Such was the condition of the Islands when Magnus Olaveson sailed with

a powerful fleet from Norway, [Sidenote: A. D. 1098.] purposing to

re-enact the part of Harald Harfager, and establish the rights of the

Norwegian crown over the western conquests of his predecessor. First

touching at the Orkneys, he seized upon the two Jarls, and dispatching

them in safe custody to Norway, carried off their sons as hostages,

placing his own son Sigurd over the Jarldom; though, as the new Jarl

was a mere child, the real authority was vested in his council. The

king then steered for the Hebrides, rapine and slaughter marking his

course, and the flames of the crops and houses which he burnt lighting

up his onward career. Some of the Islesmen escaped to the mainland

of Scotland; others fled further and sought a refuge in Ireland--for

the Norwegian fleet was far too powerful to be resisted with any hope

of success by the scattered population of the islands--whilst the

least scrupulous, or the most insignificant, escaping with life by

submitting to Magnus, swelled the number of his followers, and repaired

their own losses by relentlessly pillaging their neighbours. Among the

unsuccessful fugitives was Godfrey’s eldest son Lagman, who, before he

could escape to Ireland, was surprised amongst the northern Hebrides,

and captured off Skye, after a vain attempt to baffle his pursuers

amongst the islands. In one feature alone was the expedition of Magnus

distinguished from the incursions of his heathen ancestors--the

sanctity of Iona was respected. The king is reported to have landed on

the sacred island, and opening the door of St. Columba’s Church, to

have hastily drawn back, forbidding any of his attendants to enter,

and departing immediately after granting peace and immunity to the

inhabitants. None ever knew whether a vision had appeared to the king,

but his clemency was limited to the hallowed island of Columba, nor was

the sword of the destroyer stayed in any other quarter.

At length Magnus arrived at Man, where the inhabitants were in no

condition to resist his attack, as they had already wasted their

strength in a sanguinary contest between the northern and southern

clans near Sandwith--Ottir and MacMaras, the rival leaders, both

falling in the course of the battle. At once recognising the importance

of the island for retaining his western conquests, he ordered the

immediate construction of several wooden forts, built in the usual

manner of the age; procuring timber for this purpose from the opposite

shores of Galloway, and forcing the Galwegians to convey supplies

to Man, and to join in labouring at the entrenchments. From Man he

crossed to Anglesey, ravaging the country, exacting tribute from the

people, and killing Hugh, Earl of Shrewsbury, who attempted to oppose

his descent; whilst he could now boast at the extreme limits of his

expedition of having extended his conquests further to the southward

than any of his predecessors upon the throne of Norway.

Magnus was occupied during the ensuing winter amongst the Sudreys, or

Southern Hebrides, in securing the conquests of the preceding summer

and in arranging a treaty with the Scottish king, who is said by some

authorities to have admitted the pretensions of the Norwegian monarch

to the whole of the islands in the western seas. To such an arrangement

(if it were ever made) Edgar could have offered no valid objection,

as the majority of the islands could hardly be said, at this time,

to have ever been included amongst the dependencies of the Scottish

crown. It is further stated that the king of Norway established his

claim to his new possessions by sailing round each of them separately;

and he is even said to have been dragged across the isthmus at Loch

Tarbert in a boat, with his hand upon the tiller, in order to include

Cantyre amongst the islands--a story probably invented at a later

period to account for the severance of that district from the mainland

possessions of the Oirir Gael, and its lengthened occupation by the

Gallgael in dependence on the Norsemen and their kings.[201]

[Sidenote: A.D. 1099]

Magnus returned to Norway in the following summer, leaving Sigurd in

his new Iarldom; and he was occupied during the next three years in

warring against the Swedes, until peace was concluded, and cemented

by his marriage with a daughter of the Swedish king Inge. But his

former successes amongst the Hebrides had inflamed him with the desire

of further conquests in the same quarter, and hardly had he ratified

his alliance with Sweden before he again fitted out a fleet, to be

directed on this occasion against the Irish coasts. [Sidenote: A. D.

1102.] Murketagh O’Brien, collecting the men of Munster and Leth-Mogh,

prepared to oppose the invasion; but an arrangement was soon effected

between the kings, by which the daughter of Murketagh was given to

Sigurd Magnusson, whilst the claims of that prince upon the allegiance

of the Dublin Norsemen were probably supported by the Irish king.[202]

[Sidenote: A. D. 1103.]

Magnus passed the ensuing winter in Ireland, assisting his new allies

the Munstermen against their rivals, the northern Hy Nial, and

remaining until the following August, when he prepared to return to

Norway, and lay off the coast of Ulster awaiting a supply of cattle for

victualling his ships, promised by Murketagh O’Brien. The disastrous

defeat of the latter prince by the northern Hy Nial, early in the

same month, may have prevented or delayed the dispatch of the cattle;

and Magnus disembarked with a body of his men, both to ascertain

the fate of the scouts whom he had already sent out, and to victual

his fleet with the necessary supplies at the expense of the men of

Uladh. Whilst thus employed he gradually became entangled amongst the

neighbouring morasses; and his retreat to the ships being intercepted

by the Ulstermen, who flocked in numbers towards the spot, he fell,

with many of his followers,--through the cowardice or treachery of

one of his principal officers,--in a fruitless attempt to open a path

through the increasing numbers of the foe. On hearing the tidings of

his death, the fleet, weighing anchor, sailed immediately for Norway,

touching at the Orkneys, and taking on board Sigurd, who relinquished

his Irish princess and his island kingdom to claim a share of his

father’s dominions, when all the conquests of Magnus reverted to their

original possessors; though the Jarls of the Orkneys, and the lords of

the Western Islands long continued, whenever it suited their purpose,

to rank themselves amongst the feudatories of the Norwegian crown.[203]

With the exception of the expedition of Magnus Olaveson, the nine years

of Edgar’s reign seem to have been absolutely devoid of interest,

the total absence of event which distinguishes this period arising

probably from the personal character of the king. Of a gentle and

inoffensive nature, much resembling the Confessor, in his faults

perhaps as well as in his virtues, he provoked neither external

hostility from his ambition, nor internal revolt from his oppression;

whilst the marriage of his sister Matilda with the English Henry, must

have tended materially to strengthen his authority, by overawing the

turbulent spirits who otherwise might have presumed upon his indolent

disposition. He appears to have cultivated the alliance of the Irish

king Murketagh, who, from Edgar’s present of a camel, may have aimed

at resembling Henry of England in his partiality for rare animals.[204]

In imitation of the pious liberality of both his parents, he founded

the priory of Coldingham, granting it to the monks of Durham; thus

exhibiting his partiality for his mother’s country, and perhaps, also,

his attachment to her ancient confessor Turgot, the friend of his own

early youth, [Sidenote: A. D. 1107.] who at this time was prior of the

monastery of Durham.[205] Upon the 8th of January 1107, Edgar sunk into

an early grave, with his latest breath bequeathing the appanage of

Scottish Cumbria to his youngest brother David; not only as a testimony

of personal regard for his favourite brother, but as an acknowledgment

of the valuable assistance which he had derived, during his contest for

the crown, from the intelligence and sagacity of that able and politic

prince.[206]

_Alexander the First_ 1107–1124.

Widely different in character from his peaceful and indolent

predecessor was the next king who filled the throne of Scotland.

To a purity of life, a fondness for the devotional exercises and

austerities of the age, and a reverential demeanour towards the

clergy--qualities which he inherited from his mother--Alexander united

the high courage and warlike bearing of his father; whilst his own

restless ambition and indomitable will involved him in continual

contests throughout his reign, and earned for him the appellation

of the Fierce. In many points he resembled his sister the queen of

England; and the same lavish generosity towards strangers, with the

same somewhat ostentatious display of charity in feeding, clothing,

and washing the feet of the poor, to which “the Scottish Esther” (as

she is sometimes called) in vain endeavoured to incite her youthful

brother David, formed in Alexander a striking contrast to his haughty

and imperious bearing towards the great body of his subjects. Naturally

viewing with a jealous eye the dismemberment of his kingdom for the

advantage of his younger brother, he refused at first to carry out

the bequest of Edgar until David threatened to support his rights by

the sword; when the fear of the mail-clad auxiliaries, whom the long

residence and popularity of the Earl at his sister’s court would have

enabled him to call to his aid, at length extorted from Alexander a

tardy and reluctant recognition of his brother’s claims upon Scottish

Cumbria.[207]

The effects of the new king’s determination to enforce submission to

his will, soon became apparent in a simultaneous rising of the ancient

enemies of his family, who must have recovered much of their former

power during the anarchy and confusion resulting upon the death of

Malcolm the Third. Donald Bane was perhaps indebted to the crown for

their support, and his immediate successor was not of a disposition

to curb the increasing independence of his powerful and refractory

Mormaors; but Alexander, accustomed to the ideas of feudalism with

which he had become acquainted at the English court, was deterred by

no fear of consequences from exacting a very different species of

obedience from that which had satisfied the peaceful Edgar; and his

measures for controlling the disaffection of his subjects resulted,

before long, in a rebellion in the north.

The conspirators laid their plans with secrecy, and the men of Moray

and Mærne marched in haste to the south, in the hope of surprising

Alexander, and repeating the catastrophe of his brother Duncan. The

king was holding his court at Invergowrie--a residence to which he

always exhibited a marked partiality, as he had enjoyed the earldom of

the district from a very early period--when he received intelligence

of the near approach of his enemies, and with the prompt vigour of his

character, hesitated not an instant in confronting the danger, his bold

advance so daunting the conspirators that they turned and fled for the

mountains. Thither he followed without delay, so closely pressing the

pursuit that he swept through the northern earldoms without opposition,

until he reached the boundaries of Ross, where his opponents were

occupied in gathering their whole strength upon the opposite shores

of the Moray Firth. It was evidently their intention to dispute the

passage of the Firth, and to attack the army of the king whilst engaged

in crossing; but again anticipating their purpose, he reached the point

of passage, known as the Stockford, when it was high tide, plunged

at once into the stream, and crossing with his mounted followers in

safety, advanced upon the enemy before they could escape to mountain

or morass, and inflicted such a slaughter upon their surprised and

bewildered masses, that all disposition to revolt against his rule

was stifled in the blood of his opponents--his stern and sanguinary

vengeance upon this occasion earning for him the title of the Fierce.

The Monastery of Scone is supposed to have owed its erection to the

pious gratitude of Alexander for his speedy and triumphant success; and

in the foundation-charter of that ancient Abbey, the name of Heth, Earl

of Moray, stands prominently forward amongst the other Gaelic Mormaors,

who were assembled in dutiful attendance at the court of their lord the

Scottish king.[208]

This reign was destined to become the era of the first collision

between the ecclesiastical and secular powers in Scotland. The last

known Gaelic or Culdee bishop of St. Andrews was Fothadh, who died in

the same year as Malcolm Ceanmore,[209] the see remaining vacant during

the three succeeding reigns; but when Alexander ascended the throne,

he immediately determined upon appointing a bishop, who would be ready

to carry out the views upon religious subjects in which all the family

of Malcolm Ceanmore had been educated by their Anglo-Saxon mother.

Accordingly, in the first year of his reign he selected Turgot to fill

the vacant see of St. Andrews; but a difficulty, upon which he had

scarcely calculated, awaited him at the very outset of his undertaking.

