The party in the kingdom who supported him now put up, as king, Lulach, who was the son of Gilcomgan, Mormaer of Moray, and the heir to whom the hereditary rule over that province fell on the death of Macbeth, while his mother was a granddaughter of Boete or Bodhe, and through her he inherited whatever rights to the Scottish throne that family possessed; but his reign, nominal as it was, lasted only seven months, and he was slain at Essy in Strathbolgy on the 17th day of the following March.^[594]

These isolated events may be accepted as facts, transmitted to us as they are by contemporary writers, but they leave us quite in the dark as to how Malcolm so speedily and thoroughly accomplished what the powerful Siward with his army and his fleet had failed to effect three years before. It seems difficult too to understand how, if the northern provinces up to Fife were under the rule of the powerful earl of Orkney with his Norwegians, Malcolm could have carried the war so far into them as to drive Macbeth beyond the Dee and defeat and kill him there. The Orkneyinga Saga tells us that Thorfinn possessed nine earldoms in Scotland, and that on his death ‘many of the 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.’^[595] Besides the four earldoms in Scotland of Sutherland, Ross, Moray, and Dali, which his father Sigurd had subjected before him, he had brought for the first time under the Norwegian yoke the four earldoms of Buchan, Marr, Mearns, and Angus, and these would bring his possessions up to Fife, and with Galloway,^[596] which he probably also possessed, would make up the nine earldoms, and the most probable explanation of Malcolm having selected this year to make a great effort to recover his father’s throne and of its apparent rapid success, is that it was also the year of Thorfinn’s death, when many of the provinces which had been subjected by him fell again under native rule. Of these, the first to free themselves from the Norwegian yoke would be the four earldoms extending from the Spey to the Firth of Tay, forming the northern half of the kingdom proper. It was, however, in this part of the kingdom, and mainly in Angus, that the branch of the royal house of which Malcolm, son of Kenneth, was the head, and which Malcolm, the son of Duncan, now represented in the female line, had its main seat, and it was there that their power and influence lay. If these provinces were now freed from the Norwegian yoke, Malcolm might find there powerful support, while his paternal descent from the lay abbots of Dunkeld would likewise bring the people of Atholl and of the extensive possessions of that church to his aid. The death of Thorfinn would thus present to him a great opportunity for making another attempt to add the kingdom of Scotland to that of Cumbria, with the district of Lothian which he already possessed; and Macbeth, finding himself isolated, with the forces of Cumbria and Lothian in front of him and a hostile population behind him, in place of the support of the Norwegian earl, would fall back upon his own hereditary province of Moray, and being followed by Malcolm with his army, gathering strength as he proceeded, was overtaken and slain at Lumphanan.

If this view, that Thorfinn died in 1057, appears to afford us the most plausible explanation of the sudden termination of Macbeth’s kingdom, there is nothing in the Sagas which raises any serious objection to it. They nowhere state any fact which gives us a fixed date for Thorfinn’s death. The Orkneyinga Saga says, that from the year when he was made earl, that is, in 1014, ‘he was earl for seventy winters,’ which would make him live till the year 1084. The Saga of Saint Olaf reduced the number of years to sixty winters, that is, to the year 1074, but both Sagas agree that he died in the end or in the latter days of Harald Sigurdson, who was slain at the battle of Stamford Bridge in the year 1066; and when Harald came to the Orkneys, on his way to England, he found Thorfinn’s sons ruling as earls of Orkney, and took them with him. No events are recorded of Thorfinn in the Sagas after the year 1050, and if he died in 1057 his death would take place about eight years before that of Harald Sigurdson, and in the last half of his reign. It might still be said that he died towards the end of his reign.

