THE KINGDOM OF SCOTIA.
[Sidenote: A.D. 1005-1034.
Malcolm, son of Kenneth, king of Scotia.]
The line of the kings of Scottish descent had now been for a century and
a half in possession of the Pictish throne. During the first
half-century they had borne the title of kings of the Picts; but during
the remainder of this period their title had passed over into that of
kings of Alban, and what formerly had been known as _Cruithintuath_ and
_Pictavia_, or the territory of the Picts, and, from its capital, the
kingdom of Scone, had now become _Albania_ or the kingdom of Alban,
extending from the Firth of Forth to the river Spey, over which these
kings of Alban ruled, while a certain supremacy was acknowledged beyond
it. The mixed population of Picts and Scots had now become to a great
extent amalgamated, and under the influence of the dominant race of the
Scots were identified with them in name.
Their power was now to be further consolidated, and their influence
extended during the thirty years’ reign of a king who proved to be the
last of his race, and who was to bequeath the kingdom, under the name of
Scotia, to a new line of kings. This was Malcolm, the son of Kenneth,
who slew his predecessor, Kenneth, the son of Dubh, at Monzievaird.
Malcolm appears to have inaugurated the commencement of his reign by the
usual attempt on the part of the more powerful kings of this race to
wrest Bernicia from the kings of England, but which resulted in defeat
and a great slaughter of his people. The Ulster Annals tell us that in
the year 1006 a great battle was fought between the men of Alban and of
Saxonia, in which the men of Alban were overcome, and a great slaughter
made of their nobles;[548] and Simeon of Durham furnishes us with
further details. He says that ‘during the reign of Ethelred, king of the
English, Malcolm, king of the Scots, the son of King Kyned, collected
together the entire military force of Scotland, and having devastated
the province of the Northumbrians with fire and sword, he laid siege to
Durham. At this time Bishop Aldun had the government there, for
Waltheof, who was the earl of the Northumbrians, had shut himself up in
Bamborough. He was exceedingly aged, and in consequence could not
undertake any active measure against the enemy. Bishop Aldun had given
his daughter Ecgfrida in marriage to his son Uchtred, a youth of great
energy and well skilled in military affairs. Now when this young man
perceived that the land was devastated by the enemy, and that Durham was
in a state of blockade and siege, he collected together into one body a
considerable number of the men of Northumbria and York, and cut to
pieces nearly the entire multitude of the Scots; the king himself and a
few others escaping with difficulty.’[549]
But if Malcolm thus met with this great defeat in his first attempt to
extend his territories beyond the Firth of Forth on the south, he does
not appear to have been more successful in wresting the districts north
of the Spey from the grasp of Sigurd, the powerful earl of Orkney. The
only change which appears to have taken place in Sigurd’s relations with
the kings of the Scots is, that from being a pagan he had become
Christian under the influence of Olaf Tryggvesson, the first Christian
king of Norway, who, returning from a viking expedition to the west,
came to the Orkneys in the year 997, and seized Earl Sigurd as he lay
under the isle of Hoy with a single ship. King Olaf offered the earl to
ransom his life on condition he should embrace the true faith and be
baptized; that he should become his man, and proclaim Christianity over
all the Orkneys. He took his son Hundi or Hvelp as a hostage, and left
the Orkneys for Norway, where Hundi stayed with him some years, and died
there.[550]
This event was more likely to confirm than to shake Sigurd’s hold over
the Scottish provinces, and he had now the support of the king of
Norway, who, according to the Olaf Tryggvesson’s Saga, ‘promised him
that he should hold in full liberty as his subject, and with the dignity
of an earl, all the dominions which he had had before.’ Malcolm appears
to have found it more expedient to form an alliance with Sigurd, as the
next event recorded in the history of the Norwegian earl is, that he
then married the daughter of Melkolf, the king of the Scots, by whom he
had a son, Thorfinn. A great event, however, was now approaching, which
was not only to terminate Sigurd’s sway over these districts with his
life, but to free Ireland almost entirely from the domination of the
Danes. The native tribes of Ireland at length resolved to make a serious
effort to throw off the Danish yoke. The war commenced in Munster, and
the leader was the celebrated Brian Boroimhe, the head of one of its
most powerful tribes. His success in this war led to his becoming the
monarch of all Ireland, about a year or two before Malcolm ascended the
Scottish throne. The struggle between the two races in Ireland, the
Scandinavian and the Gaelic, soon became a vital one, and each party
recognised that it must terminate either in the freedom of Ireland from
the Danish dominion, or in its entire and permanent subjection to them.
This final conflict between the two races took place in the year 1014.
Each party assembled from all quarters such forces as they could
command. In addition to the native tribes of Munster, Connaught, and
Meath, who followed Brian, he had also an auxiliary force from Alban
under Donald, son of Eimin, son of Cainnich, the Mormaer of Marr,[551]
and advanced against Dublin in the spring of that year. The Danes of
Dublin, besides a party of the native tribes of Leinster who adhered to
them, assembled the Northmen, both Danes and Norwegians, from all
quarters. Among the former came Danes from Northumbria, and among the
latter Sigurd, earl of Orkney, with the Norwegians of Orkney and
Caithness, and those of the Isle of Man, of Skye, of Lewis, of Kintyre,
and Airergaidhel or Argyll, as well as from Wales.[552] This fleet
arrived from every quarter at Dublin, and with the Danes of Dublin
formed a very great force, consisting of three strong battalions. A
great battle took place at Cluantarbh near Dublin on Good Friday in the
year 1014 which ended in the entire defeat of the Danes and their
auxiliaries. The slaughter was very great on both sides. On the side of
the Irish, Brian himself, then an old man, fell after the victory had
been won, and Domnall, the Mormaer of Marr from Alban, was slain in the
battle. On the side of the Danes, most of the leaders, with Sigurd, the
earl of Orkney, were slain.[553]
By the death of Sigurd the provinces in Scotland which had been
subjected by him seem to have passed at once from under the domination
of the Norwegian earls. In fact the relation of these earls towards the
territory under their rule varied considerably, and was more or less
close according to the hold which the Norwegians had over them. When
they had entirely settled and colonised a district, it was close and
intimate, and the death of each earl in no way altered its position, and
it passed naturally to his successor. This was the case with the Orkney
Islands, which had become entirely Norwegian, and were held as an
earldom under the kingdom of Norway. They passed from him to his sons by
his first marriage—Sumarlidi, Brusi, and Einar—who divided the islands
among them and were accepted as earls. Those possessions which had been
only partially settled by the Norwegians were usually claimed by them,
and also by their native lords, and either formed part of the Norwegian
earldom or were separated from it according to the power and ability of
the Norwegian earl to retain their possession. Such was the position of
Caithness, which was claimed by the Norwegian earl as part of his
hereditary possessions, and also by the king of Scots as one of the
dependencies of his kingdom. When Sigurd went on his expedition to
Ireland which ended so fatally for him, he had sent his son Thorfinn, by
his second wife, the daughter of Malcolm, king of the Scots, to his
grandfather; and though he was only five years old at his father s
death, the king of the Scots ‘bestowed Caithness and Sutherland upon him
with the title of earl, and gave him men to rule the domain along with
him.’[554] Those districts, on the other hand, which the Norwegians had
rendered tributary to them without dispossessing their native rulers, or
to any great extent colonising them, were in a different position. Their
relation to the Norwegian earl seems to have been one mainly personal to
the earl whose power had subjected them to his authority, and ceased at
his death, as it is said with reference to a subsequent earl that on his
death ‘many “Rikis” which the earl had subjected fell off, and their
inhabitants sought the protection of those native chiefs who were
territorially born to rule over them.’[555] This was the case with the
province of Moray and Ross, which we find after Sigurd’s death ruled
over by the same Finleikr from whom he had wrested them, and who appears
in Tighernac as Findlaec mac Ruaidhri, Mormaer Moreb, and in the Ulster
Annals as ‘Ri Alban,’ indicating that he claimed a position of
independence both from the earls of Orkney and the kings of the Scots.
Such too may have been the position of those of the Sudreys which were
under Earl Gilli. He is mentioned in the year of the battle of
Cluantarbh, but he did not accompany the Norwegian chiefs to Ireland. He
appears to have been merely tributary to them, and readily transferred
his obedience from one Norwegian leader to another, which, as well as
the form of his name, confirms the impression that he was a native ruler
and belonged to that portion of the Gaelic tribes who from their
subjection to foreign rule were termed Gall gaidhel, and the islands
under his immediate rule may now for a time have owned the authority of
the king of the Scots.[556] Such too was probably the position of the
province termed by the Norwegians Dali, or the Dales, and which seems to
have been the western districts known as Airer Gaidhel, and part of
which was formerly Dalriada. This may also have been the position of
Galloway, as we find in that district, immediately after Cluantarbh, an
Earl Melkolf or Malcolm, whose name marks him out as a native
chief.[557]
As Thorfinn was only five winters old when his father, Earl Sigurd, was
slain in 1014, this places the marriage of King Malcolm’s daughter to
the Norwegian earl in the year 1008,[558] but another and evidently an
elder daughter had been already married to Crinan, or as the Irish
Annals term him, Cronan, ‘Abbot of Dunkeld.’ Though bearing this
designation he was not an ecclesiastic, but in reality a great secular
chief, occupying a position in power and influence not inferior to that
of any of the native Mormaers. The effect of the incessant invasions and
harassing depredations, directed as they were largely against the
ecclesiastical establishments, had been to disorganise the Christian
Church to a great extent, and to relax the power and sanction by which
the constitution and the lives of her clergy were regulated. They became
secular in their lives and habits, married, and had children who
inherited their possessions. The more important benefices passed into
the hands of laymen, who, along with the name of the office, acquired
possession of the lands attached to it, without taking orders or
attempting to perform clerical duties, and these offices with the
possessions attached to them became hereditary in their families.[559]
After the church of Dunkeld had been founded or at least reconstructed
by Kenneth mac Alpin, we find mention of an abbot of Dunkeld, who was
also chief bishop of Fortrenn, and whose death is recorded in 865. Eight
years after the abbot is termed simply Superior of Dunkeld.[560] In the
following century we find Donnchadh or Duncan, abbot of Dunkeld,
appearing at the head of his followers, and taking part in a war of
succession in support of one of the claimants to the throne. He was no
doubt a lay abbot, and the possessions of the church of Dunkeld were
sufficiently extensive to give him an important position among the
Mormaers of Alban. Crinan or Cronan, as lay abbot of Dunkeld, probably
possessed, with the lands belonging to it and other foundations
intimately connected with it, territories in the district of Atholl of
great extent, including almost the whole of the western part of it,[561]
and must have occupied a position of power and influence. He had by the
king’s daughter a son Duncan, and probably another son Maldred, and the
name of his eldest son leads to the inference that he was probably the
son or grandson of Duncan the lay abbot who was slain in battle in 965,
and in whose person the lay abbacy had become hereditary.
In the year 1016 Uchtred, the earl of Northumbria who had inflicted so
disastrous a defeat upon Malcolm in the early years of his reign, was
slain by Cnut, a Dane who was then in possession of the greater part of
England, and became its king in the following year, and the earldom of
Northumbria was bestowed by him upon Eric, a Dane. Eadulf Cudel,
however, the brother of Uchtred and the heir to his earldom, appears to
have maintained possession of the northern division north of the Tyne.
Malcolm seems to have felt this to be a favourable opportunity for
making a second attempt upon the northern districts. He was now in firm
possession of the kingdom of Alban; he could count upon the assistance
of the Britons of Cumbria, whose sub-king was under his dominion; and
the outlying provinces of the north and west were for the time freed
from the Norwegian rule, and might be won to aid him.
[Sidenote: A.D. 1018.
Battle of Carham, and cession of Lothian to the Scots.]
