The marriage of Henry, the youngest son of the Conqueror, with Matilda, daughter of Malcolm, and niece of Edgar Atheling, united the Norman and the older English royal lines. Henry’s son William was, in 1120, drowned in “The White Ship,” and his only other child, Maud, was thus the rightful heir to the throne. But the proud Norman barons had not been used to female rule; so, after Henry’s death, in 1135, Stephen, a son of the Conqueror’s daughter Adela, was made King.
David I., youngest son of Malcolm Canmore, succeeding his two elder brothers, was at this time King of Scotland, and he took up the cause of his niece Maud. In 1138 he invaded Northumberland, penetrating into Yorkshire. At Northallerton he was met and defeated in a battle called “Of the Standard.” It is said that he was gaining the day, when an English soldier cut off the head of one of the slain, placed it on a spear, and called out that it was the head of the King of Scots, thus causing a panic in the Scottish army which the King, riding amongst it without his helmet, vainly tried to overcome. After peace, David was allowed to retain Northumberland and Durham, excepting the fortresses of Newcastle and Bamborough. He was so good a king that after his death, in 1153, he was canonised.
David was succeeded by his twelve years old grandson, Malcolm. He was, from his gentle disposition, called The Maiden. He was greatly attached to the English King, Henry II., accompanying him to France as a volunteer in his army. Malcolm’s Scottish subjects were afraid of the influence of the older sovereign. Homage rendered by the Scottish kings for their possessions in England, was always liable to be construed into national homage; and it was notified that Malcolm had gone beyond mere homage, and had absolutely resigned these possessions. So Malcolm had a strong message from Scotland, asking him to return; this he did, was again in favour with his people, but died in 1165, being then only twenty-four years old.
He was succeeded by his brother William. He was called The Lion because he used as his armorial bearing a red lion—rampant—that is in heraldry, standing upon its hind legs; and this has ever since been the heraldric cognizance of Scottish royalty. In 1174, for the recovery of his ancestral possessions in Northumberland, William invaded England. One day riding in a mist with a slender retinue, he came upon a body of four hundred English horse. At first he thought that this was a portion of his own army; seeing his mistake he fought boldly, but was overpowered and made prisoner. He was taken to Northampton and conducted into King Henry’s presence, with his feet tied together under his horse’s belly. Now Henry had just been to Canterbury doing penance at the tomb of the murdered Thomas à Becket; he had walked barefoot through the city, prostrated himself on the pavement before the shrine, passed the whole night in the church, and in the morning had himself scourged by the priests with knotted cords. And now, as a token that his penance had reconciled him to heaven, and obtained the saint’s forgiveness, here was his enemy, the King of Scots, delivered into his hands.
Henry shewed no generosity towards his captive. He demanded to have homage paid him as Lord Paramount of Scotland. In his prison, first at Richmond, and then at Falaise in Normandy, William’s spirit was so far broken that he acceded to Henry’s demands, and the Scottish parliament, to obtain the release of their king, ratified a dishonourable treaty. At York the required homage was publicly paid; and for fifteen years it continued in full force. But in 1189, Henry’s son, Richard, the Lion-hearted, on the eve of his crusade to the Holy Land,—desirous to place his home affairs in safety during his absence, renounced the claim of general homage extorted from William,—reserving only such homage as was anciently rendered by Malcolm Canmore.
And in almost unbroken peace between the two countries for upwards of a century, the generous conduct of Richard bore good fruit. Then a course of accidents, which nearly extinguished the Scottish royal family, gave an English monarch the opportunity for reviving old pretensions to supremacy, and was thus the cause of renewed wars and national animosities.
William died in 1214, and was succeeded by his son, Alexander III. He reigned thirty-five years, and being of good parts, and with considerable force of character, did much for the progress of Scotland in the arts of civilization. He was succeeded in 1249 by his son, Alexander III., then only eight years of age. He married the daughter of Henry III., but the children of the marriage died young. The chief trouble of his reign was from Norwegian invasions, but in 1263 Alexander defeated Haco, King of Norway, at Largs, at the mouth of the Firth of Clyde. By this victory Scotland obtained possession of the Hebrides and the Isle of Man. Alexander was accidentally killed in 1263; riding too near the edge of a cliff on the Fifeshire coast, near Kinghorn, in the dusk of the evening, his horse stumbled and threw him over the cliff.
How Scotland became a Free Nation.
We are not attempting to present a detailed history of Scotland: such a history has both a general and a national value, and there has been no lack of writers of ability to give to it their best of thought and of research. But as having been a supreme crisis in this history, and as having placed Scotland high on the list of free nations, we give a brief summary of events at the end of the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth century.