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.
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]]