Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 35.djvu/407

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Malcolm III
401
Malcolm IV

Maelsnectan, son of Lulach, in Moray, and took captive his mother and his best men, treasures, and cattle, though the Celtic chief himself escaped. During 1077–9 Malcolm made a raid against the north of England, which he laid waste as far as the Tyne, but in 1080 William sent his eldest son Robert to invade Scotland. He came as far as Egglesbrech (Falkirk), but did nothing more except to build or restore on his return, as a frontier fort, New-Castle on the Tyne.

Four years after the accession of William Rufus in 1091, Edgar Atheling, having been expelled from the lands William had given him in Normandy, came back to Scotland, and induced Malcolm, in the absence of Rufus, to make a raid which extended as far as Chester-le-Street. Rufus on his return to England in autumn invaded Scotland. His fleet was lost by shipwreck a few days before Michaelmas, but his land force met that of Malcolm in Lothian (more probably than at Leeds), where a reconciliation was effected by Robert and Edgar Atheling, Malcolm for a second time submitting to the English king and doing homage, though for what lands does not certainly appear.

In 1092 Rufus reduced Cumbria south of the Solway, and deposed Dolphin, perhaps a son of Gospatric, who had held it under Malcolm. Malcolm remonstrated against this and other breaches of peace, and Rufus summoned him to Gloucester, sending hostages to Scotland for his safe-conduct. On his way south Malcolm attended the foundation of the new cathedral at Durham on 11 Aug. 1093, when he laid one of the foundation-stones of the new building, an act in which Freeman curiously detects a proof of his subjection to the English king. He reached Gloucester on the 24th, but was refused audience by Rufus unless as a vassal doing homage in the court of England (curia regis) for the realm of Scotland. He declined, declaring that ‘the kings of Scotland were wont to do right to the kings of England upon the borders of the two kingdoms, and according to the united judgment of the peers of both realms.’ They parted in anger, and Malcolm in November 1093, almost as soon as he returned home, invaded Northumberland, where he was surprised by its earl in an ambuscade near the river Alne and the castle of Alnwick, and was slain (13 Nov.) at a place still named Malcolm's Cross by Morel of Bamborough, who is described as ‘the earl's steward and Malcolm's gossip.’ This spiritual relationship heightened the treachery of the act. Malcolm's army was dispersed by the sword and the winter floods. The corpse of the king was left to be buried by two Englishmen at Tynemouth. His son Alexander I transferred it twenty years later to Dunfermline, where it was placed at first in a separate tomb, but in the reign of Alexander III by the side of Queen Margaret.

Malcolm had by his first wife, Ingibrorg, two sons, Duncan II [q. v.] and Donald, who predeceased him. His eldest son by Margaret, Edward, was mortally wounded and died on the retreat from Northumberland, in which Malcolm was killed, at a spot in the forest of Jedburgh called after him Edward's Isle. Malcolm's other sons by Margaret were Ethelred, lay abbot of Dunkeld and earl of Fife; Edmund, who became a monk; and three who were successively kings of Scotland—Edgar (1072–1107) [q. v.], Alexander I (1078?–1124) [q. v.], and David (1084–1153) [q. v.] His two daughters by Margaret were Matilda (1080–1118) [q. v.], afterwards wife of Henry I, and Mary, wife of Eustace, count of Boulogne, and mother of Matilda, who married Stephen of Blois, king of England.

Several anecdotes of Malcolm show that in him, as in Bruce, a gentle heart lay in the warrior's breast. His devotion to Queen Margaret, and introduction through her influence of the Roman ritual and more civilised manners, are proved, though perhaps exaggerated, by her biographer. His forgiveness of the treacherous noble who sought his life is repeated by both English and Scottish annalists. His frequent hospitality to his wayward brother-in-law, Edgar Atheling, is attested by the ‘Saxon Chronicle.’ But the introduction of the feudal tenure and the promulgations of the laws ascribed sometimes to him, sometimes to Malcolm II, are disproved by historical criticism, which has shown that feudalism proper did not reach Scotland till the reigns of his sons, though some of the Saxon usages transferred by the Norman Conquest into the feudal system may date from his own.

[The Life of Margaret, attributed to her confessor Turgot, and the Scottish Chronicles of Wyntoun and Fordun, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, and the English Annalists, especially Simeon of Durham, are the best early authorities. Lord Hailes's Annals, E. M. Robertson's Scotland under her Early Kings, and Skene's Celtic Scotland, vol. i., are the best Scottish, and Freeman's Norman Conquest and Reign of William Rufus the best English modern histories.]

Æ. M.

MALCOLM IV (The Maiden) (1141–1165), king of Scotland, born in 1141, was son, by his wife Ada de Warenne, of Henry, the only son of David I [q. v.], king of Scotland. Malcolm was thus great-grandson of Malcolm III, Canmore [q. v.] He suc-