The death of Alexander, without heirs, reunited to the Scottish kingdom the appanage of Cumbria, which had been so unwisely severed from it by Edgar; and the last surviving son of Malcolm and Margaret, the rightful heir by ancient Gaelic custom as well as by feudal law, ascended the throne without dispute. An intimate connection with the Court of England for upwards of a quarter of a century, had effectually “rubbed off the Scottish rust” from David,--to use the words of the contemporary Malmesbury,--converting him into a feudal baron; and many years before he was called upon to fill the throne, he had gathered around him in his Cumbrian principality a body of knights and barons, from whom sprung the older Norman chivalry of Scotland. During his residence in the south he married Matilda, the widow of Simon de St. Liz and heiress of Earl Waltheof of Northumberland, a portion of whose vast estates had been conferred upon each of her husbands in succession--St. Liz having been created Earl of Northampton, whilst the Honour of Huntingdon was granted to the Scottish prince; but the great earldom of Northumberland was retained in the Crown, for after the forfeiture of Robert de Mowbray, the English kings were jealous of intrusting that important province out of their own hands.[231] The sole offspring of the second marriage of Matilda was an only son, to whom his parents gave the name of Henry, born about ten years before the accession of his father to the throne of Scotland. David was the first of his family who united the character of an English baron to that of a Scottish king; and in the former capacity he was soon called upon to exercise the political sagacity through which he had reaped the reward of the appanage of Cumbria, which he held during the lifetime of his brother Alexander. Upon the death of Henry the Fifth of Germany, the English king, despairing of any male heir from his second marriage, determined upon adopting as his successor his daughter Alicia, who fifteen years before had been betrothed, whilst a mere child, to the deceased Emperor. The princess, it is said, was reluctant to leave a country in which she had resided since her infancy, and where she still enjoyed vast possessions with the title of Empress; but she had become a necessary instrument for furthering the views of her father, and he turned a deaf ear to the entreaties of the princes of Lombardy and Lorraine, whose desire to retain their Empress interfered with the tenor of his policy. The assistance of the Scottish king was early sought to join in securing the succession to his sister’s child, and he passed a whole year in England in concerting measures for this purpose. In the great council of London, to which every baron of note was summoned, David was the first to swear fealty to his niece,--who now, like her mother, had assumed the popular name of Matilda--as heiress of the kingdom in which he held the Honour