Part 1 of 2
ON the death of Henry I in 1135, his daughter Matilda was pushed aside by her more popular cousin Stephen, Duke of Normandy, and Matilda’s uncle, King David of Scotland, leapt to her defence.
David and Matilda were both descended, through David’s grandfather Edward the Exile, from King Edmund ‘Ironside’ of England.* Aware of Northumbria’s particularly bitter sufferings during William the Conqueror’s ‘Harrying of the North’, David spun his campaign as a long overdue revolt against the Normans, and marched under the ancient White Dragon of Wessex.*
His scheme was frustrated, however, by shaggy Scots warriors from the Highlands and Galloway. They preferred to treat David’s campaign in Northumberland as a joyous slave hunt, skewering the new-born, the old and the sick on their spears, then roping together miserable herds of able-bodied men and women as trophies. The English Church, which had just managed to extinguish slavery in England, easily united the free people of the north, Norman and English alike, in a common defence.
David was actually quite an English Scot. His mother was Margaret of Wessex, daughter of Edward the Exile and granddaughter of Edmund Ironside; his sister Matilda was Henry I’s wife; his late father-in-law was Waltheof, Earl of Northumbria, executed by William in 1076. One intriguing theory makes David’s grandmother Agatha, whom Edward the Exile married in Hungary, a daughter of Kievan Prince Yaroslav the Wise and his wife, Ingigerd of Sweden. See also Gytha and Vladimir.
Wessex was the kingdom of southwest England which Alfred the Great and his successors had turned into the Kingdom of England by 927.
Précis
Hoping to keep his niece Matilda on the English throne, David I of Scotland invaded England in 1138, portraying himself as an heir of rightful English kings against Norman misrule. However, his army was ill-disciplined and violent, and squandered any sympathy that the people of northern England might have felt for David. (51 / 60 words)
Part Two
AGAINST David’s Wessex dragon, Thurstan, Archbishop of York, brought a waggon bearing the standards of three saints beloved in Yorkshire, showing that even Normans could feel local identity and pride: the Apostle Peter, patron of York; John, the eighth-century bishop of Beverley; and Wilfred, the bishop of Ripon who so invigorated English Christianity in the 660s.* A rousing speech to well-armed Norman knights and sturdy Yorkshire bowmen met with a chorus of ‘Amen!’.
Meanwhile, Robert de Brus was urging David to retreat, and reducing him to tears by the tale of his warriors’ barbarity.* But at daybreak on August 22nd, 1138, the ungovernable Scots threw themselves at the English on Cowton Moor near Northallerton with shuddering cries; by ten the Scots, routed, were scattering in every direction. David took refuge in Carlisle.
Nonetheless, Stephen badly needed his support. At Durham in 1139, he gave David wide lands in Northumberland and Cumbria, which David’s grandson Malcolm IV returned after Henry II, Matilda’s boy, inherited the English crown in 1154.
Charlotte Yonge states that the banner of St Cuthbert was there too, but modern historians do not agree, saying it is first mentioned at the battle of Neville’s Cross in 1346. Geoffrey Rufus, Bishop of Durham, was not involved in the dispute, and indeed appears to have sat on the fence throughout the Anarchy.
Not Robert the Bruce (1274-1329), King of Scots, and 7th Lord of Annandale, but his forefather Robert de Brus (?1070-1142), 1st Lord of Annandale. Robert resigned his command in protest.
Précis
The Normans secured the loyalty of the people of Yorkshire against David’s Wessex Dragon by flying the banners of local saints (hence the engagement is called the Battle of the Standard). Their united army routed the undisciplined Scottish invaders, though King Stephen nonetheless thought it prudent to give David control over much of northern England. (55 / 60 words)