Murdoch I, the Just, MacDrostan
Lived: 1020-1076
Head of House MacDrostan: 1048-1076
King of Scotland: 1048-1076
Murdoch I benefitted from inheriting the Scottish throne during a Golden Age for the Kingdom. Over the course of almost three decades at the head of the Scots state he faced no major rebellion or internal conspiracy against his rule, was threatened by no great external threat and saw his Kingdom march rapidly forward as Scotland caught up with the European mainstream in terms of prosperity. Murdoch was an able administrator, but little else. During the latter 1000s, that was all Scotland needed from her King.
Murdoch’s greatest, and most lasting, achievements during his reign were his reforms to Scotland’s legal framework. Enhancing the power of the crown, Murdoch sought to do away with the arbitrary justice of local barons’ law courts and instead establish a uniform law applicable to the entire Kingdom of Scotland – directly under the control of the crown. With only the Church and a few peripheral areas in the Kingdom, the reforms were intensely popular with great swathes of the Scottish population and earned Murdoch his enduring title, ‘’the Just’’. Murdoch I, after centuries of uncertainty, finally set Scotland’s law of succession in stone through the strict adoption of primogeniture. Since the initial formation of Scotland in the 9th century the succession had been established by various forms of election by the nobility, by dividing the King’s lands and titles between his sons and, often, on the field of battle. Now, Murdoch appeared to have adopted a system that would bring stability even to the perennially treacherous periods that followed the deaths of Scotland’s Kings.
The endless peace that appeared to punctuate Murdoch I’s reign was broken up only twice by two brief wars against the Spanish in England during the 1050s and 1060s as the Scots first captured the County of Derby before moving on to the far more tantalising prize of Yorkshire – York being one of the England’s greatest cities. Scotland’s borders were expanded even further in 1065 when the County of Desmond, in the extreme South of Ireland, was inherited by the Duke of Albany – forming a Scottish bridgehead in Ireland itself.
With remarkably rapidity, in the 1070s, the balance of power in the British Isles took a dramatic shift with the formation of the Kingdom of England. Alfred of Kent, latterly known as Alfred the Great of England, came from a prominent Anglo-Saxon family that had maintained major landholdings in Wessex long after the Spanish had taken control of the region. In 1071 Alfred inherited the Duchy of Castile – giving him sovereignty over most of the old Kingdom of Wessex, as well as not insignificant holdings in Northern Spain itself. He then moved quickly to consolidate his grip over the region by attacking the Spanish holdings to the North of England, capturing Oxford and Northampton. In 1074 he declared himself King of England and moved his capital to ancient centre of the Kingdom of Wessex at Winchester. With the formation of England, comprising the most naturally bountiful lands in Britain, Alfred offered a challenge to the Scots and Irish for dominance in the British Isles.
Murdoch I died in 1076 in the 28th year of his reign. Murdoch had overseen the continuation of an age of stability that began during the later years of Brice, the Bold’s rule. His son and successor, Murdoch II, would be tasked with continuing this era on to the end of the century and laying the foundations for it to continue beyond it.