360 Conclusion 



at the English court, and his direct relations with France, he was in 

 a position to command the services of accomplished architects and 

 sculptors, as is clearly shown by the character of the monastic build- 

 ings erected under his rule ; this has been duly set forth and illustrat- 

 ed in the latter part of our study (pp. 115 ff.), and hence need not be 

 further rehearsed here. 



In the absence of more explicit and unequivocal testimony than we 

 have been able to adduce, we may not be warranted in the absolute 

 assertion that David is responsible for the existence of the Ruthwell 

 and Bewcastle crosses ; but when we think of him as the son of the 

 saintly Margaret, the brother-in-law of the scholar-king Henry I, 

 the introducer of Norman piety and skill into Scotland, the fervent 

 adorer of the cross, the tamer of Border barbarism, the man most 

 feared by the desperate, and most beloved by the good, of any who 

 bore rule in English or Scottish Cumbria in the Middle Ages, we can 



Gumh. 2. 78, 452 ; Ferguson, Hist.Cumh., pp. 2, 3 ; Surtees Soc. Pub. 68. 437-41, 

 443, 447, 463-4 ; Scott, Gtiy Marmering, chaps. 22, 23, 24. On the desolateness 

 of the region, see Hutchinson, Hist, of the County of Cumberland 1. 36, 76 ; 

 Archoeologia\4:. 117; Denton, quoted by Nanson, op. cit., p. 227; Surtees Soc. 

 Pub. 68. Ixvii ; on its spoliation by wars (in 1298, etc.), and consequent 

 decay, Hutchinson, op. cit. 1. 78. In 1881 Bewcastle had 20 persons to the 

 square mile, while the whole of Cumberland had 165, and England and 

 Wales 447 ; in 1901 the figures were 16, 176, and 558 respectively. For the 

 state of the borderland between Cumberland and Dumfriesshire, in the vi- 

 cinity of Ruthwell, before 1603, see Johnstone, Hist. Fain. Dumfriesshire, 

 pp. 1-2. 



On the other hand, Avith reference to southern Scotland, and the shores 

 of the Solway in particular, see Ruskin, Prceterita 4. 69, 70, 72, 74 : * It has 

 . . . been . . . only mthin the last five or six years that I have fully 

 understood the power, not on Sir Walter's mind merely, but on the 

 character of all good Scotchmen, (much more, good Scotchwomen,) of the 

 two lines of coast from Holy Island to Edinburgh, and from Annan to 

 the Mull of Galloway. Between them, if the reader will glance at any 

 old map which gives rivers and mountains, ... he will find that all the 

 highest intellectual and moral powers of Scotland were developed, from 

 the days of the Douglases at Lochmaben, to those of Scott in Edinburgh, 

 — Burns in Ayr,— and Carlyle at Ecclefechan, by the pastoral country, 

 everywhere habitable, but only by hardihood under suffering, and patience 

 in poverty ; defending themselves always against the northern Pictish war 

 of the Highlands, and the southern, of the EngUsh Edwards and Percys, 

 in the days when whatever was loveUest and best of the Cathohc rehgion 

 haunted still the— then not ruins, — of Melrose, Jedburgh, Dryburgh, Kelso, 

 Dunblane, Dundrennan, New Abbey of Dumfries, and, above all, the most 



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