The state of Scotland had not been unnoticed at the court of the English king, where Duncan appears to have resided, ever since the death of the Conqueror, in an equivocal position between a guest and a hostage. Brought from his native country at a very early age, he had imbibed the ideas of a feudal baron, and when Robert conferred upon him the honour of knighthood, after his liberation from his former captivity, the youthful knight preferred remaining at a court to which he was accustomed from his infancy, to returning to a country of which he knew but little, and where he may have feared a doubtful reception. Presenting himself before William, on learning the accession of his uncle, he requested the grant of his fathers kingdom, promising to hold it in fealty and allegiance in return for the king’s assistance. This was readily accorded on the terms of the petitioner; [Sidenote: A.D. 1094.] and when the return of spring favoured the march of an army, Duncan, placing himself at the head of a band of English and Norman auxiliaries, drove out his uncle Donald and took possession of the kingdom. The Scots appear to have been taken by surprise, for upon recovering from their first astonishment, they at once returned in sufficient force to overwhelm the followers of Duncan, putting most of them to the sword; but as their hostility was confined to the foreign soldiery, and they entertained no personal antipathy to a member of Malcolm’s family, they readily permitted Duncan to retain the crown on condition of introducing no more aliens into the country.[187] The temporary success of Duncan appears to have thrown Donald Bane upon the support of a partizan of the northern faction, and he enlisted in his behalf the assistance of Malpeter MacLoen, the Mormaor of Mærne; whilst another party to his conspiracy for regaining the crown was Edmund, one of the surviving sons of Malcolm and Margaret, who was to be rewarded for his connivance in the death of his half-brother by sharing the royal power with his uncle Donald. Their intrigues were only too successful, and the treacherous slaughter of Duncan at Monachedin on the banks of the Bervie, where a rude stone still marks the supposed locality of his death, reinstated Donald, after an interval of six months, whilst the surviving followers of his murdered nephew were slain or driven from the kingdom.[188]