Ever since the time when Bruno, Bishop of Toul, yielding (according

to the general opinion) to the advice of Hildebrand, Prior of Clugny,

relinquished the Papal insignia with which he had been invested by the

Emperor, and entered Italy in the garb of a pilgrim to abide by the

election of the Roman clergy, it had been the aim of the ambitious

churchman, whose master-mind is supposed to have directed the Papal

policy for a quarter of a century before he occupied the Pontifical

Chair, not only to emancipate the church from all dependence upon royal

authority, but to establish her dominion, as a temporal power, over the

whole extent of Christendom. The name of the Emperor disappeared from

Papal bulls; the titles of Apostolic Bishop and of Pope were declared

to belong to the occupant of St. Peter’s Chair alone; Archbishops

were appointed Metropolitans over other primates in spite of all

opposition; and Metropolitans were instituted without consulting their

clergy, solely by the force of Papal bulls;[210] measures calculated

to extinguish the remnants of independence in national churches, and

to place the whole Christian hierarchy at the disposal of the sole and

absolute will of the Pope. Whilst the clergy were thus to be reduced

to a dependent body, animated by the soul of one man, and carrying out

his vast schemes for temporal authority throughout the kingdoms of the

world, the secular power was attacked in more ways than one. The right

of granting kingdoms, and of releasing subjects from their allegiance,

was both claimed and exercised; Sicily was conferred upon the Norman

Guiscard; fealty was demanded from the conqueror of England;[211] Spain

and Hungary were claimed as Papal fiefs, and even the distant Russian

received his dukedom from the hands of the Bishop of Rome. It was then

also that the notorious Donation of Constantine first saw the light,

and the Papal claims to universal dominion were supported by apocryphal

documents, supposed to exist amongst the archives of Rome.[212] But

the great struggle was about the right of Investiture, or of granting

the Ring and Pastoral staff to a newly made bishop, in token of his

appointment.[213]

From the period when Christianity became the recognised religion of

the Roman empire, the head of the state participated in the nomination

of bishops, who were supposed to be chosen by their flock, approved

of and consecrated by their fellow clergy, and confirmed in their

appointment by their temporal ruler. The voice of the people had long

been silenced, on account of the disgraceful tumults and outrages so

frequently occurring at the election of bishops, when instead of a

little band of devout believers purified by the test of persecution,

the flock was composed of the licentious rabble of a city. The voice of

the clergy was intended by the policy of Hildebrand to become a mere

echo of the Lateran; and the voice of the ruler of the state to be no

more heard except in liege acquiescence. The conduct of the princes

of that era afforded ample scope to Hildebrand for appearing in the

character of a reformer of the abuses of the age, for as the elections

of bishops by the popular voice had too often degenerated into scenes

of tumult and factious violence, so in the hands of princes they had

become but too frequently mere mercantile transactions. Bishoprics

and abbacies were either openly bestowed upon the highest bidder, or

were suffered to remain vacant for years that their revenues might be

appropriated to purposes of private emolument; and too many of the

superior clergy were very ready to profit by an abuse which opened an

easy access to the high places of the church, to those whose profligacy

would otherwise have barred their advance to preferment of which they

were utterly unworthy. Had the policy of Hildebrand been directed

simply to the correction of such abuses, and to the establishment or

restoration of a discipline which he deemed essential, its motives

would have been high and holy; but it is only too evident that

earthly ambition was the ruling principle of a mind elevated above

the meaner vices of the age, and that the reforms which he advocated

served as a cloak for promoting with unscrupulous energy that temporal

aggrandizement of the Papal See, which attained its culminating point

when Innocent the Third proclaimed himself “less than God, but more

than man, God’s Christ, and Pharoah’s God.”[214]

With the influx of foreign clergy after the Conquest, the system

of Hildebrand penetrated into England, and its effects soon became

apparent, nearly every bishop rushing into a contest with the

neighbouring prelates about the rights, privileges, or possessions of

his see. Canterbury claimed jurisdiction over all the British Isles

in virtue of the Bull of Gregory the Great to Augustine; and York

asserted ecclesiastical supremacy over Scotland on account of the

signature of Wilfrith at the council of Rome, and the short episcopate

of Trumwin over the Picts. When, therefore, Alexander requested the

Archbishop of York to consecrate Turgot, he was met by a claim to the

canonical obedience of the Scottish bishops, to which he was by no

means inclined to submit. The difficulty was set aside for the time

by Henry of England, who desired the Archbishop of York to perform

the necessary ceremonies, reserving the rights of both churches for

future discussion;[215] when Anselm of Canterbury wrote to forbid the

proceeding, as he had not yet consecrated Thomas of York, who had

hitherto evaded all profession of canonical obedience.[216] But this

second difficulty was shortly removed by the death of Anselm; and soon

afterwards, the Archbishop of York, and the Bishop of St. Andrews,

[Sidenote: A. D. 1109.] were both consecrated on the same day by the

Bishop of London.[217]

Differences quickly arose between the king and Turgot, and though it

is impossible to state their nature with precision, they were probably

connected with the opposite views entertained by Alexander, and the

bishop, upon the necessity of immediately remodelling the state of

the Scottish church. At length the latter requested permission to

proceed to Rome for the purpose of laying his case before the Pope;

but Alexander steadily refused his sanction to a journey of which he

was far too sagacious not to foresee the consequences; [Sidenote: A.

D. 1115.] and Turgot only obtained license to retire to his former

residence in the monastery of Durham, where he fell ill and died in

1115.[218]

Alexander determined that the next bishop should be chosen from the

province of Canterbury, in the hope of evading the claims of York

through the opposing pretensions of the rival see; but although he

wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury to this effect soon after the

death of Turgot, several years elapsed before he finally requested that

a monk of the name of Eadmer, [Sidenote: A. D. 1120.] who had been much

in the confidence of Anselm, should be sent to undertake the office

of Bishop of St. Andrews. Released from his allegiance to the English

king, and from his canonical obedience to the see of Canterbury, the

new bishop was duly installed in his diocese;[219] but Alexander soon

found that “he had gained nothing in seeking for a bishop out of

Canterbury,” for it would appear to have been the especial object of

Eadmer to exalt the See of Canterbury by reducing the Bishop of St.

Andrews to the subordinate situation of a suffragan of the English

Metropolitan, in which he was steadily opposed by Alexander,[220] who

showed the same determination in refusing permission to Eadmer to

retire to Canterbury in the capacity of Bishop of St. Andrews, as he

had previously evinced in opposing the departure of Turgot to Rome.

The English prelate was warned by the Bishop of Glasgow that he had

to deal with a prince of inflexible resolution, and that unless he

yielded the points in dispute, or relinquished the ring and crozier,

thereby surrendering up the bishopric, he would neither be able to live

in peace within the limits of the kingdom, nor would he be permitted

to cross its boundaries. Eadmer, at length giving way, resigned his

bishopric and retired to Canterbury; consoling himself with the thought

that the investiture of the ring, which he had received from Alexander,

had lost its spiritual efficacy by passing through the hands of a

layman.[221]

[Sidenote: A. D. 1122.]

Eighteen months of retirement and the advice of his friends, who

reminded him, with justice, that it was his duty to maintain the rights

and liberties of the church and kingdom in which he had accepted

the office of bishop, rather than to find suffragans for York, or

promote the claims of Canterbury,[222] wrought an alteration in the

opinions of Eadmer; and he wrote submissively to Alexander, urging his

claims to be reinstated in the see of St. Andrews, and adding these

remarkable words, which at once place in view the real objects of the

dispute--“I entreat you not to believe that I wish to derogate in any

way from the liberty or dignity of the Scottish kingdom; since if you

still persist in retaining your opinion about your former demands in

respect of the King of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the

sacerdotal Benediction (an opinion with which I would not then concur,

from entertaining ideas which, I have since learnt, were erroneous),

you shall find that I will no longer differ from your views, nor will I

let these questions separate me from God’s service, and from your love,

that in all things I may follow out your will.”[223] But it was now

too late; [Sidenote: A. D. 1123.] Alexander was inexorable; and at the

close of the following year he appointed Robert Prior of Scone to fill

the see, which he persisted in looking upon as vacant by the voluntary

resignation of Eadmer.[224]

The contest thus maintained by Alexander against the pretensions of

the English Metropolitans extended to the diocese of Glasgow, in which

a bishopric had been re-established by Earl David shortly after the

death of Turgot. The earl had appointed his own tutor John to the see;

but the bishop-elect, terrified at his unruly flock, and shrinking

from the laborious, and perhaps dangerous, undertaking of introducing

amongst them the remodelled Roman discipline, fairly fled from the

country; though he was subsequently consecrated by Pope Paschal,

and sent back to his diocese, where he remained till the return of

Thorstein, Archbishop of York, to England.[225] By a judicious line of

policy towards the Papal court, and by the essential services which he

contrived to render to the cause of Henry in Normandy, Thorstein had

been enabled to triumph over the opposition of Canterbury, and he now

summoned the Bishop of Glasgow to acknowledge his canonical dependance

upon the see of York, [Sidenote: A. D. 1122.] suspending him from his

sacred office on his refusal.[226] John appealed to Rome, but as the

archbishop was then in high favour, his cause does not appear to have

prospered, and he removed to Jerusalem, where he remained some months

with the Patriarch, occasionally exercising his episcopal functions

until he was recalled by the Pope and sent back to his diocese;

[Sidenote: A. D. 1123.] the dispute between the two churches remaining

undecided until many years afterwards, when Glasgow was liberated from

the claims of York, and declared to be in direct dependance upon the

see of Rome.[227]

Towards the close of his reign Alexander lost his queen Sibylla, a

natural daughter of the English king, of whom little is known, and--if

the account of a contemporary writer is to be trusted--that little is

not to her advantage, for her personal deficiencies were not redeemed

by the presence of moral virtues. She died suddenly at Loch Tay, in the

course of 1122, and within two years she was followed to the grave by

her husband, [Sidenote: A. D. 1124] who expired on the 25th of April

1124, whilst still in the vigour of manhood.[228]

It would be unreasonable to estimate the little that Alexander was

enabled to accomplish by the standard of his younger brother’s success

in following out a similar line of policy. Both brothers endeavoured

to assimilate their dominions to the feudal monarchies of the age,

and to introduce amongst their clergy the revised system of the Roman

Church; but the elder had greater difficulties to contend against,

with fewer advantages in his favour. The dismemberment of his kingdom

by the separation of Scottish Cumbria must have materially diminished

his power; and had not Alexander died without an heir, the impolitic

bequest of Edgar might have been fraught with most disastrous

consequences to Scotland. The principality of David must inevitably, in

course of time, have become dependant upon one of the greater kingdoms

by which it was surrounded; it could only have existed by skilfully

promoting disunion between its more powerful neighbours; and it is

more than probable that it would have eventually been annexed to the

greater kingdom, and been held by his descendants as a fief of the

English crown. The marked separation existing between the dominions of

the two brothers during the lifetime of the elder, is best ascertained

by a reference to the charters of the period. The dignitaries at the

court of Alexander were exclusively, Gaelic Mormaors--Earls of Moray,

Fife, Atholl, and Strathearn, and other native magnates of similar

origin--the grandsons of the Northumbrian Cospatric, ancestor of the

Earls of March and Dunbar; Edward the Constable, the son of Siward

Beorn--in short, the nobility of ancient _Alban_ and the Lothians;

whilst around Earl David gathered Moreville and Somerville, Lindsay and

Umphraville, Bruce and Fitz-Alan, Norman names destined to surround the

throne of his descendants, two of them to become royal, and all to shed

a lustre upon the feudal chivalry of Scotland.[229]

Alexander may have attempted to enforce, by resolute will, the changes

and alterations which were only carried out by David through an union

of consummate tact and policy; and it may have been to this part of

the king’s conduct that Ailred alludes when he describes him as

“endeavouring to compass things beyond his power;” for he was evidently

of a disposition to frame his policy, rather according to the dictates

of his own will, than to his ability to carry it out. He achieved

enough, however, to entitle him to be remembered as the first king

who essayed to place Scotland on a footing with the feudal states of

Western Europe; for Edgar left his kingdom much as he found it--his

very bequest of Cumbria, as an absolute property, was totally at

variance with the policy of either Saxon or Norman--and the innovations

of Margaret were confined to the court and the clergy.[230] The laws

and customs of the Gaelic people remained undisturbed in her days, and

her ideas of ecclesiastical reform were widely different from those of

Hildebrand, of whose system the church of her native country, at the

time she quitted it, was ignorant.

But the grant of the _Cursus Apri_ made by Alexander to St.

