Anglo-Norman influence

Malcolm's victory foreshadowed what became a major thread of Scottish history for the next thousand years. He had relied on Northumbrian assistance to return to the throne, and from then on Scotland at no time remained very far from the thoughts of England's rulers. The reciprocal condition equally applied.

In 1066 the Norman Conquest shook England to its foundations and one of the claimants of the English throne opposing William the Conqueror, Edgar, eventually fled to Scotland. Malcolm married Edgar's sister Margaret, and thus came into opposition to William who had already disputed Scotland's southern borders. William invaded Scotland in 1072, riding through Lothian and past Stirling on to the Firth of Tay where he met up with his fleet of ships. Malcolm submitted, paid homage to William, and surrendered his son Duncan as a hostage.

Margaret herself had a great influence on Scotland. She is said to have brought European cultivation to the warlike Scottish court. She had an English father and a Hungarian mother and had grown up in Hungary, recently pagan and largely untouched by the European culture of the period, with her background steeped in the Roman Catholic church. Her influence in Church politics, pressed the Scottish Church to move away from some of its unique Celtic traditions towards greater conformity with the rites of the Church in the rest of Western Europe. Invasions by the Vikings during the centuries previous had cut Scotland and Ireland off from the bulk of European Christianity, and their local Churches had evolved along their own paths. However at this point the Church explicitly recognised the Bishop of Rome (the Pope) as its head and at her instigation, the Benedictine order founded a monastery at Dunfermline, and St Andrews began to replace Iona as the centre of ecclesiastical leadership. The rites of the Scottish church became gradually re-integrated with mainstream Western Catholicism from that base.

When Malcolm died in 1093, his brother Donald III and Malcolm's eldest son by Margaret Edmund I succeeded him to rule Scotland jointly. However, William II of England backed Malcolm's son by his first marriage, Duncan, as a pretender to the throne. With the English behind him Duncan briefly seized power as Duncan II. His murder within a few months saw Donald and Edmund restored to joint rule. The two ruled Scotland until two of Edmund's younger brothers returned from exile in England with English military backing. Victorious, the two younger brothers imprisoned Donald III and Edmund I for life, and the older of the two became King Edgar in 1097. Shortly afterwards King Magnus Bare Leg of Norway forced King Edgar into ceding the Hebrides and Kintyre to Norway, creating the conditions for the independence of the Lords of the Isles from the Scottish Crown.

When Edgar died in 1107, Margaret's third son Alexander became king, and when he in turn passed away in 1124, the crown passed to her fourth son David I. During David's reign Lowland Scots (known as Inglis then) began to grow in south east Scotland, although Gaelic would continue to be spoken in many parts of what would become the Lowlands for centuries more.

The governmental and cultural innovations introduced by the Norman conquerors of England impressed David greatly, and he arranged for several notables to come north and take up places within the Scottish aristocracy. The Normans effectively militarised large sections of Scotland, building strong stone castles, and imposing the feudal system upon the peasantry; they came into frequent conflict with the native nobility, especially in the north east and south west of the country. Like his successors, he planted a number of towns or "burghs", which were colonised by Normans, Flemish merchants and Englishmen.

In a mirror of the invitation of the Normans northwards, David received lands south of the border in fee from the English kings. This meant that the Kings of Scotland also functioned as Earls of Huntingdon, and that the Earls paid ceremonial homage to the English kings for the lands received. This homage proved problematic, however, as Malcolm Canmore as the King of Scotland had paid homage to the new Norman Kings of England twice after defeats during his various campaigns against the Normans in support of his Anglo-Saxon brother-in-law Edgar Atheling's claim to the English throne. The English maintained that this meant Scotland had become subordinate to England.

David himself during his reign fended off this claim, but Henry II defeated David's grandson, William the Lion and hauled him off to the English holdings in Normandy. There William had to swear fealty in 1174, not as Earl but as King. For the first time, Scotland became nominally unified with England. The vow was nullified in 1189 when Richard I accepted a payment from William, needed for Richard's crusade to the Middle East, but the submission hung over the Scottish kings for some time afterwards.

In 1263 Scotland and Norway fought the Battle of Largs for control over the Western Isles. The battle proved a success for the Scots, and in 1266 the Norwegian king Magnus VI of Norway signed the Treaty of Perth, which acknowledged Scottish suzerainty over the islands. Despite the treaty the practical independence of the Lord of the Isles continued.

A series of deaths in the line of succession in the 1280s, followed by King Alexander III's death in 1286 left the Scottish crown in disarray. His grand-daughter Margaret, the "Maid of Norway", a four-year old girl, became Queen of Scots.

Edward I of England, as Margaret's great-uncle, suggested that his son (also a child) and Margaret should marry, stabilising the Scottish line of succession. In 1290 Margaret's guardians agreed to this, but Margaret herself died in Orkney on her voyage from Norway to Scotland before either her coronation or her marriage could take place.