Full text of "The Scotch-Irish : or, The Scot in North Britain, north Ireland, and North America"

GIFT OF
MICHAEL REESE

"V*^

THE SCOTCH-IRISH

THE SCOT IN NORTH BRITAIN, NORTH
IRELAND, AND NORTH AMERICA

CHARLES A. HANNA

VOLUME I

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

NEW YORK AND LONDON

XTbe IRnicfterbocfeer press

1902

CHARLES A. HANNA

Zbe twtcherbocfcer press. View tfocfe

TO THE FORGOTTEN DEAD

OF THAT INDOMITABLE RACE

WHOSE PIONEERS

IN UNBROKEN RANKS FROM CHAMPLAIN TO FLORIDA

FORMED THE ADVANCE GUARD OF CIVILIZATION

IN ITS PROGRESS TO THE MISSISSIPPI

AND FIRST CONQUERED, SUBDUED, AND PLANTED THE

WILDERNESS BETWEEN

" °!

PREFACE

THESE volumes are designed to serve as an introduction to a series of
Historical Collections which the writer expects hereafter to publish,
relating to the early Scotch-Irish settlements in America. They are not in-
tended as a history of the Scotch - Irish people, for such a work would
require more time and labor than have been expended upon the present
undertaking.

The subject is one, like that of the history of America itself, which must
wait for some future gifted historian ; but unlike the subject of American
history in general, it is also one concerning which no comprehensive treat-
ment has ever been attempted. Such being the case, in order to enable the
reader to understand the relation of the Scotch-Irish to American history,
it has seemed necessary to make a brief general survey of the origin and
old-world history of the race to which the Scotch-Irish belong.

In doing this, it has not been his purpose to attempt even an outline
sketch of the history of Scotland, but merely to condense and connect the
record of its most important events, and indicate some of the principal
writers upon different aspects of its history.

The fact is, that the lack of acquaintance of many native-born Americans
with the details of Scottish history is such that they require an elemen-
tary grounding even in the annals of its most noteworthy events. Such
a primer the writer has undertaken to prepare. In doing so, he has found
it advisable to compile, epitomize, and consolidate a number of the most
compact of the sketches of Scottish history which have appeared in Great
Britain, using for this purpose the writings of William F. Skene and of E.
William Robertson, the Annals of Lord Hailes, the brief history of Mack-
intosh and, for the topographical and ethnographical description of Scot-
land of the present day, the works of the French geographer and traveller,
J. J. E. Reclus, of which an edition in English has been published by
Messrs. D. Appleton & Company.

The written history of the Scots in Ireland is in very much the same
condition as their history in America. Few attempts have been made to
record it; and for this reason, very little of their history can be presented.
What is given has been condensed chiefly from Harrison's monograph on
The Scot in Ulster; from Latimer's and Reid's histories of the Irish Presby-
terians; and from Hill's Plantation of Ulster. The most valuable features of
the present volumes in this connection will be found to be the contemporary
documents and reports relating to the inception and progress of the coloni-
zation of Northern Ireland by the Scots.

Scottish history, as has been intimated, is as a sealed book to the great
majority of American readers. In the United States, outside of the public

Preface

libraries in perhaps two or three of the larger cities, it is difficult to find
reprints of any of the original sources of information on the history of Scot-
land, or indeed any commentaries on the subject, except occasional copies
of the histories of Dr. William Robertson and Mr. John Hill Burton, neither
of which is adapted to present requirements. For this reason, it has been
deemed essential by the writer, in giving his references, to print the citations
in full; as it seems probable that that is the only means of making them
available to the greater part of his readers.

New York, Dec. i, 1901.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I — The Scotch-Irish and the Revolution i

II — The Scotch-Irish and the Constitution . . .31

III — The Scotch-Irish in American Politics ... 49

IV — New England not the Birthplace of American Liberty 55

V — Liberty of Speech and Conscience Definitely Estab-
lished in America by Men of Scottish Blood . . 70

VI — The American People not Racially Identical with

those of New England ....... 78

VII — American Ideals more Scottish than English . . 90

VIII — The Scottish Kirk and Human Liberty ... 105

IX — Religion in Early Scotland and Early England . 120

X — Scottish Achievement 133

XI — The Tudor-Stuart Church Responsible for Early

American Animosity to England 146

XII — Who are the Scotch-Irish ? 159

XIII — Scotland of To-day ..... . . 169

XIV — The Caledonians, or Picts 182

XV — The Scots and Picts 199

XVI — The Britons 224

XVII — The Norse and Galloway 235

XVIII— The Angles 265

XIX — Scottish History in the English or Anglo-Saxon

Chronicle 289

XX — From Malcolm Canmore to King David . . .316

XXI — William the Lion 338

XXII — The Second and Third Alexanders to John Baliol . 352

vii

viii Contents

CHAPTER

XXIII — Wallace and Bruce

XXIV — John of Fordun's Annals of Wallace and Bruce

XXV — From Bruce to Flodden

XXVI — The Beginning of the Reformation .

, XXVII— The Days of Knox

XXVIII — James Stuart, Son of Mary ....
XXIX — The Wisest Fool in Christendom

XXX — Scotland under Charles I

XXXI — Scotland under Charles II. and the Bishops
XXXII — Ireland under the Tudors ....
XXXIII — The Scottish Plantation of Down and Antrim
XXXIV — The Great Plantation of Ulster .
XXXV — The Ulster Plantation from 1610 to 1630
XXXVI — Stewart's and Brereton's Accounts of the Plan

tation of Ulster

XXXVII — Church Rule in Ireland and its Results
XXXVIII — Londonderry and Enniskillen ....
XXXIX — The Emigration from Ulster to America

366
378
398

408

415

424

433
439
45i
469

486
498
506

568
559
579
614

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Acknowledgments are due to the publishers hereinafter named for
their courtesy in permitting the use. in text and notes, of extracts from their
publications, as follows :

To Messrs. D. Appleton & Co., publishers of Recluses The World and Its Inhabitants,
Bancroft's History of the United States, and Lecky's England in the XVIIIth Century.

To Messrs. William Blackwood & Sons, publishers of Burton's History of Scotland,
Harrison's Scot in Ulster, MacKerlie's Galloway : Ancient and Modern, and Maxwell's His-
tory of Dumfries and Galloway.

To James Cleland, publisher, and W. T. Latimer, author, of Latimer's History of the
Irish Presbyterians.

To David Douglas, publisher of Robertson's Scotland under Her Early Kings, and
Skene's Celtic Scotland.

To Joseph Foster, editor of Members of the Scottish Parliament.

To Samuel Swett Green, author and publisher of The Scotch-Irish in America.

To Messrs. Macmillan & Co., Limited, London, publishers of Green's Short History of
England, Making of England, Conquest of England, and General History of England..

To Messrs. Harper & Brothers, publishers of Campbell's The Puritan in Holland, Eng-
land, and America, Freeman's Origin of the English Nation, and Green's Short History of
England, Conquest o.f England, and Alaking of England.

To Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., publishers of Adams's Massachusetts : Its
Historians and Its History, Fiske's Critical Period of American History, and Winsor's
Narrative and Critical History of America.

To Messrs. J. B. Lippincott & Co., publishers of Fisher's Evolution of the Constitution
of the United States.

To Messrs. Longmans & Co. and Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons, publishers of Froude's
English in Ireland.

To Messrs. Longmans & Co., publishers of Lecky's England in the XVIIIth Century.

To the Presbyterian Board of Publication, publishers of Breed's Presbyterians and the
Revolution, Craighead's Scotch and Irish Seeds in American Soil, and Moffat's The Church
in Scotland.

To Oliver P. Temple, author of The Covenanter , Cavalier, and Puritan.

To James Thin, publisher of Cunningham's Church History of Scotland.

To T. Fisher Unwin, publisher of Rhys's The Welsh People.

AMERICA'S DEBT TO SCOTLAND

CHAPTER I

THE SCOTCH-IRISH AND THE REVOLUTION

THE term " Scotch-Irish " is peculiarly American, and in tracing its ori-
gin we have, epitomized, the history of the people to whom it is now
applied. The word seems to have come into general use since the Revolu-
tion, having been first taken as a race-name by many individuals of a very
large class of people in the United States, descendants of emigrants of Scot-
tish blood from the North of Ireland. The name was not used by the first
of these emigrants, neither was it generally applied to them by the people
whom they met here. 1 They usually called themselves " Scotch," just as the
descendants of their former neighbors in Northern Ireland do to-day ; and
as do some of their own descendants in this country, who seemingly are
averse to acknowledging any connection with Ireland. 3 The Quakers and
the Puritans generally spoke of them as " the Irish," * and, during the Revo-
lutionary period, we find a large and influential body of these people joined
together at Philadelphia, in the formation of a patriotic association to
which they gave the distinctively Irish title, " The Society of the Friendly
Sons of St. Patrick." 4

The appellation " Scotch- Irish " is not, as many people suppose, an indi-
cation of a mixed Hiberno-Scottish descent ; although it could be properly
so used in many cases. It was first appropriated as a distinctive race-name
by, and is now generally applied to, the descendants in America of the early
Scotch Presbyterian emigrants from Ireland. These Scotch people, for a
hundred years or more after 1600, settled with their wives and families in
Ulster, in the North of Ireland, whence their descendants, for a hundred
years after 1700, — having long suffered under the burdens of civil and religi-
ous oppression imposed by commercial greed and despotic ecclesiasticism,
— sought a more promising home in America.

It has been remarked by some recent observers in this country that while
American history has been chiefly written in New England, that section has
not been the chief actor in its events.

No doubt the second part of this proposition would be disputed by a large

2 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

number of American people as not substantiated, who would perhaps claim
that their position was supported by the testimony of a majority of the writers
on the subject. With the latter claim it is not my purpose to take issue. Yet
the first part of the proposition is more lacking in substantiation than the
second. For, while it is apparent that the natural spirit of self-assertion, so J
early manifested by the descendants of the English Puritans, has found -
expression in a lengthy series of recitals of the doings and virtues of New
England men, it is no less evident that these portrayals are largely of
restricted application, and, for the most part, can only be considered
as contributions to that portion of American history which is called local.

That these writings have ever been taken as national history arises per-
haps from a conjunction of two causes, or conditions. The first of these, and
one that naturally would have been ineffective without the other, is the
marked tendency on the part of many New England writers to ignore or be-
little the presence of any element not within the range of their own immedi-
ate horizon. In this they are peculiarly English, and exhibit that trait which
has become so characteristic of the native English as to take its name from
their geographical situation, namely — insularity. The second cause, which
will be more fully adverted to hereafter, arises from the comparative dearth
of historical writings originating outside of the Puritan colonies.

The New England fathers came to a strange coast and found stretching
back from the shore a forbidding wilderness, to them of such unknown
depth that it was not until after a slow and gradual pushing forward of the
frontier line for a period extending over a century and a half that
their children found this wilderness was unsubdued only as far west as the
Hudson River ; 6 and fully another century elapsed before many of them were
willing to acknowledge this .to be the case. To the fathers, accordingly,
New England meant America, and to some of the sons who stayed at home it
is not unnatural that the western boundary line of America should seem to
be fixed at the point where the early Dutch settlements began.

In the examination of the contributions of the New England writers to
the " history of America," therefore, it is only necessary to bear in mind the
restricted sense in which so many of them use this term, and to observe their
superficial treatment of men and affairs not within their own provincial
boundaries, to enable us to accept these contributions at their true value.
Hence we can take pride with the New Englanders in the noble deeds which
they narrate of their fathers and of the good these fathers wrought for their
own communities, and can thus understand the nature and extent of New
England's contribution to the good of our country as a whole.

It is, however, this inevitable disposition on the part of New England
writers in their treatment of American history to magnify local at the ex-
pense of national affairs, to which may be attributed so much of the present
adverse criticism of their authority. If it be said that this tendency is only
a natural manifestation of the dominating Anglo-Saxon spirit, which brooks

The Revolution 3

no rivalry and sees no good in anything foreign to itself, it may properly be
answered that the page of impartial history is no place for such display. 8
The share of New England in making American history is great ; but it is
perhaps not so great as its chroniclers would have us believe. Neither can
it be said by any fair-minded student that the events which took place on the
soil of New England are of chief interest or importance in connection with
the progress and success of the American War of Independence, and the
foundation of our present system of government subsequent thereto, even
though the record of those events forms the substance of a majority of the
books which have been called American history.

A notable instance of this one-sided treatment of our country's history, if
not of its actual perversion, on the part of all but the most recent writers,
treating the subject from a New England standpoint, is that furnished by cer-
tain tables purporting to give the numbers of troops supplied by the different
colonies in the Revolutionary War. These tables have appeared in whole or
in part a great many times during the past sixty years, and until recently have
been quite generally cited to show the superior patriotism of New Hampshire,
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut over that of the other colo-
nies, and to sustain the claim, repeatedly made, that New England furnished
more than half the soldiers in that struggle. The tables first appeared in the
Collections of the New Hampshire Historical Society for 1824., vol. i., p. 236 ;
then in the American Almanac for 1830, p. 187, and for i8ji, p. 1 12; in Niles 's
Register for July 31, 1830 ; in Sabine's Loyalists of the Revolution, in 1847, p.
31 ; in Lossing's Field Book of the Revolution, vol. ii., p. 837 ; in Hildreth's
History of the United States, vol. iii., p. 441 ; in Barry's Massachusetts, vol. ii.,
p. 304 ; in Greene's Historical View of the American Revolution, p. 455 ; etc. T
They are supposed to be founded on a report made to Congress, May n,
1790, by Henry Knox, then Secretary of War ; but they contain only a
portion of the figures given in that report, and utterly ignore and omit the
part relating to the enlistment and service of certain southern troops com-
posing, perhaps, one fourth of the entire army. The compilers of the tables
also attempt to summarize the portion given, by adding up the aggregates of
the various enlistment rolls for the whole Revolutionary period (many of
which in the early part of the war were duplicated more than four times in
a single year, the same names appearing at every ninety-days' re-enlistment),
and then claiming that the results reached give the total number of Regulars
furnished by the different colonies in the struggle. This erroneous sum-
mary appears as follows :

New Hampshire 12,496

Massachusetts 67,807'

Rhode Island 5,908

Connecticut 3 r >939

New York 17,781

New Jersey 10,726

Carried forward 146,657

4 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

Brought forward 146,657

Pennsylvania 25,678

Delaware 2,386

Maryland 13,912

Virginia 26,678

North Carolina 7,263

South Carolina 6,417

Georgia 2,679

231,670

The report on which these tables are said to be founded is published in
the American State Papers, vol. i., pp. 14-19, of the series relating to Mili-
tary Affairs ; and in order to show the falsity of the statements based upon
the garbled and incomplete extract made from it in the aforesaid tables, the
report is here given in full and the figures accompanying the same appear
in tabulated form on the opposite page. This tabulation, it may be re-
marked, shows the form in which the incomplete statement appears, as well
as the full report, — the figures here printed in heavy-faced type being
omitted from all of the former tables since the first report of Knox.

TROOPS, INCLUDING MILITIA, FURNISHED BY THE SEVERAL STATES
DURING THE WAR OF THE REVOLUTION.

Communicated to the House of Representatives > May 11, 1790.

War Office of the United States, May 10, 1790.

In obedience to the order of the House of Representatives, the Secretary
of War submits the statement hereunto annexed of the troops and militia
furnished from time to time by the several States, towards the support of the
late war.

The numbers of the regular troops having been stated from the official
returns deposited in the War Office, may be depended upon ; and in all
cases where the numbers of militia are stated from the returns, the same
confidence may be observed.

But in some years of the greatest exertions of the Southern States there
are no returns whatever of the militia employed. In this case recourse has
been had to letters of the commanding officer, and to well informed indi-
viduals, in order to form a proper estimate of the numbers of the militia in
service ; and although the accuracy of the estimate cannot be relied on, yet
it is the best information which the Secretary of War can at present obtain.
When the accounts of the militia service of the several States shall be
adjusted it is probable that the numbers will be better ascertained.

There are not any documents in the War Office from which accurate re-
turns could be made of the ordnance stores furnished by the several States
during the late war. The charges made by the several States against the
United States, which have been presented by the commissioners of accounts,
are, probably, the only evidence which can be obtained on the subject.

All of which is humbly submitted to the House of Representatives.

H. Knox, Secretary of War.

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6 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

It should be observed that the column of aggregate footings which appears
at the right side of the table is not to be found in the original report of Gen-
eral Knox. This column gives the erroneous summary of the successive
enlistment rolls, already referred to; but these rolls cannot be added together
for the purpose of showing the number of troops furnished with any more
propriety than we can add the population of Massachusetts in 1776 to that
of the same State in 1777, 1778, 1779, 1780, and 1781 for the purpose of find-
ing out the number of people who lived there during the Revolution. We
might attempt to make an approximation of the average number of troops
from each State by dividing the aggregates of the complete returns by the total
number of years, but this would only afford a conjectural average upon which
no reliance could be placed ; for besides the fact that Knox's militia returns
are mainly estimated, many of the early Continental enlistments, as has been
already stated, were made for only three months at a time, and either re-
newed at the expiration of the term by re-enlistment, or the ranks filled by
fresh levies ; or, as was more generally the case during 1775 and 1776, the
Continental ranks were so frequently depleted by desertions that to ascribe
an/ average service of one month to each man enlisted therein during the
first eighteen months of the war would perhaps be nearer a true statement
of the fact than to set the service of each individual at from three to twelve
months. The militia estimates, however, as General Knox states, approxi-
mate the numbers actually serving, and are not, as in the case of the Conti-
nentals, merely records of enlistments. It will also be noticed that these
militia reports do not refer to the minutemen or militiamen who did not serve,
but the estimates are of those who were actually called out and saw service
in the field. In the South this service was perhaps harder and more fatal —
and relatively much more effective — than that of the Continental line in the
North, for the reason that the patriots of the South had to contend not only
with the invading armies from abroad, but also with the armed forces of
their Tory neighbors at home, whose numbers often exceeded their own, and
the cruelty and brutality of whose attacks were surpassed only by the savage
atrocities of another of Great Britain's hired auxiliaries — the native Indians. 8

The fact is that these tables of Knox, as they now exist, are of little or
no value whatever in giving a correct idea of the proportionate number of
troops furnished by the different colonies. We know that Pennsylvania, for
instance, had more than twenty thousand men in the Flying Camp, who saw
service about New York, in 1776 ; yet Knox's tables show from Pennsylvania
but little more than half that number, including both Continentals and
militia. And that almost as many as twenty-five thousand were under arms
in that State the year before is apparent from the testimony of Richard
Penn given before Parliament in 1775. 9

The following letter, received by the writer from the War Department at
Washington in response to an inquiry for some explanation of Knox's
figures, will serve to show how little reliance can be placed upon them :

The Revolution 7

September 2, 1897.
Sir:

Referring to your letter of the 26th ultimo, and its two enclosures, rela-
tive to the number of men in service during the War of the Revolution, I
have the honor to advise you as follows :

Various tables and statements have been made up from the report of the
Secretary of War of May 10, 1790, referred to in your letter, but I do not
know of any one of them that is of any value or is entitled to any weight
whatever. There is nothing on file in this Department which suggests any
interpretation of the figures given in that report, and it is impossible to ascer-
tain whether those figures represent the number of new enlistments during
each year, or whether they include men who were in service at some time
during the year but who enlisted in a prior year. In other words, it cannot
be positively determined whether the figures merely represent additions to
the force during each year, or whether they represent these additions to-
gether with the force remaining in service from a prior year. It is certain
that, in either case, they do not represent the total number of individuals
added to the force in any year, or the total number of individuals in service
in any year, because there must have been many duplications caused by
counting the same man over again for each successive enlistment. As
pointed out in the letter addressed to you by this office on the 9th ultimo, it
is well known that a very large proportion of the men who served during
the Revolution rendered two, three, or more terms, or " tours," of service.
This was notably the case in militia organizations, in which men frequently
served tours of a few days each at comparatively short intervals. . . .

It will never be possible to determine with any approximation to accuracy
the number of individuals who actually rendered military service during the
Revolution. The records that have survived destruction and have been
handed down to us are meagre in the extreme, but I do not believe that if
every military record that was made during the Revolution had been pre-
served so as to be available for reference at the present time, it would be
possible to make even a reasonably accurate estimate of the number of men
in service from any State or from all the States together. The records of
that time were comparatively few, were imperfectly kept, and contained but
little of the statistical information which is to be found in the records of
later wars. But even in the case of the War of the Rebellion of 1861 to
1865 it has been found impossible to determine accurately from all of the
voluminous records that were kept the number of individuals who were in
service from any State or from all the States. . . .

No returns or other documents have been found in this Department from
which the missing information, indicated on the list of organizations which
accompanied your letter, can be supplied.

The term "on command," as given on the published returns of the
Revolutionary Army, is understood to be equivalent to the term " on de-
tached service," as used at the present day, and the number of men so
reported should be included with the number of " present and fit for duty "
to determine the effective force of the Army. . . .

Regretting my inability to be of more material service to you in con-
nection with the subject of your inquiry, I am

Very respectfully,

F. C. Ainsworth,
Colonel, U. S. Army,
Chief, Record and Pension Office.

8 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

Concerning the matter of desertions, the correspondence of Washington,
in the latter part of 1776, contains numerous complaints of this evil, and in
some of his letters of that period to Governor Trumbull he specifies the dis-
tricts whose troops were most faulty in this respect. In the same connection,
the following excerpt from an incomplete memorial prepared by General
Steuben on the subject, and printed in Kapp's Life of Steuben (pp. 704, 705),
is of great importance as presenting an official statement of the composition
of the army from the Inspector-General himself. This memorial also shows
that Steuben accounted for the frequent re-enlistments by suggesting the fre-
quency of desertions :

The respectable citizens who entered the lists with so much ardor,
quitted their cabins with more regret to answer to the second call. Those
who were in more easy circumstances emptied their purses to induce those
who were poorer to take their places. The rotation of service soon became
a speculation, and before the end of the second campaign there were very
few rich enough to pay a substitute to serve in their stead. Associations
were formed, and, by the force of money, children, invalids, and vagrants
were engaged to complete the number of the contingents. These men were
engaged for such short terms that one recruit soon took the place of another,
and the country became quickly destitute of money. They then began to
pay in produce. Negroes, cattle, produce, even lands, were given to recruits
who were utterly useless to the army.

Congress and the commander-in-chief remonstrated. The evil had be-
come incurable. The soldiers whose term had expired could not be kept
on at any price ; several withdrew in the middle, others at the end of the
campaign. The enemy was always in full force, while the American Army
was almost insufficient to furnish the guards for our advanced posts. The
new recruit generally arrived when the operations of the war were far ad-
vanced. He arrived in a wretched condition, destitute of every article of
clothing, and utterly ignorant of a soldier's duty. Often a third of these
new levies was totally unfit for service ; another third soon went into hos-
pital ; and the remaining third was slightly trained during the time that the
enemy employed in making his dispositions.

In the third campaign the government was compelled to reduce to a
considerable extent the number of regiments, from inability to recruit them.
If the fate of America could have been decided in one day by a general
engagement, it is possible that the enthusiasm of our valorous citizens might
have achieved a victory over an army as brave as it was well disciplined.
But a war is seldom finished by one or two battles. It is necessary to keep
the field, and the hope of regaining advantages on another occasion tends to
prolong the operations of the war.

The citizen who had braved death at Bunker Hill could not resist the
desire to see his family and take charge of his household. The hero in the
battle of to-day became a deserter to-morrow, perfectly confident that he
was not guilty of any impropriety. " I have had my turn," he used to say ;
" I have fought bravely, let my neighbor do likewise. If five hundred thou-
sand of my fellow citizens fire as many shots at the enemy as I have fired in
the last battle, the enemy would be soon annihilated, and my country would
be free." The neighbor, animated by the same sentiments, puts on his arms,
joins the army, fills the vacancy, and asks nothing better than to fight and dis-
tinguish himself. But a battle is not fought every day. He waits a week,

The Revolution 9

two, three, perhaps a month. He begins to long to see his family, his cabin,
his land, which requires his presence to sow the crop or make his harvest.
He fears to lose the produce of an entire year. His anxiety affects his health.
There is nothing left for him but to go into hospital or go home. He re-
turns to require some other neighbor to take his turn, and so on indefinitely.
This rotation soon exhausts the village, but the war is not ended, and the
enemy is getting ready for another campaign.

The military establishment in 1775 consisted of three battalions of in-
fantry from New Hampshire, as follows : those of Colonels Enoch Poor,
James Reed, and John Stark ; twenty-seven from Massachusetts, as follows :
Colonels Daniel Brewer, Jonathan Brewer, Theophilus Colton, Timothy
Danielson, Ephraim Doolittle, John Fellows, James Frye, Thomas Gardner,
Samuel Gerrish, John Glover, William Heath, Ebenezer Learned, Moses
Little, John Mansfield, John Nixon, John Paterson, Edmund Phinney,
William Prescott, Joseph Reed, Paul D. Sargent, James Scammon, John
Thomas, Timothy Walker, Artemas Ward, Asa Whitcomb, Benjamin Wood-
bridge ; three from Rhode Island, as follows : Colonels Thomas Church,
Daniel Hitchcock, James Varnum ; eight from Connecticut, as follows :
Colonels Benjamin Hinman, Jedediah Huntington, Samuel H. Parsons,
Israel Putnam, Joseph Spencer, David Waterbury, David Wooster, Charles
Webb ; four from New York, as follows : Colonels James Clinton, James
Holmes, Alexander McDougall, Gosen Van Schaick ; two from New Jersey,
as follows: Colonels William Alexander and William Maxwell; two from Penn-
sylvania, as follows: Colonels John Bull and William Thompson; two from
North Carolina, as follows : Colonels Robert Howe and James Moore ; and
two from South Carolina, as follows : Colonels Christopher Gadsden and
William Moultrie. There was also, besides these fifty-four battalions of in-
fantry, one artillery regiment from Massachusetts under command of
Colonels Joseph Gridley and Henry Knox.

The infantry establishment of 1776 consisted of twenty-seven regiments
of " Continentals " so-called, composed of one regiment from Pennsylvania :
the 1st, under Colonel William Thompson ; three from New Hampshire :
the 2d, Colonel James Reed ; 5th, Colonel John Stark ; 8th, Colonel Enoch
Poor ; sixteen from Massachusetts : the 3d, Colonel Ebenezer Learned ; 4th,
Colonels John Nixon and Thomas Nixon ; 6th, Colonel Asa Whitcomb ;
7th, Colonel William Prescott ; 12th, Colonel Moses Little ; 13th, Colonel
Joseph Reed ; 14th, Colonel John Glover ; 15th, Colonel John Paterson ;
16th, Colonel Paul D. Sargent ; 18th, Colonel Edmund Phinney ; 21st,
Colonel Jonathan Ward ; 23d, Colonel John Bailey ; 24th, Colonel John
Greaton ; 25th, Colonel William Bond ; 26th, Colonel Loammi Baldwin ;
27th, Colonel Israel Hutchinson ; two from Rhode Island : 9th, Colonel
James Varnum ; nth, Colonel Daniel Hitchcock ; and five from Connecti-
cut : 10th, Colonels Samuel H. Parsons and John Tyler; 17th, Colonel
Jedediah Huntington ; 19th, Colonel Charles Webb ; 20th, Colonels Benedict

io The Scotch-Irish Families of America

Arnold and John Durkee ; 22d, Colonel Samuel Wyllys. There were also
an additional regiment from New Hampshire, Colonel Seth Warner's, and
one from Pennsylvania and Maryland, Colonel Nicholas Hausegger's, both
afterwards included in the sixteen additional regiments raised under resolve
of Congress of 27th December, 1776. Besides the Continental Line of 1776,
the following States also furnished Continental troops in that year : New York
Line, five regiments : 1st, Colonels Rudolphus Ritzema and Gosen Van
Schaick ; 2d, Colonels G. Van Schaick and James Clinton ; 3d, Colonels James
Clinton, Rudolphus Ritzema, and Peter Gansevoort ; 4th, Colonels Cornelius
Wynkoop and Henry Livingston ; 5th, Colonel Lewis Dubois ; New Jersey
Line, four regiments : 1st, Colonels William Alexander, William Winds, and
Silas Newcomb ; 2d, Colonels William Maxwell and Israel Shreve ; 3d,
Colonel Elias Dayton ; 4th, Colonels Ephraim Martin and David Brearley
(Lieutenant-Colonel); Pennsylvania Line, seven battalions: 1st, Colonel John
P. De Haas; 2d, Colonels Arthur St.Clair and Joseph Wood; 3d,Colonels John
Shee and Lambert Cadwallader ; 4th, Colonel Anthony Wayne ; 5th, Colonel
Robert Magaw ; 6th, Colonel William Irvine ; 7th, Colonel Samuel Miles,
Rifle Battalion; and five additional regiments : 8th, Colonel ^EneasMackay ;
9th, Colonel James Irvine ; 10th, Colonel Joseph Penrose; nth, Colonel
Richard Humpton ; 12th, Colonel William Cook ; Delaware Line, one regi-
ment: Colonel John Haslet; Maryland Line, seven regiments : 1st, Colonels
William Smallwood and Francis Ware ; 2d, Colonel Thomas Price ; 3d,
Colonel Mordecai Gist ; 4th, Colonel Josiah C. Hall ; 5th, Colonel William
Richardson ; 6th, Colonel Otho H. Williams ; 7th, Colonel John Gunby ;
Virginia Line, fifteen regiments : 1st, Colonel James Reed ; 2d, Colonel
William Woodford ; 3d, Colonels Hugh Mercer and George Weedon ; 4th,
Colonels Adam Stephen and Thomas Elliott ; 5th, Colonels William Peachy
and Charles Scott ; 6th, Colonel Mordecai Buckner ; 7th, Colonels William
Dangerfield and William Crawford ; 8th, Colonel Peter Muhlenberg ; 9th,
Colonels Charles Fleming and Isaac Reed ; 10th, Colonel Edward Stevens ;
nth, Colonel Daniel Morgan ; 12th, Colonel James Wood; 13th, Colonel
William Russell ; 14th, Colonel Charles Lewis ; 15th, Colonel David Mason ;
North Carolina Line, nine regiments : 1st, Colonels James Moore and Francis
Nash ; 2d, Colonels Robert Howe and Alexander Martin ; 3d, Colonel
Jethro Sumner ; 4th, Colonel Thomas Polk ; 5th, Colonel John A. Lilling-
ton ; 6th, Colonel Edward Buncombe ; 7th, Colonel James Hogan ; 8th,
Colonel James Armstrong ; 9th, Colonel Abraham Shephard ; South Caro-
lina Line, five regiments : 1st, Colonels Christopher Gadsden and Charles C.
Pinckney ; 2d, Colonels William Moultrie and Isaac Motte ; 3d, Colonel

William Thompson ; 4th, ; 5th, Colonel Isaac

Huger ; Georgia Line, two regiments : 1st, Colonel Lachlan Mcintosh ; 2d,
Colonel Joseph Habersham. Besides these eighty-nine regiments of infantry
there were two artillery regiments : Colonels Richard Gridley and Henry
Knox's Massachusetts Artillery and Colonel Charles Harrison's Virginia

The Revolution n

Artillery. There was also a regiment of light horse organized in Connecticut
by Colonel Elisha Sheldon.

In 1777 the New Hampshire Line contained three regiments under
Colonels John Stark and Joseph Cilley, Enoch Poor, and Alexander
Scammell ; the Massachusetts Line, sixteen, under Colonels Joseph Vose,
John Bailey, John Greaton, William Shepard, Rufus Putnam, Thomas
Nixon, Ichabod Allen, Michael Jackson, James Wesson, Thomas Marshall,
Ebenezer Francis and Samuel Carlton (Lieutenant-Colonel), Edward
Wigglesworth, Gamaliel Bradford, and Timothy Bigelow ; the Rhode Island
Line, two, under Colonels Christopher Greene and Israel Angell ; the Con-
necticut Line, eight, under Colonels Jedediah Huntington and Josiah Starr,
Charles Webb, Samuel Wyllys, John Durkee, Philip B. Bradley, William
Douglas and Return J. Meigs, Heman Swift, John Chandler ; the New York
Line, five, under Colonels Gosen Van Schaick, Peter Van Cortland, Peter
Gansevoort, Henry B. Livingston, and Lewis Dubois ; the New Jersey Line,
four, under Colonels Mathias Ogden, Israel Shreve, Elias Dayton, and David
Rhea (Lieutenant-Colonel) ; the Pennsylvania Line, thirteen, under Colonels
Edward Hand and James Chambers, John P. De Haas, James Irvine and
Henry Bicker, Joseph Wood and Thomas Craig, Lambert Cadwallader,
Francis Johnston, Robert Magaw, William Irvine, ^Eneas Mackay and
Daniel Brodhead, James Irvine and Anthony J. Morris and Richard But-
ler, Joseph Penrose and James Chambers and Adam Hubley (Lieutenant-
Colonel), Richard Humpton, William Cook and John Bull ; the Delaware
Line, one, under Colonel David Hall ; the Maryland Line, seven, under
Colonels John H. Stone, Thomas Price, Mordecai Gist, Josias Hall, William
Richardson, Otho H. Williams, and John Gunby; the Virginia Line, fifteen,
under Colonels James Reed and James Hendricks, William Woodford and
Alexander Spotswood, George Weedon and Thomas Marshall, Thomas
Elliott and Robert Lawson and Isaac Reed, Charles Scott and Josiah Par-
ker, Mordecai Buckner and John Gibson, William Crawford and Alexander
McClanachan, Peter Muhlenberg and Abraham Bowman and John Neville,
Isaac Reed and George Matthews, Edward Stevens, Daniel Morgan, James
Wood, William Russell, Charles Lewis, and David Mason ; the North Caro-
lina Line, ten, under Colonels Francis Nash and Thomas Clarke, Alexander
Martin and John Patton, Jethro Sumner, Thomas Polk, Edward Buncombe,
Gideon Lamb, James Hogan, James Armstrong, John Williams, and Abra-
ham Shephard ; the South Carolina Line, five, under Colonels Charles C.

Pinckney, Isaac Motte, William Thompson, (4th), and Isaac

Huger (5th) ; and the Georgia Line, four, under Colonels (1st),

Samuel Elbert (2d), (3d), and John White (4th). Lieutenant-
Colonel John Mcintosh commanded one of the Georgia regiments.

In 1778 there were three infantry regiments from New Hampshire under
Colonels Joseph Cilley, Nathan Hale, and Alexander Scammell ; fifteen
from Massachusetts, all but the nth under the same colonels as in 1777 ;

12 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

two from Rhode Island, under Greene and Angell ; eight from Connecticut,
with the same colonels as in 1777, with the exception of the 2d, in which
Zebulon Butler succeeded Charles Webb, and the 8th, in which Giles
Russell succeeded John Chandler ; five from New York, under the colonels
of 1777 ; four from New Jersey, under the colonels of 1777 ; thirteen from
Pennsylvania, under the colonels of 1777, with the exception of the 2d, in
which Walter Stewart succeeded Henry Bicker, the 10th, in which George
Nagel first, and afterwards Richard Humpton, succeeded to the command,
and the nth, which was disbanded and its place taken by Colonel Thomas
Hartley's 4th Additional Continental Regiment ; one from Delaware, under
Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph Vaughan ; seven from Maryland ; fifteen from
Virginia, under Richard Parker (1st), Christopher Febiger (2d), William
Heath (3d), Isaac Reed and John Neville (4th), Josiah Parker and Richard
Russell (5th), John Gibson and John Greene (6th), Alexander McClanachan
and Daniel Morgan (7th), John Neville and James Wood (8th), George
Matthews and John Gibson (9th), John Green and William Davies (10th),
Daniel Morgan and Abraham Buford (nth), James Wood (12th), William
Russell (13th), Charles Lewis and William Davies (14th), and David Mason
and Abraham Buford (15th) ; North Carolina, eight ; South Carolina, five ;
Georgia, four, Lieutenant-Colonel John Mcintosh succeeding to command
of the 3d, where he remained until the close of the war.

In 1779, and thereafter, of the sixteen additional regiments raised under
resolution of Congress of 27th December, 1776, the 2d and 3d (Virginia)
were united under Nathaniel Gist ; the 4th (Pennsylvania) was designated
as the nth Pennsylvania ; the 5th, 6th, and 7th (Massachusetts) were united
under Henry Jackson, and became the 16th Massachusetts in 1780 ; the 8th
and 1 2th (New Jersey) were united under Oliver Spencer, and the remainder
seem mostly to have been continued by their respective States as additional
regiments until 1781. The Massachusetts Line (fifteen regiments) remained
substantially intact until 1781 ; as did those of New Hampshire (three regi-
ments), Rhode Island (two regiments), and Connecticut (eight regiments),
until the end of 1780. Lieutenant-Colonel Isaac Sherman succeeded Giles
Russell in command of the 8th Connecticut in October, 1779 ; and the names
of John Bailey (in 1780), Ichabod Allen (in 1778), Samuel Carlton (in 1778),
and Edward Wigglesworth (in 1779) disappear as commanders of regiments
from Massachusetts. There was no change in the number or commanders
of the five regiments of New York from 1778 to 1781, excepting in the
case of the 5th, where Marinus Willet succeeded Lewis Dubois in December,
1779. In New Jersey, the 4th was probably incorporated with one of the
additional regiments after 1778. In Pennsylvania, Morgan Connor succeeded
William Irvine as commander of the 7th in May, 1779, and he was succeeded
in January, 1780, by Josiah Harmar ; the 12th and 13th were disbanded
before the close of 1778. In Delaware, Joseph Vaughan continued in
command of the one regiment from that State to the close of the war. In

The Revolution 13

Maryland, Otho H. Williams was transferred to the command of the 1st and
John Gunby to that of the 2d, in January, 1781 ; Lieutenant-Colonels John
E. Howard and Thomas Woolford serving successively in the 5th up to Octo-
ber, 1779, under Colonel William Richardson ; and Lieutenant-Colonel N.
Ramsay succeeding Mordecai Gist as commander of the 3d at the beginning
of 1779. In Virginia, the 12th, 13th, 14th, and 15th regiments were disbanded
towards the close of 1778 ; William Davies became colonel of the 1st,
Abraham Buford of the 2d, and John Gibson of the 7th, in February,
1781 ; the 9th, 10th, and nth having also been disbanded. In North Caro-
lina there are no returns from the 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, after 1778. In South
Carolina, the 2d regiment seems to have been under command of Major
Isaac Harleston after December, 1778, the 1st and 3d remaining unchanged
to 1 781 ; there are no returns, lists, or rolls of the 4th to be found, but Isaac
Huger continued as colonel of the 5th to June, 1779, and the regiment
remained in service until 1781. The names of Colonels Francis Marion
and David Hopkins also appear in orders. In Georgia, the 1st, 2d, and 3d
regiments remained in service to the close of the war ; the 4th probably
not later than 1779.

RETURNS OF THE CONTINENTAL LINE REGIMENTS IN 1 776, OFFICERS
AND RANK AND FILE PRESENT AND FIT FOR DUTY, OR ON

COMMAND.

The following returns are from the volumes of the Fifth Series of Ameri-
can Archives :

July, 1776. Monthly return of forces in South Carolina, vol. i., p. 632.

September 27th. Return of Colonel William Smallwood's Maryland
Regiment, vol. ii., p. 567.

October 5th. Return of forces under Washington at Harlem Heights,
vol. ii., p. 907.

November 9th. Return of the forces in Northern Department under
Gates, vol. iii., pp. 701, 702.

December 1st. Return of forces under Washington at Trenton, vol. iii.,

December 22d. Return of the forces under Washington on the banks of
the Delaware, vol. iii., pp. 1401, 1402.

continentals : 8. Enoch Poor, N. H Nov.

total. 9. James Varnum, R. I Oct.

1. Edward Hand, Pa Oct. 5, 367 10. Sam'l H. Parsons, Ct Oct.

2. James Reed, N. H Nov. 9, 221 II. Daniel Hitchcock, R. I. . Oct.

3. Ebenezer Learned, Mass. Oct. 5, 474 12. Moses Little, Mass Oct.

4. Thomas Nixon, Mass Oct. 5, 386 13. Joseph Read, Mass Oct.

5. John Stark, N. H Nov. 9, 258 14. John Glover, Mass Oct.

6. Asa Whitcomb, Mass Nov. 9, 308 15. John Paterson, Mass Nov.

7. William Prescott, Mass. ..Oct. 5, 318 16. Paul D. Sargent, Mass... Oct. 5, 398

274

330

448

312

347

424

384

249

The Scotch-Irish Families of America

17. Jedediah Huntington, Ct.Oct.

18. Edmund Phinney, Mass.. Nov.

19. Charles Webb, Conn Oct.

20. John Durkee, Conn Dec .

21. Jonathan Ward, Mass.... Oct.

22. Samuel Wyllys, Conn Oct.

23. John Bailey, Mass Oct.

24. John Greaton, Mass Nov.

25. William Bond, Mass Nov.

26. Loammi Baldwin, Mass. . .Oct.

27. Israel Hutchinson, Mass. .Oct.
Knox's Artillery Oct.

TOTAL.

5, 230

9. 3oi

5, 428

22, 371

5, 435

5, 391

5, 394

9, 476

9, 164

5, 378

5, 489

5, 341

9,896

NEW YORK LINE :

1. Gosen Van Schaick Nov. 9, 231

2. James Clinton Oct. 5, 253

3. Rudolphus Ritzema Oct. 5, 338

4. Cornelius Wynkoop Nov. 9, 114

5. Lewis Dubois

NEW JERSEY LINE:

1. Silas Newcomb Nov. 9, 165

2. Israel Shreve. , Nov. 9, 225

3. Elias Dayton Nov. 9, 540

4. Ephraim Martin Oct. 5, 277

PENNSYLVANIA LINE :

1. John P. De Haas Nov. 9, 393

2. Joseph Wood Nov. 9, 262

3. Lambert Cadwallader. . . .Oct. 5, 336

4. Anthony Wayne Nov. 9, 394

5. Robert Magaw Oct. 5, 343

6. William Irvine Nov. 9, 277

Miles's Rifle Regiment. . .Oct. 5, 105
Pennsylvania and Maryland

German Regiment, Hau-

segger's (one half) Dec. 22, 197

DELAWARE LINE :

1. John Haslet Oct. 5, 479

MARYLAND LINE :

1. William Smallwood Sept. 27,

2. Maryland and Pennsylvania

German Regiment, Hau-
segger's (one half) Dec. 22,

VIRGINIA LINE :

1. James Read Oct. 5,

2. William Woodford

3. George Weedon Oct. 5,

4. Thomas Elliott Dec. 1,

5. Charles Scott Dec. 1,

6. Mordecai Buckner Dec. 1,

7. William Crawford

8. Peter Muhlenberg July

9. Isaac Reed July 12,

10. Edward Stevens

11. Daniel Morgan

12. James Wood . .

Harrison's Artillery

NORTH CAROLINA LINE:

1. Francis Nash July

2. Alexander Martin July

3. Jethro Sumner July

4. Thomas Polk

5. Edward Buncombe

6. John A. Lillington

7. James Hogan

8. James Armstrong

9. John Williams

3d Company Horse July

SOUTH CAROLINA LINE:

1. Christopher Gadsden July

2. William Moultrie July

3. William Thompson July

4. Artillery

5. Isaac Huger July

6 July

GEORGIA LINE :

1. Lachlan Mcintosh

2. Samuel Elbert

CANADIAN REGIMENTS :

1. James Livingston

2. Moses Hazen

5io
263
184
313

357
306
342

326
392
414

297
299

These returns, complete for all the New England regiments, show a total
number in the Continental Line from that section in the fall of 1776 of about
9500 men, or an average of 353 men to each of the twenty-seven New Eng-
land regiments. The incomplete returns from the fifty-two regiments outside

The Revolution 15

of New England show a total of 11,004 men * n thirty-four regiments, an aver-
age of 323 men in each. There are no returns in the archives of the War
Department from the remaining eighteen regiments, but estimating that
they contained an average of 300 men each, or 5400 in all, it would give a
total effective force of " Regulars " in the American Army, before the loss of
Fort Washington, of about 26,000 men, of whom thirty-seven per cent, were
from New England.

In the collections of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania is a folio
manuscript volume, Abstracts of Muster-Rolls, prepared by direction of
Deputy Muster-Master-General William Bradford, Jr., which contains the
names of the field officers and officers commanding companies, with the
strength of each company and regiment. This invaluable book, the cover of
which is largely composed of muster-rolls dated at Valley Forge, gives the
musters for the months of June, July, August, September, and October of
1778, and January of 1779. The following is the muster for July of 1778, as
it is in a more perfect condition than any of the others.

PARTIAL ROSTER OF OFFICERS UNDER WASHINGTON, JULY, 1 778.

NORTH CAROLINA.

First Regiment. — Colonel, Thomas Clark ; Lieutenant-Colonel, Ma-
bane ; Major, Ashe ; Captains, Tatum, Dixon, Bowman, Read, McRees,
Moore ; commissioned officers, 26 ; staff, 4 ; non-commissioned and privates,
658.

Second Regiment. — Colonel, John Patten ; Lieutenant-Colonel, Harney ;
Major, Murpee ; Captains, Englis, Tenner, Coleman, Hall, Armstrong, Wil-
liams ; commissioned officers, 27 ; staff, 5 ; non-commissioned and privates,
647.

DELAWARE.

Delaware Battalion. — Colonel, David Hall ; Captains, Patten, Anderson,
Leavmonth, Kirkwood, Jaquett ; Lieutenants, Wilson, Powell, Rhodes ;
commissioned officers, 29 ; staff, 5 ; non-commissioned and privates, 351.

AT LARGE.

Lieutenant-Colonel, Aaron Burr ; Captains, Tom, Sandford, Hallet ;
Lieutenants, Dove, Neely ; commissioned officers, 1 1 ; staff, 5 ; non-com-
missioned and privates, SS.

Major, William Harrison ; Captains, Wikoff, Burrows, Forman, Combs ;
commissioned officers, 6 ; staff, 2 ; non-commissioned and privates, 73.

Colonel, Oliver Spencer ; Captains, Broderick, Weatherby, Striker, Edsell,
Pierson, Bommel ; Lieutenants, Meiker, Ogden ; commissioned officers, 14 ;
staff, 4 ; non-commissioned and privates, 157.

r At- Trtc

fcfrTrtK

1 6 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

NEW HAMPSHIRE.

First Regiment. — Colonel, Joseph Cilley ; Captains, Taswell, Scott, Fry,
Hutcheson, Wail, House, Emmerson, Morrell ; commissioned officers, 26 ;
staff, 4 ; non-commissioned and privates, 476.

Second Regiment. — Major, Benjamin Titcomb ; Captains, Drew, Carr,
Norris, Rowell, Clay, Blodgett, Robinson ; Lieutenant, Hardy ; commis-
sioned officers, 27 ; staff, 3 ; non-commissioned and privates, 368.

Third Regiment. — Colonel, Alexander Scammell ; Captains, Livermore,
Gray, Weiser, Fry, Stone, McClary, Bealls, Ellis ; commissioned officers,
26 ; staff, 3 ; non-commissioned and privates, 333.

Independent Corps. — Captain, Selir ; commissioned officers, 5 ; non-
commissioned and privates, 44.

CONNECTICUT.

First Regiment. — Colonel, Heman Swift ; Captains, Woodbridge, Wat-
son, Hill, Converse, Beardsley, Chapman, Hale, Steven ; commissioned
officers, 25 ; staff, 4 ; non-commissioned and privates, 398.

Second Regiment. — Lieutenant-Colonel, Isaac Sherman; Captains,
Parsons, Beebe, Manning, Hinkly, Betts, Walbridge, Mills, Parker ; com-
missioned officers, 16 ; staff, 5 ; non-commissioned and privates, 289.

Third Regiment. — Major, David Sill; Captains, Haney, Troop, Shum-
way, Ely, Perkins, Richards, Darrow, Home ; commissioned officers, 23 ;
staff, 5 ; non-commissioned and privates, 434.

Fourth Regiment. — Colonel, Philip Bradley; Captains, Strong, Lacey,
Wright, Sandford, Prior, Catlin, Childs, Harts ; commissioned officers, 23 ;
staff, 4 ; non-commissioned and privates, 386.

Fifth Regiment. — Major, Joseph Hait ; Captains, Monson, Brown, Rice,
Brigham, Sandford, Smith, Comstock, Mattocks ; commissioned officers, 21 ;
staff, 4 ; non-commissioned and privates, 336.

Sixth Regiment. — Colonel, John Durkee (two companies detached) ;
Captains, Bacon, Fitch, McGuire, Lee, Webb, Bile, Hallam, Harmar ; com-
missioned officers, 26 ; staff, 5 ; non-commissioned and privates, 348.

NEW YORK.

First Regiment. — Colonel, Gosen Van Schaick ; Captains, Finch, Hicks,
Sherwood, Hogkish, Copp, McCracky, Graham, Wendall ; commissioned
officers, 28 ; staff, 5 ; non-commissioned and privates, 454.

Second Regiment. — Colonel, Philip Cortland; Captains, Wright, Ten
Eyk, (late) Graham, Riker, (late) Hallet, Pell, Lounsbery ; Lieutenant,
French ; commissioned officers, 23 ; staff, 4 ; non-commissioned and pri-
vates, 413.

Fourth Regiment. — Colonel, Henry Livingston ; Captains, Titus, Sack-
ett, Gray, Strong, Smith, Walker, Davis ; Lieutenant, Elsworth ; commis-
sioned officers, 20 ; staff, 4 ; non-commissioned and privates, ^8^.

The Revolution 17

RHODE ISLAND.

Second Regiment. — Colonel, Israel Angell ; Captains, C. Olney, S.
Olney, Dexter, Potter, Humphreys, Tew, Hughes, Allen (detachment of
Colonel Green) ; commissioned officers, 27 ; staff, 4 ; non-commissioned
and privates, 469.

PENNSYLVANIA.

First Regiment. — Colonel, James Chambers ; Captains, Grier, Buchanan,
Wilson, Hamilton, Simpson, Doyle, Craig, Wilson, Parr ; Lieutenant,
Hughes ; commissioned officers, 25 ; staff, 2 ; non-commissioned and
privates, 331.

Second Regiment. — Colonel, Walter Stewart; Lieutenant - Colonel,
Henry Miller ; Major, Murray ; Captains, Marshall, Ashmead, Howell,
Bankson, Tolbert, ^Patterson ; commissioned officers, 24 ; staff, 3 ; non-
commissioned and privates, 437.

Third Regiment. — Colonel, Thomas Craig ; Captains, Craig, Moore, S.
Moore, Butler, Rees, Christie, Holling, Epple ; commissioned officers, 12 ;
staff, 4 ; non-commissioned and privates, 204.

Fourth Regiment. — Lieutenant-Colonel, William Butler ; Captains, Con-
nelly, Means, Burd, Williams, McGowan, Fishburn, Scull, Gray ; commis-
sioned officers, 19 ; staff, 3 ; non-commissioned and privates, 217.

Fifth Regiment. — Colonel, Francis Johnston ; Captains, Oldham, Christy,
Smith, McHenry, Gregg, Seely, Potts, Bond, Bartholomew ; commissioned
officers, 24 ; staff, 2 ; non-commissioned and privates, 300.

Sixth Regiment. — Colonel, Josiah Harmar ; Captains, Mouser, Cruise,

McCowan, Waugh, Humph, Bower, ; commissioned officers, 15 ; staff,

5 ; non-commissioned and privates, 194.

Seventh Regiment. — Colonel, William Irvine ; Captains, Bratton, Wil-
son, Alexander, J. Alexander, Parker, Montgomery, Irwin, Miller ; commis-
sioned officers, 26 ; staff, 1 ; non-commissioned and privates, 201.

Ninth Regiment. — Colonel, Richard Butler ; Captains, Bowen, Irwin,
Davis, Henderson, Grant, McClelland ; Lieutenant, Bickham ; commissioned
officers, 21 ; staff, 5 ; non-commissioned and privates, 210.

Tenth Regiment. — Colonel, Richard Humpton ; Lieutenant-Colonel,
Hubley ; Major, Grier ; Captains, Stake, Lang, Sample, Weaver, Stout,
Colhoon ; commissioned officers, 22 ; staff, 3 ; non-commissioned and
privates, 342.

Twelfth Regiment. — (Late William Cook); Captains, McElhatton,
Lincoln, Patterson, Bohn, Miller, Ruby ; commissioned officers, 9 ; staff,
4 ; non-commissioned and privates, 146.

NEW JERSEY.

First Regiment. — Colonel, Mathias Ogden ; Captains, Mead, Piatt, Polhe-
mus, Longstreet, Morrison, Baldwin, Angell ; Lieutenant, D. Hart ;
commissioned officers, 22 ; staff, 5 ; non-commissioned and privates, 532.

1 8 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

Second Regiment. — Colonel, Israel Shreve; Captains, Redding, Hollings-
head, Sparks, Holmes, Cummings, Lucy, one company wanting ; commis-
sioned officers, 20 ; staff, 5 ; non-commissioned and privates, 365.

Third Regiment. — Colonel, Elias Dayton ; Captains, Ballard, Ross,
Anderson, Patterson, Grifford (vacant), Cox, Mott ; commissioned officers,
23 ; staff, 4 ; non-commissioned and privates, 473.

Fourth Regiment. — Colonel, Ephraim Martin ; Captains, Anderson,
Mitchell, Lyon, Forman ; Lieutenants, Johnston, Lloyd, Barton ; commis-
sioned officers, 19 ; staff, 5 ; non-commissioned and privates, 321.

MARYLAND.

First Regiment. — Colonel, John H. Stone ; Captains, Gaither, Rox-
borough, Ewing, Winder ; Lieutenants, Smith, Bruce, Farnadis, Peal ;
commissioned officers, 19 ; staff, 5 ; non-commissioned and privates, 374.

Second Regiment. — Colonel, Thomas Price ; Captains, Anderson, Long,
Davidson, Eccleston, Williams, Dent, Dorsey ; Lieutenant, Hardman ;
commissioned officers, 16 ; staff, 4 ; non-commissioned and privates, 526.

Third Regiment. — Colonel, Mordecai Gist ; Captains, Smith, Gist, Brice,
Griffiths, Marbury, Brooks ; Lieutenants, Armstrong, Deaver, Clagett, Smith ;
commissioned officers, 31 ; staff, 6 ; non-commissioned and privates, 461.

Fourth Regiment. — Colonel, Josiah C. Hall ; Captains, Oldham, Selman,
Lansdale, Goodman, Burgess, Smith, Norwood ; Lieutenants, Reilly, Smith ;
commissioned officers, 23 ; staff, 5 ; non-commissioned and privates, 517.

Fifth Regiment. — Colonel, William Richardson ; Captains, Hawkins,
Hardey, Lynch, Johnston ; Lieutenants, Hamilton, Emory, Hand ; Ensign,
Jones ; commissioned officers, 19 ; staff, 5 ; non-commissioned and privates,

457-

Sixth Regiment. — Colonel, Otho Williams ; Captains, Harris, Hyres,
Dobson, D. Beal, Lawrence, Freeman, Myle, Ghislin ; commissioned officers,
20 ; staff, 5 ; non-commissioned and privates, 391.

Seventh Regiment. — Colonel, John Gunby ; Captains, Jones, Stull,
Spyker, Grost, Morris, Bayley, Anderson ; Lieutenant, Beatty ; commissioned
officers, 23 ; staff, 4 ; non-commissioned and privates, 369.

German Battalion. — Lieutenant-Colonel, Ludwig Weltner ; Captains,
Hubley, Bunner, Boyer, Baltzell ; Lieutenants, Cramer, Rice, Shugart, Boyer,
Meyer ; commissioned officers, 20 ; staff, 4 ; non-commissioned and privates,

385-

VIRGINIA.

First Regiment. — Colonel, Richard Parker ; Captains, Minnes, Conyng-
ham, Lawson, Lewis ; commissioned officers, 22 ; staff, 5 ; non-commissioned
and privates, 243.

Second Regiment. — Colonel, Christian Febiger ; Captains, Harrison, Mc-

The Revolution 19

Calmis, Taylor, W. Taylor, Willis, Upshaw, Holmes, Parker ; commissioned
officers, 23 ; staff, 5 ; non-commissioned and privates, 253.

Third and Seventh Regiments. — Lieutenant-Colonel, William Heath ;
Captains, Young, Hill, Blackwell, Peyton, Lipscomb, Powell, Briscoe ;
Captain-Lieutenant, Baylor ; Lieutenant, Sayres ; commissioned officers,
27 ; staff, 9 ; non-commissioned and privates, 556.

Fourth and Twelfth Regiments. — Colonel, James Wood ; Lieutenant-
Colonel, Nevil ; Major, Clark ; Captains, Lapsley, Still, Wall, Kirkpatrick,
Waggoner, Croghan, Bowyer ; commissioned officers, 30 ; staff, 13 ; non-
commissioned and privates, 752.

Fifth Regiment. — Colonel, Joseph Parks ; Captains, Fowler, Anderson,
Colston, Fauntleroy ; commissioned officers, 23 ; staff, 4 ; non-commissioned
and privates, 182.

Sixth Regiment. — Colonel, John Gibson ; commissioned officers, 17 ;
staff, 5 ; non-commissioned and privates, 85.

Ninth Regiment. — Lieutenant-Colonel, Burgess Ball ; commissioned
officers, 10 ; staff, 1 ; non-commissioned and privates, 53.

Tenth Regiment. — Colonel, John Greene ; Captains, Shelton, West,
Stephens, Mountjoy, Spotswood, Blackwell, Gillison ; Lieutenant, Lamne ;
commissioned officers, 23 ; staff, 4 ; non-commissioned and privates, 380.

Eleventh and Fifteenth Regiments. — Colonel, David Meson ; Captains,
Porterfield, Gregory, Ree, Gray ; Colonel, Cropper ; Major, Wallace ;
Captains, Will, Johnston ; commissioned officers, 26 ; staff, 10 ; non-
commissioned and privates, 584.

Fourteenth Regiment. — Colonel, William Davis ; Captains, Conway,
Reid, Robert, Winston, Overton, Marks, Jones, Thweat ; commissioned
officers, 26 ; staff, 4 ; non-commissioned and privates, 390.

First State Regiment. — Colonel, George Gibson ; Captains, Brown, Hamil-
ton, Ewell, T. Ewell, Shields, Valentine, Armistead, Crump, Hoffler, Nicholas;
commissioned officers, 29 ; staff, 4 ; non-commissioned and privates, 329.

Second State Regiment. — Colonel, Gregory Smith ; Captains, Spiller,
Dudley, Talifero, Quarles, Busse, Garnet, Barnard, Lewis ; commissioned
officers, 26 ; staff, 4 ; non-commissioned and privates, 418.

At Large. — Colonel, John Parke ; Captains, Bicker, Prowel, Keen, Dennis,
Grubb, Redman ; commissioned officers, 16 ; staff, 2 ; non-commissioned
and privates, 89. (Captain McLean's company not mustered.)

At Large. — Colonel, William Grayson ; Captains, Mitchell, Smith,
Triplett, Jones, Moore, McGuire, Smallwood, Willis, (late) Grant ; commis-
sioned officers, 17 ; staff, 3 ; non-commissioned and privates, 189.

MASSACHUSETTS.

First Regiment. — Colonel, Thomas Marshall ; Captains, Wolcut, Soper,
Warner, Marshall, Smith, Thomas, King, Wales ; commissioned officers, 25 ;
staff, 5 ; non-commissioned and privates, 277.

20 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

Second Regiment. — Colonel, G. Bradford ; Captains, Wadsworth, Cooper,
Warner, Marshall, Smith, Thomas, King, Wales ; commissioned officers, 22 ;
staff, 5 ; non-commissioned and privates, 311.

Third Regiment. — Colonel, Benjamin Tupper ; Captains, Thorne, May-
bury, Farnum, White, Wheelwright, Page, Porter, Greenleaf ; commissioned
officers, 30 ; staff, 5 ; non-commissioned and privates, 342.

Fourth Regiment. — Colonel, Samuel Brewer ; Captains, Watkins, Bur-
bank, Jenkins, Merrel, Stones, Chadwick, Donnel, Brewer ; commissioned
officers, 29 ; staff, 5 ; non-commissioned and privates, 313.

Fifth Regiment. — Colonel, James Wesson ; Captains, Pettengill, Child,
Bartlet, Blanchard, Cogswell, Ward, Dix ; commissioned officers, 22 ; staff,
5 ; non-commissioned and privates, 336.

Sixth Regiment. — Colonel, John Bailey ; Captains, Darby, Maxwell,
Drew, Alden, Dunham, Burr, Allen, Warren ; commissioned officers, 24 ;
staff, 5 ; non-commissioned and privates, 384.

Seventh Regiment. — Colonel, Michael Jackson ; Captains, Keith,
Burnam, Brown, Varnum, Wiley, Cleveland, Eb. Cleveland, Bancroft ;
commissioned officers, 25 ; staff, 4; non-commissioned and privates, 315.

His Excellency's Body-Guard. — Captain, Gibbs ; commissioned officers,
4 ; staff, 1 ; non-commissioned and privates, 148.

LIGHT DRAGOONS.

Colonel, Stephen Moylan ; Captains, Moore, Plunket, Hopkins, Heard,
Pike, Gray ; commissioned officers, 15 ; staff, 5 ; non-commissioned and
privates, 187.

Colonel, Theo. Bland ; Captains, Jones, Belfield, Call, Harrison, Dan-
dridge ; commissioned officers, 15 ; staff, 5 ; non-commissioned and
privates, 165.

Colonel, George Blaylor ; Captains, Lewis, Jones, Smith, Cad. Jones ;
commissioned officers, 15 ; staff, 6 ; non-commissioned and privates, 129.

ARTILLERY.

Colonel, Ch. Harrison ; Captains, Brown, , , Dandridge,

Singleton, Carter, Pendleton, Henry, Baylop, Eddens ; commissioned
officers, 42 ; staff, 5 ; non-commissioned and privates, 432.

Colonel, John Crane ; Captains, Burbeck, Eustice, Wills, Trothengha,
Sergeant, Treadwell, Seward ; commissioned officers, 36 ; staff, 2 ; non-
commissioned and privates, 295.,

Colonel, John Lamb ; Captains, Lee, Jnoa. Gibb, Clark, Randall,
Porter, Doughty, Bauman, Mansfield ; commissioned officers, 34 ; staff, — ;
non-commissioned and privates, 203.

The Revolution 21

SUMMARY.

New Hampshire, total officers and men, 1,3*5

Massachusetts " " " " 2,642

Rhode Island " " " " 500

Connecticut " " " " 2,352

Total in New England regiments, .

6,809

New York, total

officers and men,

i,334

New Jersey "

i,794

Pennsylvania ' '

" " "

2,8lt

Delaware ' '

c« « »»

385

Maryland "

3,689

Virginia ' '

X it t*

4,891

North Carolina "

l all State regiments,

1,367

Total ir

23,080

Artillery,

1,049

Light Dragoons,

542

At Large,

358

Grand total 25,029

We can gain considerable knowledge of the American Army in 1778 and
1779 from the reports of Baron Steuben, its Inspector-General, some of
which, printed in Kapp's Life of Steuben, can be profitably repeated at this
time :

The effective strength of the army was divided into divisions, com-
manded by major-generals ; into brigades, commanded by brigadier-gen-
erals ; and into regiments, commanded by colonels. The number of men
in a regiment was fixed by Congress, as well as in a company — so many
infantry, cavalry, and artillery. But the eternal ebb and flow of men en-
gaged for three, six, and nine months, who went and came every day, ren-
dered it impossible to have either a regiment or a company complete ; and
the words company, regiment, brigade, and division were so vague that they
did not convey any idea upon which to form a calculation, either of a par-
ticular corps or of the army in general. They were so unequal in their
number, that it would have been impossible to execute any manceuvers.
Sometimes a regiment was stronger than a brigade. I have seen a regiment
consisting of thirty men, and a company of one corporal ! Nothing was so
difficult, and often so impossible, as to get a correct list of the State or a re-
turn of any company, regiment, or corps. . . . General Knox assured
me that, previous to the establishment of my department, there never was a
campaign in which the military magazines did not furnish from five thou-
sand to eight thousand muskets to replace those which were lost in the way
I have described above. The loss of bayonets was still greater. The
American soldier, never having used this arm, had no faith in it, and never
used it but to roast his beefsteak, and indeed, often left it at home. This is
not astonishing when it is considered that a majority of the States engaged
their soldiers for from six to nine months. Each man who went away took

22 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

his musket with him, and his successor received another from the public
store. No captain kept a book. Accounts were never furnished nor re-
quired. As our army is, thank God, little subject to desertion, I venture to
say that during an entire campaign there have not been twenty muskets lost
since my system came into force. It was the same with the pouches and other
accoutrements, and I do not believe that I exaggerate when I state that my
arrangements have saved the United States at least eight hundred thousand
French livres a year.

The arms at Valley Forge were in a horrible condition, covered with
rust, half of them without bayonets, many from which a single shot could
not be fired. The pouches were quite as bad as the arms. A great many
of the men had tin boxes instead of pouches, others had cow-horns ; and
muskets, carbines, fowling-pieces, and rifles were to be seen in the same
company.

The description of the dress is most easily given. The men were liter-
ally naked, some of them in the fullest extent of the word. The officers who
had coats, had them of every color and make. I saw officers, at a grand
parade at Valley Forge, mounting guard in a sort of dressing gown, made
of an old blanket or woollen bed-cover. With regard to their military dis-
cipline, I may safely say no such thing existed. In the first place there was
no regular formation. A so-called regiment was formed of three platoons,
another of five, eight, nine, and the Canadian regiment of twenty-one. The
formation of the regiments was as varied as their mode of drill, which only
consisted of the manual exercise. Each colonel had a system of his own,
the one according to the English, the other according to the Prussian or
French style. There was only one thing in which they were uniform, and
that was the way of marching in the manceuvers and on the line of march.
They all adopted the mode of marching in files used by the Indians.

I have not been able to find any correct statement of the strength of the
southern army 10 ; but without doing injustice to the South, we may reason-
ably suppose that matters stood much worse there than in the North, because
the South was more divided in itself, and less enthusiastic for the cause of
Independence. On the other hand, we find, in the Steuben Papers, the
strength of the principal army exactly stated.

General Washington's army, at the beginning of the campaign of 1779,
consisted of six divisions, of two brigades each, numbering in all 11,067
men — forty-six regiments. These regiments had from one hundred and
fifty (Seventh Virginia) to four hundred and thirty (Sixth Connecticut)
rank and file. Steuben selected from each regiment, in proportion to its
strength, a number of picked men, to form eight light-infantry companies,
and then, where they were too weak, united the regiments into one battalion.
Thus, the whole army consisted of thirty-five battalions (9,755 men), making
two hundred and seventy-eight the average strength of each battalion, and
the eight companies of light infantry before mentioned in addition. Each
of the latter had one field officer, four captains, eight subalterns, twelve
sergeants, and 164 rank and file. The divisions were severally known as
the Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and
North Carolina.

The Revolution 23

FORMATION OF THE ARMY COMMANDED BY HIS EXCELLENCY GENERAL
WASHINGTON, FOR THE BEGINNING OF THE PRESENT
CAMPAIGN [1779]-

VIRGINIA.

First Brigade, Woolford [Woodford?] — 2d Regiment, 175; 5th and
nth, 223 ; 8th, 182 ; 7th, 150 ; 3d and 4th, 245. Total, 975.

Second Brigade, Muhlenberg. — 6th, 168 ; 2d State, 230 ; Gist's, 153 ;
1st State, 209 ; 1st and 10th, 270. Total, 1030.

MARYLAND AND DELAWARE.

First Brigade, Smallwood. — 1st, 260 ; 5th, 220 ; 7th, 230 ; 3d, 270.
Total, 980.

Second Brigade, Guest [M. Gist]. — 2d, 280; 6th, 230; 4th, 320;
Delaware, 220. Total, 1050.

PENNSYLVANIA.

First Brigade, Irvine. — 1st, 210 ; 7th, 170 ; 10th, 240 ; 2d, 340. Total,
960.

Second Brigade, Johnson. — 3d, 260; 6th, 180; 9th, 180; 5th, 240.
Total, 860.

CONNECTICUT.

First Brigade, Huntington. — 4th, 184; 8th, 232 ; 6th, 430 ; 3d, $67;*
Total, 1 2 13.

Second Brigade, Parsons. — 1st, 289 ; 5th, 220 ; 2d, 206 ; 7th, 295. Total,.
1010.

MASSACHUSETTS.

First Brigade, Nixon. — 2d, 224 ; 5th, 263 ; 4th, 313. Total, 800.
Second Brigade, Learned. — 1st, 277 ; 7th, 212 ; 8th, 248. Total, 737.
Pettason's [Paterson's] Brigade. — 9th, 192 ; 12th, 184 ; 10th, 179 ; 15th,
260. Total, 815.

NORTH CAROLINA.

1st, 328 ; 2d, 298. Total, 626.

Return of the number of men enlisted during the war, and for shorter
periods in the army under the immediate command of His Excellency
General Washington, December, 1779 :

1st Maryland Brigade 1416

*d " " 1497

1st Pennsylvania 12s *

2d " " ,050

New Jersey " 1297

New York " 1267

1st Connecticut " 1680

*d , " " 1367

Hand's " IO S3

Stark's " 12 10

Total, 13,070

24 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

It would appear from the figures given in the preceding pages that the
New England element in the American Army, subsequent to the withdrawal
of the British from New England territory, was under forty per cent, of the
whole native force, or but little more than proportionate to its relative pop-
ulation. In like manner, it appears that the leaders of the army were no
less representative of its true constitution than the rank and file. Of Wash-
ington's twelve generals at the beginning of the war, Nathan ael Greene,
William Heath, Seth Pomeroy, Israel Putnam, Joseph Spencer, John Sulli-
van, John Thomas, Artemas Ward, and David Wooster were New Eng-
land men — Charles Lee of Virginia, and Richard Montgomery and Philip
Schuyler of New York completing the staff. But the majority of the New
Englanders dropped out of sight before the conflict was fairly begun ;
and besides Greene, the only general officers from that section who
achieved renown during the progress of the war were the Scotch-Irishmen,
Henry Knox and John Stark, and the Irishman, John Sullivan. The New
England general in command of the forces on Long Island seems to have
been relegated mainly to garrison duty after the retreat from that place, and
Benjamin Lincoln's campaign in the South resulted most disastrously.
When the army was discharged in 1783, we find that among the fifteen
major-generals, New England was represented by five — Greene, Heath,
Putnam, Lincoln, and Knox. Of the remainder, there were, of Scottish
descent, besides Knox : William Alexander (N. J.), Alexander McDougall
(N. Y.), Arthur St. Clair (Pa.) ; of English descent, in addition to the four
first named : Horatio Gates (Va.), Robert Howe (N. C), William Small-
wood (Md.), and William Moultrie (?) (S. C); of French birth: Lafayette and
Du Portail ; and of German: Steuben. Of the twenty-two brigadiers at that
time — six from New England — there were of Scottish blood : William Irvine
(Pa.), Lachlan Mcintosh (Ga.), John Paterson (Mass.), Charles Scott (Va.),
John Stark (N. H.); of Anglo-Scottish: George Clinton (N. Y.), James
Clinton (N. Y.), Edward Hand (Pa.), Anthony Wayne (Pa.); of French :
Isaac Huger (S. C); of German : Johann De Kalb (France), Peter Muh-
lenberg (Va.); of Welsh: Daniel Morgan (Va.), O. H. Williams (Md.);
and of English : Elias Dayton (N. J.), Mordecai Gist (Md.), John Greaton
(Mass.), Moses Hazen (Mass.), Jedediah Huntington (Conn.), Rufus Put-
nam (Mass.), Jethro Sumner (?) (S. C), George Weedon (Va.). Out of the
thirty-seven names on these two lists of 1783, eleven were from New Eng-
land ; and of the total list about one half were of English descent, while
two fifths were to a large degree Celtic in their descent.

Proceeding to analyze the list of the other generals created during the
Revolutionary period, we further find as of probable Scottish blood : John
Armstrong (Pa.), Francis Barber (N. J.), William Campbell (Va.), George
Rogers Clark " (Va.), William Davidson (N. C), John Douglas (Conn.),
James Ewing (Pa.), Robert Lawson (Va.), Andrew Lewis (Va.), William
Maxwell (N. J.), Hugh Mercer (Va.), James Moore (N. C), John Nixon

The Revolution 25

(Pa.), Andrew Pickens (S. C), James Potter (Pa.), Joseph Reed (Pa.),
Griffith Rutherford (N. C), John Morin Scott (N. Y.), Adam Stephen
(Va.), Thomas Sumter (?) (Va.), William Thompson (Pa)., a total of twenty-
one ; of Welsh blood : John Cadwallader (Pa.), William Davies (Va.), James
Varnum (Mass.); of French : P. H. De Barre (France), Philip De Coudray
(France), A. R. De Fermoy (France), John P. De Haas (Pa., Holland-
French), Francis Marion (S. C); of Dutch: Nicholas Herkimer (N. Y.),
Abraham Ten Broeck (N. Y.), Philip Van Cortlandt (N. Y.), Gosen Van
Schaick (N. Y.); of German : Frederic W. de Woedtke ; of Irish : Thomas
Conway (Ireland), James Hogan (N. C.), Stephen Moylan (Pa.); of Polish :
Casimir Pulaski (Poland); and of probable English descent: Benedict
Arnold (Conn.), William Blount (N. C), Philemon Dickinson (N. J.),
Samuel Elbert (Ga.), John Fellows (Mass.), Joseph Frye (Mass.), John
Frost (Maine), Christopher Gadsden (S. C), John Glover (Mass.), John
Lacey (Pa.), Ebenezer Learned (Mass.), Thomas Mifflin (Pa.), Francis
Nash (?) (Va.), William North (Maine), Samuel Parsons (Conn.), Enoch
Poor (N. H.), James Reed (N. H.), Gold S. Silliman (Conn.), Edward
Stevens (Va.), James Wadsworth (Conn.), Joseph Warren (Mass.), John
Whitcomb (Mass.), James Wilkinson (Md.), William Woodford (Va.),
Nathaniel Woodhull (N. Y.), a total of twenty-five ; making with the other
names mentioned in this paragraph a list of sixty-three names in all, less
than half of which are English, and about one fourth from New England.

Taking all the lists together, we have an aggregate of one hundred and
nine names, which include practically all of Washington's generals ; and it
appears that but thirty-one of them came from the New England States, and
that less than half were of English descent — about sixty being non-English.

An examination of the lists of colonels, captains, lieutenants, and minor
commissioned officers will show a like distribution. The names of 2310 of
those who were in the Continental service are printed in the American State
Papers, vol. iii., Military Affairs, pp. 529 to 559, under the heading, " Sched-
ule of the names and rank of most of the officers of the War of Indepen-
dence, chiefly returned as belonging to the lines or corps of the thirteen
original United States soon after said army was disbanded in 1783, arranged
alphabetically and numbered distinctly according to the States."

This schedule is prefaced by the following communication to Congress
from the Secretary of War :

NINETEENTH CONGRESS : SECOND SESSION : 342. STATEMENT OF THE NAMES
AND RANK OF THE OFFICERS OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR, &C.

Communicated to the House of Representatives, January 10, 1827.

Department of War, January 10, 1827.
Sir :

In compliance with the resolution of the House of Representatives
of the 8th instant, directing the Secretary of War " to report to their House

26 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

the name and rank of each officer of the Continental army who served to
the end of the Revolutionary War, and who were by the resolution of Con-
gress entitled to half-pay during life ; and also, as nearly as practicable, the
names of the remaining officers and their places of residence," I transmit
herewith a list of the names and rank of the officers of the Revolutionary
War, as complete as the records of the Department will furnish, with the
exception of foreign officers. There is no evidence in the Department to
show which of them " were by the resolution of Congress entitled to half-
pay during life," nor is it known which of them are still living, with their
places of residence, except those who are on the pension list.
Very respectfully, etc.,

James Barbour, Secretary of War.
To the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

The list of names sent with this report shows the State to which each
officer is credited, and the regiment to which he belonged. In the final
years of the war, with very few exceptions, the officers commanded troops
raised by their own States. Of these 2310 officers, 79 were from New
Hampshire, 445 from Massachusetts, 44 from Rhode Island, 254 from Con-
necticut, 200 from New York, 92 from New Jersey, 421 from Pennsylvania,
32 from Delaware, 166 from Maryland, 337 from Virginia, 99 from North
Carolina, 93 from South Carolina, and 48 from Georgia. Less than forty per
cent, of these were from New England.

It will be seen from the heading of the list that these officers principally
belonged to the Continental Army. Militia officers are not, as a rule, men-
tioned, unless they also served in the Continental or State lines. As the
most of the troops of the Southern States did not belong to the Conti-
nental establishment, but were simply State militiamen, their officers would
have no place in this list.

NOTES TO CHAPTER I.

1 As early as 1763-64 we find them mentioned by the name " Scotch-Irish " in the Legis-
lature of the Province of Pennsylvania, when one Nathaniel Grubb, a member of the
Assembly from Chester County so denominated the Paxtang settlers. These people had
petitioned the Quaker government in vain for protection from the murderous attacks of the
savages ; and finally, despairing of help from that source, some of them took the law into
their own hands and made an indiscriminate slaughter of such Indians as they could find
in their neighborhood. In denouncing this action to his fellow Quakers, Grubb referred to
these settlers as " a pack of insignificant Scotch-Irish, who, if they were all killed, could well
enough be spared." (See, William H. Egle, History of Dauphin County, Penna.,p. 60.)

Rev. John Elder, also, in a letter written from Paxtang, under date of February 7,
1764, to Col. Edward Shippen, of Lancaster, relative to the killing of the Conestoga
Indians in December, 1763, says : " The Presbyterians, who are the most numerous I
imagine of any Denomination in the Province, are enraged at their being charged in bulk
with these facts, under the name of Scotch-Irish, and other ill-natured titles, and that the
killing of the Conestegoe Indians is compared to the Irish massacres and reckoned the most
barbarous of either, so that things are grown to that pitch now that the country seems
determined that no Indian Treaties shall be held, or savages maintained at the expense of
the Province, unless his Majestie's pleasure on these heads is well known ; for I understand,

The Revolution 27

to my great Satisfaction that amidst our great confusions there are none even of the most
warm and furious tempers, but what are firmly attached to his Majesty, and would cheer-
fully risk their lives to promote his service."

Edmund Burke, writing in 1757, says : "The number of white people in Virginia is
between sixty and seventy thousand ; and they are growing every day more numerous, by the
migration of the Irish, who, not succeeding so well in Pennsylvania as the more frugal and
industrious Germans, sell their lands in that province to the latter, and take up new ground
in the remote countries in Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina. These are chiefly
Presbyterians from the Northern part of Ireland, who in America are generally called
Scotch-Irish." — European Settlements in America, vol. ii., p. 216.

8 Although they came to this land from Ireland, where their ancestors had a century
before planted themselves, yet they retained unmixed the national Scotch character.
Nothing sooner offended them than to be called Irish. Their antipathy to this appellation
had its origin in the hostility existing in Ireland between the Celtic race, the native Irish,
and the English and Scotch colonists. Mr. Belknap quotes from a letter of Rev. James
MacGregor to Governor Shute, in which he says: "We are surprised to hear ourselves
termed Irish people, when we so frequently ventured our all for the British crown and
liberties against the Irish Papists and gave all tests of our loyalty which the government of
Ireland required, and are always ready to do the same when required." — Parker's History
of Londonderry, New Hampshire, p. 68.

3 As against the more or less willing adoption of the name "Scotch-Irish" in the
middle of the last century we may contrast the following citations, gathered by Mr. Thomas
Hamilton Murray, a more recent emigrant from Ireland, who argues that a man born in a
stable must be a horse. Mr. Murray says :

"The colonial records repeatedly mention the 'Irish,' not the Scotch-Irish. Cotton
Mather, in a sermon in 1700, says : ' At length it was proposed that a colony of Irish might
be sent over to check the growth of this country.' . . . The party of immigrants remaining
at Falmouth, Me., over winter, and which later settled in Londonderry, N. H., were alluded
to in the records of the general court as ' poor Irish.'

" On St. Patrick's day, the Irish of Portsmouth, N. H., instituted St. Patrick's Lodge
of Masons. Later we find Stark's Rangers at Fort Edward requesting an extra supply of
grog so as to properly observe the anniversary of St. Patrick.

" Marmion's Maritime Ports of Ireland states that ' Irish families ' settled Londonderry,
N. H. Spencer declares that ' the manufacture of linen was considerably increased by the
coming of Irish immigrants.' In 1723, says Condon ' a colony of Irish settled in Maine.'
Moore, in his sketch of Concord, N. H., pays tribute to the ' Irish settlers' in that section
of New England. McGee speaks of * the Irish settlement of Belfast,' Me. The same
author likewise declares that ' Irish families also settled at Palmer and Worcester, Mass.'
Cullen describes the arrival at Boston in 1717 of Capt. Robert Temple, 'with a number of
Irish Protestants.' Capt. Temple was, in 1740, elected to the Charitable Irish Society.
In another place Cullen alludes to ' the Irish spinners and weavers, who landed in Boston
in the earlier part of the 18th century.' . . .

"Among those who have been wrongly claimed [as Scotch-Irish] are Carroll, Sullivan,
. . . Moylan, Wayne, Barry, . . and . . . of a later period, . . . Meade and
Sheridan. . . .

" Of the Revolutionary heroes mentioned above, Charles Carroll was of old Irish stock.
His cousin, John Carroll, was a Roman Catholic clergyman, a Jesuit, a patriot, a bishop,
and archbishop. Daniel Carroll was another sterling patriot.

"The Sullivans, James and John, were also of ancient Irish stock, the name having
been O'Sullivan even in their father's time.

" Gen. Knox and his father were both members of the Charitable Irish Society, of
Boston. The General also belonged to the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, Philadelphia.

28 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

' ' Moylan was a brother of the Roman Catholic bishop of Cork. . . .

" Wayne was of Irish [English] descent and proud of his Irish lineage. He was an
active member of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick.

" Barry was an Irish Roman Catholic."

(T. H. Murray, in Appendix to Samuel Swett Green's monograph on The Scotch-
Irish in America, read before the American Antiquarian Society in Boston, April 24, 1895.)

4 The members of this organization were as follows : Isaac All, John Barclay, Thomas
Barclay, William Barclay, Commodore John Barry, Thomas Batt, Colonel Ephraim Blaine,
John Bleakly, William Bourke, Dr. Robert Boyd, Hugh Boyle, John Boyle, John Brown,
William Brown, General Richard Butler, Andrew Caldwell, David Caldwell, James Cald-
well, John Caldwell, Samuel Caldwell, William Caldwell, George Campbell, James
Campbell, Samuel Carson, Daniel Clark, Dr. John Cochran, James Collins, John Connor,
William Constable, D. H. Conyngham, James Crawford, George Davis, Sharp Delany, John
Donnaldson, John Dunlap, William Erskine, Thomas Fitzsimmons, Tench Francis, Turbutt
Francis, Benjamin Fuller, George Fullerton, Archibald Gamble, Robert Glen, Robert
Gray, John Greene, General Edward Hand, William Hamilton, James Hawthorn, Charles
Heatly, George Henry, Alexander Holmes, Hugh Holmes, George Hughes, Genl. William
Irvine, Francis Johnston, Genl. Henry Knox, George Latimer, Thomas Lea, John Leamy,
James Logan, Ulysses Lynch, Blair M'Clenachan, George Meade, James Mease, John
Mease, Matthew Mease, John Mitchell, John Mitchell, Jr., Randle Mitchell, William Mit-
chell, Hugh Moore, Major James Moore, Patrick Moore, Col. Thomas Moore, James
Moylan, Jasper Moylan, John Moylan, Genl. Stephen Moylan, John Murray, John M.
Nesbitt, Alexander Nesbitt, Francis Nichols, John Nixon, Michael Morgan O'Brien, John
Patton, Capt. John Patterson, Oliver Pollock, Robert Rainy, Thomas Read, Genl. Thomas
Robinson, John Shee, Hugh Shiell, Charles Stewart, Walter Stewart, William Thompson,
George Washington (an adopted member), Genl. Anthony Wayne, Francis West, Jr., John
West, William West, William West, Jr., John White, Joseph Wilson. The Moylans, Barry,
Fitzsimmons, Leamy, and Meade, all brave and active patriots, are said to have been
Catholic Irish, and probably also were Bourke, Connor, Lynch, O'Brien, and Shee. The
others, with very few exceptions, were Scotch-Irish. When Robert Morris organized the
Bank of Pennsylvania in 1780 for the purpose of furnishing funds to keep the army in food,
more than one third of its ,£300,000 capital was subscribed for and paid in by twenty-seven
members of this Society. The society is still in existence.

5 Two notable exceptions were those of the settlement of Luzerne County (Wyo-
ming), Penna., by 117 colonists from Connecticut in 1762-63 and by 196 in 1769; and
the settlement at Marietta, Ohio, of the Massachusetts colonists in 1788. Small col-
onies were also planted in Maryland, South Carolina, and Georgia by settlers from New
England.

6 More than sixty years ago Dr. Charles Hodge found occasion to rebuke an indiscreet
exhibition of this same spirit in connection with the early church history of the country. His
remarks, at that time so pertinent to the point in question, have ever since been so generally
applicable to the majority of New England attempts at American history that they cannot
be said to have lost any of their force since 1839. He says {Constitutional History of the
Presbyterian Church, vol. i., pp. 60, 61) :

•• Nothing but a sectional vanity little less than insane, could lead to the assertion that
Congregationalism was the basis of Presbyterianism in this country, and that the Presbyterian
Church never would have had an existence, except in name, had not the Congregationalists
come among us from New England. The number of Puritans who settled in New England
was about twenty-one thousand. If it be admitted that three-fourths of these were Congre-
gationalists, (which is a large admission,) it gives between fifteen and sixteen thousand.
The Presbyterian emigrants who came to this country by the middle of the last century,
were between one and two hundred thousand. Those from Ireland alone, imperfect as

The Revolution 29

are the records of emigration, could not have been less than fifty thousand, and probably
were far more numerous. . . .

"It is to be remembered that the emigration of New England men westward did
not take place, to any great extent, until after the Revolutionary War ; that is, until nearly
three-fourths of a century after the Presbyterian Church was founded and widely extended.
At that time western New York, Ohio, and the still more remote west was a wilderness.
Leaving that region out of view, what would be even now the influence of New England
men in the Presbyterian Church ? Yet it is very common to hear those who formed a mere
handful of the original materials of the Church, speaking of all others as foreigners and
intruders. Such representations would be offensive from their injustice, were it not for their
absurdity. Suppose the few (and they were comparatively very few) Congregationalists
of East Jersey had refused to associate with their Dutch and Scotch Presbyterian neighbours,
what great difference would it have made ? Must the thousands of Presbyterians already in
the country, and the still more numerous thousands annually arriving, have ceased to exist ?
Are those few Congregationalists the fathers of us all ? The truth is, it was not until a
much later period that the great influx of Congregationalists into our Church took place,
though they are now disposed to regard the descendants of its founders as holding their
places in the Church of their fathers only by sufferance."

7 The falsity of these tables was first clearly pointed out by Mr. Justin Winsor, in an
address delivered before the Historical Society of Massachusetts, in January, 1886. See
Proceedings of that Society, Second Series, vol. ii., pp. 204-207.

8 The backwoodsmen were engaged in a threefold contest. In the first place, they were
occasionally, but not often, opposed to the hired British and German soldiers of a foreign
king. Next, they were engaged in a fierce civil war with the Tories of their own number.
Finally, they were pitted against the Indians, in the ceaseless border struggle of a rude,
vigorous civilization to overcome an inevitably hostile savagery. The regular British armies,
marching to and fro in the course of their long campaigns on the seaboard, rarely went far
enough back to threaten the frontiersmen ; the latter had to do chiefly with Tories led by
British chiefs, and with Indians instigated by British agents. — Roosevelt, Winning of the

West, vol. i., p. 276.

Dr. Thomas Smythe gives a careful statement of the activity of Presbyterian elders in
the War of Independence in the province of South Carolina : "The battles of the 'Cow-
pens,' of ' King's Mountain,' and also the severe skirmish known as ' Huck's Defeat,'
are among the most celebrated in this State as giving a turning-point to the contests of the
Revolution. General Morgan, who commanded at the Cowpens, was a Presbyterian
elder. . . . General Pickens . . . was also a Presbyterian elder, and nearly
all under their command were Presbyterians. In the battle of King's Mountain, Colonel
Campbell, Colonel James Williams (who fell in action), Colonel Cleaveland, Colonel Shelby,
and Colonel Sevier were all Presbyterian elders ; and the body of their troops were col-
lected from Presbyterian settlements. At Huck's Defeat, in York, Colonel Bratton and Major
Dickson were both elders in the Presbyterian Church. Major Samuel Morrow, who was with
Colonel Sumter in four engagements, and at King's Mountain, Blackstock, and other battles,
and whose home was in the army till the termination of hostilities, was for about fifty years
a ruling elder in the Presbyterian Church. It may also be mentioned in this connection
that Marion, Huger, and other distinguished men of Revolutionary memory were of
Huguenot . . . descent." — Thomas Smythe, Presbyterianism, the Revolution, the Declara-
tion, and the Constitution, pp. 32 sea.

9 Examination of Richard Penn before Parliament, November 1, 1775 :
" Q. What force has the Province of Pennsylvania received? A. When I left Pennsyl-
vania they had 20,000 men in arms, imbodied but not in pay ; and 4500 men since raised.
Q. What were these 20,000 ; militia, or what? A. They were volunteers throughout the
Province. Q. What were the 4500 ? A. They were Minute-men, when upon service in pay."

30 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

10 Greene's army at the battle of Guilford Court-House (N. C.), March 15, 1781, con-
sisted of 4243 foot and 201 cavalry. It was composed of Huger's brigade of Virginia Con-
tinentals, 778 ; Williams's Maryland brigade and a company from Delaware, 630 ; infantry
of Lee's partisan legion, 82 ; total of Continentals, 1490. There were also 1060 North
Carolina militia, under Brigadier-Generals Butler and Eaton ; 1693 militia from Augusta
and Rockbridge counties, Virginia, under Generals Stevens and Lawson ; in all, 2753.
Washington's light dragoons, 86 ; Lee's dragoons, 75 ; Marquis de Bretagne's horse, 40 ;
total, 201.

11 Mr. Reuben G. Thwaites, of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, writes to the
author of this paper as follows: "According to all family traditions, John Clark, great-
grandfather of George Rogers Clark, came to Virginia, in 1630, from the southwest part of
Scotland. According to one tradition, a few years later, he visited friends in Maryland,
and married there ' a red-haired Scotch woman.' George Rogers Clark himself had ' sandy '
hair ; another tradition has it that the woman was a Dane. Their one son, William-John,
died early, leaving two sons, John (2) and Jonathan. Jonathan was a bachelor, and left his
estate to his brother's son, John (3). One of William-John's daughters married a Scotch
settler, McCloud, and their daughter married John Rogers, the father of the Ann Rogers
who married John Clark (4), her cousin, and thus she became the mother of George Rogers
Clark. So George Rogers Clark had Scotch ancestry on both sides of the house." — Samuel
Swett Green, The Scotch-Irish in America.

CHAPTER II

THE SCOTCH-IRISH AND THE CONSTITUTION

LET us now examine the composition of the Continental Congress of
1776, the fifty-six members of which were the signers of the Declara-
tion. So far as can at this time be ascertained, that body consisted of
thirty-four of English descent, as follows : John Adams (Mass.), Samuel
Adams (Mass.), Josiah Bartlett (N. H.), Carter Braxton (Va.), Samuel
Chase (Md.), George Clymer (Pa.), William Ellery (R. I.), Benjamin
Franklin (Pa.), Elbridge Gerry (Mass.), Lyman Hall (Ga.), John Hancock
(Mass.), Benjamin Harrison (Va.), Thomas Heyward, Jr. (S. C), Joseph
Hewes (N. C), Stephen Hopkins (R. I.), Francis Hopkinson (N. J.),
Samuel Huntington (Conn.), F. L. Lee (Va.), R. H. Lee (Va.), Arthur
Middleton (S. C), Robert Morris (Pa.), Lewis Morris (N. Y.), William
Paca (Md.), Robert Treat Paine (Mass.), John Penn (N. C), Caesar Rod-
ney (Del.), Benjamin Rush (Pa.), Roger Sherman (Conn.), Richard Stock-
ton (?) (N. J.), Thomas Stone (Md.), George Walton (Ga.), William Whipple
(N. H.), Oliver Wolcott (Conn.), George Wythe (Va.) ; eleven of Scottish:
William Hooper (N. C), Philip Livingston (N. Y.), Thomas McKean (Pa.),
Thomas Nelson, Jr. (Va.), George Ross (Del.), Edward Rutledge (S. C),
James Smith (Pa.), George Taylor (Pa.), Matthew Thornton (N. H.), James
Wilson (Pa.), John Witherspoon (N. J.) ; five of Welsh : William Floyd
(N. Y.), Button Gwinnett (?) (Ga.), Thomas Jefferson (Va.), Francis Lewis
(N. Y.), William Williams (Conn.) ; one of Swedish : John Morton (Pa.);
two of Irish: Charles Carroll (Md.), Thomas Lynch, Jr. (S. C). The father
of George Read (Del.) was born in Ireland and his mother in Wales ;
Abraham Clark, of Elizabethtown, and John Hart, of Hunterdon County,
both from strong Scottish settlements in New Jersey, are difficult to place.

On the whole, the Continental Congress of 1776 was a fairly representa-
tive body, being two thirds English and one third non-English ; although it
may be observed that the Dutch of New York, the Germans of Pennsyl-
vania, and the Huguenots of the South are not represented by members of
their own races. The first two classes, however, were generally, and to a con-
siderable degree erroneously, regarded as unfavorable to the American cause.

A similar examination of the membership of the Constitutional conven-
tion, which completed its labors at Philadelphia, September 17, 1787, shows
a like mixed composition to that of the Continental Congress.

Of the fifty-four members representing the colonies in that body, we
find that, besides Washington, probably twenty-nine of them were English,
as follows : Abraham Baldwin (Ga.), Richard Bassett (Del.), Gunning
Bedford, Jr. (Del.), William Blount (N. C), David Brearly (N. J.), George

32 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

Clymer (Pa.), William R. Davie (N. C), Jonathan Dayton (N. J.), John
Dickinson (Del.), Oliver Ellsworth (Conn.), William Few (Ga.), Benjamin
Franklin (Pa.), Elbridge Gerry (Mass.), Nicholas Gilman (N. H.), Nathaniel
Gorham (Mass.), Jared Ingersoll (Pa.), William Johnson (Conn.), Rufus
King (Mass.), John Langdon (N. H.), George Mason (Va.), Thomas
Mifflin (Pa.), Gouverneur Morris (Pa.), Robert Morris (Pa.), William Pierce
(Ga.), Charles Pinckney (S. C), Charles C. Pinckney (S. C), Roger Sher-
man (Conn.), Caleb Strong (Mass.), George Wythe (Va.) ; twelve were
Scottish : John Blair (Va.), Alexander Hamilton (N. Y.), W. Churchill
Houston (N. J.), William Livingston (N. J.), James McClurg (Va.), James
McHenry (Md.), John Mercer (Md.), William Paterson (N. J.), John Rut-
ledge (S. C), Richard Dobbs Spaight (?)( N. C), James Wilson (Pa.), Hugh
Williamson (N. C.) ; three were Irish : Pierce Butler (S. C), Daniel Car-
roll (Md.), Thomas Fitzsimmons (Pa.) ; two French : Daniel Jenifer (?)
(Md.), Henry Laurens (S. C.) ; one German : Jacob Broom (?) (Del.) ;
George Read (Del.) was Welsh-English ; James Madison's ancestry was
mixed — English, Welsh, and Scottish, and that of Edmund Randolph
(Va.) English and Scottish ; John Lansing (N. Y.) and Robert Yates
(N. Y.) were Dutch, and the descent of Luther Martin (Md.) is uncertain.

When the independent State governments were formed after the adoption
of the Declaration of Independence, and their governors chosen, then, in
the words of the ablest and most recent historian of the Puritans, 1 " the
Scotch-Irish gave to New York her first governor, George Clinton. . . . To
Delaware they gave her first governor, John MacKinley. To Pennsylvania
they gave her war governor, Thomas McKean, one of the signers of the
Declaration of Independence. To New Jersey Scotland gave her war
governor, William Livingston, and to Virginia, Patrick Henry, not only her
great war governor but the civil leader who, supported by his Scotch-Irish
brethren from the western counties, first carried and then held Virginia for
the cause of Independence. To North Carolina the Scotch-Irish gave her
first governor, Richard Caswell, and to South Carolina they gave another
signer of the Declaration, Edward Rutledge, and another great war gov-
ernor in the person of John Rutledge. . . . What those men did for the
cause of American Independence is known to every student, but their un-
English origin is not so generally recognized. In the colonial wars their
section furnished most of the soldiers of Virginia.

" It is a noteworthy fact in American history, that of the four members
of Washington's Cabinet, Knox, of Massachusetts, the only New Englander
was a Scotch-Irishman ; Alexander Hamilton, of New York, was a Scotch-
Frenchman ; Thomas Jefferson was of Welsh descent, and the fourth, Ed-
mund Randolph, claimed among his ancestors the Scotch Earls of Murray.
New York also furnished the first chief justice of the United States, John
Jay, who was a descendant of French Huguenots ; while the second chief
justice, John Rutledge," was Scotch-Irish, as were also Wilson and Iredell,

j£alifob^

The Constitution 33

two of the four original associate justices ; a third, Blair, being of Scotch
origin. John Marshall, 3 the great chief justice, was, like Jefferson, of Scotch
and Welsh descent."

Jonathan Trumbull, Connecticut's war governor (the original " Brother
Jonathan"), was descended from a member of the ancient Scottish border
clan of Turnbull. 4 Archibald Bulloch, the Scottish ancestor of Theodore
Roosevelt, was likewise the Revolutionary Governor of Georgia in 1776-77.

To pursue the subject further, it appears that of the twenty-five Presi-
dents of the United States down to the present time, less than half the
number were of purely English extraction.

Of predominating English blood may be counted Washington, the two
Adamses, Madison, William Henry Harrison, Tyler, Pierce, Fillmore, Lincoln,
and, perhaps, Taylor. Cleveland's father was of English descent, but the
name of his mother's father (Abner Neal), who was born in Ireland, indicates
a Celtic origin, possibly Scottish. Benjamin Harrison and Theodore
Roosevelt both had Scotch-Irish mothers. Of the remaining twelve
Presidents, Monroe, Hayes, Jackson, Polk, Buchanan, Johnson, Grant,
Arthur, and McKinley (nine) have been of Scottish descent — the last seven
largely Ulster Scotch. Jefferson was of Welsh ancestry ; Van Buren, Dutch ;
and Garfield a mixture of Welsh and Huguenot French. This list is in-
structive, in showing that one-half our Presidents have been to a large ex-
tent of Celtic extraction. (For notes on the Genealogies of the Presidents,
see Appendix N.)

Of the great statesmen connected with the period immediately following
the Revolution, perhaps the four most eminent names are those of Thomas
Jefferson, James Madison,* John Adams, and Alexander Hamilton : the first
of Welsh origin, the second and third English, and the fourth Scotch.
Next to these four may be mentioned the names of James Wilson, the
Scotsman, whom Bancroft pronounces to have been the most learned civilian
of the Constitutional Convention, than whom none were more influential,
sagacious, or far-seeing ; John Jay, the French Huguenot ; John Dickinson,
the English Quaker ; Roger Sherman, the English Connecticut compromiser ;
and John Rutledge, the Ulster Scot. Of the members of the Convention
of 1787, nine were graduates of Princeton, some of them pupils of the
venerable Witherspoon, four were from Yale (including Livingston), three
from Harvard, two from Columbia (including Hamilton), two from Glas-
gow, one from Oxford, one from Pennsylvania (Williamson), and five, six,
or seven from William and Mary (including Blair and Jefferson — the latter
of whom had there as his chief instructor Dr. William Small, the Scottish
teacher from whom he imbibed so many of his own liberal views). 6 Of
the college-bred men in the convention, therefore, it would seem that
more than half were either of Scottish descent or educational training ;
and this fact could not have been without some influence in the result of
its deliberations. 7

34 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

So far as their theories of government went, it would appear that the mem-
bers of the convention were influenced more by the French writers than by
the English exemplars. Montesquieu was the oracle of Washington ; and
Madison and Jefferson freely acknowledged their debt to Scottish and Con-
tinental influences. Hamilton's allusion to the English system as a model,
and his first plan of an elective monarchy, were both alike repugnant to
the views of his colleagues. In the words of Yates, " he was praised by
everybody, but supported by none."

The most judicial mind in the Constitutional Convention was undoubt-
edly that of the Scottish James Wilson, from Pennsylvania, the leader in the
debates. Madison has been called the Father of the Constitution ; Wilson
breathed into it the breath of life. " Of the fifty-five delegates," says Mc-
Master, " Wilson was undoubtedly the best prepared, by deep and systematic
study of the history and science of government, for the work that lay before
him." His learning Wilson had in times past turned to excellent use, and
in the Convention he became one of the most active members. None, with
the exception of Gouverneur Morris, was so often on his feet during the de-
bates, and none spoke more to the purpose. He supported direct popular
suffrage and a single executive. He probably exercised more influence
than any other single member in determining the character of the Constitu-
tion, and to him is due the honor of securing later the ratification of that
instrument by the State of Pennsylvania. He clearly foresaw and warned
his colleagues against the evils which would and did result from the per-
nicious New England principle of State sovereignty — a principle that, not-
withstanding his earnest protests, was given undue acknowledgment and
strength by the Connecticut compromise. This measure decided the ques-
tion of representation in and election to the Senate.

Representing the most democratic State in the confederation, Wilson,
more than any other one man in that assemblage, strove for the adoption of
a purely democratic form of government, one that would be entirely of the
people, wholly for the people, and truly by the people. Opposed to him
at times were Roger Sherman, the New England leader, John Dickinson,
the Pennsylvania Quaker who spoke for Delaware, Luther Martin, the leader
of the Maryland delegation, Alexander Hamilton, the sole acting member
from New York, John Rutledge, the foremost citizen of South Carolina,
William Paterson, who voiced the sentiments of New Jersey, and even
Edmund Randolph, the eloquent advocate of the Virginia Plan.

Wilson successfully refuted the arguments of his adversaries, and had his
judgment been followed in every question as it was in most of them, the
least satisfactory features of our Constitution would have been kept out, and
the Republic might have been spared the loss of countless lives and treas-
ure. From first to last, he was the chief opposer of the plan of equal
representation of the States in the Senate, and did everything in his power
to procure the election of senators by a direct vote of the people. 8

The Constitution 35

From time to time claims have been made by overzealous members of
the Presbyterian Church that the Federal Constitution was modelled upon
their form of Church government — a system which requires each congre-
gation to be represented in the general assemblies of that Church by delegates
chosen by its own congregational members.' Evidently these claims are as
far out of the way in one direction as are in another the similar claims to
the effect that our Constitution was copied from that of England. 10 The
Presbyterian Church was probably no more a factor in forming the consti-
tutional government of the United States than was the church of the
Congregationalist, the Lutheran, the Baptist, or the Quaker. The most
that can be said to this end is that many men who had been brought up
under Scottish ideals of freedom and duty took a prominent part in the
Convention of 1787, and that the result of their deliberations bears a resem-
blance to the system of government laid down by the canons of the Scottish
Church. This resemblance may result from the fact that the Presbyterian
form of church government is a mean between the Congregational, or Puri-
tan, plan — which involves the entire independence and sovereignty of each
community, 11 and the Episcopalian, or Cavalier, plan — which would aim at
the centralization of power in the hands of one man.

In Pennsylvania, the opposition to the adoption of the Constitution came
chiefly from some of the Presbyterians ; and in Virginia 1 , also, a large num-
ber of them stood behind Patrick Henry in his opposition to that instrument.
At the same time, it is probable that if a vote could have been taken in the
Presbyterian Church it would have shown many more of its adherents favor-
able to the Constitution than opposed to it. In the Pennsylvania convention
held for its ratification, an examination of the list of delegates shows that
considerably more than one half the number present and voting were of
Presbyterian proclivities ; yet when the final vote for the adoption of the
Constitution was taken, but twenty-three votes were cast against it, and forty-
six in its favor. The Anti-Federalists in the Pennsylvania convention had
for their leaders in the debate the three Scotch Presbyterians, Whitehill,
Findley, and Smilie, who came from the counties of Cumberland, Westmore-
land, and Fayette ; while the Federalists also looked for leadership to the
two Scotch Presbyterians, Wilson and McKean. The final vote was as
follows :

Yeas. — George Latimer, Benjamin Rush, Hilary Baker, James Wilson,
Thomas McKean, William MacPherson, John Hunn, George Gray, Samuel
Ashmead, Enoch Edwards, Henry Wynkoop, John Barclay, Thomas Yardley,
Abraham Stout, Thomas Bull, Anthony Wayne, William Gibbons, Richard
Downing, Thomas Cheyney, John Hannum, Stephen Chambers, Robert
Coleman, Sebastian Graff, John Hubley, Jasper Yeates, Henry Slagle, Thomas
Campbell, Thomas Hartley, David Grier, John Black, Benjamin Pedan,
John Arndt, Stephen Balliet, Joseph Horsfield, David Deshler, William Wil-
son, John Boyd, Thomas Scott, John Neville, John Allison, Jonathan

36 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

Roberts, John Richards, F. A. Muhlenberg, James Morris, Timothy Picker-
ing, Benjamin Elliott. — Total, 46.

Nays. — John Whitehill, John Harris, John Reynolds, Robert Whitehall,
Jonathan Hoge, Nicholas Lutz, John Ludwig, Abraham Lincoln, John
Bishop, Joseph Hiester, James Martain, Joseph Powell, William Findley,
John Bard, William Todd, James Marshall, James Edgar, Nathaniel Bread-
ing, John Smilie, Richard Baird, William Brown, Adam Orth, John Andre
Hanna. — Total, 23.

