In today’s column, I will show how Alt Clut developed to become Strathclyde, one of the lost ancient kingdoms of Scotland, and how Govan became the kingdom’s capital.
This is the latest column in my current series on the lost ancient kingdoms of Scotland. I have already written about Dalriada of the Scoti and Fortriu of the Picts. In the coming weeks, I will write about Galloway of the Gaels, the Norse kingdom that comprised Orkney, Shetland, the Hebrides, Caithness, part of the west coast, and the Isle of Man; and I will finish with Bernicia in the south-east of our country.
I remind you once again that I am dedicating this series to a great Scot and lover of our history, Alex Salmond.
The first thing to remember about Alt Clut is that it extended from Loch Lomond down into Cumbria and was peopled by tribes all speaking a Brythonic language. They were separate from the Scoti of Dalriada and Picts of Fortriu and were particularly opposed to the Angles and Saxons who came from the continent to occupy the lands on the east coast of the island of Great Britain. We’ll learn more about them when I write about Bernicia.
The excellent online resource, the Gazetteer for Scotland, is one of the few sources prepared to state the extent of Alt Clut as it became Strathclyde: “From the battle of Ardderyd (573) we find the Cumbrian British kingdom of Strathclyde comprising the present counties of Cumberland, Westmoreland, Dumfries, Ayr, Lanark, Peebles, Renfrew, and Dumbarton.”
Its borders were fluid, especially when many battles were fought to preserve Strathclyde’s territorial integrity. That there were many battles is beyond doubt, but who fought them and when is often a mystery because the history of Alt Clut/Strathclyde is lost in time.
I have frequently referred to the fact that in trying to get details of the history of our lost ancient kingdoms, there is a complete paucity of contemporary Scottish sources, and we have to rely on the annals of chroniclers in England, Ireland, and Wales, writing many decades, sometimes centuries, after events.
We can be fairly certain about the fact that Alt Clut became Christian from around 500 CE onwards. The process was underway even before Kentigern, otherwise known as Mungo, founded Glasgow as a Christian settlement on the Molendinar Burn in the late sixth century.
Often known as the Apostle to the Britons, as we saw last week, Kentigern had good relations with King Rhydderch Hael, and the missionary was basically given the run of the kingdom to build religious institutions and ensure the people fully embraced Christianity – that would have implications far into the future as Glasgow diocese would eventually encompass Strathclyde.
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Suffice to say that when Rhydderch died in 612, Kentigern was recognised as his kingdom’s bishop and he was certainly honoured as such and immediately proclaimed a saint upon his death in 614.
Rhydderch may or may not have been succeeded by his son Constantine, who is credited in legend as the founder of Govan, across the Clyde from Partick, where Rhydderch had a residence. All we have of Constantine is legend, but archaeological evidence of Christian occupation of the area has been found in Govan churchyard, dating back to around 500.
Having been personally converted in his youth by St Columba, Constantine is reputed to have given up his kingship to become a monk, and that sacrifice saw him acclaimed as a saint – Saint Constantine of Govan and Strathclyde is still included in the lists of saints of the Greek Orthodox Church. Unlike other kings, he appears not to have been a warrior at a time when war chiefs flourished – the various annals list many battles fought between Alt Clut, Dalriada, and Fortriu, as well as the numerous incursions by the Anglo-Saxons.
One source of the history of sixth and seventh-century Alt Clut is Welsh, in the shape of the extraordinary poem Y Goddodin.
It is thanks to that poem, one of the very few ostensibly contemporaneous sources about the peoples of what became Scotland and northern England, that we know of important battles.
It is generally accepted that Y Goddodin was written by the prince-bard Aneirin in the seventh century, though some stanzas appeared as late as the 11th century, and the oldest manuscript dates from 200 years later. It features the Gododdin tribe, known to the Romans as the Votadini, a Brythonic people who seem to have centred their territory on what is now Edinburgh.
Aneirin tells how 300, or it might have been 363, Gododdin warriors and allies from other tribes were gathered by Gododdin ruler Mynyddog Mwynfawr and prepared for a year – with some feasting – before heading south to confront the Anglo-Saxon armies of the kingdoms of Bernicia and Deira at the Battle of Cartraeth, most probably Catterick, around the year 600. The poem commemorates the loss of almost all the Gododdin force.
In among the accounts of the Gododdin is a stanza about the Battle of Strathcarron in 642, which has long baffled historians, not least because it stands alone and has nothing to do with the rest of the poem – some call it the Strathcarron Interpolation. The verse reads:
“I saw an array that came from Kintyrewho brought themselves as a sacrifice to a holocaust.I saw a second [array] who had come down from their settlement,who had been roused by the grandson of Neithon.I saw mighty men who came with dawn.And it was Domnall Brecc’s head that the ravens gnawed.”
According to Irish annals, Domnall Brecc was indeed killed at the Battle of Strathcarron while leading his army from Dalriada to try and take territory away from Alt Clut, then ruled by Eugein I, who was the grandson of Neithon as the poem states.
