A People's History of Scotland (2 page)

We should not think, however, of these kings in comparison to what would follow in later times: ‘They [Welsh kings] evidently fought a lot, and their military entourage is one of their best-documented features. They were generous and hospitable to their dependents, and (at least in literature) got loyalty to the death in return, although where they got the resources from is not so clear. They took tribute from subject and defeated rulers, and also tribute or rent from their own people, but the little we know of the latter implies that only fairly small quantities were owed by the peasant
population to their lords; Mynyddog's gold, silver and glass were a literary image, too.'
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Meanwhile, in Argyll, Bute and Lochaber Irish settlers from Ulaid (Ulster) established the kingdom of Dál Riata. The new settlers ensured this area was Christian from the outset, and the Irish saint Columba (died 587) crossed over to successfully convert the Pictish king as well. Dál Riata's expansion to the south-east was checked by the Northumbrians, and it was similarly blocked from expanding eastwards by the Picts. Weakened by the wars fought between the various Irish kings, it seems the rulers of Dál Riata had to pay homage to the Pictish kings and Northumbria, and they would be unable, on their own, to resist the growing incursion by the Vikings.

In central and eastern Scotland, the kingdom of the Picts was divided from Fife to Caithness into seven provinces, with the main king being that of Fortriu. The evidence suggests that theirs was a civilisation as rich as any in northern Europe at that time. Sculpted symbol stones remain as a tribute to Pictish art. They employed a system of graphic symbols, common across Scotland: some abstract, some depicting artefacts such as mirrors and combs, or animals such as geese, horses and snakes. As Christianity spread, the Cross and scenes from the Bible were carved along with scenes of hunting and warfare.

In 2008, archaeologists revealed their finds from work at a Pictish monastery at Portmahomack on the Tarbat Peninsula in Easter Ross, which dated back to the sixth century. The monastery was made up of an enclosure centred on a church that is thought to have housed about 150 monks and workers, and was similar to St Columba's monastery at Iona, with evidence that the Pictish monks would have made gospel books similar to the Book of Kells, and religious artefacts such as chalices.

Archaeologists found more than 200 fragments of Pictish stone sculptures, including the Calf Stone, which shows a bull and cow licking their calf. The real surprise, however, was the sophistication of the building, with architectural techniques that had been thought too sophisticated for the Picts. A fragment of a sculpture with a Latin inscription was also found; unfortunately the rest has not been unearthed.

Martin Carver, Professor of Archaeology at York University, said this of the Picts:

They were the most extraordinary artists. They could draw a wolf, a salmon, an eagle on a piece of stone with a single line and produce a beautiful naturalistic drawing. Nothing as good as this is found between Portmahomack and Rome. Even the Anglo-Saxons didn't do stone-carving as well as the Picts did. Not until the post-Renaissance were people able to get across the character of animals just like that.
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The Pictish monastery was burnt down, probably by Norse raiders, around 820. The complex was in use from the ninth to the eleventh centuries, possibly under the control of the Pictish Mormaers of Moray, including Macbeth.

Besides the Portmahomack artefacts, we know little about the everyday life of the ordinary people. They lived in small farming communities, breeding cattle, sheep and pigs, plus rearing small and stocky horses, which are shown on sculpted stones drawing carts and carrying members of the elite on hunting expeditions. Barley, wheat, oats and rye were grown, providing a plain diet. Fish, seals and shellfish would have been an important source of protein, as meat would have rarely been on the plates, except at festival times.

The myth might be that the land was owned by a clan, but it was administered by a chief, and long before the arrival of classical feudalism he demanded rent in the form of a share of the produce or livestock, or unpaid labour on his lands and military service. Little was to change for ordinary people for centuries, all the way to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the Lowlands, and the early nineteenth in the Highlands.

The Kingdom of the Scots Emerges

It was the Celtic Church, from its base in Iona, that had brought Christianity to Northumbria and northern England. However, it was weakened by the spread of the Roman Church, which appealed to
kings and nobles with its celebration of monarchy and aristocracy. The Roman Church finally won out in 664 when a synod, a meeting of bishops and senior church figures, was convened at Whitby in North Yorkshire by King Oswiu of Northumbria, who appointed himself the final judge on the issues at stake. Oswiu was hardly neutral. His son, Alchfrith, had expelled monks of the Celtic Church from the monastery of Ripon and handed it over to Wilfrid, a Northumbrian churchman recently returned from Rome.

