In 1054, Malcolm, the eldest son of Duncan, who is termed by the historians son of the king of the Cumbrians, with the assistance of Siward, earl of Northumbria, drove Macbeth from his kingdom and regained possession of its capital, Scone; and on the death of Thornfinn in 1057 Macbeth was driven north and slain within no great distance from the frontier of his native province of Moray, and Malcolm’s rule was extended over the whole kingdom as its legitimate monarch. We are told in the Orkneyinga Saga that Thorfinn ‘was much lamented in his own land, but in those lands which he had subjected to himself by conquest the natives were no longer content under his government; consequently many _rikis_ which the earl had subjected fell off, and their inhabitants sought the protection of those native chiefs who were territorially born to rule over them.’[61] These _rikis_ were no doubt the districts subdued by Thorfinn, which now passed again under the rule of their native Mormaers, and it is rather remarkable that, with the exception of the districts of Stratherne and Menteath, when we can trace the position of the remaining districts, consisting of Athol, Gowry, Fife, and Fothreve, we find them in the possession of the Crown, and ruled over by members of the royal family.[62] [Sidenote: Mormaers termed by Norwegians Jarls.] By the Norwegians these Mormaers seem to have been viewed as holding the same position as the Norwegian Jarls, and this name is invariably given to them in the Sagas. Like them, they were viewed as the hereditary rulers of the territory with which they were connected, and as protecting the rights of the Crown within its bounds. That the office, whatever it was, was held hereditarily by the same family we see in the notices of two of these families preserved in the Pictish Chronicle and in the Irish Annals. In the one we find Dubucan, son of Indrechtaig, Mormaer of Angus, succeeded by his son Maelbrigdi; and in the other we see the family of Ruadri filling the office of Mormaer of Moray, and the succession apparently following the Irish law of tanistry, and alternating between the descendants of his two sons Maelbrigdi and Findlaec; and when this family was finally driven from the throne in the person of Lulach, the grandson of the former, we find his son Maelsnectai appearing as _Ri Muireb_ or king of Moray, from whom it passed through his sister to Ængus, termed in the Annals ‘son of the daughter of Lulaig.’[63] [Sidenote: Mormaers of Buchan from the Book of Deer.]