A. D. 1211
It was winter when Mac William arrived in Ross, and six months elapsed before an army could be dispatched to operate with effect against him, the king following by easy marches, as well as his debilitated condition would allow. Each party pursuing their usual tactics, the campaign was opened on the royal side by the construction of two forts, or rather, perhaps, by the repair of the buildings, which had been raised in the previous war to command the most important points in the district;[500]whilst Godfrey,carefully avoiding a battle, endeavoured to harass the royal army by continued surprises and night attacks. Steadily pursuing the course which he had proposed to follow in his campaign against Donald Bane, the king placed 4000 men under the command of the Earls of Atholl and Buchan, with Malcolm of Mar and Thomas the Durward, ordering them to penetrate the recesses of the mountains in every direction, and force Mac William to an encounter. Godfrey’s place of strength was upon an island, where he had collected his treasure and supplies; and here he was at length discovered and brought to bay by the royal leaders. The struggle was most obstinate, for the rebels were animated by despair; victory, however, declared for the royal arms, Godfrey with a few of his companions escaping, though with difficulty, amongst the clefts and thickets of the neighbouring mountains.[501]
Satisfied with his success, William returned with the main body of his army to the south, leaving Earl Malcolm of Fife in charge of Moray. His departure was the signal for the reappearance of Godfrey, who suddenly presented himself in force before one of the royal castles, and commenced preparations for a siege. Alarmed at the prospect of an attack, and the probable consequences of its success, the garrison offered to capitulate on condition that their lives were spared; and as Godfrey willingly agreed to their terms, they were permitted to depart in safety, and the fort was burnt to the ground.[502]
A. D. 1212.
The tidings of Godfrey’s proceedings reached William in the winter, when any hope of taking the field amongst the northern mountains with the leastprobability of success was frustrated by the unusual severity of the season; and as he had calculated upon his forts securing the advantages gained in the preceding campaign, he was incensed and embarrassed at this unexpected loss. A renewal of such a doubtful contest as the struggle in which he had been engaged with his cousin, the elder Mac William, was an anxious prospect at his time of life, and he naturally felt inclined to draw yet closer the ties connecting him with his English ally.[503]Ere the winter passedaway the two kings met once more, and for the last time, at Durham; their conference was adjourned from that place to Norham, where the queen of Scotland is said to have exerted her influence with both parties to obtain the treaty of mutual alliance, which was concluded upon this occasion.7th Feb.Both kings are said to have agreed, that, in case of the death of either, the survivor should be bound to protect and support the youthful heir in securing the rights of his crown; William conceding to John the privilege of marrying his son Alexander, now in his fourteenth year, according to his own pleasure during the next six years, so that the alliance was suitable to the dignity of the Scottish crown; at the same time confirming his own, and his son’s, liege homage to the English prince Henry, saving their fealty to John. The Scottish prince then accompanied the king of England, upon his return, to the south, and received the honor of knighthood at St. Brides in Clerkenwell, where John held high festival in Mid-Lent.[504]
4th Mar.
With his mind set at rest upon the subject of the English alliance, William prepared to bend all his remaining energies to the suppression of the dangerous rebellion in the north. About the middle of June a considerable force was dispatched to the scene of action, the prince of Scotland accompanyingthe army to prove himself worthy of his golden spurs; and the reserve was to have followed by easy marches, under the immediate orders of the king, when its departure was arrested by the welcome intelligence of the capture of the head of the rebellion. The Earl of Fife, during a temporary absence from his command, left the province under the charge of the Justiciary, William Comyn, Earl of Buchan, into whose hands the adherents of Mac William, terror-stricken apparently at the magnitude of the royal preparations, had just surrendered their leader. The earl had already reached Kincardine with his prisoner, whom he was in haste to present to William before death robbed him of his prize—for Godfrey had resolutely refused all nourishment since his capture—when he was met by a significant message from the king, that he had no desire to see his enemy; and the unfortunate Mac William was at once beheaded, and hung up by the feet, lest starvation should anticipate his doom.[505]
A. D. 1213
