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 establish a higher antiquity for the Scottish race, royal line, and church, than could be claimed for the Irish or English. It is of course not inconsistent with the rectified chronology of Innes that even prior to 503 A.D. there may have been Celts of the Scottish race settled in Scotland. Scots had aided the Picts in opposing the Romans in the fourth century, and Bæda evidently inclines to an earlier date for the Scottish settlement. All that can be safely said is that there is no proof of any Dalriad kingdom till the commencement of the sixth century, and that the account given by Boece and Buchanan of Fergus, the son of Ferchard, and his successors, is as devoid of historical foundation as the statement that ‘his coming into Albion was at the time when Alexander the Great took Babylon, about 330 years before the birth of Christ.’

Buchanan, from whom this sentence is quoted, attempts to save his own credit by prefixing the words ‘historians say that,’ but by adopting it he became himself one of these historians, and gave the fabulous narrative a prolonged existence. Father Innes presses somewhat hardly on Boece, for the origin of this narrative dates back at least as early as the twelfth century, but the special blame undoubtedly attaches to Boece and still more to Buchanan that they clothed the dry list of names with characters, and invented events or incidents which gave the narrative more of the semblance of history.



FERGUS II (d. 501), son of Earc, was the first Dalriad king in Scotland. According to the Irish annals, the earliest and best authorities for the Celtic history of Scotland, the Dalriad or Scottish kingdom in Argyle and the Isles, which the mediæval chroniclers and the historians Boece and Buchanan antedated to a fictitious Fergus I, son of [q. v.], was really founded by this Fergus, son of Earc. The synchronisms of Flann Mainistreach (i.e. Flann of the monastery of Monasterboice in Louth) state that twenty years after the battle of Ocha the sons of Earc arrived in Britain, and date the battle of Ocha forty-three years after the coming of St. Patrick; 432 being the date of St. Patrick's mission, the migration of the sons of Earc to Scotland would be about 495 or 498. The ‘Annals of Tigernach’ substantially agree with this date, having under 501 the entry ‘Fergus Mor, the son of Earc, with the Dalriad race, held a part of Britain and died there.’

The date 501, according to Skene's probable conjecture, refers to the death of Fergus. He and his brothers, Lorn and Angus, came in all likelihood with a small number of followers and took possession of Cantyre and the adjacent isles. The Dalriads were already Christians, having been converted by St. Patrick, and Earc belonged to the royal race of the northern Hy Niall, from which Columba, who followed about half a century later to Scotland, also belonged. The exact cause of the migration from Ulster to Argyle is not recorded, but it was probably due to overpopulation and a desire for more land. Fergus is said to have been succeeded by his son Domangart, and Domangart by his sons Congall I Conall and [q. v.] 

FERGUSHILL, JOHN (1592?–1644), Scotch divine, son of David Fergushill, merchant and provost of Ayr, was educated partly at Edinburgh University, partly in France, and partly at the university of Glasgow, where his name occurs among the incorporati in 1611, and among the laureati in 1612. He was licensed to preach as a minister of the Scottish kirk and had a charge at Ochiltree in 1614. He was cited to appear before the high commission court at Glasgow in March 1620, and refusing to submit to its jurisdiction was suspended, and sentenced to be imprisoned in Perth. By the influence, however, of his friends, Robert Boyd of Trochrig, and John Chalmers, the court was induced to permit his return to Ochiltree under certain restrictions. There he appears to have continued to officiate until in October 1639 he was transferred to Ayr. He was a member of the assembly in 1638. He died on 11 June 1644, aged about 52.



FERGUSON, ADAM (1723–1816), professor of philosophy at Edinburgh, was born on 20 June 1723 at Logierait, Perthshire, the youngest of the numerous family of the exemplary minister of that parish, author of a rather curious fragment of autobiography (see account of him and it in Edinburgh Review for January 1867, article ‘Adam Ferguson’). Ferguson received his earlier education partly at home, partly at the parish school of Logierait, and afterwards at the grammar school of Perth, where he became a fair Latin scholar and distinguished in 