David I

David I (c.1085–1153), king of Scots (1124–53). An outstanding monarch, he was the youngest son of Malcolm Canmore and Queen (later St) Margaret, and succeeded his brother Alexander I. Educated at Henry I's court he drew on his experience of the Anglo‐Norman world to bring the Scots kingdom within the mainstream of European development. The ‘Davidian revolution’ involved the settlement in Scotland of Anglo‐Norman nobles, who established powerful local lordships defended with castles and supplied knights to the king's army. The monarchy was also strengthened by an extensive programme of church reform. He also developed the economic basis of the kingdom by founding burghs (notably Berwick, Edinburgh, and Aberdeen) and by introducing the first Scottish coinage.

Quintessentially, however, David was as much a conventional Celtic ruler as a new‐style ‘feudal’ monarch. He preferred to work with traditional power structures. He continued to use the ancient centres of royal authority; loyal native lords kept their prominence as members of the governing élite alongside the Anglo‐Norman incomers; the existing pattern of administrative offices coexisted with the sheriffs, justiciars, and other new officers; the taxation system remained based on the old levies of cain and conveth (‘tribute and hospitality’); and customary methods of military recruitment retained fundamental importance. His Scottish power base was confined largely to the Lowlands; but the reality of growing royal might was firmly demonstrated when he led vast armies in wars of territorial conquest against the embattled King Stephen, and from 1141 he ruled the ‘English’ north to the rivers Ribble and Tees as an integral part of an enlarged Scoto‐Northumbrian realm. But in 1152 David's only surviving son Henry predeceased him. When David himself died, he was therefore succeeded not by a mature and experienced heir, but by a boy‐king, his grandson Malcolm IV; and in 1157, at Henry II's insistence, the Scots were obliged to withdraw from the north.