Chapter 25

[128]Triocha-cedis the proper name, often renderedCantred, but erroneously. The IrishTriocha-cedwas supposed to be a collection of thirtyBaille-biataghs, or hundreds, each supposed to contain four hundred and eighty Irish acres, thus constituting aBaronyofnominally14,400 Irish acres (A.F.M., 1225,NoteS). TheCantred—the hundredtrefsor villages—belonged properly to Wales, and was supposed to contain 25,600 Welsh acres, answering rather to the ContinentalCanton. The Irish and WelshCantred, therefore, must not be considered identical. ForThanes,V. Appendix N.[129]There appears to have been the same difference amongst the ancient Irish between theBrugaidhand theBiotagh, as between theBonderandLandbuamongst the Scandinavians. TheBrugaidhwas originally the free or adopted member of the Clan orCyn, tracing his origin either really or theoretically to the founder of the race, and hence entitled to his free allotment, orduchas, of the tribe land; the freeholder, in short, deriving his name from hisBrugh,Burh, or separate house, just as theBu-ander(Bonder) from hisBu—theHus-bond;V.“Hy Fiachrach,”passim. The Biotagh was the man who held his land by payingBiodh—Feormorrent—the colonusGeneator tenant farmer, dwelling in the baille or village. The Brugaidh might have complained, like his type the Bonder, at a very early period, of being changed into a Biotagh or Land-Bu—made to pay rent; when his position must have somewhat resembled that of the KentishAlodiariusor Gaveller at the time of the Norman Conquest; but after the English invasion all distinction between the two classes was speedily forgotten, both merging in theVilleinage. In later times, indeed, the Biotagh occasionally appears to have been of more consequence than the Brugaidh, probably because members of the former class might be holders of a far wider extent of land than the small peasant proprietor, and of comparatively greater importance. Hence theArd-Biotagh, sometimes met with in the Irish annals, was probably nothing more than “a great land-holder”,—the possessor of many “benefices” held by payment of Biodh or rent.—V.AppendixO.[130]A.F.M., 3922. The Masters attribute the institution toOllamh Fodla, into whose claims I will not enter; but it is very evident, I think, that they alluded to an institution well known at least in tradition. The wordToshachsimply means “captain” or “leader”—dux; the IrishTaisigeachtmeaning “captaincy,” “leadership,” or “precedency.” When the office ofdux, originally elective, became hereditary, according to the invariable principle of “divided authority” so characteristic of all the Celtic communities, it remained permanently in the family of the eldest cadet of the clan, the Tighern farthest removed from the chieftainship. The “Captains of Galloway” and the “Thanes of Ross” were probably known in their native tongue asToshachs—captains by right of office—for though the oldest cadet and the thane, in his military capacity, were known asToshachs, it by no means follows that a Toshach was necessarily either one or the other.[131]Reg. Magest.Stat. Alex.II., c. 15. In some respects the IrishOirrigh—under-king—resembled the Mormaor; but he was a tributary king, reigning in “right of blood,” not a royalofficial, though in certain cases he appears to have acted as aMaor.[132]Fordun, l. 4, c. 48. CompareAppendix N(Thanes).[133]Reg. Prior. St. And.p. 114.[134]Fordun, to whom such a being as a married abbot would have been an abomination, metamorphosed the ancestor of the royal family of Scotland into anAbthane, asserting that the wordAbbascould only be a clerical error forAbthanus, an officer whom he places over all the king’s Thanes, l. 4., c. 43. The contemporary Tighernach, however, Wynton, and the author of the Chronicle in theReg. Prior. St. And.(Innes, Ap. 5), were ignorant that Crinan was known under any other title but that of abbot, and thoughAbthanagesare to be met with in the charters, I have never yet chanced to light upon anAbthane. Such a name, in fact, would have been simply applicable to the maor of an abbot instead of the king—the holder of an ecclesiastical Thanage.[135]Heimsk. Saga7, c. 100 to 107.Ork. Saga, inCol. de Reb. alb., p. 340.[136]Ork. Saga, Col. de Reb. alb., p. 341.[137]Sim. Dun. Hist. Dun., l. 3, c. 9. The fifth year of Canute’s son, Harold, fell in 1040.[138]Dyrness appears to mean Turness, in the isle of Hoy, not Durness the north-western extremity of Sutherlandshire.[139]Torfnes, south of Bœfiord, seems to mean Burghead on the Moray Firth; Breida Fiord was the Dornoch Firth. The account of these transactions is from theOrk. Saga, inCol. de Reb. alb., as above. Kali Hundison, the name given in the Saga to the successor of Malcolm and opponent of Thorfin, can mean no other than Duncan.VideAppendix P.[140]Innes, Ap. 5.Tigh.1040.Mar. Scot.1040. Slain “a duce suo,” writes Marianus. Tighernach addsimmaturâ ætate, contrary to all modern ideas of Duncan. Marianus was born in 1028, Tighernach was his senior; their authority, therefore, at this period, as contemporaries, is very great.Bothgowananmeans “the smith’s bothy,” and under this word may lurk some long forgotten tradition of the real circumstances of Duncan’s murder. The vision of a weary fugitive, a deserted king, rises before the mind’s eye, recalling “Beaton’s mill” and the fate of James the Third. Two hundred years after his death a chaplain was appointed by his descendant, Alexander the Second, to celebrate masses in Elgin Cathedral for the benefit of Duncan’s soul. No allusion is made in the Saga to any alliance between Thorfin and Macbeth, and whilst the former is described as collecting reinforcements from Ross, Sutherland, and Caithness, Duncan retires upon Moray as a friendly province in which he recruits his forces. Considering the hereditary enmity between the Jarls of Orkney and the Mormaors of Moray, it seems more probable that the ill fortune of the young king tempted Macbeth to aspire to the crown, and to murder his rival in “the Smith’s bothy,” where he was resting after retreating from the field of his last defeat. In the Saga, Kali disappears after the battle and is heard of no more, from which it would appear that the Orkneymen and their allies had nothing to do with his death, of which they were probably ignorant.[141]Chalmers, who has traced in hisCaledoniathe memorials of these contests with all the zeal of an enthusiastic antiquary, is angry with Pinkerton for asserting that “there is not a shadow of authority for the Danish wars of Malcolm the Second;” remarking that “popular tradition, with well vouched remains, are historical documents of sufficient authority for narrative facts.” For thefacts, undoubtedly, but not for thenarratives, which have been subsequently appended. The remains, so industriously noted down by Chalmers, fully attest the frequent conflicts occurring along the Scottish coasts with the Northmen, but they do not prove the truth of minute descriptions of battles unknown before the time of Boece, who wrote in the early part of the sixteenth century.[142]Wynton, bk. 6, c. 16, 18. Much needless confusion is thrown over the period of Macbeth by raising unnecessary questions about his birth and his rights to the crown. All the best authorities—his contemporaries Tighernach and Marianus, and the Registry of the Priory of St. Andrews, which records his gift to the Culdees of Lochleven—unite in calling him the son of Finlay, the Register describing his wife as the daughter of Boedhe, whose claims she inherited. Another difficulty is raised because Macbeth appears as the immediate successor of Malcolm the Second inSim. Dun. de Gestis, 1034, contrary to every other authority. That this is an error, of some transcriber apparently, is very evident, for the same Simeon, in his History of Durham, l. 3, c. 9, calls Duncan the king of Scots, adding that he was defeated before Durham in the fifth year of Harald’s reign,i.e., 1040, and soon afterwards slain by his own subjects. The supposed relationship between Macbeth and Duncan may have been grounded upon the real connection between the king and Thorfin, with whom the Moray Mormaor seems to have been confounded in more ways than one.[143]Reg. Prior. St. And., p. 114.[144]Mar. Scot.1050.[145]Tigh. An. Ult.1045. The flight of Duncan’s children—mere infants—one toCumbria, the other tothe Isles, is a fiction founded on the ideas of the time when it first appears, three or four centuries later. They probably remained amongst their hereditary partizans in Atholl and the southern provinces, occupying the same position which their cousin Lulach had done during the reign of their father—the position of the Head of the Hy Nial, when Brian Boru achieved the sovereignty of Ireland; or of a Duke of Bavaria or Austria, in the olden time, when another magnate had been elected to the empire.[146]Flor. Wig.1052.[147]Tigh. An. Ult. Chron. Sax.1054. Neither the contemporary Irish annalist, nor the two MSS. of the Chronicle which describe the expedition of Siward, allude to any cause for it, or note any result beyond the immense booty obtained. They never mention the name of Malcolm or of the Confessor, and theMS. Cot. Tib., BI, expressly adds that Macbeth escaped from the battle. It remained for the writers of the Anglo-Norman era to confound the events of two separate years for their own purposes, and to represent Siward as the slayer of Macbeth and the restorer of Malcolm to the throne of Scotland, at the command of Edward the Confessor, though the Northumbrian earl died three years before the accession of the Scottish prince. The ever ready pen of the Prior of Belvoir, to a literal transcription of Florence, adds the words “de se tenendum,” to complete the feudality of the transaction; the addition resting on grounds quite as good as the rest of the story, which almost seems to have been adapted upon the events which occurred forty years later, in the days of Malcolm Ceanmore’s sons, Edward standing in the place of Rufus, Siward in that of the Atheling, and Macbeth playing the part of Donald Bane.[148]Tigh. An. Ult.1058.Innes, Ap. 5. Wynton is the first to mention the popular story of Birnam Wood coming to Dunsinnan, but he places the death of Macbeth at Lumphanan, attributing it to “a knycht nowcht borne of wyf,” who is transformed by Boece into Macduff. As Fife was “in the crown” in the days of Malcolm Ceanmore, who granted the earldom to his son Ethelred, the Macduff Earl of Fife of the fabulists—a being unknown to Wynton—must be set down asa myth. Since the days of the younger Angus, the founder of St. Andrews, the province appears to have been connected with the royal family—the abbacy of the leading monastery of the district having been held by Constantine the Second, just as the abbacy of Dunkeld belonged invariably to a member of the house of Atholl—and the first earl, who cannot be traced to the reigning family, was Dufagan or Duff, a witness of the Foundation Charter of Scone in the time of Alexander the First; his immediate successors being Constantine and Gillemichael Macduff. Fife appears to have been the latest earldom held by the old Scottish tenure, and its earls, like the earls of Atholl—a branch of the reigning family—never appear in the ranks of the king’s enemies. Indeed they may be looked upon in early times as premier Earls of Scotland, with certain privileges attaching to their dignity, to account for which the legend of Macduff was probably framed; though it is not impossible that the earldom with its prominent position and privileges was granted to thehistoricalDuff or Dufagan as a reward for his assistance in restoringthe sonsof Malcolm to the throne. Many examples could be given of thetranspositionof events from one period to another. A prominent one occurs in Norwegian history, the whole of the actions ofOlaf Tryggvesonin England having been transferred toOlaf the Saint.