David I (c.1084–1153): The King Who Remade Scotland

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.

David is the first Scottish king whose reign can be followed in a large body of charters, edited by G. W. S. Barrow as The Charters of David I (1999). The narrative sources are mostly English: the Hexham chroniclers, who hated the Scots' invasions; Ailred of Rievaulx, who had served in David's household and praised him; and William of Newburgh. Monastic records, written by the beneficiaries of his gifts, also tend to praise him. Many burgh and monastery foundation dates are known only from later confirmations.

The historian Richard Oram, who wrote a biography of David (2004), gives the standard modern narrative in Domination and Lordship: Scotland 1070–1230 (2011). His interpretations are attributed throughout.

A prince without a kingdom

established David was born around 1084, the sixth and youngest son of Malcolm III and Margaret. When his father and eldest brother Edward were killed at Alnwick in November 1093 and his mother died days later, Malcolm's brother Donald Bán took the throne and drove out the late king's English followers. Early in 1094 Margaret's surviving children reached the court of William II in England, led by their uncle, Edgar Ætheling.

established In 1097 Edgar Ætheling installed David's brother Edgar as king with English help. The historian Richard Oram, in Domination and Lordship: Scotland 1070–1230 (2011), notes that their brother Alexander stayed in Scotland as Edgar's designated successor, while David went south to make a career in England. From about 1097 he was largely absent from Scotland.

established In November 1100 David's sister Edith, who took the name Matilda, married Henry I of England. David became one of Henry's courtiers. He was educated in the French-speaking culture of the English court, trained as a knight, and schooled in English and Norman government. William of Malmesbury wrote that David had been "polished" from boyhood by contact with the English and had rubbed off "all the barbarian gaucherie of Scottish manners" (as quoted by Oram).

The disputed inheritance, 1107–1113

established When Edgar died in 1107, he bequeathed part of the southern districts of the kingdom to David. Alexander I, his successor, was understandably reluctant to give up so valuable a share. Ailred of Rievaulx later implied that David obtained it only through the threat of military intervention by his English friends. Oram dates any such pressure to after July 1113, when Henry I was free to help.

shared Ailred puts into the mouth of Robert de Bruce a speech reminding David that he had obtained "all that you wanted" from Alexander "through fear of us". Historians including A. A. M. Duncan and Oram read the gap between what Edgar "bequeathed" and what David "wanted" as meaning that David took lower Tweeddale as well as Cumbria. Oram suggests David may have wanted lands to which his wife had claims as Earl Waltheof's heiress.

established A Gaelic verse of about 1113 shows that the division was resented in Scotland. It complains that "Mael Coluim's son" had divided the Scots from Alexander, as the sons of kings always caused the plunder of Alba (as quoted by Oram).

established In 1113 Henry I arranged David's marriage to his own cousin Matilda de Senlis, the widowed daughter of Waltheof, Earl of Northumbria, and Judith, niece of William the Conqueror. Through her David became Earl of Huntingdon and one of the great landholders of the English Midlands, and acquired her claims to the old earldom of Northumberland.

Prince of the Cumbrians

established Later documents show that David's southern domain comprised upper Tweeddale and Teviotdale and the whole of Cumbria from the Lennox to the Solway, except the Carlisle district William II had seized in 1092. In Cumbria he styled himself princeps Cumbrensis, prince of the Cumbrians. Oram notes that inside the principality there is little sign that David deferred to anyone, but that in Tweeddale Alexander's authority was still recognised in property deals.

established David used the principality as a testing ground. Soon after gaining Teviotdale, in 1113, he brought monks from the reformed abbey of Tiron in France to Selkirk. It was Tiron's first daughter-house, and Oram notes it was the first monastery of any of the new reformed orders anywhere in Britain. By 1114 he was developing Roxburgh as a commercial and administrative centre. Soon after 1113 he made his former chaplain John Bishop of Glasgow, and about 1121–2 he ordered an inquest into the Glasgow church's ancient lands.

shared Oram suggests that the Glasgow inquest, which found no church lands west of Clydesdale, shows the narrow western limits of David's real power before the 1120s. He also suggests that Robert de Bruce may have received Annandale before 1124, as part of a scheme agreed between David and Henry I to secure the western end of the border.

shared After 1113 the brothers dealt formally with each other, and David was apparently not regarded as Alexander's heir until Queen Sibylla died childless in July 1122. Oram suggests Henry I then pressed Alexander to acknowledge David as his successor. David spent much of 1121–2 at Henry's court and was probably in England or Normandy when Alexander died in April 1124.

