The case of Scotland was very different from that of Wales. The Scottish people were a rising not a declining nation. The Scottish kingdom was a collection of states held by different historical titles, and inhabited by races of different origin, not a nationality struggling for existence. Southern Scotland was far more akin to Northern England than to Northern Scotland; inhabited by people of English blood and English institutions, and feudally held, like great part of England, by Norman barons. The royal race was a Celtic race, but Celtic Scotland gave to the kings little more than a nominal recognition; the strength of the royal house was in the Lowlands. Ever since the Norman Conquest the relations between Scotland and England had been close. Of the several provinces over which the Scottish king now ruled, Lothian was a part of the ancient Northumbria, which had been granted, according to English accounts, by either Edgar the Peaceable or by Canute to a Scottish king. South-western Scotland, or Scottish Cumberland, had been given by Edmund I. to Malcolm. The whole Scottish race had acknowledged as their father and lord Edward, the West Saxon king, the son of Alfred; and William the Conqueror, and William Rufus, and after him, had extorted a recognition of the superiority or overlordship of the King of the English. These were shadowy claims, certainly; but since the middle of the twelfth century there had been several instances in which either the King of Scots or his son had received English estates and dignities and done homage for them. The earldoms of Northumberland and Huntingdon had been thus held by Henry, son of David I., and the latter by his son William, the Lion. Homage had on several occasions been rendered without any very distinct understanding whether it was for the English earldoms, for the Lowland provinces, or for the whole Scottish kingdom, that the overlordship of the English crown was acknowledged. Henry II. had, indeed, after the capture of king William, compelled both him and his barons to recognize his superiority in the strictest terms, but Richard had liberated them from that special bondage, and the mutual reservations or compromises, which both preceded and followed that short period of subjection, left the claims as vague as ever. Except during the same period the relations of the two kingdoms had been, since the death of Stephen, fairly friendly. The Scottish kings were married to kinswomen of the English kings; their political progress followed at some short distance behind, but in the footsteps of the progress begun under Henry II., and for nearly a century there had been only short and languid intervals of war. Now and then the Scots had pillaged or intrigued, but the two crowns were generally at peace. Edward’s design for the Scottish marriage would have turned the peace into union; but the time was not come for that. [Sidenote: Decision of Edward in favor of Balliol. ]