page_title: Kingdom of Alba
section_title: Duncan I to Alexander I
hierarchical_section_title: Kingdom of Alba / Kings of Alba / Duncan I to Alexander I
caption_attribution_description: The Stone of Scone in the Coronation Chair at Westminster Abbey. No attribution was published in the source or any other book known to contain the image.
context_page_description: The Kingdom of Alba refers to the Kingdom of Scotland between the deaths of Donald II in 900 and of Alexander III in 1286, which then led indirectly to the Scottish Wars of Independence. The name is one of convenience, as throughout this period the elite and populace of the Kingdom were predominantly Pictish-Gaels or later Pictish-Gaels and Scoto-Norman, and differs markedly from the period of the Stuarts, in which the elite of the kingdom were speakers of Middle English, which later evolved and came to be called Lowland Scots. There is no precise Gaelic equivalent for the English terminology "Kingdom of Alba", as the Gaelic term Rìoghachd na h-Alba means 'Kingdom of Scotland'. English-speaking scholars adapted the Gaelic name for Scotland to apply to a particular political period in Scottish history during the High Middle Ages.
context_section_description: The period between the accession of King Duncan I (Donnchadh Mac Críonáin) (1034) and the death of Alexander I (1124) was the last before the coming of the Normans to Scotland. In some respects, the reign of King Malcolm III (Maol Caluim Mac Donnchaidh) prefigured the changes which took place in the reigns of the French-speaking kings David I and William I, although native reaction to the manner of Duncan II's (Donnchad mac Máel Coluim) accession perhaps put these changes back somewhat.
  King Duncan I's reign was a military failure. He was defeated by the native English at Durham in 1040, and was subsequently toppled.  Duncan had only been related to previous rulers through his mother Bethoc, daughter of Malcolm II, who had married Crínán, the lay abbot of Dunkeld (and probably Mormaer of Atholl too). At a location called Bothganowan (or Bothgowan, Bothgofnane, Bothgofuane, meaning "Blacksmith's Hut" in old Gaelic, today Pitgaveny near Elgin), the Mormaer of Moray, Macbeth defeated and killed Duncan, and took the kingship for himself. After Macbeth's successor Lulach, another Moravian, all kings of Scotland were Duncan's descendants. For this reason, Duncan's reign is often remembered positively, while Macbeth is villanised. Eventually, William Shakespeare gave fame to this medieval equivalent of propaganda by further immortalising both men in his play Macbeth. Macbeth's reign however was successful enough that he had the security to go on pilgrimage to Rome.
  It was Malcolm III who acquired the nickname (as did his successors) "Canmore" (Ceann Mór, "Great Chief"), and not his father Duncan, who did more to create the successful dynasty which ruled Scotland for the following two centuries. Part of the success was the huge number of children he had. Through two marriages, firstly to the Norwegian Ingibiorg Finnsdottir, and secondly to the English princess Margaret of Wessex, Malcolm had perhaps a dozen children. Malcolm and, if we believe later hagiography, his wife, introduced the first Benedictine monks to Scotland. However, despite having a royal Anglo-Saxon wife, Malcolm spent more of his reign conducting slave raids against the English, adding to the woes of that people in the aftermath of the Norman Conquest of England and the Harrying of the North, as Marianus Scotus tells us:
  the Scots and French devastated the English; and [the English] were dispersed and died of hunger; and were compelled to eat human flesh: and to this end, to kill men, and to salt and dry them.”
  Malcolm died in one of these raids, in 1093. In the aftermath of his death, the Norman rulers of England began their interference in the Scottish kingdom. This interference was prompted by Malcolm's raids and attempts to forge claims for his successors to the English kingship. He had married the sister of the native English claimant to the English throne, Edgar Ætheling, and had given most of his children by this marriage Anglo-Saxon royal names. Moreover, he had given support to many native English nobles, including Edgar himself, and had been supporting native English insurrections against their Norman rulers. In 1080, King William the Conqueror sent his son on an invasion of Scotland. The invasion got as far as Falkirk, on the boundary between Scotland-proper and Lothian, and Malcolm submitted to the authority of the king, giving his oldest son Duncan as a hostage. This submission perhaps gives the reason why Malcolm did not give his last two sons, Alexander and David, Anglo-Saxon royal names.
  Malcolm's natural successor was his brother, Donalbane (Domhnall Bán Mac Donnchaidh), as Malcolm's sons were young. However, the Norman state to the south sent Malcolm's son Duncan to take the kingship. In the ensuing conflict, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells us that:
  Donnchadh went to Scotland with what aid he could get of the English and French, and deprived his kinsman Domhnall of the Kingdom, and was received as King. But afterwards some of the Scots gathered themselves together, and slew almost all of his followers; and he himself escaped with few. Thereaft
caption: The Stone of Scone in the Coronation Chair at Westminster Abbey, 1855. It was the ceremonial coronation stone of Scotland's Gaelic kings, similar to the Irish Lia Fáil.
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