Macbeth of Scotland
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Macbeth and the witches by Henry Fuseli (Johann Heinrich Füssli) (1741-1825) |
Mac Bethad mac Findláich, known in
English as
Macbeth c.
1005 –
August 15 1057 was
King of Scots (or of
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 itself is of limited historical accuracy.
Mac Bethad was the son of
Findláech mac RuaidrÃ,
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 grand-daughter, rather than a daughter, of Máel Coluim.
[Hudson, Propehcy of Berchán, pp. 224–225 discusses the question and the reliability of Wyntoun's chronicle.]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 Ruadrà son of Domnall son of Morggán son of Cathamal son of Ruadrà 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 Ercc son of Eochaid Muinremuir.[Rawlinson B. 502 ¶1698 Genelach RÃg n-Alban.]
This should be compared with the ancestry claimed for
Máel Coluim mac Cináeda which traces back to Loarn's brother
Fergus Mór.
[Rawlinson B. 502 ¶1696 Genelach RÃg n-Alban.] 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 AilpÃn saw themselves as coming off the Cenél nGabráin of
Dál Riata, the northern kings of Moray traced their origins back to the rival Cenél Loairn.
[Duncan, Kingship of the Scots, p. 32; Sellar, "Moray".]Mac Bethad's father Findláech was killed c. 1020 - one obit calls him king of Alba - most probably by his successor, his brother Máel Brigte's son
Máel Coluim.
[Annals of Tigernach 1020.8; Annals of Ulster 1020.6.] 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.
[Annals of Tigernach 1029.5; Annals of Ulster 1029.7.] However,
king of Alba is by no means the most impressive title used by the
Irish annals. Many deaths reported in
Irish annals in the
11th century are of rulers called
Ard RÃ Alban -
High-King of Scotland. It is not entirely certain whether Máel Coluim was followed by his brother
Gille Coemgáin or by Macbeth.
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.[Annals of Ulster 1032.2.]
Some have supposed that Mac Bethad was the perpetrator.
[Sellar, "Moray".] 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.
[Duncan, Kingship of the Scots, p. 32.] 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 MaÃl Coluim (d. 997), either is possible chronologically.
[See Duncan, Kingship of the Scots, p. 345; Lynch, Oxford Companion, p. 680; Wolfe, "Macbeth".] After Gille Coemgáin's death, Mac Bethad married his widow and took Lulach as his step-son. Gruoch's brother, or nephew, his name is not recorded, was killed in 1033 by Máel Coluim mac Cináeda.
[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 ...".]When
Canute the Great came north in 1031 to accept the submission of Máel Coluim mac Cináeda, Mac Bethad too submitted to him:
... Malcolm, king of the Scots, submitted to him, and became his man, with two other kings, Mac Bethad and Iehmarc ...[Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Ms. E, 1031.]
Some have seen this as a sign of Mac Bethad'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.
[Compare Duncan, Kingship of the Scots, pp. 29–30 with Hudson, Prophecy of Berchán, pp. 222–223.] Whatever the true state of affairs in the early 1030s, and it seems more probable that Mac Bethad was subject to the king of Alba, Máel Coluim 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.
[Hudson, Prophecy of Berchán, p. 223; Duncan, Kingship of the Scots, p. 33.] Tigernan's chronicle says only:
Máel Coluim son of Cináed, king of Alba, the honour of western Europe, died.[Annals of Tigernach 1034.1]
Máel Coluim's grandson, Donnchad mac CrÃnáin, was acclaimed as king of Alba on
30 November,
1034, apparently without opposition. Donnchad appears to have been
tánaise rÃg, 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
rÃgdomna - men of royal blood.
[Donnchad as tánaise rÃg, 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 Ã" CróinÃn, Early Medieval Ireland, 63–71. Byrne, Irish Kings and High-Kings, pp. 35–39, offers a different perspective.] 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.
[Annals of Tigernach 1040.1.]Perhaps due to his youth, Donnchad's early reign was unremarkable. 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 in 1040, Donnchad led an army into Moray, where he was killed by Mac Bethad on 15 August, at Pitgaveny near
Elgin.
[Hudson, Prophecy of Berchán, p.223–224; Duncan, The Kingship of the Scots, pp.33–34.]On Donnchad's death, Mac Bethad 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 CrÃnán was killed in a battle between two Scots armies.
[Annals of Tigernach 1045.10; Annals of Ulster 1045.6.]John of Fordun wrote that Donnchad's wife fled Scotland, taking her children, including the future kings
Máel Coluim III and
Domnall III 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.
[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.]After the defeat of CrÃnán, Mac Bethad 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.
In 1052, he found himself 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 3000 Scots and 1500 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
kingdom of Strathclyde.
[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.] It may be that 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.
Mac Bethad certainly survived the English invasion, for he was defeated and mortally wounded by Máel Coluim mac Donnchada in battle at
Lumphanan, on the north side of the
Mounth in 1057, dying at
Scone, sixty miles to the south, some days later.
[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.] His successor, his stepson Lulach mac Gille Coemgáin, was installed as king soon thereafter.
Unlike later writers, no near contemporary source remarks on Mac Bethad 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.[Hudson, Prophecy of Berchán, p. 91, stanzas 193 and 194.]
Mac Bethad'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 Macbeth 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, unlikely to have greatly concerned him, is drawn from
Holinshed's
Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, which draws on Hector 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 Mac Bethad 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.
Primary sources
Secondary sources
* 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 edn) 1989. ISBN 0-7486-0104-X
* Byrne, Francis John,
Irish Kings and High-Kings. Batsford, London, 1973. ISBN 0-7134-5882-8
* 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.
* Ã" CróinÃn, DáibhÃ,
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).
Further reading
* Aitchison, N. B., Macbeth : man and myth. Sutton, Sutton, 1999.
* Crawford, Barbara, Scandinavian Scotland. Leicester University Press, Leicester, 1987.
* Hudson, Benjamin T., Kings of Celtic Scotland. Greenwood, London, 1994.
* McDonald, R. Andrew, Outlaws of medieval Scotland: Challenges to the Canmore kings, 1058–1266. Tuckwell, East Linton, 2003.