A very full account of the proceedings of the Pennsylvania convention
was printed in 1888 by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, under the
title, Pennsylvania and the Federal Constitution, edited by John Bach Mc Mas-
ter and Frederick D. Stone. The following statement from that work (pp.
21, 22) may enable us to comprehend some of the motives which influenced
the twenty-three members who comprised the opposition :

An examination of this list reveals the fact that the little band of mal-
contents was made up of all the delegates from the counties of Cumber-
land, Berks, Westmoreland, Bedford, Dauphin, Fayette, half of those from
Washington, half from Franklin, and John Whitehill, of Lancaster. The
reason is plain. The constitution proposed for the United States was in
many ways the direct opposite of the constitution of Pennsylvania. The
legislature of Pennsylvania consisted of a single house. The legislature
of the United States was to consist of two houses. The President of Penn-
sylvania was chosen by the Assembly. The President of the United States
was chosen by special electors. The constitution of Pennsylvania had a
bill of rights, provided for a body of censors to meet once each seven years
to approve or disapprove the acts of the legislature ; for a council to advise
the President ; for annual elections ; for rotation in office, all of which were
quite unknown to the proposed constitution for the United States. But the
Pennsylvania constitution of 1776 was the work of the Patriot party ; of this
party a very considerable number were Presbyterians ; and the great Pres-
byterian counties were Cumberland, Westmoreland, Bedford, Dauphin, and
Fayette. In opposing the new plan these men simply opposed a system of
government which, if adopted, would force them to undo a piece of work
done with great labor, and beheld with great pride and satisfaction. Every
man, therefore, who gave his vote for the ratification of the national consti-
tution, pronounced his State constitution to be bad in form, and this its
supporters were not prepared to do. By these men, the refusal of the con
vention to accept the amendments they offered was not regarded as ending
the matter. They went back to the counties that sent them more determined
than ever, but failed to gain to their side the great body of Presbyterians.

A perusal of the journal of the Federal Convention and of the various pri-
vate accounts of the debates ia will sufficiently indicate how far New Eng-
land in 1787 was behind the middle colonies and Virginia in its conception
of what constitutes a democracy.

John Adams contended that the English Constitution was the " most
stupendous fabric of human invention" {Works, vol. iv., p. 358), a decla-
ration which seems to have been the source of amusement to many of his

The Constitution 37

contemporaries. 13 Thomas Jefferson explained Mr. Adams's attitude on the
subject in this way :

Adams had originally been a republican. The glamour of royalty and
nobility during his mission to England had made him believe their fascina-
tion a necessary ingredient in government. . . . His book on the Ameri-
can Constitution having made known his political bias, he was taken up by
the monarchical Federalists in his absence, and on his return to the United
States he was made by them to believe that the general disposition of our
citizens was favorable to monarchy. 14

Even so usually careful a reader as John Fiske fails to recognize fully
the various influences which were at work in the framing of the Constitution.
In seeking to present what may appear to some to be rather too flattering a
portrayal of the attitude and share of the New England delegates in the
deliberations of the convention, he follows John Adams in ascribing every-
thing to the supposed influence of the British Constitution. Fiske says :

The most curious and instructive point concerning the peculiar execu-
tive devised for the United States by the Federal Convention is the fact that
the delegates proceeded upon a thoroughly false theory of what they were
doing. . . . They were trying to copy the British Constitution, modifying
it to suit their republican ideas ; but curiously enough, what they copied in
creating the office of President was not the real English executive or prime
minister, but the fictitious English executive, the sovereign. And this was
associated in their minds with another profound misconception, which in-
fluenced all this part of their work. They thought that to keep the legisla-
tive and executive offices distinct and separate was the very palladium of
liberty ; and they all took it for granted, without a moment's question, that
the British Constitution did this thing. England, they thought, is governed
by a King, Lords, and Commons, and the supreme power is nicely divided
between the three, so that neither one can get the whole of it, and that is
the safeguard of English liberty. So they arranged President, Senate, and
Representatives to correspond, and sedulously sought to divide supreme
power between the three, so that they might operate as checks upon each
other. If either one should ever succeed in acquiring the whole sovereignty,
then they thought there would be an end of American liberty.

. . . But in all this careful separation of the executive power from the
legislative they went wide of the mark, because they were following a
theory which did not truly describe things as they really existed. And that
was because the English Constitution was, and still is, covered up with a
thick husk of legal fictions which long ago ceased to have any vitality. . . .
In our time it has come to be perfectly obvious that so far from the English
Constitution separating the executive power from the legislative, this is pre-
cisely what it does not do. In Great Britain the supreme power is all lodged
in a single body : the House of Commons. 16

Let us examine these statements in the light of Madison's and Hamil-
ton's elucidation of the same subject and see if those two delegates — them-
selves originally strong admirers of the English Constitution— were really
so entirely ignorant of its distinctions. On this subject Madison says :

38 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

One of the principal objections inculcated by the more respectable ad-
versaries of the Constitution, is its supposed violation of the political maxim
that the legislative, executive, and judiciary departments ought to be sepa-
rate and distinct. In the structure of the Federal Government, no regard, it
is said, seems to have been paid to this essential precaution in favor of
liberty. The several departments of power are distributed and blended in
such a manner as at once to destroy all symmetry and beauty of form ; and
to expose some of the essential parts of the edifice to the danger of being
crushed by the disproportionate weight of other parts. . . .

The oracle who is always consulted and cited on this subject is the cele-
brated Montesquieu. . . . Let us endeavor in the first place to ascertain his
meaning on this point.

The British Constitution was to Montesquieu what Homer has been to
the didactic writers on epic poetry. . . .
f On the slightest view of the British Constitution, we must perceive that
the legislative, executive, and judiciary departments are by no means totally
separate and distinct from each other. . . .

From these facts, by which Montesquieu was guided, it may clearly be
inferred that, in saying " there can be no liberty where the legislative and
executive powers are united in the same person, or body of magistrates,"
or " if the power of judging be not separated from the legislative and ex-
ecutive powers," he did not mean that these departments ought to have no
partial agency in, or no control over, the acts of each other. . ^. .

If we look into the constitutions of the several States, we shall find, not-
withstanding the emphatical, and, in some instances, the unqualified terms
in which this axiom has been laid down, that there is not a single instance
in which the several departments of power have been kept absolutely
separate and distinct. (James Madison, Federalist, No. xlvii.)

It was shown in the last paper, that the political apothegm there ex-
amined does not require that the legislative, executive, and judiciary de-
partments should be wholly unconnected with each other. I shall undertake
in the next place to show that, unless these departments be so far con-
nected and blended as to give to each a constitutional control over the
others, the degree of separation which the maxim requires, as essential
to a free government, can never in practice be duly maintained. (Ibid.,
No. xlviii).

Hamilton's comparison of the executives under the two constitutions is
as follows :

I proceed now to trace the real characters of the proposed executive, as
they are marked out in the plan of the Convention. This will serve to place
in a strong light the unfairness of the representations which have been made
in regard to it.

The first thing which strikes our attention is, that the executive author-
ity, with few exceptions, is to be vested in a single magistrate. This will
scarcely, however, be considered as a point upon which any comparison can
be grounded ; for if, in this particular, there be a resemblance to the king
of Great Britain, there is not less a resemblance to the Grand Signior, to the
Khan of Tartary, to the Man of the Seven Mountains, or to the governor
of New York. . . .

The President is to be the " commander-in-chief of the army and navy
of the United States, and of the militia of the several States, when called
into the actual service of the United States. He is to have power to grant

The Constitution 39

reprieves and pardons for offences against the United States, except in cases
of impeachment ; to recommend to the consideration of Congress such
measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient ; to convene, on extraor-
dinary occasions, both houses of the legislature, or either of them, and in
case of disagreement between them with respect to the time of adjournment,
to adjourn them to such time as he shall think proper ; to take care that the
laws be faithfully executed ; and to commission all officers of the United
States." In most of these particulars, the power of the President will
resemble equally that of the king of Great Britain and of the governor of New
York. The most material points of difference are these: — First: — The
President will have only the occasional command of such part of the militia
of the nation as by legislative provision may be called into the actual service
of the Union. The king of Great Britain and the governor of New York
have at all times the entire command of all the militia within their several
jurisdictions. . . . Second : — The President is to be commander-in-chief
of the army and navy of the United States. In this respect his authority
would be nominally the same with that of the king of Great Britain, but in
substance much inferior to it. It would amount to nothing more than the
supreme command and direction of the military and naval forces, as first
general and admiral of the confederacy ; while that of the British king ex-
tends to the declaring of war, and to the raising and regulating of fleets and
armies ; all which by the Constitution under consideration would appertain
to the legislature. . . . Third : — The power of the President in respect to
pardons would extend to all cases except those of impeachment. The
governor of New York may pardon in all cases, even in those of impeach-
ment, except for treason and murder. . . . Fourth : — The President can
only adjourn the national legislature in the single case of disagreement
about the time of adjournment. The British monarch may prorogue or
even dissolve the Parliament. . . .

Hence it appears, that, except as to the concurrent authority of the Presi-
dent in the article of treaties, it would be difficult to determine whether that
magistrate would in the aggregate possess more or less power than the gov-
ernor of New York. And it appears yet more unequivocally, that there is no
pretence for the parallel which has been attempted between him and the
king of Great Britain. But to render the contrast in this respect still more
striking, it may be of use to throw the principal circumstances of dissimili-
tude into a closer group.

The President of the United States would be an officer elected by the
people for four years : The king of Great Britain is a perpetual and
hereditary prince.

The one would be amenable to personal punishment and disgrace : The
person of the Other is sacred and inviolable.

The one would have a qualified negative upon the acts of the legislative
body : The other has an absolute negative.

The one would have a right to command the military and naval forces of the
nation : The other, in addition to this right, possesses that of declaring war,
and of raising and regulating fleets and armies by his own authority.

The one would have a concurrent power with a branch of the legislature
in the formation of treaties : The other is the sole possessor of the power of
making treaties.

The one would have a like concurrent authority in appointing to offices :
The other is the sole author of all appointments.

The one can confer no privileges whatever : The other can make

40 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

denizens of aliens, noblemen of commoners ; can erect corporations, with
all the rights incident to corporate bodies.

The one can prescribe no rules concerning the commerce or currency of
the nation : The other is in several respects the arbiter of commerce, and in
this capacity can establish markets and fairs ; can regulate weights and
measures ; can lay embargoes for a limited time ; can coin money ; can au-
thorize or prohibit the circulation of foreign coin.

The one has no particle of spiritual jurisdiction : The other is the su-
preme head and governor of the national church.

What answer shall we give to those who would persuade us that things so
unlike resemble each other ? The same that ought to be given to those who
tell us that a government, the whole power of which would be in the hands
of the elective and periodical servants of the people, is an aristocracy, a
monarchy, and a despotism. (Alexander Hamilton, Federalist, No. lxix.)

It is only necessary to compare these statements with those of Mr. Fiske
to see that some of our modern commentators on the Constitution have dis-
covered a great many more things in that instrument than its authors were
aware they had put there when drafting it.

Just what were the contributions of England to the American Constitu-
tion, is somewhat difficult to determine. There was certainly no manner
of resemblance in form between the unwritten Constitution of Great Britain
and the voluminous written instrument subscribed at Philadelphia by the
delegates from the American colonies in September, 1787. It is true, the
first ten amendments, proposed by Congress in 1789, may be said to consti-
tute a Bill of Rights, having been adopted with that end in view. In form
they do bear an outward resemblance to those limitations upon kings which,
until recently, were regarded in England as the foundation and chief bulwark
of liberty. But the vital substance of the ten amendments to our Constitu-
tion finds few counterparts in similar enunciations of the British legislature.
In this day some of the minor provisions of these amendments, which no doubt
seemed vital to our fathers, appear to us to be chiefly valuable as reminders
of the excesses of tyranny from which they had escaped, and of the kind of
constitutional government under which those excesses had been committed.
As a matter of fact, the adoption of the first ten amendments to the
American Constitution by Congress was due chiefly to popular clamor, and
not from conviction on the part of the legislators that they were necessary
in order to complete the Constitution. The framers of the original docu-
ment almost without exception deemed most of the provisions of these amend-
ments superfluous.

The declarations of the Bill of Rights passed by the English Parliament
in 1689 were as follows :

1. That the pretended power of suspending of laws, or the execution of
laws by regal authority without consent of Parliament, is illegal.

2. That the pretended power of dispensing with laws, or the execution of
laws by regal authority, as it hath been assumed and exercised of late, is illegal.

The Constitution 41

3. That the commission for erecting the late court of commissioners
for ecclesiastical causes, and all other commissions and courts of like nature,
are illegal and pernicious.

4. That levying money for or to the use of the Crown, by pretence of
prerogative, without grant of Parliament, for longer time or in other manner
than the same is or shall be granted, is illegal.

5. That it is the right of subjects to petition the king, and all commit-
ments and prosecutions for such petitioning are illegal.

6. That the raising or keeping a standing army within the kingdom in
time of peace, unless it be with consent of Parliament, is against law.

7. That the subjects which are Protestants may have arms for their de-
fence suitable to their conditions, and as allowed by law.

8. That elections of members of Parliament ought to be free.

9. That the freedom of speech, and debates or proceedings in Parlia-
ment, ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of
Parliament.

10. That excessive bail ought not to be required, nor excessive fines im-
posed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

11. That jurors ought to be duly impanelled and returned, and jurors
which pass upon men in trials for high treason ought to be freeholders.

12. That all grants and promises of fines and forfeitures of particular
persons before conviction are illegal and void.

13. And that for redress of all grievances, and for the amending,
strengthening, and preserving of the laws, Parliament ought to be held
frequently.

We have but to read over the amendments to the American Consti-
tution and compare them with the foregoing English Bill of Rights to per-
ceive how much they are opposed, both in letter and spirit, to the whole
theory and practice of the science of government as applied by England
during the whole of the eighteenth and the greater part of the nineteenth
century. In doing this we realize that the amendments are not so much
limitations restricting the operation of government under the American Con-
stitution as they are eternal protests against a recurrence of the evils which
had been suffered under the Constitution of Britain.

The first amendment provides that —

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.

Or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.

The absence of the first of these provisions from the constitution of Eng-
land, even to this day, is what, perhaps, more than any one thing else, led
to the early and rapid British settlement of America, and drove to its
shores such a large proportion of the bravest and noblest of the English and
Scottish people. The necessity for the second provision was probably first
impressed upon the minds of Americans by the prosecution, on informa-
tion, of the printer, John Peter Zenger, for libelling the English governor
of New York in 1735.

The second amendment announces that " A well-regulated militia being
necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and

42 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

bear arms shall not be infringed." The English Bill of Rights permits only
those who are Protestants to " have arms for their defence."

The third amendment provides that no soldier in time of peace shall
be quartered in any house without the consent of the owner. This cor-
responds with a provision in the English Petition of Rights passed by Par-
liament and approved by Charles I. in 1628. The only provision in the
English Bill of Rights bearing on this subject is, that a standing army shall
not be kept within the kingdom without consent of Parliament.

The fourth amendment relates to the right of search or seizure, and
requires all warrants for arrest or search to be specific, and supported by
oath. There is no corresponding clause in the English Bill of Rights.

The fifth amendment requires all criminal indictments to be made by a
grand jury ; and provides that no person shall for the same offence twice be
put in jeopardy of life or limb ; nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property
without due process of law. The nearest corresponding provision in the
Bill of Rights is that contained in the eleventh clause, suggesting " That
jurors ought to be duly impanelled and returned," instead of being creatures
of the judge or prosecutor.

The sixth amendment gives the accused the right of a speedy trial before
witnesses in criminal cases.

The seventh amendment assures the right of trial by jury. It appears
from Olaus Wormius that this system was first introduced into Denmark by
Regnerus, surnamed Lodborg, who began to reign in the year 820, from
whom Ethelred of England is said to have borrowed it. It was Henry II.
who brought into general use in England the trial by jury, afterwards incor-
porated in Magna Charta and confirmed by King John.

The eighth amendment is a counterpart of the tenth provision of the
English Bill of Rights, prohibiting excessive bail or fines, or cruel and
unusual methods of punishment.

The ninth amendment states that the enumeration in the Constitution of
certain rights shall not be construed as a denial or disparagement of others
"retained by the people." This, of course, would be an anomaly in the
constitution of a monarchical government, where all rights possessed by the
people have first to be granted by the supreme power, the Crown.

The tenth amendment reserves to the States and to the people all powers
not delegated to the general government.

A comparison of all these amendments with the English Bill of Rights,
therefore, shows that one only out of the ten is copied from the charter of
British constitutional privileges. Nearly all the amendments show in them-
selves that they were devised and worded to meet conditions which were
either pertinent or peculiar to American life and experience. To a large
extent they form an embodiment of certain features of the common law
as it had been applied in America to American conditions for more than a
hundred years before 1787. The provisions for free speech, a free press,

The Constitution 43

freedom of religion, freedom to bear arms, freedom from unwarranted
search or seizure, freedom from indictment on secret information, and
freedom from the usurpation of the people's natural rights, were all of
American origin. They were attached to the Constitution because Americans
had learned by bitter experience, in the century between the enactment of
the English Bill of Rights and the adoption of the American Constitution,
that their absence from the British charter led to numerous abuses and
perversions of justice on the part of imported judges and governors.

In short, the difference between the British and the American Constitu-
tions is a fundamental one. The former is a concession of privileges to
the people by the rulers : the latter, a grant of authority by the people to
the rulers.

But before leaving our original Scotch commentator, let us see just
what his views were on the question of the kinship between the British and
American Constitutions. Some expression of these views is to be found in
No. lxxxiv. of the Federalist :

The several bills of rights, in Great Britain, form its constitution. . . .

It has been several times truly remarked, that bills of rights are, in their
origin, stipulations between kings and their subjects, abridgments of pre-
rogative in favor of privilege, reservations of rights not surrendered to the
prince. Such was Magna Charta, obtained by the barons, sword in hand,
from King John. Such were the subsequent confirmations of that charter
by succeeding princes. Such was the Petition of Right assented to by
Charles the First, in the beginning of his reign. Such also was the declara-
tion of rights presented by the Lords and Commons to the Prince of Orange
in 1688, and afterwards thrown into the form of an act of Parliament, called
the Bill of Rights. It is evident, therefore, that according to their primitive
signification, they have no application to constitutions professedly founded
upon the power of the people, and executed by their immediate representa-
tives and servants. Here, in strictness, the people surrender nothing ; and
as they retain everything, they have no need of particular reservations.
" We, the People of the United States, to secure the blessings of liberty to
ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this constitution for the
United States of America." This is a better recognition of popular rights
than volumes of those aphorisms which make the principal figure in several
of our State bills of rights, and which would sound much better in a treatise
of ethics than in a constitution of government.

While it may be a fact that the New England members, and especially
the Massachusetts members of the convention, were imbued with the truly
English idea of uniting the executive and legislative branches by making
the executive head merely the creature of the legislature, 18 yet that this plan
was not adopted is perhaps due to the efforts of those members whose birth
or training had not been such as to bring them into accordance with English
traditions. The idea of a representative form of government was novel to the
men from New England, and contrary to their accustomed methods ; so that
from the date of the first gathering it took several days' time to win them over

44 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

to it. James Wilson, the Pennsylvania Scotsman, led in the opposition to the
English and New England plan of vesting the executive power mainly in the
legislature ; and to say, as Mr. Fiske does, that Wilson did not know at what
he was aiming is to belittle the intelligence of the convention's clearest mind.

The chief contribution of New England was the essentially English
suggestion of compromise. The conditions under which one of these com-
promises was made were so unwise, though so characteristic of the typical
English commercial spirit actuating its promoters, as to make it a matter of
doubt whether on the whole the evil consequences arising from the com-
promises were not greater than the benefits which they secured. These con-
ditions involved the demand for special privileges by the shipping interest of
New England, and the prohibition of a tax on exports, coupled with the recog-
nition of the right of the southern states to continue for twenty years the
importation of negroes, and to maintain indefinitely the institution of slavery.
A bargain was made between the two sections, and all three propositions
were carried by the united votes of New England and all the southern states
save Virginia.

Certainly, the one republican institution which forms the chief glory
and boast of New England, that of local self-government, cannot be clearly
traced back to England. Where it did originate is a disputed ques-
tion. Mr. Douglas Campbell, in his inquiry into the origin of certain
American institutions, has traced the beginnings of many of them to Holland.
While there is some doubt as to the sufficiency of his proof in the case
of township organization, 17 he has at least made it apparent that at the time
the Pilgrims left Holland that country and its institutions were infinitely
more analogous to the government established at Plymouth than to any like
institutions in England. 18 In concluding his review of some of the Dutch
contributions to America, Mr. Campbell sums them up as follows 19 :

Such are the leading institutions, political and legal, for which the
American Republic is indebted, directly or indirectly, to the Netherland
Republic, itself the heir of all the ages. Some of them, especially our
written constitutions, have been greatly improved upon ; but at the time of
their introduction into America few, if any, of them could be found in any
country of Europe except the Netherlands. Having completed our sketch
of their history, let us now bring them together, in order that we may appre-
ciate their combined importance.

First comes the Federal Constitution, a written instrument as opposed
to the unwritten English Constitution. Next are the provisions of this
instrument placing checks on the power of the President in declaring war
and peace, and in the appointment of judges and all important executive
officers. Then comes the whole organization of the Senate — a mutable and
yet a permanent body, representing independent bodies politic, and not caste
in State and Church. After these features of the national system, but not less
important, follow our State constitutions, our freedom of religion, our free
press, our wide suffrage, and our written ballot. With these come the free
schools, for boys and girls alike, the township system (with its sequence
of local self-government in county and State), the independence of the

The Constitution 45

judiciary, the absence of primogeniture, the subjection of land to execution
for debt, and the system of recording deeds and mortgages. Added to these
are our public prosecutors of crime in every county, the constitutional
guarantee that every accused person shall have subpoenas for his witnesses
and counsel for his defence, the reforms in our penal and prison system, the
emancipation of married women, and the whole organization of our public
charitable and reformatory work.

Taking these institutions all together, is there any cause for wonder that
they excite astonishment among modern English scholars and statesmen
who, looking beneath the mere surface resemblances of language and
domestic habits, seek an explanation of the manifest difference between the
people of England and a people in the United States assumed by them to
be of the same blood ? These observers, unlike some of our American
writers, see plainly enough that our institutions are not inherited from
England, however much we may have of English characteristics.

The simple fact is, that the whole theory of society and government in
the two countries has always been radically different. Under such condi-
tions, it was but natural that our forefathers should turn for their precedents,
not to a monarchy or an aristocracy, but to a republic — a republic which
was the beacon-light of the English Commonwealth, and whose people were
our warmest unselfish sympathizers throughout the Revolution, as they also
proved themselves to the Union cause during our late struggle for a national
existence.

The latest writer on the subject, Mr. Sydney George Fisher, in his book
on The Evolution of the Constitution of the United States, takes issue with
Mr. Campbell and with all other writers who attribute the origin of American
institutions for the most part to European influences. In an exhaustive ex-
amination of early trading and colonial charters and laws, he presents a great
many facts tending to prove that the American system of government is not
copied from others at all, but is the result of a slow and gradual period of
evolution and growth which took place on this continent for two hundred
years after 1584. This is both a philosophical and a satisfactory explanation
of the origin of our institutions, and Mr. Fisher's book goes far toward
making the reader believe that it is also the true one. In referring to
English sources of the Constitution, this writer says 20 :

After reading the assertions of learned writers that our Constitution was
modelled on the British government as it existed in 1787, I have sometimes
turned to the words of the Constitution to see the resemblance, and have
never been able to find it. As one reads along, sentence after sentence,
everything seems so un-English and so original and peculiar to our own
locality that the mind is forced to the conclusion that it either grew up as a
natural product of the soil or was invented offhand — struck off at a given
time, as Mr. Gladstone says. I recommend to those who believe in the
British model theory to adopt this simple plan : Read our Constitution,
sentence by sentence, from beginning to end, and see how many sentences
they can trace to an origin in the British government.

I do not deny that in a certain sense it is all English. ... I would
be the last person in the world to dispute the Anglo-Saxon influence in our
civilization. But all this is very different from the dogma some wish to

46 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

establish, that our Constitution was taken or copied from or suggested by
the forms of the British government as it existed in 1787. . . .

In the first eleven amendments to the Constitution, a number of the
provisions about trial by jury and freedom of speech were doubtless evolved
from the experience of the race in England. But even these, as already
shown, were worked out slowly and re-evolved on American soil. In the
body of the Constitution itself — the political framework proper — there is
little or nothing that can be traced to the forms of the British government
as it existed in 1787 or at any other time for hundreds of years previous.

I do not deny that the framers of our Constitution considered and dis-
cusssed the forms of the British Constitution. But they considered them
principally, as the minutes of their debates will show, for the purpose, or at
any rate with the result, of avoiding them. They were intelligent men, — a
large number of them were college-bred, — and they discussed the forms of
government of all countries. They were not unmindful of the example of
Holland, the democracies of Greece, the Roman republic and empire, and
the free republics of the Middle Ages. They took what light they could
from them all ; and I think as good an argument could be framed to show
that they were guided by what they knew of classic antiquity as could be
brought forward to prove that they were guided by the British Constitution.

But the foundation for all their final decisions, the basis which the forms
of government in Europe merely illustrated or made more certain, was their
own experience of nearly two hundred years with the colonial charters and
constitutions and the constitutions of 1776. What they took from England
went back through that two hundred years, and then not to the British
government, but to the forms of the old trading charters. What had been
envolved from the trading charters had been so long with us that it was
completely Americanized, and it was valued by the framers of the Constitu-
tion for that reason, and because it had been tested by two hundred years of
American life.

They did not commit the absurdity of skipping those two hundred
years of their history, or of crossing an ocean and entering other countries
to copy constitutions. . . . They took their own experience as it was up
to that date in the place and community for which they were making a frame
of government. They made no skips or jumps, but went backward in the
past directly from themselves and in their own line, taking for their guide
that which was nearest to them and latest developed, provided it had been
tested in that line of their own past. 81

NOTES TO CHAPTER II.

1 Douglas Campbell, The Puritan in Holland, England, and America, vol. ii., pp. 481,
487, 488.

3 Bancroft speaks of him as the ablest man south of the Potomac.

3 Marshall's mother was of the Scotch family of Keith.

4 See Autobiography of John Trumbull, p. 12. New York, 1841.

5 On the twenty-seventh of May [1776], Cary from the committee presented to the
[Virginia] convention the declaration of rights which Mason had drafted. For the next fort-
night the great truths which it proclaimed, and which were to form the groundwork of
American institutions, employed the thoughts of the convention. One clause only received
a material amendment. Mason had written that all should enjoy the fullest toleration in

The Constitution 47

the exercise of religion. ... A young man, then unknown to fame, . . . proposed
an amendment. He was James Madison, the son of an Orange County planter, bred in the
school of Presbyterian dissenters under Witherspoon at Princeton, trained by his own studies,
by meditative rural life in the Old Dominion, by an ingenuous indignation at the persecution
of the Baptists, and by the innate principles of right, to uphold the sanctity of religious
freedom. He objected to the word " toleration," because it implied an established religion,
which endured dissent only as a condescension ; and as the earnestness of his convictions
overcame his modesty, he proceeded to demonstrate that "all men are equally entitled to
the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience." . . . This was
the first achievement of the wisest civilian of Virginia. — Bancroft, vol. iv., p. 417.

6 In the spring of 1760 I went to William and Mary College where I continued two
years. It was my great good fortune, and what probably fixed the destinies of my life, that
Dr. William Small of Scotland was then professor of Mathematics, a man profound in most
of the useful branches of science, with a happy talent of communication, correct and gentle-
manly manners, and an enlarged and liberal mind. He most happily for me became soon
attached to me and made me his daily companion when not engaged in the school ; and from
his conversation I got my first views of the expansion of science, and of the system of things
in which we are placed. — Jefferson's Autobiography, p. 2.

'Bancroft, vol. vi., p. 211.

8 See Appendix A (James Wilson and the Convention of 1787).

9 Grouping together, then, these facts among others — the fact that Presbyterianism is in
its own nature a system of pure representative republican government, and as such in strik-
ing harmony, both in form and spirit, with that of the State and nation ; that it has always
been peculiarly odious to tyrants ; the numerous patriotic deliverances of the Synod of New
York and Philadelphia and of some of the Presbyteries of our Church ; the fact that ' ' the
first voice publicly raised in America to dissolve all connection with Great Britain," was that
of the Presbyterians, the Westmoreland County resolutions and the Mecklenburg Declara-
tion ; the fact that Witherspoon, a Presbyterian of the most authentic type, represented in
the Continental Congress the compact Presbyterianism of the land, and that (besides his
other numerous and exceedingly important services) he threw the whole weight of his own
personal influence and that of those he represented, first in favor of the Declaration of Inde-
pendence and then in favor of the organization of the States into a confederate union — and
we have some of the grounds upon which to base an estimate of the share which Presbyteri-
ans had in building and launching that national vessel that now rides so proudly upon the
billows with forty millions of voyagers on board. — W. P. Breed, Presbyterians and the
Revolution, pp. 177-179.

10 See Letters and Other Writings of James Madison, vol. ii., p. 144; vol. iv., pp. 469-
475, 480, 482 ; Works of John Adams, vol. iv., p. 358 ; Works of Thomas Jefferson, vol.
ix., p. 97.

11 The choice between a confederacy and a republic was very much the same as a choice
between Congregationalism and Presbyterianism ; for Congregationalism is a confederacy of
independent churches, but Presbyterianism is an organized representative and constitutional
government. The Presbyterian form of government was familiar to the great mass of the
inhabitants in the middle and southern colonies ; it was the form of government which
Puritan Episcopacy has ever preferred. The Congregationalism of Connecticut and of other
parts of New England tended in the same direction. There is no reason to doubt that
Presbyterianism influenced the framers of the Constitution in their efforts to erect a national
organism, — a constitutional republic. But Congregationalism also had its influence in de-
fining the limitations of the supremacy of the general government and in the reservation of
the sovereignty of the States in all those affairs which were not assigned to the general
government. It is true, Presbyterianism was prepared for such limitations by the Scotch
Barrier Act of 1697, which prevented hasty legislation by an appeal to all the Presbyteries

48 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

of the Church ; and still more by the persistent resistance of American Presbyterianism to
any legislative power in the Synod, without the consent of the Presbyteries. But the limi-
tations of the general government in the American Constitution were beyond anything known
to Presbyterianism before, and the reserved rights of the States were vastly in excess of any
rights ever claimed or exercised by Presbyteries. The American form of civil government
was a happy combination of some of the best features presented in Presbyterianism and in
Congregationalism. — Briggs, American Presbyterianism, pp. 356, 357.
13 See Bancroft, vol. vi., book iii.

13 See Madison's Works, vol. ii., p. 144; vol. iv., pp. 469-475, 480-482.

14 Writings of Thomas Jefferson, vol. ix., p. 97.
16 Critical Period of American History, p. 289.

16 See extracts from debates in the Constitutional Convention, and particularly the words
of Sherman and Gerry (Appendix A).

17 Campbell, The Puritan in Holland, England, and America, vol. ii., pp. 426-430.
18 Ibid., vol. ii., chap. xxii.

,9 Ibid., vol. ii., pp. 465-467 (by permission of Messrs. Harper & Brothers).

20 The Evolution of the Constitution of the United States, pp. 90-93.

21 See Appendix B (Pennsylvania's Formative Influence).

CHAPTER III

THE SCOTCH-IRISH IN AMERICAN POLITICS

IN more recent years Scotland's contribution to the United States has
been no less remarkable in the number and high standing of the
Scottish names which appear on America's Roll of Honor than it was in
the early days of the Republic.

Starting with the governors of the States and Territories, a brief exam-
ination of the civil lists published in Lanman's Biographical Annals of the
Civil Government, a semi-official work, shows that up to the year in which
that book was printed (1886) there have been about half a dozen more than
one thousand State or Territorial governors in office since 1789. Of these,
judging from the names alone, more than two hundred are of evident Scot-
tish descent, and it is altogether probable that if a closer inspection were
to be made a great many more would be found of that race, although bear-
ing names alike common to Scotland and England. In connection with the
same subject it may be remarked that, of the colonial governors sent from
England to the American colonies before 1776, and of the provincial gov-
ernors from that time to 1789, upwards of forty were of Scottish blood,
among them being Robert Hunter (1710), William Burnett (1720), John
Montgomerie (1728), John Hamilton (1736), Cadwallader Colden (1760),
John, Earl of Dunmore (1770), James Robertson (1780), all of New York ;
Robert Barclay (1682), John Skene (1686), Lord Neil Campbell (1687),
Andrew Hamilton, John Hamilton (1736), William Livingston (1776), all of
New Jersey ; Andrew Hamilton (1701), Sir William Keith (17 17), Patrick
Gordon (1726), James Logan (1736), James Hamilton (1748), Joseph Reed
(1778), all of Pennsylvania ; and all, except the one last named, governors of
Delaware also ; John McKinley (1777), of Delaware ; Alexander Spotswood
(1710), William Gooch (?) (1727), Robert Dinwiddie (1752), John Camp-
bell (1756), John Blair (1767), William Nelson (1770), Lord Dunmore
(1772), Patrick Henry (1776), Thomas Nelson (1781), all of Virginia;
William Drummond (1663), Gabriel Johnston (1734), Matthew Rowan
( J 753)» Alexander Martin (1782), Samuel Johnston (1788), all of North
Carolina; Joseph Morton (?) (1682), Richard Kirk (1684), James Moore
(1719), William Campbell (1775), John Rutledge (1779), all of South
Carolina; William Erwin (1775), Archibald Bulloch (1776), John Houston
(1778), Edward Telfair (1786), all of Georgia; and George Johnstone
(1763), of Florida.

Of the State governors from 1789 to 1885, the Scotch furnished to Penn-
sylvania nearly one-half her chief executives ; to Virginia, nearly one-
third ; to North Carolina, more than one-fourth ; to South Carolina, nearly

50 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

one-third ; to Georgia, more than one-half ; to Alabama, more than one-
fifth ; to Mississippi, about one-fifth ; to Louisiana, more than one-fifth ;
to Texas, about one-third ; to Tennessee, nearly one-half ; to Kentucky,
about one-third ; to Ohio, one-half ; to Indiana, more than one-third ; to
Illinois, nearly one-third ; to Missouri, nearly one-half.

Among other celebrated Scottish characters of colonial times may be
mentioned Captain William Kidd, the notorious pirate, Major Richard
Stobo, and possibly Sir William Johnson, Great Britain's celebrated Indian
agent in the Mohawk valley.

Of Scotch descent, also, on both sides of his house, was General George
Rogers Clark, the record of whose daring and successful campaigns north
of the Ohio River in 1778, is not surpassed in American history. To this
man alone the United States owes that part of its territory lying between
the Ohio and Mississippi rivers ; and had it not been for the conquest of
this empire from the British by Clark and his Scotch-Irish soldiers, the
States of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota
might have been to-day a portion of the Dominion of Canada. 1

In the naval wars of 1776 and later, we find among the most celebrated
commanders the following of Scottish birth or descent : John Paul Jones,
Samuel Nicholson, Richard Dale, Alexander Murray, Charles Stewart, James
Barron, John Rodgers, Sr., John Rodgers, Jr., Thomas McDonough, Matthew
Galbraith Perry, Oliver Hazard Perry, 3 Franklin Buchanan.

Some well-known border heroes of Scottish descent, besides George
Rogers Clark, were Adam and Andrew Poe, Samuel Brady, Captain Jack,
Simon Kenton, Kit Carson, David Crockett, and Samuel Houston.

Among the American generals and warriors since the Revolution none
rank higher than Andrew Jackson, Winfield Scott, Hugh Brady, Zachary
Taylor, U. S. Grant, James B. McPherson, George B. McClellan, J. E.
Johnston, Stonewall Jackson, J. E. B. Stuart, James Longstreet, John A.
Rawlins, Robert H. Milroy, Lew Wallace, Irvin McDowell, Q. A. Gilmore,
Hugh Kilpatrick, Francis P. Blair, John F. Reynolds, Fitz-John Porter,
David Hunter, William H. Jackson, Alexander W. Campbell, David Bell,
William Birney, Horace Porter, John A. McNulta, Alexander Hays, La-
fayette McLaws, D. M. Gregg, Schuyler Hamilton, John J. Abercrombie,
William H. Lytle, John B. S. Todd, Winfield S. Hancock, Clement A.
Finley, Isaac Ridgeway Trimble, James Ronald Chalmers, George A.
McCall, John A. McClernand, Nathan B. Forrest, Benjamin McCul-
loch, John B. Magruder, John B. Gordon, John A. Logan, Theodore
Roosevelt, 3 Henry W. Lawton, Frederick Funston, and Daniel, George
W., Robert L., Alexander McD., Daniel, Jr., Edwin S., Edward M., and
Anson G. McCook, all of Scottish blood.

In American politics this race has been represented by such individuals
as Thomas H. Benton, John C. Calhoun, 4 Jefferson Davis, James G. Blaine,
Thomas A. Hendricks, Joseph E. McDonald, John Bell, Alexander H.

American Politics 51

Stephens, Samuel Randall, J. C. Breckenridge, John G. Carlisle, Simon
Cameron, the Livingstons of New York, William B. Allison, John B. Gib-
son, Matthew S. Quay, Calvin S. Brice, Marcus A. Hanna, Whitelaw Reid,
J. Sterling Morton, Wayne McVeagh, Chauncey Mitchell Depew, Robert
Todd Lincoln, Stephen A. Douglas, Adlai E. Stevenson, Stephen B. Elkins,
Daniel S. Lamont, Arthur P. Gorman, William McKinley. 6

In the Presidents' Cabinets, the Scotch have been represented as Secre-
taries of State by Edward Livingston, Louis McLane, John Forsyth, John C.
Calhoun, James Buchanan, Jeremiah S. Black, James G. Blaine, John Hay ;
Secretaries of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, George W. Campbell,
Alexander J. Dallas, William H. Crawford, Louis McLane, Thomas Ewing,
Thomas Corwin, James Guthrie, Howell Cobb, Salmon P. Chase, Hugh Mc-
Culloch ; Secretaries of War, Henry Knox, James McHenry, John Arm-
strong, James Monroe, William H. Crawford, George Graham, John C.
Calhoun, James Barbour, Peter B. Porter, John Bell, James M. Porter,
George W. Crawford, Jefferson Davis, Simon Cameron, U. S. Grant, James
D. Cameron, George W. McCrary, Alexander Ramsey, Robert Todd Lincoln,
Daniel S. Lamont ; Secretaries of the Navy, Paul Hamilton, Thomas W.
Gilmer, William A. Graham, John P. Kennedy, James C. Dobbin, George M.
Robeson, Nathan W. Goff ; Secretaries of the Interior, Thomas Ewing,
Alexander H. H. Stuart, Robert McClelland, James Harlan, Henry M.
Teller ; Postmasters-General, John McLean, James Campbell, Montgomery
Blair, Frank Hatton ; Attorneys-General, John Breckenridge, Felix Grundy,
Jeremiah S. Black, James Speed, John W. Griggs ; United States Senators,
(since i860), Blair (2), Cameron (2), Cockrell, Gibson, Logan, McMillan,
McPherson, Mitchell (2), Stewart, Teller, McEnery, Caffery, Butler, Mc-
Laurin, Cannon, Vance, Johnston, Houston, Bailey, Blaine, Burnside, Gor-
don, Sharon, Armstrong, Beck, Wallace, Thurman, Patterson (2), Oglesby,
McDonald (2), McCreery, Brownlow, Caldwell, Kelly, Ramsey, Robertson,
Scott (2), Tipton, Corbett, Harlan, Hill, Pomeroy, Wilson, Ross, Dixon,
Davis (2), Guthrie, Grimes, Welch, Cowan, McDougall, Henderson, Hen-
dricks, Nesmith, Carlisle, Breckenridge, Kennedy, Johnson, Hunter, Hemp-
hill, Douglas, Morton, McComas, Ross, Clark, Foster, McCumber, Hanna,
Culberson, Hamilton (2), Mills, Kyle, McBride, Brice, Lindsay, Blackburn,
Palmer, Cullom, Call, Kenney, Beveridge, and others ; Speakers of the
House, John Bell, James K. Polk, Robert M. T. Hunter, Howell Cobb,
James L. Orr, James G. Blaine, Michael C. Kerr, Samuel J. Randall, John
G. Carlisle, David B. Henderson.

In literature may be named Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, Her-
man Melville, Joel Chandler Harris, Lew Wallace, Marion Crawford,Thomas
Nelson Page, Maurice Thompson ; in art, Gilbert Stuart, J. McNeil Whistler,
Walter MacEwen, George Inness, J. Q. A. Ward, James Wilson McDonald,
James D. Smillie, Alexander Doyle, E. F. Andrews, Thomas Crawford,
Frederick MacMonnies, John W. Alexander ; in music, Edward MacDowell.

Y/ v Ukaj<^-

52 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

In practical science, whether the credit for the invention of the telegraph
be given to Charles Morrison, to Joseph Henry, or to Samuel Finley Morse,
each of whom contributed towards it, the honor still belongs to the Scotch.
Edison's mother was Mary Elliott, of Scottish blood ; and John Ericsson
had in his veins a strain of the same virile current. Likewise, William
Henry, James Rumsey, and Robert Fulton, who each had a share in the inven-
tion of the steamboat, were all three Scotch ; as well as Alexander Graham
Bell and Elisha Gray, the inventors of the telephone, and the McCormicks,
who did so much for the improvement of harvesting machinery. Drs. D.
Hayes Agnew and Frank Hamilton the eminent surgeons, Alexander Wilson
the ornithologist, and Asa Gray the botanist, all of Scottish descent, are also
ranked among the greatest in their respective professions.

In no departments of American civil life, however, is the Scottish influ-
ence more marked and dominating than in those of the judiciary and the
press. The interpretation of law in America has been chiefly the work
of non-English judges ; and perhaps it is not too much to say that the
distinctive character of American jurisprudence is due to the preponder-
ating influence of men of Celtic blood at the bench and bar.

Of the fifty judges of the United States Supreme Court from 1789 to
1882, we find not more than twenty-two of probable English blood ; Jay and
Duval, of French ; Marshall, of Welsh and Scotch ; Rutledge, Wilson, Blair,
two Johnsons, Paterson, Moore, Livingston, Todd, Thompson, Trimble,
McLean, Barbour, McKinley, Daniel, Nelson, Grier, Campbell, Miller,
Davis, Harlan, of Scottish ; and Wayne, Catron, and Chase of mixed
descent.

The first newspaper printed in America — the Boston News-Letter — was
the enterprise of a Scotchman bearing the characteristic name of John
Campbell. In recent times, among editors of the first rank, we find as repre-
sentatives of the Scottish race : James Gordon Bennett, Horace Greeley,
Henry W. Grady, Murat Halstead, Samuel Medary, Joseph Medill, James
W. Scott, Alexander K. McClure, John A. Cockerill, Whitelaw Reid, Wash-
ington and John R. McLean, Joseph B. McCullagh, Richard Smith,
John Russell Young, Henry Watterson, " Richelieu " Robinson, Beriah
Wilkins, Robert W. Patterson.

Among America's prominent business men of Scottish descent may be
named A. T. Stewart, Robert Stuart, Peter Cooper, John I. Blair, John
Crerar, James Lenox, Andrew Carnegie, John Davison Rockefeller.

Daniel Webster, the most brilliant statesman New England has given to
the country, was likewise not of English origin in the paternal line, but came
from the New Hampshire Scotch. 8

In view of these facts can it not with propriety be contended that the
Scottish race, in proportion to its relative strength in the New World, has
contributed to America a vastly greater number of her leaders in thought
and action than has any other ?

American Politics

NOTES TO CHAPTER III.

1 A list of the officers of the Illinois Regiment and of the Crockett Regiment :

Brig.-General — George Rogers Clark. Lieut. -Col. — John Montgomery. Majors
— Thomas Quirk, George Slaughter. Captains — John Bailey, Richard Brashear, Abraham
Chaplin, Benjamin Fields, Robert George, John Gerault, Richard Harrison, Abraham Kellar,
Richard McCarty, John Rogers, Benjamin Roberts, Mark Thomas, Isaac Taylor, Robert
Todd, John Williams. Lieutenants — Richard Clark, William Clark, James Merriweather,
James Montgomery, James Robertson, William Roberts, Joseph Saunders, Jarret Williams.
Ensigns — William Asher, Laurence Slaughter. Cornet — John Thurston.

Crockett's Regiment: Lieut. -Col. — Joseph Crockett. Major — George Walls. Sur-
geon — Charles Greer. Captains — John Chapman (killed), William Cherry, John Ker-
ney, Benjamin Kinley (died), Peter Moore, Abraham Lipton, Thomas Young. Ensigns —
Henry Daring, Samuel Ball Greene, Hugh McGavock.

For George Rogers Clark's descent, see p. 30, note n.

The names of the following Scotch-Irishmen and others are taken from a list of the
*' Noncommissioned Officers and Soldiers of the Illinois Regiment and the Western Army
under the Command of General George Rogers Clark." The full list appears in the Vir-
ginia Historical Magazine \ vol. i., pp. 131-141 :

John Allen, Sr., John Allen, Jr., John Anderson, Samuel Allen (Sergeant), David Allen,
Isaac Allen, Francis Adams, Wm. Bell, John Blair, David Bailey, Richard Breeden, James
Brown (S.), Wm. Berry, James Bentley, John Bentley, Lon Brown, James Baxter (Corporal),
J. B. Biron (S.), Colin Brown, Wm. Barry, Thos. Benton or Bernton, John Breeden (S.),
Samuel Bird, Wm. Bowen (C), John Barber, Robert Burnett (died), James Bryant, George
Burk, John Burris, John Boyles, Ebenezer Bowing, Asher Brown, Adam Bingoman, Samuel
Blackford, Simon Burney, Lewis Brown, Collin Brown, Daniel Bolton, John Clark, Andrew
Clark, Richard Chapman, Edward Chapman, Wm. Chapman, Patrick Cornelia, Wm.
Crassley, John Cowan, Andrew Cannon, James Curry, Patrick Conroy, Joseph Cooper,
Ramsey Cooper, Thomas Connolly, John Conn, George Campbell (S.), John Campbell, John
Cowdry, Andrew Cowan, Daniel Calvin, James Corder, Rice Curtis, Ellick Chamber,
Edward Cockran, George Cockran, Dennis Coheron, James Cameron (C), Daniel Cowgill,
James Cox, Andrew Codes, James Dawson, James Dawson, John Doyle, Benj. Duncan,
Archibald Duncan, Charles Duncan, David Duncan, Nimrod Duncan, Joseph Duncan,
Samuel Duncan, John Duff, Joseph Donon, Abraham Frazier (S.), Henry Foster, John
Grimes, John Gordon, John George, John Garret, Samuel Gibbons, David Glenn, James
Graham, Samuel Humphries, Thomas Hays, Barney Higgons, Miles Hart, James Hays,
Wm. Hall, Wm. Huin, Andrew Hendrix, John Johnston, Edward Johnston, Samuel
Johnston, Thos. Jamison (S.), David Kennedy, James Kincaid, James Kirkley, Thomas
Kirk, Wm. Kerr, Robert Kidd, George Key, Thomas Key, John Lasley, Peter Laughlin,
John Levinston, Richard Lovell, Benjamin Lewis, Jacob Lyon, John Lyons, Wm. Long,
Pleasant Lockhert, Archibald Lockhart, Hugh Logan, James Lewis, Edward Murray, John
Montgomery, Francis McDermot, John Moore (S.), John McMickle, Abraham Miller (C),
John Montgomery, Wm. Montgomery, Chas. McLockland, Edward Matthews (S.), John
McGuire, James Mcintosh, Patrick Marr (C. and S.), John McMichaels, James McMullen,
Patrick McClure, Wm. Merriweather, John Miller, Charles Martin, David McDonald, John
Murphy, Thomas Murray, Thomas McClain, Wm. Munrony (S.), Sylvestor Munrony,
Thomas McQuiddy, Thomas McDaniel, James McDonald, Elijah Martin, James McKin,
Solomon Martin, John McKinney, John Moore, Thomas Moore, Thomas McDonald, Wm.
Marshall, John McGann, Enock Nelson, Moses Nelson, John Nelson, John Neal, Ebenezer
Ozburn, John Patterson, James Potter, Edward Parker, Wm. Patterson, David Pagan,
Ebenezer Potter, Samuel Pickens, John Ross, Andrew Ryan, Lazarus Ryan, James Ramsay,
John Robertson (S.), James Ross (S.), John Rice (S.), David Rogers (S.), Joseph Rogers,

54 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

Larkin Rutherford, Richard Robinson, Joseph Ross (C), Benjamin Russell, Robert Randal,
Patrick Riley, David Smith, Randal Smith, Joseph Smith, John Spencer, Wm. Shannon,
John Stephenson (S.), Samuel Stephenson, James Thompson, James Taylor, Edward Taylor,
Wm. Thompson, Daniel Tygard, Thomas Taylor, Robert Whitehead, Wm. Whitehead,
Randal White, Robert White, David Wallace, Wm. Wilkerson, John Wilson, Thomas
Wray.

2 " Going out from Put-in-Bay the tenth of September, 1813, with his whole squadron,
Perry met the British fleet in a memorable naval contest. Himself a young man of
twenty-eight years of age, he was opposed to one of Nelson's veterans. Himself a Scotch-
Irishman, his opponent, Captain Robert H. Barclay, was a Scotchman. The engage-
ment was hot, but at three o'clock in the afternoon the gallant Perry saw the British flag
hauled down. For the first time since she had created a navy, Great Britain lost an entire
squadron. " We have met the enemy and they are ours," is the familiar line in which Perry
announced his victory, in a despatch to General William Henry Harrison. Commodore
Perry's mother was Sarah Wallace Alexander, a Scotch woman from the north of Ireland.
She became the mother of five sons, all of whom were officers in the United States Navy.
Two daughters married Captain George W. Rogers and Dr. William Butler of the United
States Navy. Dr. Butler was the father of Senator Matthew Galbraith Butler, of South
Carolina. After the victory at Lake Erie, some farmers in Rhode Island declared, such was
the estimation in which they held this woman, that it was ' Mrs. Perry's victory.' " — S. S.
Green, The Scotch-Irish in America.

3 Theodore Roosevelt's father, bearing the same name, was of Dutch descent ; his
mother, a native of Georgia, of Scottish. Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., married Martha Bulloch
on December 22, 1853. Martha Bulloch's parents were Major James Stephens Bulloch and
Martha Stewart, the latter a daughter of Daniel Stewart (an officer of the Revolution) and
Susan Oswald. James Stephens Bulloch was a son of James and Ann Irvine Bulloch, the
latter a daughter of Dr. John and Ann Elizabeth Baillie Irvine. James Bulloch (b. 1765 ;
d. Feb. 9, 1806) was a son of Archibald and Mary De Veaux Bulloch, the latter a daughter
of James De Veaux, of French Huguenot descent, and senior judge of the King's Court in
the province of Georgia. Archibald Bulloch was president and commander-in-chief of the
colony of Georgia, 1776-1777 ; delegate to the Continental Congress of 1775, and elected to
the one of 1776 ; signed the first constitution of the State of Georgia as president ; and died
in 1777. He was a son of James and Jean Stobo Bulloch, the latter a daughter of Rev.
Archibald Stobo, who sailed from Scotland with the Darien colonists in 1698, and subse-
quently (in 1700) settled at Charleston, S. C. James Bulloch, Sr., b. about 1701, in Scot-
land, came from Glasgow to Charleston about 1728, where, in 1729, he married Jean Stobo.
The Bullochs appear to belong to Baldernock, in Stirlingshire, where the name appears on
the records for some four hundred years back. See A History and Genealogy of the Families
of Bellinger and De Veaux, etc., by Joseph Gaston Bulloch, Savannah, 1895.

4 John C. Calhoun was the grandson of James Calhoun, who is said to have emigrated
from Donegal, Ireland, in 1733 {John C. Calhoun, by Dr. H. von Hoist, p. 8). John C.
Calhoun was the son of Patrick Calhoun, whom James Parton, in his Famous Americans of
decent Times, speaks of (pp. 117, 118) as a Scotch-Irishman, who, with Andrew Jackson and
Andrew Johnson, other Scotch-Irishmen, illustrates well the " North of Ireland" character.
Patrick Calhoun was a Presbyterian like his father (J. Randolph Tucker, in article "John
Caldwell Calhoun," in Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography). In 1770, Patrick
Calhoun married (von Hoist, p. 8) Martha Caldwell, who, says John S. Jenkins in his Life
of John Caldwell Calhoun (p. 21), was a daughter of a Scotch-Irish Presbyterian, who,
according to Tucker, was an emigrant from Ireland.

6 Henry Clay has been classed with the Scotch-Irish by Mr. Elbert Hubbard.
6 Lodge, Daniel Webster, p. 5 ; Curtis, Life of Daniel Webster, vol. i., p. 2.

p- tf

CHAPTER IV

NEW ENGLAND NOT THE BIRTHPLACE OF AMERICAN

LIBERTY

ANOTHER instance of the effect of continuous advertising by New
England's historians of the superlative and exclusive patriotism of
her sons may be noted in the claims so frequently made, that the Ameri-
can people were first prepared for the idea of resistance to the arbitrary
measures of Great Britain, and for independence, by a few of the citizens of
Massachusetts. These claims seem first to have been given prominence by
the discussion that arose among some of the surviving leaders of the Revo-
lutionary period, in 1817 and 1818, upon the appearance of William Wirt's
Life of Patrick Henry. On page 41 of that book, 1 the biographer cites
Thomas Jefferson as saying that " Mr. Henry certainly gave the first impulse
to the ball of the Revolution." 9

This statement by Mr. Wirt led to several appeals being made to Mr.
Jefferson by correspondents from New England for its verification ; and in
answering such communications, its distinguished author uniformly dis-
claimed any thought of the general application of his remark to the country
at large, and very properly limited its range to the development of the Revo-
lutionary movement within his own State. '

The spirit of sectional pride had been aroused, however, and an exten-
sive epistolary discussion followed, in which some of the foremost citizens
of the Republic took part. New England's chief advocate was John Adams,
doubtless the original " Honest John " of American politics. With his
natural garrulousness, he had written at great length the history of the origin
of independence in Massachusetts, going into minute detail to show how it
all developed from the Boston speech made by James Otis in 1761. While
Mr. Adams's report of and commentary upon this famous argument, written
so many years after it occurred, reminds the reader somewhat of the elo-
quent and lengthy speeches which the Roman and mediaeval historians put
into the mouths of warrior heroes about to engage in some great battle, there
can be no doubt as to the general correctness of his statements regarding the
effect of Otis's words in crystallizing public sentiment in Massachusetts and
turning it definitely against the encroaching tendencies of Great Britain's
commercial policy. It goes without saying, that the beginning of resist-
ance on the part of John Adams dates from that time. His description of
the incident, given in a letter to William Tudor, written March 29, 181 7,
begins as follows 3 :

The scene is the Council Chamber in the old Town House in Boston.
The date is in the month of February, 1761. . . .

56 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

In this chamber, round a grate fire, were seated five Judges with Lieu-
tenant-Governor Hutchinson at their head as Chief Justice, all arrayed in
their new fresh, rich robes of scarlet English broadcloth ; in their large
cambric bands, and immense judicial wigs. In this chamber were seated
at a long table all the barristers-at-law of Boston, and of the neighboring
county of Middlesex, in gowns, bands, and tie wigs. ... In this chamber
you have now the stage and the scenery ; next follows a narrative of the
subject. . . .

When the British ministry received from General Amherst his despatches
announcing the conquest of Montreal, and the consequent annihilation of
the French government in America, in 1759, they immediately conceived the
design and took the resolution of conquering the English colonies, and sub-
jecting them to the unlimited authority of Parliament. With this view and
intention they sent orders and instructions to the collector of customs in
Boston, Mr. Charles Paxton, to apply to the civil authority for writs of assist-
ance, to enable the custom-house officers, tide-waiters, land-waiters, and all,
to command all sheriffs and constables to attend and aid them in breaking
open houses, stores, shops, cellars, ships, bales, trunks, chests, casks, pack-
ages of all sorts, to search for goods, wares, and merchandises, which had
been imported against the prohibition or without paying taxes imposed by
certain acts of Parliament, called the acts of trade. . . .

Now for the actors and performers. Mr. Gridley argued with his charac-
teristic learning, ingenuity, and dignity. . . . Mr. Thacher followed him
on the other side, and argued with the softness of manners, the ingenuity
and cool reasoning, which were remarkable in his amiable character.

But Otis was a flame of fire ! — with a promptitude of classical allusions,
a depth of research, a rapid summary of historical dates and events, a pro-
fusion of legal authorities, a prophetic glance of his eye into futurity, and a
torrent of impetuous eloquence, he hurried away everything before him.
American Independence was then and there born ; the seeds of patriots and
heroes were then and there sown, to defend the vigorous youth, the non sine
Diis animosus infans. Every man of a crowded audience appeared to me to
go away, as I did, ready to take arms against Writs of Assistance. Then and
there was the first scene of opposition to the arbitrary claims of Great
Britain. Then and there the child Independence was born. In fifteen
years, namely, in 1776, he grew up to manhood, and declared himself free.*

After reading Mr. Wirt's Life of Patrick Henry y and comparing the date
of his famous speech before the Virginia Assembly with that of James Otis's
argument against the Writs of Assistance, Mr. Adams valiantly took up his
pen in defence of the honor of his native State, and at once indited a notice
of infringement to the panegyrist of the Virginia orator in this fashion * :

I envy none of the well-merited glories of Virginia, or any of her sages
or heroes. But, Sir, I am jealous, very jealous, of the honor of Massachu-
setts.

The resistance to the British system for subjugating the colonies began in
1760, and in the month of February, 1761, James Otis electrified the town of
Boston, the province of Massachusetts Bay, and the whole continent more
than Patrick Henry ever did in the whole course of his life. If we must
have panegyric and hyperbole, I must say that if Mr. Henry was Demos-
thenes and Mr. Richard Henry Lee, Cicero, James Otis was Isaiah and Eze-
kiel united. 8

The Birthplace of American Liberty 57

Basing chiefly on this, and on other hasty and ill-considered statements of
a like tenor, made at about the same time, New England's historians, as a rule,
have since accepted as final and authoritative this claim of her foremost
Revolutionary statesman as to the beginnings in America of resistance to the
repressive measures of Great Britain ; and with one voice they ascribe to
Massachusetts, and to Massachusetts alone, the inauguration of the move-
ment which led to final independence.

That the deliberate judgment of Adams did not confirm the drawing of
such a broad conclusion from the statement first put forth by himself under
the impulse of feelings aroused by wounded State pride, may be reasonably
demonstrated by an examination of some of his later writings.

As tending to show this more impartial attitude on the part of the
amiable and impulsive Adams, his correspondence with Madison in the same
year may be cited, in which some observations of the latter afford a convincing
proof, as well of Adams's ultimately just conception as of the insufficiency
of any view of the matter in which the range is limited to individuals.
Madison's letter to Adams of August 7, 1818, is in part as follows 7 :

Your remark is very just on the subject of Independence. It was not
the offspring of a particular man or a particular moment. . . . Our
forefathers brought with them the germ of Independence in the principle of
self-taxation. Circumstances unfolded and perfected it.

The first occasion which aroused this principle was, if I can trust my
recollection, the projected union at Albany in 1754, when the proposal of
the British Government to reimburse its advances for the colonies by a par-
liamentary tax on them was met by the letter from Dr. Franklin to Governor
Shirley, pointing out the unconstitutionality, the injustice, and the impolicy
of such a tax.

The opposition and discussions produced by the Stamp and subsequent
Acts of Parliament, made another stage in the growth of Independence. . . .

Franklin's letters to Governor Shirley written in December, 1754, to
which reference is made by Madison, contain such expressions as these 8 :

I apprehend that excluding the people of the colonies from all share
in the choice of the grand council will give extreme dissatisfaction, as well
as the taxing them by act of Parliament, where they have no represen-
tation. . . .

That it is supposed an undoubted right of Englishmen not to be taxed
but by their own consent, given through their representatives.

That the colonies have no representatives in Parliament.

That to propose taxing them by Parliament, and refuse them the liberty
of choosing a representative council to meet in the colonies and consider and
judge of the necessity of any general tax and the quantum, shows a suspicion
of their loyalty to the Crown, or of their regard for their country, or of their
common sense and understanding which they have not deserved.

In Pennsylvania, the matter of taxation had been a constant source of
dispute between the Assembly and the Proprietary government for many
years prior to 1760. In that State, more than ten years before the battle of

58 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

Lexington, an armed uprising took place on the part of the Scotch-Irish
against the principle of taxation without representation or protection.

The inciting causes of this hostile demonstration against the provincial
government of Pennsylvania grew out of the continued and studied neglect,
by the Quaker oligarchy then controlling the Pennsylvania Assembly, of that
primary essential of all organized governments, namely, the ability and dis-
position to defend its citizens against the murderous invasions of an armed
foe. The Quaker government not only failed to furnish protection to its
citizens, but made a virtue of its own shortcomings in that respect.

Along the thinly settled borders, in 1762-63, two thousand persons had
been killed or carried off, and nearly an equal number of families driven
from their homes. " The frontier people of Pennsylvania," says Parkman,
" goaded to desperation by long-continued suffering, were divided between
rage against the Indians, and resentment against the Quakers, who had
yielded them cold sympathy and inefficient aid. The horror and fear, grief
and fury, with which these men looked upon the mangled remains of friends
and relatives, set language at defiance." On one occasion, the frontiersmen
sent to Philadelphia a wagon laden with the mangled corpses of their friends
and relatives, who had fallen by Indian butchery. These were carried along
the streets, with many people following, cursing the Indians, and also the
Quakers because they would not join in war for the destruction of the sav-
ages. But the hideous spectacle failed of the intended effect, and the As-
sembly still turned a deaf ear to all entreaties for more effective aid. The
Scotch- Irish of the frontier were the chief sufferers from the depredations
of the Indians. They were of a rude and hardy stamp, — hunters, scouts,
rangers, Indian traders, and backwoods farmers, — who had grown up with
arms in their hands, and been trained under all the influences of the war-
like frontier. They fiercely complained that they were interposed as a
barrier between the rest of the province and a ferocious enemy, and that
they were sacrificed to the safety of men who looked with indifference on
their miseries, and lost no opportunity to extenuate and smooth away the
cruelties of their destroyers.

Along the western frontiers of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, in
the summer of 1763, terror reigned supreme. Indian scalping parties were
ranging everywhere, laying waste the settlements, destroying the harvests,
and butchering men, women, and children, with ruthless fury. Many hun-
dreds of wretched fugitives flocked for refuge to Carlisle and the other
towns of the border, bringing tales of inconceivable horror. Strong parties
of armed men, who went out to reconnoitre the country, found every habi-
tation reduced to cinders, and the half-burned bodies of the inmates lying
among the smouldering ruins ; while here and there was seen some miserable
wretch, scalped and tomahawked, but still alive and conscious. As the
summer passed, the frontiers of Cumberland County were completely aban-
doned by the Scotch-Irish settlers, many of whom, not content with seeking.

The Birthplace of American Liberty 59

refuge at Carlisle, continued their flight to the eastward, and pushed on to
Lancaster and Philadelphia. Carlisle presented a most deplorable spectacle.
A multitude of the refugees, unable to find shelter in the town, had en-
camped in the woods, or on the adjacent fields, erecting huts of branches
and bark, and living on such charity as the slender means of the towns-
people could supply. The following is an extract from a letter dated at
Carlisle, July 5, 1763 (Hazard's Pennsylvania Register, iv., 390) :

Nothing could exceed the terror which prevailed from house to house,
from town to town. The road was near covered with women and children
flying to Lancaster and Philadelphia. The pastor of the Episcopal Church
went at the head of his congregation, to protect and encourage them on the
way. A few retired to the breastworks for safety. The alarm once given
could not be appeased.

The letter from which the following extract is taken appears in the
Pennsylvania Gazette, No. 1804, the letter being dated at Carlisle, July 12,
1763:

I embrace this first leisure since yesterday morning to transmit you a
brief account of our present state of affairs here, which indeed is very dis-
tressing ; every day, almost, affording some fresh object to awaken the compas-
sion, alarm the fears, or kindle into resentment and vengeance every sensible
breast, while flying families, obliged to abandon house and possessions, to
save their lives by an hasty escape ; mourning widows, bewailing their hus-
bands surprised and massacred by savage rage ; tender parents, lamenting
the fruits of their own bodies, cropt in the very bloom of youth by a barbar-
ous hand ; with relations and acquaintances pouring out sorrow for murdered
neighbors and friends, present a varied scene of mingled distress.

To-day a British vengeance begins to arise in the breasts of our men.
One of them that fell from among the twelve, as he was just expiring, said
to one of his fellows, " Here, take my gun, and kill the first Indian you see,
and all shall be well."

In October, 1763, several companies of Rangers were formed by the
Scotch-Irish in Lancaster and Cumberland counties, for the purpose of
patrolling the borders and giving such protection as they were able to the
scattered inhabitants. One of these companies, starting from Paxtang in
Lancaster County, marched to the relief of the Connecticut settlers at Wyo-
ming, but arrived two days after that settlement had been burned, and its
inhabitants killed, imprisoned, or driven off by the Indians. They buried
the dead bodies of those who had fallen in the massacre, and returned to
the southern settlements. The Quakers, who seemed resolved that they
would neither defend the people of the frontier nor allow them to defend
themselves, vehemently inveighed against the several expeditions up the
Susquehanna, and denounced them as seditious and murderous. " Urged
by their blind prejudice in favor of the Indians," says Parkman, "they
insisted that the bands of the Upper Susquehanna were friendly to the Eng-
lish ; whereas, with the single exception of a few Moravian converts near
Wyoming, who had not been molested by the whites, there could be no

60 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

rational doubt that these savages nourished a rancorous and malignant
hatred against the province. But the Quakers, removed by their situation
from all fear of the tomahawk, securely vented their spite against the bor-
derers, and doggedly closed their ears to the truth." Meanwhile, the people
of the frontier besieged the Assembly with petitions for relief ; but little
heed was given to their complaints.

At this time, the provincial government had the custody of some twenty
Iroquois Indians, who were seated on Conestoga Manor, in Lancaster County,
not far from the Susquehanna. The men spent part of their time in hunting,
and lounged away the rest of it in idleness and dissipation. They lived by
beggary, and the sale of brooms, baskets, and wooden ladles, made by the
women. In the immediate vicinity they were commonly regarded as vaga-
bonds, but in the neighboring settlements they were looked upon as secretly
abetting the enemy, acting as spies, giving shelter to scalping parties, and
aiding them in their depredations. Their chief had repeatedly threatened
to kill various white men and women of the neighborhood.

About the middle of December, word was brought to the settlers living
at Paxtang (now Harrisburg), that an Indian, known to have committed
depredations in the vicinity, had been traced to Conestoga. Matthew Smith,
a man of influence and popularity among his associates, called together a
number of the Paxtang Rangers, and led them to the Conestoga settlement.
One of the men saw an Indian issuing from a house, and thought that he
recognized him as the savage who had killed his own mother. Firing
his rifle, he brought the Indian down. Then, with a loud shout, the furious
mob rushed into the cabins, and killed all the Indians whom they found
there, some six in number. Fourteen of the Conestogas managed to escape,
and, fleeing to Lancaster, were given a place of refuge in the county jail.
While there, word was again carried to the Paxtang men that an Indian,
known to have murdered the relatives of one of their number, was among
those who had received the protection of the Lancaster magistrates. This
again aroused a feeling of rage and resentment amongst the Rangers. On
December 27th some fifty of them, under the leadership of Lazarus Stewart,
marched to Lancaster, broke open the jail, and with the fury of a mob
massacred every Indian contained therein, man, woman, and child.

This is said by some to have been the first instance of the operation of
lynch law in America ; and many blame the Scotch-Irish for its introduction.
Doubtless the odium is merited ; as a similar incident occurred nearly
twenty years later, when some of the Scotch-Irish of Washington County,
Pennsylvania, under far less extenuating circumstances, murdered in cold
blood upwards of ninety men, women, and children of the community of
Moravian Indians at Gnadenhutten, west of the Ohio. This atavistic ten-
dency is further illustrated in our own day by the lynching of negroes in
the South, the frequency of which is probably due to the fact that the
southern white population is chiefly of Scotch-Irish descent ; these examples

The Birthplace of American Liberty 61

of perverted administration of justice finding many parallels in the annals
of mediaeval Scotland. The family feuds of Kentucky, which for the most
part seem peculiar to families bearing Scottish names, may also be cited as
examples and counterparts in America of the clan and family feuds formerly
so common in Scotland. The case of the Regulators of North Carolina is
another well-known instance in American history of the Scotch-Irish back-
woodsmen taking the administration of justice into their own hands, when
their rulers had failed to provide for them a safe government.

But the uprising of the " Paxtang Boys " was more than that of a mere
lynching mob, bent on the immediate extermination of all redskins who
came within its reach. It was a protest, bloody and atrocious, it is true,
made by the harassed frontiersmen against the cowardly policy of the
Quaker government. The Scotch-Irish had suffered grievously from the
Indian outrages, caused in a great measure by the neglect of that government
to provide adequately for the defence of the province. They had repeatedly
appealed to the Assembly, and their petitions for help had been rejected
with contempt. They were unable to bring about a change for the better, as
all the political power was in the hands of a small number of people. They
determined finally to appeal to force, and, in doing so, thought in their first
blind rage that they might strike a blow at the Quakers, and at the same
time rid themselves of probable enemies, by killing the Quakers' wards. The
Assembly, they argued, had shown infinitely more consideration for the
feelings of the Indians than it had for the wounds of the Scotch-Irish. It
had voted the savages large sums of money as presents, and indirectly en-
abled them to carry on an exterminating warfare against the whites ; while
at the same time it refused to make any proper defence of the province
against the marauders. If the Quakers were unmoved by the killing of
hundreds of their Scotch-Irish fellow citizens, whom they hated, perhaps
they could be made to realize the condition of the frontiers by the killing of
their own Indian wards, whom they loved and cherished.

The Paxtang Rangers, in their bitter resentment against the government,
lost sight of the fact that it is better for twenty guilty men to escape than
for one innocent man to suffer. Their own miseries made them believe in
all sincerity that the only good Indian is a dead one ; and that they them-
selves were the agents appointed of Providence to make all Indians good.

The Reverend John Elder was captain of the Paxtang Rangers, and
minister of Paxtang and Derry congregations, from which the Rangers were
enlisted. He tried in vain to dissuade his men from going to Conestoga on
their bloody errand, and desisted only after they had broken away from him
in anger. On the 27th December, 1763, the reverend captain wrote to
Governor Penn as follows :

The storm which had been so long gathering, has at length exploded.
Had Government removed the Indians from Conestoga, as was frequently
urged without success, this painful catastrophe might have been avoided.

62 ^ The Scotch-Irish Families of America

What could I do with men heated to madness ? All that I could do was
done. I expostulated, but life and reason were set at defiance, and yet
the men, in private life, were virtuous and respectable — not cruel, but
mild and merciful. . . . The time will arrive when each palliating cir-
cumstance will be calmly weighed. This deed, magnified into the blackest
of crimes, shall be considered one of those youthful ebullitions of wrath
caused by momentary excitement, to which human infirmity is subjected.

The different proclamations of Governor Penn, and the action of the
Assembly relative to this transaction, created intense excitement on the
frontiers of Lancaster, Berks, and Northampton counties, and meetings were
held at which the provincial authorities were severely condemned. Repre-
sentatives were appointed to proceed to Philadelphia and demand redress
and protection. Accompanying them were large delegations from the
"back inhabitants."

The approach of the frontiersmen caused great uneasiness in Philadel-
phia. Their force was magnified by rumor to many thousands. Six com-
panies of foot, one of artillery, and two troops of horse were formed to
oppose them : and some thousands of the inhabitants, including many
Quakers, were prepared to render assistance, in case an attempt should be
made upon the town. The barracks, which were under the protection of the
regular troops, were fortified, several works being thrown up about them,
and eight pieces of cannon mounted.

On arriving at Germantown, the Paxtang men were met by commission-
ers to whom they made known their grievances. Colonel Matthew Smith
and James Gibson then accompanied the commissioners to Philadelphia,
where they met the Governor and the Assembly, and presented their de-
mands. In the meantime, with few exceptions, the frontiersmen who accom^
panied them returned home.

The memorial of Gibson and Smith was sustained by a " Declaration "
bearing fifteen hundred signatures.

In a letter written at this time, Governor Penn says : " We expect a
thousand of back inhabitants in town, to insist upon the Assembly granting
their request with regard to the increase of representatives, to put them upon an
equality with the rest of the counties. They have from time to time presented
several petitions for the purpose, which have been always disregarded by
the House ; for which purpose they intend to come in person. I am of
opinion they [the Assembly] will never come into [agreement], as it will
be the means of lessening the power of the governing few in this Province."

The petition presented by these Scotch-Irish citizens, in enumerating
their grievances, mentions as the chief one the fact that they were not
permitted a proportionate share in the government of the province. This
petition is printed in full in the Colonial Records of Pennsylvania, vol. ix., pp.
138-145, and its principal contents are as follows :

We, Matthew Smith and James Gibson, in behalf of ourselves and his

The Birthplace of American Liberty 63

Majesty's faithful and loyal subjects, the inhabitants of the frontier counties
of Lancaster, York, Cumberland, Berks, and Northampton, humbly beg
leave to remonstrate and lay before you the following grievances, which we
submit to your wisdom for redress.

First, We apprehend that, as freemen and English subjects, we have an
indisputable title to the same privileges and immunities with his Majesty's
other subjects who reside in the interior counties of Philadelphia, Chester,
and Bucks, and therefore ought not to be excluded from an equal share
with them in the very important privilege of legislation : nevertheless, con-
trary to the Proprietor's charter, and the acknowledged principles of com-
mon justice and equity, our five counties are restrained from electing more
than ten representatives, viz., four for Lancaster, two for York, two for
Cumberland, one for Berks, and one for Northampton, while the three coun-
ties and city of Philadelphia, Chester, and Bucks elect twenty-six. This
we humbly conceive is oppressive, unequal, and unjust, the cause of many
of our grievances, and an infringement of our natural privileges of freedom
and equality ; wherefore, we humbly pray that we may no longer be
deprived of an equal number with the three aforesaid counties, to represent
us in Assembly."

Secondly, We understand that a bill is now before the House of As-
sembly, wherein it is provided that such persons as shall be charged with
killing any Indians in Lancaster county, shall not be tried in the county
where the fact was committed, but in the counties of Philadelphia, Chester,
or Bucks. This is manifestly to deprive British subjects of their known
privileges, to cast an eternal reproach upon whole counties, as if they were
unfit to serve their country in the quality of jurymen, and to contradict the
well-known laws of the British nation in a point whereon life, liberty, and
security essentially depend, namely, that of being tried by their equals, in
the neighborhood where their own, their accusers, and the witnesses' char-
acter and credit, with the circumstances of the fact are best known, and
instead thereof putting their lives in the hands of strangers, who may as
justly be suspected of partiality to as the frontier counties can be of preju-
dices against Indians. . . .

Thirdly, During the late and present Indian War, the frontiers of this
Province have been repeatedly attacked and ravaged by skulking parties of
the Indians, who have with the most savage cruelty murdered men, women,
and children, without distinction, and have reduced near a thousand fam-
ilies to the most extreme distress. It grieves us to the very heart to see
such of our frontier inhabitants as have escaped savage fury with the loss of
their parents, their children, their wives, or relatives, left destitute by the
public, and exposed to the most cruel poverty and wretchedness, while
upwards of an hundred and twenty of these savages, who are with great
reason suspected of being guilty of these horrid barbarities, under the mask
of friendship, have procured themselves to be taken under the protection of
the Government with a view to elude the fury of the brave relatives of the
murdered, and are now maintained at the public expense. Some of these
Indians, now in the Barracks at Philadelphia, are confessedly a part of the
Wyalusing Indians, which tribe is now at war with us, and the others are the
Moravian Indians, who, living with us under the cloak of friendship, carried
on a correspondence with our known enemies on the Great Island. We
cannot but observe, with sorrow and indignation, that some persons in this
Province are at pains to extenuate the barbarous cruelties practised by these
savages on our murdered brethren and relatives, which are shocking to

64 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

human nature, and must pierce every heart but that of the hardened perpe-
trators or their abettors ; nor is it less distressing to hear others pleading
that although the Wyalusing tribe is at war with us, yet that part of it which
is under the protection of the Government, may be friendly to the English,
and innocent. In what nation under the sun was it ever the custom that
when a neighboring nation took up arms, not an individual should be
touched but only the persons that offered hostilities ? Who ever proclaimed
war with a part of a nation, and not with the whole ? Had these Indians
disapproved of the perfidy of their tribe, and been willing to cultivate and
preserve friendship with us, why did they not give notice of the war before
it happened, as it is known to be the result of long deliberations, and a pre-
concerted combination among them ? Why did they not leave their tribe
immediately, and come among us before there was ground to suspect them,
or war was actually waged with their tribe ? No, they stayed amongst
them, were privy to their murders and ravages, until we had destroyed
their provisions, and when they could no longer subsist at home, they come,
not as deserters but as friends, to be maintained through the winter, that
they may be able to scalp and butcher us in the spring.

And as to the Moravian Indians, there are strong grounds at least to
suspect their friendship, as it is known that they carried on a correspond-
ence with our enemies on the Great Island. We killed three Indians going
from Bethlehem to the Great Island with blankets, ammunition, and pro-
visions, which is an undeniable proof that the Moravian Indians were in
confederacy with our open enemies ; and we cannot but be filled with
indignation to hear this action of ours painted in the most odious and
detestable colors, as if we had inhumanly murdered our guides, who pre-
served us from perishing in the woods, when we only killed three of our
known enemies, who attempted to shoot us when we surprised them. And,
besides all this, we understand that one of these very Indians is proved, by
the oath of Stinson's widow, to be the very person that murdered her hus-
band. How, then, comes it to pass, that he alone, of all the Moravian
Indians, should join the enemy to murder that family ? Or can it be sup-
posed that any enemy Indians, contrary to their known custom of making
war, should penetrate into the heart of a settled country to burn, plunder,
and murder the inhabitants, and not molest any houses in their return, or
ever be seen or heard of ? Or how can we account for it, that no ravages
have been committed in Northampton county since the removal of the
Moravian Indians, when the Great Cove has been struck since ? These
things put it beyond doubt with us that the Indians now at Philadelphia are
his Majesty's perfidious enemies, and, therefore, to protect and maintain
them at the public expense, while our suffering brethren on the frontiers
are almost destitute of the necessaries of life, and are neglected by the pub-
lic, is sufficient to make us mad with rage, and tempt us to do what nothing
but the most violent necessity can vindicate. We humbly and earnestly
pray, therefore, that those enemies of his Majesty may be removed as soon
as possible out of the Province.

Fourthly ', We humbly conceive that it is contrary to the maxims of good
policy, and extremely dangerous to our frontiers, to suffer any Indians, of
what tribe soever, to live within the inhabited parts of this Province while
we are engaged in an Indian war, as experience has taught us that they are
all perfidious, and their claim to freedom and independency puts it in their
power to act as spies, to entertain and give intelligence to our enemies, and
to furnish them with provisions and warlike stores. To this fatal intercourse

The Birthplace of American Liberty 65

between our pretended friends and open enemies, we must ascribe the
greatest part of the ravages and murders that have been committed in the
course of this and the last Indian war. We therefore pray that this griev-
ance be taken under consideration and remedied.

Fifthly, We cannot help lamenting that no provision has been hitherto
made, that such of our frontier inhabitants as have been wounded in defence
of the Province, their lives and liberties, may be taken care of, and cured of
their wounds at the public expense. We therefore pray that this grievance
may be redressed.

Sixthly, In the late Indian war, this Province, with others of his Majesty's
colonies, gave rewards for Indian scalps, to encourage the seeking them in
their own country, as the most likely means of destroying or reducing them
to reason, but no such encouragement has been given in this war, which has
damped the spirits of many brave men, who are willing to venture their lives
in parties against the enemy. We therefore pray that public rewards may
be proposed for Indian scalps, which may be adequate to the dangers
attending enterprises of this nature.

Seventhly, We daily lament that numbers of our nearest and dearest
relatives are still in captivity among the savage heathen, to be trained up in
all their ignorance and barbarity, or to be tortured to death with all the
contrivances of Indian cruelty, for attempting to make their escape from
bondage ; we see they pay no regard to the many solemn promises they have
made to restore our friends who are in bondage amongst them. We
therefore earnestly pray that no trade may hereafter be permitted to be
carried on with them until our brethren and relatives are brought home
to us.

Eighthly, We complain that a certain society of people in this Province
[meaning the Quakers] in the late Indian war, and at several treaties held by
the King's representatives, openly loaded the Indians with presents, and that
I[srael] P[emberton], a leader of the said society, in defiance of all government,
not only abetted our Indian enemies, but kept up a private intelligence with
them, and publicly received from them a belt of wampum, as if he had been
our Governor, or authorized by the King to treat with his enemies. By this
means, the Indians have been taught to despise us as a weak and disunited
people, and from this fatal source have arose many of our calamities under
which we groan. We humbly pray, therefore, that this grievance may be
redressed, and that no private subject be hereafter permitted to treat with,
or carry on a correspondence with, our enemies.

Ninthly, we cannot but observe with sorrow, that Fort Augusta, which
has been very expensive to this Province, has afforded us but little assistance
during this or the last war. The men that were stationed at that place
neither helped our distressed inhabitants to save their crops, nor did they
attack our enemies in their towns, or patrol on our frontiers. We humbly
request that proper measures may be taken to make that garrison more
serviceable to us in our distress, if it can be done.

N. B. We are far from intending any reflection against the commanding
officer stationed at Augusta, as we presume his conduct was always directed
by those from whom he received his orders.

Signed on behalf of ourselves, and by appointment of a great number of
the frontier inhabitants.
February 13th, 1764.

Matthew Smith,
James Gibson. ,0

66 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

No action on the two memorials was taken by the Assembly, but a bill
was passed granting supplies for the ensuing campaign ; and the consequent
military preparations, together with a threatened renewal of the war on the
part of the Indians, engrossed the minds of the frontier people, and caused
the excitements of the winter to be forgotten.

The nature of some earlier conflicts between the Assembly and the State
Government of Pennsylvania is thus alluded to by Franklin in chapter nine
of his Autobiography :

These public quarrels were all at bottom owing to the Proprietaries, our
hereditary governors ; who, when any expense was to be incurred for the
defence of their province, with incredible meanness instructed their deputies
to pass no act for levying the necessary taxes, unless their vast estates were
in the same act expressly exonerated ; and they had even taken the bonds
of these deputies to observe such instructions. . . . The Assemblies for
three years held out against this injustice, though constrained to bend at
last.

The significance of the contest between the Assembly and the Proprietary
may be inferred from a perusal of the message sent to the Assembly by Gov-
ernor Morris, May 16, 1755, which charges some of its members, among other
things, with a desire for independence" This portion of the message may
well be reproduced in connection with the present consideration of its sub-
ject. It is to be found in volume vi. of the Colonial Records of Pennsylvania,
at pp. 386, 387 :

Gentlemen :

When I summoned You together on the Seventeenth of March last I
was in Hopes You would bring with you Inclinations to promote the Publick
Service by Granting the Supplies expected by the Crown and by putting
this Province into a Posture of Defence ; but I am sorry to find that neither
the Danger to which this Country stands exposed, nor his Majesty's repeated
and affectionate calls, have had any Weight with You.

The Bill you sent me for striking Twenty-Five Thousand Pounds was of
a more extraordinary Nature than that I refused my Assent to in the Winter
Sessions, as it gave General Braddock a Power over no more than Five
Thousand Pounds, and subjected the remaining Twenty Thousand and all
the Surplus of the Excise for Eleven Years to come to the Disposition of
some of the Members of your House, and to the Assembly for the Time
being.

The offering Money in a Way and upon Terms that You very well
knew I could not consistent with my Duty to the Crown consent to, is in my
Opinion trifling with the King's Commands, and amounts to a Refusal to give
at all, and I am satisfied will be seen in this Light by my Superiors, who by
your Bill above mentioned, which I shall lay before them, and by the whole
of your Conduct since You have been made acquainted with the designs of
the French, will be convinced that your Resolutions are and have been to
take Advantage of your Country's Danger, to aggrandize and render perma-
nent your own Power and Authority, and to destroy that of the Crown.
That it is for this Purpose and to promote your Scheme of future Independency
You are grasping at the Disposition of all Publick Money and at the Power

The Birthplace of American Liberty 67

of filling all the offices of Government especially those of the Revenue, and
when his Majesty and the Nation are at the Expense of sending Troops for
the Protection of these Colonies, You refuse to furnish them with Provisions
and necessary Carriages tho' your country is full of both, unless You can at
the same Time encroach upon the Rights of the Crown and increase your
own Power, already too great for a Branch of a Subordinate dependant
Government so remote from the principal Seat of Power.

In an address delivered before the Historical Society of Pennsylvania,
in 1882, upon " Pennsylvania's Formative Influence upon Federal
Institutions," Mr. William A. Wallace presented some facts which may well
be given a place in connection with the subject of taxation without repre-
sentation :

The earliest instance that I can find in which the issue of no taxation
without representation was sharply defined in America was that of 1740,
between the city of Philadelphia and the Provincial Assembly. The city
corporation, consisting of the mayor and common council, possessed exten-
sive powers of taxation, and it was proposed to take them away and vest
them in commissioners and assessors, to be elected by the people. A bill
for that purpose was passed by the Assembly, but the Governor refused to
sign it. The quarrel was really between the proprietary party and the people.
The city corporation was a close body, originally composed of persons nom-
inated by William Penn, and keeping up succession by the election of
councilmen and aldermen by those already in office, so that the policy of
the corporation guarded from the interference of persons whose views might
have differed from the councilmen. In the controversy the Assembly struck
the key-note which sounded thirty-six years afterward in the Declaration of
Independence. The ground was taken that as the inhabitants of the city
had no right to choose members of the city corporation, the latter should
not have the power of taxing the people without their own consent ; that
the King claimed no power of levying taxes without the consent of Parlia-
ment, and that there should be no taxation without representation. 12

This action was twenty-five years before the resolutions of the House of
Burgesses of Virginia, introduced by Patrick Henry, were passed, and,
whilst it may be true, as Mr. Jefferson states, that Mr. Henry certainly
gave the " first impulse to the ball of the Revolution " by these resolutions,
yet the people of the colonies were familiar with the controversies in Penn-
sylvania, and these and the teachings of Franklin prepared the public mind
for its final attitude of resistance to the death. Mr. Graham, in his history
of the colonies, says that when in the beginning of 1764, Lord Granville in-
formed the colonies of his purpose to procure an Act of Parliament, im-
posing a stamp duty on the colonies, which ultimately was carried into
execution, and aroused the patriotic fervor and indignation of all of the
people, the Pennsylvania Assembly " was distinguished above all others by
the temperate, firm, dignified, and consistent strain of its debates and pro-
ceedings." It was declared there that this proposition was a deviation from
national usage, unconstitutional, unjust, and unnecessary, and that Parlia-
ment had no right to tax the colonies at all. They recognized the right of
the Crown to ask for supplies, and expressed their willingness to grant
them, but utterly denied the power and authority of the ministers and
Parliament to tax them. Virginia and New York also gave positive con-
tradiction to this claim of right to tax the colonies, and affirmed its

68 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

unconstitutionality. Differing from Pennsylvania in her dignified silence,
they sent petitions to both King and Parliament, but that of Virginia weakened
its force by distinguishing between the power and the right to tax, for, while
denying the right, the exertion of the supposed power was deprecated in a
manner which indicated that no opposition beyond remonstrance was in-
tended. They denied the right, recognized the power, and breathed not a
syllable that implied either the power or the will to resist the infliction. The
petition of New York was not presented. No member of Parliament was
found willing to present it, and it reached England after the Stamp Act was
in progress.

Massachusetts, on the contrary, amid her divided councils, not only did
not boldly stand against the right to tax, but addressed the House of Com-
mons by a petition imploring for favor. The practical effect was to sanction
the pretensions of Parliament to enforce its right to enact and execute the
Stamp Act, and to place the hope of the colonies upon the lenity and indul-
gence of the British Government. The bold and unhesitating declaration
announced in our Assembly under the lead of Dickinson and Franklin
against the right, and the denial of the power by its record, was followed
by no other of the colonies, but Franklin in advocating the doctrine thus
laid down, in his controversy with British authority, as our representative,
quoted Philip De Comines and the famous declaration : " There is neither
King nor sovereign lord on earth, who has beyond his own domain power
to lay the imposition of one farthing on his subjects, without the consent of
those who pay it, unless he does it by tyranny and violence." Here, as in
other things, we find Pennsylvania and her sons in the advance, and this,
too, in face of the fact that the charter to Penn at least impliedly recognized
the right of Parliament to tax. When this first step in the oppressive
statutes of the mother country, which ultimately brought armed resistance
and independence, was taken, and the Stamp Act was a fixed fact, Virginia,
under the fiery lead of Henry, declared through a small majority of its
House of Burgesses that " the most substantial and distinguished part of
their political birthright was the privilege of being taxed exclusively by
themselves, or their representatives," and thus primarily voiced the uni-
versal thought. Massachusetts, following Otis, Adams, and Hancock, at the
same hour initiated her call for a convention of the colonies for unity and
resistance. Our Assembly with unanimous voice placed upon record their
protest, that " the only legal representatives of the people were the persons
elected to serve as members of the Assembly, and that the taxation of the
Province by any other persons whatsoever was unconstitutional, unjust,
subversive of liberty, and destructive of happiness."

The firm and decided attitude of the colonies, and the representations
and genius of Franklin, then the agent of Pennsylvania at London, so pre-
vailed upon Pitt and those in power, that the Stamp Act was repealed
within two years from its enactment, and the opening of the bloody drama
of the Revolution was postponed for further contests between prerogative
and arbitrary power on the one hand, and patriotic independence and per-
sonal right on the other. They soon came, and in them we trace the spirit
of feudal control combating the rights of the individual, which, since the
foundation of the colony, had been struggling for the mastery.

The Birthplace of American Liberty 69

NOTES TO CHAPTER IV.

! P. 59, 25th edition.

8 In his conversation with Webster in 1824, Jefferson pronounced a further eulogy on
the character of Patrick Henry in these words: "It is not now easy to say what we
should have done without Patrick Henry. He was far before all in maintaining the spirit of
the Revolution. His influence was most extensive with the members from the upper
counties ; and his boldness and their votes overawed and controlled the more timid and
aristocratic gentlemen of the lower part of the State. . . . After all, it must be allowed
that he was our leader in the measures of the Revolution in Virginia, and in that respect
more is due to him than to any other person. If we had not had him we should have got
on pretty well as you did by a number of men of nearly equal talents but he left all of us
far behind." — Curtis, Life of Daniel Webster, vol. i., p. 585.

3 Works, vol. x., pp. 244, 245, 247.

4 See, also, Works of John Adams, vol. x., pp. 274, 277, 279, 280, 282, 289, 292, 298,
314, 317, 320.

5 Works, vol. x., p. 272.

6 The influence of this controversy [over the Writs of Assistance in 1761] in producing
the Revolution, is not wholly due to the fiery eloquence of Otis, whose words, said John
Adams, "breathed into the nation the breath of life," nor to the range of his argument
. . . but to their effect upon th*e commercial interest — then the leading one — of New
England ; for if the latent powers of these writs were set free and used by the revenue
officers, the commerce of Boston, Salem, and Newport would have been effectually
crippled. — Narrative and Critical History of America, vol. vi., pp. II, 12. Mellen
Chamberlain, The Revolution Impending.

In the debate in the Commons on the Boston Port Bill and the infraction of the charter
of Massachusetts, Sir Richard Sutton said that "even in the most quiet times the disposi-
tion to oppose the laws of this country was strongly ingrafted in the Americans, and all
their actions conveyed a spirit and wish for independence. If you ask an American who is
his master, he will tell you he has none, nor any governor but Jesus Christ." {Adolphus, ii.,
108) — N. and C. Hist., vi., p. 232, note.

I Life and Writings of "fames Madison, vol. iii., p. 105.

8 See Franklin's Works, vol. ii., pp. 376, 377 ; and for the whole history of his plan of
union and its attendant circumstances, ibid., pp. 343 to 387, and his Autobiography, ch. ix.

9 The number of taxables in Lancaster, Cumberland, York, Northampton, and Berks
counties in 1760 was 15,437, and in Bucks, Chester, and Philadelphia, 16,230.

10 See Parkman, Conspiracy of Pontiac, ch. xxv., and his Appendix E.

II On this subject see also Appendix E (Examination of Joseph Galloway).

12 See Colonial Records of Pennsylvania, vol. iv., pp. 375-420. The principle is laid
down in a message from the Assembly to the Governor in May, 1740, as follows (p. 408) :
" Nor would any part of the bill, if passed into a law, debar them from levying money on
the inhabitants to these purposes, if they were authorized by their charter so to do, altho'
in our opinion, it ought not nor cannot give any such power, for the following reasons :
I. The members of the corporation were originally named by the Proprietor, and have
since chosen their successors ; and as the inhabitants of the city have not any right to chuse
them, it is not reasonable they should have the power of levying money on the inhabitants
without their consent. 2. The King himself claims no power of laying and levying taxes
on his subjects but by common consent in Parliament ; and as all the powers of government
in this province are derived under him, they cannot be greater in this respect than those from
which they are derived," etc.

CHAPTER V

LIBERTY OF SPEECH AND CONSCIENCE DEFINITELY ESTAB-
LISHED IN AMERICA BY MEN OF SCOTTISH BLOOD

WE have now cited some authentic instances of vigorous and prolonged
resistance to the monarchical principle of taxing the many for the
benefit of the few, as well as the promulgation of the doctrine of no taxation
without representation, all of which occurred many years before the passage
of the Stamp Act. We have also had the example of an armed demonstration
on the part of the Scotch-Irish of Pennsylvania in opposition to the first-
named principle, at a time when the Massachusetts Independence " infant "
was yet in its swaddling clothes.

Nor are these all. The early pages of American colonial history contain
numerous like instances of resistance to arbitrary power ever since the time
of the first great outbreak of the American spirit in opposition to old-
world traditions and oppressions which took place in 1676 in the revolt of
the English Nathaniel Bacon and the Scottish William Drummond and their
followers against the royal government as then administered by Governor
Berkeley in Virginia.

Let us now consider another of these vital principles of human liberty,
one in the development of which Americans boast themselves as being fore-
most among the nations of the world, — that is, liberty of speech and the
freedom of the press.

This principle was, perhaps, first effectively contended for and success-
fully established in the hearts of the American public twenty-six years be-
fore James Otis's speech at Boston, in the trial of John Peter Zenger, a printer
of New York, and it was then done chiefly by the eloquence and per-
sistence of the Scottish Attorney-General of Pennsylvania, a man named
Andrew Hamilton, who was aided by two Presbyterian lawyers of New York,
James Alexander and William Smith. Hamilton was the chief actor in this
affair, which has been cited by Gouverneur Morris as the beginning of Amer-
ican liberty, and no early moulder of public opinion on the questions involved
in that struggle deserves a higher place in the affections of the American
people than this Scotch attorney, the first " Philadelphia lawyer " to give
that appellation international renown. 1

The occasion of his appearance was a memorable one, and the incident is
not unlike that narrated by John Adams in telling of the argument over the
Writs of Assistance in Massachusetts; the scene in this case being the highest
court of the neighboring colony of New York, and the leading actors the chief
justice and attorney-general of that province with the aged and fearless lawyer
from the Quaker colony. Its action took place on August 4, 1735, and the

Liberty of Speech and Conscience 71

incident is narrated at length in a pamphlet issued soon afterwards by two of
the defendant's attorneys. Zenger's defence was undertaken by the Presby-
terian Junta, which later became so famous in the Revolutionary history of
New York. 8

Zenger was the publisher of the New York Journal, and had printed in
its columns some strictures on William Cosby, the royal governor of the
province. These criticisms were for the most part true, and for that
reason very unpalatable to their subject. As a warning to others, as much
as for his own offences, Zenger was arrested. It was proposed to deal sum-
marily with the prisoner, but public interest was aroused in his case, and it
was seen that if he was convicted all hope of free speech would for the time
be gone. As the public became interested, the authorities became de-
termined and harsh. In pursuance of his rights, Zenger's counsel made an
objection to the judges who were to try the case, and they were promptly
disbarred, while a lawyer was assigned by the Court to carry on the defence.
When Zenger was finally called on to face a jury, the authorities were confi-
dent of making short work of his case, and of establishing a precedent which
would crush out in the future what they termed " sedition." Through the
instrumentality of James Alexander and William Smith, who were the chief
spirits in a society known as the " Sons of Liberty," Andrew Hamilton was
induced to appear as counsel for the prisoner. The fame of this venerable
attorney, his standing at the bar, the prominent offices he had held, and his
position as a member of the Pennsylvania Assembly, forbade his being
treated in the summary fashion of Zenger's earlier counsel, so the repre-
sentatives of the prosecution could do nothing but submit. They had hopes
from the jury, and knew that the judges were with them.

The prosecution claimed that all the jury had to determine was, whether
the publication which was scheduled as libellous had appeared, and that they
had nothing to do with the truth or falsity of the libel. Hamilton demurred
from this, saying he was prepared to admit the publication of the strictures,
and to prove their truth, leaving the issue to the jury to be whether truth
was a libel or not. He was overruled by the Court on the inferred ground
that anything reflecting on the King was a libel. Hamilton then denied
that the King's representative had the same prerogatives as the sovereign
himself, and claimed the right of proving the truth of every statement that
had been made in Zenger's paper. This the Court again overruled, and
Hamilton then confined his attention to the jury, and made a glowing
speech on behalf of personal liberty and the right of free criticism, which
still ranks as one of the masterpieces of American eloquence. " His
speech," says Dr. Peter Ross, whose account has been chiefly followed, 3 " was
productive of effect far beyond the limits of the court-room in which it was
delivered, or the case in which it was used. It started a train of thought
which fired men's minds, and did more than anything else to give expres-
sion to the popular desire for freedom." Hamilton admitted again the

72 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

publication of the words deemed libellous, and urged the jury, even though
the Court might decide otherwise, to consider the words for themselves,
and put their own construction upon them. In closing, he said : " You see
I labor under the weight of many years, and am borne down by many in-
firmities of body ; yet old and weak as I am, I should think it my duty, if
required, to go to the uttermost part of the land where my service could
be of any use in assisting to quench the flame of prosecutions upon informa-
tions set on foot by the Government to deprive a people of the right of
remonstrating, and complaining, too, against the arbitrary attempts of
men in power. Men who oppress and injure the people under their admin-
istration provoke them to cry out and complain, and then make that very com-
plaint the foundation for new oppressions and persecutions. . . . The
question before the Court is not of small or private concern. It is not the
cause of a poor printer, nor of New York alone, which you are now trying.
No ! It may in its consequences affect every freeman that lives under the
British Government upon the main of America. It is the best cause. It is
the cause of liberty. And I make no doubt but your upright conduct this
day will not only entitle you to the love and esteem of your fellow-citizens,
but every man who prefers freedom to a life of slavery will bless and honor
you, as men who have baffled the attempts of tyranny, and by an impartial
and incorrupt verdict have made a noble foundation for securing to our-
selves and our posterity and our neighbors that to which nature and the laws
of our country have given us a right — the liberty of both exposing and
opposing arbitrary power, in these parts of the world, at least, by speaking
and writing truth."

The prosecution replied, and the Court gave his charge against the
prisoner ; but Hamilton's eloquence proved irresistible, and the jury, after a
few minutes' deliberation, brought in a verdict of " Not Guilty."

How this verdict was received by the citizens of New York who were
present at Zenger's trial is related by an early historian of that State 4 :

Shouts shook the hall. The judges threatened the leader of the tumult
with imprisonment, when a son of Admiral Norris declared himself the
leader and invited a repetition of the huzzas. The judges had no time for
a reply, for the shouts were instantly repeated, and Mr. Hamilton was con-
ducted from the hall by the crowd to a splendid entertainment. The whole
city renewed the compliment at his departure the next day. He entered
the barge under a salute of cannon, and the corporation presented him with
the freedom of the city in a gold box, on which its arms were engraved, en-
circled with the words, " Demersae Leges, Timefacta Libertas, Hsec
Tandem Emergunt."

Dr. John W. Francis states in his description of the city of New York
(printed in the American edition of Brewster s Encyclopedia, and on page
400 of Hinton's History of the United States), that Gouverneur Morris told
him that "the trial of Zenger in 1735 was tne germ of American freedom —
the morning star of that liberty which subsequently revolutionized America."

Liberty of Speech and Conscience j$

The origin of the so-called Presbyterian, or liberal, party in New York,
which first committed and then held that colony to the American cause dur-
ing the Revolution, dates from the time of this trial ; and its importance in
forming and influencing public sentiment in the middle colonies is well in-
dicated by the view of the trial generally taken by writers on the opposite
side since that time.

In the memoir of Chief Justice James De Lancey, prepared by Edward
F. De Lancey, and published in the Documentary History of New York,
vol. iv., pp. 1037-1059, the Zenger case is referred to as follows :

About two years afterwards came on before the Supreme Court the fa-
mous trial of John Peter Zenger for a series of libels on the governor and
chief officers of the colony. He was a printer by trade, in arrears to a small
amount as collector of taxes in the city, and the Assembly had refused to
allow him to discharge the small debt by doing public printing enough to
cover it.

He subsequently published a small paper entitled the New York Weekly
Journal, at the instance of the opposition, in which the libels complained of
were published. His counsel were James Alexander and William Smith,
the elder, the supposed authors of the libels, two gentlemen of ability and
intellect, both politically opposed to Chief Justice De Lancey.

Aware that the law would certainly convict their client, they attempted
to destroy the court by excepting to the commissions of the judges as in-
valid and illegal ; though they knew them to be in the usual form, and such
as their predecessors had always held, and under which they had acted
for a number of years. Their objections, if valid, would have destroyed
the court as well as the commissions, for it existed, not by force of any stat-
ute, as they contended, but by virtue of an ordinance of the governor and
council, dated May 15, 1699. A formal denial of its existence deliberately
made was therefore a gross contempt of court, and the Chief Justice from
the bench warned the counsel of the consequences. But they persisted in
tendering the exceptions, upon which the court made an order, striking their
names from its rolls and excluding them from further practice. Zenger, be-
ing unable to procure other counsel, the court assigned him Mr. Joseph
Murray, with whom the silenced lawyers associated Mr. Hamilton, of Phila-
delphia, who made so artful an address to the jury at the trial a few days
afterwards that, in the words of one of their own [Tory] friends (Smith,
History of New York, ii., 22), "when he left his client in those hands, such
was the fraudful dexterity of the orator, and the severity of his invectives
upon the governor and his adherents, that the jury, missing the true issue
before them, they, as if triers of their rulers, rather than of Zenger, pro-
nounced the criminal innocent because they believed them to be guilty."

Chief Justice De Lancey's course on this occasion has been much misun-
derstood, owing to the fact that the only report of the trial was that pub-
lished by Zenger himself, written by the silenced lawyers, and printed, not
in New York, but in Boston, in 1738, three years after the trial, which of
course represents him in the worst possible light. Taking the facts of the
case, however, as given even there, it would be difficult to point out any
other course which the court could have taken consistently with its own dig-
nity and self-respect.

At this period, and from these controversies and others allied to them,
arose the two great parties which ever afterwards divided the people of the

74 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

province : the one maintaining principles moderate and conservative ; the
other, those of a more radical tendency.

Both professed the strongest attachment and loyalty to the British con-
stitution, and vied with each other in claiming and upholding all the rights
of Englishmen.

In New York, as in some of the other colonies, the religious element en-
tered largely into politics. In point of wealth and influence the Episco-
palians were the leading denomination, the Dutch Reformed Church came
next, and the Presbyterians last ; while in point of numbers their positions
were exactly reversed, the Presbyterians outnumbering the Dutch, and the
Dutch the Episcopalians. The last, with most of the Dutch, chiefly be-
longed to the conservative party ; while the remainder of the Dutch and the
Presbyterians almost to a man were found in the ranks of the opposition.

Another and very striking peculiarity in the composition of the colonial
parties was the remarkable preponderance of the wealth and social position
of the province on the side of the conservatives [the Loyalist party of 1776].
In their ranks were found the Philipses, Van Cortlandts, De Lanceys,
Bayards, Crugers, Wattses, Waltons, Van Rensselaers, Beekmans, Bleeckers,
Barclays, Joneses of Long Island, Jays, Verplancks, Harrisons, and other
substantial families ; while in those of the opposition the Livingstons,
Morrises, Alexanders, and perhaps the Smiths and one or two more were
probably all that belonged to the same class.

Here, then, we find the contest for freedom of public utterance and the
liberty of the press waged and won in America at least forty years before
Lexington, and at a time when James Otis and Samuel Adams themselves
were not long out of their swaddling clothes. Yet, concerning these things,
the pages of so-called American histories, of the New England school, in
nine cases out of ten are silent.

Finally, let us revert to a much earlier period and consider for a moment
the founding in America of what, with civil liberty, is the twin support of
the structure of all just and lasting governments, namely, the principle of
religious freedom. 6

In Penn's colony liberty of worship was permitted from the beginning of
his government. In Maryland and in one or two others of the southern col-
onies, for a short time at the beginning there was the same beneficent pro-
vision made by their laws or charters, but statutory enactment soon destroyed
it. Outside of Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, at the beginning of the
eighteenth century, the English Church had been established by law in most
of the middle and southern governments, and the Congregational Church in
those of New England. The Revolution of 1689 had brought to Britain,
among other blessings, that of the Toleration Act, but its provisions had
not yet been fully or definitely extended to the American colonies. Rev.
Francis Makemie, the Scotch-Irish founder of American Presbyterianism,
had come from County Donegal, Ireland, to the island of Barbadoes about
1683, and thence proceeded to the eastern shore of Maryland. There and
along the Elizabeth River in Virginia he began to labor in establishing mis-
sionary stations among the Scotch and Scotch-Irish families who had settled

Liberty of Speech and Conscience 75

in those parts. In the course of twenty years he had helped to build up
two or three church organizations in that territory, and in 1706 their minis-
ters united with those of other churches of Maryland, Delaware, and Penn-
sylvania in forming the Presbytery of Philadelphia. After this organization
had been made, Makemie undertook a journey to Boston. While on the way
he stopped and preached in New York, and there the opportunity came to
him for making that first fight against the encroachments of the English
Church establishment in America, which resulted in restricting and mini-
mizing its power forever afterwards.

After the adjournment of the Presbytery of Philadelphia, October 27,
1706, Francis Makemie took with him John Hampton and set out on his jour-
ney, probably to consult with the Boston ministers. They stopped at New
York on their way. They were invited by the Puritans of the city to preach
for them. The Consistory of the Dutch Church, in accordance with their
generous custom, offered their church edifice for the purpose. But their
kindness was frustrated by the refusal of Governor Cornbury to permit it.
Makemie, therefore, preached, January 20, 1706-7, in the private house of
William Jackson, in Pearl Street. 6 The same day, John Hampton preached
at Newtown, Long Island. On the following Tuesday, Makemie and
Hampton went to Newtown intending to preach the next day, according to
appointment ; but they were there arrested on a warrant from Governor
Cornbury, on the ground that they had preached without his permission.
They were detained until March 1st, when they were brought before the
Supreme Court on a writ of habeas corpus.

