Easter Ross
The Mormaer or Mormaerdom of Ross refers to a medieval Gaelic lordship in northern Scotland, roughly between the Oykell and the Beauly. It was probably confined entirely to Easter Ross to an area between the Dornoch Firth and the Cromarty Firth, i.e. the Tarbet peninsula the and the parishes of Kiltearn (modern EVANTON or Baile Eòghainn in Gaelic) and Alness and north-west of Dingwall.
The Cromarty Firth forms an arm of the North Sea (German Ocean) in Scotland, which lies between Norway and Denmark in the east, UK in the west, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France in the south. From where it joins Moray Firth, Cromarty Firth extends inland in a westerly and then south-westerly direction for a distance of 19 miles. Excepting at Nigg Bay, on the northern shore, and at Cromarty Bay, on the southern shore, where it is about 5 miles (8 kilometres) wide (due north and south), and at Alness Bay, where it is 2 miles wide, it has an average width of 1 mile, forming one of the safest and most commodious anchorages in the north of Scotland. Besides other streams it receives the Allt Graad, Coruon, Peffery, Sgitheach and Alness village, and the principal places on its shores are Dingwall near the head, Cromarty near the mouth, Kiltearn, Invergordon and Kilmuir on the north. Alness is divided by the River Averon, it is in two parishes, Alness in the west and Rosskeen in the east. Historically these were in different presbyteries.
An offshoot of the North Sea is the Skagerrak, between Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, which connects to the Baltic Sea through the Kattegat, Öresund, the Great Belt and the Little Belt. In the south, the North Sea connects with the rest of the Atlantic through the Strait of Dover into the English Channel and in the north through the Norwegian Sea. Major rivers that drain into the North Sea include the Forth (at Edinburgh), Elbe (at Cuxhaven), the Weser (at Bremerhaven), the Ems at Emden, the Rhine and Meuse (at Rotterdam), the Scheldt (at Flushing), the Thames, and the Humber (at Hull).
The North Sea or German Sea name originates from its relationship to the land of the Frisians. They live directly to the south of the North Sea, and to the west of the East Sea (the Baltic Sea), the former South Sea (Zuiderzee, today's IJsselmeer) and the today reclaimed Middle Sea (Middelzee). The bed of the North Sea forms two basins. The main northern one lies to the north of a ridge between north Norfolk and Frisia. The southern basin, if not flooded, would now drain towards the Strait of Dover thence to the English Channel.
Macbeth was born in 1005, his father was Findlaech mac Ruadri, mormar of Moray. Macbeth was the king's given name, rather than a 'son of' family name. It derives from the Gaelic mac beatha meaning 'son of life'. His lineage can be traced back through three and a half centuries to the CenélLoairn (clan of Loarn) of Dalraida. The CenélLoairn disappear from the historical record after the Pictish onslaught of Dalraida in 736. Their descendants reappear in the late tenth century as an hereditary dynasty of mormaers (an equivalent of the English earl or thane) of Moray. They presumably migrated from their traditional lands of Lorn up the Great Glen to the region around the Moray Firth. The mormaers had the status of subject kings under the high-kings of the Scots and Picts.
Máel Coluim mac Donnchada (anglicised Malcolm III) (1038–13 November 1093) was King of Scots. He was the eldest son of Donnchad mac Crínáin. While often known as Malcolm Canmore, the earliest epithet used for him is Long-Neck.[2] It appears that the real Malcolm Canmore was this Máel Coluim's great-grandson Máel Coluim IV. Máel Coluim's long reign, spanning five decades, did not mark the beginning of the Scoto-Norman age, nor can Máel Coluim's reign be seen as extending the authority of Alba's kings over the Scandinavian, Norse-Gael and Gaelic north and west of Scotland. The areas under the control of the Kings of Scots did not advance much beyond the limits set by Máel Coluim mac Cináeda until the 12th century and 13th century. Máel Coluim's main achievement is often thought to match that of Cináed mac Ailpín, in continuing a line which would rule Scotland for many years.
Máel Coluim's father was killed by Mac Bethad mac Findláich, near Elgin, on 15 August 1040. Although William Shakespeare's Macbeth presents Máel Coluim as a grown man and his father as an old one, it appears that Donnchad was still young, and Máel Coluim and his brother Domnall Bán were children. Máel Coluim's family did attempt to overthrow Mac Bethad in 1045, but Máel Coluim's grandfather Crínán was killed in the attempt.
Crínán of Dunkeld (died 1045) was the lay abbot of the diocese of Dunkeld, and perhaps the Mormaer of Atholl. This custom existed principally in the Frankish Empire from the eighth century till the ecclesiastical reforms of the eleventh. Charles Martel was the first to bestow extensive ecclesiastical property upon laymen, political friends and soldiers. Crínán was progenitor of the House of Dunkeld, the dynasty who would rule Scotland until the later 13th century and was married to Bethoc, daughter of King Malcolm II of Scotland (reigned 1005-1034). As Malcolm II had no son, the strongest hereditary claim to the Scottish throne descended through Princess Bethóc ingen Maíl Coluim meic Cináeda, and Crinán's eldest son Duncan I (reigned 1034-1040), became King of Scots. Some sources indicate that Malcolm II designated Duncan as his successor under the rules of tanistry.
