Events of the year 1093. While Eadgar was away on his mission to Scotland, he left behind him a busy state of things in England. His embassy came in the midst of the long delays between Anselm’s first nomination and his investiture, enthronement, and consecration. It came in the time when William of Eu was plotting,[7] and when, as we shall presently see, seeming conquest was going on throughout Wales. Meeting at Gloucester. August 24, 1093. The place and day for which Malcolm was summoned to the King’s court was Gloucester on the feast of Saint Bartholomew. This can hardly have been a forestalling of the regular Christmas Gemót, for which, by the rule of the last reign, Gloucester was the proper place. But this year, like most years when William Rufus was in England, was a year of meetings. This cannot be the meeting at which Anselm was invested and did homage, for that, as we have seen, was at Winchester.[8] But, if Winchester was near to the New Forest, Gloucester was near to the Forest of Dean, and would on that account not be without its attractions for the Red King.[9] Or it may well be that the presence of the King at Gloucester, both now and earlier in the year, may have been caused by the convenience of that city for assemblies in which action against the Britons might have to be discussed.[10] Malcolm sets forth. August, 1093. Malcolm accordingly set forth, “with mickle worship,” in the beginning of August as it would seem, to go to the court of the over-lord by the Severn.
He stops at Durham. On his way he tarried to take part in a great ecclesiastical ceremony, his share in which was not without a political meaning. Rebuilding of the abbey. The Bishop of Durham, William of Saint-Calais, now again the King’s chief counsellor, already his partisan in the opening strife with Anselm,[11] was ready to begin his great work of rebuilding Saint Cuthberht’s abbey. The church of Ealdhun, which had escaped the flames on the day of Robert of Comines,[12] could not really have been ruinous beyond repair; but, after the fashion of the time, it was doomed to make way for a building, built not only on a vaster scale, but in an improved form of art surpassing every contemporary building.[13] Malcolm lays a foundation stone. August 11, 1093. Of the mighty pile which still stands, the glory of the Northern Romanesque, King Malcolm now laid one of the foundation-stones, along with Bishop William and Prior Turgot.[14] The invitation to take part in such a work was clearly meant as a mark of honour and friendship on both sides. But it must surely have meant more. The King of Scots could not on any showing have claimed any authority at Durham. But he was something more than a mere foreign visitor. As ecclesiastical geography was understood at Durham, Malcolm was no stranger there; he was rather quite at home. At York he might have been told that the whole of his dominions owed spiritual allegiance to that metropolis. But the Bishops of Durham, practically the only suffragans of the see of York and suffragans almost on a level with their metropolitan, were at no time specially zealous for the rights of the Northern Primate. Much of Malcolm’s dominions in Durham diocese. But, as they drew the ecclesiastical map, a great part of Malcolm’s dominions, his earldom of Lothian, his Castle of the Maidens, perhaps even lands beyond those borders, all came within their own immediate spiritual charge. To the counsellor of King William Malcolm came as the highest vassal of the English crown; to the Bishop of Durham he came as the highest layman in his own diocese. As such, he was fittingly asked to take a share in a work which concerned the kingdom and the church of which he was one of the chief members. Import of the ceremony. His consent, besides being a mark of friendship alike towards King William and Bishop William, was doubtless taken as an acknowledgement that he belonged to the temporal realm of the one and to the spiritual fold of the other. And if Malcolm had learned any of the subtleties of some of his contemporaries and of some of his successors, he might have comforted himself with the thought that, whatever the laying of the stone implied, it was laid only by the Earl of Lothian and not by the King of Scots.
