the most useful combatants in the long struggle for the independence of
the nation. Rome, on the whole, backed that cause. The Scottish
Catholic churchmen, in fact, pursued the old patriotic policy of
resistance to England till the years just preceding the Reformation, when
the people leaned to the reformed doctrines, and when Scottish national
freedom was endangered more by France than by England.




CHAPTER V. DAVID I. AND HIS TIMES.


With the death of Alexander I. (April 25, 1124) and the accession of his
brother, David I., the deliberate Royal policy of introducing into
Scotland English law and English institutions, as modified by the Norman
rulers, was fulfilled. David, before Alexander's death, was Earl of the
most English part of Lothian, the country held by Scottish kings, and
Cumbria; and resided much at the court of his brother-in-law, Henry I. He
associated, when Earl, with nobles of Anglo-Norman race and language,
such as Moreville, Umfraville, Somerville, Gospatric, Bruce, Balliol, and
others; men with a stake in both countries, England and Scotland. On
coming to the throne, David endowed these men with charters of lands in
Scotland. With him came a cadet of the great Anglo-Breton House of
FitzAlan, who obtained the hereditary office of Seneschal or _Steward_ of
Scotland. His patronymic, FitzAlan, merged in Stewart (later Stuart),
and the family cognizance, the _fesse chequy_ in azure and argent,
represents the Board of Exchequer. The earliest Stewart holdings of land
were mainly in Renfrewshire; those of the Bruces were in Annandale. These
two Anglo-Norman houses between them were to found the Stewart dynasty.