Political History Part II

In 1072 William marched north and took a disputed homage of Malcolm at Abernethy, receiving as hostage the king's eldest son (by his first wife, Ingebiorge), named Duncan. As to the nature of Malcolm's homage, whether for Scotland (Freeman), or for manors and a subsidy in England (Robertson), historians disagree. Malcolm subdued" the King of Moray," son of Lulach, who died in far Lochaber, though his family's claims to the crown of Scotland did not lapse. In 1091 William Rufus renewed the treaty of Abernethy with Malcolm and fortified Carlisle, thereby cutting Malcolm off from Cumberland; Malcolm was summoned to meet Rufus at Gloucester; be went, but declined to accept the jurisdiction of the Anglo-Norman peers, or to "do right" to Rufus, except on the frontier of the two realms, wherever he may have supposed that frontier to be. He was an independent king, no vassal of England; as such (1093) he invaded Northumberland, and was slain at Alnwick. His wife, St Margaret, did not survive her sorrow; she died in the castle of Edinburgh. Her reforms in church matters had apparently made her unpopular with the Celts, but under cover of a mist her body was conveyed to and buried at Dunfermline.

Margaret, in fact, completed the reduction of the Celtic church in Scotland to conformity with western Christendom, and some recent presbyterian writers have not forgiven her. Beautiful, charitable and pious, she mollified the fierce manners of her husband, who, according to her director and biographer, Turgot, acted as interpreter between her and the Gaelic-speaking ecclesiastics at their conferences. Certain obscure religious usages, as regards Lent, the Communion, the non-observance of Sunday, non-communicating at Easter, and the Forbidden Degrees in marriage, were brought into conformity with western Christendom. The last Celtic "bishop of Alban" died at this time; and when the dynasty of Malcolm Canmore was established after an interval of turmoil, English ecciesiastics began to oust the Celtic Culdees from St Andrews.

Malcolm would have been succeeded by his eldest son by Margaret, Edward, but he fell beside his father at Alnwick, and the succession was disputed between Duncan, son of Malcolm by his first wife; Edmund, eldest surviving son of Malcolm and Margaret; and Donald Ban, brother of Malcolm. The Ceits (apart from the claimant of the blood of Lulach and the house of Moray) placed Donald Ban on the throne; England supported Duncan (by primogeniture Malcolm's heir, and a hostage in England); there was division of the kingdom till Duncan was slain, and Edgar, son of Malcolm and Margaret, was restored by Edgar Altheling. He put out the eyes of his uncle, Donald Ban, and in unsaintly ways established the dynasty of the English St Margaret and of the Celtic Malcolm. In 1103 Edgar's sister, Eadgyth (Matilda), married Henry I.; the dynasty of Scotland now shows, by the names of its members, that the English element in it was predominant. After Donald Ban no Scottish sovereign bears a Gaelic Christian name save Malcolm the Maiden; and perhaps no later king knew Gaelic.

Edgar, before his death, established his brother, Alexander I., as king of Scotland, north of Forth and Clyde, with Edinburgh, which looks as if he considered Forth and Clyde the frontier of what was legally Scotland; while his younger brother, David, as earl, ruled Lothian and Cumbria. The reign of Alexander I. is marked by war with the northern Celts, and by the introduction of English bishops of St Andrews, while the claims of the see of York to superiority over the Scottish church were cleverly evaded at Glasgow (David's bishopric), as well as at St Andrews, where English Augustinian canons were now established, to the prejudice of the Celtic Culdees. We observe that the chief peers of Alexander, who signed the charter of his monastery at Scone, are Celts, Heth, earl of Moray (husband of the daughter of Lulach), Malise of Strath earn, Dufagan of Fife, and Rory. After the death of Alexander I. (1124) his successor, David I., is attended by men of Norman names, Moreville, Somerville Bruce, FitzAlan (the ancestor of the Stewards of Scotland, and himself of an ancient Breton house), and so on.

David, educated in England by Normans, was the maker of a Scotland whereof the anglicized part at least was now ruled by Anglo-Norman feudalism and Anglo-Norman municipal laws in the burghs. Marrying Matilda, widow of Simon de St Liz and heiress of Waltheof, David received the earidom of Huntingdon and supposed himself to have claims over Northumberland, a cause of war for three generations. With Anglo-Norman aid he repelled a Celtic rising, the right Qf the claimants to represent the blood of Lulach is exquisitely complex and obscure in this case, but in the end David annexed to the crown the great old sub-kingdom or province of Moray, and made grants therein to English, Norman and Scottish followers.

Some of the most eminent of his southern allies could not stand by David when, in the reign of Stephen and in fidelity to the cause of his niece, the empress Matilda, daughter of Henry I., he invaded England. The towns of Northumberland and Cumberland opened their gates, but he and Stephen met in conference at Durham, and David's son Henry, prince of Scotland, received the Honour of Huntingdon, Carlisle, Doncaster "and all that pertains to them" (1135). Stephen's relations with Henry became unfriendly, and in January 1138, in pursuance of Henry's claim to Northumberland, David again invaded. A holy war against him was proclaimed by the archbishop of York, and on the 22nd of August 1138 Bruce, Baliol, and others of David's southern allies renounced fealty to him, and he was defeated at the battle of the Standard, near Northallerton. David regained the shelter of Carlisle, a legate from Rome made peace, and Prince Henry received the investiture of Northumberland, without the strong fortresses of Bamborough and Newcastle.

