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CHAPTER X.

CUMBRIA AND SCOTLAND UNDER DAVID I. AS PRINCE AND KING, AND DOWN TO THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER III., IN 1285-86.

FROM the seventh to the eleventh centuries, there is much obscurity over the course of history in Scotland. When the light begins to dawn in the eleventh century, and brighten in the twelfth, the features of the country are very different from the original Cymric and Pictish period. In the north of the Forth there is evidence that a fusion has taken place between Scot and Pictthe former gaining supremacy, and giving the name Scotia or Scotland first to that part of the country, and then to the whole land.

To the south of the Forth, or Scots' Water, in what is now known as the Lowlands, there are signs that the Angles of Bernicia-including mainly Berwick and East Lothian-have become the dominant race in population and in language. The Cymri of Strathclyde have still a distinct appellation as Cumbrenses, and the Picts, or probably mixed Gaels of Galloway, are known as Galwenses; but they are being fast merged in the Angle

VOL. I.

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population, which is spreading over the entire Lowlands. While the western Gael or Scot had apparently gained the civil supremacy of the country, the Border Angle was really the moulding and civilising element. He was spreading his customs, his laws, and his language over conquering Scot, and subject Pict, and the now loyal Cymri of the Tweed and the Clyde.

From the time of Malcolm Canmore there had been an immigration from England of Angles and Saxons into Scotland, especially into the valley of the Tweed, and the Lowlands generally. These strengthened the powerful Angle element already existing in Bernicia. They were attracted to the representative of the Saxon monarchy; they felt the pressure of the forest and feudal laws; and they added to the Anglo-Saxon speech of the Lowlands. True to the Saxon instinct of individual liberty, they sought in the north, under the kindlier rule of Canmore and the Saxon Princess Margaret, the freedom they could not have in the south. The sons of Malcolm and Margaret, particularly the youngest, David I., favoured their coming. The spirit thus engendered against Norman rule and the feudal usages of England lived in the breasts of the descendants of those immigrants. And this it was which, transmitted and strengthened by tradition, gave intensity to the hatred of the Lowlander against Edward I., and ultimately drove his son into that ignominious flight from Bannockburn to Dunbar. Edward had no doubt what some may regard as enlightened views of government. They were, however, of a somewhat imperial and arbitrary sort, and the enlightened element in views, pressed upon

a people at the point of the sword, is apt not to be greatly appreciated. The spirit of the War of Independence was an Anglo-Saxon hatred of the feudal Norman of the south. It was manifested especially in the Lowlands of Scotland. It met with no sympathy, rather opposition, from the Gael of the Highlands, who had far more affinity of feeling with what it confronted than with what it sought, and who was indifferent as to what king reigned south of his mountains. Yet it was this spirit which fused the mixed elements of population on the Lowland plains and hills during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries into one nationality. It is that which has given the Lowland Scot his character of stern individuality, self-reliance, and stubborn independence— qualities which have done excellent service, but which sometimes with him assume so pronounced a form of self-assertion, when no one is questioning his dignity or importance, as to be slightly disagreeable. It is the well-spring, too, of that deep and full current of popular ballad and song, reflecting national feeling and personal prowess which, passing on through the centuries to our times, has risen and increased, until it has found its widest sweep in the lyrics of Burns, and in the prose and poetry of Scott. Our first great national epic was

The Bruce of Barbour, our greatest national lyric is Scots Wha Hae, our last and greatest national epic is The Lay of the Last Minstrel.

Besides the influx of the common people of the south, there was also, from the time of Malcolm Canmore, a pretty constant immigration of good Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman families from Northumbria and other

parts of England. These settled at first in the Lowlands, and many of them afterwards passed into the central and northern parts of the kingdom. This immigration was especially encouraged by David I., who no doubt looked on it as a means of civilisation, and of promoting the influence of the Church, to which he was so strongly attached. At the Battle of the Standard, under David, in 1138, we have, besides the Britons of Strathclyde, who formed the second division of the army, the Galwenses, or men of Galloway, who were in the front place. These were "usually termed Picts, but they were a Gaelic people. The third division consisted of Laodonenses, or Angles of Lothian, with the Insulani and Lavernani, or people of the Isles and Lennox.1 The king had in his own division the Scoti, or people of the districts extending from the Forth to the Spey; the Muravenses, the newly conquered Gaelic people of Moray; and a body of milites Angli et Franci,' or Anglic and Norman knights, who formed his own body-guard." 2

We find these national distinctions preserved considerably later than the time of David. In the reign of his successor, Malcolm IV. (1153-1165), we have the King of the Scots addressing the people of the land as-" Francis, Anglicis, Scotis, et Galweiensibus." 3 And again the same king addresses them as "Francis et Anglicis, Scotis, Walensibus, Gauelensibus."4

1 Almost certainly Scandinavian.

2 Historians of Scotland, iv., Fordun's Chron., Int., lii, liii.

Among

3 Reg. Epis. Glasg., i., No. 12, temp. Malcolm IV. De Ecclesia de Veteri

Rokesburgh.

4 Ibid., No. 12.

the witnesses to these documents are the leading men of the period-Somerville, Umphraville, Morville, Lindsay, Riedale (Riddel), Soulis, Olifard, Avenel, Cumin, Colville. Orm, the son of Eilaf, and his son John, appear almost like stray Norsemen among the AngloNormans. Possibly Ormiston on the Tweed, now Glenormiston, was his toun for some generations.

It was out of a fusion of the races indicated by those designations that what now bears the name of the Scottish nation arose. It was especially to those "milites. Angli et Franci" that David gave estates on Tweedside. These Angles, Normans, and, we may add, Flemings, soon held, under feudal investiture, from David and the succeeding kings of his line, nearly all the lands along the Tweed and its tributaries. Each settler fixed the limits of his vil or toun, " built himself a house of fence, distributed the lands of his manor among his own few followers, and the nativi whom he found attached to the soil, either to be cultivated on his own account, or at a fixed ferm' on the risk of the tenant.' Beside the toun, each built a mill and a brew-house. This accounts for the innumerable and utterly superfluous mills to be found till lately in the heathery glens of the Lowlands.

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The kings of the Anglo-Saxon race of Malcolm Canmore thus attached to themselves by a close tie the barons and landowners of the country. The old Cymric stock in the south, and, in a measure, the Gaelic race in the north, were superseded as lairds or domini by men. more intimately allied in feeling, sympathy, and blood with the reigning house.

1 Innes, Early Scottish History, 10.

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