Chapter IX (1)

THE KINGDOM OF SCOTIA PASSES INTO FEUDAL SCOTLAND.

[Sidenote: Effects of King Malcolm’s death.]

The death of Malcolm Ceannmor, though his reign had been prolonged for the unusual period of thirty-five years, was a great misfortune for Scotland. He united in himself so many claims to the allegiance of the heterogeneous races under his rule, that a work of consolidation had been insensibly going on during his reign, while the influence of his pious and accomplished queen, the Saxon Princess Margaret, equally advanced their civilisation. His death, followed in four days by that of his queen, who succumbed to the grief and shock caused by this unexpected blow, arrested the progress of both, and not only retarded the advance the kingdom had been making for a period of thirty years, but threatened its dismemberment, till the accession of David the First once more united all the races of its population under one vigorous rule, and the task commenced by his father—the process of consolidation and advancing civilisation—was again resumed.

It will be necessary for our purpose to notice the events which affected the population of the country during this interval.

The death of Malcolm raised once more the vexed question of the succession to the throne, and brought the laws and prepossessions of the different races, now united under one government, into conflict. Malcolm appears to have had two brothers, Donald Ban and Melmare, from the latter of whom the earls of Atholl descended.[620] By his first wife Ingibiorg, the widow of Thorfinn, earl of Orkney, he seems to have had two sons, Duncan, who was given up to the king of England as a hostage in 1072, and Donald, who predeceased him in 1085. By his second wife, the Saxon Queen Margaret, he had six sons and two daughters. The sons were Eadward, who was slain with his father at Alnwick; Eadmund; Ethelred, who appears, while under age, as lay abbot of Dunkeld and earl of Fife;[621] Eadgar, Alexander, and David.

By the Welsh population of the Cumbrian province belonging to Scotland, Duncan, as the eldest son of his father, must have been regarded as the true heir to the throne, and those parts of the kingdom which were colonised by Norwegians, or under Norwegian influence, must have also looked to him both on that account and as the son of the Norwegian Ingibiorg. On the death of Thorfinn, the powerful earl of Orkney who had brought under his rule both the Western Isles and so many earldoms on the mainland, while his patrimonial inheritance of the Orkneys, and probably Caithness, passed to his sons, the other districts, as well as the Western Islands, reverted to their natural lords, and no doubt passed under the dominion of Malcolm Ceannmor. The earldoms which lay within the bounds of the kingdom of Alban, or Scotland proper, became once more incorporated with it. The great district of Moravia, or Moray and Ross, fell under the rule of his native Mormaers. The Western Isles, with Galloway and Argyll, must still to a great extent have been occupied by Northmen; and the revolution by which Godred Crovan, a Norwegian, succeeded in driving out the Danish ruler, and taking possession of the Island of Man some time between the years 1075 and 1080, appears to have led to the Western Isles passing also under his rule, over which he placed his eldest son Lagman; while the appearance of Magnus Barefoot, who had recently become king of Norway, with his fleet in the autumn of the year 1093, and his conquest of the Orkneys and the Western Isles, led to the latter being for the time transferred from the rule of Malcolm Ceannmor, who was at the time engaged in preparing the expedition into England which had, for him, so fatal a termination, and could not defend these remote possessions, to that of the king of Norway.[622] In these more remote parts of the kingdom the claim of Duncan would be regarded with most favour.

Lothian, however, had now become a very important and influential dependence of the kingdom, and its Saxon population must have looked with longing eyes to the children of their revered Saxon princess Queen Margaret as their natural lords. This is clear from the Saxon Chronicle, which, in recording the death of Eadward, the eldest son of Malcolm by Queen Margaret, who was slain with his father in 1093, adds ‘who should, if he had lived, have been king after him,’ and in Lothian the claim of Eadmund, the next surviving son, would be preferred.

Among the Gaelic tribes which still formed the main body of the population of the districts extending from the Forth to the Spey, and constituting the proper kingdom of Scotia, the law of Tanistry must still have had a powerful influence, and had too recently had full sway among them to prepare them to accept the succession of a son in preference to a brother without difficulty; and here Donald Ban, the brother of Malcolm Ceannmor, must have been regarded as their natural and legitimate king, while his only competitor in their eyes, Duncan, being still detained as a hostage at the English court, was in no position personally to contest the succession with him.

[Sidenote: A.D. 1093.
Donald Ban, Malcolm’s brother, reigns six months.]

The Saxon Chronicle tells us that on Malcolm’s death ‘the Scots,’ by whom the people of Scotland proper are no doubt meant, ‘then chose Donald, Malcolm’s brother, for king, and drove out all the English who were before with King Malcolm.’[623] He appears to have asserted his claim with great promptitude, for John of Fordun, whom we may now accept as a fair authority for the events of Scottish history, as being nearer his own time, and having no longer a theory to maintain at the expense of its true features, tells us that Donald Ban, the king’s brother, having heard of the death of Queen Margaret, invaded the kingdom at the head of a numerous band, and besieged the castle of Edinburgh, while her body still remained there unburied, and where her sons, whom Fordun terms the king’s rightful and lawful heirs, still were; but her family, taking advantage of a thick mist, which of course he considers miraculous, but is not an unfrequent accompaniment of an Edinburgh day, brought down her body by a postern on the western side, and conveyed it safely to the church of Dunfermline, where she was buried.[624] Wynton, who wrote in the following century, repeats the same story, but says that it was her son Ethelred who conveyed her body to Dunfermline, which is probable enough, as that royal seat was situated within the bounds of his earldom of Fife.[625] Eadgar Aetheling, the queen’s brother, who was still alive, then gathered her sons and daughters together and brought them secretly to England for the purpose of being privately educated by their mother’s relatives.

