CHAPTER VI.

ENGLAND'S CLAIM TO SUPREMACY.

Ir the strongest instinct or principle of our nature be love, and if this constitute the invisible soul-"the inner vital fluid of the nerves of human society," then this instinct will develop itself in patriotism or love of country; and this patriotism, again, will most plainly manifest itself in seasons of national danger or calamity. "As the daily life of the individual alternates between labour and rest, and the refreshing sleep of the night renews the strength which has been exhausted by the toils of the day, so is it on a larger scale with the public life of the state in its alternations between peace and war. For although peace is justly prized and desired as the greatest of public blessings, still it is some comfort and compensation for its unavoidable absence to know that the presence of war, and the struggle with its dangers and hardships, first awaken and call into being many of man's best energies and noblest virtues, which in uninterrupted peace and tranquillity must have remained for ever dormant. But, as is everywhere the case throughout the moral domain, a spurious enthusiasm stands close alongside of the true and genuine specie, and requires to be carefully distinguished from it. The true enthusiasm of patriotism reveals itself most plainly in misfortune-in the midst of deep and lasting calamities. Another characteristic is, that it does not arbitrarily set up its object, or capriciously make its own occasion, but at the first call of its hereditary sovereign rushes to the post of danger. The second mark, therefore, of a true patriotism is obedience, but an obedience associated with the forward energies of a fixed and prepared resolve, which far outruns the exact requisitions of duty, and gives rise to a true and real equality-the equality of self-sacrifice, wherein the high and noble vie with the poor and lowly in the magnanimous oblation to their country of their best and dearest possessions."

SECTION 1.-ACCESSION OF MALCOLM III. SURNAMED CONMORE.

The fate of Macbeth prepared the way for the return of Duncan's family to the throne; and Malcolm, having recovered his paternal kingdom, was proclaimed at Scone on April 5th, 1057. His reign was long and prosperous; and in entering upon the government he summoned a convention of his nobles, in which his first act was to restore the estates to the survivors of those whom Macbeth had

murdered. In remembrance of the eminent services which he had rendered him, the new king raised Macduff to the rank and title of an earl, and conferred on him and his descendants the peculiar honour of placing the crown on the brow of the monarch in the coronation ceremonial, and of leading the vanguard of the Scottish army in the day of battle, or whenever the royal standard was unfurled. An attempt was made by a small rebellious faction to place Luthlac, the son of Macbeth, on the throne, but it cost the aspirant his life. Before six months had elapsed, he was taken by Malcolm and slain as an usurper. Then a few years afterwards a conspiracy was formed against the reigning prince, which was no sooner discovered than it was nipped in the bud.

Edward the Confessor having died without issue, the next heir to the English throne was Edgar Etheling; but being dispossessed by William the Conqueror, and owing to the severity of the treatment which he received from the haughty Norman, he betook himself with his sister to Scotland. Malcolm, who had received no common favour and assistance from Edward, welcomed them with open arms, and deeply sympathised with them in their misfortunes. He espoused the princess Margaret, and thus raised her to a participation in the honours of his kingdom. And having thus allied himself to the royal family of England by the Saxon line, he began to meditate how he might attack and expel the Norman invader, and restore Edgar to the throne. He made frequent inroads into the northern parts of England, and took many of the inhabitants away captive. These settled in Scotland. Hither also came many of the Normans themselves who sought a truer liberty and a wider happiness than what they enjoyed under the rule of the Conqueror. Malcolm was but too glad to welcome these latter to his shores, and to attach them to his sceptre and his service: he gave them extensive grants of land on the conditions involved in the feudal system. He thus enlarged his dominion-augmented his warlike reinforcements-removed his seat of government to Edinburgh, which, with the surrounding country, had been accounted subject to England, and then resolved upon war with the Conqueror. He made several attacks upon him, as well as upon Rufus, his son and successor, and with frequent advantage. He not only made a complete conquest of Lothian, but had well nigh made himself master of the entire province of Northumberland, took possession of other places, and was bearing his arms in triumph, till, in attempting to besiege the border-fortress of Alnwick, both he and his son fell in the engagement. The sad tidings of their death reached the Queen at the moment when she herself despaired of life, and on receiving the tidings she immediately expired.