Andrews--a grant which must be regarded, not so much in the light

of an original donation, as of a restoration to the church of

the lands which had been alienated to the royal family in their

capacity of _Cowarbs_, or hereditary abbots of the old monastic

establishment--was, unquestionably, the earliest step towards

remodelling the Scottish church, though the king’s intentions were

frustrated by his dissensions with Turgot and Eadmer, and he died

before the consecration of Robert, Prior of Scone, the last bishop whom

he appointed. He was the first king also to introduce beyond the Forth

the custom of confirming grants by charter, in place of the outward

forms and ceremonies by which, in an earlier state of society, such

gifts were invariably accompanied; though upon the occasion of his

restitution of the _Cursus Apri_ all the ancient formalities were

observed. The great feudal office of Constable is also first traceable

in this reign, and to the same king may be attributed the earliest

introduction of the sheriffdom--for the _Vicecomes_ is to be met

with in some of his charters. Alexander may therefore be said to have

laid the first stone of the social edifice which David raised from the

foundation; though many a year was fated to elapse, and more than one

generation was destined to pass away, before the system inaugurated by

the sons of Malcolm Ceanmore, was effectually established throughout

the whole extent of their dominions.

CHAPTER VIII.

_David the First_ 1124–1153.

The death of Alexander, without heirs, reunited to the Scottish

kingdom the appanage of Cumbria, which had been so unwisely severed

from it by Edgar; and the last surviving son of Malcolm and Margaret,

the rightful heir by ancient Gaelic custom as well as by feudal law,

ascended the throne without dispute. An intimate connection with the

Court of England for upwards of a quarter of a century, had effectually

“rubbed off the Scottish rust” from David,--to use the words of the

contemporary Malmesbury,--converting him into a feudal baron; and many

years before he was called upon to fill the throne, he had gathered

around him in his Cumbrian principality a body of knights and barons,

from whom sprung the older Norman chivalry of Scotland. During his

residence in the south he married Matilda, the widow of Simon de St.

Liz and heiress of Earl Waltheof of Northumberland, a portion of

whose vast estates had been conferred upon each of her husbands in

succession--St. Liz having been created Earl of Northampton, whilst

the Honour of Huntingdon was granted to the Scottish prince; but the

great earldom of Northumberland was retained in the Crown, for after

the forfeiture of Robert de Mowbray, the English kings were jealous of

intrusting that important province out of their own hands.[231] The

sole offspring of the second marriage of Matilda was an only son, to

whom his parents gave the name of Henry, born about ten years before

the accession of his father to the throne of Scotland.

David was the first of his family who united the character of an

English baron to that of a Scottish king; and in the former capacity he

was soon called upon to exercise the political sagacity through which

he had reaped the reward of the appanage of Cumbria, which he held

during the lifetime of his brother Alexander. Upon the death of Henry

the Fifth of Germany, the English king, despairing of any male heir

from his second marriage, determined upon adopting as his successor

his daughter Alicia, who fifteen years before had been betrothed,

whilst a mere child, to the deceased Emperor. The princess, it is said,

was reluctant to leave a country in which she had resided since her

infancy, and where she still enjoyed vast possessions with the title

of Empress; but she had become a necessary instrument for furthering

the views of her father, and he turned a deaf ear to the entreaties

of the princes of Lombardy and Lorraine, whose desire to retain their

Empress interfered with the tenor of his policy. The assistance of the

Scottish king was early sought to join in securing the succession to

his sister’s child, and he passed a whole year in England in concerting

measures for this purpose. In the great council of London, to which

every baron of note was summoned, David was the first to swear fealty

to his niece,--who now, like her mother, had assumed the popular name

of Matilda--as heiress of the kingdom in which he held the Honour

of Huntingdon; and it was by his advice that the unfortunate Robert

Curtois was removed from the custody of the bishop of Salisbury,

and placed in Bristol Castle under the safer charge of the Earl of

Gloucester: [Sidenote: A. D. 1226.] for the fears of Henry were at this

time directed against Robert and his son William, nor did he harbour

any suspicion of his frank and jovial nephew, Stephen of Boulogne, upon

whom he had heaped honours and dignities in return for his gallant

services in war.[232]

The feudal obligations of his English fief, and his anxiety to promote

the interests of the future queen, led to the frequent and prolonged

absence of David from his own kingdom at this period of his reign,

offering many favourable opportunities for the inveterate enemies of

his family to enter once more upon a struggle for the superiority.

Heth the contemporary, and possibly the opponent of Alexander, was

no longer living, but his hereditary animosity survived in his sons

Angus and Malcolm, who availed themselves of one occasion when David

was detained in England, [Sidenote: A. D. 1130.] about six years after

his accession, to rise in arms and assert those claims upon the crown

of Scotland which they inherited through their mother, the daughter

of Lulach.[233] In the absence of the king, the leader of the royal

forces was the Constable, and the safety of the kingdom now depended

upon Edward, the first historical personage upon whom the dignity

is known to have been conferred, and the son of that Siward Beorn

who accompanied the Atheling into Scotland. Edward in this crisis

proved himself to be worthy of the trust, and meeting the Moraymen at

the entrance of one of the passes into the Lowlands of Forfarshire,

overthrew them with a loss of four thousand men at Stickathrow, not far

from the northern Esk--Angus the Earl, or as the Irish annalists call

him, the king of Moray, being left amongst the dead, though Malcolm the

other brother, escaping from the field, prolonged the struggle amidst

the recesses of the remoter Highlands, and the contest was not brought

to a conclusion until four years later.[234] [Sidenote: A. D. 1134.]

The prestige of the Moray Mormaors was still very great throughout

the northern and north-western Highlands, and as many of the national

party, even though partisans of the reigning family, viewed with

jealousy the increasing influence of “foreigners,” and the introduction

of laws and customs against which they entertained a rooted antipathy,

as long as a descendant of Kenneth Mac Duff remained at large, claiming

to be the representative of one of their ancient line of kings, his

standard became a dangerous rallying point both for open enemies and

disaffected friends. David, seriously alarmed, besought the assistance

of the barons of Yorkshire and Northumberland, who answering to his

call with alacrity, the flower of the northern counties speedily

assembled at Carlisle under the banner of Walter Espec. The numbers

and equipment of these Anglo-Norman auxiliaries, with the rumour of a

vast fleet with which the Scottish king intended to prosecute the war

to extremity amongst the island fastnesses of the western chieftains,

filled the supporters of Malcolm with such dismay, that, in the hope

of atoning for their disaffection towards the king by treachery to

his unfortunate rival, Mac Heth was surprised by a body of his own

partisans, and delivered into the hands of David. He was at once

dispatched as a prisoner to the castle of Roxburgh, and David, in the

full determination of eradicating every trace of his enemies from the

district in which they had so long ruled supreme, declared the whole

earldom of Moray forfeited to the Crown, regranting great portions

of it to knights of foreign extraction, or to native Scots upon

whose fidelity he could depend. The confiscation of their hereditary

patrimony struck a death blow at the power of the great Moray family,

and more than one Scottish name of note dates its first rise from the

ruin of the senior branch of that ancient and far descended race.[235]

Four more years had barely passed away before David was destined to

meet, in hostile array, the very men upon whose assistance he had

relied against his formidable adversary Malcolm Mac Heth. Upon the 1st

of December 1135, died Henry the First of England, [Sidenote: A. D.

1135.] bequeathing with his latest breath the whole of his dominions

to his daughter the Empress Queen. His spirit had hardly passed away

before Stephen, arriving suddenly in England, gained over to his cause

Roger, Bishop of Salisbury, the most favoured and confidential friend

of Henry, and William du Pont de l’Arche, who was joint keeper, with

the Bishop, of the immense wealth accumulated in the coffers of the

late king; and as the possession of the royal treasure in those days

was the surest means of opening a path to the throne, before the year

was ended Stephen was crowned king of England without opposition. The

Earl of Gloucester, whose unsuccessful contest for precedency with the

new king, when they both swore fealty to Matilda, had strengthened his

devotion to the cause of the latter, was still in Normandy with his

sister; but of all the other barons and prelates who pledged their

faith to support the Empress Queen in her claim upon her father’s

throne, none proved mindful of his oath save her uncle the king of

Scotland.

No sooner had intelligence of the death of Henry reached Scotland, than

aware of the necessity for promptitude, David led an army across the

frontier, and at the very moment of Stephen’s coronation in London,

the Scottish king was receiving the allegiance of the northern barons

in behalf of his royal niece. Carlisle and Norham, Werk, Alnwick, and

Newcastle, in short all the border fortresses beyond the Tyne, with

the exception of Bamborough, opened their gates at his appearance,

and he had advanced far into the territory of St. Cuthbert, upon his

route to Durham, when he was anticipated by the approach of a numerous

army under Stephen. [Sidenote: A.D. 1136.] No time could have been

lost by that prince in collecting his forces, as upon the 5th of

February, little more than six weeks after his coronation, he marched

into Durham. David retired upon Newcastle, and the two kings remained

in a hostile attitude for another fortnight before a conference was

arranged, at which conditions of peace were finally agreed upon. The

Scottish king, still true to his oath, refused to hold any fiefs of

Stephen; but Carlisle and Doncaster were conferred upon his son Henry,

in addition to the Honour of Huntingdon, with a promise that the claims

of the prince upon Northumberland, in right of his maternal ancestry,

should be taken into consideration if the English king ever regranted

that earldom. Peace was concluded upon these terms; all the castles

surrendered to David were restored with the exception of Carlisle;

and Henry, after performing homage at York for his English fiefs,

accompanied Stephen upon his return to the south.[236]

Advancing years, and a disposition naturally pliant and easy, are the

reasons assigned by a contemporary historian for the acquiescence of

David in the usurpation of Stephen; but however willing he might have

been to support the cause of his niece Matilda, he must naturally have

shrunk from sustaining the whole weight of a contest, in which he

alone was in arms in her behalf. Nor must it be forgotten, that the

wife of Stephen was equally a daughter of one of David’s sisters; and

however the approach of age may have increased his aversion to war,

it had hardly yet diminished his characteristic sagacity, as he was

undoubtedly a gainer by the conditions of the peace.[237]

The event, as it proved, frustrated the intentions of both parties.

Stephen, when he held his court in London at Easter, assigned the

place of honour, upon his right hand, to his guest the Scottish

prince; an arrangement which so excited the jealousy of some of the

English barons, more especially of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and

of Ranulf Earl of Chester--the latter of whom had claims upon Carlisle

and Cumberland--that, after openly expressing their discontent in the

presence of Henry, they left the court in a body. Incensed at this

unprovoked insult to his son, David recalled him from England; and

though Henry was repeatedly summoned by Stephen to perform his feudal

obligations, he was not permitted by his father to return to the

south.[238]

[Sidenote: A. D. 1137.]

The absence of Stephen in Normandy, in the following year, afforded

David a favourable opportunity of avenging the indignity offered to his

son, and of forwarding, at the same time, the interests of his niece

Matilda. Already an army was collected to cross the Borders, and the

barons of the north of England were assembled at Newcastle to repel

the invasion, when Thorstein, the aged archbishop of York, by his

intercession with both parties, obtained a promise from the Scottish

king to abstain from hostilities until Advent, by which time it was

expected that Stephen would have returned from the Continent. Shortly

before Christmas, therefore, a Scottish embassy arrived at the English

court, charged to declare the truce at an end unless Prince Henry was

placed in immediate possession of Northumberland; and as this abrupt

demand for the earldom was all but tantamount to a declaration of war,

Stephen, who had just concluded a peace for two years with Geoffrey

of Anjou, and was consequently in a position to concentrate all his

energies upon establishing his power at home, at once declined to

listen to the proposal; and his refusal to comply with the conditions

of David led to an immediate rupture with Scotland.[239]

[Sidenote: A. D. 1138.]

Upon the 10th of January 1138 the advance guard of the Scottish army,

under the command of William Fitz-Duncan the king’s nephew, crossed the

Borders, and attempted to surprise Werk Castle before daylight; but,

failing in their object, they wasted the surrounding country until the

arrival of the main body under David and his son Henry, when a regular

siege was commenced with all the engineering appliances of the age.

