BUILDING BURGHS: THE CONQUEST AND CIVILISATION OF MORAY, C.1150 - C.1250

Following the death of the Moravian kings of Scots Macbeatha (in 1057) and his stepson Lulach (in 1058), Mael Coluim mac Donnchadh (Malcolm III) and his descendants sought to establish a European-style of kingship over the mongrel (British/Gaelic/Anglian/Norse) realm of Scotland. The innovation of Anglo-Norman primogeniture – succession of the eldest legitimate male heir, regardless of age or ability – broke with the native Scottish tradition of kingship that descended to the most eligible candidate emerging from several qualifying lineages. In practice, it was not until the death of William I (in 1214) that a son (Alexander II) succeeded his father. Meanwhile, the rival lineage of Moray continued to assert its claim to the kingship of the Scots.

The troublesome distinctiveness of Moray is rooted in the complexities of earlier Gaelic kingship and in the origins of the province/mormaerdom of Moray as Fortriu, the pre-eminent kingdom of Pictland. From the mid-10th century onwards, the process of embracing Moray into the emergent empire of Scotland continued through five generations under ten monarchs. This process, in Moray at least, may be characterised as a Norman conquest.

A NORMAN CONQUEST?

Anglo-Norman infiltration into Scotland began under Macbeatha, who welcomed two marcher lords to his court – Osbern de Pentecost and his companion Hugo, who presumably arrived with an appropriate entourage of men-at-arms, priests and retainers. Macbeatha’s Normans perished on the battlefield at Dunsinane and Lumphanan. But Anglo-Norman immigrants found a new and lasting foothold in Scotland under Mael Coluim III and his Anglo-Hungarian queen, Margaret, as the vanguard of an invited colonial class who would support the modernisation of the realm. The first tentative influx included Benedictine monks from Canterbury who staffed the royal chapel at Dunfermline. Mael Coluim’s son, Alexander I (1106/7-24) stiffened his army with newfangled Anglo-Norman cavalry to crush a rising by a Moray pretender in 1116; and the triumph was celebrated with the foundation of a victory abbey at Scone, staffed with Augustinian monks from Nostell in Yorkshire.

Alexander’s younger brother, Earl David, was immersed in Anglo-Norman culture at the court of Henry I of England. Henry married Earl David’s sister Maud, and David himself wed an Anglo-Norman noblewoman who brought him the earldom of Huntingdon. Earl David planted Anglo-Norman feudal tenants and abbeys for continental orders of monks in his lands in Lothian. The influx continued during David’s kingship (1124-53), and under his grandsons Malcolm IV (1153-65) and William I (1165- 1214). Anglo-Normans and (borough), and the English word in the northern-dialect form ‘burgh’ was adopted for these innovatory settlements, for which there was no adequate word in the native lexicon. However, Anglo-Norman immigrants arrived by royal invitation only – and to that extent, though the nation was profoundly changed, this was no Norman ‘conquest’ in the mould of 1066.