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.
