CHAPTER VIII.

THE KINGDOM OF SCOTIA.

[Sidenote: A.D. 1005-1034. Malcolm, son of Kenneth, king of Scotia.]

The line of the kings of Scottish descent had now been for a century and a half in possession of the Pictish throne. During the first half-century they had borne the title of kings of the Picts; but during the remainder of this period their title had passed over into that of kings of Alban, and what formerly had been known as _Cruithintuath_ and _Pictavia_, or the territory of the Picts, and, from its capital, the kingdom of Scone, had now become _Albania_ or the kingdom of Alban, extending from the Firth of Forth to the river Spey, over which these kings of Alban ruled, while a certain supremacy was acknowledged beyond it. The mixed population of Picts and Scots had now become to a great extent amalgamated, and under the influence of the dominant race of the Scots were identified with them in name.

Their power was now to be further consolidated, and their influence extended during the thirty years’ reign of a king who proved to be the last of his race, and who was to bequeath the kingdom, under the name of Scotia, to a new line of kings. This was Malcolm, the son of Kenneth, who slew his predecessor, Kenneth, the son of Dubh, at Monzievaird. Malcolm appears to have inaugurated the commencement of his reign by the usual attempt on the part of the more powerful kings of this race to wrest Bernicia from the kings of England, but which resulted in defeat and a great slaughter of his people. The Ulster Annals tell us that in the year 1006 a great battle was fought between the men of Alban and of Saxonia, in which the men of Alban were overcome, and a great slaughter made of their nobles;[548] and Simeon of Durham furnishes us with further details. He says that ‘during the reign of Ethelred, king of the English, Malcolm, king of the Scots, the son of King Kyned, collected together the entire military force of Scotland, and having devastated the province of the Northumbrians with fire and sword, he laid siege to Durham. At this time Bishop Aldun had the government there, for Waltheof, who was the earl of the Northumbrians, had shut himself up in Bamborough. He was exceedingly aged, and in consequence could not undertake any active measure against the enemy. Bishop Aldun had given his daughter Ecgfrida in marriage to his son Uchtred, a youth of great energy and well skilled in military affairs. Now when this young man perceived that the land was devastated by the enemy, and that Durham was in a state of blockade and siege, he collected together into one body a considerable number of the men of Northumbria and York, and cut to pieces nearly the entire multitude of the Scots; the king himself and a few others escaping with difficulty.’[549]

But if Malcolm thus met with this great defeat in his first attempt to extend his territories beyond the Firth of Forth on the south, he does not appear to have been more successful in wresting the districts north of the Spey from the grasp of Sigurd, the powerful earl of Orkney. The only change which appears to have taken place in Sigurd’s relations with the kings of the Scots is, that from being a pagan he had become Christian under the influence of Olaf Tryggvesson, the first Christian king of Norway, who, returning from a viking expedition to the west, came to the Orkneys in the year 997, and seized Earl Sigurd as he lay under the isle of Hoy with a single ship. King Olaf offered the earl to ransom his life on condition he should embrace the true faith and be baptized; that he should become his man, and proclaim Christianity over all the Orkneys. He took his son Hundi or Hvelp as a hostage, and left the Orkneys for Norway, where Hundi stayed with him some years, and died there.[550]

This event was more likely to confirm than to shake Sigurd’s hold over the Scottish provinces, and he had now the support of the king of Norway, who, according to the Olaf Tryggvesson’s Saga, ‘promised him that he should hold in full liberty as his subject, and with the dignity of an earl, all the dominions which he had had before.’ Malcolm appears to have found it more expedient to form an alliance with Sigurd, as the next event recorded in the history of the Norwegian earl is, that he then married the daughter of Melkolf, the king of the Scots, by whom he had a son, Thorfinn. A great event, however, was now approaching, which was not only to terminate Sigurd’s sway over these districts with his life, but to free Ireland almost entirely from the domination of the Danes. The native tribes of Ireland at length resolved to make a serious effort to throw off the Danish yoke. The war commenced in Munster, and the leader was the celebrated Brian Boroimhe, the head of one of its most powerful tribes. His success in this war led to his becoming the monarch of all Ireland, about a year or two before Malcolm ascended the Scottish throne. The struggle between the two races in Ireland, the Scandinavian and the Gaelic, soon became a vital one, and each party recognised that it must terminate either in the freedom of Ireland from the Danish dominion, or in its entire and permanent subjection to them. This final conflict between the two races took place in the year 1014.

Each party assembled from all quarters such forces as they could command. In addition to the native tribes of Munster, Connaught, and Meath, who followed Brian, he had also an auxiliary force from Alban under Donald, son of Eimin, son of Cainnich, the Mormaer of Marr,[551] and advanced against Dublin in the spring of that year. The Danes of Dublin, besides a party of the native tribes of Leinster who adhered to them, assembled the Northmen, both Danes and Norwegians, from all quarters. Among the former came Danes from Northumbria, and among the latter Sigurd, earl of Orkney, with the Norwegians of Orkney and Caithness, and those of the Isle of Man, of Skye, of Lewis, of Kintyre, and Airergaidhel or Argyll, as well as from Wales.[552] This fleet arrived from every quarter at Dublin, and with the Danes of Dublin formed a very great force, consisting of three strong battalions. A great battle took place at Cluantarbh near Dublin on Good Friday in the year 1014 which ended in the entire defeat of the Danes and their auxiliaries. The slaughter was very great on both sides. On the side of the Irish, Brian himself, then an old man, fell after the victory had been won, and Domnall, the Mormaer of Marr from Alban, was slain in the battle. On the side of the Danes, most of the leaders, with Sigurd, the earl of Orkney, were slain.[553]

By the death of Sigurd the provinces in Scotland which had been subjected by him seem to have passed at once from under the domination of the Norwegian earls. In fact the relation of these earls towards the territory under their rule varied considerably, and was more or less close according to the hold which the Norwegians had over them. When they had entirely settled and colonised a district, it was close and intimate, and the death of each earl in no way altered its position, and it passed naturally to his successor. This was the case with the Orkney Islands, which had become entirely Norwegian, and were held as an earldom under the kingdom of Norway. They passed from him to his sons by his first marriage—Sumarlidi, Brusi, and Einar—who divided the islands among them and were accepted as earls. Those possessions which had been only partially settled by the Norwegians were usually claimed by them, and also by their native lords, and either formed part of the Norwegian earldom or were separated from it according to the power and ability of the Norwegian earl to retain their possession. Such was the position of Caithness, which was claimed by the Norwegian earl as part of his hereditary possessions, and also by the king of Scots as one of the dependencies of his kingdom. When Sigurd went on his expedition to Ireland which ended so fatally for him, he had sent his son Thorfinn, by his second wife, the daughter of Malcolm, king of the Scots, to his grandfather; and though he was only five years old at his father s death, the king of the Scots ‘bestowed Caithness and Sutherland upon him with the title of earl, and gave him men to rule the domain along with him.’[554] Those districts, on the other hand, which the Norwegians had rendered tributary to them without dispossessing their native rulers, or to any great extent colonising them, were in a different position. Their relation to the Norwegian earl seems to have been one mainly personal to the earl whose power had subjected them to his authority, and ceased at his death, as it is said with reference to a subsequent earl that on his death ‘many “Rikis” which the earl had subjected fell off, and their inhabitants sought the protection of those native chiefs who were territorially born to rule over them.’[555] This was the case with the province of Moray and Ross, which we find after Sigurd’s death ruled over by the same Finleikr from whom he had wrested them, and who appears in Tighernac as Findlaec mac Ruaidhri, Mormaer Moreb, and in the Ulster Annals as ‘Ri Alban,’ indicating that he claimed a position of independence both from the earls of Orkney and the kings of the Scots. Such too may have been the position of those of the Sudreys which were under Earl Gilli. He is mentioned in the year of the battle of Cluantarbh, but he did not accompany the Norwegian chiefs to Ireland. He appears to have been merely tributary to them, and readily transferred his obedience from one Norwegian leader to another, which, as well as the form of his name, confirms the impression that he was a native ruler and belonged to that portion of the Gaelic tribes who from their subjection to foreign rule were termed Gall gaidhel, and the islands under his immediate rule may now for a time have owned the authority of the king of the Scots.[556] Such too was probably the position of the province termed by the Norwegians Dali, or the Dales, and which seems to have been the western districts known as Airer Gaidhel, and part of which was formerly Dalriada. This may also have been the position of Galloway, as we find in that district, immediately after Cluantarbh, an Earl Melkolf or Malcolm, whose name marks him out as a native chief.[557]

As Thorfinn was only five winters old when his father, Earl Sigurd, was slain in 1014, this places the marriage of King Malcolm’s daughter to the Norwegian earl in the year 1008,[558] but another and evidently an elder daughter had been already married to Crinan, or as the Irish Annals term him, Cronan, ‘Abbot of Dunkeld.’ Though bearing this designation he was not an ecclesiastic, but in reality a great secular chief, occupying a position in power and influence not inferior to that of any of the native Mormaers. The effect of the incessant invasions and harassing depredations, directed as they were largely against the ecclesiastical establishments, had been to disorganise the Christian Church to a great extent, and to relax the power and sanction by which the constitution and the lives of her clergy were regulated. They became secular in their lives and habits, married, and had children who inherited their possessions. The more important benefices passed into the hands of laymen, who, along with the name of the office, acquired possession of the lands attached to it, without taking orders or attempting to perform clerical duties, and these offices with the possessions attached to them became hereditary in their families.[559] After the church of Dunkeld had been founded or at least reconstructed by Kenneth mac Alpin, we find mention of an abbot of Dunkeld, who was also chief bishop of Fortrenn, and whose death is recorded in 865. Eight years after the abbot is termed simply Superior of Dunkeld.[560] In the following century we find Donnchadh or Duncan, abbot of Dunkeld, appearing at the head of his followers, and taking part in a war of succession in support of one of the claimants to the throne. He was no doubt a lay abbot, and the possessions of the church of Dunkeld were sufficiently extensive to give him an important position among the Mormaers of Alban. Crinan or Cronan, as lay abbot of Dunkeld, probably possessed, with the lands belonging to it and other foundations intimately connected with it, territories in the district of Atholl of great extent, including almost the whole of the western part of it,[561] and must have occupied a position of power and influence. He had by the king’s daughter a son Duncan, and probably another son Maldred, and the name of his eldest son leads to the inference that he was probably the son or grandson of Duncan the lay abbot who was slain in battle in 965, and in whose person the lay abbacy had become hereditary.

In the year 1016 Uchtred, the earl of Northumbria who had inflicted so disastrous a defeat upon Malcolm in the early years of his reign, was slain by Cnut, a Dane who was then in possession of the greater part of England, and became its king in the following year, and the earldom of Northumbria was bestowed by him upon Eric, a Dane. Eadulf Cudel, however, the brother of Uchtred and the heir to his earldom, appears to have maintained possession of the northern division north of the Tyne. Malcolm seems to have felt this to be a favourable opportunity for making a second attempt upon the northern districts. He was now in firm possession of the kingdom of Alban; he could count upon the assistance of the Britons of Cumbria, whose sub-king was under his dominion; and the outlying provinces of the north and west were for the time freed from the Norwegian rule, and might be won to aid him.

[Sidenote: A.D. 1018. Battle of Carham, and cession of Lothian to the Scots.]

