intrusting it to the charge of his brother-in-law Havard, until
intelligence reached him ere long that two Scottish nobles, whom
the Saga describes as “Earls,” had slain Havard in Threswick and
were ravaging his territories on the mainland. The Jarl waited only
to collect his followers from the Orkneys, and crossing the Firth
was joined by the men of his other earldom, who informed him that
the Scottish leaders, to whom the Saga gives the names of Hundi and
Malsnechtan, were at that moment in the neighbourhood of Duncansby
Head. Unlike Sigurd, who was now advancing with his whole force united,
the Scots allowed themselves to be drawn into action before the arrival
of an expected reinforcement; and although victory inclined to their
side in the early part of the battle, Malsnechtan was slain at the
close, and Hundi driven from the field; though any advantage that might
have arisen from Sigurd’s success was neutralized by the approach of
“Earl” Malcolm, who appears to have landed during the contest with a
considerable force at Dungall’s Bay. The Jarl’s men, already exhausted
by a protracted and hardly contested struggle, were in no condition
for a second engagement with the fresh army advancing under Malcolm,
so collecting the trophies of his barren victory, Sigurd retreated to
his island fastnesses, and the mainland conquests of the Orkney Jarls
reverted for the time to other possessors.[101]
It must have been soon after this battle that Olave Tryggveson,
returning from England to Norway, touched at the Orkneys, and
seizing upon Sigurd, who was totally unprepared for an attack, with
all the zeal of a recent convert, offered him the alternative of
immediate execution or of at once embracing the Christian faith, and
acknowledging himself a tributary of Norway. Any lingering love of
Odinism vanished before the necessity of the case, Christianity became
the religion of the islands, and Olave carried off Hundi Sigurdson as
a hostage for the fidelity of his father. His allegiance to Norway sat
lightly on the Jarl, and ceased with the life of his son a few years
afterwards; but as the conversion of the Orkneymen dates from this
summary proceeding, and no allusion is ever made to a relapse, it may
perhaps be concluded that his Christianity was more enduring.[102]
Whilst these events were occurring in the North, and the attention
of the Moray chieftains was fully occupied by the encroachments of
their powerful neighbours, Kenneth, who appears to have been an able
and energetic prince, seems to have been actively engaged in another
quarter of his dominions; and although no account has been handed down
of the nature of the transaction which eventually cost the king his
life, there is much reason to connect it with an attempt on his part to
reduce under his more immediate power a portion of the kingdom which
had hitherto continued in a condition of comparative independence.
Extending along the eastern coast of Scotland was a district of which
the whole or part was known as Angus, though it would be difficult to
define its ancient limits with accuracy. In later days the name of
Angus has been looked upon as equivalent to Forfarshire, but the old
Pictish kingdom may once have reached to the Isla and the Tay, on its
southern frontiers, whilst towards the north it bordered on the marches
of Mar, or by whatever name the district may have been known, which
was once the principality of Cyric.[103] Originally an independent
province, it probably became subordinate at some remote period to the
kingdom of which the foundations were laid by the elder Angus and
Constantine, in other words, the lord of the district paid _can_
or _cios_ to the king of Scots in peace, or acknowledged his
authority in some similar manner, and led his followers to support the
royal cause in war; but beyond such vague tokens of dependence he ruled
with undiminished authority over all who acknowledged his claim to be
their _Cen-cinneth_, or the head of their race by “right of blood.”
During the earlier reigns of the kings of the line of Kintyre,
the “Mormaors” of Angus were evidently personages of considerable
importance, as their deaths are occasionally entered in the oldest
existing chronicle, the latest notice of a member of the family
occurring during the reign of Colin. In the time of Kenneth the direct
male line appears to have ended in Cunechat or Connor, who transmitted
his rights to a daughter of the name of Finella, and she hoped in
her turn to bequeath them to her son. In this expectation she was
disappointed, for upon some long forgotten pretext the heir of Angus
was condemned and executed at Dunsinnan;[104] and as the greater part
of this province was included in the deaneries of Gowrie, Angus, and
the Merns, which, after the changes introduced into the constitution
of the Scottish church by David the First, appear under the episcopal
jurisdiction of St. Andrews, it is highly probable that the “Bishop of
the Scots” first acquired his spiritual authority in this direction
when “the King of Scots” cut off the last heir of the ancient line of
princes and annexed his province to the crown, exercising the rights of
a conqueror by “giving Brechin to the Lord.”[105]
The bereaved mother never forgave the outrage, and the scene of
Kenneth’s death, Fettercairn in Kincardineshire, where he is said
to have perished through the treachery of his immediate attendants,
favours the tradition connecting the catastrophe with the vengeance of
Finella. If any credit can be attached to the accounts of authorities
who wrote four centuries after the occurrence, policy induced her
to wear the appearance of forgetfulness until she had succeeded in
persuading the king to entrust himself within the walls of her “castle
of Fettercairn,” where he lost his life by a curious and complicated
machine, most ingeniously contrived for the fatal deed! [Sidenote: A.
D. 995.] Be this as it may, Kenneth was assassinated after a reign of
twenty-four years, and if Finella, as is not improbable, was the author
of his death, it is likely that her purpose was accomplished without
the aid of any very elaborate mechanical contrivance, and scarcely
within the walls of a feudal castle.[106]
Fordun has attributed to this king the idea of limiting the succession
to his immediate family, gravely adding, that the example of the German
empire exercised much influence in deciding Kenneth to adopt this
line of policy.[107] The fate of Olave MacIndulf, at the commencement
of this reign, lends some degree of probability to the suggestion of
the historian, though the king was hardly successful in his supposed
policy, as the usual order of succession was preserved, and two princes
intervened before the accession of his son Malcolm. More than one
fabrication has been palmed upon this reign, and the memory of the king
has been needlessly blackened by the assumed murder of Malcolm MacDuff,
a personage of more than questionable reality, for whose existence
Fordun is the earliest authority; though it is possible that some
confusion may have arisen between the imaginary king of the Cumbrians
and the real Olave, whose death is noticed by Tighernach the Irish
annalist, a few years after the accession of Kenneth to the throne.[108]
Hector Boece is the first writer who places the victory of Loncarty in
this reign, for Fordun makes no allusion to it, though his continuator
Walter Bowyer mentions “the wonderful battle of Loncarty,” fought at
a time when a Norwegian army, after ravaging the country in every
direction, had shut up a Pictish king within the ancient city of Perth.
The provisions of the besieged were upon the point of failing, when
the wily Pict, by a judicious present of his two last casks of wine,
reduced his enemies to a state that ensured him an easy victory. A
successful sortie was directed against the invaders’ camp, their ships
were burnt and sunk at the mouth of the Tay, obstructing the river, and
originating the sandbanks of Drumlay, and every subsequent invasion
of the northern foe, down to the expedition of Haco, in the reign of
Alexander the Third, was supposed to have been undertaken in revenge
for this fatal disaster.[109]
Such is the earliest account of the famous battle of Loncarty.
There can be little doubt about its real occurrence, and it was
fought probably upon the occasion of one of the earlier inroads
of the Northmen at the most formidable epoch of their power. The
recollection of a great victory gained upon this spot would long be
preserved in the traditions of the surrounding neighbourhood, but for
the circumstantial narrative embellishing the pages of Boece, that
ingenious historian was probably indebted to the same sources from
which he procured such accurate information about the elaborate machine
for accomplishing the vengeance of Finella.[110]
_Constantine the Third_ 995–997.
_Kenneth the Third_ 997–1005.
The assassination of Kenneth at Fettercairn raised Colin’s son
Constantine to the throne of Scotland. The last inheritor of the blood
of the second Constantine, his reign, like his father’s, was short and
troubled, as he lost his life two years after his accession, in a vain
attempt to resist the pretensions of Kenneth MacDuff.[111] [Sidenote:
A. D. 997.] Upon the extinction of the Scottish branch of the “Clan
Aodh MacKenneth,” the radical defect of the old system of succession
was at once developed in the immediate division of the “Clan
Constantine MacKenneth,”--hitherto united by a common enmity,--into
two hostile “factions,” headed respectively by the grandsons of the
first Malcolm. Nothing whatever is recorded of the reign of Kenneth the
Third, sometimes known as Grim or Græme, a name supposed to signify
the profession of great strength, or a certain sternness of character.
The chronicles are silent beyond the barren facts of his accession
and death, [Sidenote: A. D. 1005.] placing the latter at Monaghvaird
in Strathearn, where his defeat eight years after his victory over
Constantine raised his cousin Malcolm, the son of Kenneth the Second,
to the vacant throne of Scotland.[112]
_Malcolm the Second._ 1005–1034.
In imitation apparently of the example of his father, Malcolm
signalized his accession by one of those inroads upon Northumbria
which point significantly to the gradual extension of the Scottish
kingdom on her southern frontier. Borne down by the weight of years,
Ealdorman Waltheof, shutting himself up within the walls of Bamborough,
placidly let the storm sweep by; but his son Uchtred, who had married
the daughter of the bishop, was neither of an age nor of a temperament
to look quietly on while the broad lands he had received in dowry with
his bride were wasted by the northern invaders. Summoning the men of
Northumberland and Yorkshire to join his standard, he soon collected
a numerous force, [Sidenote: A. D. 1006.] and suddenly attacking
Malcolm before the gates of Durham drove him from the territory of St.
Cuthbert.[113]
The next step of the victorious Uchtred affords a singular example of
the manners of the age. Severing from the bodies of the fallen Scots
a sufficient number of the best-looking heads, he committed them to
the charge of four women, each of whom was to receive a cow in payment
for plaiting the hair and arraying to the best advantage these grim
relics of the foe, which were then placed on stakes at equal intervals
around the walls of Durham, to answer the double purpose of striking
terror into any future band of marauding Scots, and of recalling to the
grateful townsmen the services of their brave deliverer. Having cleared
the country of the enemy and seen to the arrangement of his revolting
trophies, Uchtred bore to Ethelred the welcome news of his victory, and
was rewarded for his gallantry with the hand of the king’s daughter--he
seems to have had neither scruple nor difficulty in releasing himself
from his former wife--as well as with a grant of the _eorldom_
of the Yorkshire Danes, in addition to his father’s _ealdordom_
beyond the Tyne.[114]
About the same time as Malcolm’s disaster before Durham, Finlay
MacRory, who had succeeded his brother Malbride in the chieftainship of
Moray,--in the words of the Norwegian Saga--“marked out a battle-field
for Jarl Sigurd on Skida Moor.” To decline the proffered contest would
have been disgraceful, but the Jarl had serious doubts about the
result, for he was afraid that the Scots would outnumber him; and as
his followers were infected with a similar misgiving, they murmured at
the risk until Sigurd promised to restore the Odal privileges which
their ancestors had resigned in the days of Einar Rognwaldson. On
this agreement they followed him with alacrity, and to increase their
confidence Sigurd bore with him one of those mystic banners, so famous
amongst the ancient Northmen, wrought in the form of a flying raven
whose wings expanded in the wind. It was the work of the Jarl’s mother,
the daughter of the Irish Kerval, and upon it she had expended all the
magic lore for which she was renowned, promising victory to all who
followed, but death to him who bore it. On this occasion the charm was
successful, three warriors who carried the fated standard falling one
after the other in the battle; but Jarl Sigurd won the day, and the
Bonders of Orkney were rewarded for their valour by the restitution of
their Odal privileges.[115]
The success of Sigurd against the Moray Mormaor, far from embroiling
him with Malcolm, appears to have been rather gratifying to the
Scottish king, who immediately gave him the hand of his younger
daughter in marriage; and from this union sprung Thorfin Sigurdson, who
upon the death of his father in the memorable battle of Clontarf, was
immediately confirmed by Malcolm in the mainland earldom of Sutherland
and Caithness, whilst the Orkneys and other island possessions fell to
the share of the elder sons of Sigurd.[116]
Soon after Malcolm had thus established his grandson in the northern
extremity of his kingdom, an opportunity again occurred for extending
his dominions on the Northumbrian frontier, which ever since the days
of Indulf had been the object of the aggressions of the Scottish kings.