With as large a force as he could raise, he, in the year 1018, invaded
Northumbria along with Eugenius the Bald, king of the Strathclyde
Britons, and penetrated the country south of the Firth of Forth as far
as the river Tweed, where he encountered the Northumbrian army at a
place called Carham on the Tweed, a couple of miles above Coldstream,
where a great battle took place, in which the Northumbrians were
entirely defeated, and their army, drawn mainly from the region between
the Tees and the Tweed, almost entirely cut off.[562] Simeon of Durham
tells us in his history of that church that in that year ‘a comet
appeared for thirty nights to the people of Northumbria, a terrible
presage of the calamity by which that province was about to be
desolated. For, shortly afterwards (that is, after thirty days), nearly
the whole population, from the river Tees to the Tweed and their
borders, were cut off in a conflict in which they were engaged with a
countless multitude of Scots at Carrum.’[563] The effect of this great
victory was that the long-pending claims upon these districts which the
Scots had so long tried to enforce, whatever they might be, were now
settled by the surrender to them of the whole district north of the
Tweed, which now became the southern boundary of the Scottish kingdom.
In his account of the siege of Durham, Simeon tells us that Eadulf
Cudel, an indolent and cowardly man, apprehensive that the Scots would
revenge upon himself the slaughter which his brother had inflicted upon
them, yielded up to them the whole of Lodoneia in satisfaction of their
claim and for a solid peace; and in this manner, he adds, Lodoneia or
Lothian in its extended sense was annexed to the kingdom of the
Scots.[564]
Malcolm appears to have retained Lothian without objection or
interference either from the earls of Northumbria or the king of England
for upwards of ten years. Eugenius or Owen, the son of Domnall, sub-king
of Cumbria, who was with him in this expedition, was slain either in
battle or elsewhere in the same year; and this line of provincial kings,
descended from the same royal house with Malcolm himself, terminated
with him, as the next king of the Cumbrians we hear of was Duncan, the
grandson of the Scottish king, whom he now probably placed over the
whole territory belonging to his kingdom south of the firths of Forth
and Clyde.[565]
But while the king of the Scots thus at length obtained possession of a
part at least of Bernicia, and his rule could now be legitimately
exercised as far at least as the river Tweed, the question still
remained open as to the relation in which it was to place him towards
the king of England. All the rights that the Earls of Northumbria could
give him to the district of Lothian he had obtained by treaty; but, as
part of Northumbria, it belonged to the kingdom of the Angles, and was
under the dominion of its kings, and their right, as overlords, could
obviously not be thus transferred. Cnut the Dane had, the year before
the battle of Carham, become king of all England, but he had enough to
occupy his attention during the first few years of his reign, and it was
not till the year 1031 that he could take any active steps to vindicate
his right as king of England. In that year, we are told by the Saxon
Chronicle, ‘King Cnut went to Rome, and as soon as he came home, he went
to Scotland, and the Scots king, Malcolm, submitted to him and became
his man; but held that only a little while; and two other kings,
Maelbaethe and Jehmarc.’ The actual kingdom of Alban, now called Scotia,
extended only from the Firth of Forth to the river Spey, and the
provinces beyond them, though viewed by the kings of the Scots as
dependencies upon their kingdom, were not yet considered as forming an
integral part of it; those lying to the north and west of the kingdom
proper frequently passing under the rule of the Norwegians. It is to
these outlying provinces we must look for the two kings who are said to
have separately submitted along with Malcolm. It is to this period that
a description of Britain belongs in which these provinces are separately
distinguished. The part which refers to Scotland is thus
described:—‘From the Tweed to the great river Forth are Loonia and
Galweya.’ From thence to Norwegia and Dacia—that is, to the districts
occupied by Norwegians and Danes—are ‘all Albania, which is now called
Scotia, and Moravia;’ and the districts and islands here included under
the terms Norwegia and Dacia are ‘Kathenessia, Orkaneya, Enchegal, and
Man, and Ordas, and Gurth, and the other Western Islands around
them.’[566] Loonia is Lothian, recently annexed to the Scottish kingdom,
and the name Galweya was afterwards extended so as to include the whole
country from the Solway to the Clyde. Albania is here distinguished from
the provinces south of the Firths, on the one hand, and from Moravia,
north of the Spey, on the other, and we are told that it is now called
Scotia. Moravia, in its extended sense, was the province of Moray and
Ross. North and west of these provinces was the territory occupied by
the Norwegians and Danes. On the mainland it consisted of Kathenessia or
Caithness, and Airergaidhel, here probably meant by Enchegal. Ordas and
Gurth are probably intended for Lewis and Skye, the old forms of which
names were Lodus and Sgithidh, and which are usually mentioned
separately from the other islands.
[Illustration:
THE
KINGDOM
OF
SCOTIA
_W. & A. K. Johnston, Edinburgh & London._
]
Moravia is here not included among the Norwegian and Danish possessions.
On the death of Sigurd, the Norwegian earl of Orkney, it had become
freed from the Norwegian rule, and its rulers appear to have considered
themselves so far independent as to claim the Celtic title of Ri or
king. Findlaec, the son of Ruadhri, who appears in the sagas under the
name of Finleikr Jarl, and whose slaughter by the sons of his brother
Maelbrigdi in 1020 is recorded by Tighernac as Mormaer of Moreb, is
termed in the Ulster Annals ‘Ri Albain;’ and Tighernac, in recording the
death of his successor Malcolm, the son of his brother Maelbrigdi, and
one of those who slew him, in 1029, terms him ‘Ri Albain.’[567] There
can therefore be little doubt that the king Maelbaethe, who submitted to
King Cnut, was Macbeth, the son of Findlaec, who appears under the same
title which had been borne by his cousin and his father.[568] The native
rulers of Airergaidhel or Argathelia appear also to have borne the
Celtic title of Ri, and it is probable that Jehmarc represents in a
corrupted form the name of the ruler of this district.[569] These kings
would probably have little scruple in rendering their submission to King
Cnut the Dane, from their having so recently been under Norwegian rule.
Three years after this expedition Malcolm died. Tighernac records his
death in 1034 as king of Alban and head of the nobility of the west of
Europe;[570] but we now obtain an additional source of information for
this period of the history of very great value in the Chronicle of
Marianus Scotus, who was born in the reign of this Malcolm, in the year
1028, and notices a few of the events in Scottish history which took
place during his own lifetime. The first Scotch event noticed by him is
the death of Malcolm, which he says took place on the twenty-fifth of
November 1034, and he terms him ‘king of Scotia.’[571] The kings of
Alban occasionally appear as kings of the Scots, but this is the first
instance in which the name of Scotia is applied as a territorial
designation of their kingdom. Used by a contemporary writer, who was
himself a native of Ireland, it is evident that the name of Scotia had
now been transferred from Ireland, the proper Scotia of the previous
centuries, and become adopted for the kingdom of the Scots in Britain in
the reign of Malcolm, son of Kenneth, which ushers in the eleventh
century, superseding the previous name of Alban.
With Malcolm the descendants of Kenneth mac Alpin, the founder of the
Scottish dynasty, became extinct in the male line. Had any male
descendant existed, there would have been great risk of the territories
now composing the kingdom becoming again disunited. As Malcolm had no
son, but at least two daughters who had male issue, Cumbria and Lothian
would naturally have passed to the nearest heir in the female line;
while a male collateral who could trace his descent from the founder of
the family would, by the law of Tanistic succession, have had a
preferable claim to the regions north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde,
forming the kingdom of Alban proper, and would probably have received
the support of the Scottish part of its population at least; but the
existence of any such male descendant cannot be traced, and the last
male scion of the race appears to have been slain by King Malcolm in the
year which preceded his own death, probably to make way for the quiet
accession of Duncan, his grandson through his daughter, to the whole of
the territories which he had united under his sway.[572]
[Sidenote: A.D. 1034-1040.
Duncan, son of Crinan and grandson of Malcolm, king of
Scotia.]
He attained his object, for Duncan appears at first to have succeeded
him in the whole of his dominions without objection, but ere long to
have provoked aggression both in the south and in the north. In the
south, Eadulf Cudel, the earl who had ceded Lothian to the Scots, did
not long survive the battle of Carham, and was succeeded in the
Bernician earldom by Aldred, a son of Uchtred, on whose death his
brother Eadulf succeeded him, and in the year 1038 invaded Cumbria and
devastated the whole country.[573] Duncan, however, was not equally
successful in an invasion of the territories of Eadulf, for Simeon of
Durham, in his history of that church, tells us that Duncan, king of the
Scots, advanced with a countless multitude of troops and laid siege to
Durham, and made strenuous but ineffective efforts to carry it, for a
large proportion of his cavalry was slain by the besieged, and he was
put to a disorderly flight, in which he lost all his foot-soldiers,
whose heads were collected in the market-place, and hung up upon
posts.[574]
The aggression, however, which he provoked in the north brought a
formidable competitor into the field, and was destined to terminate more
fatally for him. The details of this war are preserved to us in the
Orkneyinga Saga; and though its authority is not unexceptionable, and
the events it records are not to be found elsewhere, the narrative still
carries with it an air of truth, and it fills a blank in the meagre
records of the time which supplies in a great measure a clue to their
real character. In this narrative the king who succeeded Malcolm appears
under the strange designation of Karl or Kali Hundason,[575] that is,
either the Churl, or Kali the son of the hound; and from the appellation
here given to Duncan’s father, we learn that the _Hundi Jarl_ or the
Hound Earl, who fought with Sigurd the Stout, earl of Orkney, could have
been no other than Crinan, the warlike lay abbot of Dunkeld. On Sigurd’s
death the islands of Orkney fell to his three sons, Sumarlidi, Einar,
and Brusi, among whom they were divided; while Thorfinn, his son by the
daughter of King Malcolm, received from his grandfather Caithness and
Sutherland, with an earl’s title. The last of the three brothers among
whom the Orkneys were divided died, however, a few years before the
death of King Malcolm;[576] and when his grandson Duncan succeeded him,
Thorfinn had been for some years in possession of the entire earldom of
Orkney. Duncan seems to have considered that Thorfinn having become earl
of Orkney, he might resume possession of Caithness, or at least demand
tribute from it. Thorfinn, on the other hand, considered that it was his
inheritance from King Malcolm through his mother, and that he had
obtained it before Duncan inherited the kingdom. Thus, says the Saga,
they became open enemies and made war on each other. Duncan took the
initiative, and bestowed Caithness with the title of earl upon a
relation of his own, Moddan, said to be his sister’s son, who proceeded
immediately to the north and collected forces in Sutherland. Earl
Thorfinn on his part raised the men of Caithness, and on being joined by
Thorkell Fostri with an army from the Orkneys, Moddan retired before his
superior forces. Thorfinn then subdued the districts both of Sutherland
and Ross, and after plundering in the district south of them, returned
to Caithness and remained at Dungallsbae or Duncansby, with five
war-ships and their crews, the rest of the army returning to Orkney.
Moddan then sought the king, whom he found at Berwick, then probably on
his return from his unsuccessful invasion of Northumbria, and told him
the result of his expedition. Duncan organised a more formidable attack.
