![]() Meanwhile Pictish ambassadors came to King Mogallus, tearfully requesting his aid against the Romans and Britons. They embraced him with the same good-will and reverence with which they had embraced King Galdus a little earlier for having expelled the Romans from Scottish territories after waging such a toilsome war.Ĥ. The Scots lifted up their spirits in great hope for a better fortune as they saw King Mogallus adopting his grandfather’s ways and exerting all his powers to improve themselves, as he visited all the districts of the Scots with an enthusiasm and zeal for reforming all things for the better. For he thought that, if he could regain the good-will of the gods, who had been rendered angry against the kingdom and its people by Lugthacus’ monstrous crimes, he would be taking good enough care for the welfare of his person and that of his realm. He took pious care to restore the rites of the gods to the condition in which they had originally been established by his ancestors and had been carefully maintained by the priesthood, since at the urging of disreputable man they had been either neglected or ill-managed during the reign of his uncle. He hanged those pestilential agents of his who had acted to the public detriment, who had managed to escape the recent upheaval. He took painstaking care to make good thefaults of public government introduced during the reign of his uncle Lugthacus. At the beginning of his reign, mindful of the glory of his grandfather, he very earnestly strove to imitate his manners and way of life: to preserve his faith with the Romans and Britons in accordance with treaties, and to grant his commoners peace and quiet, preventing internal sedition in all quarters. After the death of Lugthacus, by consent of all men Mogallus, Galdus’ grandson by his daughter, assumed government over the Scots. ![]() The elders command that the king’s body be buried with royal estate, since the were moved by the memory of his late father’s good accomplishments those of the rest killed by the mob were to be cast in a field to be rent apart by wild beasts.ģ. For a parliament was held at Evonium, and when Lugthacus had commanded that the numerous noblemen who had employed many arguments in damning his impious manner of governing should be dragged off to their execution for fomenting dissension, an uproar broke out and by order of the elders the soldiers very cruelly put him to death together with the unclean toadies to whom he had entrusted his life, in the third year of his reign. But his criminal rashness could not go long unpunished. But nothing moved their noble minds more than his foul insults to their dignity: he called his elders, who employed wiser counsel and had better ideas about commonwealth and its government, raving gaffers and mad fools, and placed bagpipe-players, gluttons, panderers, stage-actors, and similar low-down fellows, in whom he delighted, in public office, thinking everything would go his way under this manner of government. For nearly two years the Scottish elders endured the outrages of this most foul prince. Lugthacus’ other felonies must go unmentioned, since they are unfit for men’s ears: I mean the ways in whic he debauched his aunts both paternal and maternal, his nieces, and finally his own daughters, having only this single regret, that he could not debauch all his kinswomen.Ģ. The king called these extortionists his “brothers” at public meetings and in his letters, and was pleased by himself over nothing so much as the invention of a new fiction to justify pilling and polling. Elders of the realm, convicted even of the most trifling offenses, were hoisted up onto gallows or compelled to end their lives by other demeaning forms of punishment. This was the reason why rabble were regarded as respectable men, and men of laudable dignity and decency were wretchedly mistreated at the whim of the worst sort of men. In all districts there ensued pillaging that went unpunished, since the royal authority forbade this. He assigned the power of sitting as judge and the principal dignities of the realm to base-born fellows whom he knew to be savage and greedy for other men’s properties, thinking only of their wallets. He convicted wealthy men on false charges without a hearing, despoiled them of their fortunes, and soon, employing various accusations and wiles, put to death most excellent men whom Galdus had highly esteemed, since he found them burdensome. He was very different from his father in his character in manners, having been corrupted by luxury and idleness. HE reign of Lugthacus, who received the kingship after the memorable rule of Galdus, which ended in the manner I have just described, was as hateful and loathsome as his father’s had been loved by all men.
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