William's promise that he would be a good and easy lord to his subjects was not kept for long. The new king was in all things an evil copy of his father: he had William's courage and ability, but none of his better moral qualities; he had no sense of justice, and was not restrained by any religious scruples. He was, indeed, an open atheist, and scoffed at all forms of religion, scornfully observing that he would become a Jew if it was made worth his while. Moreover, his private life was infamous, and no man who cared for honour or purity could abide at his court. Nevertheless, his government was far more tolerable than the anarchy of baronial rule would have been. If he sheared his subjects close himself, he took care that no one else should molest them, and one bad master is always better than many. Under him England was cruelly taxed, and many isolated acts of oppression were committed, but he put down civil war, overcame his foreign enemies, and ruled victoriously for all his days. [Sidenote: =War with Scotland.--Cumberland finally becomes English.=] Of William's exploits, those which were the most profitable for the peace of England were his enterprises against the Scots and the Welsh. Malcolm Canmore, though he had done homage to William I., repeatedly led armies into England against William's son. In this first Scottish war the Red King, though his fleet was destroyed by a storm, compelled Malcolm to submit, and took from him the city of Carlisle and the district of Cumberland. This land, the southern half of the old Welsh principality of Strathclyde, had been tributary to the Scots ever since King Edmund granted it to Malcolm I. in 945. It now became an English county and bishopric, and the border of England was fixed at the Solway, and no longer at the hills of the Lake District (1092). Only a year later the Scottish king again invaded England, but was slain at Alnwick. He ran into an ambush which the Earl of Northumberland laid for him, and fell; with him died his son Edward and the best of his knights. The Scottish crown passed, after much fighting and contention, to Eadgar, Malcolm's second son by his English wife Margaret, the sister of Eadgar the Etheling. This prince, trained up by his pious and able mother, and aided and counselled by his uncle the Etheling, was the first King of Scotland who spoke English as his native tongue, and made the Lowlands his favourite abode. He surrounded himself with English followers, and ceased to be a mere Celtic lord of the Highlands, as his fathers had been. [Sidenote: =South Wales partly occupied by the Normans.=]