CHAPTER VII.
The lamentable occurrence on the banks of the Alne threw all Scotland into confusion, retarding the progress of the country for the next quarter of a century. Edward had been chosen by his father for his Tanist, or successor, in preference to his elder half-brother Duncan, probably because, as the eldest of the sons of Margaret, he united her claims upon the allegiance of the Anglo-Saxons to his own right to the fealty of the native Scots; but the illegitimacy of Duncan is not necessarily to be inferred from the course pursued by Malcolm, for the ideas of that period about inheritance were not of the fixed and unvarying character which the custom of centuries has established in the present and preceding ages. The race of Alfred occupied the English throne to the exclusion of the children of his elder brother, nor did the descendants of the great king succeed in the lineal order of after-times. The claims of the Atheling were disregarded by the Saxon Harold, as well as by the Norman William; Robert was equally set aside by both his brothers; whilst Henry’s daughter, Matilda, was obliged to support her right to the crown by force of arms against the pretensions of her cousin the heir-male, himself a younger son. This uncertainty about therightful heir will explain the care with which the kings of that age thought it necessary to secure the recognition of their successors during their own lifetime. The elder Henry assembled the magnates of his dominions to acknowledge the claims of his son William, and at a subsequent period those of his daughter Matilda; whilst his grandson, the first Plantagenet, celebrated in his own lifetime the coronation of his eldest son, a proceeding of which he lived most bitterly to repent. The name of David was associated, as the successor of the reigning monarch, with that of his brother Alexander in the grant to St. Andrews of theCursus apri; that of the Scottish prince, Henry, is to be found in many charters as the heir-elect of his father; whilst the names of William the Lion, and of David of Huntingdon, are of frequent occurrence, under the same circumstances, as late as the commencement of the thirteenth century. In Scotland such a custom was peculiarly desirable, where the early usage, extending the right of election to the crown to every member of the royal family, rendered the nomination of a Tanist during the lifetime of the reigning sovereign a matter of absolute necessity, to prevent anarchy and confusion after his decease.
Three parties may be said to have divided Scotland at the period of Malcolm’s death. In the north, the partizans of the house of Moray, crushed by the decisive victory gained by the late king over Lulach’s son Malsnechtan, were in no condition to sustain the pretensions of any member of his family to the vacant throne. Along the eastern coast, and in the south, the supporters of the reigning family were divided between the national and foreign factions; the former composed of the hereditary adherentsof the house of Atholl, mostly of pure Gaelic or of Scoto-British descent; the latter of the refugees from England, and probably of the descendants of the ancient Northumbrians of the Lothians. The influence of Margaret at her husband’s court, as well as motives of policy, had induced Malcolm to show especial favour to the countrymen of his queen, thus implanting the seeds of a bitter feeling of hostility in the breasts of many of the Scottish nobles at a line of conduct exhibiting, as they thought, an undue partiality for the Saxons and their innovations. The smothered enmity of the Scots blazed forth after the death of the king, and the haste and secrecy with which the body of the royal Margaret was removed by Ethelred to its last resting-place, discloses the existence amongst many of her contemporaries of a feeling of antipathy against theSaxon Queen, widely different from the enthusiastic veneration paid by their descendants to the memory of theRoyal Saint.[185]The election of Donald Bane to his brother’s throne was the natural consequence of this wide-spread jealousy,A. D. 1093.as well as of a reactionary feeling in favour of the ancient national usage, according to which he was undoubtedly the rightful heir; and the immediate expulsion of the detestedSaxonsfollowed upon the triumph of the national party.[186]
The state of Scotland had not been unnoticed at the court of the English king, where Duncan appears to have resided, ever since the death of the Conqueror, in an equivocal position between a guest and a hostage. Brought from his native country at a very early age, he had imbibed the ideas of a feudal baron, and when Robert conferred upon him the honour of knighthood, after his liberation from his former captivity, the youthful knight preferred remaining at a court to which he was accustomed from his infancy, to returning to a country of which he knew but little, and where he may have feared a doubtful reception. Presenting himself before William, on learning the accession of his uncle, he requested the grant of his fathers kingdom, promising to hold it in fealty and allegiance in return for the king’s assistance. This was readily accorded on the terms of the petitioner;A.D. 1094.and when the return of spring favoured the march of an army, Duncan, placing himself at the head of a band of English and Norman auxiliaries, drove out his uncle Donald and took possession of the kingdom. The Scots appear to have been takenby surprise, for upon recovering from their first astonishment, they at once returned in sufficient force to overwhelm the followers of Duncan, putting most of them to the sword; but as their hostility was confined to the foreign soldiery, and they entertained no personal antipathy to a member of Malcolm’s family, they readily permitted Duncan to retain the crown on condition of introducing no more aliens into the country.[187]