Though Malcolm was so ignorant of letters that he could not even read, he was no inconsiderable agent in the introduction of the Saxon language into his kingdom. It was the native tongue of Margaret, and he loved it. From her he caught the flame of a purer and more uplifting piety. His own being a religious life, he incited others to temperance and equity. Manifold and vigorous were his efforts to repress luxury, and bring back both his nobles and his people to the

simplicity of their earlier manners. He first purified his own court, and then enacted several severe sumptuary laws with corresponding pains and penalties. Nor is little credit due to his royal consort for the example which she set of an active and self-denying goodness. If she displayed an air of ostentation in her devotions and her charities, such were her offices of kindness on behalf of the poor, and such her uncommon piety, that she was canonized by the church and enrolled among the chief of saints. She introduced a degree of politeness into the court remarkable for that age, and thus refined the manners of the nobility and improved the ruder customs of the people. In all this she was superior to her royal husband. But in his character we observe a high-ininded, generous, persevering courage. He was a brave and an active prince. Though he was the sovereign of a nation comparatively uncivilized and destitute of foreign resources, and had such antagonists to encounter as the Conqueror, and Rufus his son, yet for seven-and-twenty years he supported this unequal contestsometimes without success, never without honour.

SECTION II.-THE BATTLE OF THE STANDARD.

The children of the deceased sovereign being all under age, the crown was worn successively by three princes of little mental endowment, and of still less moral virtue. DONALDBANE, brother of Malcolm, who fled to the Hebrides from the fury of Macbeth, having promised all the western islands to Magnus, king of Norway, if he would assist him in obtaining the kingdom, was without difficulty proclaimed, and assumed the supreme authority. He was opposed by Duncan, a natural son of Malcolm, and in six months was obliged to withdraw again to the Hebrides. The government of DUNCAN was such as to rouse the whole nation into opposition to his rule. After a reign of eighteen short months, he fell by the hand of an assassin. Again Donald assumed the reins of power. For three years the kingdom was torn with internal feuds and divisions. And when his treaty with the king of Norway was discovered, messengers were secretly sent to EDGAR, the son of Malcolm, praying him to come forward as a competitor for the crown, and promising him the universal support of the nation. Edgar no sooner entered Scotland, than Donald was deserted by his party, and in attempting his flight was taken, committed to prison, and died not long after. Edgar, on his accession, first made peace with William Rufus, and afterwards confirmed the treaty with Henry, his brother and successor, to whom he gave his sister Maude, or Matilda, in marriage. He reigned for more than eight years, in great peace, “beloved and revered by the virtuous, but so formidable to the turbulent that during his life there were no intestine commotions, neither was there any alarm from an external enemy."

He was succeeded by his brother ALEXANDER THE BRAVE, of whom it is sufficient to say that he reigned in peace and war for eighteen years. DAVID, his brother, a wise, religious, and powerful prince, now ascended the throne. Peace reigned within his own dominions,