He sent Moddan by land with a considerable force to make his way to
Caithness, and he himself sailed from Berwick with a naval force,
consisting of eleven warships and a numerous army. His intention was by
landing on the north of Caithness to place Earl Thorfinn between the two
armies, but the latter anticipated his plan by sailing out in his own
ships and attacking Duncan’s fleet in the Pentland Firth. Though the
latter fleet was superior in numbers, the Scots could not stand against
the fierce onslaught of the Norwegians, and after an obstinate conflict
gave way before them, and fled south into the Moray Firth, where Duncan
landed and proceeded south to collect a new army. Thorfinn remained in
the north till he was again joined by Thorkell Fostri with the
Orkneymen, and then went south into the Moray Firth in pursuit of
Duncan, and began to plunder the districts on its southern shore. In the
meantime, Moddan, who had no one to oppose him, appears to have occupied
Caithness with his army, and took up his quarters at Thurso, where he
remained waiting for reinforcements, which he expected to receive from
Ireland. Thorfinn, hearing this, again anticipated him. He remained
himself in Scotland, and continued plundering the country, while he sent
Thorkell north with a portion of the army. The people of Caithness were
in his interest, and thus Thorkell succeeded in surprising Moddan in
Thurso, where he came by night, set fire to the house in which Moddan
was, and slew him. His men then surrendered, and Thorkell went from
thence to the Moray Firth to rejoin Thorfinn with all the men he could
collect in Caithness, Sutherland, and Boss, and found him in Myrhaevi or
Moray. King Duncan now collected as large an army as he could assemble
from the rest of Scotland; or, as the Saga expresses it, ‘as well from
the south as the west and east of Scotland, and all the way south from
Satiri or Kintyre, and the forces for which Earl Moddan had sent, also
came to him from Ireland.[577] He sent far and near to chieftains for
men, and brought all this army against Earl Thorfinn.’ Earl Thorfinn
appears to have been stationed at Torfness or Burghead, where the Borg
was which his ancestor Sigurd had built to enable the Norwegians to
maintain their footing in Moray, and here the great battle took place
which was to decide this contest. Thorfinn first attacked the Irish
division, who were immediately routed, and never regained their
position. King Duncan then brought his standard forward against Earl
Thorfinn, and the fiercest struggle took place between the Scots and the
Norwegians; ‘but,’ says the Saga, ‘it ended in the flight of the king,
and some say he was slain.’ Earl Thorfinn then drove the fugitives
before him through Scotland, and laid the land under him wherever he
went, and all the way south to Fife.[578]
Such is the account given us by the Saga of this war. Marianus
supplements it by telling us that in the year 1040 Donnchad, king of
Scotia, was slain in autumn, on the 14th of August, by his general,
Macbethad, son of Finnlaech, who succeeded him in the kingdom.[579]
Macbeth was at this time the Ri or Mormaer of the district of Myrhaevi
or Moray, which finally became the seat of war, and when Duncan sent far
and wide to the chieftains for aid, he probably came to his assistance
with the men of Moray, and filled the place which Moddan had formerly
occupied as commander of his army; but the tie which united the mormaers
of Moray with the kings of the Scots was still a very slender one. They
had as often been subject to the Norwegian earls as they had been to the
Scottish kings; and when Duncan sustained this crushing defeat, and he
saw that Thorfinn would now be able to maintain possession of his
hereditary territories, the interests of the Mormaer of Moray seem to
have prevailed over those of the commander of the king’s army, and he
was guilty of the treacherous act of slaying the unfortunate Duncan, and
attaching his fortunes to those of Thorfinn.
The authorities for the history of Macbeth know nothing of Earl Thorfinn
and his conquests. On the other hand the Sagas equally ignore Macbeth
and his doings, and had to disguise the fact that Thorfinn was attacking
his own cousin, and one who had derived his right to the kingdom from
the same source from which Thorfinn had acquired his to the earldom of
Caithness, by concealing his identity under the contemptuous name of
Karl or Kali Hundason,[580] while some of the chronicles have
transferred to Macbeth what was true of Thorfinn, that he was also a
grandson of King Malcolm,[581] and a Welsh Chronicle denominates him
king of Orkney.[582] The truth seems to be that the conquest of the
provinces south of Moray, which took place after this battle, was the
joint work of Thorfinn and Macbeth, and that they divided the kingdom of
the slain Duncan between them: Thorfinn receiving the districts which
had formerly been under his father, with the addition of those on the
east coast extending as far as Fife or the Firth of Tay. According to
the Orkney-inga Saga, he possessed ‘nine earldoms in Scotland, the whole
of the Sudreys, and a large riki in Ireland,’ and this is confirmed by
the St. Olaf’s Saga, which tells us that ‘he had the greatest riki of
any earl of Orkney; he possessed Shetland and the Orkneys, the Sudreys,
and likewise a great riki in Scotland and Ireland.’[583] Macbeth
obtained those in which Duncan’s strength mainly lay—the districts south
and west of the Tay, with the central district in which Scone, the
capital, is situated. Cumbria and Lothian probably remained faithful to
the children of Duncan.
[Sidenote: A.D. 1040-1057.
Macbeth, son of Finnlaec, king of Scotia.]
The kingdom had thus hardly passed from the last male descendant of the
founder of the Scottish dynasty to a new family, when it was again
transferred to rulers of a different race. The whole of the northern
part found itself under the rule of the Norwegian earl of Orkney, while
the centre of the kingdom, in which the capital was situated, accepted
as its king the hereditary ruler of Moray, a district the connection of
which with the kingdom proper had hitherto been both slender and
uncertain, who reigned over these districts for seventeen years. It is
difficult to understand how a king who had no hereditary claim upon
their allegiance should have been able to maintain his possession of the
throne for so many years in a part of the country which was the
stronghold of the Scots. That he should have slain his predecessor was
no unusual circumstance, and would equally have excluded many of his
predecessors. His only connection with the Scottish dynasty was, that
his wife was Gruoch, the daughter of that Boete or Bode, son of Kenneth,
whose son or grandson had been slain in 1032 by Malcolm mac Kenneth, and
through her some claim upon the allegiance of the Scots seems to have
been based. That he was not the tyrant he is represented by Fordun to
have been seems very certain. There is no trace of it in any authentic
record. On the contrary, St. Berchan speaks kindly of him. Thus—
After slaughter of Gael, after slaughter of Galls,
The liberal king will possess Fortrenn.
The red one was fair, yellow, tall;
Pleasant was the youth to me.
Brimful (or plenteous) was Alban east and west,
During the reign of the fierce red one.
And we find Macbeth son of Finnlaec, and Gruoch daughter of Bode, king
and queen of the Scots, granting the lands of Kyrkness to the Culdees of
Lochleven from motives of piety, and for the benefit of their prayers;
and Macbeth, again, granting the lands of Bolgyne to the same Culdees,
‘with the utmost veneration and devotion.’[584] That his hold over this
part of the country, whether from personal character or from his claim
through his wife, was quite equal at least to that of the family of the
lay abbot of Dunkeld, we find from the unsuccessful attempt made by the
latter to drive him from the throne a few years after his accession.
Tighernac gives us the short but significant statement, that in the year
1045 a battle took place between the men of Alban on both sides, in
which Crinan, abbot of Dunkeld, was slain, and many with him, viz., nine
times twenty heroes.[585]
Five years after this he seems to have gone to Rome, probably to obtain
absolution for the murder of Duncan, as Marianus tells us that in the
year 1050 the king of Scotia, Macbethad, freely distributed silver to
the poor at Rome.[586]
The immunity with which he enjoyed the fruit of his treachery towards
Duncan may no doubt be attributed in a great measure to there being no
one with a preferable right who was in a position to oppose him. The
children of Duncan must have been in mere infancy at his death, and if
the immediate succession of a son to his father’s throne was still
somewhat strange to the Celtic population, that of an heir who was not
of sufficient age to be capable of governing personally was totally
opposed to their laws. He had too no doubt behind him the support of the
powerful earl of Orkney, and if he had possessed a legitimate title, he
would probably have maintained his position, and been recorded as one of
the best of the Scottish kings; but the stamp of usurpation was upon
him, and his immunity was to cease when Malcolm, the son of Duncan,
reached an age to enable him to contest his right and claim, which was
to bring a more powerful antagonist into the field than Macbeth had yet
had to encounter. This was Siward, earl of Northumbria. He was of Danish
race, and became connected with the earls of Northumbria by marriage
with Elfleda the daughter of Ealdred, earl of Northumbria, and on the
slaughter of Eadulf, his wife’s uncle, by King Hardacnut, in the year
1041, was made earl over the whole of Northumbria, extending from the
Humber to the Tweed.[587] Siward was doubly connected with the house of
Crinan, the abbot of Dunkeld, for his wife’s aunt, Aldgitha, half-sister
of Earl Ealdred, was married to Maldred, son of Crinan, and King Duncan
himself married either the sister or the cousin of Earl Siward, by whom
he had a son, Malcolm. On the assassination of his father, Malcolm must
have been a mere child, but when he reached an age which enabled him to
claim his father’s kingdom, Siward seems to have resolved to make an
effort to drive Macbeth from the throne he had usurped.
[Sidenote: A.D. 1054.
Siward, earl of Northumbria, invades Scotland, and puts
Malcolm, son of King Duncan, in possession of Cumbria.]
The Saxon Chronicle tells us that in the year 1054 ‘Earl Siward went
with a large army into Scotland, both with a naval force and a land
force, and fought against the Scots, of whom he made great slaughter,
and put them to flight, and the king escaped. Many also fell on his own
side, both Danish and English, and also his own son Oshern, and his
sister’s son Siward, and some of his “huscarls” and also of the kings
were there slain, on the day of the Seven Sleepers, that is, on the 27th
of July.’[588] Tighernac records in the same year ‘a battle between the
men of Alban and the men of Saxonia,’ in which many of the soldiers were
slain;[589] and the Ulster Annals add that ‘three thousand of the men of
Alban were slain, and fifteen hundred of the men of Saxonia, around
Dolfinn, son of Finntuir’ (or Thorfinn).[590] There is a statement in
Gaimar’s metrical chronicle not to be found elsewhere. We are there told
that ‘Earl Syward made an agreement with the king of Scotland when he
went, but Macbeth destroyed the peace, and ceased not to carry on war.’
He then gives an account of the expedition, evidently taken from the
Saxon Chronicle.[591]
As Siward advanced against Macbeth with both a naval force and a land
army, he must have intended to enter the Firth of Tay with the former,
while he penetrated by land into Scotland proper. To send a fleet merely
into the Firth of Forth could in no way have aided his enterprise. His
object therefore seems to have been Scone, the capital of the kingdom,
to which he would penetrate by land by the usual route, crossing the
Forth at Stirling, and passing through Stratherne, while his fleet
entering the Firth of Tay, would not only support the land army, but
prevent the force of the districts north of the Tay being used to turn
the flank of his army. He seems to have been opposed by the people of
Alban, who appear to have been united in support of Macbeth, who
likewise had the aid of the Norwegians, as the son of Thorfinn, called
by the Irish annalist Finntuir, fell in the contest. St. Berchan appears
to allude to this battle at Scone, and to imply that a night attack had
been made, when he says,
On the middle of Scone, it will vomit blood,
The evening of a night in much contention.
Although the Saxon Chronicle claims the victory for Siward, it admits
the greatness of the slaughter on his side. It seems to have been a
fiercely contested struggle, after which Siward found it necessary to
retire without effecting his object of driving Macbeth from the throne
of Scotia, as he reigned for three years longer; but he appears to have
so far advanced the cause of young Malcolm, that he established him in
possession of the territory of the Cumbrian Britons, and of Lothian as
king of Cumbria.[592]
In the following year Siward died, and Malcolm thus lost the powerful
support of the Danish earl of Northumbria, but he appears to have formed
a close alliance with his successor Tostig, the son of Earl Godwine,
who, though not of the Northumbrian race, had been appointed earl by
King Edward, so that they became sworn brothers; and in the year 1057,
when he had been three years in possession of the districts south of the
Firths of Forth and Clyde as king of Cumbria, Malcolm seems to have
found himself strong enough to make an independent attempt to drive
Macbeth from the throne he had usurped, and this time his attempt was
successful. Of the details of this renewed attempt no account has been
handed down to us, but it resulted in Macbeth being driven across the
great range of the Mounth, and slain by Malcolm at Lumphanan in Marr on
the 15th day of August in the year 1057.[593]
[Sidenote: A.D. 1057-8.
Lulach, son of Gilcomgan, king of Scotia.]
The party in the kingdom who supported him now put up, as king, Lulach,
who was the son of Gilcomgan, Mormaer of Moray, and the heir to whom the
hereditary rule over that province fell on the death of Macbeth, while
his mother was a granddaughter of Boete or Bodhe, and through her he
inherited whatever rights to the Scottish throne that family possessed;
but his reign, nominal as it was, lasted only seven months, and he was
slain at Essy in Strathbolgy on the 17th day of the following
March.[594]
[Sidenote: A.D. 1057-8.—1093.
Malcolm, eldest son of King Duncan, king of Scotia.]