[Sidenote: A.D. 1093-1094.
Duncan, son of Malcolm by his first wife, Ingibiorg, reigns
six months.]

Donald Ban was, however, not to escape a conflict with Duncan, the eldest son of the deceased king, for when the news of these events reached the English court, where he had remained since he had been given as a hostage when a mere child, and had received his education, he went to the king, ‘and performed such fealty as the king would have of him, and so with his permission went to Scotland with the support he could get of English and French, that is Normans, and deprived his kinsman Donald of the kingdom, and was received for king.’[626] This took place after Donald had reigned for six months. By the population of Lothian and Cumbria, who had probably had enough of Donald and his Gaelic followers, Duncan would no doubt be received at once; for though the people of Lothian might have preferred a son of the Saxon queen, and might not dislike to see him set aside for one of that family, they would have no hesitation in supporting his cause against that of his uncle. The Gaelic inhabitants of Scotland proper seem to have been divided. A party of the Scots appear to have been sufficiently favourable to him to enable him to expel the intruders, while another section of the natives rejected him, for we are told by the same chronicle that ‘some of the Scots afterwards gathered together and slew almost all his followers, and he himself with few escaped. Afterwards they were reconciled on the condition that he never again should harbour in the land either English or French.’[627] Duncan had probably agreed to hold the whole kingdom as a vassal of the king of England, being himself by education a Norman, and trusting to his English and Norman support to maintain him in his position; but he seems to have found that his only chance of retaining his rule over the districts north of the Forth was by claiming them as his by hereditary right. There are two charters by him preserved: one is a grant by Duncan of the lands of Tiningham and others in East Lothian to Saint Cuthbert, that is, to the church at Durham, in which he styles himself ‘son of King Malcolm and by hereditary right king of Scotland,’ It is witnessed apparently by his brother Eadgar, and with one exception the other witnesses are all Saxons.[628] He appears also to have granted lands in Fife to the church of Dunfermline.[629] He is said to have married Ethreda, daughter of Gospatric, earl of Northumberland, who took refuge in 1067 with Malcolm Ceannmor, and was made earl of Dunbar, by whom he had a son William.[630]

The reign of Duncan, however, did not last longer than that of his uncle Donald; for after he had possessed the throne for six months, the Saxon Chronicle records in the following year, ‘In this year also the Scots ensnared and slew their king Duncan, and after took to them again, a second time, his paternal uncle Donald for king, through whose machinations and incitement he was betrayed to death.’[631] The Scots who thus ensnared him were those who inhabited the districts north of the Tay, the leaders among whom were the men of the Mearns; and Duncan is said by our oldest chronicles to have been slain by Malpeder MacLoen, the Mormaer, or Comes as the Mormaers were now called, of the Mearns, at Monachedin, now Mondynes, in the Mearns or Kincardineshire, where a large upright monolith rising six or eight feet above the surface may commemorate the event.[632]

[Sidenote: A.D. 1094-1097.
Donald Ban again, with Eadmund, son of Malcolm, reigned three
years.]

Donald Ban, who thus a second time obtained possession of the throne, appears to have felt that he could not maintain himself in that position without neutralising the opposition of the Anglic inhabitants of Lothian, and with the view of strengthening himself offered to associate with him one of the sons of Malcolm by Queen Margaret. Eadgar, the heir, was not likely to surrender his claims for a divided rule with his uncle, but his brother Eadmund appears to have yielded to the temptation and joined the party of Donald Ban. It was at the instigation of Donald Ban and Eadmund that Duncan was slain; and while Donald Ban ruled over the Scots north of the Firths, Eadmund was no doubt placed over Lothian, and, as son of their revered princess Margaret, readily commanded their allegiance.[633] Their joint reign appears to have lasted for three years, and Lothian thus became again dissevered during that period from the kingdom of Scotland.

Eadgar Aetheling, however, resolved now to make an effort to place his nephew Eadgar on the throne; and we are told by the Saxon Chronicle that in the year 1097, ‘soon after St. Michael’s Mass, or the 29th of September, Eadgar Aetheling, with the king’s support, went with a force into Scotland, and in a hard-fought battle won that land and drove out the king Donald, and in King William’s vassalage set as king his kinsman Eadgar, who was the son of King Malcolm and of Queen Margaret, and afterwards returned to England.’ Eadmund, according to William of Malmesbury, being taken and doomed to perpetual imprisonment, sincerely repented, and on his near approach to death ordered himself to be buried in his chains, confessing that he suffered deservedly for the crime of fratricide.[634] Eadgar thus reunited Lothian with Scotland, and subjected both to his rule, but it was not till two years after that he succeeded in taking Donald Ban prisoner, who was blinded and condemned to perpetual imprisonment at Roscolpin or Rescobie, where he died, and was buried in Dunfermline.[635]

[Sidenote: A.D. 1097-1107.
Eadgar, son of Malcolm Ceanmnor by Queen Margaret, reigns
nine years.]

