Norman Conquest Encyclopedia

Scots

At the opening of the 11th century, just before the time of the Norman Conquest, Scotland was still not a single kingdom similar to the territory called Scotland today. Orkney was a Viking earldom, Moray, and Man and the Isles, separate entities, and Strathclyde and Cumbria sub-kingdoms of Scotland. The ineffectual King Duncan, grandson of King Malcolm II, was overthrown by an alliance of Thorfinn the Mighty of Orkney and Macbeth, mormaer of Moray in 1040, driving Duncan's youthful son Malcolm to seek refuge at the English court. Edward the Confessor supported the young man's efforts to regain his throne and in 1054 Macbeth was defeated at Dunsinnan. Three years later Malcolm III, as he had become, finally contrived the death of Macbeth and, a year later, that of his stepson, and thus became the first seriously to claim to rule Scotland - the mainland at least. When William the Conqueror succeeded in England, Malcolm naturally sympathized with the English heir, Edgar Atheling, and William was forced to invade Scotland in 1072 in a futile attempt to force Malcolm to desist.