In the 11th century, there was still a struggle between the Celtic church and the Roman church. Though the Scottish Primate (the Bishop of St. Andrews) officially looked to Rome, the monks and priests working among the people came out of the Celtic tradition, and many of its practices--such as clergy taking wives--were still pervasive in Scotland. At this point in time, the Irish were just battling their way out from under Norse rule. The infamous king Brian Boru won his many battles just prior to the 11th century. They were a Celtic people with cultural and marriage ties to the Scots, and a common language. Moray was in the grip of a virtual civil war between those loyal to one or other branch of the Cenél Loairn. Findlaech mac Ruadri was a casualty of this conflict, being killed by his nephews, Malcolm and Gillacomgain mac Maelbrigte (MacRuari) in 1020. These two and Lulach succeeded to the mormaership in turn. Lulach's unlce, Macbeth sought refuge at the court of his grandfather, Malcolm II.
By 1031, Macbeth was acting in the capacity of mormaer of Moray at the 'conference of kings' between King Malcolm of Scotland (Macbeth's grandfather) and Cnut, the Danish king of England. This conference took place a yeare before the violent death of Gillacomgain MacRuari, who was still listed as 'mormaer of Moray' in his obituary in the Annals of Ulster. It is known that Malcolm II (who was by now an ageing king) was keen to eliminate potential rival claimants to the succession, so it may be that he appointed Macbeth as mormaer of Moray in opposition to MacBeth's cousin, Gillacomgain MacRuari as a political manoeuvre. In any case, in 1032 Gillacomgain MacRuari was dead, 'burned, and fifty of his men with him' (Annals of Ulster). Suspicion therefore falls on both Macbeth and Malcolm II as being involved in Gillacomgain's death.
Macbeth's historical wife was Gruoch (Lady MacBeth), who was either a niece of Malcolm II or a granddaughter of Kenneth III MacDuff. As for which, her father was 'Boite, son of Kenneth' whose grandson was killed by Malcolm II in 1033 by no record of which Kenneth was Boite's father. Gruoch was born of a royal line at odds with Malcolm and presumably the house of Dunkeld, where he had designated his succession. But she also had reason for hostility towards Macbeth, since she had earlier been the wife of Gillacomgain, burned to death by Macbeth or his followers. The marriage took place before Macbeth's succession and was most likely a political union, designed to bring peace between the contending kindreds of Moray. Malcolm II died in 1034, and Duncan I MacCrinan, his tanaise (another of his grandsons) succeeded to the throne. He was already King of Strathclyde, so with his succession, this ceased to be an independent entity. Malcolm died at a great age and Duncan I MacCrinan succeeded as King of Scots, not MacBeth who led an expedition into Canute's England. Duncan marched north to Thorfinn the Ravenfeeder and to MacBeth in Moray. Duncan's summoned ally was one King of Dublin, Echmarcach Imergi MacRanald of Waterford who was the enemy of Thorfinn. Duncan and Echmarcach Imergi were about to join forces at the River Lossie, near Elgin, MacBeth's Moray force in between. MacBeth attacked Duncan's retiring force and personally fought his way to Duncan's own position. There the two cousins, sword to sword were both wounded. Duncan was only twenty-seven years old; the ancestor of James VI
Duncan's throne was taken from him when he met Macbeth and Thorfinn, the Earl of Orkney, during a battle in 1040 near Elgin where he was killed "in the smith's bothy". Unlike the extensive killings undertaken by his predecessors, King Macbeth had merely exiled Malcolm III Canmore and Donald Ban, the sons of Duncan I MacCrinan. In 1046 Macbeth appeared to lose control of Lothian to Earl Siward (Shakespeare's 'Sweno'), but this reverse was overcome, and by 1050 Macbeth was secure enough in his kingdom to leave it several months to undertake a journey to Rome with Thorfinn. Duncan and Sybilla FitzSiward's sons, whose life had been spared, would gain the sympathy of the English King, Edward the Confessor, and the armed support of Siward, Earl of Northumbria ... to invade Scotland in 1054, and eventually kill Macbeth in Aberdeenshire or Mar on August 15, 1057.
Siward The Saxon Of Northumbria died before the end of 1055, of natural causes. This set back Malcolm's ambitions, and it was three more years until Macbeth's death is confirmed - 'Macbeth, son of Findlaech MacRuari, High King of Alba, slain by Malcolm III Canmore, son of Duncan' [Annals of Tigernach]. '..he was killed at Lumphanan and buried on the island of Iona' [Chronicle of the Kings]. He died on August 15th, 1057 - the seventeenth anniversary of his slaying of Duncan. Macbeth's forces seem to have won at Lumphanan, since Malcolm III Canmore did not succeed to the throne. Macbeth's tanaise and successor was Lulach mac Gillacomgain, his stepson. His short reign (August 1057 to March 1058] came to an end when he was 'slain by Duncan's son, by treachery' (Annals of Tigernach) at Essie in Strathbogie. Scotland's Celtic monarchy died with him. Malcolm III was to reign for thirty five years and be remembered as 'Malcolm Canmore'. He alone founded a dynasty which extinguished any remnants of the Celtic character of the kingship of the Scots.