The temporary success of Duncan appears to have thrown Donald Bane upon the support of a partizan of the northern faction, and he enlisted in his behalf the assistance of Malpeter MacLoen, the Mormaor of Mærne; whilst another party to his conspiracy for regaining the crown was Edmund, one of the surviving sons of Malcolm and Margaret, who was to be rewarded for his connivance in the death of his half-brother by sharing the royal power with his uncle Donald. Their intrigues were only too successful, and the treacherous slaughter of Duncan at Monachedin on the banks of the Bervie, where a rude stone still marks the supposed locality of his death, reinstated Donald, after an interval of six months, whilst the surviving followers of his murdered nephew were slain or driven from the kingdom.[188]
The second reign of Donald lasted without opposition for three years, but it would be impossible to say whether Edmund shared the throne, for a veil of mystery has been thrown over all his actions. During this period the remaining children of Malcolm were exiles from their native land, whilst Williamwas occupied in fruitless wars with the Welsh, in reducing the too powerful de Mowbray of Northumberland, and in negotiating with his brother Robert the purchase of the duchy of Normandy.A. D. 1097.At length towards the close of the year in which the Saxon chronicler laments over “the grievous oppression of the people who were driven up from the country districts to London, to work at the wall they were building about the Tower, and the Bridge, and the King’s Hall at Westminster, whereby many perished,”[189]Edgar Atheling was dispatched to Scotland, and, after a severe struggle, he succeeded in placing his eldest nephew Edgar upon the throne, under similar conditions to the terms imposed upon Duncan.[190]Donald, falling into the victor’s power, was treated with the severity of a cruel age, and was sentenced to pass the remainder of his days, in blindness and in chains, at Roscolpie or Rescobie in Forfarshire; whilst his confederate Edmund, the only degenerate son of Malcolm and Margaret, seems to have adopted a course which saved his own life, and preserved the honour of the family. He expiated his crime by assuming the cowl at Montague, a Cluniac Priory in Somersetshire; and the honourable imprisonment of the princely monk in the retirement of a distant cloister, so effectually obliterated the recollection of his treason amongst the people of his native land, that a halo of peculiar sanctity gradually encircled his memory, and he was handed down to posterity as a man of more than ordinary holiness. Such a reputation must, for obvious reasons, have been favoured by the members ofhis family, and the saintly character attributed to Edmund may have been partly owing to the austerities of a repentance, which prompted his dying wish to be buried in chains.[191]
Hardly were the sons of Malcolm reinstated in their ancestral dominions,—for the autumn must have been far advanced before the army of the Atheling reached its destination,—when the western coasts of Scotland were threatened with a repetition of the early invasions of the Northmen.
From a very early period the whole of the islands along the western coasts of Scotland were favourite resorts of the Scandinavian Vikings, who established themselves amongst the scanty population of the Hebrides with far greater ease than upon the mainland. From the intermixture of the natives with the northern invaders, sprung the race to which the Irish annalists, and occasionally the Sagas, give the name of Gallgael, a horde of pirates plundering on their own account, and under their own leaders, when they were not following the banner of any of the greater sea-kings, whose fleets were powerful enough to sweep the western seas, and exact tribute from the lesser island chieftains. Man was from an earlyperiod the seat of the sovereignty of the Isles, which was long centred in the family of the Hy Ivar, lords of Dublin, and often kings or Jarls of Danish Northumbria. In the middle of the tenth century the Islands fell under the dominion of Eric Blodæxe, whose rivalry with Olave Sitricson weakened and divided the power of the Anglo Northmen; and after the death of Eric they were ruled by Magnus Haraldson and his family, the representatives of the elder Sitric, who appear to have been driven from Limerick, the early seat of that branch of the Hy Ivar. The exploits of this line of princes upon the coasts of Wales are continually to be met with in the Welsh and Irish chronicles of the period, but their title of Oirrigh is a proof that they were not independent, and they probably paid tribute to the head of their family at Dublin.
