468 – Regicide’s Back On The Menu Boys

Welcome to the British History Podcast.

My name is Jamie, and this is episode 468: Regicides back on the menu, boys.

This show is ad-free due to member support, and as a way of thanking members for keeping the show independent, I offer members-only content, including extra episodes and rough transcripts.

You can get instant access to all the members' extras by signing up for membership at thebritishhistorypodcast.com for about the price of a latte per month.

And thank you very very much to Christine, Tina, and Julie for signing up already.

King Malcolm Canmore had hit his breaking point.

For years, Malcolm had tried to strike some sort of friendship with the new Norman rulers of England.

And when Rufus claimed the throne, those efforts had continued.

On the advice of Duke Robert and others, Malcolm had even tried to just submit to the new English king's demands in hopes that there would be some sort of peace between the kingdoms.

Now, granted, he was still a medieval king, and so he was no stranger to raiding his neighbors when diplomacy broke down or he just kind of felt like it.

But if you look through the records, you can't avoid the fact that King Malcolm Canmore had clearly been trying to work with his southern neighbor.

I've even read one historian who thinks that Malcolm may have even placed his daughter in Wilton specifically to keep her as an option for Rufus' future wife.

Now personally, I don't think that was the case given everything else that was going on, but it is possible.

And the fact that this is even plausible to historians speaks of just how clearly Malcolm had been trying to forge a diplomatic solution to the tensions that existed between him and Rufus.

But none of that mattered.

Nothing that Malcolm offered was going to change the real problem here, which was that Rufus was a lying, belligerent oaf who never had any interest in a peaceful relationship between their kingdoms, and certainly had no interest in diplomacy.

The reality was that Rufus was simply a dangerous man, and that situation at Wilton and the intervention of the abbess had revealed just how far Rufus was willing to go to attack his enemies and grasp at power.

I mean, Malcolm's own daughter, Edith, was nearly one of his victims.

So enough was enough.

And Malcolm crossed the border into England at the head of a massive Scottish army.

But rather than attacking the source of all of his problems, instead he began to slaughter the nearby peasants.

The average people who had nothing to do with any of this and who were until this moment, culturally drifting further and further towards Scotland.

I'm guessing that they, and now you, were probably wondering why this was happening.

Well, Malcolm was mad, and he was a king, and kings aren't heroes.

And generally, they don't value the lives of peasants past the amount of taxes that they can extract from them.

And these peasants didn't pay him any taxes.

So, common everyday people, people who were the medieval equivalent of folks just like you and me, suffered and died because one super rich guy was mad at another super rich guy.

And according to the English chroniclers, what Malcolm did was really bad.

They're vague about it, but they say that Malcolm went much further in his attack than he should have gone.

Now, I'm of two minds on that.

I mean, on the one hand, that is very likely to be true.

Malcolm was an angry king, and angry kings tend to do things like full-blown harrying, which is what the chronicle seems to imply here.

And Malcolm did have a history of raiding the North.

Simeon of Durham lists this as his fifth attack, and he says that this latest one was particularly savage.

But we also have to understand that this information comes from Norman-controlled England.

And the North has already been repeatedly harried by the Normans, and Scotland was increasing their authority over that same territory at the same point.

So these aren't exactly unbiased sources here.

And frankly, blaming Scotland for the horrible state of the North would be good PR for the House of Normandy.

And unfortunately, our other sources aren't really helpful on precisely how bad this was.

I mean, Orderic doesn't even mention it.

And the best that we've got from him is when he opens up his entry for 1093 with a statement, quote, after a time, King Malcolm wished to return to his own kingdom, end quote.

Which implies he was, you know, not in his own kingdom, but he doesn't tell us why.

And other sources just go full surprised Pikachu face and give us the medieval equivalent of, no one could have predicted this completely predictable response to our king, and then just skip over the hard details of the raid.

So ultimately, I'm not sure how bad this was.

