Celtic Scotland: A History of Ancient Alban: Volume III. Land and People. by Skene William Forbes

Author:Skene, William Forbes [Skene, William Forbes]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Scottish History
Publisher: Grian Press
Published: 2014-09-23T16:00:00+00:00

Paisley Abbey: Section of the medieval sedilia (photographed 2010). Note: Robert II. died at Dundonald Castle and was buried at Scone. Robert III. died at Rothesay Castle and was interred at Paisley Abbey. So, we must assume that John, last Lord of the Isles, who died at Paisley Abbey (Skene writes monastery in the generic sense though abbey status was acquired in 1245) was subsequently interred with Robert II. at Scone. Marjory Bruce, mother of Robert II. and the wives of both Robert II. and Robert III. were also buried at Paisley Abbey. After the Battle of Renfrew, 1164, a close relationship existed between the Lord of the Isles, Paisley monastery or priory and its subsequent state as abbey. We should also mention that in a definitive work on the history of Paisley Abbey, J. Cameron Lees (1878) in Chap. VIII. highlights the ‘Prosperous Times of Alexander III. 1248-1286’.

Although several attempts were made after his death by the western chiefs to raise up his grandson Donald Dubh and his nephew Donald Gallda, the son of Celestine, as Lords of the Isles, this was the final termination of the dynasty of the Celtic Lords of the Isles, which practically ceased to exist in 1476 at his first forfeiture, and the Gaelic population, which had been kept together by the power and authority of their great chiefs, became now broken up.413

The line of the Celtic earls of Lennox had come to an end during the life of Alexander, earl of Ross, when Duncan, earl of Lennox, was executed in 1425, and the earldom passed into the hands of the Stewarts.

The fifteenth century thus saw the last of the great Celtic tribes broken up; but while this process of disintegration from external influence had thus overtaken the greater tribes or Mortuath one after another, their extinction as leading features in the Celtic tribal organisation did not disclose the lesser tribes or Tuaths in their entirety. They, too, had been undergoing a process of internal change similar to that which had affected the Irish tribes and led to the development of the septs or clans, gradually severed more and more from the parent tribe, till the bond of union between them became impaired, and all tradition of their earlier existence as members of a larger organisation became lost. But while the original tribe had ceased thus to exist in that part of the country which retained its Gaelic population, as an actual element in its social organisation, it left an evidence of its previous existence in the lesser districts into which the larger territories were divided, and which still remained as a geographical feature; where an officer bearing the name and some of the functions of the ancient Toisech, of the Tuath is still found in connection with some of them. This was the Toshachdoracht or office of Toschachdoir, which was considered equivalent to Coroner. It was rendered in Latin by capitalis legis, and signified in English, principal of law. Thus, in that part

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