In this they failed, and a treaty was signed
between the two nations that neither should make war on the other
unless it were first attacked itself.[2]
Argyll, Galloway, and Moray being subdued and settled, and the old
Earldom of Caithness broken up, and divided among trustworthy feudal
tenants holding their lands by military service from the Scottish
king, the whole of the mainland of Scotland may now be said to have
been effectively incorporated into one kingdom under the Scottish
Crown. Ecclesiastically, also, the whole realm was divided into
dioceses, whose bishops were appointed by consent of the king.
The dream of Malcolm II at last was realised.
The western islands of the Hebrides, however, still owed allegiance to
the king of Norway, who was till 1240 engaged in civil war with Duke
Skuli in his own kingdom. Alexander II therefore equipped a naval
expedition to reduce the islands, but, soon after he had embarked,
he sickened and died on the island of Kerrera, near Oban, in 1249,
leaving as his successor, his son Alexander III, then only in his
eighth year, who was married in 1251, before his eleventh year, to
Margaret, daughter of Henry III of England, then a child of about
the same age as himself.
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