Simeon of Durham too tells us that in the year 1061 ‘Aldred, archbishop of York, went to Rome with Earl Tostig and received the pall from Pope Nicholas. Meanwhile Malcolm, king of Scots, furiously ravaged the earldom of his sworn brother Earl Tostig, and violated the peace of St. Cuthbert in the island of Lindisfarne.’^[597] What led to Malcolm thus taking advantage of Tostig’s absence to attack his earldom we do not know, and the chronicler throws no further light upon it; but it is hardly possible to suppose that Malcolm could have ventured to attack Northumbria, and break off his alliance with Tostig, if he had not by this time effected the subjugation of his entire kingdom, and if the northern half of it still remained under the rule of the Norwegian earl of Orkney. On Thorfinn’s death Malcolm appears to have endeavoured to conciliate the Norwegian element in the country by making Ingibiorg, the widow of Thorfinn, his wife, by whom he had a son Duncan. His Norwegian wife did not, however, apparently survive the birth of her son many years, and gave way to a more important alliance for Malcolm, and one that was to exercise a powerful influence on the internal condition of the country, and the character of the reigning house. The Saxon Chronicle tells us, that in the summer of the year 1067 ‘Eadgar child went out (from Northumberland) with his mother Agatha, and his two sisters Margaret and Christina, and Mærleswegen, and many good men with them, and came to Scotland under the protection of King Malcolm, and he received them all.’ One edition of the chronicle adds, ‘Then King Malcolm began to yearn after his sister Margaret to wife, but he and all his men long refused, and she herself also declined, and said that she would have nor him nor any one if the heavenly clemency would grant that she in maidenhood might propitiate the mighty Lord with corporal heart in this short life in pure continence. The king earnestly urged her brother, until he answered yea, and indeed he durst not otherwise, because they were come into his power.’ The other edition of the chronicle simply adds, ‘and he took the child’s sister Margaret to wife.’ Florence of Worcester, who is the next best authority, places this event in the year 1068, which is probably the correct year,^[598] and tells us that ‘Marleswein and Gospatric, and all the nobler Northumbrians, to avoid the severity of the king, and dreading the imprisonment which so many had suffered, sailed to Scotland with Eadgar Aetheling, his mother Agatha, and his two sisters Margaret and Christina, and wintered there under the protection of Malcolm king of Scots.’^[599] The marriage probably took place the following spring at Dunfermline, which King Malcolm appears to have adopted as his principal seat, and not without reason, according to Fordun’s description of it: ‘For that place was of itself most strongly fortified by nature, being begirt by very thick woods and protected by steep crags. In the midst thereof was a fair plain, likewise protected by crags and streams, so that one might think that was the spot whereof it was said, scarce man or beast may tread its pathless wilds.’^[600]

Child Eadgar, as the Saxon Chronicle calls him, was the son of Eadward Aetheling, who had returned from exile in Hungary in the year 1057, and died in England the same year. As Eadward Aetheling was the son of King Eadmund, the elder brother of Eadward the Confessor, he might have been held, if he had been at home instead of in distant exile, to have had a preferable right to the throne; but after the death of Eadward the Confessor his family were looked upon as representing the royal house of Wessex, and as possessing a legitimate claim upon the allegiance of the Saxon population, which, had the personal character of Eadgar been different, might have made him a more formidable opponent to the Norman Conqueror than he proved to be. The connection of Malcolm with this family by marriage with his sister was a very important one for him, and he now combined in his own person advantages which gave him a claim to the obedience of each of the different races now united under his rule. In the male line he represented the powerful lay abbots of Dunkeld, and inherited their influence over the ecclesiastical foundations dependent upon that monastery. In the female, he possessed the more important representation of the Scottish royal house who had ruled for a century and a half over the kingdom of Scotland. His father Duncan had been recognised for twenty years by the Welsh population of Cumbria or Strathclyde as their king, and by his mother he was connected with the Danes of Northumbria and their powerful earl Siward. His marriage with Ingibiorg gave him a claim to the good-will at least of the Norwegians, and the Anglic population of Lothian and Northumbria would look upon his marriage with the daughter of the Aetheling as giving him an additional right to their steadfast support. The northern province of Moray alone, whose hereditary rulers were of the same family as Macbeth, would probably render but an unwilling submission to his authority, and his rule over them would be little more than nominal.

Of the events of his thirty-five years’ reign, however, very few have been recorded. The combination of so many advantages in his own person would naturally lead to a further amalgamation of the different provinces of the kingdom, with their varied population, into one monarchy; but this is a silent process, which little attracts the notice of the chroniclers of the time. The personal character of Margaret, no doubt, was one to exercise a great influence upon the internal condition and progress of the people, as we learn to some extent from her life by Turgot; but this belongs to a different part of our subject, and beyond a few isolated notices we know really nothing of the internal history of his reign.

