in their breast what money the house contained, from coins of Trajan to the wretched "minims" that told of the Empire's decay, mounted their horses to protect their flight. At nightfall all were crouching beneath the dripping roof of the cave, or round the fire that was blazing at its mouth, and a long suffering began in which the fugitives lost year by year the memory of the civilization from which they came. A few charred bones show how hunger drove them to slay their horses for food; reddened pebbles mark the hour when the new vessels they wrought were too weak to stand the fire, and their meal was cooked by dropping heated stones into the pot. A time seems to have come when their very spindles were exhausted, and the women who wove in that dark retreat made spindle whorls as they could from the bones that lay about them.-Green, Making of England, p. 64.

16 In other matters the conversion left our Teutonic institutions to themselves to abide or to change according to influences on which the change of religion had no direct bearing.

"War did not cease, whether wars with the Britons or wars among the rival English kingdoms. But here came in the most direct effect of the conversion on the general history of the island. The wars of the converted Teuton ceased to be wars of extermination: therefore, in those parts of Britain which the English won after their conversion, a real British element was assimilated into the English mass."-Freeman, English People in Its Three Homes, P. 145.

17" He wasted the race of the Britons more than any chieftain of the English had done," says Bæda, "for none drove out or subdued so many of the natives, or won so much of their land for English settlement, or made so many tributary to Englishmen." The policy of accepting the submission and tribute of the Welsh, but of leaving them on the conquered soil, became indeed, from this moment, the invariable policy of the invaders; and as the invasion pushed farther and farther to the west, an ever-growing proportion of the Britons remained mingled with the conquerors.-Green, Making of England, p. 192.

18 Of Ædilfrid, who at this time ruled over Bernicia, and soon after extended his sway over Deira also, it is told us by Bede that he "conquered more territories from the Britons, either making them tributary, or expelling the inhabitants and planting Angles in their places, than any other king"; and to his reign we attribute the greatest extension of the Anglic power over the Britons. He appears to have added to his kingdom the districts on the west between the Derwent and the Mersey, thus extending Deira from sea to sea, and placing the Northumbrian kingdom between the Britons of the north and those of Wales. The river Tees appears to have separated Deira from Bernicia, and the Angles of Bernicia, with whom we have more immediately to do, were now in firm possession of the districts extending along the east coast as far as the Firth of Forth, originally occupied by the British tribe of the Ottadeni and afterwards by the Picts, and including the counties of Berwick and Roxburgh and that of East Lothian or Haddington, the rivers Esk and Gala forming their western boundary. The capital of Deira was York, and that of Bernicia the strongly-fortified position on the coast nearly opposite the Farne Islands, crowning a basaltic rock rising 150 feet above the sea, and accessible only on the southeast, which was called by the Britons, Dinguayridi, by the Gael, Dunguaire, and by the Angles Bebbanburch after Bebba the wife of Ædilfrid, now Bamborough. About half way along the coast, between Bamborough and Berwick-on-Tweed, lay parallel to the shore, the long flat island called by the Britons, Ynys Medcaud, and by the Angles, Lindisfarne.-Celtic Scotland, vol. i., p. 236. 19 Aldferth, king of Northumbria, died in 705, and was succeeded by his son, Osred, a boy eight years old; and in the following year Tighernac records the death of Brude, son of Dereli, who was succeeded by his brother Nectan, son of Dereli, according to the Pictish law of succession. Five years after his accession, the Picts of the plain of Manann, probably encouraged by the success of the neighboring kingdom of the Picts in maintaining their independence against the Angles, rose against their Saxon rulers. They were opposed by Berctfrid, the prefect or Alderman of the Northumbrians, whose king was still in only his fourteenth year. The Picts, however, were defeated with great slaughter, and their youthful

leader Finguine, son of Deleroith, slain. The English Chronicle tells us that this battle was fought between Haefe and Caere, by which the rivers Avon and Carron are probably meant, the plain of Manann being situated between these two rivers. These Picts appear to have been so effectually crushed that they did not renew the attempt, and we do not learn of any further collision between the Picts and the Angles during this period.

