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�UNFERMLINE – �ORN
�RINCE & �RINCESSES
2
DUNFERMLINE – BORN
PRINCE & PRINCESSES
BY
J. B. MACKIE, F.J.I.,
Author of
“Life and Work of Duncan McLaren.”
“Modern Journalism.”
“Margaret Queen and Saint.” &
Dunfermline;
�UNFERMLINE
�ournal �rinting �orks.
3
RUINS OF THE ABBEY CHOIR, AULD KIRK, & DUNFERMLINE.
CIRCA A.D. 1570.
(From Old Sketches and Plans.)
4
PREFACE.
____
These Sketches were written for the Dunfermline Journal for the
purpose of quickening local interest and pride in the history of the
ancient city. They are now published in book form in the hope that
they may prove not an unwelcome addition to the historical memorials
cherished by lovers of Dunfermline at home and abroad, and be found
helpful to the increasing number of visitors, attracted by the fame of
the city, so greatly enhanced within recent years by the more than
princely benefactors of one of its devoted sons.
J. B. M.
Dunfermline, November, 1910.
5
Contents.
_______
Chapter 1. - The Children of the Tower. Page 6
II. Edgar the Peaceable. 11
III. Alexander the Fierce. 15
IV. David “the Sair Sanct.” 23
V. Queen Matilda. 29
VI. Prince William and the Empress 35
Matilda.
VII. Mary of Boulogne and her Daughter. 40
VIII. James I. 45
IX Elizabeth of Bohemia, “Queen of Hearts.” 54
X Charles I. 61
6
DUNFERMLINE BORN
PRINCES AND PRINCESSES.
CHAPTER 1
THE BIRTHPLAE OF ROYALTY – MALCOLM AND
MARGARET’S FAMILY.
Dunfermline has frequently been spoken and written about as a
burial place of Scottish Royalty. In the eleventh century the centre
of ecclesiastical power was transferred from Iona to Dunfermline,
after the Culdee leadership had been overpowered by the authority
of the Roman Church, and King Malcolm and Queen Margaret had
made the seat of their Court the leading centre of religious
worship. The fame of Malcolm and the sanctity of Margaret. The
founders of the Abbey, prolonged its prestige; and the splendid
fane, the peculiar sacredness of whole attraction Robert the Bruce
felt and acknowledged, continued to be recognized and used as a
fitting burial place of Royalty, until the removal of the Court to
London consequent on the succession of James VI to the Throne
of England.
Dunfermline, however, is quite as much entitled to distinction as
the birth place of Royalty. Here were born, there is reason to
believe,
COMPOSITION VIEW OF MALCOLM’S TOWER
By J. Baine, C.E., Edinburgh, 1790.
7
Duncan, the son of Malcolm Canmore by his first wife, Ingiborg;
the six sons and two daughters of Malcolm and Margaret –
“children of Dunfermline,” as an old author described them;
David, son of King Robert the Bruce; James I of Scotland, the son
of Robert III and of Queen Annabella Drummond; Elizabeth,
daughter of James VI who because Queen of Bohemia and
foundress of the Hanoverian House; Charles I the unhappy
successor of the first Sovereign of the United Kingdom, and his
younger brother, Robert, who lived only a few weeks. Most of the
Royal Families of Europe can claim an ancestral connection with
Dunfermline –born Princes and Princesses.
As long ago as 820 years or so, what is now the priceless
heritage of the people of Dunfermline, formed the home and the
playground of Royal children. The means of enjoyment provided
for them must have been few and rude compared with those
brought within the reach of the boys and girls of the ancient city in
these days, by the splendid benefactions of Dunfermline’s devoted
and most famous son, Mr Andrew Carnegie. Their playground
must have been limited and not quite free from peril in the thick
wood, or on the side of the precipitous ravine, or as they attempted
to cross the unbridged streams, which, in times of spate at all
events, must have “raged like the lion for its prey.” Nor is it likely
their companionship were mainly or particularly acceptable. In all
probability, they saw more solemn-faced monks, given to fasting
and penance, than happy sportive children of their own age. The
boy princes may have had true and kindly friends among the Royal
retinue, who were loyal to their father and who found delight in
training them in hunting and military exercises. Yet not unlikely
among those men-at-arms and other servants were some who
resented their mother’s reforming and civilizing ways, who
cherished a native antipathy to the half-Saxon children, and who
regarded their elder brother Duncan, the son of Malcolm’s first
wife, Ingiborg, the widow of Thorfinn, Earl of Orkney, as the
rightful and, as a pure-born Northerner, the more desirable heir-
apparent. Possibly their sharp eyes and ears made them aware of
the existence of contention between the representatives of the
Celtic and Roman Churches, and they may have noticed and heard
things which in after years enabled them to understand more
readily, and to regard with more sympathy, the patriotic sentiments
which made their father’s chiefs and men, and their sons prefer the
Culdee to the Roman worship, and distrust the changes wrought by
8
the influence of Saxon civilization fostered by the King and the
Queen.
Whatever may have been the relations of the young Princes and
Princesses with the members of the Court, with the clergy, and with
the warriors, and whatever effect these associations may have had on
their training and their character, the predominating influence was
certainly that of their saintly mother. No one can doubt that in the
midst of her exacting devotions as an intensely religious woman,
conscious of her responsibility to God, she forgot or minimized her
duties to her children. The family life must have been sweetening and
refining. It was beautified by the ceaselessly enriching love of father
and mother, closely knit together by mutual faith and aim; by the
conscientious discharge of daily duties of beneficence; by the
cultivation of the taste for the things that are lovely, in all forms of
Court Service. The moral atmosphere was pure and exhilarating. In
Dunfermline Palace, if anywhere, about the close of the eleventh
century, Princes and Princesses were reared “in the nurture and
admonition of the Lord.” Judging from a story which tells of a
temporary banishment of th two daughters for some fault – or possibly
for protection against suspected momentary temptation or danger – to
the gloomy Castle Campbell, near Dollar, with the streams of Grief
and Care flowing around it and uniting in Doulour – the family
discipline cannot have been over-indulgent. Strenuous studies, fitted
to make the sons skilled in all knightly accomplishments of the time
while as learned as churchmen and the daughters adepts in
needlework and all the feminine graces most appreciated in courtly
life, must have been maintained. Malcolm and Margaret took care
that their children should be taught that life is earnest and real, with
Heaven and not the grave as its goal; and tough their sons and
daughters were not in their future life exempted from peril and trial,
the fruits of their wise, pious training and of their learned studies were
in due time abundantly displayed in rich blessings or themselves and
for Scotland – and for England, too. “Never,” says William
Malmesbury, in his estimate of David and in his reference to him and
his predecessors, Alexander and Edgar – “Never have we been told
among the events of history of three kings, and at the same time
brothers, who were of holiness so great, and savoured so much of the
nectar of their mother’s godliness. For, besides their feeding
sparingly, their plentiful alms-giving, their zeal in prayer, they so
thoroughly subdued the vice that haunts kings’ houses that never was
it said that any but their lawful wives came to their bed, or that any of
them had shocked modesty by wenching.”
9
But presently “afflictions heaviest shower” was to descend upon the
happy family, and “sorrows keenest wind” was to scourge and blight
them. A gloom, tenfold darker and more dreadful than that of Castle
Campbell, suddenly enshrouded them. In a few short weeks they lost
father and mother, eldest brother, and home. Malcolm was
treacherously slain by Percy at Alnwick; Edward, the pride and hope
of both parents, fell in a vain attempt to avenge his father’s death;
Margaret, three days later, expired at Edinburgh; Donald Bane, the
paternal uncle, supported by the chiefs and churchmen, who did not
like the Saxon ways or the Roman worship, usurped the throne; and
Edgar, Ethelred, Alexander, and David were with the aid of faithful
family friends, removed to England – not to join their sisters, who had
been previously remove thither to have their education completed by
their Aunt Christian, a nun at Romsey, but to be secreted in different
parts by their Uncle Edgar, who distrusted the friendship of William
Rufus, who had succeeded William the Conqueror on the English
throne. That he had cause for this suspicion was shown by the favour
Rufus showed about this time to Duncan, the elder half-brother of
Margaret’s sons. Duncan had joined the Court of Rufus, who,
recognising that he had nothing to gain but possibly a good deal to
fear from Donald Bane, treated the eldest son of Malcolm as the
rightful heir to his father’s throne, dubbed him a knight, and
encouraged a number of English and Norman adventurers to volunteer
for service under the claimant. The motive of Rufus was evidently a
desire to gain authority over Scotland, by using Duncan as his agent
or tool, for he required the Scottish Prince to do him homage before
he provided him with any assistance. Duncan’s expedition proved
successful. Donald Bane was defeated and dethroned after a reign of
six months, in 1094. The new King, however, did not long enjoy his
sovereignty. After he had been monarch for eighteen months or so, he
fell a victim of a revolt organized by Edmund, a son of Malcolm and
Margaret, who had remained in Scotland after the flight of his
brothers, and had made peace with Donald Bane. At the instigation of
RUINS OF KING MALCOLM’S TOWER
10
Edmund and Donald, Malpedi, the Mormaer of the Mearns, slew
Duncan by treachery, and the uncle was enabled to resume the
sovereignty. In later years David I referred to Duncan in his charters
as “frater meus,” and King James II in his Confirmation Charter to the
Abbey in 1450, describes the unfortunate Prince as “King Duncan.”
Evidently he was regarded by the sons of Margaret as less of a usurper
and less of an enemy than their Uncle Donald.
Edmund is described as “the only degenerate son of Malcolm.”
There is some indication that he gave his father some trouble, and was
subjected to disciplinary correction by Malcolm. After his father’s
death his fortunes became separate from those of the rest of
Margaret’s children, if they were not during the lifetime of his
parents. After the black week in 1093, which witnessed the death of
King, Queen, and Heir-Apparent, he seems to have thought that the
easiest and safest course for him to follow was to accept the
sovereignty of his Uncle, Donald Bane. Contradictory stories are told
about his latter end. The most pleasing is that he repented of his
wrong-doing, became a holy man, and devout in God’s service, after
his death, was buried in Montacute in England.” Presently, however,
the historian gives another version, quoted from William of
Malmesbury: - “Of the sons of the King (Malcolm) and Margaret,
Edmund was the only one who fell away from goodness. Partaking of
his Uncle Donald’s wickedness, he was privy to his brother Duncan’s
death, having, forsooth, bargained with his uncle for half the kingdom.
But being taken and kept in fetters for ever, he sincerely repented, and
when at death’s door he bade them bury him in his chains, confessing
that he was worthily punished for the crime of fratricide.”
+ + + + + + +
11
CHAPTER II
EDGAR, THE PEACABLE.
King Edgar was born in 1072, and he died in 1107. He was named
after his Saxon uncle, Edgar Atheling, the brother of Queen Margaret,
who, after his sister’s marriage to Malcolm Canmore, returned to
England under the protection of William the Conqueror. He was 21
years of age when the series of crushing misfortunes already described
befell his house, and when he and his two brothrs – Alexander 6 years
and David 12 years his junior – sought refuge in England. After a five
years; exile he was induced to undertake an expedition to Scotland for
the assertion of his claims as the rightful heir to the Scottish throne.
All the conditions were favorable. His elder half-brother, Duncan,
was dead. Donald Bane, his usurping uncle, was in trouble – out of
favour with a large section of his subjects, who had been disappointed
by internecine wars, and seriously distracted by an incursion of
Norsemen, who were harrying the northern and western coasts.
Rufus, King of England, who had formerly befriended Duncan against
Donald Bane, regarded with more favour a claimant to the Scottish
throne who was half Saxon than a Celtic king, who represented the
elements most antagonistic to England. Edgar Atheling was also
QUEEN MARGARET CAVE ORATORY.
From Baine’s view of 1790.
12
ready to assist his namesake. Hence the fugitive of a few years
previously found himself supported by a considerable and fairly well
equipped army.
As a son of Queen Margaret, faithfully to the principles and devoted
to the religion of his saintly mother, he had still further
encouragement. A spiritual counselor, according to a legend similar
to that narrated regarding he invincible Cid of Spain and many other
warriors, came to his aid. At Durham, which his father had founded
and enriched, Saint Cuthbert appeared to him and, quietening all his
apprehension gave him assurance of success, saying: -
“When thou shalt have taken my standard with thee from the
monastery of Durham and set it up against thine adversaries, I shall up
and help thee; and they foes shall be scattered and those that hate thee
shall flee before thy face.”
The legendary account of the expedition is an ample and detailed
vindication of the promise of the vision. The story is told that the
troops were greatly encouraged by it, just as the Song of Roland
inspirited the forces of William the Conqueror before the battle of
Hastings. When the armies met the standard of St Cuthbert was
raised, and thereupon Robert, the son of the famous Godwin – as
stout-hearted and confident as David when he confronted Goliath –
and other two knights “charged the enemy and slew their mightiest,
who stood out like champions in front of the battle. So before the
armies had neared one another, Donald and is men were put to flight,
and thus, by the favour of God and the merits of St Cuthbert, Edgar
happily achieved a bloodless victory.”
Setting aside the legend and following soberer, though somewhat
vague and partial, history, we find that Edgar had little difficulty in
overmastering his paternal uncle, who evidently had few powerful
friend left him. Donald Bane was taken prisoner and blinded and so
incapacitate from giving any further trouble. This stern punishment
was possibly inflicted in retaliation for the daring cruelty of Donald,
who, when his young nephew sent to him, and offer to give him great
lands and possessions if he would peacefully give up the throne, put
Edgar’s messengers in prison and then cut of their heads. Edgar was
peacefully crowned at Scone; and in the days of his power and
prosperity he made recognition of the Church and Saint by whom his
expedition had been blessed and assisted. He bestowed on the monks
of Durham in perpetuity the estate of Coldingham “with all the
pertinents therof.” Other generous benefactions to the Church
followed, until his hand was stayed by the ingratitude and infidelity of
Ranulph, he Bishop of Durham. After King Edgar had bestowed on
13
this ecclesiastic the town of Berwick, the Bishop instigated an attack
on Robert, the son of Godwin, when this helpful ally was building a
castle on an estate given to him in recognition of his bravery and
devotion. The king not only compelled the Durham barons to
surrender Robert, whom they had taken prisoner, but he cancelled his
gift to Bishop Ranulph. Robert was brought back to his Scottish
possessons and treated with great respect by the King, who followed
the policy of his father and mother in encouraging the settlement of
Saxons and Normans in his realms.