The sceptre of a great nation was fast escaping from the feeble grasp
of Ethelred, and Uchtred, the opponent of Malcolm’s earlier years,
after twice submitting to the Danish invaders, had been put to death
with the connivance of Canute from mingled motives of policy and
revenge.[117] The guardianship of the northern frontiers then fell
into the hands of Eadulf Cudel, the imitator of the supineness of his
father Waltheof, rather than of the energy of his brother Uchtred.
He could expect but little assistance from the Yorkshire Danes, who
upon the death of Uchtred had been placed under the authority of their
countryman Eric, and as the distracted state of Northumbria was not
lost upon Malcolm, twelve years after his former disaster, collecting
his followers for a second invasion, he prepared to exact a fearful
retribution for the trophies mouldering around the walls of Durham.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1018.]
During thirty days and nights, a comet, a baleful and ill-omened
prodigy in the eyes of the Northumbrians of the eleventh century,
blazed forth, a presage of impending woe; and when the men of St.
Cuthbert’s joined their countrymen at Carham, on the banks of the
Tweed, it was only to participate in the disasters of a defeat, and
to perish in multitudes in a disorderly flight. The aged bishop sunk
under the shock, dying within a few days of the battle, and such was
the confusion throughout the diocese of St. Cuthbert’s that for three
years no successor was elected. Despairing of resistance against the
power of the conqueror, Eadulf Cudel purchased an inglorious peace
at the price of relinquishing Lothian, the whole of ancient Bernicia
beyond the Tweed was ceded to the Scottish king, and Malcolm returned
in triumph to the north, having effectually obliterated the remembrance
of his failure by a more brilliant and substantial success than any of
his predecessors had hitherto achieved.[118]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1031.]
Towards the close of his life, and about thirteen years after his
successful invasion of Northumbria, Malcolm was brought into contact
with the most formidable antagonist that ever crossed his path, for
upon his return from Rome, Canute, now king of England, Denmark, and
Norway, marched with an army to the north, and both kings met upon the
frontiers of their respective dominions. As no allusion is made to the
cause which led to the expedition of Canute, it would be impossible to
determine whether it had any reference to Malcolm’s acquisition of
Lothian. A brief notice in the Saxon chronicle--all that is known of
the transaction--barely records that Malcolm met Canute, “bowed to his
power, and became his man, retaining his allegiance for a very short
time.” Canute with his army returned to the south, and the results of
the meeting faded away with the retreating footsteps of the mighty
Dane.[119]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1033]
Amongst the latest notices of this reign contained in the Irish annals,
an action is recorded of Malcolm, towards the close of his career,
which clearly demonstrates his determined purpose to transmit the regal
dignity to his own immediate descendants. According to the rule of
alternate succession hitherto observed amongst the Scots--a rule which
the later princes had invariably attempted to violate--the next king
after Malcolm’s death ought to have been chosen from the family of his
predecessor Kenneth. Boedhe, the late king’s son, was no longer living,
but he had left a son whose name is no longer preserved, the last male
representative of his race, and perhaps the Tanist, or heir apparent of
the king. The death of this prince is attributed to Malcolm, whose aim
it is evident in this deed of violence was to remove from the path of
his grandson Duncan the sole rival claimant of the throne.[120] In this
he was completely successful, no opposition awaiting his grandson when
he was called soon afterwards to reign; nor had Duncan long to wait for
the crown, for in the following year [Sidenote: A. D. 1034.] Malcolm
was assassinated at Glammis, in the same province of Angus which forty
years before had proved so fatal to his father.[121]
Of the direct male line of Kenneth MacAlpin, Malcolm the Second was
the last and greatest king, his renown extending to the neighbouring
countries, and procuring for him the title amongst the Irish annalists
of the “Lord and Father of the West.” He enlarged and consolidated his
ancestral dominions, advancing the frontier from the Pentland Hills to
the Tweed, and effecting an object that his predecessors had vainly
attempted--the transmission of the kingdom to his own immediate family.
The means employed for this purpose, it is to be feared, were neither
scrupulous nor just; but the annals of every country at this period
prove but too clearly that it was an age in which neither the ties of
relationship, nor indeed any other ties, were proof against the lust of
ambition.
Scotland had now reached her permanent and lasting frontier towards the
south, the dependent principality of Strath Clyde having apparently,
during the course of this reign, been finally incorporated with the
greater kingdom. When Donald, son of the Eogan who shared in the bloody
fight of Brunanburgh, died on a pilgrimage in 975, he seems to have
been succeeded by his son Malcolm, whose death is noticed by the Irish
Tighernach under the date of 997.[122] The last king of Strath Clyde
who has found a place in history is Eogan “the bald,” who fought by
the side of the Scottish king at Carham,[123] probably a son of the
British Malcolm whose family name he bears; and in the person of this
Eogan the line of Aodh’s son Donald appears to have become extinct. The
earliest authorities of the twelfth century give the title of “king
of the Cumbrians,” meaning undoubtedly the northern Cumbria or Strath
Clyde, to Malcolm’s grandson Duncan, and it is probable that upon the
failure of the line of Scoto-British princes, the king of Scotland
placed his grandson over the province, which from that time, losing the
last semblance of independence, ceased to be ruled by a separate line
of princes.[124]
To Malcolm the Second has sometimes been attributed the foundation
of an Episcopal See at Mortlach, which was afterwards transferred to
Aberdeen;[125] and though as far as relates to the establishment of a
regular diocese this account must be rejected, Malcolm, in imitation of
his father’s policy in the case of Brechin, may have “given Mortlach to
the Lord;” or, in other words, he may have founded and endowed a Culdee
monastery on this spot. As the erection of a religious establishment
in those days necessarily implies the possession of the surrounding
district, if the tradition is correct which connects Mortlach with the
reign of Malcolm the Second, the plains of Lothian were not his only
conquest; and, in the same manner as Kenneth acquired Angus, he must
have annexed to the dominions of the Scottish crown some portion of
the ancient kingdom which once aspired to be the leading principality
amongst the Pictish provinces of the north.[126]
Certain other changes are attributed to this king, which, however they
may have become warped and disguised by the _feudal_ ideas of the
authorities in whose pages they are found, when they are considered
in connection with the actual historical events of the period,
undoubtedly seem to point to Malcolm’s reign as the era of a certain
advance towards the consolidation of the royal authority, such as is
distinctly traceable at different epochs in many other countries. A
twofold bond of union existed from a very early period amongst the
communities into which the Celtic and Germanic people were divided,
and the noble, prince, or king, was followed either from the “tie of
blood,” as the actual head of the race, or from “the tie of service,”
as the lord and master who repaid all who rendered such service
according to the prevalent customs of the age; and as the former tie
was at the root of the _allodial_, so out of the latter gradually
arose the theory of the _feudal_ system. Originally the tie of blood
united freeman with freeman, whilst the tie of service connected the
free with the unfree, but as inequality of rank grew up from various
causes, the lesser freeman was glad to “take service” with the greater
in return for his protection and support, thus forming the class known
as _Gasinds_ (or _Gesiths_) amongst the Germans, and amongst the Gael
apparently in early times as _Amasach_--a word evidently akin to the
old Celtic _Ambact_--who were either quartered temporarily upon the
unfree tenantry of their patron as military retainers, or at a later
period frequently exercised a delegated authority over the crown lands
as _Grafs_, _Gerefas_, or _Maors_. As the royal power was increased by
acquisitions at the expense of a neighbouring state, or as the head
of one community acquired a permanent superiority over the rest, the
importance and numbers of the royal _Gasinds_ and _Amasach_ increased
proportionally, and very frequently, instead of the original usage,
according to which the greater part of the newly acquired territory
would have been portioned out more or less permanently amongst the
conquerors, as _Allod_, _Odal_, or _Duchas_, land--untaxed freehold
held by right of blood--as it was more advantageous to the sovereign
to reserve as much as possible for the use of the crown, the older
proprietary were retained as a tributary class, remaining undisturbed
under the authority of the Gasinds and Amasach, who, acting as royal
deputies, collected the king’s rents and led his dependants to
battle, reserving for their “service” a certain portion of the royal
dues, almost invariably a third. Such was the original tenure of the
_Graphiones_ of the early Frank kings, of the Ealdormen and Eorls,
amongst the Anglo-Saxons and Anglo-Danes, and of the royal Jarls
established by Harald Harfagar and other kings throughout the north;
in short, it was, in early times, the universal tenure of the royal
_official_, before “knight service” and the _feud_ gradually superseded
nearly every other tenure amongst the nobility.[127]
In Scotland, the royal official placed over the crown or fiscal lands
appears to have been originally known as the _Maor_ (the type of the
royal _Maer_ amongst the Cymri), and latterly under the Teutonic
appellation of Thane, either a corrupted form of the Gaelic Ti’ern, or
a title like _Earl_, arising from the prevalence of Anglo-Saxon law
and technical phraseology after the introduction of feudalism; for the
feudalism introduced by David and his successors, though Anglo-Norman,
was very much based upon the Anglo-Saxon, or what was much the same,
the Lothian law and customs. The epithet of Thanage was applied as well
to the office as to the district over which it was exercised, of which
the old Scottish name may have been _Triocha-ced_ or _Cantred_, a name
long equivalent amongst the Irish to a _barony_.[128] The offices of
_Maer_ and _Cynghellwr_ (or judge), amongst the Welsh, could never be
conferred upon the head of a clan (or _Pencenedyl_), the same maxim
of policy very probably being equally in force in Scotland, for it
is in strict accordance with the immemorial Celtic principle “divide
et impera;” though it may be equally referable to the invariable
hostility of early royalty to _Allodial_ or _Duchas_ tenure from its
independence of the sovereign authority. The original Thanage then
would appear to have been a district held of the Crown, differing but
little except in tenure, from a tract of land held by _Duchas_ right;
the holder, Maor or Thane, being accountable for the collection of
the royal dues, and for the appearance of the royal tenantry at the
yearly “hosting,” and answering to the hereditary _Toshach_ or captain
of a clan--for the king stood in the place of the _Cen-cinneth_, or
chief--whilst the official who acted as judge, and was subsequently
known as the _Deempster_ (the Welsh _Cynghellwr_) represented the
hereditary _Brehon_ of the tribe, the place of the lesser _Duchasach_
or _Brugaidhs_ being generally supplied in course of time by the
kinsmen of the Thane, planted on the Thanage to hold under the head
of their race as _Ogtierns_, Mesne lords, or Vavassours.[129] The
theory of “a _Toshach_ over every _Triocha-ced_, and a _Brugaidh_ over
every _Baile_,” was equally familiar to the Irish Gael, and as the tie
uniting the officials with the population of the whole Thanage was
“service,” not “blood,” the Thane was often known amongst his followers
as their _Toshach_ or captain, rather than their _Cen-cinneth_ or chief
by right of blood.[130]
When lands were strictly retained in the crown, the Royal Thane or Maor
was answerable directly to the king, but there was a still greater
official amongst the Scots, untraceable apparently in his peculiar
Scottish characteristics amongst the kindred Welsh and Irish, known
under the title of the _Mormaor_ or Lord High Steward. One example
of the peculiar tenure of the Mormaor was still existing in the
thirteenth century in the Earl of Fife; for when the second Alexander
and his “Parliament” levied fines upon all who had failed in their
attendance on the occasion of his expedition against “Donald MacNiel of
the Isles,” the earls and their “serjeants” were strictly prohibited
from entering the lands of any “tenant _in capite_”--holding
directly of the king--to exact the penalty imposed, excepting only the
Earl of Fife, who exercised this privilege throughout his district, not
as the Earl, but as the Royal _Maor_ of the county of Fife, “to
claim his rights,” or, in other words, to secure his allotted portion
of the mulct.[131] The ancient Scottish Mormaor, then, was evidently
a Maor placed over a province instead of a thanage--an earldom or
country instead of a barony--a type of Harfager’s royal Jarl, who often
exercised as a royal deputy that authority which he had originally
claimed as the independent lord of the district over which he presided.
