[150] Chalmers (Caledonia, vol. i., p. 422) maintains that Ingebiorge could not have been the mother of Malcolm’s eldest son Duncan, as her first husband, Thorfin, survived till 1074, and Duncan was knighted soon after 1072, when he must have been at least fifteen years of age. But Thorfin died “in the latter days of Harald Sigurdson,” whom his sons accompanied as Jarls of the Orkneys to the battle of Stanford Bridge in 1066. Malcolm was married to Margaret in 1070, Duncan was not knighted before the death of the Conqueror, in 1087, when he must have been more than fifteen; and as five or six years elapsed between the death of Thorfin and the marriage of Malcolm to Margaret, I see no reason for doubting the account of the Orkneyinga Saga, though many for hesitating to affix the stigma of illegitimacy upon Duncan, whose donations to Dunfermlyn are confirmed by David without any allusion to such a bar to his right to the crown.
[151] Sim. Dun. de Gestis 1061, 1065, 1066. Chron. Sax. 1065–66.
[152] In 1070 Malcolm held Cumberland by force (Sim. Dun.), and it was only in 1092 that Rufus drove Dolfin, apparently a son of Cospatric of Dunbar, out of the province, and rebuilt Carlisle. This part of England was not included in the Domesday Survey.
[153] Sim. Dun. de Gestis 1068–9. Hist. Dun., l. 3, c. 15. Chron. Sax. 1067–68. The dates of the Chronicle are wrong, as Easter fell on the 23d of March in 1068, and the historian of Durham is consequently correct. Indeed he is the first authority for the affairs of the north at this period. William three times entered York as a conqueror. A passage in Ordericus Vitalis is sometimes brought forward as a proof that Malcolm sent his submission to William through Aylwin, bishop of Durham, after the failure of the attempt of Edwin and Morkar in 1068. I have given the reasons why I cannot concur in this opinion in Appendix Q.
[154] Sim. Dun. de Gestis 1069. Chron. Sax. 1069.
[155] Sim. Dun. de Gestis 1070.
[156] Sim. Dun., as before.
[157] Marianus alludes to this famine. Compare the account of Simeon with Domesday in Ellis’s Introduction. At the date of the Survey, Lincolnshire contained 11,504 Socmen and 11,747 Villani and Bordarii, whilst in Yorkshire only 447 Socmen are recorded, with 6914 of the other classes. Yorkshire was the head-quarters of the Anglo-Danes of Northumbria, and as the Socmen represented the old Danish Odal-Bonders, there is no difficulty in recognising the real class that bore the brunt of the northern wars, and contributed most largely to the emigrants and outlaws.
[158] In the beginning of the century Uchtred, the son of Waltheof, seems to have married and put away his wives without the slightest scruple, nor could bishop Ealdun procure a permanent husband for his daughter Egfreda even by alienating the lands of his see in her favour. Twice was she divorced in spite of her dowry, and neither the bishop nor the chronicler who records these proceedings appear to have regarded them as extraordinary. Sim. Dun. Twysden, p. 79.
[159] Sim. Dun. de Gestis 1070. Vit. St. Marg. Edgar and his family appear to have left Scotland in 1069, and to have returned thither in the following year.