An uncertain accession, 1124

established David was not the only possible king in 1124. His half-nephew William, son of Duncan II, was an adult and heir of the senior male line of Malcolm III. Oram suggests William's acquiescence was bought, perhaps by recognition as David's heir while David's son Henry was still a child. William became one of David's most important commanders.

established David was inaugurated at Scone. Ailred of Rievaulx later claimed that David found aspects of the traditional ceremony offensive and that the bishops had difficulty persuading him to take part.

established While still at Scone, David granted the whole of Annandale to Robert de Bruce. This is the earliest surviving charter from a Scottish king to an incoming lord. Oram points out that all its witnesses were men of English or Norman background, led by Eustace fitz John, one of Henry I's agents in the north, and that it was addressed only to David's "French" and "English" subjects. No native lord witnessed it.

shared Oram argues that to most Scots David was "a virtual foreigner" who had used English force to win his inheritance. In the second half of 1124 Malcolm, the illegitimate son of Alexander I, rose against him. David defeated him, but Malcolm escaped. Oram notes that there is little sign David went north of Fife between 1124 and about 1139–40, and that his early burghs, except Perth and Dunfermline, were all in Lothian.

shared For Oram, Roxburgh was David's chief seat in these years. In 1128 the Selkirk monks were moved to Kelso, just across the Tweed from Roxburgh's castle and burgh, an arrangement he compares with Westminster and London. Oram describes David in this first decade as king of Scots "in little more than name", operating mainly in Cumbria and around the Forth and Tay, and still deeply dependent on Henry I.

Church politics and the York question

established David's first great task was the claim of the Archbishop of York to authority over the Scottish bishops. The papal legate John of Crema met David at Roxburgh in 1125 without result. Henry I needed David's support for the succession of his daughter Matilda, and at Christmas 1126 he persuaded Archbishop Thurstan to defer the case. In 1127 David was the first layman to swear to support Matilda as Henry's heir, and Robert, prior of Scone, was consecrated Bishop of St Andrews without professing obedience to York.

established In 1128 David installed Geoffrey, prior of Christ Church, Canterbury, as the first abbot of Dunfermline, raising his mother's foundation to an abbey. Oram reads the witness list of David's charter to Dunfermline as a picture of his support north of the Forth: five bishops and the earls of Ross, Fife, Strathearn, Mar and Atholl.

established The dispute revived when Henry I created a new see at Carlisle in 1133, which Bishop John of Glasgow claimed. David and John opened talks with the antipope Anacletus II, who had recently made Roger of Sicily a king with the right of coronation. Oram suggests David sought something similar. The talks failed, and after the Standard in 1138 David had to accept Innocent II as pope and the bishopric of Carlisle.

Moray, 1130–1150

established In 1130, while David was in England, Angus of Moray, grandson of King Lulach, rose against him in alliance with Malcolm, son of Alexander I. Angus reached Stracathro in Angus, where he was killed by an army under David's constable, Edward. Malcolm escaped again and fought on until 1134, when he was betrayed, captured and imprisoned for life at Roxburgh. David's wife Matilda died around 1130 and was buried, unusually, at Scone.

shared Oram argues that Stracathro was not the decisive victory of pro-David accounts. An Irish annal reports heavy losses in a counter-attack, and Ailred's speech for Robert de Bruce recalls English help, ships and castle-building against Malcolm. Malcolm had married a daughter of Gillebrigte, ruler of Argyll and father of Somerled, which may explain naval campaigns in the west. Oram calls Stracathro the opening gambit in a war of attrition.

