An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707). Robert S. Rait
not have succeeded. The "rightful" heir, an un-named cousin of Malcolm, was murdered, and his sister, Gruoch, who married the Mormaor of Moray, left a son, Lulach, who thus represented a rival line, whose claims may be connected with some of the Highland risings against the descendants of Duncan.
CHAPTER II
SCOTLAND AND THE NORMANS
1066–1286
The Norman Conquest of England could not fail to modify the position of Scotland. Just as the Roman and the Saxon conquests had, in turn, driven the Brythons northwards, so the dispossessed Saxons fled to Scotland from their Norman victors. The result was considerably to alter the ecclesiastical arrangements of the country, and to help its advance towards civilization. The proportion of Anglo-Saxons to the races who are known as Celts must also have been increased; but a complete de-Celticization of Southern Scotland could not, and did not, follow. The failure of William's conquest to include the Northern counties of England left Northumbria an easy prey to the Scottish king, and the marriage of Malcolm III, known as Canmore, to Margaret, the sister of Edgar the Ætheling, gave her husband an excuse for interference in England. We, accordingly, find a long series of raids over the border, of which only five possess any importance. In 1069–70, Malcolm (who had, even in the Confessor's time, been in Northumberland with hostile intent) conducted an invasion in the interests of his brother-in-law. It is probable that this movement was intended to coincide with the arrival of the Danish fleet a few months earlier. But Malcolm was too late; the Danes had gone home, and, in the interval, William had himself superintended the great harrying of the North which made Malcolm's subsequent efforts somewhat unnecessary. The invasion is important only as having provoked the counter-attack of the Conqueror, which led to the renewal of the supremacy controversy. William marched into Scotland and crossed the Forth (the first English king to do so since the unfortunate Egfrith, who fell at Nectansmere in 685). At Abernethy, on the banks of the Tay, Malcolm and William met, and the English Chronicle, as usual, informs us that the King of Scots became the "man" of the English king. But as Malcolm received from William twelve villae in England, it is, at least, doubtful whether Malcolm paid homage for these alone or also for Lothian and Cumbria, or for either of them. There is, at all events, no question about the villae. Scottish historians have not failed to point out that the value of the homage, for whatever it was given, is sufficiently indicated by Malcolm's dealings with Gospatric of Northumberland, whom William dismissed as a traitor and rebel. Within about six months of the Abernethy meeting, Malcolm gave Gospatric the earldom of Dunbar, and he became the founder of the great house of March. No further invasion took place till 1079, when Malcolm took advantage of William's Norman difficulties to make another harrying expedition, which afforded the occasion for the building of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. The accession of Rufus and his difficulties with Robert of Normandy led, in 1091, to a somewhat belated attempt by Malcolm to support the claims of the Ætheling by a third invasion, and, in the following year, peace was made. Rufus confirmed to Malcolm the grant of twelve villae, and Malcolm in turn gave the English king such homage as he had given to his father. What this vague statement meant, it was reserved for the Bruce to determine, and the Bruces had, as yet, not one foot of Scottish soil. The agreement made in 1092 did not prevent Rufus from completing his father's work by the conquest of Cumberland, to which the Scots had claims. Malcolm's indignation and William's illness led to a famous meeting at Gloucester, whence Malcolm withdrew in great wrath, declining to be treated as a vassal of England. The customary invasion followed, with the result that Malcolm was slain at Alnwick in November, 1093.
But the great effects of the Norman Conquest, as regards Scotland, are not connected with strictly international affairs. They are partially racial, and, in other respects, may be described as personal. It is unquestionable that there was an immigration of the Northumbrian population into Scotland; but the Northumbrian population were Anglo-Danish, and the north of England was not thickly populated. When William the Conqueror ravaged the northern counties with fire and sword, a considerable proportion of the population must have perished. The actual infusion of English blood may thus be exaggerated; but the introduction of English influences cannot be questioned. These influences were mainly due to the personality of Malcolm's second wife, the Saxon princess, Margaret. The queen was a woman of considerable mental power, and possessed a great influence over her strong-headed and hot-tempered husband. She was a devout churchwoman, and she immediately directed her energies to the task of bringing the Scottish church into closer communion with the Roman. The changes were slight in themselves; all that we know of them is an alteration in the beginning of Lent, the proper observance of Easter and of Sunday, and a question, still disputed, about the tonsure. But, slight as they were, they stood for much. They involved the abandonment of the separate position held by the Scottish Church, and its acceptance of a place as an integral portion of Roman Christianity. The result was to make the Papacy, for the first time, an important factor in Scottish affairs, and to bridge the gulf that divided Scotland from Continental Europe. We soon find Scottish churchmen seeking learning in France, and bringing into Scotland those French influences which were destined seriously to affect the civilization of the country. But, above all, these Roman changes were important just because they were Anglican—introduced by an English queen, carried out by English clerics, emanating from a court which was rapidly becoming English. Malcolm's subjects thenceforth began to adopt English customs and the English tongue, which spread from the court of Queen Margaret. The colony of English refugees represented a higher civilization and a more advanced state of commerce than the Scottish Celts, and the English language, from this cause also, made rapid progress. For about twenty-five years Margaret exercised the most potent influence in her husband's kingdom, and, when she died, her reputation as a saint and her subsequent canonization maintained and supported the traditions she had created. Not only did she have on her side the power of a court and the prestige of courtly etiquette, but, as we have said, she represented a higher civilizing force than that which was opposed to her, and hence the greatness of her victory. It must, however, be remembered that the spread of the English language in Scotland does not necessarily imply the predominance of English blood. It means rather the growth of English commerce. We can trace the adoption of English along the seaboard, and in the towns, while Gaelic still remained the language of the countryman. There is no evidence of any English immigration of sufficient proportions to overwhelm the Gaelic population. Like the victory of the conquered English over the conquering Normans, which was even then making fast progress in England, it is a triumph of a kind that subsequent events have revealed as characteristically Anglo-Saxon, and it called into force the powers of adaptation and of colonization which have brought into being so great an English-speaking world.
Malcolm's reign ended in defeat and failure; his wife died of grief, and the opportunity presented itself of a Celtic reaction against the Anglicization of the reign of Malcolm III. The throne was seized by Malcolm's brother, Donald Bane. Malcolm's eldest son, Duncan, whose mother, Ingibjorg, had been a Dane, received assistance from Rufus, and drove Donald Bane, after a reign of six months, into the distant North. But after about six months he himself was slain in a small fight with the Mormaer or Earl of the Mearns, and Donald Bane continued to reign for about three years, in conjunction with Edmund, a son of Malcolm and Margaret. But in 1097, Edgar, a younger brother of Edmund, again obtained the help of Rufus and secured the throne. The reign of Edgar is important in two respects. It put an end to the Celtic revival, and reproduced the conditions of the time of Malcolm and Margaret. Henceforward Celtic efforts were impossible except in the Highlands, and the Celts of the Lowlands resigned themselves to the process of Anglicization imposed upon them alike by ecclesiastical, political, and commercial circumstances. It saw also the beginning of an influence which was to prove scarcely less fruitful in results than the Anglo-Saxon triumph of which we have spoken. In November, 1100, Edgar's sister, Matilda, was married to the Norman King of England, Henry I, and two years later, another sister, Mary, was married to Eustace, Count of Boulogne, the son of the future King Stephen. These unions, with a son and a grandson respectively of William the Conqueror, prepared the way for the Norman Conquest of Scotland. Edgar died in January, 1106–7, and his brother and successor, Alexander I, espoused an Anglo-Norman, Sybilla,