In the first year of Eadgar’s reign, Magnus Barefoot, the king of Norway, again appeared in the Western Sea with his fleet. On the former occasion he was content with merely subjecting the islands to his authority as sovereign, without apparently disturbing their local government. The sons of Earl Thorfinn retained their position as earls of Orkney, and Godred Crovan remained ruler of the Isles in subordination to the king of Norway, and died in the year 1095. According to the Chronicle of Man, he died in Isla after a reign of sixteen years, and his eldest son Lagman, who had ruled the Isles under him during his life, went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where he died. The king of Norway then sent a Norwegian named Ingemund to rule the Isles, but he soon exasperated the islanders by his conduct, and on his assembling the chiefs of the Isles in the island of Lewis, where he appears to have had his seat of government, for the purpose of having himself declared king, they surrounded his house, set it on fire, and he and his whole retinue were destroyed either by the fire or the sword.[636]

It was this event which probably led to Magnus’s second expedition, and he resolved now to bring the islands under his own immediate rule. According to the Saga ‘he had both a large and vigorous army and excellent ships. King Magnus went with that army westward over the sea, and first to Orkney. He took captive the earls Paul and Erlend, and sent them both east to Norway, but left as a chieftain over the islands his son Sigurd, and gave a counsel to him. He went with his whole army to the Sudreys, but when he came there he commenced plundering immediately, burnt the inhabited places, killed the people, and pillaged wherever he went. But the people of the country fled to various places, some up to Scotland or into the fiords or sea lochs, some southward to Satiri or Kintyre; some submitted to King Magnus and received pardon.’[637] It is obvious from this account that the objects of King Magnus’s wrath were the original native possessors of the Isles, and not the Norwegian Vikings who had settled there, and it is probable that the destruction of Ingemund and his party arose from an attempt on their part to throw off the Norwegian yoke.

After the complete subjection of the Isles, Magnus proceeded southwards to the Isle of Man, and from thence to Anglesea, which he took possession of after subduing two earls—Hugo the Modest and Hugo the Stout—who governed it, and slaying one of them. On his return to the Isles he came to terms with the king of the Scots, by which all the islands to the west of Scotland, between which and the mainland a helm-carrying ship could pass, were ceded to him, and it was on this occasion that he is said to have had his ship drawn across the narrow isthmus between east and west Loch Tarbert, and included Satiri or Kintyre in the new kingdom of the Isles. It is probable that Eadgar did not feel himself sufficiently secure on his throne, and had as yet acquired too little authority over the remote parts of his kingdom to be able to resist the Norwegian king, and had no alternative but to buy off any attack upon the mainland by confirming the cession which his father had been obliged to make in the last years of his reign; and the Isles thus became entirely severed from their connection with the kingdom of Scotland, and were not again united till after the lapse of more than a century and a half.[638] King Magnus was slain in Ulster in the end of August in the year 1104, after he had ruled the Isles for six years. After his death the chiefs of the Isles appear to have endeavoured to throw off the Norwegian yoke with the assistance of the Irish under a leader, Donald mac Tadg, who, according to the Annals of Inisfallen, ‘carried war into the north of Ireland, and acquired the kingdom of Insegall by force’ in 1111;[639] but two years after, Olave, the son of Hodred Crovan, who had taken refuge with the king of England, recovered the possession of the now independent kingdom of the Isles, and ruled over them for forty years.[640]

Fordun tells us that while Eadgar was advancing with his uncle Eadgar Aetheling, towards Scotland, Saint Cuthbert appeared to him in a dream, and promised him success if he would take his standard from the church at Durham and carry it against his foes; and that, having put Donald and his men to flight, Eadgar then, by the favour of God and the merits of Saint Cuthbert, happily achieved a bloodless victory, and when established on the throne granted to the monks of Durham the lands of Coldingham.[641] That he refounded the monastery of Coldingham, and granted it to the canons regular of Saint Cuthbert is certain, for the charters still exist.[642] In these charters Eadgar terms himself king of the Scots (rex Scottorum), and addresses them to the Scots and Angles or English (Scottis et Anglis), thus classing his subjects under these two heads. Only one of the charters contains a list of witnesses. These are of the same character as those of King Duncan’s charter, and equally belong to the race of the Angles. Two of them are in part repeated; Vinget and Aelfric, who witnessed Duncan’s charter, appear also witnessing this charter as Unioett ghwite and Aelfric Pincerna, and Eadgar was thus surrounded by a Saxon court. He appears too to have made Edinburgh his residence, which as a stronghold situated near the western boundary of Lothian and on the Firth of Forth, was well adapted to be the seat of a king whose main supporters were in Lothian, and whose tenure of the northern part of his kingdom was uncertain, and to have died there on the 13th of January in the year 1107,[643] and was buried in Dunfermline. There were only three of the sons of Queen Margaret in life, Ethelred, Alexander, and David.[644] Ethelred was a churchman, abbot of Dunkeld, and possessed as a further appanage of the earldom of Fife, but seems to have made no pretension to the throne, and Alexander appears to have regarded himself as the natural heir; but Eadgar limited his succession to Scotland proper and its dependencies, and bequeathed the districts south of the Firths, consisting of Lothian and the Cumbrian province, to his youngest brother, David, with the title of Comes or Earl.[645] His motive for making this division of the kingdom between the two brothers was probably caused by the difficult position in which the kingdom was placed towards the English monarch, in regard to his claims of superiority. So far as Lothian was concerned, there was probably no idea at this period of the history of contesting it, and both Duncan and Eadgar seem to have purchased the assistance of the English by a general admission that they held the kingdom under the king of England. As soon, however, as they had obtained possession of the throne, they found the necessity of basing their right to the throne, so far as the districts north of the Firths were concerned, upon their hereditary title as heirs of its ancient kings, and not upon any concession from the king of England; but their possession of Scotland proper as independent kings, of Lothian as vassals of the king of England, and of Cumbria on an uncertain tenure in this respect, coupled with the radical diversity in the races which peopled these districts, and their mutual antagonism, made their position an anomalous one, and tended to compromise the independence of the monarchy. Donald Ban seems to have met the difficulty by associating a son of Queen Margaret with him in his second usurpation; and Eadgar, probably experiencing the same difficulty during his life, tried to obviate it after his death by making one brother independent king of the Scots, and placing the district more immediately affected by the English claims under the rule of his brother David, who was so far subordinated to Alexander as to bear the title of earl only. Such seems the natural explanation of this strange arrangement, by which Alexander’s succession as king was limited to the kingdom north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde, with the debateable ground extending from the river Forth to the river Esk, and including the strong positions of Stirling and Edinburgh; while David as earl obtained the richer districts extending from thence to the borders of England; and between them lay the earldom of Gospatric of Dunbar. According to Ailred, within whose lifetime Eadgar died, he was ‘a sweet and amiable man, like his kinsman the holy King Edward in every way; using no harshness, no tyrannical or bitter treatment towards his subjects, but ruling and correcting them with the greatest charity, goodness, and loving kindness;’[646] and consistently with this character we find few events recorded in his reign. He gives a very different character to his brother Alexander. Although, he says, he was humble and kind enough to the monks and the clergy, he was to the rest of his subjects beyond everything terrible; a man of large heart, exerting himself in all things beyond his strength. He was a lettered man, and most zealous in building churches, in searching for relics of saints, in providing and arranging priestly vestments and sacred books; most open-handed, even beyond his means, to all strangers, and so devoted to the poor that he seemed to delight in nothing so much as in supporting them, washing, nourishing, and clothing them.[647]

