Book 1 — CHAPTER VI. THE KINGDOM OF SCONE. (continued 2)

This is, however, the period of Girig’s reign, and he may, like his predecessor Kenneth, have overrun Lothian 333and obtained possession of Bamborough, the chief seat of the Bernician kings, which lies at no great distance from the south bank of the Tweed; and Simeon himself indicates this when he tells us in his History of the Church of Durham that during the reign of Guthred ‘the nation of the Scots had collected a numerous army, and among other deeds of cruelty had invaded and plundered the monastery of Lindisfarne.’^[478] His object too may have been to free the Britons, his own countrymen, from the Anglic yoke, and certainly, if he conquered Bernicia, and perhaps that part of Anglia which consisted of the British possessions extending from the Solway to the Derwent, their reunion with the kingdom of the Strathclyde Britons, as well as the freedom of Galloway from Anglic supremacy, would be the natural result. The second event attributed to him is that he first liberated the Scottish Church, which till that time had been in servitude according to the custom and usage of the Picts, and this has probably more foundation in fact. That Girig found it necessary to win over the Scottish clergy to his cause, or at least not to oppose him, is probable enough, and he seems to have freed the Church from those secular exactions and services to which the clergy of most churches were at this time subjected. The Anglic Church had not long before been freed from similar services by King Ethelwulf, and the later Pictish Church was closely connected with that of Northumbria.^[479] A curious memorial of Girig, and of his relation to the Scottish Church, remains in the church in the Mearns which bears the name of Eglisgirg, or Greg’s 334church, and was dedicated to St. Ciricus, from whom it came to be called St. Cyrus.^[480]

The gratitude of the Scottish Church for the boon they had obtained from Girig seems to have shown itself in this, that in the artificial history to which the interests of an ecclesiastical controversy had so large a share in giving birth, the usurper of foreign race, who had for a time intruded upon the line of Scottish kings descended from Kenneth mac Alpin, and been after a few years driven out, fills a prominent position, as Gregory the Great, solemnly crowned at Scone, and one of the most powerful of the early Scottish kings.

335