The united power of the Orkneys, the Islands, and the western coasts of Scotland, in addition to the Irish Norsemen, failed to avert the catastrophe of Clontarf,A. D. 1014.and the eleventh century opened upon the decline of the Hy Ivar. The personal energy of Thorfin, the great accession of territory resulting from his connection with Malcolm the Second, and the union of all the northern islands with his wide possessions on the mainland, enabled him to take advantage of their weakness; and if the Sagas are correct, in attributing to him a largeRikiin Ireland, and in extending his dominion from Thurso Skerrey to Dublin, the Jarl of the Orkneys may have assumed the prerogatives of the earlier kings of Dublin, exacted tribute from their dependants, and become the acknowledged leader of the Scottish and Irish Northmen. During the ascendancy of Thorfin the Islands were for some time under the rule of a certain Gille, and of SuibneMacKenneth,A. D. 1034.names pointing to the Gaelic element amongst the Gallgael; and it is not unlikely that they owed their rise to the Jarl, and were amongst the earliest of the mainland chiefs of the Oirir-Gael who disputed the possessions of the Hebrides with the kings of Man.[192]
Towards the middle of the eleventh century Dermot MacMalnembo, lord of Hy Kinselagh and king of Leinster, was occupied in establishing the supremacy of his family throughout his native province; and entering the territory of the Dublin Norsemen,A. D. 1052.which was known as Fingal, in the year 1052, he ravaged the country up to the walls of their capital, driving out Eachmarcach, the son of Reginald, then the head of the race of Olave Sitricson, and establishing his dominion over the whole district and its inhabitants, whilst Eachmarcach fled from his enemy to Man.A. D. 1061.Nine years later, Murchad, the son of Dermot, following up the successes of his father, pursued Eachmarcach to his island retreat, wrested the sovereignty of the Islands from the race of Ivar, and rendered them tributary to the line of Leinster. Thorfin, whose ascendancy appears to have declined before this period,A. D. 1064.died soon after the transfer of the Islands to Dermot; and his two sons, escaping from the slaughter at Stamford Bridge, whither they had followed in the train of the king of Norway, returned to their northern home,A. D. 1066.and without dividing the possessions of their warlike father, passed a peaceful and inglorious existence as joint Jarls during the remaining thirty years of the century.[193]
Amongst the fugitives from Stamford Bridge was a son of Harald the Black of Iceland, Godfrey, surnamed Crovan or “the White Hand,” who found a hospitable reception in Man from another Godfrey who, at the time of his arrival, was king, or Oirrigh, of the island.[194]A. D. 1072.Six years after the arrival of the fugitive, Dermot of Leinster fell in battle, after raising the power of his province to the highest pitch, and uniting the supremacy over the whole of southern Ireland, with the dominion of the Isles and of “the Britons”—the inhabitants, apparently, of the Isle of Anglesey;[195]and three years later, upon the death of Godfrey of Dublin, the son of Eachmarcach and head of the race of Hy Ivar, Godfrey Crovan attempted to seize upon the Islands.[196]A. D. 1075.Twice was he defeated in his attacks upon Man; but refusing to be foiled, he determined upon risking a final effort, and with a fleet collected from the other islands, sailed up the river Selby by night, landed his forces, and concealed a body of three hundred men amongst the wooded sides of a neighbouring hill called Skeafell. As soon as it was light, the Manxmen, perceiving the enemy whom they had already twice defeated, assembled to give him battle, and attacked with headlong confidence, heedless of the ambuscade, which fell upon them in the heat of the engagement with decisive and fatal effect. They turned and fled precipitately; but finding on arriving at the river that the stream was unfordable, for the tide wasthen at its height, throwing down their arms they begged for mercy from the conqueror; and as his object was attained by their submission, he put an immediate stop to the slaughter. His next step was to reward his confederates the Islesmen, to whom he offered the choice of remaining and appropriating the island, or of plundering it and returning to their homes; and as the latter course was most congenial to his allies, the property of the Manxmen was delivered over to their mercy. Many of the Islesmen, however, consented subsequently to remain behind, and they were settled by Godfrey in the south of the island, around his own immediate residence, whilst the earlier Norse population was confined to the north, a division which can long be traced in the little kingdom; and the conqueror assuming to himself, as usual, the sole right of property in his dominions, the Manxmen lost their Odal privileges in the same manner as the Orkneymen had been deprived of theirs, from the time of the first Einar, to the days of Sigurd Lodverson.[197]