The Scots of Dalriada and a part of the British nation, we are told, recovered their freedom, the Angles still maintaining the rule over the rest of the Britons. The portion of their kingdom which became independent consisted of those districts extending from the Firth of Clyde to the Solway, embracing the counties of Dumbarton, Renfrew, Lanark, Ayr, and Dumfries—with the stronghold of Alclyde for its capital; but the Angles still retained possession of the district of Galloway with its Pictish population, and Whithorn as their principal seat, as well as that part of the territory of the Britons which lay between the Solway Firth, and the river Derwent, having as its principal seat the town of Carlisle, which Ecgfrid had, in the same year in which he assailed the Picts, given to Saint Cuthbert, who had been made bishop of Lindisfarne in the previous year, that is in 684.

20 In the same year the Picts of the plain of Manann and the Britons encountered each other at Mocetac or Magdedauc, now Mugdoc in Dumbartonshire, where a great battle was fought between them, in which Talorgan, the brother of Angus, who had been made king of the outlying Picts, was slain by the Britons. Two years after Tuadubr, the son of Bili, king of Alclyde, died, and a battle was fought between the Picts themselves at a place called by Tighernac "Sreith," in the land of Circin, that is in the Strath in the Mearns, in which Bruidhi, the son of Maelchu, fell. As his name is the same as the Brude, son of Mailcu, who was king of the northern Picts in the sixth century, this was probably an attack upon Angus's kingdom by the northern Picts.

Eadberht, king of Northumbria, and Angus, king of the Picts, now united for the purpose of subjecting the Britons of Alclyde entirely to their power, and in 756 they led an army to Alclyde, and there received the submission of the Britons on the first day of August in that year. Ten days afterwards, however, Simeon of Durham, records that almost the whole army perished as Eadberht was leading it from Ovania, probable Avondale or Strathaven in the vale of the Clyde, through the hill country to Niwanbyrig or Newburgh. The Britons of Alclyde thus passed a second time under subjection to the Angles, which continued some time, as in 760 the death of Dunnagual, the son of Tuadubr is recorded, but he is not termed king of Alclyde.

CHAPTER XIX

SCOTTISH HISTORY IN THE ENGLISH OR ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE

THE

HE work which passes under the name of the English Chronicle is a continued narrative written at different times, and in the AngloSaxon language, of the most important events of English history from the earliest period to the year 1154. It is evident, both from the antiquity of the manuscripts of the Chronicle now extant, as well as from certain allusions and forms of speech which occur in it, that the latter part, at least, was written by a person contemporary with the events which he relates. In all probability the earlier part of the chronicle is also of a contemporary character, and therefore ascends to a very early period of English history, even to the time of the Heptarchy itself. This opinion rests upon the fact that, while the dialect of the latter portion of the chronicle approaches very nearly to our modern English, the early part of it bears the impress of times much more rude and ancient, and the language in which it is written is unintelligible to the modern reader who has not made the Anglo-Saxon tongue an object of study.

The best edition of the work is that of Benjamin Thorpe, published by the British Government in the Rolls Series, 1861.

There are now but six ancient copies of the English Chronicle known to be in existence, which may be described as follows:

A. The first copy of this chronicle is generally known by the name of the Benet or Plegmund Manuscript, so called because it is preserved in Benet (now Corpus Christi) College, Cambridge, and because Plegmund, Archbishop of Canterbury, in the reign of King Ælfred, is thought to have had some hand in compiling the first part of it.

"From internal evidence of an indirect nature," says Dr. Ingram, "there is great reason to presume that Archbishop Plegmund transcribed or superintended this very copy of the Saxon Annals to the year 891, the year in which he came to the See. Wanley observes it is written in one and the same hand to this year, and in hands equally ancient to the year 924, after which it is continued in different hands to the end.

"At the end of the year 890 is added, in a neat but imitative hand, the following interpolation, which is betrayed by the faintness of the ink, as well as by the Norman cast of the dialect and orthography :

"Her was Plegemund gecoron of gode and of eallen his halechen.' "There are many other interpolations in this MS.; a particular account of which, however curious, would necessarily become tedious."

Prefixed to this manuscript is a genealogy of the West Saxon kings from the landing of Cerdic and his son Cynric to the accession of Ælfred.

B. The second copy of the English Chronicle is in the British Museum. (MS. Cotton, Tiberius A. vi.) It is "written in the same hand with much neatness and accuracy, from the beginning to the end," and "is of very high authority and antiquity. It was probably written about 977, where it terminates. The hand-writing resembles that ascribed to St. Dunstan. It narrowly escaped destruction in the fire at Westminster, previous to its removal to its present place of custody, being one of Sir R. Cotton's MSS., formerly belonging to the monastery of St. Augustine's, Canterbury."