The castle was the property of Walter Espec, and so gallantly was it

defended by his nephew, Jordan de Bussy, that, before long, the king,

converting the siege into a blockade, marched with the remainder of

his army to effect a junction with William Fitz-Duncan, whom he had

already dispatched to lay waste the remainder of Northumberland; and

once more the northern counties endured a repetition of the scenes

of horror enacted, nearly seventy years before, in the early days

of the Conqueror. David, who had been long preparing for war, had

gathered his army from every quarter of his dominions; and around

the royal standard, the ancient Dragon of Wessex, might be seen the

representatives of nearly every race contributing to form the varied

ancestry of the modern Scottish people. The Norman knight and the Low

Country “Reiter,” the sturdy Angle and the fiery Scot, marched side

by side with the men of Northumberland and Cumberland, of Lothian and

of Teviotdale; whilst the mixed population of the distant islands,

Norwegians from the Orkneys, and the wild Picts of Galloway, flocked

in crowds to the banner of their king, to revel in the plunder of the

south.[240] The Galwegians, an unruly host of tributary allies rather

than of subjects, claimed to march in the van, and a piteous account

of their ravages, and enormities, has been left on record by the

contemporary chroniclers of Hexham. It was only by a great exertion of

authority, that William Fitz-Duncan was enabled to save that priory

from the destruction with which it was menaced by a body of exasperated

clansmen, whose chieftain had fallen in an affray with some retainers

of the monastery; and to prevent the possibility of such a sacrilege,

David quartered a body of Scots within its walls, whilst he granted

to the community his own share of the plunder, in reparation for the

injuries they had sustained from his undisciplined and semi-barbarous

followers.

The approach of Stephen’s army, early in February, warned the Scottish

leaders that it was time to collect their scattered forces either for

battle or retreat; but David, who was in secret correspondence with

many of Stephen’s barons, entertained the hope of finishing the war

by a stratagem, without the hazard of a contest. All of the wretched

country-people who had escaped the slaughter--and they were principally

women--were either bartered for cattle on the spot, or driven northward

with the prospect of a hopeless captivity; whilst the main body of

the Scottish army withdrew to a small morass in the neighbourhood of

Roxburgh, inaccessible except to the few who possessed an intimate

knowledge of the locality. The burghers of the town were instructed to

throw open their gates, and admit the English army without resistance;

as it was David’s intention to enter with his followers in the dead

of night, and surprise Stephen in his fancied security, calculating,

that by the capture of the English king and his principal adherents,

the war would be brought to a successful conclusion; the accession of

the empress secured; and his own claims upon Northumberland readily

acknowledged by his grateful niece.

But though in the multitude of counsellors there may be wisdom, in the

multitude of confidants there is little chance of secrecy; and through

some unknown channel Stephen became aware of his enemy’s intentions.

Avoiding Roxburgh, he retaliated upon other Scottish districts the

injuries which had been inflicted on the north of England; but as

he began to entertain suspicions of the fidelity of certain barons,

and his army was weakened, as well by the want of provisions as by

the religious scruples--either real or pretended--of several of his

followers who objected to bearing arms in Lent, he soon retraced his

steps towards the south, first possessing himself of Bamborough on his

passage through Northumberland, and placing in it a garrison on which

he could depend. The castle belonged to Eustace Fitz-John, a powerful

baron, of whose fidelity the king was so mistrustful, that, contrary

to all feudal precedent, he caused his person to be seized whilst in

actual attendance at court upon a summons of military service; and

Eustace was not restored to liberty until he yielded up to Stephen

the key-stone of his power in the north, long famous as the ancient

residence of the royal race of Ida, and the strongest fortress in

Northumberland.[241]

The conclusion of the Easter festival set at liberty the scrupulous

chivalry of the age, to enter with renewed zest upon the pursuits of

war; and David was fast approaching Durham, when a mutiny amongst

the unruly Galwegians threatened both the life of the king, and the

safety of his army. A report, judiciously fabricated for the occasion,

that the enemy was approaching, restored order for the moment; the

mutineers flew to arms to repel the foe, and David at once leading

them to Norham, employed them, with the rest of his army, in besieging

the castle. The garrison surrendered after a short resistance, and it

affords a curious instance of the impregnability of the fortresses of

that age against the limited means of offence available to besieging

armies, that it was accounted a disgraceful occurrence when nine

men-at-arms, all of whom were inexperienced, and the majority suffering

from wounds, hopeless of relief from their lord the Bishop of Durham,

yielded a well victualled castle to the whole force of Scotland! An

offer was made to restore Norham to the bishop, if he would consent to

hold it as a fief from the Scottish king; but as the proposed terms

were declined, it was immediately reduced to ashes.

The success at Norham was counterbalanced by a sally from Werk, in

which the indefatigable castellan of that fortress overthrew a body of

knights and men-at-arms, capturing several of the party, whom he put

to ransom, and carrying off a convoy of provisions intended for the

army of the Scots, which by this daring feat he once more drew around

his walls. Again the siege of Werk was converted into a blockade when

David marched to join the force, collected by the exasperated Eustace

Fitz-John, in an attempt to recover Bamborough; but though the burghers

of that place were driven, with considerable loss, from an outwork

in front of the castle, no permanent impression was made upon the

fortress itself, and it was useless to attempt a blockade without the

assistance, and co-operation, of a fleet.

Whilst the king was engaged before the castles of Norham and Werk,

the intractable division under William Fitz-Duncan, of little use in

a regular siege, had been dispatched to the more congenial occupation

of harrying Craven, and the adjoining districts of the shires of York

and Lancaster. The inhabitants assembled to resist the invaders, and

upon the 10th of June took post in four divisions at Clitheroe on the

Ribble; but their courage failing at the sight of the enemy, they broke

and fled at the first onset. As this was the first occasion upon which

the hostile parties had met in arms in the open field, the result

increased the audacity of the victors, who, spreading over the face

of the country, plundered and wasted it on every side, surpassing if

possible their former excesses; but laying the foundation of future

retribution in the very extent to which they carried their ravages.

Hitherto the barons of Yorkshire had looked upon the distant warfare

with lukewarm indifference, each mistrusting his neighbour, and hardly

knowing whether to oppose the Scots, as became the trusty partizans

of King Stephen, or to support them as loyal subjects of the Empress

Queen, whose standard was already raised by Robert of Gloucester, and

her other friends, in the south and west. But when the war was now fast

approaching their own neighbourhood, when their own lands were about

to be plundered and their own vassals to be put to the sword, it was

time to shake off their apathy, and out of the very excesses of the

foe arose their strongest bond of union. Archbishop Thorstein preached

a holy war; and through every parish, priests bore the relics of the

saints, with all the imposing paraphernalia of the Roman Catholic

religion, proclaiming it to be the duty of every Christian man to

rise in defence of the church against barbarians, hateful alike to

God and man. Ilbert de Lacy and Robert de Bruce, the youthful William

Albemarle and the aged Walter de Ghent, summoned their followers to

meet at Thirsk; and even Robert de Mowbray, then a mere child, appeared

in armour at the head of his vassals to animate the courage of the

numerous retainers of his house. To the same place of meeting hurried

William Percy and William Fossard, Richard de Courcy and Robert d’

Estoteville; the knights of Nottinghamshire under William Peveril, and

the chivalry of Derbyshire under Robert Ferrers: whilst Stephen, too

much occupied to leave the south of England, dispatched a chosen body

of knights, under Bernard de Balliol, to join the flower of the midland

and northern chivalry in repelling the inroads of the Scottish foe.

Walter Espec, a baron of vast possessions, whose age and experience,

united to a gigantic stature and a ready eloquence, marked him out as

a leader fit to inspire confidence and exact obedience, reminded the

confederate nobles of the glories of their ancestry, and pointed out

to their retainers that the enemy was little better than an unarmed

mob.[242] Ralph, the titular bishop of the Orkneys, was commissioned,

in the place of the aged and infirm Thorstein, to grant a general

absolution to the army, which, strengthened by the consolations of the

ministers of religion, and encouraged by the exhortations of military

experience, viewed the impending contest in the light of a holy war,

and prepared with alacrity for battle.

After waiting in the neighbourhood of Bamborough until the arrival of

some expected reinforcements from Carlisle, Cumberland, and Galloway,

David moved southward to effect a junction with William Fitz-Duncan.

Their forces, when united, amounted to twenty-six thousand men,

and as most of the historians of the period represent this army as

“innumerable,” it affords some clue for estimating what was in those

days looked upon as a countless host. David was well aware of the

character of the army against which he was advancing, and with the

concurrence of his most experienced officers, he determined upon

opposing his own knights and men-at-arms to the mailed chivalry of

England; rightly calculating, that, if he once broke through the rival

phalanx, his light armed irregulars, of little real use in the first

onset, would easily complete the victory. But the native warriors of

Alban, elated with the victory at Clitheroe, and vainly imagining

that the flower of England’s knights and men-at-arms would fly before

their impetuous charge, like the undisciplined peasantry and townsmen

of the district, loudly exclaimed against such tactics. “Of what use

were their breastplates and their helmets at Clitheroe?” exclaimed

the Scots. “Why trust you to these Normans?” added Malise Earl of

Strathearn, when David still remained unmoved; “unprotected as I am,

none shall be more forward in the fight.” “A great boast,” retorted

Alan Percy, “which for your life you cannot make good.” Alarmed at the

probable consequences of dissension at such a moment, David reluctantly

yielded the point in dispute, and the post of honour in the approaching

conflict was assigned to the men of Galloway.

One course yet held out a fair hope of success--a surprise--and David

determined to make the attempt.[243] He ranged his army in four

divisions, the Galwegians marching in the van, with all who claimed

to share with them the honour of the first attack. The contingent

from Cumberland and Teviotdale composed the second division, with

the knights, archers, and men-at-arms under Prince Henry and Eustace

Fitz-John, by whom the battle ought to have been commenced. Then

followed the men of the Lothians, Lennox[244] and the Isles; whilst the

king in person brought up the rear with the Scots and Moraymen, and

his own body-guard of English and Norman knights.

The morning of Monday the 22d of August favoured the design of the

Scots. A dense fog hung over the country, and under cover of the mist

the Scottish host rapidly advanced in unwonted order; for the commands

of David were rigorous in prohibiting his men from firing the villages

along their route, according to their usual practice. They had reached

the Tees, and were already crossing, when they were accidentally

discovered by an esquire, who galloped back to Thirsk, to warn the

confederate barons of the rapid approach of the hostile army.[245]

In the hope of yet averting the contest, perhaps also to gain time,

Robert de Bruce and Bernard de Balliol,--names singularly associated

as the emissaries of an English army to a Scottish king,--rode forward

to hazard a last appeal, pledging themselves, in the joint name of the

confederates, to obtain for Prince Henry the grant of Northumberland.

Bruce, in particular, warned the king of the danger he was about to

incur, in entering into a contest with the very men upon whose aid he

most relied, for curbing the refractory Galwegians, or for repressing

his own disaffected subjects; whilst, with tears in his eyes, he

besought him to be mindful of his ancient friendship, and by accepting

the conditions of peace, to put a stop to the frightful enormities of

his followers. The easy and kindly nature of David was fast yielding

to the entreaties of Bruce, who had been his friend from childhood,

when William Fitz-Duncan, a man of high spirit and the chief promoter

of the war, angrily interposed, and reproaching the latter with a

breach of fealty to his lord, prevailed upon his uncle to break off

the conference; on which the two barons, formally renouncing their

allegiance to the Scottish king, turned their horses heads and rode

back to share the fortunes of the confederate army.

The delay was fatal to the attempted surprise; for it gave time to the

army of the barons to clear the town of Northallerton, and to take

up a favourable position, two miles further to the northward, upon

Cutton Moor. A ship’s mast, bearing upon its summit the consecrated

host, and surrounded by the banners of St. Peter of York, St. John of

Beverley, and St. Wilfred of Ripon, was elevated upon a waggon, and

marked the centre of the army, around which were grouped dismounted

knights and men-at-arms; whilst from the immediate neighbourhood of the

sacred standard, Bishop Ralph and his priests dispensed blessings, and

absolution, throughout the host. The front of the position was covered

by a line of archers, with a body of men-at-arms in support; all the

horses were then removed to the rear under the charge of a mounted

guard; and the remainder of the English forces--townsmen, apparently,

and the array of the county--were ranged around the real strength of

the army in the centre.[246]

Levelling their spears, long the national weapon of the Scottish

infantry, and with wild cries of Albanach! Albanach! the ancient

_slogan_ of the warriors of the north, the first division of the

assailants rushed to the charge; and such was the impetuosity of their

onset, that the front ranks of the English reeled beneath the shock,

and were borne back in confusion upon the dismounted knights around the

standard. But then came to pass all that David had anticipated, and the

unprotected lines of Scottish spearmen recoiled, and were dashed back

like breakers from off a reef, before the steady discipline of that

animated wall of iron. Broken, but not discouraged, they cast aside

their fractured and useless lances, and, with drawn swords, once more

flung themselves, with reckless valour, upon the foe: but the front

ranks of the English had now rallied, and, from behind their dismounted

comrades, the archers poured in a storm of arrows, those fatal Norman

weapons which won so many a field for England in the days of old.