[Sidenote: A.D. 1107-1124.
Alexander, son of Malcolm Ceannmor by Queen Margaret, reigns
over Scotland north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde as king
for seventeen years.]

Alexander seems to have been dissatisfied with the arrangement made by the deceased king, and the expression in the Saxon Chronicle, coupled with the charters by which he confirms to the monks of Durham the grants they had received from Edgar,[648] implies that he was inclined to claim the whole kingdom as heir to his brother, with the assistance of the king of England, whose natural daughter Sibylla he afterwards married; but the hearty support given by the people of Lothian to his brother David, with the exception of Earl Gospatric, who appears among Alexander’s adherents, was too powerful to enable him to oppose with success the partition of the kingdom.

He soon justified that part of the character given him by Ailred which relates to the monks and the clergy, for besides the usual grants made by each king to Dunfermline, he, after he had reigned about seven years, founded a monastery at Scone, the principal seat of his kingdom, and established in it a colony of canons regular of St. Augustine, whom he brought from the church of St. Oswald at Nastlay, near Pontefract, in Yorkshire; and the church which had previously been dedicated to the Holy Trinity, he placed under the patronage of the Holy Virgin Mary, and of St. Michael, St. John, St. Laurence, and St. Augustine. The foundation charter is granted by himself and his wife Sibylla, daughter of Henry, king of England, as king and queen of the Scots, is confirmed by two bishops, and the formal consent of six earls and of Gospatric, who had also the rank of earl, is given to the grant.[649] Four can be connected with certain districts. These are Mallus of Stratherne, Madach of Atholl, Rothri of Mar, and Gartnach of Buchan. The older designation of Mormaer had now passed into that of ‘comes’ or earl, but was still more of a personal than a territorial title; and we here see Alexander, king of the Scots, whose kingdom was limited to that of Alban or Scotland proper, acting with a constitutional body of seven earls, six of whom represented the older Mormaers of the Celtic kingdom. He also founded a priory of the same canons in the island of Lochtay for himself and the soul of his queen Sibylla, which was dedicated to the Virgin and all saints.[650] In the same year in which Alexander founded the church of Scone, he found himself obliged to enter upon a struggle for the independence of the church in Scotland which indirectly involved that of the kingdom itself. The event which gave rise to this contest was the death of Turgot, bishop of St. Andrews. The see of St. Andrews had remained vacant since the death, in 1093, of the last Celtic bishop, termed in the Ulster Annals Fothudh, high bishop of Alban,[651] and in the Register of St. Andrews, Modach, son of Malmykel, of pious memory, bishop of St Andrews.[652] During the troubled time of the contest between the sons and brother of Malcolm Ceannmor, and during the reign of Eadgar, there appears to have been no consecrated bishop, but in the first year of Alexander’s reign, Turgot, who had been Queen Margaret’s confessor, and was now prior of Durham, was elected to fill the vacant see on the 20th of June 1107.[653] A difficulty immediately arose as to his consecration. The bishops of St. Andrews were at the time the sole bishops in Scotland. The controversy which had existed between Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury, and Thomas, archbishop of York, as to the rights of their respective metropolitan jurisdiction, had terminated in an agreement, at the council of Windsor in 1072, which conceded to York jurisdiction over all the episcopal sees from the Humber to the farthest limits of Scotland; and the archbishop of York now claimed the right to consecrate the bishop of St. Andrews. The claim was not without plausible grounds. The diocese of Wilfrid, the first bishop of York, after the withdrawal of the Scottish clergy, had extended over the whole of that part of Scotland which had been subjected to the Northumbrian rule, and included the entire territory of the subsequent diocese of St. Andrews, and that of Glasgow; and Lothian at that time annexed to St. Andrews, and Teviotdale annexed to Glasgow, had belonged to the bishopric of Lindisfarne. The church of St. Andrews too was founded after the expulsion of the Columban monks and might be viewed as much an offshoot of the Northumbrian church as the early Scottish church of Lindisfarne was of Iona. On the other hand, the church of St. Andrews claimed to be the representative of an older foundation, and engrafted a legendary origin upon its true history. The diocese of Galloway had been founded by the Northumbrians, and as to its subjection to the metropolitan jurisdiction of York there seems never to have been any question; but to allow it to extend over Glasgow and St. Andrews might compromise the independence of the kingdom. Turgot, however, as prior of Durham, would naturally be disposed to look to York for his consecration. Alexander had apparently been no party to his election, and seems hardly to have known thus early in his reign how to extricate himself from the difficulty, and the matter was settled for the time by a compromise. Turgot was consecrated at York on 1st August 1109, with reservation of the rights of both sees.