I mean, it definitely was awful for anyone caught up in it.

And kings doing awful things is pretty much another Thursday for the podcast.

But whether this attack was, as Malmsbury says, quote, with more than usual insolence, end quote, is something I can't say for certain.

But one thing we can be sure of is that Malcolm did attack the North.

And that was the last thing that anyone in Northern England needed, especially when they had nothing to do with the terrible behavior of their king.

Similarly, I wasn't able to find a detailed account of where the Scots struck, nor in what order.

The sources just stick to vague terms.

But if the attacks were truly as bad as they were described, they were likely looting, pillaging, and killing all the way past Lindisfarne, and then past Bamborough, which was the ancient seat of power for Bernicia, and continued moving south, looting and pillaging all the way.

And watching all of this was Earl Robert de Mowbray of Northumbria.

And it's quite possible he was sheltering in his castle at Bamborough when the Scots marched south.

Now, do you remember Robert de Mowbray?

It's okay if you don't.

We've got a lot of Roberts in this story, and Robert de Mowbray wasn't one of the likable ones.

Here's how Orderic describes him.

Quote: Powerful, rich, bold, fierce in war, haughty, he despised his equals and, swollen with vanity, disdained to obey his superiors.

He was of great stature, strong, swarthy, and hairy.

Daring and crafty, stern and grim, he was given more to meditation than speech, and in conversation scarcely ever smiled.

⁇ End quote.

So, uh, a real charmer, apparently.

But to give you a quick refresher on De Mowbray in our story, he was one of the rebel leaders who tried to depose King Rufus in 1088.

Now, if you remember, there were a lot of those, but Mowbray was the guy who was running around with Bishop Jeffrey of Coutants and was waging a campaign of extermination.

He was also the guy who, when the tides started turning against him, just up and quit and then wallowed in melancholy so hard that the scribes, who barely tell us anything, actually took the time to describe just how mopey Mowbray had become.

They paint us a picture so clear that you can practically visualize his floppy bangs while he was sitting in his bedroom sulking and listening to the Smiths.

And, you know, while I'm not sure if heaven knows how miserable he was now, the scribes sure as hell did.

But eventually, Robert the Morrissey shook off his existential angst and joined the Royalist army, just in time for Rufus to claim victory.

And that rather suspicious timing is likely why, despite being a rebel, Mowbray somehow managed to avoid any consequences and remained in Rufus' good graces.

As such, he was still the Earl of Northumbria when Malcolm invaded.

Which meant it was his lands, or more precisely, his income that Malcolm was laying waste to.

And, as a chivalric earl, it was his duty to get out there and put a stop to it.

Or, I mean, let's be honest, the days of heroic combat are long over.

So, really, it was Robert's duty to get a bunch of horsebros together and have them put a stop to it.

The only trouble here was that King Malcolm was absolutely furious.

So, he hadn't brought a small raiding band with him to make a show of force.

The Scottish king had brought a proper f off army with him.

And Earl de Mowbray's piddly little force he kept on staff simply wasn't enough to go toe-to-toe with that.

They'd be wiped out before he could say Jamaron.

But that didn't mean he was without options.

He had horses, he had knights, and he had his nephew, Morel.

And what I would love to do is tell you a thrilling story and really dramatize what happened next.

The trouble, though, is that it isn't exactly clear what happened next.

It's referred to in some places as the Battle of Alnwick, but I'm not sure it was at Alnwick, or even that there was a battle.

The record here is muddy, and several of the accounts directly contradict each other.

So your view of what happened really depends on how you weigh the various surviving records.

So...

Let's unpack the records and try and pick apart what may have happened during King Malcolm's invasion of 1093.

And let's begin with our most straightforward account.

And it comes to us courtesy of John of Worcester.

He says that on St.

Bryce's Day, which is the 13th of November, King Malcolm, his son and heir, Edward, and many others were killed by Robert de Mowbray.

