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DAVID THE FIRST, King
of Scots, a
monarch who, by his admirable capacity for government, and skill in
availing himself of opportunities of aggrandizing his kingdom, may be
truly said to be the founder of the monarchy on its modern basis and
extended limits, was the eighth son of Malcolm the Third, but the sixth
and youngest by his queen, Margaret, sister of Edgar Atheling, the
displaced heir of the Saxon line of English princes. None of his brothers
by Queen Margaret, (two of whom, Edgar and Alexander, reigned before him,)
bor the Christian names of any of the previous kings or nobles of
Scotland. They were principally such as were born by Queen margaret’s
relatives, and seem to have been chosen by herself; and Lord Hailes
conjectures that the youngest son received the name of David, from his
having been born at a time when his mother had no hope of ore children, in
reference to the youngest son of Jesse. [Dalrymple’s Annals, 4to.
edit. 1779, vol. i. p. 43.] After the death of his father, his uncle
Donald Bane usurped the throne, and the young princes Edgar, Alexander,
and David retired into England, where they were kindly entertained by
their maternal uncle, Edgar Atheling. David is said to have afterwards
spent some years at the English court, and according to the English
historian, William of Malmsbury, “By his early converse with his
countrymen his manners were polished from the rust of Scottish barbarity;”
but this is doubtful, as the English historians who refer to this matter,
speak of him as “living as a count in England,” comite in Anglia. [Odericus
Vitalis, in Dalrymple’s Annals. vol. i. p. 100.] Now he was
only a count in or of
Cumbria,
which was always spoken of by them in that age as part of England. The
Scottish historians have supposed that when in England, his residence was
at the court of Henry the First, who had married his sister Matilda,
overlooking the fact that this marriage did not take place till 1100, two
years after his brother Edgar had ascended the throne by the expulsion of
Donald Bane, and probably after David had, as the same historians relate,
soon after that event, at the head of an army of Norman knights, in the
service of William Rufus, proceeded into Scotland from Lothian or Cumbria,
to assist in the settlement of his brother’s kingdom. This view of the
matter appears the more probable from the circumstance that all these
writers describe his residence in England to have extended during and
until the close of the reign of his brother Alexander, whereas during the
whole of that reign, excepting perhaps occasional visits, he was
unquestionably residing and governing as a count or prince in Cumbria. By
his marriage with Matilda, daughter of Waltheof, count of Northumberland,
David appears to have acquired great possessions in Cumbria (Inquisition)
as also the foundation of a claim of some kind to succeed to the
government of that province.
David received
from his brother Edgar, on his deathbed in January 1107, the province of
Cumbria, (see art. ALEXANDER I.), as a sovereignty independent of the
Scottish crown, but held (as it had been by his brother) as a fief under
that of England. The writer to whom we owe the knowledge of this
circumstance, mentions it under the designation of “a part of England,”
portio regni. [Dalrymple, vol. i. page 49.] The extent of this
province, which originally included the north-west counties of England, is
distinctly stated in the ‘Inquisition’ to have been curtailed, and from
the names referred to therein, to have comprised all modern Scotland,
south of the firths of Clyde and Forth, with Dumbartonshire on the north
of the former river. We have already, in our life of Alexander the First,
alluded to Prince David’s happy genius for government, and to his ruling
that portion of the country as an independent prince , and we need not
dwell farther on either subject here. While still prince or earl of
Cumbria, (he appears at this period to have resided at Selkirk,) David
appointed several of the older and more influential inhabitants (seniorum
hominum et sapientiorum totius Cumbriae) to make an inquisition
concerning the lands pertaining to the see of Glasgow. This inquisition,
preserved in the Chartulary of Glasgow, is a valuable record of the names
of places at that period in the district, and a copy is published in one
of the volumes of the Maitland Club. This must have been about 1116, as in
the previous year he had appointed a person of great learning and piety
named John, who had had the charge of his education, bishop of the see,
and he was most anxious that it should possess all the lands which of
right belonged to it.
