ious relations in which the Scot king stood for his
different provinces to the English Crown. Scotland had come to be thought
of as a single country; and the court of London transferred to the whole of
it those claims of direct feudal suzerainty which at most applied only to
Strathclyde, while the court of Edinburgh looked on the English Lowlands as
holding no closer relation to England than the Pictish lands beyond the
Forth. Any difficulties which arose were evaded by a legal compromise. The
Scot kings repeatedly did homage to the English sovereign but with a
reservation of rights which were prudently left unspecified. The English
king accepted the homage on the assumption that it was rendered to him as
overlord of the Scottish realm, and this assumption was neither granted nor
denied. For nearly a hundred years the relations of the two countries were
thus kept peaceful and friendly, and the death of Alexander the Third
seemed destined to remove even the necessity of protests by a closer union
of the two kingdoms. Alexander had wedded his only daughter to the King of
Norway, and after long negotiation the Scotch Parliament proposed the
marriage of Margaret, "The Maid of Norway," the girl who was the only issue
of this marriage and so heiress of the kingdom, with the son of Edward the
First. It was however carefully provided in the marriage treaty which was
concluded at Brigham in 1290 that Scotland should remain a separate and
free kingdom, and that its laws and customs should be preserved inviolate.
No military aid was to be claimed by the English king, no Scotch appeal to
be carried to an English court. But this project was abruptly frustrated by
the child's death during her voyage to Scotland in the following October,
and with the rise of claimant after claimant of the vacant throne Edward
was drawn into far other relations to the Scottish realm.

[Sidenote: The Scotch Succession]

Of the thirteen pretenders to the throne of Scotland only three could be
regarded as serious claimants. By the extinction of the line of William the
Lion the right of succession passed to the daughters of his brother David.
The claim of John Balliol, Lord of Galloway, rested on his descent from the
elder of these; that of Robert Bruce, Lord of Annandale, on his descent
from the second; that of John Hastings, Lord of Abergavenny, on his descent
from the third. It is clear that at this crisis every one in Scotland or
out of it recognized