Marching through history – say hello to Gruoch, a.k.a., Lady Macbeth

Today’s guest is Sharon Bennett Connolly who has just released Medieval Scottish Queens: From St Margaret to Margaret of Denmark. For those unfamiliar with Sharon’s books, she’s written several non-fiction books, books in which she attempts to breathe life into the women of the past. Extremely well-researched, Sharon’s books offer tantalising insight into a distant time–and I can only imagine how many hours she has spent poring over ancient documents. Her post today is about Lady Macbeth–the real one.  I hope you enjoy it!

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For over 400 years, Shakespeare’s version of Lady Macbeth has been the woman most people are familiar with. The scheming, ambitious wife who will stop at nothing to put her husband on the Scottish throne – and commit murder to keep him there. But is that the real Lady Macbeth? As many fans of Richard III will say, Shakespeare is fiction. He is telling a story to entertain, imbuing it with the moral judgements of his time, the early modern era. Unlike with Richard III, Lady Macbeth has no following with a desire to seek out the truth and right the wrongs done to her. Historians, however, have tried to address the bard’s inaccuracies.

But Shakespeare’s shadow is long…

So, who was Lady Macbeth?

As you can imagine, with the passing of nearly a thousand years, the information on Lady Macbeth is scarce. Her name was Gruoch, and she was a royal princess, the granddaughter of a king. Gruoch’s date of birth is unknown, but she appears to have been married at some point in the 1020s to a man named Gille Comgáin, which may mean she was born in the first decade of the eleventh century. She and Gille Comgáin had a son, Lulach.

Gille Comgáin, was involved in a particularly nasty family feud. He was a first cousin of Macbeth and he and his brother, Máel Coluim, had murdered Macbeth’s father, and claimed the lands of Moray, with Máel Coluim succeeding his uncle as mormaer of Moray, a semi-independent region of north-eastern Scotland. Literally translated, mormaer means great steward and the holders of the title enjoyed semi-royal status, which may explain why they are sometimes referred to as kings.

Máel Coluim was in turn succeeded by his younger brother Gille Comgáin, on his death in 1029. Macbeth, younger than his murderous cousins, and probably only a teenager at the time, fled, perhaps to Ireland. In 1032, Gille Comgáin was murdered, along with 50 of his men. Though Macbeth is not mentioned as the perpetrator, many, certainly, lay the blame at his door. Given the number of dead involved, it is likely that Gille Comgáin and his followers were trapped in his hall as it was burned down, perhaps during a feast, the doors barred from the outside to prevent escape. If Gruoch was Gille Comgáin’s wife, she did not share her husband’s fate. Perhaps she and her small son were away from home at the time, otherwise they would have perished alongside the others. Another possibility is that Gruoch escaped – or was rescued – from the hall with Lulach before the fire took hold.

Macbeth succeeded as mormaer of Moray and it was only a short time after Gille Comgáin’s death that Gruoch and Macbeth were married, putting an end to the murderous family feud. We may feel uneasy about Gruoch marrying her husband’s murderer, if he was, but the union was political common sense. Gruoch, a mother with a young son and of royal blood, was low on male protection; her brother had just been murdered, possibly by Malcolm II, and her infant nephew would be killed the following year. As the wife of Macbeth, Gruoch could feel secure in his protection as the new mormaer and may have extracted guarantees that Macbeth would look after Lulach’s interests, given the way he raised the boy and even designated him as his heir. For Macbeth, Gruoch’s royal blood and lands would strengthen his own claim to the Scots throne, if he was thinking that far ahead in 1032.

In 1034, on 25 November, King Malcolm II died at Glamisand was peacefully succeeded by his grandson, Duncan, helped no doubt by Malcolm’s campaign of eliminating potential rivals. Duncan was probably in his mid-20s when he was invested as King of Scots at Scone just five days after his grandfather’s death: he was certainly not the old man depicted by Shakespeare.

When Duncan led an army north against Thorfinn of Orkney, Thorfinn allied with Macbeth to form a league to challenge the Scots king. Duncan led an army against Moray, apparently unaware of Macbeth’s alliance with Thorfinn and the two armies met at Pitgaveny, near Elgin, on 15 August 1040. Macbeth won the contest, with Duncan lying dead on the field of battle at the end of the day – not murdered as in ‘the Scottish play’. With Duncan’s sons still only children, Macbeth assumed the kingship unchallenged, with Gruoch by his side.