With as large a force as he could raise, he, in the year 1018, invaded Northumbria along with Eugenius the Bald, king of the Strathclyde Britons, and penetrated the country south of the Firth of Forth as far as the river Tweed, where he encountered the Northumbrian army at a place called Carham on the Tweed, a couple of miles above Coldstream, where a great battle took place, in which the Northumbrians were entirely defeated, and their army, drawn mainly from the region between the Tees and the Tweed, almost entirely cut off.[562] Simeon of Durham tells us in his history of that church that in that year ‘a comet appeared for thirty nights to the people of Northumbria, a terrible presage of the calamity by which that province was about to be desolated. For, shortly afterwards (that is, after thirty days), nearly the whole population, from the river Tees to the Tweed and their borders, were cut off in a conflict in which they were engaged with a countless multitude of Scots at Carrum.’[563] The effect of this great victory was that the long-pending claims upon these districts which the Scots had so long tried to enforce, whatever they might be, were now settled by the surrender to them of the whole district north of the Tweed, which now became the southern boundary of the Scottish kingdom. In his account of the siege of Durham, Simeon tells us that Eadulf Cudel, an indolent and cowardly man, apprehensive that the Scots would revenge upon himself the slaughter which his brother had inflicted upon them, yielded up to them the whole of Lodoneia in satisfaction of their claim and for a solid peace; and in this manner, he adds, Lodoneia or Lothian in its extended sense was annexed to the kingdom of the Scots.[564]

Malcolm appears to have retained Lothian without objection or interference either from the earls of Northumbria or the king of England for upwards of ten years. Eugenius or Owen, the son of Domnall, sub-king of Cumbria, who was with him in this expedition, was slain either in battle or elsewhere in the same year; and this line of provincial kings, descended from the same royal house with Malcolm himself, terminated with him, as the next king of the Cumbrians we hear of was Duncan, the grandson of the Scottish king, whom he now probably placed over the whole territory belonging to his kingdom south of the firths of Forth and Clyde.[565]

But while the king of the Scots thus at length obtained possession of a part at least of Bernicia, and his rule could now be legitimately exercised as far at least as the river Tweed, the question still remained open as to the relation in which it was to place him towards the king of England. All the rights that the Earls of Northumbria could give him to the district of Lothian he had obtained by treaty; but, as part of Northumbria, it belonged to the kingdom of the Angles, and was under the dominion of its kings, and their right, as overlords, could obviously not be thus transferred. Cnut the Dane had, the year before the battle of Carham, become king of all England, but he had enough to occupy his attention during the first few years of his reign, and it was not till the year 1031 that he could take any active steps to vindicate his right as king of England. In that year, we are told by the Saxon Chronicle, ‘King Cnut went to Rome, and as soon as he came home, he went to Scotland, and the Scots king, Malcolm, submitted to him and became his man; but held that only a little while; and two other kings, Maelbaethe and Jehmarc.’ The actual kingdom of Alban, now called Scotia, extended only from the Firth of Forth to the river Spey, and the provinces beyond them, though viewed by the kings of the Scots as dependencies upon their kingdom, were not yet considered as forming an integral part of it; those lying to the north and west of the kingdom proper frequently passing under the rule of the Norwegians. It is to these outlying provinces we must look for the two kings who are said to have separately submitted along with Malcolm. It is to this period that a description of Britain belongs in which these provinces are separately distinguished. The part which refers to Scotland is thus described:—‘From the Tweed to the great river Forth are Loonia and Galweya.’ From thence to Norwegia and Dacia—that is, to the districts occupied by Norwegians and Danes—are ‘all Albania, which is now called Scotia, and Moravia;’ and the districts and islands here included under the terms Norwegia and Dacia are ‘Kathenessia, Orkaneya, Enchegal, and Man, and Ordas, and Gurth, and the other Western Islands around them.’[566] Loonia is Lothian, recently annexed to the Scottish kingdom, and the name Galweya was afterwards extended so as to include the whole country from the Solway to the Clyde. Albania is here distinguished from the provinces south of the Firths, on the one hand, and from Moravia, north of the Spey, on the other, and we are told that it is now called Scotia. Moravia, in its extended sense, was the province of Moray and Ross. North and west of these provinces was the territory occupied by the Norwegians and Danes. On the mainland it consisted of Kathenessia or Caithness, and Airergaidhel, here probably meant by Enchegal. Ordas and Gurth are probably intended for Lewis and Skye, the old forms of which names were Lodus and Sgithidh, and which are usually mentioned separately from the other islands.

Moravia is here not included among the Norwegian and Danish possessions. On the death of Sigurd, the Norwegian earl of Orkney, it had become freed from the Norwegian rule, and its rulers appear to have considered themselves so far independent as to claim the Celtic title of Ri or king. Findlaec, the son of Ruadhri, who appears in the sagas under the name of Finleikr Jarl, and whose slaughter by the sons of his brother Maelbrigdi in 1020 is recorded by Tighernac as Mormaer of Moreb, is termed in the Ulster Annals ‘Ri Albain;’ and Tighernac, in recording the death of his successor Malcolm, the son of his brother Maelbrigdi, and one of those who slew him, in 1029, terms him ‘Ri Albain.’[567] There can therefore be little doubt that the king Maelbaethe, who submitted to King Cnut, was Macbeth, the son of Findlaec, who appears under the same title which had been borne by his cousin and his father.[568] The native rulers of Airergaidhel or Argathelia appear also to have borne the Celtic title of Ri, and it is probable that Jehmarc represents in a corrupted form the name of the ruler of this district.[569] These kings would probably have little scruple in rendering their submission to King Cnut the Dane, from their having so recently been under Norwegian rule.

Three years after this expedition Malcolm died. Tighernac records his death in 1034 as king of Alban and head of the nobility of the west of Europe;[570] but we now obtain an additional source of information for this period of the history of very great value in the Chronicle of Marianus Scotus, who was born in the reign of this Malcolm, in the year 1028, and notices a few of the events in Scottish history which took place during his own lifetime. The first Scotch event noticed by him is the death of Malcolm, which he says took place on the twenty-fifth of November 1034, and he terms him ‘king of Scotia.’[571] The kings of Alban occasionally appear as kings of the Scots, but this is the first instance in which the name of Scotia is applied as a territorial designation of their kingdom. Used by a contemporary writer, who was himself a native of Ireland, it is evident that the name of Scotia had now been transferred from Ireland, the proper Scotia of the previous centuries, and become adopted for the kingdom of the Scots in Britain in the reign of Malcolm, son of Kenneth, which ushers in the eleventh century, superseding the previous name of Alban.

With Malcolm the descendants of Kenneth mac Alpin, the founder of the Scottish dynasty, became extinct in the male line. Had any male descendant existed, there would have been great risk of the territories now composing the kingdom becoming again disunited. As Malcolm had no son, but at least two daughters who had male issue, Cumbria and Lothian would naturally have passed to the nearest heir in the female line; while a male collateral who could trace his descent from the founder of the family would, by the law of Tanistic succession, have had a preferable claim to the regions north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde, forming the kingdom of Alban proper, and would probably have received the support of the Scottish part of its population at least; but the existence of any such male descendant cannot be traced, and the last male scion of the race appears to have been slain by King Malcolm in the year which preceded his own death, probably to make way for the quiet accession of Duncan, his grandson through his daughter, to the whole of the territories which he had united under his sway.[572]

[Sidenote: A.D. 1034-1040. Duncan, son of Crinan and grandson of Malcolm, king of Scotia.]

He attained his object, for Duncan appears at first to have succeeded him in the whole of his dominions without objection, but ere long to have provoked aggression both in the south and in the north. In the south, Eadulf Cudel, the earl who had ceded Lothian to the Scots, did not long survive the battle of Carham, and was succeeded in the Bernician earldom by Aldred, a son of Uchtred, on whose death his brother Eadulf succeeded him, and in the year 1038 invaded Cumbria and devastated the whole country.[573] Duncan, however, was not equally successful in an invasion of the territories of Eadulf, for Simeon of Durham, in his history of that church, tells us that Duncan, king of the Scots, advanced with a countless multitude of troops and laid siege to Durham, and made strenuous but ineffective efforts to carry it, for a large proportion of his cavalry was slain by the besieged, and he was put to a disorderly flight, in which he lost all his foot-soldiers, whose heads were collected in the market-place, and hung up upon posts.[574]

The aggression, however, which he provoked in the north brought a formidable competitor into the field, and was destined to terminate more fatally for him. The details of this war are preserved to us in the Orkneyinga Saga; and though its authority is not unexceptionable, and the events it records are not to be found elsewhere, the narrative still carries with it an air of truth, and it fills a blank in the meagre records of the time which supplies in a great measure a clue to their real character. In this narrative the king who succeeded Malcolm appears under the strange designation of Karl or Kali Hundason,[575] that is, either the Churl, or Kali the son of the hound; and from the appellation here given to Duncan’s father, we learn that the _Hundi Jarl_ or the Hound Earl, who fought with Sigurd the Stout, earl of Orkney, could have been no other than Crinan, the warlike lay abbot of Dunkeld. On Sigurd’s death the islands of Orkney fell to his three sons, Sumarlidi, Einar, and Brusi, among whom they were divided; while Thorfinn, his son by the daughter of King Malcolm, received from his grandfather Caithness and Sutherland, with an earl’s title. The last of the three brothers among whom the Orkneys were divided died, however, a few years before the death of King Malcolm;[576] and when his grandson Duncan succeeded him, Thorfinn had been for some years in possession of the entire earldom of Orkney. Duncan seems to have considered that Thorfinn having become earl of Orkney, he might resume possession of Caithness, or at least demand tribute from it. Thorfinn, on the other hand, considered that it was his inheritance from King Malcolm through his mother, and that he had obtained it before Duncan inherited the kingdom. Thus, says the Saga, they became open enemies and made war on each other. Duncan took the initiative, and bestowed Caithness with the title of earl upon a relation of his own, Moddan, said to be his sister’s son, who proceeded immediately to the north and collected forces in Sutherland. Earl Thorfinn on his part raised the men of Caithness, and on being joined by Thorkell Fostri with an army from the Orkneys, Moddan retired before his superior forces. Thorfinn then subdued the districts both of Sutherland and Ross, and after plundering in the district south of them, returned to Caithness and remained at Dungallsbae or Duncansby, with five war-ships and their crews, the rest of the army returning to Orkney. Moddan then sought the king, whom he found at Berwick, then probably on his return from his unsuccessful invasion of Northumbria, and told him the result of his expedition. Duncan organised a more formidable attack. He sent Moddan by land with a considerable force to make his way to Caithness, and he himself sailed from Berwick with a naval force, consisting of eleven warships and a numerous army. His intention was by landing on the north of Caithness to place Earl Thorfinn between the two armies, but the latter anticipated his plan by sailing out in his own ships and attacking Duncan’s fleet in the Pentland Firth. Though the latter fleet was superior in numbers, the Scots could not stand against the fierce onslaught of the Norwegians, and after an obstinate conflict gave way before them, and fled south into the Moray Firth, where Duncan landed and proceeded south to collect a new army. Thorfinn remained in the north till he was again joined by Thorkell Fostri with the Orkneymen, and then went south into the Moray Firth in pursuit of Duncan, and began to plunder the districts on its southern shore. In the meantime, Moddan, who had no one to oppose him, appears to have occupied Caithness with his army, and took up his quarters at Thurso, where he remained waiting for reinforcements, which he expected to receive from Ireland. Thorfinn, hearing this, again anticipated him. He remained himself in Scotland, and continued plundering the country, while he sent Thorkell north with a portion of the army. The people of Caithness were in his interest, and thus Thorkell succeeded in surprising Moddan in Thurso, where he came by night, set fire to the house in which Moddan was, and slew him. His men then surrendered, and Thorkell went from thence to the Moray Firth to rejoin Thorfinn with all the men he could collect in Caithness, Sutherland, and Boss, and found him in Myrhaevi or Moray. King Duncan now collected as large an army as he could assemble from the rest of Scotland; or, as the Saga expresses it, ‘as well from the south as the west and east of Scotland, and all the way south from Satiri or Kintyre, and the forces for which Earl Moddan had sent, also came to him from Ireland.[577] He sent far and near to chieftains for men, and brought all this army against Earl Thorfinn.’ Earl Thorfinn appears to have been stationed at Torfness or Burghead, where the Borg was which his ancestor Sigurd had built to enable the Norwegians to maintain their footing in Moray, and here the great battle took place which was to decide this contest. Thorfinn first attacked the Irish division, who were immediately routed, and never regained their position. King Duncan then brought his standard forward against Earl Thorfinn, and the fiercest struggle took place between the Scots and the Norwegians; ‘but,’ says the Saga, ‘it ended in the flight of the king, and some say he was slain.’ Earl Thorfinn then drove the fugitives before him through Scotland, and laid the land under him wherever he went, and all the way south to Fife.[578]

Such is the account given us by the Saga of this war. Marianus supplements it by telling us that in the year 1040 Donnchad, king of Scotia, was slain in autumn, on the 14th of August, by his general, Macbethad, son of Finnlaech, who succeeded him in the kingdom.[579] Macbeth was at this time the Ri or Mormaer of the district of Myrhaevi or Moray, which finally became the seat of war, and when Duncan sent far and wide to the chieftains for aid, he probably came to his assistance with the men of Moray, and filled the place which Moddan had formerly occupied as commander of his army; but the tie which united the mormaers of Moray with the kings of the Scots was still a very slender one. They had as often been subject to the Norwegian earls as they had been to the Scottish kings; and when Duncan sustained this crushing defeat, and he saw that Thorfinn would now be able to maintain possession of his hereditary territories, the interests of the Mormaer of Moray seem to have prevailed over those of the commander of the king’s army, and he was guilty of the treacherous act of slaying the unfortunate Duncan, and attaching his fortunes to those of Thorfinn.

