History Of Scotland Vol. 1 - Part 2

( Originally Published 1909 )

Kenneth Macalpine: his Successors Malcolm I. obtains possession of Cumberland: Successors of Malcolm—Kenneth III., and his Successors—Malcolm II.

WHEN Kenneth Macalpine joined in his person the crowns both of the Picts and Scots, he became an adversary fit to meet and match with the warlike Saxons. The country united under his sway was then called for the first time Scotland, which name it has ever since retained. He strove fiercely to carry his banner of the Dalriads into Lothian, of which he perhaps vindicated the sovereignty, as the contested country had been part of the territory of the Picts till wrested from them by Ida. It is besides recorded of Kenneth Macalpine that he was a legislator ; which may be doubtless true, although the laws published as his are forgeries.

Kenneth might be justly termed the first king of Scot-land, being the first who possessed such a territory as had title to be termed a kingdom, since it would be absurd to bestow the term of sovereigns upon the Seoto-Irish chiefs of Argyleshire, in whose obscure genealogy historians must, however, trace the original roots of the royal line.

Not to incur the charge of lèze majesté, however, brought by Sir George Mackenzie, the king's advocate of the day, against Dr. Stillingfleet, for abridging the royal pedigree by some links, we will briefly record that by the best authorities twenty-eight of these Dalriadic kings or chiefs reigned successively in Argyleshire, where the old tower of Dunstaffnage is said to have been their chief residence. Kenneth Macalpine was the twenty-ninth in descent from Fergus the son of Eric, the first of the race.

The descendants of this fortunate prince pass us in gloomy and obscure pageantry, like those of Banquo on the theatre. In mentioning their names, we shall only take notice of such incidents in their several reigns as are necessary either to illustrate the future history of Scotland, or the manners of the period of which we treat. We shall thus avoid the disgusting task of recording obscure and ferocious contests, fought by leaders with unpronounceable names, from which the reader, to use the expression of Milton on a similar occasion, gains no more valuable information than if he were perusing the events of a war maintained between kites and crows.

In 859, Kenneth was succeeded by his brother Donald; for the mode of inheritance both in the Scottish and Pictish royal families was favorable to nepotical succession, and the brother of a deceased monarch was often called to the crown in preference to the son, in order, it may be supposed, to escape the inconvenience of frequent minorities. Of Donald there is nothing to be said, and of his nephew Constantine, son of Kenneth, very little. The latter died defending his territories against an invasion of the Danes, who were now the curse of the age; or, if tradition be believed, he was made prisoner while alive, and sacrificed in a cave on the seacoast in the parish of Crail, to the manes of the Danish leader, who had fallen in the fray. The successors of Constantine were Aodh, Eocha, and Grig, who reigned jointly; after them reigned a Donald, called the fourth; and a third Constantine. Of the four first it is only necessary to say, that their reigns displayed the same scenes of blood and slaughter, with the same unsatisfactory result, which disgust us in the annals of the period. Constantine the Third is only remarkable for having confederated with the seaking Anlaf to invade England, and shared the defeat which the Norsemen received from Athelstane, at the great battle of Brunnanburgh. Escaped from the slaughter of that bloody day, in which he lost a gallant son, Constantine retired into a cloister, and became a chief of Culdees, in the fortieth year of his reign, 952.

Malcolm, the first of a name that is famous in Scottish annals, enlarged his territories by a valuable acquisition. We have not yet had occasion to mention that, opposite to the British kingdom of Strath-Clyde, there lay another kingdom of the same nation called Raged, also consisting of British tribes, and much renowned in the lays of their bards.

This separate state, consisting of Cumberland and Westmoreland, made a stout resistance to the foreigners; nor were the Saxon princes of the period ever able thoroughly to subdue them. Edmund the Elder, of England, wasted this little kingdom by way of punishing its insubordination; he put out the eyes of the five sons of Dunmail, its last British king, and bestowed the territory on Malcolm, king of Scots, on condition that he should become his ally, and assist him by sea and land in defence of his kingdom. Thus by a singular anomaly, while England was in possession of the Lothians, at present an indubitable part of Scotland, the king of Scots possessed Cumberland and Westmoreland, now an undisputed part of the territories of England.

