Ebook The Scots Peerage

Fife (with Fothreve, the modern Kinross) was one of the seven provinces into which ancient Scotland was divided, and which were governed each by its regulus or mormaer in subjection to the Ard-Ri, the King of Scotland.

Douglas in his Peerage begins the line of Earls of Fife with Macduff, whom he styles Thane of Fife, but John of For dun, who flourished in the latter half of the fourteenth century, was thefirst to create Macduff Thane and Earl of Fife, and his story has been embellished and handed on by Wyntoun, Boece, and Buchanan. The whole narrative, however, has been discredited by later historians, first by George Chalmers, and more recently by Dr. Skene, while the writer of the article 'Macduff' in the Dictionary of National Biography calls him 'a half or wholly mythical personage.' The early English chronicles, too, will be searched in vain for the name of Macduff in connection with the defeat of Macbeth and the placing of Malcolm Oanmore on his throne. They are unanimous in giving the credit of that act to Si ward, the great Earl of Northumberland, and uncle of Malcolm, at the instigation of King Edward the Confessor.