who had been one of his soldiers, and had fled with those who had made their escape. Recovering his forces, however, he ravaged the islands and provinces of Scotland as he had done before;’before;’^[683] till at length the king, with the assistance of a Norman army, succeeded in taking him prisoner, and confined him in the castle of Marchmont or Roxburgh.^[684] This took place, as we shall see, in the year 1137.^[685]

In the following year, when King David invaded England at the head of as large a force as he could bring together from the entire country under his dominion, for the purpose of supporting the cause of his niece Matilda, the daughter of King Henry the First, and empress of Germany, he placed those Norman barons who belonged to the party of Stephen of Blois, and held possessions under King David as well as in England, in a position of great difficulty. Their feudal holdings in Scotland gave David a right as their overlord to their military service, while their policy in England was to support Stephen in his opposition to the claim of his niece Matilda to the English throne. One of the principal of these Norman barons, Robertus de Brus, who had great possessions in Yorkshire, but had adhered to King David from his youth, and held under him the extensive district of Annandale, repaired to the Scottish camp when David had advanced as far as the Tees, to remonstrate with him, and when he did not succeed, renounced his fealty to him. It is well worth quoting that part of his speech, as reported by Ailred, which details the part the Norman barons had taken in the Scottish events detailed in this chapter. ‘Against whom,’ he says to the king, ‘dost thou this day take up arms and lead this countless host? Is it not against the English and Normans? O king, are they not those from whom thou hast always obtained profitable counsel and prompt assistance? When, I ask thee, hast thou ever found such fidelity in the Scots that thou canst so confidently dispense with the advice of the English and the assistance of the Normans, as if Scots sufficed thee even against Scots? This confidence in the Galwegians is somewhat new to thee who this day turnest thine arms against those through whom thou now rulest,—beloved by Scots and feared by Galwegians. Thinkest thou, O king, that the majesty of heaven will behold thee, with unmoved eyes, do thy best to ruin those by whom the throne was gotten and secured to thee and thine? With what forces and by what aid did thy brother Duncan overthrow the army of Donald and recover the kingdom which the tyrant had usurped? Who restored Eadgar thy brother, nay more than brother, to the kingdom? was it not our army? Thou too, O king, when thou didst demand that part of the kingdom which that same brother bequeathed to thee at his death from thy brother Alexander, was it not from dread of us that thou receivedst it without bloodshed? Recollect last year when thou didst entreat the aid of the English in opposing Malcolm, the heir of a father’s hate and persecution, how keenly,—how promptly,—with what alacrity, Walter Espec and many other English nobles met thee at Carlisle; how many ships they prepared,—the armaments they equipped them with,—the youths they manned them with; how they struck terror into thy foes till at length they took the traitor Malcolm himself prisoner, and delivered him bound to thee. Thus the fear of us did not only bind his limbs but still more daunted the spirit of the Scots, and suppressed their tendency to revolt by depriving it of all hope of success. Whatever hatred, therefore,—whatever enmity the Scots have towards us, is because of thee and thine, for whom we have so often fought against them, deprived them of all hope in rebelling, and altogether subdued them to thee and to thy will.’

Ailred tells us that King David’s army was composed not only of those who were subject to his dominion, but that he had been joined by many of the people of the Western Isles and the Orkneys still under Norwegian rule;^[686] and the account which he gives of the different bodies of men which now formed his troops gives us a good idea of the heterogeneous elements of which the population of Scotland was at this time composed.

The first body of his army was composed of the ‘Galwenses’ or people of Galloway, who still bore the name of Picts, and who claimed to lead the van as their right. The second body was led by Henry, King David’s son, with soldiers and archers, to whom were joined the ‘Cumbrenses’ and ‘Tevidalenses,’ or the Welsh population of Strathclyde and Teviotdale. The third body consisted of the ‘Laodonenses’ or Anglic inhabitants of Lothian, with the ‘Insulani’ and ‘Lavernani’ or Islesmen and people of the Lennox; and the last body or rearguard was led by the king in person, and consisted of the ‘Scoti’ and ‘Muravenses,’ or the Scots of the kingdom proper extending from the Forth to the Spey, and the recently subdued people of Moray. Along with the king were many of the Norman and English knights who still adhered to him.^[687]

During the remaining year of David’s reign he appears to have maintained his authority with a firm hand and unimpaired over these various races. We read of no further insurrections on their part against him, and all attempts to resist the encroachment of the Norman barons, with their feudal followers, on their territories seem to have been given up, though probably no great advance was made in the process of amalgamating these different nationalities into one people. In the last year of his reign, his only son, Prince Henry, died, leaving three sons, the eldest of whom, Malcolm, was only eleven years of age. The succession of a grandson to his grandfather was still a novelty to the Celtic population of the kingdom, and a greater infringement upon the law of tanistic succession than had yet been made, while the obstacle to his succession would be still greater if his grandfather’s death opened the throne to him while yet a minor. The aged monarch foresaw that after his death a conflict would once more take place between the laws and customs of the Teutonic and Celtic races, and lead to a renewed collision between them; and in order to avert this, he prevailed upon the earl of Fife, who was the acknowledged head of the constitutional body of the seven earls of Scotland, to make a progress with the youthful Malcolm through the kingdom, and obtain his recognition as heir to the throne.