As to external events, Simeon of Durham, whose language, however, is coloured by an indignant hatred of the Scots on account of their frequent attacks upon Durham, tells us that Malcolm had ‘five times wasted the province of Northumbria with a savage devastation, and carried captive the wretched natives to reduce them to slavery: once in Eadward’s reign, when Tostig, earl of York, had gone to Rome;’ twice in the reign of King William the Conqueror; and twice in that of his successor.^[601]

The first we have already noticed. The two next were probably connected with the claims of the Aetheling; but it is also possible that Malcolm may now have begun to realise the growing importance of Lothian and its Anglic population as an integral portion of its dominions, and been not unwilling to take advantage of the unsettled state of the north of England to extend to the Tyne the limits of that province which was now assuming the prominent place it ever after occupied in the future Scotland. Simeon seems to hint at some such motive, when he accuses him of being ‘instigated by avarice.’ If this was Malcolm’s real object, his policy seems to have been, by harassing and devastating the earldom north of the Tyne, from time to time, to force them to put themselves under his protection—a policy not unknown to the descendants of a part of his subjects, when black mail was a familiar term.

During the first three years of the reign of William the Conqueror, he had little real power or authority beyond the Humber, and it was not till the end of the year 1069, when he invaded Northumbria, and laid the country entirely waste with fire and sword, that he may be said to have actually conquered the country. Previous to that expedition he exercised a merely nominal authority, through earls of his own appointment, who no sooner attempted to exercise their functions within the earldom than they were ere long slain.

It was in Northumbria that the cause of the Aetheling was mainly supported, and that part of it which was north of the Tyne presented a tempting field for the incursions of the Scots. On the death of Siward in 1055 an earl was for the first time appointed who was not of Northumbrian race. Tostig, the son of Earl Godwine, was appointed earl by King Eadward, but, after a ten years’ rule, we are told by the Saxon Chronicle that in 1065 ‘all the thanes in Yorkshire and Northumberland gathered together, and outlawed their Earl Tostig, and slew all his household-men that they could come at, both English and Danish, and took all his weapons at York, and gold and silver, and all his treasures which they could anyway hear of, and sent after Morkere, son of Earl Aelfgar (of Mercia), and chose him for their earl,’ which was confirmed by King Edward. Morkere does not seem, however, to have been accepted by the Northumbrians beyond the Tyne, as Simeon of Durham tells us that he transferred that part of the earldom to Osulf, son of Earl Eadulf, of the line of the native earls, who had been slain in the year 1041. In the year 1067 King William summoned Earl Morkere to attend him on his voyage to Normandy, and retained him beside him, and at the same time sent Copsige, who had been an adherent of Earl Tostig, to govern, as procurator, that part of the earldom under Osulf; but Simeon tells us that ‘Osulf, driven by Copsige from the earldom, concealed himself in the woods and mountains in hunger and want, till at last, having gathered some associates whom the same need had brought together, he surrounded Copsige while feasting at Newburn. He escaped through the midst of confused crowds, but, being discovered while he lay hid in the church, he was compelled, by the burning of the church, to go out to the door, where, at the very door, he was beheaded by the hands of Osulf, in the fifth week of his charge of the earldom, on the fourth of the ides of March. By and by, in the following autumn, Osulf himself, rushing headlong against the lance of a robber who met him, was thrust through, and there perished. At his death Gospatric, the son of Maldred, the son of Crinan, going to King William, obtained the earldom of the Northumbrians, which he purchased for a great sum, for the dignity of that earldom belonged to him by his mother’s blood. His mother was Algitha, the daughter of Earl Uchtred, whom he had by Algiva, daughter of King Agelred.’^[602] Gospatric, by paternal descent, was nearly connected and a member of the same house with Malcolm, the king of the Scots, while the means by which he obtained his earldom ranged him among the followers of King William, and he thus placed himself in a position which it was very difficult for him to maintain without alienating from him either the one or the other. In the following year, therefore, the Saxon Chronicle tells us that, in 1067, after Whitsunday, ‘it was then announced to the king that the people of the north had gathered themselves together and would stand against him if he came. He then went to Nottingham, and there wrought two castles; and so went to York, and there wrought two castles, and in Lincoln, and everywhere in that part. And Earl Gospatric and the best men went to Scotland.’ The same Chronicle tells us that in the following year, 1068 according to the Chronicle, but correctly given by Simeon in 1069, ‘King William gave to Earl Robert (de Comines) the government over Northumberland; but the men of the country surrounded him in the burgh at Durham, and slew him and nine hundred men with him. And immediately after Eadgar Aetheling came, with all the Northumbrians, to York, and the townsmen made peace with them; and King William came unawares on them from the south with an overwhelming army, and put them to flight, and slew those who could not flee, which were many hundred men, and plundered the town, and defiled St. Peter’s monastery, and also plundered and oppressed all the others, and the Aetheling went back again to Scotland.’