Unsheltered from the shower of missiles by any defensive armour, rank

after rank of the assailants went down before the English bowmen,

the best and bravest of their leaders falling in fruitless efforts

to penetrate the fatal line; and already the attack was slackening,

when Prince Henry brought his mounted division into the battle, and

the Norman chivalry of Scotland, with the disciplined retainers of

Eustace Fitz-John, bore down with levelled lances to the charge. His

success was complete. That part of the English army which sustained

the shock, was ridden down and swept from the field; and the prince,

elated with his easy triumph, and imagining that the whole Scottish

army was pressing on in support, wheeled round in the rear of the

English position to complete a victory not yet achieved, and charging

the mounted guard left to protect the horses, broke and pursued them

for many miles. His error was fatal; for the critical moment of the

day had arrived, and the English were rapidly giving way, none holding

their ground except the veteran phalanx in the centre, when suddenly

a gory head was raised aloft, and the voice of one who was never

subsequently recognized, loudly proclaimed that the king of Scotland

was slain. More than once has such a cry turned the fortune of the day

against a brave, but undisciplined, army. Upon the field of Assingdon

it won the realm of England for Canute; at Hastings it all but wrested

the same prize from the Norman William, though he led the flower of

Europe to the field; and it decided the day upon Cutton Moor in favour

of the confederate army. No longer pressed by the division of Prince

Henry, the English rallied at the cry; and the Galwegians, who for

two hours had prolonged their attack with desperate and unflinching

courage, until the last of their chieftains fell beneath an English

arrow, panic stricken at their loss, turned and fled the field; whilst

the confederates, promptly taking advantage of the confusion, advanced

at once to the charge. The Saxons of the Lothians broke at the first

onset; and though David, leaping from his horse, and placing himself at

the head of the reserve, bravely endeavoured to stem the advance of the

enemy, the Scots wavered and were carried away in the rout; whilst the

king, maddened at the thought of defeat, refused to fly until he was

forced off the field by his own body-guard. High above his head still

fluttered the ancient Dragon of Wessex, contradicting the report of

his death, and numbers who had been swept away in the first confusion

of the flight, disengaging themselves from the crowd of fugitives,

and rallying around the banner of their king, presented a formidable

front to the advancing foe. The foremost of the pursuers were either

cut down or captured, and the rest soon gave up following the Scottish

army, which, without further molestation, retreated in perfect order to

Carlisle.[247]

The losses of the Scots upon this memorable occasion were estimated at

ten thousand men, a number probably exaggerated, together with all the

plunder they had accumulated, the place where it was captured being

long remembered as Baggage Moor. More perished in the flight than in

the battle--and such was generally the case--for not only were the

fugitives massacred by the exasperated peasantry, but whenever they

came into contact with each other, Angles, Scots, and Picts of Galloway

fought with all the animosity of mutual hatred. The victors, deprived

of their horses by Prince Henry’s charge, could make no attempt at

following up their success: so, separating with mutual congratulations,

they dispatched intelligence of their victory to Stephen, who, in

acknowledgment of their important services, raised two of their

number to the dignity of earls; Robert Ferrers obtaining the Earldom

of Derbyshire, whilst that of Yorkshire was conferred upon William

Albemarle.

The battle of Northallerton, long famous under the name of the battle

of the Standard, adds but another to the many bitter proofs, that an

army without discipline is simply a disorderly mob. The discordant

elements of the Scottish nation were naturally averse to coalesce;

whilst the custom of “Scottish service,” which bound every man to

attend “the hosting across the frontier,”[248] swelled the ranks of

the army with a body of men, fierce and warlike indeed, and endued

with that self-willed and reckless courage which has on more than

one occasion been their bane, but often indifferently armed, and as

undisciplined as they were unruly. David, brought up amongst the Norman

chivalry of the court of England, was well aware of the military

character both of his own followers and of his opponents, and framed

his plan of attack accordingly, the result of Prince Henry’s charge

fully justifying his original decision; and when the fear of a mutiny

at a most critical moment forced him to yield his better judgment, he

rightly determined upon the sole course left open--a surprise. But in

allowing Bruce and Balliol to gain time by parlying, thus confirming

the character ascribed to him by Malmesbury, he committed a serious

and fatal error, sacrificing every advantage he had already obtained,

and enabling the confederates to clear the town of Northallerton,

and receive the shock of his disorderly host in a favourable and

well-chosen position, that ensured victory to the defending army.

Upon the third day after the arrival of the Scottish army at Carlisle,

the anxiety of the king about his son was set at rest by the safe

arrival of the prince. Henry, upon his return from his second charge,

instead of meeting, as he had expected, with a victorious army, beheld

the royal standard slowly retiring in the distance, and at once

comprehending the catastrophe, arranged with his companions to mingle

with the pursuers and endeavour if possible to rejoin the king. In

order to prevent recognition, they agreed to disperse in different

directions, first divesting themselves of everything that could betray

their real character; so that out of two hundred knights originally in

attendance upon the prince, only nineteen entered Carlisle in armour.

Other fugitives reached the same place by degrees, and the king busied

himself in restoring discipline, and in punishing with severity all

whom he deemed guilty of misconduct or defection. Heavy fines were

levied upon the delinquents, who were also bound by oaths and hostages

never again to desert the royal person in battle, and when order was in

some measure restored, David once more led his army to the investment

of Werk.[249]

He was still prosecuting the siege when he was informed of the approach

of the Papal legate Alberic Bishop of Ostia, and hastened to meet him

at Carlisle, with the clergy and nobility of his dominions. [Sidenote:

A. D. 1130.] Eight years previously, upon the death of Honorius the

Second, sixteen cardinals had declared for Innocent the Second, whilst

the majority elected Peter of Leon under the name of Anacletus,

who through the wealth of his father, a converted Jew, was enabled

successfully to establish himself in Rome. Two princes alone adhered to

the antipope, his own brother-in-law Roger Count of Sicily, who by this

course converted his coronet into a crown, and David of Scotland, the

reasons for whose conduct are not so easily apparent. Upon the death

of Anacletus, which occurred in the beginning of this year, an attempt

to continue the schism by electing another rival to Innocent, who took

the name of Victor the Fourth, was rendered abortive by the speedy

resignation of the ephemeral pope; Innocent returned without opposition

to Rome, and it was principally to notify the extinction of the schism,

that Alberic was dispatched as legate to the kings of England and

Scotland.

[Sidenote: A. D. 1138.]

He arrived at Carlisle four days before Michaelmas, bringing with him

the Scottish chancellor William Comyn, whom he had ransomed from his

captors at Northallerton, and everything was satisfactorily arranged

during the three following days. Eardulf was admitted to the see of

Carlisle, and John was recalled to Glasgow from the monastery of

Tiron, in which that determined absentee had taken refuge from the

troublesome duties of his diocese;[250] whilst reparation was made by

David, even before it was demanded, for the injuries sustained by the

Priory of Hexham from an unauthorised foray of a party of the Scottish

army,[251] and the wildest tribes promised to set their captives at

liberty, and to abstain henceforth from indiscriminate slaughter. Still

the benevolent Alberic was oppressed with anxiety, for during his

progress through the north he had been an eyewitness of the frightful

consequences of the ravages of the hostile armies. All Northumberland

was a desert, no attempt was made at cultivation, nor was an inhabitant

to be met with along the route which he had traversed. The barons

with their retainers were shut up in their castles, the peasantry and

their families crowded the monasteries, or lurked in the wildest and

most inaccessible retreats. The good bishop, dreading a recurrence of

such horrors, and feeling that his sacred office imposed more than

the mere formal duties of his legateship, besought the king to accept

of his mediation with Stephen, and thus to put an end to the miseries

of the war. Long was David inexorable, until the representative of

the haughtiest prelate of Christendom, kneeling before the king of

Scotland as a humble suppliant for “peace upon earth,” prevailed so

far that a truce was arranged to last until St. Martin’s day, from

the benefit of which the garrison of Werk was alone to be excepted;

and Alberic, departing from Carlisle upon Michaelmas day, retraced

his steps towards the court of Stephen, in the true character of a

Christian bishop, as the bearer of a message of peace.[252]

The castle of Werk still held out, though David, having ascertained

that its defenders were short of provisions, continued to press the

siege with unabated rigour. But Jordan de Bussy was indomitable. The

horses of the garrison yet survived, and he was determined that they

should be sacrificed one by one to enable their masters to continue

their stubborn resistance, proposing, when this last resource failed,

to make a desperate sally in the all but hopeless attempt to cut his

way through the besieging army. From this last alternative he was

saved, for when his stock of provisions was reduced to two horses, one

alive and the other _in salt_, the abbot of Rievaulx arrived,

with the commands of Walter Espec to surrender the castle; and David,

in a spirit of knightly courtesy that does him credit, provided this

gallant little garrison, twenty-four in number, with fresh horses,

and permitted them to depart with their arms, and all the honours of

war.[253]

Much about the same time arrangements were concluded for the settlement

of a firm and lasting peace between the two kings. Alberic had not

been unmindful of his mission of peace, and, after the conclusion

of the council of London, he pressed upon Stephen the necessity

of putting a stop to the horrors of the northern war. At first the

English king showed as decided an aversion to conclude a peace as his

antagonist, and his exasperation was encouraged by a numerous party

amongst his barons, who burned to avenge themselves for their losses.

But Alberic soon found that he possessed an ally whose influence more

than counterbalanced that of the war party, in Matilda the queen of

Stephen, who was warmly attached to her uncle and cousin, and most

anxious to promote a friendly feeling between her Scottish kinsmen

and her husband. She joined her entreaties to those of the legate,

who, rightly appreciating the value of such support, hesitated not to

return to Rome long before the truce expired, in the full conviction

that his benevolent object was attained.[254] [Sidenote: A. D.

1139.] Nor were his anticipations destined to be falsified, and as

Stephen left the whole conduct of the negotiation in the hands of his

queen, in the following April she repaired to Durham for the purpose of

meeting her cousin Henry. Neither of the kings were present upon this

occasion,--indeed they never appear to have met,--but the conditions

of the peace had been already settled, and it had been decided that

Henry was to receive investiture of Northumberland in addition to his

other fiefs, the barons of the shire holding of the Scottish prince,

saving their fidelity to Stephen. The English king, however, continued

to retain Newcastle and Bamborough in his own possession, for which an

equivalent was to be provided in the south of England--Henry on his

side guaranteeing to preserve unaltered throughout his new fiefs, “the

laws and customs” of the late king Henry, and to respect the rights

of the Archbishop of York and of the Bishop of Durham. The barons of

Northumberland then swore fealty to their new Earl, who, delivering up

the sons of five of the principal nobles of Scotland as hostages for

the due performance of his part of the agreement, accompanied the queen

upon her return to the south, when the treaty was confirmed by Stephen

at Nottingham.[255]

During the whole of the following summer Henry remained in England,

sedulously courting popularity by his lavish munificence and gallant

bearing--qualities so acceptable to the Norman chivalry of the age. He

accompanied Stephen to the siege of Ludlow Castle, narrowly escaping

capture on this occasion; for, on approaching too closely to the walls,

he was unhorsed by a hook suddenly launched from the battlements, owing

his rescue solely to the prompt and daring gallantry of the king.