The main issue was the practice of the Christian church in Britain and whether it should be controlled by the Pope in Rome. The Celtic Church of the late St Columba, based in Iona, had developed in isolation from Rome and was less centralised than the Catholic Church. The synod established the date for Easter and other matters in accordance with Rome, which led to the withdrawal of Celtic Church opponents from Northumbria to Iona and thence to Ireland.
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The Roman Church, having established itself in Northumbria, then moved to win over the Pictish and Scottish kings. The hierarchy of the Catholic Church was loyal to Rome, but generally it allied with the local royal power, and drew its senior churchmen and women from ruling circles. It provided administrators for the Crown in return for land and other rewards.

For many later opponents of the Catholic Church in Scotland, the Synod of Whitby represented a historic defeat for the Celtic Church, which had been indigenous to Scotland. It later re-emerged, however, in Presbyterian opposition to bishops and patronage of the Church by the Crown and the nobility.

The Celtic Church would be injured beyond recovery by Norse raiders and, after the union of the Pictish and Scottish realms in 844, the first king of what would be termed Scotland, Kenneth MacAlpin, began a policy of thorough-going reform, relying mainly upon Anglian and Scottish clergy who had conformed to the ways of Rome. An important step in this direction was taken in 849 with the removal of St Columba's relics, and the relocation of the headquarters of the Romanised Celtic Church from Iona to Dunkeld, which succeeded Iona as the major centre for the church in Alba.
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Despite the decline of the Celtic Church, the Pict kings were still
in the ascendant. Southern Pictland was under attack from Northumbrian Angles who had conquered the Lothians from the British tribes and were pushing north. One king, Bridei, managed to unite the various kingdoms and tribes, and eventually in 685 the Picts achieved a victory over the Northumbrians as great as any in the history of what was now becoming Scotland. At a place called Dunnichen (also known as Dun Nechtain and Nectansmere) near Aviemore, mass ranks of Pictish spearmen drove the Northumbrians downhill and into a loch where they were butchered.
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Bridei established one united Pictish kingdom, but all its inhabitants now faced an even more ferocious adversary: the Vikings. In 839 the Vikings defeated a Pictish army, killing their king and many of the chiefs. That power vacuum was filled by a Gaelic warlord. Kenneth MacAlpin (Cináed mac Ailpín) who by 840 became king of Pictland and the Scottish lands. This was not the result of conquest: his grandmother was a Pictish royal, so he possibly inherited the throne, and the Norse threat probably necessitated the need for a strong military ruler.

Yet by 847 the Norwegians controlled the coast of Dál Riata, the Hebrides, Wester Ross, Sutherland, Caithness, and the Orkneys and Shetlands. In the Orkneys and Shetlands the new arrivals seem to have physically removed the Pictish inhabitants, and Norse became the language of the islands. Elsewhere they ruled over the native people, and in the case of the Scots began to adopt the Gaelic culture and language.

Around 840 McAlpin established his court in Perthshire. The language of the court was Irish (Gaelic), and this became the language of the people of the new kingdom, probably helped by the spread of the Gaelic/Irish Church. The new kingdom was strong enough to restrict the Norse to their lands in the north and west.

The death of McAlpin was followed by civil war, quite possibly because of the Pictish nobility's resentment of the new Gaelic order. It was only in 906 that King Constantine was crowned at Scone, which would become the traditional coronation site.

To the south a new threat was emerging. By 927 a united Anglo-Saxon or English kingdom had been established under King Æthelstan or Athelstan (c.893/895–939). Æthelstan established
control over rival Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and Danish settlers. He had the ambition to be ‘King of all Britain', and in 934 he marched north as far as Dunnottar, near Stonehaven, forcing homage from King Constantine.