Gruoch is the first Scottish queen whose name is known to history. Duncan’s young sons were taken into exile, beyond Macbeth’s reach. In the early years of his reign, Macbeth faced challenges from the dead King Duncan’s father and from Siward, Earl of Northumbria, who mounted an invasion of Scotland in the name of Malcolm, Duncan I’s oldest son and heir. Although the invasion initially succeeded in defeating Macbeth, he gathered reinforcements from his heartlands in the north and expelled Siward’s forces.

The next eight years were peaceful. By 1050, King Macbeth was in such a strong position that he was able to leave Scotland and go on pilgrimage to Rome, where he ‘scattered money like seed to the poor’. The pilgrimage would have been a combination of religious devotion and diplomatic networking; a chance for the King of Scots to be seen on the wider European stage. The generosity of Macbeth and Gruoch towards the church, during the pilgrimage, had monastic writers recording that ‘in his reign there were productive seasons’.

In those eight years, Duncan’s sons were growing to adulthood and in 1054, Earl Siward again invaded Scotland, hoping to place Malcolm on the throne, as a client king of King Edward the Confessor. Although the battle at Dunsinane was lost, Macbeth’s men sold their lives dearly; Siward’s oldest son was killed, and the earl was unable to press any advantage. Scotland was divided, with Malcolm establishing himself in Lothian and the southern kingdom of Strathclyde, while Macbeth continued to control Scotland’s heartlands north of the Forth. The subsequent campaign was long and bloody as Malcolm extended his influence northwards. It was not until 1057 that Malcolm crossed the Mounth, ambushing Macbeth, cut off from his main army, at Lumphanan, west of Aberdeen, on 15 August. Macbeth was killed in the battle, along with his personal bodyguard. The Scots king was buried on the island of Iona, where his rival King Duncan was also interred.

Macbeth was succeeded, briefly, by his stepson, Lulach. His reign lasted less than a year and he was defeated and killed, ‘by treachery’, on 17 March 1058, at Essie in Strathbogie.

Macbeth’s reputation as a strong, wise, generous and pious king has been overshadowed by the Macbeth of Shakespeare. He is described as ‘a tall man with a ruddy complexion and fair hair’. Of his wife Gruoch, we have no description. We have very little record of Gruoch’s movements, either as Macbeth’s wife or before. We can assume that she spent the early years of her marriage to Macbeth in creating a household and raising her young son, Lulach. Once Macbeth attained the throne, Gruoch may well have assumed the traditional roles associated with queens, as an intercessor for those seeking the king’s mercy or patronage, as a hostess in welcoming foreign envoys and powerful magnates to the Scottish court, and as a religious benefactor. In one charter, Gruoch is identified with her husband as ‘King and Queen of Scots’. The fact that we have a grant given jointly by Macbeth and Gruoch suggests that the couple worked together during Macbeth’s reign. Gruoch also accompanied her husband on his pilgrimage to Rome, a journey that must have been an exciting adventure for both of them.

There is no record in the chronicles of any disharmony in the marriage but we know little else of Queen Gruoch. Despite already bearing a son, Lulach, she and Macbeth had no children that we know of; although it may be that she lost children by miscarriage or in early childhood before they came to the notice of chroniclers. This lack of a surviving heir of his own may have been what prompted Macbeth to adopt Gruoch’s son as his successor.

We know nothing of Gruoch’s death, no date is recorded nor even hinted at. She may have lived through the grief of losing her husband and son in battle and seeing Malcolm III Canmore ascend the throne and assert his authority over the whole of Scotland. Or she may have died some years beforehand. William Shakespeare had her dying by her own hand, driven insane by her evil deeds, but this was almost definitely fiction. Gruoch’s final resting place, the one site that may give us a clue, is also lost to history.

The story of Queen Gruoch, Lady Macbeth, is one shrouded in mystery, tantalisingly obscure.

Buy Scotland’s Medieval Queens: From St Margaret to Margaret of Denmark HERE

Sharon Bennett Connolly is the best-selling author of several non-fiction history books. Her latest, Scotland’s Medieval Queens; From St Margaret to Margaret of Denmark, will be released in January 2025. A Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, Sharon has studied history academically and just for fun – and has even worked as a tour guide at Conisbrough Castle. She also writes the popular history blog, www.historytheinterestingbits.com and co-hosts the podcast A Slice of Medieval, alongside historical novelist Derek Birks. Sharon regularly gives talks on women’s history, for historical groups, festivals and in schools; her book Silk and the Sword: The Women of the Norman Conquest is a recommended text for teaching the Norman Conquest in the National Curriculum. She is a feature writer for All About History and Living Medieval magazines and her TV work includes Australian Television’s ‘Who Do You Think You Are?‘

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Check out the previous Marching Through History post HERE!