The Real Macbeth

Thanks to the pen of William Shakespeare, the name Macbeth is known the world over. However, not too many have studied the real story of the man who was king of Scotland for 17 years in the mid 11th century. In 1031, Malcolm II welcomed King Cnut to Scotland. After troubled beginnings, Cnut had well and truly established his authority over England and now he marched northwards to meet with his Scottish counterpart to receive his homage with Malcolm accepting Cnut as his overlord. According to the Anglo Saxon Chronicles, during this meeting, there were two other kings in attendance. The ASC writes; “Malcolm, king of the Scots, submitted to Cnut with two other kings, Macbeth and Lehmarc.”

There shouldn’t be too much stock on Macbeth being described as a king here. According to the ASC, Malcolm would only hold the peace for a short time but his evident duplicity seems to have been of little consequence as he died in 1034. In 1040, Macbeth would succeed Duncan I as king of Scotland, having defeated Duncan at the Battle of Pilgaveny which also saw Duncan killed. Macbeth’s reign would predictably see affairs in England play a part in his kingship. Edward The Confessor, earlier in his life, had lived for a long time in Normandy and, now he was king, many Normans had come to reside in England. But, following the restoration to power of the highly influential Earl Godwin, many of these Normans were banished from the kingdom because of their “passing of unjust laws”. Only a select few of King Edward’s favourites were allowed to remain in England, one of them being the delightfully named Anfrid Cocksfoot. These tumultuous events south of the border had an impact on Macbeth in the north with some of the exiled Normans making their way to Scotland.

Osbern Pentecost, along with his friend Hugh, like many others, had been compelled to surrender their castles. Having seen their power vanish before their eyes, Osbern and Hugh chose to go north where Macbeth, rather than being inconvenienced, greeted them with warmth. In 1050, Florence of Worcester notes, Macbeth travelled to Rome where he made generous donations. It goes without saying that this indicates Macbeth was a conventionally pious man.

For the most part, Macbeth’s reign would be a largely peaceful one but it would come as no surprise that when a disturbance was caused, the source of it came from England. On the orders of King Edward himself, an English army invaded Scotland, led by Siward, “the stout Earl of Northumbria”. Macbeth marched against the meddling English and a bloody battle was fought “with many thousands” killed. The Scottish king was forced to flee for his life in the midst of the terrible slaughter along with much of his army. Even though Earl Siward was victorious, the battle came at a terrible price for his own army and himself personally. The English (and Danish) army too lost many men, one of them being Siward’s own son.

The consequence of the battle was the elevation to the throne of the kingdom of Strathclyde of one Malcolm Canmore, who would one day become Malcolm III of Scotland and therefore reclaim all the lands that had been held by his father, Duncan I, who had fallen to Macbeth. The geography of Scotland and England in this age could sometimes be rather interchangeable with rivals threatening the power of established kings and certainly Macbeth’s defeat diminished greatly his own authority. Macbeth may have been thankful that the man who had helped bring this about, Earl Siward, died the following year at York.

Like many other medieval kings, Macbeth found the fortunes of war could be fickle; he had won the crown through the sword and, in 1057, he would lose it in battle too. At the battle of Lumphanan, Macbeth once again was defeated by Malcolm Canmore who would still have to wait his turn to take the Scottish crown. In March 1058, Malcolm had Lulach, Macbeth’s successor, murdered and himself crowned. In 1093, however, Malcolm too would fall in battle, at the hands of an English army at Alnwick.

As we’ve seen, these were fast moving times in Scotland and beyond. Kings very often lived and died by the sword and Macbeth was very much one of those kings. We are given glimpses into Macbeth’s character; he was described as a “generous king” which fits with his welcoming to Scotland of Norman exiles. Beyond that Macbeth was also “The red, tall, golden-haired one, he will be pleasant to me among them; Scotland will be brimful west and east during the reign of the furious red one.” Whilst Shakespeare remains one of the great story tellers, we can’t take everything he wrote literally or even seriously. In his historical plays, there are, as is well known, vast gaps between what he wrote and what was actually true and that is certainly the case with Macbeth who was very different to the man Shakespeare describes.