Edgar had a happy and peaceful reign of fully nine years. When the
Norsemen, under Magnus, renewed their incursions, he made a treaty
with him, recognising the Norwegian sovereignty over the Orkneys
and the Hebrides and other western islands down to Cantyre – a
supremacy which was maintained until the battle of Largs. To an
Irish King, Murcertach, he showed princely courtesy by giving him a
camel, a rare possession in those days. The marriage of his sister,
Matilda, to Henry I and the friendly disposition of that monarch to the
family of his accomplished and devoted wife, ensured peace with
England. It was obviously with the view of assuring the continuance
of this peace that, on his deathbed, he bequeathed Cumbria to his
young brother David. Cumbria, he recognize, as held by him, was in
some sense under the English sovereign, and probably he feared that
the more impetuous Alexander, who heired the Scottish throne, might
raise objections regarding the paying of homage and so cause strife.
During his reign Scotland enjoyed the great and much-needed
blessing of peace. The first of the Kings who united Celtic and Saxon
blood, he did not a little to solidify the nation and to strengthen its
advances in the path of progress and civilization. He died unmarried
at Dundee on 8th January, 1107, in the 33rd year of his age, and he
was buried before the High Altar in Dunfermline Church.
14
Wynton’s ryming record is in these terms:-
Of Edgar, our nobil King,
The days with honoure tak endying,
Be-north Tay in-til Dunde,
Ty’l God, the Spryte, than yald he,
And in the Kyrk of Dunfermlyne
Solemnly he as entery’d syne.
Ailreid of Rievaux wrote of Edgar as “a sweet-tempered and amicable
man, like his kinsman Edward, the Confessor, in all respects, who
exercised no tyranny or avarice towards his people, but ruling them
with the greatest charity and benevolence.”
+ + + + + + + +
15
CHAPTER III
ALEXANDER THE FIERCE.
Perhaps Dunfermline owes quite as much to Alexander the First as
to Malcolm and Margaret. It as he who completed the church which
his parents had founded; who established the Monastry; who made
Dunfermline the chief centre of religious worship in Scotland; and
who proclaimed he town a Royal Burgh. The Scotichronicon thus
describes his character:-
“The King was a lettered and godly man; very humble and amicable
to wards the clerics and regulars, but terrible beyond measure to the
rest of his subjects; a man of large heart, exerting himself in all things
beyond his strength. He was most zealous in building churches, in
searching for relics of saints, in providing and arranging priestly
vestments and sacred books; most open-handed, even beyond his
means, to all newcomers; and so devoted to the poor that he seemed to
delight in nothing so much as in supporting them, washing,
nourishing, and clothing them.”
INCH COLME ABBEY & MONASTERY
From the East.
INCHCOME ABBEY
16
In other words, he combined the refinement and piety of his mother
with the vigour and patriotism of his father; and the happy association
of these virtues in his character made him a good and a successful
ruler.
Alexander was born in 1078. The maternal influence was earliest
brought into play, and, founded on religious faith and a high sense of
duty, it dominated his conduct throughout his varied life, with its
alternations of fortune, with its hardships and perils, its successful
achievements and happy experiences. The fourth son of Malcolm and
Margaret, named after Pope Alexander, he was too young to
accompany his father in his border forays and his English wars.
Hence, as in the case of so many men who have won for themselves
enduring places in the Temple of Fame, he was in his boyhood, and
when his mind and heart were most impressionable, the close
associate of a wise and pious mother, from whom he learned the
nobler ideals of life inspired and developed by the religious sense.
Little or noting is recorded of him during his four or five years exile in
England during the troubled reigns of his paternal uncle, Donald
Bane, and his half-brother Duncan II or even during the nine years of
the reign of his brother Edgar. It is believed that he accompanied
Edgar on his return to Scotland in 1098, and that he was present at
Durham Cathedral when the corpse of St Cuthbert, whose protection
had been assured to his brother when he crossed the Borer to claim the
kingdom of Scotland, was shown by the monks as a rebuke to the
incredulous. Presumably, therefore, the religious faith and feeling
cultivated by his saintly mother continued to a mould his character
during the nine years he stood in the relation of Heir-Apparent to his
elder brother, and helped him to maintain an unswerving devotion to
the reigning Sovereign at a time when, in all probability, not a little
latent hostility was in operation, and intrigue was active.
Fidelity to his mother’s teaching and fraternal and family loyalty
were not the result of either effeminacy or incapacity. When, after his
succession to the throne in 1107, he found that most of he Lothians
and the Border lands, with Strathclyde and Cumbria, had been
assigned by Edgar on his deathbed to his younger brother David as a
practically independent Earl, he made a manly struggle for the
maintenance of the unity of he kingdom. The Norman Barons,
however, took the part of David, and made such a display of their
power and resolution as commended to Alexander the discretion
which is the better part of valour. Possibly, too, the King was easily
persuaded he had little to fear from restless ambition or disloyalty on
the part of his younger brothers. So the fatricidal and internal strife
was abandoned; the brothers settled their differences in an amicable
17
way; and Alexander, early recognising that peace was the greatest
interest of the country, alike for the northern and southern parts,
entered into friendly relations with Henry I of England, who had
married his sister Matilda. It is not at all unlikely that the influence of
the good and faithful wife and sister helped the two Sovereigns to
appreciate the value of peace; and the friendship, which was
maintained during the closing years of the reign of Beauclerc, secured
for the southern portion of the Scottish kingdom a better protection
than even the buffer state which it is believe Edgar sought to create
when he assigned the borderland and Cumbria to his younger brother
David as a practically independent province.
Another pledge of goodwill and peace between the Sovereigns and
the two Kingdoms was given in the marriage of Alexander and of
Sibylla, a naturl daughter of the English ruler. Thus as laid early in
the twelfth century the foundation of the fusion which, after centuries
of foolish and wasting conflict, led to the constitution of th United
Kingdom under one Sovereign, enjoying ever-increasing loyalty, on
both sides of the Tweed or of the Humber.
This happy assurance of peace in his southern frontier gave
Alexander the means of promoting another fusion indispensable to the
unity of Scotland. The antagonism between the Lowlanders and
Highlanders was already active. Just as in a later age, the Highlanders
favoured a Stuart King and displayed a passionate devotion to
Jacobinism, so in the time of Alexander I, the Celts preferred a ruler
of purely Celtic blood. The sympathisers with the claims of Donald
Bane and of Duncan had not yet died out; and their resentment was
increased by King Alexander’s adherence to the policy of his parents
and of his brother Edgar, in encouraging settlers from England, and
more especially in setting aside the old Culdee form of worship to
make way for a diocesan episcopacy after the Roman or Anglican
style. Aware of this unfriendly feeling, Alexander set himself to “mak
siccar” of his northern dominions. While maintaining Edinburgh and
Dunfermline as his chief seats of government, he lived also a good
deal at Invergowrie, Perth, scone, and Stirling. He wished to become
better acquainted with the clans, so that he might strengthen his
authority over them, and teach them to be orderly and peaceable
subjects.
For much lawlessness prevailed in these remote regions. Many of
the chiefs were little better than robbers, who plundered as they had
opportunity and made almost constant war with each other. No
surprise can be felt that by such people his presence and assiduous
efforts to enforce respect for law and justice were not welcomed, or
that his personal investigation led to discoveries that quickened his
18
sense of the need for radical reform. A story is told of an appeal to
the knightly chivalry of the King, which reflects the spirit of the
reaching of Spencer’s Faery Queen and Tennyson’s Idylls and of
many of the beautiful stories of romance and exemplify and encourage
the defence of purity and the championship of the oppressed and
distressed. When returning from one of his punitive expeditions,
Alexander was met by a lady whose appearance and attire gave
evidence of rough usage. She told him that the lord of Mearns had
slain her husband and her son and had robbed her of all she possessed.
The irate, generous-hearted King took an oath that he would never rest
until he saw justice done upon the miscreant. At one he led his
followers in quest of the offender, whom, when he found, he hanged
for his wrong-doing. The man evidently had friends who wished to
avenge his death, and who, having probably committed depredations
quite as wicked, feared that the scourging hand of the King might
soon reach them. In their vindictive lawlessness they plotted the death
of their Sovereign, just as in a later day did the resentful and
audacious nobles during the reign of James I, of Scotland – also a
Dunfermline-born Prince. With the connivance of one of the Royal
servants they obtained entrance into the King’s bedchamber on a dark
night. Alexander, having been aroused from his sleep, sprang from
his bed and seizing his sword, killed the traitor and six of his
assailants – achieving a victory even more notable than that of King
Robert the Bruce when he was treacherously set upon by the one-eyed
villain and his two doughty rascal sons.
This attempt on his life and the proofs he obtained from the
prisoners taken in the melee when his men came to his rescue, roused
the martial instincts Alexander had inherited from his father. He
quickly marshalled his army, and, putting himself at the head of his
troops, made forced marches in pursuit of the rebels. At last he came
in sight of their encampment on the opposite side of a river from that
by which he had approached. The enemy evidently thought they were
secure, or at least not in danger of immediate attack. With hot
impetuosity, however, Alexander ordered that the stream should be at
once forded; and the fearless gallantry shown by King and soldiers
struck the Celtic force with dismay. After a brief struggle, the rebels
were utterly defeated; and King Alexander had no further experience
of civil war. He was recognized as a King indeed, and his writ ran
unchallenged throughout the land. It was on account of the vigour
and determination with which he master and stamped out the embers
of this revolt, as well as by the promptitude and severity with which
he punished all wrong-doing, and especially the oppressors of the
poor, that he as given he name of Alexander the Fierce. The same
19
story is briefly but graphically told by David Chalmers: - “He was ane
gritt punisher of malefactors and evil-doers. He dontonit Murray and
Ross that had rebellit, and caused hang the lord of Mernis, brother and
son, because they took away the guids of ane puir wyffe.”
The King had, however, other troubles to confront much more
perplexing than civil war. They were born of zeal for the church, or,
rather, let us say, for the religious well-being of his people. In full
sympathy with the religious views and aims of his mother, and
anxious to substitute for the old and rude Culdee system, which had
become degenerate in its character, a more cultured, more ornate, and
more orderly form of worship, Alexander entered into friendly
consultation with Anselm, the learned and devoted Archbishop of
Canterbury. When he asked from the pious churchman prayers for
the soul of his brother Edgar, he was in turn requested to extend his
civil protection to the monks, who had been sent to Scotland during
the previous reign. Not only did Alexander provide them with
protection, but he took and important step towards the establishment
of a diocesan episcopacy, such as his mother had desired. On the
death of Fothad, the last Celtic Bishop, he appointed to the See of St
Andrews Turgot, the Prior of Durham, and formerly the Confessor of
Queen Margaret.
A dispute between the Archbishops of Canterbury and of York as to
their respective claims, delayed for some time the consecration
ceremony; but at last a compromise was affected, by which the
ceremony was performed by York with a salvo as a tribute to the
authority of Canterbury. The settlement, however, did not prove quite
happy. Misunderstandings and disputes rose between the King and
the imported Archbishop, who on his part seemed disinclined to
subordinate his diocese to York. Disheartened by these controversies
and conscious of failing health, Turgot abandoned his post and
returned to Durham, where he died in 1115.
Meantime, Alexander, as a Scottish King and an earnest promoter of
the faith, continued the work of the church he had founded at Scone,
to which he was attracted as the old set of the Scottish and Pictish
kings, he brought Canons regular of St Augustine from the church of
Saint Oswald, near Pontefract. Simultaneously with the conversion of
the Celtic Mormaers into Comites or Earls of counties for the
supervision of the secular affairs of the country, he introduced
Bishops for the direction of church life and service. Thus, under his
inspiration and guidance, the feudalizing of civil government and the
promotion of diocesan episcopacy went on pari passu with a patriotic
as well as a religious aim on the part of the reforming Sovereign, in
whose reign Sheriffs or their equivalents and the use of coins first
20
made their appearance. On Gregory, the Bishop of Moray and
Cormac, Bishop of Dunkeld, he conferred the right to hold Courts,
and thus encouraged, wittingly or unwittingly, the growth of a
sentiment making for independence in religious as in civil life – a
sentiment which in time led Robert Bruce, though in his later days an
ardently religious man, to deny the authority of the Pope of Rome
unless he recognized the national independence of Scotland, finally
achieved at Bannockburn, and which at a later date gave birth and
force to the most of the Protestant Reformation movements.
After the foundation of the Scone church, to the dedication of
which, says the Scotichronicon, “nearly the whole kingdom flocked,”
Alexander applied not to the Archbishop of York, but to Ralph, the
successor of Anselm in the See of Canterbury, for a new Archbishop
for St Andrews. One of his ambassadors to Canterbury on the
occasion was Peter, Prior of Dunfermline. With the consent of Henry
I Ralph appointed Eadmer, the learned biographer of Anselm and
deeply imbued with his liberal Christian spirit. Presently the old
controversy between Canterbury and York was revived. The attitude
of Alexander as a Scottish King, who plainly thought the Church
should be the servant not the mistress of the State, was marked by no
little astuteness as well as patriotism. First of all, he claimed that the
Archbishop of St Andrews should be consecrated either by the Pope
of Rome or by the Archbishop of Canterbury; and he maintained his
ground although the claim of York was supported by Pope Calixtus II.
As the controversy developed, Alexander let it be known that though
he was willing to accept consecration for his Archbishop from
Canterbury, he did not mean to let his Church be subordinated to any
English See; and because this view was repudiated he on the day after
the election continued the local monk who had administered the
affairs during the vacancy, in possession of the lands dedicated to the
maintenance of the See. A compromise was again resorted to for the
purpose of protecting or asserting if not unifying the claims of State
and Church. Eadmer agreed to accept the ring of investiture from the
Scottish King as a temporal or secular head, but to take the staff, and
symbol of the pastoral office, from the altar as from the hand of God.
This patch-work of diplomacy did not, however, last long. Eadmer,
feeling his position as a churchman impossible, surrendered the ring
to the King, replaced the staff on the altar, and returned to Canterbury
– because, according to Alexander, he would not conform to the
customs of the country, but according to himself, because he would
not yield to the claims of the temporal power. The perplexed and
baffled Eadmer received a great deal of contradictory advice, but
though he earnestly sought a way of escape from the impasse he failed
21
to find deliverance from the great dilemma of his life. The Pope told
him to go to York for consecration. The archbishop of Canterbury
advised that he should remain with him till Alexander yielded. One
counselor recommended he should go direct to Rome for
consecration, or for some advice backed by direct authority of the
supreme Pontiff. Another advised him to go back to St Andrews and
submit to the conditions of the Scottish King. This last counsel he
was persuaded to accept, but when he communicated his purpose to
Alexander, His Majesty, distrusting the English churchmen and
becoming confirmed in his determination to uphold the nations
independence and the royal authority in church government, declined
the offer. On the death of Eadmer in 1124 Robert, Prior of Scone,
was nominated Archbishop, but the difficulty regarding his
consecration was left unsettled at the death of Alexander in the
following year.
