Sept.
Upon his return from this expedition, Henrycelebrated the marriage of William and Ermengarde with much pomp and ceremony, placing the palace of Woodstock at the disposal of the royal pair. After four days spent in feasting and revelry, the young queen departed for her husband’s kingdom, the earl of Huntingdon escorting her, with the rest of the Scottish nobility who had been present at the celebration of the marriage; whilst William, instead of attending upon his bride in her progress to the north, accompanied the English king to Marlborough.[441]
A. D.1187.
Six years had now elapsed since the establishment of Mac William in the country, where his influence and power had increased to a formidable extent, and the affairs of the north began to assume an alarming aspect. The majority of the barons and thanes of Ross, and other portions ofMoravia, had by this time ranged themselves beneath his banner;[442]whilst the connection of the lords of Argyle, and the Isles, with the family of Malcolm Mac Heth, must have disposed the leading nobles of the Western Highlands to display a very lukewarm adherence to the royal cause. With the greater part of the north and west either openly, or secretly, in his favour, Mac William could also calculate upon the support of many other leading men, who had been parties to his first establishment in the country; and the king perceived that a crisis had at length arrived, in which he must either immediately crush his competitor, or risk the loss of half his kingdom.[443]
Accordingly, in the summer of 1187, all the military force of Scotland which had not openly declared for Mac William, was ordered to concentrate uponInverness; and William contemplated placing himself at the head of his army, following his rival into the remoter Highlands, and forcing him to a decisive contest, about the result of which he entertained little doubt. Many of his barons, however, who were alive to the dangers of the impending campaign in a wild and mountainous region, vehemently opposed the royal project, dreading the repetition of some disastrous accident from the fiery and impetuous courage of the king. They were uneasy, also, about the fidelity of a certain portion of the royal army, who were quite as well inclined to favour Mac William as to support the cause of the king; and, acquiescing at length in the prudence of their advice, William consented to remain at Inverness, and to entrust the immediate conduct of the war to leaders upon whose ability and fidelity he could depend.
A fresh difficulty arose, after the king’s decision, from the positive refusal of some of his principal nobles to march without the king against Mac William. At a moment of such vital importance to the royal cause, when the exertions of the well-affected were paralysed by this unexpected sedition, the eyes of all the army were turned upon the Lord of Galloway; and it was well for William that, in this crisis, he could count upon the fidelity of that powerful baron.[444]No hesitation marked the conduct of Roland, who at once threw the whole weight of his influence and authority upon the side of his royal master; and when, in consequence of the dispute, it was arranged that the main body of the army should remain with William at Inverness, placing himselfat the head of three thousand of his own followers, upon whose fidelity he could depend, he set out in search of Mac William, in the determination of carrying out in person the original intentions of the king.
The fate of Scotland was decided by an accident; and it has twice been the destiny of Inverness to witness, in its vicinity, the termination of a contest for a crown. Upon the moor of Mamgarvy, some long forgotten spot in that neighbourhood, the party of Roland unexpectedly fell in with a body of the enemy, whose numbers were about equal to their own. Neither party shunned the contest, but the royalists gained the day, and amongst the slain was discovered the lifeless body of Mac William. His death terminated the war, and the victor returned in triumph to Inverness, to earn the grant of the broad lands of Galloway with the head of his royal master’s most formidable and inveterate opponent.[445]
The death of Donald Bane at once restored peace throughout the north of Scotland. The strength of his cause had lain, not so much in the devotion of his adherents to his own person, as in their disaffection towards the reigning sovereign; and the same feelings which had induced many of the Scottish nobles to look with indifference upon the increase of Donald’s power, rendered them equally careless about its extinction. No enthusiastic clansmen burned toavenge the slaughter of their chief; for no hereditary attachment united his followers to Mac William, like the feelings which once bound the men of Moray to the descendants of their early kings and mormaors.[446]The cause of Mac Heth was identified with the claims of the ancient line of Kenneth Mac Duff; but the powerful chieftains of the North and West, who adhered to that family from hereditary associations, must have followed the banner of Mac William from enmity to the reigning family, or from dislike to their feudal innovations, rather than from any clannish feeling of attachment to the heir of Malcolm Ceanmore’s eldest son, who claimed to be the rightful representative of the rival line of Atholl.
A. D. 1188.
Scotland had at this period almost regained the position in which she stood before the fatal capture of her king. Galloway was at length pacified, the north and west were no longer in open rebellion, and Scottish men-at-arms once more garrisoned the castle of Edinburgh; but Henry still retained Roxburgh and Berwick, the keys of the southern frontier, and for the cession of these important fortresses William offered to pay 4000 marks of silver. Henry signified his readiness to restore the castles if William, in return, would agree to grant him the tenths of the kingdom of Scotland for the projected crusade, an arrangement to which the latter promised to consent, if he could prevail upon his people to give their sanction to the terms; but when the bishop of Durham, who was deputed by his king to collect the promised aid, arrived for this purpose upon the frontiers of Scotland, he was met between Werkand Brigham by the Scottish king, who unexpectedly prohibited his further advance. William renewed his original offer for the castles, explaining to the bishop, that, personally, he was still ready to adhere to his compact with Henry; but that upon assembling his barons and clergy in council, they had unanimously refused to listen to the arrangement, asserting that they would refuse to grant away the tenths of Scotland, though both kings had sworn to levy them in person. In vain the English envoy attempted to turn the Scots from their purpose; threats and persuasion were equally unavailing, for the determination of the latter was inflexible; and as the bishop was not empowered to take into consideration the propositions of the Scottish king, he was obliged to return empty handed to the south, and convey to his master in Normandy the impotent result of his mission.[447]
A. D. 1189.
In the following year the ingratitude of his favourite son John, for whose sake he had provoked the hostility of Richard, by evading the acknowledgment of the latter as his rightful successor, completed the ruin that fatigue and chagrin had commenced, and, early in July, Henry of England died of a broken heart at Chinon. Earl David appears to have been implicated in the rebellion of Richard, for Huntingdon was amongst the fiefs granted by the latter at Tours, upon the day after the army of the confederates was enabled, through the continued drought, to enter that town by fording theshallow Loire.[448]The death of Henry was fraught with most important consequences for Scotland, for Richard, with all the enthusiasm of his impetuous nature, was burning to lead the chivalry of Europe to the re-conquest of the Holy Sepulchre, and as money was most essential for carrying out the crusade, in every imaginable method he sought to procure it. The great offices of the crown were put up for sale; the favour of the king was purchased by his illegitimate brother Geoffry; and the earldom of Northumberland was bought by the bishop of Durham.[449]Ten thousand marks of silver were paid by William as the price of the independence of his kingdom and of the restoration of the castles of Roxburgh and Berwick; and in the following November, about six weeks after the coronation of Richard, at which the earl of Huntingdon had assisted, bearing one of the swords of state, the archbishop of York, with the sheriff and barons of the shire, met William at the Tweed, and in obedience to the commands of their sovereign, escorted him with every mark of honour to Canterbury. Here upon the 5th of December, after duly performing “such homage for his English dignities as his ancestors were wont to render to the predecessors of the English king,” he received from the hands of Richard a charter annulling all the concessions extorted by Henry at the time of his capture; and after fifteen years of feudal subjection, the consequences of the disastrous accident at Alnwick were at length repaired, and the independence of Scotland re-established.[450]