Note 142 — Chapter V · The Line of Atholl.

Wynton, bk. 6, c. 16, 18. Much needless confusion is thrown over the period of Macbeth by raising unnecessary questions about his birth and his rights to the crown. All the best authorities—his contemporaries Tighernach and Marianus, and the Registry of the Priory of St. Andrews, which records his gift to the Culdees of Lochleven—unite in calling him the son of Finlay, the Register describing his wife as the daughter of Boedhe, whose claims she inherited. Another difficulty is raised because Macbeth appears as the immediate successor of Malcolm the Second in Sim. Dun. de Gestis, 1034, contrary to every other authority. That this is an error, of some transcriber apparently, is very evident, for the same Simeon, in his History of Durham, l. 3, c. 9, calls Duncan the king of Scots, adding that he was defeated before Durham in the fifth year of Harald’s reign, i.e., 1040, and soon afterwards slain by his own subjects. The supposed relationship between Macbeth and Duncan may have been grounded upon the real connection between the king and Thorfin, with whom the Moray Mormaor seems to have been confounded in more ways than one.