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1130 AD: Slaughter at Stracathro

(Detail of Angus from Robert Edward’s map of 1678- Stracathro can be seen north of Brechin on the banks of the Esk. Clicking on the image should make it larger. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland)

In the year 1130, an army led by Angus, ruler of Moray, was defeated by forces loyal to David I, King of Scots, at the Battle of Stracathro. Although this engagement was recorded by a wide variety of medieval chroniclers and historians, few provide any details about the course of the battle or its background. Even the exact date is unclear. Nonetheless, Stracathro is often seen as a pivotal moment in the relationship between the powerful lords of Moray and the developing kingdom of Scotland, and an important flashpoint in the domestic politics of David I’s reign.

To make sense of the various surviving accounts of this battle, it is necessary to give some background information on Angus of Moray’s status. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, ‘Moray’ covered a much larger area than it does now. A territory which stretched from the north-east to Ross, its rulers often found themselves in competition with the neighbouring jarls of Orkney and the kings of Alba, the latter of whom were then expanding their territory to include Strathclyde and Lothian south of the Forth, forging what we would now recognise as the kingdom of Scotland. However it is unclear whether Moray’s lords were independent rulers or regional lieutenants of the kings of Alba. The current academic consensus seems to be in favour of the latter, with some historians calling the rulers of Moray ‘mormaers’ (literally ‘great steward’ but often seen as equivalent to ‘earl’). Nevertheless Moray’s medieval inhabitants may well have seen things differently. At any rate, the rulers of Moray were clearly powerful figures in the north, with a close (if often fraught) relationship with the rulers of what we now call Scotland.

This closeness increased in 1040 when Moray’s ruler, Mac Bethad Mac Findlaích (Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth’) seized the throne of Alba. Mac Bethad had claimed Moray after his cousin Gillecomgain burned to death in 1032. He had also swiftly married Gillecomgain’s widow Gruoch* who was a granddaughter of Kenneth III, king of Alba. Some years later, Mac Bethad defeated the then king of Alba, Duncan I, in battle near Elgin, and claimed the throne of Alba. He ruled for seventeen years before his own death at Lumphanan in 1057, following his defeat by forces loyal to Duncan’s son Malcolm III. Mac Bethad was briefly succeeded by his stepson Lulach ‘fatuus’ (‘the simple’), son of Gillecomgain and Gruoch, before Lulach too was killed in 1058 and Malcolm III succeeded in wresting control of Scotland...

(The Laich of Moray in the Blaeu Atlas of 1654. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland)

(The shire of Moray is highlighted in blue and Angus (Forfarshire) in red. The old county system was only beginning to emerge in David I’s reign, and Moray in particular referred to a much larger province than shown here. The black spot shows the general location of Stracathro- I am no cartographer however, so this is only a rough guide. Template Source).

No more kings of Alba would be drawn from the house of Moray after Lulach’s death. A short conflict between Malcolm III and Lulach’s son Máel Snechta did break out in 1078: Máel Snechta got the worst of it but may have reached an agreement with Malcolm, since his kinsmen continued to rule in Moray for some decades. After this no serious challenges came from Moray for over fifty years until 1130, when another descendant of Lulach- his daughter’s son Angus- was ruler of the province.

Although we know something of his maternal ancestry (his father is a complete mystery), Angus of Moray is still a rather obscure figure. Late mediaeval Irish annals call him ‘rí’ or ‘king’ of Moray. Conversely, contemporary Anglo-Norman sources, as well as the Chronicles of Melrose and Holyrood, and late mediaeval Scottish historians like John of Fordun, all use the Latin word ‘comes’, which implies that they saw Angus’ position as roughly equivalent to that of a count or earl. Some bias is to be expected from Anglo-Norman sources since they usually favoured the descendants of Malcolm III and St Margaret over other branches of the royal house. Nonetheless we lack convincing evidence that the early twelfth century rulers of Moray controlled an independent kingdom, though they might perhaps have been ‘subkings’. We do know that Angus had a reasonably good claim to rule over both Moray and Alba, and the men of Moray were clearly willing to support him in this. And yet there had been no recorded conflict for over fifty years, so why did Angus choose to make his move in 1130?

