Alexander I (c.1078–1124): 'The Fierce' and the Reform of the Scottish Church

Each major claim carries one of three labels. established means supported by primary records, official bodies or several independent reliable sources. shared means the core fact is sound but sources disagree on details, dates or interpretation. traditional means widely repeated but not traceable to a primary or independent source.

Alexander's reign is poorly documented. A handful of his charters survive, English and Durham chroniclers mention him in passing, and the Canterbury monk Eadmer left a hostile account of his own short time as bishop of St Andrews. Almost everything about warfare inside Scotland comes from Andrew of Wyntoun and Walter Bower, writing around 1420 to 1445, who used lost earlier sources but cannot be checked. The date of Scone's foundation, the date of his marriage, the order of events in the north and even the day of his death differ between sources.

A younger son and an heir

established Alexander was born in about 1078, the fifth of the six sons of Malcolm III and his second wife, Margaret. His elder brothers were Edward, Edmund, Æthelred and Edgar; his younger brother was David. When Malcolm and his eldest son were killed in November 1093 and Margaret died days later, Malcolm's brother Donald III took the throne and the children fled south. Edgar was installed as king in 1097 with the backing of William Rufus.

established Oram shows that Edgar made provision for the succession at once. Alexander was given lands and titles in Scotia, the kingdom north of the Forth, and stayed in Scotland with Edgar while David went south to make a career in England. John of Worcester calls him "earl" in 1104, the year he attended the opening of St Cuthbert's tomb at Durham. Where his lands lay is not known.

shared Alexander was not the only possible heir. His half-nephew William, son of Duncan II, came from the senior line of Malcolm III. Oram notes that no eleventh- or early-twelfth-century source questions Duncan II's legitimacy; the claim that Duncan was a bastard was added later to discredit William's descendants, the MacWilliams.

Accession and the quarrel with David

established Edgar died at Edinburgh on 8 January 1107 and was buried at Dunfermline. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that Alexander succeeded "as king Henry granted him". Oram reads this as evidence of a previous agreement with Henry I, though there is no record that Alexander made a formal submission.

established Edgar had left part of the southern districts, Lothian and Cumbria, to David. Alexander was unwilling to give up so valuable a part of his kingdom. Ailred of Rievaulx, writing later in the twelfth century, puts into the mouth of Robert de Bruce a speech reminding David that he had once obtained what he wanted from Alexander "without bloodshed" through fear of his Anglo-Norman friends. Oram argues that Henry could not help David before 1109 at the earliest, and that any show of force probably came after July 1113.

established The result was a large principality. David held the whole of Cumbria from the Lennox to the Solway, except the district around Carlisle that William Rufus had annexed in 1092. He was styled "prince of the Cumbrian region" and "prince of the Cumbrians". He also held upper Tweeddale and Teviotdale, in old Northumbrian territory, but there property transactions still recognised Alexander's authority.

shared What changed between Edgar's bequest and David's settlement is debated. A. A. M. Duncan argued that Edgar willed David Cumbria, and that David then demanded and won Tweeddale as well. Oram suggests David may have wanted lands to which his future wife, Matilda de Senlis, had claims as heiress of Earl Waltheof, and that Henry I wanted a reliable ally along the whole frontier.

shared Ailred implies that Alexander hated and persecuted his younger brother. No other source says so. A Gaelic verse of about 1113, translated in Thomas Owen Clancy's The Triumph Tree, complains that Malcolm's son (David) had done wrong by "dividing us from Alexander", which suggests that some of the southern elite resented the split. After 1113 the brothers dealt with each other formally, and David seems to have had no active role in Alexander's kingdom.

Henry I, Sybilla and Wales

established Alexander married Sybilla, one of Henry I's many illegitimate children. The date is not recorded. Oram suggests it may have been arranged around 1113–14 to soften Alexander's defeat over David's inheritance. He points out that such a marriage was a mark of favour, not an insult: Henry used his bastard children to bind important allies to him. Alexander's sister Matilda was already Henry's queen.

established In 1114 Alexander served in Henry's campaign in north Wales against Gruffudd ap Cynan of Gwynedd, according to the Welsh chronicle Brut y Tywysogion. Oram links this to a wider effort by both kings to contain Irish and Dublin influence in the Irish Sea, since Gruffudd had kinship ties to Dublin and was an associate of the Munster king Muirchertach ua Briain.

established Sybilla died in July 1122, having had no children. William of Malmesbury claimed that Alexander barely mourned her and described her unkindly. Oram notes that this gossip does not fit accounts of her piety, her part in Alexander's religious projects, or his plans to honour her memory.

traditional Walter Bower says Sybilla died on an island in Loch Tay, now Eilean nam Ban near Kenmore, and that Alexander planned an Augustinian priory there in her memory. The priory was never built in his lifetime.

