The authorities for the history of Macbeth know nothing of Earl Thorfinn and his conquests. On the other hand the Sagas equally ignore Macbeth and his doings, and had to disguise the fact that Thorfinn was attacking his own cousin, and one who had derived his right to the kingdom from the same source from which Thorfinn had acquired his to the earldom of Caithness, by concealing his identity under the contemptuous name of Karl or Kali Hundason,[[580]] while some of the chronicles have transferred to Macbeth what was true of Thorfinn, that he was also a grandson of King Malcolm,[[581]] and a Welsh Chronicle denominates him king of Orkney.[[582]] The truth seems to be that the conquest of the provinces south of Moray, which took place after this battle, was the joint work of Thorfinn and Macbeth, and that they divided the kingdom of the slain Duncan between them: Thorfinn receiving the districts which had formerly been under his father, with the addition of those on the east coast extending as far as Fife or the Firth of Tay. According to the Orkney-inga Saga, he possessed ‘nine earldoms in Scotland, the whole of the Sudreys, and a large riki in Ireland,’ and this is confirmed by the St. Olaf’s Saga, which tells us that ‘he had the greatest riki of any earl of Orkney; he possessed Shetland and the Orkneys, the Sudreys, and likewise a great riki in Scotland and Ireland.’[[583]] Macbeth obtained those in which Duncan’s strength mainly lay—the districts south and west of the Tay, with the central district in which Scone, the capital, is situated. Cumbria and Lothian probably remained faithful to the children of Duncan.
A.D. 1040-1057.
Macbeth, son of Finnlaec, king of Scotia.
The kingdom had thus hardly passed from the last male descendant of the founder of the Scottish dynasty to a new family, when it was again transferred to rulers of a different race. The whole of the northern part found itself under the rule of the Norwegian earl of Orkney, while the centre of the kingdom, in which the capital was situated, accepted as its king the hereditary ruler of Moray, a district the connection of which with the kingdom proper had hitherto been both slender and uncertain, who reigned over these districts for seventeen years. It is difficult to understand how a king who had no hereditary claim upon their allegiance should have been able to maintain his possession of the throne for so many years in a part of the country which was the stronghold of the Scots. That he should have slain his predecessor was no unusual circumstance, and would equally have excluded many of his predecessors. His only connection with the Scottish dynasty was, that his wife was Gruoch, the daughter of that Boete or Bode, son of Kenneth, whose son or grandson had been slain in 1032 by Malcolm mac Kenneth, and through her some claim upon the allegiance of the Scots seems to have been based. That he was not the tyrant he is represented by Fordun to have been seems very certain. There is no trace of it in any authentic record. On the contrary, St. Berchan speaks kindly of him. Thus—
After slaughter of Gael, after slaughter of Galls,
The liberal king will possess Fortrenn.
The red one was fair, yellow, tall;
Pleasant was the youth to me.
Brimful (or plenteous) was Alban east and west,
During the reign of the fierce red one.
And we find Macbeth son of Finnlaec, and Gruoch daughter of Bode, king and queen of the Scots, granting the lands of Kyrkness to the Culdees of Lochleven from motives of piety, and for the benefit of their prayers; and Macbeth, again, granting the lands of Bolgyne to the same Culdees, ‘with the utmost veneration and devotion.’[[584]] That his hold over this part of the country, whether from personal character or from his claim through his wife, was quite equal at least to that of the family of the lay abbot of Dunkeld, we find from the unsuccessful attempt made by the latter to drive him from the throne a few years after his accession. Tighernac gives us the short but significant statement, that in the year 1045 a battle took place between the men of Alban on both sides, in which Crinan, abbot of Dunkeld, was slain, and many with him, viz., nine times twenty heroes.[[585]]