| Notes |
- He succeeded to the title of King Kenneth I of Galloway on 20 July 834. He gained the title of King Kenneth I of Dalriada in 841. He gained the title of King Kenneth I of the Picts between 843 and 844. He gained the title of King Kenneth I of Scotland in 846. He has an extensive biographical entry in the Dictionary of National Biography.
Dictionary of National Biography
Kenneth I, MacAlpine d. 860, king of the Scots, was son of Alpin, king of the Dalriad Scots. His father, according to the Chronicle of Huntingdon, which Fordoun follows, was slain in battle with the Picts on 20 July 834, and was at once succeeded by Kenneth as king, apparently only in Galloway. According to the same authority Kenneth became king of the Dalriad Scots about ten years later; in the seventh year after his father's death, 841 (not 839, as in Skene, Celtic Scotland, p. 308), he compelled Danish pirates who had seized the Picts' territory to fly, and in the twelfth year of his reign (846), two years after succeeding to the Dalriad monarchy, he finally defeated the Picts and confirmed his rule over Alban, the name given to the united kingdom of the Scots and Picts. The marauding Danish vikings whom he drove from the coasts were perhaps the followers of Ragnar Lodbrog, called by Irish annalists Vegesius (Wars of the Gaedhill and the Gael, Todd's edition), who founded a Scandinavian kingdom in Dublin about 830 and died 845; but this is doubted by recent Scandinavian scholars. The Chronicle adds that he reigned in all twenty-eight years-sixteen years over the Picts and Dalriad Scots together-which would make the end of his reign 862. The Pictish Chronicle, which dates only a century and a half after the event, implies that Kenneth's reign over Dalriada began in 842, and over the Picts in 844. But the difference in the dates between the Huntingdon and Pictish Chronicles is unimportant, and leaves no reasonable doubt on the point, cardinal for Scottish history, that Kenneth united the kingdoms of the Scots and Picts in the middle of the ninth century, a union effected by his conquest of the Picts. Skene points out that Kenneth and one or two of his successors are called in the Irish annals kings of the Picts, and that from his father's name (Alpin) being Pictish rather than Scottish, he may have had Pictish blood. But the evidence that Kenneth was a Dalriad king is really conclusive.
The expulsion, or, as the Pictish Chronicle calls it, the deletion of the Picts, may be something of an exaggeration; but the almost total disappearance of the Pictish dialect of Gaelic, save in the place-names, the names of the old Pictish kings, and a few other words which puzzle the philologist, indicates either a complete conquest and the superinduction of the Gaelic of the west upon the Pictish Gaelic of central and northern Scotland, or a divergence of dialect so slight that the adoption of the speech of the conquerors by the conquered was almost an imperceptible transition.
The Scots of Dalriada seem to have found in Kenneth a Scottish Alfred. Besides expelling the Danes and conquering the Picts of the central districts (the men of Fortrenn), Kenneth invaded Saxony, ie. Lothian, or the northern parts of Northumbria, six times, burning Dunbar and Melrose. By a bold stroke of policy he moved the chief seat of his kingdom from Argyll and the Isles (Dalriada), no longer tenable against the Danes, to Scone, which became the Scottish capital, so far as that word is applicable to the principal royal fort. In 851 he removed some of the relics of Columba still left in Iona to the church which he built at Dunkeld, possibly on the site of an earlier church founded by Constantine MacFergus [see Constantine], a Pictish king. Dunkeld became the chief ecclesiastical seat of the new kingdom; and this removal of Columba's relics, taken in connection with the statement of the Pictish Chronicle that the Picts were punished by God for despising the mass and precept of the Lord, and also for refusing to acknowledge others as their equals, probably indicates that an ecclesiastical revolution was associated with the civil-perhaps the restoration of the Columbite clergy, who had been expelled by the Picts in the beginning of the eighth century. Kenneth died of a tumour in 860 at Forteviot, and was buried at Iona.
