FEARCHAIR or FERCHARDUS I (622?–636?), the fifty-second king of Scottish Dalriada, according to the fictitious chronology of Boece and Buchanan, but the ninth according to the rectified list of Father Innes, reckoning from Fergus the son of Earc, is supposed by Buchanan to have been a son of Eugenius Eochadh Buidhe (the Yellow), who reigned between Conadh (Kenneth) Kerr and the more famous Donald IV (Breac) [q. v.], another son of Eochadh Buidhe. Skene, who conjectured in a note to the ‘Chronicles of the Picts and Scots’ that he may have reigned with or followed Donald Breac (preface cxii), omits him from the line of Dalriad kings in his ‘History of Celtic Scotland.’ The existence of another Fearchair II, called Fada (the Long) [q. v.], makes it not impossible that the chroniclers made two kings out of one. Buchanan's biography of Fearchair I and II is quite imaginary, and we know nothing of this king except that his name appears in the list of kings in the register of the priory of St. Andrews (Innes, app. 5) and other old lists as distinct from Fearchair Fada. In several of these he is called the son of Eroin.
[Innes's Critical Essay; Chronicles of Picts and Scots; Skene's Celtic Scotland.]
FEARCHAIR FADA (the Long) or FERCHARDUS II (d. 697) was the fifty-fourth king of Scottish Dalriada, according to the fictitious chronology of Boece and Buchanan, but the twelfth reckoning from Fergus the son of Earc, according to the rectified list of Father Innes. Buchanan has given a dark but imaginary portrait of this king, whom he represents as given up to every vice, closing his account with declaring that ‘Scotland groaned under this monster eighteen years.’ We really know very little of him, though there seems no doubt he was an historical character. Mr. Skene's conjectural reconstruction of this period is that the kingdom of Dalriada fell into anarchy after the death of Donald Breac, 643, and was subject to the Britons, who killed that king at Strathcarron, West Lothian, but that both Britons and Scots were under subjection to the Northumbrian Angles. He further supposes that during this anarchy Fearchair Fada, the head of the clan Baedan, part of the larger tribe of Cinel Eochagh, a subdivision of the Cinel Lorn, took the lead in the attempt to throw off the yoke of the Britons and Angles. He was at first defeated in 678 by the Britons, but the issue of several other battles, one perhaps on the island of Jura, is not mentioned in the scanty entries of the Irish chronicles, probably because indecisive. In 683, in conjunction with Bredei, or Brude, son of Bile, the Pictish king of Fortrenn, he took part in the siege of Dunadd, the fort in the moss of Crinan, which had been the chief strength of the Dalriads, and in the recovery of Dundurn, a fort on the east of Loch Earn, the stronghold of the men of Fortrenn. Egfrid, the king of the Northumbrian Angles, roused by these successes of the united Picts and Scots, which drove back the Anglian advance in Scotland, invaded the Pictish territory, and was slain at Nechtansmere in 685, as a result of which Bæda states: ‘The Picts recovered their territory, and the Scots in Britain and a certain part of the Britons received their liberty.’
The death of Fearchair Fada is recorded by the ‘Annals of Ulster’ in 697, and from the mention in the same annals of the violent death of descendants of Donald Breac, about the same period, Skene conjectures that there was no king of the whole of Scottish Dalriada, but rival chiefs of the tribe or clan of Lorn and Gabran, to the former of which tribe Fearchair, and to the latter Donald Breac and his descendants, representing the direct line of Fergus the son of Earc, belonged.
[Chronicles of the Picts and Scots; Skene's Celtic Scotland.]
FEARGAL (d. 785). [See Fergil.]
FEARN, HENRY NOEL-. [See Christmas, Henry, 1811–1868.]
FEARN, JOHN (1768–1837), philosopher, served for some years in the royal navy, retired, and devoted himself to philosophy. He was equally opposed to the English and the Scottish schools, but was no transcendentalist, and professed to base his philosophy on induction. In a series of works, of which a list is appended, he discussed most of the more important questions of metaphysics, but without showing any clear apprehension of the points in dispute. He was a friend of Dr. Parr and of Basil Montagu. He died in Sloane Street, Chelsea, on 3 Dec. 1837. His works are the following: 1. ‘An Essay on Consciousness, or a Series of Evidences of a Distinct Mind,’ London, 1810, 2nd edit. 1812, 4to. 2. ‘A Review of First Principles of Bishop Berkeley, Dr. Reid, and Professor Stewart, with an indication of other principles,’ London, 1813, 4to (also printed in the ‘Pamphleteer,’ No. vi.). 3. ‘An Essay on Immortality,’ London, 1814, 8vo. 4. ‘A Demonstration of the Principles of Primary Vision, with the consequent state of Philo-
