Towards the close of his life, and about thirteen years after his successful invasion of Northumbria, Malcolm was brought into contact with the most formidable antagonist that ever crossed his path, for upon his return from Rome, Canute, now king of England, Denmark, and Norway, marched with an army to the north, and both kings met upon the frontiers of their respective dominions. As no allusion is made to the cause which led to the expedition of Canute, it would be impossible to determine whether it had any reference to Malcolm’s acquisition of Lothian. A brief notice in the Saxon chronicle--all that is known of the transaction--barely records that Malcolm met Canute, “bowed to his power, and became his man, retaining his allegiance for a very short time.” Canute with his army returned to the south, and the results of the meeting faded away with the retreating footsteps of the mighty Dane.[119] [Sidenote: A. D. 1033] Amongst the latest notices of this reign contained in the Irish annals, an action is recorded of Malcolm, towards the close of his career, which clearly demonstrates his determined purpose to transmit the regal dignity to his own immediate descendants. According to the rule of alternate succession hitherto observed amongst the Scots--a rule which the later princes had invariably attempted to violate--the next king after Malcolm’s death ought to have been chosen from the family of his predecessor Kenneth. Boedhe, the late king’s son, was no longer living, but he had left a son whose name is no longer preserved, the last male representative of his race, and perhaps the Tanist, or heir apparent of the king. The death of this prince is attributed to Malcolm, whose aim it is evident in this deed of violence was to remove from the path of his grandson Duncan the sole rival claimant of the throne.[120] In this he was completely successful, no opposition awaiting his grandson when he was called soon afterwards to reign; nor had Duncan long to wait for the crown, for in the following year [Sidenote: A. D. 1034.] Malcolm was assassinated at Glammis, in the same province of Angus which forty years before had proved so fatal to his father.[121] Of the direct male line of Kenneth MacAlpin, Malcolm the Second was the last and greatest king, his renown extending to the neighbouring countries, and procuring for him the title amongst the Irish annalists of the “Lord and Father of the West.” He enlarged and consolidated his ancestral dominions, advancing the frontier from the Pentland Hills to the Tweed, and effecting an object that his predecessors had vainly attempted--the transmission of the kingdom to his own immediate family. The means employed for this purpose, it is to be feared, were neither scrupulous nor just; but the annals of every country at this period prove but too clearly that it was an age in which neither the ties of relationship, nor indeed any other ties, were proof against the lust of ambition.