Godfrey Crovan was of a character to afford his new subjects frequent opportunities of repairing the losses incurred through the pillage of the Islesmen; and he soon extended his conquests over the Irish Norsemen, capturing Dublin,A. D. 1078.and retaining his supremacy for sixteen years, until he was driven out by Murketagh O’Brien, whose family appear to have made more than one attempt subsequently upon Man.[198]His pre-eminence in the same quarter wasalso disputed by the surviving sons of Eachmarcach; but they perished in a fruitless effort to vindicate their rights,A. D. 1087.and from the date of this failure the descendants of Ragnar Lodbroc never again rose above the rank of subordinate Oirrighs of Dublin.[199]In the year after he was expelled from his Irish conquests, Godfrey died of a pestilence in the Isle of Isla,A. D. 1095leaving three sons to inherit his dominions. His great power was based upon his fleet, and to prevent any rivalry upon the seas he is said to have forbidden the Scots—the inhabitants apparently of the western coasts and the Galwegians—to build any vessel requiring more than “three bolts” in its construction.[200]
Such was the condition of the Islands when Magnus Olaveson sailed with a powerful fleet from Norway,A. D. 1098.purposing to re-enact the part of Harald Harfager, and establish the rights of the Norwegian crown over the western conquests of his predecessor. First touching at the Orkneys, he seized upon the two Jarls, and dispatching them in safe custody to Norway, carried off their sons as hostages, placing his own son Sigurd over the Jarldom; though, as the new Jarl was a mere child, the real authority was vested in his council. The king then steered for the Hebrides, rapine and slaughter marking his course, and the flames of the crops and houses which he burnt lighting up his onward career. Some of the Islesmen escaped to the mainland of Scotland; others fled further and sought a refuge in Ireland—for the Norwegian fleet was far too powerful to be resisted with any hope of success by the scattered populationof the islands—whilst the least scrupulous, or the most insignificant, escaping with life by submitting to Magnus, swelled the number of his followers, and repaired their own losses by relentlessly pillaging their neighbours. Among the unsuccessful fugitives was Godfrey’s eldest son Lagman, who, before he could escape to Ireland, was surprised amongst the northern Hebrides, and captured off Skye, after a vain attempt to baffle his pursuers amongst the islands. In one feature alone was the expedition of Magnus distinguished from the incursions of his heathen ancestors—the sanctity of Iona was respected. The king is reported to have landed on the sacred island, and opening the door of St. Columba’s Church, to have hastily drawn back, forbidding any of his attendants to enter, and departing immediately after granting peace and immunity to the inhabitants. None ever knew whether a vision had appeared to the king, but his clemency was limited to the hallowed island of Columba, nor was the sword of the destroyer stayed in any other quarter.
At length Magnus arrived at Man, where the inhabitants were in no condition to resist his attack, as they had already wasted their strength in a sanguinary contest between the northern and southern clans near Sandwith—Ottir and MacMaras, the rival leaders, both falling in the course of the battle. At once recognising the importance of the island for retaining his western conquests, he ordered the immediate construction of several wooden forts, built in the usual manner of the age; procuring timber for this purpose from the opposite shores of Galloway, and forcing the Galwegians to convey supplies to Man, and to join in labouring at the entrenchments. From Man he crossed to Anglesey, ravaging the country,exacting tribute from the people, and killing Hugh, Earl of Shrewsbury, who attempted to oppose his descent; whilst he could now boast at the extreme limits of his expedition of having extended his conquests further to the southward than any of his predecessors upon the throne of Norway.
Magnus was occupied during the ensuing winter amongst the Sudreys, or Southern Hebrides, in securing the conquests of the preceding summer and in arranging a treaty with the Scottish king, who is said by some authorities to have admitted the pretensions of the Norwegian monarch to the whole of the islands in the western seas. To such an arrangement (if it were ever made) Edgar could have offered no valid objection, as the majority of the islands could hardly be said, at this time, to have ever been included amongst the dependencies of the Scottish crown. It is further stated that the king of Norway established his claim to his new possessions by sailing round each of them separately; and he is even said to have been dragged across the isthmus at Loch Tarbert in a boat, with his hand upon the tiller, in order to include Cantyre amongst the islands—a story probably invented at a later period to account for the severance of that district from the mainland possessions of the Oirir Gael, and its lengthened occupation by the Gallgael in dependence on the Norsemen and their kings.[201]
A.D. 1099
Magnus returned to Norway in the following summer, leaving Sigurd in his new Iarldom; and hewas occupied during the next three years in warring against the Swedes, until peace was concluded, and cemented by his marriage with a daughter of the Swedish king Inge. But his former successes amongst the Hebrides had inflamed him with the desire of further conquests in the same quarter, and hardly had he ratified his alliance with Sweden before he again fitted out a fleet, to be directed on this occasion against the Irish coasts.A. D. 1102.Murketagh O’Brien, collecting the men of Munster and Leth-Mogh, prepared to oppose the invasion; but an arrangement was soon effected between the kings, by which the daughter of Murketagh was given to Sigurd Magnusson, whilst the claims of that prince upon the allegiance of the Dublin Norsemen were probably supported by the Irish king.[202]
