1 - ‘Some Talk of Alexander’ (I, king of Scots)

Summary

ONE of the most fruitful developments in recent writing about the history of medieval Scotland has been the openness displayed towards comparison and context, and in this our honorand has played no small part. Questions have been raised about state formation, nationhood and about ethnicity. The period between about 1000 and 1300 has been seen as the time when a united kingdom was created, capable of withstanding the pressure applied by Edward I (1272–1307) and his mighty war machine. In this the importation of a new foreign elite played a crucial role. The chronology, the character and the extent of change have all been debated. The periodisation of medieval Scottish history has been discussed: Matthew Hammond traced the enduring characterisation in Scottish historiography of a change from ‘Celtic’ Scotland to the ‘Norman’ twelfth century. Associating that transition with a particular reign has attracted different views. For Andrew Lang, writing more than a century ago, Celtic dominance came to an end with the death of Alexander I (1107–24), to be succeeded by Anglo-Norman and English dominance.

The reign of David I (1124–53) for a long time seemed to be the start of a brave new world, admittedly with important elements of continuity. The subtitle of a biography is ‘the king who made Scotland’. However, Alice Taylor has argued that the later twelfth century was the key period of take off for the medieval Scottish polity. This, she argued, rested on a fruitful symbiosis between crown and aristocracy, rather than inevitable opposition, and that whilst institutions and customs were imported from England, they were not slavishly copied but adapted. Rees Davies's suggestion that Scotland experienced a process of Anglicisation, therefore needs modification. Thus both periodisation and the nature of change have here been called into question.

The high reputation of King David was established as early as the twelfth century by William of Malmesbury and Aelred of Rievaulx. The former, who addressed one of his prefatory letters to his great work The Deeds of the Kings of the English to the king, was particularly complimentary about what he saw as David's civilized manners and scathing about those of Alexander's wife, Sibyl, a point to be discussed here below.