[149]According to Tighernach, Lulach perished,per dolum, a vague word, which may imply either treachery or simply an ambuscade. The Latin chroniclers sometimes call him Lulachfatuus—the simple.[150]Chalmers (Caledonia, vol. i., p. 422) maintains that Ingebiorge could not have been the mother of Malcolm’s eldest son Duncan, as her first husband, Thorfin, survived till 1074, and Duncan was knighted soon after 1072, when he must have been at least fifteen years of age. But Thorfin died “in the latter days of Harald Sigurdson,” whom his sons accompanied as Jarls of the Orkneys to the battle of Stanford Bridge in 1066. Malcolm was married to Margaret in 1070, Duncan was not knighted before the death of the Conqueror, in 1087, when he must have been more than fifteen; and as five or six years elapsed between the death of Thorfin and the marriage of Malcolm to Margaret, I see no reason for doubting the account of the Orkneyinga Saga, though many for hesitating to affix the stigma of illegitimacy upon Duncan, whose donations to Dunfermlyn are confirmed by David without any allusion to such a bar to his right to the crown.[151]Sim. Dun. de Gestis1061, 1065, 1066.Chron. Sax.1065–66.[152]In 1070 Malcolm held Cumberland by force (Sim. Dun.), and it was only in 1092 that Rufus drove Dolfin, apparently a son of Cospatric of Dunbar, out of the province, and rebuilt Carlisle. This part of England was not included in the Domesday Survey.[153]Sim. Dun. de Gestis1068–9.Hist. Dun., l. 3, c. 15.Chron. Sax.1067–68. The dates of the Chronicle are wrong, as Easter fell on the 23d of March in 1068, and the historian of Durham is consequently correct. Indeed he is the first authority for the affairs of the north at this period. William three times entered York as a conqueror. A passage in Ordericus Vitalis is sometimes brought forward as a proof that Malcolm sent his submission to William through Aylwin, bishop of Durham, after the failure of the attempt of Edwin and Morkar in 1068. I have given the reasons why I cannot concur in this opinion inAppendix Q.[154]Sim. Dun. de Gestis1069.Chron. Sax.1069.[155]Sim. Dun. de Gestis1070.[156]Sim. Dun.,as before.[157]Marianus alludes to this famine. Compare the account of Simeon with Domesday in Ellis’s Introduction. At the date of the Survey, Lincolnshire contained 11,504 Socmen and 11,747 Villani and Bordarii, whilst in Yorkshire only 447 Socmen are recorded, with 6914 of the other classes. Yorkshire was the head-quarters of the Anglo-Danes of Northumbria, and as the Socmen represented the old DanishOdal-Bonders, there is no difficulty in recognising the real class that bore the brunt of the northern wars, and contributed most largely to theemigrantsandoutlaws.[158]In the beginning of the century Uchtred, the son of Waltheof, seems to have married and put away his wives without the slightest scruple, nor could bishop Ealdun procure a permanent husband for his daughter Egfreda even by alienating the lands of his see in her favour. Twice was she divorced in spite of her dowry, and neither the bishop nor the chronicler who records these proceedings appear to have regarded them as extraordinary.Sim. Dun. Twysden, p. 79.[159]Sim. Dun. de Gestis1070.Vit. St. Marg.Edgar and his family appear to have left Scotland in 1069, and to have returned thither in the following year.[160]Such appears to be the meaning of the expression of the Chronicler, “he found nothing there for which he was the better,”Chron. Sax.1072. CompareWendover ad. an.1072.[161]Edgar, according to the Chron. Sax., returned to Scotland from Flanders in 1074, and he probably sought refuge in the latter country at the approach of William.[162]Lord Hailes, vol. 1, p. 17, thinks it improbable that Abernethy on the Tay can be the place intended, from its lying out of William’s probable route. He appears, however, to have forgotten that all the early invaders of Scotland who combined a fleet with their land force—and none else were successful—must have held their coursealong the coast, or their fleet would have been useless. Abernethy, according to Ailred, wasin Scotia(Twysden, p. 340), or beyond the Forth, and it was exactly because William had succeeded in penetrating into the heart of the real kingdom of Scotland that Malcolm came to terms.[163]Chron. Sax.1072.Sim. Dun. de Gestis1072–1087.An. Ult.1072. It may be gathered fromSim. Dun. de Gestis1091, that Malcolm held twelve manors of William and received a yearly payment of twelve marks of gold, and as the kings only met once, these grants must have been made on this occasion. The homage of Malcolm would appear to have beensimplenotliege, for he never seems to have been called upon to perform any feudal service; whilst his subsequent repudiation of the demands of Rufus shows that the homage was not rendered for the kingdom of Scotland, but was simply the feudal recognition of his subsidy. In short, the meeting appears to have resulted in a compromise, William endeavouring to secure the peace of his northern borders by what in the present age would take the form of a pension or subsidy, then conferred as a feudal grant, for which Malcolm performed homage, giving up his son as a hostage for his faithful observance of the treaty.Vide Appendix L, part 2.[164]Sim. Dun. de Gestis1072.Malm. Gesta. Regum, l. 3, sec. 253.[165]Sim. Dun. de Gestis1073.Chron. Sax.1074.Malm. Gest. Reg., l. 3, sec. 251.[166]Chron. Sax.1077.An. Ult.1085. Mr. Skene (Highlanders, vol. i., p. 123) supposes, on the strength of a very ambiguous entry in the Ulster Annals, that a certain Donald MacMalcolm, a son or descendant of Malcolm MacMalbride, the Mormaor of Moray who died in 1029, reigned over the north of Scotland from the death of Thorfin in 1064 to his own death in 1085. It is impossible, however, that this Donald could have been the representative of Malcolm of Moray, or he must have been Mormaor of that province in place of Macbeth, Lulach, and Malsnechtan, of whom the latter died in the same year as Donald, in the peaceful possession of Moray. Neither would Donald have had any claim upon the crown, as he was not the heir of Gruoch, and it is impossible that he could have reigned over the north of Scotland for upwards of twenty years, whilst his kinsman Malsnechtan,the real heir, was content with the province of Moray. If the entry is correct it is just as possible that the words “Donald, son of Malcolm king of Scotland” may apply to a son of Malcolm the Third; but the wordRighin the Irish Annals is very ambiguous, and ought to be translatedprincerather thanking, a title which answers more to theArdrigh.[167]Sim. Dun. de Gestis1079–80.Chron. Sax.1079.Fordun, l. 5, c. 21.Vide Appendix Q.[168]Sim. Dun. de Gestis1087.[169]Sim. Dun. de Gestis1091.Chron. Sax.1091.[170]Sim. Dun. de Gestis,Chron. Sax., andFlor. Wig., ad an.1091. Orderic also gives an account of this expedition—as usual a gossiping mixture of truth and absurdity. Malmsbury (l. 4, sec. 311) says that “William performed nothing worthy of his greatness, whilst he lost many of his men and baggage-horses.” Wendover, from his frequent literal transcriptions of Malmsbury, must have had this passage before him when he wrote “venientes igitur rex et frater ejus Robertus in Angliam, acies duxerunt in Scotiam, unde Malcolmusnimio terrore percussushomagium regi fecit Anglorum, et fidelitatem juravit,” (vol. ii., p. 37). In a similar manner “that most authentic and valuable volume, the Book of Abingdon,” (?) expands the short sentence in which Simeon describes the abortive invasion of Scotland by Robert in 1080—“Cum pervenisset ad Egglesbreth nullo confecto negotio reversus, etc.”—into the following inflated narrative:—“Verum rex illi Lodoniis occurrens cum suis, pacisci potius quam præliari delegit. Perinde utregno Angliæ principatus Scotiæsubactus foret, obsides tribuit. Quo pacto inito Regis filius cum exercitu ad patrem hilaris repedavit” (VideAppendix Q). When the comparative failures of Robert and William in 1080 and 1091 are thus misrepresented—failures which were notorious, and admitted to be so by the contemporary English chroniclers—what degree of confidence can be attached to the inflated descriptions of the successes of the earlier English kings, which are to be found in the same authorities? We can only judge byresults.[171]Sim. Dun. de GestisandChron. Sax.1092.[172]Sim. Dun. de GestisandChron. Sax. ad an.1093.[173]Malcolm was evidently taken by surprise. “He sent and demanded the fulfilment of the treaty that was promised him. And the king, William, cited him to Gloucester, and sent him hostages to Scotland, and Edgar Atheling afterwards and the men returned that brought him with dignity to the king. But when he came to the king he could not be considered worthy either of our king’s speech or of the conditions that were formerly promised him.” Such are the words of the Saxon Chronicler, yet Malmesbury says (sec. 311), “Malcolm came of his own accord to Gloucester, an earnest suitor for peace on equitable conditions, but he obtained nothing, though he was permitted to return in safety, as the king disdained to capture by fraud one whom he had subdued by valour.” The safe conduct and the hostages detract something from this much vaunted magnanimity, but Malmesbury would sacrifice a good deal for the sake of a well turned period. The assertion which Simeon and Florence have placed in the mouth of Malcolm conveys a valuable piece of historical information, though it does not follow that the king spokefeudal Latinbecause they have written it. The presence and intervention of the leading nobles of both kingdoms at meetings on the frontier implies the independence of both kings; for if the king of Scotland had been the vassal of Englandfor his kingdom, he andall his followerswould have been liable to have been cited to the court of their suzerain at the will of the latter, as actually happened in the reign of William the Lion. In the convention between Rufus and Robert, twelve barons on each side confirmed the agreement in token of the independence of both parties (Flor. Wig.1091). In the treaty between Richard and William the Lion four barons appear in the same way on either side (Fœd.vol. i., pt. 1, p. 50); and both Scottish and English nobles invariably affix their names to the conventions between their kings, recorded so often in the Fœdera. In attempting to force Malcolm to submit to the judgment of the English barons when he had come to Gloucester on an errand of a totally different description, William appears to have been actuated principally by overweening arrogance, though he may also have endeavoured to found a precedent injurious to Scotland; and it is singular to mark how nearly all the English authorities accuse Malcolm of “a breach of faith” because he resented the conduct of William, whilst they pass over without notice the glaring “breach of faith” on the part of their own king.[174]Morel was king Malcolm’s “Godsib,” or, in other words, they had stood Godfathers together. This bond of spiritual relationship appears to have been thought a very sacred tie in those days, and to be unfaithful to theGodsibwas considered a heinous sin, at any rate amongst the Gael; for the four Masters describe the state of the country as peculiarly wretched when “there was no protection for Church or Fortress,Gossipredor mutual oath.”An. F. M.1050,O’Donovan.