The reign of Malcolm Canmore (1057-1093) brought Scotland into closer
connection with western Europe and western Christianity. The Norman
Conquest (1066) increased the tendency of the English-speaking people of
Lothian to acquiesce in the rule of a Celtic king, rather than in that of
the adventurers who followed William of Normandy. Norman operations did
not at first reach Cumberland, which Malcolm held; and, on the death of
his Norse wife, the widow of Duncan's foe, Thorfinn (she left a son,
Duncan), Malcolm allied himself with the English Royal House by marrying
Margaret, sister of Eadgar AEtheling, then engaged in the hopeless effort
to rescue northern England from the Normans. The dates are confused:
Malcolm may have won the beautiful sister of Edgar, rightful king of
England, in 1068, or at the time (1070) of his raid, said to have been of
savage ferocity, into Northumberland, and his yet more cruel reprisals
for Gospatric's harrying of Cumberland. In either case, St Margaret's
biographer, who had lived at her Court, whether or not he was her
Confessor, Turgot, represents the Saint as subduing the savagery of
Malcolm, who passed wakeful nights in weeping for his sins. A lover of
books, which Malcolm could not read, an expert in "the delicate, and
gracious, and bright works of women," Margaret brought her own gentleness
and courtesy among a rude people, built the abbey church of Dunfermline,
and presented the churches with many beautiful golden reliquaries and
fine sacramental plate.
In 1072, to avenge a raid of Malcolm (1070), the Conqueror, with an army
and a fleet, came to Abernethy on Tay, where Malcolm, in exchange for
English manors, "became his man" _for them_, and handed over his son
Duncan as a hostage for peace. The English view is that Malcolm became
William's "man for all that he had"--or for all south of Tay.
After various raidings of northern England, and after the death of the
Conqueror, Malcolm renewed, in Lothian, the treaty of Abernethy, being
secured in his twelve English manors (1091). William Rufus then took and
fortified Carlisle, seized part of Malcolm's lands in Cumberland, and
summoned him to Gloucester, where the two Kings, after all, quarrelled
and did not meet. No sooner had Malcolm returned home than he led an
army into Northumberland, where he was defeated and slain, near Alnwick
(Nov. 13, 1093). His son Edward fell with him, and his wife, St
Margaret, died in Edinburgh Castle: her body, under cloud of night, was
carried through the host of rebel Celts and buried at Dunfermline.
Margaret, a beautiful and saintly Englishwoman, had been the ruling
spirit of the reign in domestic and ecclesiastical affairs. She had
civilised the Court, in matters of costume at least; she had read books
to the devoted Malcolm, who could not read; and he had been her
interpreter in her discussions with the Celtic-speaking clergy, whose
ideas of ritual differed from her own. The famous Culdees, originally
ascetic hermits, had before this day united in groups living under
canonical rules, and, according to English observers, had ceased to be
bachelors. Masses are said to have been celebrated by them in some
"barbarous rite"; Saturday was Sabbath; on Sunday men worked. Lent
began, not on Ash Wednesday, but on the Monday following. We have no
clearer account of the Culdee peculiarities that St Margaret reformed.
The hereditary tenure of benefices by lay protectors she did not reform,
but she restored the ruined cells of Iona, and established _hospitia_ for
pilgrims. She was decidedly unpopular with her Celtic subjects, who now
made a struggle against English influences.
In the year of her death died Fothadh, the last Celtic bishop of St
Andrews, and the Celtic clergy were gradually superseded and replaced by
monks of English name, English speech, and English ideas--or rather the
ideas of western Europe. Scotland, under Margaret's influence, became
more Catholic; the celibacy of the clergy was more strictly enforced (it
had almost lapsed), but it will be observed throughout that, of all
western Europe, Scotland was least overawed by Rome. Yet for centuries
the Scottish Church was, in a peculiar degree, "the daughter of Rome,"
for not till about 1470 had she a Metropolitan, the Archbishop of St
Andrews.
On the deaths, in one year, of Malcolm, Margaret, and Fothadh, the last
Celtic bishop of St Andrews, the see for many years was vacant or merely
filled by transient bishops. York and Canterbury were at feud for their
superiority over the Scottish Church; and the other sees were not
constituted and provided with bishops till the years 1115 (Glasgow),
1150,--Argyll not having a bishop till 1200. In the absence of a
Metropolitan, episcopal elections had to be confirmed at Rome, which
would grant no Metropolitan, but forbade the Archbishop of York to claim
a superiority which would have implied, or prepared the way for, English
superiority over Scotland. Meanwhile the expenses and delays of appeals
from bishops direct to Rome did not stimulate the affection of the
Scottish "daughter of Rome." The rights of the chapters of the
Cathedrals to elect their bishops, and other appointments to
ecclesiastical offices, in course of time were transferred to the Pope,
who negotiated with the king, and thus all manner of jobbery increased,
the nobles influencing the king in favour of their own needy younger
sons, and the Pope being amenable to various secular persuasions, so that
in every way the relations of Scotland with the Holy Father were
anomalous and irksome.
Scotland was, indeed, a country predestined to much ill fortune, to
tribulations against which human foresight could erect no defence. But
the marriage of the Celtic Malcolm with the English Margaret, and the
friendly arrival of great nobles from the south, enabled Scotland to
receive the new ideas of feudal law in pacific fashion. They were not
violently forced upon the English-speaking people of Lothian.
DYNASTY OF MALCOLM.
On the death of Malcolm the contest for the Crown lay between his
brother, Donald Ban, supported by the Celts; his son Duncan by his first
wife, a Norse woman (Duncan being then a hostage at the English Court,
who was backed by William Rufus); and thirdly, Malcolm's eldest son by
Margaret, Eadmund, the favourite with the anglicised south of the
country. Donald Ban, after a brief period of power, was driven out by
Duncan (1094); Duncan was then slain by the Celts (1094). Donald was
next restored, north of Forth, Eadmund ruling in the south, but was
dispossessed and blinded by Malcolm's son Eadgar, who reigned for ten
years (1097-1107), while Eadmund died in an English cloister. Eadgar had
trouble enough on all sides, but the process of anglicising continued,
under himself, and later, under his brother, Alexander I., who ruled
north of Forth and Clyde; while the youngest brother, David, held Lothian
and Cumberland, with the title of Earl. The sister of those sons of
Malcolm, Eadgyth (Matilda), married Henry I. of England in 1100. There
seemed a chance that, north of Clyde and Forth, there would be a Celtic
kingdom; while Lothian and Cumbria would be merged in England. Alexander
was mainly engaged in fighting the Moray claimants of his crown in the
north and in planting his religious houses, notably St Andrews, with
English Augustinian canons from York. Canterbury and York contended for
ecclesiastical superiority over Scotland; after various adventures,
Robert, the prior of the Augustinians at Scone, was made Bishop of St
Andrews, being consecrated by Canterbury, in 1124; while York consecrated
David's bishop in Glasgow. Thanks to the quarrels of the sees of York
and Canterbury, the Scottish clergy managed to secure their
ecclesiastical independence from either English see; and became, finally,
the most useful combatants in the long struggle for the independence of
the nation. Rome, on the whole, backed that cause. The Scottish
Catholic churchmen, in fact, pursued the old patriotic policy of
resistance to England till the years just preceding the Reformation, when
the people leaned to the reformed doctrines, and when Scottish national
freedom was endangered more by France than by England.