The authorities for the history of Macbeth know nothing of Earl Thorfinn and his conquests. On the other hand the Sagas equally ignore Macbeth and his doings, and had to disguise the fact that Thorfinn was attacking his own cousin, and one who had derived his right to the kingdom from the same source from which Thorfinn had acquired his to the earldom of Caithness, by concealing his identity under the contemptuous name of Karl or Kali Hundason,[580] while some of the chronicles have transferred to Macbeth what was true of Thorfinn, that he was also a grandson of King Malcolm,[581] and a Welsh Chronicle denominates him king of Orkney.[582] The truth seems to be that the conquest of the provinces south of Moray, which took place after this battle, was the joint work of Thorfinn and Macbeth, and that they divided the kingdom of the slain Duncan between them: Thorfinn receiving the districts which had formerly been under his father, with the addition of those on the east coast extending as far as Fife or the Firth of Tay. According to the Orkney-inga Saga, he possessed ‘nine earldoms in Scotland, the whole of the Sudreys, and a large riki in Ireland,’ and this is confirmed by the St. Olaf’s Saga, which tells us that ‘he had the greatest riki of any earl of Orkney; he possessed Shetland and the Orkneys, the Sudreys, and likewise a great riki in Scotland and Ireland.’[583] Macbeth obtained those in which Duncan’s strength mainly lay—the districts south and west of the Tay, with the central district in which Scone, the capital, is situated. Cumbria and Lothian probably remained faithful to the children of Duncan.

[Sidenote: A.D. 1040-1057. Macbeth, son of Finnlaec, king of Scotia.]

The kingdom had thus hardly passed from the last male descendant of the founder of the Scottish dynasty to a new family, when it was again transferred to rulers of a different race. The whole of the northern part found itself under the rule of the Norwegian earl of Orkney, while the centre of the kingdom, in which the capital was situated, accepted as its king the hereditary ruler of Moray, a district the connection of which with the kingdom proper had hitherto been both slender and uncertain, who reigned over these districts for seventeen years. It is difficult to understand how a king who had no hereditary claim upon their allegiance should have been able to maintain his possession of the throne for so many years in a part of the country which was the stronghold of the Scots. That he should have slain his predecessor was no unusual circumstance, and would equally have excluded many of his predecessors. His only connection with the Scottish dynasty was, that his wife was Gruoch, the daughter of that Boete or Bode, son of Kenneth, whose son or grandson had been slain in 1032 by Malcolm mac Kenneth, and through her some claim upon the allegiance of the Scots seems to have been based. That he was not the tyrant he is represented by Fordun to have been seems very certain. There is no trace of it in any authentic record. On the contrary, St. Berchan speaks kindly of him. Thus—

After slaughter of Gael, after slaughter of Galls, The liberal king will possess Fortrenn. The red one was fair, yellow, tall; Pleasant was the youth to me. Brimful (or plenteous) was Alban east and west, During the reign of the fierce red one.

And we find Macbeth son of Finnlaec, and Gruoch daughter of Bode, king and queen of the Scots, granting the lands of Kyrkness to the Culdees of Lochleven from motives of piety, and for the benefit of their prayers; and Macbeth, again, granting the lands of Bolgyne to the same Culdees, ‘with the utmost veneration and devotion.’[584] That his hold over this part of the country, whether from personal character or from his claim through his wife, was quite equal at least to that of the family of the lay abbot of Dunkeld, we find from the unsuccessful attempt made by the latter to drive him from the throne a few years after his accession. Tighernac gives us the short but significant statement, that in the year 1045 a battle took place between the men of Alban on both sides, in which Crinan, abbot of Dunkeld, was slain, and many with him, viz., nine times twenty heroes.[585]

Five years after this he seems to have gone to Rome, probably to obtain absolution for the murder of Duncan, as Marianus tells us that in the year 1050 the king of Scotia, Macbethad, freely distributed silver to the poor at Rome.[586]

The immunity with which he enjoyed the fruit of his treachery towards Duncan may no doubt be attributed in a great measure to there being no one with a preferable right who was in a position to oppose him. The children of Duncan must have been in mere infancy at his death, and if the immediate succession of a son to his father’s throne was still somewhat strange to the Celtic population, that of an heir who was not of sufficient age to be capable of governing personally was totally opposed to their laws. He had too no doubt behind him the support of the powerful earl of Orkney, and if he had possessed a legitimate title, he would probably have maintained his position, and been recorded as one of the best of the Scottish kings; but the stamp of usurpation was upon him, and his immunity was to cease when Malcolm, the son of Duncan, reached an age to enable him to contest his right and claim, which was to bring a more powerful antagonist into the field than Macbeth had yet had to encounter. This was Siward, earl of Northumbria. He was of Danish race, and became connected with the earls of Northumbria by marriage with Elfleda the daughter of Ealdred, earl of Northumbria, and on the slaughter of Eadulf, his wife’s uncle, by King Hardacnut, in the year 1041, was made earl over the whole of Northumbria, extending from the Humber to the Tweed.[587] Siward was doubly connected with the house of Crinan, the abbot of Dunkeld, for his wife’s aunt, Aldgitha, half-sister of Earl Ealdred, was married to Maldred, son of Crinan, and King Duncan himself married either the sister or the cousin of Earl Siward, by whom he had a son, Malcolm. On the assassination of his father, Malcolm must have been a mere child, but when he reached an age which enabled him to claim his father’s kingdom, Siward seems to have resolved to make an effort to drive Macbeth from the throne he had usurped.

[Sidenote: A.D. 1054. Siward, earl of Northumbria, invades Scotland, and puts Malcolm, son of King Duncan, in possession of Cumbria.]

The Saxon Chronicle tells us that in the year 1054 ‘Earl Siward went with a large army into Scotland, both with a naval force and a land force, and fought against the Scots, of whom he made great slaughter, and put them to flight, and the king escaped. Many also fell on his own side, both Danish and English, and also his own son Oshern, and his sister’s son Siward, and some of his “huscarls” and also of the kings were there slain, on the day of the Seven Sleepers, that is, on the 27th of July.’[588] Tighernac records in the same year ‘a battle between the men of Alban and the men of Saxonia,’ in which many of the soldiers were slain;[589] and the Ulster Annals add that ‘three thousand of the men of Alban were slain, and fifteen hundred of the men of Saxonia, around Dolfinn, son of Finntuir’ (or Thorfinn).[590] There is a statement in Gaimar’s metrical chronicle not to be found elsewhere. We are there told that ‘Earl Syward made an agreement with the king of Scotland when he went, but Macbeth destroyed the peace, and ceased not to carry on war.’ He then gives an account of the expedition, evidently taken from the Saxon Chronicle.[591]

As Siward advanced against Macbeth with both a naval force and a land army, he must have intended to enter the Firth of Tay with the former, while he penetrated by land into Scotland proper. To send a fleet merely into the Firth of Forth could in no way have aided his enterprise. His object therefore seems to have been Scone, the capital of the kingdom, to which he would penetrate by land by the usual route, crossing the Forth at Stirling, and passing through Stratherne, while his fleet entering the Firth of Tay, would not only support the land army, but prevent the force of the districts north of the Tay being used to turn the flank of his army. He seems to have been opposed by the people of Alban, who appear to have been united in support of Macbeth, who likewise had the aid of the Norwegians, as the son of Thorfinn, called by the Irish annalist Finntuir, fell in the contest. St. Berchan appears to allude to this battle at Scone, and to imply that a night attack had been made, when he says,

On the middle of Scone, it will vomit blood, The evening of a night in much contention.

Although the Saxon Chronicle claims the victory for Siward, it admits the greatness of the slaughter on his side. It seems to have been a fiercely contested struggle, after which Siward found it necessary to retire without effecting his object of driving Macbeth from the throne of Scotia, as he reigned for three years longer; but he appears to have so far advanced the cause of young Malcolm, that he established him in possession of the territory of the Cumbrian Britons, and of Lothian as king of Cumbria.[592]

In the following year Siward died, and Malcolm thus lost the powerful support of the Danish earl of Northumbria, but he appears to have formed a close alliance with his successor Tostig, the son of Earl Godwine, who, though not of the Northumbrian race, had been appointed earl by King Edward, so that they became sworn brothers; and in the year 1057, when he had been three years in possession of the districts south of the Firths of Forth and Clyde as king of Cumbria, Malcolm seems to have found himself strong enough to make an independent attempt to drive Macbeth from the throne he had usurped, and this time his attempt was successful. Of the details of this renewed attempt no account has been handed down to us, but it resulted in Macbeth being driven across the great range of the Mounth, and slain by Malcolm at Lumphanan in Marr on the 15th day of August in the year 1057.[593]

[Sidenote: A.D. 1057-8. Lulach, son of Gilcomgan, king of Scotia.]

The party in the kingdom who supported him now put up, as king, Lulach, who was the son of Gilcomgan, Mormaer of Moray, and the heir to whom the hereditary rule over that province fell on the death of Macbeth, while his mother was a granddaughter of Boete or Bodhe, and through her he inherited whatever rights to the Scottish throne that family possessed; but his reign, nominal as it was, lasted only seven months, and he was slain at Essy in Strathbolgy on the 17th day of the following March.[594]

[Sidenote: A.D. 1057-8.—1093. Malcolm, eldest son of King Duncan, king of Scotia.]