[175]Sim. Dun. de GestisandChron. Sax.1093.Fordun, l. 5, c. 25.Malm. Gesta Regum, l. 4, sec. 311. Both Malmesbury and the Saxon Chronicler imply that Malcolm lost his life by treachery, and the account of Orderic, as usual a strange mixture of truth and error, goes far to prove the existence of a tradition to this effect. He is next said to have been slain at the siege of Alnwick Castle, though it is more than doubtful if a castle then existed on the banks of the Alne. FromAlnwick Castlethe step was easy to the family so long connected with that border fortress, and the Scottish king was at length said to have been slain by a knight, who, issuing from the castle gate with the keys on the point of his lance in token of surrender, suddenlypierced the eyeof Malcolm, acquiring from this feat the name ofPierce eyeor Percy! About two centuries after the fall of Malcolm an improbable story was circulated at Tynemouth, that the body of a peasant had been palmed off upon Alexander for that of his father,Mat. Paris Addit, p. 129. The writer adds that Malcolm was conquered “by order of Henry the First,” and winds up his account of the deceit with these quaint words “ita delusa estScottorum improbitas.” The keen relish with which he enjoys the idea of overreaching “the Scotch rogues” is amusing. Pleasures of rare occurrence are sometimes supposed to be the sweetest.[176]Life of Margaret, ascribed to Turgot, and contained in the “Acta Sanctorum, June 10.” Malcolm was obliged to put up with his losses, but to every one else she restored twofold what she borrowed for charity.[177]Twysden, p. 367. Ailred heard this anecdote from Malcolm’s son David. It has been transferred by some later writers to the Saxon Edgar, the Scottish Kenneth playing the part of the guilty nobleman. The hunt was conducted “secundum legem venandi quam vulgustristamvocat.” An open plain, encircled by a belt of wood, was the scene of the sport; a flowery hillock in the centre the place of rendezvous for the sportsmen; whom Malcolm placed in different commanding positions, ready to let slip their dogs upon the game as it was driven by the beaters from covert.[178]The principal point which Margaret succeeded in carrying out was connected with Lent, which the Gaelic Church kept from Quadrigesima Sunday instead of from Ash Wednesday. The Gaelic practice was long the universal custom, and it is still doubtful who added the four days. Pope Gregory the Great speaks ofthe thirty-six daysof abstinence, though some maintain that he was the first to begin Lent from Ash Wednesday, whilst others refer the change to the time of Gregory the Second (Bingham, bk. 21, c. 1), in which they are probably correct, as the custom would otherwise have penetrated into the Gaelic Church when it conformed to the Roman practice in the days of Nectan and Ceolfrith. The other practices which Margaret endeavoured to reform were—1. A reluctance to communicate on Easter Sunday. 2. Labour on Sundays. 3. Marriage with the widow of a father or brother. 4. The celebration of the service withbarbarous rites, or, in other words, in a manner to which she was unaccustomed. In the latter point she seems to have been unsuccessful, for the Culdees still continued to celebrate their officemore suoin the days of Alexander and David (VideMargaret’s Life by Turgot, c. 2). It is worthy of remark that Margaret seems to have made no attempt to separate the Culdees from their wives; and as numbers of the Anglo-Saxon clergy were married men at that time, particularly in the provinces beyond the Humber, where the customs of the Northmen were little interfered with, it is probable that she did not consider their manner of life contrary to ecclesiastical discipline. The system of Hildebrand did not penetrate into England until after the Norman Conquest. In one of his Charters (Ancient Laws, etc., of England, vol. i., p. 495) William says, “Sciatis ... quod episcopates leges, quæ non bene nec secundum sanctorum canonum precepta usque ad mea tempora in regno Anglorum fuerunt ... emendandas judicavi.”[179]“At least,” says the honest historian, “the dishes and vessels were gilt or silvered over.”—Hailes, vol. 1, p. 44.[180]Thediversis coloribus vestesare sometimes supposed to have beentartan. The earliest dresses of the Gael were stained of a saffron colour, which was also used at one period amongst the Rajpoots.[181]This account of Margaret is entirely taken from her life, written by her confessor, generally ascribed to Turgot, and I think with reason. The writer was not her confessor latterly (c. 4), and as Turgot entered into orders in 1074 (not 1084 as Papenbroch says), and became Prior of Durham in 1087, six years before the death of Margaret, this would agree very well with the theory that ascribes the work to him. It must have been written in the reign of Edgar, as the messenger who brought the news of Malcolm’s death to Margaret was “the son who succeeded to the king”—not Duncan, who was neither present at the battle nor was he a son of Margaret—and asthreesons succeeded, though the writer only alludes tothe sonwho succeeded, he must have written before the second son came to the throne.VidealsoHailes’ Annals, in loc.[182]Wherever the followers of Rufus were quartered, it was their custom to burn everything that they could neither eat, sell, nor carry off, whilst all that they could not drink in their orgies they either spilled or used to wash their horses feet. “Quæ vero in patresfamilias crudelia, quæ in uxores et filias indecentia fecerint, reminisci pudet.” Hence the approach of the court was the signal for the wretched inhabitants of the neighbourhood to fly to the woods, and leave their houses to the mercy of their oppressors. Henry endeavoured to repress the evil with the stern justice of his father, tearing out the eyes of the perpetrators of such enormities, or punishing them by amputation of the hands or feet.Ead. Hist. Novell., l. 4, p. 94.[183]Ead. Hist. Novell., l. 3, p. 56. Malcolm seems to have been fortunate in his choice between the sisters. It may have been the influx of ladies like the Scottish princess amongst the nuns, that introduced the use of ornamented pins and gold rings amongst the sisterhood, with the wreathing and dressing the hair, forbidden in several subsequent councils. The words of Matilda convict Orderic of one of those blunders which render that chronicler such a broken reed to lean upon whenever historical accuracy is required. He says that Count Alan of Bretagne sought the hand of Matildafrom Rufus, “sed morte præventus non obtinuit,” (l. 7, p. 702). As Alan died on the 19th October 1119 (L’Art de verifier les Dates, vol. ii., p. 897), it is difficult to conceive how his death could have prevented his marriage with Matilda, who had then been eighteen months in her grave (she died 1st January 1118), after having been the wife of Henry the First since November 1100! Alan’s first wife died in 1090, and he re-married in 1093, before Matilda could have sought refuge in England, for Malcolm was alive until the 13th November in that year. Alan, however, was once a suitor for the hand of Matilda, but to her father Malcolm (according to her own words) not to Rufus. This is the little grain of truth which, as usual, lurks in an infinity of error; for Orderic seems to have retailed all the gossip of the day, generally contriving to get hold of a wrong version of the story.[184]Matilda appears to have been very amiable, very devout, very fond of music and poetry, very vain, and rather pretty; not a perfect, but a feminine and loveable character, which earned her the title of “Good Queen Maud.” The feeling which prompted her aversion to the unbecoming black hood is easily to be traced in the character which Malmesbury has left of her (Gesta Regum, l. 5, sec. 418), though the good Queen would have forgiven serious offences sooner than the lukewarm praise accorded by that writer to her personal charms, “haud usquequaque despicabilis formæ.” Like most of her family she died in the prime of life.[185]Wynton, bk. 7, c. 3, l. 96, who says that Ethelred took advantage of a mist to convey the body of his mother out of the west gate before her death was generally known. The good prior was as ignorant of any divine agency on this occasion as Turgot was unconscious of any pretentions on the part of his royal mistress to supernatural gifts; but in the account of Fordun, l. 5, c. 26, the body of Margaret is conveyed through the host of Donald Bane under cover of a miraculous mist “That a mist on the Firth of Forth should be held miraculous,” remarks Lord Hailes, “must appear to the inhabitants of the Lothians a strange example of prepossession and credulity.”[186]Boece palliates the usurpation of Donald by attributing it to the detestation—to use the words of his translator Bellenden—“of the pepil at the riotus and intemperat manneris brocht amang thaim be Inglismen;” the same high authority enumerating amongst the virtues of David that “he ejeckit the vennomus custome of riotus cheir quhilk was inducit afore be Inglismen.” David probably introduced the Norman habits, for at this period the Anglo-Saxons and Anglo-Danes were renowned for their love of “riotus cheir,” though they were hardly the corrupters of the austere morals of the ancient Scots. Robert de Mellent is said to have introduced the custom of one meal a day from Constantinople, for his health as he affirmed—for his niggardliness, as was grumblingly insinuated by the hungry Saxons, who loved to recall the jovial days when Hardicanute set four meals a day before his overfed dependants, and rejoiced to see the dishes carried away full, because his followers could literally eat no more. There may have been some truth in the complaints of the Saxons, for the Normans, with many high qualities, were a hard and close race in all that concerned money. “The vennomus custome of riotus cheir” amongInglismenis again attributed by Lambarde entirely to the corruptions of the Danes, probably with equal justice; and upon their shoulders must the blame rest, till some Yorkshireman, or other denizen of ancientDanelage, vindicates the character of his ancestry at the expense of some other scapegoat.[187]Sim. Dun. de GestisandCh. Sax., adan.1093. Donald reigned from Nov. 1093 till May 1094; Duncan from the latter date to the close of the same year, and Donald again from the close of 1094 till after Michaelmas in 1097.[188]Innes, Ap. 5.Wynton, bk. 7, c. 3, l. 145.Sim. Dun. de Gestis,Chron. Sax., andAn. Ult. ad an.1094.Malm. Gesta Regum, l. 5, sec. 400.[189]Chron. Sax.1097.[190]Sim. Dun. de GestisandChron. Sax. ad an.1097. According to Fordun, l. 5, c. 30, the Banner of St. Cuthbert won the day, three knights, through its aid, defeating the whole of Donald’s army![191]Malm., as above.Innes, Ap. 4.Wynton, bk. 7, c. 3, l. 108, and c. 8, l. 49. The Prior of Lochleven tells a singular tale about Donald, how in his blindness he enticed into his power the eldest son of David “a gangand chyld ... and wyth tympanys sharpe set till hys naylis ... thrystyd and swa handlyd the chyld ... quhil he deyd at the last,” and how “the modyr than that herd the cry ... for sorow gave the gast rycht thare.” As the latter part of the story is unquestionably false, it may be hoped that the whole tale is a fabrication. In the version of the same tale recorded by Orderic, the supposed murderer is an outcast priest, a pensioner on David’s charity.Vide Hailes’ Annals, vol. i., p. 112, note.[192]Antiq. Celt.-Scand., p. 108.Tigh.1034. Gille, Jarl of the Sudreys, was either the nephew or the brother-in-law of Jarl Sigurd,—or both, as a marriage between an aunt and her nephew occasionally took place in the distant north.