In the course of the same year he was united to Ada de Warenne, the

youngest daughter of the great earl of that name; and as the bride’s

family were staunch adherents of the cause of Stephen, and the Scottish

prince, bound by no ties to the empress, was probably far more attached

to the amiable character of Queen Matilda--whose influence seems

traceable in the marriage--than to her haughty and imperious cousin,

the arrival of the latter in England with the Earl of Gloucester,

appears to have produced no interruption of cordiality between Henry

and the English king. He was again present with his countess at the

English court in the following year, [Sidenote: A. D. 1140.] in

spite of the civil war then raging, barely escaping, on his return to

Scotland, the machinations of his ancient enemy the Earl of Chester,

the grant of Carlisle being once more the cause of their quarrel.

Ranulph, tempted by the prevailing anarchy, had planned the seizure of

Henry and the Countess Ada, counting probably upon extorting, as their

ransom, a surrender of the coveted fief; but the queen, anticipating

his design, warned Stephen of the danger, who, in accordance with

her suggestions, escorted his guests in person to the north, thus

frustrating the intentions of Ranulph, but, by so doing, drawing upon

himself the hatred of that fickle and revengeful baron.[256]

[Sidenote: A. D. 1141.]

After the defeat and capture of Stephen at Lincoln, David, who had

hitherto refrained from espousing the cause of either candidate for

the throne of England, hastened to join the empress, leaving his

chancellor, William Comyn, at Durham, with instructions to hold that

important bishopric in her name. He arrived in time to accompany his

niece upon her entry into London, his presence confirming the fidelity

of many of the leading barons, but failing to inspire Matilda with any

portion of his own sagacity, and her arrogant and imperious behaviour

soon alienated the affections of her new subjects. Driven out of

London by the hostility of the citizens, her personal antipathy to the

imprisoned king next caused a rupture with his brother, the influential

Bishop of Winchester, who turned a willing ear to the entreaties of

Stephen’s queen, now as eager in urging war in behalf of her captive

husband, as in advocating peace, a few years previously, with her

Scottish relatives. Participating in the ill success which he could

not avert, David was present at the rout of Winchester, only escaping

capture through the attachment and devotion of a youthful godson, David

Olifard, then serving in the hostile army, who, concealing him from all

pursuit, enabled him to return in safety to Scotland. The grateful king

was not unmindful of his friendly benefactor; and it was probably in

requital for his services upon this occasion that Olifard obtained a

grant of lands in Scotland, becoming the founder of a numerous family,

whose name is still well known in the country of his adoption.[257]

It has been already mentioned that in passing through Durham on his way

to the south, David left his chancellor, William Comyn, in that city,

in the hope that he might be elected to the vacant see, and hold the

bishopric in the interest of the empress queen. Nothing will convey a

clearer idea of the anarchy of the period, and of the extraordinary

measures that were occasionally resorted to by the gravest characters,

than a narrative of the proceedings of William Comyn. He had passed his

early years in the household of the late bishop Geoffrey, and, upon

the death of the latter, his relatives, wishing to favour the views of

Comyn, kept the catastrophe a profound secret, the body of the dead

bishop being submitted to an elaborate course of preparation, including

a process of _salting_, in order that it might be preserved above

ground until the arrival of the Scottish chancellor! One important

point remained to be gained--the consent of the chapter--and this was

resolutely refused. Escaping from Durham, they chose William Dean of

York to be their bishop; but their troubles were only commencing, for

they had to deal with a most determined character in the chancellor. In

vain the Pope deprived him of the Archdeaconry of Worcester which he

had hitherto enjoyed, and launched an anathema at his head; in vain the

newly-chosen bishop endeavoured to enter his Episcopal city by force of

arms. Comyn set at nought the anger of the distant pope, and drove out

the monks who attempted to give secret admittance to his rival. Filling

their monastery with his own men-at-arms, he converted it into a

regular fortress--a not unusual course of proceeding in that turbulent

era--and, secretly supported by Prince Henry and the Earl of Richmond,

for three years he kept the bishop at bay, until the sudden death of

a favourite nephew induced him to make overtures for an arrangement,

[Sidenote: A. D. 1144.] and the bishop was at length permitted to enjoy

undisputed possession of his dignity. A grant of the honour of Allerton

was conferred upon another of the chancellor’s nephews, Richard Comyn,

the founder of that name in Scotland, whose union with Hextilda, the

heiress of Bethoc, sole daughter of Donald Bane, may have contributed

to the greatness of the family; and, by this arrangement, a scandal by

no means of uncommon occurrence amongst the churchmen of that age, was

at length compromised, and brought to a satisfactory conclusion.[258]

Many years elapsed before the Scottish king was again induced to enter

upon the scene of English politics--internal rather than external

policy appearing to have occupied his attention during this period

of his reign, and many of the alterations he had previously set on

foot were now probably completed and confirmed. He had not lost

sight, however, of the interests of the empress and her son; and in

his anxiety to further the designs of the latter, [Sidenote: A. D.

1149.] about eight years after the siege of Winchester, upon the

crown of England, he was again brought to the verge of a rupture with

Stephen. The youthful Henry Fitz Empress suddenly arrived at Carlisle

to receive the honour of knighthood from the hands of his venerable

kinsman, Ranulph of Chester, who had purposely repaired to the same

city, with Henry of Scotland, assisting in the solemnities of the

occasion. Ceremonial and festivity, however, only served to cover

the real object of the meeting, and arrangements were set on foot,

at the same time, for cementing an alliance which was to place young

Henry upon the English throne. The Earl of Chester, consenting to

waive all claims upon Carlisle, performed homage to David on receiving

in exchange the fief of Lancaster, with a promise that a daughter

of Prince Henry should be given in marriage to his son. Henry Fitz

Empress bound himself, if ever he regained his grandfather’s throne, to

confirm, without let or hindrance, to David and his heirs, Newcastle

and Northumberland, from Tyne to Tweed, with all the other English

fiefs that belonged to the heir of the Scottish crown, in right of his

descent from Earl Waltheof; and, these preliminaries being adjusted,

it was agreed that the earl was to concentrate his followers upon

Lancaster; and that the Scottish army, strengthened by his retainers

and by the barons of the western counties who adhered to Henry, should

at once advance against Stephen, who, suspecting the proceedings at

Carlisle, had already reached York on his march towards the north. In

accordance with this arrangement, David and his young relative lost no

time in reaching Lancaster; but Randolph, fickle and treacherous as

usual, was as faithless to his new allies as he had been ever false to

Stephen. He failed in his appointment at Lancaster, Henry recrossed the

sea to Normandy, and the two kings, mutually averse to the hazard of an

open rupture, led back their armies without a contest.[259]

Towards the close of David’s reign the peace of Scotland was disturbed

for a considerable time by the pretensions of a most extraordinary

imposter, who, by a singular chance, has been confounded by the

historians of the last five hundred years with the very person whose

son, or nephew, he seems to have attempted to personate. In the course

of 1134, the same year in which Malcolm MacHeth was committed to

Roxburgh castle, Olave Godredson, king of Man, granted certain lands

to Ivo, abbot of Furness, for the erection of a priory at Rushen; and

amongst the brotherhood who, either at that time or subsequently, were

sent into the Isle of Man, was a monk of the name of Wimund, a man of

obscure birth but of considerable talents, and still greater and most

unscrupulous ambition. His jovial countenance and ready eloquence,

his stalwart frame and commanding stature--for he towered a head and

shoulders above the height of ordinary men--marked him out as a fit

leader for an ignorant and excitable multitude, though scarcely in

the capacity of a bishop. Yet the Manxmen thought otherwise, and, in

process of time, Wimund was advanced to the see of the Isles; though

such peaceful dignity suiting ill with his restless disposition,

he only regarded his appointment as a stepping stone to further

advancement, soon giving himself out as a son of the Earl of Moray,

and inviting the boldest and most reckless of his wild flock to assist

in avenging the injuries, and recovering the possessions, of his

supposed father, promising unlimited plunder to all who followed him to

Scotland. The descendants of the old sea-rovers flocked eagerly to the

call of their singular pastor, whose influence over them was unbounded,

and the warlike bishop lost no time in leading his followers to the

pillage of the western coasts. His proceedings, ere long, proved him to

be no mean proficient in the tactics of partizan warfare. The approach

of a hostile force was the signal for immediate departure, Wimund and

his followers dispersed amongst the islands, and upon the arrival of

the royal army the sole tidings of the enemy were the reports of his

excesses in another direction. No sooner had his pursuers retraced

their steps, than the bishop and his satellites were again on the

alert, carrying fire and sword throughout the district just evacuated;

and so often and so successfully were these tactics repeated, that

David is said to have experienced more trouble and anxiety on account

of this turbulent monk, than through any other enemy during the whole

course of his reign. Once, only, he sustained a check, which he

received from an appropriate quarter--another bishop, who refusing

to submit to his demand for tribute on the singular, but strictly

ecclesiastical, grounds that “one bishop should not pay tribute to

another,” summoned his own flock to resist the unorthodox intrusion,

and launched a light battle-axe at the head of Wimund with an aim so

accurate that the burly monk reeled beneath the blow, and his followers

fled from the field.

At length, in despair of succeeding by force, the king adopted an

opposite policy, and bought off the hostility of Wimund by a grant of

Furness in Westmoreland, where, for a short time, the bishop played the

tyrant with impunity, particularly directing his virulence against the

monastery in which he had passed his early days. At length the people

of the neighbourhood, whose patience was worn out by his exactions,

watching their opportunity, seized upon him at an unguarded moment,

and the luckless Wimund, to whom no mercy was shown, was deprived of

his see, and passed the remainder of his life, sightless and cruelly

maimed, in the monastery of Biland. No sufferings, however, could

subdue the reckless spirit of the man, who was wont to boast, with a

laugh, that “even Providence could only conquer him by the faith of a

foolish bishop;” adding, that if his enemies had only left him as much

sight as a “sparrow’s eye,” he would have soon shown them how little

cause they had for triumph.[260]

The whole of the north of England beyond the Tees had now for several

years been under the influence, if not under the direct authority,

of the Scottish king, and the comparative prosperity of this part

of the kingdom, contrasting strongly with the anarchy prevailing in

every other quarter, naturally inclined the population of the northern

counties to look with favour upon a continuance of the Scottish

connection. All southward of the Tyne, indeed, was held probably in

the name of the Empress Queen, but the influence of David extended

far beyond the Tees, and when a claim was raised upon the Honour of

Skipton in Craven, it was the Scottish, and not the English king who

decided upon its validity. William Fitz Duncan was the claimant, the

heir of Duncan the Second and the victor at Clitheroe, whose fiery

courage broke off the conference before the battle upon Cutton Moor,

and whose prominent position upon this and other occasions during the

war, seems to mark him as the Gaelic Toshach. Like his father, however,

he was more of a feudal than a Gaelic noble, and several years before

this date he married, during the lifetime of Archbishop Thorstein,

Alice de Rumeli, the heiress of her Norman name; three daughters and

one son, whose fame yet lingers in local tradition as William of

Egremont, being the issue of their union. It was in right of his wife

that William raised his claim; [Sidenote: A. D. 1151.] and as it must

have suited well with the policy of David to increase the feudal ties

incidentally securing the fidelity of his nephew, he lost no time in

installing him in the Honour, willingly providing him with the means

of enforcing his rights (as some opposition appears to have been

meditated), and atoning for the depredations of the more unruly portion

of the army by the gift of a silver chalice wherever the property of

the church was shown to have suffered from their licence.[261]

One of the most important objects of David’s policy at length appeared

to be satisfactorily attained, and the great northern fiefs of his

wife’s father added securely to the Scottish crown. They were at

present held by his son, and in some sort as a guarantee of neutrality

towards Stephen, which, though slight was so far effectual that it

restrained David from ill-advised hostilities; whilst the feeble hold

of Stephen upon the fiefs in question must have rendered him unwilling,

as long as a nominal peace was preserved, to risk the chances of an

ineffectual forfeiture which he could have scarcely hoped to carry

out. In the event of the Duke of Normandy’s accession, there was the

solemn contract ratified at Carlisle, which was to confirm the Scottish

princes in the hereditary possession of these fiefs, in which it might

well be hoped that a kindred people in language, origin, and laws,

would amalgamate in course of time, under the fostering rule of the

representatives of the sainted Edward, with the Anglian inhabitants of

the Lothians. Even the population of that great Episcopal Palatinate,

where the bishop ruled with regal power and privileges over a district

scarcely yet included in Norman England at the time of the Domesday

survey, was in sympathy and in race far more akin to the Angles of

Bernicia than to the descendants of the Scandinavian conquerors of

the Danelage; and the tendency of the men of Durham to turn their

regards towards the North, was sedulously encouraged ever since the

days of Margaret. It was her husband, the Scottish Malcolm, who laid

the first stone of the new church in the Episcopal city; her sons and

their leading nobles who enriched with their donations her favourite

monastery; and now the last and greatest of her immediate family

sheltered the sacred territory of St. Cuthbert from the miseries of

southern England, and secured for it the advantages of peace. The grant

of the English fief of Furness to Wimund, by which a troublesome enemy

was converted into a questionable feudatory, and the confirmation

of Skipton, also a dependency of the English crown, to William Fitz

Duncan, were carried out by the Scottish king without the slightest

reference to the prerogatives of the English sovereign; and owing to

the distracted state of England during the reign of Stephen, never was

Scotland at any period of her history more powerful relatively to her

southern neighbour, than during the last ten years of David’s reign.

