Scotland

The Kingdom of Scotland was founded in the early years of the nth century by an amalgamation of four tribal kingdoms— Scots, Picts, British and Angles, two of which, Scots and Picts, had been united at an earlier period. The Scots were an Irish tribe who settled, about the beginning of the 6th century, in the district known later as Argyll; the Angles, in the second half of the same century, colonized what became the Lothians and the counties of Selkirk, Peebles and Roxburgh. The British, who occupied the country between the Solway Firth and the Firth of Clyde, were akin to the Welsh, and were probably driven into north Britain by the Anglo-Saxon invasions in the south. Three, therefore, of the four constituent parts of the historic kingdoms of Scotland date back no farther than the 6th century. The identification of the Picts and Caledonians whom the Romans found in the country in the first centuries of the Christian era has been for generations a subject of controversy. For Scotland in Roman days see CALEDONIA, also BRITAIN.

Christian Scotland.

Scottish history is often said to begin with the mission of St. Columba in 563. Columba was an Irish man of noble birth who became a monk and a priest and settled in Iona to undertake the conversion of the portions of North Britain which were still heathen. Iona belonged to the small kingdom of Dalriada, which had, comparatively recently, been founded by the race to which Columba belonged, and its ruler was his kinsman. The Scots had come from Ireland, a Chris tian land, and had brought their religion with them, and Chris tianity had persisted from Roman times, or had been revived, in Strathclyde. In the beginning of the 5th century, St. Ninian had preached in Strathclyde and had sent his disciples to convert Pictland, and it is probable that many of the religious founda tions in the north-east of Scotland, generally ascribed to St. Columba, really date from an older missionary effort.' Some years before St. Columba landed in Iona, a great Christian teacher, known as St. Kentigern or St. Mungo, was labouring in Strathclyde, and to his mission is traced the foundation of the future city of Glasgow. St. Columba, therefore, cannot be said to have converted Scotland, but he laboured as a missionary in Pictland and he made Iona the centre of Scottish Christianity. In the century succeeding his death in 597, the most important contribution made by Scotland to the history of Great Britain was the direct result of his work—the re-conversion of the North of England to Christianity. A pagan reaction in the second quar ter of the 7th century had dethroned the Christian king, Edwin of Northumbria, who ruled from the Humber to the Forth. Edwin's nephew, Oswald, had been educated at Iona, and, when he recovered the kingdom of Northumbria by a victory won in 655, he brought Scottish missionaries to rebuild the shattered fabric of Christianity. The influence of Scotland upon English

Christianity was, however, short-lived. There were some differ ences of method, organization and ritual between the Irish Church and the Roman Church. Oswald's successor, Oswy, declared in favour of Roman custom, and the Scottish missionaries aban doned Northumbria in accordance with the decision of the Synod of Whitby (664).

Picts, Scots and Norse.

The kingdom of Northumbria had, by this date, reached the height of its greatness, and its rulers were ambitious of conquering the north of the island. In 685 a great Northumbrian army invaded Pictland and was defeated at the battle of Nectansmere, fought near Dunnichen in Forfarshire. The expedition proved to be the ruin of Northumbrian supremacy in England; the centre of English power shifted southwards and the menace of an English conquest was removed. North Britain was to be left, for some centuries, to work out its own destiny. The Picts became supreme in the north, and gained control over both the Scots of Dalriada and the British of Strathclyde. Then the Picts were weakened by the attacks of the Norsemen, who first attacked the coasts in the end of the 8th century, and, about 835, began to make permanent settlements. Dalriada threw off Pictish control, and in 844, when the Norsemen were attacking Pictland, Kenneth MacAlpine, King of the Scots, established a claim to the Pictish throne. There seems to have been something in the nature of a conquest, but the resources of Pictland were so much greater than those of Dalriada that it is difficult to credit the smaller country with a military conquest of the larger.

Kenneth MacAlpine's claim was in right of his mother, and the Picts preferred maternal to paternal descent. The union of Picts and Scots was followed by an attempt to snatch the Lothians from Northumbria, then devastated by the Danish invasions; but the effort was unsuccessful, and Kenneth's successors were them selves engaged in struggles with the Norsemen, who occupied the Hebrides and the Orkney and Shetland islands and made settle ments along the western and northern coasts and on the east coast as far south as the Moray Firth. They also attacked the kingdom of Strathclyde and founded colonies between the rivers Esk and Dee. The islands became definitely Scandinavian, as also did a large part of Caithness. During the long conflict with the Norse men, the Scots sometimes allied themselves with the English against the common enemy, and these alliances constituted, long afterwards, a ground of the English claim to the overlordship of Scotland, but there were other occasions upon which the Scots joined the Norsemen against the English.