THE HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. BOOK I. Containing a Review of the SCOTTISH History previous to the Death of JAMES V. THE B 1. fabulous HE first ages of the Scottish History are dark в OOK and fabulous. Nations, as well as men, arrive at maturity by degrees, and the events which hap- The origin pened during their infancy or early youth, cannot of nations be recollected, and deserve not to be remembered. and ob The gross ignorance which anciently covered all the scure. north of Europe, the continual migrations of its inhabitants, and the frequent and destructive revolutions which these occasioned, render it impossible to give any authentic account of the origin of the different kingdoms now established there. Every thing beyond that short period to which well-attested annals reach, is obscure; an immense space is left for invention to occupy; each nation, with a vanity inseparable from human nature, hath filled that void with events calculated to display its own antiquity and lustre. History, which ought to record truth BOOK and to teach wisdom, often sets out with retailing fictions and absurdities. I. Origin of The Scots carry their pretensions to antiquity as the Scots. high as any of their neighbours. Relying upon uncertain legends, and the traditions of their bards, still more uncertain, they reckon up a series of Kings several ages before the birth of Christ; and give a particular detail of the occurences which happened in their reigns. But with regard to the Scots, as well as the other northern nations, we receive the earliest accounts on which we can depend, not from A.D. 81. their own, but from the Roman authors. When the Romans, under Agricola, first carried their arms into the northern parts of Britain, they found it possessed by the Caledonians, a fierce and warlike people; and having repulsed rather than conquered them, they erected a strong wall between the firths of Forth and Clyde, and there fixed the boundA.D. 121. aries of their empire. Adrian, on account of the difficulty of defending such a distant frontier, contracted the limits of the Roman province in Britain, by building a second wall, which ran between Newcastle and Carlisle. The ambition of succeeding Emperors endeavoured to recover what Adrian had abandoned; and the country between the two walls was alternately under the dominion of the Romans and that of the Caledonians. About the beginning of the fifth century, the inroads of the Goths and other barbarians obliged the Romans, in order to defend the centre of their empire, to recall those legions which guarded the frontier provinces; and at that time they quitted all their conquests in Britain. I. A. D. 421. Their long residence in the island had polished, в OOK in some degree, the rude inhabitants, and the Britons were indebted to their intercourse with the Romans, for the art of writing, and the use of numbers, without which it is impossible long to preserve of past events. the memory North Britain was, by their retreat, left under the dominion of the Scots and Picts. The former, who are not mentioned by any Roman author before the end of the fourth century, were probably a colony of the Celta or Gauls; their affinity to whom appears from their language, their manners, and religious rites; circumstances more decisive with regard to the origin of nations, than either fabulous traditions, or the tales of ill-informed and credulous annalists. The Scots, if we may believe the common accounts, settled at first in Ireland; and, extending themselves by degrees, landed at last on the coast opposite to that island, and fixed their habitations there. Fierce and bloody wars were, during several ages, carried on between them and the Picts. At length, Kenneth II., the sixty-ninth King of the A. D. 838. Scots, (according to their own fabulous authors,) obtained a complete victory over the Picts, and united under one monarchy, all the country from the wall of Adrian to the northern ocean. The kingdom henceforward became known by its present name, which is derived from a people who at first settled there as strangers, and remained long obscure and inconsiderable. Scotland From this period the History of Scotland would History of merit some attention, were it accompanied with any peculiarly certainty. But as our remote antiquities are in- obscure. BOOK volved in the same darkness with those of other I. nations, a calamity peculiar to ourselves has thrown almost an equal obscurity over our more recent transactions. This was occasioned by the malicious policy of Edward I. of England. Towards the end of the thirteenth century, this monarch called in question the independence of Scotland; pretending that the kingdom was held as a fief of the crown of England, and subjected to all the conditions of a feudal tenure. In order to establish his claim, he seized the public archives, he ransacked churches and monasteries, and getting possession, by force or fraud, of many historical monuments, which tended to prove the antiquity or freedom of the kingdom, he carried some of them into England, and commanded the rest to be burned". An universal oblivion of past transactions might have been the effect of this fatal event, but some imperfect Chronicles had escaped the rage of Edward; foreign writers had recorded some important facts relating to Scotland; and the traditions concerning recent occurrences were fresh and worthy of credit. These broken fragments John de Fordun, who lived in the fourteenth century, collected with a pious industry, and from them gleaned materials which he formed into a regular history. His work was received by his countrymen with applause: and, as no recourse could be had to more ancient records, it supplied the place of the authentic annals of the kingdom. It was copied in many monasteries, and the thread of the narrative was continued, by different monks, through the subsequent reigns. In the beginning Innes, Essay 552. |