If this be the true reconstruction of this obscure period in the annals of Scotland, it is not wonderful that Kenneth should have been looked back upon as the founder of the Scottish dynasty, and that the verses which Wyntoun quotes as existing in his time (c. 1395) should have been inscribed on his tomb at Iona:Primus in Albania fertur regnasse KynedusFilius Alpini prelia multa gerens.
Expulsis Pictis regnaverat octo bis annisEt post Forteviot mortuus ille fuit.
It was from Scone and Dunkeld that the Scottish monarchy gradually expanded, and the first important step was taken by Kenneth in giving his kingdom a firmer hold on the central highlands, where it was secure from permanent conquest, either by the Danes or the English. The laws which Fordoun ascribed to Kenneth MacAlpine, and Hector Boece printed at length, are supposititious, and were ascribed to him because it was thought a great king must be a great lawgiver [see under Donald V].
One of Kenneth's daughters married Cu (E. W. Robertson) or Run (Skene's reading of the name in the Pictish Chronicle), a prince of the Strathclyde Britons, an alliance which foreshadowed a later union with the south-western district of Scotland; another married Olaf the White, the Norse king of Dublin; and a third married Ædh Finnliath, king of Ireland (Celtic Scotland, i. 313). Kenneth's kingdom passed for three years into the hands of his brother, Donald V [qv.], who was succeeded in 863 by his son, Constantine I [qv.], after whose death in 877 Ædh, another son of Kenneth, reigned, or attempted to reign, for a single year, when he was killed by his rival Gregory the Great (d. 889) [qv.].
Sources:
The Pictish Chronicle in Chronicles of the Picts and Scots
the Ulster and other Irish Annals
the Chronicles of Henry of Huntingdon, Wyntoun, and Fordoun are the principal early sources. Robertson's Scotland under her Early Kings and Skene's Celtic Scotland are the best modern histories.
Contributor: Æ. M. [Aeneas James George Mackay]
Published: 1891
Cináed mac AilpÃn (Modern Gaelic: Coinneach mac Ailpein), commonly Anglicised as Kenneth MacAlpin and known in most modern regnal lists as Kenneth I (died 13 February 858) was king of the Picts and, according to national myth, first king of Scots, earning him the posthumous nickname of An Ferbasach, "The Conqueror". Kenneth's undisputed legacy was to produce a dynasty of rulers who claimed descent from him and was the founder of the dynasty which ruled Scotland for much of the medieval period.
King of Scots?
The Kenneth of myth, conqueror of the Picts and founder of the Kingdom of Alba, was born in the centuries after the real Kenneth died. In the reign of Kenneth II (Cináed mac MaÃl Coluim), when the Chronicle of the Kings of Alba was compiled, the annalist wrote:
So Kinadius son of Alpinus, first of the Scots, ruled this Pictland prosperously for 16 years. Pictland was named after the Picts, whom, as we have said, Kinadius destroyed. ... Two years before he came to Pictland, he had received the kingdom of Dál Riata.
In the 15th century Andrew of Wyntoun's Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland, a history in verse, added little to the account in the Chronicle:
Quhen Alpyne this kyng was dede, He left a sowne wes cal'd Kyned,
Dowchty man he wes and stout, All the Peychtis he put out.
Gret bataylis than dyd he, To pwt in freedom his cuntre!
When humanist scholar George Buchanan wrote his history Rerum Scoticarum Historia in the 1570s, a great deal of lurid detail had been added to the story. Buchanan included an account of how Kenneth's father had been murdered by the Picts, and a detailed, and entirely unsupported, account of how Kenneth avenged him and conquered the Picts. Buchanan was not as credulous as many, and he did not include the tale of MacAlpin's treason, a story from Giraldus Cambrensis, who reused a tale of Saxon treachery at a feast in Geoffrey of Monmouth's inventive Historia Regum Britanniae.
