Page:Chronicles of the Picts, chronicles of the Scots, and other early memorials of Scottish history.djvu/158

 cl PEEFACE. Pictish throne under Kenneth Mac Alpin, who, after ruling for four reigns as kings of the Picts, succeeded in establishing the succession permanently in the Scottish line, while the Scots obtained so com- pletely the supremacy under the monarchs of their own race that the kingdom became essentially Scot- tish, and their kiags were termed either Reges Alhanice, or Reges Scotorum. Under this line of kings and their successors, the different provinces forming the subsequent kingdom of Scotland came by degrees under their sway, until eventually they became kings of the whole territory of Scotland, and as these provinces became incorporated into the kingdom, it formed one compact monarchy. Such seems to be the true deduction from our oldest his- torical documents, compared with the narrative of Bede and other historians, writing at a period to make their statements of paramount authority ; and the question remains as one, the solution of which seems necessarily to complete the inquiry. How did this history of the Scots come to lose its true aspect, and transform itself into one of so different a char- acter as that to which it had attained when John of Fordun compiled his histoiy, and to what extent can the cause of this transformation be still traced ? Throughout the whole of the true history of the people, as recorded in the scattered notices of the annals, and the meagre lists of the chronicles, it is very apparent that the ecclesiastical element entered very largely into the course of their history, and