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

by Eben William Robertson

But the difficulties of William were not confined to ecclesiastical disputes, for the confusion amongst the Scottish army, after his capture at Alnwick, was only precursory of the anarchy, and disorganization, prevailing in the remoter provinces of his dominions for several years afterwards. Conspicuous amongst the disturbed districts was Galloway, for the alliance between the brothers, who were lords of the province, lasted only as long as it was their mutual interest to unite for the overthrow of the Scottish supremacy. The king’s officers, or Maors, A. D. 1174. who appear to have been paralyzed at the suddenness of the attack, were either massacred or driven out of the country almost without resistance; and fourteen years after the conquest of the principality, the royal authority was eradicated from Galloway, in fewer weeks than it had taken years to establish.

It then occurred to the elder brother Gilbert that his father had suffered no rival to share his dominions; and, after ascertaining the sentiments of his immediate adherents, he determined upon entrusting a body of men to his son, Malcolm, with instructions to remove all impediments from his path to undivided power. The son was worthy of the father, and surprising the unsuspecting Uchtred in his island home, he tore out his eyes and tongue, and then, with still more atrocious barbarity, left him in this state to perish slowly and in agony. So speedily had this tragedy been enacted, that when Henry dispatched his chaplain, Roger Hoveden, from Normandy, with directions to put himself in communication with Robert de Vaux at Carlisle, and to negotiate with the lords of Galloway about the transfer of their allegiance to the English crown, the envoys, upon their arrival in Galloway, found Gilbert sole ruler of the province. He entered with eagerness upon the subject of their mission, guaranteeing a yearly tribute of two thousand marks of silver, and a thousand head of cattle and hogs, if Henry would release him from his dependance upon the king of Scotland; but as the envoys possessed no power to conclude an arrangement without submitting the terms to Henry, they could only promise to lay the proposal before their king, and, with this reply, they took their leave. 23d Nov. As it was late in November before they reached Galloway, by the time they returned to Normandy the convention of Falaise must have been decided upon, if it had not been already completed; and as the clause accepting the homage of William for Galloway precluded Henry from entering into a separate agreement with Gilbert, he availed himself of the crime of the latter as an excuse for breaking off the negotiations, and for refusing to treat upon any terms with the murderer of “his cousin Uchtred.”[426]

A. D. 1175.

Immediately after the conclusion of the ceremony at York, Henry granted license to William to march an army into Galloway, empowering him to seek out and seize the murderer, and bring him before the court of his liege lord for punishment.[427] Gilbert submitted without resistance; and, in the autumn of the following year, William again presented himself at the court of Henry, A. D. 1176. with the lord of Galloway in his suite; but a fine seems to have been considered as a sufficient atonement for fratricide, and, upon the 9th of October, Gilbert swore fealty to the English king, giving up his eldest son Duncan as a hostage for his allegiance, and purchasing the royal favour at the price of a thousand marks of silver. No sooner had he returned to his principality than, driving out of the province all who were not of native origin, he denounced the penalty of death against every true-born Galwegian who dared to acknowledge that he held his lands of the king of Scots. His hatred against William was intense, and as no fear ever seems to have crossed his mind that he might forfeit the newly acquired favour of Henry by hostilities against his subject and ally, until the day of his death the Galwegian prince never omitted an opportunity of harassing and plundering the neighbouring provinces of Scotland; nor did his estimate of Henry’s character prove to be incorrect.[428]

Few kings who lived in that age were fortunate enough to escape a collision with the Church of Rome, nor was William destined to be amongst the number. His quarrel with Pope Alexander III. arose out of a dispute connected with the bishopric of St. Andrews. Upon the death of Bishop Richard in 1178 the chapter elected John Scot to the vacant see; but the king, who had destined the bishopric for his own confessor Hugh, and was not accustomed to be dictated to in matters of church patronage, ordered his nominee to be installed and consecrated by the Scottish bishops, A. D. 1180. whilst the pope, espousing the opposite side, commissioned his legate, the sub-deacon Alexis, to consecrate John. Yielding to the advice of his clergy, William offered no opposition to this proceeding, but he swore by the arm of St. James—his favourite oath—that the same kingdom should not hold himself and John Scot, and after the conclusion of the ceremony he effectually frustrated the intentions of the pope by banishing John, with his uncle Matthew, bishop of Aberdeen, and all his relations, from the country. Alexander, highly exasperated, retaliated by threatening to extinguish the liberties of the Scottish Church which he had hitherto protected, and he engaged the king of England to interfere in his behalf, conferring the office of legate for Scotland upon the archbishop of York, and authorizing that prelate to excommunicate William, and to lay his dominions under an interdict if he still persisted in his determination. A. D. 1181. It was in vain that Henry summoned William to Normandy, where the banished prelates had taken refuge, and endeavoured to effect an arrangement. The king steadily refused to permit John Scot to enjoy the bishopric of St. Andrews, offering to appoint him to the chancellorship, with a promise of the first see that fell vacant in his dominions; and as the pope determined with equal firmness that none but John Scot should preside over the contested diocese, refusing to listen to any sort of compromise, every one who acknowledged Hugh was excommunicated by the papal legate, whilst all who denied his claim were banished by the king.

