[BITList] King Alexander

[John Feltham]

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Alexander I  (d. 1124), king of Scots, was the fifth son of Malcolm III  (d. 1093) and his second wife, Margaret  (d. 1093), and was possibly named after Pope Alexander II (r. 1061-73). He is presumed to have left Scotland when his father and mother died in 1093 and to have returned when his older brother Edgar was placed on the throne in 1097. But Alexander is not mentioned by any source until the account of the opening of the tomb of St Cuthbert in 1104, when he was the only layman present and paid for a new shrine with generous gifts of cash-a remarkable testimony to his standing with the monks of Durham. Some accounts call him 'earl', but his endowment before 1107 is a matter of conjecture; it could have been that which Edgar prescribed in his will for David, their youngest brother. Alexander's succession in 1107, according to the Peterborough chronicle, was 'as King Henry granted him'  (Anderson, Scottish Annals, 128), but it is difficult to believe that the enthronement could be held up for weeks to allow consultation in France with Henry I. The latter's approval probably came soon after the succession, when Alexander was given as wife Sybilla, illegitimate daughter of the English king, a lady lacking in modesty and refinement, according to William of Malmesbury.

Alexander sought to deny to his youngest brother, David, the appanage of Strathclyde and Teviotdale bequeathed by Edgar, which David, with the help of the English and Normans, forced him to release; the relationship between them thereafter is something of a puzzle, for both took a hand in the affairs of Durham Priory and its lands in Berwickshire, yet Earl David's charters referred only once to his brother-when he founded Selkirk Abbey in 1113 for the souls of his parents and 'brothers', at a time when Henry reigned in England, Alexander in Scotia. David restored the see of Glasgow and rebutted the claims of Durham to authority in Teviotdale.

By contrast Alexander was only partially successful in his efforts to restore the see of St Andrews; his first nominee, Turgot, archdeacon and prior of Durham, who had written a biography for Alexander's sister Matilda of their mother, Margaret, was approved by Henry I and eventually consecrated at York on 1 August 1109, apparently without profession of obedience. The subsequent quarrels between Turgot and Alexander are not documented; it is known only that Turgot sought to go to Rome, and retired to Durham, where he died on 31 August 1115. Alexander, who appointed a monk of Bury St Edmund's to administer (it was later alleged, to plunder) the see, decided that his rights in the Scottish church would be better respected if a new bishop were consecrated by the archbishop of Canterbury, a see which had supported with monks his mother's foundation of Dunfermline Priory. After negotiations he requested in writing Eadmer, monk of Canterbury, for the see of St Andrews; the archbishop referred the request to Henry I who gave his approval in three lines-the whole correspondence is very revealing of relations between the kings and their churches. On 29 June 1120 Eadmer was elected and probably given the ring, but certainly not the staff, by the king-a reference to the contemporary investiture controversy between lay and ecclesiastical powers. A month later, because he was about to go to war, the king compromised, and Eadmer took the pastoral staff from the altar at St Andrews. But his consecration was another matter, a tussle between Canterbury, claimed by Eadmer, and York, supported by the pope; Alexander would have neither, since a profession of obedience was demanded. Eadmer consulted the bishop of Glasgow and two Canterbury monks (perhaps at Dunfermline) and, restoring staff and ring, withdrew to Canterbury, probably in 1121; he made an abortive attempt at reinstatement in 1122.

This dismal tale, largely documented from Canterbury sources, illuminates Alexander's motives: he was determined to protect royal rights in the church, and the freedom of the churches in his kingdom from those in England. He did not interfere with the ties between Canterbury and Dunfermline, to which priory he and his wife were strikingly generous. Royal rights enabled him to bring Augustinian canons from Nostell and to establish them as a priory at Scone, probably as late as 1122. In January 1124 the king followed this up by nominating their prior, Robert, to the vacant see of St Andrews. Alexander also gave extensive lands, the Boar's Raik in eastern Fife, to the church of St Andrews 'so that the religious life might be established in that church', a plan which he could not enforce and which was completed by his successor through the establishment of the Augustinian priory there in 1144. He also took steps which seem to have been intended to establish Augustinians at the cathedral of Dunkeld, again frustrated by established clergy and resulting later in the abbey of Inchcolm; and finally he planned (fruitlessly, it seems) a cell of Scone on the island in Loch Tay where his wife had died on 12 July 1122. Thus he was a determined protagonist of the Augustinians, upon whom he conferred extensive resources, listed in the charter by himself and Sybilla (which may be a later working up of an authentic list of gifts) to Scone Priory. It seems likely that Scone was intended by Alexander to be the source of a wide Scottish dispersal of the order, but that he came to this purpose too late in life to be able to implement it.

That charter shows the primitive character of the Scottish economy, for it deals in lands, town houses, and fractions of the produce paid as rents to the king; Alexander did not dispose of readily available cash, but he may have had a following of knights of Anglo-French background, for he had a constable, Edward, who was said by Orderic Vitalis, improbably, to be the son of Earl Siward of 'Mercia'. Alexander certainly took a contingent to support Henry I against Welsh princes in 1114, and he clearly had to fight domestic enemies also. He has left three original charters at Durham and four or five copies from Scone Priory; they show that he had a chancellor, the first known in Scotland, and a double-sided seal, closely based on that of William Rufus but with an uncrowned king in majesty. But the only long witness list is on the dubious charter endowing Scone Priory; it lists bishops, earls, and six others, none evidence of a cohort of 'Normans' such as attended his brother David.

Alexander I was described by Ailred in conventional terms as pious; but also as 'beyond measure awesome to his [lay] subjects'  (Anderson, Scottish Annals, 155), and the fifteenth-century vernacular chronicler, Wyntoun, called him 'the fierce'. Alexander had no surviving children with his wife, Sybilla. Orderic Vitalis alone tells that Malcolm, illegitimate son of Alexander, opposed the succession of David I in 1124; but Robert de Torigni identified Orderic's rebel Malcolm of 1130 as this illegitimate son, while Ailred identifies a Malcolm as 'heir of his father's [perhaps Alexander's] hatred and persecution'  (Anderson, Scottish Annals, 193). Alexander died at Stirling on 27 April 1124 and was buried in Dunfermline Abbey. He was succeeded by his brother David I.

A. A. M. Duncan 

Sources  A. O. Anderson, ed., Scottish annals from English chroniclers, AD 500 to 1286 (1908), 128-58, 167, 193 + A. O. Anderson, ed. and trans., Early sources of Scottish history, AD 500 to 1286, 2 (1922), 142-68 + A. C. Lawrie, ed., Early Scottish charters prior to AD 1153 (1905), 20-48 + O. Engels and others, eds., Series episcoporum ecclesiae Catholicae occidentalis, 6th ser., 1, ed. D. E. R. Watt (1991), 81-3 + A. A. M. Duncan, Scotland: the making of the kingdom (1975), vol. 1 of The Edinburgh history of Scotland, ed. G. Donaldson  (1965-75), 128-32 + G. W. S. Barrow, The kingdom of the Scots: government, church and society from the eleventh to the fourteenth century (1973), 169-73 + J. Wilson, 'The foundation of the Austin priories of Nostell and Scone', SHR, 7 (1909-10), 141-60 + T. N. Burrows, 'The foundation of Nostell Priory', Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 53 (1981), 31-5 + I. B. Cowan and D. E. Easson, Medieval religious houses: Scotland, 2nd edn (1976), 91, 96-9 + A. H. Dunbar, Scottish kings, 2nd edn (1906)
Likenesses  seal, U. Durham L., Durham dean and chapter archives · seal, BL; Birch, Seals, 14,769 [see illus.]