A Short History of Scotland by Andrew Lang

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CHAPTER V. DAVID I. AND HIS TIMES.

With the death of Alexander I. (April 25, 1124) and the accession of his
brother, David I., the deliberate Royal policy of introducing into
Scotland English law and English institutions, as modified by the Norman
rulers, was fulfilled. David, before Alexander's death, was Earl of the
most English part of Lothian, the country held by Scottish kings, and
Cumbria; and resided much at the court of his brother-in-law, Henry I. He
associated, when Earl, with nobles of Anglo-Norman race and language,
such as Moreville, Umfraville, Somerville, Gospatric, Bruce, Balliol, and
others; men with a stake in both countries, England and Scotland. On
coming to the throne, David endowed these men with charters of lands in
Scotland. With him came a cadet of the great Anglo-Breton House of
FitzAlan, who obtained the hereditary office of Seneschal or _Steward_ of
Scotland. His patronymic, FitzAlan, merged in Stewart (later Stuart),
and the family cognizance, the _fesse chequy_ in azure and argent,
represents the Board of Exchequer. The earliest Stewart holdings of land
were mainly in Renfrewshire; those of the Bruces were in Annandale. These
two Anglo-Norman houses between them were to found the Stewart dynasty.

The wife of David, Matilda, widow of Simon de St Liz, was heiress of
Waltheof, sometime the Conqueror's Earl in Northumberland; and to gain,
through that connection, Northumberland for himself was the chief aim of
David's foreign policy,--an aim fertile in contentions.

We have not space to disentangle the intricacies of David's first great
domestic struggles; briefly, there was eternal dispeace caused by the
Celts, headed by claimants to the throne, the MacHeths, representing the
rights of Lulach, the ward of Macbeth. {20} In 1130 the Celts were
defeated, and their leader, Angus, Earl of Moray, fell in fight near the
North Esk in Forfarshire. His brother, Malcolm, by aid of David's Anglo-
Norman friends, was taken and imprisoned in Roxburgh Castle. The result
of this rising was that David declared the great and ancient Celtic
Earldom of Moray--the home of his dynastic Celtic rivals--forfeit to the
Crown. He planted the region with English, Anglo-Norman, and Lowland
landholders, a great step in the anglicisation of his kingdom.
Thereafter, for several centuries, the strength of the Celts lay in the
west in Moidart, Knoydart, Morar, Mamore, Lochaber, and Kintyre, and in
the western islands, which fell into the hands of "the sons of Somerled,"
the Macdonalds.

In 1135-1136, on the death of Henry I., David, backing his own niece,
Matilda, as Queen of England in opposition to Stephen, crossed the Border
in arms, but was bought off. His son Henry received the Honour of
Huntingdom, with the Castle of Carlisle, and a vague promise of
consideration of his claim to Northumberland. In 1138, after a disturbed
interval, David led the whole force of his realm, from Orkney to
Galloway, into Yorkshire. His Anglo-Norman friends, the Balliols and
Bruces, with the Archbishop of York, now opposed him and his son Prince
Henry. On August 22, 1138, at Cowton Moor, near Northallerton, was
fought the great battle, named from the huge English sacred banner, "The
Battle of the Standard."

In a military sense, the fact that here the men-at-arms and knights of
England fought as dismounted infantry, their horses being held apart in
reserve, is notable as preluding to the similar English tactics in their
French wars of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

Thus arrayed, the English received the impetuous charge of the wild
Galloway men, not in armour, who claimed the right to form the van, and
broke through the first line only to die beneath the spears of the
second. But Prince David with his heavy cavalry scattered the force
opposed to him, and stampeded the horses of the English that were held in
reserve. This should have been fatal to the English, but Henry, like
Rupert at Marston Moor, pursued too far, and the discipline of the Scots
was broken by the cry that their King had fallen, and they fled. David
fought his way to Carlisle in a series of rearguard actions, and at
Carlisle was joined by Prince Henry with the remnant of his men-at-arms.
It was no decisive victory for England.

