Soon after this event, we have a formal demand of feudal homage made by John on William king of Scotland, with which the latter promised promptly to comply. The two monarchs met at Lincoln, and, on an eminence near that city, in the presence of the assembled nobles of both kingdoms, the king of Scotland swore fealty of life and limb to John--against all men, saving his own right. He, at the same time, is said to have acknowledged by a written document the feudal superiority of the English crown, to have engaged to keep the peace with its king and kingdom, and to have bound himself not to marry his son without the permission of John, as his liege lord[92]. But this is a little inconsistent with another recorded fact--rising from his knees, he explicitly demanded of John the restoration of the three counties of Northumberland, Cumberland and Westmoreland, as the heir of his grandfather David, from whom he alleged them to have been unjustly wrested in the wars of Matilda and Stephen. The kind of homage rendered by the Scottish princes to the English crown, in this and succeeding ages, was always proportioned to the strength or weakness of the respective governments, and was hardly construed to mean the same thing during two successive reigns. On the whole, this singular interview seems to have been consented to on the part of the wily Scot, principally with a view to sound the dispositions of the new sovereign. The profligate and pusillanimous John is well known to have exposed his own rights, and the liberties of his people, to all the evils of protracted civil wars, and foreign invasion. At the period of his decease, the capital and the southern counties were in the hands of Louis, king of France.