but the state of England dragged him into unwilling warfare. Henry 1. of England-the youngest son of William the Conqueror, and who had married the daughter of the third Malcolm and sister of David-having no male heirs, was desirous of leaving the throne of England and the duchy of Normandy to his daughter Matilda. His barons had all agreed that his daughter should succeed him; but on his death, in 1135, a distinguished Norman of the name of Stephen, earl of Montague, opposed his claims to those of Matilda. The English nobles took arms against Stephen, in favour of the empress; nor could it be expected but that David, whose virtues included every excellence, would take the side of those who favoured his sister's child. His army was collected from different provinces of Scotland, and included Normans, Germans, and English, the Danes of Northumberland, the British of Cumberland, of Teviotdale, and of the valley of the Clyde, the Saxons of Lothian, with the wild and ferocious men of Galloway. Hearing that the king of Scotland was advancing at the head of this formidable army, the English barons in the north resolved to assemble their forces and give him battle. They raised their banner under the name of Saint Peter, and the two armies came in sight of each other near Northallerton. It was a deep and mighty contest. Had David been successful, he might have conquered England as far as the Humber; but there was in the English army an aged baron named Robert Bruce, father of a race afterwards illustrious in our history, who, having extensive property in both England and Scotland, was supremely anxious for peace. He went to the Scottish camp, and endeavoured to bring David to terms. David would have yielded, but Macdonochy, the leader of the Scottish army, looked upon Bruce as a traitor, and treated his proposals with contempt. Next morning the battle opened. The Scottish army was drawn up in three lines; the English were formed into one compact and firm battalion, with the consecrated banner or standard unfurled in their midst. The bishop of Orkney, as the deputy of the venerable and aged primate of York, ascended a carriage, and proclaimed that it was a holy war which was now to be waged, and that those who might fall in the glorious struggle should immediately pass into Paradise. The English barons grasped one another's hand, and swore rather to die than yield. At first the English sustained fearful damage, and no less fearful loss, and prince Henry of Scotland broke through their line as if it had been a spider's web. But one of the enemy having taken the head of one of the slain, and transfixed it on his spear, went through the ranks, exclaiming that it was the head of the king of the Scots. By this stratagem the Scottish lines fell into confusion, and, in the depth of their dismay, retreated and fled It was in vain that David threw his helmet from his head, and rode with uncovered face among his soldiers, to show them that he was still alive, and to reanimate their soul. The panic became universal and irrepressible, and thus the battle of the Standard was lost. David had no alternative but to come to conditions of peace with England. This peace was concluded A.D. 1139, but upon such favourable terms that, with the exception of the fortresses of Newcastle and Bamborough, the whole of Northumberland and Durham was surrendered

by Stephen to the Scottish monarch, and Cumberland, as by ancient right, remained in his possession.

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For fourteen years after the conclusion of peace, David continued to administer the affairs of Scotland with consummate wisdom, and in the development of every moral excellence. He was a man of simple and unaffected piety, and the force of his faith sustained him under manifold trials and bereavements. He was devoted to the interests of his people, and faithfully maintained the cause of the poor and the oppressed. His personal virtues insured for him the affection of the nation, and his life was a model to all of whatever is true, and just, and pure, and lovely. His liberality to the church and other ecclesiastical houses was truly magnificent. Although his whole life was exemplary beyond anything which history records, yet for a few years before his death he devoted himself so entirely to preparation for another and a better world, that he greatly increased the veneration which his earlier years had inspired. As he equalled the most excellent of the former kings in his warlike achievements, and excelled them in his cultivation of the arts of peace-at last, as if he had ceased to contend with others for pre-eminence in virtue, he endeavoured to rival himself, and in this he so succeeded that the utmost ingenuity of the most learned who should attempt to delineate the resemblance of a good king, would not be able to conceive one so excellent, as David, during his whole life, evinced himself."

The

David was succeeded by MALCOLM, the eldest son of the brave and generous prince Henry, who, though only in his twelfth year, had been so carefully educated, and had had such an example of virtue ever before him in his father and his grandfather, that he had awakened the nation's highest expectations. These expectations were sadly disappointed. Having attached himself to the second Henry of England-having followed that prince into France, and acted as a volunteer in his army-having gone so far as to resign to him the possessions which he held in the north of England, he alienated the hearts of his nobles, and risked his very throne. On his return from France he undertook his own defence, and urged that he had been carried into France and into war against an old and a tried friend wholly against his inclination. sedition which was ready to burst forth was thus, for a time, successfully quelled. Henry took advantage of the state of public feeling, and insisted on Malcolm ceding to him all those territorial possessions which he claimed in England. The Scottish monarchs had in great measure possessed themselves of the provinces of Lothian, Northumberland, Cumberland, and Westmoreland; and after several severe contests it was agreed that they should continue to hold them on the condition of doing homage to the king of England, and of rendering him military service in the time of war. This homage and this service came at length to be claimed not only for the provinces possessed in the north of England, but for the kingdom of Scotland itself, which had hitherto been a free and independent state,