David I

King of Scotland (r. 1124-1153)

• Born: Between 1080 and 1085
• Birthplace: Scotland
• Died: May 24, 1153
• Place of death: Carlisle, Cumberland, England

David granted feudal tenures to Anglo-Normans, extended the diocesan system, encouraged monastic growth, defeated various Scottish opponents, remodeled his government along patterns found in England and France, and protected his interests along the Anglo-Scottish border, creating a more united kingdom built on the thriving European institutions of his day.

Early Life

David I was the sixth son of King Malcolm III Canmore (1058-1093) and his second wife, Saint Margaret of Scotland, the daughter of Edward the Atheling and sister of Edgar the Atheling, the last male representative of the royal house of Wessex. David’s earliest years were spent in an environment that had strong ties, through Saint Margaret and her intimates, with the Anglo-Saxon past and the ecclesiastical currents of the day. This peaceful childhood came to an abrupt end in the autumn of 1093. Malcolm, while on his fifth raid into northern England, and Edward, his second son but Saint Margaret’s eldest son, were killed in early November. On receiving news of their deaths, Saint Margaret reportedly died of grief while attending a mass. The Scots chose the dead king’s brother, Donald III, as their new king. Donald expelled the English, who had been a part of Malcolm’s court. Probably about this time David and his siblings fled to the court of William II of England.

In May, 1094, Duncan, Malcolm’s eldest son, with the aid of William II, invaded Scotland and expelled Donald. Duncan II, in turn, was murdered during a rebellion led by Donald and Edmund, the eldest of Saint Margaret’s sons, in November, 1094.

In the autumn of 1097, with support from William II, Edgar, with his three younger brothers, invaded Scotland. In a battle, Edgar defeated Donald, who was slain by David. While the new king awarded his brothers Ethelred and Alexander with earldoms, he seems to have left David to seek his fortune at the English court.

Life’s Work

In 1100, Henry I of England (1100-1135) married Matilda, David’s sister. For the next few years, David, who in contemporary chronicles is repeatedly referred to as “the brother to the queen,” served as a retainer to his brother-in-law, King Henry. David’s position was that of a younger son of the Anglo-Norman aristocracy. Given that he had three brothers senior to him, there was only an extremely small chance that he would ever become a king. Nevertheless, his courteous and pious demeanor, coupled with his position as the brother of King Edgar of Scotland and Queen Matilda of England, made David a useful agent in Anglo-Scottish relations. For centuries, the border between the two kingdoms had been in dispute, with each kingdom claiming areas in the territory of the other. Edgar, at the time of his death, apparently granted Lothian to David. Yet Edgar’s successor, Alexander I, refused to honor his predecessor’s bequest until David, with the backing of Henry I, threatened to invade Scotland with a large force of Norman knights. Sometime between 1107 and 1113, David received Teviotdale, Strathclyde, including Cambria, and southern Lothian from Alexander. David’s position as an important lord in southern Scotland evolved into one of the major marcher lords along the Anglo-Scottish border.

In 1113, David’s presence on the border was enhanced by his marriage to Matilda, the widow of Simon de Senlis, earl of Northampton and Huntingdon, and granddaughter of Earl Waltheof of Northumberland and Adelaide, sister of William I of England. Conceived by Henry I, this marriage provided the vehicle through which Normanization of the border finally occurred. With Henry’s support, David led the way for Norman colonization in the border area. Using Norman knights, he defeated the Galwegians, revived the diocese of Glasgow, began the foundation of a series of religious houses beginning with one at Selkirk in 1113, and feudalized southern Scotland with the introduction of a number of Anglo-Norman knights as landholders in his Scottish lordships. These knightly colonists were descendants of feudal families that either held estates in the earldom of Northampton and Huntingdon or originated in Brittany and western Normandy in northwest France. A second aspect of David’s marriage was the possibility of a claim to the earldom of Northumberland, about which he apparently said nothing until after Henry’s death in 1135.

On April 23, 1124, Earl David became King David I. Despite Alexander I having married Henry’s illegitimate daughter, Sybil, he had had no children by her, thus leaving Scotland to David, who had outlived all of his brothers. At about the age of forty, David found himself a king.

Within Scotland, the new king continued his reliance on Anglo-Normans by settling numbers of them in its southern areas. In addition to these colonists, David introduced Anglo-Norman institutions as well. Several sheriffdoms modeled on English counties were created. In each, a sheriff acted as the Crown’s chief local officer. At the highest level, David borrowed the concept of the “justiciar,” who acted as the king’s senior administrator and justice. To maintain control of the countryside, David and his Normans built a number of motte and bailey castles, whose exemplars dotted every English county. With the Norman knights and their castles came feudalism to help the king secure his hold over the lowlands and extend his influence into the highlands. To assist the development of commerce and the payment of taxes other than in kind, David began the issuance of coinage, based on English pennies, in the late 1130’.

On the death of Henry I in 1135, England found itself divided over the succession to the throne. In 1127, David I had led the Anglo-Norman feudal lords in swearing an oath to recognize Matilda, Henry’s only surviving legitimate offspring, as the king’s successor. Yet, on hearing of Henry’s death, Stephen of Blois, the second son of William I’s daughter, Adela, seized the English crown for himself, becoming King Stephen. A protracted but intermittent civil war between Matilda and Stephen followed, during which David attempted to solidify his control over Cambria and Northumbria. While honoring his oath to Matilda, David asserted claims to southern Cambria and the earldom of Northumbria. In response to Stephen’s coronation, David invaded northern England. Stephen hurried to Durham, where David met him in February, 1136. They agreed that David would keep Cambria, return Northumberland to Stephen, decline to become Stephen’s vassal, and permit Henry, his son, to do homage to Stephen for the earldom of Huntingdon. In answer to calls for help by Matilda, David once again crossed into England and ravaged Northumbria in the spring and summer of 1138.