shared Older accounts present a swift "feudal" conquest of Moray after 1130. Oram suggests a slow and shallowly rooted process. David founded a priory at Urquhart, colonised from Dunfermline, possibly endowed from Angus's lands as a victory monument, and granted it a tenth of royal revenues from Glenelg to Loch Broom. Royal castles at Elgin, Forres, Auldearn, Cullen and probably Inverness may mark Angus's seized estate centres. Oram also notes the conjecture that William son of Duncan married a Moray heiress and held the region for a time.

established After William's death in about 1147 David took Moray into his own hands and barred William's sons from it. In May 1150 he was at Kinloss for the founding of Melrose's third daughter-house. His former chancellor Edward became Bishop of Aberdeen, and Bishop William of Moray began organising his diocese. Burghs grew up beside the Moray castles later in the century.

shared Oram argues that David relied less on incoming knights in Moray than once thought. Lands in the Moray uplands held later by the earls of Fife, Strathearn and Mar may have been rewards for helping David's conquest, so that Gaelic lords, not newcomers, extended royal power into the hills. He sees this as an example of the "balance of old and new" that Barrow identified in David's kingdom.

The north and the west

established David used marriage to extend his influence. Shortly before 1134 Maddad, Earl of Atholl, married Margaret, daughter of Earl Hákon of Orkney, and their son Harald Maddadsson was established in Caithness and half of Orkney by 1139, probably with David's support. Scottish influence lasted until 1151, when the Norwegian king Eystein II captured Harald at Thurso, received his submission and sacked Aberdeen on his way home.

established In the south-west Fergus, later styled King of Galloway, had married an illegitimate daughter of Henry I. By 1136 Fergus attended David's court, and King Óláfr of Man had married Fergus's daughter. David's gatherings at Glasgow and Cadzow in 1136 included his nephew William, the earls of Fife and Strathearn, Fergus and his son Uhtred, the lords of Nithsdale, and the incomers Hugh de Morville and Walter son of Alan, who probably held Cunningham and Renfrew by then. Men from Argyll and Lorne fought in David's army in 1138, and in the 1140s he granted Holyrood a share of his tribute from Argyll and Kintyre.

War in England, 1135–1139

established Henry I died on 1 December 1135. Stephen, his nephew, seized the English throne instead of Henry's daughter Matilda. Within weeks David invaded northern England. His forces took Carlisle, Wark, Alnwick, Norham and Newcastle, and in February 1136 he faced Stephen at Durham. By the first Treaty of Durham David gave back Newcastle but kept Carlisle. He did not do homage himself, but his son Henry did homage to Stephen for Carlisle and the earldom of Huntingdon.

shared The chronicler John of Hexham said David acted to honour his oath to Matilda. Oram argues that territorial ambition, for the Cumbrian and Northumbrian lands he saw as his wife's and son's inheritance, was the real motive, and that David would probably have invaded whoever had succeeded Henry.

established After a failed campaign in 1137, David's forces besieged Wark in January 1138 and ravaged Northumberland and Durham. On 10 June his nephew William routed an English force at Clitheroe, giving the Scots the north-west above Lancaster. David then marched on York. On 22 August 1138 his army met the northern English levies, gathered by Archbishop Thurstan, on Cowton Moor near Northallerton. The English fought around a cart carrying a ship's mast hung with saints' banners, which gave the Battle of the Standard its name. The lightly armed men of Galloway claimed the right to lead the attack, and the Scots were routed.

shared Oram warns against overstating the defeat. The English could not follow it up, Wark surrendered to the Scots in November, and the legate Alberic negotiated a truce at Carlisle. On 9 April 1139, by a second Treaty of Durham agreed with Stephen's queen, David's niece Matilda, David's son Henry received the earldom of Northumberland, except Bamburgh and Newcastle, and regained Huntingdon and Doncaster. Carlisle and Cumberland were confirmed to the Scots. Henry did homage to Stephen and married Ada de Warenne.