These isolated events may be accepted as facts, transmitted to us as they are by contemporary writers, but they leave us quite in the dark as to how Malcolm so speedily and thoroughly accomplished what the powerful Siward with his army and his fleet had failed to effect three years before. It seems difficult too to understand how, if the northern provinces up to Fife were under the rule of the powerful earl of Orkney with his Norwegians, Malcolm could have carried the war so far into them as to drive Macbeth beyond the Dee and defeat and kill him there. The Orkneyinga Saga tells us that Thorfinn possessed nine earldoms in Scotland, and that on his death ‘many of the rikis which the earl had subjected fell off, and their inhabitants sought the protection of those native chiefs who were territorially born to rule over them.’[595] Besides the four earldoms in Scotland of Sutherland, Ross, Moray, and Dali, which his father Sigurd had subjected before him, he had brought for the first time under the Norwegian yoke the four earldoms of Buchan, Marr, Mearns, and Angus, and these would bring his possessions up to Fife, and with Galloway,[596] which he probably also possessed, would make up the nine earldoms, and the most probable explanation of Malcolm having selected this year to make a great effort to recover his father’s throne and of its apparent rapid success, is that it was also the year of Thorfinn’s death, when many of the provinces which had been subjected by him fell again under native rule. Of these, the first to free themselves from the Norwegian yoke would be the four earldoms extending from the Spey to the Firth of Tay, forming the northern half of the kingdom proper. It was, however, in this part of the kingdom, and mainly in Angus, that the branch of the royal house of which Malcolm, son of Kenneth, was the head, and which Malcolm, the son of Duncan, now represented in the female line, had its main seat, and it was there that their power and influence lay. If these provinces were now freed from the Norwegian yoke, Malcolm might find there powerful support, while his paternal descent from the lay abbots of Dunkeld would likewise bring the people of Atholl and of the extensive possessions of that church to his aid. The death of Thorfinn would thus present to him a great opportunity for making another attempt to add the kingdom of Scotland to that of Cumbria, with the district of Lothian which he already possessed; and Macbeth, finding himself isolated, with the forces of Cumbria and Lothian in front of him and a hostile population behind him, in place of the support of the Norwegian earl, would fall back upon his own hereditary province of Moray, and being followed by Malcolm with his army, gathering strength as he proceeded, was overtaken and slain at Lumphanan.

If this view, that Thorfinn died in 1057, appears to afford us the most plausible explanation of the sudden termination of Macbeth’s kingdom, there is nothing in the Sagas which raises any serious objection to it. They nowhere state any fact which gives us a fixed date for Thorfinn’s death. The Orkneyinga Saga says, that from the year when he was made earl, that is, in 1014, ‘he was earl for seventy winters,’ which would make him live till the year 1084. The Saga of Saint Olaf reduced the number of years to sixty winters, that is, to the year 1074, but both Sagas agree that he died in the end or in the latter days of Harald Sigurdson, who was slain at the battle of Stamford Bridge in the year 1066; and when Harald came to the Orkneys, on his way to England, he found Thorfinn’s sons ruling as earls of Orkney, and took them with him. No events are recorded of Thorfinn in the Sagas after the year 1050, and if he died in 1057 his death would take place about eight years before that of Harald Sigurdson, and in the last half of his reign. It might still be said that he died towards the end of his reign.

Simeon of Durham too tells us that in the year 1061 ‘Aldred, archbishop of York, went to Rome with Earl Tostig and received the pall from Pope Nicholas. Meanwhile Malcolm, king of Scots, furiously ravaged the earldom of his sworn brother Earl Tostig, and violated the peace of St. Cuthbert in the island of Lindisfarne.’[597] What led to Malcolm thus taking advantage of Tostig’s absence to attack his earldom we do not know, and the chronicler throws no further light upon it; but it is hardly possible to suppose that Malcolm could have ventured to attack Northumbria, and break off his alliance with Tostig, if he had not by this time effected the subjugation of his entire kingdom, and if the northern half of it still remained under the rule of the Norwegian earl of Orkney. On Thorfinn’s death Malcolm appears to have endeavoured to conciliate the Norwegian element in the country by making Ingibiorg, the widow of Thorfinn, his wife, by whom he had a son Duncan. His Norwegian wife did not, however, apparently survive the birth of her son many years, and gave way to a more important alliance for Malcolm, and one that was to exercise a powerful influence on the internal condition of the country, and the character of the reigning house. The Saxon Chronicle tells us, that in the summer of the year 1067 ‘Eadgar child went out (from Northumberland) with his mother Agatha, and his two sisters Margaret and Christina, and Mærleswegen, and many good men with them, and came to Scotland under the protection of King Malcolm, and he received them all.’ One edition of the chronicle adds, ‘Then King Malcolm began to yearn after his sister Margaret to wife, but he and all his men long refused, and she herself also declined, and said that she would have nor him nor any one if the heavenly clemency would grant that she in maidenhood might propitiate the mighty Lord with corporal heart in this short life in pure continence. The king earnestly urged her brother, until he answered yea, and indeed he durst not otherwise, because they were come into his power.’ The other edition of the chronicle simply adds, ‘and he took the child’s sister Margaret to wife.’ Florence of Worcester, who is the next best authority, places this event in the year 1068, which is probably the correct year,[598] and tells us that ‘Marleswein and Gospatric, and all the nobler Northumbrians, to avoid the severity of the king, and dreading the imprisonment which so many had suffered, sailed to Scotland with Eadgar Aetheling, his mother Agatha, and his two sisters Margaret and Christina, and wintered there under the protection of Malcolm king of Scots.’[599] The marriage probably took place the following spring at Dunfermline, which King Malcolm appears to have adopted as his principal seat, and not without reason, according to Fordun’s description of it: ‘For that place was of itself most strongly fortified by nature, being begirt by very thick woods and protected by steep crags. In the midst thereof was a fair plain, likewise protected by crags and streams, so that one might think that was the spot whereof it was said, scarce man or beast may tread its pathless wilds.’[600]

Child Eadgar, as the Saxon Chronicle calls him, was the son of Eadward Aetheling, who had returned from exile in Hungary in the year 1057, and died in England the same year. As Eadward Aetheling was the son of King Eadmund, the elder brother of Eadward the Confessor, he might have been held, if he had been at home instead of in distant exile, to have had a preferable right to the throne; but after the death of Eadward the Confessor his family were looked upon as representing the royal house of Wessex, and as possessing a legitimate claim upon the allegiance of the Saxon population, which, had the personal character of Eadgar been different, might have made him a more formidable opponent to the Norman Conqueror than he proved to be. The connection of Malcolm with this family by marriage with his sister was a very important one for him, and he now combined in his own person advantages which gave him a claim to the obedience of each of the different races now united under his rule. In the male line he represented the powerful lay abbots of Dunkeld, and inherited their influence over the ecclesiastical foundations dependent upon that monastery. In the female, he possessed the more important representation of the Scottish royal house who had ruled for a century and a half over the kingdom of Scotland. His father Duncan had been recognised for twenty years by the Welsh population of Cumbria or Strathclyde as their king, and by his mother he was connected with the Danes of Northumbria and their powerful earl Siward. His marriage with Ingibiorg gave him a claim to the good-will at least of the Norwegians, and the Anglic population of Lothian and Northumbria would look upon his marriage with the daughter of the Aetheling as giving him an additional right to their steadfast support. The northern province of Moray alone, whose hereditary rulers were of the same family as Macbeth, would probably render but an unwilling submission to his authority, and his rule over them would be little more than nominal.

Of the events of his thirty-five years’ reign, however, very few have been recorded. The combination of so many advantages in his own person would naturally lead to a further amalgamation of the different provinces of the kingdom, with their varied population, into one monarchy; but this is a silent process, which little attracts the notice of the chroniclers of the time. The personal character of Margaret, no doubt, was one to exercise a great influence upon the internal condition and progress of the people, as we learn to some extent from her life by Turgot; but this belongs to a different part of our subject, and beyond a few isolated notices we know really nothing of the internal history of his reign.

[Sidenote: Malcolm invades Northumbria five times.]

As to external events, Simeon of Durham, whose language, however, is coloured by an indignant hatred of the Scots on account of their frequent attacks upon Durham, tells us that Malcolm had ‘five times wasted the province of Northumbria with a savage devastation, and carried captive the wretched natives to reduce them to slavery: once in Eadward’s reign, when Tostig, earl of York, had gone to Rome;’ twice in the reign of King William the Conqueror; and twice in that of his successor.[601]

The first we have already noticed. The two next were probably connected with the claims of the Aetheling; but it is also possible that Malcolm may now have begun to realise the growing importance of Lothian and its Anglic population as an integral portion of its dominions, and been not unwilling to take advantage of the unsettled state of the north of England to extend to the Tyne the limits of that province which was now assuming the prominent place it ever after occupied in the future Scotland. Simeon seems to hint at some such motive, when he accuses him of being ‘instigated by avarice.’ If this was Malcolm’s real object, his policy seems to have been, by harassing and devastating the earldom north of the Tyne, from time to time, to force them to put themselves under his protection—a policy not unknown to the descendants of a part of his subjects, when black mail was a familiar term.

During the first three years of the reign of William the Conqueror, he had little real power or authority beyond the Humber, and it was not till the end of the year 1069, when he invaded Northumbria, and laid the country entirely waste with fire and sword, that he may be said to have actually conquered the country. Previous to that expedition he exercised a merely nominal authority, through earls of his own appointment, who no sooner attempted to exercise their functions within the earldom than they were ere long slain.

It was in Northumbria that the cause of the Aetheling was mainly supported, and that part of it which was north of the Tyne presented a tempting field for the incursions of the Scots. On the death of Siward in 1055 an earl was for the first time appointed who was not of Northumbrian race. Tostig, the son of Earl Godwine, was appointed earl by King Eadward, but, after a ten years’ rule, we are told by the Saxon Chronicle that in 1065 ‘all the thanes in Yorkshire and Northumberland gathered together, and outlawed their Earl Tostig, and slew all his household-men that they could come at, both English and Danish, and took all his weapons at York, and gold and silver, and all his treasures which they could anyway hear of, and sent after Morkere, son of Earl Aelfgar (of Mercia), and chose him for their earl,’ which was confirmed by King Edward. Morkere does not seem, however, to have been accepted by the Northumbrians beyond the Tyne, as Simeon of Durham tells us that he transferred that part of the earldom to Osulf, son of Earl Eadulf, of the line of the native earls, who had been slain in the year 1041. In the year 1067 King William summoned Earl Morkere to attend him on his voyage to Normandy, and retained him beside him, and at the same time sent Copsige, who had been an adherent of Earl Tostig, to govern, as procurator, that part of the earldom under Osulf; but Simeon tells us that ‘Osulf, driven by Copsige from the earldom, concealed himself in the woods and mountains in hunger and want, till at last, having gathered some associates whom the same need had brought together, he surrounded Copsige while feasting at Newburn. He escaped through the midst of confused crowds, but, being discovered while he lay hid in the church, he was compelled, by the burning of the church, to go out to the door, where, at the very door, he was beheaded by the hands of Osulf, in the fifth week of his charge of the earldom, on the fourth of the ides of March. By and by, in the following autumn, Osulf himself, rushing headlong against the lance of a robber who met him, was thrust through, and there perished. At his death Gospatric, the son of Maldred, the son of Crinan, going to King William, obtained the earldom of the Northumbrians, which he purchased for a great sum, for the dignity of that earldom belonged to him by his mother’s blood. His mother was Algitha, the daughter of Earl Uchtred, whom he had by Algiva, daughter of King Agelred.’[602] Gospatric, by paternal descent, was nearly connected and a member of the same house with Malcolm, the king of the Scots, while the means by which he obtained his earldom ranged him among the followers of King William, and he thus placed himself in a position which it was very difficult for him to maintain without alienating from him either the one or the other. In the following year, therefore, the Saxon Chronicle tells us that, in 1067, after Whitsunday, ‘it was then announced to the king that the people of the north had gathered themselves together and would stand against him if he came. He then went to Nottingham, and there wrought two castles; and so went to York, and there wrought two castles, and in Lincoln, and everywhere in that part. And Earl Gospatric and the best men went to Scotland.’ The same Chronicle tells us that in the following year, 1068 according to the Chronicle, but correctly given by Simeon in 1069, ‘King William gave to Earl Robert (de Comines) the government over Northumberland; but the men of the country surrounded him in the burgh at Durham, and slew him and nine hundred men with him. And immediately after Eadgar Aetheling came, with all the Northumbrians, to York, and the townsmen made peace with them; and King William came unawares on them from the south with an overwhelming army, and put them to flight, and slew those who could not flee, which were many hundred men, and plundered the town, and defiled St. Peter’s monastery, and also plundered and oppressed all the others, and the Aetheling went back again to Scotland.’

