Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/365

 was agreed on. It is added that the two kings then disbanded their armies, and went together into England.

This last statement throws some doubt upon the whole of this version; for Malcolm's alleged journey to England at this moment is clearly a confusion with events which happened two years later. The references too to the earldom of Lothian and to an earlier betrothal of Margaret are a little startling; yet it is perhaps not quite hopeless to reconcile them with better ascertained facts. As I have elsewhere suggested, this earlier betrothal of Margaret to Malcolm is not necessarily inconsistent with his later marriage with her after the intermediate stage of Ingebiorg. Malcolm may at one time have been in no hurry to carry out a marriage dictated by political reasons; yet he may have afterwards become eager for the same marriage after he had seen her whose hand was designed for him. As for the Lothian earldom, we here see the beginning of the later Scottish argument, that homage was due from the Scottish to the English king only for lands held within the kingdom of England. At this stage Lothian was the land held within the kingdom of England; it was what Northumberland, Huntingdon, or any other confessedly English land held by the Scottish king, was in later times. When Malcolm was restored to his crown by the arms of Siward, no doubt Lothian was granted to him among other things. Only Malcolm takes up the line, or our historian thinks it in character to make him take up the line, of implying, though not directly asserting, that Lothian was the only possession for which homage was due. And, on the strictest view of English claims, Malcolm would be right in at least drawing a marked