But it would seem clear that the truce had expired, and that the English king was bound to no treaty of peace. His son's capture was immediately followed by the death of King Robert III, who sank, broken-hearted, into the grave. Albany continued to rule, and maintained a series of truces with England till his death in 1420. The peace was occasionally broken in intervals of truce, and the advantage was usually on the side of the Scots. In 1409 the Earl of March returned to his allegiance and received back his estates. In the same year his son recovered Fast Castle (on St. Abb's Head), and the Scots also recovered Jedburgh. Albany's attention was now diverted by a danger threatened by the Highland portion of the kingdom. Scotland, south of Forth and Clyde, along with the east coast up to the Moray Firth, had been rapidly affected by the English, French, and Norman influences, of which we have spoken. The inhabitants of the more remote Highland districts and of the western isles had remained uncorrupted by civilization of any kind, and ever since the reign of Malcolm Canmore there had been a militant reaction against the changes of St. Margaret and David I; from the eleventh century to the thirteenth, the Scottish kings were scarcely ever free from Celtic pretenders and Celtic revolts.[54] The inhabitants of the west coast and of the isles were very largely of Scandinavian blood, and it was not till 1266 that the western isles definitely passed from Norway to the Scottish crown. The English had employed several opportunities of allying themselves with these discontented Scotsmen; but Mr. Freeman's general statement, already quoted, that "the true Scots, out of hatred to the Saxons nearest them, leagued with the Saxons farther off", is very far from a fair representation of the facts. We have seen that Highlander and Islesman fought under David I at the battle of the Standard, against the "Saxons farther off", and that although the death of Comyn ranged against Bruce the Highlanders of Argyll, numbers of Highlanders were led to victory at Bannockburn by Earl Randolph; and Angus Og and the Islesmen formed part of the Scottish reserves and stood side by side with the men of Carrick, under the leadership of King Robert. During the troubles which followed King Robert's death, the Lords of the Isles had resumed their general attitude of opposition. It was an opposition very natural in the circumstances, the rebellion of a powerful vassal against a weak central government, a reaction against the forces of civilization. But it has never been shown that it was an opposition in any way racial; the complaint that the Lowlands of Scotland have been "rent by the Saxon from the Gael", in the manner of a racial dispossession, belongs to "The Lady of the Lake", not to sober history. All Scotland, indeed, has now, in one sense, been "rent by the Saxon" from the Celt. "Let no one doubt the civilization of these islands," wrote Dr. Johnson, in Skye, "for