by repeated defeats at the hands of the Northmen under Thorfinn. In 1057
Macbeth was slain in battle at Lumphanan, in Aberdeenshire, and Malcolm
Canmore, son of Duncan, after returning from England, whither he had fled
from Macbeth, succeeded to the throne. But he and his descendants for
long were opposed by the House of Murray, descendants of Lulach, who
himself had died in 1058.

The world will always believe Shakespeare's version of these events, and
suppose the gracious Duncan to have been a venerable old man, and Macbeth
an ambitious Thane, with a bloodthirsty wife, he himself being urged on
by the predictions of witches. He was, in fact, Mormaor of Murray, and
upheld the claims of his stepson Lulach, who was son of a daughter of the
wrongfully extruded House of Aodh.

Malcolm Canmore, Duncan's grandson, on the other hand, represented the
European custom of direct lineal succession against the ancient Scots'
mode.




CHAPTER IV. MALCOLM CANMORE--NORMAN CONQUEST.


The reign of Malcolm Canmore (1057-1093) brought Scotland into closer
connection with western Europe and western Christianity. The Norman
Conquest (1066) increased the tendency of the English-speaking people of
Lothian to acquiesce in the rule of a Celtic king, rather than in that of
the adventurers who followed William of Normandy. Norman operations did
not at first reach Cumberland, which Malcolm held; and, on the death of