Ordnance gazetteer of Scotland > Volume 5

MORAY, PROVINCE OF
Angus was the son of a daughter of Lulag, who succeeded
Macbeth, and therefore a nephew of the Maelsnechtan
already mentioned, but, in accordance with the new
feudal system, then slowly developing, he appears as
Earl of lloray, so that Maelsnechtan was the last of the
Mormaers. The leaders probably relied somewhat for
success on the fact that, at the time (1130), David was in
England, and that therefore much might be accomplished
before he had time to oppose them ; but in this they
were deceived, for David's cousin, Edward, son of
Siward, Earl of Mercia, raising a force, met and defeated
them in the parish of Stracathro in Forfarshire, on the
SW bank of the West "Water, a little above its junction
with the South Esk, and, following up his success,
entered Moray and obtained possession of the whole
district. Angus was slain in the battle, and with him
became extinct the line of the old Celtic Mormaers.
From his title of earl, and the fact that the Saxon
Chronicle, in noticing the event and recording his death,
declares that ' there was God's right wrought upon him,
for that he was all forsworn,' it may be inferred that he
had previously sworn allegiance to David. For the next
two hundred years the district seems to have been con-
sidered too fiery and dangerous to be entrusted to the
control of any single ruler ; and, though various
Custodes Moraviae are mentioned in the intervening
period, not till the reign of Robert Bruce was there
another Earl of Moray. The hold thus acquired David
vigorously confirmed by the erection of royal castles and
the creation of king's burghs, while an equally powerful
agent in the work of civilisation and pacification was
brought into play by the establishment of the Priory of
Ukqtjhart and of the Abbey of Kinloss. He seems
also to have resided in the district at different times,
and to have been successful in personally winning the
favour and allegiance of his turbulent northern subjects,
for at the Battle of the Standard in 1138, the rearguard,
led by the king himself, consisted of Scots and Moray
men.
The death of David was the signal for fresh troubles,
and on the accession of his grandson, Malcolm IV.,
Malcolm Macbeth, who claimed to be sprung from Earl
Angus, raised the Celtic population in revolt, and aided
by the petty prince of Argyll, to whose daughter he was
married, made a vigorous effort to regain his patrimony.
Somerled was, however, compelled to make peace in 1159,
and in 1160 Malcolm entered Moray and inflicted signal
punishment on the rebels. Many of the inhabitants of
David's burghs were probably strangers, and now his
successor determined to carry this policy still farther by
dispossessing large numbers of the natives, scattering
them throughout the country, and giving their posses-
sions to settlers on whose fidelity he could rely. For-
dun speaking of his treatment of the inhabitants, says
that he ' removed them all from the land of their birth,
and scattered them throughout the other districts of
Scotland, both beyond the hills and on this side thereof,
so that not even one native of that land abode there, and
he installed therein his own peaceful and peculiar people, '
who would seem to have been Flemings. This must,
however, be somewhat of an exaggeration. ' Such a
story of wholesale transmigration, ' says Cosmo Innes,
' cannot be true to the letter. Some old institutions
unquestionably survived the measure ; and a native
rural population in the condition of that of Scotland in
the 12th century could have no political sentiments,
nor be called to account for political conduct. That
there was some revolution, however, seems proved by
charter evidence, and by the sudden appearance at that
time, in the records of the province, of a great number
of Southerns obtaining grants of land in Moray, for
whom room must have been made by some violent dis-
placement of the former lords of the soil, . . . and
thus it came to pass that Berowald of Flanders obtained
the lands of Innes all from Spey to Lossie, except the
priory lands of Urquhart. ' This clearance would seem
to have affected the low district along the shore of the
Moray Firth more than the other districts, and the
latter were from 1174 to 1187 in a chronic state of dis-
MORAY, PROVINCE OF
affection and rebellion, part of the Celtic population aniH
the Norse settlers claiming that the family of Macbeth
should be restored to their former position, and that a.
northern chief, Donald Ban or MacWilliam, descended
from Malcolm Ceannraor and the Norwegian princess
Ingibiorg, was of the nearer line of the royal family, and
therefore the rightful sovereign ; while those who cared
but little for this were alienated through anger at the-
disgraceful bai-gain of William the Lyon with the
English. Though the first active outbreak seems to
have taken place in 1181, it was not till 1187 that
the King found time to attend to the North, but in that
year he entered Moray at the head of a large army, and,
fixing his headquarters at Inverness, detached a body of
troops to lay waste the western parts of the province.
In the decisive battle, which] took place in the upper
valley of the Spey, at a place called Mamgarvia, pro-
bably in Laggan, MacWilliam was slain. From the
number of charters granted by William at different
times and different places in Moray, he seems to have
been often in the north, and, as he followed up his-
success by reducing Ross to subjection, and bringing:
Sutherland and Caithness directly under the power of
thecrown, he keptthe North quiet forthe rest of his reign.
Hardly, however, had Alexander II. succeeded, when,
in 1215, Donald Bau, son of the Donald who was killed
at Mamgarvia in 1187, having obtaining assistance from
Ireland, rebelled and burst into Moray at the head of a
large army. He was, however, attacked and defeated
by Ferquhard Macintagart, the lay possessor of the ex-
tensive lands of the old monastery at Applecross, and
the pretensions of both the Mac Williams and the Mac-
heths were finally extinguished by Alexander in 1222,
from which time onward the historical events are all
connected with national matters. Alexander seems to
have had a gi-eat liking for the 'Laich of Moray,' and
we find him keeping Yule at Elgin in 1231 ; and again in.
1242,
' The Kyng and the Qwene alsua.
And ane honest court wyth tha,
That ilk yhere in Murrawe past.'
He founded and endowed many of the religious houses
in the district, and was a great benefactor to several of
the burghs. Alexander III. does not seem to have
visited the province very often, though he appears to
have been here shortly before the battle of Largs. One
of the claimants for the crown, after the death of
Alexander III., was John Cumyn, who had, on the
death of his uncle, Walter, Earl of Menteith, in 1258,
become Lord of Badenoch, but otherwise Moray does
not seem to have been connected with the contest of
succession that then arose, nor with events in the in-
glorious reign of John Baliol. After that ' Tulchan '
monarch was deprived of the crown, Edward I., having
set himself to subdue the kingdom, marched north
with a large army, and, crossing the Spey on 25 July
1296 near^Bellie, entered the province and advanced as
far as Elgin, whence detachments of his force were sent
to occupy the castles of Forres, Nairn, Inverness,
Dingwall, and Cromarty. Finding, however, that the
country was quiet, and that all the leading nobles-
were favourably disposed towards his rule, he ex-
tended his march no fartlier, but returned southwards
by Rothes and so through Banfl'shire and Aber-
deenshire. Traditionally, Wallace passed along the
sea-coast and crossed thence to Cromarty where he
destroyed the castle, but it seems doubtful whether he-
was everso far north, though a revolt against the English
rule was stirred up by Sir Andrew Moray, the younger
of Petty and Bothwell, and seems to have spread over
the whole district. This was in May and June in 1297,
and we find him associated with Wallace down to the
close of the year, after which he disappears from history
during the rest of the reign of Edward I. On the
second English invasion in 1303 Edward again pene-
trated to Moray, but this time advanced to Kinloss and
thence southward into Badenoch where he spent some
time at Lochindorb Castle.
After the close of the war of independence we fini
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