A. D. 1103.
Magnus passed the ensuing winter in Ireland, assisting his new allies the Munstermen against their rivals, the northern Hy Nial, and remaining until the following August, when he prepared to return to Norway, and lay off the coast of Ulster awaiting a supply of cattle for victualling his ships, promised by Murketagh O’Brien. The disastrous defeat of the latter prince by the northern Hy Nial, early in the same month, may have prevented or delayed the dispatch of the cattle; and Magnus disembarked with a body of his men, both to ascertain the fate of the scouts whom he had already sent out, and to victual his fleet with the necessary supplies at theexpense of the men of Uladh. Whilst thus employed he gradually became entangled amongst the neighbouring morasses; and his retreat to the ships being intercepted by the Ulstermen, who flocked in numbers towards the spot, he fell, with many of his followers,—through the cowardice or treachery of one of his principal officers,—in a fruitless attempt to open a path through the increasing numbers of the foe. On hearing the tidings of his death, the fleet, weighing anchor, sailed immediately for Norway, touching at the Orkneys, and taking on board Sigurd, who relinquished his Irish princess and his island kingdom to claim a share of his father’s dominions, when all the conquests of Magnus reverted to their original possessors; though the Jarls of the Orkneys, and the lords of the Western Islands long continued, whenever it suited their purpose, to rank themselves amongst the feudatories of the Norwegian crown.[203]
With the exception of the expedition of Magnus Olaveson, the nine years of Edgar’s reign seem to have been absolutely devoid of interest, the total absence of event which distinguishes this period arising probably from the personal character of the king. Of a gentle and inoffensive nature, much resembling the Confessor, in his faults perhaps as well as in his virtues, he provoked neither external hostility from his ambition, nor internal revolt from his oppression; whilst the marriage of his sister Matilda with the English Henry, must have tended materially to strengthen his authority, by overawing the turbulent spirits who otherwise might have presumed upon his indolent disposition. He appears to have cultivated the alliance of the Irish kingMurketagh, who, from Edgar’s present of a camel, may have aimed at resembling Henry of England in his partiality for rare animals.[204]In imitation of the pious liberality of both his parents, he founded the priory of Coldingham, granting it to the monks of Durham; thus exhibiting his partiality for his mother’s country, and perhaps, also, his attachment to her ancient confessor Turgot, the friend of his own early youth,A. D. 1107.who at this time was prior of the monastery of Durham.[205]Upon the 8th of January 1107, Edgar sunk into an early grave, with his latest breath bequeathing the appanage of Scottish Cumbria to his youngest brother David; not only as a testimony of personal regard for his favourite brother, but as an acknowledgment of the valuable assistance which he had derived, during his contest for the crown, from the intelligence and sagacity of that able and politic prince.[206]
Widely different in character from his peaceful and indolent predecessor was the next king who filled the throne of Scotland. To a purity of life, a fondness for the devotional exercises and austerities of the age, and a reverential demeanour towards the clergy—qualities which he inherited from his mother—Alexander united the high courage and warlike bearing of his father; whilst his own restless ambition and indomitable will involved him in continual contests throughout his reign, and earned for him the appellation of the Fierce. In many points he resembledhis sister the queen of England; and the same lavish generosity towards strangers, with the same somewhat ostentatious display of charity in feeding, clothing, and washing the feet of the poor, to which “the Scottish Esther” (as she is sometimes called) in vain endeavoured to incite her youthful brother David, formed in Alexander a striking contrast to his haughty and imperious bearing towards the great body of his subjects. Naturally viewing with a jealous eye the dismemberment of his kingdom for the advantage of his younger brother, he refused at first to carry out the bequest of Edgar until David threatened to support his rights by the sword; when the fear of the mail-clad auxiliaries, whom the long residence and popularity of the Earl at his sister’s court would have enabled him to call to his aid, at length extorted from Alexander a tardy and reluctant recognition of his brother’s claims upon Scottish Cumbria.[207]
The effects of the new king’s determination to enforce submission to his will, soon became apparent in a simultaneous rising of the ancient enemies of his family, who must have recovered much of their former power during the anarchy and confusion resulting upon the death of Malcolm the Third. Donald Bane was perhaps indebted to the crown fortheir support, and his immediate successor was not of a disposition to curb the increasing independence of his powerful and refractory Mormaors; but Alexander, accustomed to the ideas of feudalism with which he had become acquainted at the English court, was deterred by no fear of consequences from exacting a very different species of obedience from that which had satisfied the peaceful Edgar; and his measures for controlling the disaffection of his subjects resulted, before long, in a rebellion in the north.
