Page images
PDF
EPUB

and England was very great. As a consequence they inclined to throw their influence against the king, at least opposing him so far as their own great possessions were concerned, in his war with the revolted barons. Richard Marshal allowed his troops to fight against Henry's, though he refused to serve against him personally. The friction between Richard Marshal and the king led to a conspiracy against Richard of the Anglo-Irish nobles, who were his feudal tenants, to which the deputy or Lord Justice Geoffrey de Marisco (MacMaurice) was a secret party. This man, pretending to be Richard's friend, induced him to take up arms against the king in respect of his possessions in Ireland, and pretended to arrange in his interests a truce and a conference to be held between him and his enemies at the Curragh of Kildare (Cuirreach, a shrubby moor, a level plain). Here he found himself deserted by his own men, the deputy went over to the enemy, and he with fifteen who remained fought a Homeric battle against one hundred and forty. In the end he was wounded and taken prisoner, and afterwards died. It was a tragedy of which Henry bitterly repented, and it was the very greatest blow to the English occupation of Ireland.

Henry's expedition to Wales in 1244 only led to further wars, negotiations, and treacheries. The Welsh allied them

selves with the barons in the Barons' War.

After Evesham the conquest of Wales began. David, Prince of Wales, was captured and treated as a traitor in 1283, and the conquest was completed with the death of Maelgwyn Vychan, the last of the house of Rhys ap Tudor, in 1295.

He

Scotland and England. -To go back to Scotland, young Alexander did not have a very peaceful time at first. was kidnapped at Edinburgh by Durward the Justiciar, who had married a natural daughter of his father. Henry came in 1255 to interfere, but as someone must have control of the boy, it was little that he could do. Then in 1257 the Comyns seized him, resulting in the formation of a regency. In 1260 the young king and queen (he must then have been about nineteen) came to Henry's Court, where a daughter Margaret, afterwards married to Eric of Norway, was born.

Scotland, the Isles, and Norway. In 1262 Alexander, after trying to buy the Hebrides from Norway, attacked the chiefs, putting pressure on them to become his feudal vassals. He sent the Earl of Ross to attack Skye. Hakon of Norway, in reply, in 1263 prepared a great expedition, coming with one hundred and twenty of his own ships besides the many ships of the freemen who attended him for military service.

Hakon appears to have realised that these islands, now off the main road of commerce, were of little value to Norway either for trade or revenue. But he could hardly be expected tamely to surrender them to the Scots.

On his arrival at the Orkneys he held a council, and proposed to send the militia ships, which were smaller, to attack the East coast, while he with his own large ships went to the Western Isles. But the democratic Norwegians, freemen from whom we derive our ideas of liberty, refused to serve except under him, and as he could not enforce his will, the whole expedition descended on the Western Isles.

On the 5th, while the fleet was at the Orkneys, an annular eclipse of the sun took place, which is carefully recorded by the Saga.

The chiefs of the islands and of the lands north of the chain of lakes which now form the Caledonian Canal were in the most difficult position possible to conceive. They had many reasons to take the side of Hakon rather than of Alexander. They had no kinship with the Scot, and he being a power near at hand and always pressing on them, was sure to exact revenue, and to interfere with their social customs. But Hakon would not stay with them. When his expedition had achieved its results he would go back to Norway and leave them always quarrelling among themselves to the mercy of the king near at hand. Hakon had already forced contributions from the men of Caithness, who had been compelled by Alexander to give hostages for their neutrality. In consequence there was considerable division of opinion among the chiefs of the islands. Magnus of Man and most of the Western chiefs joined Hakon at Skye, but Somerled's descendants, John the chief of the MacDougalls, and Angus who held Islay and Cantyre and represented

the line of the MacDonalds, held aloof. The Stewart, who held Bute, the key of the Clyde, refused to join.

Hakon assembled his whole fleet at Kerrara, and while negotiating with the chiefs took the castle of Rothesay in Bute and Donaverty in Cantyre, and from Bute ravaged the mainland. Then Hakon sailed round Cantyre and anchored in Lamlash harbour in Arran. Parleys followed between him and Alexander, pivoting on the control of the Clyde by the possession of Arran and Bute, the Scots being willing to cede the outer islands if they could keep these and the mainland. They probably saw that it was only a matter of time when they would have all. Negotiations failing, Hakon removed his ships to the Cumbraes near Largs, and sent a force into Loch Long, Loch Lomond, and Lennox to ravage the country.

