and built the city which is called Trinovantum, now London. Thereafter he divided his kingdom among his three sons, to wit, to Locrinus, the eldest, he gave this part of Britain, which is now called England; to Albanactus, his second son, he gave that part then called Albion, now Scotland; and to Cambrus, his youngest, he gave that part thereof, then called Cambria, now named Wales; with a reservation to Locrinus, the eldest of the royal dynasty. Two years after the death of Brutus, a certain king of the Hunns, named Humber, arrived in Albany and killed Albanactus, the brother of Locrinus, which, when Locrinus, king of the Britons, had heard, he pursued Humber, who in his flight was drowned in a river, which from him is called Humber: and so Albany returned to Locrinus." (Hailes' Annals, Vol. III., pp. 259-260.) These long genealogies of Edward, having been communicated by the Pope's orders to the Scottish envoys still in Rome, they hastened to send them to Scotland to the Council, who caused answers to be drawn up and forwarded to their deputies at Rome, in which they allege that Scota, Pharaoh's daughter, came direct to Scotland with her son Erc, and that the old name of Albania was changed to Scotia from Scota. They also mention over and over again, one Erc, as the father of our Scottish kings, that he was son of Gathel and Scota, who was the first king at the settlement of the Scots in Britain, and, as giving his name with that of his father, Gathel, joined in one name Erc-gathel to the country in Britain (Argyle) which they first possessed. (Crit. Ess., pp. 714-5.) This high antiquity of the royal race of Scottish kings is further followed up in the famous letter of the Scottish nobility under King Robert the Bruce to Pope John XXII., of 6th August, 1320. There they tell the Pope that King Robert was the one hundred and thirteenth king of the Scots, when in reality he was only the fifty-third king from Fergus the son of Erc. There were two ways in which they made up this long pedigree-First, the Pictish kings, according to the best accounts, were sixty-two in number, and, by adding both together, make exactly one hundred and thirteen kings. Or, secondly, it may be that they took the fifty-five names or descents in the genealogical line from Simon Breac to Fergus the son of Erc, as in the genealogy of King William the Lyon. For fifty-five kings, and those added to the fifty-eight kings in the common account from Fergus son of Erc, down to Robert the Bruce, together make one hundred and thirteen, including King Robert. (Crit. Ess., 710-13.) We see that King Edward's pretences to high antiquity from Brutus, Locrinus, Albanactus, and Cambrensis, however fabulous, passed current in those days. The Scots, to be upsides with him, told Popes Boniface VIII. and John XXII. that they had a succession of kings long before the Incarnation. Those incredible accounts indicate that British history was yet in its infancy, undigested, and vouchers were advanced, as Father Innes says, at a venture in a necessary juncture to serve a turn. It required time to make it ripen, and the labours of posterior writers to digest it, in order to fix the date of the Scottish monarchy, the number of its kings, and their names. All this was the work of time, but the fabric was now begun. We shall see it wanted not hands, as occasion offered, to finish it piecemeal. (Crit. Ess., pp. 706-710.) For upwards of sixty years after the manifesto of the Scottish nobility to Pope John XXII., the history of Scotland remained in the chaotic state represented to that Pope. Then John Fordon laid the plan of a history of Scotland. About a century and a half later, Hector Boece brought that history into shape; and a century still later George Buchanan gave it the finishing touch. A short sketch of these learned men, and the part performed by each in propagating the fictitious history of the Scottish dynasty between Fergus I. and Fergus II., is given here. FORDON OR FORDOUN. In 1835, John of Fordon, a priest of the diocese of St. Andrews, compiled the history of the Scots in five books, from the beginning till the death of King David I., A.D. 1153. He also left some collections towards a continuation, all of which were published in 1722. (Crit. Ess., p. 201.) Fordon spared no labour to restore the history of his country, said to have been destroyed by Edward I., and for that end he travelled all over Scotland, also into England and Ireland, in search of materials, from which he framed a new system of a chronicle of Scotland in five books. (Ib. 