This unsuccessful attempt seems to have led to a more general combination of the northern powers in favour of the Aetheling, in which the aid of Swein, king of Denmark, had been solicited and obtained; and in autumn ‘came from Denmark,’ the Saxon Chronicle tells in 1069, ‘three sons of King Svein and Asbiörn Jarl, and Thorkell Jarl, with two hundred and forty ships, into the Humber; and there came to meet them Eadgar child and Earl Waltheof, and Maerleswegen, and Earl Gospatric, with the Northumbrians, and all the country people, riding and walking, with a countless army, greatly rejoicing; and so all unanimously went to York and stormed and demolished the castle, and gained innumerable treasures therein, and slew there many hundred Frenchmen, and led many with them to the ships.... When the king learned this, he went northward with all his force that he could gather and completely harried and laid waste the shire. And the fleet lay all winter in the Humber, where the king could not come at them. And the king was in the day of Midwinter at York, and so all the winter in the land.’ Florence of Worcester tells us that ‘King William ceased not, during the whole winter, to lay waste the land, to murder the inhabitants, and to inflict numerous injuries.’[603] This devastation of the land, however, does not appear to have extended beyond the Tyne, or to have affected the districts on the coast; but what was left undone by William was completed by Malcolm, king of the Scots, for Simeon of Durham tells us that in the spring of the year 1070, after King William had returned to the south of the Humber, ‘a countless multitude of Scots marched through Cumbreland, under the command of King Malcolm, and turning to the east ravaged with fierce devastation the whole of Teesdale, or the vale of the river Tees, and the parts bordering it on each side.’ Then, ‘having pillaged Cleveland in part, by a sudden foray he seized Holderness, and thence savagely overrunning the territory of St. Cuthbert, between the Tees and the Tyne, he deprived all of their property, and some of their lives. Then he destroyed by fire, under his own inspection, the church of St. Peter, the prince of the apostles, at Wearmouth. He burnt also other churches, with those who had taken refuge in them.’[604] Whether this inroad was made as part of the plan for a combined attempt in favour of Eadgar, which failed the preceding year, and that Malcolm had been too late in putting his part of it into execution, or whether, as seems more probable, he thought it a favourable opportunity for carrying out the policy which he hoped might lead to his extending his frontier to the Tyne, it seems difficult to say; but Gospatric, who had fled to Scotland before the approach of King William the preceding year, had now become reconciled to him, as Orderic of Vital says that while King William had pursued his foes to the river Tees, he ‘there received the submission of Waltheof in person, and of Gospatric by his envoys, who swore fealty on his part,’[605] and he seems to have thought that he might win favour by acting against Malcolm. Simeon therefore tells us, ‘Having called in some bold auxiliaries, he made a furious plundering attack upon Cumbreland. Having done this with slaughter and conflagration, he returned with great spoil and shut himself with his allies into the strong fortress of Bamborough, from which making frequent sallies, he weakened the forces of the enemy.’ Malcolm ‘having heard, while still gazing on the church of St. Peter as it was being consumed by the fire of his men, of what Gospatric had committed against his people, scarcely able to contain himself for fury, ordered his troops no longer to spare any of the English nation, but either to smite all to the earth, or to carry them off captives under the yoke of perpetual slavery.’ Simeon then gives us his usual picture of the barbarity with which such inroads were carried on by the Scots, and adds as the result, ‘Scotland was therefore filled with slaves and handmaids of the English race; so that even to this day, I do not say no little village, but even no cottage, can be found without one of them.’[606] Simeon inserts the following tale in his account of this inroad by Malcolm the king of the Scots. He says that ‘when he was riding along the border of the river (Wear) beholding from an eminence the cruel exploits of his men against the unhappy English, and feasting his mind and eyes with such a spectacle, it was told him that Eadgar Aetheling and his sisters, who were beautiful girls of the royal blood, and many other very rich persons, fugitives from their homes, lay with their ships in that harbour. When they came to him with terms of amity, he addressed them graciously, and pledged himself to grant them and all their friends a residence in his kingdom as long as they chose.’ And Simeon afterwards adds, ‘After Malcolm’s return to Scotland, when Bishop Egelwin was commencing his voyage towards Cologne, a contrary wind arising soon drove him back to Scotland. Thither also it bore with a favourable course Eadgar Aetheling with his companions before named. King Malcolm, with the consent of his relatives, took in marriage Eadgar’s sister Margaret, a woman noble by royal descent, but much more noble by her wisdom and piety. By her care and labour the king himself, laying aside the barbarity of his manners, became more gentle and civilised.’ But this story, if it has any foundation at all, appears to be misplaced, and the marriage which followed it had already taken place. Placed as it is in this year, it is quite inconsistent with the previous narrative. Simeon had recorded two years before the flight of Eadgar with his mother Agatha, and his two sisters Margaret and Cristina, by sea, to Scotland, where he says they passed the winter. It is therefore in the highest degree improbable that when Eadgar went in the following year to Northumbria to join the Danes in seizing the country, he should have taken his mother and sisters with him, from their secure refuge at the court of Scotland, to join him in so hazardous an expedition. Then the story as told implies that Malcolm now heard of these sisters and their charms for the first time; while, according to Simeon himself, they had already passed a winter with him in Scotland. The story really belongs to the first flight of Eadgar to Scotland, with his mother and sisters, in 1068, and not to his return from Northumbria in 1070, and seems to be the same tale which Fordun tells, on the authority of Turgot, that King Malcolm, when residing at Dunfermline, heard of the arrival of Eadgar and his sisters in St. Margaret’s Bay, and sent messengers to ascertain who they were, who brought him precisely the same report of the beauty of the sisters, in consequence of which he invited them to his court, and married Margaret.[607]

During the early years of the reign of the Conqueror, Scotland had not only been the refuge of his discontented subjects, and the haven in which those who unsuccessfully opposed him could at all times shelter themselves from his vengeance and renew their attempts when opportunity offered, but its king had afforded the Aetheling three times a refuge at his court, and had now identified himself with his cause by marrying his sister. King William therefore felt the necessity of establishing at once a more definite relation between himself and the Scottish king, and of convincing him that his power was not to be opposed with impunity. It was not till the year 1072 that he was able to turn his attention seriously to this object, but in that year the Saxon Chronicle tells us ‘King William led a naval force and a land force to Scotland, and lay about that land with ships on the sea-side, and himself with his land force went in over the ford.’ This was precisely the same disposition of his forces which Earl Siward had made when he invaded Scotland in 1054, and no doubt with the same object, that of investing Scone, the capital of the country. King William, we know, marched with his land army through Lothian and Stirlingshire, and entered Scotland proper by the ford over the Forth[608] there, and the only object in sending a fleet could have been to penetrate into the interior of the country by the Firth of Tay. We are then told that ‘King Malcolm came and made peace with King William, and gave hostages and became his man, and the king went home with all his force.’ Florence of Worcester says that ‘Malcolm, king of Scots, met him in a place called Abernethiei’[609] or Abernethy on the Tay, which is quite in accordance with this view. What the precise nature or extent of the homage was which Malcolm agreed at Abernethy to render, there are no materials now to determine. When the possessions of the king of the Scots were confined to the kingdom proper north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde, the expression ‘he became his man’ would have a definite significance; but after the cession of Cumbria and Lothian it loses its force, as we cannot tell whether the homage was paid for the kingdom or for one or both of these outlying dependencies. The hostage given was, as we are afterwards informed by the Saxon Chronicle, Duncan, the eldest son of Malcolm by Ingibiorg, his first wife, who must then have been a boy of about ten years of age. Simeon tells that on the return of King William from this expedition, he deprived Gospatric of his earldom, ‘charging him with having afforded counsel and aid to those who had murdered the earl (Robert de Comines) and his men at Durham, although he had not been present in person, and that he had been on the side of the enemy when the Normans were slain at York’ in the same year; and he adds that, ‘flying therefore to Malcolm, he (Gospatric) not long after, made a voyage to Flanders; returning after a little time to Scotland, the king bestowed upon him Dunbar with the adjacent lands in Lothian.’ [610] King William seems now to have thought it more politic to place one who had some hereditary claim to the earldom than a stranger over the Northumbrians, and bestowed Gospatric’s earldom upon Waltheof, ‘which,’ says Simeon, ‘was his right by his father’s and brother’s descent, for he was the son of Earl Siward by Elfleda, daughter of Earl Aldred.’

Eadgar Aetheling appears to have taken refuge, when King William invaded Scotland, in Flanders; but two years after, when King William went to Normandy, ‘Eadgar child came,’ the Saxon Chronicle tells us, ‘from Flanders to Scotland on St. Grimbald’s mass day, or the 8th of July, and King Malcolm and his sister Margaret received him with great worship. At that same time Philip, king of France, wrote to him and bade him come to him and he would give him the castle of Montreuil, that he might then daily do harm to his enemies. Moreover, King Malcolm and his sister Margaret gave him and all his men great gifts and many treasures in skins decked with purple and in pelisses of marten-skin and weasel-skin and ermine-skin, and in palls and in golden and silver vessels; and led him and all his ship men with great worship from his dominion.’ No doubt, in the relation in which Malcolm then stood to King William, his presence was an embarrassment to him; and as he was not disposed to assist him himself at this time, he was glad to be relieved from his difficulty by the king of France discovering that he might make use of him to annoy the king of England from another quarter. But King Malcolm was not to be so easily freed from the embarrassment of his presence as he expected; for we are told that ‘on the voyage evil befell them when they went out at sea, so that there came on very rough weather, and the raging sea and the strong wind cast them on the land so that all their ships burst asunder, and they themselves with difficulty came to land, and almost all their treasures were lost, and some of his men also were seized by the Frenchmen; but he himself and his best men went back again to Scotland, some ruefully going on foot and some miserably riding. When King Malcolm advised him that he should send to King William over the sea and pray his peace; and he also did so, and the king granted it to him and sent after him. And King Malcolm and his sister again gave him and all his men innumerable treasures, and very worthily again sent him from their jurisdiction.’ Malcolm was more fortunate the second time. Eadgar succeeded in reaching the court of King William in safety, where he was well received, and remained with him.

Malcolm appears now to have turned his attention more to the amalgamation of the provinces he held, instead of attempting to enlarge his dominions at the expense of Northumbria, and in the year 1078 he appears to have invaded the province of Moray. The hereditary ruler of the province at this time was Maelsnectan, the son of that Lulach who had borne the title of king for four months, and his son appears under the Celtic title of ‘Ri Moreb,’ or king of Moray. Malcolm seems to have been successful in his attempt, as the Saxon Chronicle tells us in an imperfect notice that ‘in this year King Malcolm won the mother of Maelslaeht ... and all his best men, and all his treasure and his cattle, and he himself escaped with difficulty.’ He may have taken refuge in the remote stronghold of Loch Deabhra in Lochaber, which St. Berchan tells us had been the habitation of his father Lulach, and here he died seven years after.[611]

Malcolm appears to have been emboldened by this success and by the continued absence of King William in Normandy to make another attempt to extend his frontier to the Tyne, notwithstanding that his son Duncan was still retained as a hostage at the English Court, as Simeon of Durham tells us that in 1079 ‘Malcolm, king of Scots, after the Assumption of St. Mary on the 15th of August, devastated Northumberland as far as the great river Tyne, slew many, took more prisoners, and returned with great spoil;’ but when King William returned in the following year to England, ‘he sent in the autumn his son Robert to Scotland against Malcolm, but having gone as far as Egglesbreth he returned without accomplishing anything, and built the new castle on the Tyne.’[612] Egglesbrech is the Gaelic name of Falkirk,[613] so that Robert penetrated as far as the river Carron, but did not venture to proceed farther, and it is probable that he contented himself with repaying the devastation of that part of Northumbria north of the Tyne by pillaging Lothian and Calatria, and was forced to retreat by the want of supplies; and while he protected Northumbria south of the Tyne by the castle he erected on that river, he virtually surrendered the district north of it to the incursions of the Scots.