Notwithstanding this keen controversy with the churchmen, King
Alexander and his Consort, Queen Sibylla, proved constant liberal
friends of the Church. Sibylla bequeathed to the Church of the Holy
Trinity at Dunfermline, which her husband had completed, the lands
of Beath and of Clunie. Dr Henderson, in his Annals of Dunfermline,
suggests tht the day on which the complete Church and Monastery
were opened for worship by solemn dedication also witnessed the
reinterment of the body f King Malcolm, brought from Tynemouth by
consent of the English King, in the presence, it was believed, of three
sons of he deceased Sovereign, viz., Alexander, David, and Ethelrede,
then Earl of fife as well as Abbot of Dunblane. On this as on other
occasions Alexander enriched the Dunfermline Church with valuable
gifts. St Andrews and Scone also received liberally at his hand.
In Wyntoun’s rhyming description of the ceremony observed at the
bestowal of the St Andrews benefaction occur these lines:
“Before the lordys all, the kyng
Gert then to the awtare bring
His cumly sted off Araby
Sadelyd and brydelyd costlykly.
With hys armourys of Turky
That princys than oysid generally
And chesyd maist for thare delyte
With sheld and spear of silver quhyt
Wyth the regale and all the lave
That to the kirk tht time he gave.”
22
Alexander’s possession of an Arab steed and Turkish armour
suggests a crusade equipment, but there is no record of the Scottish
King’s participation in the grand crusade successfully led by the
kinsmen of his sister Mary, the gallant Godfrey de Bouillon, and in
which his uncle, Edgar, and Robert of Normandy took part.
Another illustration of his religious devotion calls for notice. He as
the founder of a monastery on the island of Inchcolm in the Firth of
Forth, nearly opposite Aberdour and Donibristle. According to the
Scotichronicon, Alexander about the year 1123, having been
overtaken by a storm when attempting to cross the Forth, made pious
vows as he offered earnest prayers for deliverance. Presently he
found his boat driven safely on to Inchcolm, where he met a Columba
hermit, who entertained him and his retinue for three days until the
storm subsided. As a thank-offering the King founded a monastry as
a fitting home for pious churchmen. Dr Ross, in his careful and
interesting work on Aberdour and Inchcolm, reproduces from the
early chronicles the story of the foundation of the monastry as
preserved by the monks, with the accompanying rhyming translation:
“M, C, ter I, bis et X, literis a tempore Christi
Emon, tunc, a Alexandro fundata fuisti,
Scotorum primo, structorem Canonicorum,
Transferat ex ymo Deus, hunc ad astra polorum.”
“An M and C, three I’s and X’s two,
These letters keep the year of Christ in view.
When Alexander First gave Emon’s isle
His kingly gift, a rich monastic pile.
May God translate the noble founder’s soul
To regions high above the starry pole.”
Alexander died at Stirling in the 48th year of his age on the 27th of
April 1124, after a reign of seventeen years and three months, and
having left no issue, he was succeeded in the Sovereignty by his
brother David. He was interred before the High Altar of Dunfermline
Church, where nine years before he had buried his father Malcolm.
+ + + + + + +
23
CHAPTER IV.
DAVID THE SAIR SANCT.
It was another Dunfermline-born king who first applied this
designation to the good King David. When in 1426 James I visited
Dunfermline he remarked, on being shown the tomb of his illustrious
predecessor in the Abbey. “David wes ane soir sanct for the Crown.”
David was forty-four years old when he ascended the throne. He
had been early marked out for sovereignty. When his brothers, King
Edgar, was on his death-bed, he showed his special affection for, and
confidence in, David, then 27 years of age, by assigning to him the
administration of Cumbria, of which he recognized the King of
England as in some measure overlord or suzerain. The wise and
loving Edgar evidently desired that David should have some
experience of affairs as heir-apparent of his elder brother Alexander.
There were two other brothers older than David, but, as already seen,
Edmund had forfeited his rights and Ethelrede had been dedicated to
the service of the Church. This latter Prince, however, was more than
an ecclesiastic. He was Earl of Fife as well as Abbot of Dunkeld. In
the “Admore Charter” he is described as “vir venerandæ memoriæ
Abbas de Dunkelden et insuper comes de Fyfe.” Moreover, he had
given proof of the vigorous and manly qualities that fit for the
direction of secular or mundane affairs. Possibly he accompanied his
father Malcolm and his brother Edward in their last and disastrous
expedition to England. Certainly he was the bearer of the sad news to
his dying mother at Edinburgh, and it was under his leadership tht the
body of Margaret as safely removed from the Castle to Queensferry
when Donald Bane was watching the stronghold with his followers.
Seven years, however, before David’s accession, Ethelrede had passed
to his final rest, and his mortal remains had been laid beside those of
his mother and of his brother Edward before the Altar of the Holy
Cross in Dunfermline. No rival claimant, therefore, opposed the
succession of David on the death of Alexander in 1124.
As Prince of Cumbria David proved a just and efficient ruler.
Friendship between Alexander and him was easily maintained,
because both were inspired by kindred political and religious motives.
His conscientiousness and liberality were equally displayed in the
inquisition he caused to be made “by the elders and wise men of
Cumbria in 1121 regarding the lands belonging to the See of Glasgow
with a view to their restoration; and while by this and other means he
24
befriended and enriched Glasgow to which he had secured the
appointment of his tutor, John, in 1115, he founded a Benedictine
Abbey at Selkirk and a Monastery of canons of Augustine at
Jedburgh.
He had other training for kingly service besides his supervision of
the province of Cumbria. He was evidently a favourite brother of his
sister Matilda, who had married Henry I and having won the
confidence and affection of Beauclerc, the fine scholar, he spent a
considerable part of his early manhood at the English Court. There he
married Matilda, the daughter and heiress of Waldeof, Earl of
Huntingdon and Judith, who was the niece of the first King William,
and through her became the Earl of Huntingdon. In England he made
many friends among the Saxon and Norman noblemen, and in the
cultured society of Henry’s Court his manners says an English writer,
“were polished from the rust of Scottish barbarity.”
He showed no excessive haste to return to Scotland after he had
been declared King. He was content to leave the administration of the
affairs of his kingdom to the Constable of Scotland, the holder of an
office that had been created by Alexander. When with the good-will
and lively hope of his subjects he began the personal discharge of his
kingly duties, he was confronted with a revival of the old difficulty
respecting the consecration of the Bishop of St Andrews. His attitude
on this subject was similar to that which his brother Alexander
maintained; but while watchful and resolute in upholding the
independence of the Scottish Church, he sedulously sought a pacific
arrangement. A Council held at Roxburgh in 1125 by Cardinal John
of Crema, as legate of the Pope, proved abortive; but three years
afterwards, Thurstan, Archbishop of York, a friend of the King and at
the same time a loyal churchman, consecrated Robert, Bishop of St
Andrews, “for the love of God and of King David” under the
reservation of the claims of York and of the rights of St Andrews,
without receiving the usual promise of obedience from a suffragan to
his metropolitan.
Notwithstanding his eminently peaceful disposition, King David
became embroiled in Border and English wars almost to as great an
extent as his father Malcolm. The strife was not pleasant to him; but
family partiality and his view of the sacredness of an oath compelled
him to engage in war. When the friend of his youth and early
manhood, Henry I of England, and his loved sister Matilda lost their
son, the Prince William, who was drowned when crossing the English
Channel, the able and powerful English Sovereign made his nobles
pledge themselves to accept his daughter Matilda as Queen after his
death. As the Earl of Huntingdon, and therefore an English nobleman
25
as well as King of Scotland, David took the oath. Some time after the
death of their royal master, the English nobles set aside Matilda and
made Stephen, her cousin and her father’s nephew, King. David, in
devotion to his niece and in fidelity to his oath felt bound to interfere,
and at the head of a large army he marched into England. If he had
been able to maintain discipline among his forces, he would probably
have met with a great deal of sympathy as the champion of the
dethroned Queen Matilda. Many of his soldiers, unfortunately, were
lawless, half-savage warriors from the far north, and they, with “the
wild men of Galloway,” acted as reckless and merciless freebooters.
Their ravages and cruelties roused the angry resentment of the barons
and knights of the North of England and in self-defence more perhaps
than from ardent devotion to the cause of Stephen, they assembled a
comparatively small but well-equipped army. Thurstan, the
archbishop, David’s old churchman friend, ws sent to remonstrate
with the Scottish King, but he found himself unable to restrain the
pillaging horde with him, and then Thurstan, joining the English
troops at Northallerton in Yorkshire, unfurled the banners of Saint
Cuthbert of Durham (whose protection Edgar had obtained when he
went to claim his kingdom from Donald Bane), Saint Peter of York,
Saint John of Beverley, and Saint Wilfred of Ripon. Two Norman
knights, Robert de Bruce and Bernard de Balliol, friends and vassals
of David as Prince of Cumbria, next came from the English camp for
the purpose of inducing David to recall the depredators from
Yorkshire. “Do not drive brave men to despair,” said Bruce, the
grandfather of the hero of Scottish independence at a later date. “My
dearest master, you have been my friend and companion I have been
young with you and grown old in your service. It wrings my heart to
think that you have been defeated and that in an unjust war.” David
would have accepted this advice if he could, but one of the Galloway
men passionately interposed, and denounced Bruce as a traitor who
had broken his oath to his King. Reconciliation was found to be
impossible, and battle was prepared for. The English lords swore to
fight to the death for their holy standards. The invaders, defiant alike
of religious authority and of military discipline, rushed headlong to
the fray shouting “Scotland for ever.” I who wear no armour,”
boastfully declared the chief of the Galwegians, “will go as far this
day as any one with breastplate of mail.” “His men,” writes Green,
“charged with wild shouts of ‘Albin, Albin,’ and were followed by the
Norman knighthood of the Lowlands. The rout, however, was
complete; the fierce hordes dashed in vain against the clos English
ranks around he standard, and the whole army fled in confusion to
Carlisle.” According to another account, victory was almost achieved
26
for the scots, chiefly brought the prowess of David’s eldest son,
Prince Henry, named after his uncle, Henry I of England, when a false
rumour of the death fo their King caused a panic in the Scottish ranks.
David took off his helmet and rode bareheaded among the flying
rabble to le them see he was still with them. But the attempt to make a
rally failed, and when Prince Henry, returning from the wining of his
spurs, saw to his astonishment the rest of the army in hopeless flight,
he said to his brave companions – “We have done what men may;
now we must save ourselves if we can.” This they did with difficulty,
for three days elapsed, and many adventures were passed through
before Henry was able to rejoin his father, who had begun to sorrow
or him as lost.
So ended the historic Battle of the Standard. Thurstan and the
Yorkshire barons made no attempt to follow up their victory. “The
glory of victory fell to England, but the substantial gain to Scotland”
is the verdict of Freeman. David continued as opportunity afforded to
assist the cause of his niece, and when during a brief revival of her
good fortune she entered London as Queen, he joined her there.
When the tide again turned against her, he narrowly escaped capture
during the flight to Winchester. A Scotsman, David Oliphant, who
was in the service of Stephen, recognized his Scottish master, and
showed his patriotic fidelity by giving him a disguise and assisting
him back to Scotland. In times so troubled and in the midst of varying
reverses and successes, Stephen was ready to concede good terms of
peace to the Scottish King, who was uncle to his wife Mary as well as
to Matilda. As the result of successive negotiations Cumbria was left
with King David, and his son, Henry, was assigned the earldom of
Northumberland, dong homage only for the earldom of Huntingdon.
David was much more successful as an administrator than as a
soldier. During his long reign, the country enjoyed in a marked degree
the blessing of internal peace. Only twice was the authority of the
Crown defiled. In 1130 an isolated rising by Angus, the Mormaer of
Moray, was suppressed at Stracathro in Forfarshire; and another
revolt, promoted by Wymund, the sham Bishop of Mar, and the
Moray Mormaer, aided by Somerled, the Lord of the Isles, was ended
by the capture of the impostor in 1137. The maintenance of the
domestic peace was all the more remarkable in view of the radical
character of the reforms the King introduced in the government of
both State and Church. He developed and consolidated the feudal
system. He established and directed a county judiciary with sheriffs
holding their office from the Crown, and periodically he personally
conducted the business of the Courts. He encouraged various
industrial arts, including gardening, for which Scotsmen have through
27
the succeeding generation’s preserved a high reputation. He vigilantly
upheld the independence of the Scottish Church on the basis of an
organized diocesan episcopacy, with five or six Bishops. He sought to
promote learning and piety by the introduction and endowment of the
regular orders of the monastic clergy. Wyntoun’s historical rhyme
thus chronicles the ecclesiastical reinforcement made at Dunfermline
when the Church of the Holy Trinity was raised to the status of an
Abbey:-
Of Cawntybery, in Dunfermlyne
Monkis he browcht, and put them syn,
And dowyt thame rycht rychely,
With gret possessyownys and mony.
It is believe the Canterbury monks brought with them Jerome’s
Latin Bible, which was used in the Abbey service of Dunfermline
from its foundation in 1124 till its destruction in 1560. “This Bible,”
says Dr Henderson in his Annals of Dunfermline, “is still in existence
and in good preservation in the Advocates’ Library, where it is shown
as one of its choicest literary treasures. It is written on vellum, is
quite entire, legible and clear, except at some parts where it is a little
soiled with grease spots, which appear to have been caused by the
frequent anointing with the holy oil. The leaves are ornamented with
a great variety of figures, such as scriptural and historical subjects,
and there are several seemingly out of place, as they are singularly
grotesque. It is not in the original binding; it was rebound 40 years
THE MONASTERY
COMPOSITION VIEW BY J. HEARSLEY, LONDON, 1780.
28
ago (now fully 70 years) in a very elegant and expensive way. In
1560 the Bible was taken by Abbot Dury, the last Abbot, to France
along with other sacred relics. Afterwards it came into the possession
of the celebrated Mons. Foucault, as appears from his arms on it. At
his sale it was bought by a Scotch gentleman and brought back to this
country and deposited as a gift in the Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh.”
King David enriched the ecclesiastical foundations which owed
their origin to his brothers, Edgar and Alexander, and he established
and liberally endowed many more, including Melrose, Dryburgh,
Kelso, Jedburgh, Holyrood, and Cambuskenneth. He reformed the
morals of the clergy and repressed their quarrels. He commended and
enforced the sanctity of the marriage bond. His liberal benefactions to
the poor and the distressed he enhanced by his personal service. He
was unceasing in efforts to promote the well-being of his subjects,
industrially, socially, intellectually, and religiously, and the influence
of his counsel and labours was enormously strengthened by the
consistency of his personal Christian behaviour. He had a high
conception of religious duty as a prince and a ruler, and few
Sovereigns in any land or in any age have been as faithful and
successful as he in their efforts to conform their lives to the Christian
law. No surprise need be felt that he won the devotion and affection
of his subjects for whose best interests he so strenuously laboured.
