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Home An Early Great Britain and its Failure The Makings of Scotland; Part 4 |
The Makings of Scotland; Part 4We have already dwelt on Malcolm III's marriage with Margaret since it led to the supremacy of the English-speaking part of Scotland over the Celtic. But it had other results too. Malcolm, as a relative of the old kings of England, became an enemy of William the Conqueror. Hence we have a fresh reason for wars between England and Scotland. Indeed, it was while invading England that Malcolm was slain. Henry I desired to end this hostility by the same method that caused it, namely, a marriage.He married David's sister Edith, or, as she is known in English history, Matilda. Thus David was Henry I's brother-in-law; and just as Margaret had brought in the English influence, Matilda strengthened the Norman party in Scotland. We may note how at the most critical periods in Scottish history royal marriages have played a momentous part. We have Margaret and Matilda. Our minds instinctively turn on to another, Margaret of England (sister to Henry VIII), and to the unfortunate Mary Queen of Scots, and we may add one more Margaret, who did not live to be married, but whose union could not have failed to be of the deepest consequence. This is Margaret, the Maid of Norway. The seeker after coincidence will notice that all the names begin alike. Alliance with the family of Henry did not bring peace but a sword. David, as uncle of the Empress Maud, and also as a Norman baron (By his marriage with Matilda, granddaughter of Seward, Earl of Northumbria, he held the Honour of Huntingdon, the Earldom of Northampton, and a claim on the Earldom of Northumberland), was involved in the quarrel between Maud and Stephen. He did not play a very disinterested part in it. Like many others, he could not resist the temptation of fishing for himself in troubled waters, and though he was defeated in the Battle of the Standard, yet he managed to get Stephen to surrender to him Northumberland, Durham, Cumberland, and Westmorland. Henry II, however, looked on this just as he looked on the rest of Stephen's actions, and he did not intend to be bound by it. He compelled David's successor to restore the four counties, and being lucky enough to capture William the Lion at Alnwick, he compelled him in the Treaty of Falaise to do homage for his whole kingdom. More than once William came to England to repeat the homage, and the superiority of the English crown would have been clear enough had not Richard I, as has been related, sold William his homage back again. Thus the whole relation between the two countries was in a tangle. The English kings had tried to make out some claim to be lords over the kings of Scotland. They could point to gifts of territory and to acts of homage. On the other hand, the kings of Scotland could say that these gifts really implied nothing; that the homage was for English earldoms which they held, and not for their Scottish dominions; and that if any homage was due for Scotland itself, Richard's bargain had cancelled it. Yet so far there was no national enmity between the two. They did not glory in being different races. They fought indeed at times, now one side winning, and now the other. Yet even at the Battle of the Standard David of Scotland fought under the flag of the Dragon, the same sign as that which King Alfred had used, while a Robert Bruce, an ancestor of the Scottish patriot king, was in the English ranks. Scotland had not yet begun to think of England as a tyrant, nor did England look on Scotland as a rebel. Indeed, for the great part of the thirteenth century the two kingdoms were at peace. Both Alexander II and Alexander III married English princesses; both were wise rulers, who did much to unite Scotland and strengthen the royal power, without either attacking England or admitting the English supremacy. The more bitter feeling which becomes so marked in the next century was to spring from the doings of Edward I. |
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