In the following year (1139) David got what he wanted. His son Henry, by
peaceful arrangement, received the Earldom of Northumberland, without the
two strong places, Bamborough and Newcastle.

Through the anarchic weakness of Stephen's reign, Scotland advanced in
strength and civilisation despite a Celtic rising headed by a strange
pretender to the rights of the MacHeths, a "brother Wimund"; but all went
with the death of David's son, Prince Henry, in 1152. Of the prince's
three sons, the eldest, Malcolm, was but ten years old; next came his
brothers William ("the Lion") and little David, Earl of Huntingdon. From
this David's daughters descended the chief claimants to the Scottish
throne in 1292--namely, Balliol, Bruce, and Comyn: the last also was
descended, in the female line, from King Donald Ban, son of Malcolm
Canmore.

David had done all that man might do to settle the crown on his grandson
Malcolm; his success meant that standing curse of Scotland, "Woe to the
kingdom whose king is a child,"--when, in a year, David died at Carlisle
(May 24, 1153).

SCOTLAND BECOMES FEUDAL.

The result of the domestic policy of David was to bring all accessible
territory under the social and political system of western Europe, "the
Feudal System." Its principles had been perfectly familiar to Celtic
Scotland, but had rested on a body of traditional customs (as in Homeric
Greece), rather than on written laws and charters signed and sealed.
Among the Celts the local tribe had been, theoretically, the sole source
of property in land. In proportion as they were near of kin to the
recognised tribal chief, families held lands by a tenure of three
generations; but if they managed to acquire abundance of oxen, which they
let out to poorer men for rents in kind and labour, they were apt to turn
the lands which they held only temporarily, "in possession," into real
permanent _property_. The poorer tribesmen paid rent in labour or
"services," also in supplies of food and manure.

The Celtic tenants also paid military service to their superiors. The
remotest kinsmen of each lord of land, poor as they might be, were valued
for their swords, and were billeted on the unfree or servile tenants, who
gave them free quarters.

In the feudal system of western Europe these old traditional customs had
long been modified and stereotyped by written charters. The King gave
gifts of land to his kinsmen or officers, who were bound to be "faithful"
(_fideles_); in return the inferior did homage, while he received
protection. From grade to grade of rank and wealth each inferior did
homage to and received protection from his superior, who was also his
judge. In this process, what had been the Celtic tribe became the new
"thanage"; the Celtic king (_righ_) of the tribe became the thane; the
province or group of tribes (say Moray) became the earldom; the Celtic
Mormaer of the province became the earl; and the Crown appointed _vice-
comites_, sub-earls, that is sheriffs, who administered the King's
justice in the earldom.

But there were regions, notably the west Highlands and isles, where the
new system penetrated slowly and with difficulty through a mountainous
and almost townless land. The law, and written leases, "came slowly up
that way."

Under David, where his rule extended, society was divided broadly into
three classes--Nobles, Free, Unfree. All holders of "a Knight's fee," or
part of one, holding by _free_ service, hereditarily, and by charter,
constituted the _communitas_ of the realm (we are to hear of the
_communitas_ later), and were free, noble, or gentle,--men of coat
armour. The "ignoble," "not noble," men with no charter from the Crown,
or Earl, Thane, or Church, were, if lease-holders, though not "noble,"
still "free." Beneath them were the "unfree" _nativi_, sold or given
with the soil.

The old Celtic landholders were not expropriated, as a rule, except where
Celtic risings, in Galloway and Moray, were put down, and the lands were
left in the King's hands. Often, when we find territorial surnames of
families, "_de_" "of" this place or that,--the lords are really of Celtic
blood with Celtic names; disguised under territorial titles; and finally
disused. But in Galloway and Ayrshire the ruling Celtic name, Kennedy,
remains Celtic, while the true Highlands of the west and northwest
retained their native magnates. Thus the Anglicisation, except in very
rebellious regions, was gradual. There was much less expropriation of
the Celt than disguising of the Celt under new family names and
regulation of the Celt under written charters and leases.

