NOTE CC. Vol. ii. p. 16.
The Death of Malcolm.
The last invasion of England by Malcolm was clearly made in reprisal for the treatment which he had received at Gloucester. The words of the Peterborough Chronicler are very remarkable. They seem to describe a war which is acknowledged to be just in itself, but which is carried on with needless cruelty;
“And se cyng Melcolm ham to Scotlande gewænde. Ac hraðe þaes þe he ham com he his fyrde gegaderode.”
Most of the other writers fail to bring out the connexion both of time and of cause and effect between the scene at Gloucester and the invasion which led to Malcolm’s death at Alnwick. Perhaps we may count Matthew Paris, the zealous panegyrist of Malcolm, as an exception. He has nothing to tell us about Malcolm’s coming to Gloucester; but, having mentioned William’s sickness there, which he wrongly places in 1092, he goes on (i. 43);
“Eodem anno pius rex Scotorum Malcolmus, cujus actus in benedictione vivunt immortales, cum non immerito contra tirannum Willelmum II. regem sibi injuriantem guerram movisset, interceptus est subito et, positis insidiis, interemptus.”
So in a later passage (i. 47) he speaks of Robert of Mowbray overcoming Malcolm “proditiose.” Moreover several even of the English writers seem to imply that there was something treacherous about the way in which Malcolm met his death. The words of the Chronicler are, “hine þa Rodbeard se eorl of Norðhymbran mid his mannan unwæres besyrede and ofsloh.” And directly after he describes the grief of Margaret on hearing “hyre þa leofstan hlaford and sunu þus beswikene.” William of Malmesbury mentions the death of Malcolm twice, and in rather different tones. The first time (iii. 250) he seems to jumble up together Malcolm’s two invasions, leaving out all about the meeting at Gloucester. He had said that through the whole reign of the Conqueror Malcolm “incertis et sæpe fractis fœderibus ævum egit,” and adds;
“Filio Willelmi Willelmo regnante, simili modo impetitus, falso sacramento insequentem abegit. Nec multo post, dum fidei immemor superbius provinciam inequitaret, a Roberto de Molbreia comite Northanhimbriæ, cum filio cæsus est.”
In the second place (iv. 311), after describing the meeting at Gloucester, he adds; “Idem proxima hyeme, ab hominibus Roberti comitis Humbrensium, magis fraude quam viribus occubuit.” No one would think from this that Malcolm had gone back to Scotland, got together his army, and invaded Northumberland. It would rather suggest the idea that he was attacked on his way back from Gloucester. And this comes out more strongly in the very confused account of Orderic, 701 C. He mixes up the events of 1091 and 1093. After the first conference by the Scots’ water, the two kings go quietly together into England; then we read;
“Post aliquod tempus, dum Melcoma rex ad sua vellet remeare, muneribusque multis honoratus a rege rediret pacifice, prope fines suos Rodbertus de Molbraio, cum Morello nepote suo et militibus armatis occurrit, et ex insperato inermem interfecit. Quod audiens rex Anglorum, regnique optimates, valde contristati sunt, et pro tam fœda re, tamque crudeli, a Normannis commissa, nimis erubuerunt. Priscum facinus a modernis iteratum est. Nam sicut Abner, filius Ner, a Joab et Abisai, de domo David pacifice rediens, dolose peremptus est, sic Melcoma rex, de curia Guillelmi regis cum pace remeans, a Molbraianis trucidatus est.”
This is one of those sayings of Orderic by which we are now and then fairly puzzled. He gets hold of a scriptural or classical parallel, and seems to be altogether carried away by it. It is hard to see the likeness between the cases of Malcolm and Abner; but it is harder to see why the deed is in a marked way attributed to “Normanni,” who seem to be distinguished from the “rex Anglorum regnique optimates.” In what sense were Morel and Robert of Mowbray Norman, in which the King and the great mass of the “optimates” were not Norman just as much?
Confused as these two last accounts are, they still suggest that there was something about the way in which Robert and Morel contrived the death of Malcolm which William Rufus would have looked on as not quite consistent with the character of a “probus miles.” The one word “beswikene” in the Chronicle doubtless goes for more than any amount of Latin rhetoric, though its force is a little weakened by its not occurring in the actual narrative of Malcolm’s death, but in the account of Margaret’s grief at hearing of it, at which point most of our writers put on more or less of the tone of hagiology. But the only writer who gives us any details is Fordun (v. 20), in a passage which professes to come from Turgot, on which see the remarks of Mr. Hinde in his Simeon, p. 261. In his story we read how Malcolm,
“Cum maximam prædam ex Anglia, more solito, ultra flumen These, de Clefeland, Richemond, et alibi sæpius adduceret, castrumque de Aylnwick, sive Murealden, quod idem est, obsideret, obsessosque sibi rebellantes oppido affligeret, hi, qui inclusi fuerant, ab omni humano excludebantur auxilio.”
