Note 500 — Chapter VII · THE KINGDOM OF ALBAN.

The question of the independence of Scotland, and the bearing of these passages upon it, has been very ably discussed on the English side by Mr. Freeman in his History of the Norman Conquest of England, vol. i. pp. 60, 133, and 610; and on the Scottish side by Mr. Robertson, in his Scotland under her Early Kings, vol. ii. p. 384. It is unnecessary for the author to do more than refer to this discussion, and to add his opinion that Mr. Freeman has failed on the whole successfully to meet Mr. Robertson’s criticism. Mr. Robertson was not the first to see the fatal objection to the statement in the Saxon Chronicle that Regnwald, king of Northumbria, took Eadward for his father and lord in 924, while he died in 921. Florence of Worcester saw it before him, and places the event under the year 921.