[654] It was probably with a view to remove this difficulty that Alexander had, before the foundation of the church of Scone, erected the two additional sees of Dunkeld and Moray. Turgot, as the first bishop of St. Andrews of Anglic race, seems to have found his position an uncomfortable one, and experienced difficulty in exercising his episcopal functions; accordingly, six years after his consecration, he asked leave to retire to Durham, and died there on the 31st August 1115. It now became necessary to appoint a successor. Alexander appears to have wished for an Englishman, and to have thought that he could best defeat the pretensions of the archbishop of York by applying to the primate of all England. He accordingly wrote to Radulf, archbishop of Canterbury, to ask him to recommend a successor, since, as he averred in old time the bishops of St. Andrews were wont to be consecrated by the Pope or the archbishop of Canterbury. This appeal seems to have revived the disputes between York and Canterbury, which was probably Alexander’s object; and while they disputed as to who should consecrate the bishop, the see remained again vacant till the year 1120, when Alexander chose Eadmer, a monk of Canterbury, to be bishop of St. Andrews, and wrote to the archbishop of Canterbury to request that he might be sent to Scotland to be consecrated, who agreed to his appointment, but proposed he should be sent back to be consecrated. Eadmer went to Scotland, and was elected bishop by the clergy and people of the land, with the royal assent, but when it came to consecration the difficulty again occurred, and was again eventually settled by compromise. Eadmer received the ring from Alexander, took the pastoral staff from off the altar, and assumed the charge of the diocese. He, however, found himself quite as uncomfortable as Turgot had been. The renewed dissensions about the conflicting claims of York and Canterbury and the rights of St. Andrews retarded his consecration, and it ended in his returning the ring to Alexander, the staff to the altar, and leaving Scotland for Canterbury. When he wished, shortly afterwards, to reclaim his bishopric and return to Scotland, Alexander refused to receive him. The see again remained vacant, during which time the archbishop renewed his claim to jurisdiction over the Scottish bishops, which was supported by Pope Calixtus and steadily rejected by King Alexander; but on the death of Eadmer in the beginning of the year 1124, Robert, prior of the monastery of regular canons at Scone, was elected bishop of St. Andrews, and four years after Alexander’s death he was, in the reign of his successor, consecrated as Turgot had been by the archbishop of York, reserving the rights of both churches.[655]

It was on the occasion of Robert, the prior of his own monastery of Scone, becoming bishop of St. Andrews, that Alexander I. restored to the church of St. Andrews the lands called the Boar’s Chase, with many privileges, accompanied with the strange gift of the royal Arabian steed, with its trappings and silver shield and spear, which the king led up to the altar, and a splendid suit of Turkish armour.[656]

Alexander appears also in the same year to have founded a monastery of canons regular on the small island of Emonia, now called Inchcolm, in the Firth of Forth.[657] If these foundations amply justify the character given him of devotion and liberality to the church, that which Ailred likewise applies to him of being terrible towards his subjects was probably acquired by the stern manner in which he repressed the resistance of the Gaelic population of his kingdom, and forced them to submit to his rule. Fordun tells us that Alexander was surnamed Fers or the Fierce, and his interpolator Bower adds ‘that he acquired this name because he had received from his father’s brother, who was earl of Gowry, at his baptism, according to custom, the lands of Lyff and Invergowry, near Dundee;[658] that when he became king, he proceeded to erect a palace at Lyff, but was attacked by certain people of the Mearns and Moray in the night, who broke in the door, but he was brought secretly out[659] by his attendant, Alexander Carron, and having taken ship at Invergowry, he went to the south of Scotland, and having collected an army, he hastened against the rebels; that he then founded the monastery of Scone, and bestowed upon it the lands of Lyff and Invergowry. He then pursued the rebels to the river Spey, and there finding his enemies collected in great numbers on the opposite bank, and the river so swollen, and his men unwilling to cross, he gave his standard to Alexander Carron, who plunged into the stream, was followed by the army, and his enemies were put to flight.’[660] Wynton substantially narrates the same tale, but places the king’s palace or ‘maner-plas’ at Invergowry; terms his assailants ‘a multitude of Scottysmen;’ says that they fled ‘owre the Mownth,’ and removes their final dispersion from the Spey to the Beauly river, when he adds that the king

Folowyd on thame rycht fersly
Owre the Stokfurd into Ros;

And that

Quhilk he oure-tuk thame at the last,
And tuk and slwe thame, or he past
Owt off that land, that fewe he lefft
To tuk on hand swylk purpos efft.
Fra that day hys legys all
Oysid hym Alysandyr the Fers to call.[661]