They sorrowed with him in his great sorrow when the brave and
chivalrous Prince Henry was taken from him by death in his early
manhood
A Styth Castell, and thare he hade
Oft and mekyl hys dwellying
All the tyme tht he ws Kyng.
And fra Karlele thai browcht syne
Hys Body dede till Durfermlyn:
Thare in halowyed Sepulture
It was enteryed wyth honowre.
+ + + + + + + +
29
CHAPTER V.
QUEEN MATILDA.
One of the distinguishing titles of Dunfermline is the “Cradle of
Scottish Dissent.” It is no disparagement of the work and influence
of Ralph Erskine and Thomas Gillespie to say that the ancient city is
equally entitled to the designation “The Birthplace of the United
Kingdom,” or even “The Nursery fo the Entente Cordiale.
When nearly eight and a half centuries ago Malcolm Canmore
welcomed to his strong Tower Edgar Atheling and the Saxon refugees
from England, and shortly afterwards made the Princess Margaret his
Queen, he planted and nourished the seed of British Union, During
his reign and the reigns of his pious sons, went steadily on the process
of unification that ultimately welded into one people Picts and Celts,
Norsemen and Danes, Saxons and Normans, with one Sovereign and
one throne, and that heralded the Anglo-Saxon fusion of modern
times. The marriages of his daughters and the family relations they
formed did more, however, than strengthen the tendencies to national
the race unification. They may even be said – more especially the
marriage of the second daughter, Mary, which led to association with
th Bouillon family, of imperishable Crusader fame, that knit the
chivalry of Christendom in a splendid effort for the vindication of the
supremacy of the Cross – to have given life and direction to the
Anglo-French intimacy at the end of the eleventh century, which in
our day had fructified in the honourable and hopeful Entente. Loyal
Americans appropriate with laudable pride the sentiment expressed by
Wendell Holmes in his “Voyage of the Good ship Union” :-
One flag one land, one heart on hand,
One nation evermore;
Or sing with General Morris –
The union of lakes – the union of lands –
The union of States none can sever,
The union of hearts, the union of hands
And the Flag of our Union for ever.
30
Britons, too, with a sense of grateful security, raise the flag that has
braved a thousand years the battle and the breeze, and rejoice in the
strength and fame which are given by a world-wide Empire faithful to
the old Motherland. The intensity and purity of the patriotism of each
section of the Anglo-Saxon family stimulate rather than weaken the
sense of the brotherhood of man, and the emphasizing of the Anglo-
Saxon fusion in our day is coincident with the growth of a universal
benevolence, which works for the believes in the coming of the
golden age of Millennial peace. When Malcolm and Margaret
promoted the obliteration of race animosities in the island of Britain,
and their daughters made alliances that knit the royal families of
Scotland and England in association with the champions of
Christianity on the Continent of Europe – even although the mission
of the Prince of Peace was then but dimly comprehended – they were
unconsciously making themselves agents of the "increasing purpose”
running through al the ages. Their ends were shaped by the all-
controlling Divinity recognized and proclaimed by Shakespeare long
before Tennyson illumined the law of progress for his nineteenth
century contemporaries, by the lines –
One God, one law, one element,
And one far-off divine event
To which the whole creation moves.
Matilda or Maud, the elder of the two daughters born to King
Malcolm and Queen Margaret in Dunfermline Tower, was given a
different name at her baptism. She was first named Eadgyth, or Edith.
But at the time of her birth, probably 1080, Matilda, the wife of
William the Conqueror was still alive, and her loved son Robert, then
out of favour with his father, King Henry I was about the same time
enjoying the hospitality of the Scottish Court. Possibly the good
Queen Matilda and her virtues were in those days much talked about
in the royal family at Dunfermline; and it may be that as a tribute of
personal regard for the Norman lady who had become Queen of
England, if not also for reasons of State policy Matilda was
substituted for Edith. The wife of William the Conqueror was not
unworthy of her famous husband. The daughter of Baldwin V. Of
Lisle, the Count of Flanders, she could claim through her mother,
Adela, descent from the Kings of France, and she inherited a vast
amount of wealth, When William had become Duke of Normandy,
he sought her hand in marriage. The union desired by the Duke was,
however, forbidden by the Pope on the ground of nearness of kinship.
Probably enough, at he beginning of the courtship, Matilda did not
31
regard the suit of the Bastard with particular favour, just as Ximena,
the heroine of the popular Spanish war song, first showed aversion to
Roderigo the Cid. When Ximena saw her error and perceived that her
warrior-suitor was a man born to thrive, she changed her attitude.
Similarly with Matilda. According to one of the stories, when she had
had personal experience of William’s masterfulness and realized the
strength of his character, she determined to wed no one else; and in
due time, in defiance of the Pope and the wishes of many of her proud
family friends, she became the wife of the Duke. A Papal interdict
placed on Normandy was easily removed and church sanction for the
marriage secured by hr liberal benefactions, including the building of
the Abbey of the Holy Trinity for Nuns at Caen, which she, as a
devoted churchwoman, found it in her heart to bestow. With all her
piety she was a right valourous and capable helpmeet for her husband.
After she had failed in an attempt to persuade Harold of England to
marry one of her daughters, she actively encouraged her husband in
his designs on the English throne; and while her husband was engaged
in his work of conquest and afterward of pacification on the north side
of the Channel, she directed the administration of the affairs of the
Duchy. A loving mother, as well as a devoted wife, she dared the
resentment of her iron-willed lord by liberally supplying their son
Robert, with money, when he had been exiled by his offended father.
Generous to her friends, while liberal to the church, she was held in
high esteem alike by ecclesiastics and men of war; and
notwithstanding the many vicissitudes of her married life, caused by
the competing claims of Normandy and England on her attention and
the family disagreement already referred to, she enjoyed the reward of
the virtuous woman o the Proverbs, of whom it is said her husband
rusted and praised her while hr children arose and called her blessed.
It was the name of this noble Queen of England that the elder of the
Dunfermline-born Princesses was given after her baptism, and by
which she is known in history. Happily she had better equipment than
a fashionable or Courtly name. She had the inestimable advantage of
a religious training. Mentally as well as morally she received the best
culture the age could afford. After her education was finished at
Dunfermline Place, under the supervision of her gifted mother, aided
by the learned Court, she was transferred to the care of her Aunt
Christina, the nun at Romsey. Here she found the discipline even
stricter than she had been subjected to in the parental seminary. Her
careful and conscientious guardian and preceptress at Romsey
compelled her to ware a nun’s black veil, according to one account, as
a protection “against the brutality of the Normans, which was then
raging,” or, according to another, from fear of William Rufus, who
32
had ascended the throne in 1087. When in 1093 Malcolm visited his
daughter he was incensed by the conduct of his sister-in-law, whether
it ws inspired by worldly prudence or religious zeal. He angrily pulled
the veil from off his daughter’s face, saying he intended her not to be
a nun, but to be the wife of Count Alan II of Richmond; and he took
her back with him to Scotland. Man or king may propose, but God
disposes. Before the close of 1093, Alan, Malcolm, and Margaret
were all dead; and Donald Bane, who usurped the throne, drove
Margaret’s children out of the realm, which their father had made and
where he had reigned, none daring to dispute his supremacy. By the
help of Edgar Atheling the fugitive Scottish princes and princesses
found shelter in England. While the family were enjoying the
hospitality of English friends, William of Warrenne sought the hand
of the accomplished Matilda. Presently, however, a suitor of greater
authority, and evidently not unacceptable to the Princess, came her
way. Henry I who ascended the throne of England in 1100, claimed
her as his bride, and Matilda showed herself by no means loth to
change her position from that of a dependent to that of the first lady in
England. Her eligibility was disputed; but when certain ecclesiastics
sought to interdict the marriage on the ground that she had been a nun,
she showed a resolution worthy of her namesake, who became the
wife of William the Conqueror. She denied she had ever been a nun,
though she had been compelled to wear the veil, and she told the story
of her father’s deliverance of her from the tyranny of her aunt and of
the convent. Archbishop Anslem maintained her cause; and his
verdict, supported by the Bishops, nobles, and clergy, who were too
prudent to withstand the wishes of the King, she received “with a
happy face.” She was married and crowned by Anselm in
Westminster Abbey on the 11th November, 1000.
Matilda of Scotland, Queen of Henry I.
33
Henry was doubtless influenced by genuine love in his choice of a
consort, but it is not denied tht reasons of State also affected him in
making his selection. He calculated on strengthening the attachment
of his English subjects by marrying a child of the good Queen
Margaret, the cousin of Edward the Confessor, the memories of whose
virtues made his people regard with special favour the old kingly
stock of England. Her family life as Queen of England was peaceful
and happy. She bore her husband three children. The first, a
daughter, born at Winchester, died in infancy. Another daughter, who
was named Matilda, after both mother and grandmother, was born in
London in 1102, and a son, William, in 1103. She was not quite so
active or resolute as the Queen of William the Conqueror in
interference with political affairs. She is indeed credited with having
persuaded Duke Robert of Normandy to give up the pension from
England, secured to him by his treaty with Henry in 1101, but when in
1105 Henry exacted heavy sums from the English clergy, and she was
asked to intercede for them, she burst into tears and said she dare not
meddle.
The outstanding feature of her character was her religious devotion.
After the birth of her son William she ceased to follow the wanderings
of her husband’s Court. She made Westminster her home and
inspired by the example of her mother, she devoted her energies to
family duties and religious exercises. She cultivated her friendship of
good churchmen; she was liberal in her donations; she was unsparing
in personal service. She corresponded affectionately with Anselm
during his exile, and when he returned in 1106 neither worldly
business nor worldly pleasure could keep her from hastening to every
place through which he was to pass, hurrying to prepare him a lodging
and be the first to meet him. In her convent days she had learned and
practised the literary art. Six letters written by her to Anselm display
a scholarship unusual among laymen and probably still more among
women in her day. The learned Bishop Hildebert of Le Mons, who
had probably made her acquaintance in England in 1099, wrote to her
several friendly letters and two highly complimentary poetical
addresses in praise of her beauty.
Queen Matilda’s sense of religious duty required from her not a few
personal mortifications and a great deal of personal service. Like her
mother, she wore a hair-shirt. She went barefoot round the churches
at Lent, devoting herself especially to the care of lepers, washing the
feet and kissing their scars and building a hospital for them at St
Giles-in-the-Fields. She founded the first Austin Priory in England,
Holy Trinity Aldgate London, in 1108. She constructed two bridges,
34
with a causeway between them, over the two branches of the river
Lee, near Stratford, to take the place of the dangerous passage of Old
Ford. She gave the nuns of Barking a grant of land to provide for the
maintenance of these bridges. In 1111 she was present at the
translation of St Ethelworld’s relics at Winchester. In December,
1116, she was with Henry at the consecration of St Albans Abbey
Church. Two years afterwards she died at Westminster on 1st May,
1118, and was buried in the Abbey.
The testimony of William of Malmesbury is that Queen Matilda was
a warm patroness of verse and song. She gave lavishly to musical
clerks, scholars, poets, and strangers of all sorts, drawn to her Court
by he fame of her bounty and who spread her praises far and wide.
The tenants of her estate, however, were often fleeced by her bailiffs
to provide funds for her ill-regulated generosity, yet in English
tradition she is known as Mold the good Queen. Robert of Gloucester
ascribes to her a direct personal and most beneficial influence on the
condition of England under Henry First, declaring that “the goodness
she did to England cannot all be here written nor by any man
understood.”
+ + + + + + + +
35
CHAPTER VI
PRINCE WILLIAM AND THE EMPRESS MATILDA.
Every well-educated Dunfermline boy and girl is familiar with the
tragic story of Prince William and the wreck of the White Ship in
1120. I am not sure, however, it is so well known that the hero of that
tragedy was the grandson of Malcolm and Margaret, and that his
mother was the elder of the two Princesses born in the strong Tower,
whose ruins remain with us till this day in Pittencrieff Glen. Prince
William, who perished with a company of young nobles and fifty
strong rowers, when the White Ship foundered in the English
Channel, may have been spoiled by the flatteries and seductions of
Court life and by the designs of his worldly-minded father, who, for
the purpose of strengthening himself and his family in the Sovereignty
and in the possessions he had acquired in France as well as in
England, planned for him a purely political marriage with Sybilla, the
daughter of the Count of Anjou. He cannot however, have been
destitute of attractive features of character. The English people
regarded him with peculiar affection because of his Saxon descent,
and as the son of Matilda, the niece of Edgar, they called him, too,
“the Atheling.” His chivalrous attempt to save his half-sister when the
White Ship was sinking outside of Harfleur harbour, was an act fitted
to cover a multitude of follies in a youth still in his teens. He was the
darling of his father, who, when he heard the fatal news, fell
unconscious on the round, and, it was said, never smiled again. As an
ambitious man and loving parent, Henry realize that the blessing
which cheered the heart of King David of Israel – the promise of God
that a son would succeed him on the throne, and that his house would
last “a great while to come” – was slipping from his grasp. The
subsequent policy of the fine scholar, who had himself gained the
throne of England, though he was the youngest son of the Conqueror,
was inspired by a desire to ensure the retention of sovereignty for his
family in spite of the failure of a male heir. For the promotion of this
purpose he made use of his daughter Matilda. For her, as for her
brother, Prince William, he evidently had a strong natural action.
Unhappily the intensity of his ambition led him to imagine that he
could best ensure her earthly felicity and good fortune by scheming
for her exaltation in worldly rank and in projecting matrimonial
design for her regardless of his own wishes or feelings. When she
was only seven years of age, and while Prince William still remained
as heir to the English throne, he arranged her marriage with Henry V
36
of Germany, and on the following year she was sent to the home of
her Emperor with a handsome dowry. At Easter she was betrothed at
Utrecht, and on the 8th May she was crowned at Mainz by the
Archbishop of Cologne, while the Archbishop of Trier held her
“reverently” in his arms. Henry V has been described as the “last and
worst of the Franconian line of Emperors.” He seems, however, to
have acted in a kindly and considerate way to his child bride. It is true
that after the crowning ceremony at Cologne he dismissed all her
English attendants, but his purpose in doing so was that she might be
the better fitted for her future position by careful training in the
German language and manners. In 1114, when she was twelve years
of age, he married her; and in order that no doubt might be allowed to
exist as to her sovereign rank he had her crowned again at Mainz.
Further, more than once he had the Imperial diadem placed on her
head by the supreme Pontiff; and when he was on his deathbed at
Utrecht in 1125 he placed his sceptre in her hands, evidently in token
of his bequest to her of his Imperial dominions. The one child of the
marriage who was named Christina, possibly after the grand aunt of
her mother, the niece of Romsey, married a King of Poland, where –
sad to relate – she “made herself odious by her pride and her
passions.”
