THE IRISH DESCENT OF KING- GEORGE.
THE king is, by the derivation of his name, " the son," or special representative, " of the race " (cyn-ing, or crushed together into cyng ; -ing marking the " patronymic " in Old English). He should thus be " of kin " to those over whom he rules—though some nations, through conquest or by choice, have had kings who were sons by adoption only, like William the Conqueror and like Bernadotte in Sweden. But throughout the greater part by far of these islands our kings share the race of its inhabitants wherever they go, this fact being known to all those who are tolerably well-informed. For the Englishman, the king is descended not only from the Edwards and the Norman kings but from Alfred the Great and from Egbert, by more links than one, for the wife of William the Conqueror was descended from a daughter of Alfred the Great who had married a Count of Flanders, so that Henry I. was already a descendant of the old English line, and not first his daughter Matilda, through her mother Eadgyth or Matilda, daughter of St. Margaret who was granddaughter of Edmund Ironside. St. Margaret was wife of Malcolm Canmore, so that in this way King George is descended from the kings of Scotland ; but his descent from these through James I. is even better known, and Queen Victoria took a special interest in her Stuart ancestry. That Henry Tudor—the father of Margaret who married James IV. of Scotland— was of Welsh origin is not an obscure piece of historical knowledge ; he was descended from the princes of South Wales, at all events, even if the further claims for him are doubtful or unfounded. And as regards the Channel Islands, King George (as we were reminded recently) represents the Dukes of Normandy, his ancestors. Ireland appears to be the exception in the British Isles, as having a foreigner for its king. This is really not the case at all, and the truth might have been reached with at least a near approach to certainty from facts which are fairly well known. For James I. of England was " King of Scots "—the similar title of his mother is even more familiar. Now this title goes back to very early times, when the Scots are still dis- ting,uished from the Picts—as in the Winchester or Canter- bury Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (under the year 597), this Part having almost certainly been written in King Alfred's time--and much further back still ; in Bede's history, whether that is read in the oriainal, or in the Old English version, or in a modern translation, " Scot," " Scottish " quite obviously mean Irish and nothing else. Plainly it was this " Scottish " royal line which absorbed the Picts, or it would not have given its name to the whole dominion; and these " Scots were Irishmen, living in a part of what was once called " Alba," and were presumably governed by Irishmen.
The connexion between the islands and the Highlands of South-Western Scotland and Ireland was peculiarly easy, as anyone who passes through the strait between them must realize ; it is only twelve or thirteen miles across. Sometimes traits of character like those which one meets in Ireland are very apparent in those who live in this part of Scotland, whatever divergences have arisen from their respective history and circumstances and from difference in religion, though as ressrds a part of these Highlands and islands this last difference does not exist.
To come to more definite proofs, besides the similarity of the languages as written, those who speak Gaelic in Scotland and the speakers of Erse or Irish (especially that of the North of Ireland) are still mutually intelligible. There is a very curious funeral custom common to parts of both countries. In Lochabsr, when a coffin is being carried to a churchyard (often some considerable distance), it is thought right, if it is set down on the way, to make a cairn on the spot ; thus, close to the Roy—just opposite a bridge leading, from the road which runs along the river valley, to a public-house of old standing, now a hotel— there is quite a group of these cairns. The same custom is found, it is said, in a district of the North-West of Ireland, and certainly prevails, often much elaborated, on the Aran Islands, where at the side of a road leading to a churchyard a number of these memorials are to be seen, varying from a rough cairn made of a few long stones piled against each other to an erection roughly archi- tectural, with an inscribed slab and with a cross surmounting it. Until a fairly recent date the identity of the people on each side of the strait was commonly recognized. In 1542 (or 1543) John Elder, Clerk, writing to Henry VIII., speaks of " the valiaunt Yrishe lords of Scotland, other wayes called the *Reddshankes " (by those who did not themselves wear kilts) ; and says, further on : " Your noble Grace haithe many good hartes emonges the forsaide Yrische Lordes of Scotland, bicaus they vnder- stand and heire how mercifully and how liberally (as I have said) your Highnes hath orderide the Lordes of Ireland." In 1703 Martin writes : " The Natives speak the Irish Tongue more perfectly here [in South Uist] than in most of the other islands."