Now, John doesn't tell us how this happened, and he gives us no hint as to a location.

He doesn't even write down why it happened.

All we get from him is that DeMowbray killed them all in November.

Now, Malmesbury fills in this picture a little more.

He says that Malcolm was insolently attacking England due to broken oaths, and that's why De Mowbray killed him and his son.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle provides a little more detail.

The scribes wrote that King Malcolm had come, quote, harrowing into England with more hostility than behooved him.

And Robert, the Earl of Northumberland, surrounded him unawares with his men and slew him.

Morel of Barnborough slew him, who was the Earl's steward, and a baptismal friend of King Malcolm.

With him was also slain Edward, his son, who after him should have been king if he had lived.

End quote.

So that's interesting.

This account seems to describe it as an ambush, and they also claim that it was Morel who killed Malcolm.

And apparently, Malcolm was the godfather of Morel's child, or something along those lines, because that's what a baptismal friend is.

So is that what happened?

Morel, on behalf of his uncle DeMowbray, ambushed and murdered the godfather of his own child?

Well, maybe,

but there's more.

Next, let's go to Simeon of Durham.

Now, Simeon was not a fan of Malcolm, which is understandable.

He was from the region that kept getting raided by Malcolm.

And Simeon tells us that this was Malcolm's fifth raid into the region, and on this raid, he brought with him an enormous army and was laying waste to the entire area.

But there was heavy winter rains during this period, and so the local rivers had become unusually high.

Consequently, once Malcolm reached the river Aln, the Scots were unable to advance any farther, and they were locked in.

And it was here, next to the river Aln, where De Mowbray's forces fought against Malcolm and his men and prevailed.

We're told that many Scots died by the sword, including Malcolm and his son Edward, and those who attempted to flee drowned in the swollen river.

The king's body was placed under the care of two Scotsmen, who then loaded it onto a cart and buried it at Tynemouth.

And after that, I think Simeon got a bit annoyed because he pauses his chronology to basically say, but listen, don't feel bad for him.

That guy sucked and I'm glad he's dead.

Hell, I'm glad his kid is dead too.

Screw that guy.

Because I can't say this strongly enough.

Simeon was not a fan.

And that fact might be why he also skips over the ambush that pretty much every other source speaks about.

And instead, the story that he provides sounds very much like a straight-up battle next to a river that broke the morale of the Scottish Army and led to a bunch of them drowning in the river.

Now, to my knowledge, Simeon is the primary source for placing this conflict next to the river Aln.

And this account does sound very much like a battle.

So Simeon's record may be why it's known as the Battle of Alnwick.

And if you're surfing the internet or reading pop history, you might actually come across an an assertion that this battle occurred outside of the walls of Alnwick Castle.

You might even find details like how de Mowbray took Malcolm by surprise while he was preparing a siege or while he had dispersed his forces to pillage the lands surrounding the castle.

But here's the problem with that.

Alnwick Castle didn't exist in 1093.

It wouldn't be constructed for several more years.

And while it is possible that there may have been some sort of fortification at Alnwick, none of our contemporary sources mention it.

Instead, this detail of a battle outside of the walls of Alnwick Castle comes from a stone monument that was erected by a duchess in the 18th century.

Not exactly a contemporary source.

So, where are we at right now with this mystery?

Well, we've got a lot of dead Scottish soldiers, a a dead Scottish king, and a dead heir to the Scottish throne, and everybody seems to agree that de Mowbray's men were behind it, and many of the sources suggest an ambush, and only Simeon describes a battle which took place near the River On.

And you might be thinking that my favorite gadfly, Orderic Vitalis, will wade into the gossip and help us figure this all out.

But think again.

All Orderic does is introduce a whole bunch more confusion into the record.

Because according to Orderic, Earl Robert de Mowbray and his nephew Morell got their boys together and they hid alongside the road.

Now, he doesn't tell us which road, but he does tell us that it was near the Scottish border.