On the death of
his brother, Alexander the First, on the 27th April 1124, David
succeeded to the throne of Scotland. His right to it was not disputed at
the time, and on his accession he for the first time introduced the Norman
or feudal system into the northern portion of his kingdom, which gradually
displaced the institutions that till then had prevailed. After this period
he does not seem to have resided much at Selkirk. The larger part of
Scotland proper was also now under his sway, and as he was on the most
friendly terms with his brother-in-law, Henry the First of England, whose
court he frequently visited, several years of peace ensued, and the
nation, under his mild and beneficent rule, made rapid progress in
prosperity and civilization.
One of David’s
characteristics was the founding and endowment of religious houses. In the
same year that he founded the monastery of Kelso (1128) he also erected
that of Holyrood, styled by Fordun “Monasterium Sanctae Crucis de Crag,”
and liberally endowed it. For the canons of Holyrood and the use of the
inhabitants, he built a mill at the place which afterwards became the
village of Canonmills. In the charter of foundation he granted liberty to
these canons to erect a burgh between the abbey and the town of Edinburgh;
hence the origin of the burgh of Canongate, afterwards the seat of royalty
and the residence of the Scottish nobility while Scotland remained an
independent kingdom. The legend of the circumstances which are said to
have led to the foundation of this abbey, although adopted by modern
writers on antiquities, is quite unworthy of serious attention. He
likewise afterwards founded the abbeys of Melrose, Newbattle,
Cambuskenneth, Dryburgh, Kinloss, and Jedburgh, as well as the priory of
Lesmahago and the Cistertian convent of Berwick, all or nearly all in that
portion of the country where he himself had formerly resided. In founding
these institutions he acted with profound policy as well as piety. the
inhabitants were rude and ignorant, and no mode of instructing or of
civilizing them presented itself in that age so simple and effective as
was the establishment of religious houses, which were then more industrial
and educational than in later ages, when they became seats of luxury and
idleness; and, by attaching a powerful body to the interests of his crown,
he laid the foundation of that deep attachment to the monarchy which
eventually promoted its entire independence of England. Besides, most of
the lands with which he endowed them had originally belonged to the
church, and many of the substantial grants were at the same time made by
his nobles.
On the death of
Henry the First of England in 1135, his nephew, Stephen earl of Boulogne,
usurped the throne, and David immediately assembled an army to support the
right of his niece, Henry’s daughter, the empress Matilda, which, as a
vassal of the English monarchy, he had, as the first noble in that
kingdom, sworn to maintain. Entering England, he took Carlisle and
Newcastle, and overran the counties of Cumberland and Northumberland,
compelling the northern barons to swear fealty to Matilda, and to give
hostages for the performance of their oath. To arrest his progress,
Stephen, at the head of a large force, marched to Durham, and the king of
Scots, finding himself deserted by the English barons who had joined him
and had sworn to maintain the claims of Matilda to the throne, entered
into a negociation with Stephen, which terminated in a treaty of peace, by
which he restored all the towns and castles he had recently occupied, and
Stephen, on his part, ceded the castle of Carlisle to Henry the son of the
Scottish king, with the Honour of Huntingdon, and lands in Doncaster, for
which the latter did homage. Stephen is also said to have promised not to
make any grant of the earldom of Northumberland until he had examined the
pretensions of Prince Henry, who claimed it as grandson and heir of
Waltheof the last Anglo-Saxon earl, although the elder son of his mother
by a former marriage was then living. The peace, however, was a hollow
one, for in the same year, during the absence of King Stephen in Normandy,
David invaded Northumberland, availing himself of the occasion to press
the doubtful claim of his son Prince Henry to that county. On this
occasion Thurstin, the aged archbishop of York, who some years before had
consecrated Robert prior of Scone bishop of St. Andrews, (see life of
ALEXANDER I.), repaired to Scotland, and prevailed upon King David to
consent to a truce until Stephen’s return to England. When the latter came
back, however, he haughtily rejected the demands of the Scottish king, and
in the beginning of the following year David again invaded Northumberland.