The charge against Hampton was not pressed, but Makemie was released
on bail to appear for trial June 3d. He immediately returned to Philadel-
phia with Hampton for the meeting of the Presbytery of Philadelphia, March
22, 1707. From thence he writes to Benjamin Colman, of Boston :

Since our imprisonment we have commenced a correspondence with our
rev. breth. of the ministry at Boston, which we hope according to our in-
tention has been communicated to you all, whose sympathizing concurrence
I cannot doubt of, in an expensive struggle, for asserting our liberty against
the powerful invasion of Lord Cornbury, which is not yet over. I need not
tell you of a picked jury, and the penal laws, are invading our American
sanctuary without the least regard to the toleration, which should justly
alarm us all.

The New England ministers immediately wrote to Sir Henry Ashurst,
Sir Edmund Harrison, and other London agents, April 1, 1707 :

Except speedy relief be obtained, the issue will be, not only a vast op-
pression on a very worthy servant of God, but also a confusion upon the
whole body of Dissenters in these colonies, where they are languishing under
my Lord Cornbury's arbitrary and unaccountable government. We do
therefore earnestly solicit you, that you would humbly petition the Queen's
Majesty on this occasion, and represent the sufferings of the Dissenters in
those parts of America which are carried on in so direct violation of her

j6 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

Majesty's commands, of the laws of the nation, and the common rights of
Englishmen. (Hutchinson, History of the Province of Massachusetts Bay,
2d edition, London, 1768, ii., p. 125.)

Makemie returned to New York and sustained his trial. He was de-
fended by three of the ablest lawyers in the province — James Reigniere,
David Jameson, and William Nicholl, made an elaborate and convincing
argument in defence of his own religious rights, and was acquitted on the
ground that he had complied with the Toleration Act and had acted
within his rights as a Presbyterian minister. He produced his license to
preach under the Toleration Act in Barbadoes, and this was recognized as
valid throughout the Queen's dominions. The claim of Cornbury, that it
was necessary that he should have a special license from the governor of
New York, was simply ridiculous. But, notwithstanding his acquittal,
Makemie was obliged to pay the costs of the prosecution as well as the
defence, amounting to the large sum of £83 7s. 6d. " This trial," says
Professor Briggs, " followed by the bitter pursuit of the acquitted man on
the part of the wrathful governor, was the culmination of a series of tyran-
nical acts which aroused the entire Puritan body of the colonies and of
Great Britain to action. The arbitrary acts of Governor Cornbury were
indefensible. He had exceeded his prerogative, transgressed the provisions
of the Toleration Act, and violated the liberties of the Dissenters, and in-
deed twisted and perverted the royal instructions to himself. He even
intermeddled with the missionaries of the Society for the Propagation of
the Gospel in Foreign Parts, and gained the hostility of all the better
elements in the Church of England." The New York Assembly, in April,
1707, remonstrated against Cornbury's actions, charged him with bribery,
with encroachment on the liberties of the people, and finally expressed their
determination to redress the miseries of their country. He was recalled,
and in 1709 Lord Lovelace took his place. 7

An account of Makemie's trial was first printed in 1707, and a second
publication was made in 1755. The former account was reprinted in
Force's Tracts in 1846 (vol. iv.), and the latter in Hill's American Presby-
terianism (1839). For Makemie's argument, see Appendix D.

NOTES TO CHAPTER V.

1 Of this event, Gouverneur Morris said : " Instead of dating American liberty from the
Stamp Act, I trace it to the persecution of Peter Zenger, because that event revealed the
philosophy of freedom both of thought and speech as an inborn human right, so nobly set
forth in Milton's Treatise on Unlicensed Printing." — Lossing, The Empire State, Hart-
ford, 1888, p. 147. For Hamilton's argument, see Appendix C.

2 The account of Zenger's trial was first printed in Boston in 1738, and passed through
several editions, two of which appeared in London in 1738, and another in Lancaster, Pa.,
in 1756. See Documentary History of New York, vol. iv., p. 104.

3 The Scot in America, pp. 302-307.

Liberty of Speech and Conscience yy

4 William Dunlap, History of New Netherlands, Province of New York, and State of
New York, vol. i., pp. 298-310.

5 ' ' Where is the man to be found at this day . . . who will believe that the apprehen-
sion of Episcopacy contributed fifty years ago, as much as any other cause, to arouse the at-
tention not only of the inquiring mind, but of the common people, and urge them to close
thinking on the constitutional authority of Parliament over the colonies ? This, neverthe-
less, was a fact certain as any in the history of North America. . .

" The opinion, the principles, the spirit, the temper, the views, designs, intrigues, and ar-
bitrary exertions of power displayed by the Church of England at that time towards the
Dissenters, as they were contemptuously called, though in reality the churchmen were the
real dissenters, ought to be stated at full length. . . .

" In Virginia, the Church of England was established by law in exclusion and without
toleration." — John Adams, Works, vol. x., pp. 185, 186.

At the commencement of the Revolution, public feeling in the eastern colonies was ex-
cited by the fears of the spiritual jurisdiction of the British ecclesiastics. Elbridge Gerry
and Samuel Adams, for political effect, led off with predictions as groundless as they were
vain. Plain facts demonstrated that, notwithstanding these misrepresentations, Episcopa-
lians were the leading architects of the great work of American Independence. Franklin,
Laurens, the Pinckneys, Wythe, Marshall, Pendleton, the Randolphs, Hamilton, Washing-
ton, Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Monroe, Rutledge, the Lees, Jay, Williams, Gen. Wayne, Robt.
R. Livingston, Gouverneur, Lewis, and Robert Morris, Duer, Duane, Lord Stirling, Wil-
liam Samuel Johnson, Chase, Madison, and a host of others, distinguished patriots of the
Revolution, were of the Episcopal Church. — Opdike, History of the Episcopal Church in
Providence, R, I., pp. 241, 242.

6 This sermon was printed at Boston in 1707. A reprint of the Boston edition may be
found in the Collections of the New York Historical Society for the Year 1S70, pp. 409-453.

1 American Presbyterianism, pp. 152-155.

CHAPTER VI

THE AMERICAN PEOPLE NOT RACIALLY IDENTICAL WITH
THOSE OF NEW ENGLAND

THE second reason for the undue prominence of New England in the
popular conception of American history, to which reference was made
in the introductory chapter, is found in the absence, for a long time, of any
systematic or comprehensive treatment by the writers of the middle and
southern colonies of the history of their own districts. 1 A start was made in
this direction, it is true, by Dr. David Ramsay in his History of South Carolina
(1789), followed, with less degrees of excellence, by Hugh Williamson's
History of North Carolina, Gordon's Histories of Pennsylvania and New Jer-
sey, and Day's, Howe's, and Barber's Historical Collections of Pennsylvania,
Virginia, and New Jersey ; but these books were all written at a date when
there was little material collected or available, and before the inception of
modern methods of historic inquiry and analysis ; and they are only good
examples of what can be done by conscientious workmen without
proper tools, or suitable material at hand on which to work. Bancroft was
the first American historian to do even partial justice to the subject from a
national standpoint. Foote's Sketches of Virginia and of North Carolina are
among the most valuable contributions to the early history of these States
that we have, but these works were written nearly fifty years ago. Bishop
Meade's Churches and Families of Virginia also contains a vast amount of
local and family history in connection with that of the Episcopal churches.

In New England, from the time of its first settlement, more or less ample
and detailed records of the political and social history of nearly every
community, however small, have been preserved in written form, as well as
much of personal history. The publication of these records, which has
been carried on for many years by public and private agencies, and their
use as the bases for many of our popular histories, has served to dissem-
inate a vastly greater amount of information about the people and events with
which these records are concerned than those of any other part of America.

Literary genius, likewise, has aided materially in forming our popular
ideals of characters and events in connection with certain phases of Ameri-
can history, particularly with those of New England. Indeed, certain liter-
ary productions may have been the sole sources of information regarding
occurrences which are now reputed historic. This has been true in all
ages. The Arabian Nights, in the incidental evidence which it affords, as
well as by reason of its own intrinsic merit, must always be our chief
authority for the high degree of civilization attained by the early Moham-
medans ; just as the military prowess of ancient Greece has from time

The American People 79

immemorial been best appreciated through the glowing imageries of the
minstrel poet, and the glory of English history been best expressed in the
imaginary conceptions of an obscure playwright. Shakspeare has given us
an idea of the character of Richard III. and his predecessors and followers,
as well as of that of Macbeth, which a more thorough investigation — while
showing it to be in a large measure false — can never completely correct.
In like manner, Walter Scott has typified in the personality of the first
Richard all the romantic tendencies of the age of the Crusaders, with the
result that his highly idealized portrait will ever be preferred to the less
flattering though more honest delineation of history. So it is that the best-
known pictures of early American life and character presented in our roman-
tic literature, being taken for the most part through New England lenses,
can be considered, from an historical standpoint, only with due allowance
for that fact. Hawthorne has immortalized the Puritan, just as Cooper has
created the American Indian of the popular mind ; yet, however true the
former's characterization of the early New Englander may be, it has but little
more value, as a type of the true American eponym, than that of the latter.

These various aids and influences, either of a literary or historic nature,
have not until quite recently been available for the study of American his-
tory in its broader sense ; and we are only just beginning to get the benefit of
their assistance in the examination of other than the New England portion
of it. But this examination can never be carried on with entire satisfac-
tion, until the complete publication of the early records of the general
government. An attempt was made to this end some fifty or sixty years ago,
which began quite favorably, and resulted in the publication of Force's
series of Archives pertaining to affairs at the beginning of the Revolutionary
struggle, and the projection of other series. But that work was dropped long
before completion, and beyond nine volumes of Archives of the years 1775
and 1776, and the several volumes of State Papers of later date, very little
other data has been printed. There is a vast amount of material relating
to the colonial period and to the progress of the war and the subsequent
formation of our system of government which still remains to be published.

It is, however, to the recent enlightened policy of many of the State gov-
ernments of the original colonies that we are indebted for the inauguration
of a movement looking to the conservation of the materials for their early
history in a form that makes them at once both accessible and capable of
preservation. This consists in the publication of various volumes of State
archives, Revolutionary rosters, and documentary and other records, of which
many series have already been issued by the States of New York, New
Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, and others
are in course of preparation. Of these, by far the most useful and compre-
hensive in their preparation are the fifty volumes of Archives brought out
by the State of Pennsylvania under the capable editorship of Dr. William H.
Egle, for many years the State librarian.

80 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

In New York, up to 1887, there had been published a Documentary His-
tory (4 vols., 1850) and seventeen volumes (1856-1887) of documents re-
lating to the colonial history, including a roster of Revolutionary soldiers.
New Jersey published twenty volumes of Archives between 1872 and 1893,
and also a Revolutionary roster.

Besides these State publications, the various State historical societies of
the older colonies have also awakened in late years to the fact that, in order
to justify their right to existence, it will be necessary for them to do some-
thing of a less trivial nature than merely to publish reports of their business
meetings and lengthy obituaries of their deceased members. In conse-
quence we are beginning to benefit by their labors. The New York society
gives the best promise of future accomplishments, if the industry of its
members is at all equal to the opportunities afforded in the wealth of
documentary material now undergoing classification by the State officials.

The Historical Society of the State of Pennsylvania is unfortunate in being
located away from the seat of the State government. Its headquarters are
in Philadelphia, where live most of its members, and consequently its work
is directed more along the line of local investigation than concerned with
the history of the State at large. It might more appropriately be called the
Historical Society of Philadelphia. In that field its labors are invaluable.
Its chief publication is the Pennsylvania Magazine, a large quarterly, estab-
lished in 1877, and a model periodical of the class. In the Society's early
days a number of volumes relating to the history of the State were also issued,
but few in recent years. The inattention on the part of this Society to that
portion of the State outside of Philadelphia, however, is more than made up
by the private enterprise of Dr. Egle, already mentioned in connection with
the publication of the State Archives. During the past twenty years this gen-
tleman, in addition to his work on the State Archives, published on his own
behalf more than a dozen volumes of historical collections relating to inte-
rior Pennsylvania. The debt owed to him by all students of that part of
early American history is one that will steadily increase with the passing
years. The chief work of the Maryland society up to this date has been
the preparation of sixteen volumes of Maryland Archives (1883-1897), which
were printed by the State, and nine or ten volumes of Collections. The
Historical Society of Richmond has also contributed nearly a dozen volumes
(1882-1891) of Collections relating to Virginia. There is a rich field in that
State for the future historian of America, but up to the present time a
comparative dearth of published material. Some early history of North
Carolina, including a roster of Revolutionary soldiers, has been given in the
Colonial Records of that State (18 vols., 1886-1900) ; but South Carolina
has produced only a few small volumes of Collections, issued by its Histori-
cal Society some forty years ago (1857-59) ; and Georgia still less.

In addition to the various general historical societies in these States, there
are also many other organizations devoted to the collection of historical

The American People 81

matter relating to special classes of the population. Of these may be men-
tioned the Holland Society of New York, the Huguenot Society, and the
Scotch-Irish Society of America. The one last named held an annual con-
gress each year from 1889 to 1897, and published nine volumes of its Collec-
tions. Their contents are chiefly made up from the addresses delivered at
the annual meetings; hence there is considerable difference in their degrees
of merit.

None of these works compare in thoroughness or scope with the
publications of the New England State governments and of their various
historical and antiquarian societies. There is nothing in the Middle States
equal to the Plymouth or Suffolk Records of Massachusetts, for instance ;
or the Provincial, State, or Town Papers of New Hampshire ; or the New
England Historical and Genealogical Register.

As another result of the fecundity and one-sidedness of the New England \/
writers before 1870, it has been long customary to ascribe to the English
element in the American population the credit not only for all the early
achievements of the nation in war and peace, 3 but also for having furnished
practically all the colonists who settled in the country before the Revolu-
tion. 3 As a matter of fact, nothing could be more erroneous. The population
of the New England States at the date of the first general census (1790) was
1,009,408, and the total white population of the country, 3,172,006. Bancroft
estimated the white population of the colonies in 1775 to have been about
2,100,000; and as it is probable that the New England population did not
increase so rapidly between 1775 and 1790 as that of the other States, we
may safely estimate it at one-third of the total population in 1775.

Of the total white population at the outbreak of the Revolution there is
abundant evidence to show that at least one-third was not of English descent
or sympathies at all, but consisted of a variety of nationalities, including the
Germans, French, Hollanders, Swedes, and others. The Germans and Swiss
comprised nearly a third of the population of Pennsylvania in 1776, 4 and they
likewise had formed many communities in western Maryland and northern
Virginia, as well as in the lower country of South Carolina. The Swedes
made the first settlements in Pennsylvania and Delaware; but these were
afterwards overrun by the Dutch, who acquired most of the territory along
the Delaware River, as well as that of the Hudson and Mohawk valleys in
New York, and a considerable portion of New Jersey. The Welsh had large
grants of land and numerous settlements in Delaware and southeastern
Pennsylvania. The French, usually Huguenot refugees from the German
Palatine, or from Holland or Ireland, were likewise among the early colo-
nizers of Pennsylvania, and the same people formed a large part of the first
European population of the Carolinas. But the settlements of all these dif-
ferent nationalities taken together did not begin to equal in number or
importance those of another class of people with which we now have to deal
— a class that was as distinctly non-English as many of those just named ;

2>2 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

and one that had infinitely greater reason than any of the others for resenting
the course of injustice and oppression so long pursued in the administration
of the British Government. 5

These were the Scots of North Britain and North Ireland, a composite
race, even at that time having in the organic make-up of each individual a
combination of the several racial elements which were almost, identical with
those now forming the present collective population of America, and from
which the American of the future is gradually being evolved. Theirs was the
one representative and typical race in America with which all others are com-
ing more and more to conform. That is to say, these Attacot-Goidelic-Cymro-
Anglo-Norse-Danish Scots of colonial times, these Celto-Teutonic emigrants
to America of the eighteenth century, combined in their individual bodies
the physical attributes of the Angle, the Gael, the Norse, and the Brython.
In their veins was already blended the blood of the various peoples which in
the past hundred years have been pouring millions of individuals into the
race alembic called America ; and to a far greater extent than any of their
neighbors were these Scottish emigrants of the eighteenth century the true
prototypes of the typical American of the twentieth. 8

Their settlements in America began in the seventeenth century but were
made chiefly in the eighteenth. At the time of the Revolution these
people comprised fully forty per cent, of the patriotic population of the
country south of New England.

The Continental Congress of 1776 made an estimate of the population of
the thirteen original colonies as a basis from which to apportion the expense
of the war. 7 The figures of this conjectural census of Congress are as
follows :

New Hampshire 102,000

Massachusetts (including Maine) 352,000

Rhode Island 58,000

Connecticut 202,000

New York (including Vermont) 238,000

New Jersey 138,000

Pennsylvania 341,000

Delaware 37,000

Maryland 174,000

Virginia (including Kentucky) 300,000

North Carolina (including Tennessee) 181,000

South Carolina 93,000

Georgia 27,000

Total white population 2,243,000

Slave population 500,000

2,743,000 s

This estimate is now generally conceded to have been too large, since the

census of 1790 showed a total white population of only 3,172,006 ; and as

the average normal rate of increase of population in America ever since we

have had any data to enable us to strike an average has been about three

The American People 83

per cent, a year, the population doubling about every twenty-three years, it
would appear that the actual population of the colonies in 1776 was about
ten per cent, less than the congressional estimate. For the purpose of
lessening its proportion of the general tax, New Hampshire caused a State
census to be taken in 1782, and as a result of that census reported its popu-
lation at 82,000, but this figure was in all probability as far below the true
number as that of the congressional estimate was above it. Pennsylvania
had not quite 40,000 taxables in 1770. Counting six persons to one taxpayer,
the population then would have been about 240,000, and, with an annual
increase of three per cent., about 280,000 in 1776. There was, however, a
very large immigration of Ulster Scots into this province in 1773 and it is
probable the report made by Governor Penn to Lord Dartmouth, January
30, 1 775," fixing the white population at 300,000, was not far from the truth.
Bancroft, as stated before, estimated the total white population of the colonies
in 1775 to have been 2, 100,000. 10 It would seem that we can safely follow
this estimate, and assign 700,000, or one-third, to the territory east of the
Hudson. 11 Of the 1,400,000 west of the Hudson and south of the St. Law-
rence, the following is probably as close and accurate an estimate as can be
made from the data now available, the estimated 1,400,000 of inhabitants
being apportioned among the nine States in accordance with their relative
populations in 1790 :

New York (excluding Vermont) 202,000

New Jersey 109,000

Pennsylvania 273,000

Delaware 30,000

Maryland 134,000

Virginia (including Kentucky) 325,000

North Carolina (including Tennessee) 206,000

South Carolina 90,000

Georgia 34,ooo

Total 1,403,000

Now, we may safely estimate the proportion of inhabitants of Scottish
blood or descent to have been one-eighth of the whole white population in
New York ; one-fifth to one-fourth in the States of New Jersey, Maryland,
and Virginia ; more than one-third in Pennsylvania, Delaware, North Caro-
lina, and Georgia ; and one-half in South Carolina. 19

Using the census of 1790 as a basis on which to apportion the population
in 1775, we find from the foregoing estimates that the number of inhabitants
of Scottish ancestry at that time in the nine colonies south of New England
(there were probably 25,000 in New England) was close to 385,000, as
follows :

New York 25,000

New Jersey 25,000

Pennsylvania ico,ooo

84 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

Delaware 10,000

Maryland 30,000

Virginia 75,ooo

North Carolina 65,000

South Carolina 45,°oo

Georgia 10,000

Total 385,000

Of the 1,400,000 total white population of these States it is probable that
nearly one-third were in open or secret sympathy with the Crown during the
Revolution, and did not voluntarily contribute either men or means to the
American cause. Many of these were engaged in active hostilities against
the patriotic party, particularly in New York and North and South Carolina,
in the latter of which States at times more than half the population is said to
have been on the English side. John Adams estimated that about one-third
of the Americans were Loyalists in the first years of the struggle, though he
sometimes reduced this figure considerably. 13 It would perhaps be not an
exaggeration to say that in Maryland and Virginia in 1776 one-sixth of the
white population was opposed to the war and to independence, and was to a
greater or less extent Loyalist ; in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware,
one-third ; and in New York, Georgia, and the Carolinas, two-fifths. 14 If
these figures may be taken as fairly accurate in the aggregate, they would
reduce the patriotic population to somewhat below a million, outside of New
England; and of that number it is altogether likely that less than half were
of English extraction.

Concerning the patriotism of the Scotch-Irish, the general testimony of
contemporary and later writers is to the effect that there were no Tories
among them, and that they were found uniformly arrayed against the British ;
but it is probable this statement can be taken as applicable only in a general
way and one to which many individual exceptions may be noted. One of
these exceptions was that of the notorious renegade, Simon Girty
and his brothers, who were probably Scotch-Irish on their mother's side.
The Scotch (Jacobite) Highlanders of North Carolina principally settled
along the Cape Fear River, were nearly all active Tory partisans, 16 as were
also the Scotch Catholics of New York. Many Scottish names appear in
Sabine's list of Loyalists, principally from these two States ; and some also
from Pennsylvania, among which may be mentioned that of Galloway. 18

Among the British and Tory leaders in the South during the Revolu-
tionary War may be mentioned Colonel Patrick Ferguson, Major James
Dunlap, Captains Patrick and John Moore, Captain Peter Campbell, Captain
Cunningham, Major Fraser, Lieutenant John McGinnis, Captain Walter Gil-
key, Captain Grimes, Captain Wilson, Lieutenant Lafferty, Captain Alexan-
der Cameron, Captain James Kerr, Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Innes, all
apparently of Scotch or Scotch-Irish origin, and many of them born in
America. In the West were Governor Hamilton, Dr. John Connolly, the

The American People 85

Girty brothers, McKee, Elliott, and others ; while with Howe's northern
army undoubtedly the greatest soldier was General James Grant.

NOTES TO CHAPTER VI.

1 " A good deal of surprise was expressed at the Congress [of the Scotch-Irish Society of
America, held in 1889] that a history of the Scotch-Irish had never been attempted ; but we
do not have to seek far for the reason. There is ample material from which to speak in a
general way of their origin and of their existence in Ireland, but when we come to their
emigration to America, excepting the causes which led to it, it is meagre in the extreme.
Coming from one part of Great Britain to another, no record has been preserved of their
arrivals as would have been the case had they been of alien origin ; and all we know is that
while a large majority came to Pennsylvania, others settled in Virginia and the Carolinas.
The country along the Atlantic coast was then comparatively thickly settled, and the Scotch-
Irish took up their abodes on the outskirts of civilization. This was not because the
Quakers sent them there, as has been asserted, to protect their own settlements from the
Indians, or because the Scotch-Irish did not wish to live near the Quakers, who were con-
tinually finding fault with them, but for the same reason that now takes the emigrants to the
West, — i. e., because there good land is cheap, and large families can be supported at a small
expense. They took with them their religion and their schools, and those in Pennsylvania
extended their settlements across the mountains and down the valley into Maryland and
Virginia. There they met with their brethren from Virginia and Carolina, and penetrated
into the country now included in the States of Kentucky and Tennessee. Excepting in a
general way the records of this emigration are difficult to trace, and are only found by
examining old deeds, wills, and in family tradition.

" It must also be remembered that in no way, in the same sense of the word, did the
Scotch-Irish Presbyterians settle a colony as the Puritans settled Massachusetts, the Quakers
Pennsylvania, the Catholics Maryland, or the Episcopalians Virginia. They belonged to
a later wave of emigration than any of the above, and when they arrived on this side of the
Atlantic, governments were firmly established. The consequence is that there are no early
governmental records that can be quoted as giving expression to their views. Besides this,
the worldly condition of many of the emigrants was not such as would permit them to take
an active part in political affairs, as the elective franchise was then limited by a property
qualification, and some of those who might have claimed the right to vote were too deeply
engaged in providing for their families to take an active part in politics. It was not, there-
fore, until they gained a foothold, and by their thrift, energy, and enterprise made their
settlements important, that they exercised any influence in colonial affairs. When this
point was gained they brought into public life an element directly antagonistic to the estab-
lished order of things, and no one can deny that they were instrumental in bringing about
the War for Independence, which they loyally supported. What the result of their influence
would have been in Kentucky and Tennessee, where they were pioneer settlers, had it not
been for the Revolution, we can only surmise. After that, civil and religious liberty were
such cardinal principles of government, that it is not safe to attribute them to any one class.
The material for the history of the Scotch-Irish in this country we fear has been largely
destroyed. Some portion of it may yet exist in private letters, in church records, and in
the diaries that some of their ministers wrote while travelling from one settlement to an-
other. Much can also be accomplished by preparing memoirs, as full of original material
as possible, of early settlers in various parts of the country." — Frederick D. Stone, in The
Pennsylvania Magazine, January, 1890.

5 The trouble with the historical writers who have taken upon themselves the defence of
the founders of Massachusetts is that they have tried to sophisticate away the facts. In so

86 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

doing they have of necessity had recourse to lines of argument which they would not for an
instant accept in defence or extenuation of those who in the Old World pursued the policy
with which they find themselves confronted in the early record of the New. But there that
record is : and it will not out. Roger Williams, John Wheelwright, and Anne Hutchinson
come back from their banishment, and stand there as witnesses ; the Quakers and Baptists,
with eyes that forever glare, swing from the gallows or turn about at the cart's tail. In
Spain it was the dungeon, the rack, and the fagot ; in Massachusetts it was banishment, the
whip, and the gibbet. In neither case can the records be obliterated. Between them it is
only a question of degree, — one may in color be a dark drab, while the other is unmistakably
a jetty black. The difficulty is with those who, while expatiating with great force of lan-
guage on the sooty aspect of the one, turn and twist the other in the light, and then solemnly
asseverate its resemblance to driven snow. Unfortunately for those who advocate this view
of the respective Old and New World records, the facts do not justify it. On the contrary,
while the course in the matter of persecution pursued by those in authority in the Old World
was logical and does admit of defence, the course pursued by the founders of Massachusetts
was illogical, and does not admit of more than partial extenuation. — Charles Francis
Adams, Massachusetts : Its Historians and Its History \ p. 34.

3 See New Englander Magazine, vol. x., pp. 393-414, for an elaborate example of this
false enumeration.

4 Proud, History of Pennsylvania, vol. ii., p. 273.

5 Driven from their adopted home in the north of Ireland by English persecution, there
was burned into their very souls the bitter recollection of English ingratitude and English
broken faith. They were un-English in their origin, and they came to America — which
they have always looked upon as their only country — hating England, her Church, and her
form of government with the intensest hatred. They contributed as little which was original
to American institutions as did the Puritans of New England ; but they were also as willing
to accept new ideas from other quarters, and they contributed elements to American thought
and life without which the United States of to-day would be impossible. By them American
independence was first openly advocated, and but for their efforts, seconding those of the
New England Puritans, that independence would not have been secured. — Campbell, The
Puritan in Holland, England, and America, vol. ii., p. 471.

6 " The backwoods mountaineers . . . were all cast in the same mould, and resembled
each other much more than any of them did their immediate neighbors of the plains. The
backwoodsmen of Pennsylvania had little in common with the peaceful population of Quakers
and Germans who lived between the Delaware and the Susquehanna ; and their near kinsmen
of the Blue Ridge and the Great Smoky Mountains were separated by an equally wide gulf
from the aristocratic planter communities that flourished in the tide- water regions of Virginia
and the Carolinas. . . .

" The backwoodsmen were Americans by birth and parentage, and of mixed race ; but
the dominant strain in their blood was that of the Presbyterian Irish — the Scotch-Irish as
they were often called. . . . Mingled with the descendants of many other races, they nev-
ertheless formed the kernel of the distinctively and intensely American stock who were the
pioneers of our people in their march westward, the vanguard of the army of fighting settlers,
who with axe and rifle won their way from the Alleghanies to the Rio Grande and the Pacific.
. . . The Presbyterian Irish stock furnished Andrew Jackson, Samuel Houston, David
Crockett, James Robertson, Lewis, the leader of the backwoods hosts in their first great
victory over the northwestern Indians, and Campbell, their commander in their first great
victory over the British. . . .

44 That these Irish Presbyterians were a bold and hardy race is proved by their at once
pushing past the settled regions, and plunging into the wilderness as the leaders of the white
advance. They were the first and last set of immigrants to do this ; all others have merely
followed in the wake of their predecessors. But indeed, they were fitted to be Americans

The American People 87

from the very start ; they were kinsfolk of the Covenanters ; they deemed it a religious duty
to interpret their own Bible, and held for a divine right the election of their own clergy.
For generations their whole ecclesiastic and scholastic systems had been fundamentally
democratic. . . ." — Roosevelt, Winning of the West, vol. i., pp. 102-106.
'Pitkin's Statistics, p. 583 ; Harper's Magazine, vol. li., p. 399.

8 John Adams gives the following estimate as one made by Congress in 1774: " In
the year 1774 there was much private conversation among the members of Congress con-
cerning the number of souls in each colony. The delegates of each were consulted, and the
estimates made by them were taken down as follows : New Hampshire, 150,000 ; Massa-
chusetts, 400,000 ; Rhode Island, 59,678 ; Connecticut, 192,000 ; New York, 250,000 ;
New Jersey, 130,000 ; Pennsylvania and Delaware, 350,000 ; Maryland, 320,000 ; Vir-
ginia, 640,000 ; North Carolina, 300,000 ; South Carolina, 225,000 ; total, 3,016,678." —
Works, vol. vii., p. 302. " Governor Pownall thinks that 2,142,037 would come nearest to
the real amount [of whites] in 1774." — Ibid., vol. vii., p. 304. See, also, Holmes's Annals,
vol. ii., p. 533, etc. "An estimate of the white population of the States made in 1783 for
purposes of assessment gives the number as 2,389,300 {American Remembrancer, 1783, part
ii., p. 64)." — McMaster, History of the United States, vol. i., p. 9.

9 Pennsylvania Archives, First Series, vol. iv., p. 597.

10 History of the United States (1888), vol. iv., p. 62.

11 The population of the New England States in 1790 was 1,009,408, or a little less than
one-third of the total white population of 3,172,006. It is reasonable to assume that the
population of the newer middle colonies increased more by immigration between 1776 and
1790 than that of New England, and we know that many New England people moved into
the western colonies, particularly to New York and Ohio. It is therefore probable that
an estimate of New England's population in 1776 fixing it at one-third of the whole cannot
be far out of the way.

12 The following estimate of the white population in 1775, which does not vary much from
that given in the table quoted, is found in Seaman's Essays on the Progress of Nations, New
York, 1852, pp. 579-583 : " Maine, 45,000 ; New Hampshire, 90,000 ; Vermont, 40,000 ; Mas-
sachusetts, 280,000 ; Rhode Island, 50,000 ; Connecticut, 195,000 [total for New England,
700,000] ; New York, 175,000 ; New Jersey, 120,000 ; Pennsylvania, 275,000 ; Delaware,
35,000 ; Maryland, 160,000 ; Virginia, 360,000 ; North Carolina, 200,000 ; South Carolina,
90,000 J.Georgia, 25,000 [total, outside of New England, 1,440,000] ; total for the thirteen
colonies, 2,140,000." Mr. Seaman's estimate of the population of Maryland is perhaps based
on a census taken in 1755, giving it 107,208 white inhabitants ; but as there were but 208,649
whites in 1790, the population could not have increased as rapidly during the interim as in
the other States, where it usually doubled in from twenty to twenty-five years. Hence, it is
probable that 160,000 is too large an estimate for the population of Maryland in 1775, and, on
the other hand, 134,000 (about 64 per cent, of the population in 1790) may be somewhat
below the true figures. In New Jersey in 1830, out of a total white population of 299,667,
there were about 44,000 communicants in the various churches, representing with their
families perhaps 200,000 persons. Of these, 13,517 were Presbyterians; 15,567, Metho-
dists; 6,000, Quakers; 4,173, Dutch Reformed; 3,981, Baptists; and 900, Episcopalians.
It is safe to say the Presbyterians were chiefly Scottish ; and likewise a considerable pro-
portion of the Methodists and Baptists, because in the South, for instance, there are more
persons of that blood in those two churches than in the whole membership of the Presby-
terian Church. Smith, in his History of the Province of New Jersey, published in 1765,
gives information respecting the number of the various congregations in the province, from
which the following table is compiled : Episcopalians, 21 ; Presbyterians, 65 ; Quakers, 39 ;
Baptists, 20 ; Seventh-Day Baptists, 2 ; Low Dutch Calvinists, or Reformed, 21 ; Dutch
Lutherans, 4 ; Swedish Lutherans, 4 ; Moravians, 1 ; German Lutherans, 2 ; Separatists, 1 ;
Rogerians, 1 ; Lutherans, I ; total, 179, In Pennsylvania in 1760 there were 31,667 taxables

88 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

(Colonial Records, vol. xiv., p. 336). At that time a large part of the frontier inhabitants
were not entered on the tax-lists (see Proud's History of Pennsylvania, vol. ii., p. 275,
note). Delaware formed part of Pennsylvania prior to 1776, and was largely overrun by
the Scotch-Irish before they reached the Susquehanna valley. A considerable part of western
Maryland was settled by Scottish emigrants, as well as Cecil and Somerset counties on
the Eastern Shore, and many districts around Baltimore. Jefferson states in his Auto-
biography (p. 31), that in 1776 a majority of the inhabitants of Virginia were Dissenters
(at that time chiefly Presbyterians and Baptists), and as one-fourth of the total white popu-
lation was in the upper country and west of the mountains (see Virginia Militia returns in
1782, annexed to chapter ix., Jefferson's Notes on Virginia), and that fourth almost to a
man of Scottish ancestry, we may safely conclude that of the whole white population those
people comprised nearly one-fourth. Williamson (History of North Carolina, vol. ii. , p. 68)
says that the Scottish race was the most numerous in the northwestern part of Carolina; and
we know that they comprised nearly the whole of the population of Tennessee (then part of
North Carolina). Ramsay says they were more numerous than any other race in South Caro-
lina (History of South Carolina, vol. i., p. 20); and they likewise formed, if not a majority, at
least a controlling element in the population of Georgia. To-day their descendants in the
Carolinas, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and West Virginia form the most influential and
presumably the most numerous element in the white population of those States; and in all pro-
bability the same thing is true of the native-born population of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.

" When the first Continental Congress began its sittings, the only frontiersmen west of the
mountains, and beyond the limits of continuous settlement within the old thirteen colonies,
were the two or three hundred citizens of the little Watauga commonwealth. This quali-
fication is put in because there were already a few families on the Monongahela [this is in-
correct, because there were 7500 to 10,000 settlers in Westmoreland County, Pa., before 1776],
the head of the Kanawha, and the Upper Holston ; but they were in close touch with the
people behind them. When peace was declared with Great Britain, the backwoodsmen had
spread westward in groups, almost to the Mississippi, and they had increased in number to
some twenty-five thousand souls, of whom a few hundred dwelt in the bend of the Cumber-
land, while the rest were about equally divided between Kentucky and Holston. These
figures are simply estimates ; but they are based on careful study and comparison, and, though
they must be some hundreds, and maybe some thousands, out of the way, are quite near
enough for practical purposes." — Roosevelt, Winning of the West, vol. ii., p. 370.

13 " New York and Pennsylvania were so nearly divided — if their propensity was not
against us — that if New England on one side and Virginia on the other had not kept them
in awe, they would have joined the British." — Works of John Adams, vol. x., p. 63. This
opinion of John Adams, which he affirmed more than once in the latter part of his life, was
on one occasion mentioned by him in a letter to his old compatriot, Thomas McKean, Chief
Justice of Pennsylvania, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and a member of
every American Congress from that of 1765 to the close of the Revolution. "You say,"
wrote McKean in reply, "that . . . about a third of the people of the colonies were
against the Revolution. It required much reflection before I could fix my opinion on this
subject ; but on mature deliberation I conclude you are right, and that more than a third of
influential characters were against it " (Adams's Works, vol. x., pp. 63, no). — Sparks, Wash-
ington, vol. ii., p. 496.

John Adams was of the opinion that only about a third of the people were averse to the
Revolution, but in 1780 in his letters to Calkoen, written to secure Dutch sympathy, he flatly
affirms that the Tories constituted not a twentieth of the population, which may mean that
he thought the French alliance and the progress of the war had diminished at that time
the body of its opponents. — Winsor, Narrative and Critical History of America, vol. vii.,
p. 187.

It is probably below the truth to say that a full half of the more honorable and respected

The American People 89

Americans was either openly or secretly hostile to the Revolution. — Lecky, England in the
Eighteenth Century, vol. iv., p. 153.

14 " Of the New England colonies Connecticut had the greatest number of Tories, and
next in proportion to population was the district which was afterwards known as the
State of Vermont.

" . . . In Virginia, especially after hostilities began, the Tories were decidedly less in
number than the Whigs. In North Carolina, the two parties were about evenly divided.
In South Carolina, the Tories were the numerous party ; while in Georgia their majority
was so great that, in 1781, they were preparing to detach that colony from the general
movement of the rebellion, and probably would have done so, had it not been for the
embarrassing accident which happened to Cornwallis at Yorktown in the latter part of that
year." — Moses Coit Tyler, in American Historical Review, vol. i., p. 28 (October, 1895).

Considerable information in regard to the Loyalists may be found in Winsor's Narrative
and Critical History of America, vol. vii., pp. 185-214, and in Sabine's Loyalists of the
Revolution.

15 A strong contrast to the political apathy of these worthy men [the Germans of South
Carolina] was to be found in the rugged population of the upland counties. Here, the small
farmers of Scotch-Irish descent were, every man of them, Whigs, burning with a patriotic
ardor that partook of the nature of religious fanaticism ; while on the other hand the [High-
land] Scotsmen who had come over since Culloden were mostly Tories, and had by no
means as yet cast off that half-savage type of Highland character which we find so vividly
portrayed in the Waverley novels. — Fiske, American Revolution, vol. ii., p. 165.

The single exception was that of some of the Highlanders in North Carolina at the
beginning of the Revolution. Banished from Scotland for taking up arms for the Pretender,
their pardon was conditioned on a solemn oath of allegiance to their sovereign. Such obli-
gations they regarded with peculiar sacredness, and they had required the king to swear to
the Solemn League and Covenant. Not feeling to any great degree the evils complained of
by the other colonists, they were slow to engage in the contest. Some of them at first
sympathized with and aided the royalists ; but when the monarchical government came to an
end, they became the fast friends and supporters of republican institutions. We may respect
their moral principles, while we deplore their error of judgment, that led them at first to
battle with freemen who were only demanding their rights. — Craighead, Scotch and Irish
Seeds in American Soil, p. 315. See also Colonial Records of North Carolina, vol. v., pp.
1194-98.

16 See Appendix E (Parliamentary Examination of Joseph Galloway, March, 1779).

CHAPTER VII

AMERICAN IDEALS MORE SCOTTISH THAN ENGLISH

IT is difficult to understand the grounds for claiming that the credit for the
conception or development of the principle of man's equality belongs to
the English. So far as history and the observation of life reveal, that prin-
ciple is not established in England to-day, nor even recognized by any
more than a small part of its population. Still less was it the case more
than a hundred years ago, either in England or in English colonies. The
distinctions of caste remained longer as bitter realities in Massachusetts than
they did in Virginia ; and so far from either of those States being the first to
introduce the principles of democracy, it does not seem to be overstating it
to say that Quaker Pennsylvania, with two-thirds of its population non-Eng-
glish, had more real freedom and political equality twenty years before 1787,
than Massachusetts or Virginia had twenty years after that date. Neither
can it be considered an exaggeration to say that those embryonic principles
of civil liberty which first were brought to New England by the Pilgrims
from Holland, then for one hundred and thirty years buried and forgotten
in the sterile soil of later New England Puritanism, and which finally seemed
to germinate spontaneously and produce such abundant fruit during the
Revolutionary period, did not come chiefly from England, but came rather
from the influence of the French writers, and from Switzerland and the
Dutch Republic.

Prior to 1850 Massachusetts remained essentially English, and would be
so to-day were it not for the large influx of foreign population during the
past fifty years. If there is any one characteristic that distinguishes
the Englishman more than another, it is his persistent assertion — and,
where he is able, the maintenance — of his own rights. This is doubtless a
consequence of his Teutonic nature. It comes from the realization of his
own intrinsic excellence, and from that spirit which prompts him to go out
and subdue the earth. Unless constantly held in check, however, it is very
easy for him to overstep the line between his own rights and the rights of
others ; and so far as he is free to act upon his own racial instincts, he does
overstep this line. This is strictly in accordance with the theory of evolu-
tion. If the Englishman did not do so unto others it might be so done unto
him. We see manifestations of this encroaching spirit, in all aspects of
English life or history, from the time of Hengist and Horsa down to the
time of Jameson's Raid, and from the days of John Smith and John Win-
throp down to the days of the year 1901. It is this aggressive spirit which
proudly points the way to the universal dominion of the so-called Anglo-
Saxon race ; and it is the one attribute without which the Anglo-Saxon's

American Ideals

further racial progress, according to his own view, would be impossible.
Hence, to repeat, the Englishman has a greater regard for his own rights than
for those of others. So truly is this the case, that the rights of his weaker
neighbor are invariably sacrificed, whenever the two clash together. As a
result, there can be no real equality among the English. There is not such
a thing in England to-day, nor indeed any pretence of it. Socially, the dis-
tinctions of caste and rank are perhaps not so strongly marked there between
the various classes as were those between master and slave in early America,
but the distance between the high and the low is almost as great, — and the
abject wretchedness of the poorest class in England is far more noticeable.
The opportunities of the individual are likewise restricted wholly to those of
his particular class, and it is only by a miracle that he can ever hope to break
through into a higher and better association.

Down to a few years before the Revolutionary War, the Englishman of
New England did not differ greatly from his kinsmen at home. He had the
same aggressive and independent nature, the same reverence for ecclesiastical
and political power, the same suspicion, jealousy, and hatred of things not
English, and the same bitter intolerance and persecuting spirit for all opinions
not identical with his own. The Puritans who came to Massachusetts before
1640 soon forgot the lessons of forbearance and justice they had learned at
home when persecuted for conscience* sake. They and their children re-
tained the pride of caste, the arrogance, the narrow-mindedness, and the
bigotry of the ruling class at home. They made laws prohibiting people of
the poorer classes from wearing as good clothing as their superiors in wealth
and position. They established a State church, and enforced conformity to
its worship and universal contributions to its support, by means of the
whipping-post, the jails, and the gibbet. 1 They limited suffrage to the mem-
bers of the Established Church ; and during most of the time they required
qualifications for church-membership which were wholly secular and which
had no connection whatever with religion. 9

In all respects, their government prior to 1760 partook only of the nature
of an ecclesiastical and aristocratic oligarchy, and it was more than sixty
years after that time before the principle of equal rights became fully estab-
lished in Massachusetts.*

In America, as in every other country, the first to appreciate the necessity
for man's equality before the law were those who had suffered most from
the perversions of justice. These were the early Pilgrims, the Quakers, the
Catholics, the Baptists, and the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians. As a rule, the
oppressed can better be relied upon to distinguish between right and wrong
than the oppressors. They have a keener moral sense, and their more active
exercise of nature's first instinct teaches them the necessity of giving due
deference to the rights of their fellow men.

As we know, laws are but limitations upon arbitrary power ; and the
battle for man's industrial, political, and religious freedom has ever been a

92 The Scotch- Irish Families of America

contest between vested interests and highly privileged power on the one side,
and unaided, suffering, and burden-bearing humanity on the other. Injus-
tice must be long endured and its oppressions made intolerable before the
weaker masses who suffer from its burdens can acquire enough intelligent
strength to resist, and to bring about reforms. Reforms rarely originate
with the power-holding classes ; but are granted by them as concessions —
indeed, usually wrung from them by repeated and urgent protests, prayers,
and, at certain long intervals, by the sword of the revolutionist.

The oppressed and persecuted, therefore, are those to whom mankind
owes its greatest social blessings. They ever stand as living witnesses against
injustice and tyranny. They are the first to demand reforms. In the days
of Rome, they raised the standard of the Cross, around which in due time
the men of all nations gathered. Under this standard was erected later the
most effective system ever devised by the genius of man for curbing the
despots of paganism — a system so well organized, indeed, that when the evils
which it was created to destroy had been wellnigh stamped out it gave those
evils a new lease on life by introducing their spirit into its own religious pol-
ity, resulting in the massacres of the Reformation period.

So, in the days of John Knox, the blood of the early Scottish martyrs
was the seed not only of the British Protestant Church, but of the greater
tree of human liberty, which grew up and flourished under his fostering care;
yielding its fruits in abundant measure when the time came for Scotland
to take the lead against tyranny and to preserve for herself, for England, and
for all mankind the threatened heritage of granted liberties. 4

To a vastly greater extent does America owe her love of liberty to
those who had suffered from persecution. At an early day becoming the
harbor and home of the oppressed of all nations, its shores ever received the
exiles, the refugees, and the proscribed of the monarchies of Europe. Here
came the Pilgrim, the Puritan, the Baptist, the Quaker, the Mennonite, the
Moravian, the Catholic, the Huguenot, and the Presbyterian. Here these
people felled the forests, subdued the wilderness, planted the soil, established
towns, raised schoolhouses, built churches, and in every way prepared them-
selves to guard the precious treasure of civil and religious liberty which they
had crossed unknown seas to obtain. However, with the lapse of years and
the coming of children and grandchildren, some of them grew to forget the
lessons of liberty which they had learned in the old world, and remembered
only the deeper-grounded hereditary admonitions of their earlier persecut-
ing forefathers. These colonists reverted to the same life of injustice and
oppression which their cousins still lived at home.

This, as has been already intimated, and as we shall more fully perceive
in the pages following, was particularly the case in New England and Virginia.
In the former colony, the retrogression was rapid and marked. To use the
expression of its most candid native expositor, the period between 1637 and
1760 was the " glacial " age of Massachusetts.' In early Virginia there never

American Ideals 93

was much of Freedom's light let in. Its early settlers were English Royalists,
so-called Cavaliers, who were Episcopalian conformists, and dissent of any
kind was prohibited by the severest penalties. The institution of slavery
was established there before the expulsion of the Stuarts from England, and
the slave trade was encouraged and maintained by British adventurers and
Yankee skippers,* notwithstanding the protest of many of Virginia's most
eminent men,'

In New England, until the Scotch came, the sole guardians of liberty were
the Separatists, the Quakers, and the Baptists. The first, because of their
liberal views, were forced to remove from Massachusetts to Connecticut and
Maryland, and the others were driven into Rhode Island and New Jersey.
In the central colonies, those who kept alive the sacred flame were found at
first in Maryland, but later chiefly in Pennsylvania and New Jersey,
where the Quakers had early settled and where afterwards came the Mo-
ravians, the Lutherans, the Huguenots, the Catholics, and the Covenanters.
These two colonies became the only secure retreats for all the persecuted of
Europe, of Britain, of New England, and of the Episcopalian colonies of the
South. 8 Here was the landing-place of more than three-fourths of the
Protestant emigrants from Ireland, and here they lived, increased, spread
out over the south and west, and carried into Maryland, Virginia, and the
Carolinas their democratic principles of human equality, of the responsibility
of the governor to the governed, and of the supremacy of conscience over
all established forms of thought, government, or worship.

It was not until a long time after the beginning of the present century
that freedom of worship prevailed in Massachusetts. Up to the middle of
the preceding one, it was not safe for a visiting Presbyterian minister to
preach in that colony or in Connecticut. In 1740, a few Scotch-Irish
families lived in Worcester. After infinite labor and pains, and with con-
siderable sacrifice on their part, they began the erection of a small meeting-
house within the confines of that village. The framework of the building
had been reared, and the structure was being pushed to completion, when,
one dark night, a body of citizens, representing the majesty of the State and
the Puritan Church, secretly assembled before the partially erected build-
ing. Having made all preparations, they began to demolish the structure,
and before morning had razed it to the ground. The offensive Presbyte-
rians were not permitted to rebuild, but were obliged to remove to the
frontiers. These Scots, and their fellow-colonists in Londonderry, New
Hampshire, gave to America Matthew Thornton, Hugh McCulloch, Salmon
P. Chase, Charles Foster, George B. McClellan, Asa Gray, Horace Greeley,
General John Stark, and perhaps, also, Henry Knox, the Boston bookseller,
whom Washington so highly honored. Reverend Samuel Finley, a Scotch-
Irish Presbyterian, afterwards president of Princeton College, was arrested
and imprisoned in Connecticut in 1742-43, because he ventured to preach
in that colony without an invitation from a minister of one of the established

94 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

churches. Francis Makemie, the father of American Presbyterianism,
was likewise arrested and imprisoned in New York, in 1707, because he
held services in the city of that name as a Presbyterian minister. New
Jersey, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and Maryland were the only colonies
in which there was any approach to freedom of worship during the first half
of the eighteenth century. Down to the beginning of the Revolutionary
period, Virginia was, if anything, more intolerant than Massachusetts. Dis-
senting ministers were imprisoned there after the year 1760, according
to Patrick Henry's reading of their bill of indictment, for "preaching the
gospel of Jesus Christ." That State was the first, however, to adopt a
constitution declaring for a total separation of Church and State ; and it
was owing to the earnest fight against the intolerable inflictions of the old
laws, a fight made chiefly by the Scotch-Irish composing the Presbytery of
Hanover, 9 that, beginning in 1776, these laws were finally swept from the
statute-books. In contrasting the New England and the Southern colonies,
Mr. Douglas Campbell points out the racial differences in their respective
populations, and thus reveals the true reason for the differences in their
treatment of the matter of religious liberty. He says 10 :

The New England Colonies were republics, but not democracies. Most
of them had state churches ; their suffrage, though broad, was restricted,
and among their people social distinctions were very marked. When these
colonies became States they clung, with true English tenacity, to their old
traditions, and looked with horror upon the levelling democratic theories
advanced in other quarters. In the South, on the other hand, with its large
and influential Scotch-Irish population, the natural tendency was to get as far
as possible from the past. These men hated England as the New Engend-
ers never did, and they also hated all her institutions. Their religion had
taught them the absolute equality of man, and on this point they were in
full accord with men like Jefferson, who had learned the same principle
from the philosophers of France. Here, then, in this difference of race we
may perhaps find an explanation of the fact that Virginia, formerly the most
aristocratic, became the most democratic in theory of all the States ; while
Massachusetts, standing on old conservative ways, became the chief expo-
nent of the opposing theories. One thing is very clear — from no English
element of the population, except the Separatists, would have come the ideas
of human equality, freedom of religion, separation of Church and State, and
universal suffrage.

Peculiarly appropriate to the consideration of these questions are the
lectures delivered by Charles Francis Adams, at Cambridge, in 1893, which
have since been published in an enlarged form, under the title of Massa-
chusetts : Its Historians and Its History. Some of Mr. Adams's observations
may be cited here :

So far as the principles of civil liberty and human right are concerned,
Massachusetts has always been at the front. . . . The backbone of the
movement which preceded the French Revolution, she inspired the agitation
which ended in the fall of African slavery.

American Ideals

Such has been the Massachusetts record as respects equality before the
law ; as respects religious toleration, it has been of a character wholly-
different. Upon that issue, indeed, not only has Massachusetts failed to
make herself felt, but her record as a whole, and until a comparatively recent
period, has been scarcely even creditable. This, too, was the case from the
beginning.

The story opens with the contested charter election of 1637, as a result
of which Governor John Winthrop replaced Governor Sir Harry Vane as
chief executive of the colony. This election took place ... on the 27th
day of May. Four months later it was followed by the gathering of the first
Synod of Massachusetts churches. . . . The Synod sat through twenty-
four days, during which it busied itself unearthing heterodox opinions and
making the situation uncomfortable for those suspected of heresy. . . .
Finally . . . took place the trial of the arch-heretic, Mistress Anne
Hutchinson ; and on the 18th of November, 1637, she was condemned to
banishment.

As the twig is bent, the tree inclines. The Massachusetts twig was here
and then bent ; and, as it was bent, it during hard upon two centuries
inclined. The question of Religious Toleration was, so far as Massachusetts
could decide it, decided in 1637 in the negative. On that issue Massa-
chusetts then definitely and finally renounced all claim or desire to head the
advancing column, or even to be near the head of the column ; it did not go
to the rear, but it went well towards it, and there it remained until the issue
was decided. But it is curious to note from that day to this how the exponents
of Massachusetts polity and thought, whether religious or historical, have,
so to speak, wriggled and squirmed in the presence of the record. . . .
They did so in 1637, when they were making the record up ; they have done
so ever since. There was almost no form of sophistry to which the founders
of Massachusetts did not have recourse then, — for they sinned against light,
though they deceived themselves while sinning ; and there is almost no form
of sophistry to which the historians of Massachusetts have not had recourse
since, — really deceiving themselves in their attempt to deceive others. . . .

The first decision, and the policy subsequently pursued in accordance
with it, were distinct, authoritative, and final, — against religious toleration.
. . . The offence, as well as the policy to be pursued by the government,
was explicitly and unmistakably set forth by the chief executive and the
presiding official at the trial of Mrs. Hutchinson, when Governor Winthrop
said to her, — " Your course is not to be suffered ; . . . we see not that any
should have authority to set up any other exercises besides what authority
hath already set up." . . .

I have cited Urian Oakes, President of Harvard College from 1675 to
1681. He was succeeded by Increase Mather, who was President from 1685
to 1 701 ; and in 1685 Increase Mather thus delivered himself on the subject
of religious liberty :

" Moreover, sinful Toleration is an evil of exceeding dangerous conse-
quence : Men of Corrupt minds though they may plead for Toleration, and
Cry up Liberty of Conscience, etc., yet if once they should become numerous
and get power into their hands, none would persecute more than they. . . .
And indeed the Toleration of all Religions and Perswasions, is the way to
have no true Religion at all left. ... I do believe that Antichrist hath not
at this day a more probable way to advance his Kingdom of Darkness, than
by a Toleration of all Religions and Perswasions." (A Call to the Rising
Generation, 1685, pp. 107, 108.) . . .

96 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

So far as America is concerned, it is greatly to be feared that we in the
matter of historical work are yet in the filio-pietistic and patriotic stage of
development. " Ancestor worship " is the rule, and an excellent illustration
of the results to which that worship leads those given to it is afforded in the
treatment which has been accorded to that portion of the Massachusetts
record which relates to religious toleration. It is not too much to say that
the resources of sophistry and special pleading have been exhausted in the
attempt to extenuate or explain it away. On its face it presents difficulties
of an obvious nature : wholesale proscription ; frequent banishment under
penalty of death in case of return ; the infliction of punishments both cruel
and degrading, amounting to torture, and that regardless of the sex of those
punished ; the systematic enforcement of rigid conformity through long
periods of time ; — all these things are part of the record : — and in these
bad respects it is not at once apparent how the Massachussets record differs
from those of Spain or France or England. But the Massachusetts school
of historians, undismayed by the difficulties which confronted it, has ad-
dressed itself to the task in such a blind sense of filial devotion that the
self-deception of many, and not the least eminent of those composing the
school, has been complete. It is not pleasant to have such remarks made,
but there is a certain justice in Sir Henry Maine's reference, to " the nauseous
grandiloquence of the American panegyrical historian " (Popular Govern-
ment^ p. 222) ; and J. A. Doyle might have extended his criticism of the
early New England chroniclers, — that in reading their writings "we are
reading not a history but a hagiology," — so as to include not a few later
investigators. . . .

Again, approaching a yet larger question, — the question of Toleration.
Confronted with the record on that matter, the Massachusetts historian, so
free and frank in his denunciation of English and Italian and Spanish
ecclesiastical bigotry and intolerance, proceeds to argue that, after all, " re-
ligious intolerance, like every other public restraint, is criminal wherever it
is not needful for the public safety : it is simply self-defence whenever
toleration would be public ruin." (Palfrey, History of New England, 1864,
i., 300.) These words from the latest and most elaborate history of New
England sound like an echo, — loud, reverberating, close at hand, — of the
utterance of two centuries before. Thus Increase Mather, later president of
Harvard College, expressed himself in 1681 : "The place may sometimes
make a great alteration, as to indulgence to be expected. It is evident, that
that Toleration is in one place not only lawful, but a necessary duty,
which in another place would be destructive, and the expectation of it
irrational." . . .

The stronger and more stimulating the food, the sooner any undue quan-
tity of it is felt ; until, in the case of wine, while a carefully measured use
may stimulate the healthy and nourish the sick, excess brings on fever and
delirium. Rhode Island went through this experience in its early days. It
was, so to speak, the dumping-ground for the surplus intellectual activity of
New England. . . . Thus what was a good and most necessary element
in the economy of nature and the process of human development was an
excess in Rhode Island ; and the natural result followed, — a disordered
community. . . . But it by no means followed that what disordered infant
Rhode Island would have proved more than a healthy stimulant for larger
and more matured Massachusetts. In its spirit of rigid conformity, Massa-
chusetts rejected and expelled whatever did not immediately assimilate ;
and so did Spain. Indeed, Spain regarded Holland much as Massachusetts

American Ideals 97

regarded Rhode Island . . . the only trouble was that while Massachusetts
did not have enough of the stimulant, Rhode Island had too much. ...

But, as I have observed, this fact the inhabitants of Massachusetts could
not see then, and the Massachusetts school of historians has refused to see
it since. Those composing that school have systematically narrowed their
vision ; and denouncing the rulers of Spain and France and England for
bigotry, intolerance, and cruelty, — shutting their eyes to Holland . . . they
have pointed to Rhode Island as an example of what must inevitably have
ensued had the rulers of Massachusetts in its formative period not pursued
that policy of which Philip II. was the great and only wholly successful ex-
positor. In other words, they insist that in the seventeenth century toleration
meant chaos, — " had our early ancestors . . . placed their government on
the basis of liberty for all sorts of consciences, it would have been in that
age a certain introduction of anarchy" (Ellis, Memorial History of Boston,
i., 127) ; and in proof of this they point to Rhode Island. . . .

It was not until after the adoption of the Federal Constitution in 1787
that the political agitation which for Massachusetts began in 1760 can be
said to have practically subsided. . . . During that period, nearly the life-
time of a generation, the glacial mass of superstition and terrorism had been
gradually but imperceptibly receding and disappearing. It was still potent,
but in an inert sort of way. . . . When the constitution of 1780 was framed,
it yielded a grudging and reluctant consent to limited concessions of non-
conformity ; but it was then so potent and so rife that the framer of the
instrument abandoned in despair the attempt to put his idea of religious
freedom in any form of words likely to prove acceptable to those who were
to pass upon his work ( Works of yohn Adams \ iv., p. 222, n.). . . .

The phase of political activity has already been alluded to. In that field
Massachusetts was always at home — it enjoyed an easy American supremacy
which even its ice age did not wholly arrest. And now, when the struggle
against superstition had drawn to a close, that against caste came again to
the front, with Massachusetts still in the van. Indeed, on this issue, in 1837
as in 1635, the proper and natural place for the Puritan commonwealth was
in the van. It stood there ; indeed it was the van.

The record, opened at Plymouth in December, 1620, closed as a distinct
and independent record in April, 1865. That long struggle for the recog-
nition of the equality of man before the law, of which Massachusetts was the
peculiar and acknowledged champion, came to its close at Appomattox.

Frank and novel, indeed, are these confessions of Puritan shortcom-
ing from a scion of one of New England's most noted families. While
one cannot but feel that Mr. Adams has rendered an inestimable service to
the cause of truth, it is yet to be questioned whether in his concluding
sentences he does not himself fall under the filio-pietistic influence when
speaking of the Massachusetts monopoly of the principles of civil liberty.
Claiming descent from John Cotton, as Mr. Adams does, it is not strange
that the inquiry arises whether the fact of that descent, and the desire to
condone the bigotry of that ancestor, may not have led him to take a broader
and more philosophical survey of the subject of religious liberty in New
England than has been taken by any of his predecessors. It may also be
questioned whether his estimate as to the perniciousness of the early Puritan

gS The Scotch-Irish Families of America

ecclesiastical system may not have been reached through a realization of
the inadequacy of any other conclusion to rightly explain the Jesuitical
polity developed and practised by that Puritan ancestor. John Cotton was
a man who argued that, " to excommunicate an Heretick, is not to perse-
cute ; that is, it is not to punish an innocent, but a culpable and damnable
person, and that not for conscience, but for persisting in error against light
of conscience, whereof it hath been convinced." "

Would that some equally worthy descendant of John Winthrop or Ed-
mund Andros might give us a like demagnetized and impartial account of
the history of civil liberty in Massachusetts.

Lacking this, we have, however, from an outside source, a very clear
and forceful criticism of those portions of Mr. Adams's addresses which
partake of tendencies the opposite of the liberal ones just indicated. This
criticism is to be found in Oliver Perry Temple's little volume on The
Covenanter, Cavalier, and Puritan™ and is as follows :

The truth is, from the beginning " caste " was in higher favor and more
regarded in this [Massachusetts] than in any of the Colonies, except possibly
in Virginia. The distinction between the " better class " — those " above the
ordinary degree " — and those of " mean condition," was expressly pointed
out and declared by the General Court in 165 1. Under the law enacted by
it, regulating the kind of dress to be worn, and other things, magistrates,
civil and military officers, persons of education and employment " above the
ordinary degree," those who were worth two hundred pounds, and those
whose estates had been considerable, but had decayed, — all those in a word
called the better class, were exempt from the operation of these sumptuary
laws. But the court declared most earnestly, almost pathetically, its " utter
detestation and dislike that men or women of mean condition, educations,
and callings, should take upon them the garbe of gentlemen, by the wearing
of gold or silver lace, or buttons or poynts at their knees, to walke in great
bootes ; or women of the same ranke to weare silk or tiffany hoodes or
scarfes, which, though allowable to persons of greater estates, or more lib-
eral education, yet we cannot but judge it intolerable in persons of such like
condition." (Bryant's History of the United States, vol. ii., 63.)

Most reluctantly do I attempt to take from " Puritan Massachusetts"
any of the honors she so gracefully and complacently wears, won in the long
contest over the abolition of slavery, but the truth of history compels my
doing so. That State was not " in the van " ; much less " was she the van "
on that question until after 1836. The leading men of Virginia condemned
the institution of slavery both before and immediately after the Revolution.
In 1804 a number of Baptist ministers in Kentucky started a crusade
against the institution, which resulted in a hot contest in the denomination,
and the organization of the " Baptist Licking Locust Association Friends of
Humanity." In 1806 Charles Osborne began to preach "immediate eman-
cipation " in Tennessee. Ten years later he started a paper in Ohio, called
the Philanthropist, devoted to the general cause of humanity. In 1822 a
paper was started at Shelbyville (no State mentioned, probably Kentucky),
called the Abolition Intelligencer.

Osborne probably went from Jefferson County, eastern Tennessee, the

American Ideals 99

same county from which John Rankin,* the noted abolitionist, went, since
his was the first name on the roll of the " Lost Creek Manumission Society"
of that county in 1815.

Twenty years before Massachusetts took her stand at all on this subject,
there were eighteen manumission, or emancipation, societies in eastern Ten-
nessee, organized by the Covenanters, the Methodists, and the Quakers of
that region, which held regular meetings for a number of years in the inter-
est of emancipation or abolitionism. In 1822 there were five or six abolition
societies in Kentucky. In 181 9 the first distinctively emancipation paper in
the United States was published in Jonesborough, eastern Tennessee, by
Elihu Embree, a Quaker, called the Manumission Intelligencer. In 1821
Benjamin Lundy purchased this paper, and published it for two years in
Greenville, East Tennessee, under the title of the Genius of Universal Eman-
cipation. Lundy was merely the successor of Embree. At and previous
to this time, the Methodist Church in Tennessee, at its conferences, was
making it hot for its members who held or who bought or sold slaves, by
silencing or expelling them.

On the other hand, as late as 1835, William Lloyd Garrison was mobbed
in the streets of Boston, because he was an abolitionist. About 1827, Ben-
jamin Lundy could not find an abolitionist in that city. In 1826, of the
one hundred and forty-three emancipation societies in the United States,
one hundred and three were in the South, and not one, so far as I know, in
Massachusetts. John Rankin, the noted abolitionist of Ohio, who went
from East Tennessee in 1815 or 1816, — a Covenanter and from a Covenanter
neighborhood, — declared in the latter part of his life that it was safer in 1816
to 1820 to make abolition speeches in Tennessee or Kentucky than it was in
the North.

In 1833, the poet Whittier and George Thompson, the celebrated Eng-
lish abolitionist, were mobbed and narrowly escaped with their lives, in at-
tempting to make abolition speeches in one of the towns of Massachusetts.!

In 1833, Governor Everett, of Massachusetts, suggested the expediency
of prosecuting abolitionists. Mr. Garrison said, in the first number of the
Liberator, that he found in the North " contempt more bitter, prejudice
more stubborn, and apathy more frozen than among slave-owners them-
selves." It was estimated, in 1828, that in Tennessee three-fifths of the
people were favorably disposed toward the principle of emancipation.

In the Constitutional convention of Tennessee, in 1834, a proposition
was made to emancipate the slaves of the State, and it received over one-
third of the votes of the members, and the favorable indorsement of all,
those opposing it approving the principle, but insisting that the time for
that step had not yet arrived.

It is well known that Henry Clay commenced his political career in
Kentucky by an effort to secure the emancipation of the slaves of that
State. The fact is, the emancipation movement seems to have gotten its
first start and strength in Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky, though the
Quakers of Pennsylvania made feeble efforts in that direction before the
Revolution. 18

It thus appears that Massachusetts was a long way behind even some of

♦John Rankin's father was a Pennsylvanian and was in the Revolutionary War. John
was the founder of the Free Presbyterian Church and organized the first "underground
railway " in Ohio.

f This is likewise true of Benjamin Lundy, who first interested Garrison in abolition.

ioo The Scotch-Irish Families of America

the slave States in the struggle for "man's equality before the law." It was
not until 1836 that she led in the abolition movement.

From the very beginning, as we have seen, there has always been a ten-
dency toward caste in Massachusetts. Her people were Englishmen. They
had English ideas. Ideas of caste were a part of their heritage. I have al-
ready quoted one of their early statutes showing that a clear distinction was
drawn between the " better class," those " above the ordinary degree," and
those of " mean condition." Those of the latter class were not to wear the
same clothing that the former did. . . .

I refer to one more fact on this subject. In the discussion over the for-
mation of the Federal Constitution, and during the twelve years following
its adoption, the Federal and the Anti-Federal parties were formed and came
into being ; the one, thoroughly democratic, was led by Mr. Jefferson ; the
other, led by Mr. Hamilton and John Adams, leaned toward a strong cen-
tral government. Massachusetts and New England, following the lead of
Mr. Adams, ranged themselves on the Federal side, while the Southern
States followed the leadership of Mr. Jefferson. Massachusetts became a
Federal State, while Virginia became thoroughly Democratic.

As the logical conclusion of the discussions in the last four chapters, and
the underlying thought running through them all, it is affirmed as almost an
undeniable proposition that the advanced theories and the liberal ideas, in
reference to both political and religious liberty, which, like threads of gold,
were woven into the institutions of the country and the life of the people,
and which gave them their chief glory, were of Covenanter, and not of Puri-
tan or Cavalier, origin. This is so manifestly true as to religious liberty
that the reader has only to recall the facts already given in order to com-
mand his ready assent to the truth of the proposition. For it will be re-
membered that until after the coming of the Covenanters there was not one
gleam of light in all the dreary regions dominated by the Puritans and the
Cavaliers. The despotism and the gloom of intolerance reigned supreme.
A narrow bigotry and superstition cast their blighting shadows over the
minds of men. Notwithstanding the bold and never-ceasing teachings of
the Covenanters, from the day of their arrival in the country until they had
aroused the storm of the Revolution, so difficult was it to induce the Puri-
tans and the Cavaliers to relax their deadly grasp on the consciences of
men that eleven years passed away after the inauguration of hostilities in
the colonies before universal religious liberty prevailed in the Cavalier
State, and nearly sixty years before complete religious emancipation was ac-
complished in Massachusetts.

The struggles for political and personal liberty are always easily remem-
bered. The glare and the thunders of war are never forgotten. But the
quiet, the persistent, and the courageous warfare waged by the Covenant-
ers, everywhere and at all times, for the right of conscience, while it was
effecting a revolution as important for the happiness of mankind as the
great one settled by arms, did not appeal to the senses and the imagi-
nation of men, and hence it has been but little noted by speakers or by
historians.

To prove the correctness of the other branch of my summary, or propo-
sition, in reference to political freedom, it is only necessary to refer to the
facts already given, to show the deeply rooted ideas of caste and social dis-
tinction existing in the minds of the ruling classes, and in the society of
Virginia and Massachusetts, previous to and at the date of the Revolution.
These caste ideas and social distinctions did not prevent those favorable to

American Ideals 101

Independence from doing their duty in the great contest of arms, but they
did have a most important influence in shaping the institutions of the
country, and in giving tone and coloring to its thought afterward. And in
this second stage of the Revolution, these Covenanters, dwelling in large
numbers in all the States south of New England, with their liberal and ad-
vanced ideas, learned in their bitter experience of nearly two centuries, and
with their creed of republicanism, were ready to infuse their spirit and in-
ject their ideas of equality into the constitutions, the institutions, and into
the life of that vast region. Under this influence even aristocratic Cavalier
Virginia became, as we have seen, the most democratic of all the States.
Under this influence, also, the constitution of Tennessee was framed,
which was pronounced by Mr. Jefferson the most republican in its spirit of
all the American constitutions. And this same spirit pervaded the institu-
tions of all the Southern States, excepting South Carolina. I do not with-
hold from Mr. Jefferson the high meed of praise he so richly merits for his
magnificent work in behalf of liberal ideas and republican institutions in
Virginia. But Mr. Jefferson was always a Covenanter in his opinions as to
political and religious liberty.,, Besides this, we have seen that he would
have failed in his great reforms, except for the powerful aid he received
from the Covenanters.

Nor do I ignore the teachings of Roger Williams, nor the liberal ideas of
the Dutch of New York, nor the conservative opinions of the Quakers, nor
the tolerant spirit of the Catholics of Maryland, in accomplishing these great
results, but these were insignificant in their influence in comparison with the
widely extended power of the great Covenanter race.

NOTES TO CHAPTER VII.

1 See Alexander Johnston's " History of Parties," in Nar. and Crit. History of America,
vol. vii., and Bryant's History of the United States. " Ministers of the Gospel would have a
poor time of it if they must rely on a free contribution of the people for their maintenance.
. . . The laws of the province [Massachusetts] having had the royal approbation to ratify
them, they are the king's laws. By these laws it is enacted that there shall be public worship of
God in every plantation ; that the person elected by the majority of inhabitants to be so, shall
be looked upon as the minister of the place ; and that the salary for him, which they shall
agree upon, shall be levied by a rate upon all the inhabitants. In consequence of this, the
minister thus chosen by the people is (not only Christ's, but also) in reality the king's min-
ister, and the salary raised for him is raised in the king's name, and is the king's allowance
unto him." — Cotton Mather, Ratio Disciplines ; or, Faithful Account of the Discipline Pro-
fessed and Practised in the Churches of New England, p. 20.

2 " The constancy of the Quakers under their sufferings begot a pity and esteem for their
persons, and an approbation of their doctrines ; their proselytes increased ; the Quakers
returned as fast as they were banished ; and the fury of the ruling party was raised to such
a height that they proceeded to the most sanguinary extremities. Upon the law they had
made, they seized at different times upon five of those who had returned from banishment,
condemned, and hanged them. It is unknown how far their madness had extended, if an
order from the King and Council in England about the year 166 1 had not interposed to re-
strain them.

" It is a task not very agreeable to insist upon such matters ; but, in reality, things of this
nature form the greatest part of the history of New England, for a long time. They per-
secuted the Anabaptists, who were no inconsiderable body amongst them, with almost an equal
severity. In short, this people, who in England could not bear being chastised with rods,

102 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

had no sooner got free from their fetters than they scourged their fellow refugees with scor-
pions ; though the absurdity, as well as the injustice of such a proceeding in them, might
stare them in the face." — Burke, European Settlements in America, vol. ii., p. 151.

3 Most of the States [at the time of Jefferson's inauguration] had had property qualifica-
tions as limitations either on the right of suffrage or on the composition of the legislature.
The Republican policy had been to remove such limitations in the States which they con-
trolled, and to diminish the time of residence required for naturalization. The bulk of the
new voters, therefore, went to them, and they were continually making their hold stronger
on the States which had come under their control. New England and Delaware remained
Federalist, and Maryland was doubtful ; the other States could be counted on almost cer-
tainly as Republican. Under the New England system, governmental powers were prac-
tically divided among a multitude of little town republics ; and restriction on the right of
suffrage, intrenched in these towns, had to be conquered in a thousand successive strong-
holds. The towns, too, sufficient to themselves, cared little for the exclusion from
national life involved in their system ; and for nearly twenty years New England was
excommunicated from national politics. It was not until the rise of manufactures and of
dissenting sects had reinforced continuous agitation that the Republican revolution pene-
trated New England and overcame the tenacious resistance of her people. — Alexander John-
ston, " History of Parties," in Narrative and Critical History of America, vol. vii., p. 272.

4 " Knox, under God, made the Scotch and the Scotch-Irish. . . .

"Observe well, the influence of this prophetic patriot was felt most at St. Andrews,
through the long Strathclyde, in the districts of Ayr, Dumfries, and Galloway, the Lothians
and Renfrew. There exactly clustered the homes which thrilled to the herald voice of
Patrick Hamilton ; there were the homes which drank in the strong wine of Knox ; there
were the homes of tenacious memories and earnest fireside talk ; there were the homes
which sent forth once and again the calm, shrewd, iron-nerved patriots who spurned as
devil's lie the doctrine of ' passive resistance ' ; and there — mark it well — were the homes
that sent their best and bravest to fill and change Ulster ; thence came in turn the Scotch-
Irish of the Eaglewing ; thence came the settlers of Pennsylvania, Virginia, the Carolinas,
Tennessee, and Kentucky ; and the sons of these men blush not as they stand beside the
children of the Mayflower or the children of the Bartholomew martyrs. I know whereof
I affirm. My peculiar education and somewhat singular work planted me, American-born,
in the very heart of these old ancestral scenes ; and from parishioners who held with death-
less grip the very words of Peden, Welsh, and Cameron, from hoary-headed witnesses in the
Route of Antrim and on the hills of Down, have I often heard of the lads who went out to
bleed at Valley Forge, — to die as victors on King's Mountain, — and stand in the silent
triumph of Yorktown. We have more to thank Knox for than is commonly told to-day.

" Here we reach our Welshes and Witherspoons, our Tennents and Taylors, our Calhouns
and Clarks, our Cunninghams and Caldwells, our Pollocks, Polks, and Pattersons, our Scotts
and Grays and Kennedys, our Reynoldses and Robinsons, our McCooks, McHenrys, McPher-
sons, and McDowells.

" But the man behind is Knox. Would you see his monument ? Look around. Yes :
To this, our own land, more than any other, I am convinced must we look for the fullest
outcome and the yet all unspent force of this more than royal leader, this masterful and
moulding soul. . . . Carlyle has said : ' Scotch literature and thought, Scotch industry ;
James Watt, David Hume, Walter Scott, Robert Burns. I find Knox and the Reforma-
tion at the heart's core of every one of those persons and phenomena ; I find that without
Knox and the Reformation, they would not have been. Or what of Scotland ? ' Yea, verily ;
no Knox, no Watt, no Burns, no Scotland, as we know and love and thank God for : And
must we not say no men of the Covenant ; no men of Antrim and Down, of Derry and
Enniskillen ; no men of the Cumberland valleys ; no men of the Virginian hills ; no men of
the Ohio stretch, of the Georgian glades and the Tennessee Ridge ; no rally at Scone ; no

American Ideals

103

thunders in St. Giles ; no testimony from Philadelphian Synod ; no Mecklenburg declara-
tion ; no memorial from Hanover Presbytery ; no Tennent stirring the Carolinas ; no
Craighead sowing the seeds of the coming revolution ; no Witherspoon pleading for the
signing of our great charter ; and no such declaration and no such constitution as are ours,
— the great Tilghman himself being witness in these clear words, never by us to be let die :
' The framers of the Constitution of the United States were greatly indebted to the standards
of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland in modelling that admirable document.' — Rev. John
S. Mcintosh, Proceedings Scotch-Irish Society of America, vol. i., pp. 199-201.

" In the history of Scotland, too, I can find properly but one epoch : we may say, it
contains nothing of world-wide interest at all but this Reformation by Knox. A poor, bar-
ren country, full of continual broils, dissensions, massacrings ; a people in the last state of
rudeness and destitution, little better perhaps than Ireland at this day. Hungry, fierce bar-
ons, 'not so much as able to form any arrangement with each other how to divide what they
fleeced from these poor drudges ; but obliged, as the Columbian Republics are at this day, to
make of every alteration a revolution ; no way of changing a ministry but by hanging the
old ministers on gibbets : this is a historical spectacle of no very singular significance :
4 Bravery ' enough, I doubt not ; fierce fighting in abundance : but not braver or fiercer
than that of their old Scandinavian Sea-king ancestors ; whose exploits we have not found
worth dwelling on ! It is a country as yet without a soul : nothing developed in it but what
is rude, external, semi-animal. And now at the Reformation, the internal life is kindled, as
it were, under the ribs of this outward material death. A cause, the noblest of causes, kindles
itself, like a beacon set on high ; high as Heaven, yet attainable from Earth ; — whereby the
meanest man becomes not a Citizen only, but a Member of Christ's visible Church ; a ver-
itable Hero, if he prove a true man !

"This that Knox did for his nation, I say, we may really call a resurrection as from
death. It was not a smooth business ; but it was welcome, surely, and cheap at that price,
had it been far rougher. On the whole, cheap at any price ; — as life is. The people began
to live: they needed first of all to do that, at what cost and costs soever. Scotch Literature
and Thought, Scotch Industry ; James Watt, David Hume, Walter Scott, Robert Burns : I
find Knox and the Reformation acting in the heart's core of every one of these persons and
phenomena ; I find that without the Reformation they would not have been." — Thomas
Carlyle, On Heroes and Hero Worship, iv.

6 So much for the early clergy. As to the magistrates, in the mouths of James I. and
Charles I., of Philip II. of Spain, or Louis XIV. of France, the words : "We see not that
any should have authority to set up any other exercises besides what authority had already
set up," — these words in those mouths would have had a familiar as well as an ominous
sound. To certain of those who listened to them, they must have had a sound no less
ominous when uttered by Governor John Winthrop in the Cambridge meeting-house on the
17th of November, 1637. In them was definitely formulated and clearly announced the
policy thereafter to be pursued in Massachusetts. It was thereafter pursued in Massachusetts.
John Winthrop, John Endicott, and Thomas Dudley were all English Puritans. As such
they had sought refuge from authority in Massachusetts. On what ground can the impartial
historian withhold from them the judgment he visits on James and Philip and Charles and
Louis ? The fact would seem to be that the position of the latter was logical though cruel ;
while the position of the former was cruel and illogical. — C. F. Adams, Massachusetts : Its
Historians and Its History, p. 38.

6 See letter of Col. William Byrd, written from Virginia to Lord Egmont, July 12, 1730,
printed in American Historical Review for October, 1895, vol. i., p. 88 ; also, W. E. B.
DuBois, The Suppression of the African Slave -Trade to the United States of America,
1638-1870, chapter iv. {Harvard Historical Studies, vol. i.).

'Bancroft, vol. ii., pp. 276-279, 549, 550; vol. iii., pp. 410-413; vol. iv., p. 34; vol.
v., p, 329.

104 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

" I have found no mention of negroes in the colony until about 1650. The first brought
here as slaves were in a Dutch ship ; after which the English commenced the trade, and con-
tinued it until the Revolutionary War. That suspended, ipso facto, their further importation
for the present, and the business of the war pressing constantly on the Legislature, this sub-
ject was not acted on finally until the year '78, when I brought in a bill to prevent their
further importation. This passed without opposition, and stopped the increase of the evil
by importation, leaving to future efforts its final eradication. In 1769 I became a member
of the Legislature by the choice of the county in which I lived, and so continued until it was
closed by the Revolution. I made one effort in that body for the permission of the emanci-
pation of slaves, which was rejected ; and indeed, during the regal government nothing
liberal could expect success." — Jefferson's Autobiography, pp. 3, 38.

8 " In 1681, William Penn received from Charles II. a grant of the Province of Pennsyl-
vania, including what is now the State of Delaware. Penn's mother was a Dutch woman
from Rotterdam, and one very prominent in her generation. His peculiar religious ideas,
as we have already seen, were derived from his mother's country. He travelled extensively
in Holland, and spoke the language so well that he preached to the Dutch Quakers in their
native tongue. Finally, before coming to America, he took up his residence for some time
at Emden, in democratic East Friesland. Under all these influences, he sat down in 1682,
and prepared a " Frame of Government " for his dominion, and a " Code of Laws," which
was afterwards adopted by the General Assembly. In their preparation he was assisted by
Algernon Sidney, who had lived many years upon the Continent, who was perfectly familiar
with the institutions of the Netherland Republic and on most intimate terms with its leading
statesmen. How much they borrowed from Holland we shall see hereafter. [The registra-
tion of land titles ; that all prisons should be workhouses for felons, vagrants, etc. , and
should be free to others as to fees, board, and lodgings ; that landed estate should be liable
for a descendant's debt (one-third in cases where issue was left); that one-third the estate of
a murderer passed to the next of kin of his victim ; that all children in the province over the
age of twelve were to be taught a trade ; religious toleration.]

" With Pennsylvania, we reach the most southern point to which a Dutch influence upon
the early settlers of America can be traced, as we also reach the limit of the colonies whose
institutions, except that of slavery, have affected the American Commonwealth. Virginia
alone contributed an idea, that of the natural equality of man ; but this was borrowed by her
statesmen from the Roman law.

"One fact in connection with the Southern colonies, which in early days were almost
wholly under an English influence, is very significant. In 1669, John Locke, with the aid
of the Earl of Shaftesbury, prepared a frame of government for Carolina. None of the pro-
visions of this constitution, except that for recording deeds and mortgages, were borrowed
from Holland, and not one of them, with this exception, has found a permanent place among
American Institutions. The Puritans in Holland, England, and America, vol. ii., pp. 418-
420 (by permission of Messrs. Harper & Brothers).

9 This Presbytery furnished 10,000 names to a petition, which was the force back of
Jefferson's bill for religious freedom (1785), an enactment of which he was so proud that he
had a statement of the fact that he was its author engraved upon his tombstone. The peti-
tion is printed herein as Appendix F.

10 The Puritan in Holland, England, and A m erica, vol. ii., p. 502.

11 Cotton's " Answer to Williams," Narragansett Club Publications, vol. iii., pp. 48-49 ;
also vol. ii., p. 27.

12 See Appendix L (Tithes in Ulster.)

13 The first printed protest in America against slavery, issued by Rev. George Keith, a
Scotch Quaker, October 13, 1693, and published at New York by William Bradford, is re-
produced in the Pennsylvania Magazine, vol. xiii., pp. 265-270.

CHAPTER VIII

THE SCOTTISH KIRK AND HUMAN LIBERTY

IT may seem a reiteration of the words of Mr. Henry Thomas Buckle to
say that the history of Scotland during the century and a half from 1550
to 1700 is almost completely merged in the history of the Scottish Church. 1
He who would form a just conception of the forces in operation in that
country, during the period when the Middle Ages passed away and the mod-
ern era began, must study them chiefly in connection with their bearing on
religion. But it will not suffice in such an investigation to assume that
ecclesiasticism means religion. In his elaborate and, in some respects, highly
philosophical analysis of civilization in Scotland, 2 it seems to the writer that
Mr. Buckle has failed to reach a wholly true and satisfactory estimate of
Scottish character, and that in just so far as he has neglected to discriminate
in this regard. It is true he approaches the subject from the logical English
point of view. Looking upon the institution of the Church with strictly utili-
tarian eyes, he fails to perceive the spiritual life of its people, of which the
Church in Scotland may in all seriousness be considered merely the medium
of expression. Long accustomed by heredity, training, and experience to
the ecclesiastical system at home, which, even down to his own time, was wont
to administer to its adherents only such theological pabulum as would nour-
ish doctrines according with the views and vices of its reigning head, it is at
least not surprising that the great mind which produced the Introduction to
the History of Civilization in England should fail to strike the keynote of
that part of its theme which relates to North Britain. Nor can it be greatly
wondered at, in view of the history of the English Church establishment,
that one of its native observers should formulate a judgment against the re-
ligious system of the neighboring country, finding evidences in it of the same
spirit which dominated the Church at home, and denouncing it as the chief
hindrance to its country's progress ; even though in so doing his gravest
charge against the Scottish Church is, that its votaries have too much super-
stitious reverence for God and the Bible.

It will ever be a matter of regret that Mr. Buckle passed away just as he
had fairly entered upon the prosecution of his great work. Still more is it to
be regretted that he died before the full promulgation of our modern theories
of science and philosophy. Had he lived to-day it is not unlikely that his
name would have been linked with that of Herbert Spencer, and his meth-
ods in historical analysis become analogous in nature and merit to those of
that master-thinker in matters of speculative philosophy. He might, in
some respects, have excelled that philosopher had he enjoyed the fuller
knowledge of the present day instead of beginning to unfold and develop
his theories of the philosophy of history by the light of the first fitful and

105

106 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

half-clouded rays of forty years ago. In that event, being a student of history,
it is possible Buckle might have taken a different view of the part religion
has played in the progress of the world from that expressed in his work. He
might, also, afterwards have based his theory as to Scottish progress or retro-
gression upon a different premise from the one which he has used. Whether
he would have done so or not, however, it is reasonably certain that, if living
to-day, he would have seen a gradual change of public opinion between the
years 1861 and 1900 as to the correctness of his original hypothesis. Nor
could he have failed to perceive a slowly growing conviction on the part of
fair-minded thinkers — a conviction that, after all, some of the chief ele-
ments of human progress are bound up with the phenomena of religion; that
human nature does not reach its highest development under a strictly intel-
lectual standard of morality ; that human reason is not yet sufficiently acute
to classify, much less to harmonize, the incongruities of daily life and expe-
rience ; in short, that the permanency of nations and the endurance of the
race itself depends not so much upon intellectual development as upon the
cultivation, to a greater or less extent, of those restraining influences of
religion which the able author of the History of Civilization in England has
denominated a " mixture of wonder and fear." 3

Mr. Buckle has failed to grasp the one salient point necessary for a right
understanding of the history of religion and its effects in Scotland. Or,
noting the results of a certain moving cause, he has so clouded and distorted
the evidences of its presence that we can only reach a true apprehension of
the cause by reasoning backward from his luminous and eulogistic summary
of its effect.

This cause or principle of action in the Scottish people, the workings of
which have been so beneficial to the growth of human liberty and to man's
progress, this divine afflatus which Mr. Buckle seeks to stigmatize by the use
of that much-abused term " superstition," and to classify as an emanation
from the caverns of darkness and ignorance, is the principle of conscience.
It is this which is the guiding light of the Scottish soul and intellect. With-
out the full and just recognition of its pervading influence among that people,
it were vain for us to attempt to read aright the lessons of Scottish history ;
and idle to seek for explanation of the reasons for Scottish pre-eminence, of
which we see so many proofs in the mental and material subjugation of the
earth.

Probably the most noticeable instance of the blindness of the author of
the History of Civilization in England is afforded in the conclusion reached
by him in the following passage 4 :

By this union of ignorance with danger, the clergy had, in the fifteenth
century, obtained more influence in Scotland than in any other Euro-
pean country, Spain alone excepted. And as the power of the nobles had
increased quite as rapidly, it was natural that the Crown, completely over-
shadowed by the great barons, should turn for aid to the Church. During

The Scottish Kirk 107

the fifteenth century and part of the sixteenth, this alliance was strictly pre-
served, and the political history of Scotland is the history of a struggle by
the kings and clergy against the enormous authority of the nobles. The con-
test, after lasting about one hundred and sixty years, was brought to a close
in 1560, by the triumph of the aristocracy and the overthrow of the Church.
With such force, however, had the circumstance just narrated engrained
superstition into the Scotch character, that the spiritual classes quickly ral-
lied, and, under their new name of Protestants they became as formidable as
under their old name of Catholics. . . . The great Protestant movement
which, in other countries, was democratic, was, in Scotland, aristocratic. We
shall also see, that, in Scotland, the Reformation, not being the work of the peo-
ple, has never produced the effects which might have been expected from it, and
which it did produce in England. It is, indeed, but too evident that, while in
England Protestantism has diminished superstition, has weakened the
clergy, has increased toleration, and, in a word, has secured the triumph of
secular interests over ecclesiastical ones, its result in Scotland has been
entirely different ; and that in that country the Church, changing its form
without altering its spirit, not only cherished its ancient pretensions but un-
happily retained its ancient power ; and that, although that power is now
dwindling away, the Scotch preachers still exhibit, whenever they dare, an
insolent and domineering spirit, which shows how much real weakness there
yet lurks in the nation, where such extravagant claims are not immediately
silenced by the voice of loud and general ridicule.

The inadequacy and perniciousness of Mr. Buckle's conception of the
real bearing of religion upon the national life and character of the Scottish
people cannot perhaps be better shown than by such a disingenuous state-
ment as this. In it he deliberately ignored the facts, and falsified and reversed
the verdict of modern history. Messrs. Freeman and Gardiner, in their
sketch of English history contained in a recent edition of the standard ref-
erence manual of Great Britain, 6 only voice the opinion of all honest stu-
dents when they say:

The English Reformation then, including in that name the merely ecclesi-
astical changes of Henry as well as the more strictly religious changes of
the next reign, was not in its beginning either a popular or a theological
movement. In this it differs from the Reformation in many continental
countries, and especially from the Reformation in the northern part of
Britain. The Scottish Reformation began much later ; but, when it began,
its course was far swifter and fiercer. That is to say, it was essentially popular
and essentially theological. The result was, that, of all the nations which
threw off the dominion of the Roman See, England, on the whole, made the
least change, while Scotland undoubtedly made the most. (On the whole,
because, in some points of sacramental doctrine and ritual, the Lutheran
churches, especially in Sweden, have made less change than the Church of
England has. But nowhere did the general ecclesiastical system go on with
so little change as it did in England.) In England change began from
above. . . . The small party of theological reform undoubtedly welcomed
the changes of Henry, as being likely in the end to advance their own cause ;
but the mass of the nation was undoubtedly favorable to Henry's system of
Popery without the Pope.

108 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

On the same subject, Green says 8 :

Knox had been one of the followers of Wishart ; he had acted as pastor
to the Protestants who after Beaton's murder held the Castle of St. Andrews,
and had been captured with them by a French force in the summer of 1547.
The Frenchmen sent the heretics to the galleys ; and it was as a galley slave
in one of their vessels that Knox next saw his native shores. . . . Re-
leased at the opening of 1549, Knox found shelter in England, where he
became one of the most stirring among the preachers of the day, and was
offered a bishopric by Northumberland. Mary's accession drove him again
to France. But the new policy of the Regent now opened Scotland to the
English refugees, and it was as one of these that Knox returned in 1555 to
his own country. Although he soon withdrew to take charge of the English
congregations at Frankfort and Geneva, his energy had already given a deci-
sive impulse to the new movement. In a gathering at the house of Lord
Erskine he persuaded the assembly to " refuse all society with idolatry, and
bind themselves to the uttermost of their power to maintain the true preach-
ing of the Evangile, as God should offer to their preachers an opportunity."
The confederacy woke anew the jealousy of the government, and persecu-
tion revived. But some of the greatest nobles now joined the reforming
cause. The Earl of Morton, the head of the house of Douglas, the Earl of
Argyle, the greatest chieftain of the west, and above all a bastard son of the
late King, Lord James Stuart, who bore as yet the title of Prior of St.
Andrews, but who was to be better known afterwards as the Earl of Murray,
placed themselves at the head of the movement. The remonstrances of
Knox from his exile at Geneva stirred them to interfere in behalf of the
persecuted Protestants ; and at the close of 1557 these nobles united with
the rest of the Protestant leaders in an engagement which became memor-
able as the first among those Covenants which were to give shape and color
to Scotch religion.

" We," ran this solemn bond, " perceiving how Satan in his members, the
Antichrists of our time, cruelly doth rage, seeking to overthrow and to
destroy the Evangel of Christ, and His Congregation, ought according to
our bounden duty to strive in our Master's cause even unto the death, being
certain of our victory in Him. The which our duty being well considered,
we do promise before the Majesty of God and his Congregation that we, by
His grace, shall with all diligence continually apply our whole power, sub-
stance, and our very lives to maintain, set forward, and establish the most
blessed Word of God and His Congregation, and shall labor at our possi-
bility to have faithful ministers, purely and truly to minister Christ's Evangel
and Sacraments to his people. We shall maintain them, nourish them, and
defend them, the whole Congregation of Christ and every member thereof,
at our whole power and wearing of our lives, against Satan and all wicked
power that does intend tyranny or trouble against the foresaid Congregation.
Unto the which Holy Word and Congregation we do join us, and also do
forsake and renounce the congregation of Satan with all the superstitious
abomination and idolatry thereof : and moreover shall declare ourselves
manifestly enemies thereto by this our faithful promise before God, testified
to His Congregation by our subscription at these presents."

The Covenant of the Scotch nobles marked a new epoch in the strife of
religions. Till now the reformers had opposed the doctrine of nationality to
the doctrine of Catholicism. In the teeth of the pretensions which the
Church advanced to a uniformity of religion in every land, whatever might
be its differences of race or government, the first Protestants had advanced

*-* DIVERSITY /

or J
*$4M£20*r The Scottish Kirk

109

the principle that each prince or people had alone the right to determine its
form of faith and worship. " Cujus regio " ran the famous phrase which
embodied their theory, "ejus religio." It was the acknowledgment of this
principle that the Lutheran princes obtained at the Diet of Spires ; it was on
this principle that Henry based his Act of Supremacy. Its strength lay in
the correspondence of such a doctrine with the political circumstances of
the time. It was the growing feeling of nationality which combined with the
growing development of monarchical power to establish the theory that the
political and religious life of each nation should be one, and that the religion
of the people should follow the faith of the prince. Had Protestantism, as
seemed at one time possible, secured the adhesion of all the European
princes, such a theory might well have led everywhere as it led in England
to the establishment of the worst of tyrannies, a tyranny that claims to lord
alike over both body and soul. The world was saved from this danger by
the tenacity with which the old religion still held its power. In half the
countries of Europe the disciples of the new opinions had soon to choose
between submission to their conscience and submission to their prince ; and
a movement which began in contending for the religious supremacy of
kings ended in those wars of religion which arrayed nation after nation
against their sovereigns. In this religious revolution Scotland led the way.
Her Protestantism was the first to draw the sword against earthly rulers.
The solemn " Covenant " which bound together her " Congregation " in the
face of the regency, which pledged its members to withdraw from all sub-
mission to the religion of the State and to maintain in the face of the State
their liberty of conscience, opened that vast series of struggles which ended
in Germany with the Peace of Westphalia and in England with the Toleration
Act of William the Third.

The " Covenant " of the lords sounded a bold defiance to the Catholic
reaction across the border. While Mary replaced the Prayer-book by the
Mass, the Scotch lords resolved that wherever their power extended the
Common Prayer should be read in all churches. While hundreds were going
to the stake in England, the Scotch nobles boldly met the burning of their
preachers by a threat of war. " They trouble our preachers," ran their bold
remonstrance against the bishops in the Queen-mother's presence ; " they
would murder them and us ! shall we suffer this any longer ? No, madam,
it shall not be ! " and therewith every man put on his steel bonnet.

The testimony of Froude is likewise equally direct and positive 7 :

But in England the Reformation was more than half political. The
hatred of priests and popes was more a predominant principle than specialty of
doctrine. . . . What kings and Parliament had done in England, in Scot-
land had to be done by the people, and was accompanied therefore with the
passionate features of revolt against authority. . . . John Knox became
thus the representative of all that was best in Scotland. He was no narrow
fanatic, who, in a world in which God's grace was equally visible in a
thousand creeds, could see truth and goodness nowhere but in his own for-
mula. He was a large, noble, generous man, with a shrewd perception of
actual fact, who found himself face to face with a system of hideous iniquity.

Here, then, we have the direct refutation of Buckle's statements as to
the origin of the Scottish Reformation, by four leading authorities on British
history, and their opinions are merely confirmatory of the judgment of all
observing and unprejudiced men.

1 10 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

Much in the same line with Mr. Buckle's theory of the origin and accom-
plishment of the Reformation in Scotland is the oft-repeated assertion that the
Scottish Church was as relentless and unceasing a persecutor of dissenters as
were those of the Papacy or Episcopacy. 8 This assertion, likewise, is not
sustained by the facts. Bigoted and intolerant as the Scottish Church became
after it was made a part of the machinery of State, its methods were mild
and innocuous compared with those of its rivals. 9 The one solitary case
where death was inflicted by the authorities for heresy, at the instigation or
with the approval of the Kirk, was that of Thomas Aikenhead, who was
hanged in 1697 on the charge of atheism and blasphemy against God.
While this was a wholly unjustifiable and villainous act of cruelty, it can
hardly be classed with those persecutions from which the Presbyterians had
suffered. It would seem to belong rather to that class of religious perversi-
ties of which the most familiar example was the burning of witches. In
this latter diabolism Scotland engaged with perhaps greater zest than either
England or Massachusetts. The distinction between the crime of the
hanging of Thomas Aikenhead and that of the burning of George Wishart,
by the Catholics, or the drowning of Margaret Wilson, by the Episcopalians,
therefore, is probably to be found by a contrast of motive rather than of de-
gree ; at most it is the difference between fanaticism and tyranny. In the
latter cases, the sufferers had denied the authority of the bishops. These
prelates aimed at preferment by mixing politics with religion, and could not
be wholly sincere or disinterested. George Wishart and Margaret Wilson were
slain by them because the bishops could brook no limitations upon their own
power. In the case of Thomas Aikenhead, the authority of God had been
questioned, and the fanatical zealotry of the ministers permitted the applica-
tion of John Cotton's law, without the apparent intervention of any personal
motives. 10 If such a distinction should at first appear too finely drawn, an ex-
amination of the workings of the two principles thus suggested will show that
their results are, as a rule, widely different. Indeed, in some aspects, their
dissimilarity is almost of equal extent and correspondence with that existing
between the two churches of North and South Britain; and the divergence of
their ends but little short of that which marks the two opposite principles of
democracy and despotism. In New England, where the Calvinistic theory
of the supremacy of God and the Bible over man's conscience was at first as
fully carried out as in Scotland, a system of democracy was inaugurated
which, until its progress became retarded by the union of Church and State,
reached a higher degree of perfection than had been the case in any other
English community. This system, but for the entrance and long-continued
presence of the fatally defective policy of ecclesiastical usurpation in secular
affairs, might have developed into an ideal form of government. In Old
England, on the contrary, where the authority of the bishops over man's con-
science was ever maintained and the theory fully developed by Laud and
Sharp and the Stuarts, a highly despotic form of government resulted, from

The Scottish Kirk in

which mankind had occasionally to find relief by " blood-letting," as in the
revolutions of 1638 and 1688. The only similarity apparent in the ultimate
workings of these two principles, therefore, would seem to be that identi-
cal results have sometimes been reached by the action of one and reaction
from the other.

No theological system has yet been devised that is able to sustain this
dual relation — secular and spiritual — without deteriorating ; and the history
of the Presbyterian Church in Scotland after 1690, when it became the estab-
lished Church of the State, marks a rapid change in spirit and a steady
decadence in spiritual power and influence, only paralleled, perhaps, by that
of the kindred Church of New England after 1640.

Charles II., at the time of his father's death, was a friendless fugitive.
The Scotch offered to receive him as their king, on condition that he should
pledge himself by oath to regard and preserve their Presbyterian form of
Church government. To this he assented. When he arrived in the kingdom
he subscribed the covenant ; and again at his coronation, under circum-
stances of much more than usual solemnity, he swore to preserve it inviolate.
The Scotch accordingly, armed in his defence ; but, divided among them-
selves, and led by a general very unfit to cope with Cromwell, they were soon
defeated, and Charles was again driven to the Continent. When he returned
in 1660, he voluntarily renewed his promise to the Scotch, by whom his res-
toration had been greatly promoted, not to interfere with the liberty of their
Church. No sooner, however, was he firmly seated on his throne than all
these oaths and promises were forgotten. Presbyterianism was at once
abolished, and Episcopacy established ; not such as it was under James I.
when bishops were little more than standing moderators of the Presbyteries,
but invested, by the arbitrary mandate of the King, with the fulness of pre-
latical power. An act was passed making it penal even to speak publicly or
privately against the King's supremacy, or the government of the Church by
archbishops and bishops. A court of high commission, of which all the pre-
lates were members, was erected and armed with inquisitorial powers. Multi-
tudes of learned and pious ministers were ejected from their parishes, and
ignorant and ungodly men, for the most part, introduced in their stead. Yet
the people were forced, under severe penalties, to attend the ministrations of
these unworthy men. All ejected ministers were prohibited preaching or
praying except in their own families ; and preaching or praying in the fields
was made punishable with death. Any one, though the nearest relative, who
should shelter, aid, or in any way minister to the wants of those denounced,
was held liable to the same penalty as the person assisted. All landholders
were required to give bond that their families and dependants should abstain
from attending any conventicle. To enforce these wicked laws torture was
freely used to extort evidence or confession ; families were reduced to ruin
by exorbitant fines ; the prisons were filled with victims of oppression ; mul-
titudes were banished and sold as slaves : women and even children were

ii2 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

tortured or murdered for refusing to take an oath they could not under-
stand ; soldiers were quartered upon the defenceless inhabitants and allowed
free license ; men were hunted like wild beasts, and shot or gibbeted along
the highways. Modern history hardly affords a parallel to the cruelty and
oppression under which Scotland groaned for nearly thirty years. And
what was the object of all this wickedness ? It was to support Episcopacy.
It was done for the bishops, and, in a great measure, by them. They were
the instigators and supporters of these cruel laws, and of the still more cruel
execution of them. Is it any wonder, then, that the Scotch abhorred Episco-
pacy ? It was in their experience identified with despotism, superstition, and
irreligion. Their love of Presbyterianism was one with their love of liberty
and religion. As the Parliament of Scotland was never a fair representation
of the people, the General Assembly of their Church became their great
organ for resisting oppression and withstanding the encroachments of their
sovereigns. The conflict, therefore, which in England was so long kept
up between the Crown and the House of Commons, was in Scotland sustained
between the Crown and the Church. This was one reason why the Scotch
became so attached to Presbyterianism ; this, too, was the reason why the
Stuarts hated it, and determined at all hazards to introduce prelacy as an
ally to despotism."

The chief period of the so-called Presbyterian persecution in Scotland
was that immediately succeeding the Revolution of 1688, when we do find
a wholesale expulsion of the Episcopal clergy, and, so far as it could be done
without the use of measures involving the loss of life and limb, an earnest
attempt to suppress Episcopacy in Scotland. This, it should be remem-
bered, was immediately at the close of a reign of terror which had existed in
that country for twenty-five or thirty years, and was but the fuller carry-
ing out for Scotland of the work of the Revolution. As the calling of the
Prince of Orange and the expulsion of James II. was first made possible
through the fear of Papacy on the part of the English, so the progress and
success of the Revolution was finally assured only by the fixed determination
of the Scots to rid themselves of Episcopacy, and to re-establish the popular
religion which had been overthrown by Charles. They had infinitely greater
cause to fear the bishops of the Anglican Church than their southern neigh-
bors had to fear those of St. Peter's. They had suffered tenfold more from
the oppressions of the British pope and his bishops than had the English
from those of the pontiff of Rome. In the annals of religious persecution in
the British Islands, the crimes of the Roman Catholic Church were but
venial compared with the enormities perpetrated through the ambition and
malignancy of the prelates and heads of the Established Church of England,
by which the Scots were the chief sufferers. 13

So far as Scotland was concerned, therefore, the benefits of the Revolu-
tion, the success of which that country had rendered possible, would have
been wholly lost to it, had the chief provoking cause been left unmolested

The Scottish Kirk

ii3

and entrenched in a position for working further harm to the cause of human
liberty. All the legitimate arguments which may be made to justify the
overthrow of papal authority in England, apply with thrice-augmented force
to sustain the action of the Scottish people in breaking the wings of those
ecclesiastical vampires who had been draining the life-blood of Scotland.
Nay, the whole force of the argument in favor of the Protestant Reformation
of Christendom must be broken before it can successfully be maintained that
the action of the Scottish people in uprooting the Episcopal system was in-
consistent with their professed devotion to the cause of religious liberty. 18

The extent to which the cause of the Covenanters was bound up with
that of human liberty and opposed to the united despotism of king and
prelate may be shown by the reproduction of the celebrated Queensferry
Paper, for their approval of the revolutionary sentiments of which so many
of the Scottish martyrs suffered death. The substance of the contents of this
document, and the accompanying account of its origin, are copied from the
appendix to the Cloud of Witnesses (15th edition, pp. 343-348), as follows :

A brief relation of the persecutions and death of that worthy gentleman,
Henry Hall of Haughhead, who suffered martyrdom at Queensferry,
June 3, 1680. 14

Henry Hall of Haughhead, having had religious education, began early
to mind a life of holiness ; and was of a pious conversation from his youth ;
he was a zealous opposer of the public resolutions, insomuch that when the
minister of the parish where he lived complied with that course, he refused
to hear him, and went to Ancrum, to hear Mr. John Livingston. Being op-
pressed with the malicious persecutions of the curates and other malignants
for his nonconformity with the profane courses of abomination, that com-
menced at the unhappy restoration of that most wicked tyrant Charles II.
he was obliged to depart his native country, and go over the border into Eng-
land in the year 1665, where he was so much renowned for his singular zeal
in propagating the gospel among the people, who before his coming among
them were very rude and barbarous ; but many of them became famous for
piety after. In the year 1666, he was taken in his way to Pentland, coming
to the assistance of his convenanted brethren, and was imprisoned with some
others in Sessford castle, but by the divine goodness he soon escaped thence
through the favour of the Earl of Roxburgh, to whom the castle pertained,
the said earl being his friend and relation ; from which time, till about the
year 1679, he lived peaceably in England, much beloved of all that knew him,
for his concern in propagating the knowledge of Christ in that country ; in-
somuch that his blameless and shining christian conversation, drew reverence
and esteem from his very enemies. But about the year 1678, the heat of the
persecution in Scotland obliging many to wander up and down through
Northumberland and other places ; one colonel Struthers intended to seize
any Scotsman he could find in those parts ; and meeting with Thomas Ker
of Hayhope, one of Henry Hall's nearest intimates, he was engaged in that
encounter upon the account of the said Thomas Ker, who was killed there : ■
upon which account, he was forced to return to Scotland, and wandered up
and down during the hottest time of the persecution, mostly with Mr. Rich-
ard Cameron and Mr. Donald Cargil, during which time, besides his many

H4 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

other christian virtues, he signalized himself for a real zeal in defence of the
persecuted gospel preached in the fields, and gave several proofs of his
valour and courage, particularly at Rutherglen, Drumclog, Glasgow, and
Bothwell-bridge ; whereupon being forefaulted and violently pursued, to
eschew the violent hands of his indefatigable persecutors, he was forced to
go over to Holland ; where he had not stayed long, when his zeal for the
persecuted interest of Christ, and his tender sympathy with the afflicted
remnant of his covenanted brethren in Scotland, then wandering through
the desolate caverns and dens of the earth, drew him home, choosing rather
to undergo the utmost efforts of persecuting fury, than to live at ease when
Joseph was in affliction, making Moses' generous choice, rather to suffer
affliction with the people of God, that he might be a partaker of the fellow-
ship of Christ's sufferings, than to enjoy that momentary pleasure the ease
of the world could afford ; nor was he much concerned with the riches of
the world, for he stood not to give his ground to hold the prohibited field-
preachings upon, when none else would do it ; he was a lover and follower
of the faithfully preached gospel, and was always against the indulgence ; he
was with Mr. Richard Cameron at those meetings where he was censured.

