He was nonetheless the first earl of
Fife, probably in right of his wife. His sons included Angus, King of Moray (killed 1130),
and also Duff, Malcolm and Gillecoimded. These sons had a number of important inheritances
to consider. There was the Kingship of Moray, and also the chiefship of the Clann Duff,
and in the male-line, also the senior descent of, or position of precedence within, the
royal Kindred of St. Columba in Scotland. The descendants of Duff (who predeceased his
father Eth) took the latter two, as the senior line, while the descendants of Malcolm and
Gillecoimded "MacEth" threw in their lot with the Moray-men, whose Gaelic laws
would prefer the succession of the living brothers of their king, Angus, over his living
nephews, the descendents of Duff. On the death of Eth (Aedh), the Moray-men rose under
King Angus and his brother Malcolm MacEth (Mac Aedh) in an attempt to put Angus on the
throne of the Scots (as a son of the Abbot-Earl Eth, and as representative of the
dispossessed Clan Duff). This was a reaction in part to the Normanizing influence at the
Scottish court of David I, and in fact they were defeated and Angus killed by David’s
Norman mercenaries. Malcolm (called "Jan" or ruler of Moray by the Norwegians)
married a daughter of Somerled of the Isles, and carried on the struggle until one of his
sons, Donald MacAedh, was captured by the forces of King Malcolm IV in 1156.
At this point Malcolm became nominally
reconciled with the King of Scots, and was made Earl of Ross, a post he held till his
death in 1168. His grandson, Kenneth MacAedh, made a final attempt at the crown of the
Scots in 1215, but was defeated and beheaded by the ancestor of the Ross clan, who
subsequently became Earl of Ross (see Chapter IV). During these struggles, in about 1163,
King Malcolm IV attempted to deprive Malcolm MacAedh of the earldom of Ross in order to
give it to his own foreign brother-in-law, the Count of Holland (many knightly Flemings
had already settled in Moray). Accordingly, the King transported many of the Moraymen
extramontanas Scociae, that is, beyond the mountains of Scotland into Caithness, which was
still under Norse control (Moncreiffe 145). The Jarl of Orkney and Caithness at the time
was Harold, son-in-law of Earl Malcolm MacAedh.
It is in the extreme northwest of Scotland,
in the district known as Strathnaver in western Caithness, that the later MacAedh chiefs
appear in the early thirteenth century, and here the MacAedh chiefs gave rise to a very
important clan, later known as the Clann Aodha or MacKays (Mac Aodha, earlier MacAedh),
whose chiefs held Strathnaver for many centuries. They were also known as the Clan Morgan,
Morgan having been a favorite name in the royal house of Moray. They adopted their current
arms in the seventeenth century to reflect their traditional kinship with the Forbes clan,
but their original arms were three blue stars on silver, with a hand in chief, that is,
the Royal arms and colors of the Kingdom of Moray, surmounted by a hand symbolizing
"true family." They also share the "butcher’s broom" plant badge
(a symbol of tribalism) with their successors in the Kingdom of Moray, the Murrays and |
