The great success of the Anglo-Danish earl is generally supposed to have reinstated Malcolm on the throne, but no such inference can be drawn from the accounts of contemporary writers, by whom no allusion is made to the Scottish prince; the espousal of the suppliant’s cause by the Confessor, and the directions given by the saintly king to Siward to re-establish the heir of Duncan in his ancestral kingdom, only appearing in the pages of the Anglo-Norman chroniclers for the purpose of indirectly furthering the subsequent feudal claims of the English kings. As the rout of the Scottish army before the walls of Durham, and their subsequent contest with Thorfin Sigurdson hastened the catastrophe of the first king of the House of Atholl, so the unsuccessful issue of his encounter with Earl Siward may have eventually proved fatal to the Mormaor; but Macbeth held his ground for four years, and the grave had long closed over the Danish earl, A. D. 1058. when the defeat and death of his former antagonist at Lumphanan, in Aberdeenshire, removed the first obstacle from the path of the youthful Malcolm.[148] For three or four months the contest still continued to be maintained by Gilcomgain’s son Lulach, the feeble successor of his able kinsman, until his death at Essie in Strathbogie, where he is said to have been betrayed, or to have lost his life through some stratagem of his enemies, put an end for the time to the struggle between the rival houses, and the heir of Duncan without further difficulty obtained possession of the vacant throne.[149]
CHAPTER VI.
The Line of Atholl Restored.
Malcolm the Third (Ceanmore). 1058–1093.
Three centuries had now elapsed since the conquests of the Pictish Angus established the supremacy of his native province, and laid the foundation of the future kingdom of Scotland. During the earlier portion of this period no addition had been made to the territories of the reigning family, the lords of the southern capital of Dunfothir contenting themselves with the vague dignity of “Ardrigh of Alban,” and with excluding from the privileges of “a royal race” the rival chieftains of Dundurn. The incursions of the Northmen, above all the conquests of Thorstein Olaveson, weakened the power of the southern kingdom, and by exhibiting the almost forgotten spectacle of a prince of Dundurn sharing the throne of Scotland with a scion of the royal race, resuscitated the hopes of the northern tribes; the deaths of three kings of the MacAlpin dynasty in the province of Moray testifying to the obstinacy with which the people of that district continued to resist the pretensions of the southern family to the right of Can and Cuairt throughout the north. But the rise of the Jarls of the Orkneys again turned the scale in favour of the south, and from the time when the second Kenneth favoured the claims of Thorfin’s family upon the mainland earldom of their maternal ancestor, Forres ceased to be fatal to his race, and he was at leisure to carry out his projects against the heir of Finella, and to make the first actual addition to the territories of the Scottish kings by bringing the eastern coasts into a more direct dependancy upon the crown. The “Bishopric of the Scots,” co-extensive in jurisdiction with the royal power, henceforth reached to the Dee, and the fatality to the royal race was transferred to the eastern provinces; for the struggle was no longer in the north until the old rivalry again broke out on the rupture of the alliance with the Orkney Jarl.
The fatality attending the northern districts never seems to have extended to the junior branch of the reigning dynasty, whose alliances and expeditions were essentially connected with the south and west. It was over Strath Clyde that Constantine endeavoured to extend his influence; Northumbria was the province from which Indulf wrested Edinburgh; whilst Lothian, or the British frontiers, were fatal to Colin and his brother Eocha. Hence it may be gathered that they were the southern branch of the ruling family, the possessions of the kindred race of Constantine the First probably bringing the latter into more immediate contact with the northern division of the nation. Upon the extinction of the line of Aodh in the person of Constantine the Third, Malcolm the Second appears as the leader of the southern interest, and whilst the children of Kenneth MacDuff eventually became connected with the hereditary enemies of their race, Malcolm, in pursuance of the traditional policy of the south, allied himself with the House of Atholl, annexed Strath Clyde to the crown, and followed up the conquests of Indulf, and the attempts of his own father, Kenneth, upon the neighbouring possessions of the Northumbrian Ealdormen. The preponderance of the south was greatly increased during his reign, and as the conquests of Angus and his successors centred the royal authority in one ruling family, so the great additions made to the territory of the crown during the reign of Kenneth and his son Malcolm fixed that authority in the House of Atholl. The northern policy of these kings was reversed by their descendant Duncan, the result costing him his crown and his life; but a period was now approaching when the lengthened reign of an abler prince was to redeem the incapacity or misfortunes of the first of his House, to extend the power of the crown still further over the hostile provinces of the north, and to bequeath to his descendants a more compact and powerful kingdom, which they were destined gradually to knit together in the iron bonds of feudalism.
