It saw also the beginning of an influence
which was to prove scarcely less fruitful in results than the
Anglo-Saxon triumph of which we have spoken. In November, 1100, Edgar's
sister, Matilda, was married to the Norman King of England, Henry I, and
two years later, another sister, Mary, was married to Eustace, Count of
Boulogne, the son of the future King Stephen. These unions, with a son
and a grandson respectively of William the Conqueror, prepared the way
for the Norman Conquest of Scotland. Edgar died in January, 1106-7, and
his brother and successor, Alexander I, espoused an Anglo-Norman,
Sybilla, who is generally supposed to have been a natural daughter of
Henry I. On the death of Alexander, in 1124, these Norman influences
acquired a new importance under his brother David, the youngest son of
Malcolm and Margaret. During the troubles which followed his father's
death, David had been educated in England, and after the marriage of
Henry I and Matilda, had resided at the court of his brother-in-law,
till the death of Edgar, when he became ruler of Cumbria and the
southern portion of Lothian. He had married, in 1113-14, the daughter
and heiress of Waltheof, Earl of Huntingdon, who was also the widow of a
Norman baron. In this way the earldom of Huntingdon became attached to
the Scottish throne, and afforded an occasion for reviving the old
question of homage. Moreover, Waltheof of Huntingdon was the son of
Siward of Northumbria, and David regarded himself as, on this account,
possessing claims over Northumbria.
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