Page:Chronicles of the Picts, chronicles of the Scots, and other early memorials of Scottish history.djvu/173

 PEEFACE. clxv , 'vrith England. as to point to a mixed population, of which some of the villages were Scottish and some Pictish ; while south of the Firth of Forth it comprised the dis- tricts acquired from time to time by the kings of the Scottish race from the Northumbrian kingdom. Prior to the reign of Alexander the First, the Controversy question of the independence of the kingdom of Scotland, or of its subjection to the king of England as its Lord Paramount, had not become- the subject of discussion between the two countries. This controversy first arose under the Norman kings of England. It is true that, in the year 1072, King William the Conqueror entered Scotland with an army, penetrated as far as Abernethy on the Tay, and there received the homage of King Malcolm Canmore. It is true that his son William Rufus placed two of the sons of Malcolm, first Duncan, and afterwards Edgar, by force of arms upon the throne of Scotland. It is likewise true that several of the kings of the Scots of the line of Kenneth Mac Alpin are alleged to have done homage to the Anglo-Saxon kings of England, as Bretwaldas of Britain ; but though these facts were founded on in the subsequent discussion of the question, the con- troversy itself had not then arisen,^ and hence our 1 Mr. Eobei-tsou, in the Ajjpen- dix to his " Scotland under its " Early Kings" on the English Claims, appears to the Editor to have completely disposed of the claims founded on the passages in the monkish historians prior to the Norman conquest. This paper appears to the Editor one of the acutest and most satisfac- tory of these very able essays.