David died in the following year, and, as might have been expected, the succession of Malcolm was viewed with dislike by the entire Gaelic population of the country, as well as by those districts more immediately under the power or influence of the Norwegians, and he had ere long to contend against the open revolt of the great Gaelic districts which surrounded the kingdom of Scotland proper. These were, on the north, ‘Moravia’ or Moray; on the west, ‘Arregaithel’ or Argyll; and on the south-west corner, separated from Scotland by the Cumbrian population, was the wild region of Galloway. It is remarkable that, while the race of native rulers of the first had come to an end in the preceding reign, we find the two latter suddenly starting into life under the rule of two native princes—Somerled, ‘regulus’ of Arregaithel, and Fergus, prince of Galloway, while no hint is given of the parentage of either. The Norwegians appear to have retained a hold over both districts till the beginning of the twelfth century, and it is probable that the native population had now succeeded in expelling them from their coasts, and that owing to the long possession of the country by the Norwegians, all trace of the parentage of the native leaders under whom they had risen had disappeared from the annals of the country, and they were viewed as the founders of a new race of native lords.^[688]

On the death of King David, his grandson was at once taken by those who had acknowledged him as heir, and crowned at Scone, and he is the first king of whom we have the fact of his coronation at Scone stated on contemporary authority.^[689]

This had no sooner been accomplished, than Somerled, the regulus of Arregaithel, rose against him in conjunction with his nephews, the sons of Malcolm mac Eth, and assailed the kingdom at all quarters.^[690] The civil war had lasted three years, when, in the year 1156, Donald, the eldest son of Malcolm, was taken prisoner at Whitherne, in Galloway, by some of Malcolm’s adherents, and delivered over to him, when he was imprisoned in the castle of Marchmont along with his father.^[691] Somerled, however, continued the war, and Malcolm found it expedient to neutralise the support he received from those who still adhered to the cause of Malcolm Maceth, by coming to terms with him. Accordingly he liberated Malcolm in the following year. William of Newburgh tells us that ‘he gave him a certain province, which suspended the incursion he had instigated.’ There is good reason for thinking that this province was the earldom of Ross,^[692] a remote district over which King Malcolm could exercise but little authority; and he may have thought that his prisoner might expend his turbulent energy there with impunity—a view so far realised, as William of Newburgh further relates, that ‘whilst he was proudly proceeding through his subject province surrounded by his army like a king, some of the people who were unable to endure either his power or his insolence, with the consent of their chiefs, laid a snare for him.’ Obtaining a favourable opportunity, when he was following slowly and almost unattended a large party which he had sent forward to procure entertainment, they took and bound him and deprived him of both his eyes, and otherwise mutilated him. ‘Afterwards he came to us,’ says William of Newburgh, ‘at Byland, and quietly continued there many years till his death. But he is reported even there to have said that had he only the eye of a sparrow, his enemies should have little occasion to rejoice at what they had done to him.’^[693] In the meantime events had occurred which led to a temporary peace between the king and Somerled. Olave, the Norwegian king of the Isles, had died in the same year as King David, and his son Godred had succeeded him. Somerled had married the daughter of Olave, by whom he had a son, Dugall; and three years after Godred’s accession, when his tyrannical mode of government had excited great discontent, Somerled took advantage of it to endeavour to have his son Dugall made king of the Isles. This led to a naval engagement between Godred and Somerled on the night of the Epiphany, or 6th of January 1156, in which there was great slaughter on both sides, and an agreement was made by which the Isles were divided between them. The contest, however, continued between them, and Somerled seems to have been glad to make peace with Malcolm in 1159.^[694]

The opposition to Malcolm had as yet proceeded from the western districts over which Somerled ruled, and where the family of Malcolm Maceth found support, but this had been no sooner quieted by the conclusion of peace between them and the king, than he was exposed to a greater danger from the alienation of the Gaelic population of the kingdom of Scotland proper, and their native rulers, which he appears to have provoked by his apparent attachment to the king of England. He could hardly, from his extreme youth, be held responsible for the treaty in 1157, by which Northumberland and Cumberland were surrendered to the English monarch, but he had now attained the age of seventeen. In the previous year he had gone to Chester to meet the king of England for the purpose of obtaining knighthood at his hand, which, owing to some difference between them, was refused, but he now passed over to France and joined the king, who was besieging Toulouse, and served in his army.