[129]There appears to have been the same difference amongst the ancient Irish between theBrugaidhand theBiotagh, as between theBonderandLandbuamongst the Scandinavians. TheBrugaidhwas originally the free or adopted member of the Clan orCyn, tracing his origin either really or theoretically to the founder of the race, and hence entitled to his free allotment, orduchas, of the tribe land; the freeholder, in short, deriving his name from hisBrugh,Burh, or separate house, just as theBu-ander(Bonder) from hisBu—theHus-bond;V.“Hy Fiachrach,”passim. The Biotagh was the man who held his land by payingBiodh—Feormorrent—the colonusGeneator tenant farmer, dwelling in the baille or village. The Brugaidh might have complained, like his type the Bonder, at a very early period, of being changed into a Biotagh or Land-Bu—made to pay rent; when his position must have somewhat resembled that of the KentishAlodiariusor Gaveller at the time of the Norman Conquest; but after the English invasion all distinction between the two classes was speedily forgotten, both merging in theVilleinage. In later times, indeed, the Biotagh occasionally appears to have been of more consequence than the Brugaidh, probably because members of the former class might be holders of a far wider extent of land than the small peasant proprietor, and of comparatively greater importance. Hence theArd-Biotagh, sometimes met with in the Irish annals, was probably nothing more than “a great land-holder”,—the possessor of many “benefices” held by payment of Biodh or rent.—V.AppendixO.

