Political and military events in Scotland during the reign of David I

[4] The latter Norman-Celtic dualistic picture is attacked by Matthew Hammond, who asks why the Gaelic east of the kingdom which constituted David's Scotian heartland was less "Celtic" than the heavily Norse-influenced west and north.

While it is true that David established himself in power with the backing of Henry I and his own Anglo-Norman retainers, as king his expansion also impinged upon areas that were Norse and English in speech using forces taken from his own Gaelic territories.

Not only did he survive to die a peaceful death, but he retained hold of his core territory in east-central Scotland, introduced more direct royal control into Moray and beyond, while men from Argyll, the Hebrides and Galloway were could be brought into David's 1136-8 invasion host.

[10] In either April or May of the same year David was crowned King of Scots (Gaelic: rí(gh) Alban; Latin: rex Scottorum) at Scone.

In his first act as king he made a grant or perhaps a reaffirmation of a previous grant to one of his followers, Robert de Brus, of the lordship of Annandale, on the frontier between his old principality and the lands of "Galloway":"David, by the grace of God King of Scots, to all his barons, men and friends, English and French, greetings.

"[14] This charter addresses only his "English and French" followers, and the witness list contains the names of eight Frenchmen and one Englishman; there are no Scots.

In fact, outside his "Cumbrian" principality and the southern fringe of Scotland-proper, David still exercised little power, and in the words of Richard Oram, was "king of Scots in little more than name".

The rebel Scots had advanced into Angus when they were met by David's Mercian constable, Edward; a battle took place at Stracathro near Brechin.

Máel Coluim again escaped, and four years of this continuing Scottish "civil war" followed; for David this period was quite simply a "struggle for survival".

[26] The fleet seems to have been used in the Irish Sea, the Firth of Clyde and the entire Argyll coast, where Máel Coluim was probably at large among supporters.

[27] Richard Oram puts forward the suggestion that it was during this period, rather than earlier, that David granted Walter fitz Alan the kadrez of Strathgryfe, with northern Kyle and the area around Renfrew, forming what would become the "Stewart" lordship of Strathgryfe; he also suggests that Hugh de Morville may have gained the kadrez of Cunningham and the settlement of "Strathyrewen" (i.e. Irvine).

[28] Additionally, there is good reason to suspect that King Fergus of Galloway was brought into David's sphere of influence.

[30] David also founded in the lands of Moray Urquhart Priory, possibly as a "victory monastery", and assigned to it a percentage of his cain (tribute) from Argyll.

[31] During this period too, a marriage was arranged between the son of Matad, mormaer of Atholl, and the daughter of Haakon Paulsson, earl of Orkney.

[32] While fighting King Stephen and attempting to dominate northern England in the following years, David was continuing his drive for control of the far north of Scotland.

[33] Sometime before 1146, David appointed a native Scot called Aindréas to be the first bishop of Caithness, a bishopric which was based at Halkirk, near Thurso, in an area which was ethnically Scandinavian.

[34] David soon found himself active and personally present in the north of Scotland because of the death of his cousin William fitz Duncan.

[35] David was in the north in the year 1150, founding Kinloss Abbey, while at the same time establishing new and reinforcing old castles which formed a line running from Banff on the borders of the mormaerdom of Buchan to Inverness.

These activities and pieces of charter evidence are enough to show that consolidation of royal authority there was David's biggest priority in the first years of the 1150s.

In 1151, King Eystein II of Norway put a spanner in the works by sailing through the waterways of Orkney with a large fleet and catching the young Harald unawares in his residence at Thurso.