David was, if any man was, the maker of Scotland. The bishoprics erected by him, and his many Lowland abbeys, social Holyrood, Melrose, Dryburgh, Kelso, Jedburgh and and others, confirmed the freedom of the Scottish church from the claims of the see of York, encouraged the improvement of agriculture and endowed the country with beautiful examples of architecture. His charters to landowners and burghs (charters not being novel in Scotland, but now more lavishly conferred) substituted written documents for the unwritten customs of Celtic tenure, and converted the under kings of provinces into earls of the king, while vice-comites, or sheriffs, administered local justice in the king's name, though Celtic custom still prevailed, under a thin veneer of law, in the Celtic regions, as in Galloway. Where Anglo-Normans obtained lands in Renfrewshire, there seems to have been no displacement of the population: though a FitzAlan was dominant in Renfrewshire, the "good men," or gentry, still bore Gaelic names, until territorial names, of this or that place came into use. In Lothian the place-names recorded in charters were already, for the most part, English. Beneath the freeholders and noblesse were free tenants, farmers paying rents, mainly in kind, and in services of labour and of war.

Thus Scotland never saw a jacquerie or servile rising. The burghs were not actually the creation of David and William the Lion, but the rights, duties and privileges which had gradually developed in the towns were in the time of these kings codified and confirmed by charters; the towns had magistrates of their own election, courts, and legalized open markets. The greater burghers had a union, and made laws and regulations for municipal affairs. In addition to royal burghs, there were burghs of nobles and of bishops, and the provostship was apt to become, by custom, almost hereditary in a local noble family, which protected the burgesses.

The germ of a parliament existed in the crown vassals and the royal officials, chancellor, steward, constable, marischal and the rest, with bishops, priors, earls, barons and other probi homines. The term Iota communitas, "the whole community," appears to denote all freeholders of gentle birth, who might be present at any important assembly for the discussion of national affairs. Burgesses do not yet receive mention as present on such occasions.

Scotland was as yet, and in fact remained, destitute of constitutional history as it appears in England. There was, technically speaking, no taxation. The king "lived on his own," on rent of crown lands, feudal fines and aids, wardships, marriages, and the revenues of vacant bishoprics. Opposition used the mechanism of conspiracies; and changes of administration were effected by the seizure of the king's person, especially during the many royal minorities.

In the matter of justice, royal succeeded to tribal authority. Offences were no longer against the individual and his kin, but against the king's peace, or against the peace of subordinate holders of courts, earls, thanes, barons, bishops and abbots. Compurgation, the ordeal, and trial by battle began to yield to Visnet, Jugement del Pais, the "good men of the country," giving their verdict, while sentence was passed by the judge, sheriff, alderman or bailiff. "The Four Pleas of the Crown," murder, arson, rape and robbery, were relegated to the king's court, under Alexander 11. ruled by four grand justiciaries. While Roman law became the foundation of justice, a learned clerk was needed as assessor and developed into the Lord Justice Clerk. The vice-comes, or sheriff, as the king's direct representative, was the centre of justice for shires, and his judicature tended to encroach on that of noble holders of courts. Royal authority, sheriffs, juries and witnesses gradually superseded ordeal, compurgation, and trial by battle, though even barons long retained the right of "pit and gallows."

In the matter of education, the monasteries had their schools, as had the parish churches, and there were high schools in the burghs, and "song-schools." From the time of David to the death of Alexander III. Scotland was relatively peaceful, prosperous, and, in the south, anglicized, and was now in the general movement of western civilization.

Malcolm the Maiden, before his early death in 1165, had put down the menacing power of Somerled, lord of 'the Isles, a chief apparently of mixed Celtic and Scandinavian blood, the founder of the great clan of Macdonald, whose chiefs, the lords of the Isles, were almost royal; Malcolm also subdued the Celts of Galloway, sometimes called Picts, but at this time Gaelic in speech.

Malcolm's brother, William the Lion initiated the French alliance, fondly ascribed to the time of Charlemagne. William's desire was to seize Northumberland; in 1173 he was allied with Henry, the rebellious son of Henry II., himself in alliance with France. The capture of William at Alnwick, in July 1174, permitted a Celtic revolt in Galloway, and necessitated the Treaty of Falaise, by which for fifteen years Scotland was absolutely a fief of England, though the clergy maintained their independence of the see of York, which was recognized by Pope Clement III. in 1188. In a quarrel of church and state the legate had been authorized to lay an interdict on Scotland; William and the country merely disregarded it; and in 1191 a new pope absolved the Scottish king. The Celtic risings now were made in defence of the royal claims of a descendant of Duncan, son of Malcolm Canmore; there were also MacHeth claimants to the old rights of Lulach; Galloway and the Celtic north were ceaselessly agitated.