The west and the north

established Two regions that had troubled Edgar also troubled Alexander. In the Hebrides, the collapse of Norwegian lordship after Magnus Barelegs died in 1103 left a vacuum that Irish kings tried to fill. In about 1112 Óláfr, youngest son of Guðrøðr Crobán, who had been raised at the English court, became king in Man. Oram sees this as Henry I placing a dependable vassal in a strategic region, and thinks Alexander and Henry probably co-operated against Irish influence there.

shared In Orkney the joint rule of the earls Hákon and Magnus collapsed when Hákon's men killed Magnus on the island of Egilsay. Oram dates this to Easter 1115; other accounts give 1116 or 1117. Magnus was later venerated as a saint. Hákon's sole rule removed a pro-Scottish ruler from the north.

established The Annals of Ulster for 1116 record that "Ladhmunn son of Domnall, grandson of the king of Scotland" was killed by the men of Moray. Who he was is uncertain. He may have been a grandson of Malcolm III through a son killed in 1085. Oram raises the possibility of a challenge by the descendants of King Lulach, the old ruling line of Moray, and notes suggestions that rivals took advantage of Alexander's absence in Wales in 1114.

The rising and "the Fierce"

traditional Two fifteenth-century chronicles, Wyntoun's and Bower's, describe northern rebels attacking Alexander at Invergowrie near Dundee, and the king defeating them and pursuing them into Ross. Bower names the rebels as men of Moray and the Mearns. Neither account gives a date. Both treat the foundation of Scone as Alexander's thanks for his victory.

shared Oram treats this as possible but unprovable. If Scone was founded in 1115 as a thanks-offering, the story may point to serious disturbance in the middle of the reign, which would help explain why Symeon of Durham's continuator said Alexander held the kingship laboriosissime, "with very great effort". The presence of an Earl Aed, identified as earl of Ross, and of northern bishops in the Scone foundation charter could fit a recent campaign in the north. Oram concludes that the evidence is too ambiguous for firm conclusions.

shared The byname "the Fierce" is late. Oram, following R. Andrew McDonald, says it is first used by John of Fordun in the later fourteenth century. Other accounts give Wyntoun's chronicle of about 1420 as its first appearance and note that Fordun only calls him terrible to his subjects. Either way, it is not a contemporary name, and it should not be read as a description of his character drawn from his own time.

Church reform: Turgot and Eadmer

established Alexander's most lasting work was in the Church. In 1107 he nominated Turgot, prior of Durham and his mother's former chaplain and biographer, as bishop of St Andrews. Oram calls this the first appointment of a reformist cleric to a Scottish bishopric. The appointment quickly ran into the question of whether the bishop of St Andrews had to profess obedience to the archbishop of York, who claimed authority over all of Scotland. Relations between king and bishop broke down, Turgot wished to appeal to the pope, and by 1115 he had left his see. He died at Durham.

established Oram also corrects an older picture of a Scottish Church in decay. Historians once argued that St Andrews had been vacant from about 1093 to 1107. Dauvit Broun has shown that this gap is an accident of record survival, and that a bishop named Giric served between Fothad II and Turgot.

established Alexander's next choice was the Canterbury monk Eadmer, biographer of St Anselm. He was elected in 1120. To avoid the charge of lay investiture, he received his ring from the king but took his pastoral staff from the altar of St Andrews. By early 1121 he had resigned, because Alexander would not let him be consecrated by the archbishop of Canterbury. Eadmer returned the ring with the declaration that no layman had the right to give it. Oram notes that this is the only recorded case in Scotland of lay investiture causing open conflict between crown and Church.

shared Oram argues that Alexander was not simply resisting English supremacy. His refusal to let Turgot profess obedience to York or Eadmer to Canterbury may have been tied to his own ambitions: if St Andrews became an archbishopric, its archbishop could anoint and crown Scottish kings, freeing them from dependence on English goodwill. David I later pursued the same goal. The papacy was not sympathetic; in 1100 Pope Paschal II had told York's suffragans "throughout Scotland" to obey their archbishop.

established At the end of his reign Alexander chose Robert, prior of Scone, as bishop of St Andrews. Robert was consecrated by Archbishop Thurstan of York only in 1127, under David I, in a deal that required no profession of obedience and left York's claims unresolved.