Wynton places the foundation of Scone on his return from the north. Whether this event really took place or not, it is probably a true enough indication of what Alexander had to experience from his Gaelic subjects, and how he dealt with them, and certain it is that the foundation charter of the monastery of Scone contains a grant of the lands of Lyff and Invergowry.[662]

Alexander grants three of his charters at Strivelin, Perth, and Scone; and, in his foundation charter of the latter place, he gives the monks five dwellings in his principal towns. These are Edwinsburg or Edinburgh, Strivelin or Stirling, Inverkeithing, Perth, and Aberdon or Aberdeen. He died at Stirling in full health of body and faculties, according to Fordun, on the 24th of April in the year 1124, and was buried at Dunfermline on the day of St. Mark the Evangelist, that is, on the 25th of April, near his father, in front of the great altar.[663]

[Sidenote: A.D. 1107-1124.
David, youngest son of Malcolm Ceannmor by Queen Margaret,
rules over Scotland south of Forth and Clyde as earl.]

The only son of Queen Margaret now left was David, the youngest. He appears, while yet a youth, to have accompanied his sister Matilda to the English court, on her marriage with Henry the First, king of England, which took place in November 1100, during the reign of Eadgar over Scotland,[664] and here he was trained, with other young Norman barons, in all the feudal usages, so as to become, by education and association with the young English nobility, imbued with feudal ideas, and surrounded by Norman influences, or, as William of Malmesbury expresses it, ‘polished from a boy by intercourse and familiarity with us.’[665] When he reached maturity Henry I. gave him in marriage a rich young widow, Matilda, daughter and heiress of that Waltheof who was son of Siward, earl of Northumberland, and himself earl of Northampton, and had married Judith, the niece of the Conqueror, and was afterwards beheaded by him. She was the widow of Simon de Senlis, and by her David obtained during her life the earldom of Northampton and honour of Huntingdon. David was thus, to all intents and purposes, a Norman baron when the death of his brother Eadgar placed him, by his bequest, in possession of almost the entire Scottish territory south of the Firths of Forth and Clyde, with the title of earl. The districts thus possessed by him extended, on the east, from the Tweed as far at least as the Lammermoor range, beyond which was the earldom of Gospatric of Dunbar; while the district extending from the Esk to the Forth was retained by King Alexander. On the west his possessions reached from the Solway Firth to the Firth of Clyde.

Six years after he obtained these lands, he founded, in the year 1113, a monastery of Benedictine monks of Tyron, at Selkirk, on the banks of the Ettrick, and his foundation-charter will still further indicate the extent of his possessions as earl. In this charter he calls himself Earl David, son of Malcolm, king of Scots, and addressed it to all his adherents, Normans, Angles, and Scots,[666] and gives the monks the lands of Selkirk and other lands in Teviotdale, a ploughgate in Berwick, and a croft in the burgh of Roxburgh, the tenth of his ‘can’ or dues from Galweia or Galloway, and in addition some lands in his English lordship of Northampton; and he shows his independent position by adding that this grant was made while Henry was reigning in England and Alexander in Scotia, or Scotland proper.[667] Not long after he refounded the bishopric of Glasgow, to which he appointed John as first bishop, who had been his tutor. The instrument which records the restoration of the diocese, and an investigation ordered by Earl David into the possessions of the see, is still preserved, and may probably be dated some time between the years 1116 and 1120. In this document it was stated that ‘in the time of Henry, king of England, while Alexander, king of Scots, was reigning in Scotia, God had sent them David, brother-german of the king of Scotia, to be their prince and leader;’[668] and ‘David, prince of the Cumbrian region, causes inquisition to be made into the possessions of the church of Glasgow in all the provinces of Cumbria which were under his dominion and power, for he did not rule over the whole of the Cumbrian region.’[669] The kingdom of Cumbria originally extended from the Firth of Clyde to the river Derwent, including what was afterwards the dioceses of Glasgow, Galloway, and Carlisle.[670] That portion, however, which extended from the Solway Firth to the river Derwent, and afterwards formed the diocese of Carlisle, was wrested from the Scots by William Rufus in 1092, and was bestowed by Henry the First upon Ranulf de Meschines.[671] David’s possessions in Cumbria consisted, therefore, of the counties of Lanark, Ayr, Renfrew, Dumfries, and Peebles, and the inquisition contains lands in these counties. He was, as we have seen, overlord of Galloway, and his rule extended also over Lothian and Teviotdale, in the counties of Berwick, Roxburgh, and Selkirk; for, in a charter by Earl David to the monks of Durham of the lands of Swinton in Berwickshire, he addresses it to Bishop John of Glasgow, to Gospatric, Colban and Robert his brothers, and to his thanes and drengs of Lothian and Teviotdale;[672] and, in another, Thor of Ednam in Berwickshire calls him his overlord, or the superior of his lands.[673]

From these deeds we not only learn the extent of David’s possessions, but we also see that he had attached to himself not only his Anglic vassals but a large following of Norman barons. Of the witnesses to the inquisition there are, besides his countess Matilda and his nephew William, son of his brother Duncan, eight of Anglic race and fourteen who are Normans. In his foundation charter of Selkirk, besides Bishop John of Glasgow, his countess Matilda, his son Henry, his nephew William, and three chaplains, there are eleven Norman witnesses, nine Anglic, and a solitary Gillemichel to represent the Celtic race. The native Cumbrians nowhere appear as witnessing his grants, and it seems plain enough that he had largely introduced the Norman element into his territories, and ruled over them as a feudal superior basing his power and influence upon his Norman and Anglic vassals, of whom the former were now the most prominent both in weight and number.[674]

[Sidenote: A.D. 1124-1153.
David reigns over all Scotland as first feudal monarch.]

