A People's History of Scotland Read Free Page B

north as far as Dunnottar, near Stonehaven, forcing homage from King Constantine.
    Constantine, however, played for time, making a treaty with the Norse and with the British kingdom of Strathclyde. Æthelstan met with Constantine and his allies in 937 at a place called Brunnanburh, near modern-day Liverpool. It was a bloody slaughter of a battle, but Æthelstan’s army controlled the field at the close of the day. In truth the losses were so great no one could claim victory, and Æthelstan was forced to cede any claims over Alba. 12
    By 1018, Malcolm II defeated the Northumbrians at Carham-on-Tweed and annexed the Lothians. His grandson Duncan had become king of Strathclyde at about the same time, and when he succeeded Malcolm II, the kingdom of Scotland’s boundaries were essentially those of today. The creation of the new kingdom was largely the achievement of three kings, Constantine II (900–943), Kenneth II (971–995) and Malcolm II (1005–1034), whose relatively long reigns provided some stability. Nevertheless, the tribal lands remained contested.
    The Norwegians’ control of the territory on the mainland came to an end by the close of the eleventh century. Their final attempt to control England was defeated in 1066 by the Anglo-Saxons at Stamford Bridge. Nevertheless, the Hebrides joined the kingdom of Scotland only in 1266, and Orkney and Shetland remained under Norwegian control until the fifteenth century.
    Feudalism Takes Control
    The Norman conquest of England in 1066 may have seemed remote to the Scottish ruling class, but it heralded momentous changes that shaped Scotland as it essentially existed until 1746. But the new kingdom was not yet an effective state. Aside from those areas under Norse control (the Orkneys and Shetlands under direct Norwegian rule and the Norse-Gaelic kingdom of the Western Isles), the northern third, Moray, remained semi-independent under its own‘mormaers’ (sometimes called kings). How Pictish they were we do not know, but in 1040 one Mac Bethad (Macbeth) killed King Duncan at Pitgaveny (Bothnagowan) near Elgin, and ruled as king for the next seventeen years. Duncan’s son Malcolm Canmore (Bighead) fled to safety at the Saxon court of Edward the Confessor. In 1057, Malcolm, with Saxon aid, defeated and killed Macbeth and was crowned king of Scotland as Malcolm III.
    Malcolm Canmore would go down in history as a ‘good king’, in large part because his wife, Margaret, an Anglo-Saxon princess, was made a saint by the Catholic Church for promoting its still loose hold over religious affairs. A comprehensive system of bishops and parishes was introduced. She also encouraged Malcolm to initiate new abbeys and monasteries, and to bestow them with lands and riches. These would become one of the mainstays of feudal rule because they had both a religious and an economic function. They were often more innovative than the nobility in exploiting the land, and the peasantry, amassing great wealth.
    Malcolm’s ambition was to obtain Northumbria for the Scottish Crown and he seized every opportunity, throwing Scotland into a series of unsuccessful wars and instigating English retribution. In response the new Norman kingdom of England began exerting its might north of the Solway–Tweed border. In 1072, William the Conqueror advanced as far as the Tay. The Scots were unable to resist the heavily armoured horsemen and disciplined infantry, and Malcolm Canmore met William at Abernethy to swear vassalage. The Norman kings to the south were content to allow the Canmore dynasty to reign, using military pressure to keep them in line. They in turn saw that the feudal state to the south gave their English counterparts greater power and wealth and began to invite Norman nobles to take over estates in Scotland, transplanting the Norman feudal system into what was still, in Scotland, a clan-based society.
    It was under the Canmores that a form of English