Exasperated at not being able to take the castle of Wark, which he had
assaulted, the Scottish army committed the most cruel ravages, burning all
the towns, villages, and churches, and sparing neither men, women, nor
children. On being apprised of these devastations, King Stephen marched to
the north at the head of a large force, and pursued the Scots as far as
Roxburgh, and, crossing the Tweed, wasted the Scottish borders. On his
retreat soon afterwards, David again invaded Northumberland, where, in
spite of every effort to restrain them, his fierce soldiery committed the
most frightful excesses. At the report of the approach of an English army
they retired hastily, but their retrograde march was stayed by David, who,
laying siege to Norham castle, captured and destroyed it; while another
division of the Scottish army, under the leadership of the king’s nephew,
William the son of Duncan, penetrated through Craven in Lancashire, and
routed with great slaughter, at Clitheroe, upon the confines of Yorkshire,
the English troops that had assembled to oppose its passage across the
Ribble. From Norham King David marched southwards to join the victorious
army of his nephew. The English, unable to content against their superior
force, attempted in vain to negociate a peace. The battle that ensued,
known in history as that of “the Standard,” was fought on Cutton Moor near
Northallerton on August 21, 1138. The Scots were defeated with
considerable loss, and the attendants of the king, seeing the day
irretrievably lost, hurried him from the field. With his shattered army,
he reached Carlisle, where he was joined by his son Prince Henry, who had
escaped with difficulty.
After restoring
order among his soldiers, and binding their leaders by a solemn oath
“never to desert him in war,” he led his troops to besiege the castle of
Wark, which he reduced by famine, and razed to the ground. In the
beginning of the following year, by the mediation of Queen Maude, the wife
of Stephen and also a niece of King David, who had an interview with her
uncle at Durham, a peace was at length concluded to the satisfaction of
all parties, and the earldom of Northumberland granted to Henry prince of
Scotland.
The dislike with
which a portion of the original races of th north had regarded the
introduction of hereditary succession in the family of Malcolm the Third,
by his second marriage, into the ancient kingdom of Scotland, to the
exclusion of their ancient custom of Tanistry, however checked and
overawed it might be for a time by the chastisements inflicted on their
chiefs during the reign of his brother Alexander, did not prevent attempts
being made by them, when favourable occasions presented themselves, to
return to that rule of government, although the notices of these outbreaks
that have come down to us in the national chronicles are vague and brief.
It appears that in 1130, when David was absent in England, Angus earl of
Moray, a descendant of Lulach, or of one of the family of Macbeth, invaded
the adjacent county of Forfar with an army of 5,000 men, and was slain at
Strickathrow with many of his people, and his territory overrun and
subdued. In this attempt he is said by an English historian to have been
aided by Malcolm, said to have been a bastard son of Alexander the first,
but supposed with more probability to have been a son of Malcolm the
Third, younger brother of Duncan by the first marriage of that king with
the widow of the earl of Orkney, and an elder brother of David himself by
the father’s side, whose name appears in a charter of Duncan to the
monastery of Durham. [Dalrymple’s Annals, vol. i. pp. 45, 67.]
In 1141 one
Wimond, and English monk who possessed some address and genius, and had
obtained a precarious living by copying old writings at Furness abbey in
Lancashire, having proceeded to the Isle of Man in connexion with a
religious house there founded, so pleased the natives that they obtained
him for their bishop. Whether he there heard of the affection of the
people of Scotland for their ancient chiefs, and sought to avail himself
of that feeling for his own aggrandizement, or whether he had in reality
some ground for his pretensions, cannot now be even conjectured, but he
declared himself to be the son of Angus earl of Moray, above referred to,
and professed his intention to vindicate his rights. The Isle of Man, at
that time governed by Olive, A Norwegian chief, as king, had subjected to
it various of the islands of the Hebrides. Repairing to these, joined by
many bold men of desperate fortunes, and gathering strength by making
piratical excursions, he obtained for wife a daughter of Somerled, the
chief or thane of Argyle, who supported his pretensions, and invading the
Scottish coasts, pillaged the country and slew its inhabitants. He eluded
various forces sent against him, and becoming formidable, although
defeated on one occasion by a bishop of those parts, David was at length
obliged to make terms of accommodation with him by bestowing on him some
lands with the superiority of a monastery of his own order. On account of
his overbearing conduct, however, a conspiracy being formed against him,
he was mutilated by his own followers, had his eyes put out, and in this
condition was delivered into the hands of David, who, after imprisoning
him for some time in the castle of Roxburgh, at length suffered him to
retire to the abbey of Byland in Yorkshire, where he died.
