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However, before this, in 943, Constantine, at the age of 70, abdicated and entered the Culdee monastery at Ce
Malcolm’s accession to the throne of Alba saw renewed raids deep into Northumbria in 949 and again in the 970s during Ke
Mapping the kingdom
Further clarification of the boundary between England and Scotland was decided by the Battle of Carham in 1016 or 1018. Before this, in 1006, Malcolm II (1005–1034) invaded Northumbria and besieged the new episcopal city of Durham. However, the Scots were defeated by an army drawn from Bernicia and York, led by Uhtred the Bold.
Local women were said to have washed the severed heads of the Scots, receiving a payment of a cow for each head. The heads were fixed on stakes at Durham’s walls.
Uhtred was rewarded by King Ethelred II with the ealdormanry of Bamburgh even though his father was still alive. In the meantime, Ethelred had Earl Ælfhelm of York murdered, and he allowed Uhtred to succeed Ælfhelm as ealdorman of York, uniting northern and southern Northumbria under the house of Bamburgh. Things were definitely looking up for Uhtred, but it didn’t last.
An
ealdormanry
is basically governorship of a shire or region.
Symeon of Durham in his
Historia Regum
(History of the Kings) wrote that in 1018,
A great battle between the Scots and Angles was fought at Carrum [Carham] between Huctred [Uhtred], son of Waldef [Waltheof], earl of the Northumbrians, and Malcolm [Malcolm II], son of Cyneth [Ke
There is a little confusion regarding the date of the battle. Some historians have argued that because the earl of Northumberland was listed in the
Anglo -Saxon Chronicle
as murdered along with 40 of his men by King Cnut in 1016, the battle must have taken place in that year. However, other historians have more convincingly suggested that it took place in 1018 and that it was Uhtred’s brother, Eadulf Cudel, ‘a very lazy and cowardly man’, who engaged the Scots in battle and lost.
There is also the problem of whether the victory of the Scots led to Lothian being ceded to them. Again, some historians have argued that, from 973, Lothian was in the hands of the Scots, so the battle was less about that than the Scottish king’s desire to achieve control of Bernicia. That goal was never realised, but the defeated Eadulf formally recognised Malcolm’s possession of all of Northumbria as far as the Tweed. As a result, the southern boundary of Alba was set at the River Tweed, where it remains today.