A Short History of Scotland | Page 4

conquest."
The main fact is that out of these and similar dim transactions arose the
claims of Edward I. to the over-lordship of Scotland,--claims that were
urged by Queen Elizabeth's minister, Cecil, in 1568, and were boldly
denied by Maitland of Lethington. From these misty pretensions came
the centuries of war that made the hardy character of the folk of

Scotland. {10}

THE SCOTTISH ACQUISITION OF LOTHIAN.
We cannot pretend within our scope to follow chronologically "the
fightings and flockings of kites and crows," in "a wolf-age, a war-age,"
when the Northmen from all Scandinavian lands, and the Danes, who
had acquired much of Ireland, were flying at the throat of England and
hanging on the flanks of Scotland; while the Britons of Strathclyde
struck in, and the Scottish kings again and again raided or sought to
occupy the fertile region of Lothian between Forth and Tweed. If the
dynasty of MacAlpin could win rich Lothian, with its English-speaking
folk, they were "made men," they held the granary of the North. By
degrees and by methods not clearly defined they did win the Castle of
the Maidens, the acropolis of Dunedin, Edinburgh; and fifty years later,
in some way, apparently by the sword, at the battle of Carham (1018),
in which a Scottish king of Cumberland fought by his side, Malcolm II.
took possession of Lothian, the whole south-east region, by this time
entirely anglified, and this was the greatest step in the making of
Scotland. The Celtic dynasty now held the most fertile district between
Forth and Tweed, a district already English in blood and speech, the
centre and focus of the English civilisation accepted by the Celtic kings.
Under this Malcolm, too, his grandson, Duncan, became ruler of
Strathclyde--that is, practically, of Cumberland.
Malcolm is said to have been murdered at haunted Glamis, in
Forfarshire, in 1034; the room where he died is pointed out by legend
in the ancient castle. His rightful heir, by the strange system of the
Scots, should have been, not his own grandson, Duncan, but the
grandson of Kenneth III. The rule was that the crown went alternately
to a descendant of the House of Constantine (863-877), son of Kenneth
MacAlpine, and to a descendant of Constantine's brother, Aodh
(877-888). These alternations went on till the crowning of Malcolm II.
(1005-1034), and then ceased, for Malcolm II. had slain the unnamed
male heir of the House of Aodh, a son of Boedhe, in order to open the
succession to his own grandson, "the gracious Duncan." Boedhe had
left a daughter, Gruach; she had by the Mormaor, or under-king of the
province of Murray, a son, Lulach. On the death of the Mormaor she
married Macbeth, and when Macbeth slew Duncan (1040), he was

removing a usurper--as he understood it--and he ruled in the name of
his stepson, Lulach. The power of Duncan had been weakened by
repeated defeats at the hands of the Northmen under Thorfinn. In 1057
Macbeth was slain in battle at Lumphanan, in Aberdeenshire, and
Malcolm Canmore, son of Duncan, after returning from England,
whither he had fled from Macbeth, succeeded to the throne. But he and
his descendants for long were opposed by the House of Murray,
descendants of Lulach, who himself had died in 1058.
The world will always believe Shakespeare's version of these events,
and suppose the gracious Duncan to have been a venerable old man,
and Macbeth an ambitious Thane, with a bloodthirsty wife, he himself
being urged on by the predictions of witches. He was, in fact, Mormaor
of Murray, and upheld the claims of his stepson Lulach, who was son
of a daughter of the wrongfully extruded House of Aodh.
Malcolm Canmore, Duncan's grandson, on the other hand, represented
the European custom of direct lineal succession against the ancient
Scots' mode.


CHAPTER IV.
MALCOLM CANMORE--NORMAN CONQUEST.
The reign of Malcolm Canmore (1057-1093) brought Scotland into
closer connection with western Europe and western Christianity. The
Norman Conquest (1066) increased the tendency of the
English-speaking people of Lothian to acquiesce in the rule of a Celtic
king, rather than in that of the adventurers who followed William of
Normandy. Norman operations did not at first reach Cumberland,
which Malcolm held; and, on the death of his Norse wife, the widow of
Duncan's foe, Thorfinn (she left a son, Duncan), Malcolm allied
himself with the English Royal House by marrying Margaret, sister of
Eadgar AEtheling, then engaged in the hopeless effort to rescue
northern England from the Normans. The dates are confused: Malcolm
may have won the beautiful sister of Edgar, rightful king of England, in
1068, or at the time (1070) of his raid, said to have been of savage
ferocity, into Northumberland, and his yet more cruel reprisals for

Gospatric's harrying of Cumberland. In either