The great success of the Anglo-Danish earl is generally supposed to have reinstated Malcolm on the throne, but no such inference can be drawn from the accounts of contemporary writers, by whom no allusion is made to the Scottish prince; the espousal of the suppliant’s cause by the Confessor, and the directions given by the saintly king to Siward to re-establish the heir of Duncan in his ancestral kingdom, only appearing in the pages of the Anglo-Norman chroniclers for the purpose of indirectly furthering the subsequent feudal claims of the English kings. As the rout of the Scottish army before the walls of Durham, and their subsequent contest with Thorfin Sigurdson hastened the catastrophe of the first king of the House of Atholl, so the unsuccessful issue of his encounter with Earl Siward may have eventually proved fatal to the Mormaor; but Macbeth held his ground for four years, and the grave had long closed over the Danish earl, [Sidenote: A. D. 1058.] when the defeat and death of his former antagonist at Lumphanan, in Aberdeenshire, removed the first obstacle from the path of the youthful Malcolm.[148] For three or four months the contest still continued to be maintained by Gilcomgain’s son Lulach, the feeble successor of his able kinsman, until his death at Essie in Strathbogie, where he is said to have been betrayed, or to have lost his life through some stratagem of his enemies, put an end for the time to the struggle between the rival houses, and the heir of Duncan without further difficulty obtained possession of the vacant throne.[149] CHAPTER VI. THE LINE OF ATHOLL RESTORED. _Malcolm the Third (Ceanmore)._ 1058–1093.