And once in position, they waited.

Now, Alne is in the north, but it's not near the border.

In fact, it's to the south of Bamborough.

So either Simeon is wrong on the location, or Orderic is.

And that's not the only detail that Orderic is going rogue on.

He also claims that King Malcolm was peacefully returning to Scotland, quote, having received magnificent presents from King William, end quote.

Which, uh,

what?

What presents?

Well, I don't know.

No one else mentions it.

But Orderic keeps going.

Apparently, once the Scots passed along the road where DeMowbray, Morell, and their men were stationed, the ambush was launched, and they murdered Malcolm.

Now, nothing about this sounds honorable.

Even worse, Orderic believes that the Scots were unarmed at the time.

So, far from a battle, Orderic is describing a shameful crime.

And just in case the reader missed it, Orderk actually repeats himself and describes it both as a murder and an assassination.

So, we've got vague descriptions of an ambush from many sources.

A detailed description of something that sounds like a battle from Simeon, and then another detailed description, and that ones of DeMowbray and Morrell ambushing and assassinating Malcolm and his unarmed army near the border of Scotland while he was peacefully returning home, having received gifts, I guess.

So,

what happened?

And who do we trust?

Well, Well, I think I should point out several things about this latest entry.

First, Orderic loathed Robert de Mowbray.

I mean, you probably already know that by how he described the Earl.

Also, while other accounts speak of Malcolm's pillaging, Orderic doesn't say anything about it, and instead states that Malcolm was simply peacefully returning to Scotland after he'd received gifts from the king.

And while that isn't impossible, I get the feeling that Orderyk is picking and choosing details to fit his narrative, specifically his narrative of how much de Mowbray sucks.

And he probably did suck, but something remains off about Orderk's facts here.

But at the same time, Simeon's account of a heroic battle with a similar detour about how much Malcolm sucks feels just as slanted.

And unfortunately, all the other accounts, the ones that seem straightforward, skip all the details.

So I really don't know what happened here, nor where it happened, nor how it happened.

I can just tell you that King Malcolm crossed into England at the head of a large army, and he was confident enough in his campaign that he even brought his son an heir with him.

And then, possibly on November 13th, some sort of conflict took place, and DeMowbray and his kinsman Morel killed Malcolm and his son Edward, which left Scotland without a king.

And I should also note that, with the exception of Simeon of Durham, none of the other accounts are thrilled with this outcome.

Orderic, obviously, takes the strongest position, asserting that this was a deeply shameful assassination of an unarmed group.

And he writes that even Rufus and his barons were ashamed of what de Mowbray had done.

And while Orderic does go hard here, he's not really alone.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle describes the killing of Malcolm and his son as a betrayal, which is intriguing, and it might appear to support Orderic's view.

But it was also the chronicle that pointed out that Morel and Malcolm were bound through baptism.

And so Morel killing Malcolm could be seen as a betrayal of that baptismal bond rather than a betrayal of some sort of grant of safe passage.

It's genuinely hard hard to know what happened here, but as historians like Frank Barlow had noted, there was more than a whiff of dishonor in this whole affair.

And honestly, Robert de Mowbray really did suck.

So it's possible that he did behave shamefully here, and that the English court really was like, what the hell is wrong with you, Rob?

Though it's also possible that while Rufus and his court were unhappy with deMowray, it wasn't because of the dishonor, it was because he was a former rebel and current shady earl, and he had just killed a king.

And with things like assassinations of rulers, typically once you pop, you can't stop.

So they might have just been a bit unhappy because suddenly regicide was back on the menu.

I can't say that's the case for certain, but we probably should put a pin in that one.

But anyway, so that's how King Malcolm and his son and heir Edward died.

Somewhere, somehow.

Now, while there is disagreement over what exactly happened here, there is no disagreement that word of the death of Malcolm and Edward reached Scotland quickly.

