David the First of Scotland & The Battle of the Standard

byNuggetz

769 followers

3 years ago

Well, I just thought i would write a quick post on Scottish History as this is a topic that has always interested me and i just love sharing it. So, some time ago, i decided that instead of bending my friends ears with it all, i would instead start creating content on the topic online.

So, today i'm going to talk about David the First of Scotland and the battle of the Standard.

Now, David was one of Scotlands Kings who was an ambassador of a modern age in his time. He was the First King of Scotland born into Christendom. His father Malcolm the third who was the famous king who slew MacBeth, was the last of the Pictish Pagan kings who fell in love with the Saxon Princess Margaret who was a devout Christian. This led to Malcolms conversion to christianity, and with it, the converson of Scotland from being pagan to becoming a christiann country.

So, David was to become a very pius king who would live to fulfil his mothers wish of making Scotland completely Christian country. This was not an easy task it must be said, as Scotland then wasnt the same Scotland as it is today.

In fact, the Scotland that we see on a map today did'nt actually come into being until after the union of parliaments in 1706 following the Union of Crowns in 1603. Before that, Scotland was indeed a very divided country

In the lowlands, you had Kings and Nobles who liked to proclaim that they owned Scotland, but the bottom line was that the highlands were far too unruly to be lorded over by any King. The clans here ran their own shows depending on what part of the highlands you were in.

The Lord of the Isles

One of the most famous clans of the highlands were the McDonald clan who descended from Somerled, the Lord of the Isles. Now Somered was the son of an exiled Thane of Argyll who had been run out by the invasion of the Vikings. He came back to Scotland from Ireland with a small band of warriors and not only took back his fathers Thanedom of Argyll, but also successfully chased the Vikings out of the whole of the Western Isles of Scotland.

This fear of tact and bravery impressed the lowland king David the First and he was to form a pact with the Lord of the Isles where he would be allowed to call the highlands and islands part of his Scottish kingdom, but by no means should he ever set foot there and try to foot the bill. Because he'd just get baattered. Simple as that.

But Somerrled also agreed to form an alliance with the King of Scots where he would rouse the highland warriors an his Navy to support David should he need it.

The Battle of the Standard

This call to arms was to come soon enough when Davids neice Mathilda, the rightful empress of England was usurped by the Norman King Stephen. David agreed to support Mathilda and attack England from the northern flank while she attacked from the southern French side.

Stephen handled this northern attack by placing the Archbishop of Durham in charge of his realms northern defence.

Now, just to clear things up here, altoigh he was a Bishop, he was by no means the pius figure you may see on TV today on Songs of Praise wearing the fancy robe and pointy hat and carrying a bible. The Arch-Bishops iin these days were carefully chosen War mongers annd Durham was just that. He had already proved himself in the crusades against the saracens in Palestine and was counted as one of Englands most cunning of war mongers. So hewas definitely the man for the job.

When David marched his troops southward into England, he was met by Durhams forces near Northallerton in Yorkshire where they were to battle. Although Scotland outnumbered the English army by sheer strength, the English won the battle due to the Archbishop of Durhams cunning plan.

Basicly the plan was to grab some poor sod and nominate him Christ. He was subsequently nailed to a cross and raised high in front of the marching army.Durham, who was well known to have been to the Holy land as a crusader, proclaimed that while he was in Palestine, he had actually liberated the body of christ, which is what he was raising high here.

So, the message he was sending to the Scottish forces was that if they were to proceed in battle against them, they would not only just be attacking England, but they would also be attacking God directly.

Now, to the highlanders of Somerleds army, who were still mostly pagan or celtic church anyway, this was a load of hocus pocus.But it was enough to spook the Lowland noble classes who led the army, including David the First. Unfortunately, this was enough to put them off battle and they shat it and ran. So the highlander army of Somerled were left to fight some noble toffs battle for them in their cowardly absence.

Needless to say they got their asses handed to them on a plate and the battle of Northallerton was known famously since then as the battle of the Standard due to the Standard that Durham had held in front of the army as the body of hrist.style.

The Golden Age

Despite Davids epic failure in Battle at Northallerton, he did however leave behind hima legacy which was known as Scotlands Golden age. He was to have fuedalism instated in Scotland for the first time and founded a whole trading system of Burghs which were like market towns which would serve as the trae centres for each area where taxes could also be collected in fuedal.

Most of these Burghs still exist today except for Davids fvourite castle and burgh of Roxburgh which was later burned down by the wife of Jmes the 2nd after its ambush by the English army led to her husbands untimely death.

He was also to have the famous Holyrood abbey built as well as the Saint Margarets chapel in memory of his canonised mother. This chapel stands in Edinburgh castle as the castles oldest building.

David led Scotland into a Golden age that would last around 100 years until the untimely death of his Grandson Alexander the 4th which led to the wars of Independence that changed Scotland forever.