The biggest military problem Alt Clut faced was very much the Anglo-Saxons of Bernicia and Deira, who would later merge in the eighth century to form Northumbria.
According to the Venerable Bede, no people did more damage to the Britons of Strathclyde than the Anglian rulers, and it was not until the Picts vanquished the invading forces of King Ecgfrith at the Battle of Dunnichen (Nechtansmere) in 685 that the harassment ceased.
You may recall that the successful king of the Picts at that battle, Bridei, was the son of Bili, a king of Alt Clut, and it is likely that Britons, Picts, and Scoti joined together to face the southern menace.
After the battle, the Northumbrians drew back to Bernicia, and King Dumnagual or Domnall of Alt Clut took back a lot of territory and firmly established himself as the power around the Clyde. No-one can say precisely when Alt Clut became Strathclyde, but as the eighth and ninth centuries wore on, chroniclers used the latter name more and more. As Gaelic increasingly became the accepted language of most of Scotland, the very name of Alt Clut the town changed to Dun Breattan, Dumbarton, which means the “Fort of the Britains.”
Strathclyde seems to have lived peaceably with its Pictish and Scoti neighbours for most of the eighth century, apart from the Battle of Mygedawc (possibly Mugdock) in 750 when King Teudebur’s forces beat the Picts and killed Prince Telorgan, brother of the Pictish king Oengus.
Some accounts suggest that the Northumbrians and Picts came together to besiege Alt Clut in Strathclyde for four months in 756, and the town was probably burned to the ground before a truce was obtained. But a few days later, under King Domnaguall III, Strathclyde fought back and destroyed the Northumbrian invasion force at the Battle of Newburgh-on-Tyne. They did not come again.
The Britons of Strathclyde may have allied to the Picts for the Battle of Athelstaneford in 832, another victory for a unified Scottish force over the Northumbrians.
In the following decade, Kenneth MacAlpin united the Picts and Scoti under his rule, and the Kingdom of Alba, the forerunner of modern Scotland, was on the way.
The Britons of Strathclyde remained stubbornly independent under their own kings at first.
By the late ninth century, accounts of the kingdom of Strathclyde and most of the rest of what is now Scotland contained increasing references to the menace provided by Norse invaders.
With Dublin being their base on the Irish Sea, the Vikings regularly raided the Firth of Clyde, and in 870 the Norwegian sub-kings of Dublin, the brothers Olav and Ivar, mounted their biggest raid yet. In fact, it was almost a full-scale invasion with Dumbarton as the main target.
Accounts of the Siege of Dumbarton vary, but it seems that the Norsemen in their longships, perhaps 200 of them, arrived on the Clyde with full cargoes and siege munitions.
The previously impregnable Rock was occupied by the people of the town and surrounding area, and for four months under their King Arthgal, they bravely withstood the attacks of the Vikings, who resorted to starving them out.
Eventually, when the well on the Rock dried up, the people surrendered and were placed on the longboats and taken to Dublin as slaves. Olav and Ivar raided up the Clyde to Glasgow, capturing hundreds of local people and carrying off the treasures of Strathclyde and perhaps even proclaiming an extension of their kingdom there. Viking graves have been found at Govan, suggesting a long-term occupation.
Whatever fortifications remained on the Rock were levelled, and with the area around Dumbarton devastated, soon afterwards the court of Strathclyde moved upstream, eventually settling at Govan, possibly under the influence of Dublin.
What happened to King Arthgal remains a mystery. He may have perished at the siege or been taken back to Dublin and executed, or possibly he made his way to the emerging joint kingdom of the Scoti and Picts, where he was possibly assassinated by the Pictish king Causantin to allow a successor, Rhun, to be imposed on Strathclyde, which became a suffragan kingdom.
It was not the end of Strathclyde, however. As Alba grew and became more powerful, by rights Strathclyde should have collapsed. Far from it, however, and indeed its territory expanded in Cumbria with modern Carlisle becoming a sub-capital.
Showing the shifting allegiances of the time, Strathclyde joined with Alba and the Dublin-based Norsemen to oppose a common enemy – the hugely ambitious kingdom of Wessex, by now calling itself England under King Aethelstan.
It is recorded that King Owain of Strathclyde joined King Constantine II of Alba and King Olaf Guthfrithson of Dublin to lead their joint forces against the army of Aethelstan at the Battle of Brunnanburgh in 937. The allies were defeated and Aethelstan’s rule of England was confirmed.
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The man who is considered the last King of Strathclyde, Owen Foel (the Bald), joined with the forces of Alba to win the Battle of Carham against the northern English in 1018, thus defining the border as the River Tweed.
It was the last hurrah of the ancient kingdom. Strathclyde’s days were numbered, and the ancient kingdom fizzled out of existence as it was absorbed into Alba by 1054.
It was still recognised as a sub-kingdom, being granted as Cumbria to Prince David, son of Malcolm III (Canmore) and Queen Margaret.
It would be many centuries later that a new Strathclyde emerged – the largest region in Scotland at the time of local government reorganisation in 1975.