[130]A.F.M., 3922. The Masters attribute the institution toOllamh Fodla, into whose claims I will not enter; but it is very evident, I think, that they alluded to an institution well known at least in tradition. The wordToshachsimply means “captain” or “leader”—dux; the IrishTaisigeachtmeaning “captaincy,” “leadership,” or “precedency.” When the office ofdux, originally elective, became hereditary, according to the invariable principle of “divided authority” so characteristic of all the Celtic communities, it remained permanently in the family of the eldest cadet of the clan, the Tighern farthest removed from the chieftainship. The “Captains of Galloway” and the “Thanes of Ross” were probably known in their native tongue asToshachs—captains by right of office—for though the oldest cadet and the thane, in his military capacity, were known asToshachs, it by no means follows that a Toshach was necessarily either one or the other.

[131]Reg. Magest.Stat. Alex.II., c. 15. In some respects the IrishOirrigh—under-king—resembled the Mormaor; but he was a tributary king, reigning in “right of blood,” not a royalofficial, though in certain cases he appears to have acted as aMaor.

[132]Fordun, l. 4, c. 48. CompareAppendix N(Thanes).

[133]Reg. Prior. St. And.p. 114.

[134]Fordun, to whom such a being as a married abbot would have been an abomination, metamorphosed the ancestor of the royal family of Scotland into anAbthane, asserting that the wordAbbascould only be a clerical error forAbthanus, an officer whom he places over all the king’s Thanes, l. 4., c. 43. The contemporary Tighernach, however, Wynton, and the author of the Chronicle in theReg. Prior. St. And.(Innes, Ap. 5), were ignorant that Crinan was known under any other title but that of abbot, and thoughAbthanagesare to be met with in the charters, I have never yet chanced to light upon anAbthane. Such a name, in fact, would have been simply applicable to the maor of an abbot instead of the king—the holder of an ecclesiastical Thanage.

[135]Heimsk. Saga7, c. 100 to 107.Ork. Saga, inCol. de Reb. alb., p. 340.

[136]Ork. Saga, Col. de Reb. alb., p. 341.

[137]Sim. Dun. Hist. Dun., l. 3, c. 9. The fifth year of Canute’s son, Harold, fell in 1040.

[138]Dyrness appears to mean Turness, in the isle of Hoy, not Durness the north-western extremity of Sutherlandshire.

[139]Torfnes, south of Bœfiord, seems to mean Burghead on the Moray Firth; Breida Fiord was the Dornoch Firth. The account of these transactions is from theOrk. Saga, inCol. de Reb. alb., as above. Kali Hundison, the name given in the Saga to the successor of Malcolm and opponent of Thorfin, can mean no other than Duncan.VideAppendix P.

[140]Innes, Ap. 5.Tigh.1040.Mar. Scot.1040. Slain “a duce suo,” writes Marianus. Tighernach addsimmaturâ ætate, contrary to all modern ideas of Duncan. Marianus was born in 1028, Tighernach was his senior; their authority, therefore, at this period, as contemporaries, is very great.Bothgowananmeans “the smith’s bothy,” and under this word may lurk some long forgotten tradition of the real circumstances of Duncan’s murder. The vision of a weary fugitive, a deserted king, rises before the mind’s eye, recalling “Beaton’s mill” and the fate of James the Third. Two hundred years after his death a chaplain was appointed by his descendant, Alexander the Second, to celebrate masses in Elgin Cathedral for the benefit of Duncan’s soul. No allusion is made in the Saga to any alliance between Thorfin and Macbeth, and whilst the former is described as collecting reinforcements from Ross, Sutherland, and Caithness, Duncan retires upon Moray as a friendly province in which he recruits his forces. Considering the hereditary enmity between the Jarls of Orkney and the Mormaors of Moray, it seems more probable that the ill fortune of the young king tempted Macbeth to aspire to the crown, and to murder his rival in “the Smith’s bothy,” where he was resting after retreating from the field of his last defeat. In the Saga, Kali disappears after the battle and is heard of no more, from which it would appear that the Orkneymen and their allies had nothing to do with his death, of which they were probably ignorant.

[141]Chalmers, who has traced in hisCaledoniathe memorials of these contests with all the zeal of an enthusiastic antiquary, is angry with Pinkerton for asserting that “there is not a shadow of authority for the Danish wars of Malcolm the Second;” remarking that “popular tradition, with well vouched remains, are historical documents of sufficient authority for narrative facts.” For thefacts, undoubtedly, but not for thenarratives, which have been subsequently appended. The remains, so industriously noted down by Chalmers, fully attest the frequent conflicts occurring along the Scottish coasts with the Northmen, but they do not prove the truth of minute descriptions of battles unknown before the time of Boece, who wrote in the early part of the sixteenth century.

[142]Wynton, bk. 6, c. 16, 18. Much needless confusion is thrown over the period of Macbeth by raising unnecessary questions about his birth and his rights to the crown. All the best authorities—his contemporaries Tighernach and Marianus, and the Registry of the Priory of St. Andrews, which records his gift to the Culdees of Lochleven—unite in calling him the son of Finlay, the Register describing his wife as the daughter of Boedhe, whose claims she inherited. Another difficulty is raised because Macbeth appears as the immediate successor of Malcolm the Second inSim. Dun. de Gestis, 1034, contrary to every other authority. That this is an error, of some transcriber apparently, is very evident, for the same Simeon, in his History of Durham, l. 3, c. 9, calls Duncan the king of Scots, adding that he was defeated before Durham in the fifth year of Harald’s reign,i.e., 1040, and soon afterwards slain by his own subjects. The supposed relationship between Macbeth and Duncan may have been grounded upon the real connection between the king and Thorfin, with whom the Moray Mormaor seems to have been confounded in more ways than one.

[143]Reg. Prior. St. And., p. 114.

[144]Mar. Scot.1050.

[145]Tigh. An. Ult.1045. The flight of Duncan’s children—mere infants—one toCumbria, the other tothe Isles, is a fiction founded on the ideas of the time when it first appears, three or four centuries later. They probably remained amongst their hereditary partizans in Atholl and the southern provinces, occupying the same position which their cousin Lulach had done during the reign of their father—the position of the Head of the Hy Nial, when Brian Boru achieved the sovereignty of Ireland; or of a Duke of Bavaria or Austria, in the olden time, when another magnate had been elected to the empire.

[146]Flor. Wig.1052.