In the year 1085, the same year in which Maelsnectan died, Malcolm appears to have lost a son, Domnall, probably another son by his first marriage, who seems to have died a violent death;[614] and two years afterwards William the Conqueror died and was succeeded by his son William Rufus. By the death of his great and imposing antagonist Malcolm seems to have considered himself relieved from the necessity of further observing any engagements he may have entered into towards the king of England; and though his eldest son was still retained as a hostage at the English Court, he had now around him a flourishing band of youthful sons, the fruit of his union with Queen Margaret, the eldest of whom may now have been approaching majority, and he may have felt less hesitation in exposing the son whom he had not seen since he was a boy, and by a mother whom he had forgotten, to have the consequences of any act of hostility visited upon him. Accordingly, when in the year 1091 Eadgar Aetheling had been deprived of the lands which had been given him in Normandy by the new king, and went to Scotland to his brother-in-law and to his sister, Malcolm had no hesitation in this time adopting his cause. As the Saxon Chronicle tells us, ‘While King William was out of England King Malcolm of Scotland came hither into England and harried a great deal of it, till the good men who had charge of this land sent a force against him and turned him back. When King William in Normandy heard of this he made ready for his departure, and came to England, and his brother the Count Robert with him, and forthwith ordered a force to be called out, both a ship force and a land force; but the ship force, ere he could come to Scotland, almost all perished miserably a few days before St. Michael’s mass,[615] and the king and his brother went with the land force. But when King Malcolm heard that they would seek him with a force, he went with his force out of Scotland into the district of Lothian in England, and there awaited.[616] When King William with his force approached, there intervened Count Robert and Eadgar Aetheling, and so made a reconciliation between the kings, so that King Malcolm came to our king and became his man, with all such obedience as he had before paid to his father, and that with oath confirmed. And King William promised him in land and in all things that which he had had before under his father. In this reconciliation Eadgar Aetheling was also reconciled with the king, and the kings then with great good feeling separated.’ This passage seems very clearly to imply that the expression ‘and Malcolm became his man’ does not refer to any homage rendered by Malcolm for the kingdom of Scotland, either on this or the former occasion, but for land held under the king in England; and although Malcolm may have considered that he had a hereditary right to the district of Lothian, and was not inclined to admit its dependence upon the king of England when he could help it, yet it can hardly be doubted that when forced to recognise the claims of the king of England he conceded that Lothian was not an integral part of Scotland but of England, and, in becoming the king’s man, acknowledged his supremacy over it.

[Sidenote: A.D. 1092. Cumbria south of the Solway wrested from the Scots.]

The Chronicle adds, in narrating this reconciliation, ‘but that stood only a little while;’ and accordingly in the following year King William, who apparently coveted that part of the Cumbrian territory which extended from the Solway to the river Derwent and the Cross at Stanmore, and probably considered that if his right as overlord had been recognised he might resume any part of it, ‘with a large force went north to Carlisle and restored the town, and raised the castle and drove out Dolphin, who had previously ruled the land there, and garrisoned the castle with his own men, and then returned south hither. And very many country folk, with wives and with cattle, he sent thither to dwell and to till the land,’ Dolphin was probably the son of Earl Gospatric, and held this part of Cumbria under Malcolm, and this was a direct invasion of his rights, as the kings of Scotland unquestionably were in legitimate possession of the whole of the ancient British kingdom of Cumbria, which extended from the Clyde to the Derwent and to Stanmore; but he appears to have endeavoured at first to obtain redress by negotiation, for the Chronicle tells us that ‘after this, the king of Scotland sent, and demanded the fulfilment of the treaty which had been promised him. And King William summoned him to Gloucester, and sent him hostages to Scotland, and Eadgar Aetheling afterwards, and the men back again, who brought him with great worship to the king. But when he came to the king he could not be held worthy either the speech of the king or the conditions that had been previously promised him; and therefore in great hostility they parted, and King Malcolm returned home to Scotland. But as soon as he came home he gathered his army, and marched into England, harrying with more animosity than ever behoved him. And then Robert the earl of Northumberland ensnared him with his men unawares and slew him. Morel of Bamborough slew him, who was the earl’s steward and King Malcolm’s gossip. With him also was slain his son Eadward, who should, if he had lived, have been king after him.’ Simeon of Durham adds that he was cut off near the river Alne, and that ‘his army either fell by the sword, or those who escaped the sword were carried away by the inundation of the rivers which were then more than usually swollen by the winter rains. Two of the natives placed the body of the king in a cart, as none of his men were left to commit it to the ground, and buried it at Tynemouth.’[617]

By some of the Scotch Chronicles Malcolm is said to have been slain at Inneraldan or the mouth of the river Alne, by others at Alnwick, and to have been buried at Tynemouth;[618] and thus terminated his long reign of thirty-five years.[619] The character of Malcolm was variously regarded by the English and by his own subjects. The English historians, who had mainly to record his frequent invasions of Northumberland, regarded him as a man of barbarous disposition and a cruel and pitiless temper, who delighted to ravage and devastate the northern districts of England, instigated by avarice; while they attributed any better traits in his character to the humanising influence of his Saxon consort Queen Margaret. By his Celtic subjects he was known as Malcolm Ceannmor, or ‘great head,’ and was regarded, according to the testimony of St. Berchan, as

A king, the best who possessed Alban; He was a king of kings fortunate. He was the vigilant crusher of enemies. No woman bore or will bring forth in the East A king whose rule will be greater over Alban; And there shall not be born for ever One who had more fortune and greatness.

[Sidenote: State of Scotland at Malcolm’s death.]

On his death he left the kingdom in possession for the first time of the same southern frontier which it ever after retained. It was now separated from the kingdom of England by the Solway Firth, the range of the Cheviot Hills, and the river Tweed. From the Solway to the Clyde extended that portion of Cumbria which still belonged to the Scottish king; from the Tweed to the Forth, the district of Lothian. From the Forth to the Spey was Alban or Albania, now called Scotia. Beyond it, on the north, the province of Moravia; on the west, Airergaidhel or Argathelia; while beyond these were, on the north, Caithness and the Orkney Isles forming the Norwegian earldom of Orkney; and, on the west, the Sudreys or Western Islands still occupied by the Norwegians, though since the death of Thorfinn belonging nominally to Scotland.

Footnote 548:

1006 Bellum itir firu Albain et Saxanu coromaid for Albanchu co fargabsat ar an degh doine.—_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 366.

Footnote 549:

Sim. _de obsessione Dunelm._ Simeon places this war in the year 969, but Durham was not founded till the year 995, and Malcolm did not begin to reign till 1005. Mr. Freeman, in his _History of the Norman Conquest_, vol. i. p. 357, rightly places it in the year 1006. He says, “If it happened at all, it must have been in this year, the only one which suits the position of the king, bishop, and earl spoken of. Ealdhun became bishop in 990, and removed the see to Durham in 995. Malcolm began to reign in 1004. A Northumbrian earldom became vacant in 1006. This fixes the date. The authority of Simeon is, I think, guarantee enough for the general truth of the story, and the silence of the Chronicles and Florence is not conclusive as to a Northumbrian matter.” This conclusion of Mr. Freeman is the more striking as he appears not to have been aware of the passage in the Ulster Annals placing what is obviously the same event under the year 1006.

Footnote 550:

Olaf Tryggvesson’s Saga, cap. 52.

Footnote 551:

The tract on the Wars of the Gaedhil with the Gaill says that one wing of Brian’s army consisted of ten mormaers of Brian with their foreign auxiliaries. The word Gall, here translated ‘foreign,’ usually means the Northmen, but it seems here used in its general sense of foreign. Though the Mormaer of Marr is the only one named, the whole force of Alban was probably here arrayed on Brian’s side.

Footnote 552:

The passage in the tract on the Wars of the Gaedhil enumerates the auxiliary Galls as those of ‘Insi Ore ocus Insi Cat; a Manaind ocus a Sci ocus a Leodus; a Cindtiri ocus a h-Airergoedel ocus a Barru ocus a Coir breathnaibh ocus a Cornbliteoc ocus a Breathnaibh Cillemuine.’ A copy of a tract on the battle of Cluaintarbh in the author’s possession gives them thus:—‘Sitric mac Lodar Iarla Innsehorc go sluagh (with the host of) Innsehorc ocus Oilein Lochlannach (the Norwegian islands), sluagh (the host of) Innse Cath ocus Maininn, Scithidh, Lodhusa, Cinntire ocus Oirer Gaoidhil ocus Corbrethnuibh (district Britons of) Cille Muine ocus Cor na liagog gona rioghruidhibh (with their kings).’ Though Cath is here ranked among the islands, it is probable that Caithness is meant, and that the Irish writer rendered Cathness by Innsi Cath, supposing the termination ‘ness’ to be Innis. The others are easily recognised except the two last. Cillemuine is the Irish name of St. Davids, which implies they were the Britons of South Wales; but who were the Cornbliteoc of the one list and the Cor na liagog of the other? One would have expected to find Galloway included, and this district may be meant, though the author can give no explanation of the name.

Footnote 553:

See for a full account of the battle, the tract on the _War of the Gaedhil with the Gaill_: edited by Dr. Todd, in the Master of the Rolls’ series; also Dasent’s _Saga of Burnt Njal_.

Footnote 554:

Orkneyinga Saga. _Collect. de Rebus Albanicis_, p. 340.

Footnote 555:

_Ibid._ p. 346.

Footnote 556:

Earl Gilli had his seat in Colonsay, and as Lewis and Skye were separately named as sending their quota to the Norwegian forces at Cluantarbh, it is probable that the islands under his rule consisted of those lying to the south of the Point of Ardnamurchan. St. Berchan seems to indicate that King Malcolm had acquired some right over them when he calls him

Danger of Britons, extinction of Galls, Mariner of Ile and Arann. _Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 99.

Footnote 557:

The Nials Saga tells of Kari Solmundson, that on hearing of the battle of Cluantarbh he sailed south to Wales. ‘Then they sailed north to Beruwick and laid up their ships, and fared up into Whitherne in Scotland, and were with Earl Melkolf that year.’ Beruvik is probably the bay in the parish of Whitehern now called Port Yarrock.

Footnote 558:

_Orkneyinga Saga_, c. 1. _Saga of Saint Olaf_. _Collectanea de Rebus Albanicis_, pp. 340, 346.

Footnote 559:

Simeon of Durham gives the following picture of the Durham clergy in the tenth century. In mentioning the slaughter of the monks of Lindisfarne, and the escape of the bishop with the body of St. Cuthbert, he adds that ‘Tradita sibi districtione paulatim postposita, ecclesiasticam disciplinam odio habuerunt, remissioris vitæ illecebras secuti. Nec erat qui eos sub ecclesiastica censura coerceret, utpote cultura Dei destructis monasteriis et ecclesiis pene deficiente. Seculariter itaque omnino viventes carni et sanguini inserviebant, filios et filias generantes. Quorum posteri per successionem in ecclesia Dunelmensi fuerunt nimis remisse viventes, nec ullam nisi carnalem vitam quam ducebant, scientes nec scire volentes. Clerici vocabantur, sed nec habitu, nec conversatione clericatum prætendebant.’—Sim. _Hist. Ec. Dun._ Pref. The step was but a short one from this state of matters to that of lay possessors of the benefices. The oldest legend of St. Andrew bears a title which contains the following: ‘Et quomodo contigerit quod tantæ abbatiæ ibi factæ antiquitus fuerint quas multi adhuc seculares viri jure hereditario possident.’—_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 138.

