Did the Normans ever conquer Scotland? Part II

First, I apologise for being a few days late with this post. I misjudged and was overwhelmed with other commitments. I know better, but that does not mean I always do better. 🤦‍♀️

So, back to what is often called the Normanisation of Scotland, which I believe has often been (and still is, at times) exaggerated.

In 1102, King Henry's brother, Robert, Duke of Normandy, disputed Henry's right to the throne of England. They were saved from open war through negotiations by Bishop Flambard. Henry then set out to punish anyone he felt had not been sufficiently loyal during his dispute with his brother and eventually accused his brother of violating their agreement. Normandy slid into chaos. In July 1106, Henry invaded Normandy. At the Battle of Tinchebray, Henry took his brother prisoner and became de facto Duke of Normandy, although he did not use the title. The King of France reacted by raising an army, and Henry was very busy dealing with the threats on the continent.

 All of this would have had little to do with David, except David's older brother, King Edgar, died in 1107. The next older brother, Alexander, took the throne. David's relations with Alexander were pretty obviously bad since now King Alexander refused to allow David to claim his lands in the south of Scotland. Whether it was because Alexander thought it would make David too powerful or for some other reason is unclear. (I would go with a fear that David would be too powerful. What happened between Henry and Robert is a case study of the problems with a powerful brother).

It was not until Henry returned to England in 1113 that David could claim his Scottish lands. Though there was no open aggression on either side, there is no doubt David had to use threats to do so.

David married Matilda of Huntingdon, daughter and heiress of the Earl of Northumberland, in 1113, with King Henry's approval. That brought with it the extremely rich Honour of Huntingdon, making David a very wealthy and powerful man. He even named their son Henry out of gratitude to the English king. David was also now in a position to gift lands and power to his many young Norman followers, which he he began to do. Even after Queen Matilda died in 1118, David and King Henry remained good friends, and he kept the king's favour.

Then in 1124, Scotland's King Alexander died.

Scotland did not use Norman rules of primogeniture. Other claimants to the throne had as good a claim as David, perhaps even better, the main one being Máel Coluim, David's nephew, son of King Alexander. But David's father had been king, and he had every intention of claiming a throne he considered his. So the other claimants had the choice of accepting him or accepting war with him and with his Norman friends. Máel Coluim chose war.

After two battles, the defeated Máel Coluim retreated into the vastness of the Highlands, and in April or May, David was crowned King of Scots on the Moot Hill in Scone. However, Máel Coluim continued to fight for the throne, and in 1130, Máel Coluim led a general uprising against David, a very serious one. It included David's most powerful vassal, the sub-king of Moray.

This was when David called for the full support of all of his Norman friends. King Henry sent a large army and a large fleet to support him in rooting out the rebels. There were four years of all-out war until Máel Coluim was captured and imprisoned in Roxburgh Castle, after which no more was heard of him. Now David had friends to support and owed them a great debt. He repaid this debt by granting them lands and titles.

 This brought Scotland further into a European model of governance. It did not sweep away Scottish and Gaelic customs or noble families as the Norman conquest did in England. The ruling family remained the very Scottish House of Dunkeld. It did not import the Norman custom of serfdom. The lower levels of Scots remained freemen, and the freeholders of Scotland remained a large and potent force, one of the major forces that a century later would fight fiercely against English conquest. Nor did Scotland adopt the legal ownership by the king of all the land. All these factors made the situation in Scotland very different than that in England, where native Anglo-Saxons lost their titles and lands, and the lower classes almost universally were forced into serfdom.

What was adopted with considerable enthusiasm was military feudalism. Castle-building, the use of knights as cavalry, and homage and fealty between king and nobles became the norm. These fit well into existing Scottish attitudes and customs. However, despite the enthusiasm, infantry, wielding spears in schiltrons, remained Scotland's main military tactic, demonstrating how the two cultures came to mix. Along with this, of course, were Norman incomers, not as conquerors but as invited members of the society, who quickly married into existing Scottish nobility so that the upper classes soon became largely Scoto-Normans. As one would expect, this led to a multi-lingual society where most nobility spoke Scots and Norman French and, especially in the Highlands, Gaelic.

Thus, it was that in 1296, when commanded to attack Douglasdale by the English king, Robert the Bruce, Earl of Carrick, of both Scottish and Norman heritage, would proclaim before joining the Scottish rebellion, "No man holds his own flesh and blood in hatred, and I am no exception. I must join my own people and the nation in which I was born."