19
When the great abbot-historian Aelred of Rievaulx came to set down the achievements of his close friend King David I of Scotland, he naturally waxed lyrical. David had been holy and devout – gentle, just, chaste and humble. He was the best of men and best of kings. His greatest achievement, however, lay in the reform of the Scottish realm. David had softened the barbarity of his nation, subduing its natural ferocity for the greater good. It was David who’d bowed the Scots’ necks to the rule of law, establishing peace and punishing the unrighteous. He had found the kingdom with no more than three or four bishops, but left it with nine. He also transformed the landscape, turning Scotland from a land of famine to a land of plenty, boasting ports, castles and cities. Just as importantly, David had calmed the savagery of his people with Christian religion. It was he who introduced chastity in marriage and clerical celibacy.1
These may sound like clichés, and to a large extent they are. But Aelred was a well-informed observer, who’d served at David’s court. And his remarks convey something of the essence of David’s reign, at least as David understood it. For these years saw Scotland open up to cultural and political influences from England and mainland Europe. This was achieved by the large numbers of Anglo-Norman magnates who flocked to David’s court. In many respects, these processes look like what we see in Wales and Ireland in these years. However, there is a crucial difference. The Normans came to Scotland to bolster, not to overthrow, the local political order. This was Normanisation by choice.
The years following 1066 saw a new Norman ruling elite established along the Scottish frontier. As in Wales, the danger was that it would not stop its conquering ways at the border. There were, however, important differences, which ensured that Norman influence north of the Solway Firth took different forms. The most obvious was in the nature of royal power and authority in England. The kingdom conquered by William had been forged by the rulers of Wessex in the south. The royal writ ran most firmly south of the Thames, and became weaker the further one travelled north. The Midlands and East Anglia were under close oversight; north of the Humber, however, the king’s influence was heavily mediated.2 A further distinction can be drawn in the north between the old earldom of York (modern Yorkshire and parts of Lancashire) and that of Bamburgh to its north. The former was still a core part of the English realm, overseen by an earl who answered to the king. The latter, however, was ruled in hereditary succession by local dynasts. Here the English monarch was more of an overlord than a king.3
These differences are reflected in the Domesday Survey, which covers Yorkshire and parts of Lancashire, but stops at the Tees. The modern counties of Northumberland and Durham were evidently considered to be more like Wales and Scotland than England proper. This also emerges from a charter of William Rufus for the church of Tynemouth, which confirms its possessions ‘north of the Tyne, south of the Tyne and in England (Anglia)’. While the document itself is a later forgery, it provides a valuable local perspective on political geography.4 The former were areas of English overlordship and influence, not direct rule.
Because royal power and authority faded out as one travelled north, direct intervention in these regions was rare, and there are few signs of English intrusion into Scotland such as we see in Wales before the Conquest. Conflict was still common, but generally localised. The northernmost parts of England were also much less urbanised and saw less use of coinage than the south and east (or even Yorkshire, for that matter); in social and economic terms too, England blended into Scotland, rather than facing it cheek by jowl. For its part, Lothian in south-eastern Scotland had seen considerable English settlement in the early Anglo-Saxon period and remained more plugged in to the socio-economic world of the south than much of Wales or the northern Highlands. Indeed, one of the first recorded uses of the term ‘England’ (Old English: engla lond) is for Lothian, not for the modern country.
Since the late ninth century, Scotland had been dominated by the kingdom of Alba in the north and east, which in the course of the eleventh century came to encompass the old British kingdom of Strathclyde/Cumbria.5 The resulting realm was a composite one. Well into the twelfth century, ‘Scotland’ in the strict sense only designated the region north of the Firth of Forth, and was but one of the lands under the control of the king of Alba. Moray in the north and Galloway in the south west remained largely independent.6 Still, Alba was a powerful kingdom. And though its resources were no match for those of the English kings, its rulers – the kings of Scots, as they are increasingly known – were considerably wealthier than their Welsh counterparts. The risks of conflict for the new Norman lords of the frontier was therefore considerably less favourable here.
For their part, William and his successors were no more interested in Scotland than they were in Wales. The region was too poor and too far from Normandy to warrant the expense of permanent conquest. As in Wales, however, the Anglo-Norman monarchs were keen to maintain a degree of hegemony over these regions.7 And in the years following 1068, their interest was piqued by the presence of Edgar the Ætheling, the last remaining scion of the native English dynasty.
