316 Theory as to the Origin of the Crosses 



through the marriage of his sister, Matilda, with Henry I, son of 

 William the Conqueror ; to the veneration and affection in which 

 his mother and his sister were held ; to his residence at the English 

 court, which gave him access to the first men of his time ; to his 

 grasp of Norman institutions, and his employment of Norman 

 auxiliaries ; to the welcome he extended to foreigners, and his enlist- 

 ment of various nationalities in his enterprises ; to his warm cham- 

 pionship of the Church, and his patronage of its most powerful 

 agencies ; not to speak of his own personal qualities, which can 

 only be measured by his success in turning every advantage to 

 account — in other words, by the sum total of his achievement. Some 

 of these points have already been touched upon above ; others 

 will now be presented ; while still others are matters of common 

 knowledge, or can readily be found in encyclopaedias and other 

 standard works of reference. 



The only son of Queen Margaret now left was David, the youngest. 

 He appears, while yet a youth, to have accompanied his sister Matilda 

 to the Enghsh court, on her marriage with Henry the First, king of Eng- 

 land, which took place in November 1100, during the reign of Eadgar over 

 Scotland, and here he was trained, with other young Norman barons, 

 in all the feudal usages, so as to become, by education and association 

 with the young English nobility, embued with feudal ideas, and sur- 

 rounded by Norman influences, or, as WilUam of Malmesbury expresses 

 it, ' polished from a boy by intercourse and familiarity with us.' ^ 



He married Maud the daughter of Waltheof, by Judith the niece of 

 William the Conqueror ; and David became afterwards possessed of the 

 great earldoms of Huntingdon and Noithumberland ; so that he was, 

 at the time of his accession to the crown of Scotland, the most powerful 

 subject in England.^ 



While the king of the French was struggling for bare existence against 

 refractory barons as powerful as himself, while England was distracted 

 by the wars of Stephen and Maud so that men said that ' Christ and 

 his saints were asleep,' Scotland enjoyed a peace and prosperity which made 

 her a refuge for exiles and a mart for foreign countries. . . . By a poUtic 

 marriage he [David] gained an influence and a prestige beyond the border 

 which for a time made him arbiter of the fortunes of England. His 

 wife, Matilda, granddaughter of Siward of Northumbria, brought him 

 the Honour of Huntingdon, with lands in at least six English counties. 



^ Skene, Celtic Scotland 1. 454. 



2 Guthrie, History of Scotland 1. 303. 



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