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Macbeth of Scotland

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Monarchs of Great Britain

    Mac Bethad mac Findláich
          King of Scots
   Reign   1040–1057
   Born    before 1020
           Scotland
   Died    15 August 1057
           Lumphanan or Scone
   Buried  Iona
   Consort Gruoch
   Father  Findláech mac Ruaidrí
   Mother  unknown

   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.

Origins and family

   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 grand-daughter,
   rather than a daughter, of Máel Coluim.

   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 Ercc son of Eochaid
     Muinremuir.

   This should be compared with the ancestry claimed for Máel Coluim mac
   Cináeda which traces back to Loarn's brother Fergus Mór. 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 coming off the Cenél nGabráin of
   Dál Riata, the northern kings of Moray traced their origins back to the
   rival Cenél Loairn.

   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. 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. 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 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.

   Some have supposed that Mac Bethad was the perpetrator. 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. 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. 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.

Mormaer and dux

   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 ...

   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. 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.
   Tigernan's chronicle says only:

     Máel Coluim son of Cináed, king of Alba, the honour of western
     Europe, died.

   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. 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.

   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.

High-King of Alba

   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 Crínán was killed in a
   battle between two Scots armies.

   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.

   After the defeat of Crínán, 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. 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 or killed by Máel Coluim mac Donnchada in battle
   at Lumphanan, on the north side of the Mounth in 1057. The Prophecy of
   Berchán has it that he was wounded and died at Scone, sixty miles to
   the south, some days later. Mac Bethad's stepson Lulach mac Gille
   Coemgáin was installed as king soon after.

   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.

Life to legend

   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 is drawn from Holinshed's Chronicles of England,
   Scotland, and Ireland, which in turn borrows from 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. Macbeth is also a recurring
   character in animated television series Gargoyles in which his reign is
   portrayed sympathetically, and his success is a result of an alliance
   with the titular creatures.
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