Malcolm (Máel Coluim) III, the king at the time, was more than happy to welcome Edgar. If Edgar were to re-establish himself in England, he would owe his Scottish allies a good turn; if not, his presence could be used to destabilise the new Norman power to the south. In fact, Malcolm soon strengthened this alliance by marrying Edgar’s sister, Margaret. This not only connected him to one of Europe’s most venerable dynasties, it also gave Malcolm and his heirs a claim to the English throne. He and Margaret underlined this in their choice of names for their offspring: Edward, Edmund, Æthelred, Edgar, Alexander and David for their sons, and Edith and Mary for their daughters. Of these, all save Alexander, David and Mary – the names given to the youngest siblings – are names of earlier English kings and queens.8 These interests naturally placed Malcolm on the side of native English resistance. In the upheavals of the later 1060s, he repeatedly backed the rebel factions in the North. And following the Harrying of the North, he took the opportunity to strike at northern England himself.
Still, there could be no question of directly challenging the Conqueror. When the latter came to Scotland with a large army in 1072, Malcolm was quick to come to terms. He submitted, doing homage to William at Abernethy, a strategic site within the Scottish royal heartlands. This was a pragmatic arrangement which suited both parties. William’s superiority was acknowledged, while Malcolm’s independence of action was left undiminished. With the Scottish court continuing to support Edgar, however, relations remained frosty. When tempers next flared in 1081, William sent his eldest son, Robert Curthose, north. The result was much the same – a pragmatic peace, but little more. Malcolm now did homage to Robert in William’s place, much as he had at Abernethy.9 But tensions remained high, and Malcolm would meet his death while on a raid into English territory in 1093.
A series of regime changes eventually helped bring rapprochement. Malcolm was initially succeeded by his brother Donald (Domnall) III. One of Donald’s first recorded actions was to drive out ‘all the English’ who’d come north with Edgar and Margaret – a pointed break with his brother’s Anglophile politics. While this may look like a conciliatory gesture to the Norman court, it was largely a move to dissociate Donald from his nephews (Malcolm’s sons), many of whom were well placed at the Anglo-Norman court and had their own ambitions regarding the Scottish throne. In fact, within a year William Rufus had installed one of these, Duncan (Donnachad) II, as king in Donald’s stead. Duncan was Malcolm’s son from his first marriage; and as such, as much a rival as an ally to the many sons of Margaret still waiting in the wings. Donald was, in any case, able to reassert himself in 1094. But three years later Rufus succeeded in imposing another of Malcolm’s offspring. This was Edgar, Malcolm’s eldest son with Margaret, who’d been named after Margaret’s brother, the exiled Ætheling. The Ætheling himself – now reconciled to Anglo-Norman rule in England – played a key part in establishing his nephew’s new regime. For William Rufus, this killed two birds with one stone. It secured his northern frontier, while removing the threat of Malcolm’s many sons to his own rule. Henceforth, their energies would be directed to securing their position within the Scottish realm.
Following Rufus’ death and the accession of Henry I, relations warmed further. Keen to defuse further any potential threat from the old West Saxon line, Henry married Edgar’s sister Edith (who now took the suitably Norman name Matilda). This meant that the king of Scots was the brother-in-law of the Anglo-Norman monarch, as were his brothers and successors, Alexander I and David I. The Scottish kings were thus moving in the same circles as their Norman counterparts, and Alexander went on to marry Sybilla, one of Henry I’s illegitimate progeny (of which there were more than twenty).10 Alexander’s younger brother, David, married a great-niece of the Conqueror, Matilda of Huntingdon (Sybilla’s second cousin). The latter was a particularly good match, as Matilda was the heiress of Waltheof, bringing to the marriage the rich earldom of Huntingdon.
The result of these unions was to integrate the Scottish royal family firmly into the Anglo-Norman aristocratic world. Yet they did more than this. As Matilda’s husband, David became a significant landholder south of the border. And when he succeeded Alexander I as king in 1124, he did so not only as a Scottish prince (David had been entrusted with overseeing Cumbria), but also as an Anglo-Norman earl. Not surprisingly, David’s reign saw Norman influence on the Scottish court grow, as Aelred’s epitaph attests. David was a man of Norman tastes, whose eldest son was named Henry (after the reigning English king). Henry himself would go on to wed Ada de Warenne, a leading Anglo-Norman noblewoman and great-great-aunt of the later Earl John, who would so proudly wield her grandfather’s rusty sword in the late thirteenth century.