This unsuccessful attempt seems to have led to a more general combination of the northern powers in favour of the Aetheling, in which the aid of Swein, king of Denmark, had been solicited and obtained; and in autumn ‘came from Denmark,’ the Saxon Chronicle tells in 1069, ‘three sons of King Svein and Asbiörn Jarl, and Thorkell Jarl, with two hundred and forty ships, into the Humber; and there came to meet them Eadgar child and Earl Waltheof, and Maerleswegen, and Earl Gospatric, with the Northumbrians, and all the country people, riding and walking, with a countless army, greatly rejoicing; and so all unanimously went to York and stormed and demolished the castle, and gained innumerable treasures therein, and slew there many hundred Frenchmen, and led many with them to the ships.... When the king learned this, he went northward with all his force that he could gather and completely harried and laid waste the shire. And the fleet lay all winter in the Humber, where the king could not come at them. And the king was in the day of Midwinter at York, and so all the winter in the land.’ Florence of Worcester tells us that ‘King William ceased not, during the whole winter, to lay waste the land, to murder the inhabitants, and to inflict numerous injuries.’^[603] This devastation of the land, however, does not appear to have extended beyond the Tyne, or to have affected the districts on the coast; but what was left undone by William was completed by Malcolm, king of the Scots, for Simeon of Durham tells us that in the spring of the year 1070, after King William had returned to the south of the Humber, ‘a countless multitude of Scots marched through Cumbreland, under the command of King Malcolm, and turning to the east ravaged with fierce devastation the whole of Teesdale, or the vale of the river Tees, and the parts bordering it on each side.’ Then, ‘having pillaged Cleveland in part, by a sudden foray he seized Holderness, and thence savagely overrunning the territory of St. Cuthbert, between the Tees and the Tyne, he deprived all of their property, and some of their lives. Then he destroyed by fire, under his own inspection, the church of St. Peter, the prince of the apostles, at Wearmouth. He burnt also other churches, with those who had taken refuge in them.’^[604] Whether this inroad was made as part of the plan for a combined attempt in favour of Eadgar, which failed the preceding year, and that Malcolm had been too late in putting his part of it into execution, or whether, as seems more probable, he thought it a favourable opportunity for carrying out the policy which he hoped might lead to his extending his frontier to the Tyne, it seems difficult to say; but Gospatric, who had fled to Scotland before the approach of King William the preceding year, had now become reconciled to him, as Orderic of Vital says that while King William had pursued his foes to the river Tees, he ‘there received the submission of Waltheof in person, and of Gospatric by his envoys, who swore fealty on his part,’^[605] and he seems to have thought that he might win favour by acting against Malcolm. Simeon therefore tells us, ‘Having called in some bold auxiliaries, he made a furious plundering attack upon Cumbreland. Having done this with slaughter and conflagration, he returned with great spoil and shut himself with his allies into the strong fortress of Bamborough, from which making frequent sallies, he weakened the forces of the enemy.’ Malcolm ‘having heard, while still gazing on the church of St. Peter as it was being consumed by the fire of his men, of what Gospatric had committed against his people, scarcely able to contain himself for fury, ordered his troops no longer to spare any of the English nation, but either to smite all to the earth, or to carry them off captives under the yoke of perpetual slavery.’ Simeon then gives us his usual picture of the barbarity with which such inroads were carried on by the Scots, and adds as the result, ‘Scotland was therefore filled with slaves and handmaids of the English race; so that even to this day, I do not say no little village, but even no cottage, can be found without one of them.’^[606] Simeon inserts the following tale in his account of this inroad by Malcolm the king of the Scots. He says that ‘when he was riding along the border of the river (Wear) beholding from an eminence the cruel exploits of his men against the unhappy English, and feasting his mind and eyes with such a spectacle, it was told him that Eadgar Aetheling and his sisters, who were beautiful girls of the royal blood, and many other very rich persons, fugitives from their homes, lay with their ships in that harbour. When they came to him with terms of amity, he addressed them graciously, and pledged himself to grant them and all their friends a residence in his kingdom as long as they chose.’ And Simeon afterwards adds, ‘After Malcolm’s return to Scotland, when Bishop Egelwin was commencing his voyage towards Cologne, a contrary wind arising soon drove him back to Scotland. Thither also it bore with a favourable course Eadgar Aetheling with his companions before named. King Malcolm, with the consent of his relatives, took in marriage Eadgar’s sister Margaret, a woman noble by royal descent, but much more noble by her wisdom and piety. By her care and labour the king himself, laying aside the barbarity of his manners, became more gentle and civilised.’ But this story, if it has any foundation at all, appears to be misplaced, and the marriage which followed it had already taken place. Placed as it is in this year, it is quite inconsistent with the previous narrative. Simeon had recorded two years before the flight of Eadgar with his mother Agatha, and his two sisters Margaret and Cristina, by sea, to Scotland, where he says they passed the winter. It is therefore in the highest degree improbable that when Eadgar went in the following year to Northumbria to join the Danes in seizing the country, he should have taken his mother and sisters with him, from their secure refuge at the court of Scotland, to join him in so hazardous an expedition. Then the story as told implies that Malcolm now heard of these sisters and their charms for the first time; while, according to Simeon himself, they had already passed a winter with him in Scotland. The story really belongs to the first flight of Eadgar to Scotland, with his mother and sisters, in 1068, and not to his return from Northumbria in 1070, and seems to be the same tale which Fordun tells, on the authority of Turgot, that King Malcolm, when residing at Dunfermline, heard of the arrival of Eadgar and his sisters in St. Margaret’s Bay, and sent messengers to ascertain who they were, who brought him precisely the same report of the beauty of the sisters, in consequence of which he invited them to his court, and married Margaret.^[607]