This change was rendered very popular amongst the aristocracy of the
north, from the great increase of wealth they derived through retaining
a third of the tribute exacted in the king’s name from the classes
hitherto untaxed; and similar considerations may have exercised an
influence in facilitating the conversion of the semi-independent
Gaelic _Oirrigh_ into a dependent, but probably far wealthier,
_Mormaor_.
The existence of the royal Maor and Mormaor--officials in direct
dependence on the king, and resembling the royal Jarls and Lendermen
amongst the Northmen, or the king’s Ealdorman and Gerefa amongst the
Anglo-Saxons--implies a greater consolidation and compactness in the
Scottish monarchy than was ever attained amongst the kindred Celts of
Ireland or Wales; and it is to the policy pursued during the reigns
of Malcolm and his father Kenneth that this result is probably to be
attributed. The Maor, indeed, was an official familiar to the Gaelic
people long before the era of Kenneth and Malcolm, and he probably
played an important part in the conquered provinces annexed by the
elder Angus and his successors; but the Mormaor--the head of a province
ruling as a royal deputy instead of an independent prince--points to
a revolution in the tenure of land resembling the changes introduced
by Harfager, when he cancelled “_Odal_ right” wherever he could
extend his authority, and levied _land-tax_ by means of his Jarls
and Lendermen; and it was a revolution of this description that may
possibly have been carried out in the course of Malcolm’s reign and
that of his father. Scotland, according to Fordun, was portioned out
in ancient times into Thanages, or Fee-farms paying rent, held of
course of the crown--for any other theory was incompatible with the
ideas of the feudal era--until Malcolm, remitting the rents, gave away
the whole kingdom, only reserving to himself the Moot Hill of Scone,
when in return for the royal prodigality his people confirmed their
sovereign’s right to wardship, relief, and other feudal privileges.
Lurking under this singular statement there are probably some grains
of truth, thoroughly misunderstood by the chronicler; and as in the
partition of Scotland into Thanages a tradition may be recognized of
its ancient division into _Triocha-ceds_ and _Bailes_, or Baronies
and Townlands--institutions of a character inseparable from the very
existence of a _settled_ community--so the reduction of the kingdom of
Scotland as it then existed to a more direct dependence upon the royal
authority, entailing land-tax, _merchet_, and other Celtic mulcts, in
quarters hitherto exempt from such exactions, seems to be shadowed out
under the _feudal_ grant of the whole kingdom and the _feudal_ return
made by the gratitude of the Scottish people. Like Wales and Ireland,
the whole kingdom was probably divided in theory into _Triocha-ceds_,
_Cantreds_, or Thanages, the tribe lands held by chieftains as untaxed
_Duchas_, the crown-lands by Maors or Thanes answerable for the rents
and dues; and if Malcolm, by cancelling “_Duchas_ right” as far as
it lay in his power, assimilated the tenure of the whole kingdom to
that of the royal Maor, or, in other words, taxed the hitherto untaxed
_Duchasach_, he only brought about the same change which Harfager had
already effected in Norway, and which the ministers of the Frank kings
were continually aiming at five or six centuries before his era. As the
Thanage was evidently regarded in feudal times as the ancient Scottish
tenure throughout the whole kingdom, some such change must have been
introduced upon the older state of society before the establishment
of the feudal system, and both tradition and history seem to point to
the second Malcolm as the sovereign who first carried out successfully
a revolution so important for the aggrandizement of the royal
authority.[132]
An apocryphal collection of laws, relating principally to the
regulation of the court, has been also ascribed to the same king; and
though the laws are unquestionably fabrications, it is not impossible
that they were framed in a feudal era to represent the regulations
which Malcolm was traditionally supposed to have enacted. The
promulgation of a code of laws necessarily involves the acquiescence of
all who submit to be bound by them in the supremacy of the lawgiver;
and when a king is said to have established or re-enacted such a code,
it may be regarded as an indirect proof of a certain stability in the
authority thus centred in the royal person. When “the Gael” assembled
at Forteviot to ratify with their king, Donald, the laws of his
ancestor Aodh the Fair, and when they gathered round the Moot Hill of
Scone, to confirm perhaps with Constantine the privileges conferred by
Cyric on the See of St. Andrews, the superiority of the dynasty, whose
representative presided in these assemblies, was evidently acknowledged
by all who attended at their summons. The establishment of a court, the
enhancement of the dignity of personal attendance on the sovereign,
and the regulation of the duties and privileges attached to such
service, point again to a further advance of the royal power, and to a
certain increase in the kingly dignity attendant upon a fixed court and
residence; marking as it were an approach to the gradual conversion of
a _migratory_ king quartering himself during his yearly progresses
upon the provincial aristocracy, and upon the stewards of the royal
manors, into a _stationary_ monarch, summoning his dependent
nobility to attend upon their sovereign’s person in his own court and
palace. The laws of Howel Dha, relating entirely to the duties and
privileges of “the Court of Aberfraw,” and the similar arrangements of
the Norwegian Olaf, probably have reference to the commencement or the
progress of a revolution of this description; and if the apocryphal
regulations of the Scottish court may be regarded as the _feudal_
embodiment of a true tradition, Malcolm may be looked upon as the
originator of that change through which the Scottish king, ceasing
gradually to migrate from one province to another, enhanced the dignity
of personal attendance upon the sovereign, and assembled his nobility
in his own “palace” of Scone.
CHAPTER V.
THE LINE OF ATHOLL.
_Duncan the First_--1034–1040.
Upon the death of Malcolm the Second the direct male line of Kenneth
MacAlpin became extinct; but the rights of the royal race, originally
inherited through the female line, were transmitted in the same manner
through heiresses to the two great families of Atholl and Moray, whose
disputes for the crown were destined to become as fruitful a source of
strife and bloodshed as the sanguinary struggle between their immediate
ancestors, or the earlier feuds between the lines of Constantine and
Aodh.
Boedhe, the death of whose son has been already noticed, left a
daughter, Gruoch, who, by her marriage with Gilcomgain, the son of
Malbride MacRory, carried the claims of the line of Duff, after the
death of her brother, into the family of the Moray Mormaors. Finlay
MacRory, the antagonist of Sigurd Lodverson, lost his life in a feud
with his nephews Malcolm and Gilcomgain, to the former of whom the
earldom reverted according to the Gaelic rule of succession, until his
death in 1029, when it fell into the possession of his younger brother
Gilcomgain. Three years later the Mormaor was surprised and burnt in
his _Rath_ or fortress, with fifty of his immediate followers,
leaving an infant son, Lulach, who, after the death of Boedhe’s son in
the following year became the sole remaining representative of the
line of Kenneth Macduff. Gruoch, the widow of Gilcomgain, was married
eventually to Macbeth MacFinlay,[133] who had succeeded her late
husband and his own cousin in the Mormaorship of Moray, when, as the
husband of Gruoch and the guardian of the infant Lulach, Macbeth became
the representative during the minority of the latter of his claims upon
the crown of Scotland.
Bethoc, or Beatrice, the eldest of the late king’s daughters, carried
her claims to the race of Atholl by her marriage with Crinan, Abbot of
Dunkeld, who was also the head of the Atholl family.[134] Their son
was Duncan, the heir and successor of his grandfather, who, before his
accession to the throne of Scotland, had been placed by Malcolm over
the dependent province of Strath Clyde.
Another of Malcolm’s daughters, a younger sister of Beatrice, married
Sigurd Lodverson soon after his victory over the Mormaor Finlay, the
father of Macbeth, when it was evidently the object of the late king
to secure the alliance of the Orkney Jarl as a formidable rival to the
hostile family of Moray. [Sidenote: A. D. 1014.] After the fall of
Sigurd in the battle of Clontarf, his son Thorfin, as has been already
mentioned, when a mere child, was placed by his grandfather over the
earldom of Sutherland and Caithness, whilst the Orkneys were inherited
by his three half-brothers, Einar, Somarled, and Brusi. Upon the death
of Somarled, a few years later, Thorfin claimed a share of the islands,
when Einar prepared to resist his pretensions by force, but through
the intervention of the other brother, Brusi, Thorfin succeeded in
attaining his object, and in this manner he first acquired a footing in
the Orkneys.
Einar perished shortly afterwards in a feud, when a fresh difficulty
arose upon his death about the division of his portion of the islands.
Brusi, fearful lest king Malcolm, who was then alive, should support
the claims of his grandson, determined upon enlisting the king of
Norway in his own behalf, and for this purpose he sailed for the latter
country, whither he was soon followed by Thorfin, who thought with much
justice (to use the words of the Saga), “that though he stood well with
Olaf, and many would support him in his absence, many more would do so
if he were present.” Before the arrival of his younger brother, Brusi
had already resigned his Odal rights into the hands of Olaf, agreeing
to be bound by the royal decision, and to hold all his lands as a
_Lenderman_ or royal Jarl at the will and pleasure of the king.
When a similar resignation was demanded from Thorfin, he hesitated at
first to acquiesce in any such arrangement; but after consulting with
his friends he agreed with such alacrity to every proposition of Olaf,
that the suspicions of the king were aroused, and deciding that Einar’s
portion had reverted to the Norwegian crown, he restored it to Brusi,
relying more upon the fidelity of the elder brother than upon the
youthful but ambitious Thorfin.
The pacific Brusi soon found reason to complain of his brother,
after their return to the Orkneys, for neglecting to contribute his
allotted portion towards the defence of the islands; as Thorfin,
residing continually on the mainland, was satisfied with limiting his
connection with his insular fiefs to the punctual exaction of his dues.
The younger Jarl offered to rectify his neglect, by taking the whole
trouble out of the hands of his elder brother, on condition that the
latter in return should surrender the disputed share; and as peace, not
power, was the object of the indolent Brusi, he willingly purchased
it at the price of insignificance, and at his death, which occurred
about the year 1030, Thorfin, [Sidenote: A. D. 1030.] without further
scruple, annexed the whole of the Orkneys to his dominions.[135]
Such was the state of Scotland when Duncan the First succeeded to
the throne of his grandfather. In the extreme north, dominions more
extensive than any Jarl of the Orkneys had hitherto acquired, were
united under the rule of Thorfin Sigurdson, whose character and
appearance have been thus described--“He was stout and strong, but
very ugly, severe and cruel, but a very clever man.” The extensive
districts then dependant upon the Moray Mormaors were in the possession
of the celebrated Macbeth, and though the power of those northern
magnates must undoubtedly have been weakened by the aggressions of the
Norwegian Jarls, it tells not a little for the energy and vigour of
the late king, that his grandson was able to ascend the throne without
encountering any opposition from the formidable representative of the
claims of the rival family.
The early portion of Duncan’s reign is void of incident, but, before
long, the mainland possessions of Thorfin appear to have become an
object of dispute, the king demanding the usual tribute due from a
dependancy of Scotland, whilst the Jarl denied the justice of his
claim, maintaining that he held his earldom by Odal right, as an
absolute and unconditional gift from their joint grandfather Malcolm.
At length Duncan, to punish his kinsman’s contumacy and assert the
rights of the crown, determined upon appointing another member of
his family, Moddan or Madach, to replace Thorfin in the earldom, and
dispatching Madach with an army to the north, he empowered him to take
possession of the royal grant.[136] [Sidenote: A. D. 1040.] Much about
the same time, the Scottish king, desirous of extending the conquests
of his grandfather towards the south, laid siege to Durham, but the
town was destined to become as fatal to the hopes of Duncan as it had
once been disastrous to those of Malcolm, a sudden and unexpected sally
spread confusion amongst the besieging army, and again the heads of
the Scottish slain were ranged in triumph around the hostile walls of
Durham.[137]
Madach had been equally unsuccessful in his attempt upon the earldom
of Thorfin. Warned of the approach of his rival, the Jarl summoned
Thorkell Fostri to join him with the Orkneymen in Caithness, and
Madach, perceiving that an engagement with their united forces would
only be attended with a disastrous result, retreated southwards for
reinforcements, whilst Thorfin availed himself of the opportunity
to overrun the neighbouring district of Ross. Intelligence of his
proceedings reached the king at Berwick, deciding him to march at once
towards the north, in order to support in person his grant of the
earldom to Madach. It appears to have been Duncan’s object to cut off
Thorfin from the Orkneys, thus preventing his junction with Thorkell
Fostri and his Norwegians, whom the Jarl, on the retreat of his rival,
had permitted to return to the islands; and to carry out his purpose,
he despatched Madach towards Caithness with the land army, whilst with
eleven vessels he sailed round Duncansby Head to interpose his ships
between the Jarl and his island home; hoping thus either to force him
to fight at a disadvantage with the superior numbers of Madach, or to
drive him southwards upon those Highland districts which were less well
affected to his cause.