In consequence of news which reached Malcolm of the dissatisfaction in Scotland proper, he returned hastily, and on reaching the town of Perth, where according to Fordun he had summoned his nobles and clergy to meet him, he was besieged by Ferteth, earl of Stratherne, and five others of the seven earls of Scotland, who wished to take him prisoner, but failed in the attempt.^[695] Neither the Chronicle of Melrose nor Fordun tells us the cause of the failure, but the latter adds that he was by the advice of the clergy brought to a good understanding with his nobles. But they soon found that he was prepared to act with vigour, and to show that he was, though young, capable of reducing all recalcitrant provinces to his authority.

In the same year he thrice invaded the district of Galloway with a large army, and brought its inhabitants finally under subjection.^[696]

According to Fordun, he likewise invaded the district of Moravia or Moray, ‘removed them all from the land of their birth, and scattered them throughout the other districts of Scotland, both beyond the hills and on this side thereof, so that not even a native of that land abode there, and he installed therein his own peaceful people.’^[697] This statement is probably only so far true that he may have repressed the rebellious inhabitants of the district, and followed his grandfather’s policy by placing foreign settlers in the low and fertile land on the south side of the Moray Firth, extending from the Spey to the river Findhorn; and here he certainly did grant the lands of Innes and Etherurecard, extending from the Spey to the Lossie, to Berowald the Fleming, by a charter granted at Perth on the first Christmas after the agreement between the king and Somerled.^[698]

Malcolm had to sustain one other invasion of his kingdom ere he passed from this earthly scene at the early age of twenty-five. It proceeded once more from Somerled, who had now become more powerful by the addition of one-half of the Western Isles, which he held under the king of Norway, to his possessions on the mainland. What provoked this invasion we know not, but it proved fatal to himself. Having collected forces from all quarters, including Ireland, and assembled a fleet of 160 ships, he landed at Renfrew with the intention of subduing the whole kingdom, but was suddenly attacked by the people of the district and sustained an unexpected defeat, having been slain with his son Gillecolm.^[699] This took place in the year 1164, nearly two years before Malcolm’s death, and was attributed by the chroniclers to divine interposition; but the author of a curious contemporary poem claims the credit for the merits of Saint Kentigern of Glasgow.^[700] The rest of the country had remained quiet during the few concluding years of Malcolm’s reign, but he appears to have conciliated its Gaelic population, and won their regard, for the Ulster Annals tell us that in 1165 ‘Malcolm Cenmor or Greathead, son of Henry the high king of Alban, the best Christian that was to the Gael on the east side of the sea for almsgiving and fasting and devotion, died.’^[701]

Malcolm was succeeded by his brother William, commonly called the Lyon King, who was crowned at Scone on Christmas eve of the year 1165, but no particulars of the ceremony are recorded.^[702] His first proceeding was to claim from the king of England the restoration of Northumberland, which had been assigned to him as his appanage by his father David, but had been surrendered along with Cumberland during his brother Malcolm’s reign in 1157, and we find him invading England in 1173, with an army consisting mainly of those Highland Scots, whom, Fordun tells, men call ‘Bruti,’ and the Gallwegians.^[703] In the following year William was taken prisoner by the English, when Fordun tells us the Scots and Gallwegians ‘wickedly and ruthlessly slew their Norman and English neighbours in frequent invasions with mutual slaughter, and there was then a most woeful and exceeding great persecution of the English, both in “Scotia” or Scotland proper and Galloway.’^[704]

This account is confirmed by Roger of Hoveden, so far as Galloway is concerned, where he had been himself sent by the king of England. He tells us that Uchtred, son of Fergus, and Gilbert, his brother, princes of the Gallwegians, immediately after the captivity of the king entered their own land, and expelled the king’s officers from its bounds, slew the English and Normans whom they found in their lands without mercy, and took and destroyed the fortifications and castles which the king had placed in their territory. They even proposed to the king of England to pass from the dominion of the king of Scots to that of the English crown. In short, it was a resistance by the Gaelic population to encroachments of the Norman and English barons, and shows the nature of the policy adopted by the Scottish king in subjecting these districts to his authority, and the extent to which it had been carried. The liberation of William from captivity in the following year arrested the progress of the insurrection.^[705] According to Fordun the king led an army into Galloway, but ‘when the Gallwegians came to meet him under Gilbert, the son of Fergus, some Scottish bishops and earls stepped in between them, and through their mediation they were reconciled; the Gallwegians paying a sum of money and giving hostages.’^[706]