After the death of Henry II. in 1189, Richard I. sold back to Scotland all that his father had gained by the Treaty of Falaise, and William only became Richard's man, for all the lands for which his predecessors had been liegemen to the English kings, a vague phrase but implying that the king of Scotland was not liegeman for Scotland. To John, William did homage (1200) salvo jure suo. In 1209 he promised to purchase John's goodwill with 5,000 merks, and gave hostages. Peace was preserved till William died in 1214.

In the reign of his successor, Alexander II., the risings of Celtic claimants died out; he converted Argyll into a sheriffdom, and (1237) resigned the claims to Northumberland, in exchange for lands in the northern English counties with a rental of £200 yearly. His death in 1249 left the crown to his son, Alexander III., a child of eight, in whose minority began the practice by which parties among the nobility seized the person of the sovereign. At the age of ten, Alexander, at York, wedded a child bride, Margaret, daughter of Henry III. His boyhood was distracted by vague party strifes, but Henry did not attempt to administer his country. In 1261 his queen bore, at Windsor, a daughter, Margaret, who later, marrying Eric, king of Norway, became the mother of "The Maid of Norway," heiress of Alexander III.; the girl whose early death left the succession disputed, and opened the flood-gates of strife. Alexander won the western isles and the Isle of Man from Norway, paying 4000 merks, and promising a yearly rent of 100 merks. In 1279 Alexander did homage to Edward I. at Westminster, salvo jure suo, and through the lips of Bruce, earl of Carrick. The homage was vague, "for the lands which he holds of the king of England," or according to the Scottish version, "saving my own kingdom." On the death of Alexander's daughter, Margaret of Norway (1283), and of his son, the prince of Scotland, without issue, the estates, at Scone, recognized Margaret's infant daughter as rightful successor. At this assembly were Bruce, earl of Annandale; Robert de Brus, earl of Carrick (later king), his son; Comyn, earl of Buchan; John Baliol; and James the Steward of Scotland, of the house of FitzAlan. On the 19th of March 1286 Alexander died, in consequence of a slip made by his horse on a cliff near Kinghorn during a night ride. His death was the great calamity of Scotland, and is lamented in a famous fragment of early Scots verse. The golden age of "The Kings of Peace" was ended.

The first step of the Scottish noblesse (mainly men of Norman names), after Alexander's death, was to send a secret verbal message to Edward of England. Six custodians of the realm were then appointed, including the bishop parties. of Glasgow (Wishart) and the bishop of St Andrews (Frazer). Presently the nobles formed two hostile parties, that of the Bruces and that of Baliol. The Bruce party took up arms, and from the terms of their" band," or agreement, obviously contemplated resistance to the rights of the Maid of Norway, while declaring their fealty to Edward. In 1286-I 289 Scotland was on the verge of civil war. Edward procured a papal dispensation for the marriage of the Maid of Norway to his son Edward; the Scots were glad to consent, and preliminaries were adjusted by the Treaty of Birgham (18th of July 1290).

All possible care was taken by the Scots to guard their national independence, but Edward succeeded in inserting his favourite clause, "saving always the rights of the King of England, which belonged, or ought to belong, to him." As the Bruce faction had asserted their fealty to Edward, the carefully patriotic attitude of the Scots may be ascribed to the two bishops, who did not consistently live on this level. In August Edward ventured a claim to the castles of Scotland, which was not admitted. By the I9th of August it was known that the child queen had arrived in the Orkneys. An assembly was being held at Scone; the Bruces did not appear, but, by the 7th of October, they arrived in arms, on a rumour of the queen's death. The bishop of St Andrews tells Edward of these events, and urges him to come to the border, to preserve peace. The bishop of St Andrews was for Baliol, he of Glasgow was for Bruce; and the Baliol party, the seven earls complain, was ravaging Moray. These seven earls appear to represent the old rulers of the seven provinces of Pictland, and asserted ancient claims to elect a king.

The Bruces placed themselves under Edward's protection. In March 1291 he ordered search to be made for documents bearing on his claims in the English clerical libraries, and summoned his northern feudal levies to meet him on the Tweed, fully armed, in June. Hither he called the representatives of Scotland for the 10th of May; on the 2nd of June the eight claimants of the crown acknowledged him as Lord Paramount, despite a written protest of the communitas of Scotland; obscurely mentioned, and not easily to be understood. Edward took homage from all, including burgesses even, at Perth; his decision on the claims was deferred to the 2nd of June 1292 at Berwick.

John Baliol was great-grandson of this David, through his eldest daughter; Bruce the old was grandson of David through his second daughter, and pleaded that, by Scottish custom, he was David's heir. He also pleaded a selection of himself as successor by Alexander II., crowned before the birth of Alexander III., but of this he had no documentary evidence. On the 17th of November 1292 Edward decided, against Scottish custom (if such custom really existed), in favour of Baliol, who did fealty, and, amidst cries of dissent, was crowned at Scone on the 26th of December.

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