C. A third manuscript is also in the British Museum. (Cotton, Tiberius B. i.)

"This manuscript contains many important additions to the former chronicles, some of which are confirmed by Cotton, Tiberius B. iv.; but many are not to be found in any other manuscript, particularly those in the latter part of it. These are now incorporated with the old materials. Wanley considers the hand-writing to be the same to the end of the year 1048. The orthography, however, varies about the year 890 (889 of the printed chronicle). There is a break between the years 925 and 934, when a slight notice is introduced of the expedition of Æthelstan into Scotland. The manuscript terminates imperfectly in 1066, after describing most minutely the battle of Stanfordbridge; the few lines which appear in the last page being supplied by a much later hand."

D. A fourth copy of the English Chronicle also is found in the British Museum. (Cotton, Tiberius B. iv.)

"This manuscript is written in a plain and beautiful hand, with few abbreviations, and apparently copied in the early part, with the exception of the introductory description of Britain, from a very ancient manuscript. The defective parts, from A.D. 261 to 693, were long since supplied from four excellent manuscripts by Josselyn; who also collated it throughout with the same; inserting from them, both in the text and in the margin, such passages as came within his notice; which are so numerous, that very few seem to have eluded his vigilant search. A smaller but elegant hand commences fol. 68, A.D. 1016; and it is continued to the end, A.D. 1079, in a similar hand, though by different writers. Wanley notices a difference in the year 1052."

E. The fifth manuscript is in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. (Laud E, 80.)

It is a fair copy of older chronicles, with a few inaccuracies, omissions, and interpolations, to the year 1122; therefore no part of it was written before that period. The next ten years rather exhibit different ink than a different writer. From 1132 to the end, A.D. 1154, the language and orthography became gradually more Normanized, particularly in the reign. of King Stephen; the account of which was not written till the close of it.

The dates not being regularly affixed to the last ten years, Wanley has inadvertently described this manuscript as ending A.D. 1143; whereas it is continued eleven years afterwards."

F. The sixth and last copy is in the British Museum. (Cotton, Domitian A. viii.)

This is a singularly curious manuscript, attributed generally to a monk of Christ Church, Canterbury, on account of the monastic interpolations. It is often quoted and commended by H. Wharton, in his Anglia Sacra, because it contains much ecclesiastical and local information. It is considered, however, of the least authority among the Cotton manuscripts, because the writer has taken greater liberties in abridging former chronicles, and inserting translations of Latin documents in his own Normanized diaTowards the end the writer intended to say something about Prince Eadward, the father of Edgar and Margaret; but it is nearly obliterated and the manuscript soon after concludes, A.D. 1056. It is remarkable for being written both in Latin and Saxon; but for what purpose it is now needless to conjecture. It is said to have been given to Sir Robert Cotton by Camden.

G. Besides these six, no other ancient copy is known to exist; but there is a single leaf of an ancient copy in the British Museum. (Cotton, Tiberius A. iii.) There are also three modern transcripts, two of which are in the Bodleian Library (Junian MSS. and Laud G. 36) and one in the Dublin Library. (E 5, 15.) The Bodleian transcripts are taken from two of the Cotton manuscripts, and therefore are of little critical value; but the Dublin transcript appears to be taken from an original, now lost (Cott., Otho B. xi.), and therefore it possesses an independent authority.

At the end of the Dublin transcript is this note, in the hand-writing of Archbishop Usher: "These Annales are extant in S R. Cotton's Librarye at the ende of Bede's Historye in the Saxon Tongue." This accords with the description of the manuscript in Wanley's Catalogue, p. 219; to which the reader is referred for more minute particulars. As this manuscript was therefore in existence so late as 1705, when Wanley published his Catalogue, there can be little doubt that it perished in the lamentable fire of 1731, which either destroyed or damaged so many of the Cotton manuscripts while deposited in a house in Little Dean's Yard, Westminster.

This transcript is become more valuable from the loss of the original. It appears from the dates by William Lambard himself, at the beginning and the end, that it was begun by him in 1563, and finished in 1564, when he was about the age of twenty-five.

Of these six, or if we include the Dublin Manuscript, seven copies of the English Chronicle, no two of them agree in the date at which they terminate. Thus :

B comes down no later than A.D. 977.

G ends at A.D. 1001.