Footnote 560:

A.D. 865 Tuathal mac Artguso primus episcopus Fortrenn et abbas Duincaillenn dormivit. 873 Flaithbertach mac Murcertaigh Princeps Duncaillden obiit.—_Ann. Ult._ See Reeves’s _Adamnan_, ed. 1874, p. cxxiii, for the meaning of ‘princeps.’

Footnote 561:

Fordun calls Crinan ‘Abthanus de Dull et seneschallus insularum.’ There was no such title as Abthanus de Dull, but there was an Abthania de Dull, consisting of the possessions of that monastery. They were of great extent, and embraced the whole of the present parishes of Dull and Fortingall. If this monastery had become secularised, they may have belonged to the lay abbot of Dunkeld, and if Malcolm had now re-acquired part of the Western Isles, Crinan may have occupied some important position in connection with them also.

Footnote 562:

In his history of the kings, Simeon has under the year 1018, ‘Ingens bellum apud Carrum gestum est inter Scottos et Anglos, inter Huctredum filium Waldef Comitem Northymbrorum, et Malcolmum filium Cyneth regem Scottorum. Cum quo fuit Eugenius Calvus, rex Lutinensium;’ but we have the authority of the Saxon Chronicle for the fact that Huctred was slain two years before, and that Cnut had made Eric, a Dane, his successor, while Simeon makes his brother Eadulf Cudel succeed him. Lutinensium is with reason supposed to have been written for Clutinensium.

Footnote 563:

Siquidem paulo post, id est, post triginta dies, universus a flumine Tesa usque Twedam populus dum contra infinitam Scottorum multitudinem apud Carrum dimicaret, pene totus cum natu majoribus suis interiit.—Sim. _Hist. Ec. Dun._ c. v.

Footnote 564:

Quo occiso (Ucthredo) frater ipsius Eadulf, cognomento Cudel, ignavus valde et timidus ei successit in comitatum. Timens autem ne Scotti mortem suorum quos frater ejus, ut supradictum est, occiderat, in se vindicarent, totum Lodoneium ob satisfactionem et formam concordiam eis donavit. Hoc modo Lodoneium adjectum est regno Scottorum.—Sim. _de Obsess. Dun._

Footnote 565:

The _Annales Cambriæ_ have, in 1015, ‘Owinus filius Dunawal occisus est,’ which appears to refer to this Owen, and the event is antedated a few years. Duncan is afterwards called ‘rex Cumbrorum’ by the English chroniclers, a title he must have borne independently of that of king of the Scots. Simeon tells us that Aldgetha, daughter of Uchtred, earl of Northumbria, by Elgifa, the daughter of King Ethelred, was married to Maldred, son of Crinan Tein, or the thane, by whom she had Gospatrick, afterwards earl.—Sim. _de Obsess. Dun._ The hereditary ‘præpositi’ or provosts of the church of Hexham also bore the title of Tein.—_Priory of Hexham_ (Surtees Soc.), vol. i. p. 4. There seems no reason to doubt that Maldred was a son of this same Crinan who was the father of Duncan, and may have been joined with him in the rule of these southern districts. The name Gospatrick comes probably from the British Gwas Patrick, the servant of Saint Patrick, and connects him with Strathclyde.

Footnote 566:

Ultra (Tede flumen) usque ad flumen Forthi magni, scilicet, Loonia, et Galweya, et Albania tota, quæ modo Scotia vocatur, et Morovia, et omnes insulæ occidentales oceani usque ad Norwegiam et usque Daciam, scilicet, Kathenessia, Orkaneya, Enchegal, et Man et Ordas et Gurth, et ceteræ insulæ occidentales oceani circa Norwegiam et Daciam.—_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 154. The names of the districts and islands comprehended under Norwegia and Dacia are in a very corrupt form; but a comparison of them with the list of those which sent their quota to the Danish army at Cluantarbh will throw light on their identity (see p. 387, note 5). Kathenessia and Orkaneya correspond with Insicath and Inishore; ‘Man et Ordas et Gurth,’ with ‘Manand, Sgithidh, Lodhusa,’ and ‘Enchegal’ with ‘Airergaidhel.’

In the tract on the Wars of the Gaidhil with the Gaill, Brian is said, when he became king of all Ireland, to have sent a naval expedition upon the sea, ‘and they levied royal tribute from Saxan and Bretan, and Lemnaigh and Alban, and Airergaoidel, and their pledges and hostages, along with the chief tribute’ (p. 137). Here Saxan and Bretan represent Loonia et Galweya. Lemnaigh is the district of the Lennox. Airergaoidel is Argathelia; and all are distinguished from Alban, or the kingdom proper.

Footnote 567:

A.D. 1029 Maelcolaim mac Maelbrigdi mic Ruadri Ri Alban mortuus est.—_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 77.

Footnote 568:

St. Berchan gives Macbeth a reign of thirty years, which, reckoning from his death in 1058, places its commencement about this time.

Footnote 569:

In the Orkneyinga Saga, Airergaidhel, or at least that part of it formerly known as Dalriada, appears under the name of Dali or the Dales, and we are told that Sumarlidi Höldr had possessions in Dali, and that he and his sons were called the Dalveria aett, or the family of the people of Dali. This is, however, the Sumarled who appears in the Chronicle of Man as Somerled Regulus de Herergaidel. His pedigree is given in the Book of Ballimote. He is there said to be son of Gillibrigde, son of Gilliadamnain, son of Solaimh, son of Imergi; and this Imergi, from whom Somerled, slain in 1166, was fourth in descent, and who therefore must have flourished in the early part of the eleventh century, was probably the Jehmarc of the Saxon Chronicle. Caradoc of Llancarvan terms the two kings, kings of Orkney and Ewyst. How Macbeth came to be called king of Orkney will appear hereafter.

Footnote 570:

1034 Maelcolaim mac Cinaetha Ri Alpan ordan iarthair Eorpa uile deg.—_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 77. Ordan means nobility, dignity. The Chronicle of 1165 says, ‘Ipse etiam multas oblationes tam ecclesiis quam clero ea die distribuit’ (_Ib._ p. 131), which may account for the epithets applied to him.

Footnote 571:

1034 Moelcoluim Rex Scotiæ obiit 7 Kal. Decembri.—_Marianus Scotus._

The later chronicles state that he was slain by treachery at Glammis, and Fordun adds, by some of the stock of Constantin and Grym; but this tale is quite inconsistent with the older notices of his death, which clearly imply that he died a natural death.

Footnote 572:

The Ulster Annals have in 1033 ‘Mac meic Boete meic Cinaedha do marbhadh la (slain by) Maelcolaim meic Cinaedha.’ It has usually been assumed that this Boete was the son of Kenneth, son of Dubh, the predecessor of Maelcolm mac Kenneth, and thus represented a rival branch of the house; but the dates will not admit of this, and his father Kenneth must be placed a generation further back. He may either have been the same Kenneth who was father of Malcolm, thus making Boete his brother, or the Kenneth, son of Malcolm, who slew Constantin, son of Cuilein, in 997, and who is supposed by Fordun to be his illegitimate brother. Fordun tells us that ‘the old custom of the succession of kings lasted without a break until the time of Malcolm, son of Kenneth, when, for fear of the dismemberment of the kingdom, which might perhaps result therefrom, that king by a general ordinance decreed as a law for ever that henceforth each king after his death should be succeeded in the government of the kingdom by whoever was at the time being the next descendant—that is, a son or a daughter, a nephew or a niece, the nearest then living. Failing these, however, the next heir begotten of the royal or a collateral stock should possess the right of inheritance.’—Fordun, _Chron._, Ed. 1872, B. iv. c. 1. Whether Malcolm actually issued a formal decree to this effect rests on the authority of Fordun alone, which can hardly be accepted for the events of this early period. Malcolm seems to have taken the readier mode of removing from life any competitor who could claim as a male descendant.

Footnote 573:

Post fratris interitum Ealdulfus comes efficitur Northymbrensium, qui, cum superbia extolleretur, Britones satis atrociter devastavit: sed tertio post anno, cum ad Hardecanutum reconciliandus in pace venisset, interfectus est a Siwardo, qui post illum totius provinciæ Northanhymbrorum, id est ab Humbra usque Tuedam Comitatum habuit.—Sim. Dun. _Hist. Con._

As the _Saxon Chronicle_ records the death of Eadulf in 1041, this places this invasion in 1038.

Footnote 574:

Simeon, _Hist. Ec. Dun._ cxliv. Simeon places this event in the year 1035, upon the death of Cnut, but he also says that it took place when his son Harold was in the fifth year of his reign and Bishop Eadmund in the twentieth of his episcopate, which would place it in the year 1040; but this was the last year of Duncan’s reign when he was engaged in his northern war, and it could hardly have taken place then. It seems to be obviously connected with Eadulf’s invasion of Cumbria, but whether it preceded or followed it there is nothing to indicate.

Footnote 575:

A suggestion made by the author in an early work (_The Highlanders of Scotland_, published in 1837), in which, he believes, the Sagas were for the first time used in Scotch history, that two kings of Scotland of the name of Malcolm have been confounded—one who died in 1029, and Malcolm mac Kenneth who died in 1034, and that the latter was Kali Hundason—has unfortunately been adopted by Professor Munch in his _History of Norway_. The author has long since come to the conclusion that this theory is untenable.

Footnote 576:

It is unnecessary here to enter into any detail of the history of these three brothers; and how Thorfinn acquired a portion of the islands as each died. The last of them was Brusi, who is stated in the Olafs Saga to have died in the lifetime of King Cnut, soon after his conquest of Norway, that is, about 1029.

Footnote 577:

St. Berchan calls Malcolm Duncan’s grandfather, ‘son of the woman of Leinster,’ and also ‘son of the cow-breast from the banks of the Liffey.’ The kings of Leinster are at this time often called kings of Liffey, and this connection probably gave Duncan a claim on their assistance.

Footnote 578:

Orkneyinga Saga. _Collect. de Rebus Albanicis_, p. 341. See also Mr. Anderson’s edition, p. 17.

Footnote 579:

1040 Donnchad rex Scotiæ in autumno occiditur (19 Kal. Sept.) a duce suo Macbethad mac Finnloech, cui successit in regnum annis 17.

Donnchad regnavit annis 5, hoc est, a missa Sancti Andreæ (14 Novr.) ad eandem et insuper ad nativitatem Sanctæ Mariæ.—_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 65. By this last festival Marianus means that of the Assumption, which was on the 15th of August. A poem quoted in the Orkneyinga Saga says the battle was fought on a Monday. The 19 Kal. Sept. or 14th of August fell in the year 1040 upon a Thursday, and the 15th on a Friday. Tighernac has under 1040 ‘Donnchadh mac Crinan Airdri Alban immatura ætate a suis occisus est.’ The later chronicles all agree that he was slain by Macbeth, in a place called Bothgouanan near Elgin. This is probably the place now called Pitgaveny; and if the battle was fought at Burghead, Duncan would retreat upon Elgin.

Footnote 580:

St. Berchan calls Duncan Ilgalrach, and also as Ri Galrach. Galrach means diseased, and may have given rise to the name Kali.

Footnote 581:

The Chronicle of Huntingdon says, ‘Comes Northumbriæ Siwardus Scotiam ingressus Maket regem nepotem dicti Malcolmi cum xv. annis regnaret, a regno fugavit.’

Footnote 582:

Caradoc of Llancarvan calls the two kings Maelbeathe and Jehmarc, kings of Orkney and Ewyst. See Note ^{569}, p. 397.

Footnote 583:

_Collect. de Rebus Albanicis_, pp. 346, 347.

Footnote 584:

Machbet filius Finlach contulit per suffragiis orationum et Gruoch filia Bodhe rex et regina Scotorum, Kyrkness Deo omnipotenti et Keledeis prefatæ insulæ Lochlevine cum suis finibus et terminis.

