Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/503

Rh CANMORE TO ALEXANDER III.] SCOTLAND 481 ject to Norman influence. The Confessor, like Canmore, had been educated in exile, at the Norman court, and favoured the Normans. Though the course of events led Malcolm to ally himself with the Anglo-Saxon royal house, the Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman periods of Scottish history were not, as in England, separated by several centuries, but were nearly contemporaneous. If Malcolm, Edgar, and the first Alexander may be regarded as Scoto- Saxon, David I. and his successors were truly Scoto-Nor- man feudal monarchs. Apart from the customs and language of Lothian, which descended from Anglian North- umberland, Scotland received scarcely any pure Saxon institutions. Those it did receive have a mixed Saxon and Norman imprint. There were no tithings, wapen- takes, or hundreds, no trial by compurgation, no frank- pledge. No witenagemot or folkmotes preceded the great council which became parliament. In short, the system of government we call the Anglo-Saxon constitution never existed in Scotland, although the court of the four southern burghs and the customs of the towns of Lothian copied from those of Newcastle, and a similar association of burghs, the Hanse of Aberdeen, of which there are faint traces in the north, had a Teutonic origin. And some traces of Anglo-Saxon criminal law are to be found in the early Scottish charters. Canmore ascended the throne (1058) not long before England was subjugated by William the Conqueror. The only recorded event of his reign prior to the Conquest was his quarrel with Tostig, his " sworn " brother, when he made a raid south of the Tweed and violated the peace of St Cuthbert by ravaging Lindisfarne. The early years of his reign were devoted to establishing his rule in the northern districts, where his marriage to Ingebiorg, widow of Earl Thorfinn, related by the Norse but not the Scottish writers, may have aided him. Ingebiorg, already old,, can- not have long survived the union, nor is the fact of the marriage certain. The victory of Hastings brought to the Scottish court as refugees Edgar Atheling, grandson of Edmund Ironside, and his three sisters. Their father, Edward, had found shelter in Hungary in the reign of Canute and married an Hungarian princess. The eldest daughter of the marriage, Margaret, became the wife (1068) of Malcolm Canmore. Her virtues more than his wars make his reign an epoch of Scottish history. This alliance and the advance of the Conqueror on North- umberland in the third year of his reign rendered a collision inevitable. Malcolm twice harried Northumber- land during the reign of the Conqueror with the view of restoring the Atheling. In the interval between these expeditions William retaliated by invading Scotland as far as Abernethy, where he forced Malcolm to do homage. After the second he sent his son Kobert, who reached Falkirk ; but he returned without having accomplished anything, except that he built Newcastle as a frontier fortress. In this reign Northumberland itself was never really subdued, and William laid waste the district between the Hurnber and the Tees as a barrier against the northern Angles and Danes. After the Conqueror's death Malcolm prepared for war, but peace was made before he had left Lothian, and he again took an oath of homage. Next year William Rufus succeeded in reducing Cumbria south of the Solway, then held by Dolphin, lord of Carlisle, a vassal of Malcolm, rebuilt the castle of Carlisle, and made the adjoining country for the first time English. He then summoned Malcolm to Gloucester ; but the meeting ended, like others when a summons to do homage at a distance from the border was sent to the kings of Scotland, in settling both in a more hostile attitude. Malcolm on his return raised his Avhole forces for the last expedition of his life, in which he was slain (1093) in an ambuscade near Aln wick by Morel of Bam borough. He left to his 1058 -1097. successor a kingdom bounded on the south by the Tweed, the Cheviots, and the Solway, though there was much debatable land along the borders, and the English king claimed Lothian as successor of the Northumbrian Angles, while the Scotch claimed English Cumberland as a de- pendency dating from the grant of Eadgar. Malcolm's defeat of the mother of Maelsnechtan, son of Lulach and mormaer of Moray, is the only event recorded to indicate that L's relations with the Celtic population were not peaceful, but the materials are too scanty to make it clear how far the northern chiefs asserted their independence. The foundation of Mortlach by Malcolm is proof that the Aberdeen lowlands at least were within his dominion. The brightest side of Malcolm's reign was the reform Margaret. due to Margaret. Her life by Theodoric, a monk of Durham, or her confessor, Turgot, though coloured by par- tiality for a good woman, the patron of the church, bears the marks of a true portrait. The miraculous element in the lives of the Celtic saints, diminished but still present in Bede, disappears. The chief changes in the Celtic Church effected by Margaret with the aid of monks sent by Lanf ranc from Canterbury were the observance of Lent, the reception of the Eucharist at Easter, which had fallen into neglect, the use of the proper ritual in the mass, the prohibition of labour on the Lord's day, and of marriage between persons related by affinity. She restored lona, long desecrated, founded the church of Dunfermline in commemoration of her marriage, and protected the hermits, still common in the Scottish Church. Her severe fasts and her liberality to the sick and aged are especially noted. She washed the feet of the poor and fed children with food she had prepared, procured freedom for captives, and on either side of the ferry called Queensferry after her she erected hostelries for pilgrims. Nor did her piety lead her to neglect domestic duties. The rude manners of the Celtic court were refined by her example. The education of her children, her chief care in her husband's frequent absence, was rewarded by the noble character of the saintly David and the good Queen Maude. She did not long survive her husband : hearing of his death she thanked the Almighty for enabling her to bear such sorrow, to cleanse her from sin, and after receiving the sacrament died praying. The chapel on the castle rock at Edinburgh, erected in her memory, is the oldest building now existing in Scotland, with the exception of the meagre ruins of the Celtic Church in the western Highlands. After Malcolm's death there was a fierce contest for the crown (1093-97), which showed that the union of Celtic and Saxon blood was not yet complete in the royal house, much less in the nation. Before the corpse of Margaret could be removed to Dunfermline for burial, Donald Bain, Donald brother of Malcolm Canmore, besieged the castle, and Bain - its removal was only accomplished under cover of mist. Donald, who had the support of the Celts and the custom of tanistry in favour of his claim, was king nominally at least six months, when he was expelled by Duncan, son of Malcolm and Ingebiorg, assisted by an English force, in which there were Normans as well as Saxons; but his tenure was equally short, and Donald, aided by Edmund, the only degenerate son of Malcolm and Margaret, who slew his half-brother Duncan, again reigned three years. This was the last attempt of the Celts though partial risings continued frequent to maintain a king of their race and a kingdom governed according to their customs. Edgar Atheling, who had become reconciled to the Norman king, led an army into Scotland and by a hard-fought battle dispossessed Donald and restored his eldest nephew, Edgar, to his father's throne. The reign of Edgar (1097-1107) was unimportant. Its Edgar. XXI. 6 1