The Scoto-Northumbrian realm

established David treated Cumberland as part of his kingdom and made Carlisle and its castle a seat of government alongside Roxburgh and Edinburgh. The region gave him the silver mines at Alston in the Pennines. Oram writes that the Cumberland silver "provided the liquid on which the 'Davidian Revolution' in Scotland was floated": it allowed David to strike the first coins produced in his kingdom.

established Stephen's capture at Lincoln in February 1141 reopened everything. David went south to support the Empress Matilda, was with her in London in June when she was driven out before she could be crowned, and narrowly escaped the rout of Winchester on 14 September. He also tried to make his chancellor, William Cumin, Bishop of Durham, which failed. Meanwhile the Scots occupied north Lancashire and the north-west as far as Tulketh near Preston. David issued charters there as King of Scots with no reference to the English crown. Hugh de Morville received Westmorland, and William son of Duncan held Allerdale, Copeland and Craven.

shared Keith Stringer has argued that David came within a hair's breadth of permanently redrawing the political map of Britain, and Oram develops the point. William of Newburgh saw Scottish-ruled Northumbria as a haven of peace compared with southern England, though the Hexham chroniclers remained hostile. In Northumberland, Earl Henry ruled through local barons such as the Umfravilles.

established In May 1149 David knighted his great-nephew Henry of Anjou, the future Henry II, at Carlisle. Henry swore to confirm Scottish possession of northern England if he became king. Ranulf, Earl of Chester, gave up his claim to Carlisle and did homage to David for Lancaster. A plan to seize York and install the Cistercian archbishop Henry Murdac under Scottish protection failed when Stephen went north in person. Oram sees 1149 as the height of David's power.

Death and succession

established David's son Henry died on 12 June 1152. David at once had Duncan, Earl of Fife, escort Henry's eldest son Malcolm around the kingdom as his heir, while he took his second grandson, William, to Newcastle to receive the hostages of the Northumbrian barons. David was found dead in bed in the great tower at Carlisle on 24 May 1153. He was buried at Dunfermline, and Malcolm IV was inaugurated at Scone within days.

shared Oram's narrative gives the date of death as 29 May at one point, but his own table of events, like the usual dating, gives 24 May. The haste of Malcolm's inauguration, Oram argues, shows how real the threat from rival lines was. In November 1153 Somerled and the sons of Malcolm, Alexander I's son, rose against the boy king. In 1157 Henry II forced Malcolm IV to give up Northumberland and Cumberland.

Burghs and coinage

established Oram notes that burgh creation may have begun in the 1110s in David's principality, with Berwick and Roxburgh, and that Perth, Edinburgh, Stirling and Dunfermline appear as burghs very early in his reign, perhaps first created by Alexander I. Seventeen burghs are recorded by the end of David's reign. Their burgesses held a monopoly of trade in a defined hinterland and paid rents and tolls that gave the king his main cash income. The story of the burghs has its own article.

established David's silver pennies, struck from Alston silver after he gained Carlisle, were the first coins minted in the Scottish kingdom.

Monasteries and dioceses

established David was one of the greatest monastic patrons of twelfth-century Europe. After Selkirk (1113), moved to Kelso in 1128, he founded Holyrood for Augustinian canons in 1128, Melrose for Cistercians from Rievaulx in 1136, and, Oram records, Cambuskenneth in 1142. Bishop John of Glasgow secured his help to found Jedburgh in 1138–9. Melrose's daughter-houses included Newbattle (1140) and Kinloss and Holm Cultram (1150). He also supported an Augustinian priory at St Andrews in 1144 and forced the Céli Dé of Loch Leven to adopt the Augustinian rule.

shared Oram notes that David's choice of the Tironensians, then a minor French order, was unusual, and credits his chaplain John with the idea. He argues that David personally preferred cloistered monks, while bishops like Robert of St Andrews pushed him towards canons, who could serve the wider Church.

shared The great Border abbeys of Melrose, Kelso, Jedburgh and Dryburgh are often all credited to David. Melrose and Kelso were his foundations, and he helped found Jedburgh. Dryburgh (1150) was founded by his constable, Hugh de Morville, for Premonstratensian canons.

established David strengthened the reformed bishoprics. He secured the consecration of Robert at St Andrews and in 1147 of Herbert, abbot of Kelso, at Glasgow, without submission to York. Most of the sees held by native clerics early in his reign later passed to men from reformed monasteries or the royal household. An archdeacon was in place at Glasgow by 1128, and David's arrangements for teind, a tenth of produce paid to parish churches, helped fund the new structures. In 1151–2 he asked the papal legate John Paparo for a pallium to make St Andrews an archbishopric covering mainland Scotland and the Isles. The request failed.