About a quarter of a year after his return from Holland, being in com-
pany with the Rev. Mr. Donald Cargil, they were taken notice of by two
blood-hounds the curates of Borrowstounness and Carridden, who went to
Middleton, governor of Blackness-castle, and informed him of them ; who
having consulted with these blood-thirsty ruffians, ordered his soldiers to
follow him at a distance by two or three together, with convenient intervals
for avoiding suspicion ; and he (the said Middleton) and his man riding up,
observed where they alighted and stabled their horses ; and coming to them,
pretended a great deal of kindness and civilities to Mr. Donald Cargil and
him, desiring that they might have a glass of wine together. When they
were set, and had taken each a glass, Middleton laid hands on them, and
told them they were his prisoners, commanding in the king's name all the
people of the house to assist, which they all refused, save a certain waiter,
through whose means the governor got the gates shut till the soldiers came
up ; and when the women of the town, rising to the rescue of the prisoners,
had broke up the outer gate, Henry Hall, after some scuffle with the gov-
ernor in the house, making his escape by the gate, received his mortal blow
upon his head, with a carbine by Thomas George, waiter, and being conveyed
out of the town by the assistance of the women, walked some pretty space
of way upon his feet, but unable to speak much, save only that he made
some short reflection upon a woman that interposed between him and the
governor, hindered him to kill the governor, and so to make his escape
timeously. So soon as he fainted, the women carried him to a house in the
country, and notwithstanding the care of surgeons, he never recovered
the power of speaking more. General Dalziel being advertised, came with
a party of the guards, and carried him to Edinburgh ; he died by the way :
his corpse they carried to the Cannon gate tolbooth, and kept him there
three days without burial, though a number of friends convened for that
effect, and thereafter they caused bury him clandestinely in the night. Such
was the fury of these limbs of antichrist, that having killed the witnesses,
they would not suffer their dead bodies to be decently put in graves.

There was found upon him the rude draught of a paper containing a
mutual engagement to stand to the necessary duty of the day against its
stated enemies ; which was called by the persecutors, Mr. Cargil's convenant,
and frequently in the foregoing testimonies, the Queensferry paper, because

The Scottish Kirk 115

there it was seized by the enemies. This paper Divine Providence seems to
have made as it were the dying words and testimony of that worthy gentle-
man ; and the enemies made it one of the captious and ensnaring questions
they constantly put to the sufferers, and therefore it will not be impertinent
here to insert the heads of it, as they are compendized by the learned author
of The Hind Let Loose, page 133. For it was still owned by Mr. Donald
Cargil, that the draught was not digested and polished, as it was intended,
and therefore it will be so far from being a wrong to recite the heads of it
only, that it is really a piece of justice done him, who never intended it
should see the world as it was when the enemies found it. I shall not pretend
to justify every expression in it, but rather submit it entirely to better judg-
ments ; nor did the sufferers for most part adhere to it, without the limitation
(so far as it was agreeable to the Word of God, and our national covenants)
and in so far as it seems to import a purpose of assuming to themselves a
magistratical authority, their practice declares all along, that they did not
undertand it in that sense :

The tenor of it was an engagement,

1st, To avouch the only true and living God to be their God, and to close
with his way of redemption by his son Jesus Christ, whose righteousness is
only to be relied upon for justification ; and to take the Scriptures of the
Old and New Testament to be the only object of faith, and rule of conversa-
tion in all things. 2d, To establish in the land righteousness and religion,
in the truth of its doctrine, purity and power of its worship, discipline and
government, and to free the church of God of the corruption of Prelacy, on
the one hand, and the thraldom of Erastianism on the other. 3d, To persevere
in the doctrine of the reformed churches, especially that of Scotland, and in
the worship prescribed in the Scriptures, without the inventions, adornings,
and corruptions of men ; and in the Presbyterian government, exercised in
sessions, presbyteries, synods and general assemblies, as a distinct govern-
ment from the civil, and distinctly to be exercised, not after a carnal manner,
by plurality of votes, or authority of a single person, but according to the
Word of God, making and carrying the sentence. 4th, To endeavour the
overthrow of the kingdom of darkness, and whatsoever is contrary to
the kingdom of Christ, especially idolatry and popery in all its articles, and
the overthrow of that power that hath established and upheld it — And to
execute righteousness and judgment impartially, according to the Word of
God, and degree of offences, upon the committers of these things especially,
to-wit, blasphemy, idolatry, atheism, buggery, sorcery, perjury, uncleanness,
profanation of the Lord's day, oppression and malignancy. 5th, Seriously
considering, — there is no more speedy way of relaxation from the wrath of
God, than hath ever lien upon the land since it engaged with these rulers,
but of rejecting them, who hath so manifestly rejected God, — disclaiming his
covenant — governing contrary to all right laws, divine and human — and con-
trary to all the ends of government, by enacting and commanding impieties,
injuries and robberies, to the denying of God his due, and the subjects theirs ;
so that instead of government, godliness, and peace, there is nothing but
rapine, tumult, and blood, which cannot be called a government, but a lust-
ful rage — and they cannot be called governors, but public grassators and
land judgments, which all ought to set themselves against, as they would do
against pestilence, sword, and famine, raging amongst them — Seeing they
have stopped the course of the law and justice against blasphemers, idol-
aters, atheists, buggerers, murderers, incestuous and adulterous persons
— and have made butcheries on the Lord's people, sold them as slaves,

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imprisoned, forfeited, &c. and that upon no other account, but their main-
taining Christ's right of ruling over their consciences, against the usurpations
of men. Therefore, easily solving the objections : First, Of our ancestors
obliging the nation to this race and line ; that they did not buy their liberty
with our thraldom, nor could they bind their children to anything so much
to their prejudice, and against natural liberty, (being a benefit next to life,
if not in some regard above it) which is not an engagement to moral things :
they could only bind to that government, which they esteemed the best for
common good ; which reason ceasing, we are free to choose another, if we
find it more conducible for that end. Second, Of the covenant binding to
defend the king ; that that obligation is only in his maintenance of the true
covenanted reformation, — which homage they cannot now require upon the
account of the covenant which they have renounced and disclaimed ; and
upon no other ground we are bound to them — the crown not being an in-
heritance, that passeth from father to son, without the consent of tenants.
Third, Of the hope of their returning from these courses, whereof there is
none, seeing they have so often declared their purposes of persevering in
them. And suppose they should dissemble a repentance, — supposing also they
might be pardoned for that which is done — from whose guiltiness the land
cannot be cleansed, but by executing God's righteous judgments upon them,
— yet they cannot now be believed after they have violated all that human
wisdom could devise to bind them.

Upon these accounts they reject that king, and those associate with him
in the government, — and declare them henceforth no lawful rulers, as they
had declared them to be no lawful subjects, — they having destroyed the
established religion, overturned the fundamental laws of the kingdom, taken
away Christ's church-government, and changed the civil into tyranny, where
none are associate in partaking of the government, but only those who will
be found by justice guilty as criminals. — And declare they shall, God
giving them power, set up government and governors according to the
Word of God, and the qualifications required, Exodus xviii. 20 — And shall
not commit the government to any single person or lineal succession, being
not tyed as the Jews were to one single family, — and that kind being liable
to most inconveniences, and aptest to degenerate tyranny. — And moreover,
that these men set over them, shall be engaged to govern, principally by that
civil and judicial law, (not that which is any way typical) given by God to
his people Israel — as the best, so far as it goes, being given by God — espe-
cially in matters of life and death, and other things so far as they reach, and
are consistent with christian liberty — exempting divorces and polygamy, &c.

6th, Seeing the greatest part of ministers not only were defective in preach-
ing against the rulers for overthrowing religion — but hindered others also
who were willing, and censured some that did it — and have voted for accep-
tation of that liberty, founded upon, and given by virtue of that blasphe-
mously arrogate and usurped power — and appeared before their courts to
accept of it, and to be enacted and authorized their ministers — whereby
they have become ministers of men, and bound to be answerable to them as
they will. — And have preached for the lawfulness of paying that tribute, de-
clared to be imposed for the bearing down of the true worship of God. —
And advised poor prisoners to subscribe that bond, — which if it were uni-
versally subscribed, — they should close that door, which the Lord hath made
use of in all the churches of Europe, for casting off the yoke of the whore,
— and stop all regress of men, when once brought under tyranny, to recover
their liberty again. — They declare they neither can nor will hear them &c,

The Scottish Kirk 117

nor any who encouraged and strengthened their hands, and pleaded for
them, and trafficked for union with them. 7th, That they are for a standing
gospel ministry, rightly chosen, and rightly ordained, — and that none shall take
upon them the preaching of the word, &c, unless called and ordained
thereunto.

And whereas separation might be imputed to them, they repel both the
malice, and the ignorance of that calumny. — For if there be a separation, it
must be where the change is ; and that was not to be found in them, who
were not separating from the communion of the true church ; nor setting up
a new ministry, but cleaving to the same ministers and ordinances that
formerly they followed, when others have fled to new ways, and a new
authority, which is like the old piece in the new garment. 8th, That they
shall defend themselves in their civil, natural and divine rights and liberties.
— And if any assault them, they shall look on it as a declaring a war, and
take all advantages that one enemy does of another — But trouble and injure
none, but those that injure them.

NOTES TO CHAPTER VIII.

1 During the first fifty years of this time, the Scottish Kirk was practically supreme.
What it then did to "retard human progress," as Mr. Buckle would say, is best summed
up in the words of its enemy. King James VI., spoken when he first went down into
England, and presided at the Hampton Court Conference, held in January, 1604. See pp.

434-36.

2 History of Civilization in England, vol. ii., ch. ii.-v.

3 What may be termed, in its broadest sense, the utilitarian tendency of modern re-
ligious thought, may be noted in some of the popular writings of Alfred Russell Wallace, S.
Laing, A. J. Balfour, Benjamin Kidd, Matthew Arnold, John Fiske, etc.

4 Vol. ii., ch. ii. (vol. ii., pp. 152, 153, American edition).

8 See also Gardiner's History of England, 1603-1642, vol. i., pp. 22-26; vol. viii.,

PP. 373-375.

6 History of England, book vi., ch. ii.

7 History of England, vol. vi., ch. xxxvii., pp. 220, 221.

8 The Scotch have been greatly, and, to a certain extent, justly blamed, because, instead
of being satisfied with securing the liberty of their own church, they insisted on the over-
throw of that of England. It should be remembered, however, that intolerance was the
epidemic of the age. The Episcopalians enforced the prayer-book, the Presbyterians the
covenant, the Independents the engagement. The last being more of a political character
than either of the others, was, so far, the least objectionable. It was, however, both in de-
sign and in fact, what Neal calls it, "a severe test for the Presbyterians." Besides, the rigid
doctrine of the exclusive divine right of Presbyterianism, and an intolerant opposition to
Prelacy, did not prevail among the Scotch until they were driven, by persecution, into ex-
treme opinions. When they found Episcopacy, in their own bitter experience, associated
with despotism and superstition, and, in their firm belief, with irreligion and Popery, it is
not wonderful that they regarded it as a bitter root which could bear nothing good. Their
best apology is that which they themselves urged at the time. They considered it essential
to the liberty of their church and country that the power of the bishops should be destroyed
in England. The persecutions which they had already endured, and their just apprehensions
of still greater evils, sprang from the principles and conduct of the English prelates. How
well founded this opinion was, the atrocities consequent on the restoration of Charles II.
and the re-establishment of Episcopacy, abundantly proved. — Hodge, History of the
Presbyterian Church, vol. i., pp. 46, 47.

•See Lecky, England in the Eighteenth Century, vol. ii., ch. v.

n8 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

10 The Assembly which met in the beginning of 1696 passed an act against the atheistical
opinions of the Deists, which received a melancholy comment in an occurrence which took
place during the same year. A student of eighteen, named Thomas Aikenhead, had un-
fortunately imbibed sceptical opinions, and had been imprudent enough to spout them to
some of his companions. Trinity in unity, he said, was a contradiction. Moses had learned
magic in Egypt, and this was the secret of his miracles. Ezra was the author of the Penta-
teuch ; Theanthropas was as great an absurdity as Hirco-Cervus. These sceptical common-
places reached the ears of the authorities, and the youth was indicted under an old statute
which made it a capital crime to curse the Supreme Being. He was convicted and sentenced
to be hanged. It was in vain that the poor lad with death before his eyes, recanted his
errors and begged for his life. Even a reprieve for a few days was denied him, and the
clergy of the city . . . gave their voice for his death. He died with a Bible in his hand
in token of his change of mind. — Cunningham, Church History of Scotland, vol. ii., pp.
197, 198.

11 Hodge, History of the Presbyterian Church in America, pp. 47-50.

12 The enormities of this detestable government are far too numerous, even in species,
to be enumerated in this slight sketch ; and of course, most instances of cruelty have not
been recorded. The privy council was accustomed to extort confessions by torture — that
grim divan of bishops, lawyers, and peers, sucking the groans of each undaunted enthusiast,
in hopes that some imperfect avowal might lead to the sacrifice of other victims, or at least
warrant the execution of the present. ... It was very possible that Episcopacy might
be of apostolical institution ; but for this institution houses had been burned and fields laid
waste, and the gospel been preached in the wilderness, and its ministers had been shot in
their prayers, and husbands had been murdered before their wives, and virgins had been de-
filed, and many had died by the executioner, and by massacre, and imprisonment, and in
exile and slavery, and women had been tied to stakes on the sea-shore till the tide rose to
overflow them, and some had been tortured and mutilated ; it was a religion of the boots
and the thumbscrew, which a good man must be very cool-blooded indeed if he did not hate
and reject from the hands which offered it. For, after all, it is much more certain that the
Supreme Being abhors cruelty and persecution, than that he has set up bishops to have a
superiority over Presbyters. — Hallam, Constitutional History, vol. iii., pp. 435, 442. The
wonderful subserviency and degradation of the Scottish parliament during this period must
strike all readers with astonishment. This fact is partially explained, and the disgrace in
some measure palliated by the peculiarity of its constitution. The controlling power was
virtually in the hands of the bishops, who were the creatures, and of course, the servants of
the crown. The lords of the articles were originally a committee chosen by the parliament
for the preparation of business. But Charles I, without any authority from parliament, had
the matter so arranged, that "the bishops chose eight peers, the peers eight bishops ; and
these appointed sixteen commissioners of shires and boroughs. Thus the whole power was
devolved upon the bishops, the slaves and sycophants of the crown. The parliament itself
met only on two days, the first and last of their pretended session, the one time to choose
the lords of the articles, the other to ratify what they proposed." — Hallam, vol. iii. f p. 428.
This arrangement was renewed after the restoration of Charles II.

13 " So soon as it was known in Scotland that William of Orange had landed at Torbay ;
that he was slowly advancing toward London ; that the English nobility were flocking to him ;
that the royal army was deserting to him, that the bewildered James had attempted to flee
the country, the people began to show how ready they were to concur with the prince in
shaking off the burdens under which they had groaned.

" Meanwhile there were wild rumors afloat of an army of Irish Papists that had landed,
or was about to land, on the coast of Galloway. Some said it was already at Kirkcudbright
and had burned it. . . . In such times rumors are rife. People began to dread a
massacre. The Council had dissolved. The military had been marched into England.

The Scottish Kirk 119

There was a dissolution of all authority. The peasantry of the western counties began to
collect in large crowds, armed with such weapons as they could procure, and to take the law
into their own hands. Their wrath vented itself on the unhappy curates. They resolved to
purge the temple of them without waiting for the decision of the legislature. They began
their work upon Christmas, which seems to have been thought an appropriate day. In some
cases the curates saved themselves from insult by timely flight. In other cases they were
laid hold of by the rabble, carried about in mock procession, had their gowns torn over their
heads, their Prayer-Books burned before their eyes, and then were told to be off, and never
to show themselves in the parish again. When done with the minister, the mob frequently
entered the manse, tumbled the furniture out at the windows, marched the inmates to the
door, took possession of the keys ; and on next Sunday a preacher who had till lately been
skulking among the hills, was found in the pulpit thundering against persecuting prelatists.
These rabblings went on for two or three months ; every now and then an instance was
occurring till almost every parish in the south and west was cleaned of its Episcopal in-
cumbent. Upwards of two hundred clergymen were thus rabbled out of their manses, their
parishes, and their livings (Somers's Tracts, coll. iii., vol. iv., p. 133. "Case of the Epis-
copal Clergy in Scotland Truly Represented." " Case of the Afflicted Clergy," etc., Burnet's
History, vol. ii., p. 444).

" The wives and families of these men shared in their misfortunes. Many must have been
rendered homeless ; some reduced to absolute beggary. . . . Still no life was lost. The
only martyrdom these men underwent was a little rough usage from an ignorant rabble, and
the loss of their livings. And it must be remembered that in the districts of the country
where these things happened the curates occupied their pulpits in opposition to the will of
the people, and enjoyed stipends of which others had been tyrannically deprived. They had
no root in the soil ; they were aliens in their own parishes. What is more, they were sus-
pected of having abetted the persecution of those who preferred their old Presbyterian
ministers to them. They had their roll of absentees from church to hand to the military
officers commanding in the district. . .

4 ' For twenty-five long years, the Presbyterians had been cruelly oppressed ; and yet when:
times of revolution came, they did not rise and murder their oppressors. Even the rabblings
were conducted chiefly by the Cameronians and the lowest of the people, and many of the
Presbyterians strongly condemned them. " — Cunningham, Church History of Scotland, vol. ii.,
pp. 1 51-153.

M See Appendix R (The Scottish Martyrs.)

CHAPTER IX
RELIGION IN EARLY SCOTLAND AND EARLY ENGLAND

THE real differences between the religious life of Scotland and that of
England are not wholly those of creed and polity, brought about by
the Reformation of the sixteenth century. They would seem to go back
much farther than that period, and to have given evidence of existence
more than nine hundred years before. They may have originated from the
radical differences between the ancient pagan mythology of the Druids and
that of the Teutons. The religious genius of early Scotland was, of course,
largely Celtic, and there is no reason for believing that the more or less
complete but very gradual amalgamation of the early race with that of the
Norse and the Angle has essentially altered the inherent racial tendency to-
ward emotional fervor and intensity. Going from a warmer climate into
the comparatively bleak and northern country of Caledonia, the early Celt
doubtless became more " hard-headed," and lost much of that exuberance
of emotion which to-day is so characteristic of his cousins in France and
Ireland, and, perhaps, also in Wales. His peculiar traits were modified later
by the commingling of his blood with that of the Northmen. But his early
racial point of view was far distant from that of the pagans who brought the
worship of Woden into Britain, and the assimilating influences of climate
and intermarriage, even to this day, have not sufficed to break down the bar-
rier between the two cults. Christianity was probably planted in Great
Britain long before the Romans left. The first native account we have of
its early history there is that of Bede, in his allusions to the conversion
(176-190) of Lucius, King of the Britons, and to the establishment by Ninian
of the Church of Candida Casa at Whithorn, in Galloway. This foundation
is supposed to have been made about the year 397, and Ninian (who died
about 432) was therefore the precursor and contemporary of St. Patrick (396-
469 ?). More than a hundred and sixty years later, Columba, the Scot, came
from the island of Iona to North Britain, and converted the Picts, as Bede
tells us in the following passage (Ecd. Hist., bk. iii., ch. iv.) :

In the year of our Lord 565, when Justin, the younger, the successor of
Justinian, had the government of the Roman Empire, there came into Brit-
ain a famous priest and abbat, a monk by habit and life, whose name was
Columba, to preach the word of God to the provinces of the northern Picts,
who are separated from the southern parts by steep and rugged mountains ;
for the southern Picts, who dwell on this side of those mountains, had long
before, as is reported, forsaken the errors of idolatry, and embraced the
truth, by the preaching of Ninias, a most reverend bishop and holy man of
the British nation, who had been regularly instructed at Rome, in the faith
and mysteries of the truth ; whose episcopal see, named after St. Martin the

120

Religion 121

bishop, and famous for a stately church, (wherein he and many other saints
rest in the body,) is still in existence among the English nation. The place
belongs to the province of the Bernicians, and is generally called the White
House, because he there built a church of stone, which was not usual among
the Britons.

Columba came into Britain in the ninth year of the reign of Bridius, who
was the son of Meilochon, and the powerful king of the Pictish nation, and
he converted that nation to the faith of Christ, by his preaching and exam-
ple, whereupon he also received of them the aforesaid island for a monas-
tery, for it is not very large, but contains about five families, according to
the English computation. His successors hold the island to this day ; he
was also buried therein, having died at the age of seventy-seven, about
thirty-two years after he came into Britain to preach. Before he passed
over into Britain, he had built a noble monastery in Ireland, which, from
the great number of oaks, is in the Scottish tongue called Dearm-ach — The
Field of Oaks [now Derry]. From both which monasteries, many others had
their beginning through his disciples, both in Britain and Ireland ; but the
monastery in the island where his body lies, is the principal of them all.

Columba's religion was the same as that of St. Patrick. It had been
brought from the East at a time when the early Church retained its primitive
simplicity, and before it had become corrupted through the acquisition of
that temporal power which came to it upon the dissolution of the Roman
Empire. 1

The English were converted by St. Augustine, who came from Rome to
Britain in 597." He was followed in 625 by Paulinus. The success of
their missions is related by Bede in his Ecclesiastical History, bk. i., ch.
xxv., and bk. ii., ch. ix.

The first conflict between the primitive Christianity of the Celts and the
more secularized ecclesiasticism of Rome occurred in England about the
year 604, and in all its aspects is typical of the struggle which took place in
North Britain between the latter-day representatives of the two systems in
the time of the Stuarts. Bede's narrative, 3 therefore, needs no commentary :

In the meantime, Augustine, with the assistance of King Ethelbert, drew
together to a conference the bishops, or doctors, of the next province of the
Britons, at a place which is to this day called Augustine's Ac, that is, Au-
gustine's Oak, on the borders of the Wiccii and West Saxons ; and began
by brotherly admonitions to persuade them, that preserving Catholic unity
with him, they should undertake the common labour of preaching the Gos-
pel to the Gentiles. For they did not keep Easter Sunday at the proper
time, but from the fourteenth to the twentieth moon ; which computation is
contained in a revolution of eighty-four years. Besides, they did several
other things which were against the unity of the church. 4 When, after a
long disputation, they did not comply with the entreaties, exhortations, or
rebukes of Augustine and his companions, but preferred their own traditions
before all the churches in the world, which in Christ agree among them-
selves, the holy father, Augustine, put an end to this troublesome and tedious
contention, saying, " Let us beg of God, who causes those who are of one
mind to live in his Father's house, that he will vouchsafe, by his heavenly to-
kens, to declare to us, which tradition is to be followed ; and by what means

122 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

we are to find our way to his heavenly kingdom. Let some infirm person be
brought, and let the faith and practice of those, by whose prayers he shall
be healed, be looked upon as acceptable to God, and be adopted by all."
The adverse party unwillingly consenting, a blind man of the English race
was brought, who having been presented to the priests of the Britons, found
no benefit or cure from their ministry ; at length, Augustine, compelled by
real necessity, bowed his knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, pray-
ing that the lost sight might be restored to the blind man, and by the corpo-
real enlightening of one man, the light of spiritual grace might be kindled
in the hearts of many of the faithful. Immediately the blind man received
sight, and Augustine was by all declared the preacher of the Divine truth.
The Britons then confessed, that it was the true way of righteousness which
Augustine taught ; but that they could not depart from their ancient customs
without the consent and leave of their people. They therefore desired that
a second synod might be appointed, at which more of their number would
be present.

This being decreed, there came (as is asserted) seven bishops of Britons,
and many most learned men, particularly from their most noble monastery,
which, in the English tongue, is called Bancornburg [Bangor], over which
the Abbat Dunooth is said to have presided at that time. They that were
to go to the aforesaid council, repaired first to a certain holy and discreet
man, who was wont to lead an eremitical life among them, advising with
him, whether they ought, at the preaching of Augustine, to forsake their tra-
ditions. He answered, " If he is a man of God, follow him." — " How shall
we know that ? " said they. He replied, " Our Lord saith, * Take my yoke
upon you, and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart ' ; if there-
fore, Augustine is meek and lowly of heart, it is to be believed that he has
taken upon him the yoke of Christ, and offers the same to you to take
upon you. But, if he is stern and haughty, it appears that he is not of
God, nor are we to regard his words." They insisted again, " And how
shall we discern even this ? " — " Do you contrive," said the anchorite, " that
he may first arrive with his company at the place where the synod is to be
held ; and if at your approach he shall rise up to you, hear him submissively,
being assured that he is the servant of Christ ; but if he shall despise you,
and not rise up to you, whereas you are more in number, let him also be de-
spised by you."

They did as he directed ; and it happened, that when they came, Augus-
tine was sitting on a chair, which they observing, were in a passion, and
charging him with pride, endeavoured to contradict all he said. He said to
them, " You act in many particulars contrary to our custom, or rather the
custom of the universal church, and yet, if you will comply with me in
these three points, viz., to keep Easter at the due time ; to administer bap-
tism, by which we are again born to God, according to the custom of the
holy Roman Apostolic Church ; and jointly with us to preach the word of
God to the English nation, we will readily tolerate all the other things you
do, though contrary to our customs." They answered they would do none
of those things, nor receive him as their archbishop; for they alleged among
themselves, that " if he would not now rise up to us, how much more will he
contemn us, as of no worth, if we shall begin to be under his subjection ? " To
whom the man of God, Augustine, is said, in a threatening manner, to have
foretold, that in case they would not join in unity with their brethren, they
should be warred upon by their enemies ; and, if they would not preach
the way of life to the English nation, they should at their hands undergo the

Religion 123

vengeance of death. All which, through the dispensation of the Divine
judgment, fell out exactly as he had predicted.

For afterwards the warlike king of the English, Ethelfrid, of whom we
have already spoken, having raised a mighty army, made a very great
slaughter of that perfidious nation, at the City of Legions, which by the
English is called Legacestir, but by the Britons more rightly Carlegion
[Chester]. Being about to give battle, he observed their priests, who were
come together to offer up their prayers to God for the soldiers, standing
apart in a place of more safety ; he inquired who they were ? or what they
came together to do in that place ? Most of them were of the monastery of
Bangor in which, it is reported, there was so great a number of monks, that
the monastery being divided into seven parts, with a ruler over each, none
of those parts contained less than three hundred men, who all lived by the
labour of their hands. Many of these, having observed a fast of three days,
resorted among others to pray at the aforesaid battle, having one Brocmail
appointed for their protector, to defend them whilst they were intent upon
their prayers, against the swords of the barbarians. King Ethelfrid being
informed of the occasion of their coming, said, " If then they cry to their
God against us, in truth, though they do not bear arms, yet they fight
against us, because they oppose us by their prayers." He, therefore, com-
manded them to be attacked first, and then destroyed the rest of the impious
army, not without considerable loss of his own forces. About twelve hun-
dred of those that came to pray are said to have been killed, and only fifty
to have escaped by flight. Brocmail turning his back with his men, at the
first approach of the enemy, left those whom he ought to have defended, un-
armed and exposed to the swords of the enemies. Thus was fulfilled the
prediction of the holy Bishop Augustine, though he himself had been long
before taken up into the heavenly kingdom ; that those perfidious men
should feel the vengeance of temporal death also, because they had despised
the offer of eternal salvation.

In Northumbria, also, some of the Scottish missionaries, later, had
labored and made converts. When King Oswy was asked to join the com-
munion of Rome, the Scots sought to have him continue in their own as being
that of the more ancient British Church. He accordingly appointed a
synod to be held at Whitby in the year 664, and there, like James I. at the
Hampton Court Conference 940 years later, the king was won over by the
" superior arguments " of the bishops and decided to accept their innova-
tions, and to give up the less formal and more primitive church system of
the Scots. For the account of this conference let us again have recourse
to Bede 6 :

In the meantime, Bishop Aidan being dead, Finan, who was ordained and
sent by the Scots, succeeded him in the bishopric, and built a church in the
Isle of Lindisfarne, the episcopal see; nevertheless, after the manner of the
Scots, he made it, not of stone, but of hewn oak, and covered it with reeds;
and the same was afterwards dedicated in honour of St. Peter the Apostle, by
the reverend Archbishop Theodore. Eadbert, also bishop of that place,
took off the thatch, and covered it, both roof and walls, with plates of lead.

At this time, a great and frequent controversy happened about the ob-
servance of Easter, those that came from Kent or France affirming, that the

124 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

Scots kept Easter Sunday contrary to the custom of the universal church.
Among them was a most zealous defender of the true Easter, whose name
was Ronan, a Scot by nation, but instructed in ecclesiastical truth, either
in France or Italy, who, disputing with Finan, convinced many, or at least
induced them to make a more strict inquiry after the truth; yet he could
not prevail upon Finan, but, on the contrary, made him the more inveterate
by reproof, and a professed opposer of the truth, being of a hot and violent
temper. James, formerly the deacon of the venerable Archbishop Paulinus,
as has been said above, kept the true and Catholic Easter, with all those
that he could persuade to adopt the right way. Queen Eanfleda and her
followers also observed the same as she had seen practised in Kent, having
with her a Kentish priest that followed the Catholic mode, whose name was
Romanus. Thus it is said to have happened in those times that Easter was
twice kept in one year; and that when the king having ended the time of
fasting, kept his Easter, the queen and her followers were still fasting and
celebrating Palm Sunday. This difference about the observance of Easter,
whilst Aidan lived, was patiently tolerated by all men, as being sensible,
that though he could not keep Easter contrary to the custom of those who
had sent him, yet he industriously laboured to practise all works of faith,
piety, and love, according to the custom of all holy men; for which reason
he was deservedly beloved by all, even by those who differed in opinion
concerning Easter, and was held in veneration, not only by indifferent per-
sons, but even by the bishops, Honorius of Canterbury, and Felix of the
East Angles.

But after the death of Finan, who succeeded him, when Colman, who
was also sent out of Scotland, came to be bishop, a greater controversy arose
about the observance of Easter, and the rules of ecclesiastical life. Where-
upon this dispute began naturally to influence the thoughts and hearts of
many, who feared, lest having received the name of Christians, they might
happen to run, or to have run, in vain. This reached the ears of King
Oswy and his son Alfrid; for Oswy, having been instructed and baptized
by the Scots, and being very perfectly skilled in their language, thought
nothing better than what they taught. But Alfrid, having been instructed
in Christianity by Wilfrid, a most learned man, who had first gone to
Rome to learn the ecclesiastical doctrine, and spent much time at Lyons
with Dalfin, archbishop of France, from whom also he had received the
ecclesiastical tonsure, rightly thought this man's doctrine ought to be pre-
ferred before all the traditions of the Scots. For this reason he had also
given him a monastery of forty families, at a place called Rhypum; which
place, not long before, he had given to those that followed the system of
the Scots for a monastery; but forasmuch as they afterwards, being left to
their choice, prepared to quit the place rather than alter their opinion, he gave
the place to him, whose life and doctrine were worthy of it.

Agilbert, bishop of the West Saxons, above-mentioned, a friend to King
Alfrid and to Abbat Wilfrid, had at that time come into the province of the
Northumbrians, and was making some stay among them; at the request of
Alfrid, made Wilfrid a priest in his monastery. He had in his company a
priest, whose name was Agatho. The controversy being there started, con-
cerning Easter, or the tonsure, or other ecclesiastical affairs, it was agreed,
that a synod should be held in the monastery of Streanehalch, which signi-
fies the Bay of the Lighthouse, where the Abbess Hilda, a woman devoted
to God, then presided; and that there this controversy should be decided.
The kings, both father and son, came thither, Bishop Colman with his

Religion 125

Scottish clerks, and Agilbert with the priests Agatho and Wilfrid ; James
and Romanus were on their side; but the Abbess Hilda and her followers
were for the Scots, as was also the venerable Bishop Cedd, long before
ordained by the Scots, as has been said above, and he was in that council a
most careful interpreter for both parties.

King Oswy first observed, that it behoved those who served one God
to observe the same rule of life; and as they all expected the same kingdom
in heaven, so they ought not to differ in the celebration of the Divine mys-
teries; but rather to inquire which was the truest tradition, that the same
might be followed by all; he then commanded his bishop, Colman, first to
declare what the custom was which he observed, and whence it derived its-
origin. Then Colman said: "The Easter which I keep, I received from
my elders, who sent me bishop hither; all our forefathers, men beloved of
God, are known to have kept it after the same manner; and that the same
may not seem to any contemptible or worthy to be rejected, it is the same
which St. John the Evangelist, the disciple beloved of our Lord, with all
the churches over which he presided, is recorded to have observed." Hav-
ing said thus much, and more to the like effect, the king commanded Agil-
bert to show whence his custom of keeping Easter was derived, or on what
authority it was grounded. Agilbert answered : " I desire that my disciple,
the priest Wilfrid, may speak in my stead ; because we both concur with
the other followers of the ecclesiastical tradition that are here present, and
he can better explain our opinion in the English language, than I can by an
interpreter."

Then Wilfrid, being ordered by the king to speak, delivered himself
thus: — " The Easter which we observe, we saw celebrated by all at Rome,
where the blessed apostles, Peter and Paul, lived, taught, suffered, and
were buried; we saw the same done in Italy and in France, when we trav-
elled through those countries for pilgrimage and prayer. We found the
same practised in Africa, Asia, Egypt, Greece, and all the world, wherever
the church of Christ is spread abroad through several nations and tongues,
at one and the same time; except only these and their accomplices in obsti-
nacy, I mean the Picts and the Britons, who foolishly, in these two remote
islands of the world, and only in part even of them, oppose all the rest of
the universe.

" But as for you, Colman, and your companions, you certainly sin, if, hav-
ing heard the decrees of the Apostolic See, and of the universal church, and
that the same is confirmed by holy writ, you refuse to follow them ; for, though
your fathers were holy, do you think that their small number, in a corner of
the remotest island, is to be preferred before the universal church of Christ
throughout the world ? And if that Columba of yours, (and, I may say, ours
also, if he was Christ's servant,) was a holy man and powerful in miracles,
yet could he be preferred before the most blessed prince of the apostles, to
whom our Lord said, ' Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my
church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it, and to thee I will
give the keys of the kingdom of heaven ' ? "

When Wilfrid had spoken thus, the king said, " Is it true, Colman, that
these words were spoken to Peter by our Lord ? " He answered, " It is true,
O king! " Then says he, " Can you show any such power given to your
Columba?" Colman answered, "None." Then added the king, "Do
you both agree that these words were principally directed to Peter, and that
the keys of heaven were given to him by our Lord ? " They both answered,
" We do." Then the king concluded, " And I also say unto you, that he

126 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

is the door-keeper, whom I will not contradict, but will, as far as I know
and am able, in all things obey his decrees, lest, when I come to the gates
of the kingdom of heaven, there should be none to open them, he being my
adversary who is proved to have the keys." The king having said this, all
present, both great and small, gave their assent, and renouncing the more
imperfect institution, resolved to conform to that which they found to be
better.

The disputation being ended, and the company broken up, Agilbert
returned home. Colman, perceiving that his doctrine was rejected, and his
sect despised, took with him such as would not comply with the Catholic
-Easter and the tonsure, (for there was much controversy about that also,)
and went back into Scotland, to consult with his people what was to be done
in this case. Cedd, forsaking the practices of the Scots, returned to his
bishopric, having submitted to the Catholic observance of Easter. This
disputation happened in the year of our Lord's incarnation 664, which was
the twenty-second year of the reign of King Oswy, and the thirtieth of the
episcopacy of the Scots among the English; for Aidan was bishop seventeen
years, Finan ten, and Colman three.

The matter of religion came up again in North Britain in 717, when
Nechtan, King of the Picts, yielding to the southern influence then becom-
ing powerful at his court, accepted the tonsure, and replaced the Scottish
clergy with that of Rome (Bede, bk. v., ch. xxi.):

At that time, [716] Naitan, king of the Picts. inhabiting the northern
parts of Britain, taught by frequent meditation on the ecclesiastical writings,
renounced the error which he and his nation had till then been under, in
relation to the observance of Easter, and submitted, together with his peo-
ple, to celebrate the Catholic time of our Lord's resurrection. For per-
forming this with the more ease and greater authority, he sought assistance
from the English, whom he knew to have long since formed their religion
after the example of the holy Roman Apostolic Church. Accordingly he
-sent messengers to the venerable Ceolfrid, abbat of the monastery of the
blessed apostles, Peter and Paul, which stands at the mouth of the river
Wear, and near the river Tyne, at the place called J arrow, which he glori-
ously governed after Benedict, of whom we have before spoken; desiring
that he would write him a letter containing arguments, by the help of which
he might the better confute those that presumed to keep Easter out of the due
time; as also concerning the form and manner of tonsure for distinguishing
the clergy; not to mention that he himself possessed much information in
these particulars. He also prayed to have architects sent him to build a
church in his nation after the Roman manner, promising to dedicate the
same in honour of St. Peter, the prince of the apostles, and that he and all
his people would always follow the custom of the holy Roman Apostolic
Church, as far as their remoteness from the Roman language and nation
would allow. The reverend Abbat Ceolfrid, complying with his desires and
request, sent the architects he desired.

This action of Nechtan, as we shall see in a later chapter, had a great deal
to do in bringing about the ultimate overthrow of the Pictish dynasty by
Kenneth Mc Alpine, and the re-installation of the Scottish forms of worship. 8
The Roman Church was set up in Scotland again after 1068, through the

Religion 127

influence of Queen Margaret 7 and during the feudal period of Britain it
remained in the ascendancy, although for some time before its final over-
throw the clergy seem to have lost their influence with the masses. 8

Surely it is more reasonable to account for the greater influence of the
early Scottish clergy over the people by ascribing it to their less autocratic
manners and simpler lives, rather than to " Scottish superstition."

In examining into the differences between the Scottish and English
views of things religious, we shall find also that they have ever been influ-
enced and controlled by the diverse forces originating from differences of
race, climate, and physical environment. Stated broadly, the two contrary
social systems in which they are embodied may be said to symbolize the
operation of two important but opposing influences of nature, both con-
stantly working for the development and betterment of the race of man.
These influences may be denominated, for lack of better terms, knowledge
and environment; the first, perhaps, closely related to or even generated
by the second, yet, nevertheless, ceaselessly exercising itself against it, and
seeking to secure its subordination and control. The second, as constantly
pursuing its blind course, and except in so far as it is guided and restrained
by the first, wholly impassive as to whether its casualties elevate or ruin.
One comprehends all the outward material forces of nature; the other, the
inherent consciousness of organic existence. One wields the fate-hammer
of life, under whose blows individual character is either shaped into a noble
and beautiful form, or beaten into a base and ignoble counterfeit. The
other serves both as a die and a buffer, by which the crushing power of the
hammer is at the same time moderated and rightly directed. These two
influences constitute the mainsprings of action in mankind, and working to-
gether they have raised man so far above the level of the first created being as
to lead us to infer that their ultimate accomplishment may some day realize
all the latent aspirations of the human soul. The social organism of England,
with reference to the individual, is not unlike the phenomena of natural en-
vironment with relation to its effects on organic life. The operation of the
forces of both proceeds with little regard to the value of the unit. Neither
takes account of the individual as such, but only through his relation to the
whole, and then under certain fixed and immutable laws governing his status
with respect to his surroundings, any infraction of which involves immediate
punishment. In both cases the controlling force is from without. In Scot-
land, on the other hand, the individual is everything. The unit instinctively
seeks to stand alone, and to stand up as a unit wherever it may be placed.
Verily, each man is a law unto himself; although, in most cases, he exer-
cises sufficient self-control to make him mindful of the rights of his neigh :
bor. In that way, the Scot practically rises above the restrictions of set
forms of law, or stipulated rules of conduct. In his case there is little
necessity for these restrictions. In express terms, he governs himself and is
no longer the slave to his political or social environment, but independent of

128 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

it, if not its master. Conscience has become the touchstone to character,
and the controlling force is from within.

In a broader sense, these distinctions apply to the whole scheme of man's
development. In the evolution of human society the joint work of this in-
ward and outward force may well be traced in the phenomena of war and
labor.

War is the natural environment of society, ever threatening its destruc-
tion : industrial activity, or labor, is the inherent safeguard of society, and its
heritage from the slave. The transition of the European proletariat from a
state of savagery to one of civilized industry began with the subjection of con-
quered peoples by Grecian and Roman warriors ; and had it not been for the
universal spread of slavery which took place under the Roman Empire, the
civilization of the Caucasian to-day might differ but little from that of his
darker-skinned brothers the world over. It was through slavery that natural
man, constrained, first learned to toil, and so began to work out the salvation
of his race. The twin supporting pillars of ancient society were predatory
warfare and the enslavement, or robbery, of labor. On these the fabric of
Roman power and civilization mainly rested. Taken together, they likewise
formed the chief corner-stone of the institution of feudalism. Naturally, there-
fore, they became, in part, the inheritance of Rome's chief legatee and feudal-
ism's great ally, master, and successor — the Church of the Middle Ages. 9 In
the childhood of the world, man's instinct, begotten of experience, became
sufficiently developed to enable him to guard against the ordinary destructive
forces of nature. But instinct alone was powerless to save his race from the
terrible agency invoked when some, desiring to reap where they had not sown,
made war on their fellow-men. It then became necessary for men to battle,
and the victory always went to the stronger. The killing of the vanquished,
which in the early days of the race would appear to have been common
both in plundering and in bullying warfare, would largely tend to prevent
population from increasing beyond a point where the natural products of the
earth and the prey of the hunter were sufficient to sustain it. In the occa-
sional sparing of female lives and the carrying off and subsequent debase-
ment of an enemy's women-folk doubtless is to be found the origin of
human slavery. After that, men's lives came at times to be spared, and
domestic slavery was instituted. 10 From this it was but a few steps to in-
dustrial slavery, and then began the operation of those influences which
have since produced our modern civilization. As men were conquered and
enslaved the necessity for war grew less imperative; and as men began to
labor and to reap, the value of a man's life became greater and life's prob-
lems took on a new meaning. Hundreds of years after the building of the
pyramids man was still learning the lesson of patience and endurance, of
labor and of hope, of right and of wrong, under the lash of the taskmaster,
at the oar of the galley, or in the ranks of his lord's army. In time, warriors
came to see the superior advantages of peace, and indiscriminate warfare

Religion 129

ceased. Conscience was born and free labor inaugurated. As the moral
sense developed, the lot of the slave became less hard. Laws were made to
mitigate the suffering of the oppressed. Gradually the form of slavery was
modified, and ultimately it was changed to serfdom, vassalage, and tenantry.
Finally its most objectionable features were done away with, and to-day they
practically cease to exist.

But the force of despotic authority which established slavery as an in-
stitution still remains, and its burdens have not yet been completely removed
from the shoulders of mankind. In feudal Europe the fitting complement,
guide, and accessory to this force was the power of the mediaeval Church,
serving as a check, it is true, upon certain excesses of tyranny, yet without
which it would have been impossible for absolutism to have restrained so
long the rising power of conscience. In England — is it unfair to say it ? — the
Church Establishment during the past three hundred and sixty years has
stood in a like relation to kingly authority, and is to-day the emblem and
memorial of a once all-powerful but now impotent and fast-disappearing
institution of monarchy, just as the Roman Church system is a surviving relic
of the drawn sword and the mailed hand of the age of iron. Both alike be-
long to despotism, feudalism, and those other early stages of development
which European civilization has passed through and left behind.

On the other hand, can it be truthfully denied that the theological system
which, in matters religious, takes as its chief tenet the theory of the suprem-
acy of the individual conscience over the voice of earthly authority — that
makes man's accountability to a God a more imperative obligation than his
accountability to a prince, and controverts the divine right of kings — can it
be denied that this system on which the polity of England has ever sought
to cast odium by the use in pulpit and statute of such invidious terms as
"dissent," "nonconformity," "toleration," "heresy, " merely embodies
the accumulated protest of man's conscience against the oppressions of
tyranny ; and that it constituted the first and only effective barrier that has
ever been erected to save the race from the encroachments of that force
most antagonistic to human welfare — man's unrestricted exercise of arbi-
trary power ?

Verily, the chief distinction between the Scottish and English character
is that arising from the two different conceptions of religion. The Scotch
make of religion their main guiding standard of life and rule of conduct.
Its requirements are supreme over those of any temporal or political con-
sideration. Its functions and obligations are superior to those of any secular
authority, often, indeed, more sacredly regarded than the bond which holds
together the social fabric. Among the English, on the contrary, religion
has ever been of secondary importance, and subordinate to the secular State,
and to the needs and requirements of the existing organization of society,
whatever it might for the time be — allodial, feudal, monarchical, or consti-
tutional. The promptings, hopes, aspirations, and advancements of the

130 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

individual English conscience, therefore, are entirely limited by considera-
tions for the rights of existing society as a whole, however irrationally con-
stituted. The good of the individual is set aside for the good of the state.
Existing institutions, vested rights, and unequal concentrations of power,
rank, or privilege, are to be sustained, and their claims demand and receive
at least equal consideration with the highest claims of humanity. Hence
arises the necessity for compromise ; concessions have to be made on both
sides. The strong must yield a little of his substance to the weak. His
vested rights must suffer that their opportunities may be enlarged. But the
weak can never expect full justice from the strong. They must always act
on the rule that half a loaf is better than no bread. Hence, the history of
civilization and human progress in England, from the time when the land
was seized by the strong hand of the Norman, has been merely a story of
continually growing demands on the part of the increasing masses; con-
tinual repulse and rejection on the part of the power-holding classes; and
final concessions and mutual compromise on the part of both. The body
of English laws, in consequence, is chiefly the record of half-acquired de-
mands on the part of the people and half-granted concessions on the part of
their lords. By far the greater portion of the power still remains in the
hands of the representatives of those who first seized it, and the part received
by the people is but a fraction of what would result from a justly propor-
tioned division.

We find, therefore, that the word " compromise " is written, cross-writ-
ten, and under-written on almost every page of the record of English history,
English legislation, and English statesmanship. The English statute-book
is one long, unvarying repetition of the story of evils partially cured, of
wrongs half-righted, and of the attempts of the framers of laws to please all
parties concerned. The British Constitution is proverbially a patchwork
composition, in which every man can claim that his rights are given recog-
nition, and no two men can tell alike just what those rights are.

The germination and growth of English liberty may be likened to that of
a hardy oak, planted within the walls of a strong tower. In the course of
time it grew and filled the whole of the tower, although ever circumscribed
and prevented from reaching its full stature and extent by the impassable
walls of stone. A day may come when it will force the foundations from
the ground, and reach the freedom of the open air by breaking asunder the
confining walls of its prison. Or, possibly, since the ecclesiastical mortar
has lost its bond, the walls may fall of their own weight; for, indeed, to-day,
monarchy in England stands much like other of the crumbling and ivy-
covered ruins of feudal power and grandeur — slowly but surely disintegrating
and passing away.

In America, of course, the conditions were vastly different. Here was
a primeval state of nature. Here began the childhood of a new world.
Here, at the first, were none of man's injustices to man; no castles; no

Religion 131

oppressions of tyranny; no burdens of bishops. Naturally, the plant of liberty
thrived and flourished from the start; and the enemies it has had since have
been those of parasitical growth, such as become threatening only when
suffered for too long a time to remain undisturbed.

In Scotland, also, the liberty tree had a more favorable soil and less
burdensome bonds than in England, and it was watered and nourished by the
blood of many martyrs. The power of the nobles was more frequently
opposed to that of the king, and as a result there was often a division and
sometimes a disregard of authority. Under these conditions, the rights of
the people were more fully regarded. Then, when John Knox stirred the
soil and fertilized the roots with his Calvinistic doctrines of equality and
liberty, the result was a rapid growth and a complete bursting of restricting
bonds.

Thus we may conclude that the difference between Scottish and English
character, in its ultimate analysis, is this: the former has been developed
chiefly by the exercise of self-control, guided by the individual conscience;
the latter, by the discipline of authority, imposed by feudal and monarchical
power. While it is sometimes contended that monarchy is more favorable
to the exceptional few, and offers better promise to ambitious men, it is gener-
ally admitted that democracy affords more opportunity for progress to the
average man, and is therefore better in its results for the masses. However,
the history of America shows that more of her leaders have come from the
democratic Scotch, in proportion to their number, than from the king-loving
English. Hence, it is to be inferred that that system of government is
better both for leaders and followers which gives the greatest possible amount
of individual liberty, not inconsistent with the rights of others. This insures
perfect equality of rank and opportunity, without offering undue incentive
to the ambition of its leading citizens. Consequently, such a system is not
only the most desirable for the common people, but, by elevating the average
standard of humanity, serves also to offer broader and higher aims for the
worthy efforts of the ambitious.

NOTES TO CHAPTER IX.

1 See Appendix G (Christianity in Early Britain).

2 It is usual for native writers on English Church history, who seek to minimize the in-
fluence of Rome on their religion, to ascribe the conversion of the Angles and Saxons almost
wholly to the labors of the Scottish missionaries and the Christianized Britons who remained
alive after the Anglian conquest. On the other hand, in recent years, Freeman and other
native writers on English secular history attempt to show that practically none of the east-
ern Britons survived the exterminating wars of the English invaders. While these two the-
ories are wholly inconsistent with one another, the evidence shows the former to be no less
erroneous than the latter.

3 Book ii., ch. ii.

4 Although Bede and other writers make most mention of the disputes and controversies
respecting the celebration of Easter, and the peculiar form of clerical tonsure, and such like

132 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

fooleries, from which some have hastily concluded that there was, after all, nothing but the
most trifling and unessential distinctions between the Culdees [Columbans] and their Anglo-
Roman opponents ; yet a closer examination may enable us to discover . . . that they
differed in some points of vital importance. . . . From incidental notices ... it
may be gathered that the Culdees were opposed to the Church of Rome in such essential
doctrines as the following : They rejected . . . auricular confession, penance . . .
authoritative absolution . . . transubstantiation . . . the worship of angels, saints,
and relics, . . . praying to saints for their intercession, prayers for the dead, . . .
works of supererogation, . . . confirmation. — Hetherington, History of the Church of
Scotland, pp. 15, 16. The vital point of their difference, as stated by their representa-
tives at the Whitby conference, in 664, will be found in the next succeeding extract from
Bede. It was that they would not accept Augustine as their superior.
6 Bk. iii. , ch. xxv.

6 See p. 218, Note 43.

7 See p. 305.

England's influence and example were the direct causes of the subservience of Scot-
land's more ancient and purer faith. This might be rendered evident did our limits permit
us to trace minutely the successive events which led to this disastrous result ; such as the
residence for a time in England of some of our most powerful kings, especially Malcolm
Canmore and David I., who, returning to Scotland with their minds filled with prejudices
in behalf of the pomp and splendor of the English Prelacy, made it their utmost endeavor
to erect buildings and organize and endow a hierarchy which might vie in dignity and grand-
eur with those of their more wealthy neighbors. The ruinous effects were soon apparent.
In vain did the best of the Scottish clergy oppose these innovations ; their more ambitious
brethren were but too ready to grasp at the proffered wealth and honor ; and at length, to
save themselves from the usurpations of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who strove to assert
supremacy over the Scottish church, they yielded up their spiritual liberty to the Roman
pontiff in the year 1176. — Hetherington, History of the Church of Scotland, p. 14.

8 See Knox's History of the Reformation, bk. i.

9 Slavery under the Roman empire was carried on to an excess never known elsewhere,
before or since. Christianity found it permeating and corrupting every domain of human
life, and in six centuries of conflict succeeded in reducing it to nothing. . . . Christianity
in the early ages never denounced slavery as a crime, never encouraged or permitted the
slaves to rise against their masters and throw off the yoke ; yet she permeated the minds of
both masters and slaves with ideas utterly inconsistent with the spirit of slavery. Within
the Church, master and slave stood on an absolute equality. — W. R. Brownlow, Lectures
on Slavery and Serfdom in Europe, lecture 1,2.

10 It has been often shown . . . that slavery was introduced through motives of
mercy, to prevent conquerors from killing their prisoners. Hence the Justinian code and
also St. Augustine (De Civ. Dei., xix., 15) derived servus from servare, to preserve, be-
cause the victor preserved his prisoners alive.— Lecky, History of European Morals, vol.
i., pp. 101, 102.

CHAPTER X
SCOTTISH ACHIEVEMENT

WITH the Scotch, the expression of the spiritual has ever been through
religion. In art and literature they have produced less relatively
than the English — in the North of Ireland, almost nothing. Yet it is far
from the truth to say that Celtic genius has not found expression in lit-
erature or art. More than once it has been pointed out that Shakespeare
himself was born near the forest of Arden, close to the border-line between
England and Wales. The people of the West of England to-day are prob-
ably as much Celtic as Teutonic, and it would seem that there are at least
no better grounds for claiming their greatest genius as a Saxon than for as-
suming that he may have been a Briton. He is as likely to have been the
one as the other; though if the truth could be known, it would probably be
found that he had received an infusion of the blood and the spirit of both. 1

Of the second greatest poet of Britain, it may be said there is vastly more
reason for believing him to have been of purely Celtic extraction than there
is for asserting Shakespeare's genius to have been wholly Teutonic. It is
possible, however, that Burns, also, was of mixed descent. Rare Ben Jon-
son, likewise, although himself born in England, was the grandson of an
Annandale Scotchman.

Walter Scott, James Boswell, Lord Byron, Robert L. Stevenson, Edgar
Allan Poe, James M. Barrie, Thomas Carlyle, Washington Irving, HallCaine,
Robert Barr, John M. Watson, S. R. Crockett, David Christie Murray, and
William Black are writers of Scottish blood who have been given a high
place in English literature, and some of them classed as English. In their
days, Buchanan, Robertson, Hume, and Macaulay were perhaps the greatest
historians Britain had produced. Those Scots have since been eclipsed by
other writers of a more English origin ; but the latter, in turn, have been
outdone by a Celt — one whose work, so far as it has gone, shows the most
philosophical, judicious, and enlightened treatment of the subject of English
history that it has yet received. This historian is Mr. W. E. H. Lecky.

Other Scottish writers who have helped to make the fame of " English "
literature world-wide are Tobias Smollett, William E. Aytoun, Joanna
Baillie, M. O. W. Oliphant, Alexander Barclay, John Stuart Blackie, James
Beattie, Robert Buchanan, John Hill Burton, Thomas Campbell, Jane Porter,
Andrew Lang, Archibald Forbes, Benjamin Kidd, George Farquhar (of Lon-
donderry), John Gait, George MacDonald, John Barbour, James Hogg (the
Ettrick Shepherd), John Wilson {Christopher North), Allan Ramsay, William
Drummond, James Pollok, William Dunbar, James Thomson (who wrote
Rule, Britannia), James Macpherson, Charles Mackay, F. W. Robertson.

133

134 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

Among the great thinkers in the fields of political and practical science
Scotland has given to the world James Watt (the inventor of the steam-
engine), Adam Smith, Hugh Miller, William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), Joseph
Black, Robert Simson, John Robinson, Sir James Mackintosh, Sir Alexander
Mackenzie, Morell Mackenzie, William Murdoch (the inventor of illuminat-
ing-gas), John Napier (the inventor of logarithms), James Bruce, the two
Rosses, Mungo Park, James Grant, Dugald Stewart, and David Livingstone,
besides a legion of American scientists of the first rank. William Ewart
Gladstone was of purely Scottish parentage. His father, born in Leith, was
descended from a Lanarkshire farmer, and his mother, Ann Robertson, be-
longed to the Ross-shire Robertsons. 8 James Bryce likewise is of Scottish
descent.* In America, during the past ten years, these two men were the
best known and most popular Britons of the decade, and Gladstone's death
was mourned as generally on this side of the Atlantic as in Great Britain.
Lord Rosebery, the present leader of the Liberal party in Great Britain, is
also a Scotchman.

Ulster can boast of the names of some of the best of the captains who
served under Wellington; and she gave to India two men who helped
materially to save that empire for England during the great mutiny — Henry
and John Lawrence. Of the blood of the Ulster settlers sprang Lord Cas-
tlereagh, George Canning, Sir Henry Pottinger, and Lord Cairns; and also
one of the most brilliant and successful of modern administrators, Lord
Dufferin, the inheritor of the title of one of the first of the Scottish set-
tlers, James Hamilton, Lord Clannaboye, and the possessor of part of the
old Scottish settlement on the south shore of Belfast Lough. 4

In art, Scotland has produced little that is worthy; but the same remark
applies with equal force to England. British art, as a rule, is built on foun-
dations of conventionality rather than inspiration. Here, as in some certain
other attributes of a refined civilization, the best examples are produced by
Celtic France. Nevertheless, critics to-day are coming to class the Scottish
artist, Henry Raeburn, with the world's greatest portrait painters. George
Cruikshank, also, was the son of a father born north of the Tweed. To
America, France, more than England, represents all that is most excellent
in modern art. As a consequence, American artists of Scottish and Eng-
lish ancestry are producing more excellent work than their British cousins of
native stock. 6

In connection with the subject of Scottish achievement, it will be appro-
priate to give in condensed form the results of an investigation made by Mr.
William H. Hunter, a diligent and painstaking student, who presented the
following facts in an address delivered before the West Florida Pioneer
Scotch Society on January 25, 1895:

It has been said that opportunity is the father of greatness; but the
opportunity for inventing the steam-engine obtained before the boy Watt

Scottish Achievement 135

played with the vapor from his mother's kettle. A Scotchman saw the op-
portunity and grasped it, and revolutionized the forces in the hands of man.

When we study race-building, we can understand why a Scotchman
(Cyrus McCormick) invented the mowing-machine. John Sinclair, a Scotch-
man of wonderful perception, organized the British Board of Agriculture.
John Caird's writings added not a little to the advancement of agriculture.
Henry Burden invented the cultivator, and Thomas Jefferson gave us the
modern plough. I am also told that Longstreet, who improved the cotton-
gin, and made possible its operation by means of steam power, was of Scot-
tish blood. I take it that there are men here to-day who remember the
revolution made in American farming by the introduction of the double
Scotch harrow.

When Michael Menzies and Andrew Meikle invented the threshing-ma-
chine in 1788, they made it so nearly perfect in all its workings that little
room for improvement was left for latter-day genius. The improved roads
in most general use are made after the systems introduced by the eminent
Scotch engineers, MacAdam and Telford.

Watt made the first electrical apparatus, and would have continued ex-
periments along this line, but dropped electricity to give his whole time to
perfecting the steam-engine. . . . The honor for harnessing lightning
to serve man as a swift messenger belongs to one through whose veins
coursed Scotch blood — Samuel Finley Breese Morse. . . . The old-
time telegraphers, James D. Reid, Andrew Carnegie, Robert Pitcairn, Ken-
neth McKenzie, and David McCargo, the men who aided Morse, and made
his system successful, are of Scotch blood. The Wizard of Menlo Park is of
the same blood [Edison's mother was Mary Elliott]. Sir William Thomson,
a native of Scotch-Ireland, made possible the successful operation of the
ocean electric cables by invention of the mirror-galvanometer, which reflects
the words noted by the electric sparks as they flash under the sea. The
telephone was invented by Alexander Graham Bell, a Scotchman, while
Elisha Gray, of the same blood, is at work perfecting a telotograph. . . .
John Ericsson was born a Swede, but his biographer says of him that he
got his genius from his mother, who was of Scottish descent. ... In
speaking of the steamship, how many Scotch names come to mind! New-
comen, Watt, Patrick Miller, Symington, Henry Burden, Bell, Roach, the
American shipbuilder, and Fulton, distinguished as the first person to suc-
cessfully propel a boat by steam. The first steam vessel to cross the Atlantic
from America was built by a Scotchman. The Great Western, constructed
by Henry Burden, was the first steamship to cross the ocean from Europe to
America. The modern mariner's compass was invented by Sir William
Thomson.

The possibility of a railway was first suggested by Watt. Henry Burden
first made the peculiar spike, used to this day to fasten the rail to the cross-
tie. Peter Cooper built the first locomotive in America. The Pennsylvania
Railroad Company, the greatest and most powerful railroad corporation in
the world, was brought to its present stage by the skilled efforts of such
Scotchmen as Thomas A. Scott, William Thaw, J. N. McCullough, James
McCrea, and Robert Pitcairn [to these names should now be added those of
Frank Thomson and A. J. Cassatt]; while General Campbell, the manager
of the Baltimore & Ohio system, is also a Scotchman [later John K. Cowen,
also of Scottish blood]. During the late war between the States, the Federal
railroad military service was under the generalship of D. C. McCullum.
The Canadian Pacific Railroad was built by a Scotchman.

136 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

It is a fact that Puritan ladies were taught to spin, on Boston Common,
by Scottish immigrants from Northern Ireland ; and the great textile industry-
was given impetus by the invention of carding and spinning machines by
Alexander and Robert Barr, which machines were introduced by a Mr. Orr,
also a New England Scotchman. And the inventor of the mule spinning
machine was a Scot. Gordon McKay invented the sole-stitching that revo-
lutionized shoemaking in New England.

The first iron-furnace west of the Alleghany Mountains was erected by a
Scotchman named Grant, in 1794. At this mill, the cannon-balls used by
Perry in the battle of Lake Erie were made. John Campbell, a stalwart
Ohio Scot, first employed the hot-blast in making pig-iron.

The Scotch author is eminent in every line of literary production. We
could rest our honors with Hume, Carlyle, Scott, and Burns, and hold a high
place in the world of letters. Adam Smith was the first person to write of
political economy as a science, which theme has been also treated by Samuel
Baily, J. R. McCullough, Chalmers, and Alison. Scotland gave the literary
world Barbour, Blind Harry, Gavin Douglas, Wyntoun, Dunbar, McKenzie,
Wilson, Grant, Barrie, George MacDonald, and John Stuart Blackie. . . .
Scotland gave to America Washington Irving. . . . Mrs. Margaret Wil-
son Oliphant is of our blood, and also Robert Louis Stevenson. What author
of fiction has received fuller attention than John Maclaren Watson ?

The Scot has been a voluminous writer of theology from the days of John
Knox, the real hero of the Reformation. You all know that, of the six
ablest British sermonizers — Alison, Irving, Chalmers, Robertson, Robert
Hall, and Spurgeon — the first four mentioned were Scotch.

Hugh Miller told us the story of the rocks. To Scotland we are in-
debted for William McLuce, the father of American geology, undertaking,
as he did, as a private enterprise, the geological survey of the United States,
visiting each State and Territory, and publishing his maps six years prior to
publication of the Smith geological map of England. The Owens — David,
Richard, and Robert Dale — were men of the highest attainments in the field
of American geology, the latter, at his death, having the finest museum and
laboratory on the Western Continent. Andrew Ramsey, who was the director-
general of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, was a Scot.

Nicholl, Keill, and Ferguson, the noted astronomers, were Scotchmen.
The most learned of American astronomers was General Armsby McKnight
Mitchell. . . . Maria Mitchell, another Scotch-American astronomer,
had the distinction of receiving a medal from the King of Denmark.

No other race has produced a greater mathematician than John Napier,
the most distinguished of the British writers on the science of numbers.
Has Germany produced men of larger grasp of thought along this line than
James Beattie or Andrew Baxter, than Sir William Hamilton or Doctor
Abercrombie ? Neil Arnott was the first person to illustrate scientific prin-
ciples in the language of common life, his work being so popular that it ran
through five editions in six years. Robert and James Holdams, the philos-
ophers, Spencer Fullerton Baird, the most noted American naturalist, Alex-
ander Wilson, the ornithologist, Samuel Mitchell, who published the first
scientific periodical in the United States, Lindley Murray, the philologist —
all were Scots, and all authorities in their respective fields of research. Dr.
Clay McCauley, the noted Scotch Unitarian of Boston, is at the head of the
Senshin Sacknin, or school of advanced learning belonging to this church in
Japan. Who has written on the science of botany with greater clearness
than John H. Balfour ? Was there ever a scholar of wider distinction for

Scottish Achievement 137

comprehensive treatment of botany than Asa Gray, the descendant of a
New England Scotch family ? W. R. Smith, a Scotchman, has been for
years superintendent of the Government Botanical Gardens.

That distinguished Scotch anatomist, John Abernethy, the father of
modern surgery, revolutionized this science. Dr. J. Y. Simpson was the
first person to use chloroform as an anaesthetic in the practice of surgery.
Ephraim McDowell's skill found new fields in operative surgery, and he
became noted in Europe as well as in America. No race has given to
medicine the superiors of William and John Hunter, of Matthew Bailie, or
John Barclay. If one were to ask who have been the four most noted sur-
geons and medical doctors in America, the answer would be: Hamilton,
Hammond, Hays Agnew, and Weir Mitchell, all of Scotch blood.

As early as 1795, Dr. Thornton called attention to the possibility of teach-
ing the deaf and dumb to talk, and Alexander Bell introduced the system for
instructing the deaf and dumb, invented by his Scotch father. John Alston
was the inventor of the blind alphabet, and John Gall printed in English the
first book for the blind.

Gedd, the inventor of stereotyping, was a Scotchman. The Scot also
gave us the lightning presses. Scott, Gordon, and Campbell are of our
blood. David Bruce, the pioneer type-maker, the inventor of the type-
casting machine, introduced the Gedd process in America. Archibald
Binney and James Ronaldson established the first type foundry in Phila-
delphia. To Bruce and the McKellars we are greatly indebted for the ad-
vanced position our country holds to-day in this great industry. The first
American newspaper, the News-Letter, was published in Boston by John
Campbell. William Maxwell, a Scotchman, published at Cincinnati the first
newspaper in the Northwest Territory; and the first religious paper in the
United States was published at Chillicothe, Ohio, by a Scotchman.

In sculpture, Scotland has given to England and America their finest
artists. William Calder Marshall, and not an Englishman, won the prize
offered by the British government for a design for the Wellington monument.
Sir John Steele executed the colossal statue of Burns that adorns New
York's beautiful park. John C. King, the New England sculptor, whose
busts of Adams and Emerson are masterpieces of plastic art, and whose
cameos of Webster and Lincoln are magnificent gems, was a Scot; as was
Joel Hart, whose statues of Clay at Richmond and New Orleans are exten-
sively admired. Crawford and Ward are of our blood; and where is there
a Scot whose heart does not beat with pride in the knowledge that Scotch
blood courses in the veins of Frederick Macmonnies ? There is no end to
Scotch painters. Sir David Wilkie was perhaps the most noted of British
artists. Then there were Francis Brant and William Hart. Some of the
works of Alexander Johnston are among the world's masterpieces. David
Allan's pen drew the familiar illustrations to Burns's lyrics. There was an
academy of art in Glasgow before there was one in London. Guthrie, Mac-
Gregor, Walton, Lavery, Patterson, Roche, and Stevenson all have been
eminent painters. Gilbert Stuart, who left us portraits of prominent actors
in early American history, was a Scot, as was E. F. Andrews, who has given
America its best portraits of Jefferson, Martha Washington, and Dolly Madi-
son, those which hang in the White House. Alexander Anderson was the
first American wood-engraver, inventing, as he did, the tools used by those
pursuing this art.

No other race has produced explorers of greater achievement than Mac-
kenzie, Richardson, Ross, Collison, McClintock [Melville, Greely], or Hays.

138 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

John and Clark Ross made the only valuable discoveries ever made in the
Antarctic region; while David Livingstone, Mungo Park, Doctor Johnson
[James Grant], and Doctor Donaldson penetrated Darkest Africa. Thomas
Hutchins, the first geographer of the United States, was Scotch. So were
James Geddes and Samuel Forrer, the pioneer engineers of the Northwest
Territory. Commodore Matthew Galbraith Perry, one of the famous family
of sailors, broke down the walls of Japan, and let in the light of Western
civilization. The Perrys got their great force of character from their mother,
who was Scotch. For thirty years Sir Robert Hart was at the head of the
Chinese financial system, and opened to commerce many Chinese ports,
while Samuel M. Bryan was for a dozen years the Postmaster-General of
Japan, and introduced into that empire the Western postal system.

Do we speak of war, a thousand Scotch names rise above all the heroes:
Wallace at Stirling; Bruce at Bannockburn; Wolfe's Scottish soldiers at the
Heights of Abraham; Forbes at Fort Duquesne; Stark at Bennington;
Campbell at King's Mountain; Scott at Lundy's Lane; Perry on Lake Erie;
Grant at Appomattox. Were not Wellington and Napier Scotch ? The
latter was.

Paul Jones was only one of the naval heroes of our blood. Oliver
Hazard Perry captured a whole British fleet in the battle of Lake Erie,
building his own ships on the bank of the lake. Perry's mother was an
Alexander; and it is a fact not mentioned in histories published in New
England, that for years after, the victory on Lake Erie was called Mrs.
Perry's victory, by neighbors of the family in Rhode Island. Thomas
McDonough, of Lake Champlain, Stewart, and Bailey were Scots. Isaac
Newton, who had charge of the turret and engine of the Monitor, in its clash
with the Merrimac, was of the same blood. Alexander Murray commanded
the Constitution ; and William Kidd, the daring pirate, was also a Scotchman.

In the American Civil War the Scotch- American generals of the Federal
Army from Ohio alone made our race conspicuous in skill of arms. Grant
was a Scotchman. His [father's] people came direct to America, and first
settled in Connecticut [his mother's people were of Pennsylvania Scotch-
Irish stock]. New England gave the country not only Stark and Knox, but
Grant and McClellan, as well as Salmon P. Chase and Hugh McCulloch.
But I was speaking of Ohio. The McDowells, the Mitchells, the McPher-
sons, the Fighting McCooks (two families having nine general officers in the
field), the Gibsons, the Hayeses, the Gilmores, all were Ohio Scots. General
Gilmore, you will remember, revolutionized naval gunnery in his cannonade
and capture of Fort Pulaski, which extended his fame throughout Europe.
Gilmore, the " Swamp Angel," as he was called, was an Ohio Scotchman.
A majority of the Indian fighters in the Northwest during the Revolu-
tionary period were Scotchmen and Scotch-Irishmen, whose achievements
are history. The McCullochs, the Lewises, the McKees, the Crawfords,
the Pattersons, the Johnstons, and their fellow Scots won the West. George
Rogers Clark made complete conquest of the Northwest, giving to free gov-
ernment five great States that otherwise would have been under the British
flag. The truth about Ohio is, it has been Scotch from its first governor,
Arthur St. Clair, down to the present [1895] chief executive, William
McKinley. In the list of governors, we find Duncan McArthur, Jeremiah
Morrow (or Murray), the father of the national road and of Ohio's internal
improvements, Allen Trimble, who introduced the public-school system into
Ohio, Rutherford B. Hayes, who became President of the United States,
James E. Campbell, and William McKinley, who is likely to be a candidate

Scottish Achievement 139

of one of the political parties for the office of President [of the six Presidents
born in, or who were elected to office from, Ohio — Harrison, Grant, Hayes,
Garfield, Harrison, and McKinley — four were of Scottish descent].

Professor Hinsdale, an Ohio historian of Puritan extraction, wrote this bit
of truth: " The triumph of James Wolfe and his Highlanders on the Heights
of Abraham, and not the embattled farmers of Lexington, won the first vic-
tory of the American Revolution." And did it come by mere chance that
another Scotchman, in the person of General John Forbes, at about the
same time, led the English forces that reduced Fort Duquesne at the con-
fluence of the three rivers, and opened the gateway to the boundless west for
the forward march of Anglo-Saxon civilization ? Did it come by chance
that James Grant was the commander in the relief of Lucknow; that the
unmatched Havelock led Scottish soldiers in his Asiatic campaigns which
brought such lustre to British arms ? We have a right to manifest pride in
the fact that of the four field commanders-in-chief in the Civil War, three
were Scotch — Scott, McClellan, and Grant. Chinese Gordon was a Scot.
Through the veins of Robert E. Lee flowed the blood of Robert Bruce.
Ulysses S. Grant and Jefferson Davis were descendants of the same Scotch
family of Simpson.

Statesmen ? If Scotland had given to civil government only the name
of Gladstone, she might ever glow with a mother's pride. Erskine, too, was
a Scotchman, and considered by many writers the ablest and most eloquent
of the long line of British jurists whose influence was most potent in giving
England freer government, and withal the most vigorous defender of consti-
tutional liberty born on British soil. Jefferson, the author of the Declaration
of Independence, and of the law providing for religious tolerance; Madison,
the father of the Constitution, Monroe, [Jackson], Polk, [Taylor], Buchanan,
Johnson, Grant, Hayes, [Arthur, Harrison, McKinley], are Presidents our
race has given to the United States. Daniel Webster was of Scottish blood;
so were the intellectual giants, Benjamin Wade and Joshua Giddings. Wade's
Puritan father was so poor in purse that the son was educated at the knee of
his Scotch Presbyterian mother. McLean and Burnet, two of the ablest
lawyers and statesmen of the West, were Scots. With one exception, all the
members of Washington's Cabinet were of the same virile blood ; as were like-
wise three out of four of the first justices of the United States Supreme Court.

In finance, the Scotch are no less distinguished than in other lines of
endeavor. William Paterson was the founder of the Bank of England, and
Alexander Hamilton established the American system of finance. Both were
Scots.

The accepted notion that all the Scotch get their theology from Calvin is
incorrect. Charles Pettit Mcllvaine, perhaps the ablest bishop of the Prot-
estant Episcopal Church in America, and certainly one of the most profound
educators on this continent, was a Scotchman by descent. Bishop Matthew
Simpson was without question the ablest prelate of the Methodist Episcopal
Church in America. James Dempster, whom John Wesley sent to America
as a missionary, was a Scotchman, and his son, John Dempster, was the
founder of the school of theology of the Boston University. " Father
McCormick," as he was called, organized the first Methodist Episcopal
church in the Northwest Territory. John Rankin was the founder of the
Free Presbyterian, and Alexander Campbell of the Christian Disciples'
Church. Robert Turnbull was the most scholarly divine of the New Eng-
land Baptist Church. Edward Robinson, of the Puritan Church, was recog-
nized as the ablest American biblical scholar. While referring to scholars,

140 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

I must not neglect to mention the fact that James Blair founded William and
Mary College in Virginia; that Princeton is a Scotch institution; that Doctor
Alexander founded Augusta Academy, now the great Washington and Lee
University; that Jefferson gave the South the University of Virginia; that
Doctor John McMillan and the Finleys established more than a dozen col-
leges in the West and South; that Doctor Charles C. Beatty established the
first woman's college west of the Alleghany Mountains; and that Joseph Ray,
William H. McGuffey, and Lindley Murray were three of America's most
prominent educators.

NOTES TO CHAPTER X.

1 It seems certain that William Shakespeare was at least in part of Celtic descent. He was
a grandson of Richard Shakespeare, Bailiff of Wroxhall, by Alys, daughter of Edward Griffin
of Berswell. Edward Griffin was of the Griffin or Griffith family of Baybrook in Northamp-
tonshire, who claimed descent from Griffith, son of Rhysap Tudor, King of South Wales.
See The Gentle Shakespeare : A Vindication, by John Pym Yeatman, of Lincoln's Inn,
London, 1896. See also p. 314, Note 13.

2 John Gladstanes, of Toftcombes, near Biggar, in the upper ward of Lanarkshire, was a
small farmer, who married Janet Aitken ; their son, Thomas, who died in 1809, settled in
Leith, where he was a prosperous merchant, and where he married Helen Neilson, of Spring-
field ; their son John, born in 1764, married, 1800, Ann Robertson, daughter of Andrew, a
native of Dingwall, in Ross-shire ; John and his wife settled in Liverpool, where, in 1809,
their son, William Ewart Gladstone, was born.

3 Rev. James Bryce (1767-1857) went from Scotland, where he was born, to Ireland, and
settled in 1805, as minister of the anti-burgher church in Killaig, County Londonderry. His
son, James Bryce (1806-1877) was born in Killaig (near Coleraine). In 1846, appointed to
the High School, Glasgow. (See Dictionary of National Biography \ to which the information
contained in the article on the Bryces was furnished by the family.) James Bryce, the writer
of The American Commonwealth, the son and grandson of the persons just mentioned, was
born in Belfast, Ireland, May 10, 1838. His mother was Margaret, eldest daughter of James
Young, Esquire, of Abbeyville, County Antrim. (See Men and Women of the Time, thirteenth
edition, 1891.) — Samuel Swett Green, The Scotch-Irish in America, p. 34.

4 " T C ," a writer in Eraser's Magazine for August, 1876, makes the following

observations on the character and achievements of the Scotch in Ulster :

" Ulstermen have been described as a mongrel community. This is true in a sense.
They are neither Scotch, English, nor Irish, but a mixture of all three ; and they are an
ingredient in the Irish population distinguished by habits of thought, character, and utterance
entirely unlike the people who fill the rest of the island. It is easy to see, however, at a
single glance that the foundation of Ulster society is Scotch. This is the solid granite on
which it rests. There are districts of country — especially along the eastern coast, running
sixty or seventy miles, from the Ards of Down to the mouth of the Foyle — in which the
granite crops out on the surface, as we readily observe by the Scottish dialect of the peasan-
try. Only twenty miles of sea separate Ulster from Scotland at one point ; and just as the
Grampians cross the channel to rise again in the mountains of Donegal, there seems to be no
break in the continuity of race between the two peoples that inhabit the two opposite coasts.
Thus it comes to pass that much of the history of Ulster is a portion of Scottish history
inserted into that of Ireland ; a stone in the Irish mosaic of an entirely different color and
quality from the pieces that surround it. James I., colonized Ulster in the seventeenth cen-
tury, not with the Gaelic Scots, who might have coalesced with their kindred Celts in Ireland,
but with that Lowland rural population who from the very first fixed the moral and religious
tone of the entire province. Ireland was then called ' the back door of Great Britain ' ; and

Scottish Achievement 141

James I. was anxious to place a garrison there that would be able not only to shut the door,
but to keep it shut, in the face of his French or Spanish enemies ; and, accordingly, when an
attempt was made at the Revolution to force the door, the garrison was there — the advanced
outpost of English power — to shut it in the face of the planter's grandson, and so to save the
liberties of England at the most critical moment in its history. One may see (as Hugh Miller
did) in the indomitable firmness of the besieged at Derry the spirit of their ancestors under
Wallace and Bruce, and recognize in the gallant exploits of the Enniskillen men under
Gustavus Hamilton, routing two of the forces despatched to attack them, and compelling a
third to retire, a repetition of the thrice-fought and thrice-won battle of Roslin. . . .

" It is now time to notice the character and ways of the Ulsterman, not the Celt of
Ulster, who gives nothing distinctive to its society, — for he is there what he is in Munster or
Connaught, only with a less degree of vivacity and wit, — but the Scotch-Irishman, inheriting
from Scotland that Norse nature often crossed no doubt with Celtic blood, the one giving
him his persistency, the other a touch of impulsiveness to which Ulster owes so much of its
progress and prosperity. He represents the race which has been described as 4 the vertebral
column of Ulster, giving it at once its strength and uprightness ' — a race masculine alike in
its virtues and faults — solid, sedate, and plodding — and distinguished both at home and
abroad by shrewdness of head, thoroughgoing ways, and moral tenacity. The Ulsterman is,
above all things, able to stand alone, and to stand firmly on his own feet. He is called ' the
sturdy Northern,' from his firmness and independence and his adherence to truth and pro-
bity. He is thoroughly practical. He studies uses, respects common things, and cultivates
the prose of human life. The English despise the Irish as aimless, but not the man of
Ulster, who has a supreme eye to facts, and is 'locked and bolted to results.' There is a
business-like tone in his method of speaking. He never wastes a word, yet on occasion he
can speak with volubility. He is as dour and dogged on occasion as a Scotchman, with, how-
ever, generally less of that infusion of sternness — so peculiarly Scotch — which is really the
result of a strong habitual relation between thought and action. English tourists notice the
stiff and determined manner of the Ulsterman in his unwillingness to give way to you at fair
or market, on the ground that one man is as good as another. The Ulsterman, no matter
what his politics, is democratic in spirit ; and his loyalty is not personal, like that of the Celt,
but rather a respect for institutions. He has something, too, of the Scotch pugnacity of
mind, and always seems, in conversation, as if he were afraid of making too large admissions.
Mr. Matthew Arnold speaks of ' sweet reasonableness ' as one of the noblest elements of cul-
ture and national life. The Ulsterman has the reasonableness, but he is not sweet. A
southern Irishman says of him : ' The Northerns, like their own hills, are rough but health-
some, and, though often plain-spoken even to bluntness, there is no kinder-hearted peasantry
in the world.' But he is certainly far inferior to the Celtic Irishman in good manners and in
the art of pleasing. Though not so reserved or grave as the Scotchman, and with rather more
social talent, he is inferior to the Southern in pliancy, suppleness, and bonhomie. He hates
ceremony and is wanting in politeness. He is rough and ready, and speaks his mind without
reserve. He has not the silky flattery and courteous tact of the Southern. A Killarney beg-
garman will utter more civil things in half an hour to a stranger than an Ulsterman in all his
life ; but the Ulsterman will retort that the Southern is ' too sweet to be wholesome.' Cer-
tainly, if an Ulsterman does not care about you, he will neither say nor look as if he did.
You know where to find him ; he is no hypocrite. The Celt, with his fervent and fascinating
manner, far surpasses him in making friends whom he will not always keep ; while the Ulster-
man, not so attractive a mortal at the outset, improves upon acquaintance, and is considera-
bly more stanch in his friendships. Strangers say the mixture of Protestant fierte with
good-nature and good-humor gives to the Ulsterman a tone rather piquant than unpleasing.
Like some cross-grained woods, he admits of high polish, and when chastened by culture and
religion, he turns out a very high style of man. He differs from the Celt, again, in the way
he takes his pleasures ; for he follows work with such self-concentration that he never thinks

r ~h e
UNIVERSITY

142 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

of looking about him, like the Celt, for objects to amuse or excite. He has few holidays (unlike
the Celt, whose holidays take all the temper out of labor), and he hardly knows how to employ
them except in party processions.

" The Ulsterman is not imaginative or traditional, chiefly, because his affections strike no
deep root into Irish history. The Celt is more steeped in poetry and romance ; the Ulsterman
knows almost nothing of fairy mythology, or of the love of semi-historic legend which fires
the imagination of the Celt. The ghost is almost the exclusive property of the ancient race.
The Ulsterman has certainly lost his share, or at least his interest, in such things, although he
is surrounded, like the Celt, by all the old monuments of pagan times, each with a memory
and a tale as gray as the stone itself. It is probably because he is so imaginative that the
Celt has not such a real possession of the present as the Ulsterman ; for those who think too
much of a splendid past, whether it be real or imaginary, are usually apt to think too little of
the present, and the remark has been made that the poetry of the Celt is that of a race that has
seen better days, for there is an almost total want of the fine old Norse spirit of self-reliance,
and of making the best possible use of the present. In one of his fits of despondency, Goethe
envied America its freedom from ruined castles, useless remembrances, and vain disputes,
which entangle old nations and trouble their hearts while they ought to be strong for present
action. Certainly the Ulsterman has not allowed himself to be encumbered in any such way.

" People have said of Ulstermen, as they have said of the Scotchmen, that they are des-
titute of wit and humor ; but they certainly have wut, if they have not wit, and as practised
in the northeastern part of the province, it corresponds very nearly with what is properly
humor. It has not the spontaneity, the freshness, the oddity, the extravagance of Celtic
humor, which upsets our gravity on the instant ; it has not the power of ' pitching it strong '
or ' drawing the long-bow ' like the humor of America ; nor has it the sparkling and volatile
characteristics of French wit. It is dry, caustic, and suggestive, on the whole rather reticent
of words, and, in fact, very Scotch in character ; and the fun is contained rather in the whole
series of conceptions called up by a set of anecdotes and stories than by any smart quip or
flash at the close. Often the humor, as in Scotland, lies not in what is said but in what is
suggested, the speaker all the while apparently unconscious of saying anything to excite amuse-
ment or laughter. Many of the illustrations are, like those of Dean Ramsay, of an ecclesias-
tical character ; for the Ulsterman, like the Scotchman, makes religion a condition of social
existence, and demands with an unsparing rigor, on the part of all his neighbors, a certain par-
ticipation in the ordinances of religion. . . .

4 ' We need hardly say that Presbyterianism runs strong in the native current of Ulster
blood. It has a good deal of the douce Davie Dean type, and is resolutely opposed to all
religious innovations. It was Dean Swift who said, when he saw the stone-cutters effacing
the cherub faces from the old stonework of an Episcopal church which was to do duty as a
Presbyterian edifice, ' Look at these rascally Presbyterians, chiselling the very Popery out of
the stones ! ' Mr. Froude says it was the one mistake of Swift's life, that he misunderstood
the Presbyterians. It is not generally known that there was a Janet Geddes in Ulster. At the
Restoration, the celebrated Jeremy Taylor appointed an Episcopal successor at Comber,
County Down, to replace an excellent Presbyterian worthy, who refused conformity. The
women of the parish collected, pulled the new clergyman out of the pulpit, and tore his white
surplice to ribbons. They were brought to trial at Downpatrick, and one of the female wit-
nesses made the following declaration : ' And maun a' tell the truth, the haile truth, and
naethin but the truth ? ' ' You must,' was the answer. ' Weel, then,' was her fearless avowal,
4 these are the hands that poo'd the white sark ower his heed.' It is Presbyterianism that
has fixed the religious tone of the whole province, though the Episcopalians possess, likewise,
much of the religious vehemence of their neighbors, and have earned among English High
Churchmen the character of being Puritan in their spirit and theology.

" Arthur Helps, in one of his pleasant essays, says that the first rule for success in life is
to get yourself born, if you can, north of the Tweed ; and we should say it would not be a

Scottish Achievement 143

bad sort of advice to an Irishman to get himself born, if possible, north of the Boyne. . . .
He might have to part with something of his quickness of perception, his susceptibility to
external influence, and his finer imagination ; but he would gain in working-power, and
especially in the one great quality indispensable to success — self-containedness, steadiness,
impassibility to outward excitements or distracting pleasures. It is this good quality, together
with his adaptability, that accounts for the success of the Ulsterman in foreign countries.
He may be hard in demeanor, pragmatical in mind, literal and narrow, almost without a
spark of imagination ; but he is the most adaptable of men, and accepts people he does not
like in his grave, stiff way, reconciling himself to the facts or the facts to himself. He pushes
along quietly to his proper place, not using his elbows too much, and is not hampered by
traditions like the Celt. He succeeds particularly well in America and in India, not because
Ulstermen help one another and get on like a corporation ; for he is not clannish like the
Scottish Highlanders or the Irish Celts, the last of whom unfortunately stick together like
bees, and drag one another down instead of up. No foreign people succeed in America unless
they mix with the native population. It is out of Ulster that her hardy sons have made the
most of their talents. It was an Ulsterman of Donegal, Francis Makemie, who founded
American Presbyterianism in the early part of the last century, just as it was an Ulsterman of
the same district, St. Columbkille, who converted the Picts of Scotland in the sixth century.
Four of the Presidents of the United States and one Vice-president have been of Ulster ex-
traction : James Monroe [?], James Knox Polk, John C. Calhoun, and James Buchanan.
General Andrew Jackson was the son of a poor Ulster emigrant who settled in North Carolina
towards the close of the last century. ' I was born somewhere,' he said, ' between Carrick-
fergus and the United States.' Bancroft and other historians recognize the value of the
Scotch-Irish element in forming the society of the Middle and Southern States. It has been
the boast of Ulstermen that the first general who fell in the American war of the Revolution
was an Ulsterman — Richard Montgomery, who fought at the siege of Quebec ; that Samuel
Finley, president of Princeton College, and Francis Allison, pronounced by Stiles, the presi-
dent of Yale, to be the greatest classical scholar in the United States, had a conspicuous place
in educating the American mind to independence ; that the first publisher of a daily paper in
America was a Tyrone man named Dunlap ; that the marble palace of New York, where the
greatest business in the world is done by a single firm, was the property of the late Alexander
T. Stewart, a native of Lisburn, County Down ; that the foremost merchants, such as the
Browns and Stewarts, are Ulstermen ; and that the inventors of steam-navigation, telegraphy,
and the reaping machine — Fulton, Morse, and McCormick — are either Ulstermen or the
sons of Ulstermen.

" Ulster can also point with pride to the distinguished career of her sons in India. The
Lawrences, Henry and John, — the two men by whom, regarding merely the human instru-
ments employed, India has been preserved, rescued from anarchy, and restored to a position
of a peaceful and progressive dependency, — were natives of County Derry. Sir Robert
Montgomery was born in the city of Derry ; Sir James Emerson Tennant was a native of
Belfast ; Sir Francis Hincks is a member of an Ulster family remarkable for great variety of
talent. While Ulster has given one viceroy to India, it has given two to Canada in the per-
sons of Lord Lisgar and Lord Dufferin. Sir Henry Pottinger, who attained celebrity as a
diplomatist, and was afterward appointed governor-general of Hong Kong, was a native of
Belfast. Besides the gallant General Nicholson, Ulster has given a whole gazetteful of heroes
to India. It has always taken a distinguished place in the annals of war. An Ulsterman
was with Nelson at Trafalgar, another with Wellington at Waterloo. General Rollo Gilles-
pie, Sir Robert Kane, Lord Moira, and the Chesneys were all from County Down. Ulster-
men have left their mark on the world's geography as explorers, for they furnished Sir John
Franklin with the brave Crozier, from Banbridge, his second in command, and then sent an
Ulsterman, McClintock, to find his bones, and another Ulsterman, McClure, to discover the
passage Franklin had sought in vain. . . .

v-"

144 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

"We have already spoken of the statesmanlike ability of Ulstermen abroad. Mention
may now be made of at least one statesman at home — Lord Castlereagh — who was a native
of County Down, and the son of the first Marquis of Londonderry, who was a Presbyterian
elder till the day of his death. The name of Castlereagh may not be popular in any part of
Ireland on account of the bloody recollections of the rebellion of 1798 ; but his reputation as
a statesman has undoubtedly risen of late years, for it is now known that he was not such an
absolutist or ultraist as has been generally imagined. He possessed in perfection the art of
managing men, and excelled as a diplomatist, while he had an enormous capacity for work as
an administrator. For most of his career he had a very remarkable man for his private sec-
retary, Alexander Knox, a native of Derry, whose literary remains have been edited by
Bishop Jebb, and whose conversational powers are said to have recalled those of Dr. Johnson
himself. Lord Macaulay calls him ' an altogether remarkable man.' George Canning, the
statesman who detached England from the influences of Continental despotism and restored
her to her proper place in Europe, who was the first minister to perceive the genius and abilities
of Wellington, and who opened that ' Spanish ulcer ' which Napoleon at St. Helena declared
to be the main cause of his ruin, was the son of a Derry gentleman of ancient and respectable
family. Lord Plunket, who was equally celebrated in politics, law, and oratory, was a native
of Enniskillen, where his father, the Rev. Thomas Plunket, was a minister of the Presbyterian
Church. To come down nearer to our own times, three men who have made their mark on
the national politics of Ireland — John Mitchell, Charles Gavan Duffy, and Isaac Butt —
belong to Ulster. The first was the son of a Unitarian minister, and was born in County
Derry ; the second is the son of a County Monaghan farmer ; the third, the son of the late
rector of Stranorlar parish in County Donegal. An Ulsterman — Lord Cairns — now [1876]
presides over the deliberations of the House of Lords.

" But we must speak of the more purely intellectual work of Ulstermen, in the walks of
literature, science, and philosophy. It has been remarked that, though their predominant
qualities are Scotch, they have not inherited the love of abstract speculation. Yet they have
produced at least one distinguished philosopher in the person of Sir Francis Hutchison, pro-
fessor of moral philosophy in the University of Glasgow in the last century, and, if we may
follow the opinion of Dr. McCosh, the true founder of the Scottish school of philosophy. He
was born at Saintfield, County Down, where his father was a Presbyterian minister. In
natural science, Ulster can boast of Sir Hans Sloane, a native of Killyleagh, County Down ;
of Dr. Black, the famous chemist, a native of Belfast ; of Dr. James Thompson and his son,
Sir William Thompson, both natives of County Down ; and of William Thomson and Robert
Patterson, both of Belfast. In theology and pulpit oratory, Ulstermen have always taken a
distinguished place. If Donegal produced a deistical writer so renowned as John Toland,
Fermanagh reared the theologian who was to combat the whole school of Deism in the person
of the Rev. Charles Leslie, the author of A Short and Easy Method with the Deists. The
masterly treatise of Dr. William Magee, Archbishop of Dublin, on the doctrine of the atone-
ment still holds its place in theological literature. He was an Enniskillener, like Plunket,
and his grandson, the present bishop of Peterborough, is one of the most eloquent divines on
the English bench. There is no religious body, indeed, in Ulster, that cannot point to at
least one eminent theologian with a fame far extending beyond the province. The Presby-
terians are proud of the reputation of the Rev. Henry Cooke, of Belfast ; the Unitarians, of
the Rev. Henry Montgomery, of Dunmurry, near Belfast ; the Baptists of the Rev. Alexander
Carson, of Tubbermore, County Derry, the author of the ablest treatise ever written on behalf
of Baptist principles ; the Methodists, of Dr. Adam Clarke, the learned commentator on the
Scriptures, who was born at Maghera, in the same county ; and the Covenanters, of the Rev.
John Paul, who had all the logical acuteness of a schoolman. In oratory, Ulstermen are
proud of the great abilities of Plunket, Cooke, Montgomery, Isaac Butt, and Lord Cairns.
In pure scholarship they name Dr. Archibald Maclaine, chaplain at The Hague, and
translator of Mosheim's History ; Dr. Edward Hincks, of Killyleagh, County Down, the

Scottish Achievement 145

decipherer of the Nineveh tablets ; and Dr. Samuel Davidson, the eminent biblical scholar
and critic. . . .

" Ulster claims the sculptor, Patrick McDowell ; and Crawford, whose works adorn the
Capitol at Washington, was born, we believe, at sea, his parents being emigrants from the
neighborhood of Ballyshannon , County Donegal. But we cannot remember a single painter,
or musical composer, or singer, who belongs to Ulster. In the art of novel-writing there is
William Carleton, already referred to, the most realistic sketcher of Irish character who has
ever lived, and who far excels Lever, and Lover, and Edgeworth in the faithfulness of his
pictures, though he fails in the broader representations of Hibernian humor. No one has so
well sounded the depths of the Irish heart, or so skilfully portrayed its kinder and nobler
feelings. Ulster was never remarkable for pathos. Carleton is an exception ; but he belonged
to the ancient race, and first saw the light in the home of a poor peasant in Clogher, County
Tyrone. The only other novel-writers that Ulster can boast of — none of them at all equal
in national flavor to Carleton — are Elizabeth Hamilton, the author of The Cottagers of
Glenburnie, who lived at the beginning of this century ; William H. Maxwell, the author of
Stories of Waterloo ; Captain Mayne Reid, the writer of sensational tales about Western
America; Francis Browne; and Mrs. Riddle, the author of George Geith. In dramatic
literature, Ulster can boast of George Farquhar, the author of The Beaux' Stratagem, who was
the son of a Derry clergyman, and of Macklin, the actor as well as the author, known to us
by his play The Man of the World. The only names it can boast of in poetry are Samuel
Ferguson, the author of The Forging of the Anchor ; William Allingham, the author of
Laurence Bloomfield y with two or three of lesser note."

6 The affinity between France and America is not limited to the latter's appreciation and
imitation in matters of art alone. At an early day in the history of this country, that affinity
extended far beyond the bounds of sesthetical amenities. It included the fields of politics, of
science, and of warfare. The reason for this is not far to seek. There are many people in
America who never will, nor do they care to, understand aright the history of the building of
the American nation ; and to these people the idea of such a thing as a close bond of union
and sympathy with France, which for so long a time obviously existed in America, is one of
the things which they cannot explain, and for which they can only account by classing it as
an anomaly. To honest students of their country's history, however, and to all who can see
beyond their own immediate community or horizon, it is evident that there was no anomaly
in a Franco- American alliance ; and that to a very large proportion of the American people
whose forefathers were here in pre-Revolutionary days, such a union was quite as much to be
expected as, at other times, would be an alliance with England. The Ancient League between
Scotland and France, which existed from before the time of Bruce until the days of Knox, was
an alliance for defence and offence against the common enemy of both ; and that League was the
veritable prototype of the later alliance between America and France against the same enemy.

CHAPTER XI

THE TUDOR-STUART CHURCH RESPONSIBLE FOR EARLY
AMERICAN ANIMOSITY TO ENGLAND

THE English Church Establishment owed its origin primarily to the vices
of Henry VIII., 1 a prince whose abnormal appetite for new wives led
him into excesses too great even for the absolution of the Roman pontiff ;
though it is altogether likely that Henry's divorce of Catherine of Aragon
was refused by the Pope more because it menaced the papal ascendancy
than because it troubled the papal conscience. Organized under such cir-
cumstances, Henry's " Church " naturally obeyed in all things the will of
its creator; and, as the conditions required, it was afterwards the pander,
flatterer, or main coadjutor of his various successors; so that, down to the
beginning of the present century the religion of the loyal Englishman, as com-
pared with that of others, had in it more that was of a secular nature, and
in all things subordinate to the State. The English Episcopalian has until
recently been taught that the king is the supreme head of the " Church,"
and his universal worship of the royal fetich is, perhaps, nothing more than
a manifestation of the same emotions which in other religious establishments
differently constituted find expression in the worship of departed ancestors,
of the saints, of the Virgin Mary, or of the Deity. As a result of this teach-
ing, the Englishman's veneration for British royalty became almost as strong
as that with which other men regard things holy, and was certainly more far-
reaching in its effects. The compact between the Church Establishment and
royalty was in the nature of a close partnership, with the terms and condi-
tions clearly laid down and accepted on both sides. The kings have ever
since relied chiefly upon their bishops to maintain the loyalty of the com-
mon people to the crown, and to that end the bishops have heretofore
effectively used that most powerful agency, religion.

At the same time, the Church soon secured from the king a division of
the power thus obtained and a goodly share of the material acquisitions re-
sulting from its exercise. It has been necessary for both parties to the com-
pact, as a matter of self-preservation, to prevent the intrusion of new elements
into the field, and so long as it could possibly be done they were kept out.
Early manifestations of spiritual religion, accordingly, were viewed with
alarm and abhorrence by bishop and king alike, stigmatized as dissension by
the one and sedition by the other, and repressed as treason by both. It is only
during the present century, with the spread of knowledge among the masses,
that the great body of the English people has learned that there is not ne-
cessarily any more than a nominal kinship between the terms ' ' bishop ' ' and
11 religion "; and that the consequent decadence of the Anglican Church has

146

Early American Animosity to England 147

resulted. The crimes of the founder of that Church, connived at and par-
ticipated in by Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, 3 have scarcely a parallel
in any history but that of the Turk ; and to call Henry a reformer of religion
is analogous to saying that the fear of the devil is the beginning of god-
liness. The vain Elizabeth, likewise, committed so many heinous offences
in the name of religion, that their aggregate evil would far outweigh the
good of her reputed contribution to its reformation. 8 Therefore, when the
Scottish nation of God-worshippers became associated with the English na-
tion of king- worshippers, under James Stuart's rule, it is not surprising
that the English " spiritual lords " should find nothing but error and trea-
son in the teachings of the Scottish system of religion, a system which did
not recognize the king as the supreme head and fountain of the Church.

Under such an institution, then, as Henry founded, — not truly a spiritual
church, but an offshoot of despotism, — the persecutions of the Presbyterians
in Scotland followed the succession of James Stuart to the throne of Eliza-
beth as a matter of course. Hence, it was to be expected that in Scotland
should be fought and won the first battles that established the principle for
which the Scottish martyrs died — that in matters of conscience the king was
not supreme, 4 and that the State and Church were distinct and separate in-
stitutions, and not to be joined together as one. 6

In England and in English history it is customary to speak of Henry
VIII.'s Roman Catholic daughter as " Bloody Mary " because she burned
some scores of Protestants and one or two Episcopalian bishops. 8 Compared
with many of the successors of those bishops, however, and with some of her
own successors, Queen Mary was as red to black. Where she killed scores,
they destroyed thousands; while she was a wronged, superstitious, sickly, and
unbalanced woman, — a daughter of Spain and of Henry Tudor, — brooding
over and avenging the barbarities inflicted upon herself, her mother, and
her mother's Church, — they were set up as teachers, exemplars, and rivals
of Christ and the prophets. 7 Her crimes were those of retaliation, ignorance,
and superstition ; theirs were deep-planned, self-seeking, and malicious. The
English Church Establishment, for its years, has fully as much to answer
for that is evil as any like organization by which the name of religion has
ever been disgraced. It is not surprising, therefore, that in all the history of
the inception and progress of those movements which have given to Eng-
land her boasted boon of British liberty and to the world at large the benef-
icent results arising from the victories of the British conscience, we find
their first chief opposer and vilifier in the Established Church. 8

However, the murdering missionaries of this Establishment, turned loose
in Scotland by the Stuarts in the seventeenth century, did not all pursue
their bloody work of destruction unmolested. One of the chief agents of
the persecution, Archbishop Sharp, met his death at the point of the
sword, and died even as Cardinal Beaton had died in Scotland more than a
century before, with no time for repentance, and no chance for an earthly

148 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

benediction. Neither can their course be regarded as productive of results
ultimately disastrous to the cause of humanity, however great the sufferings
of their immediate victims; but rather, on the contrary, it proved to be the
means of hastening the coming of some of mankind's greatest blessings. It
was the inciting cause of the great revolution that began in Scotland in 1638,
spread over England a few years later, and reached its culmination when the
head of the Anglican Church's earthly god was cut off. Afterwards, it drove
thousands of the Scottish Presbyterians into Ireland. Without the presence
of these refugees in Ulster in 1689 the complete success of the revolution of
that period would have been impossible.

Yet, notwithstanding the fact that the Scots saved Ireland to William, and
made it possible for him to succeed to the English crown, the measure of
their cup of persecution was not yet filled; and for more than half a century
afterwards the British Government, chiefly through the Episcopal Establish-
ment, continued to run up a debt of hatred with these Scottish emigrants —
a debt that accumulated rapidly during the first years of the eighteenth cen-
tury, and the evidences of which were handed down from father to son and
added to in each succeeding generation. After 1689, it received its first
fresh increments in Ireland by the passage of certain Parliamentary acts,
tending to the restriction and resulting in the destruction of the woollen
industry; they being the final ones in a series of discriminating enactments
which began at the Restoration in favor of the English manufacturers
as against those of Ireland. 8

This was followed in 1704 by the passage of the bill containing the Eng-
lish Test Act. This act practically made outlaws of the Presbyterians in
Ireland, and was one of the chief inciting causes of the emigration to
America which increased with such rapidity during the first twenty years
after its enactment. 10

The next infliction to which the Ulster Scots were subjected was that of
rack-renting landlordism, by which thousands of families were driven out of
the country after 17 18. Rents were increased to two or three times their
former amounts; and in addition to this extortion the Dissenters were still
obliged to pay the blood-money exacted by the Established Church in the
form of tithes. 11

These galling and unjust discriminations continued with more or less
modified severity during the whole period between the passage of the Test
Act and the time of the final throwing off of the British yoke by those whom
its operation had driven to America.

It is said by most American historians that the War of Independence was
not a suddenly conceived movement; that it resulted from repeated acts of
injustice on the part of Great Britain toward the American colonies subse-
quent to and resulting from the French and Indian wars of 1755 anc * I 1^3'y
that the arbitrary action of the king's representatives in America began to be
resented by some of the citizens fifteen years before the battle of Lexington;

Early American Animosity to England 149

that in Massachusetts the necessity for some measure of relief from
ecclesiastical and governmental tyranny became apparent as early as 1761;
and that the political agitation of the next decade and a half was what stirred
the people up to a sufficiently adequate realization of the meaning of the
oppressive measures inflicted upon New England by Great Britain, and
made them ready to accept the issue when it was finally drawn, and to abide
by its consequences when they became apparent. All this is very true, so
far as it goes. It is also true that the concentration of the disciplinary
measures upon the devoted patriots of Boston, and their being the first to
suffer from those measures and the results following upon their attempted
enforcement, may to a great extent account for the eagerness and intensity
with which those people precipitated and entered upon the conflict. But
these are only portions of the truth, and he who would read American his-
tory aright must first take into account the aggregate value of the contribu-
tions to America in men and measures of the Holland and Palatinate Dutch,
the Huguenot French, and the Lowland and Ulster Scotch, decide just how
much greater, if any, is America's eighteenth-century debt to England and
the English than her obligation to non-English men and ideas of other coun-
tries, and learn the whole truth — that to no one man or set of men, and to
no one exclusive creed, community, race, nationality, or sectional division,
is due the credit for those institutions and that liberty which came to be
called American after the events of 1776.

He is, indeed, a superficial student of American history and of human
nature, who can see the workings of no other influences at that time than
those which immediately led up to the conflict at Lexington. 12

In New England, to be sure, there was no long-seated bitterness against
the British Government. England was truly the mother country of that
province. Their grievances were recent ; their wounds fresh. Great Britain
in its restrictive measures against Boston Port touched their pockets as well
as their persons, and like true Englishmen they were bound to fight against
any encroachments upon their guaranteed rights of person or property.

But in a great body of the people outside of New England the causes
were deeper and of more ancient origin. Their enmity to England and the
English government dated far back from the beginning of history. It was
not unlike the feeling of the Roman Catholic Irish in America toward England
at the present day. The Scots were the hereditary foes of the English kings.
Their battles with the English had made of the Scottish Lowlands one vast
armed camp and battle-field during the larger part of a period of five centuries
after the year 1000. 18 Their forbears were " Scots who had wi' Wallace bled."
They were children of the men who had fought the English at Stirling Bridge,
at Bannockburn, and " on Flodden's dark field." Their fathers also had
perished in countless numbers before the malignant fury of the Anglican
Establishment. For worshipping God as their consciences dictated they
had been hunted like wild beasts by the merciless dragoons of the bishops;

150 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

pursued from moor to glen by armed bands of the king's soldiers, their chil-
dren shot down like dogs by the ferocious ruffians employed by the English
Church, or doomed to a fate worse than death by savage Highlanders, sure
of a promised immunity, whom that Church had turned loose upon their
defenceless homes.

