When William I died in 1087, his third son William Rufus was given the English throne much to the contempt of his older brother Richard Curthose, who was given the Duchy of Normandy, his father’s original title prior to the Battle of Hastings. This resulted in open rebellion by Curthose against William Rufus, who answered swiftly with an excursion into Normandy. Malcom III saw this as an opportunity for expansion, and in 1091 led an expidition south to besiege Newcastle. The threat was enough to bring William II back to England and this time, Malcom III was ready for a fight. Fortunately for both sides, a peace was sued via the mediation of Edgar Ætheling, and Malcom III once again returned to Scotland. Not a year later did that peace begin to crumble. If it is to be believed that Cumbria was under Scottish control in 1092, the settlement of English peasants in the village surrounding William II’s newly-constructed castle Carlisle may have been the catalyst. Whatever the cause, Malcom III once again travelled south to Gloucester to confront William II on the issue of lands and estates granted by William I being seized by his son for purposes of English resettlement. Malcom III found William II unwilling to negotiate, who instead delegated the matter to English barons. Malcom III found these conditions unsuitable, and returned again to Scotland. It is unlikely that William II’s intention was to provoke casus belli to Malcom, but according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, war is what William II received: “For this reason therefore they parted with great dissatisfaction, and the King Malcolm returned to Scotland. And soon after he came home, he gathered his army, and came harrowing into England with more hostility than behoved him….” As Malcom III was besieging Alnwick, he was ambushed by a small force of knights led by Robert de Mowbray, Earl of Northumbria. Accompanied by his son Edward and Edgar Ætheling, all three men were killed in the fighting which ensued, leaving the army leaderless, and Scotland without a king. Malcom III’s wife Margaret would die nine days later of a broken heart. The resulting power vacuum made way for Malcom III’s brother Donald III to succeed him, interrupted in 1094 by a deposition attempt by Duncan II with the support of landowners and clergymen in the Lowlands, and the Anglo-Norman nobility to the south. A sequence of misjudgments by Duncan II, however, would see him killed in battle on 12 November, 1094 — outmanned, outmaneuvered, and out-supported. Donald III’s reign was marked by nativist policies, which would see the exiled Anglo-Saxon nobles which had taken refuge in the courts of Malcom III and Margaret driven out of Scotland. These policies were wildly popular with the Highland clans, who had supported Donald’s recapture of the Scottish throne from>