Having thus quieted the Gallwegians, the king resolved to bring the district of Ross, which lay between the Moray and Dornoch Firths, under his authority. In the year 1179 he penetrated into that district at the head of his earls and barons, with a large army, subdued it, and in order to maintain his authority built two castles—one called Dunscath on the prominent hill on the north side of the entrance to the Cromarty Firth, to dominate over Easter Ross, and the other called Etherdover on the north side of the Beauly Firth, at the place now called Red Castle, to secure the district called the Black Isle.^[707] Though William had thus for a time brought the northern districts under subjection to the royal authority, he was not permitted to retain them long without disturbance, and two years after he had to encounter the assault by a pretender to the crown, who found his chief support in the Gaelic population of these districts. This was Donald Ban, who called himself the son of William Fitz Duncan, and claimed the throne as lineal heir of Duncan, the eldest son of Malcolm Ceannmor, who had been himself king of Scotland.

King William had purchased his liberation from captivity in England by the surrender of the independence of Scotland, and this probably created great dissatisfaction among the Celtic population of the kingdom north of the Firths, which finally broke out, in 1181, in a serious attempt to place the ancient kingdom of Alban with the northern districts under a separate monarch in the person of Donald Ban, whose descent from the marriage of Malcolm Ceannmor with the Norwegian Ingibiorg would commend his pretensions both to the native and the Norwegian leaders. He seems to have borne the name of Macwilliam, and this is the first appearance of a family name, which was to become more familiar to the kings of Scotland in connection with such insurrections. Invited, or at least encouraged, by a formidable party among the earls and barons of Scotland proper, he invaded the northern districts with a large force.^[708] Fordun tells us that ‘for the whole time from the capture of the king of Scots to his liberation, the inhabitants of the southern and northern districts of the kingdom were engaged in mutual civil war with much slaughter;’ and this was probably true of the entire period from the surrender of the independence of the kingdom to its restoration, during which time Galloway and the districts beyond the Spey were more or less in insurrection, and a considerable party in Scotland proper were hostile to the king. On the 1st of January 1185, Gilbert, son of Fergus, lord of Galloway, died, and a part of the Gallwegians broke out into rebellion under a certain Gilpatrick; while Roland, the son of Uchtred, who had been slain by his brother Gilbert, espoused the cause of the king, and a battle took place between them in which Roland was victorious. One of the king’s officers, too, Gilcolm the Marescal, revolted from him and surrendered the king’s castle of Earn or Dundurn, at the east end of Loch Earn, to the king’s enemies, which shows that there was a party in Stratherne hostile to him, and infested Lothian with frequent attacks. As soon as he heard of the defeat of Gilpatrick, Gilcolm, who is termed by Fordun ‘a tyrant and robber chief,’ and whose name shows that he was of Gaelic, and probably of Gallwegian, descent, invaded Galloway with the view of putting himself at the head of the insurgents, and establishing himself as ruler in those parts of Galloway hostile to the king; but he, too, was defeated in battle by Roland on the 30th of September, and perished with many of his followers.^[709]

After the defeat of the Gallwegian rebels, and the slaughter of Gilcolm and his followers, the earls and barons of the kingdom of Scotland proper appear to have become more reconciled to their legitimate monarch; and he felt the necessity of either slaying or expelling Macwilliam, who had now for six years maintained himself in the northern districts beyond the Spey, and been ravaging and devastating those parts of the kingdom which adhered to King William, if he would not lose his crown altogether;^[710] but it was not till the year 1187 that he found himself in a position to advance against him. He then invaded Moravia or Moray at the head of a large army, and while he remained with the main body of the army at Inverness, sent his earls and barons with the Scots and Gallwegians to lay waste the more western parts of the province. They encountered Macwilliam in the upper part of the valley of the Spey, encamped on a moor called Mamgarvia, and a battle took place there on Friday, the 31st of July, in which Macwilliam was slain with many of his followers.^[711] Two years after the independence of Scotland was restored by Richard the First, king of England, and the relations between the two kingdoms replaced on their former footing.