Of the reigns of Indulf and Duff, princes who succeeded Malcolm, little is known. But the death of Culen, the third successor of Malcolm, proves the curious fact, that the Britons of Strath-Clyde were still independent. The violation of a British maiden of royal birth gave occasion to a war between them and the Scots. The Britons were victorious, and Culen fell in the year 970.

Kenneth III., son of Malcolm l., succeeded to the Scottish throne. He subjected to his sway the Britons of Strath.-Clyde, and thus added materially to the strength of his king-dom. It appears, however, that Strath-Clyde was governed by separate though tributary princes for some time after it was joined to the realm of Scotland. In the reign of this prince the Danes entered the Firth of Tay with a large fleet. They were met by the Scottish king, and a decisive battle took place at Loncarty. The Danes fought with their accustomed fury, and compelled the two Scottish wings to retire behind the centre, which, commanded by Kenneth in person, stood firm, and decided the fate of the day. Monumental stones, barrows filled with the relics and arms of those who fell, attest the truth of this battle, remembered yet for the obstinacy with which it was fought, notwithstanding which some historians have affected incredulity on the subject.

Kenneth III. came to his end by female treachery. He had put to death the only son of Fenella, wife of the maormor or viceroy of Kincardineshire. Fenella, though the execution had been a deserved one, did not the less readily determine on revenging her son's death. She invited Kenneth to lodge in her house near Fettercairn in the Mearns : here he was assassinated. The inhospitable murderess escaped from her castle (of which the vestiges are still visible) down a valley, still called Strath-Fenella, to a place in the parish of Fordun, where she was seized and put to death.

The sons of two of Kenneth the Third's predecessors strove for the Scottish crown. One of these was Constantine IV., son of Culen, who assumed the title of king, but was defeated and slain in 995 by Kenneth IV., son of Duff, called the Grim. He was in turn dethroned and slain by Malcolm, son of Kenneth the Third, after eight years spent in broils and bloodshed. This was in 1003.

The victor, Malcolm II., was an able prince and renowned leader. He had much trouble from invasions of the Danes. In 1010 they made a descent upon Moray, and the king of Scots met them in battle. The fury of the Northmen prevailed, and the Scots retreated to the vicinity of a chapel dedicated to Saint Moloch. Here Malcolm, in despair of earthly aid, threw himself from his horse, and made a vow to found a cathedral church to the same tutelar power (how-ever ambiguous the sound of his name) provided he should obtain the victory by his intercession. Rising from his knees, Malcolm fought with enthusiasm, slew the Danish king, and gained a complete victory. The church, dedicated to Saint Moloch, was built, and is still standing. Twenty-three feet is said to have been selected for the length of the chancel, that it might correspond with that of the king's gigantic spear, for so ran an article of his vow. Several Danish skulls, the relics of distinguished champions, were built up in the wall of the church of Mortlach. Sueno, the Danish monarch, renewed the attempt at invasion by detaching a fleet and army under Camus, one of the most renowned of the vikingar, or kings of the ocean; but he was defeated and slain at Aberlemno, where a tall monumental stone, highly sculptured, still preserves remembrance of the action.

Sueno, disheartened by so many defeats, seems to have entered into some convention with Malcolm II. for abstaining from future invasion, and abandoning a species of castle which he had established in Moray called the Burgh-head. It was highly to the honor both of prince and people, that these northern warriors, who successfully annoyed the sea-coasts of every other country in Europe, and had established a Danish dynasty on the throne of England, were taught by successive defeats to shun the fatal shores of Scotland. It was, probably, the renown attendant on the victories over the Danes, as well as a successful campaign against the Saxons, which gained to Malcolm a large and valuable accession to his territories. Eadulf-Cudel, earl of Northumberland, in 1020 ceded to the Scottish king the rich district of Lothene or Lothian, including not only the whole of the three provinces now called so, but Berwickshire and the lower part of Teviotdale as high perhaps as Melrose upon the Tweed. The condition of this cession was lasting friend-ship, afterward apparently explained into homage, which the Scottish kings certainly paid for this district of Lothian as well as for other possessions in England, to the sovereigns of that country.

