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WILLIAM, surnamed THE LION,
one of the most distinguished of our early monarchs, was born in the year
1143. He was the second son of Henry, prince of Scotland, the son and
heir-apparent of David I., but who predeceased his father in 1152. On the
death of his son, David proclaimed his eldest grandson Malcolm as the heir
of his Scottish dominions, and, destining William for a separate
principality in Northumberland, caused the barons of that district to give
him their promise of obedience, and took hostages for its performance.
Malcolm accordingly succeeded David in 1153, as king of Scots, while
William, then only ten years of age, became superior of the territory now
constituting the northern counties of England.
In 1157, an agreement took
place between Malcolm and Henry II. of England, by which Northumberland was
ceded to the latter, who gave in return the earldom of Huntingdon; an
exchange which produced great dissatisfaction in Scotland, and the utmost
displeasure in the subject of this memoir. From this time Malcolm became
unpopular in Scotland, and it is not improbable that William took advantage
of the national prejudices to advance his own ambitious views. It is
represented by the Scottish historians that, in 1164, the people obliged him
to undertake the regency of the kingdom, while the king his brother gave
himself up to religious meditation; a very decent description of what must
have been little else than a usurpation. On the 28th December, 1165, Malcolm
died, and William succeeded to the crown.
William, having repeatedly
but vainly solicited the restitution of Northumberland from Henry II., at
length joined in a confederacy with his son, the celebrated Coeur de
Lion, for the purpose of dethroning that monarch; Richard not only
assuring him of the territory he desired, but also granting the earldom of
Cambridge to his younger brother David. In 1174, William served the purposes
of this confederacy by an invasion of Northumberland, which he spoiled
without mercy. He was prosecuting the siege of Alnwick with a small party,
when a large body of Yorkshire horsemen came upon him unexpectedly. Though
he had only sixty horse to present against four hundred, he gallantly
charged the enemy, crying out, "Now we shall see who are true knights." He
was unhorsed, disarmed, and made prisoner, while his companions, and some
others who were not then present, submitted to the same fate, from a
sentiment of duty. Henry did not make a generous use of this triumph. He
caused the captive monarch to be brought into the presence of his court at
Northampton, with his feet tied together under the belly of a horse, as if
he had been a felon; and afterwards placed him in strict confinement in the
castle of Falaise in Normandy. The Scots, towards the close of the year,
recovered their monarch from captivity, but at the expense of a temporary
surrender of their national independence. In terms of the treaty formed on
this occasion, William was to do homage to the English king for the whole
of his dominions; an object at which the latter had long unjustly aimed:
and the castles of Roxburgh, Berwick, Jedburgh, Edinburgh, and Stirling,
were surrendered as pledges on the part of the king of Scots, for the
performance of his promise. The independence of the Scottish church was at
the same time impignorated, but with certain cautious ambiguities of phrase
that reflect great credit on the ingenuity of its dignitaries, who managed
this part of the treaty. The claims of the English church over Scotland,
however, disturbed several of the ensuing years of the reign of William,
who, in resisting them, backed as they were by the pope and all his
terrors, showed surprising fortitude and perseverance.
In 1189, Richard Coeur de
Lion, having acceded to the throne, and considering that William of Scotland
had forfeited his independence in consequence of an attachment to his own
interest, restored it to him, along with the castles of Berwick and
Roxburgh. Perhaps it was not altogether from a generous or conscientious
motive that the king performed this act of justice. He was about to commence
his celebrated crusade, and it might be apparent to him that the king of
Scots was not a neighbour to be left dissatisfied: he also stipulated for
ten thousand merks as the price of the favour he was granting to his brother
monarch. The treaty, however, which these mingled notions had dictated, was
the blessed means of preserving peace between the two countries for upwards
of a century. When Richard was afterwards so unfortunate as to become a
captive in a foreign land, William contributed two thousand merks towards
his ransom. Such transactions afford a pleasing relief to the general strain
of our early history.
After a long reign, of which
the last thirty years appear to have been spent in tranquillity, and without
the occurrence of any remarkable event, William died at Stirling, December
4, 1214, in the seventy-second year of his age, and the forty-ninth of his
reign, leaving, by his wife, Ermingarde de Beaumont, one son, who succeeded
him under the title of Alexander II. William also had six illegitimate
children. He is allowed by historians to have been a vigorous and judicious
prince, not exempt of course from the vices of his age, among which must be
reckoned a rash valour, but adorned also by some of its virtues. William was
the first Scottish sovereign who bore a coat armorial. He assumed the
lion rampant upon his shield, and from this cause, it is supposed, he
obtained the designation of William the Lion. A curious portrait of
William has been preserved from time immemorial in the Trinity hospital at
Aberdeen, and was lately engraved and published in the Transactions of the
Antiquarian society of Scotland. |