The ensuing winter once more found John upon the Scottish frontier. Whilst on the march in the preceding summer to repress the revolt of Llewellyn, he had received letters from William, as well as from his own natural daughter Joanna, the wife of the Welsh prince, warning him against the intentions of his own barons, if he involved himself in the intricacies of a mountain warfare in Wales.[506]The coincidence of the arrival of similar warnings from quarters so far apart, aroused his fears lest theintelligence should be true; and returning in haste to London, he sent to his principal barons, demanding hostages for their allegiance and good faith. All obeyed the royal command except Eustace de Vesci and Robert Fitz Walter; the former, too deeply implicated apparently to entrust himself within the power of John, at once seeking refuge with his father-in-law in Scotland. The flight of De Vesci was amongst the causes which brought John to the north, for it appears that he had already written to William to claim the fugitive as a traitor. Norham, as usual, was the place chosen for the conference; but William, who had been for some time detained at Newbattle by another severe attack of illness, was unable to proceed farther than Haddington; and John, who had every reason for desiring, at this period of his reign, to draw still closer the bonds of union between himself and his fellow king, earnestly adjured him to depute the young Prince Alexander in his place, holding out magnificent promises to induce compliance. The aged king was inclined to send his son, some of his advisers agreeing with him; but the majority of his council strongly opposed the project, objecting to entrust the heir of Scotland within the power of John, of whose intentions they were, not unnaturally, suspicious. They were fearful, also, lest the English king should detain Alexander as a hostage for the delivery of De Vesci, and as William eventually deferred to their opinion, John was obliged to relinquish all hope of a conference, and return disappointed to the south.[507]
During William’s contest with Earl Harald, Olave, the earl’s brother-in-law, and John Halkelson, sailed from the Orkneys to assist the son of the Norwegian Regent Erling in placing Sigurd Magnusson upon his father’s throne. Their fate was most unfortunate; the flower of the Orkneys assembled around the banner of Olave perishing, with both their leaders, in the disastrous battle of Floravagr; and their ill-omened expedition entailing the wrath of the conqueror upon Harald, who only made his peace with the indignant Sverer by yielding up to Norway the whole of the Shetland Isles. It was a diminished and impaired dominion, therefore, which Harald, upon his death in 1206, left as an inheritance between his three sons;A. D. 1206.Heinrek succeeding to his claims upon Ross, whilst David and John divided his possessions in Caithness and the Orkneys, the latter, upon the death of David, becoming the sole possessor of both his father’s earldoms.[508]To ensure the submission of Earl John to his authority, William, during the summer of 1214, proceeded as far as Moray,A. D. 1214.when the earl, unwilling to provoke the hostility of his sovereign, yielded at once to his terms, giving up his daughter and heiress as a hostage for his fidelity and allegiance. The king then returned by easy journeys towards the south, but he had far over-taxed his feeble strength, having risenfrom a bed of sickness to ensure the tranquil succession of his son. As he approached the Forth he expressed a wish to be carried to Stirling, a place for which he appears to have felt an especial fondness; and here he lingered over the autumn within the walls of that royal castle, from whence his failing sight could gaze upon one of the fairest prospects of his native land. He was never destined to see another year, and on Thursday, the 4th of December, he breathed his last, expiring in the seventy-third year of his age, and within five days of entering upon the fiftieth of a chequered and eventful reign.[509]
Few materials remain for estimating the personal character of William beyond the actions ascribed to him in the chronicles of the period. Newbridge, perhaps a prejudiced authority, contrasts him unfavourably with his brother Malcolm, regarding many of his misfortunes in the early part of his career as punishments for his addiction to worldly pleasures, and attributing the comparative peace and prosperity of his later years—meaning the period of Richard’s reign—to the beneficial effects of his marriage with Ermengarde de Bellomont.[510]He was a great man, however, in the opinion of the archdeacon of Brecknock, Giraldus Cambrensis, and worthy of praise inmany things, one blot only resting upon his glory—throughout the whole length and breadth of Scotland his will alone decided the disposal of church patronage, expressly imitating, in this respect, the policy of the English kings, stigmatized by the archdeacon as “the enormous abuses of the Norman tyranny in England.”