The sight of Duncan’s sails in the Pentland Firth conveyed to Thorfin
the earliest intelligence of his enemy’s approach, and, baffled in
an attempt to put to sea, and thus escape to Sandwick, he was forced
to lie off Dyrness for the night and to await the king’s attack on
the following morning.[138] The ships of Thorfin were laden with the
plunder of the northern provinces of Scotland, and his men fought so
desperately in defence of their booty, that the king was beaten off
and obliged to make for the coast of Moray, whither he was speedily
followed by the united forces of Thorfin and Thorkell Fostri; the Jarl
watching the movements of Duncan and collecting reinforcements from
Caithness, Sutherland, and Ross, whilst he dispatched Thorkell to
surprise Madach, who had now reached Thurso, where he was resting in
unguarded security. The fidelity of the men of Caithness ably seconded
the projects of their Jarl, so effectually concealing the approach
of Thorkell, that the first notice of danger was conveyed to the
unfortunate Madach by the flames of his burning house, and he perished
in a vain attempt to burst through the ranks of his enemies, and escape
from the blazing ruins.
The Scottish king was still occupied in the province of Moray, where
he appears to have assembled a considerable force, to which Ireland
contributed her share. Strengthened by the return of Thorkell Fostri,
and by the arrival of the friendly clans from the Highland districts
of the north and west, Thorfin crossed the Moray Firth, and assuming
the offensive, attacked the royal army, which is said to have been
stationed in the neighbourhood of Burghead.[139] Duncan was defeated
after a severe struggle, and Thorfin, following up his success,
plundered the country to the frontiers of Fife, and returned without
molestation to his northern earldom; whilst the double failure in
Northumbria and Moray hastening the catastrophe of the youthful king,
he was assassinated “in the Smith’s bothy,” near Elgin, not far from
the scene of his latest battle, the Mormaor Macbeth being the undoubted
author of his death.[140]
The reigns of this king and his predecessor have been adorned in the
pages of Buchanan and Boece with numerous victories gained over the
Northmen which were totally unknown to the earlier authorities Wynton
and Fordun. Many difficulties beset the path of the early compiler
of Scottish history. The dearth of materials; the English claims so
thoroughly interwoven with the accounts which the rival chronicler
was fain to accept for his principal authorities; the necessity under
which he lay of distinguishing the “genuine Scots”--as he considered
them--as well from the “Irishry” to the northward of “the Mounth,” as
from the English to the southward of the Tweed, all combined to render
it a matter requiring no little trouble and ingenuity to compose an
appropriate history of his country. Under these circumstances the
numerous tumuli along the coast, each marking some spot where the men
of the olden time repulsed or fell before the invaders, suggested
the groundwork of a historical fabric which might at any rate escape
much questioning; and of these memorials of bygone conflicts Boece
has availed himself without scruple. Lords of the Isles and Thanes of
Strathearn valiantly sustain the contest against Sueno or Camus, Olave
or Onetus; and at a time when surnames were as yet unknown, a Keith
or a Hay, a Graham or a Dunbar, revives the failing courage of his
countrymen and points the way to victory. The fate of Loncarty must
attend upon the triumphs of Malcolm and his grandson. The crumbling
bones of the dead bear faithful witness to the reality of the battles,
but the circumstances and the characters called into existence by the
pen of Boece, must fade away from the page of history, and pass into
the realm of fiction.[141]
THE LINE OF MORAY.
_Macbeth_ 1040–1058.
_Lulach_ 1058.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1040.]
Very few kings of so remote a period have attained to the undying
celebrity of Macbeth. As long as the English language endures, his name
will be as widely known as that of the great Alfred, his character will
retain the familiar features impressed on it by the magic genius of
Shakspeare, and it will be as impossible to disentangle the historical
personage from the weird being of romance, as to picture “the meek and
hoary Duncan,” a young and inexperienced prince, meeting his untimely
fate in the flower of youth.
The quaint verses of the prior of Lochleven have embodied some of
the tales and traditions handed down by the partizans of the rival
families; and it will create little surprise to find that in a state
of society in which “the rights of blood” were paramount, the stigma
of illegitimacy was freely cast upon both competitors for the crown.
Wyntoun has recorded how Duncan, wearied with the chase, and separated
from his usual attendants, found rest and shelter within the humble
mill of Forteviot; how love bade the king return where chance had
shown the way; and how Malcolm, whose blood has flowed in the veins of
every English and Scottish king but Stephen, from the days of Henry
Beauclerc, sprung from this intrigue with the “milnare’s dowchtyr of
Fortewyot.” As the taint upon the blood of Malcolm was supposed to be
inherited from his mother, so the stain upon the pedigree of Macbeth
was attributed to the Mormaor’s father; and in the same old verses
it may be read how the mother of the Moray chieftain, wandering by
chance in the woods, met with “ane fayr man, nevyr nane sa fayre as
scho thowcht than,” and how Macbeth was born “the Dewil’s sone,” and
the inheritor of all his father’s evil propensities. As the talisman
of success was eventually upon the side of Malcolm, so the tales of
the tyranny and crimes of his antagonist increased and multiplied,
until they assumed the well-known form in the pages of Boece, which,
copied into the chronicle of Holinshed, attracted the notice of the
master-mind that has stamped the fiction with immortality.[142]
It may be gathered from the circumstances of his early life that
Macbeth did not attain even to the position of Mormaor without a
struggle. The two sons of Ruadhri--Roderic or Rory--the first known
member of the Moray family, succeeded according to the Gaelic custom,
Finlay filling the office of Tanist during the lifetime of his brother
Malbride. He was slain, as has been already mentioned, by his nephews,
who evidently intended to retain the right of succession within
their immediate branch of the family; Gilcomgain, who must have been
chosen Tanist on his brother’s accession to the Mormaordom, following
Malcolm to the exclusion of Finlay’s son, Macbeth, whose right to the
Tanistship was undoubted, and who must have thus found himself shut
out from the seniority to which he was fully entitled to aspire as
the representative of the junior branch of Rory’s family. The union
of Gilcomgain with a daughter of the MacAlpin family must have still
further strengthened his position, and as Macbeth is subsequently
entitled _Dux_ by the contemporary Marianus, it may be conjectured
that if he filled the office of _Toshach_--Duke or Constable of
the kingdom--during the reign of Duncan, it may have been conferred
upon him originally as the natural opponent of the rival line of
Kenneth MacDuff, with which the kinsman who had supplanted him was
closely connected. The last two years of Malcolm’s reign, however,
witnessed the deaths of Gilcomgain and of his wife’s brother; and
though the name of the Mormaor’s enemy is not mentioned, it is hardly
possible to doubt, that when he was surprised and burnt with fifty of
his followers, it was the deed of Macbeth avenging the murder of his
father, and re-asserting his claim upon the Mormaorship. The subsequent
death of Boedhe’s son transferred his claims upon the throne to his
sister Gruoch, whose marriage with Macbeth reversed the position in
which the Mormaor had hitherto stood, and placed him in the position
of Gilcomgain. Henceforth his interest was closely bound up with the
family to which he had hitherto been hostile, though, had Duncan
been prosperous, his fidelity might have stood the test. It was the
disastrous career of this unfortunate prince which first seems to
have aroused the ambition of Macbeth; but even then his hostility was
secret. It was not in open battle that Duncan lost his life, nor was
the crown of Scotland the prize of the victor in a hard fought field,
the final scene in “the Smith’s bothy” being strongly suggestive of
treachery.
The historical Macbeth appears to have been an able monarch, and
religious after the fashion of the age, for his reign has been handed
down in tradition as an era of fertility and prosperity--generally
a sign of the ability of the ruler; and he is recorded with his
queen amongst the earliest benefactors of the Culdee society of
Lochleven.[143] With their joint grant to the little priory is
associated the only historical mention of the true descent of the Lady
Gruoch; and the venerable Culdee who briefly registered their donation,
little thought that, in entering the simple notice, he was perpetuating
the sole record of the real nature of the claims of his benefactors
upon the throne they were accused of usurping. His liberality to the
poor of Rome is also mentioned by a contemporary historian; but in
such a manner as to leave it a matter of doubt whether the king was
ever present in person at the Eternal City.[144]
For five years after the fall of Duncan his successful rival reigned in
peace, when an attempt was made by the adherents of the late king to
regain their lost ascendancy. [Sidenote: A. D. 1045.] The children of
Duncan were still in their infancy, and their cause was sustained by
their grandfather, Crinan, the aged abbot of Dunkeld; but his defeat
and death, “with nine times twenty warriors,” extinguished for a time
the hopes of the House of Atholl, and only served to secure the throne
more firmly in the power of Macbeth.[145] Seven years elapsed and
the fortunes of the House of Moray were still in the ascendant, when
several of the Confessor’s Norman favourites, [Sidenote: A. D. 1052.]
who were driven from England on the return of Earl Godwin, fled for
refuge beyond the Tweed,[146] and the asylum granted to the fugitives
at Macbeth’s Court may have afforded a pretext for the hostility of
Siward, who, two years later, invaded the dominions of the Scottish
king. [Sidenote: A. D. 1054.] The whole force of the Northumbrian
provinces collected around the banner of the Danish earl, and attacked
Macbeth on the day of “the Seven Sleepers;” [Sidenote: 27th July.]
fifteen hundred of the Anglo-Danes fell in the contest, with the son
and nephew of the earl, but Siward gained the day, slew three thousand
of the enemy--the detested Normans amongst the number--and carried off
a booty unprecedented in the annals of Border warfare.[147]
The great success of the Anglo-Danish earl is generally supposed to
have reinstated Malcolm on the throne, but no such inference can be
drawn from the accounts of contemporary writers, by whom no allusion
is made to the Scottish prince; the espousal of the suppliant’s cause
by the Confessor, and the directions given by the saintly king to
Siward to re-establish the heir of Duncan in his ancestral kingdom,
only appearing in the pages of the Anglo-Norman chroniclers for
the purpose of indirectly furthering the subsequent feudal claims
of the English kings. As the rout of the Scottish army before the
walls of Durham, and their subsequent contest with Thorfin Sigurdson
hastened the catastrophe of the first king of the House of Atholl,
so the unsuccessful issue of his encounter with Earl Siward may have
eventually proved fatal to the Mormaor; but Macbeth held his ground
for four years, and the grave had long closed over the Danish earl,
[Sidenote: A. D. 1058.] when the defeat and death of his former
antagonist at Lumphanan, in Aberdeenshire, removed the first obstacle
from the path of the youthful Malcolm.[148] For three or four months
the contest still continued to be maintained by Gilcomgain’s son
Lulach, the feeble successor of his able kinsman, until his death at
Essie in Strathbogie, where he is said to have been betrayed, or to
have lost his life through some stratagem of his enemies, put an end
for the time to the struggle between the rival houses, and the heir of
Duncan without further difficulty obtained possession of the vacant
throne.[149]
CHAPTER VI.
THE LINE OF ATHOLL RESTORED.
_Malcolm the Third (Ceanmore)._ 1058–1093.