These isolated events may be accepted as facts, transmitted to us as
they are by contemporary writers, but they leave us quite in the dark as
to how Malcolm so speedily and thoroughly accomplished what the powerful
Siward with his army and his fleet had failed to effect three years
before. It seems difficult too to understand how, if the northern
provinces up to Fife were under the rule of the powerful earl of Orkney
with his Norwegians, Malcolm could have carried the war so far into them
as to drive Macbeth beyond the Dee and defeat and kill him there. The
Orkneyinga Saga tells us that Thorfinn possessed nine earldoms in
Scotland, and that on his death ‘many of the rikis which the earl had
subjected fell off, and their inhabitants sought the protection of those
native chiefs who were territorially born to rule over them.’[595]
Besides the four earldoms in Scotland of Sutherland, Ross, Moray, and
Dali, which his father Sigurd had subjected before him, he had brought
for the first time under the Norwegian yoke the four earldoms of Buchan,
Marr, Mearns, and Angus, and these would bring his possessions up to
Fife, and with Galloway,[596] which he probably also possessed, would
make up the nine earldoms, and the most probable explanation of Malcolm
having selected this year to make a great effort to recover his father’s
throne and of its apparent rapid success, is that it was also the year
of Thorfinn’s death, when many of the provinces which had been subjected
by him fell again under native rule. Of these, the first to free
themselves from the Norwegian yoke would be the four earldoms extending
from the Spey to the Firth of Tay, forming the northern half of the
kingdom proper. It was, however, in this part of the kingdom, and mainly
in Angus, that the branch of the royal house of which Malcolm, son of
Kenneth, was the head, and which Malcolm, the son of Duncan, now
represented in the female line, had its main seat, and it was there that
their power and influence lay. If these provinces were now freed from
the Norwegian yoke, Malcolm might find there powerful support, while his
paternal descent from the lay abbots of Dunkeld would likewise bring the
people of Atholl and of the extensive possessions of that church to his
aid. The death of Thorfinn would thus present to him a great opportunity
for making another attempt to add the kingdom of Scotland to that of
Cumbria, with the district of Lothian which he already possessed; and
Macbeth, finding himself isolated, with the forces of Cumbria and
Lothian in front of him and a hostile population behind him, in place of
the support of the Norwegian earl, would fall back upon his own
hereditary province of Moray, and being followed by Malcolm with his
army, gathering strength as he proceeded, was overtaken and slain at
Lumphanan.
If this view, that Thorfinn died in 1057, appears to afford us the most
plausible explanation of the sudden termination of Macbeth’s kingdom,
there is nothing in the Sagas which raises any serious objection to it.
They nowhere state any fact which gives us a fixed date for Thorfinn’s
death. The Orkneyinga Saga says, that from the year when he was made
earl, that is, in 1014, ‘he was earl for seventy winters,’ which would
make him live till the year 1084. The Saga of Saint Olaf reduced the
number of years to sixty winters, that is, to the year 1074, but both
Sagas agree that he died in the end or in the latter days of Harald
Sigurdson, who was slain at the battle of Stamford Bridge in the year
1066; and when Harald came to the Orkneys, on his way to England, he
found Thorfinn’s sons ruling as earls of Orkney, and took them with him.
No events are recorded of Thorfinn in the Sagas after the year 1050, and
if he died in 1057 his death would take place about eight years before
that of Harald Sigurdson, and in the last half of his reign. It might
still be said that he died towards the end of his reign.
Simeon of Durham too tells us that in the year 1061 ‘Aldred, archbishop
of York, went to Rome with Earl Tostig and received the pall from Pope
Nicholas. Meanwhile Malcolm, king of Scots, furiously ravaged the
earldom of his sworn brother Earl Tostig, and violated the peace of St.
Cuthbert in the island of Lindisfarne.’[597] What led to Malcolm thus
taking advantage of Tostig’s absence to attack his earldom we do not
know, and the chronicler throws no further light upon it; but it is
hardly possible to suppose that Malcolm could have ventured to attack
Northumbria, and break off his alliance with Tostig, if he had not by
this time effected the subjugation of his entire kingdom, and if the
northern half of it still remained under the rule of the Norwegian earl
of Orkney. On Thorfinn’s death Malcolm appears to have endeavoured to
conciliate the Norwegian element in the country by making Ingibiorg, the
widow of Thorfinn, his wife, by whom he had a son Duncan. His Norwegian
wife did not, however, apparently survive the birth of her son many
years, and gave way to a more important alliance for Malcolm, and one
that was to exercise a powerful influence on the internal condition of
the country, and the character of the reigning house. The Saxon
Chronicle tells us, that in the summer of the year 1067 ‘Eadgar child
went out (from Northumberland) with his mother Agatha, and his two
sisters Margaret and Christina, and Mærleswegen, and many good men with
them, and came to Scotland under the protection of King Malcolm, and he
received them all.’ One edition of the chronicle adds, ‘Then King
Malcolm began to yearn after his sister Margaret to wife, but he and all
his men long refused, and she herself also declined, and said that she
would have nor him nor any one if the heavenly clemency would grant that
she in maidenhood might propitiate the mighty Lord with corporal heart
in this short life in pure continence. The king earnestly urged her
brother, until he answered yea, and indeed he durst not otherwise,
because they were come into his power.’ The other edition of the
chronicle simply adds, ‘and he took the child’s sister Margaret to
wife.’ Florence of Worcester, who is the next best authority, places
this event in the year 1068, which is probably the correct year,[598]
and tells us that ‘Marleswein and Gospatric, and all the nobler
Northumbrians, to avoid the severity of the king, and dreading the
imprisonment which so many had suffered, sailed to Scotland with Eadgar
Aetheling, his mother Agatha, and his two sisters Margaret and
Christina, and wintered there under the protection of Malcolm king of
Scots.’[599] The marriage probably took place the following spring at
Dunfermline, which King Malcolm appears to have adopted as his principal
seat, and not without reason, according to Fordun’s description of it:
‘For that place was of itself most strongly fortified by nature, being
begirt by very thick woods and protected by steep crags. In the midst
thereof was a fair plain, likewise protected by crags and streams, so
that one might think that was the spot whereof it was said, scarce man
or beast may tread its pathless wilds.’[600]
Child Eadgar, as the Saxon Chronicle calls him, was the son of Eadward
Aetheling, who had returned from exile in Hungary in the year 1057, and
died in England the same year. As Eadward Aetheling was the son of King
Eadmund, the elder brother of Eadward the Confessor, he might have been
held, if he had been at home instead of in distant exile, to have had a
preferable right to the throne; but after the death of Eadward the
Confessor his family were looked upon as representing the royal house of
Wessex, and as possessing a legitimate claim upon the allegiance of the
Saxon population, which, had the personal character of Eadgar been
different, might have made him a more formidable opponent to the Norman
Conqueror than he proved to be. The connection of Malcolm with this
family by marriage with his sister was a very important one for him, and
he now combined in his own person advantages which gave him a claim to
the obedience of each of the different races now united under his rule.
In the male line he represented the powerful lay abbots of Dunkeld, and
inherited their influence over the ecclesiastical foundations dependent
upon that monastery. In the female, he possessed the more important
representation of the Scottish royal house who had ruled for a century
and a half over the kingdom of Scotland. His father Duncan had been
recognised for twenty years by the Welsh population of Cumbria or
Strathclyde as their king, and by his mother he was connected with the
Danes of Northumbria and their powerful earl Siward. His marriage with
Ingibiorg gave him a claim to the good-will at least of the Norwegians,
and the Anglic population of Lothian and Northumbria would look upon his
marriage with the daughter of the Aetheling as giving him an additional
right to their steadfast support. The northern province of Moray alone,
whose hereditary rulers were of the same family as Macbeth, would
probably render but an unwilling submission to his authority, and his
rule over them would be little more than nominal.
Of the events of his thirty-five years’ reign, however, very few have
been recorded. The combination of so many advantages in his own person
would naturally lead to a further amalgamation of the different
provinces of the kingdom, with their varied population, into one
monarchy; but this is a silent process, which little attracts the notice
of the chroniclers of the time. The personal character of Margaret, no
doubt, was one to exercise a great influence upon the internal condition
and progress of the people, as we learn to some extent from her life by
Turgot; but this belongs to a different part of our subject, and beyond
a few isolated notices we know really nothing of the internal history of
his reign.
[Sidenote: Malcolm invades Northumbria five times.]
As to external events, Simeon of Durham, whose language, however, is
coloured by an indignant hatred of the Scots on account of their
frequent attacks upon Durham, tells us that Malcolm had ‘five times
wasted the province of Northumbria with a savage devastation, and
carried captive the wretched natives to reduce them to slavery: once in
Eadward’s reign, when Tostig, earl of York, had gone to Rome;’ twice in
the reign of King William the Conqueror; and twice in that of his
successor.[601]
The first we have already noticed. The two next were probably connected
with the claims of the Aetheling; but it is also possible that Malcolm
may now have begun to realise the growing importance of Lothian and its
Anglic population as an integral portion of its dominions, and been not
unwilling to take advantage of the unsettled state of the north of
England to extend to the Tyne the limits of that province which was now
assuming the prominent place it ever after occupied in the future
Scotland. Simeon seems to hint at some such motive, when he accuses him
of being ‘instigated by avarice.’ If this was Malcolm’s real object, his
policy seems to have been, by harassing and devastating the earldom
north of the Tyne, from time to time, to force them to put themselves
under his protection—a policy not unknown to the descendants of a part
of his subjects, when black mail was a familiar term.
During the first three years of the reign of William the Conqueror, he
had little real power or authority beyond the Humber, and it was not
till the end of the year 1069, when he invaded Northumbria, and laid the
country entirely waste with fire and sword, that he may be said to have
actually conquered the country. Previous to that expedition he exercised
a merely nominal authority, through earls of his own appointment, who no
sooner attempted to exercise their functions within the earldom than
they were ere long slain.
It was in Northumbria that the cause of the Aetheling was mainly
supported, and that part of it which was north of the Tyne presented a
tempting field for the incursions of the Scots. On the death of Siward
in 1055 an earl was for the first time appointed who was not of
Northumbrian race. Tostig, the son of Earl Godwine, was appointed earl
by King Eadward, but, after a ten years’ rule, we are told by the Saxon
Chronicle that in 1065 ‘all the thanes in Yorkshire and Northumberland
gathered together, and outlawed their Earl Tostig, and slew all his
household-men that they could come at, both English and Danish, and took
all his weapons at York, and gold and silver, and all his treasures
which they could anyway hear of, and sent after Morkere, son of Earl
Aelfgar (of Mercia), and chose him for their earl,’ which was confirmed
by King Edward. Morkere does not seem, however, to have been accepted by
the Northumbrians beyond the Tyne, as Simeon of Durham tells us that he
transferred that part of the earldom to Osulf, son of Earl Eadulf, of
the line of the native earls, who had been slain in the year 1041. In
the year 1067 King William summoned Earl Morkere to attend him on his
voyage to Normandy, and retained him beside him, and at the same time
sent Copsige, who had been an adherent of Earl Tostig, to govern, as
procurator, that part of the earldom under Osulf; but Simeon tells us
that ‘Osulf, driven by Copsige from the earldom, concealed himself in
the woods and mountains in hunger and want, till at last, having
gathered some associates whom the same need had brought together, he
surrounded Copsige while feasting at Newburn. He escaped through the
midst of confused crowds, but, being discovered while he lay hid in the
church, he was compelled, by the burning of the church, to go out to the
door, where, at the very door, he was beheaded by the hands of Osulf, in
the fifth week of his charge of the earldom, on the fourth of the ides
of March. By and by, in the following autumn, Osulf himself, rushing
headlong against the lance of a robber who met him, was thrust through,
and there perished. At his death Gospatric, the son of Maldred, the son
of Crinan, going to King William, obtained the earldom of the
Northumbrians, which he purchased for a great sum, for the dignity of
that earldom belonged to him by his mother’s blood. His mother was
Algitha, the daughter of Earl Uchtred, whom he had by Algiva, daughter
of King Agelred.’[602] Gospatric, by paternal descent, was nearly
connected and a member of the same house with Malcolm, the king of the
Scots, while the means by which he obtained his earldom ranged him among
the followers of King William, and he thus placed himself in a position
which it was very difficult for him to maintain without alienating from
him either the one or the other. In the following year, therefore, the
Saxon Chronicle tells us that, in 1067, after Whitsunday, ‘it was then
announced to the king that the people of the north had gathered
themselves together and would stand against him if he came. He then went
to Nottingham, and there wrought two castles; and so went to York, and
there wrought two castles, and in Lincoln, and everywhere in that part.
And Earl Gospatric and the best men went to Scotland.’ The same
Chronicle tells us that in the following year, 1068 according to the
Chronicle, but correctly given by Simeon in 1069, ‘King William gave to
Earl Robert (de Comines) the government over Northumberland; but the men
of the country surrounded him in the burgh at Durham, and slew him and
nine hundred men with him. And immediately after Eadgar Aetheling came,
with all the Northumbrians, to York, and the townsmen made peace with
them; and King William came unawares on them from the south with an
overwhelming army, and put them to flight, and slew those who could not
flee, which were many hundred men, and plundered the town, and defiled
St. Peter’s monastery, and also plundered and oppressed all the others,
and the Aetheling went back again to Scotland.’