[511]Giraldus wrote in the spirit of a churchman of the twelfth century; but it must at least be admitted that it tells not a little for the energy of William’s character, that in his contest with the Church of Rome, in the very zenith of her power, he was successful; neither legate nor pope bending him from his purpose, though they launched anathemas at his head, and were supported by Henry, at that time feudal overlord of Scotland. But though high-spirited and impetuous, even to rashness, in his youth and manhood, William appears to have been broken down by repeated attacks of illness as he advanced in life; and the reckless knight-errant, who rushed upon seven times his numbers at Alnwick, grew into an over-cautious sovereign, who aroused the discontent of his subjects, and risked the newly recovered independence of his kingdom, by his inordinate dread of the consequences of a rupture with England. Some allowance may be made for his anxiety to carry out the policy of his grandfather, and re-annex to the Scottish crown the appanage of his early years, which his brother had resigned at Chester; but from the comparative ease with which his successor crushedevery rebellion within a few years of his accession, firmly established the royal authority over the whole mainland of Scotland, and vindicated on every occasion the liberties of his crown and kingdom, it is very evident that William carried his caution too far; and though circumstances may have been more favourable to his son, the temporizing policy of William towards the close of his life must have increased, rather than diminished, the difficulties of his situation. From the use of the lion rampant upon his seal, a device which has since become the well-known cognizance of Scotland, he was very frequently known as “William the Lion;” and the names ofRufusandGarw—or the Rough—have also been applied to him, indicating, apparently, some distinguishing feature in his character, or personal appearance.[512]By his marriage with Ermengarde de Bellomont, he left four children; an only son, Alexander, who succeeded to the throne, and three daughters, Margaret, Isabella, and Marjory. Margaret, the eldest, was married to Hubert de Burgh, and left an only daughter, Magota, who died apparently at an early age. Isabella became the wife of Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk; and Marjory, who appears to have been celebrated for her beauty, which made a deep impression upon the susceptible heart of Henry the Third, was subsequently united to Gilbert the Mareschal, Earl of Pembroke, both the younger princesses dying without issue.
The lengthened reign of William was the era of the more complete development of David’s changes in church and state; and Scotland, at the opening of the thirteenth century, was fast progressing towardsthe condition of a thoroughly feudalized kingdom in her more settled portions. Traces of her earlier institutions, however, were still abundant; the more lenient custom, for instance, of the allodial system, by which the property of the felon was not confiscated but descended at once to the heir, was confirmed as the general law of Scotland, the strict feudal theory being, in other words, relaxed in favour of “ancient custom;” though where the homicide, or cattle-lifter, escaped the penalty of the crime by flight, his property reverted to the lord, the heir only succeeding on the death of the forfeited proprietor. Even sedition against the king did not disinherit the heir, if the property was not held directly of the crown; but for treason against the royal person both life and lands were irretrievably forfeited. Another concession in favour of “ancient custom,” perhaps, is traceable in the permission granted to the kindred of a murdered man to take full legal vengeance on the homicide, even when under the protection of “the king’s peace,” if they could prove that their consent had not been obtained to compromise the feud; though, from the wording of the law in question, this relaxation of the royal power of pardoning the highest offences, may have been confined to the case of a murdered witness. In most other respects the usual feudal customs were generally established; the charter was required as a necessary document for every freeholder—a stringent enactment being levelled against all who were convicted of forging such evidence of rights to which they were not entitled; and the Visnet was fast becoming the recognised law of the land. Galloway alone formed an exception, in this point, to the rest of Scotland, retaining her ancient code; no Galwegian being judgedby “the verdict of the neighbourhood,” except at his especial demand; but very strict rules were laid down for its substitute, “the wager of battle,”—a fine often cowsbeing enacted for speaking during the progress of a judicial combat; he who raised his hand, or made a sign, being “at the king’s mercy.” The fines assessed at Dumfries by “the Judges of Galloway,” appear, indeed, to have been heavier than in Scotland proper; and the regulations about collecting the king’sCanin this turbulent province, are marked with a degree of severity which seems to point to a state of society in which the royal imposts were still regarded