this bondage however Scotland was freed by the prodigality of Richard who allowed her to buy back the freedom she had forfeited.  Both sides fell into their old position, but both were ceasing gradually to remember the distinctions between the various relations in which the Scot king stood for his different provinces to the English Crown.  Scotland had come to be thought of as a single country; and the court of London transferred to the whole of it those claims of direct feudal suzerainty which at most applied only to Strathclyde, while the court of Edinburgh looked on the English Lowlands as holding no closer relation to England than the Pictish lands beyond the Forth.  Any difficulties which arose were evaded by a legal compromise.  The Scot kings repeatedly did homage to the English sovereign but with a reservation of rights which were prudently left unspecified.  The English king accepted the homage on the assumption that it was rendered to him as overlord of the Scottish realm, and this assumption was neither granted nor denied.  For nearly a hundred years the relations of the two countries were thus kept peaceful and friendly, and the death of Alexander the Third seemed destined to remove even the necessity of protests by a closer union of the two kingdoms.  Alexander had wedded his only daughter to the King of Norway, and after long negotiation the Scotch Parliament proposed the marriage of Margaret, “The Maid of Norway,” the girl who was the only issue of this marriage and so heiress of the kingdom, with the son of Edward the First.  It was however carefully provided in the marriage treaty which was concluded at Brigham in 1290 that Scotland should remain a separate and free kingdom, and that its laws and customs should be preserved inviolate.  No military aid was to be claimed by the English king, no Scotch appeal to be carried to an English court.  But this project was abruptly frustrated by the child’s death during her voyage to Scotland in the following October, and with the rise of claimant after claimant of the vacant throne Edward was drawn into far other relations to the Scottish realm.

[Sidenote:  The Scotch Succession]

Of the thirteen pretenders to the throne of Scotland only three could be regarded as serious claimants.  By the extinction of the line of William the Lion the right of succession passed to the daughters of his brother David.  The claim of John Balliol, Lord of Galloway, rested on his descent from the elder of these; that of Robert Bruce, Lord of Annandale, on his descent from the second; that of John Hastings, Lord of Abergavenny, on his descent from the third.  It is clear that at this crisis every one in Scotland or out of it recognized some sort of overlordship in Edward, for the Norwegian king, the Primate of St. Andrews, and seven of the Scotch Earls had already appealed to him before Margaret’s death; and her death was followed by the consent both of the claimants and the Council of Regency to refer the