Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/172

436 deed should be remitted for a pecuniary atonement. Malcolm's next duty, immediately after his accession, was to replace those families that had been deprived of land or office through the injustice of Macbeth. It is also added, that he caused his nobles to assume surnames from the lands they possessed, and introduced new titles of honour among them, such as those of Earl, Baron, and Knight, by which they are henceforth distinguished in the histories of Scotland.

By these changes Malcolm Canmore became king of Scotland without a rival, for although Macbeth left a step-son, called Lulach (or the Fool), his opposition did not occasion much apprehension. A greater subject of anxiety was the consolidation of that strange disjointed kingdom over which he was called to rule, and here Canmore was met by difficulties such as few sovereigns have encountered. A single glance at the condition of the country will sufficiently explain the severe probation with which his great abilities were tried.

Scotland had originally consisted of the two states of Pictland and Albin, comprised within the limits of the Forth and the Clyde, while all beyond these rivers formed part of England. The troubles, however, of the latter country, at first from the wars of the heptarchy, and afterwards the Danish invasions, enabled the Scots to push the limits of their barren inheritance into the fertile districts of the south, and annex to their dominion the kingdom of Strathclyde, which comprised Clydesdale, Peebles-shire, Selkirkshire, and the upper parts of Roxburghshire. The conquest of this important territory was accomplished by Kenneth III., about one hundred years before the accession of Malcolm Canmore. In addition to this, the district of Cumbria had been ceded by Edmund I., the English king, in 946, to Malcolm I. of Scotland. Thus Malcolm Canmore succeeded to the kingdom when it was composed of the three states of Albin, Pictland, and Strathclyde. But besides these there was. a fourth territory, called Lodonia or Lothian, which at one period appears to have formed part of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria, but had been partially conquered by the Picts in 685; and as it lay between the two countries, it had formed, from the above-mentioned period, a bone of contention between the English and the Scots until A.D. 1020, or about thirty-seven years before Malcolm Canmore's accession, when it was finally ceded by Eadulf, Earl of Northumberland, to Malcolm II., the great-grandfather of Canmore.

Thus the sovereignty of Scotland at this time, barren though it was, consisted of four separate kingdoms, all the fruits of successive conquests, and as yet not fully incorporated, or even properly united; and each was at any time ready either to resume an independent national existence of its own, or commence a war of conquest or extirpation against the others. And for such an explosion there was abundance of fierce materials in the population by which the country was occupied. For there were first the Caledonians or Picts, the earliest occupants of the land, who had successfully resisted the Roman invaders; after these were the Scoti or Irish, from Ulster, who had entered Scotland about the middle of the third century; and lastly, the Saxons, of different race, language, and character from the others, who, though originally conquered by the Scots and Picts, already bade fair to become the conquerors of both in turn. But besides these there was a large infusion of a Danish population, not only from the annexation of Strathclyde, but the invasions of the Danes by sea, so that many of the northern islands, and a portion of the Scottish coast, were peopled by the immediate descendants of these enterprising rovers.