Three centuries had now elapsed since the conquests of the Pictish
Angus established the supremacy of his native province, and laid the
foundation of the future kingdom of Scotland. During the earlier
portion of this period no addition had been made to the territories
of the reigning family, the lords of the southern capital of
_Dunfothir_ contenting themselves with the vague dignity of
“Ardrigh of Alban,” and with excluding from the privileges of “a royal
race” the rival chieftains of _Dundurn_. The incursions of the
Northmen, above all the conquests of Thorstein Olaveson, weakened the
power of the southern kingdom, and by exhibiting the almost forgotten
spectacle of a prince of Dundurn sharing the throne of Scotland with a
scion of the royal race, resuscitated the hopes of the northern tribes;
the deaths of three kings of the MacAlpin dynasty in the province
of Moray testifying to the obstinacy with which the people of that
district continued to resist the pretensions of the southern family to
the right of _Can_ and _Cuairt_ throughout the north. But
the rise of the Jarls of the Orkneys again turned the scale in favour
of the south, and from the time when the second Kenneth favoured the
claims of Thorfin’s family upon the mainland earldom of their maternal
ancestor, Forres ceased to be fatal to his race, and he was at leisure
to carry out his projects against the heir of Finella, and to make
the first actual addition to the territories of the Scottish kings by
bringing the eastern coasts into a more direct dependancy upon the
crown. The “Bishopric of the Scots,” co-extensive in jurisdiction with
the royal power, henceforth reached to the Dee, and the fatality to the
royal race was transferred to the eastern provinces; for the struggle
was no longer in the north until the old rivalry again broke out on the
rupture of the alliance with the Orkney Jarl.
The fatality attending the northern districts never seems to have
extended to the junior branch of the reigning dynasty, whose alliances
and expeditions were essentially connected with the south and west.
It was over Strath Clyde that Constantine endeavoured to extend his
influence; Northumbria was the province from which Indulf wrested
Edinburgh; whilst Lothian, or the British frontiers, were fatal to
Colin and his brother Eocha. Hence it may be gathered that they were
the southern branch of the ruling family, the possessions of the
kindred race of Constantine the First probably bringing the latter
into more immediate contact with the northern division of the nation.
Upon the extinction of the line of Aodh in the person of Constantine
the Third, Malcolm the Second appears as the leader of the southern
interest, and whilst the children of Kenneth MacDuff eventually became
connected with the hereditary enemies of their race, Malcolm, in
pursuance of the traditional policy of the south, allied himself with
the House of Atholl, annexed Strath Clyde to the crown, and followed up
the conquests of Indulf, and the attempts of his own father, Kenneth,
upon the neighbouring possessions of the Northumbrian Ealdormen. The
preponderance of the south was greatly increased during his reign,
and as the conquests of Angus and his successors centred the royal
authority in one ruling family, so the great additions made to the
territory of the crown during the reign of Kenneth and his son Malcolm
fixed that authority in the House of Atholl. The northern policy of
these kings was reversed by their descendant Duncan, the result costing
him his crown and his life; but a period was now approaching when the
lengthened reign of an abler prince was to redeem the incapacity or
misfortunes of the first of his House, to extend the power of the crown
still further over the hostile provinces of the north, and to bequeath
to his descendants a more compact and powerful kingdom, which they were
destined gradually to knit together in the iron bonds of feudalism.
The early years of the reign of Malcolm have escaped the notice of the
chroniclers of his age, and there is nothing to be recorded beyond
the death of Thorfin Sigurdson, [Sidenote: A. D. 1064.] when the
dominions of the Jarl reverted to his two sons, whilst Ingebiorge,
his widow, became the wife of the youthful king.[150] Ever since the
days of Ethelred and Edwin, when the princes of Deira and the race
of Ida contended for the dominion of Northumbria, the territories of
the Picts and Scots had afforded a frequent asylum to all whom the
chances of war or of political intrigue banished from the land of
the Saxon; but in the troubled and distracted period then impending
over England, the neighbouring kingdom beyond the Tweed was destined
to receive a band of more than usually illustrious exiles. The first
amongst the fugitives who sought the protection of the Scottish king
was Tosti, Earl of Yorkshire and Northumberland. [Sidenote: A. D.
1061.] A friendship had long existed between the king and the earl,
who were united in the bonds of “sworn brotherhood,” a tie which seems
to have been no obstacle to the attacks of Malcolm upon the earldom of
his sworn brother when the latter was absent upon a pilgrimage to Rome;
though it may have softened the resentment of the earl, who passed over
unnoticed this foray on the people of his earldom, whom he plundered
and oppressed, on his own part, with scarcely less hostility, under a
show of rightful authority. At length in the autumn of 1065 the whole
of the north of England rose against their earl, put to death the
ministers of his tyranny--descendants of the Anglo-Danes--and chose
Morkar, the brother of Edwin, Earl of Mercia, in his place; whilst
Tosti, escaping with difficulty from the first outbreak of their fury,
took refuge with his wife at the Court of Flanders. Here he organized a
plan for winning back his earldom, and sailing along the English coasts
in the following March, he swept some booty from the Isle of Wight,
but failing in an attempt to plunder Lindesey, where he was met and
defeated by his rival Morkar, he was obliged to seek the protection of
his old ally Malcolm. The Scottish king, however, does not appear to
have shared in the intrigues of Tosti, nor did he take any part in the
memorable expedition of the Earl and Harald Hardrade against England,
resulting, [Sidenote: A. D. 1066.] as is well known, in the defeat and
death of both invaders in the battle of Stamford Bridge.[151]
Some years elapsed after his victory at Hastings before the power
of the conqueror was thoroughly established throughout the northern
provinces of England, and even then it is doubtful whether it ever
extended, except in a qualified degree, over the modern county of
Cumberland, or over Northumbria beyond the Tyne.[152] He was well aware
of the secret disaffection existing amongst the magnates of his new
people, but it formed no part of his policy to drive them in a body
into open rebellion, and they were retained in a species of honourable
captivity at his court, or accompanied him in his expeditions into
Normandy--nominally indeed as dignified retainers, but in reality as
hostages for the peace of their respective districts--whilst year after
year saw one or more of the nobles of English birth incarcerated or
put to death on one pretext or another. The vengeance of William might
be postponed, but it was never forgotten, nor did he ever pass over an
opportunity of crushing the man whom his sagacious but unsparing policy
had once marked as dangerous.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1068.]
It was to avoid some such ebullition of William’s wrath, that, in the
summer of 1068, Edgar the Atheling, with his mother and two sisters,
and many of the northern lords who had supported his claims after
the death of Harold, deemed it expedient to cross the borders into
Scotland. There appears to have been an abortive attempt at a rising
in that year in which the fugitives may have been implicated, and, to
curb the disaffection of the men of Morkar’s earldom, William built two
castles at York, garrisoning them with a strong detachment of Norman
soldiery. [Sidenote: A. D. 1069.] In the ensuing winter he dispatched
Robert Comyn, the first of a name destined to become celebrated in
the annals of the neighbouring kingdom, to preserve order amongst the
turbulent Northumbrians beyond the Tyne; [Sidenote: 28th Jan.] but the
Norman baron was surprised and slain at Durham, before he reached his
earldom, out of seven hundred of his followers but one escaping with
life. The perpetrators of this outrage then marched upon York, taking
with them Edgar, who had joined them from Scotland, and were entering
into a negotiation with the citizens of that place, when they were
discomfited by the sudden arrival of William from the south, who gave
up the city to be plundered, as a punishment for the disaffection of
its inhabitants.[153]
[Sidenote: Sept.]
The arrival of two hundred and forty ships in the Humber, under the
command of Jarl Osbern, the Danish king’s brother, summoned Edgar and
his partizans in the following autumn to make one more effort to free
their native land from the Norman yoke, even at the cost of delivering
it to the Danes; and the united armies, marching upon York, stormed
the two Norman castles, putting more than three thousand soldiers to
the sword, when the Danes, satisfied with the amount of their success,
returned at once to their ships, whilst Edgar and his adherents lost no
time in again retiring beyond the Tyne. On receiving the intelligence
of the destruction of his castles, and the lamentable slaughter of his
men, William swore to exact a fearful vengeance, and with unflinching
rigour he fulfilled his oath. He soon discovered the proper weapons for
combating Jarl Osbern, who was ready to sacrifice the interest of his
brother for his own personal emolument; and it was secretly arranged
that the hostilities of the Danish admiral should be limited during
the winter to pillaging the coast, and that in the following spring he
should return to Denmark without offering any serious opposition to the
movements of the Norman king. Secure against attack from Jarl Osbern,
William marched to the north, giving over the whole country between
the Humber and the Tyne throughout the ensuing winter to the unbridled
license of his soldiery.[154]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1070.]
With the approach of spring he returned to the south, to institute
a searching and rigorous scrutiny into the coffers of the English
monasteries; but scarcely were the inhabitants of the devastated
provinces relieved from the presence of the Norman army, than they were
destined to experience a repetition of their sufferings from a sudden
invasion of the Scots. In the confusion of the period Malcolm had
seized upon Cumberland, retaining it hitherto by open force, and its
possession enabling him to penetrate into England without crossing the
territories of his Northumbrian allies, he poured his followers down
the Vale of Teesdale into the North Riding of Yorkshire. At a spot
known as “the Hundred Springs,” long since covered by the luxuriant
woods of Castle Howard, he reached the limits of his incursion, and
dispatching homewards a portion of the army laden with the plunder of
the expedition, he sought to entice the population of the districts
which had hitherto been spared, from the caves and forests to which
they had hurriedly fled on the first tidings of his inroad. The
stratagem of the Scottish leader was only too successful, and the
miserable inhabitants of Cleveland, Hartness, and the eastern coasts
of Durham, were soon startled from their fancied security by the
unexpected approach of the very army which they had vainly imagined to
have quitted the country, and to have been already far advanced on its
homeward march towards the north.[155]
By this time, however, the confederates, in whose behalf Malcolm had
taken up arms, had ceased to be formidable to the English king. The
Danish fleet, after plundering Peterborough, quitted the English coasts
in June; and Osbern, meeting with his just reward, was banished from
the court of his indignant brother Sweyne. Not a few of the insurgents
had already made their peace with William--a similar transaction to
that which had corrupted Osbern, purchasing for Cospatric the Earldom
of Northumberland, on which he had claims through the descent of his
mother from Earl Uchtred. The rest of the Northumbrian leaders were
preparing to leave a country in which they could now no longer hope
to dwell in safety; and Malcolm, upon his arrival at Wearmouth, found
a vessel in the harbour with the Atheling on board, who, with his
mother and his sisters, Siward Beorn, Merlesweyne, and others of his
most faithful adherents, was only awaiting a favourable wind to quit
for ever his native land. The Scottish king hastened to assure the
illustrious exiles of a welcome reception at his own court, and his
offer of an asylum was readily accepted, though the courtesy of Malcolm
towards the representatives of Anglo-Saxon royalty tended very little
to alleviate the sufferings of their subjects. The work of destruction
proceeded as before, and the king was contemplating the burning ruins
of St. Peter’s Church, fired by his own retainers, when intelligence
arrived that Earl Cospatric was signalizing his newly-born fidelity
to the English king at the expense of the Scottish possessions in
Cumberland. The fury of Malcolm knew no bounds; but a few months
had elapsed since Scotland had sheltered Cospatric from William’s
vengeance; and her king, during his recent inroad, had purposely
abstained from any outrage upon the territory of Northumberland.