On the death of King Alexander in the year 1124, the Saxon Chronicle tells us that ‘David, his brother, who was earl of Northamptonshire, succeeded to the kingdom, and had them both together, the kingdom of Scotland and the earldom in England;’ and thus the southern and northern districts, which had been severed during the whole of Alexander’s reign, were once more united under one king, and David founded a dynasty of feudal monarchs of Celtic descent in the paternal line, and in the maternal representing the old Saxon royal family, but governing the country as feudal superiors, and introducing feudal institutions. The extent to which the feudal and Norman element had already been introduced into the south of Scotland, while under the rule of earl, by David, will be apparent when we examine the relation between the Norman barons who witness his charters and the land under his sway. The most prominent of those who witness the foundation charter of Selkirk are four Norman barons, who possessed extensive lordships in the north of England. The first was Hugo de Moreville, and we find him in possession of extensive lands in Lauderdale, Lothian, and Cuningham in Ayrshire. The second was Paganus de Braosa. The third Robertus de Brus, who acquired the extensive district of Annandale in Dumfriesshire; and the fourth, Robertus de Umfraville, received grants of Kinnaird and Dunipace in Stirlingshire. Of the other Norman knights who witness this charter, and also the inquisition, Gavinus Ridel, Berengarius Engaine, Robertus Corbet, and Alanus de Perci possess manors in Teviotdale. Walterus de Lindesaya has extensive possessions in Upper Clydesdale, Mid and East Lothian, and in the latter district Robertus de Burneville is also settled. In Scotland proper the character in which David ruled will be best seen by contrasting his charters with those of his predecessors. Eadgar, who possessed the whole kingdom north of the Tweed and the Solway, addresses his charters to all his faithful men in his kingdom, Scots and Angles. Alexander, who possessed the kingdom north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde alone, to the bishops and earls, and all his faithful men of the kingdom of Scotia. A charter granted by David, in the third year of his accession to the throne, to the monks of Durham, of lands in Lothian, is addressed to all dwelling throughout his kingdom in Scotland and Lothian, Scots and Angles;[675] but when we enter Scotland proper, and compare his foundation charter of Dunfermline with that of Scone by his predecessor, Alexander I., there is a marked contrast between them. Alexander grants his charter to Scone, with the formal assent and concurrence of the seven earls of Scotland; and it is confirmed by the two bishops of the only dioceses which then existed in Scotland proper, with exception of St. Andrews, which was vacant, and the witnesses are the few Saxons who formed his personal attendants, Edward the constable, Alfric the pincerna, and others.[676] King David’s charter to Dunfermline, a foundation also within Scotland proper, is granted ‘by his royal authority and power, with the assent of his son Henry, and with the formal confirmation of his queen Matilda, and the bishops, earls, and barons of his kingdom, the clergy and people acquiescing.’ Here we see the feudal baronage of the kingdom occupying the place of the old constitutional body of the seven earls, while the latter appear only as individually witnessing the charter. David’s subsequent charters to Dunfermline show this still more clearly, for they are addressed to the ‘bishops, abbots, earls, sheriffs, barons, governors, and officers, and all the good men of the whole land, Norman, English, and Scotch:’ in short, the feudal community or ‘communitas regni,’ consisting of those holding lands of the crown, while the old traditionary earls of the Celtic kingdom appear among the witnesses only.[677]

The reign of David I. is beyond doubt the true commencement of feudal Scotland, and the term of Celtic Scotland becomes no longer appropriate to it as a kingdom. Under his auspices feudalism rapidly acquired predominance in the country, and its social state and institutions became formally assimilated to Norman forms and ideas, while the old Celtic element in her constitutional history gradually retired into the background. During this and the subsequent reigns the outlying districts, which had hitherto maintained a kind of semi-independence under their native rulers, and in which they were more tenaciously adhered to, were gradually brought under the more direct power of the monarch and incorporated into the kingdom. It will be unnecessary for our purpose to continue further a detailed narrative of the reigns of the kings of this dynasty who had thus become feudal monarchs, and it only remains to notice shortly the occasional appearance of the Celtic element in her constitution, and the fitful struggles of her Celtic subjects to resist the power which was gradually but surely working out this process of incorporation and the consolidation of the various districts which composed it into one compact kingdom.

[Sidenote: A.D. 1130.
Insurrection of Angus, earl of Moray, and Malcolm, bastard
son of Alexander I.]

