Page:Chronicles of the Picts, chronicles of the Scots, and other early memorials of Scottish history.djvu/180

 clxxii PEEFACE. and these are no other than the twenty-three kings of Dalriada, from Fei'gus Mac Erth to Alpin. Then occurs the expression, " et tunc translatum est " regnum Scotorum in regnum Pictorum." Then follow the sixty kings of the Picts, with the title Nomina Region Pictonim, and after them se- quuntur nomina regum Scotorum commencing with Kenneth Mac Alpin, in whose reign we are again in historic ground. It is remarkable that in this chronicle, by the addition of a hundred years to the period said to have elapsed from the time of Kenneth Mac Alpin, it is removed back one century, so as to meet the date when the Scottish kingdom of Dahiada, in point of act, came to an end. In 1269, the question of the independence of the Scottish Church was again raised, by an attempt on the part of the King of England to levy the tenths of the benefices in Scotland ; and if the prose chronicle attached to the " Cronicon Elegiacum" in the copy inserted in the " Clironicle of Melrose" has been rightly assigned to the year 1270, we have the theory again asserted that the Scottish kings of Dabiada were the immediate predecessors of Kenneth Mac Alpin ; and we find the later kings of Dalriada brought down a hundred years after their true date, and a few fictitious kings added to suit this theory. In the year 1278, in the Enghsh Parliament, Alexander the Third of Scotland swore fealty to Edward the First of England in general terms.