[147]Tigh. An. Ult. Chron. Sax.1054. Neither the contemporary Irish annalist, nor the two MSS. of the Chronicle which describe the expedition of Siward, allude to any cause for it, or note any result beyond the immense booty obtained. They never mention the name of Malcolm or of the Confessor, and theMS. Cot. Tib., BI, expressly adds that Macbeth escaped from the battle. It remained for the writers of the Anglo-Norman era to confound the events of two separate years for their own purposes, and to represent Siward as the slayer of Macbeth and the restorer of Malcolm to the throne of Scotland, at the command of Edward the Confessor, though the Northumbrian earl died three years before the accession of the Scottish prince. The ever ready pen of the Prior of Belvoir, to a literal transcription of Florence, adds the words “de se tenendum,” to complete the feudality of the transaction; the addition resting on grounds quite as good as the rest of the story, which almost seems to have been adapted upon the events which occurred forty years later, in the days of Malcolm Ceanmore’s sons, Edward standing in the place of Rufus, Siward in that of the Atheling, and Macbeth playing the part of Donald Bane.

[148]Tigh. An. Ult.1058.Innes, Ap. 5. Wynton is the first to mention the popular story of Birnam Wood coming to Dunsinnan, but he places the death of Macbeth at Lumphanan, attributing it to “a knycht nowcht borne of wyf,” who is transformed by Boece into Macduff. As Fife was “in the crown” in the days of Malcolm Ceanmore, who granted the earldom to his son Ethelred, the Macduff Earl of Fife of the fabulists—a being unknown to Wynton—must be set down asa myth. Since the days of the younger Angus, the founder of St. Andrews, the province appears to have been connected with the royal family—the abbacy of the leading monastery of the district having been held by Constantine the Second, just as the abbacy of Dunkeld belonged invariably to a member of the house of Atholl—and the first earl, who cannot be traced to the reigning family, was Dufagan or Duff, a witness of the Foundation Charter of Scone in the time of Alexander the First; his immediate successors being Constantine and Gillemichael Macduff. Fife appears to have been the latest earldom held by the old Scottish tenure, and its earls, like the earls of Atholl—a branch of the reigning family—never appear in the ranks of the king’s enemies. Indeed they may be looked upon in early times as premier Earls of Scotland, with certain privileges attaching to their dignity, to account for which the legend of Macduff was probably framed; though it is not impossible that the earldom with its prominent position and privileges was granted to thehistoricalDuff or Dufagan as a reward for his assistance in restoringthe sonsof Malcolm to the throne. Many examples could be given of thetranspositionof events from one period to another. A prominent one occurs in Norwegian history, the whole of the actions ofOlaf Tryggvesonin England having been transferred toOlaf the Saint.

[149]According to Tighernach, Lulach perished,per dolum, a vague word, which may imply either treachery or simply an ambuscade. The Latin chroniclers sometimes call him Lulachfatuus—the simple.

[150]Chalmers (Caledonia, vol. i., p. 422) maintains that Ingebiorge could not have been the mother of Malcolm’s eldest son Duncan, as her first husband, Thorfin, survived till 1074, and Duncan was knighted soon after 1072, when he must have been at least fifteen years of age. But Thorfin died “in the latter days of Harald Sigurdson,” whom his sons accompanied as Jarls of the Orkneys to the battle of Stanford Bridge in 1066. Malcolm was married to Margaret in 1070, Duncan was not knighted before the death of the Conqueror, in 1087, when he must have been more than fifteen; and as five or six years elapsed between the death of Thorfin and the marriage of Malcolm to Margaret, I see no reason for doubting the account of the Orkneyinga Saga, though many for hesitating to affix the stigma of illegitimacy upon Duncan, whose donations to Dunfermlyn are confirmed by David without any allusion to such a bar to his right to the crown.

[151]Sim. Dun. de Gestis1061, 1065, 1066.Chron. Sax.1065–66.

[152]In 1070 Malcolm held Cumberland by force (Sim. Dun.), and it was only in 1092 that Rufus drove Dolfin, apparently a son of Cospatric of Dunbar, out of the province, and rebuilt Carlisle. This part of England was not included in the Domesday Survey.

[153]Sim. Dun. de Gestis1068–9.Hist. Dun., l. 3, c. 15.Chron. Sax.1067–68. The dates of the Chronicle are wrong, as Easter fell on the 23d of March in 1068, and the historian of Durham is consequently correct. Indeed he is the first authority for the affairs of the north at this period. William three times entered York as a conqueror. A passage in Ordericus Vitalis is sometimes brought forward as a proof that Malcolm sent his submission to William through Aylwin, bishop of Durham, after the failure of the attempt of Edwin and Morkar in 1068. I have given the reasons why I cannot concur in this opinion inAppendix Q.

[154]Sim. Dun. de Gestis1069.Chron. Sax.1069.

[155]Sim. Dun. de Gestis1070.

[156]Sim. Dun.,as before.

[157]Marianus alludes to this famine. Compare the account of Simeon with Domesday in Ellis’s Introduction. At the date of the Survey, Lincolnshire contained 11,504 Socmen and 11,747 Villani and Bordarii, whilst in Yorkshire only 447 Socmen are recorded, with 6914 of the other classes. Yorkshire was the head-quarters of the Anglo-Danes of Northumbria, and as the Socmen represented the old DanishOdal-Bonders, there is no difficulty in recognising the real class that bore the brunt of the northern wars, and contributed most largely to theemigrantsandoutlaws.

[158]In the beginning of the century Uchtred, the son of Waltheof, seems to have married and put away his wives without the slightest scruple, nor could bishop Ealdun procure a permanent husband for his daughter Egfreda even by alienating the lands of his see in her favour. Twice was she divorced in spite of her dowry, and neither the bishop nor the chronicler who records these proceedings appear to have regarded them as extraordinary.Sim. Dun. Twysden, p. 79.

[159]Sim. Dun. de Gestis1070.Vit. St. Marg.Edgar and his family appear to have left Scotland in 1069, and to have returned thither in the following year.

[160]Such appears to be the meaning of the expression of the Chronicler, “he found nothing there for which he was the better,”Chron. Sax.1072. CompareWendover ad. an.1072.

[161]Edgar, according to the Chron. Sax., returned to Scotland from Flanders in 1074, and he probably sought refuge in the latter country at the approach of William.

[162]Lord Hailes, vol. 1, p. 17, thinks it improbable that Abernethy on the Tay can be the place intended, from its lying out of William’s probable route. He appears, however, to have forgotten that all the early invaders of Scotland who combined a fleet with their land force—and none else were successful—must have held their coursealong the coast, or their fleet would have been useless. Abernethy, according to Ailred, wasin Scotia(Twysden, p. 340), or beyond the Forth, and it was exactly because William had succeeded in penetrating into the heart of the real kingdom of Scotland that Malcolm came to terms.

[163]Chron. Sax.1072.Sim. Dun. de Gestis1072–1087.An. Ult.1072. It may be gathered fromSim. Dun. de Gestis1091, that Malcolm held twelve manors of William and received a yearly payment of twelve marks of gold, and as the kings only met once, these grants must have been made on this occasion. The homage of Malcolm would appear to have beensimplenotliege, for he never seems to have been called upon to perform any feudal service; whilst his subsequent repudiation of the demands of Rufus shows that the homage was not rendered for the kingdom of Scotland, but was simply the feudal recognition of his subsidy. In short, the meeting appears to have resulted in a compromise, William endeavouring to secure the peace of his northern borders by what in the present age would take the form of a pension or subsidy, then conferred as a feudal grant, for which Malcolm performed homage, giving up his son as a hostage for his faithful observance of the treaty.Vide Appendix L, part 2.

[164]Sim. Dun. de Gestis1072.Malm. Gesta. Regum, l. 3, sec. 253.

[165]Sim. Dun. de Gestis1073.Chron. Sax.1074.Malm. Gest. Reg., l. 3, sec. 251.

