ed and shifting
period when the limits of the kingdoms were so little certain. The issue
of this raid was that Scotland, probably meaning for the most part
Lothian, the southern portion of the country, was filled with English
captives, apportioned as slaves, or servants at least, through the
entire population, so that scarcely a house was without one, either male
or female. The Queen interested herself particularly in these captives,
as was natural; sometimes paying the ransom exacted for them, and in all
cases defending and protecting them. Her emissaries went about among
them inquiring into their condition and how they were treated, visiting
them from house to house: and all that Margaret could do to mitigate the
evils of their captivity was done. Nothing can be more strange than to
realise a time when Northumbrian prisoners of war could be house slaves
in Lothian. No doubt what was true on one side was true on the other,
and Scotch captives had their turn of similar bondage.

In those days the ancient county which her children love to call the
Kingdom of Fife was far more than Edinburgh, then a mere fortress
standing up on an invulnerable rock in the middle of a fertile plain,
the centre of the national life. Not only was the King's residence at
Dunfermline, but the great Cathedral of St. Andrews was the
ecclesiastical capital, gradually working out that development of Roman
supremacy and regularity which soon swept away all that was individual
in the apostleship of St. Columba and the faith of his followers. That
the King and Queen were frequently at Edinburgh is evident from the fact
that Margaret had her oratory and chapel on the very apex of the rock,
and had there established a centre of worship and spiritual life. St.
Andrews, however, was the centre of influence, the shrine to which
pilgrims flowed, and the pious Queen, in her care for every office of
religion and eagerness to facilitate every exercise of piety, gave
special thought to the task of making the way easy and safe towards that
holy metropolis. The Canterbury of the north was divided from the other
half of Malcolm's kingdom by that sea which in these later days, at much
cost of beauty, money, and life, has been bridged over and
shortened--"the sea which divides Lothian from Scotland" according to
the chronicler, "the Scottish Sea" as it is called by others, the mighty
Firth, which to the rude galleys of the little trading villages along
its shores m