Hiya I'm Bruce Fummey. When I say the forgotten Kings of Scotland, who do you think about?
Say Scottish history, and there are three royals a majority of people think about; Robert the Bruce
Mary, Queen of Scots and Bonnie Prince Charlie, the holy trinity of Scottish romantic monarchy.
Each has a celebrity enhanced by tragedy, each has their fame accentuated by a key turning
point in our history, whether we're subsumed into England, whether we become Protestant,
whether we move to constitutional monarchy, but there's another pinch point where our
nation went through one door of history, never to return, leaving a line of forgotten Kings.
You'd think that that would have thrown up a celebrity monarch as well.
It did, and you'll kick yourself when I tell you. If you're interested in the people, places
and events in Scottish history, then click the red button at the bottom right of the screen
to subscribe. In the meantime, let me tell you a story of forgotten Kings.
Three turning points, three alternative routes that we never lived. If we'd been subsumed in
the England of Edward Longshanks, how would history have been different? Better rugby
teams and male voice choirs? Delilah standing there laughing, but lived to laugh another day.
Are there alternative futures, where Mary Stuart and Charles Edward succeeded, and Marty McFly
speaking Gaelic and celebrating Mardi Gras? I suppose we'll never know. There's an earlier
turning point that we're forgetting. Now various people watch my videos, from those with a passing
curiosity about Scottish monarchy, who really don't want a long story, to the aficionados of Scottish
history, who frankly didn't come here for Welsh rugby jokes and a back to the future reference.
Don't worry they've clicked away now, and it's just you and me
I'm hoping that you've heard of the Canmore dynasty, if not don't worry, there's a playlist
on my channel, and most of the names in this story can be forgotten, it's the pattern that matters. Now
King Malcolm Canmore and Saint Margaret, their son Duncan was King after them, their next son Edgar
then Alexander, and then finally their youngest boy David. You've probably heard of David the First.
Now his son predeceased him, so his grandson became King Malcolm the Fourth. He didn't have kids and
they call him Malcolm the Maiden, and so the next in line was his younger brother William the Lion.
I mean he wasn't actually a lion, that's a soubriquet. If he was a lion it would have been a pet name.
Anyway, William's son's Alexander the Second and his son's Alexander the Third. It was Alexander the Third's death without
a male heir that caused the Wars of Independence. No heir, the country splits, hence Edward of England,
independence lost, decades of fighting, death and destruction and Robert the Bruce, saving us from
becoming Welsh. So that's the Canmore dynasty. I don't expect you to remember all the names,
but here's what I do expect. I expect the list broadly made sense to you. A King dies,
their eldest son takes over. When that guy dies, his son takes over. A son pre-deceased the
dad, and then the grandson takes over. If no progeny, then the original King's brother,
obviously not Prince Harry, 'What colour will the baby be?' You never for a minute question the system
that you're familiar with, even if you didn't know it's called primogeniture. The thing is that it
never happened before. It was completely new. The Canmore dynasty brought primogeniture to Scotland.
So what happened before that? Now a family tree is about to appear on screen, again the names
don't matter. Now I'll be saying the names, but I'm a trained expert wearing a safety harness,
with an emergency crew, and a medical helicopter on standby. All you need to know is the pattern
of kingship. Now the guy seen as the first King of Scots is Kenneth MacAlpin, that's him there. The
second King was his brother, Donald, the third was his nephew Constantine, followed by his brother Aed,
then his nephew and the second cousin or something sharing, how does that work? I really don't know. We
then jump back across for Donald the Second at number six, and then his cousin Constantine the Second, at number seven.
Forget the names, but I hope you're getting the zigzag pattern. Now here's two guys I do want you
to remember, number 14 and number 15. Everything else in this video is about their descendants.
So number 14 is Kenneth the Third and number 15 is Malcolm the Second, and in 1005 there
was a battle just to the west of Crieff at Monzievaird. One side had Kenneth the Third and his
men, and on the other side, his cousin, who by the end of the day would be Malcolm the Second. Now in Celtic
tradition, their descendants would take turn about at royal status for generations, but what developed
was a battle royal between two families, and two systems. The new King, Malcolm the Second didn't have sons,
so kingship will pass to an able male, sorry ladies, and the wider family obviously, but dying from his
own battle wounds 30 years later, Malcolm the Second would have been cheered, having just crushed the great
grandson of his old rival, and the last barrier to installing his own grandson as King Duncan.
