A Short History of Scotland | Page 6

receive the new ideas of feudal law in pacific fashion. They were not
violently forced upon the English-speaking people of Lothian.

DYNASTY OF MALCOLM.
On the death of Malcolm the contest for the Crown lay between his
brother, Donald Ban, supported by the Celts; his son Duncan by his
first wife, a Norse woman (Duncan being then a hostage at the English
Court, who was backed by William Rufus); and thirdly, Malcolm's
eldest son by Margaret, Eadmund, the favourite with the anglicised
south of the country. Donald Ban, after a brief period of power, was
driven out by Duncan (1094); Duncan was then slain by the Celts
(1094). Donald was next restored, north of Forth, Eadmund ruling in
the south, but was dispossessed and blinded by Malcolm's son Eadgar,
who reigned for ten years (1097-1107), while Eadmund died in an
English cloister. Eadgar had trouble enough on all sides, but the
process of anglicising continued, under himself, and later, under his
brother, Alexander I., who ruled north of Forth and Clyde; while the
youngest brother, David, held Lothian and Cumberland, with the title
of Earl. The sister of those sons of Malcolm, Eadgyth (Matilda),
married Henry I. of England in 1100. There seemed a chance that, north
of Clyde and Forth, there would be a Celtic kingdom; while Lothian
and Cumbria would be merged in England. Alexander was mainly
engaged in fighting the Moray claimants of his crown in the north and
in planting his religious houses, notably St Andrews, with English
Augustinian canons from York. Canterbury and York contended for
ecclesiastical superiority over Scotland; after various adventures,
Robert, the prior of the Augustinians at Scone, was made Bishop of St
Andrews, being consecrated by Canterbury, in 1124; while York
consecrated David's bishop in Glasgow. Thanks to the quarrels of the
sees of York and Canterbury, the Scottish clergy managed to secure
their ecclesiastical independence from either English see; and became,
finally, the most useful combatants in the long struggle for the
independence of the nation. Rome, on the whole, backed that cause.
The Scottish Catholic churchmen, in fact, pursued the old patriotic
policy of resistance to England till the years just preceding the
Reformation, when the people leaned to the reformed doctrines, and

when Scottish national freedom was endangered more by France than
by England.


CHAPTER V.
DAVID I. AND HIS TIMES.
With the death of Alexander I. (April 25, 1124) and the accession of his
brother, David I., the deliberate Royal policy of introducing into
Scotland English law and English institutions, as modified by the
Norman rulers, was fulfilled. David, before Alexander's death, was Earl
of the most English part of Lothian, the country held by Scottish kings,
and Cumbria; and resided much at the court of his brother-in-law,
Henry I. He associated, when Earl, with nobles of Anglo-Norman race
and language, such as Moreville, Umfraville, Somerville, Gospatric,
Bruce, Balliol, and others; men with a stake in both countries, England
and Scotland. On coming to the throne, David endowed these men with
charters of lands in Scotland. With him came a cadet of the great
Anglo-Breton House of FitzAlan, who obtained the hereditary office of
Seneschal or Steward of Scotland. His patronymic, FitzAlan, merged in
Stewart (later Stuart), and the family cognizance, the fesse chequy in
azure and argent, represents the Board of Exchequer. The earliest
Stewart holdings of land were mainly in Renfrewshire; those of the
Bruces were in Annandale. These two Anglo-Norman houses between
them were to found the Stewart dynasty.
The wife of David, Matilda, widow of Simon de St Liz, was heiress of
Waltheof, sometime the Conqueror's Earl in Northumberland; and to
gain, through that connection, Northumberland for himself was the
chief aim of David's foreign policy,--an aim fertile in contentions.
We have not space to disentangle the intricacies of David's first great
domestic struggles; briefly, there was eternal dispeace caused by the
Celts, headed by claimants to the throne, the MacHeths, representing
the rights of Lulach, the ward of Macbeth. {20} In 1130 the Celts were
defeated, and their leader, Angus, Earl of Moray, fell in fight near the
North Esk in Forfarshire. His brother, Malcolm, by aid of David's
Anglo- Norman friends, was taken and imprisoned in Roxburgh Castle.

The result of this rising was that David declared the great and ancient
Celtic Earldom of Moray--the home of his dynastic Celtic
rivals--forfeit to the Crown. He planted the region with English,
Anglo-Norman, and Lowland landholders, a great step in the
anglicisation of his kingdom. Thereafter, for several centuries, the
strength of the Celts lay in the west in Moidart, Knoydart, Morar,
Mamore, Lochaber, and Kintyre, and in the western islands, which fell
into the hands of "the sons of Somerled," the Macdonalds.
In 1135-1136, on the death of Henry I., David,