Hitherto plunder had been the object of the Scottish army, but
henceforth their aim was revenge; and though the walls of Bamborough
sheltered Cospatric with the spoils of wasted Cumberland, his earldom
was open to fire and sword, and dearly did its devoted inhabitants
rue the untoward zeal with which their earl had repaid his recent
appointment. No mercy was shown to either age, sex, or infancy; all who
escaped the massacre were driven in crowds along the homeward path of
the invaders; and though multitudes of the captives perished miserably
by the way, enough survived to satisfy the cupidity of their captors,
and to supply every hovel beyond the Borders with slaves of English
race.[156]
An incalculable amount of misery and loss of human life resulted from
these northern wars; for not a village was left standing between York
and Durham, nor for nine years was any attempt made at cultivation over
a space of sixty miles and upwards. _Waste_ is the term ominously
affixed in Domesday to all the possessions of Edwin, Morkar, and the
northern prelates, as well as to the lands of Waltheof and Cospatric,
of Siward Beorn, and Merlesweyne; and a province, once flourishing
and prosperous, became the haunt of beasts of prey, wild cattle, and
outlaws. To add still more to the wretchedness of the period, a partial
dearth, which had arisen from the ravages of William, was increased
by the events of the two succeeding years, until it became a famine
of the most intense description. Many sold themselves to slavery to
escape starvation; others were reduced to support life by the most
revolting substitutes for their accustomed food, such as carrion and
human flesh; houses and streets were filled with the unburied bodies
of the dead, none stopping to perform the last offices of interment;
and the roadsides were covered with dying wretches, perishing in a vain
attempt to seek a refuge in exile. Multitudes of every class abandoned
their native land during this frightful period of misery and despair;
Scotland became their asylum and adopted home, and in the veins of many
of the bravest and noblest of her sons, there flowed, in after times,
the best and purest blood of ancient Northumbria.[157]
An additional stimulus must have been afforded to this emigration by
the union of Malcolm, after his return from the south, with Margaret,
one of the sisters of the Atheling. History has left no record of the
fate of Ingebiorge, and possibly she was no longer living, though her
death is by no means necessarily to be implied from the second marriage
of Malcolm, as a laxity in the dissolution of the marriage tie was
not confined to the Gaelic people alone at that period.[158] Margaret
is said to have been at first averse to the marriage, not for any
personal dislike to her future husband, but because the misfortunes
of her country and of her family had sunk deeply into her heart,
inclining her to seek a refuge in the cloister, to which her sister
Christina subsequently retired. But the advantages of the connection
with the Scottish king were too obvious to be overlooked; her scruples
were at length overcome by her brother and his followers, and her
gentle disposition and sincere piety were destined to exercise a mild
and beneficent influence over the characters of her husband and her
youthful family.[159]
The English king was occupied during the following year in repressing
the rebellion of Edwin and Morkar, [Sidenote: A. D. 1071.]and in
crushing the attempt made by the latter earl to maintain a stand in
conjunction with Hereward, Siward Beorn, and Aylwyn bishop of Durham,
amid the fens and marshes surrounding Ely; but the invasion of Malcolm
was neither forgotten nor forgiven, and towards the close of the next
summer [Sidenote: A. D. 1072. August.] William marched to the north
with a formidable array of mounted chivalry, supported by a numerous
fleet, in the full determination of exacting vengeance, both for the
open hostility of the Scottish king, and for the support invariably
afforded in the same quarter to his disaffected subjects beyond the
Humber. If he had expected to find any of the insurgents in Scotland,
he was doomed, on this occasion, to disappointment, as they had
undoubtedly escaped elsewhere on the first rumours of the magnitude of
the expedition.[160] Edgar was apparently in Flanders,[161] a country
which, ever since the accession of Robert the Frison, had become
the asylum of all who fled from the wrath of the Conqueror; as the
connection of the count, by marriage, with the Danish and French kings,
both at enmity with the king of England, as well as the assistance
rendered by William to the nephew of Robert in his attempts upon
the appanage of his uncle, caused a ready welcome to be accorded in
Flanders to all who were disposed to assist the count in his attacks
upon the duchy of Normandy.
When William had penetrated as far as Abernethy in the county of
Fife[162] he was met by the army of his adversary; but as neither
king was really anxious to proceed to extremities, before long they
mutually agreed to the following arrangement. Malcolm received a grant
of certain manors in England, with the promise of a yearly payment of
twelve marks of gold, performing the usual homage in return for the
grant of English fiefs, and giving up Duncan, his son by his former
marriage, as a hostage for the fulfilment of his obligations.[163]
The Conqueror then retraced his steps to the south. His predominance
in the north at length established, Cospatric could be safely taxed,
both with his alleged connivance in the death of Robert Comyn, and
with his actual presence at the storm of the castles of York. Neither
of these charges had interfered with his advancement to the earldom
of Northumberland when it had been the aim of William to detach
a formidable opponent from the ranks of his enemies; nor did his
innocence of the first crime avail him now, and his fief was given to
Waltheof, whose feats at York upon the same occasion, where he long
defended the gate with his single arm, cutting down the Normans one
after another as they entered, were for the present either pardoned
or overlooked. Cospatric escaped by a timely flight, and after a
brief residence in Flanders, rejoined his countrymen in Scotland,
where he received from Malcolm, who seems to have forgotten his former
resentment against the Earl, the important fortress of Dunbar with an
ample portion of the surrounding territory, and he became the ancestor
of the noble family of Dunbar, long prominent amongst the barons of
southern Scotland as Earls of Lothian or the March.[164]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1073.]
Not long after the treaty of Abernethy, Edgar returned from the
continent to Scotland, where, though he was received with every mark
of honour and respect by his sister and her husband, Malcolm earnestly
pressed upon him the advantage of accepting the castle of Montreuil,
offered by the king of France for the purpose of establishing a
troublesome neighbour in the vicinity of the Norman possessions of
their mutual foe. Edgar accordingly once more left Scotland laden
with the costly presents of his relatives, but like most men of his
character the Atheling was doomed to misfortune, and ere long Scotland
again received him, a shipwrecked and homeless wanderer. It was no
part of the policy of Malcolm to risk the vengeance of the Conqueror
in fruitless attempts at assisting his feeble brother-in-law, and
he now strongly advised him to tender his submission to the English
king. It was accepted most willingly; and with much empty ceremony and
parade, Edgar was conducted to the English frontier, and from thence to
Normandy, where he resigned his pretensions to the English crown, and
passed the remainder of his life, for the most part, in indolent and
peaceful insignificance.[165]
Every cause for hostility between the English and Scottish kings was
removed for a time by the relinquishment of Edgar’s claims upon the
English crown, and Malcolm was at liberty to turn his attention to
internal policy, and to establish his authority, and secure it more
firmly, over the northern provinces of his dominions. The deaths of
Macbeth, and of his successor Lulach, had crushed without extinguishing
the hopes of the rival family; but though their pretensions were again
revived by Lulach’s son Malsnechtan, fortune continued adverse to
the men of Moray, and a sanguinary and decisive victory, [Sidenote:
A. D. 1077.] in which Malcolm is said to have “won the mother of
Malsnechtan, all his best men, his treasures and his cattle,” confirmed
the superiority of the king. This solitary passage in the Saxon
chronicle is the only indication of the occurrence of any contest in
the north of Scotland during the course of Malcolm’s reign; though
probably the battle thus recorded by the chronicler of a different
people, who adds that, “God’s justice was done upon Malsnechtan, for
he was all forsworn,” effectually established the royal authority over
the dominions of the hostile Mormaors. Malsnechtan, indeed, survived
his overthrow to “die in peace,” a few years afterwards, [Sidenote:
A. D. 1085.] when the title of “king of Moray,” conferred upon him by
the Irish annalist, implies (if correct) a partial independence; but
as there can be no doubt about the foundation of Mortlach before the
date of his death, the surrounding territory must have been by this
time annexed to the crown, and the influence of the Moray family must
henceforth have been confined to the westward of the Spey.[166]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1079.]
Two years after his successes in the north Malcolm again crossed his
southern frontiers with a hostile army; and, as at the time of this
inroad William was contending in Normandy against his eldest son, it
is doubtful whether the incursion was intended to effect a diversion
in favour of Robert, always a warm friend of the Scottish monarch,
or whether it was simply dictated, in the absence of the English
king, by a wish to sweep the country to the Tyne. William was very
shortly reconciled with his son, whom he dispatched with an army in
the following autumn [Sidenote: A. D. 1080.] to make reprisals for the
invasion of the Scots; but either from a want of ability, or from a
secret feeling in favour of Malcolm, Robert retreated without effecting
anything beyond a fruitless march to Falkirk; on his return southwards
laying the foundations of a new castle on the Tyne--the first link in
the chain of border fortresses destined to defend the English frontier
from the ever ready attacks of the Scots--around which the future
capital of Northumberland eventually grew into existence.[167]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1087.]
The two king’s were never destined to meet again. The stern soul of the
Conqueror was touched upon his deathbed with some feelings of remorse
for the numerous captives whom he had so long retained in hopeless
confinement, and he left directions to his sons to release, after his
death, all prisoners of state, and others whom motives of policy had
hitherto kept under restraint. Amongst the hostages set at liberty were
Malcolm’s son Duncan, and Ulf the son of Harold, whose good fortune
made Robert the arbiter of their fate; and the Duke of Normandy, with
an honourable regard for the wishes of the dead, not only carried out
the intentions of his deceased father, but conferred upon them both
the dignity of knighthood, dismissing them with presents and marks of
honour from his court; whilst the other prisoners, less fortunate, were
retained in close custody by Rufus.[168]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1091.]
Four years after the death of the Conqueror, when the contest between
his sons was brought to a temporary conclusion upon the pacification
between William and Robert, Edgar the Atheling was expelled from the
lands assigned to him in Normandy by the late king, and was once
more driven to seek a refuge in Scotland. Malcolm again espoused his
cause, and partly, perhaps, in the hope of enforcing by a hostile
demonstration the restoration of the Conqueror’s grant of manors, which
appears to have been withheld by his successor, he marched a numerous
army across the frontier in early spring, advancing as far as Chester
le Street on his route to Durham; but upon learning that the whole
country was in arms to oppose his progress, he lost no time, as his
purpose was anticipated, in returning at once to Scotland.[169]
Intelligence of this fruitless inroad reaching William in Normandy,
determined his return to England, and crossing the Channel with his
brother Robert, he dispatched a powerful fleet along the coast, and
prepared to follow in his father’s footsteps, and to march with his
Norman chivalry to the north. But the English king had miscalculated
the difficulties he would have to encounter, and though the summer was
already far advanced before he returned to England, unlike his politic
predecessor, who was always capable of postponing his vengeance to the
proper season, he pushed forward his preparations for an immediate
attack upon his enemy. Michaelmas passed away before he commenced his
march, and when he reached the north, towards the close of autumn, his
fleet was dispersed by a violent storm, and many of his horses had
perished from cold and hunger in traversing the wastes yet stamped with
the traces of his father’s vengeance. Instead of declining a contest as
before, Malcolm, who was aware of his adversary’s situation, advanced
into Lothian to meet the invaders; but a collision was prevented by
the intervention of Robert, who, sending for the Atheling from the
Scottish camp, arranged, with his assistance, a renewal of the treaty
of Abernethy. Edgar was reconciled to William on the same occasion,
accompanying him to England on his return to the south; but before
Christmas both Robert and the Atheling retired in disgust from the
English court, as the promises of the king remained in every case
unfulfilled.[170]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1092.]
Another bulwark against the inroads of the Scots was erected in
the following year, when William, marching into Cumberland, or
_Northumbria_ as it is called by the northern chroniclers, drove
out Dolfin, who then possessed the land, and rebuilt and fortified
Carlisle, which had lain in ruins since the days of Halfdan, peopling
the neighbourhood with a body of peasantry collected from other parts
of the country.[171] In spite of the non-fulfilment of William’s
promises, Malcolm had as yet proceeded to no open act of hostility,
and many of the leading men in England were anxious to carry out
the intentions of Robert, and to secure a firm and lasting peace on
terms honourable to both kings, and beneficial to their respective
subjects. The illness of William in the year after his expedition
into Cumberland, appeared a favourable opportunity for effecting
an arrangement, as the fear of approaching death had softened the
harshness of his character, and inclined him to listen to the
entreaties of his advisers, who urgently implored him to repair his
previous injustice; and accordingly, when Malcolm sent to demand the
completion of their treaty, William named Gloucester as the place of
meeting, delivered hostages for the safety of the Scottish king during
his absence from his own country, and deputed Edgar Atheling to conduct
his relative with all befitting honour to the English court.[172]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1093. 11th Aug.]
