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May 2003

Parish History Episode 25

King David's War

The le Spring family, together with Renaldus the priest and their other retainers, had established the Norman version of the Feudal System in Houghton-le- -Spring. It may have been a very unequal society, but “it worked” - the seed was sown, the harvest was gathered, the peasants were fed, and the baron and his men fed rather better. However Renaldus may well have been aware of a potential disaster facing the kingdom. William I, the Conqueror, had died in 1087. He was succeeded first by his eldest son, William II, and then, in 1100, by a younger son, Henry I. The younger William had died without heirs of his body, and his brother Henry had but one son (and some daughters as well). All three kings ruled both in Normandy and in England, and they frequently crossed the Channel as they moved between their homeland and the conquered land of England. In 1120 King Henry, together with many men and women of his Court, set sail from Normandy in two ships. Crossing the Channel they ran into a great storm and, though the King’s ship reached harbour in England safely, the other ship (“the White Ship”), on which King Henry’s only son, together with one of the King’s daughters and many lords and ladies, had embarked, sunk, and almost everybody aboard was drowned.

There was now no natural heir to the English and Norman throne. King Henry, already a widower, married again in the hope of begetting another son, but no more were born to him, and so, as he came to realise that he would die without male issue, he spent his last years persuading the feudal lords of both England and Normandy to swear allegiance to his eldest daughter, Matilda, in the event of his own death. No female monarch had previously been known in either country, and these oaths were much resented, and many of the Norman barons spoke openly of the need for a strong man to rule, and to keep the English down.

When King Henry died in 1135, assemblies of noblemen in both Rouen and London absolved themselves of their oaths to Matilda, and swore allegiance to a man called Stephen, who was the son of a daughter of William I (and thus a nephew of King Henry). Although Stephen was crowned in London, his authority was not recognised everywhere, some lords choosing not to regard themselves as having been absolved of their oaths of loyalty to Matilda. Soon these Norman lords were fighting against each other, nominally in support of either Stephen or Matilda, but in reality trying to seize each other’s lands. Civil war engulfed the Realm.

It was a terrible war, not only for the combatants, but also for the peasantry and the clergy, as the warlike lords ravaged each other’s lands, and burnt each other’s towns. History remembers this stupid war chiefly by the words written down by a monk of Peterborough, after he had described a wearisome list of atrocities : “Christ and His saints all slept” (The quotation tended later to become “God and all His angels slept”.).

Bad as things were in the Southern and Midland counties of England, they were worse in the North of England and in Normandy, where foreign invasion was added to internal strife. King Louis VII of France decided to punish the Norman lords for not keeping their oaths to Matilda, and attempted to conquer Normandy, while King David I of Scotland also took advantage of the situation by invading England, nominally in support of Queen Matilda. His real objective, however, was to alter the Border with England, to Scotland’s advantage.

Now, the Border between England and Wales runs approximately along a line separating lowland from upland Britain, and also approximates to a linguistic divide between two very different languages. However, England’s other frontier, that with Scotland, is not nearly so “natural” : it was established by historical chance, after the Battle of Carham in 1016, and if a few battles had had different outcomes, the Border between the Kingdoms might easily have come to lie several dozen miles North or South of where it now lies.

That Border, running along the Tweed and across the Cheviots, had been established by King Malcolm II’s victory at Carham, over a hundred years earlier. Now, with England in chaos, King David I assumed that he had an opportunity to advance his frontier further South.

It should have been an easy campaign. All Lothian, including Scotland’s capital city, Edinburgh, was English (or at any rate Northumbrian) in speech, and David knew that the Britons of Cumberland and the Anglians of Northumbria were seething with hatred for their Norman rulers. But he had no regular army, and the warriors he recruited for his campaign were almost all Gaelic Highlanders who spoke no English, and, believing that they were entitled to take whatever took their fancy, they fell on Northumberland like a pack of wolves, or, more literally, like the Danes in the days of Ragnar Leather-Breeches or the Normans during the Harrowing of the North. It seemed that Christ and His saints slept even more soundly in the North of England than they did around Peterborough.

After the Scots had stormed Newcastle, and murdered most of its inhabitants, King Stephen came North to assist Geoffrey Rufus, the fourth Norman Prince-Bishop, and established himself at Durham Castle. For several months in the Spring and Summer of 1136, the two Kings faced each other, one behind the walls of Durham, the other behind those of Newcastle. Their rival armies are reputed to have laid the countryside waste, while they foraged for supplies and punished potential “traitors”. Houghton-le-Spring may well have suffered badly that year, may even have been destroyed.

But Queen Matilda was winning victories in the South, and King Stephen found it necessary to strike camp, and to march away to repel Matilda from the gates of London. He did in theory make peace with King David, ceding Cumberland to the Scottish king, and handing over cash to persuade David to evacuate Northumberland. But when Stephen had departed, King David thought better of the agreement, and decided that Northumberland rightfully belonged to Scotland; and, pedantically, he decided that the Southern boundary of Northumberland lay not on the river Tyne but on the Humber. He mustered his men, and crossed the Tyne, and marched South.

Once again, the behaviour of his men was atrocious. Many towns and villages, particularly in the coastal areas, were laid waste. At some places, the peasants tried to find refuge in the new stone churches built by the Normans, but some of these churches were burnt by the Scots, and the people seeking sanctuary were butchered. Bishop Geoffrey Rufus of Durham at first tried to resist, but then abandoned Durham, possibly in the hope of sparing the people of the area from further destruction, and withdrew to Auckland Castle. He asked for terms, and was apparently willing to recognise King David’s sovereignty over Durham.

But David was an impatient man, and before negotiations were completed, he marched on, across the Tees, and into Yorkshire. King Stephen had saved London, but had abandoned the North. The only effective resistance given to the Scots North of the Tees had been that offered by Bishop Geoffrey. And South of the Tees, the defence of the Realm became the responsibility of Thurston, the Archbishop of York.

Thurston assembled a feudal levy which met the Scots at Northallerton, in what became known as the Battle of the Standard. He raised a standard in the centre of his battle line, which bore the banners of three popular Northern saints (Wilfred of Ripon, John of Beverley and Egbert of York), and also a consecrated Host. The Scots advanced - they cared little for Wilfred or John or Egbert - but when they realised that the standard bore also the Body of Christ, their courage faltered, and their charge broke upon the shields of Thurston’s men. They fell back, and, heartened by the knowledge that the Presence of the Body of Christ was immediately above them, the English rushed forward upon the retreating Scots, and slew hundreds of them. King David rallied the survivors, and withdrew from the battlefield, and a few days later he led his weary men back across the Tees.

It sounds like blasphemy to us. But there are two points of significance in the story of the Battle of the Standard. One is that, though the word Transubstantiation was not yet in use, and though theories of the Real Presence may not have been so well developed as they were later to be expounded by Aquinas, the “common man”, both in England and in Scotland, must have already believed much of the doctrine that would later be worked out by theologians in friaries and universities. The other point is that King David, by the atrocities his men committed, had united the Angles of Northumbria and the Britons of Cumbria against him, and had reconciled them to the rule of the Normans. The men this side of the Border were henceforth to think of themselves as Englishmen, and to think of the Scots as their enemies. All memory of times when York and Edinburgh were part of one Northumbrian Kingdom, and Carlisle and Dumfries part of one Kingdom of Reged, would soon be forgotten, and the Border would be engraved on men’s minds as firmly as on maps.