Later 19th century historians such as William Forbes Skene brought new standards of accuracy to early Scottish history, while Celticists such as Whitley Stokes and Kuno Meyer cast a critical eye over Welsh and Irish sources. As a result, much of the misleading and vivid detail was removed from the scholarly series of events, even if it remained in the popular accounts. Rather than a conquest of the Picts, instead the idea of Pictish matrilineal succession, mentioned by Bede and apparently the only way to make sense of the list of Kings of the Picts found in the Pictish Chronicle, advanced the idea that Kenneth was a Gael, and a king of Dál Riata, who had inherited the throne of Pictland through a Pictish mother. Other Gaels, such as CaustantÃn and Óengus, the sons of Fergus, were identified among the Pictish king lists, as were Angles such as Talorcen son of Eanfrith, and Britons such as Bridei son of Beli.
Modern historians would reject parts of the Kenneth produced by Skene and subsequent historians, while accepting others. Medievalist Alex Woolf, interviewed by The Scotsman in 2004, is quoted as saying:
The myth of Kenneth conquering the Picts - it’s about 1210, 1220 that that’s first talked about. There’s actually no hint at all that he was a Scot. ... If you look at contemporary sources there are four other Pictish kings after him. So he’s the fifth last of the Pictish kings rather than the first Scottish king."
Many other historians could be quoted in terms similar to Woolf.
A feasible synopsis of the emerging consensus, may be put forward, namely, that the kingships of Gaels and Picts underwent a process of gradual fusion, starting with Kenneth, and rounded off in the reign of Constantine II. The Pictish institution of kingship provided the basis for merger with the Gaelic Alpin dynasty. The meeting of King Constantine and Bishop Cellach at the Hill of Belief near the (formerly Pictish) royal city of Scone in 906 cemented the rights and duties of Picts on an equal basis with those of Gaels (pariter cum Scottis). Hence the change in styling from King of the Picts to King of Alba. The legacy of Gaelic as the first national language of Scotland does not obscure the foundational process in the establishment of the Scottish kingdom of Alba.
Background
Kenneth's origins are uncertain, as are his ties, if any, to previous kings of the Picts or Dál Riata. Among the genealogies contained in the Rawlinson B 502 manuscript, dating from around 1130, is the supposed descent of Malcolm II of Scotland. Medieval genealogies are unreliable sources, but many historians still accept Kenneth's descent from the established Cenél nGabráin, or at the very least from some unknown minor sept of the Dál Riata. The manuscript provides the following ancestry for Kenneth:
...Cináed son of AlpÃn son of Eochaid son of Ãed Find son of Domangart son of Domnall Brecc son of Eochaid Buide son of Ãedán son of Gabrán son of Domangart son of Fergus Mór ...
Leaving aside the shadowy kings before Ãedán son of Gabrán, the genealogy is certainly flawed insofar as Ãed Find, who died c. 778, could not reasonably be the son of Domangart, who was killed c. 673. The conventional account would insert two generations between Ãed Find and Domangart: Eochaid mac Echdach, father of Ãed Find, who died c. 733, and his father Eochaid.
Although later traditions provided details of his reign and death, Kenneth's father Alpin is not listed as among the kings in the Duan Albanach, which provides the following sequence of kings leading up to Kenneth:
Naoi m-bliadhna Cusaintin chain, The nine years of CausantÃn the fair;,
a naoi Aongusa ar Albain, The nine of Aongus over Alba;
cethre bliadhna Aodha áin, The four years of Aodh the noble;
is a tri déug Eoghanáin. And the thirteen of Eoghanán.
TrÃocha bliadhain Cionaoith chruaidh, The thirty years of Cionaoth the hardy,
It is supposed that these kings are the Constantine son of Fergus and his brother Óengus II (Angus II), who have already been mentioned, Óengus's son Uen (Eóganán), as well as the obscure Ãed mac Boanta, but this sequence is considered doubtful if the list is intended to represent kings of Dál Riata, as it should if Kenneth were king there.
