I don't doubt that Malcolm thought himself his own man, but William forced him into vassalhood at some point, you recognise that, right? As to Malcolm's supposedly limited help coming from Siward, good point. Like Bopa suggest though.. don't wag the Anglocentricism card at us and then claim we owe our culture to Scots-Irish monks. Before you say it, I'm not denying that they played a part in converting the English to Christianity or founded Lindisfarne, or even that they were a bunch of clever sods. I doubt, however, that these godly Ionian fellows suddenly turned Northumbria from some tiny chunk of land populated by hairy, unwashed, primitive ejits to a cultured and educated kingdom. Literacy often came with Christianity because it demanded the use of Latin, tbh.