The Highlanders of Scotland - Clan Strachan Society

CHAP. VI] OFSCOTLAND 87
made on the death of WilHam the Lion and accession of his
son Alexander II., by Donald, a brother of Guthred, '
in conjunction with a claimant to the
, ,
earldom of
A.D. 1214. . . . ....
,
Moray, but this insurrection was speedily suppressed by the
Earl of Ross, a new and powerful ally of the government ;
and the same fate attended the last effort made by this family to
obtain possession of the throne, which they conceived to be
their right, six years afterwards. Gilliescop M'Scolane, a
A.D. 1222.
descendant of William Fitz Duncan, who at first
.
,
, , 1 ,
obtained a temporary success, was betrayed and put
to death with his sons. He appears to have been the last of
his race, and thus terminated these singular attempts to place a
rival family on the throne of Scotland, which lasted during a
period of upwards of one hundred years, and which exhibits
so extraordinary a proof of the tenacity and perseverance
with which the Highlanders maintained their peculiar laws of
succession and the claims of a hereditary title to the throne. ^
During the whole of this period the Highlanders,
of whom
the inhabitants of the district of Moray were the principal,
did not cease to assert the claim of the lineal descendant of
Malcolm Kenmore to the throne of Scotland ; and in all their
insurrections they were supported by the greater part of the
northern chiefs, as well as by the Norwegian Earl of Orkney,
whose power, however, as well as his territories, had sustained
considerable diminution. It was, nevertheless, in vain for them
to contend against the increasing power of the Saxon kings
of the family of Malcolm, and the great force which, by the
assistance of the Norman and Saxon barons, they were enabled
to bring into the field against themi. Accordingly, each insurrection
was successively subdued with increasing loss to
the inhabitants of Moray, until at length, in the year 1 161, upon
the ill success of the attempt to place William of Egremont
on the throne, Malcolm IV., after a violent struggle, finally
he completely crushed the
succeeded in subjecting the country ;
family which had been hitherto known as possessors of the title
of earls of Moray, and bestowed that dignity upon the earls
of Mar.
^ The account of these insurrections the Chronicle of Melrose,
is taken from Winton, Fordun, and