Donnchadh (; Latin: Duncanus; English: 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, Prince 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 Galloway, he was granted lordship over Carrick in the north.
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 or 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.
Sources Donnchadh's career is not well documented in the surviving sources. Charters provide a little information about some of his activities, but overall their usefulness is limited; this is because no charter-collections (called cartularies) from the Gaelic south-west have survived the Middle Ages, and the only surviving charters relevant to Donnchadh's career come from the heavily Normanised English-speaking area to the east.Duncan, Scotland, p. 643 Principally, the relevant charters record his acts of patronage towards religious houses, but incidental details mentioned in the body of these texts and the witness lists subscribed to them are useful for other matters.A discussion of charters, in relation to the Scottish king William the Lion, can be found in Barrow (ed.), Acts of William I, pp. 68–94.
Some English government records describe his activities in relation to Ireland, and occasional chronicle entries from England and the English-speaking regions of what became south-eastern Scotland record other important details. Aside from the Chronicle of Melrose, the most significant of these sources are the works of Roger of Hoveden, and the material preserved in the writings of John of Fordun and Walter Bower.Duncan, "Roger of Howden", pp. 135–59, and Gillingham, "Travels", pp. 69–81, for Hoveden's importance; Ross, "Moray, Ulster, and the MacWilliams", pp. 24–44 for discussion of these two sources in reference to more northerly events of the same era
Roger of Hoveden wrote two important works: the Gesta Henrici II ("Deeds of Henry II", alternatively titled Gesta Henrici et Ricardi, "Deeds of Henry and Richard") and the Chronica, the latter a re-worked and supplemented version of the former.Corner, "Howden [Hoveden], Roger of"; Duncan, "Roger of Howden", p. 135; Gillingham, "Travels", pp. 70–71; Gransden, Historical Writing, pp. 222–36 These works are the most important and valuable sources for Scottish history in the late 12th century.Duncan, "Roger of Howden", p. 135; Gillingham, "Travels", p. 70 The Gesta Henrici II covers the period from 1169 to April 1192, and the Chronica covers events until 1201.Duncan, "Roger of Howden", p. 135 Roger of Hoveden is particularly important in relation to what is now south-western Scotland, the land of the Gall-Gaidhil. He served as an emissary in the region in 1174 on behalf of the English monarch, and thus his account of, for example, the approach of Donnchadh's father Gille-Brighde towards the English king comes from a witness.Corner, "Howden [Hoveden], Roger of"; Oram, Lordship, pp. 95–97 Historians rely on Roger's writings for a number of important details about Donnchadh's life: that Gille-Brighde handed Donnchadh over as a hostage to Henry II under the care of Hugh de Morwic, Sheriff of Cumberland; that Donnchcadh married the daughter of Alan fitz Walter under protest from the Scottish king; and that Donnchadh fought a battle in Ireland in 1197 assisting John de Courcy, Prince of Ulster.Anderson, Scottish Annals, pp. 268, 325; Lawrie, Annals, p. 326; Riley (ed.), Annals of Roger de Hoveden, vol. ii, p. 404
Another important chronicle source is the material preserved in John of Fordun's Chronica gentis Scottorum ("Chronicle of the Scottish people") and Walter Bower's Scotichronicon. John of Fordun's work, which survives on its own, was incorporated in the following century into the work of Bower. Fordun's Chronica was written and compiled between 1384 and August 1387.Broun, Scottish Independence, p. 215 Despite the apparently late date, Scottish textual historian Dauvit Broun has shown that Fordun's work in fact consists of two earlier pieces, Gesta Annalia I and Gesta Annalia II, the former written before April 1285 and covering the period from King Máel Coluim mac Donnchada (Malcolm III, died 1093) to 2 February 1285.Broun, Scottish Independence, pp. 257–58; Broun, "New Look at Gesta Annalia, p. 17 Gesta Annalia I appears to have been based on an even earlier text, about the descendants of Saint Margaret of Scotland, produced at Dunfermline Abbey.With perhaps another chronicle closely related to the Chronicle of Melrose and the Chronicle of Holyrood; see Broun, Scottish Independence, p. 217; Duncan, "Sources and Uses", p. 169 Thus material from these works concerning the late 12th- and early 13th-century Gall-Gaidhil may represent, despite the apparent late date, reliable contemporary or near-contemporary accounts.Broun, Scottish Independence, pp. 215–30
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
By the middle of the 12th century, the former territory of the kingdom of the Rhinns had become part of the Galloway kingdom, but the area to the north remained separate. Strathgryfe, Kyle and Cunningham had come under the control of the Scottish king in the early 12th century, much of it given over to soldiers of French or Anglo-French origin.Oram, David, pp. 93–96. Strathgryfe and most of Kyle had been given to Walter fitz Alan under King David I, with Hugh de Morville taking Cunningham.Barrow, Kingdom of the Scots, p. 251; Stringer, "Early Lords of Lauderdale", pp. 46–47 Strathnith still had a Gaelic ruler (ancestor of the famous Thomas Randolph, 1st Earl of Moray), but he was not part of the kingdom of Galloway.Balfour Paul, Scots Peerage, vol. vi, pp. 286–91; Barrow, Kingdom of the Scots, pp. 139–40 The rest of the region—the Rhinns, Farines, Carrick, Desnes Mór and Desnes Ioan, and the sparsely settled uplands of Glenken—was probably under the control of the sons of Fergus, King of Galloway, in the years before Donnchadh's career in the region.Oram, Lordship, p. 103; Woolf, "Age of Sea-Kings", p. 103
Origins and family
Donnchadh was the son of Gille-Brighde, son of Fergus, king of the Gall-Gaidhil. Donnchadh's ancestry cannot be traced further; no patronymic is known for Fergus from contemporary sources, and when Fergus' successors enumerate their ancestors in documents, they never go earlier than he does.For Alan of Galloway, see Stringer, "Acts of Lordship", p. 224; for Donnchadh, see Innes (ed.), Liber Sancte Marie, vol. i, no. 32, at p. 25, where sometime before 1196 he is described as "Donnchadh, son of Gille-Brighde, son of Fergus, earl of Carrick". The name Gille-Brighde, used by Donnchadh's father (Fergus' son), was also the name of the father of Somhairle, petty king of Argyll in the third quarter of the 12th century.Woolf, "Age of Sea-Kings", p. 103 As the original territory of the Gall-Gaidhil kingdom probably adjoined or included Argyll, Alex Woolf has suggested that Fergus and Somhairle were brothers or cousins.