The conspirators laid their plans with secrecy, and the men of Moray and Mærne marched in haste to the south, in the hope of surprising Alexander, and repeating the catastrophe of his brother Duncan. The king was holding his court at Invergowrie—a residence to which he always exhibited a marked partiality, as he had enjoyed the earldom of the district from a very early period—when he received intelligence of the near approach of his enemies, and with the prompt vigour of his character, hesitated not an instant in confronting the danger, his bold advance so daunting the conspirators that they turned and fled for the mountains. Thither he followed without delay, so closely pressing the pursuit that he swept through the northern earldoms without opposition, until he reached the boundaries of Ross, where his opponents were occupied in gathering their whole strength upon the opposite shores of the Moray Firth. It was evidently their intention to dispute the passage of the Firth, and to attack the army of the king whilst engaged in crossing; but again anticipating their purpose, he reached the point of passage, known as the Stockford, when it was high tide, plunged at once into the stream, and crossing with his mounted followers in safety, advancedupon the enemy before they could escape to mountain or morass, and inflicted such a slaughter upon their surprised and bewildered masses, that all disposition to revolt against his rule was stifled in the blood of his opponents—his stern and sanguinary vengeance upon this occasion earning for him the title of the Fierce. The Monastery of Scone is supposed to have owed its erection to the pious gratitude of Alexander for his speedy and triumphant success; and in the foundation-charter of that ancient Abbey, the name of Heth, Earl of Moray, stands prominently forward amongst the other Gaelic Mormaors, who were assembled in dutiful attendance at the court of their lord the Scottish king.[208]
This reign was destined to become the era of thefirst collision between the ecclesiastical and secular powers in Scotland. The last known Gaelic or Culdee bishop of St. Andrews was Fothadh, who died in the same year as Malcolm Ceanmore,[209]the see remaining vacant during the three succeeding reigns; but when Alexander ascended the throne, he immediately determined upon appointing a bishop, who would be ready to carry out the views upon religious subjects in which all the family of Malcolm Ceanmore had been educated by their Anglo-Saxon mother. Accordingly, in the first year of his reign he selected Turgot to fill the vacant see of St. Andrews; but a difficulty, upon which he had scarcely calculated, awaited him at the very outset of his undertaking.
Ever since the time when Bruno, Bishop of Toul, yielding (according to the general opinion) to the advice of Hildebrand, Prior of Clugny, relinquished the Papal insignia with which he had been invested by the Emperor, and entered Italy in the garb of a pilgrim to abide by the election of the Roman clergy, it had been the aim of the ambitious churchman, whose master-mind is supposed to have directed the Papal policy for a quarter of a century before he occupied the Pontifical Chair, not only to emancipate the church from all dependence upon royal authority, but to establish her dominion, as a temporal power, over the whole extent of Christendom. The name of the Emperor disappeared from Papal bulls; the titles of Apostolic Bishop and of Pope were declared to belong to the occupant of St. Peter’s Chair alone;Archbishops were appointed Metropolitans over other primates in spite of all opposition; and Metropolitans were instituted without consulting their clergy, solely by the force of Papal bulls;[210]measures calculated to extinguish the remnants of independence in national churches, and to place the whole Christian hierarchy at the disposal of the sole and absolute will of the Pope. Whilst the clergy were thus to be reduced to a dependent body, animated by the soul of one man, and carrying out his vast schemes for temporal authority throughout the kingdoms of the world, the secular power was attacked in more ways than one. The right of granting kingdoms, and of releasing subjects from their allegiance, was both claimed and exercised; Sicily was conferred upon the Norman Guiscard; fealty was demanded from the conqueror of England;[211]Spain and Hungary were claimed asPapal fiefs, and even the distant Russian received his dukedom from the hands of the Bishop of Rome. It was then also that the notorious Donation of Constantine first saw the light, and the Papal claims to universal dominion were supported by apocryphal documents, supposed to exist amongst the archives of Rome.[212]But the great struggle was about the right of Investiture, or of granting the Ring and Pastoral staff to a newly made bishop, in token of his appointment.[213]
From the period when Christianity became the recognised religion of the Roman empire, the head of the state participated in the nomination of bishops, who were supposed to be chosen by their flock, approved of and consecrated by their fellow clergy, and confirmed in their appointment by their temporal ruler. The voice of the people had long been silenced, on account of the disgraceful tumults and outrages so frequently occurring at the election of bishops, when instead of a little band of devout believers purified by the test of persecution, the flock was composed of the licentious rabble of a city. The voice of the clergy was intended by the policy of Hildebrand to become a mere echo of the Lateran; and the voice of the ruler of the state to be no more heard except in liege acquiescence. The conductof the princes of that era afforded ample scope to Hildebrand for appearing in the character of a reformer of the abuses of the age, for as the elections of bishops by the popular voice had too often degenerated into scenes of tumult and factious violence, so in the hands of princes they had become but too frequently mere mercantile transactions. Bishoprics and abbacies were either openly bestowed upon the highest bidder, or were suffered to remain vacant for years that their revenues might be appropriated to purposes of private emolument; and too many of the superior clergy were very ready to profit by an abuse which opened an easy access to the high places of the church, to those whose profligacy would otherwise have barred their advance to preferment of which they were utterly unworthy. Had the policy of Hildebrand been directed simply to the correction of such abuses, and to the establishment or restoration of a discipline which he deemed essential, its motives would have been high and holy; but it is only too evident that earthly ambition was the ruling principle of a mind elevated above the meaner vices of the age, and that the reforms which he advocated served as a cloak for promoting with unscrupulous energy that temporal aggrandizement of the Papal See, which attained its culminating point when Innocent the Third proclaimed himself “less than God, but more than man, God’s Christ, and Pharoah’s God.”[214]
