A History of Scotland Presented by Scottish Radiance

Each month we present a chapter in the history of Scotland. We move forward in time each month.

The MacMalcolm Dynasty

THE REIGN OP MALCOLM III (1058-93) WAS THE THIRD AND LONGEST OF THREE long reigns which dominated the eleventh century. Yet, like those immediately before it, Malcolm's reign began in obscure circumstances and ended amidst confusion. Unlike many of the reigns which would follow it, there do not seem to have been risings orchestrated by rival claimants to contend with but pacification of the realm was its leitmotiv rather than stability and peace. Malcolm, son of Duncan I, had gained power only with the help of Earl Siward of Northumbria and the struggle took almost four years to complete. The death of Macbeth in 1057 had resulted in the succession not of Malcolm but of Macbeth's stepson Lulach. The few details available about the episode could fit the theory that the rival claimants of 1057-8 - Malcolm and Lulach - were fellow conspirators who fell out, as well as they do the more usual explanation of a two-stage coup by Malcolm, completed only when Lulach was killed in an ambush at Essie in Strathbogie in March 1058. A month later Malcolm was inaugurated at Scone. Whichever theory is true, it remains the case that Malcolm had much to do to establish his credibility as King of Scots; the four-year crisis which he and Siward had inflicted on the country in 1054 after some fourteen years of seemingly stable rule by Macbeth made the initial task all the harder. The description of the twenty-seven-year-old new king as Canmore (better translated from the Gaelic ceonn mor as Chief rather than great head) was probably part of a reconstruction of the image of kingship.

Nothing affected Malcolm Canmore's reign more than the deaths of his two most powerful neighbours. Siward had died in 1055 and the unpopularity in Northumbria of his replacement, the Wessex warlord Tostig, resulted in outright revolt and his flight in 1065. By 1066 he would be a suitor at Malcolm's court, canvassing for military aid to recover his earldom. An unstable Northumbria offered the new King of Scots a useful opportunity - as it had early in previous reigns in 972 and 1006 - to repay the support of those who had brought him to power as well as to buy that of the uncommitted. It was this instability in the north of England, both before the Norman invasion of 1066 that brought William I 'the Conqueror' (1066-87) to power as well as after it, that made Malcolm seem a greater threat to Northumbria than any King of Scots before him.' It would be the main factor in his relations with his southern neighbour throughout his reign. Malcolm would stage five major raids or invasions into Northumbria- in 1061, 1070, 1079, 1091 and 1093- would successively be either wooed or forced into submission in 1072, 1080 and 1092, and ultimately would be caught there in a trap of his own devising in 1093. It would largely be the threat to the north, only half-conquered by the new Norman kings, William I and his sons William Rums (1087-1100) and Henry I (1100-35), which induced no fewer than five political marriages involving the Scottish royal house with the rival Norman and Old English houses between 1069 and 1113. Anglo-Scottish relations were the making and breaking of Malcolm Canmore.

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