Let it be noted then that the birthplace of royalty in Dunfermline has
supplied in and through the elder daughter of Malcolm and Margaret,
not ony a Queen in England, but an Empress to Germany. We shall
now see it also provided the origin of the Plantagenet dynasty.
After the death of the Emperor, Henry of England summoned his
widowed daughter to his Court. She joined him in Normandy, and
soon afterwards returned with him to England. Presently a deputation
of German Princes arrived for the purpose of taking Matilda back with
them as their Sovereign. The Empress was willing to place herself in
their care. Her masterful parent, however, had other purposes for her,
as his only legitimate child. His heart and mind were still bent on the
foundation of an enduring dynasty. Deprived of a male heir, he
conceived the idea of transmitting the Sovereignty through his
daughter. Accordingly he entered into a covenant with his barons and
bishops, who were favourably disposed to the Empress as the
daughter of their “good Queen Matilda.” He got them to swear that if
he would die without a lawful son, they would acknowledge her as
Lady of England and Normandy. He on his part pledged himself not
to give her in marriage to any one outside his realm. They wished to
keep their country free from wasteful Continental strife and to avoid
the danger of the introduction of any further foreign rule. The willful
King broke his part of the bargain the following year. Daring the
37
resentment of his subjects, and still intent on ensuring the continuance
of his French possessions, he planned another marriage with a view of
mortifying the enmity of one of his Norman rivals. Treating his
daughter’s feelings as no account, he sent her across the Channel
under the care of Brian FitzCount and her half-brother, Robert Earl of
Gloucester, with instructions to the Archbishop of Rouen to make
arrangements for the marriage of the widowed Empress with Geoffrey
Plantagenet, son of the Count of Anjou. A year later this second State
marriage was solemnized in Rouen Cathedral.
The marriage was not a happy one. The sadly tossed about Matilda,
who, when still a child, was married to a man fully twenty years older
than herself, was in the prime of life, being then twenty six years of
age, married to a boy scarce fifteen years old. As a helpless tool in
the hands of her scheming father, she was required to descend from
her imperial status and unite herself in marriage with “the hero of an
upstart race whose territory, insignificant in extent, was so placed as
to make their hostility a perpetual thorn in the side of the ruler of
Normandy.” The King’s political strategy succeeded; but the Mariae
a pitiful misfortune for Matilda. The ill-assorted pair – the Empress
and the boy-husband soon quarreled, and in 1129, the year after the
marriage, Geoffrey, now Count of Anjou, drove his wife out of his
dominion. For two years she stayed at Rouen; but when she went
back to England with her father, Geoffrey found it expedient to assert
his claims as a husband. His message of reall was submitted to a
Council at Northampton, which decided that she should return, while
the barons renewed their homage to her as her father’s heir. Two
years afterwards, in 1133, when Geoffrey was only 19 years of age, a
son was born at Le Mans; and the English grandfather hastened to
make his, Prince Henry.
A detailed account of the further domestic troubles of Matilda, who
was with her father when a second child was born at Rouen in 1134,
and when in the following year she took the part of her husband
against her father, does not fall within the scope of these papers. Nor
is this the place for a particular description of the many trying
vicissitudes through which she passed, when after the death of her
father, England, in spite of the pledges of the barons to King Henry,
chose Stephen as sovereign, or of the civil war, with is varying
fortunes which ensued. With a spirit and courage worthy of her
mother, who spoke so bravely for herself when her marriage with
Henry I was challenged on the ground that she had been a nun, the ex-
Empress and Countess of Anjou asserted her claims as heiress of her
father. She had many friends, not at least devoted of them her uncle,
King David of Scotland. Stephen, too, played into her hands. He
38
failed to fulfil promises and good-will of his subjects by introducing
Flemish mercenaries and by the ill-advised bestowal of favours on
great lords whom he wished to conciliate. Eventually the fortune of
war declared in favour of Matilda, who at Winchester was proclaimed
“Lady of England and Normandy,” and who, having been rapturously
welcomed at London, took up her abode a Westminster.
Unfortunately the full cup proved too much for the woman who had
passed through so many perils and distresses. Without waiting to be
formally crowned, she assumed the title of Queen; more recklessly
than Stephen she confiscated lands and honours; the barons who came
to offer her homage she offended by her haughty coldness; she
showed herself at her worst when she turned the deaf ear to the
appeals of her cousins, Stephen’s wife and brother; and she incensed
the citizens of London by her scornful rejection of their petition for a
renewal of “King Edward’s laws.” Thus she provoked a rebellion
against herself by the people who had formerly rebelled against
Stephen. During the strife Matilda passed through many perilous
adventures. At last civil war was ended by an arrangement under
which Stephen should retain possession of the crown during his life,
but adopt Matilda’s son, Henry, as his heir. A year afterwards, on the
death of Stephen, Henry ascended the throne without opposition, and
the Plantagenet dynasty in England was founded. Thus the sprig of
broom (planta genista) which the first Earl of Anjou assumed as a
symbol of humility during a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, became a
badge of royalty.
Gladly withdrawing from the troubled arena, Matilda henceforth
lived in Normandy. After her son’s accession as King of England, she
took up her abode in a palace built by her father beside the Minster of
Notre Dame des Pres, near Rouen. Increasingly with her advancing
years, peace and esteem became her happy portion. She is credited
with having constantly influenced her son for good, though the
English people, remembering her former haughtiness, always
regarded her with suspicion. She was the one person with whom he
took counsel before sailing for England in 1154. In the following year
she induced him to give up a rash scheme for the invasion of Ireland.
In 1162 she tried to dissuade him from making Thomas a Becket
Arch-bishop of Canterbury; in the quarrels between he two whih
shortly ensued she acted as a mediatrix, and displayed fairness and
skill in dealing with he case. Two lettres of hr are extant, one written
in 1166-67, a the Pop’s request, beseeching Thomas to be reconciled
to the King; the other addressed to King Louis of France pleading for
cessation of hostilities against her son. In 1167, overcome by fever
and decay of strength, she died at Notre Dame. On her deathbed she
39
took the veil as a nun of Fontevrault. She was buried before the High
Altar in the abbey Church of Beck, the resting-place she had chosen
for herself thirty-three years before in spite of her father’s
remonstrances. In 1263 the church, and with it her tomb, were
destroyed by fire. In 1282, when the church had been restored, her
remains, which had been wrapped in an oxhide, were interred in a new
tomb, which in 1421 was stripped of its ornaments by the English
soldiers who sacked Bec. In 1684 a brass plate with a long inscription
was placed over the grave by the Brethren of the Maur, who had lately
come into possession of the Abbey. This, too perished in 1793. The
church itself was demolished in 1831, and the leaden coffin of the
Empress, re-discovered in 1846, was translated to the Cathedral
Church of Rouen, which her father, in 1131, had declared should be
their only fitting abode.
Her will directed that her wealth should be distributed to the poor,
hospitals, church, and monasteries, of which Bec was the chief. She
left a large sum for the completion of a stone bridge which she had
begun to build over the Seine at Rouen. She founded several religious
houses and aided many more in England as well as in Normandy. In
her latter years the harsh and violent temper which had marred one
period of her career seems, says the writer in the Dictionary of
National Biography to have been completely mastered by the
nobleness of her character, which had gained for her as a girl the
esteem of her first husband and he admiration of his subjects, and
which, even in her worst days, had won and kept for her the devotion
of men like Robert of Gloucester, Miles of Hereford, and Brian
FitzCount. Arnulf of Lisieux, intending to praise her, called her, “a
woman who had nothing of the women in her.” One German
chronicler gave her the title of “the good Matilda,” which English
writers applied to her mother. Germans, Normans, and English were
agreed as to her beauty. Her portrait on her great seal, which had been
made for her in Germany before her husband’s coronation at Rome,
shows a majestic figure seated, robed and crowned, and holding in her
right hand a sceptre terminating in a lily flower. The Seal’s legend is
– “Matilda, by God’s grace, the Queen of the Romans.” The style
commonly used in her Characters is “Matilda, the Empress, King
Henry’s daughter,” sometimes adding during her struggle with
Stephen, “A Lady of the English,” or “Queen of the English.” The
epitaph graven on her tomb sums up her character: - “Here lies
Henry’s daughter – wife and mother, great by birth, greater by
marriage, and greatest by motherhood.”
+ + + + + + + +
40
CHAPTER VII.
MARY OF BOULONGE AND HER DAUGHTER,
QUEEN MATILDA.
Mary, the second of the Princesses born to Malcolm and Margaret in
Dunfermline Tower, quickly passed out of the national and also
English life and history. The Scotichronicon has practically nothing
to say of her. May we therefore conclude that not only her life was
comparatively uneventful but that she enjoyed the happiness
proverbially associated with dull annals? Yet she really entered into a
larger and more brilliant life than that of her sister. Shortly after her
elder sister, Matilda, had become Queen of England, she married
Eustace, Count of Boulogne, the brother of Godfrey of Bouillon, the
famous Crusader, who after the capture of Jerusalem, refused to wear
a crown of gold where his Saviour had worn one of thorns, and
preferred the title of Defender and Guardian of the Holy Sepulchre –
the typical representative of Christian chivalry, who is he hero of
Tasso’s immortal poem, “Jerusalem Delivered,” and to whom the
great poet thus pays his homage:-
Thus conquered Godfrey; and as yet the sun
Dived not in silver waves his olden wain.
But daylight served him to the fortress won
With his victorious host to turn again.
His bloody coat he put not off, but run
To the high temple with his noble rain;
And there hung up his arms, and there he bows
His knees, there prayed, and there performed his
Vows.*(*From Fairfax’s translation in Hasell’s Tasso, published by M.
Blackwood & Son.)
To Eustace and Mary was born a daughter, the fourth of our
Matildas, who married Stephen, the favourite nephew of Henry I of
England, and who was the first of Queen Margaret’s grand-daughters
to ascend the English throne. Stephen was the son of Adela, the
daughter of William the Conqueror, and the sister of Rufus and of
Henry, who married the Count of Blois. At an early age he joined his
Uncle Henry’s court in England. As a pledge of affection the King
gave him the Countship of Mortain in Normandy, and he strengthened
41
the family relationship and enlarged his personal fortune by marriage
with Henry’s niece, the heiress of Boulogne, bearing the name of
Henry’s Queen. At the English Court he won the favour of many
besides that of the Sovereign, for, after the death of his cousin, Prince
William, he was the next nearest male heir – admired for his dexterity
as a swordsman and for his happy humour and generous nature.
When his Uncle Henry held his Council in 1127 for the purpose of
having his own daughter Matilda recognised as the Lady of England,
Stephen swore fidelity – and possibly like Gawain in the Idylls,
“louder than the rest.”
Yet when Henry died Stephen hurried over to England, while his
cousin Matilda was occupied with affairs in Normandy and heedless
of his vow to his kingly relative and benefactor he laid claim to the
throne. The people of England did not regard the prospect of a
woman sovereign with favour, and they welcomed Stephen as a fit
representative of the Norman family by descent and of the Saxon
family by marriage with a daughter of Queen Margaret of pious
memory. He was hailed with enthusiasm by the citizens of London
and Winchester, and twenty-one days after the death of Henry he was
proclaimed King of England. His reign was neither happy nor
glorious. The Prince who proved false to his vow to his uncle soon
found himself unable to fulfil the many generous promises he had
made to the people, and his popularity rapidly declined. The fortune
of war, too, quickly turned against him. For a time he lost his throne
and even his personal liberty, and though he by and by regained the
Matilda of Boulogne.
42
Kingship, the protracted strife between the partisans of his cousin
Matilda and his own, and his lack of skill and efficiency as a ruler,
plunged the country into the deepest chaos and misery. Green quotes
this description of the prevailing horror from the English Chronicle:-
They hanged up men by their feet and smoked them with foul
smoke. Some were hanged up by their thumbs, others by the
head, and burning things were hung on to their feet. They put
knotted strings about their head and writhed them till they went
into the brain. They put men into prisons where adders and
snakes and toads were crawling and so they tormented them.
Some they put into a chest, short and narrow and not deep, and
that had sharp stones within, and forced men therein, so that
they broke all their limbs. In many of the castles were hateful
and grim things called rachenteges, which two or three men had
enough to do to carry. It was thus made – It was fastened to a
beam, and had a sharp iron to go about a man’s neck and throat,
so that he might noways sit, or lie, or sleep, but he bore all the
iron. Many thousands they afflicted with hunger.
Assuredly England during this horrible civil war was a habitation of
horrid cruelty. No surprise need be felt tht while he warring barons
plundered, burned, maimed and murdered as their passions prompted
them, “men said openly tht Christ and His saints were asleep.”
How did Queen Matilda bear herself in these terrible times? During
the varying fortunes of her husband she proved not only the helpmeet
but the better half. When Stephen’s follies and oppressions provoked
a rebellion of the barons Matilda took energetic action. She besieged
one of the leaders of the revolt, Wakelyn Meminot in Dover Castle,
while a squadron of ships from Boulogne blockaded him by sea, till
he was driven to surrender. She used her influence with her Uncle
David of Scotland (who had taken the field in behalf of his other
niece, the widowed Empress Matilda) to secure peace between her
and her husband, the terms of the treaty being settled by her and
David’s son Henry at Durham on 9th April, 1129. Next she exerted
herself to gain the alliance of France. Taking with her across the
Channel her eldest son, Eustace, she obtained his investiture as Duke
of the Normans and his betrothal with the French King’s sister,
Constance, whom she brought back with her to England as a sign of
French goodwill and a pledge of co-operation. All her efforts,
however, were to no avail. The Barons and the people, who felt
themselves deceived by King Stephen, were too deeply estranged
from his rule to sustain her in her gallant efforts. Notwithstanding his
43
great skill in warfare and his own personal prowess, Stephen was
defeated by his cousin’s forces at Lincoln in 1141, and he himself was
taken prisoner. As indicated in the preceding chapter, the empress
Matilda did not show to advantage in her hour of triumph. She
ordered the defeated and dethroned King to be loaded with chains and
to be kept as a close prisoner in the Castle of Bristol. Queen Matilda,
however, neither lost heart nor slackened her efforts. When a Council
was held for the purpose of acknowledging the Empress as Lady of
England, the wife of Stephen sent a letter to the barons entreating
them to effect his restoration. When this appeal failed, the lady who
had been crowned Queen of England at Westminster in 1136, four
years afterwards approached her cousin as a petitioner for the release
of her husband. Her appeal on bended knees to her fair cousin
established in her seat of sovereignty and surrounded by her courtiers,
supplied famous artists with an attractive theme, and the pictures of
two beautiful women – one as an eager suppliant and one as a
relentless mistress- have invested this memorable incident with
additional pathos. The suit of the devoted wife was refused. It would
have been well for the Empress Matilda and for the country if she had
shown a more peaceable disposition and sought the ways of peace.
