have been of savage ferocity, into Northumberland, and his yet more cruel reprisals for Gospatric’s harrying of Cumberland.  In either case, St Margaret’s biographer, who had lived at her Court, whether or not he was her Confessor, Turgot, represents the Saint as subduing the savagery of Malcolm, who passed wakeful nights in weeping for his sins.  A lover of books, which Malcolm could not read, an expert in “the delicate, and gracious, and bright works of women,” Margaret brought her own gentleness and courtesy among a rude people, built the abbey church of Dunfermline, and presented the churches with many beautiful golden reliquaries and fine sacramental plate.

In 1072, to avenge a raid of Malcolm (1070), the Conqueror, with an army and a fleet, came to Abernethy on Tay, where Malcolm, in exchange for English manors, “became his man” for them, and handed over his son Duncan as a hostage for peace.  The English view is that Malcolm became William’s “man for all that he had”—­or for all south of Tay.

After various raidings of northern England, and after the death of the Conqueror, Malcolm renewed, in Lothian, the treaty of Abernethy, being secured in his twelve English manors (1091).  William Rufus then took and fortified Carlisle, seized part of Malcolm’s lands in Cumberland, and summoned him to Gloucester, where the two Kings, after all, quarrelled and did not meet.  No sooner had Malcolm returned home than he led an army into Northumberland, where he was defeated and slain, near Alnwick (Nov. 13, 1093).  His son Edward fell with him, and his wife, St Margaret, died in Edinburgh Castle:  her body, under cloud of night, was carried through the host of rebel Celts and buried at Dunfermline.

Margaret, a beautiful and saintly Englishwoman, had been the ruling spirit of the reign in domestic and ecclesiastical affairs.  She had civilised the Court, in matters of costume at least; she had read books to the devoted Malcolm, who could not read; and he had been her interpreter in her discussions with the Celtic-speaking clergy, whose ideas of ritual differed from her own.  The famous Culdees, originally ascetic hermits, had before this day united in groups living under canonical rules, and, according to English observers, had ceased to be bachelors.  Masses are said to have been celebrated by them in some “barbarous rite”; Saturday was Sabbath; on Sunday men worked.  Lent began, not on Ash Wednesday, but on the Monday following.  We have no clearer account of the Culdee peculiarities that St Margaret reformed.  The hereditary tenure of benefices by lay protectors she did not reform, but she restored the ruined cells of Iona, and established hospitia for pilgrims.  She was decidedly unpopular with her Celtic subjects, who now made a struggle against English influences.