Scone Priory

shared Alexander brought canons regular, priests living under the Rule of St Augustine, to Scone from Nostell Priory in Yorkshire. Oram gives the date as 1115, following the standard reference works, while noting debate; the People of Medieval Scotland database dates the foundation charter to between 1114 and July 1122. The arrangements were probably negotiated through Alexander's sister, Queen Matilda, and Henry I, both supporters of the Augustinians.

shared Scone was the inauguration place of Scottish kings and a royal residence. Oram notes the striking parallel with Westminster, the English coronation church beside a royal palace, and the possibility that Alexander wanted a more Christian king-making rite to raise his status. But he points out that the Augustinian canons played no recorded part in inaugurations until the 1300s, and that the choice of a reforming, missionary order rather than Benedictines suggests the deeper motive was religious reform.

established Alexander planned further Augustinian houses at St Andrews, Loch Tay, Inchcolm and possibly Dunkeld. None was established before his death. Oram suggests the king's enthusiasm did not win support among the native nobility, without which new orders could not take root.

traditional Bower tells that Alexander vowed to found a monastery on Inchcolm in the Firth of Forth after being stranded there by a storm and sheltered by a hermit. Inchcolm became an Augustinian house only after his death, and the story is not found in earlier sources.

A cautious reformer

shared Oram's broader judgement is that Alexander has been underrated. Most general histories barely mention him, and his reign has been treated, in Oram's words, as "an uneventful pause before the revolutionary career of his younger brother, David". Oram argues that the reign saw significant changes in political culture and "a step change in the pace of reform" of the Church.

established Alexander showed little interest in other aspects of the new European culture. While David was settling Anglo-Norman friends in the Southern Uplands, Alexander does not appear to have introduced a single colonial knight or burgess into his kingdom. Oram suggests he may have advanced cautiously, starting reform in the Church while avoiding the settlement of foreigners that had made his father's family unpopular in 1093.

The succession and death

established After 1113 David was not treated as Alexander's heir. Alexander was married and expected a son, and William son of Duncan was another possible successor. Sybilla's death in 1122 reopened the question. Henry I visited Carlisle that year and ordered its defences strengthened. Oram suggests that Henry's activity in the north after Sybilla's death pressed Alexander into acknowledging David as his heir, although neither brother expected the arrangement to take effect soon.

shared Alexander died at Stirling in April 1124. Most modern accounts give 23 April; the People of Medieval Scotland database gives 27 April. He was buried at Dunfermline beside his parents and Edgar. David was probably with Henry I in England or Normandy when the news arrived.

established Alexander left an illegitimate son, Malcolm. Malcolm challenged David in 1124 and escaped after his defeat. In 1130 he joined Angus of Moray in a rising that ended at Stracathro, and he was finally captured in 1134 and imprisoned at Roxburgh. He had married a daughter of Gillebrigte, ruler of Argyll, and so was the brother-in-law of Somerled. In 1153 Somerled and Malcolm's sons rose against Malcolm IV. Oram stresses that these were bids for the throne by a senior, if illegitimate, branch of the royal house, not a "Celtic reaction" against reform.

• Alexander was the fifth son of Malcolm III and Margaret, and the second of their sons, after Edgar, to be king.
• His sister Matilda married Henry I of England in 1100, and his wife Sybilla was Henry's daughter, so the English king was both his brother-in-law and his father-in-law.
• He fought for Henry I in north Wales in 1114.
• The Canterbury bishop-elect Eadmer took his pastoral staff from the altar of St Andrews to avoid receiving it from the king.
• Scone Priory, near the inauguration place of the kings, was the only religious house he completed.
• His byname "the Fierce" was not used in his lifetime; it first appears around three centuries later.
• His illegitimate son Malcolm married into the family of Somerled and fought David I for a decade.

• Myth: Alexander's reign was an uneventful gap between Edgar and David. It saw a long dispute with David over the south, close ties to Henry I, campaigns in Wales and probably the north, and the first sustained push for Church reform.
• Myth: Alexander was known as "the Fierce" in his own day. The byname first appears in chronicles written around three centuries after his death.
• Myth: St Andrews had no bishop for years before Turgot. Research by Dauvit Broun has identified a bishop, Giric, between Fothad II and Turgot.
• Disputed: when and why David gained his southern lands. Most historians place the settlement in about 1113, but whether David took more than Edgar had left him is argued.
• Disputed: the rising at Invergowrie. It rests on fifteenth-century chronicles and cannot be dated. It may be connected to the killing recorded in Moray in 1116.
• Disputed: the foundation date of Scone Priory. About 1115 is usual, but the charter can only be dated to between 1114 and 1122.
• Disputed: the day of his death. Most accounts give 23 April 1124; the People of Medieval Scotland database gives 27 April.