as unwelcome novelties, all recusants being mulcted ina hundred cows, and bound to pay one-third more than the original demand. Agriculture was still a subject of legislation, and the regulations of David, which discouraged pasturage, were repeated; the barons and greater clergy being exhorted “to live like lords and masters upon their own domains, not like husbandmen and shepherds, wasting their lands and the country with multitudes of sheep and cattle, thereby troubling God’s people with scarcity, poverty, and utterhership.” Constant travelling with a retinue unnecessarily large, was also a social feature which it was still necessary to discountenance; as well assorning, or living at free quarters; and unnecessary exaction ofherbary, or food and lodging for the night; the repetition of David’s laws on all these points displaying the tenacity with which the native baronage clung to the habits of an earlier age, the sole difference noticeable in the later enactments of William pointing to one of those changes from a simpler state of society, which the progress of civilization is sure to introduce upon “the good old times”—the herbary which, in the time ofDavid, was to be given “for the sake of charity,” in the reign of his grandson was to be duly recompensed—with pence.[513]
But though the regulations of David still continued to be the groundwork of the Scottish constitution, certain modifications were introduced by William which tended still further to increase the power of the crown. In the fifteenth year of his reign, “on the Monday before the festival of St. Margaret” in 1180, in one of these great assemblies of the whole Frank-tenantry of the kingdom, lay and ecclesiastical, in which the germs of future parliaments are traceable, and which, on this occasion, was held at Stirling, it was agreed that, for the future, none were to hold ordinary courts of justice, or a court of ordeal, whether “of battle, iron, or water,” except in the presence of the sheriff, or of one of his serjeants; though, if the official, after due summons, failed to attend, the court might be held in his absence. At the same time, the four great pleas, which had been removed from the jurisdiction of burgh provosts and baron baillies in the reign of David, were reserved absolutely for the crown.[514]Seventeen years later, in 1197, perhaps in consequence of abuses in the exercise of authority, these minor courts were further regulated by an ordinance passed in a similar “Parliament” held at Perth, and attended by “the Bishops,Abbots, Earls, Barons, Thanes, and Community of the Realm;” in which the great barons were pledged to give no support to law-breakers, whether their own followers or others, and to take no money for remission of judgment after sentence had been duly passed; all failing in their duty, in either of these points, being condemned to forfeit for ever their right to hold a court.[515]The regulations of David about the great royalmoots, and about the sheriffs’ courts, were also modified at some period of William’s reign; and it was ordered that two great assemblies were to be held yearly at Edinburgh and Peebles, at which every freeholder was bound to attend, unless prevented by sickness, or other sufficient cause. In every province the sheriff was to hold a court every forty days—in this particular following the Norman, or Frank, rather than the Saxon custom; but bishops, abbots, earls, and probably the greater barons who enjoyed “the rights and custom of an earl,” were now excused from personal attendance, appearing by their Seneschals or Stewards, and only being bound to attend in person upon the court of the royal justiciary, or of his deputy.[516]Henceforth the privilege of a “Regality” was confined to the greater barons or clergy, upon whom it was conferred by royal favour; a sure sign of the progress of order, and of the royalauthority. It may be remarked that a Regality in the feudal period was generally on some frontier; or was a district made over to some powerful noble to control, as he best might, by the strong hand; and in England, the sole provinces of this description were thePalatinatesof Chester and Durham, the former on the Welsh frontier, the latter upon the borders of that turbulent Northumbrian province which, at one period, could be scarcely reckoned as an integral, or settled, portion of either England or Scotland. David probably interfered but little with the privileges of the ancient earls within their immediate possessions, limiting his innovations upon their earlier duties and prerogatives to the introduction of the royalVicecomes: but William was enabled to advance a step further; the royal authority was becoming firmer, and was now made paramount throughout the settled portion of Scotland, except where the greater barons or higher clergy were specially privileged; though the right to execute within the precincts of his own barony the homicide taken “red-hand,” or the robber captured with the stolen cattle, still remained the privilege of every baron who claimed the jurisdiction of “pit and gallows.”
