Page:Chronicles of the Picts, chronicles of the Scots, and other early memorials of Scottish history.djvu/183

PEEFACE. clxxv Scottish kingdom in the year 443 before the Christian era. They are followed by the whole list of the Pictish kings, and the last of these is suc- ceeded by Kenneth Mac Alpin, the founder of the later Scottish kingdom. In 1290, Edward king of England produced a vast body of extracts from chronicles collected from the monasteries in England ; but no further statement appears on the Scottish side till the year 1301, when the controversy again broke out in a stUl more formal shape, in consequence of the interposition of the Pope, who addressed a letter to the king of England, which was followed by his reply, and by two documents emanating from the Scotch. In these the question was fully discussed, according to the aspect in which it was viewed on both sides, and in the Scotch documents the statement now first appears, that the Scotch were converted to Christi- anity by the clergy who introduced the relics of St. Andrew, and that they had been converted 400 years before the conversion of the Angles. The Pope again interposed in the year 1317, after Eobert the Bruce had firmly established himself on the Scottish throne ; but this time the intervention was on the side of the English, and had no other effect than to draw forth from the high-spirited king of the Scotch an assertion of his rights as an inde- pendent monarch ; but the date of this event coin- cides with that of the next chronicle, which was compiled in the same year. The lists of the kings