204-5.) The second of these books contains the Scottish history, from the setting up of the monarchy by Fergus the son of Ferchard, anno 330 B.C., which continued for 733 years, till another famous era, to wit, the restoration of the Scottish monarchy in Britain, A.D. 403, by King Fergus II., son of Erc, after that kingdom had been ruined by Maximus, the Usurper. (Ib. 208.) Fordon was the first we know of who fixed the epoch of the monarchy of Scotland to the year 330 before the Incarnation. He was also the first who raised to the dignity of the first monarch of the Scots in Britain, Fergus or Forgo son of Feredac, whose name had till then lain confusedly among the other names of the old genealogy of King William the Lyon without any mark or distinction, or having ever been taken notice of till Fordon added to his name, in the two copies he gives of the genealogy, the quality of first King of Albany. (Crit. Ess., pp. 736-7.) From Fergus I. to Fergus II., during the space of seven hundred years, Fordon says there reigned forty-five kings over the Scots in Britain of the same nation and kindred, but he tells us neither the lives, actions, nor the times of their reigns, nor even the names of the forty-five kings. He only names as kings, Reuther, and Eugenius an uncle of Erc, the father of Fergus II., and he ingenuously owns that for the present he could say nothing distinctly of their reigns, because he had not found any full account of them. (Crit. Ess., pp. 211-2.) Yet with all his simplicity, he does not scruple to invent vouchers to prove the authenticity of the reign of Fergus, the son of Feredac, the first king of this fictitious dynasty. His first voucher is in these four Latin lines Albion in terris rex primus germine Scotus Which may be freely translated Three hundred and thirty years Before the Christian era, Fergus the son of Ferchard Bore in the van of his troops A red lion roaring On a tawny field. He was the first king of the Scottish race Who reigned in Albion. Hailes says, Fordon does not tell whence he had these verses, whether from any former writer, new or old. Yet, the author of them, be he who he will, must have been little skilled if he intended that they should pass as ancient. "Before the days of William the Lyon, 1166-1214, none of the Scottish kings assumed a coat armorial. The lion rampant first appears on his seal. It is probable from this circumstance he received the appellation of The Lion." (Vol. I., pp. 156-7.) His second voucher is a legend of Saint Congal, an Irish saint, which relates that Fergus, son of Ferchart, brought with Scotland, and was Father Innes says, him the famous chair from Ireland to crowned on it the first King of the Scots. "I have found at last the life of this Saint Congal. It was published by F. Fleming among the works of Saint Colomban. But there is not a word of Fergus the son of Ferchart, in it, or anything relating to Fordon's narration." (Crit. Ess., pp. 741-3.) The last charge against Fordon is his guilt in interpolating dates. According to him Fergus II. began to reign A.D. 403, and died 419, and that King Aiden, his grandchild, died in 605: so there would be only three generations to take up nearly two centuries. It would seem that he was aware of this difficulty, and therefore to obviate it, or rather to hinder its being taken notice of, care is taken to intermix with the real kings in the interval betwixt Fergus and Aidan the names of four supernumerary kings, viz.. Eugenius, Constantin, Ethodius, and Kinatill, of all of whom there is no mention in the more ancient catalogues of our kings; and to three of them he has given long reigns, to help him to spin out the two centuries." (Crit. Ess., pp. 691-2.) It is quite evident from all the ancient abstracts of our chronicles written before the year 1291, that the reign of King Fergus II. can be placed no higher than the year 500, for the three ancient catalogues of our kings, to wit, the Chronica Scottorum, the Register of St. Andrews, the Chronicle of the Latin Verse, and the Chronicles of Winton and Gray, bear unanimously that (1) Fergus, son of Erc, reigned three years; (2) Domangart, son of Fergus, five years; (3) Congal, son of Domangart, twenty-four years; (4) Gauran, son of Domangart, twenty-two years; (5) Conal, son of Congal, fourteen years; (6) Aidan, son of Gauran, thirty-four years, and died in 605. Now counting up the years of these six kings they amount to one hundred and two years, which being deducted from 605, the fixed epoch of the death of King Aidan (on which all parties, с |