Chapter VIII: David the First 1124–1153 (2)

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]