It may be accepted as probable that the first Norman by whom this barony was held was Gilbert Tyson, standard-bearer of the Conqueror, the kind of personage who very naturally would be intrusted with the charge of a remote and turbulent northern district. His descendants continued to hold some estates under the lords of Alnwick in the reign of Edward III., but there is no foundation for the legend that the barony of Alnwick passed to Yvo de Vesci by his marriage with Alda, a granddaughter of Gilbert Tyson. Still, by whatever means he may have acquired possession, Yvo de Vesci was lord of Alnwick about the year 1096; and he also is the first Norman baron of this barony whose history, scanty as it is, rises above doubt and speculation. He died about the year 1134, leaving, without any male issue, an only daughter, Beatrix, his sole heiress. Before we pass on to trace the fortunes of the descendants of Yvo de Vesci, a brief notice must be taken of a memorable incident which took place in the immediate neighbourhood of Alnwick before Yvo himself had become its lord. After the Norman Conquest many of the Anglo-Saxon nobles found a sympathizing refuge to the north of the Border, under the protection of Malcolm Caenmore, or “great head,” King of Scotland, whose queen was an Anglo-Saxon princess, being sister to Edgar Atheling. Malcolm, in his zeal for the fallen Anglo-Saxon dynasty, five times made incursions into Northumberland, laid waste the country far and wide with fire and sword, and carried away almost the entire adult population as slaves into Scotland. This devastating warfare was suspended in consequence of a treaty, during the concluding years of the reign of the Conqueror; but it broke out afresh after the succession of Rufus, and Malcolm, accompanied by Prince William, his eldest son, in person led an expedition as far south as Alnwick; and there, on the 13th of November, 1093, the king himself fell in an ambuscade, his son at the same time was mortally wounded, and the Scottish army was dispersed by Earl Robert de Mowbray, the governor of Bamborough Castle. The body of Malcolm, having rested about thirty years at Tynemouth, was removed and re-interred at Dunfermline by his son Alexander. There still remain two fragments of a rude memorial cross, which, from an early period, has marked the spot assigned by tradition to the scene of Malcolm’s discomfiture and death; and, in 1774, one of his descendants, Elizabeth, Duchess of Northumberland, erected on the same spot another cross, designed in accordance with the debased architectural taste of that period. [Illustration: _The Barbican._]