[Sidenote: A. D. 1152. 12th June.]

Bright as were the hopes of the aged king, when he established his

nephew in the inheritance of the de Rumelis, in the following summer

they were doomed to disappointment, when a sudden gloom was cast

over Scotland by the untimely death of Prince Henry. Nor was the

sorrow thus felt confined to his native land alone, for his loss was

regretted throughout the neighbouring kingdom. His death was indeed a

calamity for Scotland, for all the virtues of his family are said to

have centred in his character; and handsome in person, and gallant in

bearing, he possessed in addition those popular qualities which, had

he lived, would have endeared him to his people; though the elaborate

praises dictated by the attachment of his early friend, the abbot of

Rievaulx, are perhaps less emphatic than the brief description of

St. Bernard, “a brave and able soldier, he walked like his father in

the paths of justice and of truth.”[262] By his marriage with Ada de

Warenne, who survived him, Henry left six children, three sons and

three daughters. Of the former, Malcolm and William lived to ascend

the throne of Scotland, and David, the youngest, long enjoyed the

Honour and title of Huntingdon. Ada, the eldest daughter, became the

wife of Florence Count of Holland, carrying with her as a dowry the

northern earldom of Ross. Margaret, the second, was twice married;

first to Conan Duke of Bretagne, by whom she left an only daughter,

Constance, who became the wife of Geoffrey and the mother of Arthur,

son and grandson of Henry the Second; and after the death of Conan, to

Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford. Matilda, the youngest sister, died

unmarried in the same year as her brother Malcolm.[263]

Amidst the deep affliction which he must have felt at the loss of

his only son, nothing was left undone by David that could ensure the

peaceful succession of his grandchildren. A crisis was even then

impending, for six months before the death of the prince of Scotland

Henry Fitz Empress had already landed in England, and Stephen,

whose good and gentle queen was no longer alive, seizing upon the

opportunity of Prince Henry’s death to strengthen his cause by a

fresh alliance, had at once made over Huntingdon to the Earl of

Northampton. Accordingly, under the charge of Duncan Earl of Fife,

upon whom the privileges of his earldom appear to have conferred this

office, Malcolm was dispatched throughout the Scottish provinces to be

acknowledged in every quarter of the realm as the heir and successor

of his grandfather, whilst the king, hurrying in person to Newcastle,

assembled the barons of Northumberland and took oaths and hostages for

their obedience to William, whom he presented to them as their future

feudal lord; and during the few short months he survived his son, he

busied himself in completing his arrangements for the regulation of the

kingdom in the event of his own decease.[264]

The close of his career, indeed, was not far distant, for though his

intellect was still clear and vigorous, his bodily health was failing

fast, and though his friends would assure him that he had yet many

years to live, he felt in his own mind a presentiment that his end

was at hand. It was on a Wednesday towards the close of May that the

venerable monarch perceived the approach of death. Calmly reviewing his

last instructions, he suggested a few additions, and having concluded

his earthly affairs, dedicated his remaining hours to religion. Even

at such a moment his kindly nature beamed forth, and when almost

speechless he beckoned to his almoner, who, bending over the couch

of his dying master, heard him whisper his latest instructions for

the distribution of his daily alms. [Sidenote: A. D. 1153.] Thus he

lingered over the remainder of the week, and as the sun rose upon

the morning of the 24th, the spirit of the aged king returned to his

Maker.[265]

David was a good man as well as an able king. His faith was of the

age, but his religion was from the heart, and there are few who will

not respect the feeling that prompted his dying wish to be carried

to pray before the Black Rood of his mother. The times in which he

lived, and the peculiar tone of his mother’s mind, which is easily

traceable in all her children, may naturally have influenced the

character of his religion, but the formal and saintly colours in which

he is occasionally depicted, represent the actual living man about as

much, probably, as a mediæval portrait in stained glass resembles the

real features of the original. Strict in the conception of his own

religious duties, he was exact in requiring from the ecclesiastical

body a decorous abstinence from all internal broils and dissensions, in

return for the immunities and external peace he was zealous in insuring

them, enforcing obedience if necessary; though, it is said, that on one

occasion he was obliged to kneel to an obdurate churchman before he

could shame him into propriety. A kindly and warm-hearted disposition

is traceable in many of his acts, and is especially displayed in his

consideration and thoughtfulness for his poorer subjects. In accordance

with a regulation often found in other codes, and which was, probably,

a well-known and general maxim of law, no one was allowed to bring a

lesser cause into the royal court of justice, except as an appeal from

a lower court: yet, in spite of this enactment, which he seems to have

been the first to introduce into Scotland, he appointed certain days

on which, like an eastern king of old, he “sat in the gate” to give

audience to the poor and the aged; and he would turn without a murmur

from a hunting party to examine the appeal of a suppliant; if his

decision was contrary to the expectations of his humble petitioners,

kindly endeavouring to convince them of its justice--in too many

instances a thankless and hopeless undertaking. The poor and the

defenceless, indeed, were the especial objects of his protection, and

he passed a law that whenever anything belonging to them was stolen,

if only one man of good repute was ready to testify to the thief by an

oath sworn on the altar before proper witnesses, “according to Scottish

usage,” the stolen property was to be restored, “on the footing of the

king,” and an additional fine of “eight cows,” the usual mulct for

serious offences, levied on the offender--a privilege of great moment

to the unprotected and oppressed in an age when, in ordinary cases, the

oaths of six, twelve, or even more men, were necessary to establish an

accusation of theft.[266]

Conciliation may be described as the leading principle of David’s

policy. Called in the prime of life to reign over a people differing in

race, in habits, and in language, and agreeing only in the perpetuation

of hereditary feuds, he determined upon introducing, amongst his own

subjects, the more orderly and settled system of government with which

he and his brother Alexander were familiar during their lengthened

residence at the Anglo-Norman court; and so ably were his measures

conceived, and so judicious was his admixture of conciliation and

authority in carrying out this project,--which seems to have been

entertained by both brothers,--that he is said to have succeeded in

establishing a more durable state of concord amongst the heterogeneous

population of his kingdom, than existed at that period amongst

people enjoying far higher advantages. Perhaps the true secret of

his popularity lay in the admirable tact with which he seems to have

entered warmly into the subject that lay nearest to the hearts of all

his people--their own affairs. David had nothing to conceal except his

councils, and the royal chamber was accessible at all times; every one

in turn was favoured with an audience; the great and the lowly; the

churchman and the soldier the burgher and the peasant, each departing

with the assurance that his own interests were a matter of attention

and care to a watchful and paternal ruler.

Pursuing the policy inaugurated by his mother, Queen Margaret, he

encouraged the resort of foreign merchants to the ports of Scotland,

insuring to native traders the same advantages which they had enjoyed

during the reign of his father; whilst he familiarized his Gaelic

nobles, in their attendance upon the royal court, with habits of luxury

and magnificence, remitting three years’ rent and tribute--according to

the account of his contemporary Malmesbury--to all his people who were

willing to improve their dwellings, to dress with greater elegance,

and to adopt increased refinement in their general manner of living.

Even in the occupations of his leisure moments he seems to have wished

to exercise a softening influence over his countrymen, for, like many

men of his character, he was fond of gardening, and he delighted in

indoctrinating his people in the peaceful arts of horticulture, and

in the mysteries of planting and of grafting. For similar reasons he

sedulously promoted the improvement of agriculture, or rather, perhaps,

directed increased attention to it; for the Scots of that period

were still a pastoral, and, in some respects, a migratory people,

their magnates not residing, like the great feudal nobles, in their

own castles, and in the centre of their own “demesnes,” but moving

about from place to place--not always upon their own property--and

quartering themselves upon the dependant population. By enforcing

tillage and agricultural labour, and by directing laws against the

indolent listlessness of a pastoral life--for it was an age when, from

the reaction which might be expected after a period of “irregulated”

independence, even the common occurrences of every day life were often

made the subject of legal statutes--David hoped to convert the lower

orders into a more settled and industrious population; whilst he

enjoined the higher classes to “live like noblemen” upon their own

estates, and not to waste the property of their neighbours, and spare

their own, under pretence of continual journeys. In consequence of

these measures feudal castles began, ere long, to replace the earlier

buildings of wood and wattles rudely fortified by earthworks; and

towns rapidly grew up around the royal castles and about the principal

localities of commerce. The monasteries of Kelso, Jedburgh, Melrose,

and Holyrood, with many another stately pile, also owed their first

foundation to the fostering care of David; for, independently of his

religious zeal, he appreciated the encouragement afforded by such

establishments to the pacific arts it was his aim to introduce amongst

his subjects. The prosperity of the country during the last fifteen

years of his reign contrasted strongly with the miseries of England

under the disastrous rule of Stephen; Scotland became the granary

from which her neighbour’s wants were supplied; and to the court of

Scotland’s king resorted the knights and nobles of foreign origin, whom

the commotions of the Continent had hitherto driven to take refuge in

England.[267]

David, for his own purposes, encouraged this immigration by every means

in his power; for many of the events of his reign disclose the dilemma

in which he was occasionally placed between his nobility of native

birth, and the Anglo-Norman feudatories whose allegiance was also due

to the English crown. On the former he could count with safety in any

of his inroads upon the south, and to the latter he could look for

assistance against the rebellions of the north and west; but there were

circumstances in which he could place entire dependance upon neither

party. If he threw himself into the arms of the native Scots he must

have resigned all hope of social improvement; but if he alienated their

affections and relied exclusively upon the Anglo-Normans, he must have

made up his mind to reconquer northern Scotland by force of arms, or

to resign it to some successful competitor. He gave, therefore, a

ready welcome to all who arrived unfettered by any tie to the English

king, depending on the knights for the creation of a baronage strongly

attached to his own interests, and equally to be relied upon against

Englishman and native Scot; whilst to the lower orders, whom he settled

in the towns, he looked for the promotion of commerce and the formation

of a burgherhood, devoted to the king from whom their privileges and

immunities were derived.

In furtherance of his contemplated innovations, and not a little also

of the views which he never ceased to entertain of still farther

aggrandizing his kingdom on her southern frontier, David may be said

to have laid the foundation of a radical change in the relative

importance of the two great divisions of feudal Scotland. Hitherto,

though the royal authority extended practically as far as the Spey,

and the king of Scots was obeyed nominally throughout the whole extent

of the mainland, the country between the Forth, the Tay, and the

central ridge of the Grampian range, was the real heart and centre of

_Alban_. Here were the royal capitals of Scone and Forteviot; here

the bishoprics of St. Andrews and Dunkeld, and Abernethy once also a

capital and bishopric, still an abbacy, and apparently the seat of the

learning of the age.[268] Here also were the religious foundations of

David’s parents, and of his brother Alexander; and here the late king

was wont to hold his court at his favourite residence of Invergowrie.

Southward of the Forth stretched Lothian and the ancient principality

of Strath Clyde, provinces still dependant on the kingdom beyond the

_Scots-water_, and never yet regarded as the seat of the central

authority. Northern Scotland may be compared to Wessex, the hereditary

province of the royal race and the centre of the English government;

the southern district between the Forth, the Solway, and the Tweed,

resembling the Danelage, secure in its own laws and customs, but

secondary in other respects to the remaining portion of the kingdom.