This unsuccessful attempt seems to have led to a more general
combination of the northern powers in favour of the Aetheling, in which
the aid of Swein, king of Denmark, had been solicited and obtained; and
in autumn ‘came from Denmark,’ the Saxon Chronicle tells in 1069, ‘three
sons of King Svein and Asbiörn Jarl, and Thorkell Jarl, with two hundred
and forty ships, into the Humber; and there came to meet them Eadgar
child and Earl Waltheof, and Maerleswegen, and Earl Gospatric, with the
Northumbrians, and all the country people, riding and walking, with a
countless army, greatly rejoicing; and so all unanimously went to York
and stormed and demolished the castle, and gained innumerable treasures
therein, and slew there many hundred Frenchmen, and led many with them
to the ships.... When the king learned this, he went northward with all
his force that he could gather and completely harried and laid waste the
shire. And the fleet lay all winter in the Humber, where the king could
not come at them. And the king was in the day of Midwinter at York, and
so all the winter in the land.’ Florence of Worcester tells us that
‘King William ceased not, during the whole winter, to lay waste the
land, to murder the inhabitants, and to inflict numerous injuries.’[603]
This devastation of the land, however, does not appear to have extended
beyond the Tyne, or to have affected the districts on the coast; but
what was left undone by William was completed by Malcolm, king of the
Scots, for Simeon of Durham tells us that in the spring of the year
1070, after King William had returned to the south of the Humber, ‘a
countless multitude of Scots marched through Cumbreland, under the
command of King Malcolm, and turning to the east ravaged with fierce
devastation the whole of Teesdale, or the vale of the river Tees, and
the parts bordering it on each side.’ Then, ‘having pillaged Cleveland
in part, by a sudden foray he seized Holderness, and thence savagely
overrunning the territory of St. Cuthbert, between the Tees and the
Tyne, he deprived all of their property, and some of their lives. Then
he destroyed by fire, under his own inspection, the church of St. Peter,
the prince of the apostles, at Wearmouth. He burnt also other churches,
with those who had taken refuge in them.’[604] Whether this inroad was
made as part of the plan for a combined attempt in favour of Eadgar,
which failed the preceding year, and that Malcolm had been too late in
putting his part of it into execution, or whether, as seems more
probable, he thought it a favourable opportunity for carrying out the
policy which he hoped might lead to his extending his frontier to the
Tyne, it seems difficult to say; but Gospatric, who had fled to Scotland
before the approach of King William the preceding year, had now become
reconciled to him, as Orderic of Vital says that while King William had
pursued his foes to the river Tees, he ‘there received the submission of
Waltheof in person, and of Gospatric by his envoys, who swore fealty on
his part,’[605] and he seems to have thought that he might win favour by
acting against Malcolm. Simeon therefore tells us, ‘Having called in
some bold auxiliaries, he made a furious plundering attack upon
Cumbreland. Having done this with slaughter and conflagration, he
returned with great spoil and shut himself with his allies into the
strong fortress of Bamborough, from which making frequent sallies, he
weakened the forces of the enemy.’ Malcolm ‘having heard, while still
gazing on the church of St. Peter as it was being consumed by the fire
of his men, of what Gospatric had committed against his people, scarcely
able to contain himself for fury, ordered his troops no longer to spare
any of the English nation, but either to smite all to the earth, or to
carry them off captives under the yoke of perpetual slavery.’ Simeon
then gives us his usual picture of the barbarity with which such inroads
were carried on by the Scots, and adds as the result, ‘Scotland was
therefore filled with slaves and handmaids of the English race; so that
even to this day, I do not say no little village, but even no cottage,
can be found without one of them.’[606] Simeon inserts the following
tale in his account of this inroad by Malcolm the king of the Scots. He
says that ‘when he was riding along the border of the river (Wear)
beholding from an eminence the cruel exploits of his men against the
unhappy English, and feasting his mind and eyes with such a spectacle,
it was told him that Eadgar Aetheling and his sisters, who were
beautiful girls of the royal blood, and many other very rich persons,
fugitives from their homes, lay with their ships in that harbour. When
they came to him with terms of amity, he addressed them graciously, and
pledged himself to grant them and all their friends a residence in his
kingdom as long as they chose.’ And Simeon afterwards adds, ‘After
Malcolm’s return to Scotland, when Bishop Egelwin was commencing his
voyage towards Cologne, a contrary wind arising soon drove him back to
Scotland. Thither also it bore with a favourable course Eadgar Aetheling
with his companions before named. King Malcolm, with the consent of his
relatives, took in marriage Eadgar’s sister Margaret, a woman noble by
royal descent, but much more noble by her wisdom and piety. By her care
and labour the king himself, laying aside the barbarity of his manners,
became more gentle and civilised.’ But this story, if it has any
foundation at all, appears to be misplaced, and the marriage which
followed it had already taken place. Placed as it is in this year, it is
quite inconsistent with the previous narrative. Simeon had recorded two
years before the flight of Eadgar with his mother Agatha, and his two
sisters Margaret and Cristina, by sea, to Scotland, where he says they
passed the winter. It is therefore in the highest degree improbable that
when Eadgar went in the following year to Northumbria to join the Danes
in seizing the country, he should have taken his mother and sisters with
him, from their secure refuge at the court of Scotland, to join him in
so hazardous an expedition. Then the story as told implies that Malcolm
now heard of these sisters and their charms for the first time; while,
according to Simeon himself, they had already passed a winter with him
in Scotland. The story really belongs to the first flight of Eadgar to
Scotland, with his mother and sisters, in 1068, and not to his return
from Northumbria in 1070, and seems to be the same tale which Fordun
tells, on the authority of Turgot, that King Malcolm, when residing at
Dunfermline, heard of the arrival of Eadgar and his sisters in St.
Margaret’s Bay, and sent messengers to ascertain who they were, who
brought him precisely the same report of the beauty of the sisters, in
consequence of which he invited them to his court, and married
Margaret.[607]
During the early years of the reign of the Conqueror, Scotland had not
only been the refuge of his discontented subjects, and the haven in
which those who unsuccessfully opposed him could at all times shelter
themselves from his vengeance and renew their attempts when opportunity
offered, but its king had afforded the Aetheling three times a refuge at
his court, and had now identified himself with his cause by marrying his
sister. King William therefore felt the necessity of establishing at
once a more definite relation between himself and the Scottish king, and
of convincing him that his power was not to be opposed with impunity. It
was not till the year 1072 that he was able to turn his attention
seriously to this object, but in that year the Saxon Chronicle tells us
‘King William led a naval force and a land force to Scotland, and lay
about that land with ships on the sea-side, and himself with his land
force went in over the ford.’ This was precisely the same disposition of
his forces which Earl Siward had made when he invaded Scotland in 1054,
and no doubt with the same object, that of investing Scone, the capital
of the country. King William, we know, marched with his land army
through Lothian and Stirlingshire, and entered Scotland proper by the
ford over the Forth[608] there, and the only object in sending a fleet
could have been to penetrate into the interior of the country by the
Firth of Tay. We are then told that ‘King Malcolm came and made peace
with King William, and gave hostages and became his man, and the king
went home with all his force.’ Florence of Worcester says that ‘Malcolm,
king of Scots, met him in a place called Abernethiei’[609] or Abernethy
on the Tay, which is quite in accordance with this view. What the
precise nature or extent of the homage was which Malcolm agreed at
Abernethy to render, there are no materials now to determine. When the
possessions of the king of the Scots were confined to the kingdom proper
north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde, the expression ‘he became his
man’ would have a definite significance; but after the cession of
Cumbria and Lothian it loses its force, as we cannot tell whether the
homage was paid for the kingdom or for one or both of these outlying
dependencies. The hostage given was, as we are afterwards informed by
the Saxon Chronicle, Duncan, the eldest son of Malcolm by Ingibiorg, his
first wife, who must then have been a boy of about ten years of age.
Simeon tells that on the return of King William from this expedition, he
deprived Gospatric of his earldom, ‘charging him with having afforded
counsel and aid to those who had murdered the earl (Robert de Comines)
and his men at Durham, although he had not been present in person, and
that he had been on the side of the enemy when the Normans were slain at
York’ in the same year; and he adds that, ‘flying therefore to Malcolm,
he (Gospatric) not long after, made a voyage to Flanders; returning
after a little time to Scotland, the king bestowed upon him Dunbar with
the adjacent lands in Lothian.’ [610] King William seems now to have
thought it more politic to place one who had some hereditary claim to
the earldom than a stranger over the Northumbrians, and bestowed
Gospatric’s earldom upon Waltheof, ‘which,’ says Simeon, ‘was his right
by his father’s and brother’s descent, for he was the son of Earl Siward
by Elfleda, daughter of Earl Aldred.’
Eadgar Aetheling appears to have taken refuge, when King William invaded
Scotland, in Flanders; but two years after, when King William went to
Normandy, ‘Eadgar child came,’ the Saxon Chronicle tells us, ‘from
Flanders to Scotland on St. Grimbald’s mass day, or the 8th of July, and
King Malcolm and his sister Margaret received him with great worship. At
that same time Philip, king of France, wrote to him and bade him come to
him and he would give him the castle of Montreuil, that he might then
daily do harm to his enemies. Moreover, King Malcolm and his sister
Margaret gave him and all his men great gifts and many treasures in
skins decked with purple and in pelisses of marten-skin and weasel-skin
and ermine-skin, and in palls and in golden and silver vessels; and led
him and all his ship men with great worship from his dominion.’ No
doubt, in the relation in which Malcolm then stood to King William, his
presence was an embarrassment to him; and as he was not disposed to
assist him himself at this time, he was glad to be relieved from his
difficulty by the king of France discovering that he might make use of
him to annoy the king of England from another quarter. But King Malcolm
was not to be so easily freed from the embarrassment of his presence as
he expected; for we are told that ‘on the voyage evil befell them when
they went out at sea, so that there came on very rough weather, and the
raging sea and the strong wind cast them on the land so that all their
ships burst asunder, and they themselves with difficulty came to land,
and almost all their treasures were lost, and some of his men also were
seized by the Frenchmen; but he himself and his best men went back again
to Scotland, some ruefully going on foot and some miserably riding. When
King Malcolm advised him that he should send to King William over the
sea and pray his peace; and he also did so, and the king granted it to
him and sent after him. And King Malcolm and his sister again gave him
and all his men innumerable treasures, and very worthily again sent him
from their jurisdiction.’ Malcolm was more fortunate the second time.
Eadgar succeeded in reaching the court of King William in safety, where
he was well received, and remained with him.
Malcolm appears now to have turned his attention more to the
amalgamation of the provinces he held, instead of attempting to enlarge
his dominions at the expense of Northumbria, and in the year 1078 he
appears to have invaded the province of Moray. The hereditary ruler of
the province at this time was Maelsnectan, the son of that Lulach who
had borne the title of king for four months, and his son appears under
the Celtic title of ‘Ri Moreb,’ or king of Moray. Malcolm seems to have
been successful in his attempt, as the Saxon Chronicle tells us in an
imperfect notice that ‘in this year King Malcolm won the mother of
Maelslaeht ... and all his best men, and all his treasure and his
cattle, and he himself escaped with difficulty.’ He may have taken
refuge in the remote stronghold of Loch Deabhra in Lochaber, which St.
Berchan tells us had been the habitation of his father Lulach, and here
he died seven years after.[611]
Malcolm appears to have been emboldened by this success and by the
continued absence of King William in Normandy to make another attempt to
extend his frontier to the Tyne, notwithstanding that his son Duncan was
still retained as a hostage at the English Court, as Simeon of Durham
tells us that in 1079 ‘Malcolm, king of Scots, after the Assumption of
St. Mary on the 15th of August, devastated Northumberland as far as the
great river Tyne, slew many, took more prisoners, and returned with
great spoil;’ but when King William returned in the following year to
England, ‘he sent in the autumn his son Robert to Scotland against
Malcolm, but having gone as far as Egglesbreth he returned without
accomplishing anything, and built the new castle on the Tyne.’[612]
Egglesbrech is the Gaelic name of Falkirk,[613] so that Robert
penetrated as far as the river Carron, but did not venture to proceed
farther, and it is probable that he contented himself with repaying the
devastation of that part of Northumbria north of the Tyne by pillaging
Lothian and Calatria, and was forced to retreat by the want of supplies;
and while he protected Northumbria south of the Tyne by the castle he
erected on that river, he virtually surrendered the district north of it
to the incursions of the Scots.