That Kenneth was a Gael is not widely rejected, but modern historiography distinguishes between Kenneth as a Gael by culture and/or in ancestry, and Kenneth as a king of Gaelic Dál Riata. Kings of the Picts before him, from Bridei son of Der-Ilei, his brother Nechtan as well as Óengus I son of Fergus and his presumed descendants were all at least partly Gaelicised. The idea that the Gaelic names of Pictish kings in Irish annals represented translations of Pictish ones was challenged by the discovery of the inscription Custantin filius Fircus(sa), the latinised name of the Pictish king CaustantÃn son of Fergus, on the Dupplin Cross.
Other evidence, such as that furnished by place-names, suggests the spread of Gaelic culture through western Pictland in the centuries before Kenneth. For example, Atholl, a name used in the Annals of Ulster for the year 739, has been thought to be "New Ireland", and Argyll derives from Oir-Ghà idheal, the land of the "eastern Gaels".
Reign
Compared with the many questions on his origins, Kenneth's ascent to power and subsequent reign can be dealt with simply. Kenneth's rise can be placed in the context of the recent end of the previous dynasty, which had dominated Fortriu for two or four generations. This followed the death of king Uen son of Óengus of Fortriu, his brother Bran, Ãed mac Boanta "and others almost innumerable" in battle against the Vikings in 839. The resulting succession crisis seems, if the Pictish Chronicle king-lists have any validity, to have resulted in at least four would-be kings warring for supreme power.
Kenneth's reign is dated from 843, but it was probably not until 848 that he defeated the last of his rivals for power. The Pictish Chronicle claims that he was king in Dál Riata for two years before becoming Pictish king in 843, but this is not generally accepted. In 849, Kenneth had relics of Columba, which may have included the Monymusk Reliquary, transferred from Iona to Dunkeld. Other that these bare facts, the Chronicle of the Kings of Alba reports that he invaded Saxonia six times, captured Melrose and burnt Dunbar, and also that Vikings laid waste to Pictland, reaching far into the interior. The Annals of the Four Masters, not generally a good source on Scottish matters, do make mention of Kenneth, although what should be made of the report is unclear:
Gofraid mac Fergusa, chief of AirgÃalla, went to Alba, to strengthen the Dal Riata, at the request of Kenneth MacAlpin.
The reign of Kenneth also saw an increased degree of Norse settlement in the outlying areas of modern Scotland. Shetland, Orkney, Caithness, Sutherland, the Western Isles and the Isle of Man, and part of Ross were settled; the links between Kenneth's kingdom and Ireland were weakened, those with southern England and the continent almost broken. In the face of this, Kenneth and his successors were forced to consolidate their position in their kingdom, and the union between the Picts and the Gaels, already progressing for several centuries, began to strengthen. By the time of Donald II, the kings would be called kings neither of the Gaels or the Scots but of Alba.
Kenneth died from a tumour on 13 February 858 at the palace of Cinnbelachoir, perhaps near Scone. The annals report the death as that of the "king of the Picts", not the "king of Alba". The title "king of Alba" is not used until the time of Kenneth's grandsons, Donald II (Domnall mac CausantÃn) and Constantine II (ConstantÃn mac Ãeda). The Fragmentary Annals of Ireland quote a verse lamenting Kenneth's death:
Because Cináed with many troops lives no longer
there is weeping in every house;
there is no king of his worth under heaven
as far as the borders of Rome.
Kenneth left at least two sons, Constantine and Ãed, who were later kings, and at least two daughters. One daughter married Run, king of Strathclyde, Eochaid being the result of this marriage. Kenneth's daughter Máel Muire married two important Irish kings of the Uà Néill. Her first husband was Aed Finliath of the Cenél nEógain. Niall Glúndub, ancestor of the O'Neill, was the son of this marriage. Her second husband was Flann Sinna of Clann Cholmáin. As the wife and mother of kings, when Máel Muire died in 913, her death was reported by the Annals of Ulster, an unusual thing for the male-centred chronicles of the age.
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810 - 858 (48 years)
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