The besieged, having no other chance, take to treachery. One man offers himself to go on the desperate venture; he makes his way to the Scottish camp, and asks for the King;
“Quærentibus causam inquisitionis dixit, se castrum regi traditurum, et in argumentum fidei claves ejusdem in hasta sua coram omnibus portavit oblaturus. Quo audito rex, doli nescius, incaute a tentorio inermis exiliens et minus provide, occurrit proditori; at ille, quæsita opportunitate, inermem regem armatus transfixit, et, latibula silvæ vicinæ festinanter ingressus, eorum manus evasit.”
Then follows the death of the King’s son Eadward;
“Turbato igitur exercitu, dolor dolorem accumulat: nam Eadwardus regis primogenitus a Northumbris lethaliter vulneratur.”
He dies three days later “apud Eardwardisle foresta de Jedwood,” and was buried at Dunfermline “juxta patrem.”
It is really impossible that this can be a genuine bit of Turgot. There is nothing anywhere else about a siege of Alnwick, and Mr. Hinde pertinently raises the question whether there was anything at Alnwick to besiege. At any rate, it is strange that the defenders of Alnwick, or anybody else whom Malcolm might come across in Northumberland, should be called “rebellantes” against him. There is a very mythical sound about the alleged form of Malcolm’s death. In the Tapestry (see N. C. vol. iii. p. 240) keys are handed to a victorious besieger on the point of a spear; but it is from the walls of the besieged place, and they are received in the like sort. They surely would not be presented in this way in the King’s own camp. And, if Malcolm was killed in this way, how came Eadward to be mortally wounded? Mr. Hinde adds;
“The ridiculous tale of the person who pierced the king’s eye, receiving from that exploit the designation of ‘Piercy, quod Anglice sonat perforare oculum,’ is interpolated in some MSS. of Fordun. This story must necessarily have been invented after the Percy family became the possessors of Alnwick, and so gave point, if not probability, to the fiction.”
I suspect that Malcolm was killed in some ambush or in some other way unlike open battle. Then sympathy for Margaret called up—except at Durham and other parts more nearly concerned—sympathy for Malcolm. Then the Chronicler, in this state of mind, used the harsh word “beswikene,” and so a tale of actual treachery grew up. The version in Fordun gives us the story in the form of a detailed legend; in Orderic the tale itself is still vague; but the events which went before are so altered as to make any attack on Malcolm treacherous. In that version, he is going home from the King’s court in the King’s peace. In the true version, he is invading England, perhaps on just grounds in his own eyes, certainly on grounds which made his invasion by no means wonderful. Still resistance to him was a rightful operation of war, unless there was any actual treachery in the form which the attack took. That such there was we have no direct evidence; but there must have been something or other to account for the tone of so many writers. Florence is colourless; so is Henry of Huntingdon.
The Hyde writer, as usual, takes a line of his own. He speaks (301) of “quidam Robertus Northamhumbrorum comes, vir dives et potens, qui regem Scotorum Malcolmum, patrem Matildis reginæ, bellando cum toto pene exercitu interfecit.” It is not unlikely that the fact that Malcolm was not only the husband of the sainted Margaret, but also the father of the popular Queen Eadgyth-Matilda, won for him a measure of sympathy after his death which he had not enjoyed while he was alive. Indeed we get this relation distinctly set forth by the Continuator of William of Jumièges (viii. 8), who after recording the life-long imprisonment of Robert of Mowbray, adds, “Dictum est a pluribus, hanc talionem sibi redditam fuisse, quia regem Scotiæ, patrem videlicet nobilissimæ Mathildis postea reginæ Anglorum, dolose peremerat.”
Alnwick, as the place of Malcolm’s death, and of the capture of another Scottish king in the next century, awakens a certain amount of real interest beyond the range of mere legend and misapplied sentiment. The late Mr. Hartshorne wrote with a strange feeling of devotion towards anything that did profess and call itself Percy; but he gives us the facts. All that need be known about Alnwick will be found in his papers in the Archæological Institute’s second Newcastle volume, p. 143. Robert of Veci appears in Domesday in several shires as far north as Lincoln, but of course we cannot track him in the unsurveyed parts of Northumberland. Of the original Percy we have heard something in various parts in N. C. vol. iv. pp. 215, 295, 789; vol. v. p. 773. The second set of Percies, those of Louvain, got to Alnwick by a grant from Bishop Antony Beck in 1309 (Hartshorne, ii. 150, 152). Very little can be made of the Alnwick Chronicle printed in Mr. Hartshorne’s Appendix. What can we say to a “William Tisonne” who dies on the English side at Senlac, and who is the brother of Richard Tisone who founds chapels in the year 1000, as his father “Gisbright” founded abbeys before him? In this story the first Norman lord of Alnwick is Ivo of Veci, who is described as “miles de secretariis,” whatever that may mean, to the Conqueror, and he gets Alnwick along with the daughter of the slain William Tisonne. Alnwick may quite possibly have passed to a Norman lord by marriage with an English heiress, but assuredly her father was not called William and did not bear an hereditary surname, and it is much to his credit if, in the teeth of his Earl, he found his way to the great battle from a point so far north as Alnwick.