Perhaps the answer can be found in the internal politics of the Scottish royal house. By 1130, David I, the youngest son of Malcolm III by his second wife Margaret of Wessex, had worn the title ‘King of Scots’ for six years. Although history remembers David as an impressive and innovative monarch- one of those kings who ‘made’ Scotland- in the early years of his reign his power seems to have been centred on the southern provinces of Lothian and Strathclyde. His control of ‘Scotia’ or Alba- the traditional heartland of the kingdom north of the River Forth- was less certain, and he must have seemed a very distant figure in a place like Moray. He also had to contend with rivals for the throne, like Malcolm, the son of David’s older brother and predecessor Alexander I. Described by the contemporary Anglo-Norman chronicler Orderic Vitalis as illegitimate, in an age when this did not yet disqualify a man from kingship, Ailred of Rievaulx later called Malcolm, ‘the heir of his father’s hatred and persecution’.* He may have opposed his uncle David at the outset of the reign, though if so he was plainly unsuccessful. This was not to be the last of Malcom’s intrigues however, since he pops up again a few years later in the company of Angus of Moray, taking part in the invasion of Alba in 1130. Perhaps then Malcolm’s appearance in Moray meant that he was able to convince Angus to support his claim and that this provided the impetus for the invasion. However it must be said that, in general, Angus is presented as the real leader of the campaign. Most sources do not even seem to think Malcolm’s presence at Stracathro worth mentioning, while Orderic Vitalis wrote that Angus ‘entered Scotland with the intention of reducing the whole kingdom to subjection’, and merely notes that Malcolm accompanied the army.

(David I and his grandson Malcolm IV, in a twelfth century charter belonging to Kelso Abbey. Source- Wikimedia commons)

(The round tower at Brechin, a few miles south of Stracathro, was likely constructed in the twelfth century, if not earlier. It is one of only two such round towers in Scotland)

It is also worth bearing in mind that, at the time of the invasion of Alba, David I was probably hundreds of miles away in the south of England, attending the court of his brother-in-law King Henry I. Although David’s relationship with the English king had proven useful on many occasions, this time it might have provided Angus and his allies with the perfect opportunity to revolt. Perhaps his absence also provided motive: later twelfth century kings of Scots would occasionally face armed opposition to their prolonged absences from the realm, and it is possible that Angus sought to capitalise on any discontent. Whatever the ultimate cause of their revolt, the year 1130 saw Angus and Malcolm march south with an invasion force which is said to have been 5,000 strong.

Contemporary sources do not tell us much about the course of the campaign. Only the late fourteenth century historian John of Fordun, who hailed from the Mearns himself and probably drew on earlier sources, gives a location for the sole recorded battle- Stracathro, near Brechin in Angus. This suggests that Angus of Moray’s army either headed south by one of the tracks over the Grampian mountains or, perhaps more likely, travelled east in the direction of Aberdeen and from there made its way down the low-lying strip of land between the Mounth and the coast. This last route would have covered roughly similar terrain to the modern A90 road and, although the landscape of long rolling fields sloping away towards the blue foothills of the Mounth in the west may have looked very different in the twelfth century, its strategic value for a mediaeval army on the move is readily apparent. The Romans had already marched across this ground a thousand years earlier, leaving the remains of a camp at Stracathro, and the conquering forces of Edward I of England would later follow a similar route north in 1296. It is also clear that, despite the sparse details given in contemporary sources, and despite David I’s posthumous legacy as a strong monarch, the 1130 invasion represented a serious crisis. In the absence of any recorded opposition, Angus and his supporters had been able to overrun the fertile east coast of ‘Scotia’, not far from the Tayside heartlands of the kingdom, and only forty miles or so from the traditional coronation site at Scone.

The men of Moray were only brought to a halt when King David’s constable Edward, son of Siward, hastily assembled an army and cut Angus’ force off a few miles north of Brechin. Orderic Vitalis, the contemporary writer who describes the battle in the greatest detail, tells us little about Edward other than that he was ‘a cousin of King David’ and the son of Siward who, according to various translations, was an ‘earl’ or ‘tribune’ of Mercia. Since his name and paternity indicate that he was of English stock, it is possible that Edward was one of the king’s maternal cousins, but theories abound as to his exact identity. Previously, several historians accepted the theory that he was the son of Siward Beorn (the earl of Northumbria who fought against Macbeth) and thus an uncle of David I’s queen Matilda. However this does not really tally with the few details Orderic provides, and any son of Siward Beorn would likely have been in his seventies in 1130. More recent writers, including David I’s most recent academic biographer, favour Ann Williams’ identification of Edward as a son of Siward, son of Aethelgar, a Shropshire thegn and therefore both of Mercian descent and, like David, a great-great grandson of Aethelred the Unready.