In the year 1085, the same year in which Maelsnectan died, Malcolm
appears to have lost a son, Domnall, probably another son by his first
marriage, who seems to have died a violent death;[614] and two years
afterwards William the Conqueror died and was succeeded by his son
William Rufus. By the death of his great and imposing antagonist Malcolm
seems to have considered himself relieved from the necessity of further
observing any engagements he may have entered into towards the king of
England; and though his eldest son was still retained as a hostage at
the English Court, he had now around him a flourishing band of youthful
sons, the fruit of his union with Queen Margaret, the eldest of whom may
now have been approaching majority, and he may have felt less hesitation
in exposing the son whom he had not seen since he was a boy, and by a
mother whom he had forgotten, to have the consequences of any act of
hostility visited upon him. Accordingly, when in the year 1091 Eadgar
Aetheling had been deprived of the lands which had been given him in
Normandy by the new king, and went to Scotland to his brother-in-law and
to his sister, Malcolm had no hesitation in this time adopting his
cause. As the Saxon Chronicle tells us, ‘While King William was out of
England King Malcolm of Scotland came hither into England and harried a
great deal of it, till the good men who had charge of this land sent a
force against him and turned him back. When King William in Normandy
heard of this he made ready for his departure, and came to England, and
his brother the Count Robert with him, and forthwith ordered a force to
be called out, both a ship force and a land force; but the ship force,
ere he could come to Scotland, almost all perished miserably a few days
before St. Michael’s mass,[615] and the king and his brother went with
the land force. But when King Malcolm heard that they would seek him
with a force, he went with his force out of Scotland into the district
of Lothian in England, and there awaited.[616] When King William with
his force approached, there intervened Count Robert and Eadgar
Aetheling, and so made a reconciliation between the kings, so that King
Malcolm came to our king and became his man, with all such obedience as
he had before paid to his father, and that with oath confirmed. And King
William promised him in land and in all things that which he had had
before under his father. In this reconciliation Eadgar Aetheling was
also reconciled with the king, and the kings then with great good
feeling separated.’ This passage seems very clearly to imply that the
expression ‘and Malcolm became his man’ does not refer to any homage
rendered by Malcolm for the kingdom of Scotland, either on this or the
former occasion, but for land held under the king in England; and
although Malcolm may have considered that he had a hereditary right to
the district of Lothian, and was not inclined to admit its dependence
upon the king of England when he could help it, yet it can hardly be
doubted that when forced to recognise the claims of the king of England
he conceded that Lothian was not an integral part of Scotland but of
England, and, in becoming the king’s man, acknowledged his supremacy
over it.
[Sidenote: A.D. 1092.
Cumbria south of the Solway wrested from the Scots.]
The Chronicle adds, in narrating this reconciliation, ‘but that stood
only a little while;’ and accordingly in the following year King
William, who apparently coveted that part of the Cumbrian territory
which extended from the Solway to the river Derwent and the Cross at
Stanmore, and probably considered that if his right as overlord had been
recognised he might resume any part of it, ‘with a large force went
north to Carlisle and restored the town, and raised the castle and drove
out Dolphin, who had previously ruled the land there, and garrisoned the
castle with his own men, and then returned south hither. And very many
country folk, with wives and with cattle, he sent thither to dwell and
to till the land,’ Dolphin was probably the son of Earl Gospatric, and
held this part of Cumbria under Malcolm, and this was a direct invasion
of his rights, as the kings of Scotland unquestionably were in
legitimate possession of the whole of the ancient British kingdom of
Cumbria, which extended from the Clyde to the Derwent and to Stanmore;
but he appears to have endeavoured at first to obtain redress by
negotiation, for the Chronicle tells us that ‘after this, the king of
Scotland sent, and demanded the fulfilment of the treaty which had been
promised him. And King William summoned him to Gloucester, and sent him
hostages to Scotland, and Eadgar Aetheling afterwards, and the men back
again, who brought him with great worship to the king. But when he came
to the king he could not be held worthy either the speech of the king or
the conditions that had been previously promised him; and therefore in
great hostility they parted, and King Malcolm returned home to Scotland.
But as soon as he came home he gathered his army, and marched into
England, harrying with more animosity than ever behoved him. And then
Robert the earl of Northumberland ensnared him with his men unawares and
slew him. Morel of Bamborough slew him, who was the earl’s steward and
King Malcolm’s gossip. With him also was slain his son Eadward, who
should, if he had lived, have been king after him.’ Simeon of Durham
adds that he was cut off near the river Alne, and that ‘his army either
fell by the sword, or those who escaped the sword were carried away by
the inundation of the rivers which were then more than usually swollen
by the winter rains. Two of the natives placed the body of the king in a
cart, as none of his men were left to commit it to the ground, and
buried it at Tynemouth.’[617]
By some of the Scotch Chronicles Malcolm is said to have been slain at
Inneraldan or the mouth of the river Alne, by others at Alnwick, and to
have been buried at Tynemouth;[618] and thus terminated his long reign
of thirty-five years.[619] The character of Malcolm was variously
regarded by the English and by his own subjects. The English historians,
who had mainly to record his frequent invasions of Northumberland,
regarded him as a man of barbarous disposition and a cruel and pitiless
temper, who delighted to ravage and devastate the northern districts of
England, instigated by avarice; while they attributed any better traits
in his character to the humanising influence of his Saxon consort Queen
Margaret. By his Celtic subjects he was known as Malcolm Ceannmor, or
‘great head,’ and was regarded, according to the testimony of St.
Berchan, as
A king, the best who possessed Alban;
He was a king of kings fortunate.
He was the vigilant crusher of enemies.
No woman bore or will bring forth in the East
A king whose rule will be greater over Alban;
And there shall not be born for ever
One who had more fortune and greatness.
[Sidenote: State of Scotland at Malcolm’s death.]
On his death he left the kingdom in possession for the first time of the
same southern frontier which it ever after retained. It was now
separated from the kingdom of England by the Solway Firth, the range of
the Cheviot Hills, and the river Tweed. From the Solway to the Clyde
extended that portion of Cumbria which still belonged to the Scottish
king; from the Tweed to the Forth, the district of Lothian. From the
Forth to the Spey was Alban or Albania, now called Scotia. Beyond it, on
the north, the province of Moravia; on the west, Airergaidhel or
Argathelia; while beyond these were, on the north, Caithness and the
Orkney Isles forming the Norwegian earldom of Orkney; and, on the west,
the Sudreys or Western Islands still occupied by the Norwegians, though
since the death of Thorfinn belonging nominally to Scotland.
-----
Footnote 548:
1006 Bellum itir firu Albain et Saxanu coromaid for Albanchu co
fargabsat ar an degh doine.—_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 366.
Footnote 549:
Sim. _de obsessione Dunelm._ Simeon places this war in the year 969,
but Durham was not founded till the year 995, and Malcolm did not
begin to reign till 1005. Mr. Freeman, in his _History of the Norman
Conquest_, vol. i. p. 357, rightly places it in the year 1006. He
says, “If it happened at all, it must have been in this year, the only
one which suits the position of the king, bishop, and earl spoken of.
Ealdhun became bishop in 990, and removed the see to Durham in 995.
Malcolm began to reign in 1004. A Northumbrian earldom became vacant
in 1006. This fixes the date. The authority of Simeon is, I think,
guarantee enough for the general truth of the story, and the silence
of the Chronicles and Florence is not conclusive as to a Northumbrian
matter.” This conclusion of Mr. Freeman is the more striking as he
appears not to have been aware of the passage in the Ulster Annals
placing what is obviously the same event under the year 1006.
Footnote 550:
Olaf Tryggvesson’s Saga, cap. 52.
Footnote 551:
The tract on the Wars of the Gaedhil with the Gaill says that one wing
of Brian’s army consisted of ten mormaers of Brian with their foreign
auxiliaries. The word Gall, here translated ‘foreign,’ usually means
the Northmen, but it seems here used in its general sense of foreign.
Though the Mormaer of Marr is the only one named, the whole force of
Alban was probably here arrayed on Brian’s side.
Footnote 552:
The passage in the tract on the Wars of the Gaedhil enumerates the
auxiliary Galls as those of ‘Insi Ore ocus Insi Cat; a Manaind ocus a
Sci ocus a Leodus; a Cindtiri ocus a h-Airergoedel ocus a Barru ocus a
Coir breathnaibh ocus a Cornbliteoc ocus a Breathnaibh Cillemuine.’ A
copy of a tract on the battle of Cluaintarbh in the author’s
possession gives them thus:—‘Sitric mac Lodar Iarla Innsehorc go
sluagh (with the host of) Innsehorc ocus Oilein Lochlannach (the
Norwegian islands), sluagh (the host of) Innse Cath ocus Maininn,
Scithidh, Lodhusa, Cinntire ocus Oirer Gaoidhil ocus Corbrethnuibh
(district Britons of) Cille Muine ocus Cor na liagog gona
rioghruidhibh (with their kings).’ Though Cath is here ranked among
the islands, it is probable that Caithness is meant, and that the
Irish writer rendered Cathness by Innsi Cath, supposing the
termination ‘ness’ to be Innis. The others are easily recognised
except the two last. Cillemuine is the Irish name of St. Davids, which
implies they were the Britons of South Wales; but who were the
Cornbliteoc of the one list and the Cor na liagog of the other? One
would have expected to find Galloway included, and this district may
be meant, though the author can give no explanation of the name.
Footnote 553:
See for a full account of the battle, the tract on the _War of the
Gaedhil with the Gaill_: edited by Dr. Todd, in the Master of the
Rolls’ series; also Dasent’s _Saga of Burnt Njal_.
Footnote 554:
Orkneyinga Saga. _Collect. de Rebus Albanicis_, p. 340.
Footnote 555:
_Ibid._ p. 346.
Footnote 556:
Earl Gilli had his seat in Colonsay, and as Lewis and Skye were
separately named as sending their quota to the Norwegian forces at
Cluantarbh, it is probable that the islands under his rule consisted
of those lying to the south of the Point of Ardnamurchan. St. Berchan
seems to indicate that King Malcolm had acquired some right over them
when he calls him
Danger of Britons, extinction of Galls,
Mariner of Ile and Arann.
_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 99.
Footnote 557:
The Nials Saga tells of Kari Solmundson, that on hearing of the battle
of Cluantarbh he sailed south to Wales. ‘Then they sailed north to
Beruwick and laid up their ships, and fared up into Whitherne in
Scotland, and were with Earl Melkolf that year.’ Beruvik is probably
the bay in the parish of Whitehern now called Port Yarrock.
Footnote 558:
_Orkneyinga Saga_, c. 1. _Saga of Saint Olaf_. _Collectanea de Rebus
Albanicis_, pp. 340, 346.
Footnote 559:
Simeon of Durham gives the following picture of the Durham clergy in
the tenth century. In mentioning the slaughter of the monks of
Lindisfarne, and the escape of the bishop with the body of St.
Cuthbert, he adds that ‘Tradita sibi districtione paulatim postposita,
ecclesiasticam disciplinam odio habuerunt, remissioris vitæ illecebras
secuti. Nec erat qui eos sub ecclesiastica censura coerceret, utpote
cultura Dei destructis monasteriis et ecclesiis pene deficiente.
Seculariter itaque omnino viventes carni et sanguini inserviebant,
filios et filias generantes. Quorum posteri per successionem in
ecclesia Dunelmensi fuerunt nimis remisse viventes, nec ullam nisi
carnalem vitam quam ducebant, scientes nec scire volentes. Clerici
vocabantur, sed nec habitu, nec conversatione clericatum
prætendebant.’—Sim. _Hist. Ec. Dun._ Pref. The step was but a short
one from this state of matters to that of lay possessors of the
benefices. The oldest legend of St. Andrew bears a title which
contains the following: ‘Et quomodo contigerit quod tantæ abbatiæ ibi
factæ antiquitus fuerint quas multi adhuc seculares viri jure
hereditario possident.’—_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 138.