After King
Stephen’s defeat and capture at Lincoln in February 1140, and the
temporary acknowledgment of the empress Matilda as queen, David repaired
to London, to give her his advice and assistance. He was with her in the
castle of Winchester, in the following August, when it was invested by
Stephen’s brother, the bishop of winchester, and it was with great
difficulty that he succeeded in escaping with his niece. A young Scots
soldier, named Oliphant, in the army of Stephen, to whom David had been
godfather, concealed him from a very strict search, and conveyed him in
safety to Scotland. In the last years of Stephen, David’s son, Prince
Henry, (and after his death his grandson Malcolm), remained in the quiet
possession of Northumberland, (with the exception of the fortresses of
Newcastle and Bambrough,) as also of Carlisle and a portion of modern
Cumberland, connected therewith, and the possession of the former was
promised to the Scottish crown by his grand-nephew, Prince Henry
Plantagenet, the son of the empress Matilda, afterwards Henry the Second
of England, when he received the honour of knighthood from him at
Carlisle, May 22, 1149, should he succeed to the throne.
In his old age,
King David lost his only son, Henry, one of the most virtuous and
accomplished princes of that age, who died suddenly on June 12, 1152. By
the Lady Ada, a daughter of the earl of Warrene and surrey, whom he had
married in 1139, Prince Henry had three sons, Malcolm and William,
successively kings of Scotland, David, earl of Huntingdon, and three
daughters. The aged monarch took immediate measures to have the rights of
his grandsons established, and he had no sooner done so than his health,
which had been long declining, gave way, and he was found dead in his bed
at Carlisle, in an attitude of prayer, May 24, 1153.
The character of
this pious and patriotic monarch stands out in history as that of one of
the wisest and best of the kings of Scotland. Under his beneficent sway,
the country was contented and happy. The endowments which he bestowed upon
the church produced immediate and beneficial effects upon the nation, for
to the influence of the clergy may be mainly attributed not only the
promotion of knowledge and of the arts of industry among the people, but
the loyalty and love of order of the barons, at that time for the most
part a simpler race, new to their dignities, and more under the persuasive
influence of the clergy than in later periods of Scottish history, when,
their families having multiplied and become powerful, they vexed the
kingdom by their ambition and rivalries. Besides Edinburgh and St.
Andrews, the towns of Brechin, Montrose, Haddington, Linlithgow, Jedburgh,
and Rutherglen owe their charters of burghal rights to the wisdom of David
the first. His seal as count of Cumbria has been already given. In one of
the charters of his grandson Malcolm, who succeeded him as king, is a
representation of an old and young man, generally supposed to represent
these two monarchs from which the preceding as his portrait has been
taken.
[seal of David I]
In
a work upon Scottish biography the circumstance of the settlement in
Scotland of the ancestors of most of the families who, even to modern
times, are reckoned of note in that country, having occurred during the
reign of this great prince, must not be omitted. to enumerate even the
names of the principal of these would exceed our present limits.
Originally located, for by far the greatest part, on lands in his
principality of Cumbria, (the modern Lothians, and Ayrshire,) which their
prowess had probably contributed to conquer, these chiefs, for the most
part of Norman descent, gradually extended themselves by marriage, or by
confiscation of the native possessions, into an over the northern portion
of the kingdom; and holding them by tenures which necessarily called forth
and strengthened their military spirit, and with regalities and rights
more ample than could be obtained from the neighbouring monarchy of
England, they became the firm advocates of the integrity of the kingdom,
whilst their descendants in subsequent ages having greatly multiplied, and
forming the majority of the inhabitants of these regions, gradually gave
an entirely new aspect to the social character of the population.
