athclyde, and on
Malcolm's death in 1034 the whole of Scotland was nominally united under
Duncan I.[33] The consolidation of the kingdom was as yet in the future,
but from the end of the reign of Malcolm II there was but one Kingdom of
Scotland. From this united kingdom we must exclude the islands, which
were largely inhabited by Norsemen. Both the Hebrides and the islands of
Orkney and Shetland were outside the realm of Scotland.

The names of Macbeth and "the gentle Duncan" suggest the great drama
which the genius of Shakespeare constructed from the magic tale of
Hector Boece; but our path does not lie by the moor near Forres, nor
past Birnam Wood or Dunsinane. Nor does the historian of the relations
between England and Scotland have anything to tell about the English
expedition to restore Malcolm. All such tales emanate from Florence of
Worcester, and we know only that Siward of Northumbria made a fruitless
invasion of Scotland, and that Macbeth reigned for three years
afterwards.

We have now traced, in outline, the connections between the northern and
the southern portions of this island up to the date of the Norman
Conquest of England. We have found in Scotland a population composed of
Pict, Scot, Goidel, Brython, Dane, and Angle, and we have seen how the
country came to be, in some sense, united under a single monarch. It is
not possible to speak dogmatically of either of the two great problems
of the period--the racial distribution of the country, and the Edwardian
claims to overlordship. But it is clear that no portion of Scotland was,
in 1066, in any sense English, except the Lothians, of which Angles and
Danes had taken possession. From the Lothians, the English influences
must have spread slightly into Strathclyde; but the fact that the Celtic
Kings of Scotland were strong enough to annex and rule the Lothians as
part of a Celtic kingdom implies a limit to English colonization. As to
the feudal supremacy, it may be fairly said that there is no portion of
the English claim that cannot be reasonably doubted, and whatever force
it retains must be of the nature of a cumulative argument. It must, of
course, be recollected that Anglo-Norman chroniclers of the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries, like English historians of a later date, regarded
themselves as holding a brief for the English claim, while, on the other
hand, Scottish writers would be the last to assert, in their own case, a
complete absence of bias.