Footnote 560:
A.D. 865 Tuathal mac Artguso primus episcopus Fortrenn et abbas
Duincaillenn dormivit. 873 Flaithbertach mac Murcertaigh Princeps
Duncaillden obiit.—_Ann. Ult._ See Reeves’s _Adamnan_, ed. 1874, p.
cxxiii, for the meaning of ‘princeps.’
Footnote 561:
Fordun calls Crinan ‘Abthanus de Dull et seneschallus insularum.’
There was no such title as Abthanus de Dull, but there was an Abthania
de Dull, consisting of the possessions of that monastery. They were of
great extent, and embraced the whole of the present parishes of Dull
and Fortingall. If this monastery had become secularised, they may
have belonged to the lay abbot of Dunkeld, and if Malcolm had now
re-acquired part of the Western Isles, Crinan may have occupied some
important position in connection with them also.
Footnote 562:
In his history of the kings, Simeon has under the year 1018, ‘Ingens
bellum apud Carrum gestum est inter Scottos et Anglos, inter Huctredum
filium Waldef Comitem Northymbrorum, et Malcolmum filium Cyneth regem
Scottorum. Cum quo fuit Eugenius Calvus, rex Lutinensium;’ but we have
the authority of the Saxon Chronicle for the fact that Huctred was
slain two years before, and that Cnut had made Eric, a Dane, his
successor, while Simeon makes his brother Eadulf Cudel succeed him.
Lutinensium is with reason supposed to have been written for
Clutinensium.
Footnote 563:
Siquidem paulo post, id est, post triginta dies, universus a flumine
Tesa usque Twedam populus dum contra infinitam Scottorum multitudinem
apud Carrum dimicaret, pene totus cum natu majoribus suis
interiit.—Sim. _Hist. Ec. Dun._ c. v.
Footnote 564:
Quo occiso (Ucthredo) frater ipsius Eadulf, cognomento Cudel, ignavus
valde et timidus ei successit in comitatum. Timens autem ne Scotti
mortem suorum quos frater ejus, ut supradictum est, occiderat, in se
vindicarent, totum Lodoneium ob satisfactionem et formam concordiam
eis donavit. Hoc modo Lodoneium adjectum est regno Scottorum.—Sim. _de
Obsess. Dun._
Footnote 565:
The _Annales Cambriæ_ have, in 1015, ‘Owinus filius Dunawal occisus
est,’ which appears to refer to this Owen, and the event is antedated
a few years. Duncan is afterwards called ‘rex Cumbrorum’ by the
English chroniclers, a title he must have borne independently of that
of king of the Scots. Simeon tells us that Aldgetha, daughter of
Uchtred, earl of Northumbria, by Elgifa, the daughter of King
Ethelred, was married to Maldred, son of Crinan Tein, or the thane, by
whom she had Gospatrick, afterwards earl.—Sim. _de Obsess. Dun._ The
hereditary ‘præpositi’ or provosts of the church of Hexham also bore
the title of Tein.—_Priory of Hexham_ (Surtees Soc.), vol. i. p. 4.
There seems no reason to doubt that Maldred was a son of this same
Crinan who was the father of Duncan, and may have been joined with him
in the rule of these southern districts. The name Gospatrick comes
probably from the British Gwas Patrick, the servant of Saint Patrick,
and connects him with Strathclyde.
Footnote 566:
Ultra (Tede flumen) usque ad flumen Forthi magni, scilicet, Loonia, et
Galweya, et Albania tota, quæ modo Scotia vocatur, et Morovia, et
omnes insulæ occidentales oceani usque ad Norwegiam et usque Daciam,
scilicet, Kathenessia, Orkaneya, Enchegal, et Man et Ordas et Gurth,
et ceteræ insulæ occidentales oceani circa Norwegiam et
Daciam.—_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 154. The names of the districts
and islands comprehended under Norwegia and Dacia are in a very
corrupt form; but a comparison of them with the list of those which
sent their quota to the Danish army at Cluantarbh will throw light on
their identity (see p. 387, note 5). Kathenessia and Orkaneya
correspond with Insicath and Inishore; ‘Man et Ordas et Gurth,’ with
‘Manand, Sgithidh, Lodhusa,’ and ‘Enchegal’ with ‘Airergaidhel.’
In the tract on the Wars of the Gaidhil with the Gaill, Brian is said,
when he became king of all Ireland, to have sent a naval expedition
upon the sea, ‘and they levied royal tribute from Saxan and Bretan,
and Lemnaigh and Alban, and Airergaoidel, and their pledges and
hostages, along with the chief tribute’ (p. 137). Here Saxan and
Bretan represent Loonia et Galweya. Lemnaigh is the district of the
Lennox. Airergaoidel is Argathelia; and all are distinguished from
Alban, or the kingdom proper.
Footnote 567:
A.D. 1029 Maelcolaim mac Maelbrigdi mic Ruadri Ri Alban mortuus
est.—_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 77.
Footnote 568:
St. Berchan gives Macbeth a reign of thirty years, which, reckoning
from his death in 1058, places its commencement about this time.
Footnote 569:
In the Orkneyinga Saga, Airergaidhel, or at least that part of it
formerly known as Dalriada, appears under the name of Dali or the
Dales, and we are told that Sumarlidi Höldr had possessions in Dali,
and that he and his sons were called the Dalveria aett, or the family
of the people of Dali. This is, however, the Sumarled who appears in
the Chronicle of Man as Somerled Regulus de Herergaidel. His pedigree
is given in the Book of Ballimote. He is there said to be son of
Gillibrigde, son of Gilliadamnain, son of Solaimh, son of Imergi; and
this Imergi, from whom Somerled, slain in 1166, was fourth in descent,
and who therefore must have flourished in the early part of the
eleventh century, was probably the Jehmarc of the Saxon Chronicle.
Caradoc of Llancarvan terms the two kings, kings of Orkney and Ewyst.
How Macbeth came to be called king of Orkney will appear hereafter.
Footnote 570:
1034 Maelcolaim mac Cinaetha Ri Alpan ordan iarthair Eorpa uile
deg.—_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 77. Ordan means nobility, dignity.
The Chronicle of 1165 says, ‘Ipse etiam multas oblationes tam
ecclesiis quam clero ea die distribuit’ (_Ib._ p. 131), which may
account for the epithets applied to him.
Footnote 571:
1034 Moelcoluim Rex Scotiæ obiit 7 Kal. Decembri.—_Marianus Scotus._
The later chronicles state that he was slain by treachery at Glammis,
and Fordun adds, by some of the stock of Constantin and Grym; but this
tale is quite inconsistent with the older notices of his death, which
clearly imply that he died a natural death.
Footnote 572:
The Ulster Annals have in 1033 ‘Mac meic Boete meic Cinaedha do
marbhadh la (slain by) Maelcolaim meic Cinaedha.’ It has usually been
assumed that this Boete was the son of Kenneth, son of Dubh, the
predecessor of Maelcolm mac Kenneth, and thus represented a rival
branch of the house; but the dates will not admit of this, and his
father Kenneth must be placed a generation further back. He may either
have been the same Kenneth who was father of Malcolm, thus making
Boete his brother, or the Kenneth, son of Malcolm, who slew
Constantin, son of Cuilein, in 997, and who is supposed by Fordun to
be his illegitimate brother. Fordun tells us that ‘the old custom of
the succession of kings lasted without a break until the time of
Malcolm, son of Kenneth, when, for fear of the dismemberment of the
kingdom, which might perhaps result therefrom, that king by a general
ordinance decreed as a law for ever that henceforth each king after
his death should be succeeded in the government of the kingdom by
whoever was at the time being the next descendant—that is, a son or a
daughter, a nephew or a niece, the nearest then living. Failing these,
however, the next heir begotten of the royal or a collateral stock
should possess the right of inheritance.’—Fordun, _Chron._, Ed. 1872,
B. iv. c. 1. Whether Malcolm actually issued a formal decree to this
effect rests on the authority of Fordun alone, which can hardly be
accepted for the events of this early period. Malcolm seems to have
taken the readier mode of removing from life any competitor who could
claim as a male descendant.
Footnote 573:
Post fratris interitum Ealdulfus comes efficitur Northymbrensium, qui,
cum superbia extolleretur, Britones satis atrociter devastavit: sed
tertio post anno, cum ad Hardecanutum reconciliandus in pace venisset,
interfectus est a Siwardo, qui post illum totius provinciæ
Northanhymbrorum, id est ab Humbra usque Tuedam Comitatum habuit.—Sim.
Dun. _Hist. Con._
As the _Saxon Chronicle_ records the death of Eadulf in 1041, this
places this invasion in 1038.
Footnote 574:
Simeon, _Hist. Ec. Dun._ cxliv. Simeon places this event in the year
1035, upon the death of Cnut, but he also says that it took place when
his son Harold was in the fifth year of his reign and Bishop Eadmund
in the twentieth of his episcopate, which would place it in the year
1040; but this was the last year of Duncan’s reign when he was engaged
in his northern war, and it could hardly have taken place then. It
seems to be obviously connected with Eadulf’s invasion of Cumbria, but
whether it preceded or followed it there is nothing to indicate.
Footnote 575:
A suggestion made by the author in an early work (_The Highlanders of
Scotland_, published in 1837), in which, he believes, the Sagas were
for the first time used in Scotch history, that two kings of Scotland
of the name of Malcolm have been confounded—one who died in 1029, and
Malcolm mac Kenneth who died in 1034, and that the latter was Kali
Hundason—has unfortunately been adopted by Professor Munch in his
_History of Norway_. The author has long since come to the conclusion
that this theory is untenable.
Footnote 576:
It is unnecessary here to enter into any detail of the history of
these three brothers; and how Thorfinn acquired a portion of the
islands as each died. The last of them was Brusi, who is stated in the
Olafs Saga to have died in the lifetime of King Cnut, soon after his
conquest of Norway, that is, about 1029.
Footnote 577:
St. Berchan calls Malcolm Duncan’s grandfather, ‘son of the woman of
Leinster,’ and also ‘son of the cow-breast from the banks of the
Liffey.’ The kings of Leinster are at this time often called kings of
Liffey, and this connection probably gave Duncan a claim on their
assistance.
Footnote 578:
Orkneyinga Saga. _Collect. de Rebus Albanicis_, p. 341. See also Mr.
Anderson’s edition, p. 17.
Footnote 579:
1040 Donnchad rex Scotiæ in autumno occiditur (19 Kal. Sept.) a duce
suo Macbethad mac Finnloech, cui successit in regnum annis 17.
Donnchad regnavit annis 5, hoc est, a missa Sancti Andreæ (14 Novr.)
ad eandem et insuper ad nativitatem Sanctæ Mariæ.—_Chron. Picts and
Scots_, p. 65. By this last festival Marianus means that of the
Assumption, which was on the 15th of August. A poem quoted in the
Orkneyinga Saga says the battle was fought on a Monday. The 19 Kal.
Sept. or 14th of August fell in the year 1040 upon a Thursday, and the
15th on a Friday. Tighernac has under 1040 ‘Donnchadh mac Crinan
Airdri Alban immatura ætate a suis occisus est.’ The later chronicles
all agree that he was slain by Macbeth, in a place called Bothgouanan
near Elgin. This is probably the place now called Pitgaveny; and if
the battle was fought at Burghead, Duncan would retreat upon Elgin.
Footnote 580:
St. Berchan calls Duncan Ilgalrach, and also as Ri Galrach. Galrach
means diseased, and may have given rise to the name Kali.
Footnote 581:
The Chronicle of Huntingdon says, ‘Comes Northumbriæ Siwardus Scotiam
ingressus Maket regem nepotem dicti Malcolmi cum xv. annis regnaret, a
regno fugavit.’
Footnote 582:
Caradoc of Llancarvan calls the two kings Maelbeathe and Jehmarc,
kings of Orkney and Ewyst. See Note ^{569}, p. 397.
Footnote 583:
_Collect. de Rebus Albanicis_, pp. 346, 347.