With the influx of foreign clergy after the Conquest, the system of Hildebrand penetrated into England, and its effects soon became apparent,nearly every bishop rushing into a contest with the neighbouring prelates about the rights, privileges, or possessions of his see. Canterbury claimed jurisdiction over all the British Isles in virtue of the Bull of Gregory the Great to Augustine; and York asserted ecclesiastical supremacy over Scotland on account of the signature of Wilfrith at the council of Rome, and the short episcopate of Trumwin over the Picts. When, therefore, Alexander requested the Archbishop of York to consecrate Turgot, he was met by a claim to the canonical obedience of the Scottish bishops, to which he was by no means inclined to submit. The difficulty was set aside for the time by Henry of England, who desired the Archbishop of York to perform the necessary ceremonies, reserving the rights of both churches for future discussion;[215]when Anselm of Canterbury wrote to forbid the proceeding, as he had not yet consecrated Thomas of York, who had hitherto evaded all profession of canonical obedience.[216]But this second difficulty was shortly removed by the death of Anselm; and soon afterwards, the Archbishop of York, and the Bishop of St. Andrews,A. D. 1109.were both consecrated on the same day by the Bishop of London.[217]
Differences quickly arose between the king andTurgot, and though it is impossible to state their nature with precision, they were probably connected with the opposite views entertained by Alexander, and the bishop, upon the necessity of immediately remodelling the state of the Scottish church. At length the latter requested permission to proceed to Rome for the purpose of laying his case before the Pope; but Alexander steadily refused his sanction to a journey of which he was far too sagacious not to foresee the consequences;A. D. 1115.and Turgot only obtained license to retire to his former residence in the monastery of Durham, where he fell ill and died in 1115.[218]
Alexander determined that the next bishop should be chosen from the province of Canterbury, in the hope of evading the claims of York through the opposing pretensions of the rival see; but although he wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury to this effect soon after the death of Turgot, several years elapsed before he finally requested that a monk of the name of Eadmer,A. D. 1120.who had been much in the confidence of Anselm, should be sent to undertake the office of Bishop of St. Andrews. Released from his allegiance to the English king, and from his canonical obedience to the see of Canterbury, the new bishop was duly installed in his diocese;[219]but Alexander soon found that “he had gained nothing in seeking for a bishop out of Canterbury,” for it would appear to have been the especial object ofEadmer to exalt the See of Canterbury by reducing the Bishop of St. Andrews to the subordinate situation of a suffragan of the English Metropolitan, in which he was steadily opposed by Alexander,[220]who showed the same determination in refusing permission to Eadmer to retire to Canterbury in the capacity of Bishop of St. Andrews, as he had previously evinced in opposing the departure of Turgot to Rome. The English prelate was warned by the Bishop of Glasgow that he had to deal with a prince of inflexible resolution, and that unless he yielded the points in dispute, or relinquished the ring and crozier, thereby surrendering up the bishopric, he would neither be able to live in peace within the limits of the kingdom, nor would he be permitted to cross its boundaries. Eadmer, at length giving way, resigned his bishopric and retired to Canterbury; consoling himself with the thought that the investiture of the ring, which he had received from Alexander, had lost its spiritual efficacy by passing through the hands of a layman.[221]
A. D. 1122.
Eighteen months of retirement and the advice of his friends, who reminded him, with justice, that it was his duty to maintain the rights and liberties of the church and kingdom in which he had accepted the office of bishop, rather than to find suffragans for York, or promote the claims of Canterbury,[222]wrought an alteration in the opinions of Eadmer; and he wrote submissively to Alexander, urging his claims to be reinstated in the see of St. Andrews, and addingthese remarkable words, which at once place in view the real objects of the dispute—“I entreat you not to believe that I wish to derogate in any way from the liberty or dignity of the Scottish kingdom; since if you still persist in retaining your opinion about your former demands in respect of the King of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the sacerdotal Benediction (an opinion with which I would not then concur, from entertaining ideas which, I have since learnt, were erroneous), you shall find that I will no longer differ from your views, nor will I let these questions separate me from God’s service, and from your love, that in all things I may follow out your will.”[223]But it was now too late;A. D. 1123.Alexander was inexorable; and at the close of the following year he appointed Robert Prior of Scone to fill the see, which he persisted in looking upon as vacant by the voluntary resignation of Eadmer.[224]