And when Queen Margaret learned that both her son and her husband had died on the same day, She immediately fell sick.

And according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, it was the betrayal of it all that hit her the hardest.

Now, the accounts of Queen Margaret's reaction use a lot of descriptors.

We're told she was deeply affected, that she was in her mind, that she was afflicted with great distress, that she was almost distracted to death.

But they all tell the same story.

Margaret fell into a deep depression and collapsed.

And we're told that she was brought to the church and anointed with oils and rites were performed over her and confession was heard.

But it was ineffective, and we know that based on her heartbreaking prayers.

We're told that she prayed earnestly and constantly for God to take her life and allow her to die.

And three days later, she did.

Now, the annals of Ulster claim it was actually nine days, but most other accounts say three.

And while we're not given details of what led to her death, with accounts just skipping right over it and at most saying that she died of sorrow, and while heartbreak can and does lead to death, the fact that it took three days made my ears prick, because a human body can survive without water for about three days.

And she was someone who had a history with religious fasting, and so I'm guessing she would have been aware of that.

And so what might have happened here is that she might have intentionally wasted away.

I don't know for sure though.

All I can say is that while we are told about her constant prayers and the sacred rites, the basic necessities of life are notably absent from the descriptions of her last days.

It's a sad end for that family.

And with King Malcolm III and his heir Edward dead, succession was on everyone's minds.

Now, Malcolm, likely wielding the level of power and control that he gained through his incredibly long time on the throne, had sought to change the way that Scotland handled succession.

Typically, Scotland handled succession through tannistry, with the crown going to a close family member, typically a brother of the king.

And Malcolm wanted to change that and have the crown pass through primogeniture, which would mean that instead it would go to the king's eldest living son.

And while Edward was dead, Malcolm did have other sons, and they were old enough to rule.

But with the deaths of King Malcolm, Prince Edward, and now Queen Margaret, the old king's grip on Scotland had been shaken loose.

And so his brother, Donald, saw an opportunity to re-implement Gaelic tannistry succession.

He wanted the crown to go to a brother, and he had just the brother in mind.

Him.

Now, Donald was getting up there in years, being in his 60s, And he didn't have any children that we know of, so seizing the throne was likely to create a succession crisis somewhere down the line.

But this was Scotland, and if there's one thing that's consistent about Scotland, it's that they're no strangers to a succession crisis.

And Donald clearly felt like it was time that they had another one.

And he wasn't alone.

The truth is, the primogeniture wasn't the only thing that Malcolm had introduced to Scotland.

I mean, his queen had been English, and his sons by Margaret were all half English.

His children had a lot of links with England, with some of them being educated there.

And his court was home to a variety of Englishmen, with that number expanding rapidly following the conquest.

The fact was, Malcolm's court was quite English.

I mean, hell, even Harrying the North was pretty damn English when you think about it.

And there were plenty of Scots Scots who did not like that and who wanted things to go back to the way that they had been.

And Donald looked like he might be the man to make that happen.

Now, unfortunately, we don't have a contemporary account of what happened next.

We do have Simeon and John of Worcester and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and they all tell roughly the same story.

And while all of them were writing close in time to the events, none of them are Scottish.

And so they don't provide us with much detail outside of how it impacted English politics.

And unfortunately, our main Scottish sources, namely John of Forden and Andrew of Winton, weren't writing until the late 14th and early 15th centuries.

But keeping that in mind, these records do tell roughly the same story, and they don't contradict each other.

And so, taken together, here's what may have happened.

Once Queen Margaret died, the the power of King Malcolm III was broken, and his brother, Donald, saw his chance.

He got together a bunch of Scots who were angered by the increasing English presence within Scottish politics, and they laid siege to Edinburgh.

Edgar the Atheling, realizing how bad this could be for his nephews, took the boys into his care and fled the kingdom.

And Donald was soon crowned king of Scotland.

Immediately afterwards, he expelled all the English from court.

