Blair Collection > Critical dissertations on the origin, antiquities, language, government, manners, and religion, of the antient Caledonians, their posterity the Picts, and the British and Irish Scots

42 Of the Pinijh Monarchy.
over all Albany, throughout a feries of one thou-
iand three hundred and fixty years, or at leafl: one
thoufand and feventy. But the learned prelate
told the author of this treatife, that Albany was
of old divided into {Q.\^?i. kingdoms, each of
M'hich had a fovereign of its own ; and that every
one of theie fovereigns had a petty King under
him. The moft antient of thofe fovereigns was
called Ennegus, if the bifhop deferves any credit.
In Ihort, the hifbory of thofe Pidifh monarchs
who reigned over Caledonia before St. Ninian's
time, is no lefs dubious than that of thofe forty
Scoitifh Kings whom Innes has been at fo much
pains to eraze from the lift of Scots Kings. We
may therefore venture to affirm, that it is impolii-
ble to prove, from any probable hiftory, that the
Pids were governed by any general Kings before
the time of Fergus the fon of Ere, fuppofing that
time to be the true aera of the commencement of
the Scottifh monarchy. If the Scots of modern
times will, at all events, have fpurious or nominal
Kings in the lift of their monarchs, Fergus the
fon of Ferchard, and his thirty-nine immediate
fucceftbrs, will anfwer their purpofe much better
than Chruidne and his ideal delcendants.
The generality of the Scots hiftorians place
the beginning of the Scottilli monarchy in the age
of Alexander the Great. Every impartial judge
will allow, that Innes has totally deftroyed that
part of their fyftem *. But had Innes been con-
liftent with himfelf, or had he purfued thofe prin-
ciples from which he argued fo fuccefsfully againft
the antiquity of the Scottilli monarchy, it feems
plain, that he would have likewife demoliftied
* See the Crit. Eflay, p. 102, 103, 104.
that