Macbeth of Scotland

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Mac Bethad mac Findlaích
Rí Alban
"King of Scotland"

Early modern engraved depiction of the king
Reign 1040–1057
Born 1005
Scotland
Died 15 August 1057
Lumphanan or Scone
Buried Iona
Consort Gruoch
Father Findláech mac Ruaidrí
Mother unknown

Mac Bethad mac Findlaích (1005–15 August 1057), known in English as Macbeth, was King of Scots (or Alba) from 1040 until his death. He is best known as the subject of William Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth and the many works it has inspired, although the play is historically inaccurate.

Contents

Main article: Mormaer of Moray

Mac Bethad was the son of Findláech mac Ruaidrí, Mormaer of Moray. His mother is sometimes supposed to have been a daughter of Máel Coluim mac Cináeda. This may be derived from Andrew of Wyntoun's Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland which makes Mac Bethad's mother a granddaughter, rather than a daughter, of Máel Coluim. [1]

Mac Bethad's paternal ancestry can be traced in the Irish genealogies contained in the Rawlinson B.502 manuscript:

“ Mac Bethad son of Findláech son of Ruadrí son of Domnall son of Morggán son of Cathamal son of Ruadrí son of Ailgelach son of Ferchar son of Fergus son of Nechtan son of Colmán son of Báetán son of Eochaid son of Muiredach son of Loarn son of Eirc son of Eochaid Muinremuir.[2] ”

This should be compared with the ancestry claimed for Máel Coluim mac Cináeda which traces back to Loarn's brother Fergus Mór.[3] Several of Mac Bethad's ancestors can tentatively be identified: Ailgelach son of Ferchar as Ainbcellach mac Ferchair and Ferchar son of Fergus (correctly, son of Feredach son of Fergus) as Ferchar Fota, while Muiredach son of Loarn mac Eirc, his son Eochaid and Eochaid's son Báetán are given in the Senchus fer n-Alban. So, while the descendants of Cináed mac Ailpín saw themselves as being descended from the Cenél nGabráin of Dál Riata, the northern kings of Moray traced their origins back to the rival Cenél Loairn.[4]

An extract of a family tree describing the relations in the text. See the more complete version.
An extract of a family tree describing the relations in the text. See the more complete version.

Mac Bethad's father Findláech was killed about 1020 - one obituary calls him king of Alba - most probably by his successor, his brother Máel Brigte's son Máel Coluim.[5] Máel Coluim died in 1029, the circumstances are unknown, but violence is not suggested; he is called king of Alba by the Annals of Tigernach.[6] However, king of Alba is by no means the most impressive title used by the Irish annals. Many deaths reported in the annals in the 11th century are of rulers called Ard Rí Alban - High-King of Scotland. It is not entirely certain whether Máel Coluim was followed by his brother Gille Coemgáin or by Mac Bethad.

Gille Coemgáin's death in 1032 was not reported by Tigernach, but the Annals of Ulster record:

“ Gille Coemgáin son of Máel Brigte, mormaer of Moray, was burned together with fifty people.[7] ”

Some have supposed that Mac Bethad was the perpetrator.[8] Others have noted the lack of information in the Annals, and the subsequent killings at the behest of Máel Coluim mac Cináeda to suggest other answers.[9] Gille Coemgáin had been married to Gruoch, daughter of Boite mac Cináeda, with whom he had a son, the future king Lulach.

