Book reviews
In-depth reviews of recent titles
Professor R. Andrew McDonald has become well known for his work on the west coast of Scotland and the adjacent ‘Irish Sea region’ in the central medieval period, having published The Kingdom of the Isles: Scotland’sWestern Seaboard, c.1100-c.1336 (Tuckwell Press, 1997) and, a decade later, Manx Kingship in Its Irish Sea Setting 1187–1229 (Four Courts Press, 2007). In the intervening period, he also completed Outlaws of Medieval Scotland (Tuckwell, 2003), important because it remains the only extended treatment of Scottish domestic politics across the 12th and 13th centuries.
Some of McDonald’s early work was criticised for its political analysis. He often appeared to rely heavily on the so-called ‘feudal-ethnic framework’ (i.e. an anglicising Scottish state versus atavistic Celts). The model was considered old-fashioned by the late 1990s, and McDonald’s work came out just as the mainstream was becoming increasingly impatient with its persistence. Better received was Manx Kingship, more effective because the perspective was wider than politics. Now in The Sea Kings McDonald reasserts the core interests of Manx Kingship, but expands the thematic, geographical and chronological scope.
The first chapters introduce the islands and survey the sources, in particular the so-called ‘Manx Chronicle’. After chapter 3’s stimulating overview of environmental and geographic matters, we are taken into political history. McDonald presents Godred Crovan (d.1095) and his Manx dynasty in chapters
4, 6 and 7, with Somerled (d.1164) and his line appearing in chapter 5 and intermittently elsewhere. Having outlined most of the political narrative, McDonald moves back to structural and thematic analysis, with chapters on the economy (8), ships and naval warfare (9), kingship and court (10), and the Church (11). He ends with some thoughts on the period after the Manx rebellion against the Scots in 1275 (epilogue).
Overall, McDonald offers a broad picture of the Manx kings and their world. Far from being remote or cut off, these kings probably had better connections around the archipelago of Britain and Ireland than any other rulers except the king of England himself. They were also among the most open to ‘European’ influences and were, for instance, among the first to embrace ‘reformed’ monasticism. Although they were akin to medium-ranking English barons in terms of landholding, the royal status and naval power of the Manx rulers gave them something more. They commanded significant portions of the commerce and piracy of the Irish Sea, periodically supplementing their economic power with naval contracts; for example, they were paid to guard the Irish coast by England’s kings.
The book does a good job presenting all this, and with a breadth of knowledge and context that is very impressive at times.Yet
Although they were akin to mediumranking English barons in terms of landholding, the royal status and naval power of the Manx rulers gave them something more
the work is far from being perfect, with the political analysis in particular exhibiting various problems.
McDonald attempts to compare information from Norwegian sagas with ‘Scottish’ sources, but this is often unconvincing.When analysing the ScotoLatin chronicle account of one Scottish revenge attack on Hebridean opponents, McDonald states that ‘[t]he slaughter of the traitors, which would surely have been recorded in the saga [Hákonar saga Hákonarsonar] if it had actually occurred, probably took place only in [John of] Fordun’s imagination’ (pp.180-1).The saga of Hákon IV Hákonarson (d.1263) was commissioned for the Norwegian court by his son Magnús VI (d. 1280), and it would hardly be surprising if the author had been reluctant to publicise Hákon’s failure to protect his dependants. McDonald also seems to be unaware of the significant
scholarship showing that Fordun’s work is substantially a reproduction of a chronicle that, if not precisely contemporary, is at least 13th century.
This neglect of recent scholarship plagues other parts of the book. The Rhins of Galloway, part of the wider ‘kingdom of the Isles’ until probably the 12th century, is acknowledged only in a brief and dated commentary (e.g. p.29). Thomas Owen Clancy’s key ‘The GallGhàidheil and Galloway’ (The Journal of Scottish Name Studies 2, 2008) does not make it into the bibliography. In Scottish domestic matters, McDonald continues to confuse (pp.102-3) Máel Coluim ‘Macheth’ (a mormaer of Ross) and Máel Coluim son of Alexander I (a royal pretender). The confusion was unravelled more than a decade ago by Alasdair Ross, in an article written for a festschrift for Colm Ó Baoill (Clann Tuirc, 2007). Although McDonald does cite this article, he writes as if he had not processed it. Whenever one recommends Outlaws of Medieval Scotland to undergraduates, which is unavoidable because of the lack of other material, one always has to warn that it must be read alongside Ross. This makes McDonald’s handling of the matter more frustrating.