The annexation of the district of Ross to the kingdom, and the suppression of this insurrection, seem, however, soon after to have brought the people of Caithness into closer contact with the royal authority. Although nominally held of the Scottish king, Caithness was possessed as an earldom by the earl of Orkney, who held his other earldom of the king of Norway, and thus the tie with Scotland was a slender one. The earl at this time was Harald, who was himself of the royal family, being son of Madach, earl of Atholl, whose father was a brother of Malcolm Ceannmor, and he had succeeded to the earldom of Orkney and Caithness through his mother, Margaret, the daughter of the Norwegian earl Hakon of Orkney, and his wife was a daughter of Malcolm mac Eth. According to Fordun, King William led an army into Caithness in the year 1196. Crossing the river Oikell, which separates Sutherland from Ross, he killed some of the disturbers of the peace, and subjected both provinces of the Caithness men—that of Sutherland and of Caithness—routing Earl Harald, who, says Fordun, had been ‘until then a good and trusty man, but at that time, goaded on by his wife, the daughter of Mached, had basely deceived his lord the king, and risen against him. Then, leaving there a garrison for the country, the king hurried back into Scotland.’^[712] From the Chronicle of Melrose we learn that in the following year ‘a battle was fought near the Castle of Inverness, between the king’s troops, who had been probably left as a garrison there, and Roderic and Thorfinn, son of Earl Harald, in which the king’s enemies were put to flight, and Roderic slain, with many of his followers. King William then proceeded with his army to Moray, and the more remote districts’—that is, as Fordun tells us, the districts of Sutherland, Caithness, and Ross; ‘and, having taken Earl Harald prisoner, confined him in the castle of Roxburgh, where he remained till his son Thorfinn gave himself as a hostage for his father.’^[713] Such are the Scotch accounts of these events; but Roger of Hoveden, a contemporary English writer, gives a somewhat different account. He says that, in 1196, King William entered Moray with a great army to drive out Harald, who had occupied that district, but before the king could enter Caithness, Harald fled to his ships. The king then sent his army to Thurso, and destroyed the castle. Harald then came to the king and submitted, and the king permitted him to retain half of Caithness on condition he surrendered his enemies to him in Moray, and gave the other half to Harald, grandson of Rognwald, a former earl of Orkney and Caithness. The king then returned to his own land, and Harald to Orkney. In the autumn the king returned to Moray, and went to Invernairn to receive the king’s enemies from Harald; but after bringing them to the port of Loch Loy, near Invernairn, he allowed them to escape, on which the king took him prisoner, and kept him in Edinburgh Castle till his son Thorfinn was delivered up for him. Harald the younger was afterwards slain in battle with the elder Harald, who then went to the king and offered to redeem his lands in Caithness with a sum of money. The king agreed to give him back the half of Caithness if he would put away his wife, the daughter of Malcolm Maceth, and take back his first wife, Afreka, sister of Duncan, earl of Fife; but he refused, on which the king gave Caithness to Reginald, the son of Somerled, for a sum of money, reserving the king’s annual tribute.^[714] In consequence of an attack upon Caithness made in 1202 by Harald, in which he drove out Reginald’s men and made an outrage on the bishop, King William once more sent his army in the spring of that year to Caithness, but it was unable to penetrate beyond the border of the country, and as the king was preparing to follow by sea, Harald met him at Perth under the safe-conduct of Roger, bishop of St. Andrews, and came to an understanding with the king, by which he was restored to his earldom on payment of every fourth penny to be found in Caithness, amounting to 2000 merks of silver.^[715]

Towards the close of William’s reign he had again to suppress a renewed attempt by the people of Ross to throw off the yoke by supporting the claims of the descendants of William Fitz Duncan. Fordun tells us that ‘Guthred, the son of Macwilliam, came about the Lord’s Epiphany (6th January), by the advice, it was said, of the Thanes of Ross, out of Ireland into that district, and infested the greater part of the kingdom of Scotland. But the king’s army was suddenly sent against him to kill him or to drive him out of the country, and King William himself went after him, and in the following summer built two towns there; but Guthred being seized and fettered through the treachery of his own men, was brought before the king’s son Alexander, at the king’s manor and place of Kincardine, and was there beheaded and hung up by the feet.’feet.’^[716] An old chronicler, Walter of Coventry, represents what appears to have been the feeling of the Gaelic population towards the family of Macwilliam, and led to these frequent revolts. ‘This Guthred,’ he says, ‘was of the ancient lineage of the Scottish kings who, with the support of Scots and Irish, did, as well as his father Domnald, exercise constant hostilities against the modern kings, now secretly, now openly. For these modern kings affected more the Normans, as in race, so in customs, language, and culture, and the Scots being reduced to utter servitude admitted the Normans only to their friendship and service.’^[717] During the remainder of his reign William had no further encounter with his Gaelic subjects, and died at Stirling on the 4th of December 1214.