words:--"the Scots gave him oaths, that they would all that he would".
Such are the main facts relating to the first two divisions of the
threefold claim to overlordship, and their value will probably continue
to be estimated in accordance with the personal feelings of the reader.
It is scarcely possible to claim that they are in any way decisive. Nor
can any further light be gained from the story of what Mr. Lang has
happily termed the apocryphal eight which the King of Scots stroked on
the Dee in the reign of Edgar. In connection with this "Great
Commendation" of 973, the Chronicle mentions only six kings as rowing
Edgar at Chester, and it wisely names no names. The number eight, and
the mention of Kenneth, King of Scots, as one of the oarsmen, have been
transferred to Mr. Freeman's pages from those of the twelfth-century
chronicler, Florence of Worcester.

We pass now to the third section of the supremacy argument. The district
to which we have referred as Lothian was, unquestionably, largely
inhabited by men of English race, and it formed part of the Northumbrian
kingdom. Within the first quarter of the eleventh century it had passed
under the dominion of the Celtic kings of Scotland. When and how this
happened is a mystery. The tract _De Northynbrorum Comitibus_ which used
to be attributed to Simeon of Durham, asserts that it was ceded by Edgar
to Kenneth and that Kenneth did homage, and this story, elaborated by
John of Wallingford, has been frequently given as the historical
explanation. But Simeon of Durham in his "History"[32] asserts that
Malcolm II, about 1016, wrested Lothian from the Earl of Northumbria,
and there is internal evidence that the story of Edgar and Kenneth has
been constructed out of the known facts of Malcolm's reign. It is, at
all events, certain that the Scottish kings in no sense governed Lothian
till after the battle of Carham in 1018, when Malcolm and the
Strathclyde monarch Owen, defeated the Earl of Northumbria and added
Lothian to his dominions. This conquest was confirmed by Canute in 1031,
and, in connection with the confirmation, the Chronicle again speaks of
a doubtful homage which the Scots king "not long held", and, again, the
Chronicle, or one version of it, adds an impossible statement--this time
about Macbeth, who had not yet appeared on the stage of history. The
year 1018 is also marked by the succession of Malcolm's grandson,
Duncan, to the throne of his kinsman, Owen of Str