During the early years of the reign of the Conqueror, Scotland had not only been the refuge of his discontented subjects, and the haven in which those who unsuccessfully opposed him could at all times shelter themselves from his vengeance and renew their attempts when opportunity offered, but its king had afforded the Aetheling three times a refuge at his court, and had now identified himself with his cause by marrying his sister. King William therefore felt the necessity of establishing at once a more definite relation between himself and the Scottish king, and of convincing him that his power was not to be opposed with impunity. It was not till the year 1072 that he was able to turn his attention seriously to this object, but in that year the Saxon Chronicle tells us ‘King William led a naval force and a land force to Scotland, and lay about that land with ships on the sea-side, and himself with his land force went in over the ford.’ This was precisely the same disposition of his forces which Earl Siward had made when he invaded Scotland in 1054, and no doubt with the same object, that of investing Scone, the capital of the country. King William, we know, marched with his land army through Lothian and Stirlingshire, and entered Scotland proper by the ford over the Forth^[608] there, and the only object in sending a fleet could have been to penetrate into the interior of the country by the Firth of Tay. We are then told that ‘King Malcolm came and made peace with King William, and gave hostages and became his man, and the king went home with all his force.’ Florence of Worcester says that ‘Malcolm, king of Scots, met him in a place called Abernethiei’^[609] or Abernethy on the Tay, which is quite in accordance with this view. What the precise nature or extent of the homage was which Malcolm agreed at Abernethy to render, there are no materials now to determine. When the possessions of the king of the Scots were confined to the kingdom proper north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde, the expression ‘he became his man’ would have a definite significance; but after the cession of Cumbria and Lothian it loses its force, as we cannot tell whether the homage was paid for the kingdom or for one or both of these outlying dependencies. The hostage given was, as we are afterwards informed by the Saxon Chronicle, Duncan, the eldest son of Malcolm by Ingibiorg, his first wife, who must then have been a boy of about ten years of age. Simeon tells that on the return of King William from this expedition, he deprived Gospatric of his earldom, ‘charging him with having afforded counsel and aid to those who had murdered the earl (Robert de Comines) and his men at Durham, although he had not been present in person, and that he had been on the side of the enemy when the Normans were slain at York’ in the same year; and he adds that, ‘flying therefore to Malcolm, he (Gospatric) not long after, made a voyage to Flanders; returning after a little time to Scotland, the king bestowed upon him Dunbar with the adjacent lands in Lothian.’ ^[610] King William seems now to have thought it more politic to place one who had some hereditary claim to the earldom than a stranger over the Northumbrians, and bestowed Gospatric’s earldom upon Waltheof, ‘which,’ says Simeon, ‘was his right by his father’s and brother’s descent, for he was the son of Earl Siward by Elfleda, daughter of Earl Aldred.’