CHURCH LANDS.

David I. was, according to James VI., nearly five centuries later, "a
sair saint for the Crown." He gave Crown-lands in the southern lowlands
to the religious orders with their priories and abbeys; for example,
Holyrood, Melrose, Jedburgh, Kelso, and Dryburgh--centres of learning and
art and of skilled agriculture. Probably the best service of the regular
clergy to the State was its orderliness and attention to agriculture, for
the monasteries did not, as in England, produce many careful chroniclers
and historians.

Each abbey had its lands divided into baronies, captained by a lay
"Church baron" to lead its levies in war. The civil centre of the barony
was the great farm or grange, with its mill, for in the thirteenth
century the Lowlands had water-mills which to the west Highlands were
scarcely known in 1745, when the Highland husbandmen were still using the
primitive hand-quern of two circular stones. Near the mill was a hamlet
of some forty cottages; each head of a family had a holding of eight or
nine acres and pasturage for two cows, and paid a small money rent and
many arduous services to the Abbey.

The tenure of these cottars was, and under lay landlords long remained,
extremely precarious; but the tenure of the "bonnet laird" (_hosbernus_)
was hereditary. Below even the free cottars were the unfree serfs or
_nativi_, who were handed over, with the lands they tilled, to the abbeys
by benefactors: the Church was forward in emancipating these serfs; nor
were lay landlords backward, for the freed man was useful as a spear-man
in war.

We have only to look at the many now ruined abbeys of the Border to see
the extent of civilisation under David I., and the relatively peaceful
condition, then, of that region which later became the cockpit of the
English wars, and the home of the raiding clans, Scotts, Elliots, and
Armstrongs, Bells, Nixons, Robsons, and Croziers.

THE BURGHS.

David and his son and successor, William the Lion, introduced a stable
middle and urban class by fostering, confirming, and regulating the
rights, privileges, and duties of the already existing free towns. These
became _burghs_, royal, seignorial, or ecclesiastical. In origin the
towns may have been settlements that grew up under the shelter of a
military castle. Their fairs, markets, rights of trading, internal
organisation, and primitive police, were now, mainly under William the
Lion, David's successor, regulated by charters; the burghers obtained the
right to elect their own magistrates, and held their own burgh-courts;
all was done after the English model. As the State had its "good men"
(_probi homines_), who formed its recognised "community," so had the
borough. Not by any means all dwellers in a burgh were free burghers;
these free burghers had to do service in guarding the royal castle--later
this was commuted for a payment in money. Though with power to elect
their own chief magistrate, the burghers commonly took as Provost the
head of some friendly local noble family, in which the office was apt to
become practically hereditary. The noble was the leader and protector of
the town. As to police, the burghers, each in his turn, provided men to
keep watch and ward from curfew bell to cock-crow. Each ward in the town
had its own elected Bailie. Each burgh had exclusive rights of trading
in its area, and of taking toll on merchants coming within its _Octroi_.
An association of four burghs, Berwick, Roxburgh, Edinburgh, and
Stirling, was the root of the existing "Convention of Burghs."

JUSTICE.