Analytically, there is a lack of sharpness in key places. McDonald offers what appears to be a meaningless distinction between a ‘first Kingdom of the Isles’ and a ‘second Kingdom of the Isles’ (pp.27, 30) as if they were something akin to numbered French republics. It never becomes clear how he thinks either kingdom emerged or why he distinguishes them. In addition, while the analytical power of ethnicity has appealed to McDonald in the past, his vision of the cultural makeup of the islands comes across as blurry if not incoherent. At various points he acknowledges that the Hebrides were culturally Norse in the period covered by the book, notably in the title; but at other times he casually refers to the peoples as ‘Gaelic’ (p.229).
At the beginning of the book McDonald makes the assertion that ‘Godred Crovan established two dynasties of sea kings’ (p.1), apparently founding the dynasty of Somerled. He does this on the basis that Somerled married one of Crovan’s granddaughters – the equivalent of saying that Máel Coluim III (d.1093) founded the Plantagenets! In general, his attempt to stitch the two dynasties together comes across as unpersuasive, and I ended up less convinced than I had been previously that the Manx dynasty and the ‘MacSorleys’ of Argyll, the main beneficiaries of the former’s downfall, really fit well into a single picture.
With all that said, the book has many merits, particularly in the coverage of the Manx family and the ‘Irish Sea World’ c.1200. It can probably be recommended above McDonald’s earlier two works, beating both in terms of breadth and value for money.
Neil McGuigan received his doctorate in 2015, and currently lectures on Scottish and medieval history within the evening degree programme at the University of St Andrews.
Part 2 addresses ‘identity and selffashioning’. Editor Chris Langley shows how covenanting leaders’ differing idealisations of 16th-century reformer John Knox created major fault-lines in the movement’s ideology and identity between 1638 and 1650. Louise Yeoman then utilises the fascinating example of ‘prophet’ Margaret Mitchelson to examine how ideas about identity might manifest within the spiritual practices of those labouring to evidence the National Covenant’s ‘divine legitimacy’ (p.105). Next, a solo chapter by Andrew Lind persuasively – and statistically – demonstrates royalism and resistance among parish clergy, echoing Newton’s earlier discussion of the Aberdeen doctors to prove that they were not the only bastion of clerical resistance to the covenant. Discussion in part 2 concludes with Salvatore Cipriano’s analysis of divisions within Scotland’s universities, further consolidating this second section’s depiction of varied, often competing, covenanting identities.
The final section of this book addresses the theme of ‘remembering’. Neil McIntyre draws on interdisciplinary debates elsewhere to explore how both recollections and collective representations of key events between 1648 and 1651 influenced Scots’ thoughts and actions after the 1660 Stuart restoration. Allan Kennedy then provides an effective account of how such indelible memories also conditioned constitutional resettlement and political culture.
The volume closes with an important contribution from Alasdair Raffe who asks the question: ‘who were the “Later Covenanters”?’ Raffe argues convincingly that the term ‘covenanter’ cannot, in fact, be helpfully applied to nonconformists after 1660 without encouraging ‘misconceptions’ and masking the covenants’ evolving significance (p.213).
Across all three themes, welcome attention is given to ordinary people and individual figures normally absent from conventional narratives of the covenanting movement. The covenants were – as Langley acknowledges in his useful introduction to the volume – explicitly popular, and it is good to see the myriad ways in which they affected the fabric of Scottish society drawn out so consistently throughout all of these varied contributions. If there is a downside
Editor Chris Langley shows how covenanting leaders’ differing idealisations of 16th-century reformer John Knox created major fault-lines in the movement’s ideology and identity between 1638 and 1650
to this collection, it is that some areas marked as significant by recent work remain underexplored. It is obviously impossible to cover every aspect of such a paradigmatic historical moment but, arguably, within most chapters the political dynamics of covenanting thought are underplayed, which is the more regrettable given work emphasising this by Laura Stewart and Karin Bowie. Likewise, Stewart and others have stressed the significance of women to the covenanting movement from the start and, as Raffe has shown elsewhere, they remained integral to its longer-term survival.Women participated alongside men during swearing ceremonies and in some kirks, like Haddington, even subscribed their names.Women also organised many of the conventicles noted in later chapters. But their presence is overlooked in this volume and the only article to mention any female covenanter by name is that offered by its only female contributor. However, that these aspects are left unaddressed illustrates how this volume should be applauded as positive grounds for future research. On the whole, this is an exciting and commendable collection that clearly and effectively demonstrates just how far scholarship on the 1638 National Covenant and its legacy has now come.