Before David I became the King of Scotland in 1124, he was the prince of the Cumbrians and earl of a great territory in the middle of England acquired by marriage. This period marks the beginning of his life as a great territorial lord. Circa 1113, the year in which King Henry I of England arranged his marriage to an English heiress and the year in which for the first time David can be found in possession of "Scottish" territory, marks the beginning of his rise to Scottish leadership.
Background
Most historians agree that David I's early career was largely manufactured for him by King Henry I of England. David was one of Henry's "new men",Kapelle, Norman Conquest, pp. 202-3. and his "greatest protégé";Oram, Lordship of Galloway, pp. 59, 63. Henry's influence had brought David his English marriage and lands, and Henry's military power had allowed David to take up his Scottish lands. David's early career can be understood as part of Henry's frontier policy, which included marriage of two daughters to the kings of Scotland and Galloway, consolidation of royal control in the north-west coast of England and the quelling of the Montgomeries, marcher lords on the Welsh borders who had been allied to Muirchertach Ua Briain, High King of Ireland (1101–19).Oram, Lordship of Galloway, p. 59 et passim. The world of peace which David had enjoyed in England ended after the death of Henry I, just as it did for most other English magnates.
When Henry I first became king of England, he did so in circumstances that were very irregular.Oram, David I: The King Who Made Scotland, p. 50; Green, "David I and Henry I", passim; Kapelle, 34-49; Barrow, Feudal Britain, pp. 134-145. William II, it was said, had been killed in a hunting accident in the New Forest.Green, "David I and Henry I", passim; Kapelle, Norman Conquest of the North, pp. 34-49; Barrow, Feudal Britain, pp. 134-145; Stringer, Earl David of Huntingdon, pp. 1-5; McDonald, "David I, c. 1085-1153", p. 335. Oram, David I: The King Who Made Scotland, p. 50. Many have theorized that Henry conspired against William, leading to his hunting ‘accident’. Oram names the murderer: Walter Tirel. Henry tentatively assumed power while his elder brother Robert, duke of Normandy and the rightful heir, was on crusade. Thus, as a usurper within his own dynasty, he cast about for a claim to legitimacy. He found it in a marriage to David's sister Edith, often called Matilda in Norman fashion, who had accompanied David in his exile.Green, "David I and Henry I", passim; Oram, David I: The King Who Made Scotland, p. 49ff. esp. 52-53. She was a descendant of the near-extinct dynasty of Wessex through her mother, and thereby provided a crude but effective means to create a legal basis for his rule. As an added benefit, from Henry's viewpoint, she might also provide some protection against further Scottish incursions like those that had plagued the northern English provinces with regularity under Malcolm III.Green, "David I and Henry I",’, passim; Stringer, Earl David of Huntingdon, pp. 1-5; MacDonald, "David I, c. 1085-1153", p. 335. Oram, David I: The King Who Made Scotland, pp. 52-53; Barrow, Kingship of the Scots, p. 38. This is not to argue that Henry I and David could not have appreciated each other's company and built their friendship on that basis, of course, but the fact that David was now styled as "the brother of the queen" when he witnessed documents does suggest at least one clear ulterior motive for their friendship and, on Henry's part, points to a familiar and quintessentially feudal logic that underpinned his nurturing of David.Green, "David I and Henry I", passim; Oram, David I: The King Who Made Scotland, 49ff.
Indeed, it was at Henry's bidding that David gained experience as a judge in the royal courts; it was Henry who organized his aforementioned marriage to Maud de Senlis (Matilda)Barrow, ‘Kingship and Unity’, pp. 35. in 1113, thereby installing David as one of the seven earls of the English realm; and it was Henry who ensured that the will of king Edgar was fulfilled, giving military aid to David when he was installed in his appanage.A. D. M. Barrell, Medieval Scotland, 15-41; R. R. Davies, Domination and Conquest, pp. 11, 50-51: "Henry I’s extraordinary largesse was surely not disinterested. He had cocooned David in a web of munificence and obligation which should bring its reward amply if and when David succeeded to the throne (as he did in 1124)". Green, "David I and Henry I", passim; Bartlett, England, 79-80; MacDonald, "David I, c. 1085-1153", p. 335; Oram, David I: The King Who Made Scotland, p. 49ff.
Furthermore, this organization of power based upon personal relationships peculiar to the feudal system ensured that, after he became king of Scotland in 1124, the only thing that kept David from pursuing a policy of vigorous expansion was his friendship with Henry.Green, ‘David I’, passim; Barrow, Feudal Britain, pp. 134-145; Stringer, Earl David of Huntingdon, pp. 1-5. To be sure, it should not be surprising to learn that David harboured territorial ambitions – such desires were cultivated by the prevailing culture of the Normans, the greatest warriors of the age, and applauded if they ended in conquest – nor should it be any surprise that he soon sought to express them upon Henry's death.R. R. Davies, The First English Empire, pp 4-30; Davies, Domination and Conquest, p. 26; Green, "Anglo-Scottish Relations", p. 68: "David...was in effect using those methods which Professor Le Patourel described as Norman imperialism against the Normans ". That he should seek to place those ambitions upon a solid basis of propriety would have been even less remarkable, had a suitable excuse to attack not been conveniently at hand.
