Kenneth I
King of Scotland
Cináed mac Ailpín
c.810–858
Father: Alpin II of Dalriada (?-841)
Mother: UNKNOWN
Wife: UNKNOWN
Children:
Constantine I of Scotland (836-877)
Pedigree:
Eochaid IV
|Alpin II|
| |Urgusia
|
|--Kenneth I of Scotland
|
| ____________________
|____________________|
|____________________
Colleen Keenan's 33rd and 34th great-grandfather
NOTE: Kenneth I "succeeded his father, Alpin II of Dalriada, to the throne of Dalriada.
He soon obtained the Pictish throne in 843 and became the first king to rule the Picts
of Pictavia and the Scots of Dalriada, thus becoming the first King of Scots, a regnal
title which continued for another 863 years, until the Acts of Union. It is possible that
intermarriage with the Picts helped secure Kenneth's throne. The joint Kingdom of Scotland
was known as Alba from the Gaelic name for the area. He was the first king of the House
of Alpin.
Recalling the peculiarity of a matrilineal succession which governed Pictish crowns, it
is evident that Kenneth Mac Alpin grounded his claims to the Pictish crown from his mother's
bloodlines. In 839, the Picts suffered a disastrous defeat at the hands of the Vikings.
The Norsemen had conquered and settled Shetland, the Outer Hebrides and as far south as
the mouth of the Clyde. Caithness, Sutherland and even Dalriada were being attacked and
harassed by the long boats. The brutalizing defeat at the hands of the Vikings in 839
killed most of the Pictish nobility, including the King of Picts and Scots Uven Mac Angus II,
his brother Bran, and "numberless others". This opened Mac Alpin's claim to the vacant
Pictish throne (via his mother who was a Pictish princess). The Pictish kingdoms had
been severely weakened by attacks from the Vikings and were in no condition to dispute
his claim.
His claim to the crown of Dalriada came from his father, who was a member of clan
Gabhran, which had produced most Scottish kings, such as his ancestors King Eachaidh,
King Alpin Mac Eachaidh, King Aed, and King Fergus. His Pictish mother was descended
from the royal house of Fortrenn, and his great-grand uncle, Alpin Mac Eachaidh had
actually reigned as King of Picts until deposed by Oengus I. It is thus that Kenneth
Mac Alpin was one of several nobles with a claim to the crown of Picts and Scots.
The sources for facts of how Kenneth Mac Alpin, the avenging son of the slain Alpin,
became King of Picts and Scots are few and suspect. Two such sources, The Prophecy of
St. Berchan, and De Instructione Principus note that in 841 Mac Alpin attacked the
remnants of the Pictish army and defeated them (he is lauded as "the raven feeder").
MacAlpin then invited the Pictish king, Drust, and the remaining Pictish nobles to
Scone, Perthshire to perhaps settle the issue of Dalriada's freedom or MacAlpin's
claim to the Dalriadic crown. Faced with a recently victorious MacAlpin in the south
and a devastated army in the north, Drust, as well as all claimants to the Pictish
throne from the seven royal houses attend this meeting at Scone. Legend has it that the
Scots came secretly armed to Scone, where Drust and the Pictish nobles were killed. This
event has come to be known as MacAlpin's Treason.
Although their king and royal houses had been murdered and their armies wiped out in the
north by the Vikings and decimated in the south by the Scots, the Picts nonetheless
resist Scottish domination and as late as the 12th year of MacAlpin's reign The Chronicle
of Huntington tells us that Mac Alpin "fought successfully against the Picts seven times
in one day" (perhaps wiping out the last remnants of an independent Pictish armed force).
By the year 843, he had created a semblance of unity among the warring societies of the
Picts, Scots, Britons, and Angles after he had defeated the Picts in battle. MacAlpin
created his capital at Forteviot, also called Scone, in Pictish territory. He then moved
his religious center to Dunkeld on the River Tay in present-day Perthshire, to where he
transferred the remains of St. Columba from the Isle of Iona.
At roughly the same time that the people of Wales were separated from the invading Saxons
by the artificial boundary of Offa's Dyke, MacAlpin was creating a kingdom of Scotland.
MacAlpin's successes in part were due to the threat coming from the raids of the Vikings,
many of whom became settlers. The seizure of control over all Norway in 872 by Harald Fairhair
caused many of the previously independent Jarls to look for new lands to establish themselves.
One result of the coming of the Norsemen and Danes, with their command of the sea, was
that the kingdom of Scotland became surrounded and isolated. The old link with Ireland
was broken, the country was now cut off from southern England and the Continent, thus,
the kingdom of Alba established by MacAlpin was thrown in upon itself and united against
a common foe. According to the Huntingdon Chronicle, he "was the first of the Scots to
obtain the monarchy of the whole of Albania, which is now called Scotia."
Kenneth is thought to have died of a tumor after reigning for sixteen years. He died at
Forteviot in 858 and was buried on the Isle of Iona. His brother, Donald I, succeeded
him,
as was the custom.
Throughout this whole period, the dominion of the Scottish kings was essentially limited
to Fortrenn, the Mearns and Dalriada, as the rest of the Pictish lands were under the
yoke of the Vikings. Nonetheless, within a few generations, the Pictish language was
forgotten, the Pictish Church taken over by the Scottish Columban Church, and most
vestiges of Pictish culture assimilated.
Furthermore, the seat of Kings was eventually moved to Scone, sacred heart of the Pictish
land. The sons of Mac Alpin accepted the crown over the land of Picts and Scots seated on
a slab of stone known as the Stone of Scone. Scottish myth tells us the Stone was carried
by the Celtic tribes since their origins in Spain, brought to Tara in Ireland, built into
the wall of Dunstaffnage Castle and then brought to Scone."
SOURCE: en.wikipedia.org
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