Competing ecclesiastical and royal attempts at centralisation in Scotland’s west before 1230

Adam of Melrose, bishop of Caithness, was burned to death by a group of local notables in 1222. This occurred the same year as Alexander II launched a campaign in Argyll that would eventually result in a major shift in the pattern of lordship there. This campaign also contributed to the growing ill-feeling that eventually led several groups in the west to support Hákon Hákonarson’s 1263 invasion of Kintyre and Bute. The events of 1222 in Caithness and Argyll occurred the same year as a major attack on Coleraine on the north coast of Ireland by Hugh de Lacy and Aéd Ua Néill. This article will explore some of the paths that led to this state of affairs, providing a discussion of the processes at work in the west that provide something of a parallel to those within which the burning of Bishop Adam and the earlier blinding of Bishop Jón of Caithness, his predecessor, occurred. The focus will be on Argyll, Man, and the Hebrides, with occasional reference to Galloway and Ireland. Having briefly introduced the emergence of the relevant polities, the article will then turn to a diachronic discussion of the shifts in Scottish royal policies towards the lordships or kingdoms — depending on whose perspective — along Scotland’s western seaboard in the ‘long’ twelfth century, opening with a brief discussion of the career of Somerled son of Gille-Bhrighde, whose activities intersect with the ongoing process(es) of centralisation in northern Britain. This is followed by a treatment of the concurrent emergence of the dioceses of Suðreyjar/Sodor in Niðaróss’ archdiocese and the diocese of Argyll in the aftermath of the Gregorian reforms that resulted in much of Catholic Europe adopting a stricter diocese–deanery–parish system of organisation.