Scotland under her early kings, Volume 1 (of 2)

by Eben William Robertson

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, 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] 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, 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. 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]

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]

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.