The Scotch were not of a cowardly race, nor were they weak and spirit-
less louts, subject to their masters for life or death, like dumb, driven cattle.
They cannot be judged by modern standards, but must be compared with
people of other races who were their contemporaries. It is true they en-
dured unjust persecutions and grievous oppressions for long periods without
open complaint or effective resistance. But they rebelled against their
tyrants and oppressors earlier, and more often, and more efficaciously than
did the people of any other nation. They anticipated the English by a full
century in their revolutions, and their claim for the rights of the individual.
They were more than two centuries ahead of the French in fighting and
dying for the principles of the French Revolution. They were farther ad-
vanced three centuries ago than the Germans are to-day in their conceptions
and ideals of individual liberty. Buckle well says, in speaking of his own
English race, "If we compare our history with that of our northern neigh-
bors, we must pronounce ourselves a meek and submissive people." There
have been more rebellions in Scotland than in any other country, excepting
some of the Central and South American republics. And the rebellions
have been very sanguinary, as well as very numerous. The Scotch have
made war upon most of their kings, and put to death many. To mention
their treatment of a single dynasty, they murdered James I. and James III.
They rebelled against James II. and James VII. They laid hold of James
V. and placed him in confinement. Mary they immured in a castle, and
afterwards deposed. Her successor, James VI., they imprisoned; they led
him captive about the country, and on one occasion attempted his life.
Towards Charles I. they showed the greatest animosity, and they were the
first to restrain his mad career. Three years before the English ventured to
rise against that despotic prince, the Scotch boldly took up arms and made
war on him. The service which they then rendered to the cause of liberty
it would be hard to overrate. They often lacked patriotic leaders at home,
and their progress was long retarded by internecine and clan strife. They
were hard-headed, fighting ploughmen. Though with a deep religious char-
acter, and conscientiousness to an extreme that often has seemed ridiculous
to outsiders, their material accomplishments as adventurers, pioneers, and
traders, in statesmanship, in science, in metaphysics, in literature, in com-
merce, in finance, in invention, and in war, show them to be the peers of the
people of any other race the world has ever known.

Hence, they entered upon the American Revolutionary contest with a
deep-seated hatred of England inherited from the past, with a passionate
desire for vengeance, and with that never-ceasing persistence which is their

Early American Animosity to England 151

chief characteristic as a race " ; and in tracing their history down to this point
it would seem as if we could see the working of some inscrutable principle
of Divine compensation ; for without the later presence in America of these
descendants of the martyred Scottish Covenanters — doubly embittered by
the remembrance of the outrageous wrongs done their fathers and the ex-
perience of similar wrongs inflicted upon themselves and their families — the
Revolution of 1776 would not have been undertaken, and could not have
been accomplished. 16

NOTES TO CHAPTER XI.

I See Appendix H (Henry VIII. 's Reformation and Church).

8 Cranmer first suggested to Henry a means by which he might free himself from Catherine
without waiting for a papal divorce ; namely, that if he could obtain opinions from the learned
of the universities of Europe to the effect that his marriage was illegal because of Catherine's
having been his deceased brother's wife, then no divorce would be necessary. Just how these
opinions were obtained is told in letters of Richard Croke and others in Nos. xcix., cxxvi.,
cxxviii., cxlvi., clvii., and cciii., of Pocock's Records of the Reformation ; and also by a
contemporary of Cranmer (Cavendish, Life of Wolsey, Singer's edition, p. 206) in these
words : " There was inestimable sums of money given to the famous clerks to choke them, and
in especial to those who had a governance and custody of their universities' seals." Later,
Cranmer pronounced the divorce between Catherine and Henry, when it became apparent
that the Pope would not consent to it ; and he likewise arbitrarily divorced Anne and Henry,
and declared the children of both consorts of that king to be bastards. When finally brought
to punishment by Mary for the many injuries done to her mother, herself, and her church,
and for his share in the execution of the Catholics, he basely recanted his Protestantism in the
vain hope of saving his life.

" The courage that Cranmer had shown since the accession of Mary gave way the
moment his final doom was announced. The moral cowardice with the lust and despotism
of Henry displayed itself again in six successive recantations by which he hoped to purchase
pardon." — Green, History of the English People, book vi. , ch. ii.

3 * ' Upon the approach of the Armada many of the Catholics had been placed in prison as
a precautionary measure. Even this hardship did not turn them against the government.
Those confined in Ely for their religion signed a declaration of their ' 4 readiness to fight till
death, in the cause of the queen, against all her enemies, were they kings, or priests, or
popes, or any other potentate whatsoever." Before 1581, three Catholics had been executed
for their religion, and after the landing of Campian and Parsons, a few Jesuits were added to
the number. Now, directly after the destruction of the Armada, which proved how little
danger there was from Rome, a selection of victims was made from the Catholics in prison,
as if to do honor to the victory.

II Six priests were taken, whose only alleged crime was the exercise of their priestly office ;
four laymen who had been reconciled to Mother Church, and four others who had aided or
harbored priests. They were all tried, convicted, and sentenced to immediate execution.
Within three months, fifteen more of their companions were dealt with in the same manner,
six new gallows being erected for their execution. It was not so much as whispered that
they had been guilty of any act of disloyalty. Upon their trials nothing was charged against
them except the practice of their religion. This was called treason, and they met the bar-
barous death of traitors, being cut down from the gallows while alive, and disembowelled
when in the full possession of their senses. But this was only the beginning of the bloody
work. In the fourteen years which elapsed between the attempted invasion by Spain and the
death of Elizabeth, sixty-one Catholic clergymen (few of whom were Jesuits), forty-seven

152 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

laymen, and two gentlewomen suffered capital punishment for some one or other of the
spiritual felonies and treasons which had been lately created, most of the victims being drawn
and quartered.

" Many writers, when alluding to this butchery, make the statement that it was not a relig-
ious persecution ; that these victims were punished for treason and not for their religion. But
when a statute, in defiance of all principles of law, makes the mere practice of a religious rite
punishable as an act of treason, it is the paltriest verbal quibble to say that it is not a re-
ligious persecution. Under such a definition, all of Alva's atrocities in the Netherlands
could be justified, and the Inquisition would take the modest place of a legitimate engine of
the State." — Douglas Campbell, The Puritan in Holland, England, and America, vol. ii.,
pp. 110-112 (by permission of Messrs. Harper & Brothers).

In the elections for the New Parliament [1661] the zeal for church and king swept
all hope of moderation and compromise before it. . . . The new members were yet
better Churchmen than loyalists. ... At the opening of their session they ordered every
member to receive the communion, and the League and Covenant to be solemnly burned by
the common hangman in Westminster Hall. The bishops were restored to their seats in the
House of Lords. The conference at the Savoy between the Episcopalians and Presbyterians

broke up in anger The strongholds of this party were the corporations of the

boroughs ; and an attempt was made to drive them from these by the Test and Corporation
Act, which required a reception of the communion according to the rites of the Anglican
Church, a renunciation of the League and Covenant, and a declaration that it was unlawful
on any grounds to take up arms against the King, before admission to municipal offices. A
more deadly blow was dealt at the Puritans in the renewal of the Uniformity Act. Not only
was the use of the Prayer-book and the Prayer-book only, enforced in all public worship, but
an unfeigned consent and assent was demanded from every minister of the Church to all
which was contained in it ; while for the first time since the Reformation, all orders save
those conferred by the hands of bishops were legally dissolved. ... It was the close of
an effort which had been going on ever since Elizabeth's accession to bring the English com-
munion into closer relations with the reformed communions of the Continent, and into greater
harmony with the religious instincts of the nation at large. The Church of England stood
from that moment isolated and alone among all the churches of the Christian world. The
Reformation had separated it irretrievably from those which still clung to obedience of the
Papacy. By its rejection of all but Episcopal orders, the Act of Uniformity severed it as
irretrievably from the general body of Protestant churches, whether Lutheran or Reformed.
And while thus cut off from all healthy religious communication with the world without, it
sank into immorality within. With the expulsion of the Puritan clergy, all change, all
efforts after reform, all national development, suddenly stopped. From that time to this, the
Episcopal Church has been unable to meet the varying spiritual needs of its adherents by any
modification of its government or Its worship. It stands alone among all the religious bodies
of Western Christendom in its failure through two hundred years to devise a single new
service of prayer or of praise. — Green's Short History, pp. 606, 607.

4 See Appendix I (Scotland vs. The Divine Right of Kings).

5 This is said to be the one original principle contributed by America to the science of
government, but whether that be true or not, it came wholly and solely from that part of the
American people whose forefathers had died for it in Scotland. The doctrine of the respon-
sibility of kings to their subjects, as widely disseminated through America by Thomas Paine
in his Common Sense in 1774, an d by Jefferson afterwards made a chief corner-stone of the
Declaration, is likewise of Scottish rather than English origin. See Appendix F. (Separa-
tion of Church and State.)

6 The executions of Protestants which took place in "Bloody Mary's" reign were, in
1555, seventy-five ; in 1556, eighty-three ; in 1557, seventy-seven ; in 1558, fifty-one ; a total
of 286.

Early American Animosity to England 153

7 The religious changes had thrown an almost sacred character over the " majesty" of
the King. Henry was the Head of the Church. From the primate to the meanest deacon
every minister of it derived from him his sole right to exercise spiritual powers. The voice
of its preachers was the echo of his will. He alone could define orthodoxy or declare heresy.
The forms of its worship and beliefs were changed and rechanged at the royal caprice. Half
of its wealth went to swell the royal treasury, and the other half lay at the King's mercy. It
was this unprecedented concentration of all power in the hands of a single man that over-
awed the imagination of Henry's subjects. He was regarded as something high above the
laws which govern common men. The voices of statesmen and priests extolled his wisdom
and authority as more than human. The Parliament itself rose and bowed to the vacant
throne when his name was mentioned. An absolute devotion to his person replaced the old
loyalty to the law. When the Primate of the English Church described the chief merit of
Cromwell, it was by asserting that he loved the King " no less than he loved God." — John
Richard Green, History of the English People, book vi., ch. i.

8 This was particularly true at the time of the Revolutions of 1638, 1688, and 1775.

9 See Appendix J (Repression of Trade in Ireland).

10 No Presbyterian could henceforth hold any office in the army or navy, in the customs,
excise, or post office, nor in any of the courts of law, in Dublin or the provinces. They were
forbidden to be married by their own ministers ; they were prosecuted in the ecclesiastical
courts for immorality because they had so married. The bishops introduced clauses into their
leases forbidding the erection of meeting-houses on any part of their estates and induced
many landlords to follow their example. To crown all, the Schism Act was passed in 17 14,
which would have swept the Presbyterian Church out of existence, but Queen Anne died be-
fore it came into operation, but not before the furious zeal of Swift had nailed up the doors
and windows of the Presbyterian meeting-house at Summer Hill, in the neighborhood of
Laracor. Similar scenes occurred at three other places. The immediate effect of these
proceedings was to estrange the Presbyterian people ; and, soon after, when they saw that all
careers were closed against them, wearied out with long exactions, they began to leave the
country by thousands. The destruction of the woollen trade sent 20,000 of them away. The
rapacity and greed of landlords, and especially the Marquis of Donegal, the grandson of Sir
Arthur Chichester, the founder of the Ulster plantation, caused the stream of emigration to
America to flow on for nearly forty years without intermission. — Thomas Croskery, Irish
Presbyierianism, Dublin, 1S84, pp. 13, 14.

See Appendix K (The Test Act).

11 " It would be difficult indeed to conceive a national condition less favourable than that
of Ireland [in 171 7] to a man of energy and ambition. . . . If he were a Presbyterian he was
subject to the disabilities of the Test Act. . . . The result was that a steady tide of emi-
gration set in, carrying away all those classes who were most essential to the development of
the nation. The manufacturers and the large class of energetic labourers who lived upon
manufacturing industry were scattered far and wide. Some of them passed to England and
Scotland. Great numbers found a home in Virginia and Pennsylvania, and they were the
founders of the linen manufacture in New England {Burke's Settlements in America, ii., 174,
175, 216).

4 ' The Protestant emigration which began with the destruction of the woollen manufacture,
continued during many years with unabated and even accelerating rapidity. At the time of
the Revolution, when great portions of the country lay waste, and when the whole framework
of society was shattered, much Irish land had been let on lease at very low rents to Eng-
lish, and especially to Scotch, Protestants. About I7i7and 1718 these leases began to fall in.
Rents were usually doubled, and often trebled. The smaller farms were generally put up to
competition, and the Catholics, who were accustomed to live in the most squalid misery, and
to forego all the comforts of life, very naturally outbid the Protestants. This fact, added to
the total destruction of the main industries on which the Protestant population subsisted, to

154 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

the disabilities to which the Protestant nonconformists were subject on account of their
religion, and to the growing tendency to throw land into pasture, produced a great social
revolution, the effects of which have never been repaired." — Lecky, Irelandin the Eighteenth
Century, vol. i., pp. 245, 246.

Mr. Robert Slade, Secretary to the Irish Society of London in 1802, who had been sent
to Londonderry to inspect the property of that Society, in the report of his journey writes as
follows : " The road from Down Hill to Coleraine goes through the best part of the Cloth-
workers' proportion, and was held by the Right Hon. Richard Jackson [he was nominated
for Parliament by the town of Coleraine in 1712], who was the Society's general agent. It is
commonly reported in the country, that, having been obliged to raise the rents of his tenants
very considerably, in consequence of the large fine he paid, it produced an almost total emi-
gration of them to America, and that they formed a principal part of that undisciplined body
which brought about the surrender of the British army at Saratoga." This undoubtedly
refers to the emigration of those colonists who, in 1718-19, founded the town of Londonderry,
New Hampshire, from which place were recruited Stark's Rangers, who fought the battle of
Bennington, and also many of those who took part in the battles which led to Burgoyne's
surrender. Five ship-loads, comprising about one hundred and twenty families, sailed from
Ulster in the summer of 1718 , reaching Boston on August 4th. Here they were not long per-
mitted to remain by the Puritan Government, owing to the fact that they had come from
Ireland, but were granted a portion of the township in which they afterwards built the town
of Londonderry, the site then being far out on the frontier. These emigrants were accom-
panied by four ministers, among whom was the Reverend James Macgregor. He had been
ordained at Aghadoey in 1701, and served as their first minister in America. Their motives
in emigrating may be gathered from a manuscript sermon of Mr. Macgregor's, addressed to
them on the eve of their embarkation. These reasons he states as follows : " 1. To avoid
oppression and cruel bondage. 2. To shun persecution and designed ruin. 3. To withdraw
from the communion of idolators. 4. To have an opportunity of worshipping God according
to the dictates of conscience and the rules of His inspired Word."

See also Appendix L (Tithes in Ulster).

12 Mr. Adolphus, in his book on the Reign of George III., uses the following language :
' ' The first effort toward a union of interest was made by the Presbyterians, who were eager
in carrying into execution their favorite project of forming a synod. Their churches had
hitherto remained unconnected with each other, and their union in synod had been considered
so dangerous to the community that in 1725 it was prevented by the express interference of
the lords-justices. Availing themselves, with great address, of the rising discontents, the
convention of ministers and elders at Philadelphia enclosed in a circular-letter to all the
Presbyterian congregations in Pennsylvania the proposed articles of union. ... In con-
sequence of this letter, a union of all the congregations took place in Pennsylvania and the
Lower Counties. A similar confederacy was established in all the Southern provinces, in
pursuance of similar letters written by their respective conventions. These measures ended
in the establishment of an annual synod at Philadelphia, where all general affairs, political as
well as religious, were debated and decided. From this synod orders and decrees were issued
throughout America, and to them a ready and implicit obedience was paid.

" The discontented in New England recommended a union of the Congregational and
Presbyterian interests throughout the colonies. A negotiation took place, which ended in
the appointment of a permanent committee of correspondence, and powers to communicate
and consult on all occasions with a similar committee established by the Congregational
churches in New England. . .

4 ' By this union a party was prepared to display their power by resistance, and the Stamp
law presented itself as a favorable object of hostility."

Equally explicit testimony is borne in a published address of Mr. William B. Reed of
Philadelphia, himself an Episcopalian : " The part taken by the Presbyterians in the contest

Early American Animosity to England 155

with the mother-country was indeed, at the time, often made a ground of reproach, and the
connection between their efforts for the security of their religious liberty and opposition to
the oppressive measures of Parliament, was then distinctly seen." Mr. Galloway, a prominent
advocate of the government, in 1774, ascribed the revolt and revolution mainly to the action
of the Presbyterian clergy and laity as early as 1764. Another writer of the same period says :
' ' You will have discovered that I am no friend to the Presbyterians, and that I fix all the
blame of these extraordinary proceedings upon them." — J. G. Craighead, Scotch and Irish
Seeds in American Soil, pp. 322-324.

13 The two nations in the long course of their history had met each other in three hun-
dred and fourteen pitched battles, and had sacrificed more than a million of men as brave as
ever wielded claymore, sword, or battle-axe. — Halsey, Scotland's Influence on Civilization,
p. 14.

14 " Call this war, my dearest friend, by whatsoever name you may, only call it not an
American Rebellion, it is nothing more nor less than an Irish-Scotch Presbyterian Rebellion."
— Extract from a letter of Captain Johann Heinrichs of the Hessian Jager Corps, written
from Philadelphia, January 18, 1778 ; see Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography,
vol. xxii., p. 137.

General Wayne had a constitutional attachment to the decision of the sword, and this
cast of character had acquired strength from indulgence, as well as from the native temper of the
troops he commanded. They were known by the designation of the Line of Pennsylvania ;
whereas they might have been with more propriety called the Line of Ireland. Bold and
daring, they were impatient and refractory ; and would always prefer an appeal to the bayonet
to a toilsome march. Restless under the want of food and whiskey, adverse to absence from
their baggage, and attached to the pleasures of the table, Wayne and his brigade were more
encumbered with wagons than any equal portion of the army. The General and his soldiers
were singularly fitted for close and stubborn action, hand to hand, in the centre of the army ;
but very little adapted to the prompt and toilsome service to which Lafayette was and must
be exposed, so long as the British general continued to press him. Cornwallis therefore did not
miscalculate when he presumed that the junction of Wayne would increase rather than
diminish his chance of bringing his antagonist [Lafayette] to action. — Gen. Henry Lee,
Memoirs of the War in the Southern Department, ch. xxxi., p. 203, vol. ii., first edition ; p.
292, second edition.

Dr. Charles Janeway Stille, in his work on Major-General Anthony Wayne and the
Pennsylvania Line in the Continental Army, in commenting on this passage speaks as follows :
"A curious error has been fallen into by many historians, including Mr. Bancroft, in speaking
of the Pennsylvania Line, that ' it was composed in a large degree of new-comers from Ireland.'
. . . These writers are evidently thinking of the characteristic qualities of the Celtic Irish-
man in war ; but there were not, it is said on good authority [*'. e., Dr. William H. Egle and
John Blair Linn, editors of the Pennsylvania Archives'], more than three hundred persons of
Irish birth (Roman Catholic and Celtic) in the Pennsylvania Line. Two-thirds of the force
were Scotch-Irish, a race with whose fighting qualities we are all familiar, but which are quite
opposite to those which characterize the true Irish Celt. Most of them were descendants of the
Scotch-Irish emigrants of 1717-1730, and very few of them were ' new-comers.' " In making
the statement last quoted, Dr. Stille evidently overlooked the large emigration of Scotch-Irish
from Belfast to Pennsylvania which took place in 1772-73. These emigrants left Ulster
with a bitter animosity to England, brought on in a large measure by the same causes which
afterwards led to the Protestant Irish Rebellion of 1798.

15 See Appendix M (The Scotch-Irish and the Revolution).

THE SCOT IN NORTH BRITAIN

157

CHAPTER XII
WHO ARE THE SCOTCH-IRISH ?

THE North of Ireland is divided into the counties of Antrim, Down, Ar-
magh, Londonderry (formerly Coleraine), Tyrone, Monaghan, Donegal,
Fermanagh, and Cavan. These nine counties comprise the ancient province
of Ulster, which includes a fourth part of the island, and contains 8567
square miles of territory, an area equal to nearly one-fifth that of Pennsyl-
vania, or of about the same extent as the portion of that State lying south
and east of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

At the present time, one-third of the land in Ulster is under cultivation ;
somewhat more than a third is in pasturage ; and a little less than one-fourth
is classed as waste land — mountains and bogs : in all 5,321,580 acres. Such
of this land as was not laid off into towns and roads was held, in 1881, by
22,000 owners — 3,766,816 acres, or 72 per cent., belonging to 477 individuals,
of whom 95 owned 2,088,170 acres, or 40 per cent, of the whole.

In 1891, the population of the province was 1,619,814, of whom 45.98 per
cent, are classified in the Census Report of Great Britain as Roman Catho-
lics ; 22.39 P er cent, as Episcopalians ; and 26.32 per cent, as Presbyterians.
These proportions bear a close affinity to those of the various racial elements
of which the population is composed. In this respect, the Roman Catholic
Church represents approximately the ancient Irish element; the Episcopalian
Church, the English or Anglo-Irish ; and the Presbyterian, the Scotch or
Scotch-Irish. In those districts where one element predominates over an-
other, we find a majority of the people identified, to a greater or less extent,
with the corresponding religious sect. This has been the case for nearly
three hundred years, or ever since the foreign elements were first introduced,
and is so generally recognized that it is perhaps not too much to say that in
no other mixed population in the world has church affiliation been so char-
acteristic of race and nationality as in the North of Ireland since the be-
ginning of the seventeenth century. 1 This circumstance being kept in
mind, does much to simplify the work of tracing the various elements of the
population to their original sources.

The Presbyterian Church of Ireland now numbers over 550 congrega-
tions, and there are, besides, several United Presbyterian and Reformed Pres-
byterian congregations. The Presbyterians number nearly half a million —
about one-tenth of the population of the country. The Episcopalian Church
claims over 600,000 adherents. The Presbyterian Church doubtless includes
more than four-fifths of the Scots of Ulster. The manner in which the mem-
bership of that church is distributed affords ample proof of this. Ulster
claims fifteen-sixteenths of them, and they are found in those identical

159

160 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

localities where we know that the Scots settled. In Antrim they constitute
38 per cent, of a total population of 428,000 ; in Down, 38 per cent, of a
total population of 267,000 ; while in Londonderry they form 30 per cent.,
in Tyrone, 19, and in Armagh 15 per cent, of the population. But it is when
we come to examine the details of the census of 1881 that the clearest traces
of the Scottish emigration are to be found. Down has only 38 per cent, of
Presbyterians, but that is because the south of the county was never colon-
ized, and is still Roman Catholic. The old Scottish colony in Upper Clan-
naboye and the Great Ards is still nearly as Presbyterian as in 1630. James
Hamilton, immediately after settling there in 1606, raised churches and
placed " learned and pious ministers from Scotland " in the six parishes of
his, estate — Bangor, Killinchy, Holywood, Ballyhalbert, Dundonald, and
Killyleagh. These parishes have gone on flourishing, so that when the census
collector did his rounds through Hamilton's old estate in 1881, he found
that it contained 29,678 inhabitants ; and that although it was situated in
what has been called the most Catholic country in Europe, only 3444 Roman
Catholics were there to be found, as against 17,205 Presbyterians. For
nearly three centuries these " Westlan' Whigs " have stood true to their Scot-
tish Church. The record of Hugh Montgomery's settlement is quite as
curious. His old headquarters, Newtown-Ards, has grown into a flourish-
ing little manufacturing town ; and Donaghadee is a big village well known
as a ferry-port for Scotland. Still they remain " true blue " Presbyterian.
Montgomery's estate is pretty well covered by the four parishes of Newtown-
Ards, Grey Abbey, Comber, and Donaghadee. These have a united population
of 26,559 ; the Presbyterians number 16,714, and the Roman Catholics only
1370 — the balance being mainly Episcopalians and Methodists. In Armagh
and in Fermanagh, on the other hand, the Episcopalians are more numerous
than the Presbyterians. In the former there are 32 per cent, belonging to
the Church of Ireland, and only 15 to the Presbyterian Church ; while in
the latter there are only 2 per cent, of Presbyterians, as against 36 of Epis-
copalians. The balance of nationalities and of religions remains to all
appearance what the colonization of the seventeenth century made it, and
that notwithstanding the great emigration from Ulster during the eighteenth
century. The only strange change is, that Belfast, which was at its founda-
tion an English town, should so soon have become in the main Scottish, and
should remain such unto this day.

There is another point that may be mentioned in this connection — one,
indeed, on which the foregoing conditions may be said quite largely to
depend. That is, the fact that intermarriages between the natives and the
Scotch settlers of the seventeenth century, and their descendants in Ulster,
have been so rare and uncommon as to be practically anomalous, and in
consequence can hardly be said to enter into the general question of race
origin ; or at most, only in an incidental way. 2

It is true, this cannot be said of the English colonists of Elizabeth's time,

Who Are the Scotch-Irish ? 161

nor of Cromwell's soldiers, who settled in the southern provinces of Ireland
after 1650. Concerning these two latter classes of settlers, as the most
recent authoritative writer 8 on Ireland has said: " No feature of Irish
history is more conspicuous than the rapidity with which intermarriages had
altered the character of successive generations of English colonists. . . .
The conquest of Ireland by the Puritan soldiers of Cromwell was hardly
more signal than the conquest of these soldiers by the invincible Catholicism
of the Irish women." But in the case of the Scotch colonists planted by
James in Ulster, and of those who followed them, we find none of the results
attributed by Lecky to the intermarriages of the English soldiers with the
Irish. And while it is true that the influence of religion in keeping up
the lines of race distinction has been at times overestimated, yet in the case
of the Ulster Scots, it cannot be maintained that propinquity and the asso-
ciations of daily life made it " absolutely certain that attachments would be
formed, that connections would spring up, that passion, caprice, and daily
association would . . . prove too strong for religious or social repug-
nance " to an extent sufficient to change or perceptibly influence the char-
acter of their descendants. These Scottish people in Ireland to-day exhibit
all the distinctive racial characteristics of their Scottish forefathers ; and
have none of the peculiar qualities attributed by the two leading writers on
the subject to the offspring of mixed marriages between Irish Protestants
and Roman Catholics. Thus we are led to conclude that inasmuch as the
Ulster Scots have not been overcome by the invincible Roman Catholi-
cism of the Irish women, and since they remain Presbyterians, as their early-
Scotch ancestors were before them, they are likewise of unmixed Scottish
blood.

Concerning the correctness of this conclusion, we have the recent testi-
mony of two distinguished Americans, one of them a native and the other
for many years a resident of Ulster. And, considering the well-known
prominence of these two gentlemen as clergymen, it cannot be supposed
that their denominational proclivities would lead them to give any other
than an accurate statement of facts so readily capable of verification. One
of these witnesses, the late Dr. John Hall of New York, said : " I have
sometimes noticed a little confusion of mind in relation to the phrase,
* Scotch-Irish,' as if it meant that Scotch people had come over and in-
termarried with the native Irish, and that thus a combination of two races,
two places, two nationalities had taken place. That is by no means the
state of the case. On the contrary, with kindly good feeling in various
directions, the Scotch people kept to the Scotch people, and they are called
Scotch-Irish from purely local, geographical reasons, and not from any
union of the kind that I have alluded to. I have n't the least doubt that
their being in Ireland and in close contact with the native people of that
land, and their circumstances there, had some influence in the developing of
the character, in the broadening of the sympathies, in the extending of the

1 62 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

range of thought and action of the Scotch-Irish people ; but they are Scotch
through and through, they are Scottish out and out, and they are Irish be-
cause, in the providence of God, they were sent for some generations to the
land that I am permitted to speak of as the land of my birth."

The second authority is the Rev. John S. Macintosh of Philadelphia, who,
by reason of his many years of close observation spent amongst the people
of Ulster, and his extended research into their earlier history, is perhaps
better qualified to speak conclusively on the subject than any other living
person. His testimony is that : " Our American term — the Scotch-Irish —
is not known even in Ulster, save among the very few who have learned the
ways of our common speech. The term known in Britain is the Ulsterman ;
and in Ireland, it is the ' sturdy Northern,' or at times the ' black Northern.'
What changed the Lowlander, and what gave us the Ulsterman ? In this
study I have drawn very largely upon the labors of two friends of former
years — Dr. William D. Killen of the Assembly's College, one of the most
learned and accurate of historians, and the Rev. George Hill, once Librarian
of Queen's College, Belfast, Ireland, than whom never was there more
ardent student of old annals and reliable of antiquarians. But more largely
still have I drawn on my own personal watch and study of this Ulster folk
in their homes, their markets, and their churches. From Derry to Down I
have lived with them. Every town, village, and hamlet from the Causeway
to Carlingford is familiar to me. Knowing the Lowlander and the Scotch-
Irish of this land, I have studied the Ulsterman and his story of rights and
wrongs, and that eagerly, for years. I speak that which I have seen, and
testify what I have heard from their lips, read from old family books, church
records, and many a tombstone in kirk-yards. . . .

" This fact, that the Ulster colonist was a stranger, and the favorite, for
the time, of England and her government, wrought in a twofold way ; in
the Ulsterman and against him. . . .

" Again, the fact that he was the royal colonist wrought in him the pride,
the contempt, the hauteur and swaggering daring of a victorious race planted
among despised savages. What at a later day was seen here may be seen
down all the stretch of Ulster history. I have myself seen it, and heard
time and again he would ' lord it ower the mere Eerish.' And the rulers of
that hour both cultivated that feeling and enforced it. The Celt of that day
had nothing to make him winsome or worthy of imitation. Romance and
sentiment may as well be dropped. We have the hard facts about the clans-
men of the O'Neill. The glory and the honor were with England. The
times were big with the fresh British life. The men and women of that age
and the age just closed are mighty by their witching force of greatness in
good and evil. It is the era of Britain's bursting life and greatening soul.
Song and statesmanship, the chiefs of the drama, and the captains of daring
are telling mightily on our forefathers in England and in Ulster. The new
' Plantation ' itself is full of enchantment when contrasted with the old state

Who Are the Scotch-Irish ? 163

of internecine war. . . . But those proud and haughty strangers, with high
heads and their new ways, were hated as aliens and harried from the begin-
ning by ' the wild Irish.'

" The scorn of the Scot was met by the curse of the Celt. The native
chiefs and their clansmen did not distinguish between the government and
the colonists ; nor had they the right ; nor did the colonists give them any
cause. The hate and the harrying of the Irish were returned, and with com-
pound interest, by the proud Ulsterman. I neither approve nor apologize :
I simply state what I find. To him the * redshanks ' of the ' wild Earl ' of
Tyrone were exactly as the redskins of our forests to the men of New Eng-
land and the Susquehanna and the Ohio. The natives were always * thae
Eerish ! ' and the scorn is as sharp to-day on the tongue of a Belfast Orange-
man as two centuries ago. It has been said that the Ulster settlers mingled
and married with the Irish Celt. The Ulsterman did not mingle with the
Celt. I speak, remember, chiefly of the period running from 1605 to 1741.
There had been in Ireland before the ' Plantation ' some wild Islanders from
the west of Scotland, whose descendants I have found in the Antrim
* Glynnes ' ; they did marry and intermarry with the natives ; but King
James expressly forbade anymore of these island-men being taken to Ulster;
and he and his government took measures that the later settlers of the * Plan-
tation ' should be taken ' from the inward parts of Scotland,' and that they
should be so settled that they ' may not mix nor intermarry ' with * the
mere Irish.' The Ulster settlers mingled freely with the English Puritans
and with the refugee Huguenots ; but so far as my search of state papers,
old manuscripts, examination of old parish registers, and years of personal
talk with and study of Ulster folk disclose — the Scots did not mingle to any
appreciable extent with the natives. I have talked with three very old friends,
an educated lady, a shrewd farmer's wife, and a distinguished physician ; they
could each clearly recall their great-grandfathers ; these great-grandparerits
told them their fathers' tales ; and I have kept them carefully as valuable
personal memoirs. These stories agree exactly with all we can get in docu-
ments. With all its dark sides, as well as all light sides, the fact remains
that Ulsterman and Celt were aliens and foes.

" Hence came constant and bitter strife. ... In both Lowlander
and Ulsterman is the same strong racial pride, the same hauteur and self-
assertion, the same self-reliance, the same close mouth, and the same firm
Will — ' the stiff heart for the steek brae.' They are both of the very Scotch,
Scotch. To this very hour, in the remoter and more unchanged parts of
Antrim and Down, the country-folks will tell you : ' We 're no Eerish bot
Scoatch.' All their folk-lore, all their tales, their traditions, their songs, their
poetry, their heroes and heroines, and their home-speech, is of the oldest
Lowland types and times."

Again, we have some supplementary evidence to the same effect from a
recent Scottish author, John Harrison, who, in his account of the native

164 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

Irish-Scots, gives a brief and characteristic description of an Ulster grave-
yard. This author says :

Two miles south from Donaghadee, on the shore road into the Upper
Ards, that narrow peninsula between Strangford Lough and the Irish Sea,
there lies a little enclosure which must arrest the stranger's attention. It is
a graveyard, and is called Temple-patrick. It is surrounded by low stone
walls ; no church or temple is now within its confines ; no trees or flowers
give grateful shade, or lend colour and tender interest ; it is thickly covered
with green mounds, and with monumental slabs of gray slaty stone, — the
graves are packed close together. Read the simple ' headstones," and you
discover no trace of sentiment ; few fond and loving words ; no request for
the prayers, of the passer-by for the souls of those who sleep below ; nothing
more akin to sentiment than " Sacred to the memory of." Above, great
masses of gray clouds, as they go scudding past, throw down on the traveller,
as he rests and thinks, big drops of rain ; and before him is spread out,
north, south, and east, the sullen sea, whose moan fills all his sense of hear-
ing. It is not the spot which a man would love to picture to himself as his
last resting-place. Read the names on the stones, and you discover why
here in Ireland there is to be found nothing of tender grace to mark the
higher side, nothing of tinsel to show the lower, of Irish character. The
names are very Scottish — such as Andrew Byers, John Shaw, Thomas
MacMillan, Robert Angus ; it is a burying-place of the simple peasants of
County Down, who are still, in the end of the nineteenth century, as Scot-
tish as they were when they landed here nearly three centuries ago. . . .

It is difficult to bring home to men who do not know Ireland and its his-
tory, the fact that there is a deep, strongly marked difference between the
Ulstermen and the Irish, and that that difference is not accidental, not the
divergence arising out of different surroundings, not even that springing
from antagonistic religious training, but is the deeper, stronger-marked
cleavage of differing race. It is as distinct as that between any two varie-
ties of any other animal — say between mastiff and stag-hound. Of course,
intermarriage gradually shades off the difference of type ; but take the Scots
of the Ards of Down, who have probably scarcely intermarried with the
Irish during the three hundred years they have been in the island, and con-
trast them with the inhabitants of West Donegal, who have probably scarcely
mixed their blood with the English, and you see the race difference. It is
strange for any man who is accustomed to walk through the southern dis-
tricts of Scotland, and to meet the country people going about their daily
work in their everyday clothes and everyday manner, to cross into Ireland
and wander through the country roads of Down or Antrim. He is in a
country which is supposed to be passionately anxious to set up a separate
nationality, and yet he cannot feel as if he were away from his own kith and
kin. The men who are driving the carts are like the men at home ; the
women at the cottage doors are in build and carriage like the mothers of
the southern Highlands ; the signs of the little shops in the village bear
well-known names — Paterson, perhaps, or Johnstone, or Slo.an ; the boy
sitting on the " dyke " with nothing to do is whistling A man 's a man for
a' that." He goes into a village inn, and is served by a six-foot, loosely-
hung Scottish Borderer, worthy to have served " drams " to " the Shepherd
and Christopher North " ; and when he leaves the little inn he sees by the
sign that his host bears the name of "James Hay," and his wonder ceases.

Who Are the Scotch-Irish ? 165

The want of strangeness in the men and women is what strikes him as
so strange. Then he crosses the Bann, and gets into a different region.
He leaves behind him the pleasant green hills which shut in Belfast Lough,
the great sweep of rich plain which Lough Neagh may well ask to show
cause why it should not be annexed to its inland sea ; he gets within sight
of the South Derry hills, and the actors in the scene partly change. Some
are very familiar ; the smart maid at his inn is very like the housemaid at
home, and the principal grocer of the little village is the " very image " of
the elder who taught him at the Sunday School ; but he meets a donkey-
cart, and neither the donkey nor its driver seem somehow or other to be kin
to him ; and the "Father" passes him, and looks at him as at a stranger
who is visiting his town, — then the Scotsman knows that he is out of Scot-
land and into Ireland. It is not in Belfast that he feels the likeness to home
so much, for everybody is walking fast just as they are in Glasgow, so he
cannot notice them particularly, and, of course, the " loafers " at the public-
house doors, who are certainly not moving smartly, do not count for any-
thing in either town ; but it is in the country districts — at Newtown Ards, or
Antrim, where life is leisurely, that he recognizes that he is among his own
people ; while it is in a town which is in the border-land between Scot-
tish and Irish, say at Coleraine, on a Saturday market-day, that he has the
difference of the two types in face and figure brought strongly before him.
Some seem foreign to him, others remind him of his " ain countrie," and
make him feel that the district he is in, is in reality the land of the Scot.

A contributor to the Edinburgh Review for April, 1869, in writing on this
subject, says :

Another effect of the Plantation [of Ulster] was that it effectually
separated the two races, and kept them apart. It planted a new race in
the country, which never coalesced with the native population. There they
have been in continual contact for more than two centuries ; and they are
still as distinct as though an ocean rolled between them. We have seen
that all former schemes of plantation failed, because the new settlers became
rapidly assimilated to the character, manners, and faith of the native inhab-
itants ; even the descendants of Oliver's Puritan troopers being as effectually
absorbed in the space of forty years as to be undistinguishable from the
Celtic mass. The Ulster settlement put an end to the amalgamation of
races ; difference of creed, difference of habits, difference of tradition, the
sundering effects of the penal laws, kept them apart. The Presbyterian
settlers preserved their religious distinctness by coming in families, and the
intense hatred of Popery that has always marked the Scottish mind was
an effective hindrance to intermarriage. It is a curious fact, that the tra-
ditions of the Ulster Presbyterians still look back to Scotland as their home,
and disclaim all alliance with the Celtic part of Ireland. Indeed, the past
history of Ulster is but a portion of Scottish history inserted into that of
Ireland ; a stone in the Irish mosaic of an entirely different quality and
color from the pieces that surround it.

Hence it is that in Ulster of the present day there is little difficulty in
distinguishing the citizen of Scottish blood from the Episcopalian of English
and the Roman Catholic of Irish descent. In the towns and districts where
the Presbyterians are most numerous we find that, so far as names, language,

1 66 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

habits of thought and action, and the testimony of recorded history can be
taken, the population bears the most characteristic marks of a Scottish
origin. 4 In the country districts, the peasant still retains the Scotch " bur "
in his speech * ; devoutly believes in the doctrines of John Calvin and John
Knox ; is firmly committed against everything allied with Popery or Prelacy ;
and usually emphatic in his claims to a Scottish and his disavowal of an
Irish descent. 6

Not that all the Irish Scots are Presbyterians, however, nor all the Pres-
byterians Scotch. From the days of Echlin and Leslie down, some of the
most bitter opponents and persecutors of Ulster Presbyterianism and its
adherents have been Scotchmen ; while some of its most useful and influen-
tial supporters have come from the ranks of the English Puritans and the
French Huguenots. 7 Nevertheless, the great bulk of the Presbyterian
settlers in Ulster were from Scotland, and of this class was composed nearly
the whole emigration from that country. In inquiring into the origin of
these people, therefore, we must seek for it on the other side of the Irish
Channel.

NOTES TO CHAPTER XII.

1 The rector of the parish of Dungiven, in county Derry, writing in 1814, says : " The
inhabitants of the parish are divided into two races of men, as totally distinct as if they
belonged to different countries and regions. These, in order that we may avoid the invidious
names of Protestant and Roman Catholic, which indeed have little to say in the matter, may
be distinguished by the usual names of Scotch and Irish, the former including the descend-
ants of all the Scotch and English colonists who have emigrated hither since the time of
James I., and the latter comprehending the native and original inhabitants of the country.
Than these, no two classes of men can be more distinct : the Scotch are remarkable for their
comfortable houses and appearance, regular conduct, and perseverance in business, and their
being almost entirely manufacturers ; the Irish, on the other hand, are more negligent in
their habitations, less regular and guarded in their conduct, and have a total indisposition to
manufacture. Both are industrious, but the industry of the Scotch is steady and patient, and
directed with foresight, while that of the Irish is rash, adventurous, and variable." — Statistical
Account of Ireland ', Dublin, 1814, vol. ii., p. 307.

2 The numerous Protestant Kellys, Sullivans, Murphys, McMahons, and others show that
there are exceptions to this general proposition.

8 W. E. H. Lecky, England in the Eighteenth Century, vol. ii., p. 404.

4 The two counties which have been most thoroughly transformed by this emigration are
the two which are nearest Scotland, and were the first opened up for emigrants. These two
have been completely altered in nationality and religion. They have become British, and in
the main, certainly Scottish. Perhaps no better proof can be given than the family names of
the inhabitants. Some years ago, a patient local antiquary took the voters' list of county
Down " of those rated above ^12 for poor-rates," and analyzed it carefully. There were
10,028 names on the list, and these fairly represented the whole proper names of the county.
He found that the following names occurred oftenest, and arranged them in order of their
frequency : Smith, Martin, M'Kie, Moore, Brown, Thompson, Patterson, Johnson, Stewart,
Wilson, Graham, Campbell, Robinson, Bell, Hamilton, Morrow, Gibson, Boyd, Wallace, and
Magee. He dissected as carefully the voters' list for county Antrim, in which there were
9538 names, and found that the following were at the top : Thompson, Wilson, Stewart,

Who Are the Scotch-Irish? 167

Smith, Moore, Boyd, Johnson, M'Millan, Brown, Bell, Campbell, M'Neill, Crawford,
M'Alister, Hunter, Macaulay, Robinson, Wallace, Millar, Kennedy, and Hill. The list
has a very Scottish flavor altogether, although it may be noted that the names that are highest
on the list are those which are common to both England and Scotland : for it may be taken
for granted that the English " Thompson " has swallowed up the Scottish " Thomson," that
" Moore" includes the Ayrshire " Muir," and that the Annandale '* Johnstones" have been
merged by the writer in the English" Johnsons." One other point is very striking — that
the great Ulster name of O'Neill is wanting, and also the Antrim " Macdonnel." . . .
Another strong proof of the Scottish blood of the Ulstermen may be found by taking the
annual reports presented to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Ireland,
held in June, 1887. Here are the names of the men, lay and clerical, who sign these reports,
the names being taken as they occur : J. W. Whigham, Jackson Smith, Hamilton Magee,
Thomas Armstrong, William Park, J. M. Rodgers, David Wilson, George Macfarland r
Thomas Lyle, W. Rogers, J. B. Wylie, W. Young, E. F. Simpson, Alexander Turnbull,
John Malcolm, John H. Orr. Probably the reports of our three Scottish churches taken
together could not produce so large an average of Scottish surnames. — The Scot in Ulster r
Edinburgh, 1888, pp. 103-105.

5 Many of the settlers were English, but the larger and more influential element came
from the Calvinists of Scotland. . . . To-day the speech of Ulster is Scotch rather than
English, showing which nationality has predominated. — Douglas Campbell, The Puritan in
Holland, England, and America y vol. ii., p. 474.

• Towards the end of the last century ' 4 in all social and political matters the native Catho-
lics, in other words the immense majority of the people of Ireland, were simply hewers of
wood and drawers of water for Protestant masters, for masters who still looked on themselves
as mere settlers, who boasted of their Scotch or English extraction, and who regarded the
name of ' Irishman ' as an insult." — J. R. Green, History of the English People, book
ix., ch. ii.

Most of the great evils of Irish politics during the last two centuries have arisen from
the fact that its different classes and creeds have never been really blended into one nation,
that the repulsion of race or of religion has been stronger than the attraction of a common
nationality, and that the full energies and intellect of the country have in consequence seldom
or never been enlisted in a common cause. — Lecky, England in the Eighteenth Century, vol.
ii., p. 505. Am. ed., pp. 440 and 441. Travellers tell us that to-day in sections of Ulster
the population is Scotch and not Irish.

1 A considerable portion of the English colonists, especially those who came to the Lon-
don settlement in Londonderry county, were Puritans, and joined with the Scots in church
affairs. A strong Calvinistic element was also afterwards infused into the district by the
French Huguenots, who settled in different parts of Ireland after the Revocation of the Edict
of Nantes. — Harrison, The Scot in Ulster, p. 21.

" While along the shores of Down and Antrim, and by the banks of the Six-Mile Water
and the Main, the colonists are almost wholly from the Lowlands of Scotland ; upon the
shores of Derry and Donegal, and by the banks of the Foyle and the Bann, were planted by
the action of the same far-seeing James Stuart, bands of English colonists. Large grants of
land in the escheated counties of Ulster were bestowed upon the great London companies,
and on their vast estates by the Foyle and the Bann were settled considerable numbers
of fine old English families. The Englishmen may be easily traced to this very day in
Derry, and Coleraine, and Armagh, and Enniskillen. Groups of these Puritans dotted the
whole expanse of Ulster, and in a later hour, when the magnificent Cromwell took hold of
Ireland, these English colonists were reinforced by not a few of the very bravest and strongest
of the Ironsides. To this very hour I know where to lay my hands on the direct lineal de-
scendants of some of Cromwell's most trusted officers, who brought to Ireland blood that
flowed in the purest English veins. The defiant city of Derry was the fruit of the English

1 68 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

settlement, the royal borough of Coleraine, the cathedral city of Armagh, the battle-swept
Enniskillen, and several towns and hamlets along the winding Bann. Among these English
settlers were not a few who were ardent followers of George Fox, that man who in many
respects was Cromwell's equal, and in some his master ; these Friends came with a man of
great force of character, Thomas Edmundson, who bore arms for the Parliament, and has left
behind him a singularly interesting diary. The Friends came to Antrim in 1652, and settled
in Antrim and Down ; hence come the Pims, the Barclays, the Grubbs, and Richardsons,
with many another goodly name of Ulster.

" The name of this Irish province was spreading over Europe by the second decade of
the seventeenth century as the ' shelter of the hunted ' ; and soon the Puritan and the Quaker
are joined in Ulster by another nobleman of God's making — the Huguenot from France.
Headed by Louis Crommellin they came a little later and settled in and around Lisburn,
founding many of the finest industries of Ulster, and giving mighty impulse to those already
started. And still later, following the ' immortal William ' came some brave burghers from
Holland and the Netherlands. Thus Ulster became a gathering ground for the very
finest, most formative, impulsive, and aggressive of the free, enlightened, God-fearing
peoples of Europe." — J. S. Macintosh, "The Making of the Ulsterman," Scotch-Irish
Society of America Proceedings, vol. ii., pp. 98, 99.

CHAPTER XIII

SCOTLAND OF TO-DAY

IT has been said of the modern Scottish race by some of its enthusiastic sons
that, in proportion to its numbers, that race has produced more men who
have taken a prominent part in the affairs of the English speaking world than
has any other. Whether this be true or not, there are two facts bearing upon
that phase of Scottish race-history to which attention may properly be
called. The first and most important fact is, that nearly all the men of
Scottish birth or descent who are renowned in history trace their family
origin back to the western Lowlands of Scotland. That is to say, the district
comprising the counties of Lanark, Renfrew, Ayr, Dumfries, Wigtown, Kirk-
cudbright, and Dumbarton — in area about the same as Connecticut, and the
most of which was formerly included in the Celto-British kingdom of Strath-
clyde, — has produced a very large proportion of the men and families who
have made the name of Scotland famous in the world's history. 1

In this district are to be found the chief evidences in Scotland of the
birth or residence of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table.
Dumbartonshire is the reputed birthplace of St. Patrick, Ireland's teacher
and patron saint. Elderslie, in Renfrewshire, is said to have been the birth-
place of Scotland's national hero, William Wallace. Robert Bruce also, son
of Marjorie, Countess of Carrick and daughter of Nigel or Niall (who was
himself the Celtic Earl of Carrick and grandson of Gilbert, son of Fergus, Lord
of Galloway), was, according to popular belief, born at his mother's castle of
Turnberry, in Ayrshire. The seat of the High Stewards of Scotland,
ancestors of the royal family of the Stuarts, was in Renfrewshire. The
paternal grandfather of William Ewart Gladstone was born in Lanarkshire.
John Knox's father is said to have belonged to the Knox family of Renfrew-
shire. Robert Burns was born in Ayrshire. The sect called the " Lollards,"
who were the earliest Protestant reformers in Scotland, appear first in Scottish
history as coming from Kyle in Ayrshire, the same district which afterwards
furnished a large part of the leaders and armies of the Reformation. The
Covenanters and their armies of the seventeenth century were mainly from
the same part of the kingdom. Glasgow, the greatest manufacturing city of
Europe, is situated in the heart of this district. These same seven coun-
ties also furnished by far the greater part of the Scottish colonists of Ulster,
in Ireland, from whom are descended a large proportion of ihe Scotch-Irish
who have become famous in American history. 3

The second fact about the race-history of Scotland and one that in a
measure accounts for the first, is, that the population of the western Low-
lands during the past six hundred years has consisted of a mixed or com-

169

170 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

posite race, made up of a number of different and originally very dissimilar
racial elements. The basis of the race was the Romanized Briton who lived
u between the walls," built by the Romans across the island of Great Britain
in the time of the Emperor Hadrian.* Chiefly from these early Britons —
or Welsh (i. e., "aliens"), as they were called by the Anglic invaders, —
the Ulster Scot gets his Celtic blood, and not from the Gaels of modern
Ireland. The Britons were in part Brythonic or Cymric Celts, identical with
some of the tribesmen of Gaul who are described by Caesar ; in part Gaelic
Celts, who had preceded the Cymri some centuries in their migration to the
islands ; in part non-Celtic and non-Aryan Aborigines, whom the Gaels
found there ; and in part a blended race, comprising all these basic ele-
ments, with an additional Roman element furnished from the Roman legions
(provincial and imperial), which for four centuries traversed, harried, and
dominated the island of Great Britain. As time passed, there came marked
departures from the original type, occasioned by intermarriages, first with the
Picts and Scots, then with the Angles and Danes who occupied and largely
peopled the eastern coast of Scotland, and with the Norsemen, who settled in
the southwest. 8 From the last-named stock comes most of the Teutonic
blood of the Ulster Scots, or Scotch-Irish. After the eleventh century, the
Normans came from England into Scotland in large numbers, and occupied
much of the land, their leaders frequently intermarrying with the daughters
of native Celtic chieftains. Long before the seventeenth century, in the
early years of which the Scottish emigration to Ireland began, the various
race-groups of the western Lowlands of Scotland had become fused into one
composite whole, having the attributes of the Celt, the Norse, the Angle, and
the Norman ; thus typifying many centuries ago the identical race which the
world to-day is beginning to recognize as the American — an amalgamation
of the Teutonic and the Celtic, having the staying qualities of the one, with
the grace, adaptability, and mental brilliancy of the other.

" The Scottish Lowlanders are a very mixed race," says Reclus, the
French traveller and geographer, " and even their name is a singular proof
of it. Scotland was originally known as Hibernia, or Igbernia, 4 whilst
the name of Scotia, from the end of the sixth to the beginning of the eleventh
century, was exclusively applied to modern Ireland. The two countries have
consequently exchanged names."

John of Fordun, the first of the early historians of Scotland whose writ-
ings can even in part be relied upon, has given us the following description
of Scotland as it existed in his day (he died shortly after 1384) :

Scotia is so named after the Scottish tribes by which it is inhabited. At
first, it began from the Scottish firth on the south, and, later on, from the

* One wall ran east from the Clyde and the other from the Solway.

Scotland of To-Day 171

river Humber, where Albania also began. Afterwards, however, it com-
menced at the wall Thirlwal, which Severus had built to the river Tyne.
But now it begins at the river Tweed, the northern boundary of England,
and, stretching rather less than four hundred miles in length, in a north-
westerly direction, is bounded by the Pentland Firth, where a fearfully
dangerous whirlpool sucks in and belches back the waters every hour. It is
a country strong by nature, and difficult and toilsome of access. In some
parts, it towers into mountains ; in others, it sinks down into plains. For
lofty mountains stretch through the midst of it, from end to end, as do the
tall Alps through Europe ; and these mountains formerly separated the Scots
from the Picts, and their kingdoms from each other. Impassable as they are
on horseback, save in very few places, they can hardly be crossed even on
foot, both on account of the snow always lying on them, except in summer-
time only ; and by reason of the boulders torn off the beetling crags, and the
deep hollows in their midst. Along the foot of these mountains are vast
woods full of stags, roe-deer, and other wild animals and beasts of various
kinds ; and these forests oftentimes afford a strong and safe protection to the
cattle of the inhabitants against the depredations of their enemies ; for the
herds in those parts, they say, are accustomed, from use, whenever they hear
the shouts of men and women, and if suddenly attacked by dogs, to flock
hastily into the woods. Numberless springs also well up, and burst forth
from the hills and the sloping ridges of the mountains, and, trickling down
with sweetest sound, in crystal rivulets between flowery banks, flow together
through the level vales, and give birth to many streams ; and these again to
large rivers, in which Scotia marvellously abounds, beyond any other country;
and at their mouths, where they rejoin the sea, she has noble and secure
harbors.

Scotia, also, has tracts of land bordering on the sea, pretty, level, and rich,
with green meadows, and fertile and productive fields of corn and barley, and
well adapted for growing beans, peas, and all other produce ; destitute, how-
ever, of wine and oil, though by no means so of honey and wax. But in the
upland districts, and along the highlands, the fields are less productive, except
only in oats and barley. The country is, there, very hideous, interspersed
with moors and marshy fields, muddy and dirty ; it is, however, full of pas-
turage grass for cattle, and comely with verdure in the glens, along the water-
courses. This region abounds in wool-bearing sheep, and in horses ; and its
soil is grassy, feeds cattle and wild beasts, is rich in milk and wool, and mani-
fold in its wealth of fish, in sea, river, and lake. It is also noted for birds of
many sorts. There noble falcons, of soaring flight and boundless courage,
are to be found, and hawks of matchless daring. Marble of two or three
colors, that is, black, variegated, and white, as well as alabaster, is also
found there. It also produces a good deal of iron and lead, and nearly all
metals.

The manners and customs of the Scots vary with the diversity of their
speech. For two languages are spoken amongst them, the Scottish and the
Teutonic ; the latter of which is the language of those who occupy the sea-
board and plains, while the race of Scottish speech inhabit the highlands and
outlying islands. 6 The people of the coast are of domestic and civilized
habits, trusty, patient, and urbane, decent in their attire, affable, and peace-
ful, devout in Divine worship, yet always prone to resist a wrong at the hand
of their enemies. The highlanders and people of the islands, on the other
hand, are a savage and untamed nation, rude and independent, given to
rapine, ease-loving, of a docile and warm disposition, comely in person, but

17 2 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

unsightly in dress, hostile to the English people and language, and, owing to
diversity of speech, even to their own nation, and exceedingly cruel. They
are, however, faithful and obedient to their king and country, and easily
made to submit to law if properly governed.

The Picts or Caledonians, who lived in the country at the time of its
conquest by the Romans, do not appear to have formed a strong element of
the actual population of the Scottish Lowlands. 8 The inhabitants of that
part of the country seem for the most part to be of British and Anglo-Celtic
race. The line which separated the Britons from the Picts runs, approx-
imately, across the isthmus of the Clyde and Forth ; the ancient wall of
Antoninus thus marking an ethnological frontier no less than a political
one. But Angles and Britons were compelled to share their territory with
emigrants of various races, including the Scots of Ireland, Frisians, North-
men, and Danes. " At some places," says Reclus, " and more especially
along the coast, people of different origin live in close contact with each
other, and yet remain separate. Their blood has not mingled ; habits,
customs, and modes of thought and action have remained distinct. Along the
whole of the coast, on that of the German Ocean, no less than on that of the
Irish Sea, we meet with colonies of fishermen, some of whom claim descent
from the Northmen, whilst others look upon the Danes as their ancestors.
There are even colonies which tradition derives from Flanders. Several of
the maritime villages consist of two portions like the towns on the coasts of
Catalonia, Liguria, and Sicily, the upper part being inhabited by Saxon arti-
sans and agriculturists, while the lower part forms the * Marina ' of Scandi-
navian fishermen. These various elements of the population have, however,
become fused in the greater part of the country. Physically the Scotchman
resembles the Norwegian, and this is not solely due to a similarity of climate,
but also to the numerous unions between Scandinavian invaders and the
daughters of the country. The languages of the two countries also possess
more features in common than was formerly believed. The Scotch speak
English with a peculiar accent which at once betrays their origin. Their
intonation differs from that of the English, and they suppress certain con-
sonants in the middle and at the end of words. They still employ certain
old English terms, no longer made use of to the south of the Tweed, and,
on the strength of this, patriotic Scotchmen claim to speak English with
greater purity than their southern neighbors. Amongst the many words of
foreign derivation in common use, there are several French ones, not only
such as were introduced by the Normans, but also others belonging to the
time when the two peoples were faithful allies, and supplied each other with
soldiers.

" The Scotch Lowlander is, as a rule, of fair height, long-legged, strongly
built, and without any tendency to the obesity so common amongst his kins-
men of England. His eye is ordinarily brighter than that of the English-
man, and his features more regular ; but his cheeks are more prominent,

Scotland of To-Day 173

and the leanness of the face helps much to accentuate these features. In
these respects he bears a striking resemblance to his American cousins.
Comparative inquiries instituted by Forbes prove that physical development
is somewhat slower amongst Scotchmen than amongst Englishmen ; the for-
mer comes up to the latter in height and strength only at the age of nine-
teen, but in his ripe age he surpasses him to the extent of about five per
cent, in muscular strength. 7 Of all the men of Great Britain, those of south-
western Scotland are distinguished for their tall stature. The men of Gal-
loway average 5 feet 7 inches in height, which is superior to the stature
attained in any other district of the British Islands. The Lowlander is in-
telligent, of remarkable sagacity in business, and persevering when once he
has determined upon accomplishing a task ; but his prudence degenerates
into distrust, his thrift into avarice. As in America, there is not a village
without one or more banks. When abroad he seeks out his fellow-country-
men, derives a pleasure in being useful to them, and helps their success in
life to the best of his ability.

" The achievements of Scotch agriculturists, who are so little favored by
climate, must appear marvellous to the peasants of Italy and of many parts
of France. Under the fifty-sixth degree of latitude they secure crops far
more abundant than those obtained from the fertile lands on the Mediterra-
nean, which are nine hundred miles nearer to the equator. Human labor
and ingenuity have succeeded in acclimatizing plants which hardly appear to
be suited to the soil and climate of Scotland. About the middle of the
eighteenth century a patch of wheat was pointed out near Edinburgh as a
curiosity, whilst now that cereal grows in abundance as far north as the
Moray Firth. And yet it appears as if the climate had become colder, for
it is no longer possible to cultivate the poppy or tobacco, as was done in the
beginning of the century. Several varieties of apples, pears, and prunes,
formerly in high repute, no longer arrive at maturity, and the horticultural
societies have ceased offering prizes for these productions, because it is no
longer possible to grow them in the open air. The manufacturing triumphs
of Scotland have been quite equal to those achieved -in agriculture, and it is
on Scottish soil that Glasgow, the foremost manufacturing town of the
United Kingdom, has arisen, with a population greater than that of either
Manchester, Leeds, or Birmingham. Scotland, through her numerous emi-
grants who live in London and the other great towns, has also largely con-
tributed towards the prosperity of England. The hawkers in the English
manufacturing districts are usually known as ' Scotchmen.' The Scotch
colonists in New Zealand and Canada are amongst the most active and in-
dustrious, and the young Lowlanders who go out to India as government
officials are far more numerous in proportion than those from England.

" The love of education for its own sake, and not merely as a means to an
end, is far more widely spread in Scotland than in England. The lectures
at the universities are attended with a zeal which the students of Oxford

174 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

or Cambridge seldom exhibit. It is by no means rare to meet pupils in
elementary schools who are passionately fond of study, and the humble homes
of artisans and laborers frequently contain a select library which would do
credit to a wealthy English tradesman. At the same time there are not
wanting young men who accelerate their studies in order that they may se-
cure the certificates which form their passport to lucrative employment.
They work hard, no doubt, but they strive not after knowledge, but for ma-
terial gain. The students of Edinburgh have little time to devote to those
exercises of strength and skill which are so highly cultivated at Oxford and
Cambridge. 8 By a curious contrast, these Scotchmen, so practical and full
of common sense, have an extraordinary love for the supernatural. They
delight in stories of terror and of ghosts. Though clever architects of their
own fortunes, they are yet fatalists, and the religious sects of which most of
them are members defend with singular fervor the doctrine of predestina-
tion. Thousands amongst the peasants, dressed in clerical black, are veri-
table theologians, and know how to discuss the articles of their faith with a
great luxury of Scripture texts. As Emerson says, they allow their dialectics
to carry them to the extremes of insanity. In no other country of the world
is the Sabbath observed with such rigor as in Scotland. On that day many
of the trains and steamers cease running, and silence reigns throughout the
land. There are even landed proprietors who taboo their hills on that day,
and if a tourist is found wandering amongst them he is treated as a reckless
violator of the proprieties."

Who were the earliest inhabitants of the Scottish Highlands ? Of what
race were the Picts, who formerly inhabited the country, and over whom
even the Romans could not triumph ? Were they pure Celts, or had their
blood already mingled with that of Scandinavia ? It is usually believed that
the Picts had preceded the other Britons in their migration to the island,
coming at a very early age, and that their idioms differed much more from
the dialect spoken in Gaul than did Cymric. They originally inhabited,
perhaps, the whole of Great Britain, and were pushed to the northward by
the Britons, who in turn were displaced by Romans and Angles. 9

Numerous stone monuments, known as Picts' " houses," or weems, and
invariably consisting of a chamber or centre passage surrounded by smaller
apartments, are attributed to these aborigines. The mainland, and to a
great extent the islands, abound in broughs, or borgs — that is, towers of
defence, resembling, at least externally, the nuraghe of Sardinia. On the
Shetland Islands there are seventy-five of these towers, and in the Orkneys
seventy. Petrie, who has examined forty of them, looked upon them as
fortified dwelling-houses. Their circular walls are twelve feet and more in
thickness ; their original height is not known, for every one of them has
reached us in a partial state of demolition. Pestles for crushing corn, stone
lamps, and vessels made of the bone of whales testify to the rudimentary
state of civilization which the inhabitants had attained. The Brough of

Scotland of To-Day 175

Mousa, to the south of Lerwick, bulges out near its base, probably to prevent
the use of scaling ladders, and recesses occur at regular intervals on the
inside of the wall. Cromlechs, cairns, standing stones, symbolical sculptures,
circles of stones, pile dwellings, and vitrified forts are found in several local-
ities both on the mainland and the islands. Primitive monuments of this
kind form one of the most salient landscape features in the Orkneys. On
Pomona there is a district of several square miles in area which still abounds
in prehistoric monuments of every description, although many stones have
been carried away by the neighboring farmers. In the tumulus of Meashow,
opened in 186 1, were discovered over nine hundred Runic inscriptions, and
the carved images of fanciful animals. On the same island are the standing
stones of Stennis ; and on Lewis, twelve miles to the west of Stornoway, the
" gray stones of Callernish." These latter, forty-eight in number, are also
known as Tuirsachan, or " Field of Mourning," and they still form a perfect
circle, partly buried in peat, which has grown to a height of from six to
twelve feet around them. 10 We know that these constructions belong to
different ages, and that now and then the stones raised by the earliest build-
ers were added to by their successors. Christian inscriptions in oghams and
runes, in characters not older, according to Munch, than the beginning of the
twelfth century, have been discovered on these monuments. At Newton, in
Aberdeenshire, there is a stone inscribed in curiously shaped letters, not yet
deciphered.

Notwithstanding a change of religion, these sacred places of the ancient
inhabitants still attract pilgrims. On South Uist the people until recently
walked in procession around a huge pile of rocks, turning thrice in following
the apparent path of the sun. The small island of Iona at the western
extremity of Mull is one of those places which have been held sacred for
generations. Various stone monuments prove that this spot was held in
veneration at the dawn of history, and this probably induced the Irish
apostle, St. Columba, to found here a monastery — the " light of the western
world " — which soon became the most famous in Great Britain. Hence
went forth those ascetic Culdees whom the jealousy of the clergy caused to
disappear in the course of the thirteenth century." In the ruined ecclesias-
tical buildings of this islet are buried more than sixty kings of Scotland,
Ireland, and the Hebrides, the last interred here having been Macbeth. A
prophecy says that one day the whole earth will be swallowed up by a
deluge, with the exception of Iona. There was a time when this venerated
island was interdicted to women, as Mount Athos is at the present day. Not
far from the church lay the " black stones," thus called on account of the
malediction attaching to him who foreswore himself by their side. It was
here that the " Lords of the Isles," kneeling on the ground with their hands
raised to heaven, were bound to swear to maintain intact the rights of their
vassals. 13 Among the heaps of rocks piled up on the beach, it is said by
monks in expiation of their trespasses, are found fine fragments of granite,

176 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

porphyry, and serpentine, which the inhabitants employ Scotch workmen to
cut and polish, in order that they may sell them as amulets to their visitors.
Formerly these stones were looked upon throughout the Hebrides as the
most efficacious medicine against sorcery ; and when about to be married a
bridegroom, to insure happiness, placed a stone of Iona upon his bare
left foot. 1 *

The Scotch Highlanders are more or less mixed with Scandinavians, for
the Northmen, who for centuries held possession of the Orkneys, gained a
footing also upon the mainland, where they founded numerous colonies.
Scandinavian family names are frequent in the Orkneys, but the type of the
inhabitants is nevertheless Scotch. 14 The geographical nomenclature of
the Shetland Isles is wholly Norwegian. The names of farms terminate in
seter or ster, and those of hills in hoy or hole. In 1820 the sword dance of
the ancient Norwegians might still be witnessed on one of the islands, and,
according to Gifford, 16 Norse was spoken in a few families as recently as
1786. Sutherland clearly formed part of the old domain of the North-
men. That county lies at the northern extremity of Scotland ; but to the
inhabitant of the Orkneys it was a Southern Land, and the name which they
gave to it has survived to our own time.

A few Scandinavian colonies on the mainland have retained their distinct
character. As an instance may be mentioned the village of Ness on Lewis,
the inhabitants of which are distinguished for their enterprise, presenting a
singular contrast to the sluggishness of their Gaelic neighbors. The descend-
ants of these hostile races have, like oil and water, long refused to mingle.
It would nevertheless be next to impossible to define the boundaries between
the various races throughout the country. Language certainly would prove
no safe guide, for many of the Gaels have given up their language and speak
English. Out of 5,000,000 Scotchmen, only 350,000 are able to express
themselves in Gaelic, and of these only 70,000 are ignorant of English. 1 * As
to the Scandinavians, not one amongst their descendants now speaks Old
Norse. The greater number of them speak English, but many, too, have
adopted Gaelic. In most of the islands the names of places are Danish,
although Gaelic has for centuries been the spoken language. Even in St.
Kilda, remote as is its situation, an intermingling of Gaels and Northmen has
been recognized.

The use of Gaelic was discontinued at the court of Scotland about
the middle of the eleventh century, and it is doomed to disappear. Far
poorer in its literature and less cultivated than Welsh, its domain diminishes
with every decade, for English is now almost universally spoken in the
towns, and the Highland valleys are becoming depopulated, or invaded by
Saxon sportsmen and graziers. If Caledonia really stands for Gael-Dun, or
" Mountain of the Gael," then its limits are becoming narrower every time
the meshes of the network of railroads are drawn tighter. But though
Celtic may disappear as a spoken language, the geographical nomenclature:

Scotland of To-Day 177

of Scotland will for all time bear witness to its ancient domination. Those
acquainted with Gaelic may obtain a tolerably correct notion of the relief of
the ground by merely studying the names upon a map. Names like ben,
earn, carr, carragh, cnoc, ereag, cruach, dun, mam, meal, monadh, sguir, sith,
sithean, sliabh, stob, slue, tolm, torr, and tullich, will suggest to their minds
variously shaped mountains ; eye, i, and innis denote islands ; linne and loch
represent lakes or gulfs ; abh, abhuinn, uisge, esk, and buinne, stand for rivers
or torrents. Inver in the west, and Aber in the east, indicate the mouths of
rivers. The names Albainn, Albeinn, or Albion, by which the Gaels were
formerly designated, are now applied to all Britain. The Gaelic bards speak
of their fellow-countrymen by preference as Albannaich, or " Mountaineers." 1T
The Albannaich of the Grampians and the Albanians of the Pindus are thus
known by a similar name, having possibly the same meaning.

The translation of one of John Knox's religious works was the first book
printed in Gaelic, and thus, as in Wales, the Reformation conferred upon
the language of the people an importance which it had not possessed before.
But whilst in Wales religious zeal, through its manifestation in the pulpit
and the press, has contributed in a large measure to keep alive the native
idiom, the division of the Highlanders into Roman Catholics and Protestants
has resulted in a diminution of the collective patriotism of the people, as it
reveals itself in language. Roman Catholics are numerous in the county of
Inverness, and it merely depended upon the chief of a clan whether his
followers remained true to the old faith or embraced the new. Canna and
Eigg are the only Hebrides the inhabitants of which remained Roman
Catholics. Those of the larger island of Rum, it is said, hesitated what to
do, when the chief of the MacLeods, armed with a yellow cudgel, threw
himself in the way of a procession marching in the direction of the Romish
church, and drove the faithful to the temple which he patronized.
Hence Protestantism on that island is known to the present day as the " Re-
ligion of the Yellow Cudgel." 18 But notwithstanding these changes of religion
many superstitions survive amongst the people. In Lewis, " stone " and
" church " are synonymous terms, as they were in the time when all religious
ceremonies were performed around sacred megaliths. 19

The fame of the Highlanders had been sung by poets and novelists,
until they came to be looked upon as typical for bravery, loyalty, and all
manly virtues. The soldiers in their strange and showy garb have so
frequently won distinction upon the field of battle that all their panegyrists
said about their native virtues was implicitly believed ; and on the faith of
poets we admired their pipers, the successors of the ancient bards, who
accompanied their melancholy chants on the harp. In reality, however, the
Highlanders, until recently, were warlike herdsmen, as the Montenegrins,
Mirdits, and Albanians are even now, always at enmity with their neighbors.
It was only after forts had been built at the mouths of the valleys, and
military roads constructed through their territories, that they were reduced

178 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

to submission. The members of each family were closely united, and, like
American Indians, they had their war cries, badges, and distinctly patterned
tartans. The people were thus split up into about forty clans, or, including
the Lowland families, into about one hundred, and several of these clans con-
sisted of more than 10,000 individuals. The principal Highland clans in
1863 were : MacGregors, 36,000 ; MacKenzies, 21,000 ; MacLeans,
16,000 ; MacLeods, 14,000 ; Macintoshes, 11,000 ; MacDonalds, 10,000.
The members of each clan, though sometimes only cousins a hundred times
removed, all bore the same name, and they fought and worked together.
The land was originally held in union, being periodically divided amongst
the clan. The honor of the tribe was dear to every one of its individual
members, and an injury done to one amongst them was avenged by the
entire community. When the kings of Scotland had to complain of a High-
land chief, they attacked his clan, for they well knew that every member of
it would embrace the cause of the chief. There existed no courts of justice
in the Highlands, but blood was spilt for blood. Various monuments recall
such acts of savage vengeance, and as recently as 181 2 a Highland family
set up seven grinning heads as a trophy to commemorate a sevenfold
murder committed by its ancestors. A cavern on Eigg Island is strewn with
human bones, the relics of the ancient inhabitants of the island, two hundred
in number, who are said to have been suffocated within the cavern by a
neighboring chief, MacLeod, in retaliation for some private injury. 20

As long as every member of the community possessed a share in the land,
Scotland was spared the struggle between rich and poor. But by the close
of the eighteenth century, the poorer members of the clan, though still claim-
ing cousinship with their chief, had lost all proprietary rights in the land,
and the lairds, when remonstrated with by the clan, responded in the words
of the device adopted by the earls of Orkney, " Sic fuit, est, et erit! " They
were even then able to drive away the ancient inhabitants from the plots of
land they occupied, in order that they might transform them into pasturing
or shooting grounds. Several landlords even burned down the cabins of
their poor " cousins," thus compelling them to leave the country. Between
181 1 and 1820, 15,000 tenants were thus evicted from the estates of the
Duchess of Stafford.

Entire villages were given up to the flames, and on a single night three
hundred houses might have been seen afire. Nearly the whole population of
four parishes was in this way driven from its homes. Since the middle of the
century about one million acres in the Highlands have been cleared of human
beings and sheep, to be converted into shooting grounds. 21 Thus, contrary
to what may be usually witnessed in civilized countries, the Highland
valleys are returning to a state of nature, and wild beasts taking the place
of domesticated animals. The country formerly almost bare of trees has
been largely planted, and from Black Mount in Argyleshire to Marr Forest
in Aberdeen there now extends an almost unbroken belt of verdure. Already

Scotland of To-Day 179

the shooting grounds cover over two million acres, and they are continually-
extending. Scotland has emphatically become a sporting country, and many
a large estate is managed as a shooting ground, that proving more profitable
to its proprietor than would its cultivation. There are not wanting sports-
men willing to pay ^400 for a salmon stream, ^1000 for the right of shoot-
ing over a moor, or ^4000 for a deer park. With these rents a salmon may
cost £2> and a stag ^"40. In 1877, 2060 shooting grounds in Scotland
were let for ^6oo,ooo. 22 Scotland, even more than England, is a land of
wide demesnes, and twenty-one individuals share between them the third
of the kingdom, seventy the half, and one thousand and seven hundred
nine-tenths of it. The Duke of Sutherland alone owns about the fifteenth
part of Scotland, including nearly the whole county from which he derives
his title. Domains of such vast extent cannot be properly cultivated, and
heaths and swamps which would repay the labor bestowed upon them by
peasant proprietors are allowed by their wealthy owners to remain in a state
of nature.

In the Orkneys, a portion of the land is still owned by odallers, or peasant
proprietors ; but the Shetland Islands and several of the Hebrides, includ-
ing Lewis, the largest amongst them, belong to a single proprietor, who thus
disposes indirectly of the lives of the inhabitants, whom he can compel to
abandon their homes whenever it suits his interests. Several islands, such
as Barra and Rum, which formerly supported a considerable population,
have in this way become almost deserts ; and amongst the inhabitants left
behind there are even now many who live in a state of extreme poverty, who
look upon carrageen, or Iceland moss, as a luxury, and who are dependent
upon seaweeds and fish for their daily sustenance. Owing to the inferiority
of the food, dyspepsia is a common complaint, and certain physicians de-
clare that the gift of " second sight," which plays so prominent a part in the
history of the Highlanders, is traceable to a disorder of the organs of diges-
tion. The villages of Lewis are perhaps unique of their kind in Europe.
The inhabitants gather the stones embedded in the peaty soil to construct
rough concentric walls, filling the space between them with earth and gravel.
A scaffolding made of old oars and boughs supports a roof covered with
earth and peat, leaving a wide ledge on the top of the circular wall, upon
which vegetation soon springs up, and which becomes the favorite prom-
enade and playground of children, dogs, and sheep. A single door gives
access to this unshapely abode, within which a peat fire is kept burning
throughout the year, in order that the damp which perpetually penetrates
through the wall and roof may evaporate. Horses, cows, and sheep, all of
diminutive stature, owing to the want of nourishment, occupy one extremity
of this den, while the fowls roost by the side of the human inhabitants, or
perch near the hole left for the escape of the smoke. To strangers the
heat and smoke of these dwellings are intolerable, but the former is said
to favor the laying of eggs." Such are the abodes of most of the

180 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

inhabitants of Lewis. Yet the claims to comfort have increased since the
commencement of the nineteenth century, and a porringer is no longer
looked upon as a veritable curiosity.

NOTES TO CHAPTER XIII

1 It may be not without interest to note here the names of the twenty-nine American
Immortals, for whom memorial tablets have been placed in the Hall of Fame, erected during
the year 1900 on University Heights in the city of New York. The names were selected by
a jury of ninety-seven members, composed of twenty-five college presidents, twenty-six profes-
sors of science and history, twenty-three publicists, editors, and authors, and twenty-three
justices of state and national supreme courts. The result of this selection was as follows,
the number of votes cast for each candidate being appended :

George Washington (97), Abraham Lincoln (96), Daniel Webster (96), Benjamin Frank-
lin (94), Ulysses S. Grant (92), John Marshall (91), Thomas Jefferson (90), Ralph Waldo
Emerson (87), Henry W. Longfellow (85), Robert Fulton (85), Washington Irving (83), Jon-
athan Edwards (81), Samuel Finley Breese Morse (80), David G. Farragut (79), Henry Clay
(74), Nathaniel Hawthorne (73), George Peabody (72), Robert E. Lee (69), Peter Cooper
(69), Horace Mann (67), Eli Whitney (67), John James Audubon (67), Henry Ward
Beecher (66), James Kent (65), Joseph Story (64), John Adams (61), William Ellery Chan-
ning (58), Gilbert Stuart (52), Asa Gray (51),

Of the twenty-nine names given above, the bearers of seven were of Scottish descent
in the male line — Webster, Grant, Fulton, Irving, Cooper, Stuart, and Gray ; Marshall was
Welsh and Scotch ; Morse, English and Scotch ; Jefferson, Welsh, English, and Scotch ;
Farragut, Spanish ; Audubon, French and Spanish : Clay, uncertain ; Edwards, Welsh ;
Adams, English and Welsh ; and the remaining fourteen English. Of the other names voted
on by the jury, the fifteen receiving the most votes under the number necessary to elect (fifty-
one) were as follows, the names of those of Scottish descent (six out of fifteen) being printed
in italics: John C. Calhoun (49), Andrew Jackson (49), John Quincy Adams (48), William
Cullen Bryant (48), James Madison (48), Rufus Choate (47), Mark Hopkins (47), Elias Howe
(47), Horace Greeley (45), Joseph Henry (44), James B. Eads (42), Benjamin Rush (42), John
Lothrop Motley (41), Patrick Henry (39), Edgar Allan Poe (37).

Thus of the forty-four Americans receiving the highest number of votes, sixteen were of
Scottish origin in whole or part, thirteen being of Scottish descent in the male line.

8 The ancient Celto-Scottish kingdom of Strathclyde, which, as late as the eleventh cen-
tury, extended from the Clyde to the river Ribble, in Lancashire, England, and formed part
of the domain of Malcolm Canmore, King of the Scots in the time of William the Conqueror,
was the ancestral home, not only of the Scotch-Irish and many of the heroes of Scotland,
but also of the families of Washington, Jackson, and Taylor, which have furnished three
presidents to the United States.

3 The reader will of course remark that of the four kingdoms — Dalriadic Irish, Pictish,
British of Strathclyde, and English of Bernica — the two latter realms extended far south be-
yond the line of modern Scotland. This fact had remarkable consequences in Scottish
history. Otherwise the existence of these four kingdoms mainly interests us as showing the
nature of the races — Pictish, British, Irish, and English — who were, then, the inhabitants of
various parts of Scotland, leaving, doubtless, their strain of blood in the population. A
Dumfries, Ayr, Renfrew, Lanark, or Peebles man, as a dweller in Strathclyde, has some
chance of remote British (Brython) ancestors in his pedigree ; a Selkirk, Roxburgh, Berwick-
shire, or Lothian man is probably for the most part of English blood ; an Argyleshire man is
or may be descended from an Irish Scot or Dalriad ; the northern shires are partly Pictish,
as also is Galloway, always allowing for the perpetual mixture of races in really historical and
in prehistoric times. — Andrew Lang, History of Scotland, vol. i., p. 31.

Scotland of To-Day 181

4 See Strabo, book i., ch. iv. ; book ii., ch. i., v.; book iv., ch. v.

6 If a line is drawn from a point on the eastern bank of Loch Lomond, somewhat south
of Ben Lomond, following in the main the line of the Grampians, and crossing the Forth at
Aberfoil, the Teith at Callander, the Almond at Crieff, the Tay at Dunkeld, the Ericht at
Blairgowrie, and proceeding through the hills of Brae Angus till it reaches the great range of
the Mounth, then crossing the Dee at Ballater, the Spey at Lower Craigellachie, till it reaches
the Moray Firth at Nairn — this forms what was called the Highland Line and separated the
Celtic from the Teutonic-speaking people. Within this line, with the exception of the county
of Caithness, which belongs to the Teutonic division, the Gaelic language forms the vernacu-
lar of the inhabitants. — Celtic Scotland, ii., 453.

The Scottish Highlands are sometimes spoken of so as to convey the impression that
there is a clearly defined mountain district, contrasted with " the Lowlands," as though the
latter were a vast plain. There could hardly be a greater mistake. From Kirkcudbright to
Caithness, there is hardly a county without its hill ranges ; and without leaving the Southern
district, the lover of mountain beauty will find noble heights and solitary glens, with many
a rippling burn from tarns among the hills. — Samuel G. Green, Scottish Pictures, p. 117.

6 This description of the present inhabitants of the Lowlands and Highlands of Scotland
is chiefly taken from Elisee Reclus's La Terre, Appleton's American edition, 1883. Reclus
bases on Kemble, Saxons in England ; Latham, Ethnology of the British Isles ; Murray,
in Philological Society's Transactions, 1873, etc -

7 Forbes ; Hugh Miller, First Impressions of England and the English.

8 Demogeot and Montucci, De V enseignement superieur en Angleterre et en Ecosse.

9 Just as Highland scenery has come to be reckoned peculiarly Scottish scenery, not
only by Englishmen and foreigners, but even by the inhabitants of the Lowlands themselves,
to whom its lakes and glens, its stony precipices and wind-swept isles are as familiar and dear
as they were once dreaded and disliked ; so in some important aspects, of which war is per-
haps the chief, the Highlander has become the typical Scot, and the Lowlander, who mainly
shaped the fortunes of the nation and gave it its place in history, has acquiesced in the repre-
sentation and is proud of the disguise. No harm can follow from this if we only keep stead-
ily in view the true ethnological condition of Scotland, and realize the fact that while in
Southern Britain the Saxons and Angles almost wholly superseded the original Cymric pop-
ulation, there is no evidence that a similar act ever took place in North Britain ; there is no
record of a Teutonic settlement except in the southeast, and there is no probability that the
Picts between Drumalban and the eastern sea, or even the Cymry of Strathclyde, though
they lost their language and their independence, were ever expelled from their original seats,
or transformed in character by any extraordinary infusion of a Teutonic element. — J. M.
Ross, Scottish History and Literature , p. 15.

10 Wilson's Prehistoric Annals of Scotland.

11 Jameson's History of the Culdees.

18 Forbes Leslie, Early Races of Scotland.

13 Mercey, Revue des Deux Mondes, Sept., 1838.

14 Hugh Miller, Footprints of the Creator.

15 Historical Description of Zetland.

16 E. G. Ravenstein, On the Celtic Languages in the British Isles,

17 Forbes Leslie, Early Races of Scotland.

18 Dr. Johnson, Tour in the Western Hebrides.

19 Anderson Smith, Lewisiana.

80 Hugh Miller, Cruise of the "Betsey"

81 Hugh Miller, Sutherland as it Was and Is.
88 Official Journal, Nov. 16, 1877.

83 Anderson Smith, Lewisiana.

CHAPTER XIV

THE CALEDONIANS, OR PICTS

OF the inhabitants of Britain in prehistoric times we can learn but
little, and that only in the most general way. While the literature on
the subject is quite extensive, and, so far as it records the results of archaeo-
logical investigation, not without considerable value, yet the data thus far
made available are so fragmentary as to form a basis for hardly anything more
than a probable supposition as to who they were and whence they came. 1
The following summary by one of the recent English authorities 3 gives us a
hint of the progress thus far made in this line of inquiry :

From the bones which have been taken from the tombs, and from the
ancient flint-mines uncovered in Sussex and Norfolk, the anatomists have
concluded that the Neolithic Britons were not unlike the modern Eskimo.
They were short and slight, with muscles too much developed for their
slender and ill-nurtured bones ; and there is that marked disproportion be-
tween the size of the men and women, which indicates a hard and miserable
life, where the weakest are overworked and constantly stinted of their food.
The face must have been of an oval shape, with mild and regular fea-
tures : the skulls, though bulky in some instances, were generally of a long
and narrow shape, depressed sometimes at the crown and marked with a
prominent ridge, " like the keel of a boat reversed." 8 . . .

The oldest races were in apre-metallic stage, when bronze was introduced
by a new nation, sometimes identified with the oldest Celts, but now more
generally attributed to the Finnish or Ugrian stock. When the Celts arrived
in their turn, they may have brought in the knowledge of iron and silver ;
the Continental Celts are known to have used iron broad-swords at the battle
of the Anio in the fourth century before Christ, and iron was certainly
worked in Sussex by the Britons of Julius Caesar's time ; but as no objects
of iron have been recovered from our Celtic tumuli, except in some instances
of a doubtful date, it will be safer to assume that the British Celts belonged
to the later Bronze Age as well as to the Age of Iron. 4

With reference to the earliest population of Scotland, the following
hypothesis given by Samuel Laing in his work on Prehistoric Remains of
Caithness may be taken as a fairly comprehensive statement :

Our population contains three distinct ethnological elements : I. Xan-
thochroi brachycephali (the fair, broad-headed type) ; II. Xanthochroi
dolichocephali (the fair, long-headed type); III. Melanchroi (the dark type).
In Caesar's time, and for an indefinitely long period, Gaul contained the first
and third of these elements, and the shores of the Baltic presented the
second. In other words, the ethnological elements of the Hiberno-British
islands are identical with those of the nearest adjacent parts of the continent
of Europe, at the earliest period when a good observer noted the characters
of their population.

182

The Caledonians, or Picts 183

Dr. Thurnam has adduced many good reasons for believing that the
" Belgic " element intruded upon a pre-existing dolichocephalic ' Iberian "
population ; but I think it probable that this element hardly reached
Ireland at all, and extended but little into Scotland. However, if this were
the case, and no other elements entered into the population, the tall, fair,
red-haired and blue-eyed dolichocephalia, who are, and appear always to
have been, so numerous among the Irish and Scotch, could not be accounted
for.

But their existence becomes intelligible at once, if we suppose that long
before the well-known Norse and Danish invasions a stream of Scandinavi-
ans had set into Scotland and Ireland, and formed a large part of our primi-
tive population. And there can be no difficulty in admitting this hypothesis
when we recollect that the Orkneys and the Hebrides have been, in compara-
tively late historical times, Norwegian possessions. ... In another
fashion, the fair and broad-headed " Belgae " intruded into the British area ;
but meeting with a large dolichocephalic population, which at subsequent
times was vastly reinforced by Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Danish invasions,
this type has been almost wiped out of the British population, which is, in the
main, composed of fair dolichocephalia and dark dolichocephalia. . . .
But language has in no respect followed these physical changes. The fair
dolichocephali and fair brachycephali of Germany, Scandinavia, and Eng-
land speak Teutonic dialects ; while those of France have a substantially
Latin speech ; and the majority of those of Scotland, and, within historic
times, all those of Ireland, spoke Celtic tongues. As to the Melanchroi,
some speak Celtic, some Latin, some Teutonic dialects ; while others, like the
Basques (so far as they come under this category) have a language of their
own.

So far as any definite conclusions can be deduced from the work of the
ethnologists and archaeologists, it appears that the first Celtic invaders to
enter Scotland (whether at a period simultaneous with or prior or subse-
quent to the advent of the Stone-Age Britons in that part of the island can-
not perhaps be definitely told) were the Gaels, or Goidels, who had crossed
over into Britain from Gaul, first settling on those portions of the coast most
easy of access from the points of embarkation, thence pushing into the interior,
and gradually spreading to the west and north. In their progress they must
have encountered and, to a greater or less extent, superseded the aborigines
— the Britons of the Stone Age. This may have been done by exterminating
them, by driving them off towards the west, or by assimilating them with
themselves. Probably all of these methods of race extinction were
brought into operation. In such a primitive age, these tribes, native
and foreign, cannot be conceived to have been other than loosely organized
hordes of wandering savages, preying upon one another, without fixed habi-
tations, and to whom all weaker strangers were foredoomed enemies. The
Celts, bringing with them from the Continent the knowledge of bronze and
iron, would have considerable advantage in battle over the aborigines, who
had no more effective weapons than sharpened stones. In those days, also,
it is reasonable to suppose that the country was so sparsely populated that
for centuries after the first coming of the Gaels, there would be room enough

184 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

on the island for both races ; and many bodies of the aborigines no doubt
remained unmolested long after the extinction of their race had been in part
accomplished. 5 As fresh waves of invasion swept over the eastern shores,
the Celts first coming would be apt to be driven farther and farther inland from
the coast, and would in turn displace the natives — who, to escape death or
slavery, would be obliged to push farther westward and northward. Some
of these (supposed) aborigines, however, seem to have made a successful
stand against the encroachments of the newcomers, and among them we find
two tribes who were identified with portions of Scotland down to a date
long after the beginning of the historic era. These were the Novantae and
Selgovae mentioned by Ptolemy, whose territory in his time (the early part
of the second century) embraced the country west of the river Nith and
south of the Ayr — Kirkcudbrightshire and Galloway — and possibly, also,
the peninsula of Kintyre, in Argyle. Toward the end of the Roman occupa-
tion they seem to have coalesced, and became known as the Attecotti, a
" fierce and warlike tribe," who gave the Romans a great deal of trouble.
They afterwards appear in history as the Galloway Picts, and seem to have
remained a distinct people under that name down to a comparatively recent
date/

The Gaelic Celts of the first migrations were in time followed by other
bodies of their own tribesmen, and later by large incursions of invaders of
a kindred race — the Cymric Celts. 7 The first comers, accordingly, seem to
have been pushed on to the west and north, overrunning the west of Eng-
land and Wales, entering Scotland, and some of them, more venturesome
than others, crossing over into Northern Ireland, and making that country
their own. 8 In the course of time, various tribes of the Cymric Celts ac-
quired the most of Southern Britain and not a small portion of Scotland,
spreading over the island in considerable numbers, and leaving few parts
unoccupied save the hills and highlands of Scotland, which became the
final retreat and stronghold of their Gaelic cousins."

Caesar was the first observer who has left any record of these early Cym-
ro-Celtic Britons. Of their origin and manner of living he speaks as fol-
lows (£>e Bello Gallico, book v., ch. xii., xiv.) :

The interior portion of Britain is inhabited by those of whom they say
that it is handed down by tradition that they were born in the island itself ;
the maritime portion by those who had passed over from the country of the
Belgae for the purpose of plunder and making war ; almost all of whom are
called by the names of those states from which being sprung they went
thither, and having waged war, continued there and began to cultivate the
lands. The number of the people is countless, and their buildings exceed-
ingly numerous, for the most part very like those of the Gauls ; the number
of cattle is great. They use either brass or iron rings, determined at a cer-
tain weight, as their money. Tin is produced in the midland regions ; in the
maritime, iron ; but the quantity of it is small ; they employ brass, which is
imported. There, as in Gaul, is timber of every description except beech
and fir. They do not regard it lawful to eat the hare, and the cock, and the

The Caledonians, or Picts 185

goose ; they, however, breed them for amusement and pleasure. The cli-
mate is more temperate than in Gaul, the colds being less severe.

The most civilized of all these nations are they who inhabit Kent, which
is entirely a maritime district, nor do they differ much from the Gallic cus-
toms. Most of the island inhabitants do not sow corn, but live on milk and
flesh, and are clad with skins. All the Britons, indeed, dye themselves with
woad, which occasions a bluish color, and thereby have a more terrible ap-
pearance in fight. They wear their hair long, and have every part of their
body shaved except their head and upper lip. Ten and even twelve have
wives common to them, and particularly brothers among brothers, and par-
ents among their children ; but if there be any issue by their wives, they are
reputed to be the children of those by whom respectively each was first
espoused when a virgin.

A description of the several peoples inhabiting Britain at this time, or
shortly after, is found in Ptolemy's Geography, written about a.d. 121. Ac-
cording to Professor Rhys's interpretation of Ptolemy, most of the country
between the Humber and Mersey and the Caledonian Forest belonged to a
tribe or confederation known as the Brigantes. The Novantae and Selgovae,
occupying the district on the Solway west of the Nith, appear, however, to
have been independent of them ; as were also the Parisi, between the Humber
and the Tees. The Otadini (occupying a portion of Lothian and the coast
down to the southern Wall) and the northern Damnonii (inhabiting the dis-
trict north of the Novantae, the Selgovae, and the Otadini, and to a consid-
erable distance beyond the Forth and Clyde — the present counties of Ayr,
Renfrew, Lanark, Dumbarton, Stirling, and the western half of Fife) were
either distinct peoples subject to the Brigantes, or included in the tribes that
went under that name. 10

Aside from the Novantae and Selgovae, these various tribes are now gen-
erally supposed to have belonged to the Cymric Celts, being part of the same
people who, since the time of Julius Caesar, have been popularly known as
" Britons," at the present day sometimes called " Brythons," to distinguish
them from the "Goidels," or Gaelic Celts of Britain. Freeman includes with
the Brythons nearly all the tribes of North Britain, a classification which
seems entirely too comprehensive ; he says of the latter :

On the whole, it is most likely that they belonged to the same branch of
the Celtic race as the southern Britons, and that they differed from them
chiefly as the unsubdued part of any race differs from the part which is
brought into subjection. In the later days of the Roman power in Britain,
these northern tribes, under the name of Picts, appear as dangerous invaders
of the Roman province, invaders whose inroads were sometimes pushed
even into its southern regions. 11

The connection of these different divisions of the early races with our
subject is quite important, for, as we shall see later on, that portion of Brit-
ain inhabited for so long a time by the Novantae, the Selgovae, the Otadini,
the Damnonii, the Brigantes, and the Galloway Picts of later writers is the

1 86 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

part from which Ireland received the largest proportion of her Scottish
immigrants."

Up to the close of the tenth century, the name " Scotland " was applied
solely to the Hibernian island. The present Scotland was then known as
Caledonia, or by its ancient Gaelic name of Alban, or Albania. Before that
period, and, indeed, for some time afterwards, its boundaries did not extend
south of the Forth and Clyde. That part of the country south of these
estuaries was included in the Roman province, and its inhabitants for the
most part were Romanized Britons. During their wars with the Brigantes in
the first century, the Romans learned of a people to the north of that nation,
whom they termed Caledonian Britons. Lucan first mentions them a.d. 65 :
" Unda Caledonios fallit turbata Britannos." They are alluded to by Taci-
tus some fifteen years later {Life of Agricola, c. xi.), who says :

Who were the first inhabitants of Britain, whether indigenous or immi-
grants, is a question involved in the obscurity usual among barbarians.
Their temperament of body is various, whence deductions are formed of
their different origin. Thus, the ruddy hair and large limbs of the Caledo-
nians point out a German derivation. 13 The swarthy complexion and curled
hair of the Silures, together with their situation opposite to Spain, render it
probable that a colony of the ancient Iberi possessed themselves of that ter-
ritory. They who are nearest Gaul resemble the inhabitants of that country;
whether from the duration of hereditary influence, or whether it be that
when lands jut forward in opposite directions, climate gives the same condi-
tion of body to the inhabitants of both. On a general survey, however, it
appears probable that the Gauls originally took possession on the neighbor-
ing coast. The sacred rites and superstitions of these people are discernible
among the Britons. The languages of the two nations do not greatly differ.
The same audacity in provoking danger, and irresolution in facing it when
present, is observable in both. The Britons, however, display more ferocity,
not being yet softened by a long peace ; for it appears from history that the
Gauls were once renowned in war, till, losing their valor with their liberty,
languor and indolence entered among them. The same change has also
taken place among those of the Britons who have been long subdued ; but
the rest continue such as the Gauls formerly were.

Tacitus's account of the campaigns carried on against the Caledonians by
Agricola sufficiently illustrates the spirit and valor of these early Scotch-
men. Though often defeated in battle, they were never subdued ; and when
unable to withstand the charges of the Roman legions in the open, they fell
back to their retreats in forest and mountains, where they were able to hold
the Romans at bay.

Dion Cassius, the historian (about a.d. 155-230), brings them to our at-
tention again, when in the year 201 we find the Caledonians joined with the
Maeatae in preparation for an attack on the Roman province. This was
postponed, however, by the action of the Roman Governor, Virius Lupus,
who purchased peace at a great price from the Maeatae. Dion, writing before
the year 230, gives the following description of these Maeatae, which, while in
some respects evidently founded upon fable, yet as a whole corresponds

The Caledonians, or Picts 187

with like accounts which have come down to us of the neighboring tribes

(1. lxxvi., ch. xii.) :

Of the Britons, the two most ample nations are the Caledonians and
the Maeatae ; for the names of the rest refer for the most part to these. The
Maeatae inhabit near the very wall which divides the island in two parts ; the
Caledonians are after those. Each of them inhabits mountains, very rugged,
and wanting water, also desert fields full of marshes ; they have neither
castles nor cities, nor dwell in any ; they live on milk, and by hunting, and
maintain themselves by the fruits of trees : for fishes, of which there is a very
great and numberless quantity, they never taste ; they dwell naked in tents,
and without shoes ; they use wives in common, and whatever is born to them
they bring up. 14 In the popular state they are governed as for the most part ;
they rob on the highway most willingly ; they war in chariots ; horses they
have, small and fleet ; their infantry, also, are as well most swift at running
as most brave in pitched battle. Their arms are a shield and a short spear,
in the upper part whereof is an apple of brass, that while it is shaken it may
terrify the enemies with sound ; they have likewise daggers ; they are able
to bear hunger, cold, and all afflictions ; for they merge themselves in
marshes, and there remain many days having only their heads out of water ;
and in woods are nourished by the barks and roots of trees. But a certain
kind of food they prepare for all occasions, of which if they take as much
as the size of a single bean, they are in nowise ever wont to hunger or thirst.

The nation of the Maeatae {i.e., " Men of the Midlands ") embraced those
tribes immediately north of the Roman wall between the Forth and the
Clyde, while the Caledonians were to the north and east. This division of
the people into two nations or septs seems to have continued for some cen-
turies. In 380, they were known as the Dicalidones and the Vecturiones.
By Bede they appear to have been distinguished as the Northern Picts and
the Southern Picts. 16

In the year 208, Severus penetrated into their country as far as the
river Tay. By great exertions in clearing the country of forests and under-
growth, and the construction of roads and bridges, he acquired a limited
district beyond that Wall of Antoninus which he had reconstructed between
the Clyde and the Forth. This territory the Romans afterwards garrisoned,
and retained for a few years. Severus is said to have fought no battles,
on this march, but his loss in men was very great, owing to the destructive
guerilla warfare carried on by the natives during the progress of the work
of clearing. In 211, the Maeatae and Caledonians prepared again for an
attack on the Romans. The death of Severus in that year preventing his
conduct of the operations against them, his son and successor was forced to
make peace with these tribes on terms which it would seem eventually in-
volved the withdrawal of the Roman garrisons to the south of the Wall.

After this we learn nothing more of the Caledonians from the Roman
writers until near the beginning of the following century, when they are
brought to our attention again under a new name, and one by which the
early inhabitants of Scotland have become best known in history. Eumenius,
the panegyrist, in his oration to Constantius Chlorus delivered at Autun, in

1 88 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

Gaul, a.d. 296, on the occasion of the victory of the latter over Allectus,
compares the victor with the former leaders who had fought against the
Britons, and adds : " The nation Caesar attacked was then rude, and the
Britons, used only to the Picts and Hibernians, — enemies then half naked, —
easily yielded to the Roman arms and ensigns." At the same place some
years later (309-10) Eumenius pronounced a second panegyric on Constan-
tius Chlorus, before Constantine, the son of Constantius, in which he said :
" The day would fail sooner than my oration were I to run over all the actions
of thy father, even with this brevity. His last expedition did not seek for
British trophies (as is vulgarly believed), but, the gods now calling him, he
came to the secret bounds of the earth. For neither did he by so many and
such actions, I do not say the woods and marshes of the Caledonians and other
Picts, but not Hibernia [Scotland ?], near at hand, nor farthest Thule," etc.

These, and similar brief allusions on the part of later writers, are all
that we get from the pages of early history concerning a subject which,
towards the close of the last century, gave rise to the famous Pictish Contro-
versy, a dispute that was carried on in Scotland for many years, and with
extreme bitterness on both sides, but which did not result in adding much
information to that imparted by Eumenius in the passage quoted above :
namely, that the Caledonians were Picts. 16 For a full consideration of
these discussions, the reader is referred to the works of Pinkerton, Ritson,
Chalmers, Prichard, Grant, Betham, and others. While we cannot but agree
with Mr. Hill Burton in concluding that the labor of those writers has been
without avail, and are entirely willing to " content ourselves with the old
and rather obvious notion that by Picti the Romans merely meant painted
people, 17 without any consideration about their race, language, or other
ethnical specialties," yet the efforts of our modern workers in the same field
have been more fruitful of results, so far as the ethnology of these painted
people is concerned. It is now generally believed that they were primarily
descended from the aborigines of Britain, who were non-Celtic and non-
Aryan. Later, in accordance with the usually adopted view as to the priority
of the Gaelic emigration to Britain, its subsequent movement northward, and
the facility with which the Picts afterwards coalesced with the Scots, they
must also have become to a large extent Gaelic. Yet, the presence of known
Cymric peoples in the Pictish territories in Roman times, — one instance
being that of the northern Damnonii, who were cut off from their own nation
by the building of the first Wall, — together with the many proofs of Brythonic
occupation shown in the topographical nomenclature of the northern Low-
lands, lead us to the conclusion that, so far as the Southern Picts were con-
cerned, their peculiar characteristics had to a considerable extent been
modified by the infusion of Cymric elements. In other words, the Northern
Picts seem to have been largely of the aboriginal type, more or less modified
by fusion with the Gaelic, while those of the south were a mixed Gaelic,
Cymric, and aboriginal people. This view harmonizes with the distinction

The Caledonians, or Picts 189

nearly always made by the early historians in their references to the inhabi-
tants of Caledonia — as instanced by the Maeatae and Caledonians of Dion
Cassius, the Caledonians and " other Picts " of Eumenius, the Dicalidones
and Vecturiones of Ammianus, and, somewhat later, the Northern and
Southern Picts of Bede. 18

The Picts were converted to Christianity by the preaching of St. Columba
in the latter half of the sixth century (after a.d. 565) ; and they were ruled
over by a line of Pictish kings down to the year 842, when Kenneth MacAlpin,
king of the Dalriada Scots, brought them under subjection, and united the
two kingdoms under one crown.

The chief original sources of information about the Pictish kingdom and
its rulers are the Ulster Annals, the Annals of Tighernac, and the Pictish
Chronicle, of which the best editions are those contained in Mr. William F.
Skene's Chronicles of the Picts and Scots. English translations of portions
of the first two of these have been printed in the Collectanea de Rebus
Albanicis of the Iona Club (see Appendix O).

The names of the Pictish kings from the beginning of the fifth century,
with the dates of the commencement of their reigns, duration of same, and
dates of death, are as follows :

About a.d. 406, Drust (or Drest) I., son of Irb (or Erp, or Wirp).

451, Talore I., son of Aniel, reigned four years.

455-57, Nechtan I., surnamedMorbet, son of Irb (or Erp); reigned twenty-
four years.

480, Drest (or Drust) II., surnamed Gurthinmoch ; reigned thirty
years.

510, Galanau ; reigned twelve years.

522, Dadrest ; reigned one year.

523, Drest (or Drust) III., son of Gyrom ; reigned eleven years.

524, the same, with Drust IV., son of Udrust (or Wdrost). 19
529, Drust III. (alone).

534, Gartnaoch I., son of Gyrom ; reigned seven years.

541, Giltram (or Cailtram), son of Gyrom ; reigned one year.

542, Talorg II., son of Muircholaich ; reigned eleven years.

553, Drest V., son of Munait ; reigned one year.

554, Galam,* son of Cendaeladh ; reigned two years ; died (probably) 580.

555, the same, with Bridei.

556, Bridei (or Bruidi, or Brudei, or Brude) I., son of Mailcon (Bruidi
mac Mailochon) ; reigned thirty years ; died 583.

586, Gartnard (or Gartnaidh) II., son of Domelch (or Domlech or Don-
ald) (Gartnay mac Donald) ; reigned eleven years ; died 599.

597, Nechtan II., grandson (or nephew) of Uerd (Nechtan Hy Firb) ;
reigned twenty years.

612 (or 617), Cinioch (or Cinaeth, or Kenneth, or Cinadon), son of
Luchtren (or Lachtren) ; reigned fourteen to nineteen years ; died 631.

190 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

631, Gartnard (or Gartnaidh) III., son of Wid (or Foith) (Gartnay
macFoith) ; reigned four years ; died 635.

635, Breidei (or Bruidi) II., son of Wid (or Foith) (Bruidi mac Foith) ;
reigned five years ; died 641.

641, Talorc (or Talore, or Talorcan) III., son of Wid (or Foith) (Talor-
can mac Foith) ; reigned twelve years ; died 653.

653, Talorcan, son of Ainfrait (or Anfrith, 21 or Eanfred) ; reigned four
years ; died 657.

657-63, Gartnait (or Gartnaidh) IV., son of Donnell (or Domhnaill)
(Gartnay mac Donald) ; reigned six and a half years ; died 66^.

665, Drest (or Drust, or Drost) VI., son of Donnell and brother of
Gartnach (Drust mac Donald) ; reigned seven years ; expelled 672.

672, Bredei (or Bruidi, or Bruidhe," or Bredei) III., son of Bili (or Bile
or Beli) (Bruidi mac Bili) ; reigned twenty-one years ; died 693.

693, Taran (or Gharan), son of Entefedich (or Enfisedech) (Gharan
mac Enfisedech) ; reigned four years ; expelled 697.

695-7, Brudei (or Bredei, or Bruidi, or Brude) IV., son of Derili (or
Derelei) (Brudei mac Derili) ; reigned eleven years ; died 706.

709, Nechtan III., son of Derili ; reigned fifteen years ; resigned 724 ;
returned 728 ; died 729.

724, Drest (or Druxst or Drost) VII.; expelled 726; died, 729.

726, Alpin, son of Eachaidh ; expelled 728 ; died 741.