DAVID
THE SECOND, king of Scots,
son of Robert te Bruce, succeeded his father, 7th June 1329,
when little more than five years old, having been born at Dunfermline, 5th
march 1323-4. On the 14th November 1331, he was crowned at
Scone, with his consort, Johanna, daughter of Edward the Second, whom,
child as he was, he had married at Berwick, on 12th July 1328,
in virtue of the treaty of Northampton, which had restored peace between
Scotland and England. After the success of Edward Baliol and the
disinherited barons, on their invasion of Scotland in September 1332, the
disgraceful surprise of Dupplin, and the more fatal battle of Halidon Hill
in 1333, David and his infant queen were, for greater security, sent to
France, where they remained till Baliol had been driven out of Scotland,
and his adherents dispersed. In 1340, the young king of Scots was with the
french army under Philip of Valois, in Flanders, when Edward of England
was unsuccessfully besieging Tournay. On 4th May 1341 he
landed, with his consort, at Inverbervie in Kincardineshire, being then in
his nineteenth year. Rash and impetuous, like his uncle Edward Bruce, he
had no sooner returned than he showed himself anxious for a rupture with
England, and in the following February he accompanied the earl of Moray as
a volunteer, when he invaded the western marches, wasted the English
borders, and plundered Penrith. In the summer of 1342, after creating a
numerous body of knights, he himself led a large force into
Northumberland, but was obliged to make an inglorious retreat. A third
invasion, soon after, met with no better success.
In
1346, when Edward the Third was occupied with his wars in France, David,
at the instigation of the French king, resolved to invade England, and
having mustered a large army at Perth, commenced his march. After storming
the fortress of Liddel on the borders, and beheading Walter Selby, its
governor, disregarding the advice of Douglas, the knight of Liddesdale, he
continued his advance, eastward and southward, marking the progress of his
army through Northumberland and towards Durham, by all the wasting ravages
of war. He was defeated, however, after a great battle, and taken
prisoner, at Neville’s Cross, near Durham, October 17th of the
same year. According to Rymer and Froissart, though he had two spears
hanging in his body, his leg desperately wounded, and his sword beated out
of his hand, he disdained captivity, and provoked the English by
opprobrious language to kill him. When John Copeland, a gentleman of
Northumberland and governor of Roxburgh castle, advised him to yield, he
struck him on the face with his gauntleted hand so fiercely that he
knocked out two of his teach. He was conveyed to the Tower of London,
being, it is said, conducted to that celebrated fortress under an escort
of twenty thousand men, accompanied by the different companies of the city
in their proper dresses. In 1351, after several negociations, in
consequence of an agreement between Edward and the commissioners from
Scotland, David was allowed to visit his kingdom, on giving hostages and
making oath to return to captivity, when required. His confinement had
been very strict, and it is believed that to obtain his liberty he had
entered into a secret treaty with Edward, unfavourable to the independence
of Scotland. Having failed in his attempts to procure its confirmation he
returned to the Tower in 1352. After long conferences a treaty for his
liberation and a truce of nine years was concluded at Newcastle, 13th
July 1354, and duly ratified, but it was prevented from being carried into
effect, in consequence of the intrigues of the king of France, who, by
sending a body of soldiers and a sum of money into Scotland, prevailed
upon the Scots to continue the war against England. In 1357, however, a
treaty was finally entered into, whereby the ransom of the king was fixed
at one hundred thousand marks, to be paid in ten years, and David returned
to Scotland, October 3d of that year. His long residence in England had
led him to admire the superiority of English policy and manners. His
captivity, in the castle of Odiham in Hampshire, was alleviated by the
similar fate of John the French monarch, and was gradually enlarged. Gold
medals of David were struck in England, (Pinkerton’s Essay on Medals,
vol. ii., plate 2,) and he returned to Scotland impressed with the
most favourable sentiments of that country and its sovereign,
notwithstanding the defeats, disorders, and miseries to which his subjects
had been reduced by the English monarch. He afterwards paid frequent
visits to England, and was engaged in certain secret intrigues with the
English king to prevent the succession of his nephew Robert the Steward,
who had been regent during his captivity. In 1363, after his return from
one of these visits, he made a proposal to the parliament at Scone, that
if he died without issue, Lionel duke of Clarence, second son of Edward
the Third, should be chosen king, a proposition which the parliament
indignantly rejected, and the Steward and others of the nobility entered
into an association to maintain the legal succession to the crown. David,
after issuing an energetic proclamation, had recourse to arms, on which
the insurgents submitted, and a general amnesty was granted. In the same
year, however, he again repaired to London, and was present, with Edward
the Third, at a conference, held 23d November, at which it was agreed that
in the event of David dying without issue, the king of England was to
become sovereign of Scotland; but, in the then temper of the Scots nation,
he did not venture to bring such a project forward, and it was not known
till published in the sixth volume of Rymer’s ‘Foedera,’ after the union
of the two kingdoms.