For the scorned Queen turning from appeals for mercy which had
proved vain, renewed her appeal to fore. A rebel once more against
her cousin, aided by Captain William of Ypres, a staunch friend of her
husband, and aided still more by the resentment caused by the
Empress’ misuse of her power, the wife of Stephen rallied the King’s
adherents, and presently the tide of war turned in her favour. Robert,
the Earl of Gloucester, the half-brother of the Empress, who had
formerly effected the capture of the King, fell into the hands of
Stephen’s party. The Queen behaved with greater magnanimity than
her cousin. She took personal charge of the captive, but kept him free
from physical restraint although under strict surveillance. She
discreetly used him however, as a means of forcing the hand of the
Empress; and the result of a negotiation which was opened was an
exchange of prisoners – and possibly also a certain modification of the
family hostilities. Meanwhile, however, Stephen’s cause continued to
revive, while that of the Empress as steadily declined; and in a short
time the royal lady who had scornfully rejected her cousin’s appeal
for mercy was herself a fugitive, reduced on one occasion to the
humiliating necessity of seeking escape by feigning herself a corpse.
Stephen and Matilda re-entered London, and on Christmas Day
1141, they both wore their crowns in Canterbury Cathedral. As
Queen Matilda showed a devotion to the church worthy of a
descendant of Saint Margaret. Shortly after her first accession, in
44
1136 or 1137, she and her husband founded for the souls of hr father
“and of our children” a preceptory of Knights’ Templars at Cowley in
Oxford. In 1142, shortly after her restoration, she founded a
Cistercian Abbey on her lands at Coggeshall in Essex. She also
established the Hospital of St Katherine by the Tower of London for
the souls of two of hr children – Baldwin and Matilda – who were
buried in Trinity Church. Of hr three other children, Eustace died in
August 1153; William became by marriage Earl of Warrenne, but died
childless in 1160; and Mary, who was devoted as an infant to the
religious life, became in time Abbess of Romsey. On her brother
William’s death, Henry II recognised the Abbess as heiress of
Boulogne, and obtained a Papal dispensation for her marriage with
Matthew, son of the Count of Flanders. She died in 1182, leaving two
daughters, through the younger of whom – Matilda – the County of
Boulogne ultimately passed to the house of Brabant.
As a true daughter of the church Queen Matilda showed herself a
peace worker. Aided by the faithful family friend and counsellor,
William of Ypres, she was instrumental in effecting in 1147
reconciliation between the King and Archbishop Theobald, whose
appointment to the primacy of Canterbury ten years previously had
been due chiefly to her influence. For two years afterwards she
resided at Canterbury and superintended the building of Faversham
Abbey, which she and King Stephen had founded.
Her labours as mother, wife and Queen, and as a devoted supporter
of the church were now drawing near a close. In April 1152 she fell
sick at Hedingham Castle, Essex, sent or her confessor Ralph, Prior of
Holy Trinity, Aldgate, and died three days later, on 3rd May. In death
she was not long separated from her husband. Before his demise,
which took place at Canterbury in 1154, Stephen deprived, like his
Uncle Henry, of a son to heir his throne, and the Empress Matilda,
chastened by long suffering and refined by a revival of her early piety,
settled their differences. Stephen adopted as his heir the son of the
lady he had formerly supplanted in the Sovereignty; and together as
loving cousins they visited the chief centres of the land “to be
received at each place with solemn procession and the most joyful
acclamations.” The latter end of their exceptionally stormy and
trouble career was peaceful. In the hope of Divine forgiveness they
mutually forgave much and the people of England gratefully
welcomed the reconciliation as a promise of national blessing.
+ + + + + + + +
45
CHAPTER VIII.
JAMES I
Oure King Jamys in Scotland syme,
That yhere was born in Dunfermlyne –
So sings Wynton in his Orygynale Cronikil.
The prince, born in the Palace of Dunfermline in 1394, figures in
history as one of the ablest, the most cultured, and, alas! The most
unfortunate of Scottish Kings. The times in which he lived were
unpropitious in the highest degree; and he endured far more than the
fair share of the trials and miseries of sovereignty. He lost his mother
when he was eight years of age; his liberty when he was twelve; his
life when he was forty-three. In spite of his many misfortunes,
however, he accomplished not a little for Scotland; and the story of
his life appeals equally to lovers of country, of literature, and of
chivalry.
It is believed James spent the days of his childhood and early
boyhood in Dunfermline and Inverkeithing with his mother, Queen
Annabella, the descendant of a Hungarian who accompanied Edgar
Atheling in his flight from England, and who settled in Scotland as a
friend of the good Queen Margaret. Too early he lost her tender care
and watchful guardianship. She died in Inverkeithing in the year
1403, and was interred in Dunfermline Abbey. A memorial window
in the south wall of the Abbey thus sets forth her record: -
The armys of queyne Annabell Drummond spous to
King Robert ye third mother to king James
The fyrst Annabell queyne of Scotland.
Robert ye third ye second of ye noble surnaym of ye Stewarts
spousd Anabell dochter to ye lard of Stobhall qth bair to hym twa
sones Dauid duk of rothsay qth bi his uncle duk Robert was presoint
in Falkland to ye deth notwithstanding yat he was prince of Scotland
ye second James yat succeedit to ye croune.
46
(Inscription on Brass Plate.)
This Memorial,
bearing the Escutcheon
of
Anabel Drummond, Queen of Scotland
was erected by
Clementina Sarah Drummond, Lady Willoughby
de Eresby,
in memory of
her Royal Ancestors.
By this time, King Robert III a weak old man, bowed down beneath
a load of cares, was conscious that authority was deserting him. His
ambitious and unscrupulous brother, the Earl of Fife, known as the
Duke of Albany, was gradually usurping regal power, and when the
feeble old King heard that Albany had compassed the death of his
elder son, David Duke of Rothesay, by starvation in Falkland Place,
he in concern for the safety of his younger son, James, now the
legitimate heir to the throne, arranged for his removal to France. The
Prince never reached his intended destination. The vessel in which he
sailed was seized by an English merchant cruiser near Flamborough
Head in Yorkshire, and James, then a boy of twelve years, was sent to
the Tower of London by Henry IV. The English King, and his
successor, Henry V did well by their royal prisoner. They gave him a
training designed to develop the ideal conditions – a sound mind in a
sound body. James became an expert in all knightly accomplishments.
As the result of his material exercises he was distinguished in
wrestling, running, archery, and riding. And physical prowess
represented only one side of his equipment. He was skilled in many
47
things on which great store is placed in modern education, and not
least in Dunfermline, with the aid of the Carnegie Trust. He became
an accomplished musician; in drawing and painting he found delight;
and he was equally gifted in handicraft. To these accomplishments he
added scholarship. He was an appreciative student of Chaucer and
Gower, and he was a maker as well as a lover of literature. As a poet
he takes a high rank among the early English writes. “The King’s
Quhair,” or Book, not only tells the romance of his life, but it reveals
the refinement of his mind and heart. Its heroine is the Lady Jane
Beaufort, a daughter of the Earl of Somerset and a grand-daughter of
the Earl of Somerset and a grand-daughter of John of Gaunt. The
beautiful young lady he first saw from the window of his prison at
Windsor walking in the “garden fair,” and, eager for sympathy in his
loneliness, he loved her at first sight:-
Cast I down mine eyes again,
Where as I saw, walking under he Tower,
Full secretly, new comen here to plain,
The fairest or the freshest young floure
That ever I saw, methought before that hour,
For which, sudden abate, anon astart (went and came)
The blood of all my body to my heart.
* * * * *
In her was youth, beauty, with humble aport,
Bounty, richess, and womanly feature,
God better wot than my pen can report,
Wisdom largess, estate and cunning sure.
In every point so guided her measure.
In word, in deed, in shape, in countenance,
That nature might no more her child avance.
And when she walked had a little thraw
Under the sweete green boughis bent,
Her fair, fresh face as white as snaw,
She turned has and furth her wayis went;
But tho began mine arches and torment,
To see her part and follow I na might,
Methought the day was turned into night.
48
When, for reasons of state and on a pledge of the payment of
£40,000 in name of board and education for eighteen years, James
received his liberty from Henry VI he married the Lady Jane, who
remained for him all his days “his soul’s far better part,” and proved
to him in return a right loyal resolute helpmeet.
The bill charged for board and education was by no means small;
but James and the Scottish people, who pledged themselves to meet
the demand, were given as already seen, some invaluable
compensations, in the intellectual and knightly culture which had been
provided during the long captivity.
It was as a King, James returned to his native land. His father had
died of a broken heart within a few months after his seizure at
Flamborough Head. The fifty years’ guardianship of the adroit and
merciless Albany had ended. His son, Murdoch, who had succeeded
him in the Regency, had after five years been set aside by the
turbulent nobles and chiefs. And it was as a King of Scotland he
went. His scholarship in England had been built on a foundation laid
by Bishop Wardlaw of St Andrews and on the eve of the
quincentenary of St Andrews University it is interesting to reall that
James I in his early boyhood, enjoyed the tuition of the Churchman,
who, as a friend of learning, obtained the Pope’s authority for the
institution of the first university in Scotland. Nor had he forgotten or
surrendered his patriotism. It is said that when Henry V found
himself opposed by Scottish warriors in France, he asked James to
order their return to their native land. “Let me free,” answered the
royal prisoner, “then they will obey me. How could they
acknowledge as their King one who is in the power of another man.”
Further, he entered upon the duties of sovereignty as one who keenly
felt his responsibilities. He soon realized that the state of the realm
which was nominally his was deplorable. The testimony of a monk
chronicler is – “In those days there was no law in Scotland, and the
great man oppressed the poor man, and the whole Kingdom was a den
of thieves.” James resolved that the realm should be his in reality, and
that in it justice should prevail and security be enjoyed. “If God,” he
said, “grants, me life I will make the key keep the castle and the
bracken bush the cow.”
James was a very different man from his father. He soon made it
evident he meant to govern as well as reign. Moe severely than in the
time of Alexander the Fierce malefactors of all kinds – the turbulent
nobles, the lawless predatory chiefs, the oppressors of the poor – were
made feel the flagellations of the royal Talus. Shortly after his return
to Scotland he was ceremonially crowned at Scone, and his Queen
was similarly honoured. Yet, though thus cordially welcomed home
49
and placed on the throne, he was not long in discovering that the
nobles or powerful barons had no thought of rendering him the
obedience and homage of loyal subjects. Fearlessly and resolutely the
King applied himself to the task of reducing them to subjection and
asserting his regal supremacy. His own kinsfolk, his cousin Murdoch
the son of the Duke of Albany, whom he regarded as responsible for
his long exile, and Murdoch’s sons and relatives, were the first to feel
the weight of his avenging hand. It is obvious he distrusted as well as
disliked them; and when, after the eldest son of his cousin with his
father-in-law, the Earl of Lenox, had been put in prison, another son
of Murdoch raised the standard of revolt and slew the keeper of
Dumbarton Castle and thirty-one other persons, the King felt himself
justified in executing against them summary vengeance. Murdoch,
his two sons, and the Earl of Lennox were, after a form of trial at
Stirling Castle, led to the Heading Hill, where they suffered the last
penalty for what James accounted their treason. He felt, too, that the
lawless Highland chiefs needed a lesson. Forty of them who obeyed
his summons to meet him at Inverness were at once arrested; and
though most of them were given their freedom some time afterwards,
several of them were put to death. Among the chiefs whose lives
were spared was Alexander, the Lord of the Isles. Cherishing fierce
resentment in his heart, the Lord of the Isles gathered around him his
clansmen and friends and, the King was in pursuit; Alexander’s army
began to melt away; and over the attenuated and disheartened forces
of the Lord of the Isles James won an easy victory in Lochaber. The
defeated chief informed that his only hope was to sue for mercy.
Sometimes afterwards Alexander suddenly appeared in Holyrood
Church as a humble suppliant, wearing only his shirt and drawers, and
knelt before the King as he surrendered his sword. On the
intervention of the Queen James spared the chief’s life, and after a
short imprisonment restored to him his lands and his freedom.
While the King thus terrorised the scheming and disloyal nobles and
the turbulent Highlands chiefs, he insisted on orderly behaviour in his
presence. On one occasion two nobles quarreled at Court; and when
one struck his neighbour on the face, he was instantly required by the
King to lay his hands on the table to be smitten off by the lord to
whom, in his ungovernable temper, he had offered and unpardonable
affront. On another occasion a poor Highland woman appeared
before him with lacerated feet and told him that when she threatened
to report to His Majesty the theft of her two cows by a robber, the
caitiff brigand had nailed horse shoes on her feet. The King ordered
the cruel scoundrel to be dressed in a linen shirt bearing a
50
representation of his misdeed and to be dragged at a hors’s tail to the
gallows.
Similarly he asserted his authority over the churchmen. He let them
understand that avarice indolence, and oppression could not be
tolerated; and oppression could no be tolerated; and through, as an
orthodox Catholic, he treated Lollardism as heresy – allowing Paul
Crawar, the Hussite preacher, to be put to death, and rewarding the
inquisitor, Fogo, by promotion to the Abbacy of Melrose – he, like
Robert he Bruce and Alexander the Fierce, jealously maintained the
independence of the Scotish Church and resisted the Pope’s claims to
supremacy. In his conflicts with the nobility and clergy James was fortified by
the goodwill and support of the common people and of the smaller
barons. Shortly after his Coronation at Scone he summoned the
barons, the clergy, and the representatives of the burghs to meet him
in a Parliament at Perth, and these assemblies or councils were held
yearly during his reign. He evidently had little difficulty in imposing
his will upon the legislators, and he succeeded in having enacted a
long series of reforming and melioratory measures for the
enforcement of law and its identification with justice, for the
promotion of agriculture and other industries for the establishment of
the relations of Church and State. Every department of national
business felt the stimulus and guidance of his intellect and his
reforming zeal, and the masses of the people gratefully regarded him
as their friend, their protector, and their benefactor.
The twelve years of his reign were crowded with signal service for
Scotland. He discovered for the country its sense of unity. He taught
it to value law and order. He laid the foundation of constitutional
government. He developed trade and commercial enterprise, and he
encouraged shipbuilding and seamanship. He proved himself a great
statesman and a vigorous administrator. He was not, however free
from error. For one thing, he did not show himself scrupulous in his
observance of the treaty with England under witch he obtained his
freedom. He had no hesitation or difficulty in fulfilling one of the
conditions, viz., marriage with an English lady, for he cherished for
the beautiful and gifted daughter of the Earl of Somerset the true love,
which binds heart to heart and mind to mind in body and in soul. He,
however, showed little anxiety to pay the installments of the ransom
money, which he had solemnly covenanted to do, and in further
breach of the treaty he maintained friendly relations with France.