It is not clear whether Gruoch's father was a son of Cináed mac Duib (d. 1005) or of Cináed mac Maíl Coluim (d. 997), either is possible chronologically.[10] After Gille Coemgáin's death, Mac Bethad married his widow and took Lulach as his stepson. Gruoch's brother, or nephew (his name is not recorded), was killed in 1033 by Máel Coluim mac Cináeda.[11]

When Canute the Great came north in 1031 to accept the submission of Máel Coluim mac Cináeda, MacBeth too submitted to him:

“ ... Malcolm, king of the Scots, submitted to him, and became his man, with two other kings, MacBeth and Iehmarc ...[12] ”

Some have seen this as a sign of MacBeth's power, others have seen his presence, together with Iehmarc, who may be Echmarcach mac Ragnaill, as proof that Máel Coluim mac Cináeda was overlord of Moray and of the Kingdom of the Isles.[13] Whatever the true state of affairs in the early 1030s, it seems more probable that MacBeth was subject to the king of Alba, Máel Coluim, who died at Glamis, on 25 November 1034. The Prophecy of Berchan is apparently alone in near contemporary sources in reporting a violent death, calling it a kinslaying.[14] Tigernan's chronicle says only:

“ Máel Coluim son of Cináed, king of Alba, the honour of western Europe, died.[15] ”

Máel Coluim's grandson Donnchad mac Crínáin was acclaimed as king of Alba on 30 November 1034, apparently without opposition. Donnchad appears to have been tánaise ríg, the king in waiting, so that far from being an abandonment of tanistry, his kingship was a vindication of the practice. Previous successions had involved strife between various rígdomna - men of royal blood.[16] Far from being the aged King Duncan of Shakespeare's play, the real Donnchad was a young man in 1034, and even at his death in 1040 his youthfulness is remarked upon.[17]

Perhaps due to his youth, Donnchad's early reign was apparently uneventful. His later reign, in line with his description as "the man of many sorrows" in the Prophecy of Berchán, was not successful. In 1039, Strathclyde was attacked by the Northumbrians, and a retaliatory raid led by Donnchad against Durham in 1040 turned into a disaster. Later that year Donnchad led an army into Moray, where he was killed by Mac Bethad on 15 August 1040 at Pitgaveny near Elgin.[18]

On Donnchad's death, MacBeth became king. No resistance is known at this time, but it would be entirely normal if his reign were not universally accepted. In 1045, Donnchad's father Crínán of Dunkeld was killed in a battle between two Scottish armies.[19]

John of Fordun wrote that Donnchad's wife fled Scotland, taking her children, including the future kings Máel Coluim III and Domnall Bán with her. Based on the author's beliefs as to whom Donnchad married, various places of exile, Northumbria and Orkney among them, have been proposed. However, the simplest solution is that offered long ago by E. William Robertson: the safest place for Donnchad's widow and her children would be with her or Donnchad's kin and supporters in Atholl.[20]

After the defeat of Crínán, MacBeth was evidently unchallenged. Marianus Scotus tells how the king made a pilgrimage to Rome in 1050, where, Marianus says, he gave money to the poor as if it were seed.

The Orkneyinga Saga says that a dispute between Thorfinn Sigurdsson, Earl of Orkney, and Karl Hundason began when Karl Hundason became "King of Scots" and claimed Caithness. The identity of Karl Hundason, unknown to Scots and Irish sources, has long been a matter of dispute, and it is far from clear that the matter is settled. The most common assumption is that Karl Hundason was an insulting byname (Old Norse for "Churl, son of a Dog") given to MacBeth by his enemies. [21] Skene's suggestion that he was Donnchad mac Crínáin has been revived in recent years. Lastly, the idea that the whole affair is a poetic invention has been raised.[22]

According to the Orkneyinga Saga, in the war which followed, Thorfinn defeated Karl in a sea-battle off Deerness at the east end of the Orkney Mainland. Then Karl's nephew Mutatan or Muddan, appointed to rule Caithness for him, was killed at Thurso by Thorkel the Fosterer. Finally, a great battle on the south side of the Dornoch Firth ended with Karl defeated and fugitive or dead. Thorfinn, the saga says, then marched south through Scotland as far as Fife, burning and plundering as he passed. A later note in the saga claims that Thorfinn won nine Scottish earldoms.[23]

Whoever Karl son of Hundi may have been, it appears that the saga is reporting a local conflict with a Scots ruler of Moray or Ross:

“ [T]he whole narrative is consistent with the idea that the struggle of Thorfinn and Karl is a continuation of that which had been waged since the ninth century by the Orkney earls, notably Sigurd Rognvald's son, Ljot, and Sigurd the Stout, against the princes or mormaers of Moray, Sutherland, Ross, and Argyll, and that, in fine, Malcolm and Karl were mormaers of one of these four provinces.[24] ”

In 1052, MacBeth was involved indirectly in the strife in the Kingdom of England between Godwin, Earl of Wessex and Edward the Confessor when he received a number of Norman exiles from England in his court, perhaps becoming the first king of Scots to introduce feudalism to Scotland. In 1054, Edward's Earl of Northumbria, Siward, led a very large invasion of Scotland. The campaign led to a bloody battle in which the Annals of Ulster report 3,000 Scots and 1,500 English dead, which can be taken as meaning very many on both sides, and one of Siward's sons and a son-in-law were among the dead. The result of the invasion was that Máel Coluim - not Máel Coluim (III) mac Donnchada - "son of the king of the Cumbrians" was restored to his throne, i.e., as ruler of the kingdom of Strathclyde.[25] It may be that the events of 1054 are responsible for the idea, which appears in Shakespeare's play, that Máel Coluim III was put in power by the English.

MacBeth certainly survived the English invasion, for he was defeated and mortally wounded or killed by Máel Coluim mac Donnchada on the north side of the Mounth in 1057, after retreating with his men over the Cairnamounth Pass to take his last stand at the battle at Lumphanan.[26] The Prophecy of Berchán has it that he was wounded and died at Scone, sixty miles to the south, some days later.[27] Mac Bethad's stepson Lulach mac Gille Coemgáin was installed as king soon after.

Unlike later writers, no near contemporary source remarks on MacBeth as a tyrant. The Duan Albanach, which survives in a form dating to the reign of Máel Coluim (III) mac Donnchada calls him "Mac Bethad the renowned". The Prophecy of Berchán, a verse history which purports to be a prophecy, describes him as "the generous king of Fortriu", and says:

“ The red, tall, golden-haired one, he will be pleasant to me among them; Scotland will be brimful west and east during the reign of the furious red one.[28] ”

Macbeth and the witches by Henry Fuseli (Johann Heinrich Füssli) (1741-1825)
Macbeth and the witches by Henry Fuseli (Johann Heinrich Füssli) (1741-1825)
Main article: Macbeth

MacBeth's life, like that of Donnchad, had progressed far towards legend by the end of the 14th century, when John of Fordun and Andrew of Wyntoun wrote their histories. Hector Boece, Walter Bower, and George Buchanan all contributed to the legend.

The influence of William Shakespeare's Macbeth towers over mere histories, and has made the name of Mac Bethad infamous. Even his wife has gained some fame along the way, lending her Shakespeare-given title to a short story by Nikolai Leskov and the opera by Dmitri Shostakovich entitled Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. The historical content of Shakespeare's play is drawn from Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, which in turn borrows from Boece's 1527 Scotorum Historiae which flattered the antecedents of Boece's patron, King James V of Scotland.

In modern times, Dorothy Dunnett's novel King Hereafter aims to portray a historical Macbeth, but proposes that MacBeth and his rival and sometime ally Thorfinn of Orkney are one and the same (Thorfinn is his birth name and Macbeth is his baptismal name). John Cargill Thompson's play Macbeth Speaks 1997, a reworking of his earlier Macbeth Speaks, is a monologue delivered by the historical Macbeth, aware of what Shakespeare and posterity have done to him. Scottish author Nigel Tranter based one of his historical novels on the historical figure (MacBeth the King).