(View of Stracathro and the surrounding country in James Dorret’s map of 1750. I have coloured the kirk of Stracathro in red so it can be spotted more easily; again clicking on the image should expand it. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland)

The royal army clashed with Angus and his men at Stracathro. No source gives a blow-by-blow account of the battle but the result was clear. In a rout which the Irish Annals of Innisfallen described as the ‘Slaughter of the men of Moray in Scotland’**, Angus and most of his force were killed. We should be wary of mediaeval chroniclers’ tendency to play fast and loose with numbers, but the language which all sources use about the engagement indicates that the death toll was high, with the late mediaeval Annals of Ulster even claiming that as many as 4,000 of the men of Moray were killed- 80% of the force which Orderic Vitalis claimed Angus was able to put into the field. The Annals of Ulster also claimed that a thousand of the men of Scotland (or ‘alban’) died, but this number was later corrected to one hundred. Leaving the chroniclers’ suspiciously exact death tolls aside, it is clear that the battle of Stracathro was a catastrophe for the Moravians, and a blood-bath from which Angus’ co-commander Malcolm, the son of Alexander, was very lucky to escape. Fleeing soldiers from Angus’ shattered army were then chased back to Moray by the triumphant Edward and the Scots, who promptly established control over the province.

Both mediaeval chroniclers and more recent historians have traditionally made this annexation of Moray following the battle seem very easy. As Robert de Torigni neatly summed it up, ‘Angus, the earl of Moray, was killed; and David, the king of Scotland, held the earldom thenceforward’. Now the undisputed overlord of Moray, David I is then supposed to have set about a comprehensive programme of ‘feudalisation’, complete with reformed monastic orders, a reorganised diocesan system, royal burghs for controlling trade, and, of course, a new settler nobility. However, David’s most recent academic biographer, Richard Oram, has argued that this feudalisation of Moray may have been a slower process than is often implied, and that it took some time for David and his supporters to establish complete control over the old lordship. Indeed, although there was to be no more trouble from Moray until the reign of David’s grandson King William, the fact that rivals for the Scottish throne were still able to draw considerable support from the native nobility of the province in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries could indicate that the post-Stracathro reorganisation was not so complete as some writers have assumed.

Stracathro is now a quiet place. A century and a half after the battle the area witnessed another, less bloody, defeat when John Balliol and his council negotiated with the triumphant Edward I of England from the kirkyard of Stracathro in July 1296. But other than this Stracathro is probably best known for its community hospital and a Victorian walled garden. The Battle of Stracathro is not exactly the most famous event in the annals of Scottish history. In a county that is otherwise littered with carved stones which allegedly commemorate ancient battles, few traces of the twelfth-century skirmish remain. Two mounds near Ballownie farm used to be pointed out as the alleged burial site of the slain, and certain internet etymologies claim that the nearby place name ‘Auchenreoch’ can be interpreted as deriving from a term meaning ‘the field of great sorrow’***. But otherwise the battle of 1130 has not left much of a mark in the landscape. Modern perceptions of the battle are also influenced to a great extent by the accounts of Anglo-Norman chroniclers, who may well have downplayed the threat which Angus of Moray (and other twelfth century rivals for the throne) posed to the descendants of Malcolm III and St Margaret. Nonetheless the slaughter at Stracathro is worth commemorating: had the battle gone the other way, Scotland might have been a very different place today.

(Stracathro Mansion is not necessarily on the site of the battle, and the landscape has changed considerably in nine hundred years, even down to the way fields are ploughed. However this may at least give an idea of the surroundings of the north part of Angus, with the Mounth in the background. Reproduced under the Creative Commons License (source here) since I’m limited in the photos I can take personally right now for obvious reasons).

Notes:

* Everybody’s favourite ‘Lady Macbeth’

**Not to be confused with Malcolm MacHeth

*** The original Irish says ‘Albain’

**** Though it must be said, I have my doubts

Selected Bibliography:

“The Ecclesiastical History of England and Normandy”, by Orderic Vitalis, Vol. III, translated by Thomas Forester

“Early Sources of Scottish History”, ed. A.O. Anderson

“Rerum Hibernicarum Scriptores”, vol. 2, ed. Charles O’Conor

“Annala Uladh”, vol. II, edited and translated by B. Mac Carthy

“Chronicle of Melrose”, and the “Chronicle of Holyrood” trans. Rev. Joseph Stevenson in ‘The Church Historians of England’, vol. IV

“Scottish Annals From English Chroniclers”, ed. A.O. Anderson