[228] Sim. Dun. de Gestis 1122, 1124. Fordun, l. 5, c. 40, 41. Malm. Gesta Regum, l. 5, sec. 400.
[229] Lib. de Scone, No. 1. Six earls attest the charter; Heth (written through a clerical error Beth) of Moray, Madach of Atholl, Malise of Strathearn, Dufagan of Fife, and Gartnach and Rory, who may be assigned to Angus, Mar, or Buchan. Heth appears to have married the sister of Malsnechtan (for his successor, Angus, is described as the son of Lulach’s daughter, An. Ult. 1130), and thus to have inherited and transmitted the claims of the line of Kenneth MacDuff. He must have been an inveterate opponent of the reigning family, as his son Malcolm is described by Ailred as “the inheritor of his father’s hatred.” The real descent of the Stewarts was well known as late as the fourteenth century, when Richard Fitz-Alan, Earl of Arundel in 1336, sold the Stewardship of Scotland to Edward III., a transaction which was confirmed by Edward Balliol (Tiernay’s Hist. of Arundel, vol. i., pp. 193, 299, notes). The sale was of course a political fiction, founded on the assumed forfeiture of the Scottish branch of the earl’s family, through which their hereditary office was supposed to have reverted to their English connections. The real king and the pseudo-king united in the joint exercise of an act of shadowy sovereignty—a joint protest of their claims as vassal king and overlord of Scotland—the sole substantial gain, the purchase-money, falling to the earl; though, had the Plantagenets succeeded in conquering Scotland, the transaction would have become a reality, and the ancestry of the hereditary Earls Marshal of the present day would have lost their claim to supplant the ancestry of the reigning sovereign. The father of Alan was Flahald or Fleald, a name which reappears under the familiar form of “Fleance, son of Banquo, Thane of Lochaber.”
[230] The reign of Edgar has been occasionally regarded as the era of a thorough Saxonizing of all Scotland, except the Highlands; but with respect to this opinion I can only use the words which Father Innes applies to the laws of Aodh Fin—“De hisce...... altissimum apud scriptores nostros silentium.” If Thane and Thanage are supposed to be, not Saxon names applied to Scottish institutions, but actual Saxon institutions introduced beyond the Forth, it should be explained why the Saxon Thane was as totally different a character from the Scottish Thane as Thane-land was from a Thanage. The Saxon held by military service—cnicht-service, an expression scarcely traceable to Normandy; the Scot by Scottish service and rent—in fee-farm. Why also is only one Thane traceable in the Lothians, if all the Thanes came from the Saxons? Compare Appendices N and R.
[231] Chron. Sax. 1124, calls David Earl of Northamptonshire. If this authority is correct, he must have held that earldom as guardian of the younger St. Liz, who was Earl of Northampton at the date of his death in 1153.
[232] Malm. Hist Nov., l. 1, sec. 1–3. Chron. Sax. 1126–7. The chroniclers of that age call the empress Alicia, oftener than Matilda; perhaps to distinguish her from Stephen’s queen.
[233] Vide preceding chapter, p.184, note.
[234] Chron. Sax., Chron. St. Crucis, Chron. Mel., and An. Ult. 1130. Ord. Vit., l. 8, p. 701–3. The Saxon Chronicler declares Angus to have been “all forsworn.” The account of Orderic is, as usual, a strange mixture of truth and error. As Heth witnessed the first Dunfermlyn charter in company with Constantine Earl of Fife, who died in 1128, he must have survived David’s accession; and it was possibly on the death of the Moray chieftain that his sons broke out into rebellion.
[235] Ailred de Bel. Stand. p. 344. Chron. Mel. 1134. “Deinde cum cohortibus suis jam triumpho elatis fugientes avidé insecutus est, et Morafiam defensore dominoque vacantem ingressus est, totumque regionis spaciosæ Ducatum, Deo auxiliante nactus est.” Such are the expressions of Orderic relating to the course pursued by David after Stickathrow. There is no allusion to Malcolm suffering the usual barbarities inflicted on state prisoners, so it is to be hoped, for David’s credit, that he escaped all such tortures.
[236] John and Rich. Hexham 1136. Hen. Hunt., l. 8, p. 222. Malm. Hist. Nov., l. 1, sec. 12. Lingard has no authority for saying that “David claimed Cumberland as having formerly belonged to the heir-apparent of the Scottish kings,” c. 11, note 13. There is no allusion to any claim except upon Northumberland (in right of his wife), and this was waived at the time for the fiefs of Carlisle and Doncaster. Strictly speaking, the Scottish royal family never appear to have held the Earldom—or rather perhaps Comitatus—but the Honour of Huntingdon. A grant of the “tertius denarius de placitis,” seems generally to have entitled its holder to the earldom at this period, whilst the holder of an honour was “overlord”—or constable—of a number of knights and barons; for all the tenants of an honour held by military service, and with manorial rights. It was in the power of the king, however, to grant the dignity of an earl, or attach the dignity to any fief, without reference to the “tertius denarius.” Vide Appendix L, pt. 2.
[237] Malm. Hist. Nov., l. 1, sec. 13. There is some uncertainty about David’s age, and Lord Hailes, a little rashly, finds fault with Malmesbury for writing about “the approach of age.” But as David survived Malmesbury, the latter would hardly have written what was not true, in such a trifling point, about one who was then living. Neither Alexander nor David appear to have taken any prominent part in the events immediately occurring after the death of their father; but David was old enough to assist his brother Edgar in 1097 by his astutia (Gesta Regum, sec 400). Forty years later he must have been nearer sixty than fifty.