So as the year 1040 approaches, what do we have? The present king,
Next we find the two clashing near the town of Elgin, deep in the heart of
northern Moray. What is Duncan doing there? We can only speculate. Perhaps
Moray chose to withhold conveth after the disastrous battle before Durham, and
Duncan rode north to try to collect. Perhaps this was a routine "royal circuit"
which the high king made through his provinces, and Macbeth took advantage of
the opportunity to attack Duncan in his own territory. My pet theory--which many
will dispute--is that Duncan was the ill-fated "Karl Hundeson" in the Norse sagas
who lost a sea battle against Thorfinn, then landed on the northeast shore of the
Moray Firth and retreated inland, expecting his sub-king Macbeth to reinforce him.
Whatever the circumstances, Duncan went up against Macbeth and lost. Duncan was
buried with previous kings on the sacred Isle of Iona. Macbeth was now the biggest
dog on the hill, and he rode to the capital city of Scone to claim the high kingship
for himself.
Macbeth's claim had to be ratified by the nobles and Church officials, and presumably
it was. Either he was considered the most suitable candidate for the job, or he had
an army too large to argue with--possibly both. His only potential rival was Duncan's
brother Maldred, who had succeeded Duncan as king in Cumbria, but no mention is made
of him. Duncan's oldest son Malcolm (Canmore) was nine at the time, far short of the
17 years needed for him to hold office under Celtic law.
There seems to have been no attempt to force Duncan's widow to flee with her three
boys, for it is two years before she arrives at the court of her kinsman, the Earl
of Northumbria. Donal--later Donalbane--appears to have been fostered in the Western
Isles, while the youngest boy shows up later in Cumbria. But Malcolm, who came to
be known as Malcolm Canmore, went first to Northumbria with his mother, and then
south to the court of King Edward the Confessor of England. There he grew to manhood,
and eventually found support to challenge Macbeth for the Scottish throne.
Little is recorded of Macbeth's high kingship, a fact which in itself indicates that
it was relatively peaceful. There were still skirmishes with Northumbria, and Viking
raids along the coast. Most interesting is a reference in the annals to a battle
"between the Scots themselves" in which Crinan, Duncan's father, was killed.
Although some scholars call this a civil war, the wording in the annals hints
that a company of Scots from different provinces were en route together to a
common destination when the conflict broke out. The location is in Atholl,
west of Crinan's stronghold at Dunkeld. Could a war band have been heading
west to ward off an attack by Thorfinn, or by the Vikings being squeezed out
of Ireland at that time? Alas, we can only speculate.
The picture we get of Macbeth's reign is a time when Scotland was strong enough
to hold its borders against Northumbria, against Thorfinn, against the Viking
overlords being expelled from Ireland. Through treaty or through might, Macbeth
preserved Alba in relative stability for most of his 17-year rule. Laws were
recorded, and the queen donated family lands to the Church. In fact, Macbeth
felt secure enough in his authority that he left the country for a time in 1050
to visit Rome, where he is recorded as having distributed silver "by throwing it
about," a tradition for visiting heads of state.
But in England, Malcolm Canmore was coming of age. His education and upbringing
were English, his notion of succession shaped by English thought, the divine
right of kings reinforced by the Roman Catholic Church. Even under Celtic law,
he was by heritage and training a natural choice to be the next King of Scots.