From Durham and its ceremonies Malcolm, Earl and King, went on to the court of the over-lord at Gloucester. Malcolm at Gloucester. August 24, 1093. He had evidently come disposed to make the best of matters, as William himself had been during his time of sickness and penitence. But now in August Rufus was himself again; he had repented of his repentance; he was more than ever puffed up with pride and with the feeling of his own power. Rufus refuses to see Malcolm. Out of mere insolence, it would seem, in defiance of the advice of his counsellors who wished for peace, he refused to have any speech with, or even to see, the royal vassal and guest who had made such a journey to come to his presence.[15] Whatever passed between the kings must have passed by way of message through third parties. Dispute between the kings. In one account we read generally that Rufus would do nothing of what he had promised to Malcolm.[16] In another version we are told, with all the precision of legal language, that William Question of “doing right.” demanded that Malcolm should “do right” to him by the judgement of the barons of England only, while Malcolm maintained that he was bound by ancient custom to “do right” only on the borders of the two kingdoms, where the kings of Scots were wont to “do right” to the kings of the English, and that by the judgement of the great men of both kingdoms.[17] The meaning of these words is plainly open to dispute, and it has naturally given rise to not a little.[18] Probable pretensions of Rufus. Their most natural meaning seems to be that William wished to deal with the kingdom of Scotland as with an ordinary fief. Such a claim would have been against all precedent, and it would be specially dangerous when William Rufus was king and when Randolf Flambard was his minister. On the other hand, Malcolm in no way denies the superiority of the English crown; he stands simply on the ground of ancient custom. He is ready to “do right,” a process clearly to be done by an inferior to a superior; but he will do it only as by ancient custom it was wont to be done. Because a kingdom acknowledged the external superiority of another kingdom, it did not at all follow that its king was bound to submit himself to the judgement of the barons of the superior kingdom. The original commendation had been made, not only by the King of Scots, but by the whole Scottish people,[19] and their king might fairly claim that he should have the advice and help of his own Wise Men in making answer to any charge that was brought against him. This is one of the cases in which the use of technical language, without any full explanation of the circumstances, really makes a matter darker; and we must perhaps be content to leave the exact point at issue unsettled. William in the wrong. But it is plain from the English Chronicle that William was in the wrong; he refused to do something for Malcolm which he had promised to do. The obligations of a treaty sat lightly on the Red King; but on one point his honour was pledged. Malcolm had come under a safe-conduct—the sending of hostages, if nothing else, shows it. William observes his safe-conduct. And a safe-conduct from Rufus might always be trusted. We cannot say that the two kings parted in wrath, seeing they did not meet at all. But Malcolm naturally went away in great wrath, and he left Rufus behind him in great wrath also. He reached his own kingdom in safety; what he did with the hostages we are not told.[20]
Edwᵈ. Weller
For the Delegates of the Clarendon Press.
Map illustrating the
NORTHUMBRIAN CAMPAIGNS
A.D. 1093–95.
The silly pride shown by William Rufus at Gloucester led to a series of events of the highest importance both as to the relations between England and Scotland, and as to the internal affairs of the northern kingdom. Malcolm’s last invasion of England. As soon as Malcolm reached Scotland, he gathered together his forces, and began his fifth, and, as it happened, his last, invasion of England. He entered the earldom of Northumberland, and harried after his usual fashion as far as some point which, there is no reason to doubt, was in the near neighbourhood of Alnwick. He draws near to Alnwick. We may fairly accept the tradition which carries him to the spot known as Malcolm’s Cross, where a commemorative rood once stood, and where the ruins of a Romanesque chapel may still be seen. The spot is on high ground overlooking the river Alne, while on the opposite side of the stream a lower height is crowned by the town of Alnwick castle. Alnwick, and by such remains of its famous castle as modern innovation has spared. The neighbourhood of Alnwick and the Percies. that castle, the fame of the historic house which once held it, has caused every place and every act into which the name of Alnwick or of Percy can be dragged to be surrounded by an atmosphere of legend. The first Percy at Alnwick. 1309. It needs some little effort to take in the fact that, as the Percies of history have long passed away from Alnwick, so in the days of Malcolm some centuries had to pass before the Percies of history reached Alnwick. It needs some further effort to take in the further fact that the true Percy, The true Percies. the Percy of Domesday, the Percy of Yorkshire, never had anything to do with Alnwick or with Northumberland at all. And it perhaps needs a further effort again to take in the fact that it is by no means clear whether in the days of Malcolm there was any castle of Alnwick in being. One may guess that the site had been fortified at some earlier time; The Vescies at Alnwick. but the known history of Alnwick, castle and abbey, begins with the works of the elder lords of Alnwick, the house of Vescy, in the next century.[21] Of that date a noble gateway has still been spared, which may 1174. well have looked on the captivity of the Scottish William in the days of Henry the Second, but which assuredly did not look on the death of Malcolm in the days of the Red King. The height to which Malcolm’s harryings reached may have looked down on some earlier fortress beyond the Alne, or it may simply have looked down on the town of Alnwick, which was doubtless already in being. But whatever was there at that time in the way of artificial defence, there were stout hearts and a wary leader ready to meet the king who was invading England for the fifth time.