Cum omni libertate collata fuit villa de Kyrkenes Deo omnipotenti et Keledeis, aliique omni munere et onere et exaccione regis et filii regis, vicecomitis et alicujus et sine refectione pontis et sine exercitu et venatione, sed pietatis intuitu et orationum suffragiis fuit Deo omnipotenti collata.

Cum summa veneratione et devotione Makbeth rex contulit Deo et Sancto Servano de Lochlevyn et heremitis ibidem Deo servientibus Bolgyne filii Torfyny cum omni libertate et sine onere exercitus regis et filii ejus, vel vicecomitis, et sine exactione alicujus, sed caritatis intuitu et orationum suffragiis.—_Chr. of St. Andrews_, p. 114, 12.

Gruoch being united with him in the first of these grants rather points to the family of Bodhe being peculiarly connected with Fife.

Footnote 585:

A.D. 1045 Cath etir Albancho araenrian cur marbadh andsin Crinan Ab. Duincalland ocus sochaighe maille fris .i. nae xx laech.

Footnote 586:

A.D. 1050 Rex Scottiæ Macbethad Romæ argentum pauperibus seminando distribuit.—According to the Orkneyinga Saga, Thorfinn, earl of Orkney, went to Rome in the same year, ‘and saw the Pope, from whom he obtained absolution for all his sins.’—Mr. Anderson’s edition, p. 43. This is either another instance of the confusion between Thorfinn and Macbeth, or they went together for the same purpose.

Footnote 587:

Simeon of Durham says of Earl Eadulf, ‘qui postmodum, regnante Eadwardo, occisus est a Siwardo, qui post illum totius Northanhymbrorum provinciæ, hoc est, ab Humbra usque ad Tweodam suscepit comitatum.’ The Saxon Chronicle, however, says, under 1041, ‘In this year Harthecnut betrayed Earl Eadulf while under his safeguard, and he was then a belier of his pledge,’ and has no hint of Siward being concerned in his death, but mentions Earl Siward two years after, in the first year of King Eadward.

Footnote 588:

This is the combined account of the editions of the Chronicle.

Footnote 589:

A.D. 1054 Cath etir Albancho ocus Saxancho in artoitset moran do mileadaib.

Footnote 590:

1054 Cath itir fhiru Albain et Saxanu itorcradar tri mile doferaib Albain et mile coleth di Saxanu im Dolfinn mac Finntuir.—_An. Ult._ The tract ‘Origo et Gesta Sivardi Ducis,’ printed in Langebek’s _Scriptores_, iii. p. 287, says of this expedition, ‘Exercitum congregavit, in subsidium Regis usque ad Dunde progrediens, ubi nunciatum fuit ei, quod homines sui de Northumbreland jam in eum et suos adeo insurrexerunt, quod Osbertum Bulax filium suum interfecerant. Comes autem reverti compulsus,’ etc. The tract is not of much authority. Other authorities state that Siward’s son was slain in the Scotch war.

Footnote 591:

‘Li quens Syward donc s’accordat Al rei d’Escoce, u il alat, Mais Macheden defuit la pes De guerrier ne fist releis. _Mon. Hist. Brit._ p. 825.

Footnote 592:

The Saxon Chronicle makes no mention of Malcolm in connection with this expedition; but Florence of Worcester adds to an account, apparently taken from the Saxon Chronicle, that it was made ‘jussu regis,’ that the forces on the one side were ‘Scoti et Normanni,’ on the other ‘Angli et Dani,’ and that Siward ‘Malcolmum regis Cumbrorum filium ut rex jusserat regem constituit.’ Macbeth, however, appears in the Irish Annals as Ri Alban till 1057, and Marianus states distinctly that he reigned till that year, which is conclusive as to Malcolm not having been made king of Scotland in 1054. It is remarkable, however, that in this passage he is not called ‘filius regis Scottorum’ but ‘filius regis Cumbrorum;’ and Simeon seems not to have recognised Duncan as king of the Scots, for he makes Macbeth the immediate successor of Malcolm, son of Kenneth, ‘Anno mxxxiiij Malcolm rex Scottorum obiit, cui Macbethad successit.’ The solution seems to be that he was established in 1054 as king of Cumbria, and at this time Lothian seems to have been included in the territories under the rule of the rex Cumbrorum.

Footnote 593:

Marianus has in 1057 ‘Macfinlaeg occiditur in Augusto;’ and again, ‘Inde Macfinlaeg regnavit annis 17 ad eandem missam Sanctæ Mariæ’ (15th August). Tighernac under 1057: Macbethadh mic Findlaich Airdri (sovereign of) Alban domarbad do (slain by) Maelcolaim mic Dondcadha, to which the Ulster Annals add ‘i cath’ (in battle).—_Chron. Picts and Scots_, pp. 65, 78, 369.

Marianus and Tighernac are contemporary authorities. The later chronicles add that he was slain in Lumfanan.

Footnote 594:

Marianus has in 1057, ‘Lulag successit et occiditur in Martio;’ and again, ‘Lulach a nativitate Sanctæ Mariæ ad missam Sancti Patricii in mense Martio regnavit’ (17th March). Tighernac under the same year, ‘Lulach Rig Albain domarbadh Coluim mic Donchadha per dolum;’ and the Ulster Annals, ‘Lulach mac Gillcomgan Ardri Albain domarbhadh la Maelcolaim meic Donchadha i cath’ (in battle).

St. Berchan says of him

And at Loch Deabhra his habitation.

Loch Deabhra is a small lake in the district of Mamore in Lochaber, on an island in which there was formerly a small castle, called the castle of Mamore. The glen leading to it is called Glenrie or the King’s glen.

Footnote 595:

_Collect. de Reb. Alb._ p. 346.

Footnote 596:

The author agrees with Professor Munch (_Chron. Man._ p. 46) in thinking that the place called Gadgeddli, where Thorfinn is said by the Saga to have frequently dwelt, was Galloway.

Footnote 597:

1061 Interim rex Scottorum Malcolmus sui conjurati fratris, scilicet comitis Tostii, comitatum ferociter depopulatus est, violata pace Sancti Cuthberti in Lindisfarnensi insula.—Sim. Dun. _Hist. Con._

Footnote 598:

The Saxon Chronicle states that in the same year ‘the king came to Winchester, and Easter was then on the x. Kal. of April,’ that is, March 23d, but Easter fell on that day in the year 1068.

Footnote 599:

Flor. Wig. _Chron._ ad an. 1068.

Footnote 600:

Fordun’s Chronicle, ed. 1872, vol. ii. p. 202. For the marriage having taken place here we have the distinct authority of Turgot, in his life of Saint Margaret, who says that King Malcolm and his queen founded a church to the Holy Trinity in the place where they were married.

Footnote 601:

Sim. Dun. _de Gest. Reg._ ad an. 1093.

Footnote 602:

Sim. Dun. _de Gestis Reg._ ad an. 1072.

Footnote 603:

Flor. Wig. _Chron._ ad an. 1069.

Footnote 604:

Sim. Dun. _de Gestis Reg._ ad an. 1070.

Footnote 605:

Orderic. Vit. B. iv. c. v.

Footnote 606:

Sim. Dun. _de Gest. Reg._ ad an. 1070. Simeon of Durham died in 1130.

Footnote 607:

See Fordun, _Chronicle_, book v. chap. xiv., ed. 1874, vol. ii. p. 201. The story as here told is too long for insertion, but it is obviously the same, the scene of it being removed to Scotland. In consequence of the marriage being placed under this year by Simeon, it appears in the Chronicle of Melrose and in Fordun under this year, and in the former also under the year 1067 on the authority of the Saxon Chronicle.

Footnote 608:

Ailred, in the battle of the Standard, makes Walter l’Espec say, ‘Angliæ victor Willelmus per Laodoniam, Calatriam, Scotiam usque ad Abernith penetraret.’ The river Avon was the boundary of Laodonia. Between that river and the Carron was the district called Calatria. Dufoter de Calateria witnesses a charter of King David I. in the Glasgow Chartulary, and he appears in the Chartulary of Cambuskenneth as ‘vicecomes de Strivilyn.’

The ford King William crossed was the great entrance into Scotland proper, which King Kenneth fortified when ‘vallavit ripas vadorum Forthin.’

Footnote 609:

Flor. Wig. _Chron._ ad an. 1072.

Footnote 610:

Sim. Dun. _de Gest. Reg._ ad an. 1072.

Footnote 611:

The Ulster Annals have at 1085, ‘Maelsnectai mac Lulaigh Ri Muireb, suam vitam feliciter finivit.’—_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 370.

Footnote 612:

Sim. Dun. _de Gestis Reg._ ad an. 1079.

Footnote 613:

Falkirk is termed in Latin ‘Varia Capella,’ and is still known to the Highlanders by the name of Eaglesbreac, or the ‘speckled church.’ Falkirk, or rather Fawkirk, is the Saxon equivalent, and has the same meaning from A.S. _Fah_, ‘of various colours.’

Footnote 614:

The Ulster Annals have in 1085, ‘Domhnall mac Malcolm Ri Albain, suam vitam infeliciter finivit.’

Footnote 615:

In the end of September, one of the most stormy months in the Scotch seas.

Footnote 616:

Mr. Burton considers that the place meant (Lothene) was the district of Leeds. The author dissents entirely from this, and is surprised that a writer of his acuteness and sagacity should have adopted this view. Scotia was still confined to the country north of the Firth of Forth, which still separated it from Anglia. William the Conqueror, who made the same preparation, went through Laodonia into Scotia. How could Malcolm await the king’s approach at Leeds?

Footnote 617:

Sim. Dun. _de Gest. Reg._ ad an. 1093.

Footnote 618:

Interfectus in Inveraldan.—_Chron. St. A._ Fust tue a Alnewyk et enterrez a Tynmoth.—_Scala. Cron._ _Chron. Picts and Scots_, pp. 175, 206.

Footnote 619:

Mr. Burton gives Malcolm a reign of forty-six years. He says, ‘He is the first monarch of whose coronation we hear. The ceremony was at Scone near Perth—a place which had become the centre of royalty, though it hardly had the features which make us call a town a capital. History now becomes precise enough to fix the day of this event as the 25th of April 1057.’ By history Mr. Burton here means John of Fordun, whose authority ought not to be relied upon for such an event. The statement is quite incorrect. The first authentic record of a coronation at Scone is that of Malcolm the Fourth in 1154, and Malcolm Ceannmor reigned from 17th March 1057-8 to 13th November 1093, the day on which he was slain, or exactly thirty-five years and nearly eight months. The author has preferred narrating the events of his reign as nearly as possible in the words of the Chronicles which record them, as in fact we know nothing beyond what they tell us. All else is mere speculation, and adds nothing to our information. Mr. Burton introduces under this reign some remarks on the effect of the Norman influences and the feudal system upon Scotland. Excellent as these observations are, they are here out of place, and belong more properly to a later period. It was an old notion that feudalism came into Scotland in the reign of Malcolm, but it will not bear a close examination, and these influences were in fact very slight in the kingdom of Scotland proper, which still continued essentially in all its characteristics a Celtic kingdom till the reign of David the First, who was the first feudal monarch of Scotland, and when these influences became permanent. The author must, however, protest against one statement. Mr. Burton says (vol. i. p. 372), ‘Whether the thanes had or had not a distinct feudal existence independent of the power of the Crown to deal with them as official subordinates, it seems clear that the Abthane was placed among them as a royal officer, deriving his dignity and power from the Crown, and that it was his function to see to the collection of the royal dues payable from the landed estates—something, on the whole, bearing a close resemblance to feudal holding and its casualties.’ This account of the Abthane Mr. Burton has too readily adopted from Fordun, without proper examination; for nothing is more certain than that no such office, either in name or in reality, ever existed.