Knights, charters and "feudalism"

established David gave land to incoming knights in return for military service. Robert de Bruce received Annandale and Hugh de Morville Lauderdale and Cunningham, large lordships that allowed them to plant their own knightly tenants. Walter son of Alan, ancestor of the Stewarts, was established in Renfrew. Smaller holdings in Lothian and the Borders were granted for the service of one or two knights.

shared G. W. S. Barrow saw this as the import of an almost fully formed English "military feudalism". Oram argues that the process was more piecemeal and organic. Neither the Annandale charter nor early Lauderdale documents state a knight-service quota, which appears only under William the Lion. Before about 1150 only the earldom of Fife is known to have been held by royal charter, and that charter does not specify service. Oram also notes the move from knights kept in the royal household, like those of Macbeth and Duncan II, to knights rewarded with land had happened by the start of David's reign.

shared David's government also used sheriffs. In his reign the king's sheriff collected the cash rents of the burghs through a reeve. Oram cautions, though, that the network of sheriffdoms grew gradually, and that the Moray castles became centres for sheriffs only much later.

Reputation

established Soon after David's death Ailred of Rievaulx praised him as a gentle, just, chaste and humble king who softened the barbarity of the Scots. William of Newburgh compared him with the Biblical David, a good king stained by one sin: the slaughter his armies inflicted on the people of northern England. Both portraits, Oram notes, read like the early stages of a case for sainthood. David was never formally canonised.

traditional James I is said to have called David "ane sair sanct for the croun", a sore saint for the crown, because his gifts of land to the Church impoverished the monarchy. The remark is reported by later chroniclers, not recorded from James himself.

shared Historians once spoke of a "Davidian Revolution" that replaced Gaelic Scotland with a Norman kingdom. Barrow stressed a balance of new and old, and Oram goes further. He emphasises how insecure David's first decade was, how far he depended on Henry I, how much he relied on Gaelic earls in Moray, and how gradual and patchy the spread of charters, knights and sheriffs was. Oram still regards the period as one of profound change. The burghs, abbeys, dioceses and lordships that grew from David's reign shaped Scotland for centuries.

• David spent most of his youth and early manhood in England, not Scotland.
• He was an English earl, of Huntingdon, before he was a Scottish king.
• His first monastery, Selkirk, was the first house of any of the new reformed orders in Britain.
• A Gaelic poet attacked him in about 1113 for dividing the kingdom.
• The earliest surviving royal charter to an incoming lord, Robert de Bruce's grant of Annandale, was issued at David's inauguration in 1124.
• His wife Matilda was buried at Scone, not Dunfermline.
• Scotland's first coins were struck in his name from English silver mined at Alston.
• He knighted the future Henry II of England at Carlisle in 1149.
• He died at Carlisle, then part of his kingdom.

• Myth: David founded all four Border abbeys. Dryburgh was founded by his constable, Hugh de Morville.
• Myth: James I's "sair sanct for the croun" is a recorded saying. It is reported only by later chroniclers.
• Myth: David was a canonised saint. He was praised as saintly but never formally canonised.
• Myth: David's accession in 1124 was smooth and his rule secure from the start. He faced a rival claimant for ten years and rarely went north of Fife before about 1139.
• Myth: Alexander I gave David his southern principality freely. David obtained it with the threat of English force, and it was resented.
• Disputed: the "Davidian Revolution". Historians agree on great change but stress continuity of Gaelic lordship, law and culture, and the gradual spread of new forms.
• Disputed: how David conquered Moray. Older accounts describe a swift feudal conquest; Oram argues for a slow process that relied on Gaelic earls as well as castles and churches.
• Disputed: why David invaded England in 1135. Contemporaries said it was loyalty to Matilda; Oram argues it was territorial ambition.