rule the ancient kingdoms of the Picts and
Scots, including the whole of Scotland from the Pentland Firth to the
Forth. In 908, a brother of the King of Scots became King of the Britons
of Strathclyde, while Lothian, with the rest of Northumbria, passed
under the overlordship of the House of Wessex. We have now arrived at
the commencement of the long dispute about the "overlordship". We shall
attempt to state the main outlines as clearly as possible.

The foundation of the whole controversy lies in a statement, "in the
honest English of the Winchester Chronicle", that, in 924, "was Eadward
king chosen to father and to lord of the Scots king and of the Scots,
and of Regnold king, and of all the Northumbrians", and also of the
Strathclyde, Brythons or Welsh. Mr. E.W. Robertson has argued that no
real weight can be given to this statement, for (1) "Regnold king" had
died in 921; (2) in 924, Edward the Elder was striving to suppress the
Danes south of the Humber, and had no claims to overlordship of any kind
over the Northumbrian Danes and English; and (3) the place assigned,
Bakewell, in Derbyshire, is improbable, and the recorded building of a
fort there is irrelevant. The reassertion of this homage, under
Aethelstan, in 926, which occurs in one MS. of the Chronicle, is open to
the objection that it describes the King of Scots as giving up idolatry,
more than three hundred and fifty years after the conversion of the
country; but as the entry under the year 924 is probably in a
contemporary hand, considerable weight must be attached to the double
statement. In the reign of Edmund the Magnificent, an event occurred
which has given fresh occasion for dispute. A famous passage in the
"Chronicle" (945 A.D.) tells how Edmund and Malcolm I of
Scotland conquered Cumbria, which the English king gave to Malcolm on
condition that Malcolm should be his "midwyrtha" or fellow-worker by sea
and land. Mr. Freeman interpreted this as a feudal grant, reading the
sense of "fealty" into "midwyrtha", and regarded the district described
as "Cumbria" as including the whole of Strathclyde. It is somewhat
difficult to justify this position, especially as we have no reason for
supposing that Edmund did invade Strathclyde, and since, in point of
fact, Strathclyde remained hostile to the kingdom of Scotland long after
this date. In 946 the statement of the Chronicle is reasserted in
connection with the accession of Eadred, and in somewhat stronger