729-31, Angus (or Hungus) I., son of Fergus (or Wirgust) ; reigned
thirty years ; died 761.

761, Brudei (or Bruidi) V., son of Fergus ; reigned two years ; died

763.

763, Kenneth (or Cinaedh, or Ciniod), son of Feredach (or Wirdech, or
Wredech) ; reigned twelve years ; died 775.

775, Alpin, son of Wroid ; reigned three years ; died 780.

777-8, Drust (or Drost), son of Talorgen (or Talorcan) ; reigned four to
five years ; and Talorgan (or Talorcan), son of Angus ; reigned two and
a half years ; died about 782.

784, Conall, son of Taidg (or Canaul, son of Tarl'a) ; reigned five years ;
expelled 789-90.

790, Constantine, son of Fergus (or Wirgust) ; reigned thirty years ; died
820.

820, Angus (brother of Constantine), son of Fergus ; reigned twelve
years ; died 834.

834, Drust (or Drost), son of Constantine, and Talorcan (or Talorgan),
son of Uitholl (or Wthoil) ; reigned about three years.

836, Eoganan, son of Angus ; reigned three years ; died 839.

839, Wrad (or Fered), son of Bargoit ; reigned about three years.

842, Bred (or Bruidi), son of Ferat ; reigned one year.

842-4, Kenneth II., surnamed mac Alpin, King of Albany.

The Caledonians, or Picts 191

NOTES TO CHAPTER XIV.

1 One of the most useful books on this subject is Dr. Daniel Wilson's Prehistoric Annals
of Scotland.

'Charles I. Elton, Origins of English History \ London, 1890.

8 Dr. Thurnam was the first to recognise that the long skulls, out of the long barrows of
Britain and Ireland, were of the Basque or Iberian type, and Professor Huxley holds that
the river-bed skulls belong to the same race. We have therefore proofs that an Iberian or
Basque population spread over the whole of Britain and Ireland in the neolithic age, inhabit-
ing caves, and burying their dead in caves and chambered tombs, just as in the Iberian
peninsula also, in the neolithic age. — Cave Hunting, p. 214, by W. Boyd Dawkins, M.A., 1874.

4 " The site of the prehistoric Celtic village near Glastonbury has been further excavated
since July last under the superintendence of the discoverer, Arthur Bullied. The sites of the
dwellings are marked by mounds. One of these contained the greatest depth of clay yet
found, no less than nine feet, the accumulation of successive hearths, which were found
necessary as the weight of the clay gradually compressed the peat beneath. This mound
contained three hundred tons of clay, all of which must have been brought in their boats by
the inhabitants from the neighboring hills. Under the mound was found the framework of
a loom with brushwood and wattlework to form the foundation. That the inhabitants were
much engaged in spinning is clear from the fact that in addition to other things connected
with the craft no fewer than forty horn and bone carding combs have been unearthed*
Strangely enough, no two of these are exactly of the same pattern. As in previous
seasons, a large number of bone articles has been discovered. The number of broken bone
needles and splinters of bone found in one mound seems to indicate that it was utilized as a
needle factory.

' ' Another mound was very rich in fragments of pottery and other evidences of the
manufacture of hardware. No fewer than ten bronze fibulae were found, these being
fashioned almost exactly like the modern safety-pin. Two bronze studs, probably a part of
harness or for fastening clothing, were also found, together with other small bronze articles.
A neatly cut iron file about eight inches long was found. As usual, very few human re-
mains were discovered, part of the skeleton of a very young child being all that was brought
to light this summer. With the exception of the cracked skulls of a few unfortunate warriors,
the remains of very young children have chiefly been found in past years, Mr. Bullied being
of the opinion that these primitive people conveyed their dead to the neighboring hills for
interment.

" Parts of three broken millstones were unearthed and in one mound a clay oven, measur-
ing two feet by nine inches. One glass article only was brought to light this year, a blue
glass bead with a wavy line of dark blue running around it." — London Times, circa
January, 1898.

6 As for Britain, one of the most thoroughly non-Celtic portions of it south of the Clyde
was probably that of the Selgovae or hunters, in Roman times, and later the more limited
Pictish district beyond the Nith. — J. Rhys, Celtic Britain, p. 270.

6 The name of the Nith in Ptolemy's time was Novios, and it is from it that this people
got the name of Novantae, given them probably by Brythons. ... To the east and
northeast of the Novantae dwelt the Selgovae, protected by thick forests and a difficult
country. They have left their name in the modern form of Solway to the moss and to the
firth called after them. The word probably meant hunters, and the people to whom it
applied may be supposed, not only to have been no Brythons, but to have been to no very
great extent Celtic at all, except perhaps as to their language, which they may have adopted
at an early date from the Goidelic invaders ; in a great measure they were most likely a
remnant of the aboriginal inhabitants, and the same remark may be supposed to be equally
applicable to the Novantae. . . . They lived between the Walls, and appeared in history

19 2 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

as Genunians, we think, and Attecotti. . . . The struggle in which they took part
against the Romans ended in their ultimately retaining only the country behind the Nith,
where the name of the Novantae becomes in Bede's mouth, that of the Niduarian Picts,
known as the Picts of Galloway for centuries afterwards. — Celtic Britain, pp. 220-221.

The name " Picti " was likewise applied to the inhabitants of Galloway, comprising the
modern counties of Kirkcudbright and Wigton, till a still later period, and survived the entire
disappearance of the name as applied to any other portion of the inhabitants of Scotland,
even as late as the twelfth century. This district was occupied in the second century by the
tribe termed by Ptolemy the " Novantae," with their towns of Rerigonium and Lucopibia,
and there is nothing to show that the same people did not occupy it throughout, and become
known as the Picts of Galloway, of which " Candida Casa," or Withern, was the chief seat,
and occupied the site of the older Lucopibia. — Celtic Scotland, vol. i., p. 131.

The Picts of Galloway are occasionally confounded with or included amongst the
Southern Picts, though when Bede describes the latter people as dwellers beyond the Forth,
at the foot of the lofty range of mountains separating them from the northern division of their
race, he places them in a very different part of the country from Galloway. Ritson maintains
that Galloway was a province of the Southern Picts, laying it down, in his dogmatic manner,
" as an incontrovertible fact, for which we have the express authority of Bede." In support
of this assertion he quotes Bede, Hist. Eccl., 1. iv., ch. xxvi., which, unfortunately for his argu-
ment, proves exactly the contrary, as the seat of Trumwine's bishopric is there said to have
been placed at Abercorn on the Forth, which divides the territories of the Picts and the
Angles — a very long way from Galloway. Bede was very well acquainted with this latter
district under the name of the diocese of Candida Casa, as it belonged, when he wrote, to the
kingdom of Northumbria ; and in his last chapter he commemorates the establishment of an
Anglian bishop within its boundaries. As he distinctly says that the Picts, after their
victory at Nectan's Mere, recovered from the Angles all that they had previously lost, it is
plain that the diocese of Candida Casa, which remained in possession of the Northumbrians,
could not have belonged to the Picts, but must have been conquered from another race, the
Britons. The authority of Bede is quite sufficient to refute the account of Jocelin, a monk
who in the twelfth century ascribed the conversion of the Picts of Galloway to a certain
shadowy St. Kentigern in the seventh ; this very district having been, upwards of two centuries
before, the seat of a Christian bishop, the British Ninian. A still more apocryphal story
occurs in the Acta Sanctorum (nth March), that St. Constantine of Cornwall (the contem-
porary of Gildas) was martyred in Kintyre about the year 570, when preaching to the heathen
Galwegians and pagan Scots ; or exactly at the same time when Columba was converting the
Northern Picts from his asylum of Iona, which he received from the Christian King of the
Dalriads. Another argument has been brought forward to place the Picts in Galloway in
the days of Bede, because the venerable historian has said that St. Cuthbert, on an excursion
from Melrose, was driven by stress of weather to the territory of the Picts called Niduari —
44 ad terram Pictorum qui Niduari vocantur." 44 The Picts inhabiting the banks of the Nith
in Dumfriesshire," say Smith and Pinkerton, 4< whither the holy man could not have gone in
a boat," retorts Ritson — with much truth — suggesting in his turn Long Niddry in Linlithgow-
shire, to reach which place, however, the holy man's boat must have been driven by stress of
weather across a considerable tract of dry land. The explanation of the difficulty seems to
be that Cuthbert, sailing from some point on the eastern coast, was driven northwards by
contrary winds into the Firth of Tay, landing near Abernethy on the coast of Fife, the
inhabitants of the banks of the Nethy probably being the 44 Picti qui Niduari vocantur". —
Scotland under her Early Kings, vol. ii., p. 382. See Note 12, p. 214.

1 As early as the middle of the fourth century the British provinces were already persis-
tently attacked by sea and land. The Picts and Scots, and the warlike nation of the
44 Attecotti," from whom the Empire was accustomed to recruit its choicest soldiers, the fleets
of Irish pirates in the north, the Franks and Saxons on the southern shores, combined to-

The Caledonians, or Picts 193

gether, whenever a chance presented itself, to burn and devastate the country, to cut off an
outlying garrison, to carry off women and children like cattle captured in a foray, and to offer
the bodies of Roman citizens as sacrifices. . . . The " Notitia Dignitatum " [compiled
about a.d. 400] mentions several regiments of Attecotti serving for the most part in Gaul
and Spain. Two of their regiments were enrolled among the " Honorians," the most distin-
guished troops in the Imperial armies. Though their country is not certainly known, it
seems probable that they inhabited the wilder parts of Galloway. — Elton, Origins of English
History, p. 338. After the building of the Roman wall by which those south of it were
severed from their kinsmen north of it the former probably soon lost their national character-
istics and became Brythonicized, while the Selgovae remained to form, with the Novantae,
the formidable people of the Attecotti, who afterwards gave Roman Britain so much to do,
until their power was broken by Theodosius, who enrolled their able-bodied men in the Roman
army, and sent them away to the continent, where no less than four distinct bodies of them
served at the time when the Table of Dignities was drawn up. They were a fierce and war-
like people, but by the end of the Roman occupation they seem to have been subdued or
driven beyond the Nith: . . . here the language of the inhabitants down to the
sixteenth century was Goidelic. — Celtic Britain, pp. 233-234.

Upon the whole it seems highly probable — and these Gaulish inscriptions add to the weight
of probability — that the Galli of Caesar were in the same line of Celtic descent with the Irish,
and that the name is preserved to this day in Gadhel and Gael, and commemorated also in
the triad Galedin, Celyddon, and Gwyddyl, as well as in Caledonia, Galatas, Keltai, and
Celtae. It is also nearly certain that these Galli or Gaels were the first to colonize Britain,
and probably that they were the first to colonize Gaul, and that in both cases they were
closely followed by a people of the same original stock and using a similar language, called
Cymry, Cimri, and in earlier times Kimmerioi, Cimmerii. — Thomas Nicholas, Pedigree of the
English People, p. 43.

There also cannot be a doubt that the statement which eminent writers have handed
down is virtually correct, that the Goidels or Gaels were the first Celtic inhabitants, who
absorbed the aborigines as the situations or circumstances demanded, and who in turn were
next dislodged by the Cymri, and other Celtic fresh hordes who flocked into Britain, driving
the said Goidels northwards, and across to Ireland. If other proof were wanting, we have
it in the surnames, and the names of places, many of which are common to both Galloway
and Ireland, being found on both sides of the Channel. It is also not to be forgotten that, as
Roger de Hovedon relates, the Galwegians, at the battle of the Standard in a.d. 1138, used
the war-cry " Albanach ! Albanach ! " thus identifying themselves as Irish-Scots ; for to the
present time the Irish call the people of Scotland Albanach and Albanaigh. It also ex-
tends further, for as Irish-Scots its use implied that they considered they had returned to
the land of their fathers, and were entitled to be Scotsmen, which is the Gaelic meaning of
the word. Hovedon, having lived at the time, is thus contemporary evidence and it is
related that he was sent on a mission to Scotland. — MacKerlie, Galloway, Ancient and
Modern, p. 62.

8 " That this is so may be inferred with a reasonable degree of certainty from the inaug-
uration and progress of the English conquest of a later age, which, beginning at nearly the
same point on the eastern coast that Caesar had found most convenient to reach from Gaul,
gradually extended westward and northward, driving the Celts before until they reached the
western shore.

" The early separation of these pioneers of the Gaelic race through their crossing into
Ireland, whether from Scotland or Wales, is quite sufficient to account for the marked differ-
ence now existing between the Gaelic, or Irish, language and the Welsh."— Nicholas, Pedigree
of the English People, London, 1873, p. 46.

Diodorus Siculus, a contemporary of Caesar, states that Ireland was inhabited by
44 Britains." Camden thinks they first emigrated from Galloway. Spain was at least five

194 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

hundred miles distant ; and the nearest promontory of Gaul lay about three hundred miles
from the shores of Ireland.

* Professor Rhys, in his latest work ( The Welsh People, New York and London, 1900,
written in collaboration with Dr. David Brynmor-Jones), has applied the name " Goidelo-
Celtic," or "Celtican," to the language of the Gaelic Celts, and " Galato-Celtic," or " Ga-
latic," to that of the Brythonic Celts. On this subject, he says :

" The ancient distinction of speech between the Celts implies a corresponding difference
of race and institutions, a difference existing indeed long before Celts of any description came
to these islands. . . . The two peoples are found to have differed largely in their manner
of disposing of their dead, and each had weapons characteristic of its own civilization. The
interments with the most important remains of the older stock are found mostly in the neigh-
borhood of the Alps, including the upper portions of the basin of the Danube and the plains
of North Italy (see Bertrad and Reinach's volume on Les Celles dans les Vallees du Po et du
Danube, Paris, 1894). This older Celtic world began, about the sixth century B.C., to be in-
vaded by the Galatic Celts, whose home may be inferred to have consisted of Central and
Northern Germany and of Belgium ; and the remains of these Galatic Celts are to be studied
in the great burial places between the Seine, the Marne, and the Rhine — in the country, in
short, from which they invaded Britain. It has been surmised that this movement was begun
by the Brythons between the time of Pytheas, in the fourth century B.C., and the visits of
Julius Caesar. The latter mentions, (ii., 4.) a certain Diviciacos, king of the Suessiones, a
Belgic people which has left its name to Soissons, as the most powerful prince in Gaul, and
as ruling also over Britain. This was, moreover, late enough to be within the memory of
men living in Caesar's time. . . .

" When, it may be asked, did the other Celts, the Goidels, whom the Brythons found
here, arrive in this country ? It is impossible to give any precise answer to such a question,
but it may be supposed that the Goidels came over not later than the great movements which
took place in the Celtic world of the Continent in the fifth and sixth centuries before our era
(see the Premiers Habitants de l* Europe, vol. i., p. 262, and Zimmer's Mutterrecht der Pikten
in the Zeitschrift fur Rechtsgeschichte, vol. xv., pp. 233, 234). We mean the movements
which resulted in the Celts reaching the Mediterranean and penetrating into Spain, while
others of the same family began to press towards the east of Europe, whence some of them
eventually crossed to Asia Minor and made themselves a home in the country called after
them Galatia. On the whole, we dare not suppose the Goidels to have come to Britain much
later than the sixth century B.C. ; . . . rather should we say that they probably began to
arrive in this country earlier. Before the Brythons came the Goidels had presumably oc-
cupied most of the island south of the firths of the Clyde and Forth. So when the Brythons
arrived and began to press the Goidels in the west, some of the latter may have crossed to
Ireland ; possibly they had begun still earlier to settle there. The portion of Ireland which
they first occupied was probably the tract known as the kingdom of Meath, approximately
represented now by the diocese of that name ; but settlements may have also been made by
them at other points on the coast.

' ' We have next to consider the question whether the first Celtic comers, the Goidels,
were also the first inhabitants of this country. This may be briefly answered to the effect
that there seems to be no reason to think so, or even to suppose that it may not have been
uninterruptedly inhabited for a time before it ceased to form a continuous portion of the con-
tinent of Europe. . . . It is but natural to suppose that the Goidels, when they arrived,
subjugated the natives, and made slaves of them and drudges. From the first the fusion of the
two races may have begun to take place. . . . The process of fusion must have been quick-
ened by the advent of a third and hostile element, the Brythonic . . . and under the pres-
sure exerted by the Brythons the fusion of the two other nations may have been so complete
as to produce a new people of mixed Goidelic and native origin. . . . Accordingly, sup-
posing the Aborigines not to have been Aryans, one might expect the language of the resultant

The Caledonians, or Picts 195

Goidelic people to show more non-Aryan traits than the language of the Brythons ; as a
matter of fact, this proves to be the case."

10 The southern Damnonii, inhabiting as they did what was later the nucleus of the
kingdom of the Cumbrians, must undoubtedly be regarded as their ancestors and as Brythons.
So were the Otadini Brythons . . . they disappeared early, their country having been seized
in part by the Picts from the other side of the Forth, and in part by Germanic invaders from
beyond the sea. — Celtic Britain, p. 271.

Over the ethnography of Selgovae and Novantse much controversy has taken place. It
is probable that on the shores of Solway, as in the rest of the British Isles, there was at one
time an aboriginal race, small and dark-haired, which early Greek writers describe as being
replaced by the large-limbed, fairer-skinned Celts. The early Irish historical legends contain
numerous allusions to this people, generally known as Firbolg. But as it cannot be affirmed
that any trace of these has been identified, either in the traditions or sepulchral remains of
this particular district, further speculation about them is for the present futile. The fairest
inference from the majority of place-names in Novantia — now Galloway — as well as from
the oldest recorded personal names, is that it was long inhabited by people of the Goidelic or
Gaelic branch of Celts, speaking the same language, no doubt with some dialectic variation, as
the natives of Ireland and the rest of what is now Scotland. The Cymric or Welsh speech,
which was afterwards diffused among the Britons of Dumfriesshire and Strathclyde, did not
prevail to dislodge innumerable place-names in the Goidelic language which still remain
within the territory of the Strathclyde Britons. That the people who dwelt longest in Gallo-
way spoke neither the Welsh form of Celtic nor the Pictish dialect of Gaelic, may be inferred
from the absence of any certain traces of either of these languages among their names of
places. Yet, as will be shown hereafter, they bore the name of Picts long after it had fallen
into disuse in other parts of Scotland. They were Picts, yet not the same as Northern Picts
dwelling beyond the Mounth, nor as the Southern Picts, dwelling between the Mounth and
the Forth ; Gaels, yet not of one brotherhood with other Gaels — a distinction emphasized by
the name given to them of Gallgaidhel or stranger Gaels. This term became in the Welsh
speech Gallwyddel {dd sounds like th in "this"), whence the name Galloway, which still
denotes the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright and the shire or county of Wigtown. Reginald of
Durham, writing in the twelfth century, has preserved one word of Galloway Pictish. He
says that certain clerics of Kirkcudbright were called scollofthes in the language of the Picts.
This is a rendering of the Latin scolasticus, differing not greatly from the Erse and Gaelic scolog,
more widely from the Welsh yscolAeie. — Maxwell, History of Dumfries and Galloway, pp. 4, 5.

11 " One may say that the Welsh people of the present day is made up of three elements :
the Aboriginal, the Goidelic, and the Brythonic. And it would be unsafe to assume that
the later elements predominate ; for the Celtic invaders, both Goidels and Brythons, may
have come in comparatively small numbers, not to mention the fact that the aboriginal race,
having been here possibly thousands of years before the first Aryan arrived, may have had
such an advantage in the matter of acclimatization, that it alone survives in force. This is
now supposed to be the case with France, whose people, taken in the bulk, are neither
Frankish nor Celtic so much as the representatives of the non-Aryan populations which the
first Aryans found there. It thus becomes a matter of interest for us to know all we can
about the earliest inhabitants of this country. Now, the question of the origin of that race
is, according to one view taken of it, inseparably connected with the Pictish question ; and
the most tenable hypothesis may be said to be, that the Picts were non-Aryans, whom the
first Celtic migrations found already settled here. The Picts appear to have retained their
language and institutions latest on the east coast of Scotland in portions of the region be-
tween Clackmannan and Banff. But Irish literature alludes to Picts here and there in Ireland,
and that in such a way as to favor the belief that they were survivals of a race holding pos-
session at one time of the whole country. If the Picts were not Aryans, we could hardly
suppose them to have been able to acquire possession of extensive tracts of these islands after

196 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

the arrival of such a powerful and warlike race as the early Aryans. The natural conclusion
is, that the Picts were here before the Aryans came, that they were, in fact, the aborigines.

"Now, something is known of the manners and customs of the ancient Picts ; for one
of them at least was so remarkable as to attract the attention of the ancient authors who
mention the peoples of this country. It was the absence among them of the institution of
marriage as known to men of the Aryan race. This is illustrated by the history of the Picts
in later times, especially in the case of their kings, for it is well known that a Pictish king
could not be succeeded by a son of his own, but usually by a sister's son. The succession
was through the mother, and it points back to a state of society which, previous to the con-
version of the Picts to Christianity, was probably based on matriarchy as distinguished from
marriage and marital authority. . . .

" The same conclusion as to the probable non- Aryan origin of the Picts is warranted by
facts of another order, namely, those of speech ; but the Pictish question is rendered philo-
logically difficult by the scantiness of the remains of the Pictish language. . . . Failing
to recognize the borrowing of Goidelic and Brythonic words by the Picts, some have been led
to regard Pictish as a kind of Gaelic, and some as a dialect akin to Welsh. The point to
have been decided, however, was not whether Gaelic or Welsh explains certain words said to
have been in use among the Picts, but whether there does not remain a residue to which
neither Gaelic nor Welsh, nor, indeed, any Aryan tongue whatsoever, can supply any sort of
key. This is beginning of late to be perceived. . . . It is not too much to say that the
theory of the non- Aryan origin of the Pictish language holds the field at present." — Rhys,
The Welsh People, pp. 13-16.

12 Some information in regard to the early inhabitants of the district west of the Nith may
be found in the works of Mr. P. H. MacKerlie, chief of which is Lands and their Owners in
Galloway, In speaking of the language, he says : " It is also found that the Lowland Scottish
was not derived from the Saxon, from which it differs in many respects, but appears to have
had its origin from the language of the Northern Picts and Norwegian settlers. It is true
that there are no means of distinctly tracing this ; but the belief of some writers that the
Picts were originally Britons, and became mixed with Norse blood, is more than probable.
The Pictish language, so far known as Celtic, is considered as having been nearer to the dia-
lects of the Britons than to those of the Gael, which coincides with the above account of their
origin — hence the characteristics of both, blended with the Goidel or Gaelic, to be found in
the Scots. There can be little doubt that the Scottish language had its foundation principally
from these sources. Chalmers gives many Scottish words as decidedly British or Cymric.
In addition there are many Goidelic or Gaelic words, as can be traced by any one possessed
of Gaelic and Scottish dictionaries. It is historical that in the eleventh century Gaelic was
in use at the Court of Malcolm Canmore, and also in the Church at that period. This
continued until Edgar succeeded as king in 1098, when Norman French (not Saxon) dis-
placed the Gaelic at Court." — Galloway, Ancient and Modern, p. 79.

Mr. MacKerlie's work is chiefly valuable for its local features, and he cannot be too closely
followed in his general conclusions. His statement as to the origin of the Scottish language
must be taken with considerable allowance. Mr. Hill Burton, however, takes an equally
extreme position on the other side of the question. In speaking of the Lowlanders, he says :
" How far Celtic blood may have mingled with their race we cannot tell, but it was the
nature of their language obstinately to resist all admixture with the Gaelic. The broadest
and purest Lowland Scotch is spoken on the edge of the Highland line. It ought, one would
think, to be a curious and instructive topic for philology to deal with, that while the estab-
lished language of our country — of England and Scotland — borrows at all hands — from
Greek, from Latin, from French, — it takes nothing whatever, either in its structure or
vocabulary, from the Celtic race, who have lived for centuries in the same island with the
Saxon-speaking races, English and Scots." — History of Scotland, vol. i., p. 200.

13 In elucidation of this passage no less reputable an authority than Thomas H. Huxley

The Caledonians, or Picts 197

is named by Mr. Skene as sponsor for his proposition that " the people termed Gauls and
those called Germans by the Romans did not differ in any important physical character."
This, indeed, coincides with the usual description given by the Romans.

14 This subject has been discussed in connection with the succession of the Pictish kings.
The names of the reigning kings are in the main confined to four or five names, as Brude,
Drust, Talorgan, Nechtan, Gartnaidh, and these never appear among the names of the fathers
of kings, nor does the name of a father occur twice in the list. Further, in two cases we
know that while the kings who reigned were termed respectively Brude and Talorcan, the
father of the one was a Briton, and of the other an Angle. The conclusion which Mr. Mc-
Lennan in his very original work on primitive marriage draws from this is, that it raises a
strong presumption that all the fathers were men of other tribes. At any rate, there remains
the fact, after every deduction has been made, that the fathers and mothers were in no case
of the same family name ; and he quotes this as a reason for believing that exogamy prevailed
among the Picts. But this explanation, though it goes some way, will not fully interpret the
anomalies in the list of Pictish kings. The only hypothesis that seems to afford a full expla-
nation is one that would suppose that the kings among the Picts were elected from one family,
clan, or tribe, or possibly from one in each of the two divisions of the Northern and Southern
Picts ; that there lingered among the Picts the old custom among the Celts, who, to use the
language of Mr. McLennan, " were anciently lax in their morals, and recognized relationship
through mothers only ; that intermarriage was not permitted in this royal family tribe, and
the women had to obtain their husbands from the men of other tribes, not excluding those of
a different race ; that the children were adopted into the tribe of the mother, and certain
names were exclusively bestowed on such children." — Celtic Scotland, vol. i., pp. 233-234 ;
John F. McLennan, Origin of the Form of Capture in Marriage Ceremonies.

15 These Britons, known by the name of Maeatae, included under them several lesser
people, such as the Otadini, Selgovae, Novantes, Damnii, etc. — T. Innes, Critical Essay on
the Ancient Inhabitants of the Northern Parts of Britain or Scotland, book i., ch. ii., art. i.

16 Herodian (lib. iii.), in his account of Severus's expedition, written about 240, calls the
same inhabitants of Caledonia simply Britons, but he describes them as Picts, or painted, in
these words : " They mark their bodies with various pictures of all manner of animals, and
therefore they clothe not themselves lest they hide the painted outside of their bodies." — Innes,
book i., ch. iii., art. i.

11 " The Scots, in their own tongue, have their name for the painted body [Cruithnigh],
for that they are marked by sharp-pointed instruments of iron, with black pigments, with
the figures of various animals. . . .

" Some nations, not only in their vestments, but also in their bodies, have certain things
peculiar to themselves . . . nor is there wanting to the nation of the Picts the name of the
body, but the efficient needle, with minute punctures, rubs in the expressed juices of a native
herb, that it may bring these scars to its own fashion : an infamous nobility with painted
limbs." — Isadore of Seville, Origines, 1. ix., ch. ii.; and 1. xix., ch. xxiii.

18 The Picts and Scots have usually been associated with Caledonia. These names are
recent in origin, being used only by later Roman writers. Bede (sixth cent.) calls Caledonia
" Provincia Pictorum " ; and it would seem that in his time the name Picts, or Pehts, had
nearly superseded the older term Caledonii — derived from the Cymric Celydon, and this
related to the generic Galatse, Celts, Galli. — Nicholas, Pedigree of the English People, p. 49.
The proper Scots, as no one denies, were a Gaelic colony from Ireland. The only
question is as to the Picts or Caledonians. Were they another Gaelic tribe, the vestige of a
Gaelic occupation of the island earlier than the British occupation, or were they simply
Britons who had never been brought under the Roman dominion ? The geographical aspect
of the case favors the former belief, but the weight of the philological evidence seems to be
on the side of the latter. — Freeman, Norman Conquest, ch. ii., sec. 1.

The Picts were simply Britons who had been sheltered from Roman conquest by the

198 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

fastnesses of the Highlands, and who were at last roused in their turn to attack by the weak-
ness of the province and the hope of plunder. Their invasions penetrated to the heart of the
island. Raids so extensive could hardly have been effected without help from within, and
the dim history of the time allows us to see not merely an increase of disunion between the
Romanized and un-Romanized population of Britain, but even an alliance between the last
and their free kinsfolk, the Picts. — J. R. Green, Short History of the English People, ch. i.,
sec. 1.

The Southern Picts are said by Bede to have had seats within these mountains. . . .
These districts consist of the Perthshire and Forfarshire Highlands, the former of which is
known by the name of Atholl. The western boundary of the territory of the Southern Picts
was Drumalban, which separated them from the Scots of Dalriada, and their southern boun-
dary the Forth. The main body of the Southern Picts also belonged no doubt to the Gaelic
race, though they may have possessed some differences in the idiom of their language ; but
the original population of the country, extending from the Forth to the Tay, consisted of part
of the tribe of Damnonii, who belonged to the Cornish variety of the British race, and they
appear to have been incorporated with the Southern Picts, and to have introduced a British
element into their language. The Frisian settlements, too, on the shores of the Firth of Forth
may also have left their stamp on this part of the nation. — Celtic Scotland, vol. i., p. 231.

19 This Drust is clearly connected with Galloway ; and we thus learn that when two
kings appear in the Pictish Chronicle as reigning together, one of them is probably king of
the Picts of Galloway.

" Near to the parish church of Anwoth, in Galloway, is a low undulating range of hills,
called the Boreland hills. One of these goes by the name of Trusty's Hill, and round its
top may be traced the remains of a vitrified wall." — Stuart's Sculptured Stones, vol. i., p. 31.

20 He, too, was probably a king of the Picts of Galloway, and traces of his name also can
be found in the topography of that district. The old name of the parish of New Abbey, in
Kirkcudbright, was Loch Kendeloch.

21 Skene says that Talorcan was obviously the son of that Ainfrait, the son of Aedilfrid,
an elder brother of Osuald, who on his father's death had taken refuge with the Picts, and
his son Talorcan must have succeeded to the throne through a Pictish mother. At the time,
then, when King Oswiu extended his sway over the Britons and Scots, there was a king of the
Anglic race by paternal descent actually reigning over the Picts. Tighernac records his
death in 657, and Bede tells us that within three years after he had slain King Penda, Oswiu
subjected the greater part of the Picts to the dominion of the Angles. It is probable, there-
fore, that he claimed their submission to himself as the cousin and heir on the paternal side
of their king, Talorcan, and enforced his claim by force of arms.

22 Brudei (Bredei, or Brude) was paternally a scion of the royal house of Alclyde, his
father, Bili, appearing in the Welsh genealogies annexed to Nennius as the son of Neithon
and father of that Eugein who slew Domnall Brec in 642. His mother was the daughter of
Talorcan mac Ainfrait, the last independent king of the Picts before they were subjected by
Oswiu.

CHAPTER XV

THE SCOTS AND PICTS

THE Scots of Dalriada acquired possession of the peninsula of Kintyre
and adjacent territory in Argyle at the beginning of the sixth century.
About 503 Loarn More, son of Ere, settled there with his brothers, Angus
and Fergus, and some of their followers. They came from Irish Dalriada —
a district in Ireland approximately corresponding to or included in the
northern portion of the present county of Antrim.

Of the Scots of Ireland we have frequent mention by the Roman histor-
ians. As we have seen, their island was for some centuries known by the
name of Scotia, 1 and after the Scots had settled in Albania, it continued to
be called Scotia Major in distinction from Scotia Minor, which was the first
form of the present name, " Scotland," as applied to North Britain.

The following references to the Scots are found in the History of Ammi-
anus Marcellinus (written between 380 and 390), and they are the first ac-
counts that we have of these people under that name, although they may have
been of the same race with the " Hibernians " mentioned by Eumenius in 296,
who, with the Picts, were said by him to have been the hereditary enemies of
the Britons in Caesar's time. It seems more probable, however, that the
term " Hibernians " was first applied by the Romans to the inhabitants of
Western Scotland.

These were the events which took place in Illyricum and in the East.
But the next year, that of Constantius's tenth and Julian's third consulship
[a.d. 360], the affairs of Britain became troubled in consequence of the in-
cursions of the savage nations of Picts and Scots, who, breaking the peace to
which they had agreed, were plundering the districts on their borders, and
keeping in constant alarm the provinces exhausted by former disasters. —
(Book xx., ch. i.)

At this time [a.d. 364], the trumpet, as it were, gave signal for war
throughout the whole Roman world ; and the barbarian tribes on our fron-
tier were moved to make incursions on those territories which lay nearest to
them. The Allemanni laid waste Gaul and Rhaetia at the same time. The
Sarmatians and Quadi ravaged Pannonia. The Picts, Scots, Saxons, and
Attecotti harassed the Britons with incessant invasions. 2

It will be sufficient here to mention that at that time [a.d. 368] the Picts,
who were divided into two nations, the Dicalidones and the Vecturiones,
and likewise the Attecotti, a very warlike people, and the Scots were all
roving over different parts of the country, and committing great ravages. —
(Book xxvi., ch. iv.)

Theodosius, father of the emperor of that name, finally succeeded in driv-
ing the invaders north of Severus's wall, and the country between that and
the Wall of Hadrian was added to the Roman Empire about 368 as the fifth
province in Britain, and called Valentia, after the reigning emperor. The

199

200 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

legions becoming reduced by the revolt of Maximus about 390, however,
further incursions of the Picts and Scots took place ; and though fresh
troops were sent against them and the territory again recovered, the final
withdrawal of the garrisons during the next twenty years left the province
wellnigh defenceless and exposed to the raids of the savages, who from that
time on broke through the walls with impunity and overran and destroyed
the Roman settlements at will (Ammianus, book xxvii., ch. viii.).

The early attacks on Britain by the Scots seem to have been made directly
from Ireland, and were more in the nature of predatory forays than perma-
nent territorial conquests. They first appear to have come through Wales.'

The History of Nennius, so-called 4 (a mixture of fables and half-truths),
tells us :

§ n. ^neas reigned over the Latins three years ; Ascanius, thirty-three
years ; after whom Silvius reigned twelve years, and Posthumus thirty-nine
years : the former, from whom the kings of Alba are called Silvan, was
brother to Brutus, who governed Britain at the time Eli, the high-priest,
judged Israel, and when the ark of the covenant was taken by a foreign
people. But Posthumus, his brother, reigned among the Latins. [Fabulous.]

§ 12. After an interval of not less than eight hundred years, came the
Picts, and occupied the Orkney Islands [?] : whence they laid waste many
regions, and seized those on the left-hand side of Britain, where they still
remain, keeping possession of a third part of Britain to this day.

§ 13. Long after this, the Scots arrived in Ireland from Spain. [?] . . .

§ 14. . . . The sons of Liethali obtained the country of the Dimetse
where is a city called Menavia [St. David's] and the province Guiher and
Cetguela [Caer Kidwelly, in Carmarthenshire], which they held till they
were expelled from every part of Britain, by Cunedda and his sons.

§ 15. . . . The Britons came to Britain in the third age of the
world ; and in the fourth, the Scots took possession of Ireland. The Britons
who, suspecting no hostilities, were unprovided with the means of defence,
were unanimously and incessantly attacked, both by the Scots from the
west and by the Picts from the north. A long interval after this, the Ro-
mans obtained the empire of the world.

§ 62. . . . The great king, Mailcun, reigned among the Britons,
i. e., in the district of Guenedota, because his great-great-grandfather Cun-
edda, with his twelve sons, had come before from the left-hand part, i. e.,
from the country which is called Manau Gustodia, one hundred and forty-
six years before Mailcun reigned, and expelled the Scots with much slaugh-
ter from those countries, and they never returned again to inhabit them.

The invasions of the Scots and Picts after the departure of the Romans
from Britain (418-426) are thus described by Gildas, who wrote in the mid-
dle of the sixth century :

§ 13. At length also, new races of tyrants sprang up, in terrific numbers,
and the island, still bearing its Roman name, but casting off her institutes
and laws, sent forth among the Gauls that bitter scion of her own planting,
Maximus, with a great number of followers, and the ensigns of royalty,
which he bore without decency and without lawful right, but in a tyrannical
manner, and amid the disturbances of the seditious soldiery. . . .

The Scots and Picts 201

§ 14. After this, Britain is left deprived of all her soldiery and armed
bands, of her cruel governors, and of the flower of her youth, who went with
Maximus, but never again returned ; and utterly ignorant as she was of the
art of war, groaned in amazement for many years under the cruelty of two
foreign nations — the Scots from the northwest, and the Picts from the north.

§ 15. The Britons, impatient at the assaults of the Scots and Picts, their
hostilities and dreaded oppressions, send ambassadors to Rome with letters,
entreating in piteous terms the assistance of an armed band to protect them,
and offering loyal and ready submission to the authority of Rome, if they
only would expel their invading foes. A legion is immediately sent, forget-
ting their past rebellion, and provided sufficiently with arms. When they
had crossed over the sea and landed, they came at once to close conflict
with their cruel enemies, and slew great numbers of them. All of them
were driven beyond the borders, and the humiliated natives rescued from
the bloody slavery which awaited them. . . .

§ 16. The Roman legion had no sooner returned home in joy and tri-
umph, than their former foes, like hungry and ravening wolves, rushing with
greedy jaws upon the fold which is left without a shepherd, and wafted both
by the strength of oarsmen and the blowing wind, break through the boun-
daries, and spread slaughter on every side, and like mowers cutting down the
ripe corn, they cut up, tread under foot, and overrun the whole country.

§ 17. And now again they send suppliant ambassadors, with their gar-
ments rent and their heads covered with ashes, imploring assistance from the
Romans, and like timorous chickens, crowding under the protecting wings of
their parents, that their wretched country might not altogether be destroyed,
and that the Roman name which now was but an empty sound to fill the ear,
might not become a reproach even to distant nations. Upon this, the Ro-
mans, moved with compassion, as far as human nature can be, at the relations
of such horrors, send forward, like eagles in their flight, their unexpected
bands of cavalry by land and mariners by sea, and planting their terrible
swords upon the shoulders of their enemies, they mow them down like leaves
which fall at the destined period ; and as a mountain-torrent swelled with
numerous streams, and bursting its banks with roaring noise, with foaming
crest and yeasty wave rising to the stars, by whose eddying currents our
eyes are as it were dazzled, does with one of its billows overwhelm every
obstacle in its way, so did our illustrious defenders vigorously drive our
enemies' band beyond the sea, if any could so escape them ; for it was be-
yond those same seas that they transported, year after year, the plunder which
they had gained, no one daring to resist them.

§ 1 8. The Romans, therefore, left the country, giving notice that they
could no longer be harassed by such laborious expeditions, nor suffer the Ro-
man standards, with so large and brave an army, to be worn out by sea and
land by fighting against these unwarlike, plundering vagabonds ; but that the
islanders, inuring themselves to warlike weapons, and bravely fighting, should
valiantly protect their country, their property, wives, and children, and, what
is dearer than these, their liberty and lives. . . .

§ 19. No sooner were they gone, than the Picts and Scots, like worms
which in the heat of mid-day come forth from their holes, hastily land again
from their canoes, in which they had been carried beyond the Cichican val-
ley, differing one from another in manners, but inspired with the same avid-
ity for blood, and all more eager to shroud their villainous faces in bushy
hair than to cover with decent clothing those parts of their body which
required it. Moreover, having heard of the departure of our friends, and

202 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

their resolution never to return, they seized with greater boldness than before
on all the country towards the extreme north as far as the wall. To oppose
them there was placed on the heights a garrison equally slow to fight and ill
adapted to run away, a useless and panic-struck company, who slumbered
away days and nights on their unprofitable watch. Meanwhile the hooked
weapons of their enemies were not idle, and our wretched countrymen were
dragged from the wall and dashed against the ground. Such premature
death, however, painful as it was, saved them from seeing the miserable suf-
ferings of their brothers and children. But why should I say more? They
left their cities, abandoned the protection of the wall, and dispersed them-
selves in flight more desperately than before. The enemy, on the other
hand, pursued them with more unrelenting cruelty than before, and
butchered our countrymen like sheep, so that their habitations were like
those of savage beasts ; for they turned their arms upon each other, and for
the sake of a little sustenance, imbrued their hands in the blood of their fel-
low countrymen. Thus foreign calamities were augmented by domestic
feuds ; so that the whole country was entirely destitute of provisions, save
such as could be procured in the chase.

§ 20. Again, therefore, the wretched remnant, sending to ^Etius, a
powerful Roman citizen, address him as follows : " To JEtius, now con-
sul for the third time: the groans of the Britons." And again, a little
further, thus : " The barbarians drive us to the sea ; the sea throws us back
on the barbarians : thus two modes of death await us, we are either slain or
drowned." The Romans, however, could not assist them, and in the mean-
time the discomfited people, wandering in the woods, began to feel the effects
of a severe famine, which compelled many of them without delay to yield
themselves up to their cruel persecutors, to obtain subsistence ; others of
them, however, lying hid in mountains, caves, and woods, continually sallied
out from thence to renew the war. And then it was, for the first time, that
they overthrew their enemies, who had for so many years been living in
their country ; for their trust was not in man, but in God ; according to the
maxim of Philo, " We must have divine assistance, when that of man fails."
The boldness of the enemy was for a while checked, but not the wicked-
ness of our countrymen ; the enemy left our people, but the people did not
leave their sins.

§ 21. For it has always been a custom with our nation, as it is at pres-
ent, to be impotent in repelling foes, but bold and invincible in raising civil
war, and bearing the burdens of their offences. They are impotent, I say,
in following the standard of peace and truth, but bold in wickedness and
falsehood. The audacious invaders therefore return to their winter quar-
ters, determined before long again to return and plunder. And then, too,
the Picts for the first time seated themselves at the extremity of the island,
where they afterwards continued, occasionally plundering and wasting the
country.

As already stated, about the year 503 the sons of Ere, a descendant of
Cairbre Riadhi (founder of the kingdom of Dalriada in the northern part of
the present county Antrim), passed from Ireland to Scotland with a body
of their followers, and established a government over some of their country-
men who had previously settled in the southwest of Argyle. One of these
sons, Fergus More, succeeded his brother Loarn in the chiefship, and is
generally esteemed the founder of the dynasty. 6

The Scots and Picts 203

Fergus was followed by his son, Domangart (died 505), by the latter's
sons, Comgall (died 538) and Gabhran (died 560), and by Comgall'sson, Co-
nal (died 574). JEdan, son of Gabhran, seized the succession after the death
of his cousin, Conal, and during his long reign did much to increase the
power and influence of the colony and to create a respect for the Scots' arms,
by making war against the Picts, the Britons of Strathclyde, and the Saxons."
He lived to see his dominion independent of the Irish Dalriada, to which it
had before been tributary, and is usually esteemed the founder of the
kingdom of the Scots, having been the first to form the families and tribes-
men of his race into a compact and united people.

St. Columba settled in Iona about 565, and the colony of Dalriada in the
time of JEdan was, in consequence, the centre and chief source of the Chris-
tian faith and propaganda in Britain. From thence missionaries travelled
to many parts of the island and to the Continent ; and the conversion of
the Gaelic Picts of the north by the preaching and ministrations of Columba
no doubt prepared the way for the union of the Scots and Picts, which, more
than two centuries later, followed the conquering career of the most renowned
of ^Edan's successors.

^Edan ascended the throne of Dalriada in 574 ; or perhaps it would be
more correct to say that he became chief of the Dalriad tribe. In 603 he led
a numerous force — recruited largely from the Britons of Strathclyde —
against ^Ethelfrid, the Anglian king of Bernicia. 7 Meeting him in Liddes-
dale, near the frontier line of the kingdoms of Bernicia and Strathclyde (in
the present Roxburghshire), a decisive battle was fought at Degsastan, which
resulted in the utter defeat and rout of ^Edan's army, and the extension of
the western boundary of the Anglian kingdom to the river Esk. 8 The annal-
ist, Tighernac, records ^dan's death in 606, at the age of seventy-four.

He was succeeded by his son, Eocha Buidhe, who resigned the throne to
his son, Conadh Cerr. In the year 629, the latter was slain in the battle of
Fedhaeoin, fought in Ireland between the Irish Dalriads and the Irish Picts,
or Cruithne. Both parties to this contest received auxiliaries from Scotland ;
Eocha Buidhe appears also in this battle, on the side of the Picts, and op-
posed to his son, Conadh, the leader of the Dalriad Scots. 9 Mr. Skene infers
from this, and from other confirmatory circumstances, that Eocha, at this
time having withdrawn from Dalriada, must have been ruler of the Gallo-
way Picts. 10 He died later in the same year.

Domnall Brecc, or Breac, brother to Conadh Cerr, succeeded to the
throne of Dalriada on the death of the latter. In 634, he fought the
Northumbrians at Calathros (now Callender, in Stirlingshire), and was
defeated. 11 Three years later he was again defeated with great loss in
the battle of Mag Rath, in Ireland, whither he had gone as an ally of the
Cruithne, or Irish Picts, in their contest with Domnall mac Aed, king of the
Irish Dalriads. In 638, Tighernac records another battle and defeat, being
that of Glinnemairison, or Glenmureson, which name has been identified

204 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

with that of the present Mureston Water, south of the river Almond, in
the parishes of Mid and West Calder (Edinburghshire). As the siege of
Etin (Edinburgh) is mentioned in the same reference, and as this was the
second defeat which the Dalriad king had suffered at the hands of the
Angles within the space of four years in contiguous territory, it is to be sup-
posed that these battles may have resulted from the efforts of Domnall
Brecc to dispossess the Angles of that portion of their dominions in or near
which the battles were fought. The battle of Degsastan, near the Esk, in
603, and these fights on both sides of the Avon in 634 and 638, would seem
to fix these streams as at that time marking the extremities of the frontier
line between Northumbria and Strathclyde."

While the Britons were naturally allied with the Scots in these wars against
the common enemy of both, it appears that the circumstances of their union
were not otherwise sufficiently favorable to insure more than the temporary
ascendancy of the Dalriad chief as their leader at this time. It is possible
he may have taken the opportunity of his leadership as an occasion for
seeking permanent rule ; but if this were so, he could not have met with
much encouragement from the Britons ; for in the year 642, Tighernac tells
us, he was slain at Strathcawin (or Strath Carron), by Oan, king of the
Britons. 18

In 654, Penda, king of the Angles of Mercia, with his British or North
Welsh allies, was defeated by Oswiu, King of Northumbria, in a battle fought
near the Firth of Forth. 14 Penda and nearly all of his leaders were slain.
This victory not only established Oswiu firmly upon the Northumbrian
throne, but also enabled him to bring under his rule the dominions of the
Strathclyde Britons and of the Scots and Southern Picts. 15 In 672, after
Ecgfrid had succeeded Oswiu on the Northumbrian throne, the Picts at-
tempted to regain their independence, but without success."

After the death of Domnall Brecc in 642, and the successes of Oswiu,
which must indirectly at least have influenced Dalriada, that kingdom seems
to have remained for a long time broken up into rival clans, the Cinel
Loarn, or Race of Loam, and the Cinel Gabhran being the two most impor-
tant. 17 It was not until 678 that these clans again appear united in offensive
warfare. In that year they fought against the Britons, but were defeated. 18
Afterwards, in union with the Picts, they seem to have made attempts at
recovering their independence, and so far succeeded that Ecgfrid, then
king of the Northumbrians, felt obliged to enter Pictland with an invading
army to reduce them. This was in 685. On June 20th of that year a great
battle was fought at Duin Nechtan, or Nechtansmere (Dunnichen, in For-
farshire ?), in which the English king and his entire force perished. 19

" From that time," in the words of Bede, " the hopes and strength
of the English kingdom began to waver and retrograde ; for the Picts re-
covered their own lands, which had been held by the English and the Scots
that were in battle, and some of the Britons their liberty, which they have

The Scots and Picts 205

now enjoyed for about forty-six years. Among the many English who then
either fell by the sword, or were made slaves, or escaped by flight out of the
country of the Picts, the most reverend man of God, Trumwine, who had
been made bishop over them, withdrew with his people that were in the
monastery of Abercurnig."

The king of the Picts at this time was an Anglo-Briton, Brudei, son of
Bili, King of Strathclyde," and grandson through his mother of that Pictish
king, Talorcan, who was called the son of Ainfrait (Eanfrid), the Angle.
Ainfrait was the brother of King Oswiu, and uncle to King Ecgfrid. On the
death of ^Ethelfrid, father to Ainfrait and Oswiu, in 617, his throne had been
seized by ^Edwine. Bede tells us 21 that during all the time King ^Edwine
reigned in Northumbria, Ainfrait, with his brothers and many of the
nobility, lived in banishment among the Scots, or Picts.

During the forty-six years between the defeat of the Angles at Nechtans-
mere and the period at which Bede's history is brought to a close, two con-
flicts took place between the Dalriads and the Strathclyde Britons, in both
of which the latter were defeated." These occurred in the neighboring
territories of the Picts, during the reign of Nechtan, son of Derili, who ruled
from before 710 to 724. It was this Nechtan who, as Bede states," was per-
suaded to forsake the teachings and customs of the Scottish Church, which
had been established in Pictland by St. Columba, and to conform to those
of Rome. In 717 he expelled the Columban priests from his kingdom and
gave their possessions and places to such of the clergy as had conformed to
Rome.

Shortly after this date, Selbhac, son of Farchar Fata, and leader of the
Dalriad tribe known as Cinel Loarn, seems to have obtained the ascend-
ancy over the rival tribe of Gabhran, and succeeded in uniting the Dalriad
Scots again into one great clan, of which he became the head. Selbhac is
the first chief after the death of Domnall Brecc in 642 to acquire the title of
King of Dalriada. In 723 he resigned the throne to his son, Dungal, and
became a cleric.

In 724, Nechtan, king of the Picts, also having become a cleric, was
succeeded by Druxst (or Drust). The latter was expelled from Pictland in
726 by Alpin, son of Eachaidh (or Eachach) by a Pictish princess. 84 At
the same time, Dungal, the Cinel Loarn chieftain, who occupied the throne
of Dalriada, was expelled from that dominion and succeeded by Eochaidh
(or Eochach), the head of the rival Scottish clan Gabhran. Eochaidh was
a brother or half-brother to Alpin, then king of the Picts, both being sons
of Eachaidh, Domnall Brecc's grandson. 96

Dungal's father, Selbhac, in 727, made an unsuccessful attempt to
restore his son to the Scottish throne, but Eochaidh seems to have con-
tinued in power until 733, in which year Tighernac records his death.

In Pictavia also, at this time, the right to the throne was disputed by
several powerful rivals. Nechtan, who had resigned his rule to Druxst in

206 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

order that he himself might experiment with monastic life, now returned to
contest the claims of Alpin, the Dalriadic aspirant who had driven out
Nechtan's legatee. Angus of Fortrenn, son of Fergus, also appeared as
a claimant. Alpin was defeated by Angus in a battle fought in 728 at
Monaigh Craebi (Moncrieff), and the territory west of the river Tay was
lost to him in consequence. Not long afterwards, Nechtan also met Alpin
in battle at Scone, completely overthrew his forces and partially recovered
the Pictish kingdom and title for himself. 88

In 729 Angus and Nechtan met and contested for the supreme leader-
ship. A battle was fought at Loch Inch, near the river Spey, which resulted
in the defeat and rout of Nechtan's forces and the assumption of kingly
authority and title by Angus. Soon after this battle, Angus encountered
and slew Druxst ; and in 732, the last of his rivals was removed by the death
of Nechtan. Angus ruled Pictland for thirty years.

In 733, Eochaidh, King of Dalriada, having died, Selbhac's son, Dungal,
regained the throne of that kingdom. During the next year, Dungal having
aroused the anger of Angus by an attack upon the latter's son, Brude, the
Pictish king invaded Dalriada, and put its ruler to flight. Two years later
(in 736), Angus destroyed the Scots' city of Creic, and taking possession of
Donad, the capital, he laid waste all Dalriada, put in chains the two sons of
Selbhac, 27 and appears to have driven out the fighting men of the two leading
clans. One of these, the Cinel Loam, was then under the chiefship of
Muredach, and the other, the Cinel Gabhran, was ruled by that Alpin mac
Eachaidh who had been driven from the Pictish throne by Nechtan in 728.
Both of these chieftains attempted to free their country from the grasp of
the invader by carrying the war into Pictland. Muredach fought the Picts
on the banks of the Avon (at Carriber), where he was opposed by Talorgan,
brother to Angus, and was completely defeated and routed by that lieu-
tenant. 38 Alpin himself, about 1740, likewise invaded Ayrshire, the country
of the Galloway Picts, and though he succeeded in " laying waste the lands
of the Galwegians," he met his death the following year while in their ter-
ritories. 29 In the same year in which Alpin was killed (741), Angus is said
to have completed the conquest of Dalriada. Its subjection to the Picts
must have continued at least during the period of his life.

The existing authentic records for the century following the death of
Alpin in 741 give but little information as to Dalriada, beyond the names of
some of its clan chieftains. It may reasonably be supposed to have remained
during that time a subject state of the then powerful Pictish kingdom.

Simeon of Durham tells us that a battle was fought in 744 between the
Picts and the Britons, 30 and in 750, the Picts, under the leadership of Talor-
gan, the brother of Angus, met the Britons in a great battle at Magedauc'
(in Dumbartonshire), in which Talorgan was slain. 31 Eadberht, Anglic king
of Northumbria, in 750, added to his Galloway possessions the plain of Kyle
(in Ayrshire) and "adjacent regions." He formed an alliance with Angus

The Scots and Picts 207

a few years later against the Britons of Strathclyde, and in 756 received
the submission of that kingdom. 8 *

Five years later (761) Angus mac Fergus died, and his brother, Brude,
came to the Pictish throne. He died in 763, and was succeeded by Ciniod
(Kenneth), son of Wirdech, who reigned twelve years." Alpin, son of
Wroid, followed Kenneth, and his death is recorded in 780 as king of the
Saxons, 34 which would seem to point to his acquisition of more or less of the
Northumbrian territory south of the Forth.

Drust, son of Talorgan, succeeded Alpin, and reigned for five years, his
succession being disputed by Talorgan, son of Angus, who also reigned in
part of the Pictish kingdom for two years and a half. Conal, son of Tarla,
then held the throne for about five years, when he was overthrown and suc-
ceeded by Constantine, son of Fergus. 86

Conal fled to Dalriada, then under the government of Constantine, son of
Domnall, whom he seems later to have succeeded, for in 807 Conal's assassina-
tion is reported as that of one of the rulers of Dalriada. After that date the name
of Constantine, son of Fergus, appears as King of Dalriada for the nine years
following, so that during that period this kingdom was doubtless united with
Pictland under the one ruler. The two Constantines may have been identical.

For some years after 816 Constantine's brother, Angus mac Fergus (2d),
governed Dalriada, and on the death of the former in 820, Angus succeeded
him as ruler over both kingdoms. After 825 Dalriada was governed by Aed,
son of Boanta ; and then for a term by Angus's own son, Eoganan.

In 834 Angus died, when Drust, son of Constantine, and Talorgan, son of
Wthoil, are said to have reigned jointly for the space of two or three years,
the former probably ruling the Southern Picts, and the latter those of the
North. It is likely that this joint reign arose from a disputed succession, for
about the same time another aspirant to the throne appeared in the person
of Alpin, who was called king of the Scots, and apparently must have
claimed title to the Pictish throne through maternal descent. He fought
the Picts near Dundee in 834, and was successful in his first battle ; but
later in the same year was defeated and slain. 88

In 836 Eoganan, son of Angus, is recorded in the Pictish Chronicle as
the successor to Drust and Talorgan. He reigned for three years, and in
839 was slain by the Danes, who had invaded the kingdom. On his death,
Kenneth (son of Alpin, king of the Scots), who had been chief of the Dal-
riad clans since the death of his father in 834, made war against the Picts.
Taking advantage of the presence of the Danish pirates, and perhaps pos-
sessing some inherited title to the Pictish throne, he succeeded in establish-
ing himself first as the supreme ruler of Dalriada (839) and then, four or
five years later, became also the king of the Picts. 87 Between the death of
Eoganan and the accession of Kenneth mac Alpin, there were two inter-
mediate kings of Pictland. These were Wrad, son of Bargoit, who reigned
three years, and Bred, son of Ferat, who reigned one year.

208 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

When Kenneth mac Alpin became king of the Picts in 844, his territories
embraced that part of Scotland now included in the counties of Perth, Fife,
Stirling, Dumbarton, and Argyle. 38 North and west of this district the
country continued in a state of practical independence for a long time after-
ward, being in part occupied by the Northern Picts, and in part by the
Norsemen. South of Kenneth's territories the Northumbrian Angles occu-
pied the province of Bernicia, which included most of the present counties
of Scotland south of the Forth and east of the Avon and Esk. They also
maintained lordship over part of the district now known as Galloway and
Ayr. The Cymric Britons of Strathclyde lived and ruled where are now the
counties of Renfrew, Lanark, Dumfries, Peebles (Clydesdale, Nithsdale, and
Annandale) ; the adjacent portions of Ayr and Galloway and also for a con-
siderable distance to the south of Solway Firth.

The reasons for the success of Kenneth in establishing himself and the
small and numerically insignificant 39 colony of Dalriad Scots who inhabited
the southwestern portion of Argyle as the ruling element in the land of the
Picts have never been very clearly understood. Superior prowess, 40 mater-
nal ancestry, 41 favorable matrimonial alliances, 42 the labors of missionaries, 48
the wars of the Picts with other intruders, 44 the higher culture of the Scots, 4 *
and various other causes have been surmised and assigned in explanation.
Our present knowledge of the period will not justify more than a tentative
acceptance of these several theories as a whole, with the allowance that each
one probably accounts in part, or, might account in part, for the result.

Kenneth died in 858, and his brother Donald succeeded him, who reigned
four years. On Donald's death, Constantine, the son of Kenneth, came
to the throne. After a reign of some fifteen years, he was killed in battle
with the Norsemen, who fought the Scots 46 at Inverdufatha (Inverdovet)
near the Firth of Forth, in 876-7. Constantine was succeeded by his brother,
Aedh, or Hugh, who reigned as king of the Picts for one year, when he was
killed by his own people.

While, under the law of Tanistry, which governed the descent of the
crown among the Scots, Donald, son of Constantine, was entitled to rule, yet
by the Pictish law, Eocha (son of Constantine's sister and of Run, king of
the Britons of Strathclyde) was the next heir ; and as the Pictish party at
this time seems to have been in the ascendancy, Eocha was made king.
Being too young to reign, however, another king was associated with him as
governor. 47 This governor, or regent, was Grig, or Ciric, son of Dungaile.
While the earlier Pictish Chronicle gives no account of this reign beyond
the statement that after a period of eleven years Eocha and Grig were both
expelled from the kingdom, the later writers have made a popular hero of
Grig ; and his virtues and achievements are magnified to most gigantic
proportions. 48 Grig, having been forced to abdicate, was succeeded in 889
by Donald, son of Constantine, who reigned for eleven years. Donald
was also chosen as King of Strathclyde, which henceforth continued to re-

/ OF THE \\

| UNIVERSITY j

\vc^ LFFOP ^/ The Scots and Picts 209

ceive its princes from the reigning Scottish family until it was finally merged
into the Scottish kingdom. During Donald's reign his kingdom ceased to
be called Pictland or Pictavia and became known as the kingdom of Alban
or Albania, and its rulers were no longer called kings of the Picts, but
kings of Alban." Donald was slain in battle with the Danes, probably at
Dunotter in Kincardineshire. 50

From 900 to 942 the throne was held by Constantine, son of Aedh, and
cousin to Donald. During his reign, ^Ethelstan, King of Mercia, became
ruler of Wessex (in 925), and at once set about to extend his power northward
from the Humber. He first arranged for a marriage between his sister and
Sihtric, the Danish ruler of Deira, the southern province of Northumbria.
On Sihtric's death (926), ^Ethelstan immediately seized his kingdom and an-
nexed it to his own, driving out Guthferth, the son of Sihtric, who had suc-
ceeded his father, and forming an alliance for peace with Ealdred, ruler of
Bernicia, the northern province of Northumbria, and with Constantine, King
of Alban." A little later, however, Aulaf, or Olaf, the eldest son of Sihtric,
having in the meantime married King Constantine's daughter, and thereby
secured the co-operation of the Scottish ruler, succeeded also in enlisting
in his behalf Olaf of Dublin, a leader of the Danes, or Ostmen, of Ireland,
and Owin, king of the Cumbrians. 63 Together these allies prepared for an
attempt to recover Olaf's heritage. But ^Ethelstan, anticipating them, in-
vaded Alban by sea and land and ravaged a great part of that kingdom. 68

Three years afterwards the confederated forces again assembled and
made a descent upon Deira. At first they were successful in their attacks,
but finally encountered ^Ethelstan with all his army on the field of Brunan-
burgh, and there fought the great battle which takes its name from that
place. ^Ethelstan was victorious and drove the allied forces of the Scots
and Danes from the field with great losses, among the slain being the son of
the Alban king, with many of his bravest leaders. 64

In 942 Constantine, having retired to a monastery, was succeeded by
Malcolm, son of Donald, who also acquired sovereignty over Cumbria, 66 and
reigned until 954, when he was killed in a battle with the Norsemen near
Fodresach, now Fetteresso, in Kincardineshire. The next king, Indulf, was
also killed by the Norsemen in 962, at Cullen, in Banffshire. 66 During his
reign the kingdom seems first to have been extended south of the Forth,
Edinburgh for a time being added to its territory. Duff, or Dubh, son of
Malcolm, next occupied the throne, but he was expelled about 967 by
Cuilean, or Colin, son of Indulf, who succeeded him as king, and was slain
himself four years later (971) in a quarrel with the Strathclydensians.

Kenneth II., brother of Duff, and son of the first Malcolm, then gained
the crown. He is said to have greatly ravaged the territory of the Strath-
clyde Welsh ; and then, in order to protect himself against their counter-
attacks, to have fortified the fords of the river Forth, which separated the
two kingdoms. 67 Immediately after his attack on Strathclyde, he also

210 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

invaded Saxonia, as the northern part of Northumbria was then called. The
following year, Kenneth MacMalcolm made a second attempt against the
same district. At that time, Domnall, or Dunwallaun, son of Eoain, was king
of the Strathclyde Britons. 58 Edinburgh is supposed to have been permanently
ceded to the Scots during the reign of Kenneth MacMalcolm, as a result of his
continued operations against the territory south of the Forth. 69 Kenneth
was slain by some of his subjects at Fettercairn in Kincardineshire, 995. 80

He was succeeded by Constantine, son of Colin Maclndulf, who, after a
reign of two years, was killed by Kenneth MacMalcolm (2d) and succeeded
by Kenneth MacDufT (Kenneth III.), surnamed Grim, who retained the
throne for some eight or nine years.

In 997, the death of Malcolm MacDonald, king of the northern Britons,
is recorded."

Kenneth MacDuff was defeated in battle and slain at Strathern in 1005,
by his cousin, Malcolm, son of King Kenneth MacMalcolm. He was known
as Malcolm II., or Malcolm MacKenneth, and reigned from 1005 until 1034,
when he is said to have been assassinated at Glamis, in Angus. He is ac-
cused of having procured, about 1033, the death of a son of Boete MacKen-
neth, and grandson of Kenneth II. (or of Kenneth HI.) 62 The claim of
Kenneth MacDuff's grandson to the crown, under the Pictish law of suc-
cession,* was superior to that of King Malcolm's own grandson, Duncan.
In 1006, shortly after the commencement of his reign, King Malcolm II.
invaded Northumbria, but was defeated and driven out with the loss of
many of his best warriors. 88 Twelve years later (1018), in conjunction with
Owen the Bald, king of the Strathclyde Britons, Malcolm made a second
attempt against Northumbria, which proved more successful. In a battle
fought at Carham, on the Tweed, he defeated the Northumbrians and Danes
with great loss. 64 In consequence, they were obliged to cede to the victor
all of Northumbria lying north of the Tweed, which territory from that time
became a part of Scotland. 85

The kingdom of Strathclyde, or Cumbria, also, was now completely ab-
sorbed into Scotland. Its ruler, Owen, having been slain in the year of the
battle of Carham, the union with Scotland took place through the succession
of Duncan, grandson of Malcolm, to the lordship of Strathclyde. For that
portion of his domain which extended south from the Solway Firth, to the
river Ribble, in Lancashire, Duncan continued to do homage to the King of
England, as his predecessors before him had done, since the time (945) when
the English king, Eadmund, had given it " all up to Malcolm, king of the
Scots, on condition that he should be his fellow-worker as well by sea as by
land." 88 This Prince Duncan was the son of Bethoc, or Beatrice, Malcolm's
daughter, who had married Crinan of the House of Athol, lay Abbot of
Dunkeld, said by Fordun to have been also the Steward of the Isles. On

* The early Picts had no institution of marriage, succession passing through the maternal
line alone. See note n, p. 196.

The Scots and Picts 2 1 1

the death of Malcolm, his grandfather, in 1034, Duncan, King of Strathclyde,
ascended the Scottish throne, thus completely uniting the subkingdom of
Strathclyde with Scotia.

Another daughter of Malcolm had been given in marriage to Sigurd, the
Norse jarl, ruler of the Orkney Islands. By her Sigurd had a son, Thorfinn,
cousin to Duncan, born about 1009, who, on the death of his father, some
five years later, succeeded to the lordship of Caithness, Sutherland, and
other districts, including Galloway. 67 In this capacity, he was also over-lord
of the tributary provinces of Moray and Ross, which at the time of Earl
Sigurd's death were ruled over by the Mormaor Finleikr, or Finley (father
of Macbeth). 88

Duncan, king of the Scots, married the sister 69 of Siward, the Danish
Earl of Northumbria; and reigned for about five years. He became involved
in a war with his cousin, Thorfinn, over the sovereignty of the northern dis-
tricts of Scotland, and was slain at Bothgowan in 1039-40 by Macbeth, who
had by that time succeeded to the mormaorship of Ross and Moray. 70 Upon
the supposed circumstances of Duncan's tragic death, as depicted by Boece
and copied by Holinshed, Shakspeare constructed his play of Macbeth.

Before going into the details of that tragedy, it will be well to pause
and take a glance at the surroundings and condition of the Scottish king-
dom at the beginning of Duncan's brief reign. There are three things
connected with the preceding reign of his grandfather, Malcolm II., which
mark it as a distinctive and important epoch in Scottish history. The first
and most notable of these was the cession to Malcolm by its Danish ruler of
that portion of the Anglo-Danish kingdom of Northumbria known as Lothian
— being all that part of eastern Scotland lying north of the Tweed and south
of the Forth. This cession resulted from the victory of the Scots at Carham
in 1018, to which allusion has already been made. 71 The next important
event was the marriage of Malcolm's daughter with Sigurd, the Norse over-
lord of the northern regions of Scotland, and the establishment of their son,
Thorfinn, as ruler of that domain on the death of his father. This marriage
eventually proved to be an effective step toward bringing the whole country
north of " Scot's Water," 7a under the rule of one king. The third event
was the accession of Duncan to the kingship or lordship of Strathclyde after
the death of Owen the Bald, in 1018, and the subsequent peaceful union of
that kingdom with Scotland on the ascension of Duncan to the Scottish
throne. It is proper, therefore, to give a brief summary of the circumstances
leading up to this conjunction of conditions which ultimately resulted in the
amalgamation of the various racial elements of Scotland into one people.
The Cumbrian and Norse districts will first be taken up, as being more inti-
mately associated with the history of Malcolm's nearest male heirs ; and the
Anglo-Danish province will afterwards be considered in connection with the
reign of Duncan's son, Malcolm Canmore — in whom its possession may be
said first to have been definitely confirmed. 7 *

212 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

NOTES TO CHAPTER XV.

1 Ireland is first mentioned as being also called Scotia by Isadore of Seville, 580-600.

2 The first recorded appearance of the Saxons off the coast of Gaul is in A.D. 287.
Eutropius, ix M 21. {Monum. Hist. Brit., p. lxxii.)

The boats of Irish pirates — or, as they were then called, Scots — ravaged its western
shores, while a yet more formidable race of freebooters pillaged from Portsmouth to the
Wash. In their homeland between the Elbe and the Ems, as well as in a wide tract across
the Ems to the Rhine, a number of German tribes had drawn together into the people of the
Saxons, and it was to this people that the pirates of the Channel belonged. — J. R. Green,
Making of England, p. 15.

3 ' ' We learn from the account given by the historian of their eventual recovery, that the
districts ravaged by the Picts were those extending from the territories of the independent
tribes to the Wall of Hadrian between the Tyne and the Solway, and that the districts occu-
pied by the Scots were in a different direction. They lay on the western frontier, and con-
sisted of part of the mountain region of Wales on the coast opposite to Ierne, or the island of
Ireland, from whence they came.

" Unaided as she was left, Britain held bravely out as soon as her first panic was over ;
and for some thirty years after the withdrawal of the legions the free province maintained an
equal struggle against her foes. Of these she probably counted the Saxons as still the least
formidable. The freebooters from Ireland were not only scourging her western coast, but
planting colonies at points along its line. To the north of the Firth of Clyde these " Scots"
settled about this time in the peninsula of Argyle. To the south of it they may have been
the Gaels, who mastered and gave their name to Galloway ; and there are some indications
that a larger though a less permanent settlement was being made in the present North Wales."
— Green, Making of England, p. 23.

4 Written not long before the ninth century, and, so far as its record of earlier events
goes, chiefly useful in giving us the form in which they were current in the time of the
author.

5 Though, as we have seen, his eldest brother Loarn ruled before him, yet Fergus holds
a more conspicuous position as the father of the dynasty, since it was his descendants, and
not those of Loarn, who afterwards ruled in Dalriada. It is in him, too, that the scanty
broken traces of genuine history join the full current of the old fabulous conventional history
of Scotland. Thus Fergus may be identified with Fergus II. — the fortieth king of Scotland,
according to Buchanan and the older historians. This identity has served to show with sin-
gular clearness the simple manner in which the earlier fabulous race of Scots kings was in-
vented. A Fergus was still the father of the monarchy, but to carry back the line to a
respectable antiquity, a preceding Fergus was invented, who reigned more than 300 years
before Christ — much about the time when Babylon was taken by Alexander, as Buchanan
notices. To fill up the intervening space between the imaginary and the actual Fergus,
thirty-eight other monarchs were devised, whose portraits may now be seen in the picture-
gallery of Holyrood. — Burton, History of Scotland, vol. i., p. 287.

6 Wales, or the country of the Cymri, at this time extended from the Severn to the
Clyde, and comprised all modern Wales, Cheshire, Lancashire, part of Westmoreland, Cum-
berland, Dumfriesshire, Ayrshire, Lanarkshire, and Renfrewshire. Novantia, however, re-
mained Pictish — i, e., Goidelic — in speech and race. Thus, whatever had been the affinity
in earlier centuries between the Selgovae of Dumfriesshire and the Novantae, or Attecotts, of
Galloway, it had been replaced in the sixth century by hereditary racial enmity. Galloway
was peopled by Attecott Picts ; Annandale, Nithsdale, and Strathclyde by Britons, Cymri, or
Welshmen. ... In the sixth century, then, there were four races contending for what
was formerly the Roman province of Valencia — (1) the Britons, Cymri, or Welsh, ancient
subjects of Rome, who may be regarded as the legitimate inhabitants ; (2) the Northern and

The Scots and Picts 213

Southern Picts, representing the older or Goidelic strain of Celts, with an admixture, per-
haps, of aboriginal Ivernians, with whom may be associated the Attecott Picts west of the
Nith ; (3) the Scots from Erin, also Goidelic, but distinct from the Picts, not yet firmly set-
tled in Lorn and Argyle under ^Edan, the [great-] grandson of Fergus Mor Mac Eire, but
making descents wherever they could find a footing, and destined to give their name to Alban
in later centuries as "Scotland " ; and (4) the Teutonic colonists. — Herbert Maxwell, History
of Dumfries and Galloway \ pp. 32, 33.

I Celtic Scotland, vol. i., p. 163.

8 " Alban, or, as we now call it, Scotland, had by this time resolved itself into four domin-
ions, each under its separate line of kings. The Picts held the country north of the Forth,
their chief town being near the mouth of the Ness ; Argyle and Lorn formed the kingdom of
Dalriada, populated by the Scottish (that is, Irish) descendants of the colony of Fergus Mor.
The British kingdom of Alclut or Strathclyde was the northern portion of the Cymric terri-
tory, or old Wales, once extending from Cornwall to Dunbarton, but permanently severed
first by the Saxon king, Ceawlin, who in 577 took possession of the country round Bath and
Gloucester ; and second by Edwin, King of Bernicia, at the great battle of Chester, in 613.
Strathclyde, then, comprised a tract extending from the Derwent in Cumberland to Loch
Lomond, the capital being called in Welsh Alclut, or the cliff on the Clyde, but known to
the Dalriadic and Pictish Gaels as dun Bretann, the fort of the Welshmen.

" On the east the Saxon realm of Bernicia stretched from the Humber to the Forth under
King Edwin, who has left his name in Edinburgh, the Saxon title of the town which the
Gaels called Dunedin, but whose seat of rule was Bamborough. Just as the territory of the
Attecott Picts was separated from Strathclyde by the rampart now known as the De'il's Dyke,
so Bernicia was separated from Strathclyde by the Catrail, an earthwork crossing the upper
part of Liddesdale. Besides these four realms there was a debatable strip of country between
the Lennox Hills and the Grampians, including the carse of Stirling and part of Linlithgow-
shire, chiefly inhabited by the Southern Picts or Picts of Manau ; and lastly, the old territory
of the Niduarian or Attecott Picts, who had managed to retain autonomy under native princes,
and a degree of independence, by means of powerful alliances.

" At the beginning of the seventh century, then, Dumfriesshire was under the rule of the
Welsh kings of Strathclyde, while Wigtonshire and Kirkcudbright, soon to acquire the name
of Galloway, were under their native Pictish princes." — Maxwell, History of Dumfries and
Galloway, pp. 35, 36.

9 A. d. 629, Cath Fedhaeoin in quo Maelcaith mac Scandail Rex Cruithnin victor erat.
Concad Cer Rex Dalriada cecidit et Dicuill mac Eachach Rex Ceneoil Cruithne cecedit et
nepotes Aidan, id est, Regullan mac Conaing et Failbe mac Eachach (et Osseric mac Albruit
cum strage maxima suorum). Eochadh Buidhi mac Aidan victor erat.— Tighernac.

10 Celtic Scotland, vol. i., p. 242.

II In the same year in which the battle was fought which placed Osuald on the throne of
Bernicia, Domnall Brecc, king of the Scots of Dalriada, appears to have made an attempt to
wrest the district between the Avon and the Pentland Hills from the Angles, whether as
having some claim to it through his grandfather, Aidan, or what is more probable, as a leader
of the Britons, is uncertain. — Celtic Scotland, vol. i., p. 247.

12 " In the centre of Scotland, where it is intersected by the two arms of the sea, the
Forth and the Clyde, and where the boundaries of these four kingdoms approach one another,
is a territory extending from the Esk to the Tay, which possessed a very mixed population,
and was the scene of most of the conflicts between these four states. Originally occupied by
the tribe of the Damnonii, the northern boundary of the Roman province intersected it for
two centuries and a half, including part of this tribe and the province, and merging the rest
among the barbarians. On the fall of the Roman power in Britain, it was overrun by the
Picts, and one of the earliest settlements of the Saxons, which probably was composed of
Frisians, took place in the districts about the Roman wall. It was here that, during the

214 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

sixth century, the main struggle took place. It falls naturally into three divisions. The first
extends from the Esk and the Pentland Hills to the Roman wall and the river Carron.
This district we find mainly peopled by Picts, the remains probably of those who once occu-
pied the eastern districts to the southern wall, and preserved a kind of independence, while
the rest were subjected by the Angles.

1 • From the Picts the Angles give the hills which formed its southern boundary the name
of the Pehtland, now Pentland Hills. Near its southeastern boundary was the strong natu-
ral position called by the Britons Mynyd Agned and also Dineiddyn, and by the Gaels Dun-
edin. Nine miles farther west, the Firth of Forth is narrowed till the coast approaches to
within two miles of that of Fife, and affords a ready means of access ; and on the south shore
of the upper basin of the Forth, and near the termination of the Roman wall, was the ancient
British town of Caeredin, while in the Forth itself opposite this district was the insular town
of Guidi. The western part of this territory was known to the Welsh by the name of Manau
Guotodin, and to the Gael as the plain or district of Manann, a name still preserved in Sli-
abhmanann, now Slamanan, and this seems to have been the headquarters of these Picts.

" Between them and the kingdom of the Picts proper lay a central district, extending
from the wall to the river Forth, and on the bank of the latter was the strong position after-
wards occupied by Stirling Castle ; and while the Angles of Bernicia exercised an influence
and a kind of authority over the first district, this central part seems to have been more
closely connected with the British kingdom of Alclyde. The northern part, extending from
the Forth to the Tay, belonged to the Pictish kingdom, with whom its population, originally
British, appears to have been incorporated, and was the district afterwards known as Fortrein
and Magh Fortren.

" Finally, on the north shore of the Solway Firth, and separated from the Britons by the
lower part of the river Nith, and by the mountain range which separates the counties of
Kirkcudbright and Wigton from those of Dumfries and Ayr, were a body of Picts, termed
by Bede Niduari ; and this district, consisting of the two former counties, was known to the
Welsh as Galwydel, and to the Irish as Gallgaidel, from which was formed the name Gall-
weithia, now Galloway." — Celtic Scotland, vol. i., pp. 237-239. See Note 6, p. 192.

13 During these wars there appears to have been hitherto a combination of the Britons of
Alclyde and the Scots of Dalriada against the Angles and the Pictish population subject to
them. It was, in fact, a conflict of the western tribes against the eastern, and of the
Christian party against the pagan and semi-pagan, their common Christianity forming a strong
bond of union between the two former nations, and after the death of Rhydderch Hael in
603 the Dalriadic kings seem to have taken the lead in the command of the combined
forces. — Celtic Scotland, vol. i., p. 249.

14 Oswy . . . held the same dominions for some time, and for the most part subdued
and made tributary the nations of the Picts and Scots, which possess the northern parts
of Britain : but of these hereafter. — Bede, book ii., ch. v.

15 The same King Oswy governed the Mercians, as also the people of the other
southern provinces, three years after he had slain King Penda ; and he likewise subdued the
greater part of the Picts to the dominion of the English. — Bede, book iii., ch. xxiv.

The Scots of Dalriada naturally fell under his [Oswiu's] dominion along with the Britons,
and we have the testimony of Adamnan that they were trodden down by strangers during the
same period. But while these nations became tributary to the Angles during this period of
thirty years, the mode in which the kings of Northumbria dealt with the Picts shows that
their dominion over them was of a different kind, and that they viewed that part of the nation
which was subject to them as now forming part of the Northumbrian kingdom. The way
for this was prepared by the accession of Talorcan, son of Ainfrait, to the throne of the
Picts on the death of Talore, son of Wid, or Ectolairg mac Foith, as Tighernac calls him, in
653. Talorcan was obviously the son of that Ainfrait, the son of ^Edilfrid, and elder
brother of Osuald, who on his father's death had taken refuge with the Picts, and his son

The Scots and Picts 215

Talorcan must have succeeded to the throne through a Pictish mother. At the time, then,
when Oswiu thus extended his sway over the Britons and Scots there was a king of the Anglic
race by paternal descent actually reigning over the Picts. Tighernac records his death in
657, and Bede tells us that within three years after he had slain King Penda, Oswiu subjected
the greater part of the Picts to the dominion of the Angles. It is probable, therefore, that
he claimed their submission to himself as the cousin and heir on the paternal side of their
king Talorcan, and enforced his claim by force of arms. How far his dominion extended
it is difficult to say, but it certainly embraced, as we shall see, what Bede calls the province
of the Picts on the north side of the Firth of Forth, and, nominally at least, may have in-
cluded the whole territory of the Southern Picts ; while Gartnaid, the son of Donnell, or
Domhnaill, who appears in the Pictish Chronicle as his successor, and who from the form of
his father's name must have been of pure Gaelic race, ruled over those who remained
independent. — Celtic Scotland, vol. i., pp. 257-258.

16 In the first years of his [Ecgfrid's] reign the bestial people of the Picts, despising their
subjection to the Saxons, and threatening to throw off the yoke of servitude, collected to-
gether innumerable tribes from the north, on hearing which Ecgfrid assembled an army, and
at the head of a smaller body of troops advanced against this great and not easily discovered
enemy, who were assembled under a formidable ruler called Bernaeth, and attacking them
made so great a slaughter that two rivers were almost filled with their bodies. Those who
fled were pursued and cut to pieces, and the people were again reduced to servitude, and
remained under subjection during the rest of Ecgfrid's reign. — Eddi, Life of St. Wilfrid*
ch. xix. (written before 731).

11 In the meantime the little kingdom of Dalriada was in a state of complete disorgani-
zation. We find no record of any real king over the whole nation of the Scots, but each separate
tribe seems to have remained isolated from the rest under its own chief, while the Britons
exercised a kind of sway over them, and, along with the Britons, they were under subjection
to the Angles. — Celtic Scotland, vol. i., p. 263.

18 A. D. 678, Interfectio generis Loairn itirinn, id est, Feachair fotai et Britones qui
victores erant. — Tighernac.

Bellum Duinlocho et bellum Liaccmaelain et Doirad Eilinn — Annals of Ulster.

19 Bede, book iv., ch. xxvi.

20 Brudei was paternally a scion of the royal House of Alclyde, his father Bili appearing
in the Welsh genealogies annexed to Nennius as the son of Neithon and father of that
Eugein who slew Domnall Brecc in 642.

81 Book iii., ch. i.

22 711, Congressio Brittonum et Dalriadha for Loirgeclat ibu Britones devicti. 717,
Congressio Dalriada et Brittonum in lapide qui vocatur Minvircc et Britones devicti
sunt. — Tighernac.

23 Book v., ch. xxi. See p. 126.

24 726, Nechtain mac Derili constringitur apud Druist regem. Dungal de regno
ejectus est et Druist de regno Pictorum ejectus et Elphin pro eo regnat. Eochach mac
Eachach regnare incipit. — Tighernac.

25 697, Euchu nepos Domhnall jugulatus est. — Annals of Ulster.

26 728, Cath Monaigh Craebi itir Piccardachaib fein (i. e. , between the Picts themselves),
Aengus et Alpine issiat tuc in cath (fought that battle), et ro mebaigh ria (the victory was
with) n Aengus et ro marbhadh mac Alpin andsin (and the son of Alpin was slain there) et ro
gab Aengus nert (and Angus took his person). Cath truadh itir (an unfortunate battle be-
tween the) Piccardachaebh ac Caislen Credhi et ro mebaigh ar in (and the victory was against
the same), Alpin et ro bearadh a cricha et a daine de uile (and his territories and all his men
were taken), et ro gab Nechtan mac Derili Righi na Picardach (lost the kingdom of the
Picts). — Tighernac. The Ulster Annals add : " ubi Alpinus effugit."

27 736, Aengus mac Fergusa rex Pictorum vastavit regiones Dailriata et obtinuit Dunad

216 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

et compulsit Creich et duos filios Selbaiche catenis alligavit, id est, Dongal et Feradach, et
Paulo post Brudeus mac Aengusa mic Fergusa obiit. — Tighernac.

88 736, Bellum Cnuicc Coirpri i Calathros uc etar Linndu inter Dalriatai et Fortrenn
et Talorgan mac Ferguso filium Ainbhceallach fugientum cum exercitu persequitur in qua
congressione multi nobiles ceciderunt. — Annals of Ulster.

99 One of the chronicles appears to have preserved the traditionary account of his death
when it tells us that he was slain in Galloway, after he had destroyed it, by a single person
who lay in wait for him in a thick wood overhanging the entrance of the ford of a river as he
rode among his people. (Cesty fust tue en Goloway, com il le avoit destruyt, de un soul
hom qi ly gayta en un espesse hoys en pendaunt al entree dun ge de un ryvere, com chevauch-
eoit entre ses gentz. — Scala Chron.) The scene of his death must have been on the east side
of Loch Ryan, where a stream falls into the loch, on the north side of which is the farm of
Laight, and on this farm is a large upright pillar stone, to which the name of Laight Alpin,
or the Grave of Alpin, is given.

30 By the Picts, Simeon usually understands the Picts of Galloway, and this battle seems
to have followed the attack upon them by Alpin and his Scots.

31 750, Cath etir Pictones et Britones, id est a Talorgan mac Fergusa et a brathair et ar
Piccardach imaille friss (and his brother and a slaughter of Picts with him). — Tighernac.

750, Bellum inter Pictos et Brittonis, id est, Gueith Mocetauc et rex eorum Talorgan a
Brittonibus occiditur. — An. Cam.

32 756, Eadberht rex, xviii. anno regni sui et Unust rex Pictorum duxerunt exercitum ad
urbem Alcluth. Ibique Brittones in deditionem receperunt prima die mensis Augusti.
Decima autem die ejusdem mensis interiit exercitus pene omnis quem duxit. (Eadberhtus)
de Ouania ad Niwanbirig, id est, ad novam civitatem. — Simeon of Durham.

33 775. Pex Pictorum Cynoth ex voragine hujus coenulentis vitae eripitur. — Simeon of
Durham.

" After the death of Angus MacFergus, king of the Picts, who is stigmatized by a Saxon
writer as 'a bloody tyrant,' the history of the succeeding period again becomes obscure.
Bruidi, his brother, followed him on the throne, which, after the death of Bruidi, and an in-
terval of fifteen years, during which it was again occupied in succession by two brothers,
reverted once more to the family of Angus in the persons of his son and grandson — Constan-
tine MacFergus, also probably a member of the same race, acquiring the supreme power
towards the close of the century by driving out Conal MacTeige, who lost his life a few years
later in Kintyre. The names of three kings of Dalriada attest the existence of the little
kingdom, without throwing any further light upon its history, though from the character of a
subsequent reference to Aodh, ' the Fair,' it may be conjectured that he was in some sense
the restorer of the line of Kintyre. After the death of Doncorcin, the last of these three
princes, which happened shortly after the accession of Constantine, no further mention of the
province will be found in any of the Irish annals which have hitherto been published.

" For thirty years and upwards, the supremacy of Constantine was undisputed, and he
was succeeded upon his death by his brother Angus, his son Drost, and his nephew Eoganan
in the same regular order which is subsequently observable amongst the early kings of Scot-
land. His reign was unquestionably an era of considerable importance, tradition connecting
it with the termination of the Pictish monarchy, and representing Constantine as the last of
the Pictish kings — a tradition which must have owed its origin to a vague recollection of
some momentous change about this period. He and his brother Angus are numbered most
suspiciously amongst the immediate predecessors of Kenneth Mac Alpin in the ' Duan of
Alban,' the oldest known genealogy of the early kings of Scotland ; whilst the name of Con-
stantine, unknown amongst the paternal ancestry of Kenneth, was borne by his son and many
of his race, who would thus appear to have looked for their title to the throne quite as much
to their maternal as to their paternal line of ancestry — for the mother of Alpin, Kenneth's
father, was traditionally a daughter of the House of Fergus. (Innes, book i., art. viii. Cale-

The Scots and Picts 217

donia, book ii., ch. vi., p. 302, note A, with other authorities cited by both.) The marriage of
Kenneth's grandfather with a sister of Constantine and Angus rests solely on tradition, but
it appears the most probable solution of his peaceful accession to the throne. The examples
of Talorcan, son of Eanfred, perhaps also of his cousin Bruidi, son of Bili, which is a British
name, shows that the alien extraction of the father was no bar to the succession of the son.
Such a succession would be exactly in accordance with the old custom mentioned by Bede,
that ' in cases of difficulty ' the female line was preferred to the male, i. e., a near connec-
tion in the female line to a distant male heir. From not attending to the expression ' in
cases of difficulty,' the sense of Bede's words has been often misinterpreted." — Scotland
under her Early Kings, vol. i., pp. 18, 19.

34 780, Elpin rex Saxonum moritur. — Annals of Ulster.

86 789, Bellum inter Pictos ubi Conall mac Taidg victus est et evasit et Constantin victor
fuit.

790, Vel hie bellum Conall et Constantin secundum alios libros. — Annals of Ulster.

86 Anno ab incarnatione Domini octingentesimo tricesimo quarto congressi sunt Scotti
cum Pictis in sollempnitate Paschali. Et plures de nobilioribus Pictorum ceciderunt. Sicque
Alpinus Rex Scottorum victor extitit, unde in superbiam elatus ab eis, altero concerto bello,
tercio decimo kal. Augusti ejusdem anni a Pictis vincitur atque truncatur. — Chronicles of the
Picts and Scots, p. 209.

81 The Chronicle of Huntingdon tells us that Kynadius succeeded his father Alpin in
his kingdom, and that in the seventh year of his reign, which corresponds with the year 839,
while the Danish pirates, having occupied the Pictish shores, had crushed the Picts who were
defending themselves, with a great slaughter, Kynadius, passing into their remaining terri-
tories, turned his arms against them, and having slain many, compelled them to take flight,
and was the first king of the Scots who acquired the monarchy of the whole of Alban, and
ruled in it over the Scots.

Cujus filius Kynadius successit in regno patris qui vii° regni sui anno, cum piratae Dano-
rum, occupatis littoribus, Pictos sua defendentes, straga maxima pertrivissent, in reliquos
Pictorum terminos transiens, arma vertit et multis occisis fugere compulit, sicque monarchiam
totius Albanise, quae nunc Scotia dicitur, primus Scottorum rex conquisivit et in ea primo
super Scottos regnavit. — Chronicles of the Picts and Scots, p. 209.

38 Chronicles of the Picts and Scots, edited by Wm. F. Skene, pp. 9, 21, 65, 84, 102,
1-3$, J 54» J 84, 361, 362 : E. W. Robertson, Scotland under her Early Kings, vol. i., pp.
23-39-

39 In the Tract of the Men of Alban we are told that " the armed muster of the Cineal
Loam was seven hundred men ; but it is of the Airgialla that the seventh hundred is." —
Chron. Picts and Scots, p. 313. This name (Airgialla) was therefore likewise applied to
two districts whose people were subject to the Cineal Loam, and contributed one hundred
men to their armed muster, and were probably the ' ' Comites " who fought along with
Selbhac in 719.

40 It is utterly impossible that the Picts could have been exterminated and their language
eradicated by the broken remnants of the insignificant tribe of Kintyre, and it is equally im-
probable that such a conquest, if it ever took place, should have escaped the notice of every
contemporary writer. The Pictish name disappeared, but the Pictish people and their lan-
guage remained as little influenced by the accession of Kenneth MacAlpin, apparently in
right of his maternal ancestry, as they were at a later period by the failure of the male line of
the same family in the person of Malcolm the Second, and by the similar accession, in right
of his maternal ancestors, of a prince of the Pictish House of Athol. — Scotland under her
Early Kings, vol. ii., p. 373.

At this time the Picts were the chief power in Scotland ; but, like the Scots of Argyle,
they were divided among themselves. . . . The Picts were rather living in a rude con-
federacy than under a fixed monarchy ; and, besides the domestic feuds and broils incident to

218 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

tribunal communities, the Britons, Picts, Saxons, Scots, and finally the Danes, carried on an
intermissive warfare with one another, often showing little result. Throughout the seventh
and eighth centuries, the first four tribes frequently met in deadly conflict on a sort of
debatable land, extending from the river Forth to the river Almond, in the counties of Stir-
ling and Linlithgow. This region seems to have been occupied by a mixed population of
Picts, Angles, and Britons ; and here the chief tribes encountered each other, and fought most
of their battles. — John Mackintosh, History of Civilization in Scotland, vol. i., p. in.

41 See Note 33, p. 217.

42 War was declared against the Picts ; and he [Kenneth] gathered his forces together,
and made his way into the country. So furiously, then, did he rage not only against the men,
but even the women and little ones, that he spared neither sex nor holy orders, but destroyed,
with fire and sword, every living thing which he did not carry off with him. Afterwards, in the
sixth year of his reign, when the Danish pirates had occupied the coast, and, while plundering
the seaboard, had, with no small slaughter, crushed the Picts who were defending their lands
Kenneth, likewise, himself also turned his arms against the remaining frontiers of the Picts,
and, crossing the mountain range on their borders, to wit, the backbone of Albania, which is
called Drumalban in Scottish, he slew many of the Picts, and put the rest to flight ; thus
acquiring the sole sovereignty over both countries. But the Picts, being somewhat reinforced
by the help of the Angles, kept harassing Kenneth for four years. Weakening them subse-
quently, however, by unforeseen inroads and various massacres, at length, in the twelfth year
of his reign, he engaged them seven times in one day, and swept down countless multitudes
of the Pictish people. So he established and strengthened his authority thenceforth over the
whole country from the river Tyne, beside Northumbria, to the Orkney Isles — as formerly
St. Adamnan, the Abbot of Hy (Iona), had announced in his prophecy. Thus, not only were
the kings and leaders of that nation destroyed, but we read that their stock and race, also,
along with their language or dialect, were lost ; so that whatever of these is found in the
writings of the ancients is believed by most to be fictitious or apocryphal. — John of For-
dun's Chronicle , book iv., ch. iv.

43 During the entire period of a century and a half which had now elapsed since the
Northern Picts were converted to Christianity by the preaching of St. Columba (565), there is
hardly to be found the record of a single battle between them and the Scots of Dalriada.
Had they viewed each other as hostile races, it is difficult to account for the more powerful
nation of the Picts permitting a small colony like the Scots of Dalriada to remain in undis-
turbed possession of the western district where they had settled ; and prior to the mission of
St. Columba we find the king of the Northern Picts endeavoring to expel them ; but after
that date there existed a powerful element of peace and bond of union in the Columban
Church. — Celtic Scotland, vol. i., p. 276.

The Scottish clergy, no doubt, never lost the hope of regaining their position as the
Church of Pictavia, and of recovering their possessions there. The occurrence of a Scottish
prince having a claim to the Pictish crown by the Pictish law of succession, accompanied by
the invasion of the Danes, and the crushing defeat sustained by the Pictish army which
opposed them, probably afforded a favorable opportunity. — Skene, Introduction to John of
Fordun's Chronicle, p. xlix.

44 The causes of this revolution are obscure ; but the defeat of the Picts by the Danes
(in 839) must have facilitated the accession of a king of Scottish descent ; and the natural
outcome of the long struggle among the various tribes, which we dimly discern through the
mist, had a tendency towards a greater concentration of power somewhere — one or other of
the chief tribes would gradually obtain an ascendancy. It is to these circumstances we should
look for an explanation of the foundation of the monarchy. Other explanations have been
offered, such as royal marriages, the efforts of the Scots clergy, and so on, but none of them are
satisfactory. It is safer, and probably nearer the truth, to rely on the accumulating force of the
surrounding circumstances. — Mackintosh, History of Civilization in Scotland, vol. i., p. 112.

The Scots and Picts 219

46 " We cannot thoroughly understand the significance of the ascendancy so acquired by
the kings of the Dalriadic race, without realizing to ourselves, what is not to be done at
once, the high standard of civilization which separated the Scots of Ireland and Dalriada
from the other nations inhabiting the British Isles. . . . We have no conspicuous memorials
of such a social condition, such as the great buildings left by the Romans and the Normans.
Celtic civilization took another and subtler, perhaps a feebler shape. It came out emphati-
cally in dress and decoration. Among Irish relics there are many golden ornaments of
exquisitely beautiful and symmetrical pattern. Of the trinkets too, made of jet, glass, orna-
mental stone, and enamel, the remnants found in later times belong in so preponderating a
proportion to Ireland, as to point to the centre of fashion whence they radiated being there.
There seems to have been a good deal of what may be called elegant luxury : the great folks,
for instance, lay or ecclesiastic, had their carriages and their yachts. Especially the shrines,
the ecclesiastical vestments, and all the decorations devoted to religion were rich and beauti-
ful. They had manuscripts beautifully written and adorned, which were encased in costly
and finely worked bindings. It is to this honor done to sacred books, of which the finest
specimens belong to Ireland, that we may attribute the medieval passion for rich bindings.

" The high civilization of the Celtic Scots, indeed, was received with a becoming defer-
ence all around. . . . Among the nations around, whether of Teutonic or Celtic origin,
the civilization of the Scots, then a rising and strengthening civilization, raised them high in
rank, and gives us reason to believe that the Picts, instead of mourning the loss of indepen-
dence, felt their position raised by counting the Dalriadic sovereign as their own too." —
Burton, History of Scotland, vol. i., pp. 294, 295, 297.

46 Paulo post ab eo bello in xiiij ejus facto in Dolair inter DanariOs et Scottos. Occisi
sunt Scotti co Ach Cochlam. — Pictish Chronicle. This is the first appearance in the Pictisk
Chronicle of the term "Scotti" or Scots being applied to any portion of the inhabitants of
Pictavia, and it seems to have been used with reference to those of the province of Fife in
particular, but the Ulster Annals record the death of Constantine as king of the Picts.

41 Eochodius autem filius Run regis Britannorum nepos Cinadei ex filia regnavit annis xi.
Licet Ciricium filium alii dicunt hie regnasse ; eo quod alumpnus ordinatorque Eochodio
fiebat. — Pictish Chronicle.

48 In their hands he becomes Gregorius Magnus, or Gregory the Great, and in his person
restores the true line of Scots royalty, which had been perverted to serve the claims of power-
ful collaterals. He is the great hero-king of his age. He drives out the Danes, he humbles
England, he conquers Ireland ; but his magnanimity will permit him to take no more advan-
tage of his success than to see that these two kingdoms are rightly governed, that they are rid
of the northern invaders, and that their sceptres are respectively wielded by the legitimate
heir. All this is just about as true as the story of the king of Scotland with five royal com-
panions rowing the barge of King Edgar in the Dee. When the two countries afterwards
had their bitter quarrel, such inventions were the way in which the quarrel was fought in the
cloister. — Burton, History of Scotland, vol. i., p. 331.

49 See Chronicles of the Picts and Scots, pp. 9, 209 ; Robertson's Scotland under her
Early Kings, vol. i., pp. 54, 55; Celtic Scotland, vol. i., p. 335.

" Though we know less of his diplomacy in the states to the northward of the Danelaw,
we can see that Alfred was busy both with Bernicia and the kingdom of the Scots. The es-
tablishment of the Danelaw in Mid-Britain, the presence of the pirates in Caithness and the
Hebrides, made these states his natural allies ; for, pressed as they were by the vikings
alike from the north and from the south, their only hope of independent existence lay in the
help of Wessex. Of the first state we know little. The wreck of Northumbria had given
freedom to the Britons of Strathclyde, to whom the name of Cumbrians is from this time
transferred. The same wreck restored to its old isolation the kingdom of Bernicia. Deira
formed part of the Danelaw, but the settlement of the Danes did not reach beyond the Tyne,
for Bernicia, ravaged and plundered as it had been, still remained English, and governed, as

220 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

it would seem, by the stock of its earlier kings. The weakness of this state drew it to Alfred's
side ; and we know that the Bernician ruler, Eadwulf of Bamborough, was Alfred's friend.

" The same dread of the Danes drew to him the kingdom of the Scots. The Scot king-
dom, which at its outset lurked almost unseen among the lakes of Argyle, now embraced the
whole of North Britain, from Caithness to the firths, for the very name of the Picts had dis-
appeared at a moment when the power of the Picts seemed to have reached its height. The
Pictish kingdom had risen fast to greatness after the victory of Nechtansmere in 685. In the
century which followed Ecgfrith's defeat, its kings reduced the Scots of Dalriada from nomi-
nal dependence to actual subjection ; the annexation of Angus and Fife carried their eastern
border to the sea, while to the south their alliance with the Northumbrians in the warfare
which both waged on the Welsh extended their bounds on the side of Cumbria or Strath-
clyde. But the hour of Pictish greatness was marked by the extinction of the Pictish name.
In the midst of the ninth century the direct line of their royal house came to an end, and the
under-king of the Scots of Dalriada, Kenneth MacAlpin, ascended the Pictish throne in right
of his maternal descent. For fifty years more Kenneth and his successors remained kings of
the Picts. At the moment we have reached, however, the title passed suddenly away, the
tribe which had given its chief to the throne gave its name to the realm, and ' Pict-land '
disappeared from history to make room first for Alban or Albania, and then for ' the land of
the Scots."' — Green, Conquest of England ', ch. iv., sees. 39, 40.

60 A. D. 900, Domhnall mac Constantin Ri Alban moritur. — Annals of Ulster.

61 English Chronicle, Anno 926. See p.

62 The men of the northern Danelaw found themselves backed not only by their brethren
from Ireland, but by the mass of states around them — by the English of Bernicia, by the
Scots under Constantine, by the Welshmen of Cumbria or Strathclyde. It is the steady recur-
rence of these confederacies which makes the struggle so significant. The old distinctions
and antipathies of race must have already, in great part, passed away before peoples so diverse
could have been gathered into one host by a common dread of subjection, and the motley
character of the army pointed forward to that fusion of both Norman and Briton in the gen-
eral body of the English race, which was to be the work of the coming years. — Green,
Conquest of England, ch. v., sec. 42.

63 Deinde hostes subegit, Scotiam usque Dunfoeder et Wertermorum terrestri exercitu
vastavit, navali vero usque Cateness depopulatus est. — Simeon of Durham, di Gestis Reg.
Fugato deinde Owino rege Cumbrorum et Constantino rege Scotorum, terrestri et navali ex-
ercitu Scotiam sibi subjugando perdomuit. — Simeon of Durham, Ecclesiastical History of
Durham. See also English Chronicle, Anno 933.

64 Florence of Worcester, Anno 937; the Egill's Saga; Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Anno
937 ; Simeon of Durham says, in his History of the Kings, that " iEthelstan fought at Wen-
dune, and put King Oulaf with six hundred and fifteen ships, Constantin, king of the Scots,
and the king of the Cumbrians with all their forces, to flight." And in his History of the
Church of Durham he says : " ^thelstan fought at Weondune, which is also called Aetbrun-
nanmere or Brunnanbyrig, against Oulaf, the son of Guthred, the late king, who had arrived
with a fleet of six hundred and fifteen ships, supported by the auxiliaries of the kings recently
spoken of, that is to say, of the Scots and Cumbrians."

65 In 945 Eadmund conquered Cumberland. It might not be easy to say exactly what
territory is meant by that name ; but it was clearly the whole or a part of the ancient Strath-
clyde. This territory Eadmund bestowed on Malcolm, king of Scots, distinctly as a territorial
fief. . . . The northern kingdom of the Britons now became the ordinary appanage of
the heirs of the Scottish crown . . . and soon after the Scottish kings themselves made
their way south of the Forth. In the reign of Eadred, Edinburgh, the border fortress of
Northumberland to the north, became a Scottish possession ... it was the beginning of
the process which brought the lands between Forth and Tweed into the possessions of the
Scottish kings, and which thereby turned them into English kings of a Northern England,

The Scots and Picts 221

which was for a while more English than the southern England itself. — Freeman's Sketch of
English History.

66 Chronicles of the Picts and Scots, pp. 10, 151, 174, 302.

67 Chronicles of the Picts and Scots, p. 10.

68 He is the same Domnaldus who was king of the Cumbrians when Eadmund ravaged
the country in 945, and was the son of that Eugenius, king of the Cumbrians, who fought in
the battle of Brunanburgh.

975, Domnallmac Eoain Ri Bretain in ailitri. — Tighernac.

974, Dun walla wn, King of Strathclyde, went on a pilgrimage to Rome (Brut y
Tywysogion). — Chronicles of the Picts and Scots, pp. 77, 124.

69 In the north the settlement effected by Eadmund still held good, in spite of a raid into
which the Scots seem to have been tempted by a last rising of the Danelaw. The bribe of
the Cumbrian realm sufficed to secure the Scot king as a fellow-worker with Eadgar, as effec-
tively as it had secured him as a fellow-worker with Eadmund, while a fresh bond was added
by the cession during this reign of the fortress of Edinburgh with the district around it, along
with the southern shore of the Forth, to the Scottish king. — Green, Conquest of England, ch.
vii., sec. 12.

60 Interfectus est a suis hominibus in Fotherkern per perfidiam Finvelae flliae Cunchar
comitis de Engus, cujus Finvelae unicum filium predictus Knyeth interfecit apud Dunsinoen.
— Chronicles of the Picts and Scots, pp. 175, 289.

61 A.D. 997, Maelcolaim mac Domnall Ri Breatan Tuaiscert moritur. — Tighernac.
"See note 1, Chapter XX.

63 Fordun, book iv., ch. xli. Malcolm appears to have died in 1029 and to have then
been succeeded by another Malcolm — so at least the Danish authorities tell us ; but the Scots'
chronicles give the whole of the period of the united reigns to one Malcolm ; and in using any
lights they give us, it is necessary to speak of them as one, since there are no means of sepa-
rating their two reputations. It was the younger Malcolm, however, according to the same
authorities, who was the son of Kenneth, — the other, who had the longer reign, being called
" Mac Malbrigid Mac Ruaidhri." — Burton, History of Scotland, vol. i., p. 341. This theory
was first suggested by Skene in his Highlanders of Scotland, published in 1837, but was after-
wards considered by him to be untenable (Celtic Scotland, vol. i., p. 400). See p. 238.

64 Chronicles of the Picts and Scots, p. 366.

66 A comet appeared for thirty nights to the people of Northumbria, a terrible
presage of the calamity by which that province was about to be desolated. For, shortly af-
terwards (that is, after thirty days), nearly the whole population, from the river Tees to the
Tweed and their borders, were cut off in a conflict in which they were engaged with a count-
less multitude of Scots at Carrun. — Simeon of Durham, Ecclesiastical History of Durham,
ch. v.

1018, a great battle was fought at Carham between the Scots and the English, between
the son of Waltheof, earl of the Northumbrians, and Malcolm, the son of Kenneth, king of
the Scots ; with whom in battle was Owen the Bald, king of the Clutinians. — Simeon of
Durham, Hist. Reg.

Which [Uchtred] being slain [by King Cnut] his brother Eadulf, surnamed Cudel,
very slothful and timid, succeeded him in comitatum. But fearing lest the Scots should re-
venge upon him the death of those whom his brother, as is above said, had slain, gave all Lo-
thian for satisfaction and firm concord. In this manner was Lothian added to the kingdom of
the Scots. — Simeon De Obsess. Dun.

We have the authority of the Saxon Chronicle for the fact that Uchtred was slain two years
before and that Cnut had made Eric, a Dane, his successor, while Simeon makes his brother,
Eadulf Cudel, succeed him. — Celtic Scotland, vol. i., p. 393.

66 English Chronicle, Anno 945. See p. 300.

67 Orkneyinga Saga, Collectanea de Rebus Albanicis, pp. 340, 346. See Appendix P.

222 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

68 The same Finleikr who appears in Tighernac as Findlaec mac Ruaidhri, Mormaer
Moreb, and in the Ulster Annals as " Ri Alban," indicating that he claimed a position of
independence both from the earls of Orkney and the kings of the Scots. — Celtic Scotland,
p. 389.

