The second reign of Donald lasted without opposition for three years, but it would be impossible to say whether Edmund shared the throne, for a veil of mystery has been thrown over all his actions. During this period the remaining children of Malcolm were exiles from their native land, whilst William was occupied in fruitless wars with the Welsh, in reducing the too powerful de Mowbray of Northumberland, and in negotiating with his brother Robert the purchase of the duchy of Normandy. [Sidenote: A. D. 1097.] At length towards the close of the year in which the Saxon chronicler laments over “the grievous oppression of the people who were driven up from the country districts to London, to work at the wall they were building about the Tower, and the Bridge, and the King’s Hall at Westminster, whereby many perished,”[189] Edgar Atheling was dispatched to Scotland, and, after a severe struggle, he succeeded in placing his eldest nephew Edgar upon the throne, under similar conditions to the terms imposed upon Duncan.[190] Donald, falling into the victor’s power, was treated with the severity of a cruel age, and was sentenced to pass the remainder of his days, in blindness and in chains, at Roscolpie or Rescobie in Forfarshire; whilst his confederate Edmund, the only degenerate son of Malcolm and Margaret, seems to have adopted a course which saved his own life, and preserved the honour of the family. He expiated his crime by assuming the cowl at Montague, a Cluniac Priory in Somersetshire; and the honourable imprisonment of the princely monk in the retirement of a distant cloister, so effectually obliterated the recollection of his treason amongst the people of his native land, that a halo of peculiar sanctity gradually encircled his memory, and he was handed down to posterity as a man of more than ordinary holiness. Such a reputation must, for obvious reasons, have been favoured by the members of his family, and the saintly character attributed to Edmund may have been partly owing to the austerities of a repentance, which prompted his dying wish to be buried in chains.[191] _Edgar_ 1097–1107. Hardly were the sons of Malcolm reinstated in their ancestral dominions,--for the autumn must have been far advanced before the army of the Atheling reached its destination,--when the western coasts of Scotland were threatened with a repetition of the early invasions of the Northmen.