  1. ^ Hudson, Prophecy of Berchán, pp. 224–225, discusses the question, and the reliability of Wyntoun's chronicle.
  2. ^ Rawlinson B. 502 ¶1698 Genelach Ríg n-Alban.
  3. ^ Rawlinson B. 502 ¶1696 Genelach Ríg n-Alban.
  4. ^ Duncan, Kingship of the Scots, p. 32; Sellar, "Moray".
  5. ^ Annals of Tigernach 1020.8; Annals of Ulster 1020.6.
  6. ^ Annals of Tigernach 1029.5; Annals of Ulster 1029.7.
  7. ^ Annals of Ulster 1032.2.
  8. ^ Sellar, "Moray".
  9. ^ Duncan, Kingship of the Scots, p. 32.
  10. ^ See Duncan, Kingship of the Scots, p. 345; Lynch, Oxford Companion, p. 680; Woolf, "Macbeth".
  11. ^ Annals of Ulster 1033.7. The victim is reported as M. m. Boite m. Cináedha, which is variously read as "the son of the son of Boite" or as "M. son of Boite".
  12. ^ Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Ms. E, 1031.
  13. ^ Compare Duncan, Kingship of the Scots, pp. 29–30 with Hudson, Prophecy of Berchán, pp. 222–223.
  14. ^ Hudson, Prophecy of Berchán, p. 223; Duncan, Kingship of the Scots, p. 33.
  15. ^ Annals of Tigernach 1034.1
  16. ^ Donnchad as tánaise ríg, the chosen heir, see Duncan, The Kingship of the Scots, pp. 33–34; Hudson, Prophecy of Berchán,pp. 223–224, where it is accepted that Donnchad was king of Strathclyde. For tanistry, etc., in Ireland, see Ó Cróinín, Early Medieval Ireland, 63–71. Byrne, Irish Kings and High-Kings, pp. 35–39, offers a different perspective.
  17. ^ Annals of Tigernach 1040.1.
  18. ^ Hudson, Prophecy of Berchán, p.223–224; Duncan, The Kingship of the Scots, pp.33–34.
  19. ^ Annals of Tigernach 1045.10; Annals of Ulster 1045.6.
  20. ^ Robertson, Scotland under her Early Kings, p. 122. Hudson, Prophecy of Berchán, p. 224, refers to Earl Siward as Máel Coluim mac Donnchada's "patron"; Duncan, The Kingship of the Scots, pp. 40–42 favours Orkney; Woolf offers no opinion. Northumbria is evidently a misapprehension, further than that cannot be said with certainty.
  21. ^ However Mac Bethad's father may be called "jarl Hundi" in Njál's saga; Crawford, p. 72.
  22. ^ Anderson, ESSH, p. 576, note 7, refers to the account as "a fabulous story" and concludes that "[n]o solution to the riddle seems to be justified".
  23. ^ Orkneyinga Saga, cc. 20 & 32.
  24. ^ Taylor, p. 338; Crawford, pp. 71–74.
  25. ^ Florence of Worcester, 1052; Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Ms. D, 1054; Annals of Ulster 1054.6; and discussed by Duncan, The Kingship of the Scots, pp. 38–41.
  26. ^ Andrew Wyntoun, Original Chronicle, ed. F.J. Amours, vol. 4, pp 298-299 and 300-301 (c. 1420)
  27. ^ The exact dates are uncertain, Woolf gives 15 August, Hudson 14 August and Duncan, following John of Fordun, gives 5 December; Annals of Tigernach 1058.5; Annals of Ulster 1058.6.
  28. ^ Hudson, Prophecy of Berchán, p. 91, stanzas 193 and 194.