English feeling about Malcolm. It is certainly strange that in not a few English writers, generally indeed those who are parted from the event by some distance of time and place, the overthrow of the invaders which now followed is told with a certain feeling for the invader and with a certain feeling against those who overthrew him. Malcolm perhaps drew to himself some share of the national and religious halo which gathered round his wife, while there was nothing attractive, either on national or on personal grounds, in the men who at that time stood forth as the champions of England. Yet it must have been the “good men” of two years past[22] who now went forth under the cunning guidance of Earl Robert of Mowbray. By some ambush or other stratagem, that skilful captain led his forces on the Scottish King unawares, under circumstances which are not detailed, but which have led even English writers to speak of the attack as treacherous.[23] Death of Malcolm. November 13, 1093. Malcolm was killed; and with him died his son and expected heir Eadward. They fell on the day of Saint Brice, ninety-one years after the great slaughter of the Danes which has made that day memorable in the kalendar of England.[24] Malcolm slain by Morel. The actual slayer of Malcolm was his gossip Morel, Earl Robert’s nephew and steward, guardian of the rock and fortress of Bamburgh. From him it would seem that Alnwick, or perhaps rather the dale between Alnwick and Malcolm’s Cross, took the name of Moreldene.[25] Morel was, it was noticed, the gossip, the compater, of Malcolm, as William Malet was of Harold;[26] and it seems almost to be implied, by writers far away from Alnwick, that this spiritual affinity made the slaughter of the invader a crime.
Burial of Malcolm at Tynemouth. The body of Malcolm, like the bodies of Harold and Waltheof, received a first burial and a later translation. It was first borne to the church of Saint Oswine at Tynemouth, a place which was growing into great reputation under the special favour of Earl Robert. History of Tynemouth. Through his bounty the walls of a new minster were rising within his fortress which crowned the rocky height on the left bank of the mouth of the great Northumbrian river. That fortress and that minster will again play a memorable part in the chequered history of their founder. But the church of Saint Oswine, the martyred King of Deira, did not owe its first origin to Robert of Mowbray or to any other stranger.[27] Martyrdom of King Oswine. The body of the sainted king, slain by the practice of the Bretwalda Oswin, was laid in a church which was said to have been first built of wood by the Bretwalda Eadwine, and then rebuilt of stone by the sainted Bretwalda Oswald. First church of Tynemouth. The position of Tynemouth marked it out as a special point for attack and defence in the days of the Danish invasions; but, after the havoc which they caused, the holy place had been neglected and forgotten. Invention of Saint Oswine. March 15, 1065. In the days of Earl Tostig and Bishop Æthelwine the pious care of the Earl’s wife Judith had led to the invention of the martyr’s relics, and to the beginning of a new church. Of that Tostig begins the new church. church Tostig laid the foundations in the year of his fall, but men of another speech were to finish it. The unfinished church was granted by Earl Waltheof to the monks of the newly restored house of Jarrow, and his gift was confirmed by the Norman Earl Alberic. Tynemouth granted to Jarrow by Waltheof. A gift to Jarrow proved, as events turned out, to be the same thing as a gift to Durham; but, before the change of foundation at Durham, the monks of Jarrow had removed the relics of Saint Oswine from Tynemouth to their own church. Earl Robert grants Tynemouth to Saint Alban’s. With the reign of Earl Robert a change came. Out of devotion, and at the heavenly bidding, as was believed at Saint Alban’s—out of a quarrel with Bishop William, as was believed at Durham—but at all events out of a feeling for the memory of Oswine which showed that he had learned some reverence for the worthies of the land in which he had settled—Earl Robert deprived the church of Durham of this possession, and refounded Tynemouth as a cell to the distant abbey of Saint Alban. Death of Abbot Paul. 1093. Abbot Paul came in person to take possession, in defiance of all protests on behalf of Durham, where it was believed that his death which soon followed was the punishment of this wrong. Translation of Saint Oswine. August 23, 1103. Saint Oswine himself was not translated back to Tynemouth till the power of Robert of Mowbray had passed away. But the church on the rock became famous, and it fills a considerable place in the local history of Saint Alban’s. There, in the chosen sanctuary of his conqueror, the body of Malcolm lay for awhile. Malcolm translated to Dunfermline. He was afterwards moved to his own Dunfermline[28] , where the pillars of his minster, in their deep channellings, bear witness to an abiding tie, at least of the artistic kind, between the royal abbey of Scotland and the great church of Northern England of which a Scottish king laid the foundation-stone.