Malcolm III won a battle at Monymusk in Aberdeenshire against the men of Moray who supported MacBeth's sons and Lulach's son Malsnechtan. When William Rufus succeeded William the Conqueror, he still held Malcolm III's oldest son Duncan II as hostage. The Scots chose Malcolm's brother Donald Ban the fair as king. William Rufus sent the captive Duncan II after 1094 with a great English army and defeated Donald. In the turmoil the three Margaretsons had fled to England with their two sisters and after three years more of Donald. Then William Rufus again, sent Malcolm and St. Margaret's third son Edgar MacMalcolm with an English army. Donald Ban (Edgar's uncle) was defeated again and was captured. Edgar reigned with English support for ten years- with his two brothers and sisters in Rufus' hands. Edgar yielded to the Norse such that the Hebrides and the West Highland seabord by treaty abandoned Iona to the Vikings.
 |
Moreover, we learn from Fordun, in 1097, Edgar appeared in Scotland with an English army, and made fierce war upon Donald Bane, the protegë of King Magnus, who had reascended the throne in 1095, after the fall of Duncan, and this war, which ended with the captivity of Donald, was not brought to an issue, when Magnus arrived in Scotland in 1098. If St. Margaret had never been and the Columban church had continued, the great Reformation of the sixteenth century might never have had to take place. For Scotland's sake Edgar MacMalcolm died in 1107. It was now the fifth son of St. Margaret and Malcolm: Alexander the Fierce. Meanwhile, William Rufus was succeeded by his brother Henry I Beauclerc. |
Henry I married Alexander and St. David's older sister Matilda. The brothers were now brothers-in-law of the King of England. Alexander the Fierce married Henry I's daughter. At Henry's request, David and Alexander was to bring an srmy southwestwards to the Welsh who were rising against their Norman overlords. Alexander did not seek to bring his brother home from exile in the south and even denied him lands in south Scotland which Edgar had left St. David in his will. Alexander, an Augustinian, built Inchcolm abbey for a Columban hermit who rescued him near Culross from a storm swept boat.
Henry also sent David north not to Scotland but to be his governor and viceroy in Cumbria, Galloway, and the old Strathclyde. Leaving Alexander, David returned to his Cumbrian and Borderland duties. St. David's Strathclyde was a separate British kingdom of Strathclyde, stretching from Dumbarton (Alcluyd), down the west side of Scotland and England, almost to Lancaster, whereafter started the Welsh principality. In time, this kingdom broke up and was taken over by the Kings of Scots. Galloway and the Cumbrians always remained semi-independent to Norman overlordship or the Scots crown. St. David married Countess Matilda of Huntingdon (the daughter of Waltheof and Judith) from the south who succeeded Henry I. The Huntingdon earldom maintained manors in eleven different English counties. Many of David's importees to Cumbria and the south during his long reign of twenty-nine years.., influenced the Celtic land. Most were younger sons of Norman nobles from England, Wales, and Ireland and merged with the native ruling class. They were descendents of Norsemen who had invaded and conquered Northern France and the Orkneys. The Scots of the Scots but all Norman families and Celtic marriage (Bruce, Stewart, Lindsay, Fraser, Comyn, Melville, Gordon, Montgomery, Chisholm, Balliol, Baillie) were all imported by St. David I. The Normans had no tradition of any common origin with the people but of caring in any way for the population and knowing nothing of the Celtic chiefs and clansfolk, for the Norman were feudalists. All but the remoter Highlands lost by the change gradually over the entire country. David was to make locally, MacBeth's laws which had fallen into abeyance -practical again. Empress Maud (David's niece) succeeded Henry I but the crown had been usurped in her absence on the Continent, by another of Henry's nephews: Stephen of Blois and there was civil war in England. Stephen was at York and the King of Scots took an army there to challenge the usurper with Maud's supporters to join him. The two armies met at Northallerton between York and Durham. Stephen stayed behind as the Archbishop of York was to lead his forces. Th English never left their defensive position at the Battle of the Standard; a contest between two nations. David never forgave himself for the casualties. During the last years of his reign, Queen Matilda died in 1152 and their only child Henry of Huntingdon died. Henry of Huntingdon and Ada left three young sons as St. David's grandsons: William I the Lion, Malcolm IV the Maiden, and Earl David.
Henry II Curtmantle (c. 1133-1189), son of Empress Maud succeeded the usurping Stephen in 1154.
William the Lion was a lot of trouble with rebellions in Galloway and Ross or with the latter's descendants of the older Celtic line. Henry II dictated William's marriage to Ermengarde de Beaumont. Having founded Arbroath Abbey, William like his grandfather David is recorded as holding assizes from time to time. William the Lion managed to get into a quarrel with the Pope and was actually excommunicated and all of Scotland put under interdict. Uprisings continued in the northern district of Moray and Ross, and the Earldom of Moray was forfeited to the Crown in 1130 (not to be revived until after the Battle of Bannockburn, when the Earldom was conferred by King Robert the Bruce upon his nephew Sir Thomas Randolph).
The twelve-year reign of the young King Malcolm IV the Maiden was marked with wars and insurrections, the most serious of which began shortly after he took the throne in 1153. These events ultimately had a bearing on the creation of the Earldom of Ross and the recognition of a new clan and the rise of the first Lord of the Isles, the great Somerled, from whom the MacDonalds, MacDougalls and other major clans descend and among the West Highland seabord and most of the Hebrides which was of Norse occupation since Edgar's day. Malcolm IV the Maiden became Henry's formal vassal 1157 and gave up all Scots calims to Cumbria and Northumbria in order to keep Huntingdon from Dunkeld; moreover, Galloway in Scotland. William the Lion's son Alexander II had to deal with treachery and King John of England, the youngest son of Henry II. John twice burned the Border shires Berwick, Dunbar, and Haddington and was forced by his nobles to sign the Magna Carta in 1215 when his son Henry III was seven years old. It took Alexander II to Galloway, the Highland west and the north where the Celtic element was in constant revolt. By 1230, Alexander could have pacified the north.