Meanwhile, most likely in the summer months of 1070, Malcolm ravaged Cleveland, Durham, and other districts where there must have been little left to ravage.  Meanwhile the AEtheling Edgar and his sisters, with other English exiles, sought shelter in Scotland, and were hospitably received.  At the same time Gospatric, now William’s earl in Northumberland, retaliated by a harrying of Scottish Cumberland, which provoked Malcolm to greater cruelties.  It was said that there was no house in Scotland so poor that it had not an English bondman.  Presently some of Malcolm’s English guests joined the defenders of Ely; those of highest birth stayed in Scotland, and Malcolm, after much striving, persuaded Margaret the sister of Edgar to become his wife.  Her praises are written in Scottish history, and the marriage had no small share in the process which made the Scottish kings and the lands which formed their real kingdom practically English.  The sons and grandsons of Margaret, sprung of the Old-English kingly house, were far more English within their own realm than the Norman and Angevin kings of Southern England.  But within the English border men looked at things with other eyes.  Thrice again did Malcolm ravage England; two and twenty years later he was slain in his last visit of havoc.  William meanwhile and his earls at least drew to themselves some measure of loyalty from the men of Northern England as the guardians of the land against the Scot.

For the present however Malcolm’s invasion was only avenged by Gospatric’s harrying in Cumberland.  The year 1071 called William to Ely; in the early part of 1072 his presence was still needed on the mainland; in August he found leisure for a march against Scotland.  He went as an English king, to assert the rights of the English crown, to avenge wrongs done to the English land; and on such an errand Englishmen followed him gladly.  Eadric, the defender of Herefordshire, had made his peace with the King, and he now held a place of high honour in his army.  But if William met with any armed resistance on his Scottish expedition, it did not amount to a pitched battle.  He passed through Lothian into Scotland; he crossed Forth and drew near to Tay, and there, by the round tower of Abernethy, the King of Scots swore oaths and gave hostages and became the man of the King of the English.  William might now call himself, like his West-Saxon predecessors, Bretwalda and Basileus of the isle of Britain.  This was the highest point of his fortune.  Duke of the Normans, King of the English, he was undisputed lord from the march of Anjou to the narrow sea between Caithness and Orkney.