  • Barrell, A.D.M., Medieval Scotland. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000. ISBN 0-521-58602-X
  • Barrow, G.W.S., Kingship and Unity: Scotland 1000–1306. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, (corrected ed.) 1989. ISBN 0-7486-0104-X
  • Byrne, Francis John, Irish Kings and High-Kings. Batsford, London, 1973. ISBN 0-7134-5882-8
  • Crawford, Barbara, Scandinavian Scotland. Leicester University Press, Leicester, 1987. 0-7185-1282-0
  • Duncan, A.A.M., The Kingship of the Scots 842–1292: Succession and Independence. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2002. ISBN 0-7486-1626-8
  • Hudson, Benjamin T., The Prophecy of Berchán: Irish and Scottish High-Kings of the Early Middle Ages. Greenwood, London, 1996.
  • McDonald, R. Andrew, Outlaws of medieval Scotland: Challenges to the Canmore kings, 1058–1266. Tuckwell, East Linton, 2003. 1-86232-236-8
  • Ó Cróinín, Dáibhí, Early Medieval Ireland: 400–1200. Longman, London, 1995. ISBN 0-582-01565-0
  • Sellar, W.D.H., "Moray: to 1130" in Michael Lynch (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Scottish History. Oxford UP, Oxford, 2001. ISBN 0-19-211696-7
  • Smyth, Alfred P., Warlords and Holy Men: Scotland AD 80–1000. Edinburgh UP, Edinburgh, 1984. ISBN 0-7486-0100-7
  • Taylor, A.B., "Karl Hundason: King of Scots" in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, LXXI (1937), pp. 334–340.
  • Woolf, Alex, "Macbeth" in Lynch (2001).

  • Tranter, Nigel MacBeth the King Hodder & Stoughton, 1978.
  • Aitchison, Nick Macbeth Sutton Publishing, 2001 , ISBN 0750926406.
  • Dunnett, Dorothy King Hereafter Knopf, 1982 , ISBN 0394523784.
  • Ellis, Peter Berresford Macbeth: High King of Scotland 1040-57 Learning Links, 1991 , ISBN 0856404489.
  • Marsden, John Alba of the Ravens: In Search of the Celtic Kingdom of the Scots Constable, 1997, ISBN 0094757607.
  • Walker, Ian Lords of Alba Sutton Publishing, 2006, ISBN 0750934921.
Macbeth of Scotland
Born: 1005 Died: 15 August 1057
Regnal titles
Preceded by
Donnchad I		 King of Scots
1040-1057		 Succeeded by
Lulach
Preceded by
Gille Coemgáin		 Mormaer of Moray
1032-1057
v • d • e
Monarchs of Scotland (Alba)

Traditional List of Monarchs of the Picts
Legendary Monarchs • Drest of the Hundred Battles • Talorc I • Nechtan I • Drest II • Galan • Drest III • Drest IV • Gartnait I • Cailtram • Talorc II • Drest V • Galam Cennalath • Bruide I • Gartnait II • Nechtan II • Cinioch • Gartnait III • Bruide II • Talorc III • Talorgan I • Gartnait IV • Drest VI • Bruide III • Taran • Bruide IV • Nechtan IV • Drest VII • Alpín I • Óengus I • Bruide V • Cináed I • Alpín II • Talorgan II • Drest VIII • Conall • Caustantín • Óengus II • Drest IX • Eogán • Ferat • Bruide VI • Cináed II • Bruide VII • Drest X

Traditional List of Monarchs of the Scots
Cináed I • Domnall I • Causantín I • Áed • Giric • Domnall II • Causantín II • Máel Coluim I • Idulb • Dub • Cuilén • Cináed II • Causantín III • Cináed III • Máel Coluim II • Donnchad I • Mac Bethad • Lulach • Máel Coluim III • Domnall III Bán • Donnchad II • Domnall III Bán • Edgar • Alexander I • David I • Máel Coluim IV • William I • Alexander II • Alexander III • First Interregnum • John • Second Interregnum • Robert I • David II • Robert II • Robert III • James I • James II • James III • James IV • James V • Mary I • James VI* • Charles I* • Charles II • The Covenanters • The Protectorate • Charles II* • James VII* • Mary II* • William II* • Anne*

* also monarch of Ireland and England
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Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macbeth_of_Scotland"
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