The facts mentioned above would by themselves make the conclusion almost inevitable that the Stuarts, from whom, as we know, the King draws his hereditary right to the crown of Scotland, derived their right to it from a family which was, in its origin, Irish. However, there is no need to confine ourselves to circumstantial evidence when records are available. Whether there had been an earlier immigration is disputed, but at all events about A.D. 500 a certain part of the royal family of Dalriada (part of County Antrim) passed over with a considerable band of followers into Cantyre and Knapdale, and founded another Dalriada in " Alba." From Loans Mor (or from his descendants) the district of Lorn was named ; but it is from Fergus Mor, his brother, that the Kings of Scots have mostly come. Dunadd, on the hills just north of the Crinan Canal, seems to have been a principal fortress of the Irish colony—the humble predecessor of Edinburgh Castle and of Windsor Castle or of the Tower of London ; it was besieged in A.D. 683, and taken by the Picts in 736 ; it was a dry-built stone fort, not unlike some of the many in Ireland. As to the further connexions of the royal family of Dalriada, the " Four Masters," having mentioned "Conaire, King of Ireland," under the year A.D. 158, under the year 165 speak of " Cairbre Riedel " (as one of his three sons), " from whom are the Dalriada. Saraid, daughter of Conn of the Hundred Battles, was the mother of these sons of Conaire." Conn is recorded as King of Ireland in A.D. 123. And the son of Fergus, Domhangart, Lord of Dalriada, married a descendant of Eochaidh Muighmheadhoin, king of Ireland from 358 to 365 (from another son of Eochaidh, Niall of the Nine Hostages, most of the later Irish kings were descended). The son of Domhangart was Gabhran, who was beaten and apparently slain by the Picts ; he was succeeded not by a son but by a nephew, Conall, in whose time there came to " Alba," afterwards Scotland, St. Columb or Columcille (cille = " of the church ")—there is no need to latinize his name unless one is quoting or referring to a Latin life of him, any more than is done in the dedication of Derry Cathedral (Derry was one of his principal religious foundations) or in the town that bears his name in Cornwall. This saint was a person of great hereditary position ; on the father's side, he was descended from Niall of the Nine Hostages (and quite eligible for the kingship of Ireland) and his grandmother was a daughter of Loam - his mother was descended from a King of Ireland. This great statesman and missionary is in two ways a (now somewhat distant) relation of King George. When " he sailed from the land of the Scots (Scotia) to Britain wishing to go abroad for Christ," that is, as a missionary, " to preach the word of God to the provinces of the Northern Picts," he was certainly not going among strangers, to begin with. He settled on the island, admirably placed for his purpose, whose real name is I or Hy (or Ia, Io), or I Coluimcille (in Shakespeare, Colmekill), " the isle Erische callit I-colm-kill, that is Sanct Colm's ile," as Archdeacon Monro wrote in 1594, and it is still so called in Gaelic or " Erische," though not quite with that spelling ; it has, solely through a rather ancient misreading of MSS., acquired the name of " Iona." Conall died in 574 ; and St. Columb, who had wished to have a certain son of Gabhran made king, was, according to the account which almost certainly comes from the saint himself, compelled by an angel to ordain as king " another son of Gabhran, Aedhan ; and, at Hy, " laying his hand on his head, ordained and blessed him." The choice was just what the kingdom then required. Hitherto it had been a subject colony of Ireland and its ruler a " lord." Aedhan declined to pay tribute any more to the king of Ireland, and assumed the position of a king ; he had been " ordained as king " and ordained by St. Columb, who, though only a presbyter, in the abnormal view of the Irish Church of the time as to the relative position of Abbots and Bishops, held the power and prestige of an Archbishop, at least, in Dalriada, besides his power and influence, through his monasteries and otherwise, in Ireland. Early in Aedhan's reign, probably in 574, there was " the great convention of Druim-Ceta, at which were Coluna-Cille and Aedh, son of Ainmire," the king of Ireland ; Ainmire was St. Columb's first cousin. Of course Aedhan himself was present. There (the meeting-place is close to Limavady) this matter, among others, was amicably settled, and Dalriada was ,given practical independence. Aedhan's long and successful reign was not without a " set-back " ; in his attempt, at the head of a Celtic confederacy, to stop or to recover the conquests made by Aethelfrith, king of Northumbria, from the Strathclyde Welsh, he was beaten at Degsastan, probably in 603, with the loss of the greater part of " an immense and brave army," though he himself escaped. Success would have given him a still greater position, but, as Reeves says, " under him it was that the real founda- tion of the Scottish monarchy was laid "—with St. Columb's help. Its boundaries were gradually much extended. The kingship did not remain continuously in Aedhan's family—there were several kings from the house of Loam —but it returned to Aedhan's descendants, to stay there.