In early societies, justice is, in many respects, an affair to be settled
between the kindreds of the plaintiff, so to speak, and the defendant. A
man is wounded, killed, robbed, wronged in any way; his kin retaliate on
the offender and _his_ kindred. The blood-feud, the taking of blood for
blood, endured for centuries in Scotland after the peace of the whole
realm became, under David I., "the King's peace." Homicides, for
example, were very frequently pardoned by Royal grace, but "the pardon
was of no avail unless it had been issued with the full knowledge of the
kin of the slaughtered man, who otherwise retained their _legal_ right of
vengeance on the homicide." They might accept pecuniary compensation,
the blood-fine, or they might not, as in Homer's time. {27} At all
events, under David, offences became offences against the King, not
merely against this or that kindred. David introduced the "Judgment of
the Country" or _Visnet del Pais_ for the settlement of pleas. Every
free man, in his degree, was "tried by his peers," but the old ordeal by
fire and Trial by Combat or duel were not abolished. Nor did
"compurgation" cease wholly till Queen Mary's reign. A powerful man,
when accused, was then attended at his trial by hosts of armed backers.
Men so unlike each other as Knox, Bothwell, and Lethington took advantage
of this usage. All lords had their own Courts, but murder, rape, arson,
and robbery could now only be tried in the royal Courts; these were "The
Four Pleas of the Crown."

THE COURTS.

As there was no fixed capital, the King's Court, in David's time,
followed the King in his annual circuits through his realm, between
Dumfries and Inverness. Later, the regions of Scotia (north of Forth),
Lothian, and the lawless realm of Galloway, had their Grand Justiciaries,
who held the Four Pleas. The other pleas were heard in "Courts of
Royalty" and by earls, bishops, abbots, down to the baron, with his
"right of pit and gallows." At such courts, by a law of 1180, the
Sheriff of the shire, or an agent of his, ought to be present; so that
royal and central justice was extending itself over the minor local
courts. But if the sheriff or his sergeant did not attend when summoned,
local justice took its course.

The process initiated by David's son, William the Lion, was very slowly
substituting the royal authority, the royal sheriffs of shires, juries,
and witnesses, for the wild justice of revenge; and trial by ordeal, and
trial by combat. But hereditary jurisdictions of nobles and gentry were
not wholly abolished till after the battle of Culloden! Where Abbots
held courts, their procedure, in civil cases, was based on laws
sanctioned by popes and general councils. But, alas! the Abbot might
give just judgment; to execute it, we know from a curious instance, was
not within his power, if the offender laughed at a sentence of
excommunication.

David and his successors, till the end of the thirteenth century, made
Scotland a more civilised and kept it a much less disturbed country than
it was to remain during the long war of Independence, while the beautiful
abbeys with their churches and schools attested a high stage of art and
education.

CHAPTER VI. MALCOLM THE MAIDEN.

The prominent facts in the brief reign of David's son Malcolm the Maiden,
crowned (1153) at the age of eleven, were, first, a Celtic rising by
Donald, a son of Malcolm MacHeth (now a prisoner in Roxburgh Castle), and
a nephew of the famous Somerled Macgillebride of Argyll. Somerled won
from the Norse the Isle of Man and the Southern Hebrides; from his sons
descend the great Macdonald Lords of the Isles, always the leaders of the
long Celtic resistance to the central authority in Scotland. Again,
Malcolm resigned to Henry II. of England the northern counties held by
David I.; and died after subduing Galloway, and (on the death of
Somerled, said to have been assassinated) the tribes of the isles in
1165.

WILLIAM THE LION.

Ambition to recover the northern English counties revealed itself in the
overtures of William the Lion,--Malcolm's brother and successor,--for an
alliance between Scotland and France. "The auld Alliance" now dawned,
with rich promise of good and evil. In hopes of French aid, William
invaded Northumberland, later laid siege to Carlisle, and on July 13,
1174, was surprised in a morning mist and captured at Alnwick. Scotland
was now kingless; Galloway rebelled, and William, taken a captive to
Falaise in Normandy, surrendered absolutely the independence of his
country, which, for fifteen years, really was a fief of England. When
William was allowed to go home, it was to fight the Celts of Galloway,
and subdue the pretensions, in Moray, of the MacWilliams, descendants of
William, son of Duncan, son of Malcolm Canmore.

