| Notes |
- Name Suffix: King of Scotland
Alexander I, king of Scotland (1078?-1124), was the fourth son of MalcolmCanmore and Margaret, grandneice of Edward the Confessor, and was perhapsnamed after Pope Alexander II. Being too young to share in his father'scampaigns, he received a careful training from his mother. After thedeath in 1093 of Malcolm and Margaret, Alexander, together with hisbrothers Edgar and David, and his sisters Matilda, afterwards wife ofHenry I, and Mary, afterwards wife of Eustace, count of Boulogne, wasprotected by Edgar Atheling, his mother's brother, from the troublescaused in Scotland by the claim of Donald Bane, his paternal uncle, tothe crown by the Celtic custom of tanistry*. Through distrust of Rufus,Edgar is said to have concealed his nephews and nieces in different partsof England, and Alexander remained in that country during the reign ofDonald Bane and the breif restoration of Duncan, son of Malcolm and hisNorse wife Ingebiorg. He probably returned however, when, in 1097, hisbrother Edgar was placed on the throne by Edgar Atheling with the aid ofRufus. Nothing is recorded of him during the ten years (1097-1107) of hisbrother's peaceful reign, except that he was at Durham in 1104, when thecorpse of St Cuthbert, whose portection had been invoked when Edgarresumed the kingdom, was exhibited by the monks as a rebuke to theincredulous. On his brother's death, Alexander succeeded to the oldkingdom of Scotland north of the Forth and Clyde, but its newerconquests, uncer the name of Cumbria, which seem in this instance to haveincluded not merely Strathclyde but a considerable part of the easternborderland and portions of Lothian, were, by a deathbed gift of Edgar,erected into an earldom or principality in favour of David, who bore thetitle of Comes, and was almost an independent sovereign. Alexanderopposed the division of the kingdom, but the Norman barons supportedDavied, as they reminded him at the battle of the Standard (1138), and ithad to be acquiesced in. Possibly the motive of the gift was to interposea barrier between Scotland and England. More probably the grant ofindependence was intended to satisfy the inhabitants of the southerndistricts of modern Scotland, between whom and the northern Celticpopulation there was no good will. About the time of his accessionAlexander married Sibylla, a natural daughter of Henry I, and the unionof the two countries, thus cemented by a double bond of affinity, secureduninterrupted peace between them during the whole of Alexander's reign. Aletter of Anselm records the fact that the archbishop's prayers wereasked by Alexander for his brother's soul. Anselm, in return, counselledthe king to preserve the religious habits he had acquired in youth andto protect the monks who had been sent to Scotland at Edgar's request. Tothe see of St Andrews, rendered vacant by the death of Fothad, the lastCeltic bishop, Alexander appointed Turgot, prior of Durham, theconfessor, and perhaps the biographer, of his mother; but theconsecration was delayed till 1109 through a dispute between Anselm andThomas, archbishop York, and they the latter prelate preformed theceremony with a salvo of the authority of Canterbury - a compromiseobtained by Henry I. This appointment, made with the object of furtheringreforms in the Celtic church with Queen Margaret had begun, and ofintroducing diocesan episcopacy on the Roman and English model, did notfulfill its promise. Probably Turgot may have shown an inclination tosubject the Scottish church to York, as his successor Eadmer did toCanterbury. After several years of dispute with Alexander, Turgot'shealth failed, and he returned to Durham, where he died in 1115.
The separtation of Cumbria threw the centre of the Scottish kingdomfurther north, and while Alexander retained Edinburgh and Dunfermline,the chief residences of his parents, we find him more frequently atInvergowrie, Perth, Scone, and Stirling. The exact date of the war withsome norther
|
Abt 1078 - 1124 (46 years)