Moray or Elginshire

Elgin and Forres are royal burghs the municipal and police burghs include Burghead, Elgin, Forres, Grantown-on-Spey, Los siemouth, and Rothes. Moray is included in one sheriffdom with Inverness and Nairn, and there is a resident sheriff-substitute at Elgin. The county is under school-board jurisdiction, several of the schools earning grants for higher education. There are an acad emy, a school of science and art and a technical school at Elgin.

History.

The stone circle at Viewfield is an interesting prehistoric monument. Christianity, introduced under the auspices of Columba (from whose time the site of Burghead church has probably been so occupied), flourished for a period until the Columban church was expelled in 717 by King Nectan. Thereafter the district was given over to internecine strife be tween the northern and southern Picts, which was ended by the crushing victory of Kenneth MacAlpine in 831, as one result of which the kingdom of Pictavia was superseded by the principality of Moravia. Later the Norsemen raided the country first under Thorstein and then under two Sigurds. It was in the time of the second Sigurd that the Firth was fixed as the northern boundary of Moray. In spite of such interruptions as the battle of Torf ness (Burghead) in 1040, in which Thorfinn, earl of Orkney and Shetland, overthrew the Scots under King Duncan, the con solidation of the kingdom was being gradually accomplished. After Macbeth ascended the throne the Scandinavians held their hands. Though Macbeth and his faineant successor, "daft" Lulach, were the only kings whom Moray gave to Scotland, the province continued under the rule of its own marmaer, or great steward until the dawn of the 12th century, when as an entity it ceased to exist. With a view to breaking up the power of the marmaers, David I. and his successors colonized the seaboard with settlers from other parts of the kingdom, but from time to time the clansmen and their chiefs descended from their fast nesses and plundered the Laigh. Meanwhile, the Church had become a civilizing force. In 1107 Alexander had founded the see of Moray and the churches of Birnie, Kinneddar and Spynie were in turn the cathedral of the early bishops, until in 1224 under the episcopate of Andrew of Moray (de Moravia), the church of the Holy Trinity in Elgin was chosen for the cathedral.

Another unifying factor was the struggle for independence.

In his effort to stamp out Scottish nationality Edward I. came as far north as Elgin in 1296. Wallace, however, was well sup ported by Sir Andrew Moray of Bothwell, and Bruce recognized the assistance he had received from the men of the north by erecting Moray into an earldom on the morrow of Bannockburn and bestowing it upon Thomas Randolph. (See MORAY, THOMAS RANDOLPH, EARL OF.) Henceforward the history of the county resolved itself in the main into matters affecting the power of the Church and the ambitions of the Moray dynasties. There was strife between Covenanters and the adherents of Episcopacy until, prelacy itself being abolished in 1689, the bishopric of Moray came to an end after an existence of 581 years. (For the subsequent history of the earldom see MURRAY or MORAY, EARLS OF.) Other celebrated Moray families who played a part in local politics were the Gordons, the Grants and the Duffs. Still, national affairs occasionally evoked interest in Moray. In the civil war Montrose ravaged the villages which stood for the Covenanters, but most of the great lairds shifted in their allegiance, and the mass of the people were quite indifferent to the declining fortunes of the Stewarts. Charles II. landed at Garmouth on July 3, 165o, on his return from his first exile in Holland. The fight at Cromdale (May day, 1690) shattered the Jacobite cause, for the efforts in 1715 and 1745 were too spas modic and half-hearted to affect the loyalty of the 4istrict to Hanoverian rule. A few weeks before Culloden Prince Charles Edward stayed in Elgin for some days, and a month afterwards the duke of Cumberland passed through and administered the coup de grace to the Young Pretender on Drummossie moor.

Elginshire has twice been the scene of terrible catastrophes. In 1694 the barony of Culbin—a fine estate, comprising 3,600 ac. of land, so fertile that it was called the Granary of Moray, a mansion, a church and several houses—was buried under a mass of sand in a severe storm. This sandy waste, north-west of Forres, measures 3 m. in length and 2 in breadth. The other calamity was the Moray floods of Aug. 2 and 3, 1829. The Find horn inundated an area of 20 sq.m.; the Divie rose 4o ft., and the Lossie flooded all the low ground around Elgin.