David had been barely six years on the throne of Scotland when a united attempt was made on the part of its Gaelic inhabitants to wrest the districts north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde from his dominion, and the further encroachment of the English barons with their feudal holdings. At the head of this insurrection was Malcolm, a natural son of the late King Alexander, who probably counted upon the Gaelic population of Scotland proper preferring to recognise him as his father’s heir in his limited kingdom, rather than be united with Lothian under the feudal government of David; and Angus, son of the daughter of Lulach the Mormaer of Moray, and successor of Macbeth as king of Scotia, for three months, who on the death of Lulach’s son Maelsnechtan in 1085 had succeeded to him, according to the Pictish law of succession, as Mormaer of Moray, or, as it was now termed, Earl. Orderic of Vital gives so circumstantial an account of this insurrection, that his narrative may be accepted as substantially true, supported as it is by other authorities. ‘Malcolm, a bastard son of Alexander,’ he tells us, ‘attempted to deprive his uncle of the crown, and involved him in two rather severe contests; but David, who was his superior in talent as well as in wealth and power, defeated him and his party. In the year of our Lord 1130, while King David was ably applying himself to a cause in King Henry’s court, and carefully examining a charge of treason which, they say, Geoffrey de Clinton had been guilty of, Angus, earl of Moray, with Malcolm and five thousand men, entered Scotia (or Scotland proper) with the intention of reducing the whole kingdom to subjection. Upon this Edward, the son of Siward, earl of Mercia in the time of King Edward, who was a cousin of King David and commander of his army, assembled troops and suddenly threw himself in the enemy’s way. A battle was at length fought, in which Earl Angus was slain and his troops defeated, taken prisoners, or put to flight. Vigorously pursuing the fugitives with his soldiers elated with victory, and entering _Morafia_, or Moray, now deprived of its lord and protector, he obtained, by God’s help, possession of the whole of that large territory. Thus David’s dominions were augmented, and his power was greater than that of any of his predecessors.’[678] This account is confirmed by the Saxon Chronicle, which has in the year 1130, ‘In this year Anagus was slain by the Scots army, and there was a great slaughter made with him. Thus was God’s right avenged on him, because he was all forsworn;’ and the Ulster Annals have in the same year, ‘Battle between the men of Alban and the men of Moray, in which fell four thousand of the men of Moray, with their king Oengus, son of the daughter of Lulag, a thousand also of the men of Alban in heat of battle.’[679] Fordun places the scene of this battle at Stracathro in Forfarshire.[680]

[Sidenote: A.D. 1134.
Insurrection by Malcolm Maceth.]

This attempt, which ended so fatally for the Gael of Moray, was followed a few years after by one of the strangest incidents which occur in the history of Scotland at that period. It is obviously alluded to by Ailred in his eulogium upon King David, when, on telling us that ‘God gave David the affection of a son amid scourgings, that he should not murmur or backslide, but should give thanks amid “scourgings,”’ he adds, ‘These were his words, when God sent as a foe against him a certain spurious bishop, who lied and said he was the earl of Moray’s son;’ and again, ‘that the Lord had scourged with the lies of a certain monk that invincible king who had subdued unto himself so many barbarous nations, and had, without great trouble triumphed over the men of Moray and the islands.’[681]

William of Newburgh, however, who had personally known the impostor, if impostor he was, and had conversed with him, gives us a fuller account of this strange transaction. He first appears as a monk of the Cistercian monastery of Furness, which had been founded in the year 1124, as Brother Wymundus. According to William of Newburgh, ‘he possessed an ardent temper, a retentive memory, and competent eloquence, and advanced so rapidly that the highest expectations were formed of him.’ In 1134, Olave, the Norwegian king of Man, granted lands in that island to Yvo, abbot of Furness, to found an affiliated monastery at Russin, and Brother Wymund was sent with some monks to fill it; and here we are told ‘he so pleased the barbarous natives with the sweetness of his address and openness of his countenance, being also of a tall and athletic make, that they requested him to become their bishop and obtained their desire.’ Olave accordingly applied to Thurstan, archbishop of York, to consecrate him their bishop, and Wymund appears to have been consecrated by him.[682] He had no sooner obtained this position than he announced himself to be the son of the earl of Moray, who had been slain in 1130, and ‘that he was deprived of the inheritance of his father by the king of Scotland.’ Having collected a band of followers, who took an oath to him, he dropped his monastic name of Wymund for his Celtic appellation of Malcolm mac Eth, and began his career throughout the adjacent islands. His claim appears to have been recognised as genuine by the Norwegian king of the Isles, and by Somerled, the Celtic regulus of Argyll, whose sister he married. ‘Every day,’ says William of Newburgh, ‘he was joined by troops of adherents, among whom he was conspicuous above all by the head and shoulders: and, like some mighty commander, he inflamed their desires. He then made a descent on the provinces of Scotland, wasting all before him with rapine and slaughter; but whenever the royal army was despatched against him, he eluded the whole warlike preparation, either by retreating to distant forests, or taking to the sea; and when the troops had retired, he again issued from his hiding-places to ravage the provinces.’ In this career he met one check; for, invading the province of Galloway and demanding tribute from the bishop, he was encountered by him at the head of his people when attempting to ford the river Cree; and the bishop ‘having met him as he was furiously advancing and himself striking the first blow in the battle, by way of animating his party, he threw a small hatchet, and, by God’s assistance, he felled his enemy to the earth as he was marching in the van. Gladdened at this event, the people rushed desperately against the marauders, and killing vast numbers of them compelled their ferocious leader shamefully to fly,’ ‘Wymund,’ adds William, ‘himself used afterwards with much pleasantry and boastingly to relate among his friends that God alone was able to vanquish him by the faith of a simple bishop. This circumstance I learnt from a person who had been one of his soldiers, and had fled with those who had made their escape. Recovering his forces, however, he ravaged the islands and provinces of Scotland as he had done before;’[683] till at length the king, with the assistance of a Norman army, succeeded in taking him prisoner, and confined him in the castle of Marchmont or Roxburgh.[684] This took place, as we shall see, in the year 1137.[685]

[Sidenote: A.D. 1138.
David invades England; position of Norman barons.]