Footnote 584:
Machbet filius Finlach contulit per suffragiis orationum et Gruoch
filia Bodhe rex et regina Scotorum, Kyrkness Deo omnipotenti et
Keledeis prefatæ insulæ Lochlevine cum suis finibus et terminis.
Cum omni libertate collata fuit villa de Kyrkenes Deo omnipotenti et
Keledeis, aliique omni munere et onere et exaccione regis et filii
regis, vicecomitis et alicujus et sine refectione pontis et sine
exercitu et venatione, sed pietatis intuitu et orationum suffragiis
fuit Deo omnipotenti collata.
Cum summa veneratione et devotione Makbeth rex contulit Deo et Sancto
Servano de Lochlevyn et heremitis ibidem Deo servientibus Bolgyne
filii Torfyny cum omni libertate et sine onere exercitus regis et
filii ejus, vel vicecomitis, et sine exactione alicujus, sed caritatis
intuitu et orationum suffragiis.—_Chr. of St. Andrews_, p. 114, 12.
Gruoch being united with him in the first of these grants rather
points to the family of Bodhe being peculiarly connected with Fife.
Footnote 585:
A.D. 1045 Cath etir Albancho araenrian cur marbadh andsin Crinan Ab.
Duincalland ocus sochaighe maille fris .i. nae xx laech.
Footnote 586:
A.D. 1050 Rex Scottiæ Macbethad Romæ argentum pauperibus seminando
distribuit.—According to the Orkneyinga Saga, Thorfinn, earl of
Orkney, went to Rome in the same year, ‘and saw the Pope, from whom he
obtained absolution for all his sins.’—Mr. Anderson’s edition, p. 43.
This is either another instance of the confusion between Thorfinn and
Macbeth, or they went together for the same purpose.
Footnote 587:
Simeon of Durham says of Earl Eadulf, ‘qui postmodum, regnante
Eadwardo, occisus est a Siwardo, qui post illum totius
Northanhymbrorum provinciæ, hoc est, ab Humbra usque ad Tweodam
suscepit comitatum.’ The Saxon Chronicle, however, says, under 1041,
‘In this year Harthecnut betrayed Earl Eadulf while under his
safeguard, and he was then a belier of his pledge,’ and has no hint of
Siward being concerned in his death, but mentions Earl Siward two
years after, in the first year of King Eadward.
Footnote 588:
This is the combined account of the editions of the Chronicle.
Footnote 589:
A.D. 1054 Cath etir Albancho ocus Saxancho in artoitset moran do
mileadaib.
Footnote 590:
1054 Cath itir fhiru Albain et Saxanu itorcradar tri mile doferaib
Albain et mile coleth di Saxanu im Dolfinn mac Finntuir.—_An. Ult._
The tract ‘Origo et Gesta Sivardi Ducis,’ printed in Langebek’s
_Scriptores_, iii. p. 287, says of this expedition, ‘Exercitum
congregavit, in subsidium Regis usque ad Dunde progrediens, ubi
nunciatum fuit ei, quod homines sui de Northumbreland jam in eum et
suos adeo insurrexerunt, quod Osbertum Bulax filium suum
interfecerant. Comes autem reverti compulsus,’ etc. The tract is not
of much authority. Other authorities state that Siward’s son was slain
in the Scotch war.
Footnote 591:
‘Li quens Syward donc s’accordat
Al rei d’Escoce, u il alat,
Mais Macheden defuit la pes
De guerrier ne fist releis.
_Mon. Hist. Brit._ p. 825.
Footnote 592:
The Saxon Chronicle makes no mention of Malcolm in connection with
this expedition; but Florence of Worcester adds to an account,
apparently taken from the Saxon Chronicle, that it was made ‘jussu
regis,’ that the forces on the one side were ‘Scoti et Normanni,’ on
the other ‘Angli et Dani,’ and that Siward ‘Malcolmum regis Cumbrorum
filium ut rex jusserat regem constituit.’ Macbeth, however, appears in
the Irish Annals as Ri Alban till 1057, and Marianus states distinctly
that he reigned till that year, which is conclusive as to Malcolm not
having been made king of Scotland in 1054. It is remarkable, however,
that in this passage he is not called ‘filius regis Scottorum’ but
‘filius regis Cumbrorum;’ and Simeon seems not to have recognised
Duncan as king of the Scots, for he makes Macbeth the immediate
successor of Malcolm, son of Kenneth, ‘Anno mxxxiiij Malcolm rex
Scottorum obiit, cui Macbethad successit.’ The solution seems to be
that he was established in 1054 as king of Cumbria, and at this time
Lothian seems to have been included in the territories under the rule
of the rex Cumbrorum.
Footnote 593:
Marianus has in 1057 ‘Macfinlaeg occiditur in Augusto;’ and again,
‘Inde Macfinlaeg regnavit annis 17 ad eandem missam Sanctæ Mariæ’
(15th August). Tighernac under 1057: Macbethadh mic Findlaich Airdri
(sovereign of) Alban domarbad do (slain by) Maelcolaim mic Dondcadha,
to which the Ulster Annals add ‘i cath’ (in battle).—_Chron. Picts and
Scots_, pp. 65, 78, 369.
Marianus and Tighernac are contemporary authorities. The later
chronicles add that he was slain in Lumfanan.
Footnote 594:
Marianus has in 1057, ‘Lulag successit et occiditur in Martio;’ and
again, ‘Lulach a nativitate Sanctæ Mariæ ad missam Sancti Patricii in
mense Martio regnavit’ (17th March). Tighernac under the same year,
‘Lulach Rig Albain domarbadh Coluim mic Donchadha per dolum;’ and the
Ulster Annals, ‘Lulach mac Gillcomgan Ardri Albain domarbhadh la
Maelcolaim meic Donchadha i cath’ (in battle).
St. Berchan says of him
And at Loch Deabhra his habitation.
Loch Deabhra is a small lake in the district of Mamore in Lochaber, on
an island in which there was formerly a small castle, called the
castle of Mamore. The glen leading to it is called Glenrie or the
King’s glen.
Footnote 595:
_Collect. de Reb. Alb._ p. 346.
Footnote 596:
The author agrees with Professor Munch (_Chron. Man._ p. 46) in
thinking that the place called Gadgeddli, where Thorfinn is said by
the Saga to have frequently dwelt, was Galloway.
Footnote 597:
1061 Interim rex Scottorum Malcolmus sui conjurati fratris, scilicet
comitis Tostii, comitatum ferociter depopulatus est, violata pace
Sancti Cuthberti in Lindisfarnensi insula.—Sim. Dun. _Hist. Con._
Footnote 598:
The Saxon Chronicle states that in the same year ‘the king came to
Winchester, and Easter was then on the x. Kal. of April,’ that is,
March 23d, but Easter fell on that day in the year 1068.
Footnote 599:
Flor. Wig. _Chron._ ad an. 1068.
Footnote 600:
Fordun’s Chronicle, ed. 1872, vol. ii. p. 202. For the marriage having
taken place here we have the distinct authority of Turgot, in his life
of Saint Margaret, who says that King Malcolm and his queen founded a
church to the Holy Trinity in the place where they were married.
Footnote 601:
Sim. Dun. _de Gest. Reg._ ad an. 1093.
Footnote 602:
Sim. Dun. _de Gestis Reg._ ad an. 1072.
Footnote 603:
Flor. Wig. _Chron._ ad an. 1069.
Footnote 604:
Sim. Dun. _de Gestis Reg._ ad an. 1070.
Footnote 605:
Orderic. Vit. B. iv. c. v.
Footnote 606:
Sim. Dun. _de Gest. Reg._ ad an. 1070. Simeon of Durham died in 1130.
Footnote 607:
See Fordun, _Chronicle_, book v. chap. xiv., ed. 1874, vol. ii. p.
201. The story as here told is too long for insertion, but it is
obviously the same, the scene of it being removed to Scotland. In
consequence of the marriage being placed under this year by Simeon, it
appears in the Chronicle of Melrose and in Fordun under this year, and
in the former also under the year 1067 on the authority of the Saxon
Chronicle.
Footnote 608:
Ailred, in the battle of the Standard, makes Walter l’Espec say,
‘Angliæ victor Willelmus per Laodoniam, Calatriam, Scotiam usque ad
Abernith penetraret.’ The river Avon was the boundary of Laodonia.
Between that river and the Carron was the district called Calatria.
Dufoter de Calateria witnesses a charter of King David I. in the
Glasgow Chartulary, and he appears in the Chartulary of Cambuskenneth
as ‘vicecomes de Strivilyn.’
The ford King William crossed was the great entrance into Scotland
proper, which King Kenneth fortified when ‘vallavit ripas vadorum
Forthin.’
Footnote 609:
Flor. Wig. _Chron._ ad an. 1072.
Footnote 610:
Sim. Dun. _de Gest. Reg._ ad an. 1072.
Footnote 611:
The Ulster Annals have at 1085, ‘Maelsnectai mac Lulaigh Ri Muireb,
suam vitam feliciter finivit.’—_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 370.
Footnote 612:
Sim. Dun. _de Gestis Reg._ ad an. 1079.
Footnote 613:
Falkirk is termed in Latin ‘Varia Capella,’ and is still known to the
Highlanders by the name of Eaglesbreac, or the ‘speckled church.’
Falkirk, or rather Fawkirk, is the Saxon equivalent, and has the same
meaning from A.S. _Fah_, ‘of various colours.’
Footnote 614:
The Ulster Annals have in 1085, ‘Domhnall mac Malcolm Ri Albain, suam
vitam infeliciter finivit.’
Footnote 615:
In the end of September, one of the most stormy months in the Scotch
seas.
Footnote 616:
Mr. Burton considers that the place meant (Lothene) was the district
of Leeds. The author dissents entirely from this, and is surprised
that a writer of his acuteness and sagacity should have adopted this
view. Scotia was still confined to the country north of the Firth of
Forth, which still separated it from Anglia. William the Conqueror,
who made the same preparation, went through Laodonia into Scotia. How
could Malcolm await the king’s approach at Leeds?
Footnote 617:
Sim. Dun. _de Gest. Reg._ ad an. 1093.
Footnote 618:
Interfectus in Inveraldan.—_Chron. St. A._ Fust tue a Alnewyk et
enterrez a Tynmoth.—_Scala. Cron._ _Chron. Picts and Scots_, pp. 175,
206.
Footnote 619:
Mr. Burton gives Malcolm a reign of forty-six years. He says, ‘He is
the first monarch of whose coronation we hear. The ceremony was at
Scone near Perth—a place which had become the centre of royalty,
though it hardly had the features which make us call a town a capital.
History now becomes precise enough to fix the day of this event as the
25th of April 1057.’ By history Mr. Burton here means John of Fordun,
whose authority ought not to be relied upon for such an event. The
statement is quite incorrect. The first authentic record of a
coronation at Scone is that of Malcolm the Fourth in 1154, and Malcolm
Ceannmor reigned from 17th March 1057-8 to 13th November 1093, the day
on which he was slain, or exactly thirty-five years and nearly eight
months. The author has preferred narrating the events of his reign as
nearly as possible in the words of the Chronicles which record them,
as in fact we know nothing beyond what they tell us. All else is mere
speculation, and adds nothing to our information. Mr. Burton
introduces under this reign some remarks on the effect of the Norman
influences and the feudal system upon Scotland. Excellent as these
observations are, they are here out of place, and belong more properly
to a later period. It was an old notion that feudalism came into
Scotland in the reign of Malcolm, but it will not bear a close
examination, and these influences were in fact very slight in the
kingdom of Scotland proper, which still continued essentially in all
its characteristics a Celtic kingdom till the reign of David the
First, who was the first feudal monarch of Scotland, and when these
influences became permanent. The author must, however, protest against
one statement. Mr. Burton says (vol. i. p. 372), ‘Whether the thanes
had or had not a distinct feudal existence independent of the power of
the Crown to deal with them as official subordinates, it seems clear
that the Abthane was placed among them as a royal officer, deriving
his dignity and power from the Crown, and that it was his function to
see to the collection of the royal dues payable from the landed
estates—something, on the whole, bearing a close resemblance to feudal
holding and its casualties.’ This account of the Abthane Mr. Burton
has too readily adopted from Fordun, without proper examination; for
nothing is more certain than that no such office, either in name or in
reality, ever existed.