[portrait of David the Second]
David’s queen, Johanna, had died in England in 1362, and in the following
year he married a second time Margaret Logie, a gentlewoman of singular
beauty. In 1369, yielding to her suggestions, he imprisoned the Steward
and his three sons. The marriage was an unhappy one, and he obtained a
divorce from her by the Scottish bishops in 1370. On her disgrace the
Steward and his three sons were released from prison. David died in the
castle of Edinburgh, in 22d February 1371, in the 47th year of
his age, and 42d of his reign. Dying without issue, he was succeeded by
his nephew, Robert the Steward, (Robert the Second). Notwithstanding the
weakness and degeneracy of character of David the Second, the veneration
of the Scots people for the memory of their illustrious deliverer, Robert
the Bruce, kept them steady in their attachment to his only son. From a
fine portrait of David the Second in Pinkerton’s Scottish Gallery, 2d vol,
the preceding woodcut is taken.
DAVID,
Earl of Huntingdon, prince of Scotland,
was the son of David the First and brother of William the Lion. In early
life he seems to have possessed the lands and the earldom of Lennox, a
fact hitherto unknown to all our genealogists, but established by the
details of an inquest into the property of the lands of Monoch-Kenneran in
Dumbartonshire held in the early part of the reign of Alexander the
Second, preserved in the Chartulary of Paisley, and published in the
appendix to the descriptions of the sheriffdoms of Lanark and Renfrew by
the Maitland Club, 1830, p. 275, where Anekol, one of the witnesses,
confirmed by three others, viz. Nemiss, Kissin, and Gillemor, swears to
these lands having been exempt from aids when demanded by “Comes David
frater regis Wilielmi ea tempore que habent comitatum de Levenax et
possedit,” as pertaining to the church of Kilpatrick. It would thus
appear, as has been supposed by Skene, that these lands of Lennox were
originally a royal patrimony, and were first erected into an earldom in
his favour either by his grandfather David the First, or by his elder
brother Malcolm. The history of this prince is full of romance, and has
been made the groundwork, with of course many of the usual inventions of
the novelist, of Sir Walter Scott’s brilliant story of the Talisman in the
‘Tales of the Crusaders.’ Soon after his marriage with Matildis, daughter
of Ranulph earl of Chester, he departed for the Holy Land, to fight
against the Saracens, under the banners of Richard the First of England,
surnamed, from his bravery, Coeur de Lion, or the Lion-hearted. On his
voyage homeward, he met with some strange adventures. Having been
shipwrecked on the coast of Egypt, the prince was made captive, and having
lost all his retinue, and his rank being unknown, he was sold as a slave
to a Venetian, who carried him to Constantinople. In that city some
English merchants accidentally recognising him, redeemed him, and sent him
home. After having surmounted various difficulties, he was in imminent
hazard of a second shipwreck on the coast of Scotland. He is said to have
returned from the Holy Land in the eighth year of King William. In
accordance with the superstitious notions of the times, he ascribed his
deliverance to the Virgin Mary, and in memory of her efficacious
intercession, he founded the monastery of Lindores in Fife, which he
dedicated to St. Mary and St. Andrew. Some of the ruins of the abbey, the
buildings of which were at one time very extensive, still remain. The
monks were of the Benedictine order. They were rich, having twenty-two
churches, and large estates in several counties. This earl of Huntingdon
possesses an interest in Scottish history beyond that attaching to his
mere personal adventures, as being the father of the two princesses, from
whom Bruce and Baliol were descended, and on which descent they founded
their respective claims to the throne. |