The early years of the reign of Malcolm have escaped the notice of the chroniclers of his age, and there is nothing to be recorded beyond the death of Thorfin Sigurdson, A. D. 1064. when the dominions of the Jarl reverted to his two sons, whilst Ingebiorge, his widow, became the wife of the youthful king.[150] Ever since the days of Ethelred and Edwin, when the princes of Deira and the race of Ida contended for the dominion of Northumbria, the territories of the Picts and Scots had afforded a frequent asylum to all whom the chances of war or of political intrigue banished from the land of the Saxon; but in the troubled and distracted period then impending over England, the neighbouring kingdom beyond the Tweed was destined to receive a band of more than usually illustrious exiles. The first amongst the fugitives who sought the protection of the Scottish king was Tosti, Earl of Yorkshire and Northumberland. A. D. 1061. A friendship had long existed between the king and the earl, who were united in the bonds of “sworn brotherhood,” a tie which seems to have been no obstacle to the attacks of Malcolm upon the earldom of his sworn brother when the latter was absent upon a pilgrimage to Rome; though it may have softened the resentment of the earl, who passed over unnoticed this foray on the people of his earldom, whom he plundered and oppressed, on his own part, with scarcely less hostility, under a show of rightful authority. At length in the autumn of 1065 the whole of the north of England rose against their earl, put to death the ministers of his tyranny—descendants of the Anglo-Danes—and chose Morkar, the brother of Edwin, Earl of Mercia, in his place; whilst Tosti, escaping with difficulty from the first outbreak of their fury, took refuge with his wife at the Court of Flanders. Here he organized a plan for winning back his earldom, and sailing along the English coasts in the following March, he swept some booty from the Isle of Wight, but failing in an attempt to plunder Lindesey, where he was met and defeated by his rival Morkar, he was obliged to seek the protection of his old ally Malcolm. The Scottish king, however, does not appear to have shared in the intrigues of Tosti, nor did he take any part in the memorable expedition of the Earl and Harald Hardrade against England, resulting, A. D. 1066. as is well known, in the defeat and death of both invaders in the battle of Stamford Bridge.[151]
Some years elapsed after his victory at Hastings before the power of the conqueror was thoroughly established throughout the northern provinces of England, and even then it is doubtful whether it ever extended, except in a qualified degree, over the modern county of Cumberland, or over Northumbria beyond the Tyne.[152] He was well aware of the secret disaffection existing amongst the magnates of his new people, but it formed no part of his policy to drive them in a body into open rebellion, and they were retained in a species of honourable captivity at his court, or accompanied him in his expeditions into Normandy—nominally indeed as dignified retainers, but in reality as hostages for the peace of their respective districts—whilst year after year saw one or more of the nobles of English birth incarcerated or put to death on one pretext or another. The vengeance of William might be postponed, but it was never forgotten, nor did he ever pass over an opportunity of crushing the man whom his sagacious but unsparing policy had once marked as dangerous.
A. D. 1068.
It was to avoid some such ebullition of William’s wrath, that, in the summer of 1068, Edgar the Atheling, with his mother and two sisters, and many of the northern lords who had supported his claims after the death of Harold, deemed it expedient to cross the borders into Scotland. There appears to have been an abortive attempt at a rising in that year in which the fugitives may have been implicated, and, to curb the disaffection of the men of Morkar’s earldom, William built two castles at York, garrisoning them with a strong detachment of Norman soldiery. A. D. 1069. In the ensuing winter he dispatched Robert Comyn, the first of a name destined to become celebrated in the annals of the neighbouring kingdom, to preserve order amongst the turbulent Northumbrians beyond the Tyne; 28th Jan. but the Norman baron was surprised and slain at Durham, before he reached his earldom, out of seven hundred of his followers but one escaping with life. The perpetrators of this outrage then marched upon York, taking with them Edgar, who had joined them from Scotland, and were entering into a negotiation with the citizens of that place, when they were discomfited by the sudden arrival of William from the south, who gave up the city to be plundered, as a punishment for the disaffection of its inhabitants.[153]
Sept.