In Scotland, David’s reign was characterised by an influx of Anglo-Norman aristocrats. Most of these came via the English court, where they’d often first met David. The result was the formation of something of a shared Anglo-Scoto-Norman elite. At David’s court, the most favoured magnates were all of Norman (or at least French) descent, and their numbers grew steadily across the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The result was not a complete displacement of the native aristocracy, but rather a mixing (and at times jostling) between this and the Anglo-Norman incomers. Such shifts were not welcomed by all, however, and signs of tension can be seen across much of the twelfth century. Indeed, malcontents rallied around rival branches of the royal family, backing Alexander’s illegitimate son Malcolm (named after his grandfather) in David’s early years. And such oppositional forces would return in force following David’s death.
Still, this was not armed conquest. It was (largely) peaceful settlement, encouraged by the Scottish kings – and also elements of the native aristocracy. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries were an important period of change within the Scottish realm, which saw the first formal structures of bureaucratic rule erected. The importation of Norman aristocrats was part of these shifts, the main effect of which was to entrench the powers of the king and aristocracy (particularly its upper echelons).11
From the perspective of our (largely English) sources, these changes are looked upon with favour. We have seen how Aelred wrote approvingly of King David taming his nation’s barbarous ways. Here we see similar tropes to those invoked on the Welsh March: the Anglo-Normans are the forces of order, out to tame Scotland’s native barbarism. Yet there is an important difference. Aelred speaks of the Scots embracing this world.12 Similar sentiments had already been expressed by William of Malmesbury in the mid-1120s. William dedicated his monumental History of the Kings of England to Empress Matilda (the daughter of Henry I and Edith/Matilda – and thus David’s niece), in which he, also, describes how David had cast off the barbarism of his land and had raised standards of living, dress and diet.13
Of course, not all Englishmen were as sympathetic as Aelred and William (and even they were capable of stern criticism upon occasion). Still, there are signs that genuine change was afoot. We can see this most clearly in the practice of war. Scottish custom was much like that of the Welsh and pre-Conquest English, which was to kill or enslave those defeated in battle (and their civilian populations). This was still the case in the late eleventh century, when Malcolm III’s raids on northern England are reported with horror by Symeon of Durham. To a Norman audience accustomed to mercy among aristocrats in war, the large-scale enslaving of defeated enemies by the Scottish was beyond the pale.14 David’s invasion of 1138 was in many respects similar, with substantial numbers of those captured sold off into slavery. Yet there are hints of change. Many accounts draw a distinction between the Norman, lowland English, Scottish and Galwegian (or ‘Pictish’) elements within David’s army, with the worst of the atrocities ascribed to the latter groups. It would seem that David’s forces were only half-barbarous. Moreover, David himself is said to have returned his share of the slaves as a pious gesture. Evidently he was keen to play by the Norman rules of engagement.15
By 1173 to 1174, when David’s grandson William the Lion next invaded northern England, these distinctions had blurred further. The only difference between William’s personal retinue and their English foes lay in their loyalties – or at least so Jordan Fantosme, the Anglo-Norman poet, would have us believe. Of course, not everything had changed. Jordan remarks that the local inhabitants of the regions ravaged by William’s men (in fact, Flemish mercenaries) were fortunate that the Scots (their ‘mortal enemies’) were not present, for they would have shown no mercy. And William of Newburgh, writing in Latin, still describes the force as a ‘horde of barbarians’ and ‘more savage than beasts’. (Though even William lets slip that the Scottish king mistook the English attackers for his own men – a clear indication that the Anglo-Norman elite at both courts was largely indistinguishable.)16
The line between chivalry and barbarism had always been a fluid one. To the Norman invaders of 1066, the native English were uncivilised. By the time Symeon of Durham wrote in the 1120s, they’d begun to join the Normans in their ‘sweet civility’. With growing numbers of Normans (and English) making their way to the Scottish court, Scotland was now moving in a similar direction. These changes did not, however, embrace all of Scotland in equal measure. Norman settlement was heaviest in the largely English-speaking regions of Lothian, as well as the northern Lowlands of Fife, Gowrie, Angus and the Mearns.17 And already in the accounts of the Battle of the Standard (1138), we see hints of the distinction between Highlanders and Lowlanders, with only the latter readily adopting the norms of the Anglo-Norman court. This dichotomy, which would become the major cultural cleavage in later Scottish society, was taken up with gusto by clerical writers of the Lowlands, who underline the barbarism of the Highlanders, much as earlier English writers had that of the Scots.18