It is possible that Princess Bethóc had previously been married to 14th Jarl Sigurd of Orkney, and to Findláech, the Mormaer of Moireabh. This Jarl Sigurd a key figure in the Battle of Clontarf. He was born around AD 960, and is mentioned in the Orkneyinga Saga and other Medieval sources. According to the 13th century Njal's Saga, Gormflaith prompted her son, Sigtrygg Silkbeard, into getting Sigurd to fight against her former husband, Brian Ború: "...she sent him to Earl Sigurd to ask for support... Sigtrygg sailed back to Ireland and told his mother that the jarl had joined him." The 12th century Irish source, the Cogadh Gaedhil re Gallaibh, records the events of the battle. The "foreigners and Leinstermen" were led by Brodir of the Isle of Man and Sigurd, and the battle lasted all day. Though Brian was killed in the battle, the Irishmen ultimately drove back their enemies into the sea. Sigurd also died that day at Clontarf, in 1014. But the Battle of Clontarf took place on Good Friday in 1014 (April 23) between the forces of Brian Boru, the king of Munster and High King of Ireland, and forces led by the King of Leinster, Mael Mordha: comprised mainly of his own men, Viking mercenaries from Dublin and the Orkney Islands led by his cousin Sigtrygg, as well as the one rebellious king from the province of Ulster. Brian Boru immediately imprisoned Gormlaith, and went on a series of raids around Dublin in order to tie down any Irish who would attempt to join the Viking forces. Meanwhile Gormlaith contacted Sigurd Lodvesson, the Viking earl of the Orkney Isles, to come to her aid. He not only agreed, but in turn contacted Brodir of the Isle of Man.
Crinán of Dunkeld's second son, Maldred of Allerdale, held the title of Lord of Cumbria. Crinán was killed in battle in 1045 at Dunkeld. Gospatric, a feudal earl of Northumberland, fled England for Scotland in 1072 after losing his title for taking part in a massacre at Durham; he was given the Stewardship of Dunbar by Malcolm III. While the title of Hereditary Lay Abbot was a feudal position that was often exercised in name only, Crinán does seem to have acted as Abbot in charge of the monastery in his time. In the 11th century, the Celtic Abbacy of Dunkeld became an appanage of the Crown and subsequently descended to the Earls of Fife. Isabella of Fife, granddaughter of Joan of Acre resigned the title in 1371.
Princess Bethóc is not to be confused with Bethóc ingen Domnaill Bain meic Donnchada, daughter of, in his native Gaelic language he was known as Domnall Bán which means Fair Donald who was born about 1033 and became Mormaer (or Earl) of Gowrie about 1060. He was the son of Duncan I, brother of the previous king Malcolm III, and uncle of his successor Duncan II. This Domnaill Bain (Donald III) took the throne of Scotland in 1093 on the death of his brother Malcolm III, in a joint rule with his nephew Edmund I. No record exists that indicates that Donald was ever crowned. Malcolm's son Duncan II deposed Donald III in May 1094 with the help of English troops, who then withdrew. Donald III and Edmund then rose against Duncan, killed him, and retook the throne the following November, with Donald ruling the north of the kingdom and Edmund ruling the south. Donald III and Edmund were deposed by King Edgar in 1097, again with the help of English troops.
Of Shakespeare's version, claims that Donnchad was married to a niece of Siward, Earl of Northumbria, (Sigurd the Dane) but an earlier king-list gives her the Gaelic name Suthen. It was assumed that Máel Coluim passed most of Mac Bethad's seventeen yeare reign in the Kingdom of England at the court of Edward the Confessor. If Máel Coluim's mother took her sons into exile, either in 1040 or in 1045, she is likely to have gone north, to the court of Thorfinn Sigurdsson, Earl of Orkney, an enemy of Mac Bethad's family, the Mormaers of Moray, and perhaps Donnchad's kinsman by marriage.
At some point in his life Donald married, and had a daughter, Bethóc, through this marriage. Bethóc married and had children of her own. Bethóc's husband was Ughtred of Tynedale, an Anglo-Saxon noble and lord in Northumbria. They had a daughter Hextilda, who married Richard de Comyn, a noble of Norman descent. Their descendants, the Comyns became important in Scotland, for example obtaining the earldom of Buchan by marriage, and lordship of Badenoch. However, Bethóc's descendants did not make a bid for the Scottish throne until 1290, when her descendant John Comyn of Badenoch, heir of William Comyn, son of Hextilda, was one of claimants to the Scottish throne after the death of Margaret of Norway.
Following Macbeth's defeat of Malcolm's father King Duncan I in 1040, the infant Malcolm was sent to Northumbria to be guarded by Siward (Sigurd the Dane). In 1053, Edward the Confessor agreed to assist the now adult Malcolm in taking the throne of Scotland, and designated Siward as leader of the English army. Siward's first incursion met with limited success, capturing the fortress Dunsinane in 1054, but Macbeth was not decisively defeated until 1057 at Lumphanan. One of Siward's own sons, Osberne, was killed during the campaign in Scotland. Malcolm's son King David I would later marry Siward's granddaughter Matilda.
Siward's descendants also included James I of England, the only child of Mary, Queen of Scots and ruled in Scotland as James VI from 24 July 1567 until the death of Elizabeth I of England in 1603. James VI was born the Lord High Steward. From the late 12th century, the office was considered to be bound with the Earldom of Leicester. When the House of Lancaster (i.e English in Wales) ascended the throne in 1399, Henry IV made his second son, Thomas of Lancaster, Duke of Clarence, Lord High Steward. The Lord High Steward of Ireland in contrast is a hereditary title, also known as the Hereditary Great Seneschal, vested in the Earl of Shrewsbury, Waterford and Talbot, who is the Premier Earl of Ireland Chetwynd-Talbot. His Deputy is the Vice Great Seneschal of Ireland, a hereditary position vested in the Lord Steward or Hereditary Seneschal for Tyrconnell (Donegal, Sligo, Leitrim, Fermanagh).