69 Fordun says, " cousin."

70 He was, however, murdered through the wickedness of a family, the murderers of both
his grandfather and great-grandfather, the head of which was Machabeus, son of Finele, by
whom he was privily wounded unto death at Bothgofnane ; and, being carried to Elgin, he
died there, and was buried, a few days after, in the island of Iona. — Fordun, book iv.,
ch. xliv.

71 Innes, Ap. 4. Sim., Hist. Dun., i., 3, c. 5, 6 ; Ibid., De Obs. Dun., p. 81 ; De Gestis,
1018. On comparing the passages of Simeon it is impossible to doubt that the cession of
Lothian by Eadulf Cudel was the result of the battle of Carham, though there is an evident
reluctance in the English chronicler to allude to the defeat and its consequences. The men
of the Lothians, according to Wallingford, retained their laws and customs unaltered, and
though the authority is questionable, the fact is probably true, for Lothian law became eventu-
ally the basis of Scottish law. Conquest indeed in these times did not alter the laws and
customs of the conquered, unless where they come into contact and into opposition with those
of the conquerors, and the men of the Lothians remained under the Scottish kings in much
the same position as the men of Kent under the kings of Mercia and Wessex, probably
exchanging the condition of a harassed for that of a favored frontier province. — Scotland
under her Early Kings, vol. i., p. 96.

72 The Firth of Forth.

73 Scotland had now reached her permanent and lasting frontier towards the south, the
dependent principality of Strathclyde, having, apparently, during the course of this reign,
been finally incorporated with the greater kingdom. When Donald, son of the Eogan who
shared in the bloody fight of Brunanburgh, died on a pilgrimage in 975, he seems to have been
succeeded by his son Malcolm, whose death is noticed by the Irish Tighernac under the date
of 997. The last king of Strathclyde, who has found a place in history, is Eogan " the
Bald," who fought by the side of the Scottish king at Carham, probably a son of the British
Malcolm whose family name he bears ; and in the person of this Eogan the line of Aodh's
son, Donald, appears to have become extinct. The earliest authorities of the twelfth century
give the title of " king of the Cumbrians," meaning undoubtedly the northern Cumbria
or Strathclyde, to Malcolm's grandson, Duncan, and it is probable that upon the failure
of the line of Scoto-British princes, the King of Scotland placed his grandson over the prov-
ince, which from that time, losing the last semblance of independence, ceased to be ruled by
a separate line of princes. — Robertson, Scotland under her Early Kings, vol. i., p. 98.

" We have already seen how the political relations of the Scots with their southern neigh-
bors had been affected by the action of the Danes. Pressed between the Norse jarls settled in
Caithness and the Danelaw of Central England, the Scot kings were glad to welcome the
friendship of Wessex ; but with the conquest by the house of Alfred of the Danelaw, and the
extension of the new English realm to their own southern border, their dread of English
ambition became in its turn greater than their dread of the Dane. In the battle of Brunan-
burgh the Scot king, Constantine, fought side by side with the Northmen against yEthelstan.
Eadmund's gift of southern Cumbria showed the price which the English kings set upon Scot-
tish friendship. The district was thenceforth held by the heir of the Scottish crown, and for
a time at least the policy of conciliation seems to have been successful, for the Scots proved
Eadred's allies in his wars with Northumbria. But even as allies they were still pressing
southward on the English realm. Across the Forth lay the English Lowlands, that northern
Bernicia which had escaped the Danish settlement that changed the neighboring Deira into a
part of the Danelaw. It emerged from the Danish storm as English as before, with a line of
native ealdormen who seem to have inherited the blood of its older kings. Harassed as the

The Scots and Picts 223

land had been, and changed as it was from the Northumbria of Baeda or Cuthbert, Bernicia
was still a tempting bait to the clansmen of the Scottish realm.

"One important post was already established on Northumbrian soil. Whether by
peaceful cession on Eadred's part or no, the border fortress of Edinburgh passed during his
reign into Scottish hands. It is uncertain if the grant of Lothian by Eadgar followed the
acquisition of Edinburgh ; but at the close of his reign the southward pressure of the Scots
was strongly felt. ' Raids upon Saxony ' are marked by the Pictish Cronicle among the
deeds of King Kenneth ; and amidst the troubles of yEthelred's reign a Scottish host swept
the country to the very gates of Durham. But Durham was rescued by the sword of Uhtred,
and the heads of the slain marauders were hung by their long, twisted hair round its walls.
The raid and the fight were memorable as the opening of a series of descents which were
from this time to form much of the history of the north. Cnut was hardly seated on the
throne when in 1018 the Scot king, Malcolm, made a fresh inroad on Northumbria, and the
flower of its nobles fell fighting round Earl Eadwulf in a battle at Carham, on the Tweed. . . .

" Few gains have told more powerfully on the political character of a kingdom than this.
King of western Dalriada, king of the Picts, lord of Cumbria, the Scot king had till now
been ruler only of Gaelic and Cymric peoples. ' Saxony,' the land of the English across the
Forth, had been simply a hostile frontier — the land of an alien race — whose rule had been
felt in the assertion of Northumbrian supremacy and West-Saxon over-lordship. Now for
the first time Malcolm saw Englishmen among his subjects. Lothian, with its Northumbrian
farmers and seamen, became a part of his dominion. And from the first moment of its sub-
mission it was a most important part. The wealth, the civilization, the settled institutions,
the order of the English territory won by the Scottish king, placed it at the head of the Scot-
tish realm. The clans of Kintyre or of the Highlands, the Cymry of Strathclyde, fell into
the background before the stout farmers of northern Northumbria. The spell drew the Scot
king, in course of time, from the very land of the Gael. Edinburgh, an English town in the
English territory, became ultimately his accustomed seat. In the midst of an English district
the Scot kings gradually ceased to be the Gaelic chieftains of a Gaelic people. The process
at once began which was to make them Saxons, Englishmen in tongue, in feeling, in tendency,
in all but blood. Nor was this all. The gain of Lothian brought them into closer political
relations with the English crown. The loose connection which the king of Scots and Picts
had acknowledged in owning Eadward the Elder as father and lord, had no doubt been drawn
tighter by the fealty now owed for the fief of Cumbria. But Lothian was English ground,
and the grant of Lothian made the Scot king * man ' of the English king for that territory, as
Earl Eadwulf was Cnut's ' man ' for the land to the south of it. Social influences, political
relations, were henceforth to draw the two realms together ; but it is in the cession of Lothian
that the process really began." — Green, Conquest of England, ch. ix., sees. 38-40.

It should be borne in mind that Mr. Green writes from the customary English point of
view in stating that the conquest of Lothian by Malcolm made the Scottish kings the liege
men of the rulers of England. Scottish historians contend that the record of their king
having acknowledged Eadward the Elder as " father and lord" is a fabricated one ; and the
evidence seems to be with them. See p. 359.

CHAPTER XVI

THE BRITONS

OF the Romanized Britons after the departure of the imperial legions in
the early part of the fifth century, we have no definite record until the
time of Gildas, 1 who wrote about 556. His description of the conquest of the
island by the Saxons is more particularly confined to the events which took
place in Kent. However, he gives a brief account of the inhabitants " between
the Walls," and of their weak and inadequate defence against the Picts and
Scots.* The legendary accounts of the battles of King Arthur with the Sax-
ons, as given in the compilation of Nennius, while no doubt to a certain degree
mythical, at least show us that the portion of Britain with which Arthur's
name and achievements were earliest connected was not within the bounds
of the present Wales ; but in the vicinity of Carlisle, and to a great extent
north of Solway Firth. These accounts of Nennius are as follows :

§ 38. Hengist, after this, said to Vortigern, " I will be to you both a
father and an adviser ; despise not my counsels, and you shall have no rea-
son to fear being conquered by any man or any nation whatever ; for the
people of my country are strong, warlike, and robust : if you approve, I will
send for my son and his brother, both valiant men, who at my invitation will
fight against the Scots, and you can give them the countries in the north,
near the wall called Gual [Antoninus's wall]." The incautious sovereign hav-
ing assented to this, Octa and Ebusa arrived with forty ships. In these they
sailed round the country of the Picts, laid waste the Orkneys, and took
possession of many regions, even to the Pictish confines. . . .

§ 50. St. Germanus, after Vortigern's death, returned into his own
country. At that time the Saxons greatly increased in Britain, both in
strength and numbers. And Octa, after the death of his father Hengist,
came from the sinistral part of the island to the kingdom of Kent, and from
him have proceeded all the kings of that province, to the present period.

Then it was that the magnanimous Arthur, with all the kings and mili-
tary force of Britain, fought against the Saxons. And though there were
many more noble than himself, yet he was twelve times chosen their com-
mander, and was as often conqueror. The first battle in which he was
engaged was at the mouth of the river Gleni. The second, third, fourth and
fifth, were on another river, by the Britons called Dubglas, in the region
Linnius. The sixth on the river Bassas. The seventh in the wood Celidon,
which the Britons call Cat Coit Celidon. The eighth was near Guinnion
Castle, where Arthur bore the image of the Holy Virgin, mother of God,
upon his shoulders, and through the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the
holy Mary, put the Saxons to flight, and pursued them the whole day with
great slaughter. The ninth was at the city of Legion, which is called Cair
Lion. The tenth was on the banks of the river Tribruit. The eleventh was
on the mountain Breguoin, which we call Agned. The twelfth was a most
severe contest, when Arthur penetrated to the hill of Badon. In this engage-
ment, nine hundred and forty fell by his hand alone, no one but the Lord

224

The Britons 225

affording him assistance. In all these engagements the Britons were suc-
cessful. For no strength can avail against the will of the Almighty.

The more the Saxons were vanquished, the more they sought for new
supplies of Saxons from Germany ; so that kings, commanders, and military
bands were invited over from almost every province. And this practice they
continued till the reign of Ida, who was the son of Eoppa ; he, of the Saxon
race, was the first king of Bernicia, and in Cair Ebrauc [York].

The " river Gleni " has been usually identified with the Glen, a river in
the northern part of Northumberland ; the " Dubglas, in the region of
Linnius," with the two streams called Douglas, or Dubhglass, in Lennox,
which fall into Loch Lomond, and also with the Dunglas, which formed
the southern boundary of Lothian ; the Bassas, with an isolated rock in the
Firth of Forth, near the town of North Berwick, called " The Bass " ; the
" wood Celidon," with the Caledonian forest ; the fastness of " Guinnion,"
with the church of Wedale, in the vale of the Gala Water ; the mount
called " Agned " with Edinburgh. In the chronicle attached to Nennius,
Arthur is said to have been slain at the battle of Camlan in 537, in which he
fought Medraud. This Medraud was the son of Lieu of Lothian. It is true,
Mr. Guest has located the sites of many of these battles in the south ; but
the preponderance of evidence favors the northern localities as given above. 3

The Arthurian romances, which appeared at a later date than the Nen-
nius fragments, also pertain largely to Arthur's adventures in the north, and
this to a far greater extent than is generally realized, even by those who are
familiar with that romantic literature. 4

The district in Scotland occupied by the Britons at this time comprised
all that part of the country between the Clyde and the Solway lying west of
the Esk, 6 excepting that southern portion west of the Nith, occupied in
Ptolemy's time by the Novantae, the supposed progenitors of the Niduarian
or Galloway Picts. Later, the British territory was reduced through the
partial subjugation of Galloway by the Northumbrians, mention of which
is made as early as 750/ During the next hundred years, probably about
the time of Kenneth MacAlpin's accession to the Pictish throne, 843-44, there
seem also to have been settlements made by the Irish or Dalriada Scots or
Picts along the western and southern coasts of Galloway. 7

Ida, the Angle, who built the strong citadel of Bamborough, on the
northeast coast of England in 547, reigned over Bernicia for twelve years/
His successors are described by Nennius as follows :

§ 6$. Adda, son of Ida, reigned eight years ; Ethelric, son of Adda,
reigned four years. Theodoric, son of Ida, reigned seven years. Freothwulf
reigned six years ; in whose time the kingdom of Kent, by the mission of
Gregory, received baptism. Hussa reigned seven years. Against him
fought four kings, Urien, and Ryderchen, and Guallauc, and Morcant.
Theodoric fought bravely, together with his sons, against that Urien. But
at that time sometimes the enemy and sometimes our countrymen were de-
feated, and he shut them up three days and three nights in the island of

226 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

Metcaut ; and whilst he was on an expedition he was murdered, at the in-
stance of Morcant, out of envy, because he possessed so much superiority-
over all the kings in military science. Eadfered Flesaurs reigned twelve
years in Bernicia, and twelve others in Deira, and gave to his wife, Bebba,
the town of Dynguoaroy, which from her is called Bebbanburg 9 [Bam-
borough].

The British king, Ryderchen (or Rhydderch) mentioned in this passage,
fought a great battle against some of the other Welsh I0 chiefs in 573, at
Arddyred (now Arthuret) on the river Esk, about eight miles north of Car-
lisle. 11 Rhydderch was victorious, and became sovereign ruler of all the
northern Britons, with his capital established at Alclyde. 18 Adamnan, who
was born in 624, mentions him in his Life of Columba" as Rodericus, son of
Tothail, who reigned at the rock of Cluaithe (Petra-Cloithe, Alclyde, or
Dumbarton.) 14 Adamnan states also that Rhydderch was a friend and cor-
respondent of St. Columba. His death is said to have occurred in 603."

In 642, the Annals of Tighernac record the killing of Domnall Brecc,
king of the Dalriad Scots, at Strathcawin, by Oan (Owen, or Eugein), king of
the Britons. 16

In 654, Oswiu, King of Bernicia, defeated the Britons and Mercians, under
the command of Penda the Mercian king, in a battle fought in Lothian, and
thus obtained supremacy over the Strathclyde people. Their subjection to
the Angles continued for about thirty years, until the disastrous defeat and
death of Ecgfrid at Nechtansmere (Dunnichen) in 685. 1T In the year 658,
the Ulster Annals record the death of Guiret, King of Alclyde. There is
then an interval of thirty-six years before another death record appears. In
694, Tighernac mentions the death of Domnall mac Avin, King of Alclyde,
whom Mr. Skene supposes to have been the son of that Owen who is said to
have slain Domnall Brecc in 642. Domnall mac Avin was succeeded by
Beli or Bili, son of Alpin, and grandson of the same Owen. In 752, Tigher-
nac refers to the death of " Tuadar mac Bili Ri Alochlandaih " (Tuadubr,
son of Bili, King of Alclyde). 18 Four years later, Eadberht, King of North-
umbria, and Angus, King of the Picts, led an army to Alclyde, and there
compelled the submission of the British. 19

It is probable that Strathclyde remained under the rule of Northumbria
for some time after this conquest. The Annals of Ulster record the burn-
ing of Alclyde in the calends of January, 780 ; and in 828, King Ecgbryht is
said to have overrun and subdued the North Welsh. 20 From that time there
is but little record of the kingdom until nearly half a century later, when it
again appears as the British kingdom of Strathclyde. In the year 872, the
Ulster Annals inform us that Artgha, king of the Britons of Strathclyde^
was put to death, at the instigation of Constantine (son of Kenneth mac Al-
pin), then king of the Picts. The descent of this Artgha from Dunnagual,
whose death is recorded in 760, is given in the Welsh genealogies attached
to Nennius.

Simeon of Durham records the invasion of the Strathclyde district by the

The Britons 227

Danes in 875, under the leadership of Halfdan, who brought the whole of
Northumbria under subjection, and destroyed great numbers of the Picts (of
Galloway) and people of Strathclyde." Artgha left a son, Run, who suc-
ceeded to the government, and married a daughter of Kenneth MacAlpin.
On the death of Kenneth's son, Aedh, king of the Picts, in 878, Eocha, the
son of Run, came to the throne of Alban, which he held for eleven years,
having associated with him another Briton, Ciric, or Grig, the Gregory the
Great of some of the later Scottish historians. During this reign a large
party of the Britons are said to have left Strathclyde for the south and to
have finally settled in Wales." Eocha and Grig seem to have ruled jointly
for a time over Strathclyde and Pictland, until they were both expelled in
889." They were succeeded by Donald in the sovereignty of Strathclyde.
The latter died in 908." He is said by Skene to have been the last of the
family claiming Roman descent which had hitherto given its kings to Al-
clyde. Donald was succeeded by another Donald — a brother of Constantine
II., King of Alban, and son to that Aedh mac Kenneth whose sister had
married Run, the former King of Strathclyde.

The next ruler of whom we have a record was Owen, or Eugenius, who
is mentioned by Simeon of Durham, in connection with Constantine, King of
Alban, as having been defeated by the Saxon ^Ethelstan in 934." He was
the son of the same Donald who became king in 908. Owen's son, Donald,
succeeded him, and was king in 945, when the kingdom was invaded and
conquered by Eadmund, the Northumbrian ruler, who gave it up to Malcolm,
king of the Scots." Donald, however, continued as the nominal ruler. He
apparently recovered his independence after Malcolm's death, and reigned
for upwards of thirty years. The Pictish Chronicle states that in 971, Cuil-
ean, King of Alban, and his brother, Eochodius, or Eocha, were slain by the
Britons, who were under the leadership of Ardach. Kenneth, Cuilean's suc-
cessor, attempted to avenge the latter's death by laying waste the British ter-
ritories ; but succeeded in doing this only after considerable loss to himself,"
and in the following year was obliged to fortify the fords of the river Forth
in order to protect himself from the counter-attacks of the Britons.

Tighernac records a pilgrimage made by Domnall, son of Eoain, king of
the Britons, in 975, and the same event is mentioned in the British chronicle
the Brut y Tywysogion, which calls him Dunwallaun, King of Strathclyde,
and states that he went on a pilgrimage to Rome. Tighernac's record is
followed by another in 997, mentioning the death in that year of Malcolm,
son of Donald, and king of the northern Britons." Malcolm seems to have
been succeeded by his brother, as the next reference to the Strathclyde kings
mentions Owen (or Eugenius), surnamed The Bald, son of Domnall, as ruler
in 10 1 8, in which year he fought with Malcolm, King of Alban, at the battle
of Carham, against their common enemy, the Northumbrian Danes. On
Owen's death in the same year," he was succeeded by Duncan, the grandson
of the Scottish Malcolm. This Duncan on ascending the throne of Scotland

228 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

in 1034 permanently united the kingdoms under a single ruler, and merged
the two into one.

NOTES TO CHAPTER XVI.

1 The genuineness of Gildas, which has been doubted, may now be looked on as estab-
lished (see Stubbs and Haddan, Councils of Britain, i., 44). Skene (Celtic Scotland, i., 116,
note) gives a critical account of the various biographies of Gildas. He seems to have been
born in 516, probably in the North- Welsh valley of the Clwyd ; to have left Britain for
Armorica when thirty years old, or in 546 : to have written his History there about 556 or
560 ; to have crossed to Ireland between 566 and 569 ; and to have died there in 570. For
the nature and date of the compilation which bears the name of Nennius, see Guest, Early
English Settlements, p. 36, and Stevenson's introduction to his edition of him. In its earliest
form, it is probably of the seventh century. Little, however, is to be gleaned from the con-
fused rhetoric of Gildas ; and it is only here and there that we can use the earlier facts which
seem to be embedded among the later legends of Nennius. — J. R. Green, The Making of
England, p. 23.

St. Gildas, the author of a querulous treatise, De excidio Britannia, is said, in his Life,
by an anonymous monk of Ruys, in Brittany, about 1040, to have been born at Alcluyd, or,
as he calls it, in the most fertile region of Arecluta (a.d. 520) ; his father, according to his
other biographer, Caradoc of Llancarvan, a writer of the following century, called Nau, (or
Kau,) and being the King of Scotland, the most noble of the northern kings ; meaning, it is
presumed, that he was a king or prince of Strathclyde. The monk of Ruys, however, only
calls the father " nobilissimus et catholicus vir," though he says that " Cuillus " (Hueil,
Caradoc) " post mortem patris, ei in regno successit." — Ritson, Annals of Strathclyde,
p. 142.

2 See p. 201, sec. 19.

On their departure from Britain in 407 the Roman Government probably calculated on
re-establishing their authority at no distant day, and left certain officials of native birth to
administer the government, which for a time they had been forced to relinquish. For some
time previous to this Britain had been divided into five provinces, of which Valentia, the
northernmost, so named by Theodosius in honour of the Emperor Valentinian, was left under
the rule of Cunedda or Kenneth, the son of Edarn or Aeternus. Tradition says that his
mother was a daughter of Coel Hen, British King of Strathclyde, whose name is preserved in
that of the district of Kyle in Ayrshire, and in our nursery rhyme of " Old King Cole."
(Coel Hen signifies Old Cole.) Cunedda's official title as ruler of Valentia was Dux Britan-
niarum, or Duke of the Britons. He left eight sons, some of whom became, like their father,
very powerful and distinguished. From one of these, Meireon, the county of Merioneth is
named ; from another, Keredig, the county of Cardigan. — Maxwell, History of Dumfries
and Galloway, pp. 31, 32.

The five Romanized tribes of North Britain continued to occupy their respective districts,
and were known in history as the Cumbrians, or Walenses. They remained divided, as for-
merly, in clanships, each independent of the other, and an almost constant civil war was the
consequence. They were exposed to repeated inroads from the Scots and Picts ; and to the
invasion of a still more dangerous enemy — the Saxons — who, in the fifth century, extended
their conquests along the east coast of North Britain, from the Tweed to the Forth ; the de-
feated Otadini and Gadeni falling back among their countrymen, the Damnonii, and other
tribes who occupied the Lothians. Seeing the peril by which they were surrounded — the Picts
and Scots on the north, and the Saxons on the south — the inhabitants of Ayrshire, Renfrew-
shire, Lanarkshire, Dumfriesshire, Liddesdale, Teviotdale, Galloway, and the greater part of
Dumbartonshire and Stirlingshire, formed themselves into a distinct kingdom called Alcluyd.
The metropolis of the kingdom — Alcluyd — was, no doubt, situated on the banks of the Clyde,

The Britons 229

but the precise locality is not now known. Dumbarton rock was the main place of strength,
and the seat of the reguli. The history of the Alcluyd kingdom presents a series of wars
domestic and foreign, throughout the greater portion of its existence — sometimes with the
Picts, sometimes with the Scots, oftener with the Saxons, and not less frequently one clan
against another. Though repeatedly defeated and overrun, they continued to defend them-
selves with great spirit ; and more than once their restless enemies felt the weight of their
sword. — Paterson, History of the County of Ayr, vol. i., p. 13.

8 Mr. Nash, in his introduction to Merlin, or the Early History of King Arthur , makes a
statement which appears to me to be well founded : 4< Certain it is," he says, " that there are
two Celtic — we may perhaps say two Cymric — localities, in which the legends of Arthur and
Merlin have been deeply implanted, and to this day remain living traditions cherished by the
peasantry of these two countries, and that neither of them is Wales or Britain west of the
Severn. It is in Brittany and in the old Cumbrian kingdom south of the Firth of Forth that
the legends of Arthur and Merlin have taken root and nourished." To Cumbria, however,
may be added Cornwall, where the Arthurian romance places the scene of many of its
adventures ; and it is rather remarkable that we should find in the second century a tribe
termed Damnonii possessing Cornwall and a tribe of the same name occupying the ground
which forms the scene of his exploits in the north. — Skene, Celtic Scotland, vol. i., pp. i54~55«

4 " If any reality could be extracted from them, Scotland would have full share in it,
since much of the narrative comes northward of the present border. Berwick was the Joye-
use garde of Sir Lancelot, and Aneurin describes a bloody battle round Edinburgh Castle.
Local tradition and the names of places have given what support such agencies can to the
Scottish claims on the Arthurian history. So the curious Roman edifice on the bank of the
Carron was called Arthur's Oon or Oven ; and we have Arthur's Seat, Ben Arthur, Arthurlee,
and the like. The illustrious * Round Table ' itself is at Stirling Castle. The sculptured
stones in the churchyard of Meigle have come down as a monument to the memory and
crimes of his faithless wife. A few miles westward, on Barry Hill, a spur of the Gram-
pians, the remnants of a hill-fort have an interest to the peasant as the prison of her captivity.
In the pretty pastoral village of Stowe there was a ' Girth ' or sanctuary for criminals, attrib-
uted to the influence of an image of the Virgin brought by King Arthur from Jerusalem, and
there enshrined. . . .

" The parish of Meigle, in Forfarshire, is the spot most richly endowed with these monu-
ments ; and Boece tells us that they commemorate Arthur's false queen, here known by the
name of Guanora, who fell a captive to the Picts in their contest with the Britons." — Burton,
History of Scotland, vol. i., pp. 143, 177.

See Arthurian Localities, their Historical Origin, Chief Country, and Fingalian Re-
lations, by John Stuart Glennie, M.A., 1869.

5 Cornwall was subsequently occupied by the [Saxon] strangers, and the place of the
Britons to the south of present Scotland became limited to what was afterwards known as the
principality of Wales. The narrow part of North England, Lancashire and Yorkshire,
being occupied by the Saxons there was thus a gap between the Southern Britons and those
of Scotland. These latter became a little independent state, known as Strathclyde, en-
dowed with a sort of capital and national fortress at Dumbarton. This country is now
known as the shires of Ayr, Renfrew, Lanark, Stirling, and Dumbarton. It had its own
small portion in the events of the time through which it existed in independence, and became
at last, as we shall see, absorbed in the aggregation that made the kingdom of Scotland. Such
was one of the early elements of this aggregation. — Burton, History of Scotland, vol. i.,
p. 82.

6 The same natural boundary which separated the eastern from the western tribes after-
wards divided the kingdom of the Strathclyde Britons from that of the Angles ; at a subse-
quent period, the province of Galweia from that of Lodoneia in their most extended sense ;
and now separates the counties of Lanark, Ayr, and Dumfries from the Lothians and the

230 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

Merse. Galloway in its limited sense was not more clearly separated by this mountain bar-
rier on the north from Strathclyde than were the Pictish races from the British race by the
same chain, and the earlier tribes of the Selgovae and Novantae from the Damnonii.

7 See pp. 242-43.

8 See pp. 269-70.

9 Ida, the son of Eoppa, possessed countries on the left-hand side of Britain, i. e., of the
Humbrian sea, and reigned twelve years, and united Dynguayth Guarth-Berneich [Deira and
Bernicia]. — JVennius, § 61.

10 The name Welsh, or Wealas, meaning "strangers," or "foreigners," was applied by
the English to all the Celtic inhabitants of Britain.

11 See Proceedings Scottish Antiquarian Society, vol. vi., p. 91.

12 " We arrive at something like historic certainty of events in the southwest. The An-
gles were pagans. The Picts of Novantia had generally relapsed from Christianity into their
original cult, of which the traditions had been kept alive by the native bards, and a large part
of the Welsh population, in the valleys of Annan, Nith, and Clyde, had followed them. The
Welsh leader was Gwendolew, who claimed descent from Coel Hen — Old King Cole. But
there was still a Roman party among these northern Britons, led by Rydderch Hael — that is,
Roderick the Liberal — who adhered to Christianity.

" The great issue between the pagans and Christians was fought out on the borders of
Dumfriesshire in 575, at a place called Ardderyd, now Arthuret, on the Scottish bank of the
Esk. Gwendolew's camp was about four miles north of this, and gave the name still borne
by a stream called Carwhinelow — that is, caer Gwendolew, Gwendolew's camp. (The parish
of Carruthers in Dumfriesshire probably takes its name from caer Rydderch, Roderich's camp.)
The Christian champion Rydderch was completely victorious, and became ruler of the Strath-
clyde Britons, under the title of King of Alclut." — Maxwell, History of Dumfries and Gallo-
way, p. 34.

13 Reeves's edition, 1874, pp. 15, 136, 224.

14 It is called likewise, by Adamnan, Petra-Cloithe, and by other ancient writers, Are-
cluta, Alcwith, Aldclyhit, and Alcluth ; all implying a rock, or elevation, upon the Clyde,
now Dumbarton, a corruption of Dunbritton. The foundation of the monarchy cannot be
ascertained. If, however, we may credit the Life of St. Ninian [written in the twelfth cen-
tury], it existed so early as the fourth ; whence it can be traced, with sufficient certainty,
down to nearly the close, at least, of the tenth. — Ritson, Annals of the Caledonians, Picts,
etc., vol. ii., p. 132.

15 The population of this kingdom seems to have belonged to the two varieties of the
British race — the southern half, including Dumfriesshire, being Cymric or Welsh, and the
northern half having been occupied by the Damnonii, who belonged to the Cornish variety.
The capital of the kingdom was the strongly fortified position on the rock on the right bank
of the Clyde, termed by the Britons Alcluith, and by the Gadhelic people Dunbreatan, or the
fort of the Britons, now Dumbarton ; but the ancient town called Caer Luel or Carlisle in the
southern part must always have been an important position. The kingdom of the Britons
had at this time no territorial designation, but its monarchs were termed kings of Alcluith,
and belonged to that party among the Britons who bore the peculiar name of Romans, and
claimed descent from the ancient Roman rulers in Britain. The law of succession seems to
have been one of purely male descent. — Celtic Scotland, vol. i., p. 236.

16 642, Domnall-brecc in cath Strathacauin in fine anni in Decembre interfectus est xv
regni sui ab Ohan rege Britonum. — Tighernac.

17 Bede, book iv., ch. xxvi. See p. 204.

18 722, Beli Alius Elfin moritur. — An. Cam. Bili mac Elphine rex Alochluaithe moritur.
— Tighernac.

The author of Galloway, Ancient and Modern, in his reading of the early annalists has
fallen into the rather careless error of confusing the fathers of the Strathclyde kings with the

The Britons 231

kings themselves. For instance, at page 91, he says : " The next king of Strathcluyd was
Owen, who was ruling in 694 when his son Daniel (Domnall) died. He was succeeded by
Elphin (Alpin), who appears as king in 772 when his son Bili died." The record of Tighernac
for 694 is as follows : " Domnall mac Avin [OwenJ rex Alochluaithne moritur," and for 722
(not 772) the same record reads. " Bili mac Elphin rex Alochluaithe moritur."

19 756, Eadberht rex, xviii. anno regni sui et Unust rex Pictorum duxerunt exercitum ad
urbem Alcluth. Ibique Brittones in deditionem receperunt prima die mensis Augusti. —
Simeon of Durham.

The successes of Eadbert reduced the fortunes of the Britons in this quarter to the lowest
ebb. Kyle was rendered tributary to Northumbria, which already included Cunningham ;
and shortly after the middle of the century, Alclyde or Dumbarton, the strongest bulwark of the
Northern Britons, surrendered to the united forces of the Northumbrians and the Picts. The
capture of Alclyde must have thrown the whole of the ancient British territories in the Lennox,
which were subsequently included in the diocese of Glasgow, into the power of Angus, to-
gether with a great portion of the " debateable land " between the Forth and Clyde, similarly
included in the " Cumbrian" diocese; and the little principality of Strathclyde was now
completely hemmed in and surrounded by hostile territories, though the gradual decline of
the Northumbrian power towards the close of the eighth century enabled the petty state to
struggle on for another hundred years in a precarious species of nominal independence. —
Robertson, Scotland under her Early Kings, vol. i., p. 18.

20 English Chronicle, An. 828. See p. 298.

81 See also the English Chronicle, Anno 875, p. 298, where in describing the same event,
the people of Strathclyde are called the Strathclyde Welsh. The name Straecled Wealas
is rendered by ^Ethelwerd into the Latin Cumbri, which Mr. Skene notes as the first appear-
ance of the term Cumbri, or Cumbrians, as applied to the people of Strathclyde.

1 * Much confusion has arisen from the ambiguous use of the appellations of Cumbria and
Cumberland. The former name was undoubtedly applied at one time to a wide extent of
country stretching at least from Dumbartonshire to North Wales, from which district it was
early separated when the greater part of modern Lancashire was added to the Northumbrian
dominions. A little later the grants of Ecgfrith to St. Cuthbert must have severed the modern
counties of Cumberland and Westmoreland from the northern Cumbria or Strathclyde, which
was still further curtailed by the settlements of the Angles in the diocese of Candida Casa, a
district of which the greater part, if not the whole, had by this time probably fallen into the
hands of the ancestors of the Picts of Galloway.

" Southern Cumbria or Cumberland does not appear to have been included amongst the
conquered districts recovered by the Britons after the defeat and death of Ecgfrid at the battle
of Nechtan's Mere. When Eardulf the bishop carried off the relics of St. Cuthbert and St.
Oswald from the profane violence of a pagan as fierce as Penda, the most trusted companion
of his hurried flight was Edred, the Saxon Abbot of Carlisle ; and there is little reason to
doubt that at this time the descendants of the men who won the land in the days of Ecgfrid
still peopled the broad acres granted to the monastery of St. Cuthbert. Forty years later it
is told how Edred, the son of Rixinc, the foremost chieftain amongst the nobility of Deira,
rode ' westward over the hills,' and slew the Lord Eardulf, a prince of the Bernician race of
Ida, carried off his wife 'in spite of the Frith and the people's wishes,' and held forcible
possession of territories reaching from Chester le Street to the Derwent, till he lost both lands
and life in the battle of Corbridge Moor. All these names are genuine Saxon, and though
the original British population may still have lingered amidst the lakes and mountains of their
picturesque region, it may be safely doubted whether they paid either tribute or submission
to the Scoto-British prince who yet retained some vestiges of authority over the fertile valley
of the Clyde ; and whilst Scottish Cumbria, or Strathclyde, continued under the rule of a
branch of the MacAlpin family from the opening of the tenth century till the reign of Mal-
colm the Second, English Cumbria, or Cumberland, when it was not under the authority of

232 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

the Northumbrian earls, in whose province it was included, may be said to have remained in
a state of anarchy till the conquest." — Scotland under her Early Kings, vol. i., p. 70.

" The last retreat of the Romanized Britons was called originally Strathclyde, but in later
times more frequently Cumbria. . . .

1 ' In the scanty notices of the chroniclers the district is generally called a kingdom, but
this may have been more from the habit of using that term towards the neighboring nations,
than because there was any fixed form of monarchical government in Strathclyde." — Burton,
History of Scotland, vol. i., pp. 182, 278, 279.

22 Again, in 875, the same restless enemy, sallying forth from Northumberland, laid waste
Galloway, and a great part of Strathcluyd. Thus harassed by the insatiable Northmen, many
of the inhabitants of Alcluyd resolved upon emigrating to Wales. Under Constantin, their
chief, they accordingly took their departure ; but were encountered by the Saxons at Loch-
maben, -where Constantin was slain. They, however, repulsed their assailants, and forced
their way to Wales, where Anarawa, the king, being at the time hard pressed by the Saxons,
assigned them a district which they were to acquire and maintain by the sword. In the ful-
filment of this condition, they aided the Welsh in the battle of Cymrid, where the Saxons
were defeated and driven from the district. The descendants of these Strathcluyd Britons
are said to be distinguished from the other inhabitants of Wales at the present day. The
Strathcluyd kingdom was, of course, greatly weakened by the departure of so many of the best
warriors ; and it continued to be oppressed both by the Scots and Anglo-Saxon princes. The
judicious selection of a branch of the Scottish line as their sovereign had the effect of secur-
ing peace between the two nations for some time. Hostilities, however, at length broke out
with great fury, in consequence of Culen — who ascended the Scottish throne in 965 — having
dishonored his own relative, a granddaughter of the late King of Strathcluyd. Incensed at
the insult, the inhabitants flew to arms, under King Ardach, and marching into Lothian, there
encountered the Scots. The battle was a fierce one, and victory declared for the Alcluyden-
sians. Both Culen and his brother Eocha were slain. This occurred in 971. The Scottish
throne was ascended by Kenneth III. [II.] ; and the war between the Scots and Cumbrians
continuing, the latter, under Dunwallin — the successor of Ardach — were at length overpowered
on the bloody field of Vacornar ; where, the Welsh Chronicle states, the victors lost many a
warrior. Dunwallin retired to Rome in 975. The Strathcluyd kingdom, now fairly broken
up, was annexed to the Scottish erown, and the inhabitants became mixed with the Scots and
Picts. This was a successful era for the Scots. Though the country had been overrun by
^Ethelstan, the Saxons gained no permanent advantage. On the contrary, Eadmund, in 945,
ceded Cumberland, in England, to Malcolm I., on condition of unity and aid. Lothian,
which had previously been held by England, was also delivered up to Malcolm III., in 1018,
after the battle of Carham with Uchtred of Northumberland. — Paterson, History of the County
of Ayr, p. 15.

" An occasional brief entry in the early chronicles reveals the anxiety of the rulers of the
Picts and Scots to avail themselves of the gradual decline of the Northumbrian power for the
purpose of extending their own influence over the neighboring province of Strathclyde.
Some such motives may have instigated Kenneth to seek for his daughter the alliance of a
British prince ; and a few years later, the death of Artgha, King of Strathclyde, which is
attributed by the Irish annalists to the intrigues of Constantine the First, may have been con-
nected with the same policy of aggrandizement, and have furthered the claims of Eocha, the
son of Constantine's sister. The advancement of Eocha to the Scottish throne was shortly
followed by important consequences to his native province, and after the flight and death of the
Welsh prince Rydderch ap Mervyn had deprived the northern Britons of one of their firmest
supporters, a considerable body of the men of Strathclyde, relinquishing the ancient country
of their forefathers, set out, under a leader of the name Constantine, to seek another home
amongst a kindred people in the south. Constantine fell at Lochmaben in attempting to
force a passage through Galloway ; but his followers, undismayed at their loss, persevered in

The Britons 233

their enterprise, arriving in time to assist the Northern Welsh at the great battle of the Con-
way, where they won the lands, as the reward of their valor, which are supposed to be occu-
pied by their descendants at the present day. (An. 67/., 876, 877 ; An. Camb. and Brut y
Tywys. 880 ; Caledonia, vol. i., book iii., ch. v., p. 355.)

"Chalmers gives the name of Constantine to their first leader, whilst, according to
Caradoc, Hobart was their chief when they reached Wales. To some old tradition of this
migration, and to the encroachments of the Galwegians, the Inquisitio Davidis probably
alludes : 4 Diverse seditiones circumquaque insurgentes non solum ecclesiam et ejus pos-
sessions destruxerunt verum etiam totam regionem vastantes ejus habitatores exilio tradide-
runt. ' {Reg- Glasg) In fact it would appear as if a Scottish party had dated its rise from the
days of Kenneth MacAlpin, and secured a triumph by the expulsion of its antagonists, on
the accession of Eocha to the Scottish throne, and by the election of Donald in the reign of
the second Constantine.

" With the retreating emigrants, the last semblance of independence departed from the
Britons of the north ; and upon the death of their king Donald, who was probably a descend-
ant of Kenneth's daughter, Constantine the Second experienced little difficulty in procuring
the election of his own brother Donald to fill the vacant throne. Henceforth a branch of the
MacAlpin family supplied a race of princes to Strathclyde ; and although for another
hundred years the Britons of that district remained in a state of nominal independence, they
ceased to exist as a separate people, appearing, on a few subsequent occasions, merely as
auxiliaries in the armies of the Scottish kings." — Scotland under her Early Kings, vol.

i., p. 54-

The Angles only retained their power over the Picts of Galloway and the Cumbrians
south of the Solway, together with the city of Carlisle, which Ecgfrith, shortly before his
death, had given to St. Cuthbert, with some of the land around it. The Cumbrians north
of the Solway became independent, and had kings of their own again, of whom one is recorded
as dying in 649, and another in 722. But the Picts of Galloway continuing under the yoke of
the Northumbrians, the king of the latter managed in 750 to annex to Galloway the district
adjoining it on the north and west, which was then a part of the land of the Cumbrians,
though it may have long before belonged to the Picts. In the same year, a war took place
between the former and the Picts of Lothian, who suffered a defeat and lost their leader,
Talorgan, brother to the King of Alban, in a battle at a place called Mocetauc in the Welsh
Chronicle, and supposed to be in the parish of Strathblane in the county of Stirling ; but in
756 we read of the Picts and the Northumbrians joining, and pressing the Cumbrians sorely.
Afterwards little is known of them (except that Alclyde was more than once destroyed by the
Norsemen) until we come down to the end of the ninth century, when we meet with a Welsh
tradition that the Cumbrians who refused to submit to the English were received by the King
of Gwynedd into the part of North Wales lying between the Dee and the Clwyd, from which
they are made to have driven out some English settlers who had established themselves there.
How much truth there may be in this story is not evident, but it is open to the suspicion of
being based to some extent on the false etymology which identifies the name of the Clwyd
with that of the Clyde. It is needless to say that the latter, being Clota in Roman times, and
Clut in old Welsh, could only yield Clud in later Welsh. Harassed and weakened on all
sides, the Cumbrians ceased to have kings of their own race in the early part of the tenth
century, when a Scottish line of princes established itself at Alclyde ; and in 946 the kingdom
was conquered by the English king Eadmund, who bestowed the whole of it from the neigh-
borhood of the Derwent to the Clyde [?] on the Scottish king Maelcoluim or Malcolm, on
condition that he should assist him by land and sea, the help anticipated being intended
against the Danes. . . . William the Red made the southern part of Cumbria, including
the city of Carlisle, an earldom for one of his barons ; and thus it came to pass that the name
of Cumberland has ever since had its home on the English side of the border, while the
northern portion, of which the basin of the Clyde formed such an important part, is spoken of

234 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

in the Saxon Chronicle as that of the Strathclyde Welshmen. It may here be added that this
last was still more closely joined to the Scottish crown when David became king in 1124;
but its people, who formed a distinct battalion of Cumbrians and Teviotdale men in the
Scotch army at the battle of the Standard in 11 30, preserved their Cymric characteristics long
afterwards. How late the Welsh language lingered between the Mersey and the Clyde we
have, however, no means of discovering, but, to judge from a passage in the Welsh Triads,
it may be surmised to have been spoken as late as the fourteenth century in the district of
Carnoban (see Gee's Myvyrian Archaeology, p. 401, triad 7), wherever between Leeds and
Dumbarton that may turn out to have been. — Rhys, Celtic Britain, pp. 146-148.

23 On the west were the districts occupied by the Britons of Strathclyde. In the previ-
ous century and a half these had been narrowed to the vale of the Clyde, with Alclyde or
Dumbarton as its stronghold, and the rest of the British districts had, along with Galloway,
been under the dominion of the Angles of Northumbria ; but their rule had been relaxed
during the period of disorganization into which the Northumbrian kingdom had fallen, and
had by degrees become little more than nominal, when the invasion of Bernicia by the Briton
Giric, who for a time occupied the Pictish throne, led to the severance of these districts from
Northumbria, and the whole of the British territory from the Clyde to the river Derwent in
Cumberland became once more united under the rule of an independent king of the Britons.
— Celtic Scotland, p. 346.

24 Et in suo octavo anno cecidit excelsissimus rex Hibernensium et archiepiscopus apud
Laignechos id est Cormac mac Cuilennan. Et mortui sunt in tempore hujus Donevaldus
rex Britannorum et Duvenaldus Alius Ederex eligitur. — Chronicles of the Picts and Scots, p. 9.

25 Fugato deinde Owino rege Cumbrorum et Constantino rege Scotorum, terrestri et
navali exercitu Scotiam sibi subjugando perdomuit. — Simeon of Durham, Hist, de Dun. Ec,

26 English Chronicle, Anno 945.

944, Strathclyde was ravaged by Saxons. — Brut y Tywysogion.

946, Stratclut vastata est a Saxonibus. — An. Camb.

The life of St. Cadroe gives us almost a contemporary notice of the Cumbrian kingdom.
St. Cadroe was a native of Alban, and flourished in the reign of Constantin who fought at
Brunanburgh, and leaves him to go on a foreign mission. He comes to the " terra Cumbro-
rum," and Dovenaldus, the king who ruled over this people, receives him gladly and conducts
him "usque Loidam civitatem quae est confinium Normannorum atque Cumbrorum."
— Chronicles of the Picts and Scots, p. 116.

27 Statim predavit Britanniam ex parte Pedestres Cinadi occisi sunt maxima cede in Moin
na Cornar. — Pictish Chronicle.

28 He was, no doubt, the son of that Donald who was king of the Cumbrians when his
kingdom was overrun by King Eadmund and bestowed upon Malcolm, King of Alban, and
this shows that though the sovereignty was now vested in the Scottish kings, the line of pro-
vincial kings still remained in possession of their territory. — Celtic Scotland, vol. i., p. 382.

29 With him ended the kingdom of Strathclyde. Galloway as a portion of it then fell
into the full possession of the Norsemen. — Mac Kerlie, Galloway, Ancient and Modern, p. 92.

CHAPTER XVII
THE NORSE AND GALLOWAY

THE Norwegian and Danish invasions of Britain began in 793. In that
year the Northmen made an attack upon the island of Lindisfarne,
which lies a little south of Tweedmouth. Their raid is thus described by
Simeon of Durham :

In the same year [793] of a truth, the pagans from the northern region
came with a naval armament to Britain like stinging hornets, and overran
the country in all directions like fierce wolves, plundering, tearing, and
killing not only sheep and oxen, but priests and levites, and choirs of monks
and nuns. They came, as we before said, to the church of Lindisfarne, and
laid all waste with dreadful havoc, trod with unhallowed feet the holy places,
dug up the altars, and carried off all the treasures of the holy church.
Some of the brethren they killed, some they carried off in chains, many they
cast out naked and loaded with insults, some they drowned in the sea.

The following year a party of Norsemen plundered the monastery at the
mouth of the Wear, where their chief was killed, and their fleet afterwards
wrecked by a storm. In the same year one of their fleets laid waste the
Western Isles and sacked the church of Iona. Four years later they again
visited the Western Isles. In 802 they burned the Iona church ; and in 806
killed the inhabitants of that island, numbering sixty-eight persons. These
pirates were distinguished by the Irish as belonging to two races, the Finn-
gaill — white, or fair-haired strangers (Norse), — and the Dubhgaill, — black, or
dark-haired strangers (Danes).

While it has been generally customary to speak of them as Northmen,
yet so far as Scotland was concerned they approached it from the east — and
in the case of the Danes from the southeast — the distance between Norway
and Scotland being but about two hundred miles. First sailing to the Ork-
neys these invaders proceeded down along the west coast into the Irish Sea,
and made their landings in Ireland, Cumberland, or Galloway ' as the hope
of plunder might lead them. The Irish gave to the Danes the name of
Ostmen, or Men of the East, which properly described them ; but that point
of the compass from which they approached Normandy and the southern
coast of England is the one that furnished them with the name by which
they are best known.

The following account of the operations of the Norse in Northern, West-
ern, and Southwestern Scotland is based chiefly on the Orkneyinga and other
Norse sagas, and on the Annals of Tighernac and of Ulster (see Appen-
dixes O and P).

In 825, Blathmhaic, son of Flann, was killed by the Norse in Iona. In

235

236 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

839, the Danes came to Dublin with sixty-five ships. After plundering
Leinster, they entered Scotland through Dalriada, and, in a battle with the
Picts and Scots, killed their ruler, Eoganan, son of Angus. This helped
to open the way for the accession of Kenneth MacAlpin to the Pictish
throne. 3

During Kenneth's reign his country was often harassed by these trouble-
some visitors. Later they seem to have made permanent settlements in
some parts of the island, particularly in the north and in Galloway. 3 In the
1 latter district they intermarried with and made allies of the natives, who
in time became known along the western coast of Scotland and in Ireland
as the " Gallgaidhel ", or " stranger (*. ^., renegade) Gaels."

The fragments of Irish Annals published by the Irish Archaeological
Society state that in 852 a battle was given by Aedh, King of Ailech, to the
fleet of the Gallgaidhel, who were said to be Scots and foster-children of the
Northmen, and who themselves were formerly called Northmen. They were
defeated and slain by Aedh, many heads being carried off as trophies by
himself and Niall. The Irish justified their action on this occasion by say-
ing that " these men were wont to act like Lochlans " (Northmen). Again
it is stated of them in 858 that the Gallgaidhel were " a people who had re-
nounced their baptism, and were usually called Northmen, for they had the
customs of the Northmen, and had been fostered by them, and though the
original Northmen were bad to the churches, these were by far worse in what-
ever part of Erin they used to be." In 866 a large fleet of Danish pirates,
under command of Halfdan and his two brothers, arrived off the coast of
England. After spending the winter in East Anglia, they invaded Northum-
bria, took the city of York, killed the two rival claimants to the North-
umbrian throne, and made Ecgberht king. He ruled for six years, and was
succeeded by Ricsig.

In the same year in which occurred Halfdan's invasion of Northumbria,
Olaf the White, the Norwegian king of Dublin, who had married a daughter
of Kenneth MacAlpin and may have had designs upon the latter's throne,
invaded Pictavia with the " Galls " of Erin and Alban, laid waste all the
country, and occupied it from the kalends of January to the feast of St.
Patrick (March 17th). On returning to Ireland, he took with him both
booty and hostages. 4 From the same source we learn that in the year 870
Alclyde was invested by the Northmen under Olaf and Imhair, and destroyed
after a four months' siege ; much booty and a great host of prisoners being
taken. Olaf and Imhair seem also to have attacked both the Picts of
Galloway and the Angles of Bernicia, for they are said to have returned to
Dublin with two hundred ships and great booty of men, Angles, Britons,
and Picts, as captives. 6 In 875 a Danish army under command of Halfdan
again ravaged Northumbria, Galloway, and Strathclyde, 6 and made great
slaughter of the Picts. In the same year, Thorstein the Red (son of Olaf
the White by Audur, daughter of the Norseman, Kettil Flatnose), who had

The Norse and Galloway 237

succeeded to his father's rule, attacked the northern provinces of Scotland
and added Caithness, Sutherland, Ross, and Moray to his dominion. He
was slain soon after by the Albanians. In the year 877 the Danes and
Norwegians of Ireland contested for the mastery. The Finngaill being
successful, the Danes were driven out of Ireland and entered Scotland.
Here they attacked the Scots in Fifeshire and slew a great multitude of
them, together with Constantine, their king. Between 885 and 890 the Nor-
wegians colonized the Orkney Islands, and Harold Harfagr, King of Norway,
having taken possession, gave them to Rognwald, Earl of Maeri. He re-
linquished to his brother, Sigurd, on whom the King bestowed the title of
jarl. Sigurd soon after invaded Scotland and reconquered Caithness, Suth-
erland, Ross, and Moray. He was killed in an encounter with Maelbrigda,
a Scottish jarl. His son, Guthorn, succeeded to his estates, but died within
a year. Earl Rognwald then sent his own sons, Hallad and Einar, to
rule the Orkneys, the latter of whom retained the government until his death
in 936.

About 900 a Danish army, having invaded and plundered Ireland, came
into Scotland and overran the southern districts, righting several battles
with the Scots, in one of which King Donald was slain. At this time the
Norse influence was very strong in Caithness and Sutherland, those provinces
being ruled from the Orkneys. The Norse also established themselves in
the Western Isles and in Man, and soon came to exert almost as great an
influence there as in Galloway. In 912 Rognwald, with a powerful band of
Danish pirates, invaded Scotland and ravaged Dunblane. He returned
again in 918, having visited and plundered in Ireland in the meantime.
The Scots' king, Constantine, having united his forces with those of Ealdred,
ruler of Bernicia, met the Danes in battle, and succeeded in routing them.
Notwithstanding this, they soon afterwards secured possession of Bernicia,
where Rognwald established himself as king. 7 In 937 the Scots, having
united with the Danes of Northumbria and those of Dublin in making war
against ^Ethelstan, shared in the disastrous defeat inflicted by that king
upon his enemies at the battle of Brunanburgh. Soon after this event, Eric
of the Bloody Axe, son of Harold Harfagr, King of Norway, came to the
coasts of England on a plundering expedition. Having been offered a
settlement in Northumberland by King ^Ethelstan, he seated himself there
with his followers. After his death, his sons removed to the Orkneys, and
in the reign of the Scottish king Indulf (954-962), they are said to have
been the leaders of a Norwegian fleet which made a descent upon Buchan.

Upon the death of Einar, Earl of the Orkneys, in 936, he was succeeded
by his son Thorfinn, called the "Skull-cleaver," who married Grelauga,
daughter of Dungadr, or Duncan, the Jarl of Caithness, and thus confirmed
the possession of that province to his descendants. His eldest son, Havard,
having succeeded to the rule, was slain by his own wife ; and Liotr, the
second son, assumed the title and domain. Another brother, Skuli, disputed

238 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

the succession. Having secured the support of the Scottish king, he gave
battle to Liotr and was slain. Liotr fought a second battle with the Scots,
and killed Earl Maelbrigdi, their leader ; but received a wound himself from
which he afterwards died. Hlodver, the surviving son of Thorfinn Einarson,
then became Earl of Orkney. Upon his death, which occurred about the
year 980, Sigurd, his son, became ruler. Soon after, Finley (or Finleikre or
Finlaec — son of Ruaidhri and brother to Maelbrigdi) who was the Scottish
Mormaor (Earl) of Moray, made war against Sigurd, but was defeated by
him in battle. The latter, in consequence, gained possession of Moray,
Ross, Sutherland, and "Dali," all of which provinces he ruled over in 989.
However, Finley mac Ruaidhri eventually recovered Moray at a later date,
and continued as lord of that distiict until 1020, when he was slain by the
sons of his brother, Maelbrigdi.

These sons of Maelbrigdi appear to have been Malcolm, who died in
1029, and Gilcomgain, who was killed in 1032. The latter had married
Gruoch, daughter of Boete (son of King Kenneth MacMalcolm), or accord-
ing to some authorities, a granddaughter of Boete other than Gruoch.
After the death of Gilcomgain, his widow married Macbeth (son of Finley),
who doubtless had a hand in the killing of her first husband, in retaliation
for the killing of Finley by Gilcomgain and his brother. Malcolm mac
Maelbrigdi (so-called by Tighernac), who died in 1029, is spoken of by the
annalist as "«' (or king) of Scotland." Undoubtedly at that time the
mormaors of Moray were the virtual rulers of the greater part of Scotland
lying north of the Grampians. Under the Pictish system of descent, the
rights of a deceased king's brother were superior to those of the king's son ;
and as that system prevailed in the Highlands long after the tenth century,
Finley would be the natural successor to the mormaorship on the death of
his brother Maelbrigdi. This succession, however, as indicated above, was
disputed by the sons of Maelbrigdi, and they succeeded in settling the title
for the time being by killing their uncle. After their own deaths, Macbeth
was the next in succession, notwithstanding Gilcomgain had left an infant
son (Lulach).

A few years after the beginning of the eleventh century (about 1008),
the Orkneyinga Saga tells us, Sigurd, Earl of Orkney, married the daughter
of Melkolf (Malcolm) " King of the Scots," and by her had a son, Thorfinn.
When the latter was five years old, " the King of Scots gave to Thorfinn, his
relation, Katanes [Caithness] and Sutherland, and an earl's title along with
it, and gave him men to rule the domain along with him." 8 While this King
Malcolm, has been identified with Malcolm MacKenneth (grandfather of Dun-
can), King of Southern Scotland, by Messrs. Skene and Robertson and by
all later writers founding on them, there is no certainty that they were the
same. In some points the probabilities favor the view taken originally by
Mr. Skene in his Highlanders, that the Norse sagas, in their first mention of
King Malcolm, really referred to Malcolm mac Maelbrigdi, Mormaor of

The Norse and Galloway 239

Moray, the " ri " who died in 1029, and who was the ruler of the Scotland
best known to Earls Sigurd and Thorfinn. (See " The Norse Sagas," Ap-
pendix P.)

Five years after Thorfinn's birth (in 1014), in the final struggle which
took place between the Irish and the Danes, Earl Sigurd went to Dublin as
an ally of the latter, and there met his death at the battle of Clontarf.
Before embarking for Ireland, Sigurd had sent his young son Thorfinn
to the child's grandfather, Malcolm, King of Scotland. Upon the death
of the father, Malcolm bestowed Caithness and Sutherland upon Thorfinn,
with the title of earl, and gave him men to enable him to establish
his authority. Sigurd had three sons by a former wife — Sumarlidi, Brusi,
and Einar — among whom the Orkneys were divided. They all died
prior to 1029, however; and before King Malcolm's death in 1034,
Thorfinn, their half-brother, had succeeded to the earldom of Orkney.
On Duncan's accession to the Scottish throne, after the death of Malcolm,
that king assumed full authority over Caithness, and bestowed it upon his
nephew, Moddan, with the title of earl. Duncan's cousin, Thorfinn, naturally
looked upon this as an abrogation of his own rights, and the two became
enemies. When Moddan came north with his men from Sutherland to take
possession of the earldom, he was met by a superior force under Thorfinn
and compelled to retire. Duncan at once organized a considerable army,
and having sent Moddan to the north overland, sailed from Berwick to
Caithness with a fleet of eleven vessels. Thorfinn met the fleet in the
Pentland Firth, and though having with him only five warships, defeated
Duncan, and obliged the latter to retire to the Moray Firth, where he
landed, and started for the south to get together a new army. Earl Mod-
dan, who in the meantime had entered Caithness, was followed by Thorfinn's
lieutenant, and surprised and slain at Thurso. Duncan collected as large
an army as possible, and having entered Moray again, met Thorfinn in battle
at Torfness, or Broghead, where, the second time, he was completely defeated
and his forces routed. Earl Thorfinn then overran and subdued the country
as far south as Fife. 9 Soon after, Duncan was slain by Macbeth, the Mor-
maor of Moray, whose father, Finley, had regained the mormaorship after the
death of Earl Sigurd. Macbeth at the time may have been operating as an
ally of Thorfinn 10 ; or, according to some accounts, endeavoring to make
good his own wife's claim to the Scottish throne — a claim which seems to
have been at least of equal merit with that of Duncan himself.

After Duncan's death, Macbeth succeeded to his crown ; yet the power
of Earl Thorfinn at this time was nearly as great as his own. Thorfinn pos-
sessed the nine earldoms of Sutherland, Ross, Moray, " Dali," Buchan, Mar,
Mearns, Angus, and Galloway " ; and without his assistance the Mormaor
of Moray could hardly have succeeded in establishing himself upon the
Scottish throne. 18 It is probable, therefore, that Macbeth's reign marked
the highest point ever reached by Norse influence in Scotland. 1 * As that

240 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

influence has a considerable interest in connection with the genesis and de-
velopment of the people of Galloway, and one that has not until recently
been clearly recognized, it may at this period properly be considered.

The part of Scotland now known by the name of Galloway embraces the
counties of Kirkcudbright and Wigton, which lie west of the lower Nith
valley, and south of the range of high hills or mountains that form the
southern boundary of Ayr and Dumfries. In earlier times, after its separa-
tion from Strathclyde, Galloway probably included Annandale (in Dumfries),
the two southern districts of Ayr (Kyle and Carrick), and perhaps also a great
part of the northern district of Ayr (Cuninghame) in addition. 14 It thus
embraced within its bounds nearly the whole of the southern and western
coast of Scotland from the mouth of the Nith to the Clyde.

St. Columba preached to the Northern Picts as early as 565 ; but long
before that St. Ninian had converted the Galloway Picts, 16 and built the mis-
sion station or monastery of Candida Casa, or White House, at Whithorn on
the southeastern coast of Wigtonshire.

Ninian is said to have been born on the shore of Solway Firth, 16 to have
been the son of a king, or nobleman, and to have studied at Rome, where
he was consecrated as Bishop by Pope Siricius. He started in 395 on a mis-
sion to convert the Attecotts. 17

Now, he chose his seat in a place which is now called Withern [Whithorn] ;
which place, situate upon the shore of the ocean, while the sea stretches far
from the east, west, and south, is inclosed by the sea itself ; from the north
part a way is opened for those only who are willing to enter. There, then,
by the command of the man of God, the masons, whom he had brought with
him, erect a church ; before which they say there was none in Britain built
of stone. 18

This stone church presented such a contrast to the customary oaken struc-
tures of the surrounding country that it soon became known far andwide as the
White House. Ninian is said to have died and been buried here about 432."

In Bede's time, Whithorn had been erected into an Episcopal See under the
fostering care of the Northumbrian kings. The Lord of Northumbria like-
wise maintained dominion over more or less of the territory and people of
Galloway. 20 Such districts as did not acknowledge his sovereignty remained
either under their own independent chiefs or were included in the kingdom
of Strathclyde, which, after the victory of the Picts at Nechtansmere in 685,
had been freed from the Northumbrian yoke.

In 740, Alpin (son of Eachaidh by a Pictish mother), who had been suc-
cessively king of the Northern Picts (726) and king of the Scots (729) and
who later was driven out of those kingdoms by Angus, entered Galloway
(Ayrshire) with an army and laid its territory waste. In 741 he was defeated
by Innrechtach near the Dee, 31 and obliged to retreat to Loch Ryan, where
he was assassinated."

In 750 Eadberht, King of Northumbria, added the plain of Kyle and other

The Norse and Galloway 241

regions to his Galloway domain." These " other regions " are generally-
supposed to have been portions of the adjacent districts of Cuninghame and
Carrick in Ayrshire." They were retained as dependencies until the close of
the same century, when by reason of civil feuds at home, and the increasing
invasions of the Norsemen from without, the Angles were compelled to
withdraw from Galloway and their suzerainty was given up. 36

It has usually been assumed by modern historians, founding on George
Chalmers, that there were repeated invasions of Galloway from Ireland dur-
ing the seventh and eighth centuries, and that this district was then, like
Argyle in the sixth, largely colonized by emigrants from Ulster. This
assumption has been in a great measure refuted by Mr. Skene," and as the
question is one of considerable interest at this point, it will not be amiss to
give his argument some consideration. It is as follows :

Chalmers, in his Caledonia (i., p. 358), states dogmatically that Galloway
was colonized in the eighth century by Cruithne [Picts] from Ireland, and that
they were followed by fresh " swarms from the Irish hive during the ninth and
tenth centuries," and this statement has been accepted and repeated by all
subsequent writers as if there were no doubt about it. There is not a vestige
of authority for it. Galloway belonged during these centuries to the North-
umbrian kingdom, and was a part of Bernicia. Bede, in narrating the foun-
dation of Candida Casa by St. Ninian (Book iii., ch. iv.), says, " qui locus ad
provinciam Berniciorum pertinens " ; and there is abundant evidence that
Galloway was under the rule of the Northumbrian kings after his time. It
is antecedently quite improbable that it could have been colonized from Ire-
land during this time without a hint of such an event being recorded either
in the Irish or English annals.

The only authorities referred to by Chalmers consist of an entire misap-
plication of two passages from the Ulster Annals. He says : " In 682 a.d.,
Cathasao, the son of Maoledun, the Mormaor of the Ulster Cruithne, sailed
with his followers from Ireland, and landing on the Firth of Clyde, among
the Britons, he was encountered and slain by them near Mauchlin, in Ayr,
at a place to which the Irish gave the name of Rathmore, or great fort. In
this stronghold Cathasao and his Cruithne had probably attacked the Britons,
who certainly repulsed them with decisive success." — Ulster An., sub. an.
682. " In 702 the Ulster Cruithne made another attempt to obtain settlement
among the Britons on the Firth of Clyde, but they were again repulsed in
the battle of Culin." — lb., sub. an. 702. The original texts of these pass-
ages is as follows : " 682. Beltum Rathamoire Maigiline contra Britones ubi
ceciderunt Catusach mac Maelduin Ri Cruithne et Ultan fllius Dicolla. 702.
Bellum Campi Cuilinn in Airdo nepotum Necdaig inter Ultu et Britones ubi
filius Radgaind cecidit. Ecclesiarum Dei Ulait victores erant." Now, both
of these battles were fought in Ulster. Rathmore, or great fort of Maigiline,
which Chalmers supposed to be Mauchlin, in Ayr, was the chief seat of the
Cruithne in Dalaraidhe, or Dalaradia, and is now called Moylinny. See
Reeves's Antiquities of Down and Connor, p 70. Airdo nepotum Necdaig, or
Arduibh Eachach, was the Barony of Iveagh, also in Dalaradia, in Ulster
(lb., p. 348) ; and these events were attacks by the Britons upon the Cruith-
nigh of Ulster, where the battles were fought, and not attacks by the latter
upon the British inhabitants of Ayrshire

242 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

Now, while it must be admitted that the case against the relevancy of
Mr. Chalmers's citations and his theory of an eighth century settlement of the
Irish in Galloway is a very clear one, the fact remains that for several hun-
dred years past, and certainly as far back as the time of Kenneth MacAlpin
(840), there have been apparent in the people themselves direct indications
of large Gaelic infusions into the Galloway population, whether their origin
be Ireland or the north of Scotland. The most noticeable of these evidences
are to be found in the language and in the names of the people. Up to and
beyond the twelfth century the Picts of Galloway spoke the Gaelic tongue.
At the battle of the Standard in 1138 the war-cry of the Galwegians, who
were in the van of the Scottish army, was " Albanaich ! Albanaich ! " the
Gaelic name for Scotland ; and the English on the other side are said to have
answered back in derision, " Yry ! Yry ! " (Irish ! Irish !) To this day,
" Eerish " is a term of contempt in Galloway."

Mr. Skene, while fully acknowledging the presence of a considerable
Gaelic element in the Galloway population, and while ever alive to the im-
portant bearing which language sustains to racial questions, handles it in
this case more with reference to its efficacy as a refutation of the claim for
a Cymro-Celtic origin of the Galloway Picts. 28 But in doing so he incident-
ally presents some testimony which, if it proves no one thing in particular,
at least shows what was the vulgar opinion of the origin of the Galwegians,
about the time of John Knox. This testimony is as follows :

If any part of the Pictish people might be expected to retain their pecu-
liar language and characteristics, it would be the Picts of Galloway ; and if
that language had been a Cymric dialect, it must have merged in the speech
of the British population around them. In one of the legends which seems
peculiarly connected with them, Gaedel Ficht or the Gaelic Pict appears as
the " eponymus " of the race ; and Buchanan tells us that in his day, that is,
in the reign of Queen Mary, " a great part of this country still uses its ancient
language." What that language was we learn from a contemporary of
Buchanan, William Dunbar, the poet, who, in the " Flyting " between him and
Kennedy, taunted his rival with his extraction from the natives of Galloway
and Carrick, and styles him " Ersch Katheraine," " Ersch brybour baird,"and
his poetry as " sic eloquence as they in Erschert use." This word " Ersch "
was the term applied at the time to Scotch Gaelic, as when Sir David
Lyndesay says —

Had Sanct Gerome bene borne intil Arygle,
Into Irische toung his bukis had done compyle.

And Kennedy retorts upon Dunbar —

Thow luvis nane Erische, enf I understand,

But it sowld be all trew Scottismenn is leid ;
It was the gud langage of this land.

Mr. Mac Kerlie, in Paterson's History of the County of Ayr (pp. 14, 16),
explains the reasons for the similarity between the Gaelic tongue of Galloway
and that of Ulster, in this wise :

The Norse and Galloway 243

In 740, however, the Alcluydensians of Kyle were invaded by Alpin,
king of the Scots, who landed at Ayr with a large body of followers. He is
said to have wasted the country between the Ayr and the Doon as far inland as
the vicinity of Dalmellington, about sixteen miles from the sea. There he
was met by an armed force under the chiefs of the district, and a battle hav-
ing ensued, Alpin was slain, and his army totally routed. The spot where
the king was buried is called at this day Laicht- Alpin, or the Grave of Alpin.
Chalmers observes that this fact is important, as showing that the Gaelic
language was then the prevailing tongue in Ayrshire. No doubt it is : but
it is one of the strongest arguments that could be urged against his theory
that the Gaelic was superinduced upon the British, which he holds was the
language of the Caledonian Picts, as well as the Romanised tribes. If the
Damnonii of Ayrshire spoke Gaelic in 836, they must have done so long be-
fore ; because at that period, as we have seen, the Scots of Argyle had made
no settlement in Ayrshire.

But the fact that there is a considerable difference between the Gaelic of
the Galloway Cruithne and the Gaelic of the Scots — that the former bears a
much closer affinity to the Irish as it now exists — is strong evidence that
the Scottish Gaelic was not a direct importation from Ireland, and that the
Dalriads of Argyle were not purely Irish. Though originally from North
Britain, the Cruithne had been long resident in Ireland, and did not settle
in Galloway till about four centuries later than the return of Fergus to
Argyleshire ; consequently the greater similarity in language and customs
can easily be accounted for."

The evidences of a considerable Gaelic admixture in the blood of the
early southwestern Scotchmen are also shown in their place-names and sur-
names. This is particularly the case in Ayrshire, which was the native
county of the first emigrants to Antrim and Down in the seventeenth century.
To again quote the author of the History of the County of Ayr (vol. i., pp.
9, 16, 17) :

In so far as Ayrshire is concerned, there can be no doubt that the early
inhabitants were purely Celtic ; whether called Britons, Belgse, Scots, Picts,
or Cruithne, they must all have been of Gallic extraction. This is apparent in
the topography of the country, the hill-forts, stone-monuments, and Druidi-
cal and other remains which have everywhere been found. Even yet, not-
withstanding the frequent accessions, in later times, of Saxons, Normans,
and Flemings, the bulk of the population retains much of its original features.
This appears in the prevailing patronymics, many of which preserve their
Celtic prefixes, such as M'Culloch, M'Creath, M'Crindle, M'Adam, M'Phad-
ric, or M'Phedries ; or have dropped them like the Alexanders, Andrewses,
Kennedies, and Bones, within these few centuries. Campbell is a numerous
surname. The Celtic lineaments are perhaps not so strong in Cuninghame,
at least in the middle portion of it, as in the other districts ; but this is easily
accounted for by the early settlements of the De Morville, and other great
families from England, in the richest parts of it. In Pont's maps, drawn up
at the commencement of the seventeenth century, the Celtic names are more
numerous both in Kyle and Cuninghame than in the maps of the present day.
The Gaelic language is said [by Buchanan] to have been spoken in some
quarters of Ayrshire so late as the sixteenth century. . . .

244 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

The main topographical argument of Chalmers in favor of the Scoto-
Irish theory, is the circumstance of Inver, in two instances, having been sub-
stituted for Aber. Now, as formerly shown, there are only two solitary
instances of Inver in the whole topography of Ireland, and not one through-
out the range of Galloway. The word, therefore, seems to have been pecu-
liar to the Scottish Gael. In Kyle, on the contrary, we have several samples
of it in old charters. Ayr itself is called Inver-ar in some instances, while
we have Inverpolcurtecan and Inverdon. Another distinction between the
Gaelic, Welsh, and Irish, worthy of being taken notice of, is the patronymic
mark. In the Scots it is Mac ; in Welsh, Ap ; and in Irish, 0\ Now, if
the Scots had been thoroughly Irish in their descent, as Chalmers affirms
they were in their manners, laws, and customs, it is difficult to understand
why they should have differed so widely upon so common a point ; and it is
equally strange that, in the oldest charters, where the Walenses, the re-
mains of the Alcluyd Britons, are distinctly mentioned, there should not
occur a single Welsh patronymic mark, if the language of the North Britons
and the Welsh were so congenerous as he supposed. If we take, according
to Chalmers, the British words in the topography of Scotland as a proof
that the inhabitants spoke Welsh, the same rule would apply equally to Ire-
land, where the same British words are prevalent.

The lists of the Scottish and Pictish kings are adduced by Chalmers as
another proof of the British speech of the Picts, the names of the latter
having no meaning unless in the British. Now this is not the case. Most
of the Pictish names are just as capable of being explained by a Gaelic
dictionary as those of the Scots. The difference lies chiefly in the spelling,
a circumstance which is not to be wondered at.

The Gaelic was not a written language. The earliest verses known are
the Duan, a sort of genealogy of the Scottish kings, composed in the
eleventh century, during the reign of Malcolm Canmore. The Irish Annals
of Ulster and Tighernach were not written before the thirteenth [?] century,
so that any writings at all extant — even where Gaelic names of places occur
in the earliest charters — all make a nearer approach to the language as it is
now spoken and understood than the Welsh authorities, to whose records of
facts we are chiefly indebted for any knowledge which has been preserved of
the Picts or Alcluydensians, and who wrote at a much earlier period. The
annals of the latter came to us through an ancient Cambro-British medium,
those of the Scots through a recently written, and no doubt much changed
branch of a kindred tongue.

Another argument against the Irish extraction of the Scots may be drawn
from the statement of Chalmers, that the Scoto-Irish brought the custom of
war-cries with them. Now, in the first place, we know that war-cries were
not peculiarly Irish ; and, in the second, that the Scots did not use the affix
abo, to their cries, such as Butler-#&?, or Crom-abo, which was general over
Ireland. Their national war-cry was simply Albanich from Albyn, the
ancient name of North Britain. Thus we see there was nothing Irish
even in the style of their war-cry, while the cry itself shows that they were
of Albyn, not of Ireland. Even the Cruithne, or " the wild Scots of Gallo-
way," as they were termed in the twelfth century, used the same war-cry.
At the battle of the Standard, in 1136, they led the van, 30 and rushing on to
battle, the cry was " Albanich ! Albanich ! Albanich ! " Thanks to Hove-
den, who has recorded the circumstance, we have here strong presumptive
proof that both the Dalriads of Argyle and the Cruithne of Galloway were
originally from Albyn, and had preserved the same national war-cry through-

The Norse and Galloway 245

out their long pilgrimage in the North of Ireland. As the term Albyn only-
applied in ancient times to the Pictish country north of the Forth, the cry
would not have been locally appropriate in Galloway ; hence it was not
likely to have been adopted after their arrival. The war-cry in ancient, like
armorial bearings in more modern times, may be regarded as strong evidence
of descent.

Taking all things into consideration, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion
that there was, in reality, very little difference originally between the
language of the Scots, Picts, and Alcluydensians. If there had been as
great a distinction between the Gaelic and the Pictish language as the
apocryphal specimen left by Merlin, a poet of the sixth century, would lead
us to suppose, there would have been little use in appointing Gaelic clergy-
men over a Pictish people. That what is now the Lowland dialect had its
rise during the Scottish period there can be little doubt. The annexation
of Lothian, occupied for centuries chiefly by the Angles, brought them into
closer contact with the inhabitants of the adjacent districts ; while a body
of Saxons actually effected a settlement in Kyle and Cuninghame. Though
these, it may be inferred, did not long retain possession, owing to the de-
cline of the Northumbrian power, still the probability is that a portion both
of their lineage and language remained. The many Saxons brought into
Scotland by Malcolm Canmore — though numbers of them were expelled
by the Scots after his death — must have tended greatly to disseminate a
language already constituting the vernacular tongue of the east coast from
the Forth to the Tweed.

The Lowland dialect, originating in a combination of the oldest and
purest Teutonic with the native Gaelic or British, owes to this union much
of that peculiar softness, copiousness, and graphic power for which it is dis-
tinguished. One-third of the language, upon careful examination, will be
found to be Celtic. It has also a considerable admixture of French, the
acquisition of which can easily be accounted for by the number of Norman
settlers who came amongst us, and the subsequent intercourse which took
place between France and Scotland. In the next, or Anglo-Saxon period
of our history, the growth of the Scottish dialect can be still more distinctly
traced.

In reference to the laws during the era of which we are now writing,
Chalmers shows that they were Celtic, and very different from the Saxon ;
but that they were peculiarly Scoto-Irish, as in accordance with his system,
he affirms, is by no means so clear. It is not at all proved that the laws of the
Scots were different from those of the Picts, or Lowland Britons. The pre-
dominance of the Scots brings them down more nearly to written evidence ;
and therefore we have a better knowledge of the customs which prevailed
under their rule. On the contrary, we are almost in total ignorance of the
laws by which the Picts or Alcluydensians were governed.

The law of tanistry — by which the succession of the crown was regu-
lated — existed apparently amongst the Picts as well as the Scots. Bede
casually informs us that it was a rule with the Picts, when the succession
came to be disputed, that the preference should be given to the nearest
claimant by the female side. It was this law which placed Kenneth on the
throne, in opposition to the other competitor, Bred.

That the customs of the Scots and Picts were the same is apparent from
an ordinance of Edward I., issued with a view to the settlement of Scotland,
in which he says, " the custom of the Scots and Picts shall for the future be
prohibited, and be no longer practised." Customs, not custom, would have

246 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

been the phrase if there had been different customs prevailing among the
Scots and Britons. During the Scottish period the country had been eccle-
siastically divided into parishes, but the introduction of sheriffdoms and
justiciaries belongs to a later age.

Mr. MacKerlie refers to the same conditions in the district of modern
Galloway {Galloway, Ancient and Modern, pp. 62-63) :

The distance between the county Down and Galloway is twenty-two
miles, and thus only eight miles farther off than Antrim from Kintyre, and
both to be seen from Ireland. The emigration to Galloway must have been
gradual, and spread over centuries, until the Ulster settlers were so numer-
ous as to become the dominant people. It is to be remembered that the
Strathclyde kingdom came into existence about a.d. 547-8, which fully
accounts for the absence of information in regard to the erroneous supposi-
tion that Galloway was an independent district, with rulers of its own. This
continued until a.d. 1018, when Strathclyde as a kingdom came to an end ;
but the Norsemen then got full possession of and sway over Galloway, which
continued for about two centuries, until the kings of Scotland were fully
established, and ruled over the whole kingdom, as since known.

The popular idea that Galloway was all along a kingdom in itself is
purely ideal, and without the slightest basis for it. We wish to direct atten-
tion to the close communication which evidently existed between Galloway
and Ireland from the earliest times. It is easily understood from being such
close neighbours. There also cannot be a doubt that the statement which
eminent writers have handed down is virtually correct, that the Goidels or
Gaels were the first Celtic inhabitants, who absorbed the aborigines as the
situations or circumstances demanded, and who in turn were next dislodged
by the Cymri, and other Celtic fresh hordes who flocked into Britain, driving
the said Goidels northwards, and across to Ireland. If other proof were
wanting, we have it in the surnames, and in the names of places, many of
which are common to both Galloway and Ireland, being found on both sides
of the Channel.

There was a more or less considerable Teutonic element introduced into
the population of Galloway at an early date not only by the Angles who
occupied it in Bede's time, but to a far greater extent by the Norse sea-kings
and their followers, who settled there in large numbers during the latter part
of the tenth and first half of the eleventh centuries. This conquest of
Galloway and northern Scotland has been briefly sketched in the preceding
pages. Let us now consider the results of that conquest. This subject has
been treated at some length by the author last quoted, who says :

The idea has also largely prevailed that Galloway was for long under
Saxon rule, with no other basis, so far as we can trace, than that in a.d. 723
commenced a succession of bishops connected with the Anglo-Saxon Church.
This, however, was of short duration, as the last bishop was elected in 790.
He was still there in 803, but the line ended with him. 31 This ecclesiastical
establishment, which did not exist for a century, was distinct from district
rule. The power of the Church of Iona extended to Northumberland, until
the Anglo-Saxons conformed to Rome in 664. This latter was the church

The Norse and Galloway 247

thrust on the Galwegians, and failed at that period. Afterwards, when King
David I., with his Anglo-Normans, etc., succeeded in establishing the
Anglo-Church of Rome in Scotland without an archbishop, the Pope di-
rected that the Primate of York should consecrate, and this was continued
until an archbishop was established at St. Andrews in a.d. 1472. During
that period, however, Scotland as a country was not subject to England,
and so it was with Galloway, an ecclesiastical union only existing with
Northumberland.

That Galloway was overrun and devastated on different occasions is to be
believed, but permanent settlement does not appear. The confusion, how-
ever, about the district was kept up ; and under date 875 we are told that
the Britons of Strathclyde and the Picts of Galloway were ravaged by the
Danes of Northumberland. 82 This is correct in one sense, as the Irish-Scots
in Galloway, through Bede, had their name stamped in history as Picts ;
but we have mentioned in its proper place how it arose. The statement
under date 875 conveys that Galloway and Strathclyde were not united,
which is erroneous.

Mackenzie, in his History of Galloway, while joining in the usual opinion
(taken from uninvestigated writings), yet admits that few traces are left in
support of Anglo-Saxon occupation, and at Whithorn specially, the place
where such should be found. In the absence of facts, he therefore had re-
course to making out something from the names of places, in which he was
singularly unfortunate. His examples were Boreland, Engleston, and Carle-
ton, as now spelled. The first he describes as the habitations of the slaves
who were employed by the Anglo-Saxons to till the ground, termed boors, and
hence Boreland. The next, Engleston, or Ingleston, is described as applied
to farms which had been occupied by the Angles. The last is Carleton,
which lands he states were so called from the ceorles, or middle-class Saxons,,
who were the owners.

We thus have Galloway and Ayrshire transformed into an Anglo-Saxon
province, as having been fully in their possession. The meanings given of
all three are entirely erroneous. Boreland, as Bordland, is to be found as
" lands kept by owners in Saxon times for the supply of their own board or
table, but it referred specially to the Norsemen, from the Orkneys to Gal-
loway, as lands exempt from skatt, the land-tax, for the upholding of Gov-
ernment. Ingleston has been corrupted by some writers to Englishtoun, the
abode of the English, whereas it is also from the Norse and refers to land of
a certain character or quality. Under our reference to the Norse occupa-
tion of Galloway, we will enter into more particulars in regard to the names
Boreland and Engleston. Lastly, Carleton, being from ceorles, is very far-
fetched. If it had been from a Saxon source as indicated, the class from
whom it is said to have been derived must have been very few (three or four)
in number. . . . Other lands in Wigtonshire, and Borgue parish,
Kirkcudbrightshire, got the same designation from descendants who removed
there.

In fact, all the erroneous exaggerations in regard to the Anglo-Saxon occu-
pation of Galloway have arisen from the Norse rule being overlooked. The
supposition has been that the latter only held the coast, whereas their rule
of the district was thorough. 33

The earliest record of the appearance of the Norsemen in British waters
is to be found in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles. They are stated to have come
from Haeretha-land, now Hordaland, on the west coast of Norway. The
Irish Annals and Welsh Chronicles give the date of their first appearance on

248 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

the Irish coast as a.d. 795, but it is clear enough that they were known cen-
turies previously. . . . About 872, King Harold, aided by Earl Rogn-
wald, subdued the Hebrides, inclusive of the Isle of Man. Thorstein the
Red, son of Olaf the White, King of Dublin, and Earl Sigurd, subdued
Caithness and Sutherland, as far as Ekkielsbakkie, and afterwards Ross and
Moray, with more than half of Scotland, over which Thorstein ruled, as
recorded in the Landnama-bok.

About 963, Sigurd, son of Earl Hlodver, and his wife Audna (the daugh-
ter of the Irish king Kiarval), became ruler over Ross and Moray, Suther-
land and the Dales (of Caithness), which seems also to have included old
Strathnavar. Sigurd married, secondly, the daughter of Malcolm (Malbrigid),
called King of Scotland. He was slain at Clontarf near Dublin, in 10 14.
By his first marriage he left issue, Sumarlidi, Brusi, and Einar, who divided
the Orkneys between them. By his second marriage he had issue, Thorfinn,
on whom King Malcolm bestowed the earldom of Caithness.

To quote from the introduction, Njal Saga, by Dasent [Saga of Burnt
Njal, George Webbe Dasent, 1861], "Ireland knew them [the Vikings]
Bretland or Wales knew them, England knew them too well, and a great part
of Scotland they had made their own. To this day the name of almost every
island on the west coast of Scotland is either pure Norse, or Norse distorted,
so as to make it possible for Celtic lips to utter it. The groups of Orkney
and Shetland are notoriously Norse ; but Lewis and the Uists, and Skye
and Mull are no less Norse, and not only the names of the islands them-
selves, but those of reefs and rocks, and lakes, and headlands, bear witness
to the same relation, and show that, while the original inhabitants were not
expelled, but held in bondage as thralls, the Norsemen must have dwelt and
dwelt thickly too, as conquerors and lords."

The foregoing extract gives a description which investigation corrobor-
ates. The blank in the history of Galloway after the termination of the
Strathcluyd kingdom is now fully met. The only difficulty is to determine
at what date Galloway became separated from Strathcluyd. Earl (Jarl)
Malcolm, who lived near Whithorn in 1014, is the first Norseman specially
named. His place of residence is believed to have been Cruggleton Castle,
of historic renown in after-times. Eogan the Bald, who fought at Carham,
and died in 1018, was the last King of Strathcluyd. We have thus only a
difference of four years, and certain it is that Earl Malcolm was in Galloway,
and evidently located there as one in possession. In the Burnt Njal we find
the following : " They (Norsemen) then sailed north to Berwick (the Sol-
way), and laid up their ship, and fared up into Whithorn in Scotland, and
were with Earl Malcolm that year." . . .

Another point certain from close investigation is, that Jarl (Earl) Thor-
finn (son of Sigurd II.) ruled over Galloway in 1034, the time mentioned,
and continued to do so until his death in 1064 or 1066 [1057]. In 1034
he was twenty-seven years of age. In Scottish history we learn nothing of
him, although in possession of a large part of Scotland. During his lifetime
he ruled Galloway from Solway to Carrick. The Flateyjarbok contains the
Orkneyinga Saga complete in successive portions : and in Munch's Historie
et Chronicon Mannice, Earl Thorfinn is distinctly mentioned.

It is also related that the Earl Gille had married a sister of Sigurd II.,
and acted as his lieutenant in the Sudreys. He is said to have resided at
Koln, either the island of Coll or Colonsay ; and when Sigurd fell at Clon-
tarf in 1014, he took Thorfinn, the youngest son, under his protection, while
the elder brothers went to the Orkneys, and divided the northern dominions

The Norse and Galloway 249

amongst them. The two elder brothers died early in life, and Brusi accepted
a pension for his claim ; therefore, when Thorfinn grew up he found himself
possessed of nine earldoms in Scotland, to which he added all Galloway.
Munch thinks they were Caithness, Sutherland, Ross, Moray, Buchan, Athol,
Lorn, Argyle, and Galloway. To quote from Munch : " The Orkneyinga
Saga says so expressly."

Outliving his elder brothers, he (Thorfinn) became the Lord of Orkney
and Shetland ; Caithness was given to him by his maternal grandfather, and
after the death of Malcolm . . . he . . . conquered Sutherland and Ross,
and made himself lord of Galloway, in the widest sense of this denomination

— viz., from Solway to Carrick — where he resided for long periods, and
whence he made successful inroads, sometimes on Cumberland, sometimes
upon Ireland. He possessed, besides the Sudreys and part of Ireland, not
less than nine earldoms in Scotland, etc. As Munch further states, all the
Hebrides and a large kingdom of Ireland were also his. The Skeld Arnor,
who personally visited him, and made a poem in his honour, testifies in it that
his kingdom extended from Thurso rocks to Dublin. He also mentions
that Thorfinn obtained possession of eleven earldoms in Scotland, all the
Sudreyar (Hebrides), and a large territory in Ireland. He further states
that Thorfinn sent men into England to foray, and then, having collected a
force from the places named, he sailed from England, where he had two
pitched battles : as Arnor gives it — " South of Man did these things
happen."

This is contemporary evidence. In 1035, when Rognwald arrived from
Norway, Thorfinn was much occupied in Scotland, and they made an alli-
ance by which Rognwald was to have his part of Orkney free of contest,
under condition of assisting Thorfinn with all the forces he could command.
This alliance lasted ten years, and during that time Thorfinn made many
incursions into England and Ireland. He generally resided in the south
during the summer months, and in Caithness, or rather the Orkney and
Shetland Isles, during the winter. They quarrelled, however, and Rogn-
wald was slain in 1045. Thorfinn died about 1064 [? ], 34 says Munch, or
sixty years after King Malcolm ... so far as the exact dates can be ascer-
tained. . . .

In regard to Thorfinn, it is stated that he " resided long at Caithness in
a place called Gaddgedlar, where England and Scotland meet." Munch
correctly insists that Gaddgedlar meant Galloway, 35 which at the period
extended to Annan on one side and Carrick on the other, in its widest sense

— or, in other words, the south-western part of Scotland, from Annandale
on the Solway to Carrick opposite Kintyre — and therefore, in the true sense
of the word, the boundary towards England. Munch was too careful a
writer to confuse such a subject, and gave as his opinion that the sentence
was incomplete, having been incorrectly copied from the original MS. This
belief has been proved to be correct, as we will hereafter show. . . .

We have had much assistance from other eminent Norse scholars, but
that Gaddgedlar meant Galloway has been confirmed beyond dispute by
the late G. Vigfusson, who communicated to us privately the missing passage
before his Collection of Sagas was in the press. He found it in a Danish
translation, made in a.d. 16 15, and preserved in Stockholm, from an ancient
Icelandic vellum, which is no longer in existence. The existing printed text
of the Orkneyinga Saga was founded on the Flateyensis only. The passage
in its purity is, " Sat Porfinner jarl longum a Katanesi en Rognvaldr i
Eyjum. Pat var a einu sumri at Porfinnr jarl herjadi um Sudreyjar ok

250 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

vestan um Skotland. Hann la par sem Gaddgedlar heita, par maetist Skot-
land ok England. Hann hafdi gibrk fra ser lid sudr a England at Strand-
hoggi." The rough translation is : " Earl Thorfinn dwelt for the most part
in Caithness, but Rognwald in the Isles. One summer Earl Thorfinn made
war in the Hebrides and the west of Scotland. He lay at the place called
Gaddgedlar, where Scotland and England meet. He had sent some from
himself men to England for a strand-head (coast foray)." We will give Mr.
Vigfusson's notes, which he sent to us in regard to the foregoing : (1) " ' En
Rognwaldr. Hann la,' is taken from the translation — the careless copyist of
the Flateyensis having here omitted and transposed a whole important pass-
age. The suggestion of the late Norse historian, P. A. Munch, is thus
conclusively proved to be true, both as to the identification of Gaddgedlar-
Galloway (the translator spells it Gaardgellar), as also the unsound state of
the text. Munch surmised that after ' Katanesi ' something, the copula
* ok ' or the like, had been dropped out. It now is found that a whole sen-
tence has been omitted or transposed. (2) We have followed the translator,
where the text runs thus : ' Gaardgellar der modis Engeland oc, Scotland
da harf" de han Sendt nogen af sin Krigs folck hen paa Engeland, etc' The
Flateyensis is here all confusion. As we have shown, Thorfinn ruled over a
large part of Scotland and a part of Ireland. He also carried his sway to
portions of England, and at one time was chief of the Thingmen. He went
to Rome, supposed about a.d. 1050, saw the Pope, and obtained absolution
for all his sins. His position is thus shown to have been not only that of a
warrior, but also of a conqueror."

That Galloway was under his sway is clear. This opinion is fully enter-
tained among the learned in Copenhagen ; and as mentioned to us, arising
from our investigations, great interest has been evinced in the universities
there in regard to Galloway, considering it at one time to have belonged to
the sea-kings. It thus appears to us as very strange how the occupation of
the districts, in the full sense, by the Norsemen has escaped the notice of
those who have entered on Galloway history.

The desire to make the Fergus line of lords of Galloway the ancient
inheritors has blinded research. If the character of the people had only
been considered, such an omission would not have occurred ; for we think
no one will be bold enough to dispute the fact that the fortresses on the
coast were built by the Norsemen. Having incurred such labor, is it to be
supposed for one moment that they were erected as coast ornaments, or that
the fierce natives of Galloway would have permitted such erections if they
had not been subdued ? All the Danish records tell us of a conquered
people. The fortresses never could have been built under other circum-
stances. . . .

There can, we think, be no question that the principal fortresses in
Galloway were erected in the time of Jarls, or Earls, Malcolm and Thorfinn,
long before the appearance of King Magnus, styled in the annals, Chroni-
cum Scotorum, as King of Lachlann. His descent was in 1093. He
returned to Norway in 1099. In 1102 he came back, and was killed in
Connaught, Ireland, in 1103. He was buried in St. Patrick's Church, Down.
He only reigned over the Western Isles for six years, when he was succeeded
by Olave, who was a pacific prince, and his confederacy with Ireland and
Scotland so close, that no one presumed to disturb the peace of these isles
while he lived. He married Affrica, daughter of Fergus, Lord of Galloway.
The Inquisitio Davidis, a nearly contemporary document, particularly notices
the influx of a Gentile, alias heathen, population, and this could only be the

The Norse and Galloway 251

Norsemen, as both Irish, Scots, and Saxons (so-called) were Christians, in
theory at least, for two or three centuries before that time. . . .

The Northern sagas, 870-75, show that the mass of the population then
in Galloway was of the Cymric race, sometimes called Brythons ; but the
Irish-Scots or Gaels, from the counties Antrim and Down, the particulars in
regard to whom we have already given, must also have been numerous, for
in 876 the Cymri were under their rule, and those who would not submit to
the yoke retreated to Wales to rejoin their countrymen in that quarter. . . .
The Norsemen have left various marks of their occupation of Galloway in
the names of places and also in surnames.

Under the alleged Saxon occupation, which is erroneous, we have referred
to Boreland, Ingleston, and Carleton, at pp. 87, 88. The first two are from
the Norse, and the last from an Irish personal name. The Lothians were
for a time in the possession of the Anglo-Saxons (so-called), and yet, after
careful investigation, the first is not to be found there, and the second, only
once, in West Lothian. We find a Boreland in Peeblesshire, a property so
called in Cumnock parish, and Boarland in Dunlop parish, Ayrshire. There
are also lands so called in Dumfriesshire, near the mouth of the Nith, which
Timothy Pont gives in his survey as North, Mid, and South Bordland. The
Borelands in Galloway are so numerous that we must deal with them as one,
for there are fourteen farms with the name in the Stewartry, and three in
Wigtonshire.

In Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, Bordlands is interpreted to
mean " lands kept by lords in Saxon times for the supply of their own
board or table/' This approaches the true meaning, and is all that can be
found until we come to the Norse, when it is cleared up. We find in the
Orkneys, where the Norsemen's headquarters were, that part of the ancient
estate of the jarls (earls) of Orkney and Shetland consisted of the " bord-
lands," which were the quarters of the jarls when occasionally travelling
through the islands, and therefore exempt from skatt, the tax upon all land
occupied by the Udellers or Odellers, for the expense of government. This
skatt, or scat, was an ancient land-tax payable to the Crown of Norway.
Skatt in Norse is to make tributary, and skatt-lsind is tributary land. The
Udellers held land by uninterrupted succession without any original charter,
and without subjection to feudal service, or the acknowledgment of any
superior. The exemption of the "bordlands" from skatt or land-tax is
shown in some old rentals of Orkney. In a rental dated 30th April, 1503,
there is the following entry : " Memorandum, That all the Isle of Hoy is of
the aid Erldome and Bordland, quhilk payit nevir scat." There are several
similar entries relating to other Bordlands in the same rental. In a later
rental, bearing date 1595, there are several farms entered — viz., " Hanga-
back, na scat, quia Borland," etc. Numerous other entries of the same
description are given. . . . That the Borelands in Galloway have a
similar derivation as those in the Orkneys cannot be doubted. The old
spelling in Galloway is " Bordland," as the old deeds will show. The same
refers to the lands already mentioned at the mouth of the Nith, Dumfries-
shire side. Bordland, in fact, appears to be the proper spelling throughout
Scotland. . . .

The other special name is Engleston or Ingleston, which we mentioned
at p. 87. In regard to it there are at least two opinions, one being that it is
derived from " English," and another from the Scottish " ingle," a chimney,
or rather fireplace. There are several farms bearing the name in Galloway,
and one so called in West Lothian. In a charter granted by King David II.,

252 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

lands so called have it spelled Inglynstoun, and in another charter by Robert
II., it is Inglystoun (Robertson's Index of Charters). Pont, in his map
drafted between 1608-20, spells it " Englishtoun," which cannot be accepted,
for it is obviously incorrect. The surname of Inglis found in Scotland is the
root of this error, as the assumption has been that it is a corruption of
" English " ; but opposed to this idea is the fact that although several indi-
viduals named Inglis are to be found in the possession of lands at an early
period, not one of them is styled of Ingliston or Inglystoun. The Inglises
of Manner seem to have been the chief family, and they held the lands of
Branksome or Branksholm, afterwards possessed by the Scotts (Buccleuch).
The Ingliston in West Lothian probably got the name from Inglis of Cra-
mond, the first of which family was a merchant in Edinburgh about 1560,
the Reformation time. It has also been overlooked that " English " is a dis-
tinct English surname borne by families in England, and any affinity with it
and Inglis has no other basis than some similarity in sound. We still adhere
to the same opinion as given by us in Lands and their Owners in Galloway,
that the farms in Galloway called Engleston or Ingleston have nothing to do
with the surname Inglis, or as Englishtoun ; but were given from the nature
or character of the land, and are from the Norse engi for meadow-land, or a
meadow, which is also found in Anglo-Saxon as ing or inge, a pasture, a
meadow. . . .

Worsaae mentions that the names of places ending in " by " are to be
found only in the districts selected by the Norsemen for conquest or colo-
nization — as Lockerby, in Dumfriesshire, Appleby and Sorby (a parish, and
some farms corrupted to "bie"), in Wigtonshire, etc. Sorby is also to be
found in North Yorkshire and Cumberland, where settlements existed.
Camden mentions a peninsula called " Flegg," in Norfolk, where the Danes
had settled, and that in a little compass of ground there were thirteen vil-
lages ending in "by," a Danish word signifying a village or dwelling-place ;
and hence the bi-lagines of the Danish writers, and the " by-laws " in Eng-
land, come to signify such laws as are peculiar to each town or village. It
is also sometimes in the form of bui, a dweller, an inhabitant, whereas baer
or byr or bae means a village, etc. Pollbae, in Wigtonshire, should in correct
form be Pollrbae, the marshy or boggy farm. We entered on this subject
in our historical sketch to vol. ii. of Lands and their Owners in Galloway. It
is of importance, as it goes to prove with other evidence what we have held
to all along, that instead of a mere coast occupation, as generally believed,
Galloway was in the full possession of the Norsemen. We were therefore
glad to find in Professor MacKinnon's article, No. VI., on " The Norse
Elements," published in the Scotsman, December 2, 1887, the following from
his pen : " Beer, byr, ' a village,' becomes by, and marks the Danish settle-
ment in England — Whitby, Derby, Selby, Appleby ; and in the Isle of Man,
Dalby, Salby, Jurby. This form is not common in the Isles. There is
Europie, ' beach village,' in Lewis, hence the ' Europa Point ' of the maps.
There is Soroby in Tyree, and Soroba near Obam. Shiaba (Schabby in old
records), on the south of Mull, contains the root. So do Nereby and Con-
nisby {homing, a ' king's village ') in Islay, Canisby in Caithness, and Smerby
in Kintyre." . . .

To continue the general subject the word flow, well known in Gal-
loway as donating marshy moorland, is from the Norse floi, for a marshy
moor.

The names of places beginning or ending with garth or guard show where
the Scandinavians were settled in gaarde or farms, which belonged to the

The Norse and Galloway 253

Danish chiefs, or Udellers (holdus from old Norsk holldr). Worsaae men-
tions that these seem to have been the property of the peasants, on condition
of their paying certain rents to their feudal lords, and binding themselves to
contribute to the defence of the country. In Galloway we have Garthland
and Cogarth as examples. Worsaae does not seem to have visited the dis-
trict, but to have been in Dumfriesshire, as he refers to Tundergarth, Apple-
garth, and Huntgarth.

The Holms he also notices, which are to be found in Galloway and
other parts of Scotland, also in England where the Norsemen had settle-
ments. The name is from the Norse holmr, meaning an island in a loch or
river, or a plain at the side of a river. In Orkney there are the parish and
Sound so-called, also four islands. In Shetland there are three small islands,
and at Skye there is one, etc.

Among many other Norse names in Galloway, there is Tung or Tongue.
Worsaae calls the " Kyles of Tongue," in Sutherlandshire, pure Norwegian.

Fleet, the name of a river in Anwoth parish, is from the Norse fljot, pro-
nounced in Anglo-Saxon yfotf. In the parish at Stoneykirk are the farms
and bay of Float, locally stated to have been so called from the wreck of one
of the ships of the Spanish Armada ; and to make it complete, the headland
close to, corrupted from the Gaelic word monadh, the hill-head, to " Money-
head," from money supposed to have been lost from the wreck. Such deriva-
tions are erroneous. The name Float is from the Norse flott, which means
a plain ; and the access from the bay, with the character of the farms so
called, together with the history of the lands adjoining, fully bear out the
Norse meaning. One of the Orkney Isles is called Flotta. It was the resi-
dence of the historiographer appointed by the Crown of Norway to gather
information ; his work was therefore called Codex Flotticenses.

The Norse word Borg, given to a parish, is now spelled Borgue ; and Gata
corrupted to Galtway.

In the bay of Luce, or rather in the offing, are the " Scar Rocks," and
without reference to them, Worsaae mentions sker or skjaer as the Norse for
isolated rocks in the sea, which those we refer to truly are. Begbie (Bagbie)
and Killiness are also Norse.

The Norse names in Galloway are far from being exhausted, as will be
found by reference to the parishes and lands given in Lands and their
Owners in Galloway.

Worsaae refers to Tinwald in Dumfriesshire as undoubtedly identical
with Thingvall or Tingvold, the appropriate Scandinavian or Norse term for
places where the Thing was held. Elsewhere he states that they settled
their disputes and arranged their public affairs at the Things. In connection
with this he mentions Dingwall in Cromarty, Tingwall in the Shetland Isles,
and Tynewald or Tingwall in the Isle of Man.

We will only add here one other word, and a well-known one over Scot-
land — viz., kirk, which is from kirke, the Danish for church. In the old
Norse it is kirkja. In the same language there is kirke-gaard or garth and
kirkju-gardr, a kirk or churchyard. In the German it is kirche, and in
Anglo-Saxon, church.

Worsaae correctly mentions that old Irish authors called the inhabitants
of Denmark Dublochlannoch — dark Lochlans — the word Lochlan with them
being the usual appellation for Scandinavia. It is also given as Lochlin and
Lochlann. In the Gaelic it is somewhat similar, as in that language Dubh-
Lochlinneach means a Dane, and Fionn- Lochlinneach, a Norwegian. The lat-
ter are also found called Finngheinte in Gaelic. Worsaae repeats that the

254 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

best and oldest Irish chronicles distinguish between the light-haired Finn-
Lochlannoch or Fionn-Lochlannaigh, the Norwegians, and the dark-haired
Dubh-Lochlannoch or Dubh-Lochlannaigh, the Danes ; or, what is the same,
between Dubhgall, Dubh-Ghoill, and Finngall, Fionn-Ghoill™

NOTES TO CHAPTER XVII.

1 During the latter years of Kenneth's reign, a people appear in close association with
the Norwegian pirates, and joining in their plundering expeditions, who are termed Gall-
gaidhel. This name is formed by the combination of the two words " Gall," a stranger, a
foreigner, and " Gaidhel," the national name of the Gaelic race. It was certainly first ap-
plied to the people of Galloway, and the proper name of this province, Galweitha, is formed
from Galwyddel, the Welsh equivalent of Gallgaidhel. It seems to have been applied to
them as a Gaelic race under the rule of Galle or foreigners : Galloway being for centuries a
province of the Anglic kingdom of Northumbria, and the term ' ' Gall " having been applied
to the Saxons before it was almost exclusively appropriated to the Norwegian and Danish
pirates. Towards the end of the eighth century the power of the Angles in Galloway seems
to have become weakened, and the native races began to assert their independent action.
— Celtic Scotland, vol. i., p. 311.

9 See p. 208.

3 " Deira was the district thus portioned out amongst the Northmen who peopled the
ancient kingdom of Northumbria, whilst Bernicia and the territory of St. Cuthbert, between
Tees and Tyne, seem to have been still occupied by a Saxon proprietary, to a certain extent
in a dependent condition, as exemplified in the Wergilds of the Northern Leod, in which the
Holdr is reckoned at twice the value of the Thegn. A sure and certain test of a colonization
of this description is afforded by the topography of the districts thus allotted, the Caster and
the By invariably marking the presence of the Northmen, not only as a dominant, but as an
actual occupying class ; and as only four Bys are to be found to the northward of the Tees,
whilst the Chester is traceable from Tees to Tweed, and in a few instances even beyond that
river, it may be safely assumed that though the territory of St. Cuthbert was divided by
Reginald Hy Ivar between his followers Skuli and Olaf, the Tees was the northern boundary
of the actual settlement, and that Deira alone was ' roped out ' amongst the Danes.

" The Caster and the By in Cumberland and Westmoreland tell at the present day of a
considerable colonization amidst the bleak moorlands of the west, unconnected apparently
with the Danes of the Yorkshire Trythings. . . . whilst beyond the Solway not a few
Bys between the Annan and the Esk mark the encroachments of the Northmen in the east-
ern division of modern Dumfriesshire, a few settlers penetrating into Galloway. Cannoby,
Dunnaby, Wyseby, Perceby, Middleby, Lockerby, and Sibalby occur in Dumfriesshire, and
Sorby and Appleby in Wigtonshire." — Scotland under her Early Kings, vol. ii., pp. 432,

437.

4 Annals of Ulster.

6 871, Amlaiph et Imhar do thuidhecht a frithisi du Athacliath a Albain dibhcedaib long
(came again to Athacliath from Alban with 200 ships), et praeda maxima hominum Anglo-
rum et Britonum et Pictorum deducta est secum ad Hiberniam in captivitate. — Annals of
Ulster.

6 Predictus exercitus [Danorum] se in duas partes divisit, una pars cum Haldene ad
regionen Nordanhymbrorum secessit et earn vastavit et hyemavit juxta flumen quod dicitur
Tine et totam gentem suo dominetui subdidit et Pictos atque Strathduccenses depopulati
sunt. — Sim. Dun. 875, Congressio Pictorum for Dubgallu et strages magna Pictorum facta
est.— An. Ult.

1 English Chronicle, Anno 924. See p. 298.

The Norse and Galloway 255

8 Orkneyinga Saga, Coll. de Rebus Albanicis. See Appendix P.

• " So it was that Scotland received a population of immigrants from Norway along the
seaboard from Caithness to Fife. In Lothian and Northumberland they met and mingled
with the people of a kindred race who had crossed from Jutland, Zealand, and Friesland to
the coast of England. It is from the change that domesticated each successive horde of new-
comers, that we lose all historical hold upon their coming as a separate fact, and have so
much difficulty in identifying the leaders who brought them over. We cannot say where it
was that the first man of Teutonic northern race set foot in Scotland, and whether he found
the land empty or inhabited by Celts. But we know pretty well that from the fourth cen-
tury to the tenth this race spread over the land that is now Lowland Scotland, and that if
they found Celts there, these were pressed westwards to join the community of their fel-
low-Celts that had crossed over from Ireland.

4 ' Of the stormy history of which such scattered fragments only can be recovered, the
general influence on the future of Scotland may be thus abbreviated : As far as the Firth of
Forth stretched Northumbria, where the Norse element predominated. It gradually combined
with kindred elements on the side of England, while northward of the firth there was a
combination with fresh invaders from Scandinavia, and a general pressure on any remains
of Celtic inhabitancy, if there were such remains, along the north-eastern districts — a pres-
sure driving them westward into the mountain district peopled by their Irish kindred.
Orkney became a province of Norway, with a tendency to stretch the power of that state
over the adjoining mainland. The Hebrides and other islands along the west coast, so far
as they held out any inducement for permanent settlement to the Scandinavian colonists, had
a seat of government in the Isle of Man." — Burton, History of Scotland, vol. i., pp. 317, 330.

