The Highlanders of Scotland - Clan Strachan Society

APPENDIX TO PART I.
The Seven Provinces of Scotland.
In treating of the earlier part of the history of Scotland, it had
been my intention to have refrained from entering more deeply
into the subject than was absolutely necessary for the development
of the single proposition which I had to establish— viz., the
descent of the Highlanders from the northern Picts ; but the
remarkable discoveries of Sir Francis Palgrave, regarding the
court and privileges of the seven earls of Scotland in the
thirteenth century, corroborate so very strongly
the views
which I had been led to form of the constitution of the Pictish
kingdom, and of its preservation in the subsequent Scottish
monarchy, that I am induced to depart from my resolution, and
to give a more detailed view of the subject in this Appendix.
Previous writers of Scottish history have in general overlooked
the ancient territorial divisions of the country. That
the name of Scotia was, previous to the thirteenth century,
confined to the country north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde,
is undoubted ; the chronicles and ancient writers invariably
asserting that these Firths divided Scotia from Anglia. That
part of the present kingdom
situated to the south of these
Firths, appears to have formerly consisted of the two provinces
of Lothian and Cumbria, or Galloway ; and these provinces
have been frequently noticed by
our later historians. These
writers have, however, entirely overlooked the fact, that Scotia,
or Scotland proper, was likewise divided into provinces. We
have seen that frequent allusion is made by the chroniclers and
monkish writers to the "
provinciae Pictorum";i and from the
See Part I., chap. ii.