Donnchadh, Earl of Carrick

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Donnchadh, Earl of Carrick bigraphy, stories - Scottish earl

Donnchadh, Earl of Carrick : biography

– 13 June 1250

Donnchadh (or Donnchad) (Latinised Duncanus, later Anglicised as Duncan) was a Gall-Gaidhil prince and Scottish magnate in what is now south-western Scotland, whose career stretched from the last quarter of the 12th century until his death in 1250. His father, Gille-Brighde of Galloway, and his uncle, Uhtred of Galloway, were the two rival sons of Fergus, "King" or "Lord" of Galloway. As a result of Gille-Brighde’s conflict with Uhtred and the Scottish monarch William the Lion, Donnchadh became a hostage of King Henry II of England. He probably remained in England for almost a decade before returning north on the death of his father. Although denied succession to all the lands of the Gall-Gaidhil, he was granted lordship over Carrick in the north-west.

Little is known about Donnchadh’s life and rule. Allied to John de Courcy, Donnchadh fought battles in Ireland and acquired land there that he subsequently lost. A patron of religious houses, particularly Melrose Abbey and North Berwick priory nunnery, he attempted to establish a monastery in his own territory, at Crossraguel. He married the daughter of Alan fitz Walter, a leading member of the family later known as the House of Stewart—future monarchs of Scotland and England. Donnchadh was the first mormaer ("earl") of Carrick, a region he ruled for more than six decades, making him one of the longest serving magnates in medieval Scotland. His descendants include the Bruce and Stewart Kings of Scotland, and probably the Campbell Dukes of Argyll.

Notes

Geographic and cultural background

Donnchadh’s territory lay in what is now Scotland south of the River Forth, a multi-ethnic region during the late 12th century.Barrow, Anglo-Norman Era, pp. 32–35; Barrow, Kingdom of the Scots, pp. 38–40 North of the Forth was the Gaelic kingdom of Scotland (Alba), which under its partially Normanised kings exercised direct or indirect control over most of the region to the south as far as the borders of Northumberland and Cumberland.Barrow, Kingdom of the Scots, pp. 112–29 Lothian and the Merse were the heartlands of the northern part of the old English Earldom of Northumbria,Woolf, Pictland to Alba, pp. 232–40 and in the late 12th century the people of these regions, as well as the people of Lauderdale, Eskdale, Liddesdale, and most of Teviotdale and Annandale, were English in language and regarded themselves as English by ethnicity, despite having been under the control of the king of the Scots for at least a century.Barrow, Anglo-Norman Era, pp. 48–50; Broun, "Becoming Scottish", p. 19

Clydesdale (or Strathclyde) was the heartland of the old Kingdom of Strathclyde; by Donnchadh’s day the Scots had settled many English and Continental Europeans (principally Flemings) in the region, and administered it through the sheriffdom of Lanark.Barrow, Anglo-Norman Era, pp. 30–50, illustrative maps at pp. 51–60 Gaelic too had penetrated much of the old Northumbrian and Strathclyde territory, coming from the west, south-west and the north, a situation that led historian Alex Woolf to compare the region to the Balkans.Woolf, Pictland to Alba, pp. 294–96 The British language of the area, as a result of such developments, was probably either dead or almost dead, perhaps surviving only in the uplands of Clydesdale, Tweeddale and Annandale.Broun, "Welsh Identity", pp. 120–25; Edmonds, "Personal Names", pp. 49–50

The rest of the region was settled by the people called Gall-Gaidhil (modern Scottish Gaelic: Gall-Ghàidheil) in their own language, variations of Gallwedienses in Latin, and normally Galwegians or Gallovidians in modern English.Clancy, "Galloway and the Gall-Ghàidheil", pp. 32–33, et passim References in the 11th century to the kingdom of the Gall-Gaidhil centre it far to the north of what is now Galloway.Clancy, "Gall-Ghàidheil", pp. 29–39 Kingarth (Cenn Garadh) and Eigg (Eic) were described as "in Galloway" (Gallgaidelaib) by the Martyrology of Óengus, in contrast to Whithorn —part of modern Galloway—which was named as lying within another kingdom, The Rhinns (Na Renna).Byrne, "Na Renna", p. 267; Clancy, "Gall-Ghàidheil", pp. 29–32; Stokes (ed.), Martyrology, pp. 116–17, 184–85, 212–3 These areas had been part of the Kingdom of Northumbria until the 9th century, and afterward were transformed by a process very poorly documented, but probably carried out by numerous small bands of culturally Scandinavian but linguistically Gaelic warrior-settlers moving in from Ireland and southern Argyll.Clancy, "Gall-Ghàidheil", p. 44; Woolf, Pictland to Alba, pp. 293–98 "Galloway" today only refers to the lands of Rhinns, Farines, Glenken, Desnes Mór and Desnes Ioan (that is, Wigtownshire and the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright), but this is due to the territorial changes that took place in and around Donnchadh’s lifetime rather than being the contemporary definition.Clancy, "Gall-Ghàidheil", passim For instance, a 12th-century piece of marginalia located the island of Ailsa Craig "lying between Gallgaedelu [Galloway] and Cend Tiri [Kintyre]", while a charter of Máel Coluim IV ("Malcolm IV") describes Strathgryfe, Cunningham, Kyle and Carrick as the four cadrez (probably from ceathramh, "quarter"s) of Galloway; an Irish annal entry for the year 1154 designated galleys from Arran, Kintyre, the Isle of Man as Gallghaoidhel, "Galwegian".Clancy, "Gall-Ghàidheil", pp. 33–34