In his progress towards the south Malcolm assisted at the foundation
of a new church at Durham, and his presence at the ceremony marks the
connection which appears to have grown up since the annexation of
Lothian--and still more since the marriage of Margaret--between the
inhabitants of the northern counties and their Scottish neighbours,
before the frontier line of fortresses springing up along the borders
effectually severed the last links connecting the divisions of the
ancient Bernician kingdom. [Sidenote: 24th Aug.] Towards the close
of August he arrived at Gloucester, but William was no longer on
a bed of sickness, and his transient penitence, with the apparent
amelioration in his character, having passed away on the return of
health, Malcolm found the English king more haughty and exacting than
ever. Admission to the royal presence was contemptuously denied him,
and he was commanded to “do right” in the English court, and according
to the judgment of the English barons alone. To have yielded to this
demand would have at once placed the king of Scotland on a footing
with the English barons as “his Peers,” and would have been tantamount
to an admission of his absolute and unconditional dependence upon the
English crown. Exasperated at the affront, Malcolm indignantly refused
compliance, promptly asserting “that the kings of Scotland were wont
to do right to the kings of England upon the frontiers of the two
kingdoms, and according to the united judgment of the Peers of both
realms;” and having thus maintained his entire independence of the
English king, he departed in open hostility from his court.[173]
Hastily collecting an army on his return to his own country, Malcolm
again crossed the frontier before the close of autumn, and in spite of
the warnings of his anxious queen, [Sidenote: November.] headed his
followers in person to revenge upon the soil of England the insult of
her haughty sovereign. The forebodings of Margaret were destined to
be too fatally fulfilled, Malcolm perishing on the 13th of November
on the banks of the river Alne; and although the manner of his death
is involved in some obscurity, there is little doubt that it was
effected by treachery. His ostensible opponent was Robert de Mowbray,
at that time Earl of Northumberland, but the death-blow was dealt by
Morel of Bamborough, to whom he had once been bound by the ties of the
closest and most familiar friendship.[174] Edward, the eldest of the
sons of Margaret, and acknowledged as his father’s heir, fell mortally
wounded on the same fatal occasion, dying a few days afterwards at
a place in Jedwood forest long known as “Edward’s Isle;” whilst the
Scottish host, dismayed at their double loss, returned in confusion
to their own country, many perishing by the sword in their disorderly
flight, but more losing their lives in attempting to cross the rivers
swollen into torrents at that late season of the year. The body of
the king, abandoned by his followers, was found upon the field of
battle by two peasants, who cast it carelessly on a cart and brought
it into Tynemouth, where the royal corpse was consigned to an obscure
tomb--a judgment, in the eyes of the historian of Durham, for the
injuries inflicted by the living king on that very place--until about
twenty years afterwards, when it was removed by the filial piety of
the first Alexander to his native land, and the ashes of the warlike
Malcolm at length reposed in peace by the side of his sainted queen in
Dunfermline.[175]
Thus died Malcolm Ceanmore in the six-and-thirtieth year of a long
and prosperous reign. An able king, and a bold and fearless warrior,
the traits that have been preserved of his private character evince
the kindliness of disposition, and the frank generosity, which not
unfrequently adorn so gracefully the character of a brave man. Though
as ignorant of letters as most of his contemporaries, he loved to
choose the books which were the favourite study of his queen, and to
cause them to be emblazoned with gold and jewels as a testimony of his
affection and esteem; and when in the exercise of the lavish almsgiving
for which the royal Margaret was renowned, she would unhesitatingly
resort to the personal property of the king, after exhausting her own
resources, Malcolm, on discovering his loss, would merely tax her
laughingly with the theft.[176] According to an anecdote related by
his son David, he once received an intimation that a nobleman, whose
arrival at court was daily expected, had agreed with his enemies
to attempt his assassination. Strict secrecy was enjoined upon the
informant, and on the appearance of the visitor a royal hunt was
proclaimed; the king contriving, in assigning his position to each
sportsman, to separate himself from all the party with the exception
of the suspected noble, whom he then taxed with his intended crime,
bidding him on the spot, where there was none to see or to interfere,
enact the part of a brave foe rather than of a base and cowardly
assassin. Overwhelmed with shame and remorse, the nobleman threw
himself at the feet of his intended victim, entreating forgiveness for
his treachery; and the pardon was as freely bestowed by the generous
king as the combat on equal terms had been frankly proffered.[177]
The history of Malcolm’s career would be incomplete without an allusion
to one who exercised so great an influence over his court and people
as Queen Margaret. Firmly convinced of the infallibility of his queen,
whom he appears to have regarded as the incarnation of all that was
pure and holy upon earth, the king submitted to her guidance implicitly
in all matters connected with religion; and Margaret, conscious of her
own learning and eloquence, and perhaps not unwilling to display her
undoubted talents, frequently summoned the clergy to meet in council,
and laid before them her opinions on the state of the Scottish church;
Malcolm on such occasions acting as interpreter, and supporting her
views on ecclesiastical subjects with all the weight of his own
temporal authority.[178] Her piety was fervent and sincere, though
imbued with much of the formalism of the age. Every morning a certain
number of poor were ranged in front of the palace, and it was the
first daily duty of the king and queen to wash their feet, and to
supply them with food and clothing. Every night Margaret arose for
midnight prayer, and the severity of the discipline to which she chose
to subject herself, laid the foundation of a painful and lingering
disease which eventually shortened her life. But her influence was not
confined to matters of religion alone, and it was through Margaret
that pomp and ceremonial were first introduced at the Scottish court,
the king no longer riding out without a royal escort, nor regaling his
nobility in the rude fashion of his ancestors, but astonishing them
with a display of gold and silver plate.[179] A corresponding degree
of magnificence was encouraged amongst the courtiers, foreign traders
were invited to bring their rich and varied wares to Scottish ports,
whilst it was signified that all who wished to earn the royal favour
must become purchasers of the costly novelties.[180] In short, to the
influence of Margaret may be attributed the foundation of that change,
which gradually converted the king of Scotland from a rude and simple
chieftain, surrounded by congenial and semi-barbarous followers, into
a feudal monarch in the midst of a knightly and chivalrous court.
The impress of her character is very visible in the dispositions and
qualities of her children; and if from her they inherited the love
of ostentation and display, which seems to have been the foible of
their amiable mother, it must not be forgotten that from her also they
derived the purity of life for which they were all alike distinguished,
and which was so eminent a feature in the character of a queen, in
whose presence not even a word that could give offence was ever known
to have been uttered.
The disastrous intelligence of the battle reached Margaret after her
health had been long impaired, less by age, for she was scarcely
past the prime of life, than by a painful disorder brought on by the
austerities of the fasts, and penances, dictated by her fervent though
mistaken piety. The departure of the king with her elder sons, upon
their last unfortunate expedition, had already oppressed her mind with
a gloomy foreshadowing of the future; and when, on the third day after
the catastrophe, her son Edgar stood by her couch, in his expressive
silence she divined her loss, and bowed in submission to the blow.
But the shock was too great for her enfeebled frame, and sinking at
once under the intelligence, upon the same day on which the fatal
tidings arrived, she calmly and peacefully breathed her last, and death
released her from her sorrows.[181]
Six sons and two daughters were the offspring of the marriage between
Malcolm and Margaret. Edward, the eldest, perished with his father, and
Ethelred, created Abbot of Dunkeld and Earl of Fife, appears to have
survived his parents for a very short time: Edmund died in an English
cloister, a penitent and mysterious recluse; Edgar, Alexander, and
David, lived to wear, in succession, the crown of Scotland. Of the two
daughters, Editha was destined by Malcolm to be the wife of Alan, Count
of Bretagne, but she eventually became the queen of Henry of England,
who had long been attached to the Scottish princess, and claimed her
as his bride immediately upon his accession to the throne. Many blamed
Archbishop Anselm for countenancing the marriage, as they believed that
Editha had taken the vows of a nun; but she convinced the archbishop
of their mistake, and her words throw a curious light on the severe
discipline to which she was subjected under the rule of her mother’s
sister, the stern abbess of Romsey, as well as on the perils to which
even a lady of her exalted rank was exposed, in these stormy times,
from the licence of the Norman conquerors.[182] “I never took the
veil,” said the princess, “but when I was quite a young girl, trembling
under the rod of my aunt Christina, whom you must recollect, she used
to place a little black hood on my head, to protect me from the lawless
insolence of the Normans; and when I tore it off she would beat me
cruelly, scolding me during the punishment in the harshest language. So
in her presence I wore the black hood in tears and trembling; but when
my father saw it he would pluck it from my head in a rage, imprecating
the wrath of Heaven on the hand that placed it there, and adding that
he intended me for Count Alan’s bride, and not for a sisterhood of
nuns.”[183] She changed her name to Matilda in compliment to her
husband’s mother, and her memory was long venerated amongst the English
people, who fondly remembered her as “good Queen Maud.”[184] Mary, the
younger daughter, after the marriage of her sister with Henry, was
united to Eustace, Count of Boulogne, by whom she left an only child,
also named Matilda, the heiress of her father’s earldom, which she
brought as her dowry to Stephen of Blois, afterwards king of England.
CHAPTER VII.
_Donald the Third_ 1093 - 1094.
_Duncan the Second_ 1094 ----.
_Donald restored_ 1094 - 1097.
The lamentable occurrence on the banks of the Alne threw all Scotland
into confusion, retarding the progress of the country for the next
quarter of a century. Edward had been chosen by his father for his
Tanist, or successor, in preference to his elder half-brother Duncan,
probably because, as the eldest of the sons of Margaret, he united
her claims upon the allegiance of the Anglo-Saxons to his own right
to the fealty of the native Scots; but the illegitimacy of Duncan is
not necessarily to be inferred from the course pursued by Malcolm, for
the ideas of that period about inheritance were not of the fixed and
unvarying character which the custom of centuries has established in
the present and preceding ages. The race of Alfred occupied the English
throne to the exclusion of the children of his elder brother, nor
did the descendants of the great king succeed in the lineal order of
after-times. The claims of the Atheling were disregarded by the Saxon
Harold, as well as by the Norman William; Robert was equally set aside
by both his brothers; whilst Henry’s daughter, Matilda, was obliged to
support her right to the crown by force of arms against the pretensions
of her cousin the heir-male, himself a younger son. This uncertainty
about the rightful heir will explain the care with which the kings
of that age thought it necessary to secure the recognition of their
successors during their own lifetime. The elder Henry assembled the
magnates of his dominions to acknowledge the claims of his son William,
and at a subsequent period those of his daughter Matilda; whilst his
grandson, the first Plantagenet, celebrated in his own lifetime the
coronation of his eldest son, a proceeding of which he lived most
bitterly to repent. The name of David was associated, as the successor
of the reigning monarch, with that of his brother Alexander in the
grant to St. Andrews of the _Cursus apri_; that of the Scottish
prince, Henry, is to be found in many charters as the heir-elect of
his father; whilst the names of William the Lion, and of David of
Huntingdon, are of frequent occurrence, under the same circumstances,
as late as the commencement of the thirteenth century. In Scotland such
a custom was peculiarly desirable, where the early usage, extending the
right of election to the crown to every member of the royal family,
rendered the nomination of a Tanist during the lifetime of the reigning
sovereign a matter of absolute necessity, to prevent anarchy and
confusion after his decease.