When Sir John Stewart, the Constable of France, came with a number
of French noblemen to treat for the betrothal of his two-year-old
daughter Margaret to the Dauphin, aged five, he accepted the
51
proffered alliance, and in the year before his death he sent the Princess
to the French Court to a marriage which brought her high rank but
also the intensest misery. He wisely, however kept free from
entanglement in the military quarrels between France and England;
and though he never forgot or forgave his captivity he kept the peace
with his nearer neighbour.
The most serious of his errors was the readiness with which he
confiscated and added to the possessions of the Crown the estates of
the barons whose loyalty he distrusted. Doubtless he felt the need of
money, and believed he could make better use of it than the lawless
nobles whom he despoiled. He was aware, too, that the Crown estates
had been grievously dilapidated by grasping nobles during his long
exile. Probably the sense of the injustice suffered by the Sovereign
was not absent from his mind when, on a visit to the place of his birth
and the tomb of his mother in Dunfermline Abbey, he lamented the
impoverishment of the Crown caused by the lavish benefactions of
King David to the church.
This appropriation of the lands of the lawless nobility accentuated
the enmity with which they regarded him as an upholder of law and
order and a guardian of the poor. One of the earliest of the subjects of
his reforming chastisement was Sir Robert Graham. This turbulent
chief he found it necessary to put in prison during the first years of his
reign. After his liberation Graham acted as a man who felt he had
nothing to be grateful for. He cherished fierce resentment against the
King; and when, after the confiscation of the estates of the great Earls
of March and Mar, part of the possessions which should have fallen to
Graham’s nephew, the Earl of Strathearn, was appropriated by the
Crown, the hostility of Sir Robert grew ungovernably passionate. In
Parliament he dared openly to curse the King and to denounce him as
a tyrant. Knowing now that he had transgressed beyond the hope of
forgiveness, Graham anticipated the royal vengeance by an active
display of implacable hatred. He made himself a willing tool of the
barons who fretted under the rigorous rule of James. Listening
greedily to the treasonable suggestions which were whispered even in
the Court itself and by men enjoying the confidence of the Monarch,
he began to seek an opportunity for the assassination of the King.
When in the winter of 1437 the King repaired to Perth to spend his
Christmas at the Monastery of the Dominicans, he perceived his
chance had come, and with the connivances of several of the courtiers
he organized a band of assassins. James was not wholly without
warning. Befor he left Edinburgh on his journey northward he was
told by an old Highland woman that if he crossed the Forth on that
occasion he would never come back, but like a brave and resolute man
52
he refused to take fright. A few hours before generally the King had
come to be appreciated and greatly beloved.
For he had tamed the nobles’ lust,
And curbed their power and pride,
And reached out an arm to right the poor,
Through Scotland far and wid;
And many a lordly wrongdoer
By the headsman’s axe had died.
Hence Graham and his fellow assassins found themselves outlawed
and fugitives for their lives, with every man’s hand against them as
the wicked of regicides. Within forty days they were all caught, tried,
and executed. Graham himself was treated with savage barbarity. He
was nailed naked to a tree and dragged through the streets; his body
was torn with pincers; his son was tortured and beheaded before his
eyes; but his spirit remained untamed, and he declared with his dying
lips that he had done a just deed slaying a tyrant. The widowed
Queen in this terrible crisis showed little of the qualities of the “Milk
white dove,” which in former days awake the admiration and devotion
of her royal lover. She placed no restraint on the general cry for
vengeance; and the unfriendly nobles soon realizes that they had lost
rather than gained power by the murder of the King, and that the
supremacy of the royal authority had been confirmed. James I was
dead, but the cause for which he battled so valorously during his brief
reign of twelve years – the cause of the Sovereign and the people
against lawless and oppressive barons and chiefs – survived and held
the field.
James I was perhaps as conscious of his “divine right” and of his
personal responsibility to God and to his subjects as the German
Emperor of the present day. Physically as well as intellectually he
was a man of exceptional force. Aeneas Sylvius, the Pope’s
Ambassador, described him as “Quadratus,” or a “four-square man.”
He was stout, broad shouldered, possibly a little under the medium
height, but agile and well-proportioned. He loved equally manly
exercises and metal culture. As a King who in the midst of his many
duties and trails found time for personal culture and pleasant
recreations, in the writing of verses, both in the vernacular and in
Latin, he took a warm interest in the newly-founded University of St
Andrews as the chief seat of learning. A wise and far-seeing ruler, he
53
upheld justice, encouraged trade and commerce, and sought peace as
the greatest of the national interests – though tempted on the one hand
by alluring offers from France, and on the other by his dislike and
distrust of England, caused by his imprisonment. He was a patriotic
ruler, concerned for the unity and stability of his country and for the
welfare of his subjects. And conspicuous among his other virtues
shone his personal purity. He fulfilled the ideal of King Arthur’s
knights, who rode about redressing human wrongs, sworn to love one
maiden only, and to lead a pure life in spotless chastity. His love for
his Queen never wavered. He, too, was a blameless King, of whom it
is written he had no mistress and he left no bastards.
Annunciation Stone on the Palace Dunfermline. Luke c.i.v.28-38.
+ ++ + + + + + +
54
�
CHAPTER IX.
ELIZABETH OF BOHEMIA – “QUEEN OF HEARTS.”
There are few historical characters about the facts of whose life and
conduct more disagreement exists than Elizabeth, daughter of James
VI and I, the Queen of Bohemia. First of all, there has been sharp
conflict of testimony regarding the place of her birth. The Royal
Burgh of Dunfermline claims her as one of her daughters, but Mrs
Everett-Green, in her carefully written Life, taking as her authority the
Harley MSS. In the British Museum, states:-
“The Princess Elizabeth was born at Falkland Palace on the
16th day of August 1596, nearly seven years before the
accession of her father to the English throne.”
In his Annals of Dunfermline Dr Ebenezer Henderson sets forth the
results of a careful comparison of the conflicting authorities. He first
makes these extracts from works in favour of the Dunfermline claim: -
1. “Upon the xix day of September 1596, the Queen Majestie was
deliveritt at Dunfermline of the Princess Elizabeth.” (Moyse’s
Memoirs of the Affairs of Scotland; Bannatyne Club, 1830; Maitland
Club, 1830.)
2. Elizabeth Princess of Scotland, borne in Dunfermline the 19th
August 1596 yeirs.” (Chronicles of Perth, p. 6; Maitland Club.)
3. “The Queene was delivered of a maid childe at Dunfermling
upon the 19th day of . . . 1596.” (Calderwood’s Hist. Kirk Scot. Fol.
1704. p.330; Woodrow Society, vol. v. p.438.)
4 “In the Palace t Dunfermline were born King Charles I with his
sister Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia.” (Macfarlane’s Geograph, Coll,
MS., vol. Advo. Lib. Edin)
5. “The Princess Elizabeth, from whom his present Majesty is
descended, was born in the Palace of Dunfermline.” (Stat. Acc.
55
Scot. vol. xili. P.448; Campbell’s Journey through Scotland; De
Foe’s Journey through Scotland, 1728, p. 173.
Dr Henderson next subjoins extracts from the testimony in favour of
the Falkland claim: -
1. “The 15th day of August (1596) the Queyne was deliverit of
a ladie in Falkland, and baptesit be the nayme of Elizabeth.”
(The Historie and Life of King James the Sext; Bannatyne Club
1825.)
2. “The 15th of August (1596) the Queyne was delyverit of a
ladie in Falkland and baptesit be the nayme of Elizabeth.”
(Vide Letters to King James the sixth, p. 26, Maitland Club
1835.)
These two extracts are identical in every respect.
3. “The Princess Elizabeth was born at Falkland Palace on
the 16th August 1596.” (Vide Miss Anne Everett’s Lives of the
Princesses of England, p. 146.) (Miss Everett refers to a
Harleian M.S. 1368.)
He quotes from Moyse’s preface to show that he was his Majesty’s
“ain old man,” and had served him for upwards of thirty years, and he
holds that the testimony of a man in so intimate a relation with the
Royal family “is worth a score of hearsay notices.” By way of
confirmatory circumstantial evidence Dr Henderson quotes from
Calderwood, Spottiswoode, and Birrel regarding the Queen’s
movements, and the conclusion he draws from these collateral sources
is “That Queen Anne went from Edinburgh to Dunfermline on the
17th day of July, 1596; that she gave birth to the Princess in her
dowry house here on the 19th August; and that she left Dunfermline
for Holyrood House on November 2 of the same year to prepare for
the baptism of her daughter.” He further gives quotations to show that
the King resided much in Falkland between 16th August and 25th
September, 1596, and his verdict is in these words: -
“It would therefore appear, after carefully comparing and
weighing these matters, that Queen Anne resided in her dowry
house at Dunfermline from 17th July until the 2nd November,
1596, and that she gave birth to her first and eldest daughter
there on the 19th of August, 1596, while the King was enjoying
the sport of hunting with his courtiers at Falkland, and that from
this circumstance some careless writers, dealers in hearsay, had
jumped to the conclusion that because the King was hunting at
56
Falkland about the time of the birth, the Princess was born in
Falkland.”
Many recent authorities following Mrs Everett-Green have named
Falkland Palace as he birthplace, but careful local historians who have
examined the facts, like Dr Chalmers, Sheriff Mackay, and Mr A.H
Millar, F.S.C., Scot., accept without challenge the view that
Dunfermline Palace as the birthplace of the Princess.
In the next place there is disagreement as to the place of birth in
Dunfermline Palace. Millar dismisses the suggestion that the famous
Annunciation Stone was inserted in the roof of the oriel window of the
Palace to mark the chamber where the Princess was born. He remarks
that “the most probably reason for the stone being placed in the Palace
was that Shaw (the architect) had found it amongst the ruins of the
Church and had appropriately used it to decorate the birth-chamber of
the Scottish Princess.” Dr Chalmers locates the birth-place of Charles
I and Elizabeth in the room lighted by the most westerly widow in the
front wall, which survives.
From the beginning till the end of her days Elizabeth was the victim
of statecraft and of strifes which dominated her fortune irrespective of
her will or efforts. When she was born in 1596 Queen Elizabeth of
England was an old woman, and James VI of Scotland, having an eye
to her throne, sought to confirm himself in the favour of Her Majesty
by naming his child after her. Yet the care of the Princes in her
childhood was entrusted to Lord Livingstone, afterwards Earl of
Linlithgow, whose wife was a Catholic, and with whom she stayed at
Linlithgow Palace. When shortly after the death of “good Queen
Bess” she travelled with her mother to England, she was placed first
under the charge of the Countess of Kildare, whose husband became a
“suspect.” Next, she was handed over to Lord and Lady Harrington,”
persons eminent for prudence and piety,” where Lady Anne Dudley
became her intimate friend. In the days of her maidenhood she seems
to have inspired universal homage by the exercise of the charms and
talent which in after years won for her the honorific title of Queen of
Hearts. The foes of her father were her friends – after their own
unscrupulous fashion, for one of the designs of the authors of the
Gunpowder Plot was to place Elizabeth on the throne. Before her
twelfth years he was well acquainted with French and Italian as well
as with the classics, and was able to send little notes in a foreign
language to her scholarly father for his correction and also for his
satisfaction as to the progress she was making in her studies. Among
the English men of letters of this time it was the fashion to pay her
tribute in adulatory poems or dedications; and when she became
57
Queen of Bohemia Sir Henry Wotton in courtly verses gave
expression to the estimate formed of her by her English admirers:-
“You meaner beauties of the night
That poorly satisfy our eyes
More by your number than your light,
You common people of the skies,
What are you when the moon shall rise?
“Your curious chanters of the wood
That warble forth Dame Nature's lays,
Thinking your voices understood
By you weak accents? What’s your praise
When Philomel her voce doth raise?
“Your violets that first appear,
By your pure purple mantles known,
Like the proud virgins of the yer
As if the spring were all your own!
What are you when the rose is blown?
“So, when my mistress shall be seen
In form and beauty of her mind,
By virtue first, then choice, a queen
Tell me if she were not designed
Th’eclipse and glory of hr kind?”
Partly on account of her beauty and accomplishments and partly by
reason of the play of antagonistic Continental diplomacies as
Protestantism and Catholicism strove to win the support of the English
Sovereign, Elizabeth had many suitors. The most notable of them all
was Gustavus Adolphus, the son of Charles IX of Sweden who was
anxious to effect a quadruple alliance, embracing England, Sweden,
Holland, and France; but the Danish influence at the English Court
represented by Queen Anne, the sister of Christian IV of Denmark,
defeated this scheme. Another project was marriage with King Philip
of Spain, which Elizabeth’s elder brother, Henry Prince of Wales,
strongly opposed. Eventually James formed an alliance with the
Princes of the German Protestant Union, and he assigned his daughter
in marriage to Frederick, Elector Palatine, in the expectation, which
was realised, that his son-in-law would become King of Bohemia, and
of ensuring the Elector of a Protestant Emperor – a design that was
disappointed. For after a brilliant marriage ceremony in England and
58
a recklessly extravagant court life at Heidelberg, where the Princes
had an establishment of 374 persons, and where the costliest
festivities and masquerade were maintained, and after a brief reign at
Prague, where the “Winter King,” as the Jesuits called Frederick,
melted in the summer heat, Elizabeth and her husband were deprived
both of principality and kingdom, and were obliged to seek refuge in
Holland. There and elsewhere for many years they endured poverty in
sharp contrast to the splendour in which they had indulged at
Heidelberg and Prague.
Elizabeth of England is credited with an inspiring display of
patriotism and courage in the camp at Tilbury, where her troops were
waiting for the Spanish invasion, when she told them that though she
was a feeble woman she had the heart of a King, and of a King of
England, too. By some historical authorities this heroic speech is
regarded as apocryphal. Similarly, doubt is cast upon the genuineness
of the utterance attributed to Elizabeth Stewart where her husband
seemed inclined to shirk the responsibility of accepting the leadership
of the Protestant Union in Germany as King of Bohemia. “Your were
bold enough,” she is reported to have said, “to marry the daughter of a
King, and do you hesitate to accept the crown which is voluntarily
offered to you? I would rather live on bread at a kingly table, than
feast at an electoral board.” According to another account the
Electress was too much engaged with the Heidelberg festivities and
gaieties to be keenly interested in the statecraft which entangled
Frederick in the Bohemian enterprise, and was taken by surprise when
her husband was offered the throne. It is difficult, however, not to
believe that so intelligent a lady had some idea of the aims and hopes
of her father when he gave her hand to the Elector, that so resolute a
Protestant as she was did not share her husband’s belief in “the divine
call” to the sovereignty, and that there is no foundation for the
statement she was ready to pledge her jewels and everything else she
prized in the world for the sake of the Protestant cause. For whatever
estimate may be formed of her character there is nothing in the
historical records of the time to cast doubts on her fidelity to the
Reformed faith. She had her faults, and perhaps the greatest of them
ws her extravagance and her love of luxury and display. One of her
sons described her Court as vexed with rats and mice, but especially
creditors. Her daughter Sophia wrote on one occasion that her
mother’s banquets were more luxurious than Cleopatra’s, because
diamonds as well as peals had been sacrificed in providing for them.