One of the clearest signs that the Scottish court was entering the European mainstream is that its kings and princes were knighted at the hands of continental dukes and monarchs. Duncan had already received his arms from the Conqueror’s son Curthose in 1087, while David I went on to be knighted by Henry I of France. Malcolm IV was then dubbed by Henry II in 1159, as was his brother David somewhat later, while the future Alexander II was knighted by the infamous ‘bad King John’ in London in 1212. The ritual of knighting, one of the archetypal symbols of chivalric culture, was well-suited to the relationship between the Scottish and the English monarch. It symbolised a degree of hierarchy, but like homage constituted an honourable form of submission. That the Scottish were in some sense the equals of their Anglo-Norman counterparts is revealed by the fact that they could return the favour, as when David I knighted the young pretender to the English throne, Henry Plantagenet (the future Henry II).19
Of the Norman families to make their way north under David, few were more famous (and influential) than that of Robert de Brus. Robert was already a prominent figure in England and Normandy in the 1120s. He’d been a supporter of Henry I, whose reign had seen relations with the Scottish court improve so markedly. And he was rewarded for his loyalty with a series of manors in Yorkshire.20 It was through the Anglo-Norman court that Robert first met David, then earl of Huntingdon. David himself first appears in the documentary record in a charter of King Henry confirming the rights of Robert in 1103, and it may be that the two served together in the Cotentin.21 Certainly when David established himself on the Scottish throne, Robert was one of the first (of many) Norman associates to appear beside him.
Robert’s arrival in Scotland is recorded in a charter of 1124, issued at Scone, the traditional site of royal inauguration. This is the first document David issued as king and is in many respects symbolic of his reign. In it, David grants Robert Annandale a large swathe of land in exchange for loosely defined service. The aim was clearly to win the loyalty of an up-and-coming Anglo-Norman baron (and long-time associate), whose know-how and connections would be sorely needed if Scotland were to survive and thrive as an independent nation. David had probably given Robert these lands some time earlier, while deputising for his elder brother in Cumbria. The purpose of the charter is to formalise the arrangement. The witness list shows David in his element, enjoying the company of the new crop of Anglo-Norman magnates he’d brought north (all eight of the charter’s witnesses are newcomers). And the text itself is only addressed to David’s French and English subjects – i.e. the Norman incomers and the inhabitants of Lothian – leaving out their Scottish and Galwegian counterparts to the north and west. This is an indication of the original audience for the grant. This act was for the benefit of the small cadre of new favourites at court. The grant itself is equally noteworthy. This not only secured the services of a useful ally, but created a new lordship overlooking Galloway, a largely autonomous region in which the king of Scots often struggled to assert himself.22
From Robert came the de Brus (or Bruce) line, one of the great noble families of medieval Scotland. Another was founded by Bernard de Balliol, the scion of an Anglo-Picard noble family. Both Robert and Bernard remained first and foremost Anglo-Norman barons. And when conflict erupted in 1138 and again in 1173 to 1174, they and their heirs backed the English Crown against their new Scottish lords (indeed, it was Bernard’s youngest son who’s reported to have captured William the Lion in 1174). Still, this did not stop the Bruces and Balliols climbing the ranks at the Scottish court, and both families would eventually find themselves on the throne itself: the Balliols in the person of John (II) de Balliol (John I of Scotland) in the late thirteenth century, the son of the founder of Balliol College, Oxford; and the Bruces in Robert (VII) the Bruce (Robert I of Scotland) and his son and heir, David II, shortly thereafter. When the Bruce line failed after the second generation in 1371, the kingship passed to another Scoto-Norman lineage first established under David I: the Stewarts.23 Under their more genteel later designation (the Stuarts), this family would come to sit upon the English throne too, in 1603. Through the twists and turns of dynastic fortune, Norman settlement in Scotland thus lay the foundations for the union of Scottish and English crowns – for Great Britain. And this would not be its only manifestation.