Three parties may be said to have divided Scotland at the period of
Malcolm’s death. In the north, the partizans of the house of Moray,
crushed by the decisive victory gained by the late king over Lulach’s
son Malsnechtan, were in no condition to sustain the pretensions of any
member of his family to the vacant throne. Along the eastern coast,
and in the south, the supporters of the reigning family were divided
between the national and foreign factions; the former composed of the
hereditary adherents of the house of Atholl, mostly of pure Gaelic
or of Scoto-British descent; the latter of the refugees from England,
and probably of the descendants of the ancient Northumbrians of the
Lothians. The influence of Margaret at her husband’s court, as well
as motives of policy, had induced Malcolm to show especial favour to
the countrymen of his queen, thus implanting the seeds of a bitter
feeling of hostility in the breasts of many of the Scottish nobles at
a line of conduct exhibiting, as they thought, an undue partiality for
the Saxons and their innovations. The smothered enmity of the Scots
blazed forth after the death of the king, and the haste and secrecy
with which the body of the royal Margaret was removed by Ethelred
to its last resting-place, discloses the existence amongst many of
her contemporaries of a feeling of antipathy against the _Saxon
Queen_, widely different from the enthusiastic veneration paid
by their descendants to the memory of the _Royal Saint_.[185]
The election of Donald Bane to his brother’s throne was the natural
consequence of this wide-spread jealousy, [Sidenote: A. D. 1093.] as
well as of a reactionary feeling in favour of the ancient national
usage, according to which he was undoubtedly the rightful heir; and the
immediate expulsion of the detested _Saxons_ followed upon the
triumph of the national party.[186]
The state of Scotland had not been unnoticed at the court of the
English king, where Duncan appears to have resided, ever since the
death of the Conqueror, in an equivocal position between a guest and a
hostage. Brought from his native country at a very early age, he had
imbibed the ideas of a feudal baron, and when Robert conferred upon
him the honour of knighthood, after his liberation from his former
captivity, the youthful knight preferred remaining at a court to which
he was accustomed from his infancy, to returning to a country of which
he knew but little, and where he may have feared a doubtful reception.
Presenting himself before William, on learning the accession of his
uncle, he requested the grant of his fathers kingdom, promising to hold
it in fealty and allegiance in return for the king’s assistance. This
was readily accorded on the terms of the petitioner; [Sidenote: A.D.
1094.] and when the return of spring favoured the march of an army,
Duncan, placing himself at the head of a band of English and Norman
auxiliaries, drove out his uncle Donald and took possession of the
kingdom. The Scots appear to have been taken by surprise, for upon
recovering from their first astonishment, they at once returned in
sufficient force to overwhelm the followers of Duncan, putting most of
them to the sword; but as their hostility was confined to the foreign
soldiery, and they entertained no personal antipathy to a member of
Malcolm’s family, they readily permitted Duncan to retain the crown on
condition of introducing no more aliens into the country.[187]
The temporary success of Duncan appears to have thrown Donald Bane upon
the support of a partizan of the northern faction, and he enlisted in
his behalf the assistance of Malpeter MacLoen, the Mormaor of Mærne;
whilst another party to his conspiracy for regaining the crown was
Edmund, one of the surviving sons of Malcolm and Margaret, who was
to be rewarded for his connivance in the death of his half-brother
by sharing the royal power with his uncle Donald. Their intrigues
were only too successful, and the treacherous slaughter of Duncan
at Monachedin on the banks of the Bervie, where a rude stone still
marks the supposed locality of his death, reinstated Donald, after an
interval of six months, whilst the surviving followers of his murdered
nephew were slain or driven from the kingdom.[188]
The second reign of Donald lasted without opposition for three years,
but it would be impossible to say whether Edmund shared the throne,
for a veil of mystery has been thrown over all his actions. During
this period the remaining children of Malcolm were exiles from their
native land, whilst William was occupied in fruitless wars with the
Welsh, in reducing the too powerful de Mowbray of Northumberland,
and in negotiating with his brother Robert the purchase of the duchy
of Normandy. [Sidenote: A. D. 1097.] At length towards the close of
the year in which the Saxon chronicler laments over “the grievous
oppression of the people who were driven up from the country districts
to London, to work at the wall they were building about the Tower,
and the Bridge, and the King’s Hall at Westminster, whereby many
perished,”[189] Edgar Atheling was dispatched to Scotland, and, after
a severe struggle, he succeeded in placing his eldest nephew Edgar
upon the throne, under similar conditions to the terms imposed upon
Duncan.[190] Donald, falling into the victor’s power, was treated with
the severity of a cruel age, and was sentenced to pass the remainder
of his days, in blindness and in chains, at Roscolpie or Rescobie in
Forfarshire; whilst his confederate Edmund, the only degenerate son of
Malcolm and Margaret, seems to have adopted a course which saved his
own life, and preserved the honour of the family. He expiated his crime
by assuming the cowl at Montague, a Cluniac Priory in Somersetshire;
and the honourable imprisonment of the princely monk in the retirement
of a distant cloister, so effectually obliterated the recollection
of his treason amongst the people of his native land, that a halo of
peculiar sanctity gradually encircled his memory, and he was handed
down to posterity as a man of more than ordinary holiness. Such a
reputation must, for obvious reasons, have been favoured by the members
of his family, and the saintly character attributed to Edmund may have
been partly owing to the austerities of a repentance, which prompted
his dying wish to be buried in chains.[191]
_Edgar_ 1097–1107.
Hardly were the sons of Malcolm reinstated in their ancestral
dominions,--for the autumn must have been far advanced before the army
of the Atheling reached its destination,--when the western coasts of
Scotland were threatened with a repetition of the early invasions of
the Northmen.
From a very early period the whole of the islands along the western
coasts of Scotland were favourite resorts of the Scandinavian
Vikings, who established themselves amongst the scanty population of
the Hebrides with far greater ease than upon the mainland. From the
intermixture of the natives with the northern invaders, sprung the race
to which the Irish annalists, and occasionally the Sagas, give the name
of Gallgael, a horde of pirates plundering on their own account, and
under their own leaders, when they were not following the banner of any
of the greater sea-kings, whose fleets were powerful enough to sweep
the western seas, and exact tribute from the lesser island chieftains.
Man was from an early period the seat of the sovereignty of the Isles,
which was long centred in the family of the Hy Ivar, lords of Dublin,
and often kings or Jarls of Danish Northumbria. In the middle of the
tenth century the Islands fell under the dominion of Eric Blodæxe,
whose rivalry with Olave Sitricson weakened and divided the power of
the Anglo Northmen; and after the death of Eric they were ruled by
Magnus Haraldson and his family, the representatives of the elder
Sitric, who appear to have been driven from Limerick, the early seat of
that branch of the Hy Ivar. The exploits of this line of princes upon
the coasts of Wales are continually to be met with in the Welsh and
Irish chronicles of the period, but their title of Oirrigh is a proof
that they were not independent, and they probably paid tribute to the
head of their family at Dublin.
The united power of the Orkneys, the Islands, and the western coasts
of Scotland, in addition to the Irish Norsemen, failed to avert the
catastrophe of Clontarf, [Sidenote: A. D. 1014.] and the eleventh
century opened upon the decline of the Hy Ivar. The personal energy of
Thorfin, the great accession of territory resulting from his connection
with Malcolm the Second, and the union of all the northern islands with
his wide possessions on the mainland, enabled him to take advantage of
their weakness; and if the Sagas are correct, in attributing to him
a large _Riki_ in Ireland, and in extending his dominion from
Thurso Skerrey to Dublin, the Jarl of the Orkneys may have assumed the
prerogatives of the earlier kings of Dublin, exacted tribute from their
dependants, and become the acknowledged leader of the Scottish and
Irish Northmen. During the ascendancy of Thorfin the Islands were for
some time under the rule of a certain Gille, and of Suibne MacKenneth,
[Sidenote: A. D. 1034.] names pointing to the Gaelic element amongst
the Gallgael; and it is not unlikely that they owed their rise to the
Jarl, and were amongst the earliest of the mainland chiefs of the
Oirir-Gael who disputed the possessions of the Hebrides with the kings
of Man.[192]
Towards the middle of the eleventh century Dermot MacMalnembo, lord of
Hy Kinselagh and king of Leinster, was occupied in establishing the
supremacy of his family throughout his native province; and entering
the territory of the Dublin Norsemen, [Sidenote: A. D. 1052.] which was
known as Fingal, in the year 1052, he ravaged the country up to the
walls of their capital, driving out Eachmarcach, the son of Reginald,
then the head of the race of Olave Sitricson, and establishing
his dominion over the whole district and its inhabitants, whilst
Eachmarcach fled from his enemy to Man. [Sidenote: A. D. 1061.] Nine
years later, Murchad, the son of Dermot, following up the successes
of his father, pursued Eachmarcach to his island retreat, wrested the
sovereignty of the Islands from the race of Ivar, and rendered them
tributary to the line of Leinster. Thorfin, whose ascendancy appears
to have declined before this period, [Sidenote: A. D. 1064.] died soon
after the transfer of the Islands to Dermot; and his two sons, escaping
from the slaughter at Stamford Bridge, whither they had followed in
the train of the king of Norway, returned to their northern home,
[Sidenote: A. D. 1066.] and without dividing the possessions of their
warlike father, passed a peaceful and inglorious existence as joint
Jarls during the remaining thirty years of the century.[193]
Amongst the fugitives from Stamford Bridge was a son of Harald the
Black of Iceland, Godfrey, surnamed Crovan or “the White Hand,” who
found a hospitable reception in Man from another Godfrey who, at
the time of his arrival, was king, or Oirrigh, of the island.[194]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1072.] Six years after the arrival of the fugitive,
Dermot of Leinster fell in battle, after raising the power of his
province to the highest pitch, and uniting the supremacy over the
whole of southern Ireland, with the dominion of the Isles and of “the
Britons”--the inhabitants, apparently, of the Isle of Anglesey;[195]
and three years later, upon the death of Godfrey of Dublin, the son of
Eachmarcach and head of the race of Hy Ivar, Godfrey Crovan attempted
to seize upon the Islands.[196] [Sidenote: A. D. 1075.] Twice was
he defeated in his attacks upon Man; but refusing to be foiled, he
determined upon risking a final effort, and with a fleet collected
from the other islands, sailed up the river Selby by night, landed
his forces, and concealed a body of three hundred men amongst the
wooded sides of a neighbouring hill called Skeafell. As soon as it was
light, the Manxmen, perceiving the enemy whom they had already twice
defeated, assembled to give him battle, and attacked with headlong
confidence, heedless of the ambuscade, which fell upon them in the
heat of the engagement with decisive and fatal effect. They turned
and fled precipitately; but finding on arriving at the river that the
stream was unfordable, for the tide was then at its height, throwing
down their arms they begged for mercy from the conqueror; and as his
object was attained by their submission, he put an immediate stop
to the slaughter. His next step was to reward his confederates the
Islesmen, to whom he offered the choice of remaining and appropriating
the island, or of plundering it and returning to their homes; and as
the latter course was most congenial to his allies, the property of
the Manxmen was delivered over to their mercy. Many of the Islesmen,
however, consented subsequently to remain behind, and they were settled
by Godfrey in the south of the island, around his own immediate
residence, whilst the earlier Norse population was confined to the
north, a division which can long be traced in the little kingdom; and
the conqueror assuming to himself, as usual, the sole right of property
in his dominions, the Manxmen lost their Odal privileges in the same
manner as the Orkneymen had been deprived of theirs, from the time of
the first Einar, to the days of Sigurd Lodverson.[197]
Godfrey Crovan was of a character to afford his new subjects frequent
opportunities of repairing the losses incurred through the pillage
of the Islesmen; and he soon extended his conquests over the Irish
Norsemen, capturing Dublin, [Sidenote: A. D. 1078.] and retaining his
supremacy for sixteen years, until he was driven out by Murketagh
O’Brien, whose family appear to have made more than one attempt
subsequently upon Man.[198] His pre-eminence in the same quarter
was also disputed by the surviving sons of Eachmarcach; but they
perished in a fruitless effort to vindicate their rights, [Sidenote:
A. D. 1087.] and from the date of this failure the descendants of
Ragnar Lodbroc never again rose above the rank of subordinate Oirrighs
of Dublin.[199] In the year after he was expelled from his Irish
conquests, Godfrey died of a pestilence in the Isle of Isla, [Sidenote:
A. D. 1095] leaving three sons to inherit his dominions. His great
power was based upon his fleet, and to prevent any rivalry upon the
seas he is said to have forbidden the Scots--the inhabitants apparently
of the western coasts and the Galwegians--to build any vessel requiring
more than “three bolts” in its construction.[200]