Eadgar Aetheling appears to have taken refuge, when King William invaded Scotland, in Flanders; but two years after, when King William went to Normandy, ‘Eadgar child came,’ the Saxon Chronicle tells us, ‘from Flanders to Scotland on St. Grimbald’s mass day, or the 8th of July, and King Malcolm and his sister Margaret received him with great worship. At that same time Philip, king of France, wrote to him and bade him come to him and he would give him the castle of Montreuil, that he might then daily do harm to his enemies. Moreover, King Malcolm and his sister Margaret gave him and all his men great gifts and many treasures in skins decked with purple and in pelisses of marten-skin and weasel-skin and ermine-skin, and in palls and in golden and silver vessels; and led him and all his ship men with great worship from his dominion.’ No doubt, in the relation in which Malcolm then stood to King William, his presence was an embarrassment to him; and as he was not disposed to assist him himself at this time, he was glad to be relieved from his difficulty by the king of France discovering that he might make use of him to annoy the king of England from another quarter. But King Malcolm was not to be so easily freed from the embarrassment of his presence as he expected; for we are told that ‘on the voyage evil befell them when they went out at sea, so that there came on very rough weather, and the raging sea and the strong wind cast them on the land so that all their ships burst asunder, and they themselves with difficulty came to land, and almost all their treasures were lost, and some of his men also were seized by the Frenchmen; but he himself and his best men went back again to Scotland, some ruefully going on foot and some miserably riding. When King Malcolm advised him that he should send to King William over the sea and pray his peace; and he also did so, and the king granted it to him and sent after him. And King Malcolm and his sister again gave him and all his men innumerable treasures, and very worthily again sent him from their jurisdiction.’ Malcolm was more fortunate the second time. Eadgar succeeded in reaching the court of King William in safety, where he was well received, and remained with him.

Malcolm appears now to have turned his attention more to the amalgamation of the provinces he held, instead of attempting to enlarge his dominions at the expense of Northumbria, and in the year 1078 he appears to have invaded the province of Moray. The hereditary ruler of the province at this time was Maelsnectan, the son of that Lulach who had borne the title of king for four months, and his son appears under the Celtic title of ‘Ri Moreb,’ or king of Moray. Malcolm seems to have been successful in his attempt, as the Saxon Chronicle tells us in an imperfect notice that ‘in this year King Malcolm won the mother of Maelslaeht ... and all his best men, and all his treasure and his cattle, and he himself escaped with difficulty.’ He may have taken refuge in the remote stronghold of Loch Deabhra in Lochaber, which St. Berchan tells us had been the habitation of his father Lulach, and here he died seven years after.^[611]

Malcolm appears to have been emboldened by this success and by the continued absence of King William in Normandy to make another attempt to extend his frontier to the Tyne, notwithstanding that his son Duncan was still retained as a hostage at the English Court, as Simeon of Durham tells us that in 1079 ‘Malcolm, king of Scots, after the Assumption of St. Mary on the 15th of August, devastated Northumberland as far as the great river Tyne, slew many, took more prisoners, and returned with great spoil;’ but when King William returned in the following year to England, ‘he sent in the autumn his son Robert to Scotland against Malcolm, but having gone as far as Egglesbreth he returned without accomplishing anything, and built the new castle on the Tyne.’^[612] Egglesbrech is the Gaelic name of Falkirk,^[613] so that Robert penetrated as far as the river Carron, but did not venture to proceed farther, and it is probable that he contented himself with repaying the devastation of that part of Northumbria north of the Tyne by pillaging Lothian and Calatria, and was forced to retreat by the want of supplies; and while he protected Northumbria south of the Tyne by the castle he erected on that river, he virtually surrendered the district north of it to the incursions of the Scots.