When Henry I died in 1135, David had already sat upon the throne of Scotland for nearly eleven years. He had also, in his capacity as a great English nobleman, been the first to swear obedience to Henry's daughter, his own niece, the former Empress of Germany, Matilda, supporting her succession in lieu of any legitimate male heirs – Henry's son having predeceased him, drowning in the famous disaster of the White Ship in 1120.Alan O. Anderson, Early Sources, p. 170; Stringer, Reign of Stephen, pp. 28-37; K. J. Stringer, "State-Building in Twelfth-Century Britain", pp. 40-62; Green, "Anglo-Scottish Relations", pp. 65-68. Henry is a curious case. He produced a brood of bastards, and only one legitimate son.
The unclaimed inheritance
On 8 January 1107 David's brother Edgar died. It is often assumed that David took control of his inheritance, the southern lands bequeathed by Edgar, straight after the latter's death.Judith Green, "David I and Henry I", p. 3. She cites the gap in knowledge about David's whereabouts as evidence; for a brief outline of David's itinerary, see Barrow, The Charters of David I, pp. 38-41 However, much of the evidence indicates that David had to wait until 1113 to get the support he needed to take control of these lands because of King Alexander's opposition; it cannot be demonstrated that he possessed his inheritance until his foundation of Selkirk Abbey late in the year 1113.See Oram, David: The King Who Made Scotland, pp. 60-2; Duncan, The Kingship of the Scots, pp. 60-4. David's exact whereabouts between May 1108 and December 1113 are not explicitly attested in any sources, but according to the arguments of Richard Oram, all of this time was spent both in England and in Normandy. By the end of his time in the Kingdom of the English David had acquired lands in Yorkshire and in Normandy, receiving Hallamshire and the northern section of the Cotentin Peninsula from King Henry. David was probably in Henry's company when the latter campaigned in Normandy during this period, and David was probably given these lands as a reward for his services as a trusted subordinate. It was from Normandy and his possessions in the Cotentin Peninsula that David drew most of his early core followers, men such as Robert de Brus, Hugh de Morville and Ranulf de Soules, who became his chief magnates in the conquered territory between Cumberland and the Kingdom of Scotland; from here he probably brought his confessor John, the man who became the first bishop of David's reorganised diocese of Glasgow. According to Oram, it was only in 1113, when Henry had returned to England, that David was at last in a position to claim his inheritance in southern "Scotland".For all this, see Oram, David: The King Who Made Scotland, pp. 59-63.
Seizure of inheritance There is no evidence which shows that King Henry himself participated in the campaign in person, but it is clear that his backing was enough to force King Alexander to recognize his younger brother's claims. This probably occurred without bloodshed. Years later, when David invaded England with a huge army composed almost entirely of Gaelic Scots, Ailred of Rievaulx has a Norman knight named Robert de Brus lament and complain to David about his betrayal of the Angli and Normanni, the English and Normans, whom he once relied upon. Among other things, the knight asserted:"Oh King, when thou didst demand from thy brother Alexander the part of the kingdom which the same brother [Edgar] had bequeathed at his death didst obtain without bloodshed all that thou wouldst, through fear of us"A.O. Anderson, Scottish Annals, (1908), p. 193. It was in this way, through a bloodless threat of force, that David gained his first territorial foothold within the area of modern Scotland. David's aggression seems to have inspired resentment amongst some native Scots. A recently rediscovered Gaelic quatrain from this period complains that: Olc a ndearna mac Mael Colaim, It's bad what Máel Coluim's son has done;, ar cosaid re hAlaxandir, dividing us from Alexander; do-ní le gach mac rígh romhaind, he causes, like each king's son before; foghail ar faras Albain. the plunder of stable Alba. Thomas Owen Clancy, The Triumph Tree, p.184; full treatment of this is given in Clancy, "A Gaelic Polemic Quatrain from the Reign of Alexander I, ca. 1113" in: Scottish Gaelic Studies vol.20 (2000), pp. 88-96. If "divided from" is anything to go by, this quatrain may have been written in David's new territories in southern "Scotland".Clancy, "A Gaelic Polemic Quatrain", p. 88. The lands in question consisted of the pre-1994 counties of Roxburghshire, Selkirkshire, Berwickshire, Peeblesshire and Lanarkshire. David, moreover, gained the title princeps Cumbrensis, "Prince of the Cumbrians", as attested in David's charters from this era.For all this, see Oram, David: The King Who Made Scotland, pp. 62-64; for princeps Cumbrensis, see Archibald Lawrie, Early Scottish Charters Prior to A.D. 1153, (Glasgow, 1905), no. 46. Although this was a large slice of Scotland south of the river Forth, the region of Galloway-proper was entirely outside David's control.Richard Oram, The Lordship of Galloway, (Edinburgh, 2000), pp. 54-61; see also following references. David may perhaps have had some varying degrees of overlordship in parts of Dumfriesshire, Ayrshire, Dunbartonshire and Renfrewshire; these lands were thought of as part of a [Greater] "Galloway", settled by Gall Gaidel, Gaelic-speakers of mixed Gaelic and Norse descent, and in the early days of David's lordship would have rendered no more than occasional payments of cain, the tribute paid to an overlord in Scotland.See, for instance, Dauvit Broun, "The Welsh Identity of the Kingdom of Strathclyde", in The Innes Review, Vol. 55, no. 2 (Autumn, 2004), pp. 138-40, n. 117; see also Forte, Oram, & Pedersen, The Viking Empires, (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 96-7. Upon the lands between Galloway and the Principality of Cumbria, David eventually setup large-scale marcher lordships, such as Annandale for Robert de Brus, Cunningham for Hugh de Morville, and possibly Strathgryfe for Walter fitz Alan.E.g., Oram, David: The King Who Made Scotland, p. 113, also n. 7.