In the meantime, news that Malcolm and his son had fallen at Alnwick reached the Scottish court, and overwhelmed Queen Margaret with grief. Nothing seemed sufficient to console the royal lady for the loss she had sustained. Indeed, she is said to have prayed that she might not survive them, and to have expired within three days of the catastrophe which made her a widow. The children of Malcolm Canmore and Margaret Atheling, when thus deprived of both parents, were in no enviable plight. The courtiers, being for the most part Normans and Saxons, were regarded and hated by the Scots as strangers or foreigners; and the only man capable of protecting the royal children was their uncle, Donald Bane. But that prince proved the reverse of generous. Instead of maintaining the interests of the eldest of his nephews, he resolved on availing himself of his nephew's nonage to seize the crown. It was not difficult for Donald Bane to realize his aspirations. The prejudices of the Scots as to the laws of succession, and the claims of Magnus, King of Norway, were in his favour. Without scruple he gratified the patriotism of the Scots by declaring for the banishment of all Normans and Saxons; and at the same time he purchased the support of the Norwegian king by ceding to him the Western Isles. Having thus strengthened his claims, Donald Bane mounted the Scottish throne. When affairs reached this stage, the Normans and Saxons escaped from Scotland with all convenient speed. With Normans and Saxons to England went Edgar Atheling; and with Atheling, to the country over which his sires had reigned, went the children of Malcolm and Margaret, to seek refuge in the land of their maternal ancestors till the occurrence of events calculated to lead to their restoration to home and country. [Illustration: Tynemouth.] XLIX. [Illustration] ROBERT DE MOUBRAY About the spring of 1095, William Rufus was menaced with ruin. It was Robert de Moubray, Earl of Northumberland--a man who possessed two hundred and eighty manors--whose influence the Red King now had to dread. Not without bitter grumbling had the Norman barons hitherto submitted to the law by which the Norman king retained the exclusive right of hunting in the forests of England. Nevertheless, this privilege was maintained by Rufus as vigorously as ever it had been by the mighty Conqueror. The Saxons contemptuously called him "The Wild Beast Herd," while the Normans conspired to take off his crown, and place it on the head of Stephen, Earl of Albemarle, son of the Conqueror's sister. At the head of this conspiracy, which included several of the highest Norman nobles, Robert de Moubray nobly placed himself.