Although a raid by Stephen into Lothian did not reduce King David’s pressure on the north of England, an army of Yorkshiremen destroyed the Scottish army in August, 1138, at the Battle of the Standard. David escaped back to the border. At Durham, in April, 1139, Stephen, attempting to stabilize his northern frontier, continued to accept the arrangements made in 1136, except that David’s son Earl Henry now became the earl of Northumbria, which included the counties of Northumberland, Durham, Cumberland, Westmorland, and Lancashire. When Matilda captured Stephen early in 1141, David journeyed southward to assist her. While besieging some of Stephen’s supporters at Winchester, Matilda and David were attacked by a relieving force. She escaped, and David found himself captured three different times, after each of which he bought his freedom and finally returned to Scotland. Stephen regained his freedom and deprived David and Henry of their English estates. Although they lost control over Huntingdon, they retained Northumbria, which Stephen was unable to wrest from them.

In 1149, Henry of Anjou, duke of Normandy and Matilda’s heir, journeyed to Carlisle seeking David’s assistance. For his promise to recognize Scottish rule of Cumbria and Northumbria, Duke Henry was knighted by David. When their joint movement southward from Carlisle met a quick response from Stephen, David returned to Scotland and Henry to Normandy. Not until November, 1153, would Duke Henry come to the agreement with Stephen, which would make him king of England in 1154, Henry II.

David intended to pass Scotland to his son, Earl Henry. From the mid-1130’s David had associated Henry with himself in the governance of Scotland and their English earldoms. By 1144, Henry was being referred to as rex designatus, king-designate. David’s plan, however, came to naught: Henry died on June 12, 1152. Being about seventy, David quickly had Earl Henry’s sons Malcolm and William proclaimed heir to the kingdom of Scotland and earl of Northumbria, respectively. Then, on May 24, 1153, while at Carlisle, David I died and was succeeded by twelve-year-old Malcolm IV.

Significance

In the half century following David I’s death, several English monastic writers described the king’s achievements both as a ruler and a man. They report that he maintained a balance between his actions as a king and his behavior as a devout Christian. In him, while the roles of king and Christian affected each other, neither completely dominated the other. The English monk William of Newburgh described David as

a man religious and pious; a man of much prudence, and of the greatest moderation in the administration of temporal things, and none the less of great devotion toward God; a man by no means on account of affairs of the kingdom more careless of divine offices: nor on account of the divine offices with which he occupied himself less capable in the affairs of the kingdom.

Scots from his day onward saw David’s reign as a high point in their history. David had reasserted Scottish independence from England, had begun the revival of the Christian church, and had initiated an enduring governmental structure. His accomplishments would continue to influence the development of Scottish government, culture, and society well into the thirteenth century.

Kings of Scotland, c. 858-1371

Reign

• Ruler

c. 858

• Kenneth I breaks with England

1005-1034

• Malcolm II: Lothian added

1034-1040

• Duncan I: Strathclyde added

1040-1057

• Macbeth

1057-1058

• Lulach

1058-1093

• Malcolm III Canmore

1093-1094

• Donaldbane

1094

• Duncan II

1094-1097

• Donaldbane (second rule)

1097-1107

• Edgar

1107-1124

• Alexander I

1124-1153

• David I

1153-1165

• Malcolm IV

1165-1214

• William I the Lion

1214-1249

• Alexander II

1249-1286

• Alexander III

1286-1290

• Margaret

1290-1292

• Interregnum

1292-1296

• John Baliol

1296-1306

• Interregnum

1306-1329

• Robert I the Bruce

1314

• Robert the Bruce defeats England

1329-1371

• David II

1371

• Ascendancy of Robert II, House of Stuart

Bibliography

Anderson, Alan Orr. Early Sources of Scottish History, A.D. 500 to 1286. 2 vols. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1922. Contains passages from chronicles written by non-English and non-Scottish writers as well as material drawn from charters and other documents in English translation.

Barrow, G. W. S. The Anglo-Norman Era in Scottish History. New York: Clarendon Press, 1980. A fairly technical discussion of the Normanization of Scotland, for which David I was mainly responsible, by a premier scholar of medieval Scottish history.

Barrow, G. W. S. Kingship and Unity: Scotland, 1000-1306. 2d ed. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003. An exploration of David I’s life and accomplishments.

Duncan, Archibald A. M. Scotland: The Making of the Kingdom. New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1975. The standard historical treatment of early medieval Scotland.

Kapelle, William E. The Norman Conquest of the North: The Region and Its Transformation, 1000-1135. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979. Provides an excellent analysis of Norman settlement along the Anglo-Scottish border until 1135.

Le Patourel, John. The Norman Empire. New York: Clarendon Press, 1976. Presents the wider picture of Norman expansion in England and northern France from the early 900’s to the mid-1150’s and discusses the background against which David I acted.

Ritchie, R. L. G. The Normans in Scotland. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1954. Indispensable text on the Normanization of Scotland.

Webster, Bruce. Medieval Scotland: The Making of an Identity. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997. Discusses Scottish identity in the context of place, order, faith, and struggles for independence.