as 



bj defining this settlement, as having been made near Dumbarton, 

 (Alcluith,) on the northern shore of the Frith of Clyde. 



This account delivered by an author so worthy of belief, touching 

 a matter to him so immediately within the limits of tradition, (the 

 European colonization of America is less so within ours,) and subject 

 alike to the corrections of students in his own school from Ireland and 

 North Britain respectively, should be decisive and sufficient in itself 

 to invalidate a legion of ephemeral opponents. It may be added too, 

 that Camden, Usher, Lhuid, Stillingfleet, Innes, and others, who 

 rejected much of Bede's accounts relative to the southern Britons and 

 Picts, did all implicitly receive his assertion of the above colonization. 

 Indeed it is the only one of the three events of which Bede himself 

 affects to speak with any cei'tainty, his opinion of the British coloni- 

 zation being given, " ut fertur," and of the Pictish, "ut perhibent." 



Giraldus Cambrensis supports this migration, and Higden, in the 

 Polychronicon, confirms it as " from Hibernia, which is properly the 

 native country of the Scots.^'* 



Richard of Cirencester transmits the proof with his authority. 

 "A. M. 4325. The Scots, under the guidance of King Fergus pass 

 into Britain, and there make a settlement."-t- Matthew of Westminster 

 supports the account, Wintown admits it, and Thomas of Walsing- 

 ham conveys it in the words of Bede.:|: Hector Boetius adopts the 

 proposition, as does Buchanan to the fullest extent, while he suggests§ 

 the possibility of some prior colonization from the same source. 

 Stanihurst writes, "Wherefore as Scotland is named ' Scotia Minor,' 

 so Ireland is termed ' Scotia Major,' as the head from whence the 



* " De Hibernia, quse proprie Scottorum patria est." — Polychron. de Scotia, 

 f " Ductu Regis Fergusii in Britanniam transeunt Scotti, ibique sedem figunf." 

 X Ypodigma Neustria, ad ann. 1186. § Rer. Scot. Hist. lib. 2. 



