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(judges), who were also barons, travelled the country administering the king’s justice. The administration of the royal household was also overhauled. New offices created included those of constable, chancellor, chamberlain, marshal and steward. By the end of David’s reign, a national system of administration and justice was established in Scotland.
It didn’t end there. David also began building towns, or
burghs
as they were known in Scotland. The first of these were Berwick and Roxburgh. A
burgh
was a settlement with marked-out boundaries, with guaranteed trading rights, and where the king could collect and sell the product of his
cain
(rent in kind – for example, sheep and poultry).
David went on to found 15 burghs, which were immensely important in reshaping the long-term economic and ethnic makeup of Scotland. These pla
The transformation of the Scottish Church
The most powerful instrument in helping David to transform Scotland or Alba was the Church. Indeed, David was one of medieval Scotland’s greatest monastic patrons. He founded monasteries all over the country, and the latest monastic orders were invited in even before he was crowned king – the Augustinians to Jedburgh, the Cistercians to Melrose and the Tironensians to Kelso. After 1124, these monastic orders spread to Scone, St Andrews and Holyrood, as well as enlarging the Benedictine monastery at Dunfermline.
The clergy didn’t just look after the spiritual needs of the community; they became the king’s closest advisors. The monks formed an educated bureaucracy, managing the king’s records and that of his government. On top of this, the massive grants of land given to them by David (much regretted by later monarchs) boosted the economy through encouraging more trade with Europe. The Cistercian monasteries introduced new agricultural practices to Scotland, which transformed the southern part of the country into one of northern Europe’s most important sources of wool.
But how did all these developments affect the local population? The answer is: in many ways. The Church increased its pastoral activities by establishing a parish system of more than 1,000 parishes by 1200, based on the local priest, who blessed crops and tended to the spiritual needs of his flock. This was important because if Catholicism as a religious system had been based simply on monasteries, it would’ve become a closed and hierarchical system only for rich patrons. The parish system brought Catholicism to the Scottish people.
To ensure that all parts of the kingdom were singing from the same hymn sheet of David’s reforms, the Church was placed under the control of the bishops of the two largest dioceses – St Andrews and Glasgow. David also used his bishops to rebuff any claims by York or Canterbury to ecclesiastical authority over the Scottish Church.
Anglo–Scottish relations
Even before he became king of Alba, David was a major player in English court politics. Through his marriage to Matilda, he owned land stretching from south Yorkshire to Middlesex, although most of it was concentrated in four English counties – Northampton, Huntingdon, Cambridge and Bedford. Collectively, the lands formed the ‘honour of Huntingdon’.
Such was David’s influence that he presided over a treason trial of Henry I’s chamberlain, Geoffrey Clinton. As long as Henry I was living, relations between the two kingdoms seemed friendly enough. In fact, in 1127, David agreed to recognise and swear fealty to Henry’s heir and successor, his daughter Matilda, the former empress of the Holy Roman Empire.
However, Henry died in December 1135, and a succession crisis erupted because the English barons didn’t want to be ruled by a woman, far less one who was married to a member of the Angevins of France. The barons and the Church rallied behind the ba
Never one to miss an opportunity, David invaded and took possession of Carlisle and Cumbria, something he would never have attempted while Henry I was alive. But in a subsequent treaty with the English in February 1136, he recognised Stephen’s authority in return for keeping Cumbria and having his son Henry recognised as lord of the honour of Huntingdon, but giving up Northumbria.
Having sworn an oath of fealty to his niece Matilda, David was pulled into the civil war in England in early 1138, when Matilda’s half-brother, Robert, Earl of Gloucester, took up arms on her behalf. In that year, the Scots were invading Northumbria and pushing on toward Yorkshire. David’s army came in for severe criticism due to the brutality of their actions. One of the English chroniclers, Richard of Hexham, wrote:
an execrable army, more atrocious than the pagans, neither fearing God nor regarding man, spread desolation over the whole province and slaughtered everywhere people of either sex, of every age and rank, destroying, pillaging and burning towns, churches and houses.
However, the brutal conquest came to a sudden halt on 22 August of that year when David’s army of 26,000 men engaged in battle with the English at Cowton Moor, near Northallerton. This became known as the Battle of the Standard. The fighting began at 6 a.m. and was went on for more than three hours. The English archers inflicted huge casualties on the Scots, who were reckoned to have lost around 10,000 men, many of them cut down as they fled the battlefield.
But oddly enough, the Scots snatched victory out of the jaws of defeat! Due to his troubles in the south, the English king failed to press home his advantage. In April 1139, another peace treaty was agreed between David’s son Henry and Matilda of Boulogne, Stephen’s wife, at Durham. The terms of the treaty gave David all he had hoped for: his son was made earl of Northumbria and restored to the honour of Huntingdon; the Scots king kept Carlisle and Cumbria. In return, Henry paid homage to Stephen for his English lands and David swore to remain loyal to him – he didn’t.
Empress Matilda’s last bid for power came in 1141, when she captured Stephen at the Battle of Lincoln and tried to launch herself on the English throne but was thwarted by a rebellion in London. David and his son joined forces with Matilda but failed to support her when she was defeated later that year at Winchester. The civil war in England continued until the signing of the Treaty of Winchester in November 1153. This treaty recognised Matilda’s eldest son, Henry of Anjou, as the next king of England. In return, Matilda agreed that Stephen’s son, William, would be allowed to keep his family lands in France.
The shifting power balance adversely affected David and his son’s holdings in England. David lost the honour of Huntingdon, but more importantly, he held on to lands between the River Tweed and the River Tyne. He was even able to extract a promise from Empress Matilda’s son (whom he knighted at an elaborate ceremony in Carlisle in 1149) that, after his accession to the English throne, the Scots would be left undisturbed rulers of the English northern counties. In fact, Carlisle became David’s regular seat of government. Of course, like most promises made during these years, it was broken; in this case, as soon as David’s 12-year-old son, Malcolm IV, came to the throne.
In 1157, Malcolm IV travelled to Chester to pay homage to Henry, who declared that “the king of England ought not to be defrauded of so great a part of his kingdom, nor could he patiently be deprived of it.”
That was it. Or was it? Read on in Chapter 6.
David I: The greatest of Scottish kings?
You could make a strong case suggesting that David I was the greatest and most revolutionary of Scottish kings. The only two who come close – Robert I and James IV – were not game changers in the way that he was. David transformed Scotland from a Celtic society to an Anglo-Norman one, although admittedly parts of the Highlands and islands clung to their traditional ways. He did this in five ways:
Religion:
Under David’s leadership, the Scottish Church conformed more closely to the doctrines and practices of western Catholicism, but at the same time, he guarded its independence from Canterbury and York.
Political:
David introduced feudalism as the basis of government.
Cultural:
David’s ope
Administration:
Royal justice, through the introduction of justiciars, was more thoroughly established under David. Those mormaers who had their own courts were informed that if they failed to provide justice, the king would intervene.
Territory:
David restored the southern border of the kingdom to what it had been prior to 1092.
The achievements don’t end there. David was the first king to have a silver coin struck in his name at the royal mints established at Berwick, Carlisle and Edinburgh. He also held what was reckoned to be Scotland’s first Parliament in 1140 at Edinburgh Castle.
But although far-reaching in their impact, the changes brought about by David built on foundations laid by those monarchs who had gone before him. In that sense, he was no i
David died on 24 May 1153 at Carlisle Castle, about a year after his son Henry. He was buried in early June before the high altar of the church of Dunfermline Abbey.