Southern Scotland was the creation of David. He embellished it with the

monasteries of his religious foundations; he strengthened it with the

castles of his feudal baronage; and here he established the nucleus of

feudal Scotland, and the foundation of that importance which eventually

transferred the preponderance in the kingdom to the south. Strath Clyde

and the Lothians were admirably adapted to his purpose, for all the

land appears to have been in direct dependance on the crown; he could

stud it at will with his favourite Anglo-Norman chivalry, and there

are no traces in either quarter of the powerful magnates who were in a

position, beyond the Scots-water, to oppose the policy of their king.

But it is not to be imagined that in any portion of the kingdom, except

in forfeited districts, David enacted the part of a conqueror, driving

out the earlier population and replacing the native proprietary by a

baronage of foreign origin. He was beloved by the Scots, and terrible

only to the men of Galloway, says his friend and biographer Ailred; and

it is impossible that he could have retained the affections of his own

people had he carried out a policy so hostile to their very existence.

He seems to have confirmed rather than destroyed proprietary right, and

though he introduced novel tenures into Scotland, the Thanes holding,

according to ancient custom, by Scottish service will be found, long

after his reign, side by side with the knights and barons holding by

the feudal tenure of military service. But this and other changes which

he accomplished, and the general policy he pursued in church and state,

will form the subject of the two succeeding chapters.[269]

CHAPTER IX.

THE STATE.

Scotland in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries still retained many

of the features of a confederated rather than of a consolidated

kingdom, acknowledging indeed, even in the earlier portion of that

period, the rule of one reigning family, but scarcely recognising the

authority of the same laws and customs, or bound together by the ties

of kindred, origin, and language. Between Forth and Tweed lay Lothian,

bordering towards the western frontiers upon the Cumbrian principality

and Galloway; both the former provinces having been annexed to the

Scottish crown by a course of successful aggression, if not by actual

conquest, though Galloway was still rather a tributary dependency than

an integral portion of the kingdom. Lothian, apparently, preserved

the same laws that were in force throughout Saxon Northumbria before

the reign of Canute; whilst two centuries of the dominion of a

Scottish line of princes over Cumbria must have introduced a Scottish

proprietary very generally throughout the province, without effecting

any material alteration in laws and customs, which, based upon the

Celtic principle of government, differed probably little, if at all,

from the code then and long afterwards retained in Galloway.

Northward of the Scots-water two great divisions were recognised,

_Scotia_, or Scotland proper, and _Moravia_. The former embraced the

whole of the Lowland districts from the Spey to the Forth, extending

to the summit of the _Mounth_ or Grampian range; thus including the

earldoms of Mar, Buchan, and Angus, Fife, Atholl, Strathearn, and

Menteith, with Gowrie and Stormont, the Merns and other districts

retained more directly in the king’s hands; together with the whole

of “Scottish Argyle,” which, before the creation of the shire and

bishopric, was connected with Atholl and the Abbacy of Glendochart;

whilst Cantyre and Cowal depended upon the earldom of Menteith.

_Moravia_ was made up of the earldoms of Moray, forfeited in the

earlier portion of David’s reign; Caithness, which still included

Sutherland, then extending as far as Dingwall; and Ross, a sort of

debatable land between the _Gall-Gael_, _Oirir-Gael_, and ancient

Mormaors of Moray: with “Northern Argyle,” or that portion of the

territories of the _Oirir-Gael_ which reached, at this period, from

the northern boundaries of the modern county to the frontiers of

the _Gall-Gael_ in Sutherland.[270] Feudal tenure, in the later

Anglo-Norman acceptation of the word, was unknown throughout these

provinces at the accession of Alexander the First; though the earlier

system of government, once existing amongst a number of independent

tribes and confederacies, had long given place to the royal authority

wherever the rights of the crown--as was certainly the case in

_Scotia_--were thoroughly established. But though the principle of

the system was changed, the features remained very much the same; and

a nobility, owing their original appointment or confirmation to the

crown, exercising as deputies the privileges of the sovereign, and

retaining as their prerogative a portion of the dues they exacted in

his name, stood in the place of the elective or hereditary magistrates

of tribes and confederacies. The Thane, or _Tighern_, and the official

known as the _Deempster_, represented the _Cean-cinneth_, or rather

perhaps the _Toshach_, and the _Brehon_--the chief, or captain, and

the judge of the clan; the earl or _Mormaor_ the provincial judge

answered to the chosen leader and judge of the confederacy; the kindred

of these officials, and the _Og-tiernach_, or “lesser lords,” formed

the _Duchasach_ and _Duine-uasal_, the gentry or freeholders of the

district; whilst none who could not claim to be enrolled amongst one of

these kindreds were entitled to the privileges of free or gentle birth.

The only tenure known at this period was the _Gavel_[271] one of the

earliest forms of the original allotment, which was enjoyed in common

by all within the limit of the immediate kindred--or, in Teutonic

phrase, all embraced in the _Mæg-borh_--a permanent property in such

a holding only being acquired by uninterrupted possession for the

usual period of “three generations.” No fixed or individual property,

in the modern sense of the word, was conveyed by such a tenure in any

certain spot of land as long as divisible and inheritable property

consisted of money, arms, and ornaments, and the stock and produce

of the land; but rather a right of joint-occupancy in the family

district or holding, shared by all who could claim a certain degree

of kindred with the Senior of the race. The Senior was elective,

every member of the kindred who had a right of joint-occupancy also

having an equal claim to choose the head of his family; though under

ordinary circumstances the precedency seems to have been generally

conceded to the actual representative of the original “eldest born.”

Seniority conferred privileges, but it also entailed obligations. To

every kindred occupant of a lesser holding was assigned a portion of

land, the Senior having the preference in the choice of allotments,

with a joint right to feed his live stock on the common pasture, and

a similar share in the house, barns, and stabling; the possession of

the hearth in the “capital messuage” generally being included amongst

the prerogatives of seniority. All that was not partitioned out in

this manner fell to the share of the Senior, who in return for his

privileges was responsible for the whole of his kindred. He was their

_plegius_ or security, and their spokesman on all occasions,--or, in

the language of the Anglo-Saxon laws, their _Borh_ and _Fore-Speca_. He

asserted their joint rights, he avenged their joint wrongs, and he was

answerable in their joint names for the receipts or payments invariably

following injuries whether inflicted or received--for community in good

or evil was the very soul of the system of kindred--as well as for the

due exercise of hospitality whenever the “overlord,” to use the feudal

phrase, was entitled, on his _Cuairt_ or Visitation, to demand the

“refection,” which was known amongst the Anglo-Saxons as “a night’s

feorm.” It may be safely assumed that similar features were exhibited

on a greater scale in the thanage, and in the holding belonging to the

district judge; the obligation of “refection” in the case of the thane

being confined to receiving the king, an earl, or an abbot or bishop,

according as he held office under a lay or ecclesiastical superior. To

judge from the parallel case of the Welsh nobleman, this was generally

on the occasion of the great winter circuit, when the Scottish kings

and magnates were accustomed to pass their Christmas amongst their

thanes, much as the kings and Jarls of Scandinavia were wont, according

to the old Icelandic chronicler, to move about during the winter months

amongst their baronage, or _Hersirs_, who held their lands in a similar

manner by the tenure of _Veitslo_, or provisioning the king. The same

rule may be supposed to have been applicable to the earldom; whilst

the principle of community of right in the kindred unquestionably

extended to ecclesiastical dignitaries amongst the Gael, _Tanist_ and

_Adbhar_ abbots--or the successor actually chosen, and all capable of

being nominated to the abbacy--being continually met with in the Irish

annals.[272] It may be gathered from the ancient Scottish laws that

the limit of the immediate kindred extended to the third generation,

all who were fourth in descent from a Senior passing from amongst

the joint-proprietary, and receiving, apparently, a final allotment;

which seems to have been separated permanently from the remainder of

the joint-property by certain ceremonies usual on such occasions.

On the death of a Senior, a redistribution of the land and offices

belonging to the family invariably took place; and it was at this

period, probably, that all who were beyond the limit of the immediate

kindred received their final allotment. The fourth in descent from a

thane, no longer entitled to his share amongst the joint-proprietary,

or _Tigherns_, became an _Og-tiern_, he and his descendants holding

henceforth of the representative of the Senior, by the same tenure

as the thane held of the king; the lapse of the necessary period in

both cases rendering them irremovable from their respective districts.

The _Tanist_, or next in succession--for the “law of Tanistry” is

only another phrase for the law of succession--was appointed at the

same time as the Senior, receiving an allotment in proportion to the

dignity of his office, and, at this period, generally holding the

_Toshachdorach_, or captaincy of the family,--which, in later days,

as the law of succession gradually altered, and the office of Tanist

sunk into disuse, seems to have become the especial prerogative of

the next in succession; and when the earldom, lordship, or thanage

passed out of the original family by female heiresses, was generally

confirmed by charter on the heir male, to be held hereditarily under

the head of the house. Nor was the _Toshach_ a character confined to

the Celtic people alone; for the Mayor of the palace under the early

Merovingian sovereigns, who was usually elected at the same time as the

king, and was perhaps a member of the same royal race, was known as the

_Dux Francorum_; very much resembling the Gaelic _Toshach_, and the

dignitary whose title appears upon the early British coins under the

Latinized form of _Tascio_.[273]

Many of the features, indeed, displayed in the Celtic Gavel were not

in any way peculiar to the Celtic people, but will be found to have

very generally existed in every part of western and northern Europe,

wherever a portion of the population continued to hold their land by

the older system, which was stigmatized as _Roturier_ after the

feudal theory of “knight-service” was recognised as the only principle

of “gentle tenure.” In the intermediate period, when the earlier system

still held its ground side by side with the principles of Roman law,

and the shifting allotment to which every member of the _Folk_ or

_Leod_ was entitled by “the right of blood” was passing gradually

into a fixed and permanent inheritance, length of possession,

variously reckoned in different early laws, alone conferred pure

allodial property in land amongst the German people--for the chartered

grant from the king was thoroughly Roman--whilst throughout the North,

long uninfluenced by contact with Imperial Rome, the original principle

of descent, which was still traceable in the Germanic nobility of this

period, and in the “inborn” right acquired by the lower orders, was in

full force; the _Bonder_ growing into the _Odal-Bonder_, and

if his blood was strictly pure, into the _Holder_, solely after

the lapse of the necessary number of descents. Long after the conquest

of the ancestral dukedom of the English kings by Philip Augustus of

France, the main features of the law of Tanistry, which seemed so

strange to the Anglo-Irish lawyers of the seventeenth century, were

still familiar to the Normans of the continental duchy. All the family

up to the sixth degree were joint proprietors with the Senior of the

race in the _Tenure-par-Parage_, holding by fealty alone, the

seventh in descent passing from amongst the privileged kindred and

holding by _homage_, thus becoming “_the man_” of the head

of the family, just as the fourth in descent by Scottish custom became

an _Og-tiern_ under the Thane. The difference in the number of

descents was simply the result of the introduction of a noble class

above the free, and in either case, all who passed beyond the limits

of the kindred evidently had an “inborn” right to a fixed and final

provision.[274] A similar principle seems to have regulated the holding

amongst the continental Angles, which never passed to an heiress until

the kindred could furnish no male heir within the necessary limit,

extending in this case to the fifth degree. The _share-house_ of

the Kentish _Gavel_ (the _Bold-getal_ perhaps of Alfred’s

laws), with the hearth reserved, as among the Welsh, for the youngest

heir; the allotment of which the name of _shifting_ betokens

the original character; and the freedom of the heirs from the

consequences of the father’s felony, alluded to in the old Kentish

rhymes, “the father to the bough, the son to the plough,”--a freedom

which was confirmed, rather than introduced, in Scotland by the laws

of William,[275]--closely resemble the characteristics of the Celtic

holding: though the preference of the youngest heir in the Welsh and

Kentish Gavel, and in the tenure known as _Borough-English_,

discloses the pre-existence of a state of society unknown, apparently,

amongst the Gael; whilst the allodial character of the Kentish Gavel

seems to have been almost peculiar to that county.