The Fight at Largs.-Then on October 1st and 2nd there was a terrible storm which wrecked ten of Hakon's vessels. A huge transport loaded with supplies and several other ships broke loose and drifted on to the land at Largs, where there is only a very narrow strip of land below the cliffs. The storm prevented the Norwegians from salving the wrecked ships, while the Scots from the cliffs above came down to plunder them.

Hakon went over and salved the transport, but went back to the fleet leaving about 1000 men on shore.

Then a scrimmage began which developed into a little battle. The Scots, who are said to have had 600 mounted men in armour and a number of infantry with bows and Lochaber axes, drove the Norwegians before them, Hakon, owing to the storm, being unable to assist them. When the storm had abated, so that he could do it, he sent a force to drive the Scots back to the hills. On the next day the Norsemen came and carried their dead to Bute for burial, burned the stranded ships, and moved again to Lamlash = harbour.

Here Hakon received a messenger from some Irish chiefs,7 offering, if he would help them against England, to entertain him and his whole expedition throughout the winter. But the Norwegians declined the offer. Perhaps they remembered

the death of Magnus Barfod. Hakon then went among the islands, levying money and ordering their affairs. The Norwegians went home for the winter, the chiefs separated to their different islands, Hakon with a few ships went to the Orkneys, so that he might be ready for action in the spring. Here he died in December 1263.

Norway sells the Isles and Man. -After his death a mission was sent from Norway to treat for peace, but the Scots received them very coldly, and no Norwegian fleet being in evidence, Alexander took his revenge on the men of the Isles. Finally, Magnus the Law Improver, in 1266 sold all the Hebrides and Man to Alexander for 4000 marks down, and 100 marks per annum as feu-duty.

With the departure of the Norwegian power went the last connection of the Western Isles and Highlands with external trade. From this time the island chiefs had no use for their harbours except for fishing boats or for such trade in cattle with the Eastern Scots as they might have, or for fitting out fleets to make war on one another on or the neighbouring countries. From now on the inhabitants of the Western Islands sink to the condition of poor peasants who earn a hazardous livelihood by fishing and tending cattle. The change did not only affect Western Scotland. It left the Irish in the backwaters of commerce, hemmed in on the North-East and South-East by the feudal kingdoms bent upon their conquest and absorption.

In 1272 Henry III. dies, succeeded by Edward I.

In 1274 Margaret, Edward's sister, the queen of Scotland, dies.

In 1281 Margaret, the daughter of Alexander III. and Margaret of England, is married to Eric of Norway. In 1283 she dies, leaving an infant daughter, the Maid of Norway. In 1285 Alexander III. dies, his horse carrying him over a cliff in the dark. The Estates appoint a regency.

Edward I. had obtained a dispensation from the Pope for his son Edward to marry the Maid of Norway, a proposal willingly agreed to by the Scots. A treaty made at Berwick embodied the necessary safeguards for Scottish law and customs. The Maid of Norway was to be sent to England,

and to be transferred to Scotland when good order was established. She died in 1290 at the Orkneys on her way to England.

Here the first phase of the conflict between the social ideals ends, and we enter upon a new era.

2 Query

3 Charter 5 See

NOTES.- 1 Calendar of Documents relating to Scotland. an Adam de Brus came with Emma of Normandy in 1050. No. liv. in Lawrie's Select Charters. 4 Annals of Loch Cé. my First Twelve Centuries of British Story, p. 142. 6 Calendar of Documents relating to Ireland, vol. i. He promises that this service outside Ireland shall not form a precedent. No. 2679, June 11, 1244, No. 2777, October 21.

7 Hakonar Saga, Rolls Series.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE BARONS' WAR IN SCOTLAND

THE tendencies which preceded the break up of the tribal system, where there was a small amount of cultivable land, and as a consequence small communities widely separated, had begun to show in the Highlands at the end of the twelfth century. When by marriage or otherwise the Highland earldoms passed into foreign hands, the Gaelic population, no longer held together as a tribe by supposed descent with the chief from a common ancestor, broke up into septs or clans. Moray, Buchan, Atholl, and Angus, says Skene,1 were all so broken up in the reign of Alexander II., Ross in the reigns of William the Lion and Alexander II., Menteith in that of Alexander III., and Mar in that of David II. From the time when Robert le Brus took control, Lowland Scotland became more and more assimilated to feudal England, while the Highland communities, scattered over a number of small islands and isolated glens, keeping up the reality or the fiction of kinship, were dissolving into clans, septs, or group families.

The change made any attempt at control by a federal government much more difficult, as it increased the number of interests to be considered and conciliated, and it weakened

« PreviousContinue »