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262 Reginald
L. Poole
But if that is so, the three remaining names must be an odd lot, and
topographical situation no guide to their identification. So it is difficult to
frame any guesses which are better than any other guesses. Alne is not
far from Ufoa ; Swostersey looks very Norse if it can mean Sister's Isle, it
may be Inchkenneth, which seems to have been the chief possession of the
Nuns of lona. The remaining insula episcoporum h may be lona if any
reason can be given for giving it that name but I hardly think it was ever
a Bishop's seat (except casually in Celtic times) till the final division of the
Scottish and English Sees of Sodor. It is to be observed that in the Sixteenth
Century Rental of the Bishopric of the Isles (in Collectanea de Rebus
had not a third of the
Albanicis] it is expressly noted that the Bishop
parsonage of Icolmkill, and this privilege may be very ancient.
Sir Archibald Lawrie says,
It is, I think, certain that the Kings of
Norway in the eleventh and twelfth centuries claimed every one of the
islands on the West Coast of Scotland.
The tradition was that King Magnus in 1098, to add to the number of
his possessions, sat in a boat which was dragged across the isthmus of
Tarbert to prove that Kintyre was an island.
The Kings of Norway in the next century recognised the power of the
Kings of the Isles, and in 1166, when King Henry II. of England met
there came there the
King William of Scotland at Mont St. Michel,
Bishop of Man and the Isles, who told Robert de Torigneio (then the
Abbot of St. Michel) that the King of the Isles held Man and thirty-one
other islands under the King of Norway on condition of paying on the
accession of each King of Norway ten marks of gold. 62
An interesting question is whether lona was one of the islands held by
the King of the Isles under Norway and whether the Bishop of Man
and the Isles had any episcopal rights or derived any revenue from the
church of lona.
It is probable that the Kings of Norway claimed lona and that the Bishop
of Trondhjem and afterwards the Kings and Bishops of Man pretended that
it lay within their diocese and jurisdiction, but it is almost certain that such
a claim was not acknowledged. The old church of lona was closely
connected with Ireland, and as late as 1164 the Annals of Ulster record
an event which Haddan and Stubbs describe as an ineffectual attempt to
reunite lona and the Irish church. 63
The meaning of the passage is not clear to me, but it seems certain that
the churchmen of lona looked to Ireland and not to Man as the seat of
ecclesiastical authority.
In addition to claims by the Irish church and by the Bishop of Man
there was a claim by the Bishop of Dunkeld, a Bishopric which long
asserted interests and rights
in the church of lona.
Towards the end of the twelfth century King William granted to the
Abbey of Holyrood the churches in Galloway on the mainland of Scotland
62 Robert de Torigneio, Rolls Ed. vol. iv. p. 228.
63 Haddan and Stubbs, v.a. 2, p. 235 ; Chron. Picts and Scots, p. 372 ; dnnals of
Malcolm and William, p. 89.