[166]Chron. Sax.1077.An. Ult.1085. Mr. Skene (Highlanders, vol. i., p. 123) supposes, on the strength of a very ambiguous entry in the Ulster Annals, that a certain Donald MacMalcolm, a son or descendant of Malcolm MacMalbride, the Mormaor of Moray who died in 1029, reigned over the north of Scotland from the death of Thorfin in 1064 to his own death in 1085. It is impossible, however, that this Donald could have been the representative of Malcolm of Moray, or he must have been Mormaor of that province in place of Macbeth, Lulach, and Malsnechtan, of whom the latter died in the same year as Donald, in the peaceful possession of Moray. Neither would Donald have had any claim upon the crown, as he was not the heir of Gruoch, and it is impossible that he could have reigned over the north of Scotland for upwards of twenty years, whilst his kinsman Malsnechtan,the real heir, was content with the province of Moray. If the entry is correct it is just as possible that the words “Donald, son of Malcolm king of Scotland” may apply to a son of Malcolm the Third; but the wordRighin the Irish Annals is very ambiguous, and ought to be translatedprincerather thanking, a title which answers more to theArdrigh.

[167]Sim. Dun. de Gestis1079–80.Chron. Sax.1079.Fordun, l. 5, c. 21.Vide Appendix Q.

[168]Sim. Dun. de Gestis1087.

[169]Sim. Dun. de Gestis1091.Chron. Sax.1091.

[170]Sim. Dun. de Gestis,Chron. Sax., andFlor. Wig., ad an.1091. Orderic also gives an account of this expedition—as usual a gossiping mixture of truth and absurdity. Malmsbury (l. 4, sec. 311) says that “William performed nothing worthy of his greatness, whilst he lost many of his men and baggage-horses.” Wendover, from his frequent literal transcriptions of Malmsbury, must have had this passage before him when he wrote “venientes igitur rex et frater ejus Robertus in Angliam, acies duxerunt in Scotiam, unde Malcolmusnimio terrore percussushomagium regi fecit Anglorum, et fidelitatem juravit,” (vol. ii., p. 37). In a similar manner “that most authentic and valuable volume, the Book of Abingdon,” (?) expands the short sentence in which Simeon describes the abortive invasion of Scotland by Robert in 1080—“Cum pervenisset ad Egglesbreth nullo confecto negotio reversus, etc.”—into the following inflated narrative:—“Verum rex illi Lodoniis occurrens cum suis, pacisci potius quam præliari delegit. Perinde utregno Angliæ principatus Scotiæsubactus foret, obsides tribuit. Quo pacto inito Regis filius cum exercitu ad patrem hilaris repedavit” (VideAppendix Q). When the comparative failures of Robert and William in 1080 and 1091 are thus misrepresented—failures which were notorious, and admitted to be so by the contemporary English chroniclers—what degree of confidence can be attached to the inflated descriptions of the successes of the earlier English kings, which are to be found in the same authorities? We can only judge byresults.

[171]Sim. Dun. de GestisandChron. Sax.1092.

[172]Sim. Dun. de GestisandChron. Sax. ad an.1093.

[173]Malcolm was evidently taken by surprise. “He sent and demanded the fulfilment of the treaty that was promised him. And the king, William, cited him to Gloucester, and sent him hostages to Scotland, and Edgar Atheling afterwards and the men returned that brought him with dignity to the king. But when he came to the king he could not be considered worthy either of our king’s speech or of the conditions that were formerly promised him.” Such are the words of the Saxon Chronicler, yet Malmesbury says (sec. 311), “Malcolm came of his own accord to Gloucester, an earnest suitor for peace on equitable conditions, but he obtained nothing, though he was permitted to return in safety, as the king disdained to capture by fraud one whom he had subdued by valour.” The safe conduct and the hostages detract something from this much vaunted magnanimity, but Malmesbury would sacrifice a good deal for the sake of a well turned period. The assertion which Simeon and Florence have placed in the mouth of Malcolm conveys a valuable piece of historical information, though it does not follow that the king spokefeudal Latinbecause they have written it. The presence and intervention of the leading nobles of both kingdoms at meetings on the frontier implies the independence of both kings; for if the king of Scotland had been the vassal of Englandfor his kingdom, he andall his followerswould have been liable to have been cited to the court of their suzerain at the will of the latter, as actually happened in the reign of William the Lion. In the convention between Rufus and Robert, twelve barons on each side confirmed the agreement in token of the independence of both parties (Flor. Wig.1091). In the treaty between Richard and William the Lion four barons appear in the same way on either side (Fœd.vol. i., pt. 1, p. 50); and both Scottish and English nobles invariably affix their names to the conventions between their kings, recorded so often in the Fœdera. In attempting to force Malcolm to submit to the judgment of the English barons when he had come to Gloucester on an errand of a totally different description, William appears to have been actuated principally by overweening arrogance, though he may also have endeavoured to found a precedent injurious to Scotland; and it is singular to mark how nearly all the English authorities accuse Malcolm of “a breach of faith” because he resented the conduct of William, whilst they pass over without notice the glaring “breach of faith” on the part of their own king.

[174]Morel was king Malcolm’s “Godsib,” or, in other words, they had stood Godfathers together. This bond of spiritual relationship appears to have been thought a very sacred tie in those days, and to be unfaithful to theGodsibwas considered a heinous sin, at any rate amongst the Gael; for the four Masters describe the state of the country as peculiarly wretched when “there was no protection for Church or Fortress,Gossipredor mutual oath.”An. F. M.1050,O’Donovan.

[175]Sim. Dun. de GestisandChron. Sax.1093.Fordun, l. 5, c. 25.Malm. Gesta Regum, l. 4, sec. 311. Both Malmesbury and the Saxon Chronicler imply that Malcolm lost his life by treachery, and the account of Orderic, as usual a strange mixture of truth and error, goes far to prove the existence of a tradition to this effect. He is next said to have been slain at the siege of Alnwick Castle, though it is more than doubtful if a castle then existed on the banks of the Alne. FromAlnwick Castlethe step was easy to the family so long connected with that border fortress, and the Scottish king was at length said to have been slain by a knight, who, issuing from the castle gate with the keys on the point of his lance in token of surrender, suddenlypierced the eyeof Malcolm, acquiring from this feat the name ofPierce eyeor Percy! About two centuries after the fall of Malcolm an improbable story was circulated at Tynemouth, that the body of a peasant had been palmed off upon Alexander for that of his father,Mat. Paris Addit, p. 129. The writer adds that Malcolm was conquered “by order of Henry the First,” and winds up his account of the deceit with these quaint words “ita delusa estScottorum improbitas.” The keen relish with which he enjoys the idea of overreaching “the Scotch rogues” is amusing. Pleasures of rare occurrence are sometimes supposed to be the sweetest.

[176]Life of Margaret, ascribed to Turgot, and contained in the “Acta Sanctorum, June 10.” Malcolm was obliged to put up with his losses, but to every one else she restored twofold what she borrowed for charity.

[177]Twysden, p. 367. Ailred heard this anecdote from Malcolm’s son David. It has been transferred by some later writers to the Saxon Edgar, the Scottish Kenneth playing the part of the guilty nobleman. The hunt was conducted “secundum legem venandi quam vulgustristamvocat.” An open plain, encircled by a belt of wood, was the scene of the sport; a flowery hillock in the centre the place of rendezvous for the sportsmen; whom Malcolm placed in different commanding positions, ready to let slip their dogs upon the game as it was driven by the beaters from covert.