The same Princess is also credited with having said of her mother that
she preferred animal pests to the personal care of her children, of
whom she had thirteen. Doubtless, too, she was tenacious in her
59
hatreds. But she was at least equally constant in her affections. In the
poverty and distresses to the last devoted of her husband. In her youth
she won in a marked degree the love of her elder brother, Prince
Henry, whose last words, it is said, were – “Where is my dear sister?”
She was deeply affected by the death of her brother, Charles I and in
token of the undying sisterly attachment she ever afterwards wore a
mourning ring bearing the inscription, “Memento mori.” In the midst
of her personal trials she was constantly concerned for the interests of
her sons and daughters; and it as on their account as well as of her
tendency to lavishness when she had means at her command she made
demands on her son, Charles Lewis, when he became Elector, and on
her nephew, Charles II of England, which they were unable, if also to
a certain extent unwilling to meet. Two years before her death she
returned to England, and Evelyn, in recording her funeral says – “This
night was buried in Westminster Abbey the Queen of Bohemia, after
all her sorrows and afflictions, being come to die in the arms of her
nephew, the King.” Her personal fascination doubtless inspired the
generous and fearless championship of Duke Christian of Brunswick,
Administrator of the Bishopric of Halberstadt. But it was more than
her charms of figure and manners; - it was her unflinching devotion to
Britain and to Protestantism that made the chivalry of England ready
to fight in her cause on the Continent if her worldly wise father had
seen his way to sanction the enterprise, that ensured for her the self-
sacrificing service of a nobleman of the type of Lord Craven, her
friend and companion in arms of her husband and her son Rupert, and
that secured for her descendants the succession to the British throne.
Of her large family four at lest became notable figures; Elizabeth by
reason of her scholarship and her friendship with Descartes, and her
patronage of letters as head of the Lutheran Abbey of Hervorden;
Prince Maurice and Rupert by their knightly accomplishments and
their devotion to the Royalist cause in England, and most of all
Sophia, who married Ernest Augustus, Elector of Hanover, and was
the mother of George I of Britain.
Appended is the genealogical tale of the House of Stewart and the
House of Hanover, as given in Professor Hume Brown’s History of
Scotland: -
60
James VI
(1. of England)
I
I
_____________________________________ I__________________
I I I
Henry Charles I Elizabeth married
(Died young) I Elector Palatien
I I
________________________ I_____________ ___________I______
I I I I I I
Charles II James VIII Mary married Rupert Maurice Sophia married
(I. of England) Prince of Orange Elector of Hanover
I I
I I
William II George I
_____________________________________I I
I I I I
Mary II Anne James George II
Married (The Pretender) I
I I
_______ I_______ Frederick
I I (Prince of Wales)
Charles Henry I
(The Young Pretender (Cardinal of York) George III
I
I
______________________________________ I___
I I I I
George IV Frederick William III Edward
(Duke of York) (IV of England) (Duke of Kent)
I
Victoria
I
I
Edward I
(VII of England)
I
I
George IV
+ + + + + + + +
61
CHAPTER X
CHARLES I.
Sir Robert Sibbald, the historian and Geographer-Royal; for
Scotland by appointment of Charles II, in whose reign he received his
knighthood, gives indisputable evidence of the staunchness of his
loyalty to the Royalist case when he writes:-
“The greatest honour this shire ever had was that it gave birth to
King Charles I, royal martyr, who was born in the Abbey of
Dunfermline, and baptised by Mr David Lindsay, Bishop of Ross, on
December 23, 1600 -
Whose heavenly virtues angels should rehearse;
It is a theme too high for human verse;
His sufferings and his death let no man name,
It was his glory, but his kingdom’s shame.”
Nor is the Fife antiquarian the only panegyrist of the last of the kings
born in Dunfermline. In Reliquiæ Antiquæ under the title of “Ane
Epitaph on the Royale Martyr, King Charles I” as printed the
following lines:-
Here doth lye C. R. I.
Read these letters right, and ye shall find
Who in this bloody sheet lyes here inshrined.
The letter C his name doth signifie;
R doth express his royall dignitie;
And by the figure I is this great name
From his sad son’s distinguished; the same
Three letters, too, express his sufferings by
Cromwell, Rebellion, Independency.
Then join them in a word and it doth show
What each true loyal subject ought to doe-
CRY, cry, oh, cry aloud!
Let our crys outcry his blood.
62
Doubtless, throughout the succeeding generations this sentiment of
devotion to King Charles has been cherished by a section of the
citizens who favoured Jacobitism or Episcopacy. It cannot be said,
however, that the political or civic partiality for the royal son of the
Auld Grey Toon, who lost his head at Whitehall, has been general.
The traditions of the city most reverently and most generally
cherished are associated with the cause of the Covenant, the
Presbyterian testimony and its Evangelical succession, through Ralph
Erskine and Thomas Gillespie, and the democratic political faith of
which Presbyterianism is the expression and embodiment of the
religious or sacred sphere. Hence, Charles’ insincerity and his
disloyalty to the Covenant, his association with unscrupulous
sycophants who encouraged him in his reactionary ways, his assertion
of th right divine of Kings to decide for their subjects their religious
Charles I.
63
Profession and the national policy, his attempt to suppress
Parliamentary Government and Presbyterian worship, are remembered
to his discredit, while his refinement of manners, his devotion to wife
and family, the purity of his personal life are forgotten. If no
sympathy with regicide is shown, there is certainly to be found little
disposition to pay homage to the memory of this unfortunate royal son
of Dunfermline as a martyr in a good cause.
It was not in the Abbey but in the Royal Palace that Charles was
born. He was not the eldest child of the family. Prince Henry, born in
Stirling Castle on 19th February 1593, was nearly seven years his
senior. For some time before the advent of Charles, the Palace, which
three successive Jameses had enlarged and beautified, had been “the
Royal dwelling.” Here Elizabeth was born in September 1596, and
Margaret, who died in girlhood in December 1598. A younger
brother, Robert, who only survived fourteen weeks, was also born in
the Palace in May 1602, and Dunfermline continued to be the head-
quarters of the family until the removal to England in the following
year, on the accession of James to the throne of the United Kingdom.
The birth of Charles, who was given the title of Duke of Albany,
was celebrated with befitting rejoicings. “At qlk tyme,” says Birrell
in his Diary, “the canons schott for joy.” In his early infancy,
however, he seems to have caused his father care and anxiety in the
midst of his concern for “the affairs of the State” and of his learned
studies, from which demonology does not seem to have been
excluded. “Charles,” writes Dr Robert Chambers in his Picture of
Scotland, “was a very peevish child, and used to annoy his parents
dreadfully by his cries during the night. He was one night puling in
his cradle, which lay in an apartment opening from the bedroom of the
King and Queen, when the nurse employed to tend him suddenly
alarmed the Royal pair by a loud scream, followed by the
exclamation, ‘Eh! my bairn.’ The King started out of bed at hearing
the noise, and ran into the room where the child lay, crying, 'Hoot,
toot, what’s the matter wi’ ye, nursie?’ Oh.’ Exclaimed the woman,
‘there was ane like an auld man came into the room, and threw his
cloak around the Prince’s cradle; and syne drew it till him again as if
he had ta’en cradle, bairn, and a’ awa’ wi’ him. I’m feared it was the
thing that’s no canny.’ ‘Fiend, nor he had ta’en the girnie brat clean
awa’! said King James, whose demonological learning made him at
on see he truth of the nurse’s observation: 'Gin he ever be King
there’ll be nae gude in his ring; the deil had cussen his cloak over him
already.’”
64
Notwithstanding this inauspicious start in life, Charles surmounted
his youthful ailments, and gradually developed a right regal bearing.
When he was in his twelfth year the lamented death of Prince Henry
made him the Heir-Apparent, and he was given a training befitting a
British sovereign. Like most of his predecessors he became skilful in
manly exercises. He was equally distinguished by his metal
accomplishments. He acquired a refinement of manners, in marked
contrast with that of King James; and though he was perhaps less
accomplished than the Scottish Solomon as a student of the
Humanities and Philosophies, he exhibited fine taste in art and letters.
He was likewise much more reserved in his demeanour, which gave
the impression of cold haughtiness, but in his family life he was more
affectionate and gentle. Unfortunately, as already indicated, he
yielded too readily to the foolish and selfish counsellors who led him
sadly astray by their flatteries. Giving full play to the absolutist ideas
taught by his father, and, making them his religion, he inflexibly
maintained his claim to the Divine Right, and cherished the sense of
personal responsibility to God only, which brought him into conflict
with Puritanism in England, Presbyterianism in Scotland and
Protestantism everywhere. The same absolutism also caused him to
estrange the nobles and the people by seizure of lands which had one
belonged to the Roman Catholic Church, and by his arbitrary
imposition of taxes for enterprises and extravagances of which his
subjects did not approve.
Charles left Dunfermline with his parents when he was three years
of age. Thirty years elapsed before he gave proof of the patriotic
quality described by his father as “a salon-like affection” for the place
of one’s birth, by visiting it. When in 1633 he came to Scotland for
his Coronation, he did not forget the old Royal dwelling. On the 4th
and 5th of July he held his Court there, when “with great solemnitie,”
he created Sir Robert Kerr Earl of Ancrum and Lord Kerr of Nisbet.
Proclamation of the election to the Peerage was made by the heralds at
the open windows of “the great chamber” of the Palace. He also
conferred the honour of knighthood on five of his friends, and it is
supposed that Alexander Clark of Pittencrieff was one of the
favourites so honoured on this occasion.
By this time, however, the glow of enthusiastic loyalty which had
been exited by the Royal visit to Scotland had begun to cool. His
Majesty showed himself tactlessly lacking in graciousness towards the
citizens of Edinburgh, who had spared no pains to give him a right
hearty Royal welcome. He had issued too, his “General Revocation.,”
claiming for himself possessions which had been appropriated by
others; and among the assumptions was the Lordship of Dunfermline
65
“to which His Majestie succeeded as only sone and heire to His
Majestie’s umquhile, dearest mother, Queen Anna, who was heritably
infeft in the said Lordship of Dunfermling and siclike gifts.” By this
Act he revoked “all gifts, alienations, dispositions, and other rightes
whatsoever, made by His Majestie, or his said dearest mother,
unlawfully and against the lawes of the kingdome, of the said
lordship, or any landes, teinds, offices, kirks, patronages, and others
pertaining to the said lordship at any time preceding the date hereof.”
Further, he had caused keep disappointment and no slight
apprehension by his antipathy to Presbyterians or Dissenters, whom in
Edinburgh he regarded “with an unfavourable aspect.” At Stirling his
attitude had been equally unfriendly. Two days before he arrived in
Dunfermline, a Provost at Linlithgow or Stirling “who was known to
be a Dissenter” was not admitted to kiss the regal hand, when he
presented plate as a token of loyalty and devotion. Next year he gave
offence on a larger scale. Lord Rothes, Sheriff of Fife; Lord Lindsay,
bailie of the regality of St Andrews, having learned that it was the
intention of the King to pass through Dunfermline, assembled the
country gentry there to the number of nearly 2000 on horseback, in
order to give “a noble reception to his Majesty.” Rush-worth, in his
History, adds – “Many of them being Dissenters, His Majesty was
pleased to take another way and avoided them.”
As the struggle between King and Parliament proceeded, the
sympathy of the people of Dunfermline and West Fife with the cause
of political and religious freedom must have steadily grown,
notwithstanding their natural partiality for the Dunfermline-born
sovereign. For the Protestant and Presbyterian sentiment was strong
and keen, and the summons to battle for “Christ’s Crown and
Covenant” was resolutely responded to. In 1638 the National
Covenant, prepared by Alexander Henderson and Johnstone of
Warriston, was extensively subscribed in Dunfermline. This
document, a large sheep of parchment 37¼ by 34¾ inches, is
treasured in the Session House of Queen Anne Street Church as a
sacred relic transmitted to them through Ralph Erskine. Among
upwards of 200 signatures are the names of the heads of most of the
families in the town and district at the time including those of the Earl
of Dunfermline; Sir Robert Halkett of Pitfirrane; James Durie of
Craigluscar; Robert Ged (senior and junior) of Baldridge; Henry
Wardlaw of Pitreavie; Wm Wardlaw of Balmule; etc. As the trying
dreary years slowly passed bringing with them alternating hopes and
fears, there must have been many variations of attitude on the part of
the citizens as they pondered the claims of their earthly King and of
the King of Kings and strove to effect an adjustment in their minds
66
and consciences. With the great majority of their fellow-countrymen
they were probably not unwilling to see concession or conciliation on
the pat of Charles in times of stress and peril, when he turned to his
Scottish subjects for support, even after he had failed and
disappointed them again and again. The Solemn League and
Covenant acceded to by the King in one of these times of strait in
1643 was eagerly accepted as a basis of settlement. The Kirk Session
Records contain the following note under date of October 19:-
“That day the Solemne League and Covenant fr reformation
and defence of religion, the honour and happiness of the King,
and the peace and safety of the three kingdoms of Scotland,
England, and Ireland, ws red intimat this sabbath be Mr Robert
Kay to the haill congregation, that nane plead ignorance
thairoff, but that they may be prepared to sweare to it and
subscribe the same next Lord’s day.”
Unhappily that readjustment, which “cost Scotland blood, cost
Scotland tears,” proved a rope of sand, and the accentuation of the
strifes between Royalists and Independents, Cavaliers and Round-
heads, culminated in the execution of Charles at Whitehall as a traitor
to the Commonwealth.
“There can be no doubt,” writes Dr Ebenezer Henderson, the
painstaking City Annalist, who evidently to some extent shared the
view of Sir Robert Sibbald, “that when the news of his violent death
came to Dunfermline - his ain toun, as it was styled – the great body
of the inhabitants would with the nation at large, ‘express their
sympathy for his untimely end, mourn his loss, and esteem him a
martyr’; while others who went in with Cromwell would refer to his
‘unrighteous war, his insincerity, and his bigotry.’”
