An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707). Robert S. Rait
He left three sons, of whom the two elder, Malcolm and William, became successively kings of Scotland, while from the youngest, David, Earl of Huntingdon, were descended the claimants at the first Inter-regnum. It was the fate of Scotland, as so often again, to be governed by a child; and a strong king, Henry II, was now on the throne of England. As David I had taken advantage of the weakness of Stephen, so now did Henry II benefit by the youth of Malcolm IV. In spite of the agreement into which Henry had entered with David in 1149, he, in 1157, obtained from Malcolm, then fourteen years of age, the resignation of his claims upon Northumberland, Cumberland, and Westmoreland. In return for this, Malcolm received a confirmation of the earldom of Huntingdon (cf. p. 18). The abandonment of the northern claims seems to have led to a quarrel, for Henry refused to knight the Scots king; but, in the following year, Malcolm accompanied Henry in his expedition to Toulouse, and received his knighthood at Henry's hands. Malcolm's subsequent troubles were connected with rebellions in Moray and in Galloway against the new régime, and with the ambition of Somerled, the ruler of Argyll, and of the still independent western islands. The only occasion on which he again entered into relations with England was in 1163, when he met Henry at Woodstock and did homage to his eldest son, who became known as Henry III, although he never actually reigned. As usual, there is no statement precisely defining the homage; it must not be forgotten that the King of Scots was also Earl of Huntingdon.
Malcolm died in 1165, and was succeeded by his brother, William the Lion, who reigned for nearly fifty years. Henry was now in the midst of his great struggle with the Church, but William made no attempt to use the opportunity. He accepted the earldom of Huntingdon from Henry, and in 1170, when the younger Henry was crowned in Becket's despite, William took the oath of fealty to him as Earl of Huntingdon. But in 1173–74, when the English king's ungrateful son organized a baronial revolt, William decided that his chance had come. His grandfather, David, had made him Earl of Northumberland, and the resignation which Henry had extorted from the weakness of Malcolm IV could scarcely be held as binding upon William. So William marched into England to aid the rebel prince, and, after some skirmishes and the usual ravaging, was surprised while tilting near Alnwick, and made a captive. He was conveyed to the castle of Falaise in Normandy, and there, on December 8th, 1174, as a condition of his release, he signed the Treaty of Falaise, which rendered the kingdom of Scotland, for fifteen years, unquestionably the vassal of England.[39] The treaty acknowledged Henry II as overlord of Scotland, and expressly stated the dependence of the Scottish Church upon that of England. The relations of the churches had been an additional cause of difficulty since the time of St. Margaret, and the present arrangement was in no sense final. A papal legate held a council in Edinburgh in 1177, and ten years afterwards Pope Clement III took the Scottish Church directly under his own protection.
About the political relationship there could be no such doubt. William stood, theoretically, if not actually, in much the same position to Henry II, as John Baliol afterwards occupied to Edward I. It was not till the accession of Richard I that William recovered his freedom. The castles in the south of Scotland which had been delivered to the English were restored, and the independence of Scotland was admitted, on William's paying Richard the sum of 10,000 marks. This agreement, dated December, 1189, annulled the terms of the Treaty of Falaise, and left the position of William the Lion exactly what it had been at the death of Malcolm IV. He remained liegeman for such lands as the Scottish kings had, in times past, done homage to England. The agreement with Richard I is certainly not incompatible with the Scottish position that the homage, before the Treaty of Falaise, applied only to the earldom of Huntingdon; but the usual vagueness was maintained, and the arrangement in no way determines the question of the homage paid by the earlier Scottish kings. For a hundred years after this date, the two countries were never at war. William had difficulties with John; in 1209, an outbreak of hostilities seemed almost certain, but the two kings came to terms. The long reign of William came to an end in 1214. His son and successor, Alexander II, joined the French party in England which was defeated at Lincoln in 1216. Alexander made peace with the regent, resigned all claims to Northumberland, and did homage for his English possessions—the most important of which was the earldom of Huntingdon, which had, since 1190, been held by his uncle, David, known as David of Huntingdon. In 1221, he married Joanna, sister of Henry III. Another marriage, negotiated at the same time, was probably of more real importance. Margaret, the eldest daughter of William the Lion, became the wife of the Justiciar of England, Hubert de Burgh. Mr. Hume Brown has pointed out that immediately on the fall of Hubert de Burgh, a dispute arose between Henry and Alexander. The English king desired Alexander to acknowledge the Treaty of Falaise, and this Alexander refused to do. The agreement, which averted an appeal to the sword, was, on the whole, favourable to Scotland. Nothing was said about homage for this kingdom. David of Huntingdon had died in 1119, and Alexander gave up the southern earldom, but received a fief in the northern counties, always coveted of the kings of Scotland. This arrangement is known as the Treaty of York (1236). Some trifling incidents and the second marriage of Alexander, which brought Scotland into closer touch with France (he married Marie, daughter of Enguerand de Coucy), nearly provoked a rupture in 1242, but the domestic troubles of Henry and Alexander alike prevented any breach of the long peace which had subsisted since the capture of William the Lion. In 1249, the Scottish king died, and his son and successor,[40] Alexander III, was knighted by Henry of England, and, in 1251, married Margaret, Henry's eldest daughter. The relations of Alexander to Henry III and to Edward I will be narrated in the following chapter. Not once throughout his reign was any blood spilt in an English quarrel, and the story of his reign forms no part of our subject. Its most interesting event is the battle of Largs. The Scottish kings had, for some time, been attempting to annex the islands, and, in 1263, Hakon of Norway invaded Scotland as a retributive measure. He was defeated at the battle of Largs, and, in 1266, the Isles were annexed to the Scottish crown. The fact that this forcible annexation took place, after a struggle, only twenty years before the death of Alexander III, must be borne in mind in connection with the part played by the Islanders in the War of Independence.
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