lexander III, 1241-86, king of Scotland (1249-86), son and successor of Alexander II. He married a daughter of Henry III of England and disputed with him over the old English claims to overlordship in Scotland. The great achievement of Alexander was his final acquisition for Scotland of the Western Islands and of the Isle of Man, which his father had already claimed from Norway. To drive the Scots from the islands King Haakon IV of Norway sailed with a great fleet in 1263, but a storm battered his ships, and he fought the inconclusive battle of Largs in the River Clyde (1263). Alexander signed a treaty with Haakon’s successor, Magnus VI, assigning the Western Isles and the Isle of Man to Scotland. This was followed by an arrangement with Norway providing for the marriage of Magnus’s son Eric with Alexander’s daughter Margaret. Alexander survived his children, and when he died his only near relative was his little granddaughter Margaret Maid of Norway. See biography by James Fergusson (1937). [The Illustrated Columbia Encyclopedia, 1969]

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