Such was the state of Scotland towards the close of the year 1181, when, to the unfeigned delight of William, he was unexpectedly released from his difficulties by the deaths of the aged pope and of Roger, archbishop of York, the inveterate opponent of the liberties of the Scottish Church. The bishop of Glasgow and the abbot of Melrose were commissioned to set out immediately for Rome, for the purpose of negotiating an arrangement with the new pope; and Lucius III., A. D. 1182. reversing the policy of his predecessor, absolved William from the excommunication, released his kingdom from the interdict, and forwarded to him the Golden Rose in token of amity.[429] It was subsequently agreed that both bishops, resigning their sees, should be reinstated by the pope, Hugh retaining the bishopric of St. Andrews, and John Scot receiving Dunkeld; and though six years elapsed before the dispute was brought to a final close, after the death of Alexander no serious misunderstanding arose between the king of Scotland and the papal see.[430]

A. D. 1181.

During the absence of William in Normandy, whilst he was in attendance at the court of Henry upon the subject of his dispute with the papal see, some of the leading nobility of Scotland—probably of Moravia—taking advantage of the distracted state of the kingdom, made overtures to Donald Bane, a son of William Fitz Duncan, inviting him to assert his claim upon the throne of Scotland. This Donald, better known as Mac William, had already put forward his pretensions to the Scottish crown, but his attempts had been hitherto limited to predatory incursions, nor had he ever yet obtained a permanent footing in the country; but the old spirit of disaffection still lingered in the north and west, where the enemies of the king flocked to the standard of his hostile kinsman as readily as they had once gathered around the banner of the heir of Moray, and the insurrection soon rose to a formidable head.[431] Upon his return to England towards the close of July, William received intelligence of the invasion of Donald Bane, but it was not until the middle of September that he obtained the permission of Henry to absent himself with his attendant barons from the English court, and to take measures for the defence of his kingdom. He at once hurried with his brother David toward the provinces in possession of the enemy, but Mac William appears to have avoided an encounter, and the king was obliged to remain satisfied with strengthening his hold upon the marches and lowlands of Ross-shire, and confining his enemy to the remoter Highland districts, by the erection of the two castles of Eddirton and Dunscath.[432]

Although he was now released from the interdict, William found too much occupation, in attending to the internal dissensions of his own kingdom, to attempt any interference in the quarrels between Henry and his sons. Mac William in the north was still unsubdued, whilst Gilbert of Galloway openly invaded the Lothians, plundering the country, massacring the inhabitants, and refusing to listen to any terms of accommodation. A. D. 1184. Such was the state of disorder created by the Galwegians, that in the year 1184 William had assembled an army to repress the outrages of Gilbert, when the return of Henry from Normandy induced him to alter his intentions, and, dismissing his followers, he hastened southwards to meet the English king. Mingled motives may have dictated this change of purpose, though, as a vassal of the English crown, he was not strictly justified in avenging himself upon another vassal without the license of his superior; but at this time particularly, he was anxious to avoid every cause of quarrel with Henry, for the Duchess of Saxony had arrived in the train of her father from Normandy, and William was a suitor for the hand of her daughter Matilda. Simon de St. Liz also, upon whom the Honor of Huntingdon had been conferred, had lately died without an heir, and the Scottish king was equally on his guard lest any misunderstanding should interfere with his claims upon his former fief.[433]

Henry readily promised his consent to the proposed union if a papal dispensation could be obtained, but though the relationship was somewhat distant—for Matilda was eight degrees removed from William according to the old computation of the civil law, though only four by the later canonical method of reckoning—the pope refused compliance, and from subsequent occurrences it is not improbable that Henry was secretly opposed to the marriage. As a set off to the failure of his suit with Matilda, the forfeiture of Huntingdon was reversed, and though several of the English barons put forward pretensions to the fief, A. D. 1185. offering large sums of money for its possession, it was restored by Henry to the Scottish king, who immediately sub-infeoffed it to his brother David.[434]