In 1124 King David I inherited a multicultural kingdom which included a majority Gaelic population alongside a significant minority English population. He followed his father and his brothers in seeking to foster the loyalty of the new English-speaking community of Lothian while holding on to the loyalty of the traditional Gaelic-speaking community of Alba itself. It was a difficult balance to maintain but he would be assisted by his genetic inheritance from his parents, his knowledge of both languages and his own highly mixed cultural background. He would seek to exploit English weakness, like his ancestors, to resume the southward expansion of the kingdom in order to restore Cumberland and secure more of Northumbria. He spent a great deal of his time in the southern part of the kingdom close to the English border, where risks and opportunities were highest. He continued with the introduction of English or Anglo-Norman cultural elements to the royal Court, royal administration, local administration and the Church. He vastly expanded the construction of reformed monasteries and speeded up the modernisation of the Church more generally. He introduced significant numbers of Anglo-Normans to add to the already rich cultural mix within the kingdom. He introduced towns, populated with English and French, as centres for manufacturing and exchange and minted the first Scottish coins. In all of this, with the exception of the towns, he was following a trail blazed to some extent by his predecessors.
In 1124 the kingdom of Scotland was already a very different political entity from the kingdom of Alba and it would be transformed almost beyond recognition in the next thirty years by King David. This was a process that built directly on all the work done by King Malcolm III during his long reign. If Malcolm had not managed to bridge the cultural gap between his Gaelic-speaking and English-speaking subjects it is unlikely that medieval Scotland, as we know it, would have emerged. In the worst case, the kingdom might have fractured into its Gaelic and English component parts. In other scenarios, Gaelic language and culture might have overwhelmed English, as it had already overwhelmed Welsh in Strathclyde. It is doubtful if King David would have found it so easy to introduce his Anglo-Normans or his towns, if the kingdom had been a Gaelic monoculture on the Irish model. The Anglo-Scottish lineage of MacKenneth might have become too closely identified with the English population and lost power to its rival Gaelic lineages. The English population of Lothian might have become a Trojan horse for English penetration into southern Scotland. Instead of any of these alternatives, the successful reconciliation of the Gaelic and English populations achieved principally by King Malcolm III opened the door to further change and to the transformation of the kingdom into its new form.
Family Trees
MAP 1: ALBA 800–1125
MAP 2: SOUTHWARD EXPANSION 900–1100
MAP 3: PROVINCES AND THANAGES
MAP 4: EARLY DIOCESES AND CATHEDRALS
MAP 5: LINGUISTIC AND CULTURAL MARKERS
5a: Gaelic place-names in southern Scotland
5b: English place-names in southern Scotland
Notes
CHAPTER 1
1. Anderson, A.O., Early Sources of Scottish History A.D. 500–1286, Stamford, 1990, pp. 273–4, n. 4
2. Ibid., pp. 263–5
3. The Triumph Tree, tr. T.O. Clancy, Edinburgh, 1998, p. 144
CHAPTER 2
4. Jackson, K., The Gaelic Notes in the Book of Deer, Cambridge, 1972, pp. 33–4
5. Clancy, Triumph Tree, p. 183
CHAPTER 3
6. The Annals of Ulster to A.D. 1131, ed. S. MacAirt and G. MacNiocaill, Dublin, 1983, pp. 368–9
7. Hill, P., The Age of Athelstan, Stroud, 2004, p. 200
8. Armes Prydain, ed. I. Williams, Dublin, 1972, pp. 2–3
9. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. D. Whitelock, D.C. Douglas and S.I. Tucker, Westport, 1986, pp. 69–70
10. Anderson, Early Sources of Scottish History, pp. 431–43
CHAPTER 4
11. The Chronicle of John of Worcester: Volume II, ed. R.R. Darlington and P. McGurk, Oxford, 1995, pp. 422–5
CHAPTER 5
12. Morris, C.J., Marriage and Murder in Eleventh-Century Northumbria: A Study of De Obsessione Dunelmi, York, 1992, pp. 1–2
13. English Historical Documents: Volume I, ed. D. Whitelock, Oxford, 1979, p. 339, No. 18
CHAPTER 6
14. John of Fordun’s Chronicle of the Scottish Nation: Volume 2, ed. W.F. Skene, Lampeter, 1993, pp. 289–90
CHAPTER 7
15. Barrow, G.W.S. ‘The Kings of Scotland and Durham’, in Anglo-Norman Durham, ed. D. Rollason, M. Harvey and M. Prestwich, Woodbridge, 1998
16. Donaldson, G., Scottish Historical Documents, Edinburgh, 1974, p. 18
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