Now, Orderic adds that this was all done illegally, and that succession should have gone to Malcolm's eldest living son.

And while that does appear to be what Malcolm had intended, that also relied on English norms, and Donald and his supporters were clearly moving to reassert Scottish norms.

And by Scottish law, Donald taking the throne wasn't illegal at all.

But, regardless of the legality of the matter, this situation was a godsend for King Rufus, because he had an ace in his court.

His name was Duncan.

Do you remember Duncan?

He was Malcolm Canmore's son by his first wife.

Now, most of our sources just conveniently ignore his first wife, and Malmsbury goes so far as to imply that there wasn't a marriage at all, and that Duncan was illegitimate.

The Orkney Inga saga, on the other hand, claims that Malcolm had been married to the daughter of the Earl of Orkney, a woman named Ingeborg.

But regardless of who his mother was, the fact was that while Malcolm's kids by his second partner, Queen Margaret, had gotten a path to the throne, their older half-brother Duncan was given a path to England.

Because in 1072, when Duncan had only been 12 years old, he was given to William the Conqueror as a hostage.

And he'd been living there this whole time.

Now, as a child of a king, the Normans immediately set about educating him, which meant because they're Normans, he was immediately trained to become a knight.

And over time, Duncan adopted the culture and traditions of his captors.

In fact, his integration with the Normans was so strong that he took part in some of William's campaigns.

And when William died, Duke Robert freed Duncan and knighted him.

Because, as I've said before, and I'll say again, Robert was just way too nice to be part of this family.

Now, you might imagine that Duncan would have returned to Scotland after gaining his freedom.

But at this point, he'd spent more of his life with the Normans than he had done with the Scots.

So he took a pass on returning to Scotland and stuck around.

And you might expect him to have stayed in Robert's court, you know, in appreciation for the knighthood and the freedom.

But that's not what he did either.

Instead, Duncan went to the court of King Rufus.

Perhaps because he, like many of our scribes, felt that Robert was just too weak of a leader, and so serving him wouldn't lead him to wealth and power.

But whatever the reason, that's where Duncan has been this whole time, which meant that Rufus had a claimant to the throne of Scotland in his court during a Scottish succession crisis.

A claimant who was educated and raised in the Norman way, and who, even after he was freed, deliberately chose a Norman life.

A claimant who was quite interested in wealth and power, and who was more than willing to make an oath of fealty to Rufus in exchange for the crown's support in overthrowing his uncle.

Like I said, he had an ace.

ace.

And Rufus immediately seized the opportunity.

And he gave Duncan permission to recruit English and Norman adventurers and mercenaries for his campaign to take the throne of Scotland.

And I'm guessing that mixed in there were probably also a fair number of those Englishmen who just got tossed out of the Scottish court by King Donald.

So war with Scotland was coming.

And at some point right around now, Rufus also would have received word of what was happening right across the border in Wales.

Because all of this chaos that Rufus was spreading around wasn't just restricted to Scotland, Normandy, England, and the church.

He was also spreading it in Wales.

And this is why it's incredibly difficult to provide a clear narrative of what's going on, because there's simply so much chaos and so many rich guys causing problems in so many different ways.

Not to mention all the chaos caused by their habit of elevating their weird, inexperienced teenage companions, sorry, knights, into positions of authority that they had no business being in.

And I know, it's hard to imagine living in a society like that, but it was happening, and nobody in power could seem to stop it.

So anyway, back to Wales.

So, as we've discussed in the past, the Normans were relentlessly working on subduing and occupying Wales.

But the nature of the landscape and the way of Welsh war was making that a rather difficult prospect, and their Welsh campaigns weren't enjoying the relatively quick success that they had enjoyed in southern England.

But that doesn't mean that Wales was left alone.

The Normans were very much making aggressive pushes into Welsh territories.

And while we have already spoken about some of their activities in northern Wales, under the command of Robert of Rivlin and Earl Hugh Lupus of Chester, this this aggression was taking place across the entire Welsh border.