There is no need to follow in detail the history of the kingdom. But about the middle of the ninth century, Cionaedh or Kenneth MacAlpin (a descendant of Aedhan) married a daughter of the king of the Picts and annexed Pictland, thus becoming king of Alba—of Scotland north of the Clyde and Forth ; though his successors are for some time described by that title or even as " Kings of the Picts," the title of King of Scots " established itself. The kingdom of Strathclyde became first a vassal state to them and was then absorbed, and Lothian, conquered by Malcolm II., King of Scots, in 1018, was. handed over to him by Cnut in (or about) 1027, in return for homage. At the Norman Conquest, Edgar the Aetheling, grandson of Edmund Ironside, took refuge with (another) Malcolm, called Ceannmor or Canmore, with his two sisters ; one of these, Margaret, afterwards canonized, married the king (as we have seen) ; their daughter, usually called Matilda, married Henry I. ; and thus all the later kings of England, while through her mother they are descended from the Old English royal line, are, through her father, Malcolm, the descendants of Aedhan and Fergus and of kings of Ireland their ancestors. But the line also went on in Scotland ; the daughter of Robert Bruce married the hereditary High Steward (or " Stuart ") of Scotland, and thus James VI. of Scotland and I. of England was---not only through his English ancestry—descended from the same Irishmen. His daughter Elizabeth married Frederic, Elector Palatine, whose acceptance of the crown of Bohemia was the cause, or the occasion, of the Thirty Years' War ; her daughter, Sophia, married the Elector of Hanover, and was the mother of George I.
King George V. is also descended from the kings of Leinster. For Eva, daughter of Dermot, king of Leinster, married Richard, Earl of Pembroke (called " Strongbow "), and from two granddaughters of hers were descended respectively the mother of Robert Bruce and Elizabeth of York, wife of Henry VII., mother of Margaret, who married James IV. of Scotland. Margarets and Elizabeths have by their marriages been especially important in the history of the royal line.
Finally, attention may be drawn to two facts. With the object of conferring on Henry VIII. the title of king (instead of lord) of Ireland, " a parliament," says Dr. Joyce, " was assembled in Dublin on the 12th June, 1541; and in order to lend greater importance .to its decisions, a number of the leading Irish chiefs were induced to attend it. The act conferring the title of King of Ireland on Henry and his successors was passed through both houses rapidly, and with perfect unanimity." Parliaments were then not always free to speak their minds, but here the consent seems to have been genuine, since, whatever we may otherwise think of Henry, as a ruler of Ireland he was in general (as the same historian' says) conciliatory and successful ; " John Elder, Clerk," was not a mere flatterer.
Secondly, it may just be noticed that the Englishman who is hated with a perfect hatred in Ireland (not without reason, though a personal ubiquity not consistent with history is commonly attributed to him) was as great an enemy to the Royal Family of England as he was to the Irish.
[There is a table " to show the ancestry of King Edward VII.," a copy of which is in the Museum at Dublin. It is, as might be expected, correct, but it has no definite authorities appended, and the name of the compiler is, I am told, now• unknown, so that it cannot be cited as guaranteeing statements made. The authorities for those above (or the books by which this table has been checked throughout, and supplemented) are :- Reeves, Adamnan's Life of St. Columba, text, notes, and genea- logical tables ; documents in Collectanea de Rebus Albanicis ; Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland by Four Masters, ed. O'Donovan ; Annals of Ulster, ed. Hennessy ; Two of the Saxon Chronicles , Parallel, ed. Earle ; Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, ed. Plummer ; Dictionary of National Biography ; Oman, England before the Norman Conquest ; Joyce, A Concise History of Ireland, &c.]
ARTRITR C. CRAMPNEYS.
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