Each month we present a chapter in the history of Scotland. We move forward in time each month.
The Mac Alpin Dynasty: Success and Failure(continued)What was probably happening in the localities is likely to have been the same process as seen in Ireland, but in a much accelerated form, of the recasting of kings and underkings, and eventually as territorial lords. The rank of toiseach reappeared significantly in Ireland at much the same time as the mormaer, which can be seen in Buchan in the Book of Deer, to indicate that this the old tribal rí by another name. The mac Alpin kings were emerging as overkings at the expense of lesser ranks of kings. In most cases, the achievement of this dynasty was to oversee the reshuffling of a three-fold system of kingship into a two-fold relationship of king and subjects, a process revealed partly by the use of new names for the ruirí, such as the Gaelic (but non-Irish) term mormaer of comes (earl) in its Latin form. In their own demesne, these new lords probably had as much if not more power in the eleventh century than before. Later kings of Scots, such as Alexander II or III, would insist on referring to powerful provincial rulers as "Lord of the Isles" or 'Lord of Galloway', whereas in reality they were kings in all but name allowed them. The consolidation of the mac Alpin dynasty was achieved, but only at the expense of a lesson which future kings of Scots would take carefully to heart: that a kingdom which so naturally divided into three different parts, to the north and south of Mounth and beyond the Forth, was held together more securely by treating its distinctive parts differently. The characteristic balance of power which would last throughout the medieval period - between kinds of Scots and their great lords in their various localities - was in the process off being struck.
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