THE HISTORY OF THE AREA
Ross in the Middle Ages
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THE HISTORY OF THE AREA
Ross in the Middle Ages
After Thorfinn's death in 1064, Norse power in the north began to decline and the Scots were quick to exploit the vacuum which his death created. Thorfinn's widow, Ingibiorg, married the new king of Scots, Malcolm III Canmore, who had defeated Macbeth in southern Scotland in 1054 and within two years of Thorfinn's death the Scots were back in control of Easter Ross. Tradition avows that King Malcolm granted Tain the immunities that were to be the basis for its future greatness as a burgh. By the 11th century it had risen to dominate the whole area around the Dornoch Firth. At the end of the 9th Century great territorial bishoprics had been set up and Tain had been established as the seat of a bishop who served the lands from the Cromarty Firth north into Sutherland. The greatest of these bishops was St Duthac, the first native of Tain to whom we can give a name. He died in about 1065 in Ireland, and a year later King Malcolm granted the privileges to the church in Tain that were to encourage the growth of the town.Scottish control over these northlands was far from secure. Throughout the 11th and 12th centuries rebellions led by the descendants of Lulach (Macbeth's stepson) and his allies, or by yet other rival claimants to the Scottish crown, were to throw the region into turmoil. The MacWilliams, descendants of Malcolm III's son of Ingibiorg of Orkney, used their northern heritage to stir up trouble there for their rivals, the children of Malcolm's second marriage to Queen Margaret. They were joined by Harald Maddadsson, the greatest of the Norse earls since Thorfinn, who was also a great nephew of King Malcolm. Lulach's descendants were probably the most successful in the long run for, after years of struggling against the greater resources of the kings of Scots, they submitted and in 1157 received the realdom of Ross in compensation for what they had renounced. The Scottish king's gamble failed, for Malcolm earl of Ross died in 1168 and one of his children succeeded him. Ross was once again disputed territory and Harald fished in these troubled waters by trying to set up one of his own sons as earl.
Trouble in the south of the kingdom and a war with the English weakened the Scots to such an extent that the northerners were able to rise repeatedly in rebellion, and it was only after 1196 that firm steps were taken to ensure that Scottish power was strengthened. King William the lion (1165-1214) pushed northwards and crossed the Cromarty Firth to establish a new royal castle at Dunskeath near Nigg. Despite further rebellion, William consistently tightened his grip on the north, forced Earl Harald to come to terms and established Scottish royal authority as far north as Caithness.
William's death late in 1214 sparked a final great rising. Donald MacWilliam and Kenneth, a descendant of Earl Malcolm, rose in rebellion and attacked the new royal castles in Ross. The revolt was doomed and in June 1215 the rebels were cornered and defeated by Ferchar MacTaggart, lord of Applecross in Wester Ross, ancestor of the Rosses of Balnagown. He sent the heads of the defeated rebels to the young king, Alexander II, and was knighted for his service and rewarded with lands in Easter Ross, probably near Tain. Ferchar was to be the king's most loyal supporter amongst the native lords of the north. Shortly after 1220, he founded an abbey of Premonstratendian canons whom he had brought from Whithorn in Galloway at Old Fearn to the west of Edderton, and gave them a large portion of his recently acquired estates in Easter Ross. It was probably Ferchar's intention that this should become the seat of the bishopric of Ross, which had settled at Rosemarkie after St Duthac's time, but this was not to be. Finally, in about 1230, Ferchar's devotion to the king was rewarded by the grant to him of the earldom of Ross.
Ferchar MacTaggart and the Earldom of Ross
The central importance of the lands around Tain to the new earl is emphasised by his transfer of the seat of his power, from his family's traditional lands around Applecross, to the richer and more hospitable east. In 1238 he moved the abbey at the request of the canons to a new location at New Fearn in the lowlands in the centre of the Tain peninsula, close to his own new castle at Earl's Allan - of which no visible trace remains - and at the centre of the most populous portion of the earldom.
The church in Ross was completed and the network of parishes in the medieval diocese was established. Tain had been saved from sinking into obscurity as only another rural parish by preservation of the rights of St Duthac's sanctuary. It was probably with Ferchar's support that the bishop of Ross began to negotiate with the church of Armagh in Ulster, where Duthac was buried, for the return of his relics to his home town. In 1253, two years after Ferchar's death, the saint's remains joined the other relics, including his shirt, which were already in Tain.
The Rosses continued to flourish throughout the 13th Century and the process of settlement of their lands was completed without the interruption of renewed rebellion. Dingwall had been founded as a royal burgh but Tain, secure with its immunities, far out-stripped its upstart rival in size and wealth. By the end of the 13th Century, Tain was the largest town north of Inverness and was already enjoying a reputation as an important pilgrimage centre.
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