During William's reign (1188) Pope Clement III. decided that the Scottish
Church was subject, not to York or Canterbury, but to Rome. Seven years
earlier, defending his own candidate for the see of St Andrews against
the chosen of the Pope, William had been excommunicated, and his country
and he had unconcernedly taken the issue of an Interdict. The Pope was
too far away, and William feared him no more than Robert Bruce was to do.

By 1188, William refused to pay to Henry II. a "Saladin Tithe" for a
crusade, and in 1189 he bought from Richard I., who needed money for a
crusade, the abrogation of the Treaty of Falaise. He was still disturbed
by Celts in Galloway and the north, he still hankered after
Northumberland, but, after preparations for war, he paid a fine and
drifted into friendship with King John, who entertained his little
daughters royally, and knighted his son Alexander. William died on
December 4, 1214. He was buried at the Abbey of Arbroath, founded by him
in honour of St Thomas of Canterbury, who had worked a strange posthumous
miracle in Scotland. William was succeeded by his son, Alexander II.
(1214-1249).

ALEXANDER II.

Under this Prince, who successfully put down the usual northern risings,
the old suit about the claims to Northumberland was finally abandoned for
a trifling compensation (1237). Alexander had married Joanna, daughter
of King John, and his brother-in-law, Henry III., did not press his
demand for homage for Scotland. The usual Celtic pretenders to the
throne were for ever crushed. Argyll became a sheriffdom, Galloway was
brought into order, and Alexander, who died in the Isle of Kerrera in the
bay of Oban (1249), well deserved his title of "a King of Peace." He was
buried in Melrose Abbey. In his reign the clergy were allowed to hold
Provincial or Synodal Councils without the presence of a papal Legate
(1225), and the Dominicans and Franciscans appeared in Scotland.

ALEXANDER III.

The term King of Peace was also applied to Alexander III., son of the
second wife of Alexander II., Marie de Coucy. Alexander came to the
throne (1249) at the age of eight. As a child he was taken and held
(like James II., James III., James V., and James VI.) by contending
factions of the nobles, Henry of England intervening. In 1251 he wedded
another child, Margaret, daughter of Henry III. of England, but Henry
neither forced a claim to hold Scotland during the boy's minority (his
right if Scotland were his fief), nor in other respects pressed his
advantage. In February 1261-1262 a girl was born to Alexander at
Windsor; she was Margaret, later wife of Eric of Norway. Her daughter,
on the death of Alexander III. (March 19, 1286), was the sole direct
descendant in the male line.

After the birth of this heiress, Alexander won from Norway the isles of
the western coast of Scotland in which Norse chieftains had long held
sway. They complained to Hakon of Norway concerning raids made on them
by the Earl of Ross, a Celtic potentate. Alexander's envoys to Hakon
were detained, and in 1263, Hakon, with a great fleet, sailed through the
islands. A storm blew most of his Armada to shore near Largs, where his
men were defeated by the Scots. Hakon collected his ships, sailed north,
and (December 15) died at Kirkwall. Alexander now brought the island
princes, including the Lord of Man, into subjection; and by Treaty, in
1266, placed them under the Crown. In 1275 Benemund de Vicci (called
Bagimont), at a council in Perth, compelled the clergy to pay a tithe for
a crusade, the Pope insisting that the money should be assessed on the
true value of benefices--that is, on "Bagimont's Roll,"--thenceforth
recognised as the basis of clerical taxation. In 1278 Edward I. laboured
to extract from Alexander an acknowledgment that he was England's vassal.
Edward signally failed; but a palpably false account of Alexander's
homage was fabricated, and dated September 29, 1278. This was not the
only forgery by which England was wont to back her claims.

A series of bereavements (1281-1283) deprived Alexander of all his
children save his little grandchild, "the Maid of Norway." She was
recognised by a great national assembly at Scone as heiress of the
throne; and Alexander had no issue by his second wife, a daughter of the
Comte de Dreux. On the night of March 19, 1285, while Alexander was
riding from Edinburgh to visit his bride at Kinghorn, his horse slipped
over a cliff and the rider was slain.