[178]The principal point which Margaret succeeded in carrying out was connected with Lent, which the Gaelic Church kept from Quadrigesima Sunday instead of from Ash Wednesday. The Gaelic practice was long the universal custom, and it is still doubtful who added the four days. Pope Gregory the Great speaks ofthe thirty-six daysof abstinence, though some maintain that he was the first to begin Lent from Ash Wednesday, whilst others refer the change to the time of Gregory the Second (Bingham, bk. 21, c. 1), in which they are probably correct, as the custom would otherwise have penetrated into the Gaelic Church when it conformed to the Roman practice in the days of Nectan and Ceolfrith. The other practices which Margaret endeavoured to reform were—1. A reluctance to communicate on Easter Sunday. 2. Labour on Sundays. 3. Marriage with the widow of a father or brother. 4. The celebration of the service withbarbarous rites, or, in other words, in a manner to which she was unaccustomed. In the latter point she seems to have been unsuccessful, for the Culdees still continued to celebrate their officemore suoin the days of Alexander and David (VideMargaret’s Life by Turgot, c. 2). It is worthy of remark that Margaret seems to have made no attempt to separate the Culdees from their wives; and as numbers of the Anglo-Saxon clergy were married men at that time, particularly in the provinces beyond the Humber, where the customs of the Northmen were little interfered with, it is probable that she did not consider their manner of life contrary to ecclesiastical discipline. The system of Hildebrand did not penetrate into England until after the Norman Conquest. In one of his Charters (Ancient Laws, etc., of England, vol. i., p. 495) William says, “Sciatis ... quod episcopates leges, quæ non bene nec secundum sanctorum canonum precepta usque ad mea tempora in regno Anglorum fuerunt ... emendandas judicavi.”

[179]“At least,” says the honest historian, “the dishes and vessels were gilt or silvered over.”—Hailes, vol. 1, p. 44.

[180]Thediversis coloribus vestesare sometimes supposed to have beentartan. The earliest dresses of the Gael were stained of a saffron colour, which was also used at one period amongst the Rajpoots.

[181]This account of Margaret is entirely taken from her life, written by her confessor, generally ascribed to Turgot, and I think with reason. The writer was not her confessor latterly (c. 4), and as Turgot entered into orders in 1074 (not 1084 as Papenbroch says), and became Prior of Durham in 1087, six years before the death of Margaret, this would agree very well with the theory that ascribes the work to him. It must have been written in the reign of Edgar, as the messenger who brought the news of Malcolm’s death to Margaret was “the son who succeeded to the king”—not Duncan, who was neither present at the battle nor was he a son of Margaret—and asthreesons succeeded, though the writer only alludes tothe sonwho succeeded, he must have written before the second son came to the throne.VidealsoHailes’ Annals, in loc.

[182]Wherever the followers of Rufus were quartered, it was their custom to burn everything that they could neither eat, sell, nor carry off, whilst all that they could not drink in their orgies they either spilled or used to wash their horses feet. “Quæ vero in patresfamilias crudelia, quæ in uxores et filias indecentia fecerint, reminisci pudet.” Hence the approach of the court was the signal for the wretched inhabitants of the neighbourhood to fly to the woods, and leave their houses to the mercy of their oppressors. Henry endeavoured to repress the evil with the stern justice of his father, tearing out the eyes of the perpetrators of such enormities, or punishing them by amputation of the hands or feet.Ead. Hist. Novell., l. 4, p. 94.

[183]Ead. Hist. Novell., l. 3, p. 56. Malcolm seems to have been fortunate in his choice between the sisters. It may have been the influx of ladies like the Scottish princess amongst the nuns, that introduced the use of ornamented pins and gold rings amongst the sisterhood, with the wreathing and dressing the hair, forbidden in several subsequent councils. The words of Matilda convict Orderic of one of those blunders which render that chronicler such a broken reed to lean upon whenever historical accuracy is required. He says that Count Alan of Bretagne sought the hand of Matildafrom Rufus, “sed morte præventus non obtinuit,” (l. 7, p. 702). As Alan died on the 19th October 1119 (L’Art de verifier les Dates, vol. ii., p. 897), it is difficult to conceive how his death could have prevented his marriage with Matilda, who had then been eighteen months in her grave (she died 1st January 1118), after having been the wife of Henry the First since November 1100! Alan’s first wife died in 1090, and he re-married in 1093, before Matilda could have sought refuge in England, for Malcolm was alive until the 13th November in that year. Alan, however, was once a suitor for the hand of Matilda, but to her father Malcolm (according to her own words) not to Rufus. This is the little grain of truth which, as usual, lurks in an infinity of error; for Orderic seems to have retailed all the gossip of the day, generally contriving to get hold of a wrong version of the story.

[184]Matilda appears to have been very amiable, very devout, very fond of music and poetry, very vain, and rather pretty; not a perfect, but a feminine and loveable character, which earned her the title of “Good Queen Maud.” The feeling which prompted her aversion to the unbecoming black hood is easily to be traced in the character which Malmesbury has left of her (Gesta Regum, l. 5, sec. 418), though the good Queen would have forgiven serious offences sooner than the lukewarm praise accorded by that writer to her personal charms, “haud usquequaque despicabilis formæ.” Like most of her family she died in the prime of life.

[185]Wynton, bk. 7, c. 3, l. 96, who says that Ethelred took advantage of a mist to convey the body of his mother out of the west gate before her death was generally known. The good prior was as ignorant of any divine agency on this occasion as Turgot was unconscious of any pretentions on the part of his royal mistress to supernatural gifts; but in the account of Fordun, l. 5, c. 26, the body of Margaret is conveyed through the host of Donald Bane under cover of a miraculous mist “That a mist on the Firth of Forth should be held miraculous,” remarks Lord Hailes, “must appear to the inhabitants of the Lothians a strange example of prepossession and credulity.”

[186]Boece palliates the usurpation of Donald by attributing it to the detestation—to use the words of his translator Bellenden—“of the pepil at the riotus and intemperat manneris brocht amang thaim be Inglismen;” the same high authority enumerating amongst the virtues of David that “he ejeckit the vennomus custome of riotus cheir quhilk was inducit afore be Inglismen.” David probably introduced the Norman habits, for at this period the Anglo-Saxons and Anglo-Danes were renowned for their love of “riotus cheir,” though they were hardly the corrupters of the austere morals of the ancient Scots. Robert de Mellent is said to have introduced the custom of one meal a day from Constantinople, for his health as he affirmed—for his niggardliness, as was grumblingly insinuated by the hungry Saxons, who loved to recall the jovial days when Hardicanute set four meals a day before his overfed dependants, and rejoiced to see the dishes carried away full, because his followers could literally eat no more. There may have been some truth in the complaints of the Saxons, for the Normans, with many high qualities, were a hard and close race in all that concerned money. “The vennomus custome of riotus cheir” amongInglismenis again attributed by Lambarde entirely to the corruptions of the Danes, probably with equal justice; and upon their shoulders must the blame rest, till some Yorkshireman, or other denizen of ancientDanelage, vindicates the character of his ancestry at the expense of some other scapegoat.

[187]Sim. Dun. de GestisandCh. Sax., adan.1093. Donald reigned from Nov. 1093 till May 1094; Duncan from the latter date to the close of the same year, and Donald again from the close of 1094 till after Michaelmas in 1097.

[188]Innes, Ap. 5.Wynton, bk. 7, c. 3, l. 145.Sim. Dun. de Gestis,Chron. Sax., andAn. Ult. ad an.1094.Malm. Gesta Regum, l. 5, sec. 400.

[189]Chron. Sax.1097.

[190]Sim. Dun. de GestisandChron. Sax. ad an.1097. According to Fordun, l. 5, c. 30, the Banner of St. Cuthbert won the day, three knights, through its aid, defeating the whole of Donald’s army!

[191]Malm., as above.Innes, Ap. 4.Wynton, bk. 7, c. 3, l. 108, and c. 8, l. 49. The Prior of Lochleven tells a singular tale about Donald, how in his blindness he enticed into his power the eldest son of David “a gangand chyld ... and wyth tympanys sharpe set till hys naylis ... thrystyd and swa handlyd the chyld ... quhil he deyd at the last,” and how “the modyr than that herd the cry ... for sorow gave the gast rycht thare.” As the latter part of the story is unquestionably false, it may be hoped that the whole tale is a fabrication. In the version of the same tale recorded by Orderic, the supposed murderer is an outcast priest, a pensioner on David’s charity.Vide Hailes’ Annals, vol. i., p. 112, note.

[192]Antiq. Celt.-Scand., p. 108.Tigh.1034. Gille, Jarl of the Sudreys, was either the nephew or the brother-in-law of Jarl Sigurd,—or both, as a marriage between an aunt and her nephew occasionally took place in the distant north.

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