ENGLISH CLAIMS OVER SCOTLAND.

In 924 the first claim by an English king, Edward, to the over-lordship of Scotland appears in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.  The entry contains a manifest error, and the topic causes war between modern historians, English and Scottish.  In fact, there are several such entries of Scottish acceptance of English suzerainty under Constantine ii., and later, but they all end in the statement, “this held not long.”  The “submission” of Malcolm I. to Edmund (945) is not a submission but an alliance; the old English word for “fellow-worker,” or “ally,” designates Malcolm as fellow-worker with Edward of England.

This word (midwyrhta) was translated fidelis (one who gives fealty) in the Latin of English chroniclers two centuries later, but Malcolm I. held Cumberland as an ally, not as a subject prince of England.  In 1092 an English chronicle represents Malcolm iii. as holding Cumberland “by conquest.”

The main fact is that out of these and similar dim transactions arose the claims of Edward I. to the over-lordship of Scotland,—­claims that were urged by Queen Elizabeth’s minister, Cecil, in 1568, and were boldly denied by Maitland of Lethington.  From these misty pretensions came the centuries of war that made the hardy character of the folk of Scotland. {10}

THE SCOTTISH ACQUISITION OF LOTHIAN.

We cannot pretend within our scope to follow chronologically “the fightings and flockings of kites and crows,” in “a wolf-age, a war-age,” when the Northmen from all Scandinavian lands, and the Danes, who had acquired much of Ireland, were flying at the throat of England and hanging on the flanks of Scotland; while the Britons of Strathclyde struck in, and the Scottish kings again and again raided or sought to occupy the fertile region of Lothian between Forth and Tweed.  If the dynasty of MacAlpin could win rich Lothian, with its English-speaking folk, they were “made men,” they held the granary of the North.  By degrees and by methods not clearly defined they did win the Castle of the Maidens, the acropolis of Dunedin, Edinburgh; and fifty years later, in some way, apparently by the sword, at the battle of Carham (1018), in which a Scottish king of Cumberland fought by his side, Malcolm ii. took possession of Lothian, the whole south-east region, by this time entirely anglified, and this was the greatest step in the making of Scotland.  The Celtic dynasty now held the most fertile district between Forth and Tweed, a district already English in blood and speech, the centre and focus of the English civilisation accepted by the Celtic kings.  Under this Malcolm, too, his grandson, Duncan, became ruler of Strathclyde—­that is, practically, of Cumberland.