To understand the next few years and what happened to Duncan, there's more detail in three videos
I've made: 'Was Macbeth the Last Celtic King of Scotland?, 'Who was the Real King Macbeth?' and 'Malcolm
Canmore'. Spoiler alert, there's some killing, and yes Macbeth is our fourth celebrity Scottish monarch
and we're approaching that turning point that I mentioned. Macbeth had been chosen under the
system that had long prevailed in the Celtic world, Tanistry, where the Kings chosen from the
wider royal family creating that zigzag pattern, like fairy lights around the family tree. Macbeth
was killed by Malcolm the Second's great grandson and namesake, Malcolm Canmore, and so the new King was
Lullach, stepson of Macbeth and the great grandson of Kenneth the Third. That shook you, didn't it? Nine
months later, Malcolm Canmore and Lullach, descendants of the two men who'd met at the battle of Monzievaird
emulated their ancestors, and Lullach lay dead. Then came that line of Canmore Kings
confining the crown to a single family with primogeniture as they Normanised Scotland,
but centuries of Celtic tradition don't disappear just like that, there were the forgotten Kings of
Scotland. You see Lullach had a son Mael Snechta, and growing up his mum would tell him stories of his
dad, and the Canmore King, who'd brought mercenaries north from England. By the light of a fire, he also
heard stories of his great-great-grandad Kenneth the Third, killed by the Canmore's great-grandfather
Malcolm the Second. Kinfolk would remind him, that under their system of Tanistry, kingship rotated, and if
he grew up strong and brave and respected by men, then his turn would come, and so in 1078,
now fully grown, Mael Snechta defied Canmore rule, but he was comprehensively defeated. All his
men, all his livestock, all his wealth, he barely got away with his own life by crossing the sea
to live it out in Ireland. Tanistry had its downsides, but with Tanistry, a side of the royal
line overlooked, would simply bide its time for a better opportunity, and a generation wasn't enough
to douse the flame of Celtic tradition, and so Lullach's grandson, Angus reared with the same stories
as his uncle Mael Snechta, sought his chance to lead the fight for Celtic Scotland against one
of Canmore's sons, David the First, the Normaniser in chief, who never came north of the Tay. His base
was in Roxburgh. Now we call it the Borders, but it was the heart of David's kingdom. South of here
is Stracathro. Angus probably came over the Cairn O’ Mount behind us from Moray to Angus,
passing this point before meeting Canmore forces down there in Stracathro. At the end of a long
and bloody fight, Angus was dead. The Canmores had won, the line of Kenneth the Third was ended, or was it?
When David the First came to power, primogeniture wasn't so well ingrained as to make the next
King a certainty. An alternative to David was his cousin, William, but he was bought off with lands up
in Moray. He was later rewarded for loyalty with lands down in England, and he doesn't seem to have
come back, but if I've got this straight, and you might want to buy a book by Richard Oram called
'Domination and Lordship Scotland 1070 - 1230', just in case, link in the description below by the way,
but if I've got this straight, then before William headed south, this Canmore descendant's
first marriage was in Moray and the woman that he married was a descendant of Lullach ... aye.
Now we don't have the name of the mother, but after a no doubt long and difficult labour,
she presented William with a beautiful, ticking time bomb, and they called it Donald. As Donald
Macwilliam, Donald Mac William grew up, King David denied him his rightful inheritance. That blow
may have been cushioned by the stories that his mother told of Celtic Tanistry, his royal blood
and of course descent from both the Kings who fought out that battle at Monzievaird.
Two lines had been united in one man. Maybe King David had good reason to withhold lands, title,
and authority. The next two Canmore Kings felt the blast of this explosion, the biggest damage
was to William the Lion. Now I'm already running well over time, so I'll leave a link at the end
to 'The King who Lost Scotland' or you can click the white tab up there. The point is, that during
unpopular periods of Canmore reign, Celtic Scotland turned to Donald Macwilliam, and his descendants.
I'll make an extra video for my Patreon members, and that'll give a bit more detail, but every
time the Canmores prevailed over the McWilliams, another one rose up. They defeated Donald Macwilliam,
his son, Guthred popped up, execute him, and then Donald Ban Macwilliam rose up there after.
It's a measure of how much the Canmore backs were to the wall, that they had to
go to King John of England, that's right the baddie in Robin Hood, to get mercenaries.
Even then, there was yet another Macwilliam waiting in the wings, and more executions. It's been
more than 200 years! Surely this last insurgent was finally the end of the Macwilliam line.
No, there remained his three-year-old daughter, the last hope of the McWilliams, the descendants
of two lines of Celtic Kings, and so one morning in 1230 A.D., a three-year-old little girl was brought
out to where Forfar Mercat Cross stood, before she was old enough to hear or understand the stories
of her royal ancestry, she was held triumphantly aloft. Taking her by the feet, she was swung to
her head smashed against the stone of the Mercat Cross, her brains exploded in all directions to
make sure that all would see the last detonation of a Macwilliam time bomb. Scotland was Norman,
and this brutal event ensured the Canmore family's reign, but only for one generation,
because when Alexander the Third fell from his horse and broke his neck, his son was already dead and
his daughter had pre-deceased him too and his granddaughter, the Little Maid of Norway died en
route back to Scotland. It was Edward Longshanks of England who chose Scotland's next King, not
with Celtic Tanistry, but with Norman primogeniture. If you're wondering about the reason that some
folks were so hacked off with William the Lion, then there are a couple of videos about
William the Lion, 'The King Who Lost Scotland and they're coming up on screen here, they'll fill in
some of the picture. In the meantime, tha mi an dochas gum bith lath math leibh. Tiorridh an drasda.