Alexander Iii

Related Category: British and Irish History: Biographies

1241–86, king of Scotland (1249–86), son and successor of Alexander II. He married a daughter of Henry III of England and quarreled with Henry, and later Henry's son Edward I, over the old English claims to overlordship in Scotland. The great achievement of Alexander was his final acquisition for Scotland of the Hebrides and of the Isle of Man, which his father had already claimed from Norway. King Haakon IV of Norway attempted to drive the Scots from the islands, but a storm battered his ships, and he was defeated in the battle of Largs in the Clyde river. In 1266, Alexander signed a treaty with Magnus VI, assigning the islands to Scotland. Alexander survived his children, and when he died his only near relative was his little granddaughter Margaret Maid of Norway.