The Chronicle of Huntingdon is a medieval chronicle of events in Scotland compiled at the Priory of Huntingdon in 1291. It is currently in London in the Treasury of His Majesty's Exchequer [1]
It is based in part upon the Chronicle of Melrose Abbey. [2] Huntingdon, despite being in Cambridgeshire in eastern England, had a Scottish connection because King David I of Scotland married Maud, Countess of Huntingdon, in 1113, becoming the Earl of Huntingdon. The title was inherited by his son Henry in 1136, so it is believed that the earlier part of this chronicle, prior to Malcolm Canmore, was derived from a Scottish source. [3]
In 1290, Edward I of England with little advance notice commanded English cathedrals and large monasteries, including Huntingdon, to compile historical data on relations between English and Scottish kings. [2] [4] In response, the chronicle was compiled by the canons in Huntingdon in the spring of 1291. [2]
The chronicle is a Latin list of Scottish kings, beginning with Kenneth mac Alpin and ending at the beginning of the reign of Alexander III in 1249. [2] The chronicle commences with a battle between the Picts and Alpín mac Echdach, king of the Scots, in 834; and a marginal note claims that the Scots had possessed the country for 456 years from Alpin, the addition of which figure to 834 suggests that the chronicle may have been begun in 1290. [3] [2]
Over time the manuscript deteriorated, with many words in the narrative of the reigns of Alpin and his son Kenneth MacAlpin becoming illegible, although the text of these lacunae can usually be supplied by referring to the Chronica Gentis Scotorum of John of Fordun, who used the chronicle as a source. [3]
Áed mac Cináeda was a son of Cináed mac Ailpín. He became king of the Picts in 877 when he succeeded his brother Constantín mac Cináeda. He was nicknamed Áed of the White Flowers, the wing-footed or the white-foot.
Causantín mac Cináeda was a king of the Picts. He is often known as Constantine I in reference to his place in modern lists of Scottish monarchs, but contemporary sources described Causantín only as a Pictish king. A son of Cináed mac Ailpín, he succeeded his uncle Domnall mac Ailpín as Pictish king following the latter's death on 13 April 862. It is likely that the reign of Causantín witnessed increased activity by Vikings, based in Ireland, Northumbria and northern Britain. He died fighting one such invasion.
Causantín mac Áeda was an early King of Scotland, known then by the Gaelic name Alba. The Kingdom of Alba, a name which first appears in Constantine's lifetime, was situated in what is now Northern Scotland.
Domnall mac Ailpín, anglicised sometimes as Donald MacAlpin and known in most modern regnal lists as Donald I, was King of the Picts from 858 to 862. He followed his brother Kenneth I to the Pictish throne.
Kenneth MacAlpin or Kenneth I was King of Dál Riada (841–850), and King of the Picts (848–858), of likely Gaelic origin. According to the traditional account, he inherited the throne of Dál Riada from his father Alpín mac Echdach, founder of the Alpínid dynasty. Kenneth I conquered the kingdom of the Picts in 843–850 and began a campaign to seize all of Scotland and assimilate the Picts, for which he was posthumously nicknamed An Ferbasach. He fought the Britons of the Kingdom of Strathclyde and the invading Vikings from Scandinavia. Forteviot became the capital of his kingdom and Kenneth relocated relics, including the Stone of Scone from an abandoned abbey on Iona, to his new domain.
The Picts were a group of peoples in what is now Scotland north of the Firth of Forth, in the Early Middle Ages. Where they lived and details of their culture can be gleaned from early medieval texts and Pictish stones. The name Picti appears in written records as an exonym from the late third century AD. They are assumed to have been descendants of the Caledonii and other northern Iron Age tribes. Their territory is referred to as "Pictland" by modern historians. Initially made up of several chiefdoms, it came to be dominated by the Pictish kingdom of Fortriu from the seventh century. During this Verturian hegemony, Picti was adopted as an endonym. This lasted around 160 years until the Pictish kingdom merged with that of Dál Riata to form the Kingdom of Alba, ruled by the House of Alpin. The concept of "Pictish kingship" continued for a few decades until it was abandoned during the reign of Caustantín mac Áeda.
Cináed mac Duib, anglicised as Kenneth III, and nicknamed An Donn, was King of Alba (Scotland) from 997 to 1005. He was the son of Dub. Many of the Scots sources refer to him as Giric son of Kenneth son of Dub, which is taken to be an error. An alternate explanation is that Kenneth had a son, Giric, who ruled jointly with his father.
Constantine, son of Cuilén, known in most modern regnal lists as Constantine III, was king of Alba (Scotland) from 995 to 997. He was the son of King Cuilén. John of Fordun calls him, in Latin, Constantinus Calvus, which translates to Constantine the Bald. Benjamin Hudson notes that insular authors from Ireland and Scotland typically identified rulers by sobriquets, noting for example the similarly named Eugenius Calvus, an 11th century King of Strathclyde.
Alpín mac Echdach was a supposed king of Dál Riata, an ancient kingdom that included parts of Ireland and Scotland.
Óengus mac Fergusa was king of the Picts from 820 until 834. In Scottish historiography, he is associated with the veneration of Saint Andrew, the patron saint of Scotland, although this has not been proven.
Giric mac Dúngail, in modern English his name is Gregory or Greg MacDougal and nicknamed Mac Rath, was a king of the Picts or the king of Alba. The Irish annals record nothing of Giric's reign, nor do Anglo-Saxon writings add anything, and the meagre information which survives is contradictory. Modern historians disagree as to whether Giric was the sole king or ruled jointly with Eochaid, on his ancestry, and if he should be considered a Pictish king or the first king of Alba.
MacAlpin's treason is a medieval legend which explains the replacement of the Pictish language by Gaelic in the 9th and 10th centuries.
The Chronicle of the Kings of Alba, or Scottish Chronicle, is a short written chronicle covering the period from the time of Kenneth MacAlpin until the reign of Kenneth II. W.F. Skene called it the Chronicle of the Kings of Scots, and some have called it the Older Scottish Chronicle, but Chronicle of the Kings of Alba is emerging as the standard scholarly name.
The Poppleton manuscript is the name given to the fourteenth-century codex probably compiled by Robert of Poppleton, a Carmelite friar who was the Prior of Hulne, near Alnwick. The manuscript contains numerous works, such as a map of the world, and works by Orosius, Geoffrey of Monmouth and Gerald of Wales. It is now in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.
Drest was king of the Picts from 845 to 848, a rival of Kenneth MacAlpin. According to the Pictish Chronicle, he was the son of Uurad.
Conall mac Taidg was a king of the Picts from 785 until 789. Very little is recorded of the king. He is mentioned twice by the Irish annals, the most reliable source for the history of Northern Britain in the years around 800. He also appears in later regnal lists.
The origins of the Kingdom of Alba pertain to the origins of the Kingdom of Alba, or the Gaelic Kingdom of Scotland, either as a mythological event or a historical process, during the Early Middle Ages.
The Chronica Gentis Scotorum or Chronicles of the Scottish People was the first substantial work of Scottish history. It was written by John of Fordun, a priest of the diocese of St. Andrews and chaplain of the church of Aberdeen. Before his death, he had finished the first five books down to the reign of David I (1124–53) and had arranged his remaining materials, the last of which was dated 1385.