And the Normans weren't going to let up because Wales was a threat.

And it was actually a much more present threat than Scotland.

After all, it sat very close to lucrative southern English lands, whereas Scotland's closest potential targets were all in Northumbria, which, you know, had largely been devastated by the Normans.

So for the Scots to do do real damage, they would need to come much further south, and that would give the Normans time to respond.

But that wasn't the case with Wales.

And so, the Normans were very aggressive in their campaigns.

Which brings us to Bernard de Neuve-Marché.

Now, Bernard was one of the many Norman lords who had previously rebelled against Rufus in 1088.

But thanks to a politically weakened Rufus and the tangled web of of feudal obligations, Bernard had also escaped punishment.

But it seems like he realized how precarious his position was, and how, if he remained an easy target, Rufus was likely to take vengeance on him once the king was back on his feet.

And so Bernard had been very busy working on expanding his power and authority.

Specifically, he had been in a long, drawn-out conflict with the southern Welsh.

And the source of this conflict was that he wanted southern Wales, and the Welsh didn't want Bernard.

And this war had been waged on and off for years.

And in typical Norman fashion, he was throwing up fortifications anytime he got the chance.

And according to later accounts, one of these castles was at Brecon.

And King Resap Tudor of De Highbarth and King Blethen of Brekiniog led a combined army against Bernard's forces.

And in the fighting, King Rhys was killed, thus breaking the power of De Highbarth and further destabilizing Wales.

Seizing on the opportunity, another Norman lord, Roger de Montgomery, loaded his forces upon his ships and attacked Caradigian by sea, subsequently occupying the old kingdom and immediately surging southwards into Devid.

At about the same time, Roger de Montgomery's neighbor, Philip of Briuse, gathered his forces and seized Radnor, thus creating a link between Bernard and Roger's occupied territories.

And so, in the space of less than a year, the whole kingdom was thrown into chaos, and large chunks of it had been seized and occupied by the Normans.

But it wasn't all good news.

Rufus was also likely told that King Griffith outkunin of Gwynedd had escaped the dungeons of Earl Hugh Lupus.

And that's not great for the Normans.

But word had it that he had fled to Ireland.

So it's possible that the court of King Rufus breathed a sigh of relief, thinking that would be the last time they'd ever hear of Griffith.

And so, all in all, I'm guessing Rufus couldn't believe his luck.

1093 had been a hell of a year for the guy.

I mean, Scotland had been a threat to the Norman dominance in England since the days of his father.

And when King Malcolm invaded months earlier, it was a genuine problem, especially given Rufus' unpopularity and Malcolm's many connections to the House of Wessex.

But thanks to whatever shady thing that de Mowbray had done up in Northumberland, well, now Malcolm and his son were dead.

And they had a real chance of installing a Norman-trained and educated puppet on the throne of Scotland.

Someone who, rather than challenging Rufus, would be a loyal vassal.

All Duncan had to do was kill his uncle, King Donald.

And if he failed at that, well, at least Scotland would be destabilized by the attempted regicide.

And as for Wales, the death of King Rhys had destabilized Wales to such an extent that huge portions of it were now coming into the hands of Norman lords.

His lords.

So So yeah, everything was coming up rufous.

Though

everything was also coming up regicide.

Might want to keep an eye on that.

And speaking of kings and killing, when Griffith Apkunin escaped Hughes' prison, he didn't just flee into the countryside to retire.

He wanted payback.

And he had quite a few Welsh countrymen looking for a little payback of their own.

It was time for another war.

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, you can reach me at thebritishhistorypodcast at gmail.com.

And if you'd like to support the podcast, please go over to the British History Podcast and sign up for membership.

And if you'd like to join us on social media, we're on Reddit and we're on Blue Sky.

And you can find links to them in the communities section of thebritish historypodcast.com.

Thanks for listening.