In pursuance of his usual line of policy, William also carried out the ecclesiastical and commercial measures of his predecessors, ordering the general payment of tithes and dues throughout the kingdom, defining the means by which his edicts were to be put in force, and assimilating the dioceses of Aberdeen and Moray to the model bishoprics of Glasgow and St. Andrews.[517]More than this he appears to have been unable to effect, for the church lands in the seesof Brechin and Dunblane were still in the possession of great lay feudatories, disinclined as yet to restore the property to the bishops, and too powerful to be rendered discontented by any overprompt measures of alienation. Even in Dunkeld the chapter was not as yet provided for; Ross was in a chronic state of rebellion during the greater part of this reign; and Caithness was at this time hardly more than a nominal province of Scotland. Only one religious foundation is ascribed to William, the monastery of Arbroath, which he dedicated to the memory of Thomas à Becket, with whom he is sometimes said to have been on terms of familiar intimacy at the English court in his earlier years; and from the date of this tribute to the memory of the martyred archbishop, which was completed and endowed within a very few years after the king’s return from captivity, it would certainly appear as if William had been very much impressed at the time by the peculiar circumstances of his capture.[518]
Though David may be regarded unquestionably as the founder of the Scottish burghs, many were indebted to William for the earliest charters confirmatory of their original privileges. Monopoly was, as usual, ensured to the privileged class within the walls, no one being allowed to sell the produce of his lands or flocks except to burgesses;[519]commerce, thus forbidden to the nobility, was confined to the burgher class; and the result was the same all over Europe. There is not a trace amongst the Teutonic people, in early times, of that broad line of distinction which grew up in a later age between the soldier and the merchant, the man of arms andthe man of commerce—though the few actual trades, or rather handicrafts, of the period, were probably confined to the unfree. “Biorn the merchant” was the son of a king, and the spirit of commerce was strongly developed amongst the early Northmen. But the burghers claimed it as their exclusive privilege, and their monopolies were fostered and encouraged, stringent laws prohibiting theuplandnobility from entering into competition with the freemen within the walls; and accordingly they soon grew to despise pursuits in which they were thus precluded from engaging. No such restrictions existed in Italy, and her merchants were amongst the noblest in the land. Elsewhere the exclusive monopolies of aRoturierclass very much contributed to stamp commerce, in the Middle Ages, as a pursuit generally confined to the low-born. David’s commercial, like his religious, foundations were principally to the southward of the Forth—his views were directed towards Northumberland—and though many of his burghs were planted to the northward of that river, and particularly in the forfeited province of Moray, it is from the confirmatory charters of William that their existence is first discovered. Not a few additions were also made by William to the number of Scottish burghs—foremost in importance to future ages the bishop’s burgh of Glasgow—and Galloway, Scottish Cumbria, and the northern and eastern coasts of Scotland proper, were studded with commercial garrisons. Berwick still appears to have monopolized the foreign trade, and its importance may be best appreciated by the clause inserted in one of the treaties between John and William, engaging the English king to stop the further progress of the castle at Tweedmouth, which had evidentlybeen intended to aim a fatal blow at the most flourishing emporium of Scottish commerce.[520]But it was upon the northern and eastern coasts ofScotiaproper, and upon that portion of the northern coast which had been reclaimed fromMoraviaby the establishment of Inverness, that the progress and advancement of the kingdom were most marked in William’s reign. David’s favourite residences appear to have been generally in the south and centre of his kingdom, but William was often in the north, and many of his charters are dated from Forfar and Aberdeen, and from the Moray burghs of Nairn, Forres, Elgin, and Inverness. The latter burgh was a thorough garrison, and in return for certain privileges which its inhabitants enjoyed over other burgesses, they were bound to keep in good repair the ditch and rampart, which the king had thrown up around the town. Most of the great families which are still to be found in this quarter—Chisholms, Roses, Bissetts now represented by the Frasers, and others—are of Scoto-Norman origin, descendants of the auxiliaries planted in, by the Scottish kings, “in the times of eld,” to defend the lands they had won from the supporters of Mac Heth, or Mac William; their names, though they have long been enrolled most worthily in the ranks of “Scottish Highlanders,” yet recalling the time in which the ancient house of Moray was finally crushed by the power of the rival house of Atholl; and when the hereditary earldom of Macbeth was the realmarchof royal Scotland towards the north, held by the disciplined valour of the Normans. Inverness was the key of the lowlandsof Moray, and in many respects an outpost of civilization, from which, in the next reign, the royal power extended still further over the north and west. The views of David were turned southwards, and he never ceased to hope that the ancient territories of the Northumbrian Ealdormen might yet be numbered amongst the appanages of the Scottish crown. But William, in his later years, if the Scottish version of his secret treaty with John is correct, was ready to waive his claims upon Northumberland; and as the unsubstantial vision of the fair English earldom faded from his sight, he may have directed his attention more exclusively to his own kingdom, and have inaugurated that wiser line of policy which, in the course of his son’s reign, united the whole of the Scottish mainland in loyal obedience to the king.
END OF VOL. I.
Printed byR. & R. Clark,Edinburgh.