he bombast and inaccurate style of the monkish historians,
is, that the Scots had sometimes been defeated by the English, had
received peace on disadvantageous terms, had made submissions to the
English monarch, and had even perhaps fallen into some dependence on a
power which was so much superior, and which they had not at that time
sufficient force to resist. His authorities from the Norman period were,
if possible, still less conclusive: the historians indeed make frequent
mention of homage done by the northern potentate; but no one of them
says that it was done for his kingdom; and several of them declare, in
express terms that it was relative only to the fiefs which he enjoyed
south of the Tweed;[*] in the same manner, as the king of England
himself swore fealty to the French monarch, for the fiefs which he
inherited in France. And to such scandalous shifts was Edward reduced,
that he quotes a passage from Hoveden[**] where it is asserted that a
Scottish king had done homage to England; but he purposely omits the
latter part of the sentence, which expresses that this prince did homage
for the lands which he held in England.

When William, king of Scotland, was taken prisoner in the battle of
Alnwick, he was obliged, for the recovery of his liberty, to swear
fealty to the victor for his crown itself. The deed was performed
according to all the rites of the feudal law: the record was preserved
in the English archives, and is mentioned by all the historians: but
as it is the only one of the kind, and as historians speak of this
superiority as a great acquisition gained by the fortunate arms of Henry
II.,[***] there can remain no doubt that the kingdom of Scotland was,
in all former periods, entirely free and independent. Its subjection
continued a very few years: King Richard, desirous, before his departure
for the Holy Land, to conciliate the friendship of William, renounced
that homage, which, he says in express terms, had been extorted by his
father; and he only retained the usual homage which had been done by the
Scottish princes for the lands which they held in England.

* Hoveden, p. 492, 662. M. Paris, p. 109. M. West. p. 256.

** Page 662.

*** Neubr. lib. ii. cap. 4. Knyghton, p. 2392.

But though this transaction rendered the independence of Scotland
still more unquestionable, than if no fealty had ever been sworn to the
English crown, the Scottish kings, apprised of the point aimed at by