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hurt. In process of time he and his cousin Haco fell into various disagreements, and they resolved to meet and to endeavour to bring about a reconciliation. The Isle of Eglishay was to be the place of meeting. On the appointed day, Magnus repaired to the islet, and, faithful to the conditions that had been made, he brought with him only a few peaceable friends. Soon after Haco arrived, accompanied by armed crews. With calm resignation Magnus foresaw and prepared to meet his fate, and after hours of prayer, the reception of the Holy Communion, and the humble confession of his sins, he forgave his cousin, and kneeling down, he said to the executioner, 'Stand before me, and strike with all your might; it beseems not a prince to be beheaded like a thief,' and as he signed himself with the cross, his head was severed from his body. A death under these circumstances, and a pure and holy life, at variance with the careers of his kinsmen, numbered Magnus amongst the northern saints. 'Pilgrimages were made to his shrine at Birsa, vows paid in his honour, prayers offered for his intercession, from all parts of the northern archipelago, from Scotland, from Sweden, from Denmark, from Norway; . the life of the saintly Earl of the Orkneys was woven into a saga in the Icelandic speech;'1 and in 1138 the great Romanesque cathedral of Kirkwall, the glory of the 'stormswept Orcades,' was erected by his sister's child, Earl Rognwald, in fulfilment of a vow, it is said, that should he recover his uncle's earldom from the son of Haco, he would rear such a church on the bleak island in honour of the saint as had never been seen in the north before.

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'Scottish Abbeys and Cathedrals,' Quarterly Review, vol. lxxxv. p. 123.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE FEUDAL SYSTEM.

'My good blade carves the casques of men,
My tough lance thrusteth sure,
My strength is as the strength of ten,
Because my heart is pure.

The shattering trumpet shrilleth high,
The hard brands shiver on the steel,
The splintered spear-shafts crack and fly,
The horse and rider reel :

They reel, they roll in clanging lists,
And when the tide of combat stands,
Perfume and flowers fall in showers,

That lightly rain from ladies' hands.'

TENNYSON.

THE kings who reigned in succession after Constantine II. were Malcolm I., Indulf, Duff, Culen, Kenneth II., Constantine III., Kenneth III., and Malcolm II. In the reign of Malcolm I., Edmund, King of England, made a temporary grant of Cumberland to the Scottish crown; in that of Indulf, part of Lothian (Lothian was till this time English territory in Northumbria), including Edinburgh (oppidum Eden), was acquired by Scotland, and Kenneth II. is supposed to have annexed the independent principality of the old Roman province of Cumbria or Strathclyde. This same Kenneth, who reigned from 971 to 995, is signalized in the Pictish

Chronicle as 'he who gave the great city of Brechin to the Lord;' and according to an old historian, the battle of Luncarty, whereat a great victory was gained by the Scottish monarch over the Norwegians, was fought in this reign. We have now seen the earliest notices of four Scottish sees-Galloway, Glasgow, St. Andrews, and Brechin. Malcolm II., who is called by the Irish annalists the Lord and Father of the West,' reigned from 1005 to 1034. He consolidated and permanently established his dominions, and by uniting the whole of Lothian to Scotland, the Tweed became the boundary of the kingdom. About the period of this annexation, the see of English Northumbria was removed from Chester-le-Street, whither the visits of the Danes had necessitated its transference from ancient Lindisfarne, more than a hundred years before, to Durham, and that portion of the Northumbrian diocese north of the Tweed gradually passed into the jurisdiction of the bishops of St. Andrews. We have here to remember St. Cadroë, a nobly born Scot, who lived in the tenth century. He founded a monastery in France, and devoted himself to labouring in the cause of the gospel on the Continent.

On the death of Malcolm II. in 1034, the direct male line of Kenneth MacAlpin became extinct. Malcolm's daughter, Bethoc, who had married Crinan, the lay-abbot of Dunkeld, had a son named Duncan, who succeeded his grandfather as King of the Picts and Scots. The 'gracious Duncan' married the sister of Siward, Earl of Northumberland, and had two sons, Malcolm, surnamed Canmore, or Great-head, and Donald, surnamed Bane, or White. In the year 1039, King Duncan was slain at Bothgowanan, near Elgin, by Macbeth, the Maormor of Ross. Macbeth's wife was Gruoch, the daughter of Boidhe, son of Kenneth, the immediate predecessor of Malcolm II. By a previous husband, Gruoch had a son named Lulach, and, according to the old

Scottish law of succession, Lulach had perhaps as good a claim to the crown as Duncan, son of Bethoc, and by some round-about reasoning Macbeth seems to have arrived at the conclusion that he had some sort of right to be king himself, if he could manage it. The reign of Macbeth and Gruoch is famous for good government and general prosperity. Wynton, an old Scottish poet, whom we shall sometimes quote, says that—

All his time was great plenty,

Abounding both on land and sea.
He was in justice right lawful,

And to his lieges all, awful.'

Macbeth was the only Scottish sovereign who visited Rome; he made a pilgrimage there in 1050, and distinguished himself by his almsdeeds. During his reign, Malcolm, the eldest son of Duncan, resided at the court of Edward the Confessor. In 1054, his uncle, Siward of Northumberland, led an army into Scotland in behalf of his nephew's claims to the crown. After a lengthy struggle the battle of Dunsinane was fought. Macbeth was finally slain at Lumphanan in Mar, in 1056, and in the following year his stepson, Lulach, fell at Essie, in Strathbogie. On the Feast of St. Mark 1057, King Malcolm Canmore began his long reign, and for many years the annals of Church and State are irradiated by the light which shone from a life full of grace and beauty. In the midst of the history of the fierce races whose congenial element was strife, it is inexpressible the refreshment that is afforded by coming to the history of one who lived only for God, and who was filled with the grace of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To the ancient period we are leaving behind various codes of written laws were once assigned, but the trustworthy historians of Scotland have proved that the antiquity of these

laws is not genuine. Our real knowledge of the state of society, and of the manners and customs of the period preceding Malcolm Canmore, is dim. The notices in Bede, the Irish and Welsh Annals, Adamnan's Life of St. Columba, the Northern Sagas, and the Pictish Chronicle, constitute the only sources of sound information. There are indeed innumerable tales and suppositions, which I have not alluded to, because it seemed best to adhere simply to that which was, and not to speculate on that which may have been. We are approaching an age when the clear light of authentic history will guide us into comparatively full details of 'a national life which is no more.' The reign of Canmore is the threshold of the middle ages, and that wherein is laid the very earliest foundations of the feudal system. It will be well to glance, although it must necessarily be very briefly, at this mighty Gothic fabric called Feudalism, which is so soon quietly but effectually to supersede the half-barbaric past, and while it left all the individuality of our very individual race unimpaired, was yet to give old Caledonia the same broad outlines of government and of manners and customs that obtained in other European states. Although the head and centre of the feudal state was the sovereign, and although all possessions and dignities flowed from him as the great original laird of all the land, his powers were circumscribed, and in this country he gradually became almost a nominal governor. As in the courts of other feudal kings, the great ministers of state surrounded his throne,-the Justiciars, the Chancellor, in whose custody was the king's seal, who was the most intimate councillor of the sovereign, and the witness to his solemn charters, letters, and proclamations, the Constable and the Marechal, commanders-in-chief of the army, the Seneschal or High Steward, and the Chamberlain, in whose hands were the management of the king's household, and of

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