Constantine, however, played for time, making a treaty with the Norse and with the British kingdom of Strathclyde. Æthelstan met with Constantine and his allies in 937 at a place called Brunnanburh, near modern-day Liverpool. It was a bloody slaughter of a battle, but Æthelstan's army controlled the field at the close of the day. In truth the losses were so great no one could claim victory, and Æthelstan was forced to cede any claims over Alba.
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By 1018, Malcolm II defeated the Northumbrians at Carham-on-Tweed and annexed the Lothians. His grandson Duncan had become king of Strathclyde at about the same time, and when he succeeded Malcolm II, the kingdom of Scotland's boundaries were essentially those of today. The creation of the new kingdom was largely the achievement of three kings, Constantine II (900–943), Kenneth II (971–995) and Malcolm II (1005–1034), whose relatively long reigns provided some stability. Nevertheless, the tribal lands remained contested.

The Norwegians' control of the territory on the mainland came to an end by the close of the eleventh century. Their final attempt to control England was defeated in 1066 by the Anglo-Saxons at Stamford Bridge. Nevertheless, the Hebrides joined the kingdom of Scotland only in 1266, and Orkney and Shetland remained under Norwegian control until the fifteenth century.

Feudalism Takes Control

The Norman conquest of England in 1066 may have seemed remote to the Scottish ruling class, but it heralded momentous changes that shaped Scotland as it essentially existed until 1746. But the new kingdom was not yet an effective state. Aside from those areas under Norse control (the Orkneys and Shetlands under direct Norwegian rule and the Norse-Gaelic kingdom of the Western Isles), the northern third, Moray, remained semi-independent under its own
‘mormaers' (sometimes called kings). How Pictish they were we do not know, but in 1040 one Mac Bethad (Macbeth) killed King Duncan at Pitgaveny (Bothnagowan) near Elgin, and ruled as king for the next seventeen years. Duncan's son Malcolm Canmore (Bighead) fled to safety at the Saxon court of Edward the Confessor. In 1057, Malcolm, with Saxon aid, defeated and killed Macbeth and was crowned king of Scotland as Malcolm III.

Malcolm Canmore would go down in history as a ‘good king', in large part because his wife, Margaret, an Anglo-Saxon princess, was made a saint by the Catholic Church for promoting its still loose hold over religious affairs. A comprehensive system of bishops and parishes was introduced. She also encouraged Malcolm to initiate new abbeys and monasteries, and to bestow them with lands and riches. These would become one of the mainstays of feudal rule because they had both a religious and an economic function. They were often more innovative than the nobility in exploiting the land, and the peasantry, amassing great wealth.

Malcolm's ambition was to obtain Northumbria for the Scottish Crown and he seized every opportunity, throwing Scotland into a series of unsuccessful wars and instigating English retribution. In response the new Norman kingdom of England began exerting its might north of the Solway–Tweed border. In 1072, William the Conqueror advanced as far as the Tay. The Scots were unable to resist the heavily armoured horsemen and disciplined infantry, and Malcolm Canmore met William at Abernethy to swear vassalage. The Norman kings to the south were content to allow the Canmore dynasty to reign, using military pressure to keep them in line. They in turn saw that the feudal state to the south gave their English counterparts greater power and wealth and began to invite Norman nobles to take over estates in Scotland, transplanting the Norman feudal system into what was still, in Scotland, a clan-based society.

It was under the Canmores that a form of English gradually became the main language of the Lowlands, encouraged by the court, the Church and the new nobility. Malcolm IV (1153–65) and William the Lion (1165–1214) were David I's grandsons and their
mother was a Norman. They continued David's policy of encouraging Norman nobles to settle in Scotland. The most powerful Norman dynasty was the Comyns (Cummings), who by the mid-thirteenth century held lands in Galloway, the Borders and Moray.

The influx of Normans (many were actually Flemings) reached its peak under David I, who ruled 1124–53. He gave land in return for knight service, especially in the troublesome south-west. Robert de Brus (the Bruce) was given Annandale, Liddesdale went to Ranulf de Sules, David's constable, Hugh de Morville acquired Cunningham and Lauderdale, and Robert Avenel got Eskdale. David's steward Walter had come from Shropshire and was given the lordship of Renfrew and North Kyle. He brought his own followers who in turn were given land in return for their service. Walter and his family took over the castle at Renfrew and built another at Dundonald as well as bestowing an abbey at Paisley.
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New settlements were created and named after their lord – Duddingston, now in Edinburgh, after Dodin, Houston, now in Renfrew, after Hugh.
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