Malcolm died peaceably in 1033, and was succeeded by "The gracious Duncan," the same who fell by the poniard of Macbeth. On reading these names, every reader must feel as if brought from darkness into the blaze of noonday; so familiar are we with the personages whom we last named, and so clearly and distinctly we recall the events in which they are interested, in comparison with any doubtful and misty views which we can form of the twilight times before and after that fortunate period. But we must not be blinded by our poetical enthusiasm, nor add more than due importance to legends, because they have been woven into the most striking tale of ambition and remorse that ever struck awe into a human bosom. The genius of Shakespeare having found the tale of Macbeth in the Scottish chronicles of Holinshed, adorned it with a lustre similar to that with which a level beam of the sun often invests some fragment of glass, which, though shining at a distance with the lustre of a diamond, is by a near investigation discovered to be of no worth or estimation.

Duncan, by his mother Beatrice a grandson of Malcolm II., succeeded to the throne on his grandfather's death, in 1033: he reigned only six years. Macbeth, his near relation, also a grandchild of Malcolm II., though by the mother's side, was stirred up by ambition to contest the throne with the possessor. The lady of Macbeth also, whose real name was Graoch, had deadly injuries to avenge on the reigning prince. She was the granddaughter of Kenneth IV., killed in 1003, fighting against Malcolm II. ; and other causes for revenge animated the mind of her who has been since painted as the sternest of women. The old annalists add some instigations of a supernatural kind to the influence of a vindictive woman over an ambitious husband. Three women, of more than human stature and beauty, appeared to Macbeth in a dream or vision, and hailed him successively by the titles of thane of Cromarty, thane of Moray, which the king afterward bestowed on him, and finally by that of king of Scots : this dream, it is said, in-spired him with the seductive hopes so well expressed in the drama.

Macbeth broke no law of hospitality in his attempt on Duncan's life. He attacked and slew the king at a place called Bothgowan, or the Smith's House, near Elgin, in 1039, and not, as has been supposed, in his own castle of Inverness. The act was bloody, as was the complexion of the times; but, in very truth, the claim of Macbeth to the throne, according to the rule of Scottish succession, was better than that of Duncan. As a king, the tyrant so much exclaimed against was, in reality, a firm, just, and equitable prince.

Apprehensions of danger from a party which Malcolm, the eldest son of the slaughtered Duncan, had set on foot in Northumberland, and still maintained in Scotland, seem, in process of time, to have soured the temper of Macbeth, and rendered him formidable to his nobility. Against Mac-duff, in particular, the powerful maormor of Fife, he had uttered some threats which occasioned that chief to fly from the court of Scotland. Urged by this new counsellor, Siward, the Danish earl of Northumberland, invaded Scotland in the year 1054, displaying his banner in behalf of the banished Malcolm. Macbeth engaged the foe in the neighborhood of his celebrated castle of Dunsinane. He was defeated, but escaped from the battle, and was slain at Lumphananan in 1056.

Very slight observation will enable us to recollect how much this simple statement differs from that of the drama, though the plot of the latter is consistent enough with the inaccurate historians from whom Shakespeare drew his materials. It might be added, that early authorities show us no such persons as Banquo and his son Fleance, nor have we reason to think that the latter ever fled further from Macbeth than across the flat scene, according to the stage direction. Neither were Banquo nor his son ancestors of the house of Stuart. All these things are now known; but the mind retains pertinaciously the impression made by the impositions of genius. While the works of Shakespeare are read, and the English language subsists, History may say what she will, but the general reader will only recollect Macbeth as a sacrilegious usurper, and Richard as a deformed murderer.