CHAPTER VII. ENCROACHMENTS OF EDWARD I.--WALLACE.

The Estates of Scotland met at Scone (April 11, 1286) and swore loyalty
to their child queen, "the Maid of Norway," granddaughter of Alexander
III. Six guardians of the kingdom were appointed on April 11, 1286. They
were the Bishops of St Andrews and Glasgow, two Comyns (Buchan and
Badenoch), the Earl of Fife, and Lord James, the Steward of Scotland. No
Bruce or Baliol was among the Custodians. Instantly a "band," or
covenant, was made by the Bruces, Earls of Annandale and Carrick, to
support their claims (failing the Maid) to the throne; and there were
acts of war on their part against another probable candidate, John
Balliol. Edward (like Henry VIII. in the case of Mary Stuart) moved for
the marriage of the infant queen to his son. A Treaty safeguarding all
Scottish liberties as against England was made by clerical influences at
Birgham (July 18, 1290), but by October 7 news of the death of the young
queen reached Scotland: she had perished during her voyage from Norway.
Private war now broke out between the Bruces and Balliols; and the party
of Balliol appealed to Edward, through Fraser, Bishop of St Andrews,
asking the English king to prevent civil war, and recommending Balliol as
a person to be carefully treated. Next the Seven Earls, alleging some
dim elective right, recommended Bruce, and appealed to Edward as their
legal superior.

Edward came to Norham-on-Tweed in May 1291, proclaimed himself Lord
Paramount, and was accepted as such by the twelve candidates for the
Crown (June 3). The great nobles thus, to serve their ambitions,
betrayed their country: _the communitas_ (whatever that term may here
mean) made a futile protest.

As lord among his vassals, Edward heard the pleadings and evidence in
autumn 1292; and out of the descendants, in the female line, of David
Earl of Huntingdon, youngest son of David I., he finally (November 17,
1292) preferred John Balliol (_great-grandson_ of the earl through his
eldest daughter) to Bruce the Old, grandfather of the famous Robert
Bruce, and _grandson_ of Earl David's second daughter. The decision,
according to our ideas, was just; no modern court could set it aside. But
Balliol was an unpopular weakling--"an empty tabard," the people said--and
Edward at once subjected him, king as he was, to all the humiliations of
a petty vassal. He was summoned into his Lord's Court on the score of
the bills of tradesmen. If Edward's deliberate policy was to goad
Balliol into resistance and then conquer Scotland absolutely, in the
first of these aims he succeeded.

In 1294 Balliol was summoned, with his Peers, to attend Edward in
Gascony. Balliol, by advice of a council (1295), sought a French
alliance and a French marriage for his son, named Edward; he gave the
Annandale lands of his enemy Robert Bruce (father of the king to be) to
Comyn, Earl of Buchan. He besieged Carlisle, while Edward took Berwick,
massacred the people, and captured Sir William Douglas, father of the
good Lord James.

In the war which followed, Edward broke down resistance by a sanguinary
victory at Dunbar, captured John Comyn of Badenoch (the Red Comyn),
received from Balliol (July 7, 1296) the surrender of his royal claims,
and took the oaths of the Steward of Scotland and the Bruces, father and
son. He carried to Westminster the Black Rood of St Margaret and the
famous stone of Scone, a relic of the early Irish dynasty of the Scots;
as far north as Elgin he rode, receiving the oaths of all persons of note
and influence--except William Wallace. _His_ name does not appear in the
list of submissions called "The Ragman's Roll." Between April and
October 1296 the country was subjugated; the castles were garrisoned by
Englishmen. But by January 1297, Edward's governor, Warenne, Earl of
Surrey, and Ormsby, his Chief Justice, found the country in an uproar,
and at midsummer 1297 the levies of the northern counties of England were
ordered to put down the disorders.

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