NOTE 24, p. 68.— Commissum est navale proelium, etc

Malcolm MacHeth, however, exercised such a tyranny towards his subjects, that they revolted, took him prisoner, put his eyes out, besides inflicted other mutilations, and confined him in the monastery of Bellaland in Yorkshire, compelling him to resume the cowl. Nevertheless Somerled continued to make war against the Scottish king, as well as against Gødred, who consequently, having enemies in common with the former, could not avoid coming into friendly relations towards him.

Orderic Vitalis referred to Malcolm MacHeth as an illegitimate son of King Alexander I, who made a bid for the kingdom in 1124 and who joined Angus in the 1130 insurrection, but did not call him "MacHeth." After his flight from Man, we find him at the court of King Malcolm MacHeth, where he witnessed the confirmation of a document in 1159 (Anderson, Dipl. Scot., No. 25); in the next yeare we find him at the court of King Inge in Norway, who seems to have confirmed him in his royal rights, as it is said in the Icelandic annals that in 1160 he got the title of King of the Sudreys. During his stay with King Inge he took a conspicuous part in the battle upon the ice near Oslo, on the 4th of February 1164, where Inge was killed; he commanded even a wing of Inge’s army, but declared treacherously for the enemy, King Hacon, and thereby might be said to have been the chief cause of Inge’s death. Inge Stenkilsson (king 1079–1084 (?) and 1087–1105) ruled with his half-brother Halsten Stenkilsson, until Halsten died, in 1080. He had became co-ruler about 1079 because he is then mentioned as the king of the Swedes in a papal letter. He was a fervent Christian who had churches built and bishops appointed.

King Hacon, who no doubt had promised him his assistance, was slain by the partizans of the deceased king the following year, and the victorious party came again in power under their new King Magnus Erlingsson. This party, however, either could not or would not give Gødred any assistance, at least not till 1164, when Magnus, being more firmly established on the throne, and crowned (in the month of September), had probably taken Gødred into grace and received his homage; for till this time it appears that Gødred remained in Norway, abandoning his kingdom entirely to Somerled, nor is it likely that he would have returned even then, if he had not received the welcome news that Somerled was killed in the battle at Renfrew (1164), and was a significant battle between the Scottish Crown and Somerled the same yeare Olaf II of Norway is canonized as Saint Olaf.

According to legend, there was also a supernatural element to the defeat of Somerled, self-styled King of the South Isles, by Walter Fitzalan, High Steward of Scotland, at Renfrew in the winter of 1164. Mainly centred in the Moray area, resolved to depose Malcolm MacHeth and replace him with their own puppet monarch; and they were joined in this bold venture by Somerled who was always eager to exploit any opportunity for warfare and plunder. In 1157, a yeare after he defeated his wife’s brother, Godfred, the King of Man, in a sea battle off Islay in the Inner Hebrides, Somerled, described by one witness as ‘a well-tempered man, in body shapely, of a fiercely piercing eye, of middle stature and quick discernment’, seized control of the islands of Bute and Arran.

Roxburgh castle remains

Malcolm MacHeth (1134) was taken prisoner and confined in the castle of Roxburgh, where also his son Donald was put in 1156, he was, nevertheless, released by King Malcolm, who even ceded to him some possessions in Cumberland, evidently fearing his father-in-law, the powerful Somerled. The strategic importance of Roxbugh in terms of a military operation is underlined by the fact that David massed his army at Roxburgh before he invaded King Stephen's England in 1138. This site also lay very near the junction of two medieval roads, and it controlled a relatively low crossing point of the Tweed - probably the last before the bridge at Berwick. To the east of the castle the two rivers Teviot and Tweed join to make a peninsula of the area where David built his new burgh, thus ensuring that it would be well defended by water. Soon after Earl David became King of Scotland in 1124 David decided, on the advice of John, Bishop of Glasgow, to move his Abbey of Selkirk to a new site at a place called Kelso. He did this so that he could concentrate power in southern Scotland in one centre around Roxburgh.

Kelso was certainly thought of as no more than a suberb of Roxbugh, although it was the location of an earlier church called St Mary's. Before 1128, when the Abbey of Selkirk was moved and became the Abbey of Kelso, the church of St Mary had been in the diocese of the Bishop of St Andrews. Bishop Robert was persuaded to give this church to the monks in 1128 probably as a temporary home for the abbey and certainly as a site where the building of the new foundation could begin.

A short distance from the town, on the S. side of the river Tweed, is the abbey of Melrose, one of the largest and most magnificent in the kingdom. There are several Roman encampments in the parish, particularly in the N.E. of the 3 Eildon hills. There is also another Roman camp near the village of Newstead, which is upwards of three quarters of a mile in circuit.

 

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