In the year 1085, the same year in which Maelsnectan died, Malcolm appears to have lost a son, Domnall, probably another son by his first marriage, who seems to have died a violent death;^[614] and two years afterwards William the Conqueror died and was succeeded by his son William Rufus. By the death of his great and imposing antagonist Malcolm seems to have considered himself relieved from the necessity of further observing any engagements he may have entered into towards the king of England; and though his eldest son was still retained as a hostage at the English Court, he had now around him a flourishing band of youthful sons, the fruit of his union with Queen Margaret, the eldest of whom may now have been approaching majority, and he may have felt less hesitation in exposing the son whom he had not seen since he was a boy, and by a mother whom he had forgotten, to have the consequences of any act of hostility visited upon him. Accordingly, when in the year 1091 Eadgar Aetheling had been deprived of the lands which had been given him in Normandy by the new king, and went to Scotland to his brother-in-law and to his sister, Malcolm had no hesitation in this time adopting his cause. As the Saxon Chronicle tells us, ‘While King William was out of England King Malcolm of Scotland came hither into England and harried a great deal of it, till the good men who had charge of this land sent a force against him and turned him back. When King William in Normandy heard of this he made ready for his departure, and came to England, and his brother the Count Robert with him, and forthwith ordered a force to be called out, both a ship force and a land force; but the ship force, ere he could come to Scotland, almost all perished miserably a few days before St. Michael’s mass,^[615] and the king and his brother went with the land force. But when King Malcolm heard that they would seek him with a force, he went with his force out of Scotland into the district of Lothian in England, and there awaited.^[616] When King William with his force approached, there intervened Count Robert and Eadgar Aetheling, and so made a reconciliation between the kings, so that King Malcolm came to our king and became his man, with all such obedience as he had before paid to his father, and that with oath confirmed. And King William promised him in land and in all things that which he had had before under his father. In this reconciliation Eadgar Aetheling was also reconciled with the king, and the kings then with great good feeling separated.’ This passage seems very clearly to imply that the expression ‘and Malcolm became his man’ does not refer to any homage rendered by Malcolm for the kingdom of Scotland, either on this or the former occasion, but for land held under the king in England; and although Malcolm may have considered that he had a hereditary right to the district of Lothian, and was not inclined to admit its dependence upon the king of England when he could help it, yet it can hardly be doubted that when forced to recognise the claims of the king of England he conceded that Lothian was not an integral part of Scotland but of England, and, in becoming the king’s man, acknowledged his supremacy over it.

The Chronicle adds, in narrating this reconciliation, ‘but that stood only a little while;’ and accordingly in the following yearfollowing year King William, who apparently coveted that part of the Cumbrian territory which extended from the Solway to the river Derwent and the Cross at Stanmore, and probably considered that if his right as overlord had been recognised he might resume any part of it, ‘with a large force went north to Carlisle and restored the town, and raised the castle and drove out Dolphin, who had previously ruled the land there, and garrisoned the castle with his own men, and then returned south hither. And very many country folk, with wives and with cattle, he sent thither to dwell and to till the land,’ Dolphin was probably the son of Earl Gospatric, and held this part of Cumbria under Malcolm, and this was a direct invasion of his rights, as the kings of Scotland unquestionably were in legitimate possession of the whole of the ancient British kingdom of Cumbria, which extended from the Clyde to the Derwent and to Stanmore; but he appears to have endeavoured at first to obtain redress by negotiation, for the Chronicle tells us that ‘after this, the king of Scotland sent, and demanded the fulfilment of the treaty which had been promised him. And King William summoned him to Gloucester, and sent him hostages to Scotland, and Eadgar Aetheling afterwards, and the men back again, who brought him with great worship to the king. But when he came to the king he could not be held worthy either the speech of the king or the conditions that had been previously promised him; and therefore in great hostility they parted, and King Malcolm returned home to Scotland. But as soon as he came home he gathered his army, and marched into England, harrying with more animosity than ever behoved him. And then Robert the earl of Northumberland ensnared him with his men unawares and slew him. Morel of Bamborough slew him, who was the earl’s steward and King Malcolm’s gossip. With him also was slain his son Eadward, who should, if he had lived, have been king after him.’ Simeon of Durham adds that he was cut off near the river Alne, and that ‘his army either fell by the sword, or those who escaped the sword were carried away by the inundation of the rivers which were then more than usually swollen by the winter rains. Two of the natives placed the body of the king in a cart, as none of his men were left to commit it to the ground, and buried it at Tynemouth.’^[617]

By some of the Scotch Chronicles Malcolm is said to have been slain at Inneraldan or the mouth of the river Alne, by others at Alnwick, and to have been buried at Tynemouth;^[618] and thus terminated his long reign of thirty-five years.^[619] The character of Malcolm was variously regarded by the English and by his own subjects. The English historians, who had mainly to record his frequent invasions of Northumberland, regarded him as a man of barbarous disposition and a cruel and pitiless temper, who delighted to ravage and devastate the northern districts of England, instigated by avarice; while they attributed any better traits in his character to the humanising influence of his Saxon consort Queen Margaret. By his Celtic subjects he was known as Malcolm Ceannmor, or ‘great head,’ and was regarded, according to the testimony of St. Berchan, as