Malcolm invaded Bernicia and laid seige to Durham, where he was defeated in a great battle, by Uhtred, son of eorl Waltheof. Whether, in consequence of this, Malcolm lost part of his territories south of the Forth is uncertain, but in 1018, the year after the accession of Cnut to the English throne, he renewed the war with Eadwulf, the brother of Uhtred, whom he defeated in a great battle at Oarham. Eadwulf afterwards came to an agreement with Malcolm, and ceded to him Lothian for ever. The division of the old Northan-hymbra-land, lying between the Forth and Tweed, was thenceforth a portion of the dominions of the king of the Scots, who held it however, as it had been held by the eorls of Northumbria, and as he himself held Strathclyde, i.e. in his own right when he could maintain it,—when he could not, in dependence upon the king of England. In the latter capacity, when Cnut personally visited Scotland in 1031," the king of the Scots, Malcolm, submitted to him, and became his man, but that he held only a little while; and two other kings, Macbeth and Jehmarc."[1]
The history of the Scottish kingdom during the 10th century exhibits the struggles of two dynasties, one of which was by marriage and sympathies more connected with Northumbria, and courted the English alliance; the other identified with the northeast, and more exclusively Celtic in its leanings. The Celtic or native line found its greatest representative in Macbeth, who, after the defeat and death of Duncan, ruled over the original Scotland, while the Angle districts south of the Forth remained attached to the family of Duncan. It was rather as a king of Lothian, conquering Scotland, that Malcolm Ceanmor, son of Duncan and the Northumbrian eorl's daughter, at the head of an Anglo-Saxon army overthrew Macbeth and recovered the crown of his fathers. Having spent the days of his exile with his uncle, Eorl Siward, in Northumbria, and at the Court of Edward the Confessor, Malcolm returned to Scotland the heir of a line of Celtic kings, but half a Saxon in blood, and wholly Saxon in tastes and sympathies, which were still more confirmed by his marriage, in 1067, with Margaret, sister of Edgar the Ætheling, heiress of the hopes and aspirations of the English Saxon dynasty. The southern names of the children born from this union are thus recorded by Wyntown (Book VII. iii. 30):—
"Malcolm kyng, be lawchfull get,
Had on hys Wyff Saynt Margret,
Sownnys sex, and Dowchtrys twa.
Off þir Sownnys, thre of þa
Wes Edmwnd, Edward, Ethelrede,
Kyng of þire nowcht ane we rede;
Bot Edgare, Alysawndyre, and Dawy yhyng
Ilkane of þire wes crownyd a kyng."
- ↑ Saxon Chronicle, A.D. 1031.
² In this and the subsequent quotations, expansions of the contractions of the MSS. are indicated by italic letters.