10 " Such is the account given us by the saga of this war. Marianus supplements it by tell-
ing us that in the year 1040, Donnchad, King of Scotia, was slain in autumn, on the 14th of
August, by his general, Macbethad, son of Finnlaech, who succeeded him in the kingdom.
Macbeth was at this time the Ri or Mormaor of the district of Myrhaevi or Moray, which
finally became the seat of war, and when Duncan sent far and wide to the chieftains for aid,
he probably came to his assistance with the men of Moray, and filled the place which Mod-
dan had formerly occupied as commander of his army ; but the tie which united the mormaors
of Moray with the kings of the Scots was still a very slender one. They had as often been
subject to the Norwegian earls as they had been to the Scottish kings ; and when Duncan sus-
tained this crushing defeat, and he saw that Thorfinn would now be able to maintain posses-
sion of his hereditary territories, the interests of the Mormaor of Moray seem to have prevailed
over those of the commander of the king's army, and he was guilty of the treacherous act of
slaying the unfortunate Duncan, and attaching his fortunes to those of Thorfinn.

"The authorities for the history of Macbeth knew nothing of Earl Thorfinn and his
conquests. On the other hand, the sagas equally ignore Macbeth and his doings, and had to
disguise the fact that Thorfinn was attacking his own cousin, and one who had derived his
right to the kingdom from the same source from which Thorfinn had acquired his to the earl-
dom of Caithness, by concealing his identity under the contemptuous name of Karl or Kali
Hundason, while some of the chronicles have transferred to Macbeth what was true of Thor-
finn, that he was also a grandson of King Malcolm, and a Welsh Chronicle denominates him
King of Orkney. The truth seems to be that the conquest of the provinces south of Moray,
which took place after this battle, was the joint work of Thorfinn and Macbeth, and that they
divided the kingdom of the slain Duncan between them ; Thorfinn receiving the districts
which had formerly been under his father, with the addition of those on the east coast extend-
ing as far as Fife or the Firth of Tay. According to the Orkneyinga Saga, he possessed
' nine earldoms in Scotland, the whole of the Sudreys, and a large riki in Ireland,' and this
is confirmed by the St. Ola/'s Saga, which tells us that ' he had the greatest riki of any earl
of Orkney ; he possessed Shetland and the Orkneys, the Sudreys, and likewise a great riki in
Scotland and Ireland.' Macbeth obtained those in which Duncan's strength mainly lay —

256 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

the district south and west of the Tay, with the central district in which Scone, the capital, is
situated. Cumbria and Lothian probably remained faithful to the children of Duncan. " —
Celtic Scotland, vol. i., pp. 403-405.

To the existence of a Norwegian kingdom at this period lasting for thirty years, during
which Macbeth ruled as a tributary of Thorfinn, I must equally demur. The chronicles of
England, Scotland, and Ireland are silent upon this subject, whilst the sagas only say that
Thorfinn plundered the country as far as Fife and returned to Caithness, where he dwelt
" amongst the Gaddgedlar," every year fitting out a fleet for a course of piracy — the normal
summer occupation of an Orkney jarl in that age. They make no allusion to his placing
officers over the conquered districts, according to the invariable custom of the time ; and in
describing his proceedings after his victory, their expressions are no stronger than upon the
occasion of his marauding incursion upon England, with his nephew Rognwald, in the days
of Hardacanute, when after a great victory the jarls are said to have ranged over all England
in arms, slaying and burning in every quarter. The conqueror of Scotland, the main support
of Macbeth, would have scarcely been obliged to yield a share in the Orkneys to his nephew
Rognwald, backed by a force of three ships ; nor does Thorfinn seem to have been of a char-
acter to allow his dependent to assume the title of king, whilst he was contented with that of
jarl. A king ruling under a jarl would have been a novelty in history. The support given
to Macbeth by the Norwegians, and the presence of a Saxon army at Lumphanan, are equally
dubious ; for the Normans mentioned in connection with Siward's expedition four years
before, were Osbern Pentecost, Hugh, and others, who had sought refuge at the Court of
Macbeth about two years before the appearance of the Anglo-Danish Earl. (Flor. Wig.,
1054). — Scotland under her Early Kings, vol. ii., p. 478, 479.

11 Celtic Scotland, vol. i., pp. 411-413. Professor Munch, in his Histori et Chronicon
Mannice, names these districts as Caithness, Sutherland, Ross, Moray, Buchan, Athol, Lorn,
Argyle, and Galloway.

12 It is hardly possible that the tangled tale of Macbeth's murder of Duncan and his
usurpation of the throne of Scotia will ever be clearly unravelled, but this much seems toler-
ably certain, that Macbeth ruled in concert with the powerful Norse Earl Thorfinn, who suc-
ceeded Earl Melkoff or Malcolm at Whithorn, and, according to the Chronicum Regum
Mannia, " lived long at Gaddgeddli [Galloway], the place where England and Scotland
meet." — Maxwell, History of Dumfries and Galloway, p. 43.

13 We know, historically, that in the west, group after group of Norse invaders were
absorbed into the Irish-speaking population. Although the Norsemen were conquerors of
the Highland region, and gave it monarchs and lords, the more civilized language absorbed
the ruder though fundamentally stronger, and all spoke the Irish tongue together. Thus, in
language, the Teutonic became supreme in the eastern Lowlands, the Celtic among the
western mountains. From a'general view of the whole question, an impression — but nothing
stronger than an impression — is conveyed, that the proportion of the Teutonic race that came
into the use of the Gaelic is larger than the proportion of the Celtic race that came into the
use of the Teutonic or Saxon. Perhaps students of physical ethnology may thus account for
the contrasts of appearance in the Highlands ; in one district the people being large-limbed
and fair, with hair inclined to red ; in others, small, lithe, and dusky, with black hair. —
Burton, History of Scotland ', vol. i., p. 207.

It is remarked by Worsaae [Jeus Jacob Asmussen Worsaae, Account of the Danes and
Northmen in England, Scotland, and Ireland, 185 1 J, that the language of the Lowlands of
Scotland is so much like that of Scandinavia that seamen wrecked on the coasts of Jutland
and Norway [are reputed to] have been able to converse without difficulty in their mother
tongue with the people there [?]. Also, that the popular language of the Lowlands contains
a still greater number of Scandinavian words and phrases than even the dialect of the North
of England. He states, in addition, that the near relationship of the North Englishmen with
the Danes and other Scandinavians is reflected both in popular songs and in the folk-lore, and

The Norse and Galloway 257

is even more so in the Scottish Lowlands, whither great immigrations of Northmen took
place. Modern Scandinavian has changed considerably ; but in the Icelandic, which is pure,
its affinity with the ancient Scottish is great. The Lord's Prayer in the two languages, as
given by Pinkerton, will show this. The orthography and pronunciation constitute the
principal difference. It is obvious that the assimilation of Icelandic into Scottish was attended
with no difficulty. It was considered by some writers — and truly so, we think, from the
character and customs of the people, — that the Scandinavian poetry gave to the Scottish
some of its wildness, added greatly to by the Celtic element. It is stated that the Scandina-
vian and the Scottish music scales are very similar. Worsaae mentions, as we have already
stated, that it was a special trait of the Scandinavians that they very quickly accommodated
themselves to the manners and customs of the countries where they settled. They even
sometimes quite forgot their mother tongue, without, however, losing their original and
characteristic national stamp. The well-known " raven," called the Danebrog of heathenism,
which was borne for centuries, and viewed with superstitious awe in the British Isles as well
as elsewhere, was not put aside for long after they became Christianized. According to
Worsaae, it was borne until about A.D. noo ; but a Galloway legend brings it to a date some
years later. — Galloway, Ancient and Modern, p. 112.

14 Ayrshire is divided by the rivers Doon and Irvine into three districts — Carrick, Kyle,
and Cunninghame. At what period these three were erected into a sheriffdom is not precisely
known. Wyntoun, the venerable and generally accurate chronicler of Scotland, speaking of
the wars of Alpin with the Picts, says :

" He wan of were all Galluway ;

Thare wes he slayne, and dede away."

As the death of Alpin occurred in 741, near Dalmellington, on the north banks of the
Doon, it may be inferred that Ayrshire was then an integral part of Galloway. Yet, though
this was the case, it is well known that there were no sheriffs under the purely Celtic rule of
the country, which prevailed until the eleventh century ; and from charters of David I. it is
evident that in his reign, if not previously, the boundaries of Galloway had been greatly
limited. — Paterson, History of the County of Ayr, p. 1.

44 Galloway anciently comprehended not only the country now known by that name, and
the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright, but also the greatest part, if not the whole, of Ayrshire. It
had its own princes and its own laws. It acknowledged, however, a feudatory dependence
on Scotland. This dependence served only to supply the sovereign with rude undisciplined
soldiers, who added rather to the terror than to the strength of his armies.

44 Even at so late a period as the reign of Robert Bruce, the castle of Irvine was accounted
to be in Galloway. There is reason to suppose that a people of Saxon origin encroached by
degrees on the ancient Galloway. The names of places in Cuningham are generally Saxon.
The name of the country itself is Saxon. In Kyle there is some mixture of Saxon. All the
names in Carrick are purely Gaelic." — Lord Hailes, Annals of Scotland, vol. i., p. 118.

18 We cannot, certainly, infer, from this Life [of Ninian] that there were any Picts in
Galloway, at this period. Ninian, as will be elsewhere seen, goes from Whithorn into the
country of the Southern Picts to convert that idolatrous people. . . . 4 * There is extant,"
says Usher, <4 among our Irish, a Life of the same Ninian, in which he . . . is reported
to have had, also, a brother, St. Plebeia by name, as we read in his Life by John of
Tinmouth." — Ritson, Annals of the Caledonians, Picts, etc., vol. ii., pp. 140, 141.

16 In that region it is supposed in the western part of the island of Britain where the
ocean stretching as an arm, and making, as it were, on either side two angles, divideth at this
day [11 50] the realms of the Scots and Angles, which, till these last times belonging to
the Angles, is proved not only by historical record, but by actual memory of individuals to
have had a king of its own. — Ailred, Vita Niniani, ch. i.

11 Ailred, Life of Ninian, ch. iv.

258 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

18 It is perhaps to Whithorn, therefore, alone among the towns of Scotland, that honour
is due for having maintained the worship of the Almighty uninterrupted for fifteen hundred
years. — Maxwell, History of Dumfries and Galloway, p. 3.

Whit-herne (Saxon) implies the white-house ; the signification, likewise, of Louko-pibia
and Candida-casa. This famous mansion was situate upon the continental peninsula of Gal-
loway, now Wigtonshire, where, or near which, Fergus, Lord of Galloway, between seven and
eight centuries afterward, founded a priory of the same name ; and not (as has been asserted)
upon the little island at the point of it. "Candida casa vocatur locus in extremis Angliae
juxta Scotiam finibus, ubi beatus Ninia requiescit, natione Britto, qui primus ibidem Christi
praedicationem evangelizavit. Sanctum hunc Ninian prseclarum virtutibus experta est anti-
quitas. Scribit, Alcuinus, in epistola ad fratres ejusdem loci dicens : Deprecor vestrae
pietatis unanimitatem ut nostri nominis habeatis memoriam in ecclesia sanctissimi patris
vestri Niniae episcopi, qui multis claruit virtutibus, sicut mihi nuper delatum est per carmina
matricse artis, quae nobis per fideles nostros discipulos Eboracensis ecclesiae scholastica directa
sunt, in quibus et facientis cognovi eruditionem, et facientis miracula sanctitatem." (William
of Malmesbury, De Ges. Pon., book iii.) — Ritson, Annals of Galloway.

19 Maxwell, History of Dumfries and Galloway, p. 29.

20 Bede, book v. , ch. xxiii.

But the Attecott Picts did undergo about this time a very important change in their
foreign relations. The successors of Edwin, King of Bernicia, became, as the price of their
alliance, ard-righ or over-lords of Galloway, and under them the native chiefs ruled the
people. — Maxwell, History of Dumfries and Galloway, p. 36.

That part of Galloway which lay along the sea-coast, or at the greatest distance from
the seat of government, was now overrun by the Northumbrian Saxons who made settle-
ments in it. The farms which are still styled Inglestons are thought to have derived
their name from the Angles who then possessed them, and motes seem generally to
have been in their vicinity. Those slaves whom they employed in tilling the ground were
termed boors, and the places which they inhabited or occupied are still named Boorlands.
The lands called " Carletons" also obtained their name from the ceorles, or middle class of
society among the Saxons ; the thanes being the highest and the slaves the lowest. — Macken-
zie, History of Galloway, vol. i., p. 130. These derivations are discussed by Mr. MacKerlie,
who ascribes them to the Norse and Gaelic settlers, rather than to the Angles. See p. 247.

21 741, battle of Drum Cathmail between the Cruithnigh and the Dalriads against
Innrechtach. — Annals of Ulster.

22 While riding through a ford in Glenapp he was killed by a man hidden in a wood, and
his burial-place is marked to this day by a large stone called Laicht Alpin, Alpin's Grave,
which gives the name to the farm of Laicht on which it stands. — Maxwell, History of Dum-
fries and Galloway, p. 37.

He crossed from Kintyre to Ayr, and then moved southwards. A great deal of miscon-
ception has accompanied his movements. Wyntoun has been implicitly believed, who wrote
his Chronicle about 700 years after the event, and has not been considered altogether
trustworthy in regard to other matters. And he has rendered it —

" He wan of werre all Galloway,

There wes he slayne, and dede away."

The story of the devastation of the district rests on these lines. There is no doubt that he
never overran Wigtonshire, nor was even in it. He was only on the borders of present Gal-
loway, and there was slain, not in battle, as is generally supposed, but by an assassin who lay
in wait for him at the place, near Loch Ryan, where the small burn separates Ayrshire from
Wigtonshire. An upright pillar stone marks the spot, and was called Laicht Alpin, which
in the Scoto-Irish means the stone or grave of Alpin. — Galloway, Ancient and Modern, p. 65.
83 Bede, continuation of Chronicle, Anno 750.

The Norse and Galloway 259

Kyle, according to Buchanan, was so designated from Coilus, King of the Britons, who
was slain and interred in the district. The learned historian informs us that a civil war having
ensued between the Britons who occupied the south and west of Scotland, and the Scots and
the Picts, who were settled in the north and north-west, the opposing armies met near the
banks of the Doon ; and that, by a stratagem, Coilus, who had dispatched a portion of his
forces northward, was encompassed between the Scots and Picts, and completely routed. He
was pursued, overtaken, and slain in a field or moor, in the parish of Tarbolton, which still
retains the name of Coilsfield, or Coilus's field. Modern inquirers have regarded this as one of
the fables of our early history. Tradition corroborates the fact of some such battle having
been fought. — Paterson, History of the County of Ayr, vol. i., p. 2.

24 Eadberct's forces arrived in time to reinforce Innrechtach in pursuing Alpin's defeated
army. The result was that all Carrick and Kyle were added to the Northumbrian realm. This
was the high-tide mark of Saxon dominion in the north. Its chronicles during the latter half
of the eighth century show that the domestic difficulties of the Northumbrian over-lords of
Galloway had become so pressing as to divert them from all thought of further conquest.
— Maxwell, History of Dumfries, p. 38.

These nations had now resumed their normal relation to each other — east against west
— the Picts and Angles again in alliance, and opposed to them the Britons and the Scots.
Simeon of Durham tells us that in 744 a battle was fought between the Picts and the
Britons, but by the Picts, Simeon usually understands the Picts of Galloway, and this battle
seems to have followed the attack upon them by Alpin and his Scots. It was followed by a
combined attack upon the Britons of Alclyde by Eadberct of Northumbria, and Angus, king
of the Picts. The chronicle annexed to Bede tells us that in 750 Eadberct added the plain of
Cyil with other regions to his kingdom. This is evidently Kyle in Ayrshire, and the other
regions were probably Carrick and Cuninghame, so that the king of Northumbria added to
his possessions of Galloway on the north side of the Solway the whole of Ayrshire. — Celtic
Scotland, vol. i., pp. 294-5.

Connected with the three divisions of Ayrshire there is the old rhyme of

" Kyle for a man,

Carrick for a coo,
Cuninghame for butter and cheese,
And Galloway for woo."

These, and similar popular and traditionary lines, are worthy of preservation ; as they con-
stitute, as it were, popular landmarks in statistics, which supply a ready test to the changes
that come over a district. Some contend for a different reading, making

" Carrick for a man,
Kyle for a cow,"

but the first would seem to be the proper one. It is the one most general, and as old as the
days of Bellenden. — Paterson, History of the County of Ayr, vol. i., p. 4.

86 Gradually the Viking pirates crept round the Caledonian shores ; their black kyuls
found as good shelter in the lochs of the west as in the fiords of Norway and the Baltic,
whence they had sailed. Iona fared no better than Lindisfarne, and now it seemed as if the
pagan torch must fire the sacred shrine of St. Ninian at Whithorn. But to the warlike
prowess of their Attecott ancestors these Picts of Galloway seem to have added the talent of
far-seeing diplomacy, by means of which the Norsemen, instead of desolating their land like
the rest with fire and sword, were induced to fraternise with them and make common cause.
What were the terms paid by Christians for their alliance with pagans can never now be re-
vealed. It is plain from the place-names of Norse origin scattered through the Stewartry
and the shire, among those in Gaelic and Saxon speech, that there was a permanent Scandi-
navian settlement there, but we are left to imagine whether the relations between the two

260 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

races were those of over-lords and tributary, or whether they merely became fellow-pirates.
At all events the connection cost the Galloway men the respect of other Celtic communities.
The Irish chronicler, MacFirbis, declares that they renounced their baptism and had the
customs of the Norsemen, and it is in the ninth century that they first appear mentioned as
Gallgaidhel, or foreign Gaels, taking with the Vikings part in plundering and devastation.
So it came to pass that their monastery of Candida Casa was spared. — Maxwell, History of
Dumfries and Galloway , pp. 38, 39.

" What most hindered the complete reduction of the Danelaw was the hostility to the
English rule of the states north of it, the hostility of Bernicia, of Strathclyde, and, above all,
of the Scots. The confederacy against ^thelstan had been brought together by the intrigues
of the Scot king, Constantine ; and though Constantine, in despair at his defeat, left the throne
for a monastery, the policy of his son Malcolm was much the same as his father's. Eadmund
was no sooner master of the Danelaw than he dealt with this difficulty in the north. The
English blood of the Bernicians was probably drawing them at last to the English monarch,
for after Brunanburh we hear nothing of their hostility. But Cumbria was far more import-
ant than Bernicia, for it was through Cumbrian territory that the Ostmen [of Ireland] could
strike most easily across Britain into the Danelaw. . . .

" Under Eadberht the Northumbrian supremacy had reached as far as the district of Kyle
in Ayrshire ; and the capture of Alclwyd by his allies, the Picts, in 756, seemed to leave the
rest of Strathclyde at his mercy. But from that moment the tide had turned ; a great defeat
shattered Eadberht's hopes ; and in the anarchy which followed his reign district after district
must have been torn from the weakened grasp of Northumbria, till the cessation of the line
of her bishops at Whithern (Badulf , the last bishop of Whithern of the Anglo-Saxon succes-
sion whose name is preserved, was consecrated in 791. Sim. Durh. ad. ann.) tells that her
frontier had been pushed back almost to Carlisle. But even after the land that remained to
her had been in English possession for nearly a century and a half it was still no English land.
Its great land-owners were of English blood, and as the Church of Lindisfarne was richly
endowed here, its priesthood was probably English too. But the conquered Cumbrians had
been left by Ecgfrith on the soil, and in its local names we find few traces of any migration
over moors from the east. . . .

' ' Along the Irish Channel the boats of the Norwegian pirates were as thick as those
of the Danish corsairs on the eastern coast ; and the Isle of Man, which they conquered and
half colonized, served as a starting-point from which the marauders made their way to the
opposite shores. Their settlements reached as far northward as Dumfriesshire, and south-
ward, perhaps, to the little group of northern villages which we find in the Cheshire peninsula
of the Wirral. But it is the lake district and in the north of our Lancashire that they lie
thickest. . . . While this outlier of northern life was being planted about the lakes, the
Britons of Strathclyde were busy pushing their conquests to the south ; in Eadmund's day,
indeed, we find their border carried as far as the Derwent ; but whether from the large space
of Cumbrian ground they had won, or no, the name of Strathclyde from this time disappears,
and is replaced by the name of Cumbria. Whether as Strathclyde or Cumbria, its rulers
had been among the opponents of the West-Saxon advance ; they were among the confeder-
ates against Eadward as they were among the confederates against /Ethelstan ; and it was no
doubt in return for a like junction in the hostilities against himself that Eadmund, in 945,
' harried all Cumberland.' But he turned his new conquest adroitly to account by using it to
bind to himself the most dangerous among his foes ; for he granted the greater part of it to
the Scottish king, on the terms that Malcolm should be ' his fellow- worker by sea and land.'
In the erection of this northern dependency we see the same forces acting, though on a more
distant field, which had already begun the disintegration of the English realm in the formation
of the great earldormanries of the eastern coast. Its immediate results, however, were advan-
tageous enough. Scot and Welshman, whose league had till now formed the chief force of
opposition to English supremacy in the north, were set at variance ; the road of the Ostman

The Norse and Galloway 261

was closed, while the fidelity of the Scot king seemed to be secure by the impossibility
of holding Cumbria against revolt without the support of his ' fellow-worker ' in the south."
— Green, Conquest of England \ ch. vi., sees. 14-17.

26 Celtic Scotland, vol. i., p. 132.

27 Sir Herbert Maxwell, History of Dumfries and Galloway, p. 51.

In this battle, says Lambarde, " After that the bishop of Durham had exhorted the soldiers
to fighte, the Scottes cryed out ' Albany ! Albany ! ' after their own manner, as thoughe al had
bene theires. But the Englishe souldyours sent amongst them suche hayle of schott that
after a whyle they turned their backes, and, in fine, theare was slayne of theim to the number
of 11,000, and they weare, for their brag of Albany, mocked with ' Yry, Yry, Standard ! ' a
terme of great reproach at that time, as Matthew Paris witnesseth " ; in whose work, however,
no such thing is to be found. — Ritson, Annals of Galloway, p. 264.

88 The enmity between the Strathclyde Britons and Ulstermen would tend to make the
Galloway Picts throw in their lot with their congeners of Ulster, and no doubt intercourse
between them was frequent and generally amicable, leading to intermarriage and relationship
of blood. But there is not the least ground for believing that Galloway was overrun at this
time in a hostile sense by the people from the opposite Irish coast. — Maxwell, History of
Dumfries and Galloway, p. 36.

" The portion of the Pictish people which longest retained the name were the Picts of
Galloway. Completely surrounded by the Britons of Strathclyde, and isolated from the rest
of the Pictish nation, protected by a mountain barrier on the north, and the sea on the west
and south, and remaining for centuries under the nominal dominion of the Angles of North-
umbria, they maintained an isolated and semi-independent position in a corner of the island,
and appear as a distinct people under the name of Picts as late as the twelfth century, when
they formed one division of the Scottish army at the battle of the Standard. . .

** We find, therefore, that in this remote district, in which the Picts remained under their
distinctive names as a separate people as late as the twelfth century, a language considered
the ancient language of Galloway was still spoken as late as the sixteenth century, and that
language was Gaelic." — Celtic Scotland, vol. i., pp. 202-204.

29 It will thus be seen that to those in North Antrim, the Mull of Kintyre, only fourteen
miles distant, being in sight, and with countrymen already settled in Argyleshire, easy means
offered for leaving Hibernia ; and, as recorded, a colony passed over in A.d. 498, under the
leadership of Fergus Mor Mac Earca. . . . There is not such special mention to be
found of the southern movement, but there cannot be a doubt that in the same way the Irish
Scoti in Down, etc. — southern Dalriada — being opposite to Galloway, only twenty-two
miles distant, and always more or less to be seen, except in thick weather, it offered an
inducement for them to pass over there, and more particularly as communication seems to
have existed previously with Galloway, which there is reason to believe was constant. That
such an exodus took place is supported by the people found in Galloway after the Roman
period. As we have already mentioned, Chalmers, in his Caledonia, gives the period of the
settlement in the ninth and tenth centuries. We consider that it must have begun about the
same time as the emigration to Argyleshire, while it was of a more gradual character, extend-
ing over several centuries, and not an immediate rush, which will account for not a vestige of
authority as argued by Dr. Skene. It is, however, mentioned in the Pictish Chronicle that
the settlement was made about A.D. 850 by stratagem, when they slew the chief inhabitants,
which latter statement is likely enough ; but this conveys that they had been in Galloway for
some time, and had become numerous, thus supporting what we have mentioned, that the
colonization had been gradual. — Galloway, Ancient and Modern, pp. 52, 53.

30 " Alpin, king of the Scots of Dalriada (not to be confused with him who perished
in Glenapp in 741), had been expelled from his kingdom by the Northern Picts. His son
Kenneth (in Gaelic, Cinaedh), afterwards renowned as Kenneth MacAlpin, had taken refuge
in Galloway. By the help of his relatives there, and the co-operation of the Norsemen, he

262 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

was able to regain his kingdom of Dalriada and afterwards defeat the Northern Picts in the
epoch-making battle of Fortrenn. . . .

" It has been plausibly suggested that the right which for many centuries afterwards was
undoubtedly claimed by and conceded to the men of Galloway to march in the van of Scottish
armies, was conferred on them by Kenneth MacAlpin in recognition of their services at this
momentous time. The new king certainly gave proof of the value set upon these services by
giving his daughter in marriage to a Galloway chief called Olaf the White.

" In the same year, 844, in which Kenneth was crowned King of Alban, the Gallgaidhel,
or Picts of Galloway, assisted Olaf to seize the throne of Dublin.

" On the death of Kenneth MacAlpin in 860, Olaf made a determined attempt on the
crown of Alban. Inheritance among the Picts was invariably through the female line.
Olaf's wife, being daughter to Kenneth, gave him a better claim under Pictish law than Ken-
neth's son Constantin. In company with Imhair, Olaf captured Dumbarton in 872, and held
a great part of Alban, retreating with much booty and many captives to Galloway, whence the
whole party sailed in two hundred ships to Dublin." — Maxwell, History of Dumfries and
Galloway \ pp. 40, 41.

31 The name of Heathored occurs as the last amongst the bishops of Whithern in Flor.
Wig. App., and his predecessor, Badwulf, is alluded to by Sim. Dun. under 796. The topo-
graphy of Galloway and the language once spoken by the Galwegians (who acknowledged
a Kenkinny — Cen-Cinnidh — not a Pen-cenedl) distinguish them from the British race
of Strathclyde — the Walenses of the early charters as opposed to the Galwalenses. Beda,
however, knew of no Picts in the diocese of Candida Casa (v. Appendix K), and consequently
they must have arrived at some later period, though it would be difficult to point with cer-
tainty to their original home. Some authorities bring them from Dalriada, making them
Cruithne or Irish Picts ; and the dedication of numerous churches in Galloway to saints
popular in the northeast of Uladh seems to favor their conjecture. The name of Galloway is
probably traceable to its occupation by Gall, in this case Anglian strangers. — Robertson,
Scotland under her Early Kings, vol. i., p. 21.

32 A mighty devastation of Strathclyde and Galloway is recorded in 875 by Simeon of
Durham, and this is corroborated in the Annals of Ulster, where reference is made to a
bloody defeat of the Picts by the Dubhgall or Danes.

33 " The next important personage to appear in Galloway history is Ronald the Dane,
titular King of Northumbria, styled also Duke of the Galwegians, in right of the ancient
superiority of the Saxon kings over the Picts. With Olaf of the Brogues (Anlaf Cuaran),
grandson of Olaf the White, as his lieutenant, he drove the Saxons before him as far south as
Tamworth. This was in 937, but in 944 the tide of victory rolled north again. King
Eadmund drove Ronald out of Northumbria to take refuge in Galloway. Of this province he
and his sons continued rulers till the close of the tenth century. But these were Dubhgalls or
Danes, and they now fell to war with the Fingalls or Norse, who possessed themselves of the
province. Galloway, on account of its central position between Ireland, Cumbria, and
Strathclyde, and still more because of its numerous shallow bays and sandy inlets, so conve-
nient for Viking galleys, was then in higher esteem than it has ever been since among mari-
time powers.

" Sigurd the Stout, Earl of Orkney, grandson of Thorfinnthe Skull-cleaver, was Lord of
Galloway in 1008. His resident lieutenant was a native prince, Malcolm, whose name
appears in the sagas as Earl Melkoff." — History of Dumfries and Galloway, p. 42.

34 " In 1057 Malcolm Canmore — son of the murdered Duncan, — attacked the usurper
Macbeth, defeated and slew him and became King Malcolm III., of Scotia. The great Earl
Thorfinn having died in the same year, Malcolm most prudently married his widow Ingi-
biorg, of the Pictish race, thereby bringing under his rule the Norse districts of Scotland,
including Galloway. Consolidation was now the order of the day. The Norse influence,
undermined by the effects of the battle of Clontarf , was steadily on the wane. The island

The Norse and Galloway 263

of Britain, soaked as it was with centuries of bloodshed, was resolving itself into the two
main dominions of England and Scotland — a process which the Church, relieved from op-
pression by the pagan Norsemen, lent her influence to accelerate. The native rulers of Gal-
loway showed some hesitation as to the realm into which they would seek admission.
Tradition and custom tempted them to union with their old over-lords the Saxon earls of
Northumbria ; but the Saxon power was waning, as the Roman and the Norse had waned
before. Geography as well as linguistic and racial affinity turned the scale, and the
Galwegians became lieges of the Scottish king.

44 In this manner closed the dominion of the Norsemen over Galloway, and such parts
along the Solway shore of Dumfriesshire as they had been able to hold by force. Their
strength ever lay in their ships, but of their handiwork some traces probably remain in a
peculiar kind of cliff tower, which may be seen at various parts of the coast, such as Castle
Feather and Cardhidoun near the Isle of Whithorn, and Port Castle on the shore of Glasser-
ton parish." — Maxwell, pp. 43, 44.

85 *' Gallwallia or Galwedia is termed in the Irish Annals Gallgaedhel, a name also ap-
plied to the people of the Isles. The name of Galwedia in its more extended sense consisted
of the districts extending from Solway to the Clyde ; but in its limited sense, in which it is
used here, it is co-extensive with the modern counties of Wigton and Kirkcudbright. In the
Norse sagas it is termed Gaddgeddli.

44 Both districts of Ergadia and Gallwallia appear to have been to a great extent occu-
pied by the Norwegians down to the period when these 4 reguli ' first appear. At the battle
of Cluantarf in 1014, there is mention of the Galls or foreigners of Man, Sky, Lewis, Cantire,
and Airergaidhel {Wars of Gaedel zuith the Galls, p. 153). Thorfinn, the Earl of Orkney,
when he conquered the nine 4 rikis ' in Scotland in 1034, included in his possessions Dali or
Ergadia, and Gaddgedli or Galloway, and in the same year the Irish Annals record the death
of 4 Suibhne mac Cinaeda ri Gallgaidel.' Though Thorfinn's kingdom in Scotland termin-
ated in 1604, when it is said that 4 many rikis which he had subjected fell off, and their in-
habitants sought the protection of those native chiefs who were territorially born to rule over
them' {Coll. de Reb. Alb., p. 346), the Norwegians appear to have retained a hold of Erga-
dia and Galwedia for nearly a century after, as we find in the Irish Annals mention made in
1 1 54 of the fleets of Gallgaedel, Arann, Cintyre, Mann, and the Centair Alban, or seaboard
of Alban, under the command of Macscelling, a Norwegian {Annals of the Four Masters,
1 1 54). Mac Vurich likewise states that before Somerled's time, 4 all the islands from Man-
nan (Man) to Area (Orkneys), and all the bordering country from Dun Breatan (Dumbarton)
to Cata (Caithness) in the north, were in the possession of the Lochlannach (Norwegians),
and such as remained of the Gaedel of those lands protected themselves in the woods or
mountains' ; and in narrating the exploits of Somerled, he says ' he did not cease till he
had cleared the western side of Alban from the Lochlannach.'

44 It seems probable, therefore, that the natives of Ergadia and Gallwallia had risen
under Somerled and Fergus, and had finally expelled the Norwegians from their coasts, and
that owing to the long possession of the country by the Norwegians, all trace of their parent-
age had disappeared from the annals of the country, and they were viewed as the founders
of a new race of native lords.

44 The two districts appear, however, closely connected with each other in the various
attempts made by the Gaedheal against the ruling authority in Scotland." — Skene, Fordun y
vol. ii., p. 431.

36 Much less equivocal are the remains of Scandinavian occupation preserved in the place-
names of the south-west. Many hills still bear the title 44 fell" — the Norse fjall — often
pleonastically prefixed to the Gaelic barr, as in Fell o' Barhullion, in Glasserton parish, or
disguised as a mere suffix, as in Criffel. The well-known test-syllable by, a village, farm, or
dwelling, so characteristic of Danish rather than of Norse occupation, takes the place in
southern districts which bolstadr holds in northern. Lockerby, the dwelling of Locard or

264 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

Lockhart, Canonbie, and Middlebie in Dumfriesshire — Busby, Sorby, and Corsbie in Wig-
tonshire — are instances in point. Vik, a creek or small bay, gives the name to Southwick
parish and Senwick {sand vik, sandy bay) ; and n'es, a cape, appears in Sinniness {sunnr
n'es, south point) and Borness {borh ries, burgh or fort point) ; but Auchness is in another
language, being the Gaelic each inis, horse-pasture. Pastoral occupation is implied in Fair-
girth (faer gardr, sheep-fold) ; but Cogarth, the cow-pen, is more probably Saxon than
Scandinavian, for though in modern Danish " cow" is ho, in old Norse it was kyr. Tin-
wald, like Dingwall in the north, is \>inga vollr, the assembly-field, and Mouswald, most
vollr, the moss-field. — Maxwell, Dumfries and Galloway, pp. 44, 45.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE ANGLES

RETURNING again to the subject of Macbeth's so-called usurpation, it
may be stated that, in addition to the causes already suggested as
leading to his revolt, we find another reason given by some of the early
chroniclers in apparent justification of his conduct in slaying Duncan
and possessing himself of that ruler's kingdom. This explanation is, that
Macbeth's wife, Gruoch, was the daughter of that Boete (or Boedhe)
MacKenneth whose son was slain by King Malcolm MacKenneth about
1033, in order to prepare the way for the peaceable ascension to the throne
of his own daughter's son, Duncan. 1

The title of Boete's heirs to the crown, according to the customary order
of descent at that time, was superior to that of Malcolm's heirs. There-
fore, it has been contended that, as Malcolm had wrongfully removed
Boete's son by killing him, and thus made the way clear for the succession
of his own grandson, it was not unnatural that the claims of the latter should
be contested by the other heirs of Boete and their representatives. 9 Besides
the son whom Malcolm killed, Boete had left also a daughter, Gruoch, who
married into the family of the Mormaors of Moray, carrying her claims with
her. Her husband, Gilcomgain mac Maelbrigdi mac Ruaidhri, was slain in
a family quarrel, but left a son by Gruoch, named Lulach, an infant, who
thus represented the line of King Kenneth MacDuff. Gruoch next married
Macbeth mac Finley mac Ruaidhri, (second cousin to Gilcomgain) who had
succeeded to the mormaorship of Moray. By the hitherto prevalent Pictish
system of alternation, Lulach was the rightful king ; and as guardian and
representative of his stepson, Macbeth stood for the child's claims on the
Scottish crown, as against Duncan, son of Malcolm's daughter, Bethoc, by
Crinan. 3

Macbeth reigned for about seventeen years, and the contemporary re-
cords of the period all seem to indicate that his rule was one of considerable
benefit to the kingdom. 4 In 1045 an attempt was made by Crinan, the
father of Duncan, to dethrone Macbeth ; but it proved abortive, resulting in
the death of Crinan 5 and, in consequence, the more secure possession of
the crown by Macbeth. In 1050 the latter made a pilgrimage to Rome."

In 1054, Siward, the Danish earl of Northumbria, a close connection of
the family of Duncan, 7 led an army into Scotland against Macbeth, in the
interests of Duncan's son, Malcolm, and perhaps at the instance of Edward,
King of England. 8 Although not then successful in recovering the central
kingdom, Siward succeeded in confirming Malcolm as ruler of all that por-
tion of Scotland south of the Clyde and Forth." Siward died in 1055, how-
ever, and Malcolm was not able to push his cause further until 1057. In

265

266 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

that year he formed an alliance with Tostig, who was the son of Earl God'
win and successor to Siward as ruler of Northumberland. Then taking ad-
vantage of the death of Thornnn, Macbeth's most powerful coadjutor, the
allies again entered the domain of the latter and on the 15th of August,
1057, Malcolm killed Macbeth in battle at Lumphanan. 10

Malcolm then ascended the throne. Having married Ingiborg, widow of
Thornnn, he seems soon afterwards to have united the different states of the
north into the single kingdom of Scotia. Within a few years he became so
powerful as to attempt the invasion of England. 11 In 1068-9, Ingiborg ap-
parently having died in the meantime, he married Margaret, 18 sister of Edgar
vEtheling, the Saxon heir to the English crown, who with his family and fol-
lowers, had been driven out of England after the coming of the Normans in
1066, and had taken refuge in Scotland.

This King Malcolm is known in history as Malcolm Canmore, so named
from the size of his head, the Celtic words " cean mohr " meaning " head
big." The possession of the Anglian province of Northumbria known as
Lothian, which had been ceded to his great-grandfather, Malcolm mac Ken-
neth, after the battle of Carham in 10 18, in Malcolm Canmore, became defi-
nitely confirmed to the crown of Scotland. 13 This union resulted in bringing
under one government the Teutonic races of the eastern, northern, and
western coasts, and the Celtic Gaels and Cymri of Galloway, Strathclyde,
and Scotia proper. Malcolm's marriages, first with Ingiborg the Norse
jarl's widow, and secondly, with Margaret, daughter of the Saxon royal
family, may be taken as presaging the union of races that was to follow in
Scotland. 14 As the most substantial and enduring attributes of Scottish
civilization owe their origin to this amalgamation, and are in a great measure
due to the infusion of Teutonic blood into the veins of the Celt, we cannot
do better in this connection than to consider at length the nature and extent
of the English elements entering into the composition of the feudal
Scotchman.

Having already sketched the rise and progress of the Norwegian power
in the north and west, one considerable source of the Teutonic stream, it
now remains only to inquire into the history of Northumbria, the northern
province of which in Malcolm's time became firmly united with Scotland,
forming the modern counties of Haddington, Roxburgh, Linlithgow, Edin-
burgh, Berwick, etc. It has been deemed proper to give this history in the
form of extracts from the early annals relating to Britain and Northumbria,
so far as these are preserved in the history of Gildas, the works of Bede, and
in the English Chronicle, these three being our chief authorities for early
English history. Inasmuch as the record of the English conquest of North
Britain does not begin until the year 547, the history of the preceding cen-
tury — aside from the brief descriptions of Nennius already given, and similar
references to be found in the Welsh Book of the Princes (Brut y Tywy-
sogion), and the Annates Cambrice — can only be inferred from such records

The Angles 267

as remain of the earlier English conquest of the southern portions of the
island.

The history of Gildas was written about 556-560 ; that of Bede about
731 ; and the English or Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is the work of various hands
between Bede's time and the middle of the twelfth century, the earliest
copies extant bearing evidences of a date some years prior to 900.

GILDAS HISTORY OF BRITAIN*

§ 2X. Then all the councillors, together with that proud tyrant Gurth-
rigern [Vortigern], the British king, were so blinded, that, as a protection to
their country, they sealed its doom by inviting in among them (like wolves
into the sheep-fold) the fierce and impious Saxons, a race hateful both to God
and men, to repel the invasions of the northern nations. Nothing was ever
so pernicious to our country, nothing was ever so unlucky. What palpable
darkness must have enveloped their minds — darkness desperate and cruel J
Those very people whom, when absent, they dreaded more than death itself,
were invited to reside, as one may say, under the selfsame roof. Foolish
are the princes, as it is said, of Thafneos, giving counsel to unwise Pharaoh.
A multitude of whelps came forth from the lair of this barbaric lioness, in
three cyu/s, as they call them, that is, in three ships of war, with their sails
wafted by the wind and with omens and prophecies favorable, for it was
foretold by a certain soothsayer among them, that they should occupy the
country to which they were sailing three hundred years, and half of that
time, a hundred and fifty years, should plunder and despoil the same. They
first landed on the eastern side of the island, by the invitation of the unlucky
king, and there fixed their sharp talons, apparently to fight in favor of the
island, but, alas ! more truly against it. Their mother-land, finding her first
brood thus successful, sends forth a larger company of her wolfish offspring,
which, sailing over, join themselves to their bastard-born comrades. From
that time the germ of iniquity and the root of contention planted their poison
amongst us, as we deserved, and shot forth into leaves and branches. The
barbarians being thus introduced as soldiers into the island, to encounter, as
they falsely said, any dangers in defence of their hospitable entertainers,
obtain an allowance of provisions, which, for some time being plentifully
bestowed, stopped their doggish mouths. Yet they complain that their
monthly supplies are not furnished in sufficient abundance, and they indus-
triously aggravate each occasion of quarrel, saying that unless more liberality
is shown them, they will break the treaty and plunder the whole island. In
a short time, they follow up their threats with deeds.

§ 24. For the fire of vengeance, justly kindled by former crimes, spread
from sea to sea, fed by the hands of our foes in the east, and did not cease,,
until, destroying the neighboring towns and lands, it reached the other side
of the island, and dipped its red and savage tongue in the western ocean.
In these assaults, therefore, not unlike that of the Assyrian upon Judea, was
fulfilled in our case what the prophet describes in words of lamentation :
" They have burned with fire the sanctuary ; they have polluted on earth the
tabernacle of thy name." And again, " O God, the Gentiles have come into
thine inheritance ; Thy holy temple have they defiled," etc. So that all the
columns were levelled with the ground by the frequent strokes of the

* See also pp. 200-202.

268 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

battering-ram, all the husbandmen routed, together with their bishops,

priests, and people, whilst the sword gleamed, and the frames crackled

around them on every side. Lamentable to behold, in the midst of the

streets lay the tops of lofty towers, tumbled to the ground, stones of high

walls, holy altars, fragments of human bodies, covered with livid clots of

coagulated blood, looking as if they had been squeezed together in a press ;

and with no chance of being buried, save in the ruins of the houses, or in

the ravening bellies of wild beasts and birds ; with reverence be it spoken

. for their blessed souls, if, indeed, there were many found who were carried,

J at that time, into the high heaven by the holy angels. So entirely had the

' vintage, once so fine, degenerated and become bitter, that, in the words of

the prophet, there was hardly a grape or ear of corn to be seen where the

husbandman had turned his back.

§ 25. Some, therefore, of the miserable remnant, being taken in the
mountains, were murdered in great numbers ; others, constrained by famine,
came and yielded themselves to be slaves for ever to their foes, running the
risk of being instantly slain, which truly was the greatest favor that could
be offered them : some others passed beyond the seas with loud lamentations
instead of the voice of exhortation. " Thou hast given us as sheep to be
slaughtered, and among the Gentiles hast thou dispersed us." Others, com-
mitting the safeguard of their lives, which were in continual jeopardy, to the
mountains, precipices, thickly wooded forests, and to the rocks of the seas
(albeit with trembling hearts), remained still in their country. 16 But in the
meanwhile, an opportunity happening, when these most cruel robbers were
returned home, the poor remnants of our nation (to whom flocked from
divers places round about our miserable countrymen as fast as bees to their
hives, for fear of an ensuing storm), being strengthened by God, calling upon
him with all their hearts, as the poet says, " With their unnumbered vows
they burden heaven," that they might not be brought to utter destruction,
took arms under the conduct of Ambrosius Aurelianus, a modest man, who
of all the Roman nation was then alone in the confusion of this troubled
period by chance left alive. His parents, who for their merit were adorned
with the purple, had been slain in these same broils, and now his progeny in
these our days, although shamefully degenerated from the worthiness of their
ancestors, provoke to battle their cruel conquerors, and by the goodness of
our Lord obtain the victory.

§ 26. After this, sometimes our countrymen, sometimes the enemy, won
the field, to the end that our Lord might in this land try after his accustomed
manner these his Israelites, whether they loved him or not, until the year of
the siege of Bath-hill, when took place also the last almost, though not the
least slaughter of our cruel foes, which was (as I am sure) forty-four years
and one month after the landing of the Saxons, and also the time of my own
nativity. And yet neither to this day are the cities of our country inhabited
as before, but being forsaken and overthrown, still lie desolate ; our foreign
wars having ceased, but our civil troubles still remaining. For as well the
remembrance of such a terrible desolation of the island, as also of the unex-
pected recovery of the same, remained in the minds of those who were
eye-witnesses of the wonderful events of both, and in regard thereof, kings,
public magistrates, and private persons, with priests and clergymen, did all
and every one of them live orderly according to their several vocations.
But when these had departed out of this world, and a new race succeeded,
who were ignorant of this troublesome time, and had only experience of the
present prosperity, all the laws of truth and justice were so shaken and

The Angles 269

subverted that not so much as a vestige or remembrance of these virtues
remained among the above-named orders of men, except among a very few
who, compared with the great multitude which were daily rushing head-
long down to hell, are accounted so small a number, that our reverend
mother the church, scarcely beholds them, her only true children, reposing
in her bosom.

NENNIUS GENEALOGIES OF THE KINGS, ETC.

§ 57. (Bernicia) — Woden begat Beldeg, who begat Beornec, who begat
Gethbrond, who begat Aluson, who begat Ingwi, who begat Edibrith, who
begat Esa, who begat Eoppa, who begat Ida. But Ida had twelve sons,
Adda, Belric, Theodric, Ethelric, Theodhere, Osmer, and one queen, Bear-
noch, Ealric. Ethelric begat Ethelfrid : the same is Aedlfred Flesaur. For
he also had seven sons, Eanfrid, Oswald, Oswin, Oswy, Oswudu, Oslac, Offa.
Oswy begat Alfrid, Elfwin, and Ecgfrid. Ecgfrid is he who made war against
his cousin Brudei, king of the Picts, and he fell therein with all the strength
of his army, and the Picts with their king gained the victory ; and the Saxons
never again reduced the Picts so as to exact tribute from them. Since the
time of this war it is called Gueithlin Garan.

But Oswy had two wives, Riemmelth, the daughter of Royth, son of
Rum ; and Eanfled, the daughter of Edwin, son of Alia.

§ 58. (Kent) — Hengist begat Octa, who begat Ossa, who begat Eormen-
ric, who begat Ethelbert, who begat Eadbald, who begat Ercombert, who
begat Egbert.

§ 59. (East Anglia) — Woden begat Casser, who begat Titinon, who begat
Trigil, who begat Rodmunt, who begat Rippa, who begat Guillem Guercha,
[Uffa, or Wuffa] who was the first king of the East Angles. Guercha begat
Uffa, who begat Tytillus, who begat Eni, who begat Edric, who begat Ald-
wulf, who begat Elric.

§ 60. (Mercia) — Woden begat Guedolgeat, who begat Gueagon, who
begat Guithleg, who begat Guerdmund, who begat Ossa, who begat Ongen,
who begat Earner, who begat Pubba. This Pubba had twelve sons, of
whom two are better known to me than the others, that is Penda and Eawa.
Eadlit is the son of Pantha, Penda, son of Pubba, Ealbald, son of Alguing,
son of Eawa, son of Penda, son of Pubba. Egfert son of Offa, son of
Thingferth, son of Enwulf, son of Ossulf, son of Eawa, son of Pubba.

§ 61. (Deira) — Woden begat Beldeg, Brond begat Siggar, who begat
Sibald, who begat Zegulf, who begat Soemil, who first separated Deur from
Berneich [Deira from Bernicia]. Soemil begat Sguerthing, who begat
Giulglis, who begat Ulfrea, who begat Iffi, who begat Ulli, Edwin, Osfrid,
and Eanfrid. There were two sons of Edwin, who fell with him in battle at
Meicen, and the kingdom was never renewed in his family, because not one
of his race escaped from that war ; but all were slain with him by the army
of Catguollaunus, king of the Guenedota [Cadwalla, king of the western
Britons], Oswy begat Ecgfrid, the same is Ailguin, who begat Oslach, who
begat Alhun, who begat Adlsing who begat Echun, who begat Oslaph. Ida
begat Eadric, who begat Ecgulf, who begat Leodwald, who begat Eata, the
same is Glinmaur, who begat Eadbert and Egbert, who was the first bishop
of their nation.

Ida, the son of Eoppa, possessed countries on the left-hand side of
Britain, i. e., of the Humbrian sea, and reigned twelve years, and united
Dynguayth Guarth-Berneich [Deira and Bernicia].

270 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

§ 62. Then Dutigirn at that time fought bravely against the nation of
the Angles. At that time Talhaiarn Cataguen was famed for poetry, and
Neirin, and Taliesin, and Bluchbard, and Cian, who is called Guenith Guaut,
were all famous at the same time in British poetry.

The great king, Mailcun, reigned among the Britons, i. e., in the district
of Guenedota, because his great-great-grandfather, Cunedda, with his
twelve sons, had come before from the left-hand part, i. e., from the
country which is called Manau Gustodin, one hundred and forty-six years
before Mailcun reigned, and expelled the Scots with much slaughter from
those countries, and they never returned again to inhabit them.

§ 63. Adda, son of Ida, reigned eight years ; Ethelric, son of Adda,
reigned four years. Theodoric, son of Ida, reigned seven years. Freothwulf
reigned six years. In whose time the kingdom of Kent, by the mission of
Gregory, received baptism. Hussa reigned seven years. Against him
fought four kings, Urien, and Ryderthen, and Guallauc, and Morcant.
Theodoric fought bravely, together with his sons, against that Urien. But
at that time sometimes the enemy and sometimes our countrymen were
defeated, and he shut them up three days and three nights in the island of
Metcaut ; and whilst he was on an expedition he was murdered, at the
instance of Morcant, out of envy, because he possessed so much superiority
over all the kings in military science. Eadfered Flesaurs reigned twelve
years in Bernicia, and twelve others in Deira, and gave to his wife, Bebba, the
town of Dynguoaroy, which from her is called Bebbanburg [Bamborough].

Edwin, son of Alia, reigned seventeen years, seized on Elmete, and ex-
pelled Cerdic, its king. Eanfled, his daughter, received baptism, on the
twelfth day after Pentecost, with all her followers, both men and women.
The following Easter Edwin himself received baptism, and twelve thousand
of his subjects with him. If any one wishes to know who baptized them, it
was Rum Map Urbgen [Rhun, son of Urien] : he was engaged forty days
in baptizing all classes of the Saxons, and by his preaching many believed
on Christ.

§ 64. Oswald, son of Ethelfrid, reigned nine years ; the same is Oswald
Llauiguin ; he slew Catgublaun [Cadwalla], king of Guenedot, in the battle
of Catscaul, with much loss to his own army. Oswy, son of Ethelfrid,
reigned twenty-eight years and six months. During his reign there was a
dreadful mortality among his subjects, when Catgualart [Cadwallader] was
king among the Britons, succeeding his father, and he himself died amongst
the rest. He slew Penda in the field of Gai, and now took place the
slaughter of Gai Campi, and the kings of the Britons, who went out with
Penda on the expedition as far as the city of Judeu, were slain.

§ 65. Then Oswy restored all the wealth, which was with him in the
city, to Penda ; who distributed it among the kings of the Britons, that is,
Atbert Judeu. But Catgabail alone, king of Guenedot, rising up in the
night, escaped, together with his army, wherefore he was called Catgabail
Catguommed. Ecgfrid, son of Oswy, reigned nine years. In his time the
holy bishop Cuthbert died in the island of Medcaut. It was he who made
war against the Picts, and was by them slain.

Penda, son of Pybba, reigned ten years ; he first separated the kingdom
of Mercia from that of the Northmen, and slew by treachery Anna, king of
the East Anglians, and St. Oswald, king of the Northmen. He fought the
battle of Cocboy, in which fell Eawa, son of Pybba, his brother, king of the
Mercians, and Oswald, king of the Northmen, and he gained the victory by
diabolical agency. He was not baptized, and never believed in God.

The Angles 271

§ 66. From the beginning of the world to Constantius and Rufus, are
found to be five thousand, six hundred and fifty-eight years.

Also from the two consuls, Rufus and Rubelius, to the consul Stilicho,
are three hundred and seventy-three years.

Also from Stilicho to Valentinian, son of Placida, and the reign of
Vortigern, are twenty-eight years.

And from the reign of Vortigern to the quarrel between Guitolinus and
Ambrosius, are twelve years, which is Guoloppum, that is Catgwaloph.
Vortigern reigned in Britain when Theodosius and Valentinian were con-
suls, and in the fourth year of his reign the Saxons came to Britain, in the
consulship of Felix and Taurus, in the four hundredth year from the
incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ.

From the year in which the Saxons came into Britain, and were received
by Vortigern, to the time of Decius and Valerian, are sixty-nine years.

THE VENERABLE BEDE'S ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

Bede, or Beda, surnamed, on account of his learning and piety, " Vener-
able," was born about the year 673, probably in what is now the parish of
Monkton, near Wearmouth, in Durham. He was educated in the monastery
of St. Peter at Wearmouth, and after his twentieth year removed to the neigh-
boring monastery of St. Paul at Jarrow, where he died about 735. His
most valuable work is the Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, an ecclesi-
astical history of England in five books, to which we are indebted for almost
all our information on the early history of England before the year 731.
Bede gained the materials for this work partly from Roman writers, but
chiefly from native chronicles and biographies, records, and public docu-
ments, and oral and written communications from his contemporaries.
King Alfred translated it into Anglo-Saxon.

Bede's chief sources for the description of Britain are Pliny, Solinus,
Orosius, and Gildas ; St. Basil is also cited ; and the traditions which were
current in Bede's own day are occasionally introduced. The history of the
Romans in Britain is founded chiefly upon Orosius, Eutropius, and Gildas,
corrected in some places by the author, apparently from tradition or local
information. Documents pre-existing in an historical form are occasionally
quoted, among those of which use has been made being the Life of Gregory
the Great, written by Paulus Diaconus ; the Miracles of Ethelberga, Abbess
of Barking ; the Life of Sebbi, king of the East Saxons ; the Legend of
Fursey j the Legend of Cuthbert of Lindisfarne ; and the Treatise of Arculf
De Locis Sanctis.

The author seems to have been at work on his History down to the time
of his death. The following extracts are made from Giles's translation :

Book I., Chapter I. — This island at present, following the number of the
books in which the Divine law was written, contains five nations, the English,
Britons, Scots, Picts, and Latins, each in its own peculiar dialect cultivating
the sublime study of Divine truth. The Latin tongue is, by the study of the
Scriptures, become common to all the rest. At first this island had no other

272 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

inhabitants but the Britons, from whom it derived its name, and who, coming
over into Britain, as is reported, from Armorica, possessed themselves of the
southern parts thereof. When they, beginning at the south, had made them-
selves masters of the greatest part of the island, it happened, that the nation
of the Picts, from Scythia, as is reported, putting to sea, in a few long ships,
were driven by the winds beyond the shores of Britain, and arrived on
the northern coasts of Ireland, where, finding the nation of the Scots, they
begged to be allowed to settle among them, but could not succeed in obtain-
ing their request. Ireland is the greatest island next to Britain, and lies to
the west of it ; but as it is shorter than Britain to the north, so, on the other
hand, it runs out far beyond it to the south, opposite to the northern parts
of Spain, though a spacious sea lies between them. The Picts, as has been
said, arriving in this island by sea, desired to have a place granted them in
which they might settle. The Scots answered that the island could not
contain them both ; but " We can give you good advice," said they, " what
to do ; we know there is another island, not far from ours, to the eastward,
which we often see at a distance, when the days are clear. If you will go
thither, you will obtain settlements ; or, if they should oppose you, you
shall have our assistance." The Picts, accordingly, sailing over into
Britain, began to inhabit the northern parts thereof, for the Britons were
possessed of the southern. Now the Picts had no wives, and asked them of
the Scots ; who would not consent to grant them upon any other terms,
than that when any difficulty should arise, they should choose a king from
the female royal race rather than from the male : which custom, as is well
known, has been observed among the Picts to this day. In process of time,
Britain, besides the Britons and Picts, received a third nation, the Scots,
who, migrating from Ireland under their leader, Reuda, either by fair
means, or by force of arms, secured to themselves those settlements among
the Picts which they still possess. From the name of their commander,
they are to this day called Dalreudins ; for, in their language, Dal signifies
a part. Ireland, in breadth, and for wholesomeness and serenity of climate,
far surpasses Britain. . . . It is properly the country of the Scots, who
migrating from thence, as has been said, added a third nation in Britain to
the Britons and the Picts. There is a very large gulf of the sea which
formerly divided the nation of the Picts from the Britons ; which gulf [the
Firth of Clyde] runs from the west very far into the land, where, to this day,
stands the strong city of the Britons, called Alcluith. The Scots arriving on
the north side of this bay, settled themselves there.

Chapter XI. — In the year 407, Honorius, the younger son of Theodosius,
and the forty-fourth from Augustus, being emperor, two years before the in-
vasion of Rome by Alaric, king of the Goths, when the nations of the Alani,
Suevi, Vandals, and many others with them, having defeated the Franks and
passed the Rhine, ravaged all Gaul, Gratianus Municeps was set up as
tyrant and killed. In his place, Constantine, one of the meanest soldiers,
only for his name's sake, and without any worth to recommend him, was
chosen emperor. As soon as he had taken upon him the command, he
passed over into France, where being often imposed upon by the barbarians
with faithless treaties, he caused much injury to the Commonwealth.
Whereupon Count Constantius, by the command of Honorius, marching
into Gaul with an army, besieged him in the city of Aries, and put him to
death. His son Constans, whom of a monk he had created Caesar, was also
put to death by his own Count Gerontius, at Vienne.

Rome was taken by the Goths, in the year from its foundation, 1164.

The Angles 273

Then the Romans ceased to rule in Britain, almost 470 years after Caius
Julius Caesar entered the island. They resided within the rampart, which,
as we have mentioned, Severus made across the island, on the south side of
it, as the cities, temples, bridges, and paved roads there made, testify to this
day ; but they had a right of dominion over the farther parts of Britain, as
also over the islands that are beyond Britain.

Chapter XII. — From that time, the south part of Britain, destitute of
armed soldiers, of martial stores, and of all its active youth, which had been
led away by the rashness of the tyrants, never to return, was wholly exposed
to rapine, as being totally ignorant of the use of weapons. Whereupon they
suffered many years under two very savage foreign nations, the Scots from
the west, and the Picts from the north. We call these foreign nations, not
on account of their being seated out of Britain, but because they were re-
mote from that part of it which was possessed by the Britons ; two inlets of
the sea lying between them, one of which runs in far and broad into the
land of Britain, from the Eastern Ocean, and the other from the Western,
though they do not reach so as to touch one another. The eastern has in
the midst of it the city Giudi. The western has on it, that is, on the right
hand thereof, the city Alcluith, which in their language signifies the Rock
Cluith [Clyde], for it is close by the river of that name.

On account of the irruption of these nations, the Britons sent messengers
to Rome with letters in mournful manner, praying for succours, and promis-
ing perpetual subjection, provided that the impending enemy should be
driven away. An armed legion was immediately sent them, which, arriving
in the island, and engaging the enemy, slew a great multitude of them,
drove the rest out of the territories of their allies, and having delivered
them from their cruel oppressors, advised them to build a wall between the
two seas across the island, that it might secure them, and keep off the
enemy ; and thus they returned home with great triumph. The islanders
raising the wall, as they had been directed, not of stone, as having no artist
capable of such a work, but of sods, made it of no use. However, they drew
it for many miles between the two bays or inlets of the seas, which we have
spoken of ; to the end that where the defence of the water was wanting,
they might use the rampart to defend their borders from the irruptions of
the enemies. Of which work there erected, that is, of a rampart of extra-
ordinary breadth and height, there are evident remains to be seen at this
day. It begins at about two miles' distance from the monastery of Aber-
curnig, on the west, at a place called in the Pictish language, Peanfahel,
but in the English tongue, Penneltun, and running to the westward, ends
near the city Alcluith.

But the former enemies, when they perceived that the Roman soldiers
were gone, immediately coming by sea, broke into the borders, trampled
and overran all places, and like men mowing ripe corn, bore down all before
them. Hereupon messengers are again sent to Rome, imploring aid, lest
their wretched country should be utterly extirpated, and the name of a
Roman province, so long renowned among them, overthrown by the
cruelties of barbarous foreigners, might become utterly contemptible. A
legion is accordingly sent again, and, arriving unexpectedly in autumn,
made great slaughter of the enemy, obliging all those that could escape, to
flee beyond the sea ; whereas before, they were wont yearly to carry off
their booty without any opposition. Then the Romans declared to the
Britons, that they could not for the future undertake such troublesome ex-
peditions for their sake, advising them rather to handle their weapons, like

274 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

men, and undertake themselves the charge of engaging their enemies, who
would not prove too powerful for them, unless they were deterred by
cowardice ; and, thinking that it might be some help to the allies, whom
they were forced to abandon, they built a strong stone wall from sea to sea,
in a straight line between the towns that had been there built for fear of the
enemy, and not far from the trench of Severus. This famous wall, which is
still to be seen, was built at the public and private expense, the Britons also
lending their assistance. It is eight feet in breadth, and twelve in height,
in a straight line from east to west, as is still visible to beholders. This be-
ing finished, they gave that dispirited people good advice, with patterns to
furnish them with arms. Besides, they built towers on the sea-coast to the
southward, at proper distances, where their ships were, because there also
the irruptions of the barbarians were apprehended, and so took leave of
their friends, never to return again.

After their departure, the Scots and the Picts, understanding that they
had declared they would come no more, speedily returned, and growing
more confident than they had been before, occupied all the northern and
farthest part of the island, as far as the wall. Hereupon a timorous guard
was placed upon the wall, where they pined away day and night in the ut-
most fear. On the other side, the enemy attacked them with hooked
weapons, by which the cowardly defendants were dragged from the wall,
and dashed against the ground. At last, the Britons, forsaking their cities
and wall, took to flight and were dispersed. The enemy pursued, and the
slaughter was greater than on any former occasion ; for the wretched
natives were torn in pieces by their enemies, as lambs are torn by wild
beasts. Thus, being expelled their dwellings and possessions, they saved
themselves from starvation by robbing and plundering one another, adding
to the calamities occasioned by foreigners, by their own domestic broils, till
the whole country was left destitute of food, except such as could be
procured in the chase.

Chapter XIII. — In the year of our Lord 423, Theodosius, the younger,
next to Honorius, being the forty-fifth from Augustus, governed the Roman
empire twenty-six years. In the eighth year of his reign, Palladius was sent
by Celestinus, the Roman pontiff, to the Scots that believed in Christ, to be
their first bishop. In the twenty-third year of his reign, ^Etius, a renowned
person, being also a patrician, discharged his third consulship with Sym-
machus for his colleague. To him the wretched remains of the Britons
sent a letter, which began thus :-— " To ^Etius, thrice Consul, the groans of
the Britons." And in the sequel of the letter they thus expressed their
calamities : — " The barbarians drive us to the sea ; the sea drives us back
to the barbarians : between them we are exposed to two sorts of
death ; we are either slain or drowned." Yet neither could all this procure
any assistance from him, as he was then engaged in most dangerous wars
with Bledla and Attila, kings of the Huns. And, though the year before
this, Bledla had been murdered by the treachery of his brother Attila, yet
Attila himself remained so intolerable an enemy to the Republic, that he
ravaged almost all Europe, invading and destroying cities and castles. At
the same time there was a famine at Constantinople, and shortly after, a
plague followed, and a great part of the walls of that city, with fifty-seven
towers, fell to the ground. Many cities also went to ruin, and the famine
and pestilential state of the air destroyed thousands of men and cattle.

Chapter XIV. — In the meantime, the aforesaid famine distressing the
Britons more and more, and leaving to posterity lasting memorials of its

The Angles 275

mischievous effects, obliged many of them to submit themselves to the
depredators ; though others still held out, confiding in the Divine assistance,
when none was to be had from men. These continually made excursions
from the mountains, caves, and woods, and, at length, began to inflict
severe losses on their enemies, who had been for so many years plundering
the country. The Irish robbers thereupon returned home, in order to come
again soon after. The Picts, both then and afterwards, remained quiet in
the farthest part of the island, save that sometimes they would do some
mischief, and carry off booty from the Britons.

When, however, the ravages of the enemy at length ceased, the island
began to abound with such plenty of grain as had never been known in any
age before ; with plenty, luxury increased, and this was immediately attended
with all sorts of crimes ; in particular, cruelty, hatred of truth, and love of
falsehood ; insomuch, that if any one among them happened to be milder
than the rest, and inclined to truth, all the rest abhorred and persecuted him,
as if he had been the enemy of his country. Nor were the laity only guilty
of these things, but even our Lord's own flock, and his pastors also, addicting
themselves to drunkenness, animosity, litigiousness, contention, envy, and
other such like crimes, and casting off the light yoke of Christ. In the mean-
time, on a sudden, a severe plague fell upon that corrupt generation, which
soon destroyed such numbers of them, that the living were scarcely sufficient
to bury the dead : yet, those that survived, could not be withdrawn from the
spiritual death, which their sins had incurred, either by the death of their
friends, or the fear of their own. Whereupon, not long after, a more severe
vengeance, for their horrid wickedness, fell upon the sinful nation. They
consulted what was to be done, and where they should seek assistance to
prevent or repel the cruel and frequent incursions of the northern nations ;
and they all agreed with their king Vortigern to call over to their aid, from
the parts beyond the sea, the Saxon nation ; which, as the event still more
evidently showed, appears to have been done by the appointment of our Lord
himself, that evil might fall upon them for their wicked deeds.

Chapter XV. — In the year of our Lord 449, Martian being made em-
peror with Valentinian, and the forty-sixth from Augustus, ruled the empire
seven years. Then the nation of the Angles, or Saxons, being invited by the
aforesaid king, arrived in Britain with three long ships, and had a place
assigned them to reside in by the same king, in the eastern part of the island,
that they might thus appear to be fighting for their country, whilst their real
intentions were to enslave it. Accordingly they engaged with the enemy,
who were come from the north to give battle, and obtained the victory ;
which, being known at home in their own country, as also the fertility of the
country, and the cowardice of the Britons, a more considerable fleet was
quickly sent over, bringing a still greater number of men, which, being
added to the former, made up an invincible army. The new comers received
of the Britons a place to inhabit, upon condition that they should wage war
against their enemies for the peace and security of the country, whilst the
Britons agreed to furnish them with pay. Those who came over were of the
three most powerful nations of Germany — Saxons, Angles, and Jutes. From
the Jutes are descended the people of Kent, and of the Isle of Wight, and
those also in the province of the West-Saxons who are to this day called
Jutes, seated opposite to the Isle of Wight. From the Saxons, that is, the
country which is now called Old Saxony, came the East-Saxons, the South-
Saxons, and the West-Saxons. From the Angles, that is, the country which
is called Anglia, and which is said, from that time, to remain desert to this

276 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

day, between the provinces of the Jutes and the Saxons, are descended the
East-Angles, the Midland-Angles, Mercians, all the race of the Northum-
brians, that is, of those nations that dwell on the north side of the river
Humber, and the other nations of the English. The two first commanders
are said to have been Hengist and Horsa. Of whom Horsa, being after-
wards slain in battle by the Britons, was buried in the eastern part of Kent,
where a monument, bearing his name, is still in existence. They were the
sons of Victgilsus, whose father was Vecta, son of Woden ; from whose
stock the royal race of many provinces deduce their original. In a short
time, swarms of the aforesaid nations came over into the island, and they
began to increase so much, that they became terrible to the natives them-
selves who had invited them. Then, having on a sudden entered into league
with the Picts, whom they had by this time repelled by the force of their
arms, they began to turn their weapons against their confederates. At first,
they obliged them to furnish a greater quantity of provisions ; and, seeking
an occasion to quarrel, protested that, unless more plentiful supplies were
brought them, they would break the confederacy, and ravage all the island ;
nor were they backward in putting their threats into execution. In short,
the fire kindled by the hands of these pagans, proved God's just revenge for
the crimes of the people ; not unlike that which, being once lighted by the
Chaldeans, consumed the walls and city of Jerusalem. For the barbarous
conquerors acting here in the same manner, or rather the just Judge ordain-
ing that they should so act, they plundered all the neighboring cities and
country, spread the conflagration from the eastern to the western sea, with-
out any opposition, and covered almost every part of the devoted island.
Public as well as private structures were overturned ; the priests were every-
where slain before the altars ; the prelates and the people, without any respect
of persons, were destroyed with fire and sword ; nor was there any to bury
those who had been thus cruelly slaughtered. Some of the miserable re-
mainder, being taken in the mountains, were butchered in heaps. Others,
spent with hunger, came forth and submitted themselves to the enemy for
food, being destined to undergo perpetual servitude, if they were not killed
even upon the spot. Some, with sorrowful hearts, fled beyond the seas.
Others, continuing in their own country, led a miserable life among the
woods, rocks, and mountains, with scarcely enough food to support life, and
expecting every moment to be their last. 15

Chapter XVI. — When the victorious army, having destroyed and dis-
persed the natives, had returned home to their own settlements, the Britons
began by degrees to take heart, and gather strength, sallying out of the
lurking places where they had concealed themselves, and unanimously im-
ploring the Divine assistance, that they might not utterly be destroyed.
They had at that time for their leader, Ambrosius Aurelius, a modest man,
who alone, by chance, of the Roman nation had survived the storm, in which
his parents, who were of the royal race, had perished. Under him the
Britons revived, and offering battle to the victors, by the help of God, came
off victorious. From that day, sometimes the natives, and sometimes their
enemies, prevailed, till the year of the siege of Baddesdown-hill, when they
made no small slaughter of those invaders, about forty-four years after their
arrival in England. But of this hereafter. . . .

Chapter XXIII. — In the year of our Lord 582, Maurice, the fifty-fourth
from Augustus, ascended the throne, and reigned twenty-one years. In the
tenth year of his reign, Gregory, a man renowned for learning and behavior,
was promoted to the apostolical see of Rome, and presided over it thirteen

The Angles 277

years, six months and ten days. He, being moved by Divine inspiration, in
the fourteenth year of the same emperor, and about the one hundred and
fiftieth after the coming of the English into Britain, sent the servant of God,
Augustine, and with him several other monks, who feared the Lord, to
preach the word of God to the English nation. They having, in obedience
to the pope's commands, undertaken that work, were, on their journey,
seized with a sudden fear, and began to think of returning home, rather than
proceed to a barbarous, fierce, and unbelieving nation, to whose very language
they were strangers ; and this they unanimously agreed was the safest course.
In short, they sent back Augustine, who had been appointed to be conse-
crated bishop in case they were received by the English, that he might, by
humble entreaty, obtain of the holy Gregory, that they should not be com-
pelled to undertake so dangerous, toilsome, and uncertain a journey. The
pope, in reply, sent them a hortatory epistle, persuading them to proceed in the
work of the Divine word, and rely on the assistance of the Almighty. . . .
Chapter XXV. — Augustine, thus strengthened by the confirmation of
the blessed Father Gregory, returned to the work of the word of God, with
the servants of Christ, and arrived in Britain. The powerful Ethelbert was
at that time king of Kent ; he had extended his dominions as far as the great
river Humber, by which the Southern Saxons are divided from the Northern.
On the east of Kent is the large Isle of Thanet containing according to the
English way of reckoning, 600 families, divided from the other land by the
river Wantsum, which is about three furlongs over, and fordable only in two
places, for both ends of it run into the sea. In this island landed the
servant of our Lord, Augustine, and his companions, being, as is reported,
nearly forty men. They had, by order of the blessed Pope Gregory, taken
interpreters of the nation of the Franks, and sending to Ethelbert, signified
that they were come from Rome, and brought a joyful message, which most
undoubtedly assured to all that took advantage of it everlasting joys in
heaven, and a kingdom that would never end, with the living and true God.
The king having heard this, ordered them to stay in that island where they
had landed, and that they should be furnished with all necessaries, till he
should consider what to do with them. For he had before heard of the
Christian religion, having a Christian wife of the royal family of the Franks,
called Bertha ; whom he had received from her parents, upon condition that
she should be permitted to practise her religion with the Bishop Luidhard,
who was sent with her to preserve her faith. Some days after, the king came
into the island, and sitting in the open air, ordered Augustine and his
companions to be brought into his presence. For he had taken precaution
that they should not come to him in any house, lest, according to an ancient
superstition, if they practised any magical arts, they might impose upon him,
and so get the better of him. But they came furnished with Divine, not
with magic virtue, bearing a silver cross for their banner, and the image of
our Lord and Saviour painted on a board ; and singing the litany, they
offered up their prayers to the Lord for the eternal salvation both of them-
selves and of those to whom they were come. When he had sat down, pursu-
ant to the king's commands, and preached to him and his attendants there
present, the word of life, the king answered thus : — " Your words and
promises are very fair, but as they are new to us, and of uncertain import, I
cannot approve of them so far as to forsake that which I have so long
followed with the whole English nation. But because you are come from
far into my kingdom, and, as I conceive, are desirous to impart to us those
things which you believe to be true, and most beneficial, we will not molest

278 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

you, but give you favorable entertainment, and take care to supply you
with your necessary sustenance ; nor do we forbid you to preach and gain
as many as you can to your religion." Accordingly he permitted them to
reside in the city of Canterbury, which was the metropolis of all his domin-
ions, and, pursuant to his promise, besides allowing them sustenance, did
not refuse them liberty to preach. . . .

Chapter XXVI. — As soon as they entered the dwelling-place assigned
them, they began to imitate the course of life practised in the primitive
church ; applying themselves to frequent prayer, watching and fasting ;
preaching the word of life to as many as they could ; despising all worldly
things, as not belonging to them ; receiving only their necessary food from
those they taught ; living themselves in all respects conformably to what they
prescribed to others, and being always disposed to suffer any adversity, and
even to die for that truth which they preached. In short, several believed and
were baptized, admiring the simplicity of their innocent life, and the sweet-
ness of their heavenly doctrine. There was on the east side of the city, a
church dedicated to the honor of St. Martin, built whilst the Romans were
still in the island, wherein the queen, who, as has been said before, was a
Christian, used to pray. In this they first began to meet, to sing, to pray, to
say mass, to preach, and to baptize, till the king, being converted to the faith,
allowed them to preach openly, and build or repair churches in all places.

When he, among the rest, induced by the unspotted life of these holy
men, and their delightful promises, which, by many miracles, they proved to
be most certain, believed and was baptized, greater numbers began daily to
flock together to hear the word, and, forsaking their heathen rites, to asso-
ciate themselves, by believing, to the unity of the church of Christ. Their
conversion the king so far encouraged, as that he compelled none to em-
brace Christianity, but only showed more affection to the believers, as to his
fellow citizens in the heavenly kingdom. For he had learned from his in-
structors and leaders to salvation, that the service of Christ ought to be
voluntary, not by compulsion. Nor was it long before he gave his teachers
a settled residence in his metropolis of Canterbury, with such possessions of
different kinds as were necessary for their subsistence. 16 . . .

Chapter XXXIV. — At this time [603], Ethelfrid, a most worthy king, and
ambitious of glory, governed the kingdom of the Northumbrians, and rav-
aged the Britons more than all the great men of the English, insomuch that
he might be compared to Saul, once king of the Israelites, excepting only
this, that he was ignorant of the true religion. For he conquered more terri-
tories from the Britons, either making them tributary, or driving the inhabi-
tants clean out, and planting English in their places, than any other king or
tribune. 17 To him might justly be applied the saying of the patriarch bless-
ing his son in the person of Saul, " Benjamin shall ravin as a wolf ; in the
morning he shall devour the prey, and at night he shall divide the spoil."
Hereupon, ^Edan, king of the Scots that inhabit Britain, being concerned at
his success, came against him with an immense and mighty army, but was
beaten by an inferior force, and put to flight ; for almost all his army was
slain at a famous place, called Degsastan, that is, Degsastone. In which
battle also Theodbald, brother of Ethelfrid, was killed, with almost all the
forces he commanded. This war Ethelfrid put an end to in the year 603
after the incarnation of our Lord, the eleventh of his own reign, which
lasted twenty-four years, and the first year of the reign of Phocas, who then
governed the Roman empire. From that time, no king of the Scots durst
come into Britain to make war on the English to this day."

The Angles 279

In the province of the Northumbrians, where King Ceolwulf reigns, four
bishops now preside ; Wilfrid in the church of York, Ethelwald in that of
Lindisfarne, Acca in that of Hagulstad, Pechthelm in that which is called
the White House, which, from the increased number of believers, has lately
become an episcopal see, and has him for its first prelate. The Picts also at
this time are at peace with the English nation, and rejoice in being united
in peace and truth with the whole Catholic Church. The Scots that inhabit
Britain, satisfied with their own territories, meditate no hostilities against the
nation of the English. The Britons, though they, for the most part, through
innate hatred, are adverse to the English nation, and wrongfully, and from
wicked custom, oppose the appointed Easter of the whole Catholic Church ;
yet, from both the Divine and human power withstanding them, can in no
way prevail as they desire ; for though in part they are their own masters,
yet elsewhere they are also brought under subjection to the English. Such
being the peaceable and calm disposition of the times, many of the North-
umbrians, as well of the nobility as private persons, laying aside their weap-
ons, rather incline to dedicate both themselves and their children to the
tonsure and monastic vows, than to study martial discipline. What will be
the end hereof, the next age will show. This is for the present the state of
all Britain ; in the year since the coming of the English into Britain about
285, but in the 731st year of the incarnation of our Lord, in whose reign may
the earth ever rejoice ; may Britain exult in the profession of his faith ; and
may many islands be glad, and sing praises in honor of his holiness !

Book V., Chapter XXIV. — I have thought fit briefly to sum up those
things which have been related more at large, according to the distinction of
times, for the better preserving them in memory.

In the sixtieth year before the incarnation of our Lord, Caius Julius
Caesar, first of the Romans, invaded Britain, and was victorious, yet could
not gain the kingdom.

In the year from the incarnation of our Lord, 46, Claudius, second of the
Romans, invading Britain, had a great part of the island surrendered to him,
and added the Orkney Islands to the Roman empire.

In the year from the incarnation of our Lord, 167, Eleutherius, being
made bishop at Rome, governed the Church most gloriously fifteen years.
Lucius, king of Britain, writing to him, requested to be made a Christian,
and succeeded in obtaining- his request.

In the year from the incarnation of our Lord 189, Severus, being made
emperor, reigned seventeen years ; he enclosed Britain with a trench from
sea to sea.

In the year 381, Maximus, being made emperor in Britain, sailed over
into Gaul, and slew Gratian.

In the year 409, Rome was crushed by the Goths, from which time Ro-
man emperors began to reign in Britain.

In the year 430, Palladius was sent to be the first bishop of the Scots that
believed in Christ, by Pope Celestine.

In the year 449, Martian being made emperor with Valentinian, reigned
seven years ; in whose time the English, being called by the Britons, came
into Britain.

In the year 538, there happened an eclipse of the sun, on the 16th of Feb-
ruary, from the first to the third hour.

In the year 540, an eclipse of the sun happened on the 20th of June and
the stars appeared during almost half an hour after the third hour of the day.

280 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

In the year 547, Ida began to reign ; from him the royal family of the
Northumbrians derives its original ; he reigned twelve years.

In the year 565, the priest, Columba, came out of Scotland, into Britain,
to instruct the Picts, and he built a monastery in the isle of Hii.

In the year 596, Pope Gregory sent Augustine with monks into Britain,
to preach the word of God to the English nation.

In the year 597, the aforesaid teachers arrived in Britain ; being about
the 150th year from the coming of the English into Britain.

In the year 601, Pope Gregory sent the pall into Britain, to Augustine,
who was already made bishop ; he sent also several ministers of the word,
among whom was Paulinus.

In the year 603, a battle was fought at Degsastane.

In the year 604, the East Saxons received the faith of Christ, under King
Sabert, and Bishop Mellitus.

In the year 605, Gregory died.

In the year 616, Ethelbert, king of Kent, died.

In the year 625, the venerable Paulinus was, by Archbishop Justus, or-
dained bishop of the Northumbrians.

In the year 626, Eanfleda, daughter to King Edwin, was baptized with
twelve others, on Whit-Saturday.

In the year 627, King Edwin was baptized, with his nation, at Easter.

In the year 633, King Edwin being killed, Paulinus returned to Kent.

In the year 640, Eadbald, king of Kent, died.

In the year 642, King Oswald was slain.

In the year 644, Paulinus, first bishop of York, but now of the city of
Rochester, departed to our Lord.

In the year 651, King Oswin was killed, and Bishop Aidan died.

In the year 653, the Midland Angles, under their prince, Penda, received
the mysteries of the faith.

In the year 655, Penda was slain, and the Mercians became Christians.

In the year 664, there happened an eclipse of the sun ; Earconbert, king
of Kent, died ; and Colman returned to the Scots ; a pestilence arose ;
Ceadda and Wilfrid were ordained bishops of the Northumbrians.

In the year 668, Theodore was ordained bishop.

In the year 670, Oswy, king of the Northumbrians, died.

In the year 673, Egbert, king of Kent, died, and a synod was held at
Hertford, in the presence of King Egfrid, Archbishop Theodore presiding :
the synod did much good, and its decrees are contained in ten chapters.

In the year 675, Wulfhere, king of the Mercians, dying, when he had
reigned seventeen years, left the crown to his brother Ethelred.

In the year 676, Ethelred ravaged Kent.

In the year 678, a comet appeared ; Bishop Wilfrid was driven from his
see by King Egfrid ; and Bosa, Eata, and Eadhed were consecrated bishops
in his stead.

In the year 679, Elfwine was killed.

In the year 680, a synod was held in the field called Hethfeld, concern-
ing the Christian faith, Archbishop Theodore presiding ; John, the Roman
abbot, was also present. The same year also the Abbess Hilda died at
Streaneshalch.

In the year 685, Egfrid, king of the Northumbrians, was slain.

The same year, Lothere, king of Kent, died.

In the year 688, Caedwalla, king of the West Saxons, went to Rome from
Britain.

The Angles 281

In the year 690, Archbishop Theodore died.

In the year 697, Queen Ostritha was murdered by her own people, that
is, the nobility of the Mercians.

In the year 698, Berthred, the royal commander of the Northumbrians,
was slain by the Picts.

In the year 704, Ethelred became a monk, after he had reigned thirty
years over the nation of the Mercians, and gave up the kingdom to Ceolred.

In the year 705, Alfrid, king of the Northumbrians, died. 19

In the year 709, Ceolred, king of the Mercians, having reigned six years,
went to Rome.

In the year 711, Earl Bertfrid fought with the Picts.

In the year 716, Osred, king of the Northumbrians, was killed ; and
Ceolred, king of the Mercians, died ; and Egbert, the man of God, brought
the monks of Hii to observe the Catholic Easter and ecclesiastical tonsure.

In the year 725, Withred, king of Kent, died.

In the year 729, comets appeared ; the holy Egbert departed ; and Osric
died.

In the year 731, Archbishop Bertwald died.

The same year Tatwine was consecrated ninth archbishop of Canterbury,
in the fifteenth year of Ethelbald, king of Kent.

( What follows appears to be by another hand. Bede died in the year /JS-J

In the year from the incarnation of our Lord 732, Egbert was made
bishop of York, in the room of Wilfrid ; Cunebert, bishop of Lindisfarians,
died.

a.d. 733, there happened an eclipse of the sun, on the 18th day before
the kalends of September, about the third hour of the day ; so that almost
all the orb of the sun seemed to be covered with a black and horrid shield.

In the year from the incarnation of our Lord 733, Archbishop Tatwine
having received the pall by apostolical authority, ordained Alwich and Sig-
frid bishops.

a.d. 734, the moon, on the 2d before the kalends of February, about the
time of cock-crowing, was, for about a whole hour, covered with a bloody
red, after which a blackness followed, and she regained her light.

In the year from the incarnation of our Lord 734, Bishop Tatwine died.

In the year from the incarnation of our Lord 735, Nothelm was ordained
archbishop ; and Bishop Egbert, having received the pall from the apostolic
see, was the first confirmed archbishop after Paulinus, and ordained Frith-
bert and Frithwald bishops ; and the priest Bede died.

a.d. 737, too much drought rendered the land unfruitful, and Ceolwulf,
voluntarily receiving the tonsure, left the kingdom to Eadbert.

a.d. 739, Ethelard, king of the West Saxons, died, as did Archbishop
Nothelm.

a.d. 740, Cuthbert was consecrated in Nothelm's stead. Ethelbald, king
of the Mercians, through impious fraud, wasted part of the Northumbrians,
their king Eadbert, with his army, being employed against the Picts. Bishop
Ethelwald died also, and Conwulf was consecrated in his stead. Amwin
and Eadbert were slain.

a.d. 741, first a great drought happened in the country. Charles, king of
the Franks, died ; and his sons, Caroloman and Pepin, reigned in his stead.

a.d. 745, Bishop Wilfrid and Ingwald, bishop of London, departed to our
Lord.

282 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

a.d. 747, the man of God, Herefrid, died.

a.d. 750, Cuthred, king of the West Saxons, rose up against King Ethel-
bald and Angus ; Theneorus and Eanred died ; Eadbert added the plain
of Kyle and other places to his dominions. 30

a.d. 756, in the fifth year of King Eadbert, on the ides of January, there
happened an eclipse of the sun ; afterwards, the same year and month, on the
9th before the kalends of February the moon suffered an eclipse, being most
horridly black.

a.d. 756, Boniface, called also Winfrid, bishop of the Franks, received
the crown of martyrdom, with fifty-three others ; and Redger was conse-
crated archbishop in his stead, by Pope Stephen.

a.d. 757, Ethelbald, king of the Mercians, was miserably murdered, in
the night, by his own tutors ; Beonred began his reign ; Cynewulf, king of
the West Saxons, died ; and the same year, Offa, having vanquished Beonred,
in a bloody manner, sought to gain the kingdom of the Mercians.

a.d. 758, Eadbert, king of the Northumbrians, receiving St. Peter's ton-
sure, for the love of God and to gain the heavenly country by violence, left
the kingdom to his son Oswulph.

a.d. 759, Oswulph was wickedly murdered by his own servants ; and Eth-
elwald, being chosen the same year by his people, entered upon the king-
dom ; in whose second year there happened a great tribulation of mortality,
and continued almost two years, several grievous distempers raging, but
more especially the dysentery.

a.d. 761, Angus, king of the Picts, died ; who, from the beginning to
the end of his reign, continued a bloody tyrannical butcher : Oswin was also
slain.

a.d. 765, King Alcred was advanced to the throne.

NOTES TO CHAPTER XVIII.

1 The Ulster Annals have in 1033 " Mac meic Boete meic Cinaedha do marbhadh la (slain;
by) Maelcolaim meic Cinaedha." It has usually been assumed that this Boete was the son of
Kenneth, son of Dubh, the predecessor of Maelcolm mac Kenneth, and thus represented
a rival branch of the house ; but the dates will not admit of this, and his father Kenneth
must be placed a generation farther back. He may either have been the same Kenneth
who was father of Malcolm, thus making Boete his brother, or the Kenneth, son of Mal-
colm who slew Constantin, son of Cuilein, in 997, and who is supposed by Fordun to be
his illegitimate brother. Fordun tells us that "the old custom of the succession of kings
lasted without a break until the time of Malcolm, son of Kenneth, when, for fear of the dis-
memberment of the kingdom, which might perhaps result therefrom, that king by a general
ordinance decreed as a law forever that henceforth each king after his death should be
succeeded in the government of the kingdom by whoever was at the time being the next
descendant — that is, a son or a daughter, a nephew or a niece, the nearest then living.
Failing in these, however, the next heir begotten of the royal or collateral stock should
possess the right of inheritance." — (Fordun, Ckron., Ed. 1872, b. iv., c. i.) Whether Mal-
colm actually issued a formal decree to this effect rests on the authority of Fordun alone,
which can hardly be accepted for the events of this early period. Malcolm seems to have
taken the readier mode of removing from life any competitor who should claim as a male
descendant. — Celtic Scotland, p. 399.

8 At his death, in 1033, there was no powerful adult collateral to seize on the succession.
He is said to have provided for this by putting to death the grandson of Kenneth IV. [III. J

The Angles 283,

The charge stands on very faint evidence ; and were it not that it adds an item to the long
catalogue of royal crimes, the tenuity of the evidence might be regretted, since such a death
would help to clear up the tragic mysteries of the next reign. — Burton, History of Scotland,
vol. i., p. 343.

3 It appears from the chartulary of St. Andrews that Gruoch, Jilia Bodhe, was the wife,
of Macbeth, son of Finnloech, and reigned along with him, while Lulach, his successor, is
termed in one of the Latin lists nepos filii Boede. — Chronicles of the Picls and Scots, p. 147.

The foundation for Shakespeare's tragedy is the account given by Hector Boece, which
was copied into Holinshed' 's Chronicle and thence came to the hands of the poet. Boece's-
story is as follows :

' ' Nocht lang ef tir, hapnit ane uncouth and wonderful thing, be quhilk f ollowit sone,
ane gret alteration in the realme. Be aventure, Makbeth an Banquho wer passand to Fores,
quhair King Duncane hapnit to be for the time, and met be the gait thre wemen, clothit in
elrage and uncouth weid. Thay wer jugit, be the pepill, to be weird sisteris. The first of
thaim said to Makbeth, 4 Hale, Thane of Glammis ! ' the second said, ' Hale, Thane of
Cawder ! ' and the third said, ' Hale, King of Scotland ! ' Then said Banquho, ' Quhat
wemen be ye, sa unmerciful to me, and sa favorabil to my companyeon ? For ye gaif to him
nocht onlie landis and gret rentis, bot gret lordschippis and kingdomes ; and gevis me nocht.'
To this, answerit the first of thir weird sisteris, ' We schaw more felicite appering to the than/
to him ; for thoucht he happin to be ane king, his empire sail end unhappelie, and nane of
his blude sail eftir him succeid ; be contrar, thow sail nevir be king, bot of the sal cum mony
kingis, quhilkis, with lang progressioun, sail rejose the croun of Scotland.' Als sone as thir
wourdis wer said, thay suddanlie evanist out of sicht. This prophecy and divinatioun wes
haldin mony dayis in derision to Banquho and Makbeth. For sum time Banquho wald call
Makbeth, King of Scottis, for derision ; and he on the samin maner, wald call Banquho, the
fader of mony kingis. Yit, becaus al thingis succedit as thir wemen devinit, the pepill
traistit and jugit thame to be weird sisteris. Not lang after it hapnit that the Thane of
Cawder was disherist and forfaltit of his landis, for certane crimes of lese majeste ; and
his landis wer gevin be King Duncane to Makbeth. It hapnit in the nixt nicht, that
Banquho and Makbeth wer sportand togiddir at thair supper. Than said Banquho, ' Thow
hes gottin all that the first two weird sisteris hecht. Restis nocht bot the croun, quhilk wes
hecht be the third sister.' Makbeth, revolving all thingis as thay wer said be thir weird
sisteris, began to covat the cround ; and yit he concludit to abide quhil he saw the time ganand
thairto, fermelie believing that the third weird suld cum, as the first two did afore.

" In the mene time, King Duncane maid his son Malcolme prince of Cumbir, to signify
that he suld regne eftir him. Quhilk wes gret displeseir to Makbeth ; for it maid plane dero-
gatioun to the third weird, promittit afore to him be thir weird sisteris. Nochteles, he
thocht, gif Duncane wer slane, he had maist richt to the croun, becaus he wes nerest of
blude theirto, be tennour of the auld lawis maid eftir the deith of King Fergus, ' Quhen
young children wer unabil to govern the croun, the nerrest of thair blude sail regne.' Als,
the respons of thir weird sisteris put him in belief, that the third weird suld cum as weill as
the first two. Attour, his wife, impacient of lang tary, as all wemen ar, specially quhare
thay ar desirus of ony purpos, gaif him gret artation to persew the third weird, that scho micht
be ane quene ; called him, oft timis, febil cowart, and nocht desiris of honouris ; sen he durst
not assailye the thing with manheid and curage, quhilk is offerit to him be benivolence of
fortoun ; howbeit sindry o^heris hes assailyeit sic thingis afore, with maist terribil jeopardyis r
quhen thay had not sic sickernes to succeid in the end of thair laubouris as he had.

'* Makbeth, be persuasion of his wife, gaderit his freindis to ane counsall at Innernes,
quhare King Duncane happinit to be for the time. And becaus he fand sufficient opor-
tunite, be support of Banquho and otheris his freindis, he slew King Duncane, the VII. yeir
of his regne. His body was buryit in Elgin, and efter tane up and brocht to Colmekill,
quhare it remains yit, amang the sepulturis of uthir kingis ; fra our redemption MXLVI..

284 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

yeris." — Bellenden's Croniklis of Scotland, book xii., chap, iii., Edinburgh, 1822, translated
from Boece's History and Croniklis of Scotland.

4 " Machbet filius Finlach contulit per suffragiis orationum et Gruoch filia Bodhe rex et
regina Scotorum, Kyrkness Deo omnipotenti et Kaledeis, prefatse insulae Lochlevine cum
suis finibus et terminis.

"Cum omni libertate collata fuit villa de Kyrkenes Deo omnipotenti et Kaledeis, alique
omni munere et on ere et exaccione regis et filii regis, vice comitis et alicujus et sine refectione
pontis et sine exercitu et venatione, sed pietatis intuitu et orationum suffragiis fuit Deo omni
potenti collata. Cum summa veneratione et devotione Makbeth rex contulit Deo et Sancto
Servano de Lochlevyn et heremitis ibidem Deo servientibus Bolgyne filii Torfyny cum omni
libertate et sine onere exercitus regis et filii ejus, vel vicecomitis, et sine exactione alicujus,
sed caritatis intuitu et orationum suffragiis." — Chr. of St. Andrews, p. 114, 12.

5 A. D. 1045 Cath etir Albancho araenrian cur marbadh andsin Crinan Ab. Duincalland
ocus sochaighe maille fris. i. nae xx laech. — Annals of Tighernac.

6 Probably to obtain absolution for the murder of Duncan, as Marian us tells us that in
the year 1050 the king of Scotia, Macbethad, freely distributed silver to the poor at Rome.
According to the Orkneyinga Saga (Mr. Anderson's edition, p. 43), Thorfinn, earl of Orkney,
went to Rome in the same year, "and saw the Pope, from whom he obtained absolution
for all his sins."

There is a singular passage concerning Macbeth in Florence of Worcester, p. 626
" Anno 1050, Rex, Scotorum Macbethad " Romae argentum spargendo distribuit." Fordun
simply adds " Pauperibus " ; L. v., c. 9, because that word follows in the text, Ps. 112.
From the words of Fordun, Goodall draws this notable inference. "Machebeda Roman
profectus"; Index ad Fordun. Thus from Fordun, and his publisher, we learn, "that
Macbeth went to Rome, and there distributed ' alms to the poor ' " ; whereas the original in-
sinuated "that 'Macbeth bribed the court of Rome.'" — Hailes, Annals of Scotland, vol.
i., p. 4.

7 Siward was doubly connected with the house of Crinan, the abbot of Dunkeld, for his
wife's aunt, Aldgitha, half-sister of Earl Ealdred, was married to Maldred, son of Crinan,
and King Duncan himself married either the sister or the cousin of Earl Siward, by whom
he had a son, Malcolm. — Celtic Scotland, vol. i., p. 408.

8 In 1054 Siward, the valiant duke of the Northumbrians, by the command of King
Edward, with both an army of horse, and a powerful fleet, went into Scotland and fought a
battle with Macbeth, king of Scots, and many thousand of the Scots and all the Normans, of
whom we have above made mention, being killed, put him to flight, and constituted King
Malcolm, son of the king of the Cumbrians, as the king had commanded. In that battle,
however, his son and many of the English and Danes fell. — Florence of Worcester.

Under the year 1054 the chronicle contains two separate accounts of the expedition of
Earl Siward, in which he defeated Macbeth and returned with enormous booty. Such were
the only results, according to the contemporary chronicler, of an expedition which appears to
have been directed against Macbeth on account of the protection he had afforded to the
Norman favorites of the Confessor. Tighernac, the contemporary Irish annalist, alludes to
this defeat of Macbeth under the same year ; and four years later, in 1058, he notices an
abortive attempt of the Norwegians, which is also entered in the Saxon Chronicle under the
same date, placing the defeat and death of Macbeth, which raised Malcolm Ceanmore to the
throne, in the same year. In later chroniclers the events of both these years have been pur-
posely confounded, and Siward has been, for obvious reasons, represented as defeating and
killing Macbeth, and restoring Malcolm to his father's throne at the command of the
English king — all which, as he died in 1055, he must have risen from his grave (like Reg-
inald Hy Ivar) to effect. That the defeat of Macbeth in 1054 contributed eventually to the
success of Malcolm in 1058 is highly probable ; but the misrepresentations of the Anglo-
Norman writers cannot stand for a moment against the account of the contemporary and

The Angles 285

more impartial authorities. — E. William Robertson, Scotland under her Early Kings, vol.
ii., p. 400.

A new cause for action had now made itself felt. The flight of a body of Normans to
the Scottish court on Godwine's return from exile forced on the struggle. The power of
Macbeth had been doubled by his close alliance with the Orkney jarls, and his reception of
the Normans threatened danger to the English realm. It was " by the king's order " that
Siward marched over the border to fight Macbeth. The danger was soon dispelled. In 1054
a Northumbrian fleet appeared off the Scottish coast, and a Northumbrian army met Mac-
beth and his Orkney allies in a desperate battle. The English victory was complete ; the
Normans were cut to pieces, and Macbeth fled to his Norse allies, to perish after four years
of unceasing struggle with Duncan's son, Malcolm, whom Siward placed on the Scottish
throne. — Green, Conquest of England, ch., xi., § 8.

9 The Saxon Chronicle makes no mention of Malcolm in connection with this expedition ;
but Florence of Worcester adds to an account, apparently taken from the Saxon Chronicle,
that it was made jussu regis, that the forces on the one side were " Scoti et Normanni," on
the other " Angli et Dani," and that Siward " Malcolmum regis Cumbrorum filium ut rex
jusserat regem constituit." Macbeth, however, appears in the Irish Annals as Ri Alban till
1057, and Marianus states distinctly that he reigned till that year, which is conclusive as.
to Malcolm not having been made king of Scotland in 1054. It is remarkable, however, that
in this passage he is not called " filius regis Scottorum " but " filius regis Cumbrorum ;" and
Simeon seems not to have recognized Duncan as king of the Scots, for he makes Macbeth the
immediate successor of Malcolm, son of Kenneth, " Anno mxxxiiij Malcolm rex Scottorum
obiit cui Macbethad successit." The solution seems to be that he was established in 1054 as
king of Cumbria, and at this time Lothian seems to have been included in the territories under
the rule of the rex Cumbrorum. — Celtic Scotland, p. 410.

10 Marianus has in 1057 " Macfinlaeg occiditur in Augusto ; " and again, " Inde Macfin-
laeg regnavit annis 17 ad eandem missam Sanctae Mariae " (15th August). Tighernac under
1057, " Macbethadh mic Findlaich Airdri (sovereign of) Alban domarbad do (slain by)
Mselcolaim mic Dondcadha, to which the Ulster Annals add "i cath " (in battle). — Chron.
Picts and Scots, pp. 65, 78, 369.

' ' Mony Jnglishmen in lyke maner of hich kin and blude f olloweat him [Malcolm Canmore]
into Scotland, quhome the king of his liberalitie promouet til Dignities, because stoutlie thay
had stande with him in his defence against his ennimies of quhilkes war Calder, Lockhart,
Gordoun, Setoun, Lauder, Wawn, Meldroun, Schaw, Lermont, Libertoun, Straquhin, Rotray,
Dundas, Cockburne, Myrtom, Jnglis, Leslye, Cargill, Cuilra, Mar, Meinzies, Abbercrummie,
the chiefest : of thir mony nobile houses have tane the beginning. The name lykewyse mony
have receivet frome their fortitude and mony fra the land quhair thay duell.

" The same tyme was Waltir Fleanthie, his sone decoret with the honor of chief e Merchal,
because in Galloway and in the hilandes he dantounet had the rebellis ; of quhome cam the
familie of the Stuartis." — John Lesley, (1571) Historie of Scotland, vol., i. b. vi. Lesley's
account of the English origin of so many Scottish families is not based on any information
or record more authentic than that of Boece.

11 " Simeon of Durham too tells us that in the year 1061 ' Aldred, archbishop of York, went
to Rome with Earl Tostig and received the pall from Pope Nicholas. Meanwhile Malcolm,
king of Scots, furiously ravaged the earldom of his sworn brother Earl Tostig, and violated
the peace of St. Cuthbert in the island of Lindisfarne.'

" From this date may be traced the beginning of the long warfare which for so many
centuries desolated the borderland of England and Scotland. Malcolm, claiming in the name
of Edgar the right of rule over all Cumbria and part of Northumbria, overran all that country,
which brought him into contact with William Rufus. This led to the invasion of Scotland by
William, and ended in Malcolm doing homage to the English king for the territories of Lothian
and Cumbria." — Maxwell, Dumfries and Galloway, p. 45.

286 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

18 See English Chron., Anno 1067.

The connection of Malcolm with this family by marriage with his sister was a very
important one for him, and he now combined in his own person advantages which gave him a
claim to the obedience of each of the different races now united under his rule. In the male
line he represented the powerful lay abbots of Dunkeld, and inherited their influence over the
ecclesiastical foundations dependent upon that monastery. In the female, he possessed the
more important representation of the Scottish royal house who had ruled for a century and a
half over the kingdom of Scotland. His father Duncan had been recognized for twenty years
by the Welsh population of Cumbria and Strathclyde as their king, and by his mother he was
connected with the Danes of Northumbria and their powerful Earl Siward. His marriage with
Ingibiorg gave him a claim to the good will at least of the Norwegians, and the Anglic popu-
lation of Lothian and Northumbria would look upon his marriage with the daughter of the
./Etheling as giving him an additional right to their steadfast support. The northern province
of Moray alone, whose hereditary rulers were of the same family as Macbeth, would proba-
bly render but an unwilling submission to his authority, and his rule over them would be but
little more than nominal. — Celtic Scotland, vol. i., p. 415.

" Quhen Wilyeam of Norman die knew this, [the marriage of Margaret to Malcolm] he
commandet to pass out of Jngland all Edgar his freindes and of his kin ; of quhome sprang up
Lindsay, Vaus, Ramsay, Loual, Toures, Prestoun, Sandelandis, Bissatt, Foulis, Wardlaw,
Maxwell, and mony vthiris of grett nobilitie, that tyme cam first in Scotland. . . . With
Agatha [mother of Edgar and Margaret], lykewyse cam out of Wngre [Hungary] mony, as
Crychtoun, Fodringhame, Giffert, Manlis, Borthik, and vthiris ; amang quhon war Bartho-
lomew Leslie. . . . About this tyme lykwyse cam out of France ane innumerable multi-
tude of Nobles of quhome we have Freser, Sanschir, Montgomerie, Campbell, Brise.Betoun,
Tailyefer, Bothwell, and vthiris diueris." — Historieof Scotland, by John Lesley, vol. i., b. vi.
This account is probably without much foundation in fact. See p. 330, note 3.

13 See English Chronicle, Anno 1072.

14 The form in which the influence of the Conquest was first felt in Scotland, was by
a steady migration of the Saxon people northward. They found in Scotland people of their
•own race, and made a marked addition to the predominance of the Saxon or Teutonic element.
About the year 1068 there came among these emigrants a group whose flight from England,
and reception in the court of Malcolm, make a turning-point in history. Edgar, the .'Ethe-
ling, the heir of th» Saxon line of kings, came over, bringing with him his mother and two
sisters, and such a body of retainers as an exiled court might command. One of the sisters,
Margaret, was afterwards married to Malcolm ; and thus it behoved the king of Scotland,
whether from chivalrous sympathy or from self-interest, to be the champion of the Saxon
claims, and the Conqueror's enemy. — Burton, History of Scotland, vol. i., p. 373.

15 The caves of the Yorkshire moorlands preserve traces of the miserable fugitives who
fled to them for shelter. Such a cave opens on the side of a lonely ravine, known now as the
King's Scaur, high up in the moors beside Settle. In primeval ages it had been the haunt of
hyenas, who dragged thither the mammoths, the reindeer, the bisons, and the bears that
prowled in the neighboring glens. At a later time it became a home of savages, whose stone
adzes and flint knives and bone harpoons are still embedded in its floor. But these, too,
vanished in their turn, and this haunt of primitive man lay lonely and undisturbed till the
sword of the English invaders drove the Roman provincials for shelter to the moors. The

hurry of their flight may be gathered from the relics their cave-life has left behind it. There
was clearly little time to do more than to drive off the cattle, the swine, the goats, whose bones
lie scattered round the hearth fire at the mouth of the cave, where they served the wretched
fugitives for food. The women must have buckled hastily their brooches of bronze or parti-
colored enamel, the peculiar workmanship of Celtic Britain, and snatched up a few household
implements as they hurried away. The men, no doubt, girded on as hastily the swords whose
dainty sword-hilts of ivory and bronze still remain to tell the tale of their doom, and, hiding

The Angles 287

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 king-
doms. 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 : there-
fore, in those parts of Britain which the English won after their conversion, a real British ele-
ment 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 Bseda, " 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 ac-
cepting 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 ^Edilfrid, 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 dis-
tricts 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 Fame 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 yEdilfrid, 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 en-
couraged by the success of the neighboring kingdom of the Picts in maintaining their inde-
pendence 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

288 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

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 free-
dom, 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 pos-
session of the district of Galloway with its Pictish population, and Whithorn as their princi-
pal 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 Ti-
ghernac " 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 pur-
pose 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 work which passes under the name of the English Chronicle is a
continued narrative written at different times, and in the Anglo-
Saxon 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 contem-
porary 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 ap-
proaches 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 Alfred, 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 superin-
tended 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 waes 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."

289

290 The Scotch-Irish Families of America

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 Alfred.

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 re-
moval 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 chron-
icles, 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 ^Ethelstan into Scotland. The manuscript terminates
imperfectly in 1066, after describing most minutely the battle of Stanford-
bridge ; 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 be-
fore 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 English Chronicle 291

The dates not being regularly affixed to the last ten years, Wanley has in-
advertently 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 con-
sidered, however, of the least authority among the Cotton manuscripts, be-
cause the writer has taken greater liberties in abridging former chronicles,
and inserting translations of Latin documents in his own Normanized dia-
lect. Towards 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