The contest thus maintained by Alexander against the pretensions of the English Metropolitans extended to the diocese of Glasgow, in which a bishopric had been re-established by Earl David shortly after the death of Turgot. The earl had appointed his own tutor John to the see; but the bishop-elect, terrified at his unruly flock, and shrinking from the laborious, and perhaps dangerous, undertaking of introducing amongst them the remodelled Roman discipline, fairly fled from the country; though he was subsequently consecrated by Pope Paschal, and sent back to his diocese, where he remained till the return of Thorstein, Archbishop of York, to England.[225]By a judicious line of policy towards the Papal court, andby the essential services which he contrived to render to the cause of Henry in Normandy, Thorstein had been enabled to triumph over the opposition of Canterbury, and he now summoned the Bishop of Glasgow to acknowledge his canonical dependance upon the see of York,A. D. 1122.suspending him from his sacred office on his refusal.[226]John appealed to Rome, but as the archbishop was then in high favour, his cause does not appear to have prospered, and he removed to Jerusalem, where he remained some months with the Patriarch, occasionally exercising his episcopal functions until he was recalled by the Pope and sent back to his diocese;A. D. 1123.the dispute between the two churches remaining undecided until many years afterwards, when Glasgow was liberated from the claims of York, and declared to be in direct dependance upon the see of Rome.[227]
Towards the close of his reign Alexander lost his queen Sibylla, a natural daughter of the English king,of whom little is known, and—if the account of a contemporary writer is to be trusted—that little is not to her advantage, for her personal deficiencies were not redeemed by the presence of moral virtues. She died suddenly at Loch Tay, in the course of 1122, and within two years she was followed to the grave by her husband,A. D. 1124who expired on the 25th of April 1124, whilst still in the vigour of manhood.[228]
It would be unreasonable to estimate the little that Alexander was enabled to accomplish by the standard of his younger brother’s success in following out a similar line of policy. Both brothers endeavoured to assimilate their dominions to the feudal monarchies of the age, and to introduce amongst their clergy the revised system of the Roman Church; but the elder had greater difficulties to contend against, with fewer advantages in his favour. The dismemberment of his kingdom by the separation of Scottish Cumbria must have materially diminished his power; and had not Alexander died without an heir, the impolitic bequest of Edgar might have been fraught with most disastrous consequences to Scotland. The principality of David must inevitably, in course of time, have become dependant upon one of the greater kingdoms by which it was surrounded; it could only have existed by skilfully promoting disunion between its more powerful neighbours; and it is more than probable that it would have eventually been annexed to the greater kingdom, and been held by his descendants as a fief of the English crown. The marked separation existing between the dominions of the two brothers during the lifetime of the elder, is best ascertained by a reference to the charters ofthe period. The dignitaries at the court of Alexander were exclusively, Gaelic Mormaors—Earls of Moray, Fife, Atholl, and Strathearn, and other native magnates of similar origin—the grandsons of the Northumbrian Cospatric, ancestor of the Earls of March and Dunbar; Edward the Constable, the son of Siward Beorn—in short, the nobility of ancientAlbanand the Lothians; whilst around Earl David gathered Moreville and Somerville, Lindsay and Umphraville, Bruce and Fitz-Alan, Norman names destined to surround the throne of his descendants, two of them to become royal, and all to shed a lustre upon the feudal chivalry of Scotland.[229]
Alexander may have attempted to enforce, by resolute will, the changes and alterations which were only carried out by David through an union of consummate tact and policy; and it may have been to this part of the king’s conduct that Ailred alludeswhen he describes him as “endeavouring to compass things beyond his power;” for he was evidently of a disposition to frame his policy, rather according to the dictates of his own will, than to his ability to carry it out. He achieved enough, however, to entitle him to be remembered as the first king who essayed to place Scotland on a footing with the feudal states of Western Europe; for Edgar left his kingdom much as he found it—his very bequest of Cumbria, as an absolute property, was totally at variance with the policy of either Saxon or Norman—and the innovations of Margaret were confined to the court and the clergy.[230]The laws and customs of the Gaelic people remained undisturbed in her days, and her ideas of ecclesiastical reform were widely different from those of Hildebrand, of whose system the church of her native country, at the time she quitted it, was ignorant.
But the grant of theCursus Aprimade by Alexander to St. Andrews—a grant which must be regarded, not so much in the light of an original donation, as of a restoration to the church of the lands which had been alienated to the royal family in their capacity ofCowarbs, or hereditary abbots of the old monastic establishment—was, unquestionably, the earliest step towards remodelling the Scottishchurch, though the king’s intentions were frustrated by his dissensions with Turgot and Eadmer, and he died before the consecration of Robert, Prior of Scone, the last bishop whom he appointed. He was the first king also to introduce beyond the Forth the custom of confirming grants by charter, in place of the outward forms and ceremonies by which, in an earlier state of society, such gifts were invariably accompanied; though upon the occasion of his restitution of theCursus Apriall the ancient formalities were observed. The great feudal office of Constable is also first traceable in this reign, and to the same king may be attributed the earliest introduction of the sheriffdom—for theVicecomesis to be met with in some of his charters. Alexander may therefore be said to have laid the first stone of the social edifice which David raised from the foundation; though many a year was fated to elapse, and more than one generation was destined to pass away, before the system inaugurated by the sons of Malcolm Ceanmore, was effectually established throughout the whole extent of their dominions.