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The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First
The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First Author:Edward Augustus Freeman Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: and possessions in England.1 What followed may perhaps Ohap. v. suggest that, however much the occupation of Carlisle may have rankled in the mind of Malcolm, th... more »e formal ground of complaint was something of this last kind. Whatever were his wrongs, the Scottish king sent to Scottish complain of them, and the answer which he received was one which shows that, at this first stage, Rufus was not disposed to slight the complaint. We are not told the exact date of this first Scottish embassy. It may very well have come during the short season of William's reformation; his seeming readiness to deal reasonably with the matter, as contrasted with his conduct a few months later, may pass as one of the fruits of his temporary penitence, along with the appointment of Anselm and the promise of good laws. He sent an embassy to Malcolm Scotland, inviting or summoning the Scottish King to to Glou- Gloucester, and giving hostages for his safety. This looks cester- very much as if the ground of complaint was the refusal of some of the rights which had been promised to Malcolm whenever he came to the English court. The Scottish King agreed to come on these terms. William, in his present frame of mind, was seemingly anxious to do all honour to the prince with whom he was dealing. The Eadgar Scottish ambassadors were sent back to bring their king, bring him. and with them, as the most fitting of mediators, was sent the man who had himself for a moment been a king, the brother-in-law of Malcolm, the favoured guest of William, the Etheling Eadgar.2 We last heard of Eadgar somewhat more than a year Eadgar in before, when Robert left England in anger, and Eadgar vmlam! went with him.3 This seems to imply that the relations between William and Eadgar were at that moment un- 1 See vol. i. p. 304. ...« less