The Makers of Scotland by Tim Clarkson

Author:Tim Clarkson [Clarkson, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781907909016
Publisher: Birlinn
Published: 2015-01-24T16:00:00+00:00

The Rise of the Picts

Ecgfrith inherited from his father not only the kingship of Bernicia but that of Deira too. With the resources of a unified Northumbria at his disposal, he had the capability to maintain the extensive hegemony established by Oswiu. His chief trouble in the early part of his reign came from Mercia where Penda’s sons were eager to shake off the dominion imposed upon their lands in 655. In the North, the Scots and Britons accepted Ecgfrith as overlord, recognising him as a worthy heir of mighty forebears. Their regular tribute payments to the Bernician royal coffers continued, renewed by oaths of submission to the new sovereign. In return, they received assurances that he would not plunder their lands. When he demanded the same homage from the Picts, he found them rather less compliant and sent an army to remind them of their obligations. At that time, the southern Pictish region of Fife probably lay under English control. It may have been conquered by Oswiu sometime after 655, becoming thereafter a Bernician province. Beyond its northern border, in the fertile river valleys of Earn and Tay, lay the heartlands of the Picts: Strathearn, Strathmore, Atholl and Moray. Around the time of Ecgfrith’s punitive raid, the Picts in one of these regions expelled Drust, an overking, and installed in his place an ambitious prince called Brude, son of Bili. The new monarch was a half-Pict whose father had ruled the Clyde Britons and whose half-brother Owain had destroyed Domnall Brecc at Strathcarron in 643. Brude’s ambitions may have included a determination to hurl the English settlers and tribute gatherers back across the Forth. If so, he had first to establish himself as a viable challenger to Ecgfrith by carving out a martial reputation of his own.

After gaining the overkingship in 672, Brude spent the next ten years imposing his authority on outlying districts. Rivals and rebels were besieged in their centres of power and forced to submit. Frontier lords were brought to heel by punitive raids on their strongholds at places such as Dunnottar on the Aberdeenshire coast, Dundurn on the western land-route to Argyll and perhaps Dunbeath in the northern province of Caithness. Nor were the offshore territories immune from Brude’s consolidation of a wide hegemony: the Picts of Orkney were attacked in 682, their kings thereafter acknowledging him as liege-lord.

There is no record of conflict between Brude and the Scots or Britons, both of whom were more than distracted by troubles of their own. Strife had broken out in Dál Riata after the slaying of Domangart, son of Domnall Brecc, in 673. Domangart’s death came at a time when his family’s hold on the regional overkingship was under threat from ambitious challengers in Lorn. A vigorous king called Ferchar Fota (‘the Tall’) had emerged among Cenél Loairn to compete with Cenél nGabráin rivals. Whatever remained of the latter’s grip on the overkingship was tenuously retained by Maelduin, a son of Conall Crandomna. Neither Maelduin nor Ferchar

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