Scotland Back in the Day: Turbulent times for Scotland’s own Lion King

Unless completely thick, most people will say Lionheart. Then ask them about the nickname of King William I of Scotland, and you’ll have to do the roaring cat act again because the vast majority of Scots, having been taught no great amount of Scottish history at school, will not know that he was King William the Lion (or Lyon, as it has been spelled differently down the ages), the only king of that name in Scotland prior to our James VI becoming James I of England and Ireland.

Talking of kings and their numbers, I have recently had considerable correspondence about various things which are accepted as conventions but are not factual – King James II of England and Ireland was King James VII of Scotland, William of Orange was King William III of England and Ireland but only William II of Scotland, and of course our own dear Queen Elizabeth II is actually Elizabeth I of Scotland.

Or is she? Most historians and constitutional lawyers accept that regnal numbers are matters of convention, and that we can all agree that kings such as the Georges were correctly numbered as they reigned after the Act of Union in 1707 in which it is stated – much though many of us may dislike it – that the two kingdoms of Scotland and England were “United into One Kingdom by the Name of Great Britain”.

Since then, the convention has arisen that monarchs’ names that pre-dated 1707 are simply “rolled on” as if the Act of Union had not existed, and I am afraid I have been guilty of accepting the convention and will continue to do so in the case of the current monarch as she is the second queen of that name to reign over a country now in the United Kingdom. The same applies to all the Edwards – no Scottish king was ever called Edward, so the convention applies to them.

There is no problem with names such as Charles, and the current Prince of Wales will indeed be Charles III as only two previous kings of that name reigned over both England and Scotland. But what will Scots do when the Duke of Cambridge ascends the throne of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, if it still exists then? For he will be King William V of England, but only William IV of Scotland.

It is a question seriously worth asking, because if we are independent, all Scots should have the choice about the future make-up of our country. Should we continue as a monarchy and recognise – and have a separate coronation for – Prince William as William IV, King of Scots, or become a republic?

If I was running the Yes movement just now, I would point out that the biggest thing we can offer people in an independent Scotland is choice – to rejoin the EU or not? To have a president or king/queen as head of state? To have our own written constitution and currency? For as shown by the case of the future King William V – as he will be known if we still are in the UK – right now Scotland doesn’t get those choices.

Which is a roundabout way of introducing William I of Scotland, our very own Lion King.

He really was one of the most fascinating characters in Scottish history, the second-longest-reigning monarch on the throne of Scotland and sixth-longest-reigning monarch in British history after our current Queen, then Victoria, George III, James VI and I and Henry III of England and Ireland. No doubt there is even now someone reaching for their laptop to fire off an email about James Francis Edward Stuart, the Old Pretender, who “reigned” for 64 years, 3 months, and 16 days, but who was never crowned in Britain though France, Spain and the Papal States all recognised him as James VIII and III.

There was only ever one William, King of Scots, and what a tumultuous reign he had. He was the younger son of the ill-starred Henry, Earl of Northumbria (Northumberland), who died in July 1152. Earl Henry was the only son and heir of the saintly David I, who had transformed Scotland by introducing continental-style reforms to the nation’s justice and town systems – he created the royal burgh name, which many towns claim to this day.

When David died in 1153, Malcom IV became King of Scots and was crowned at Scone. He was just 12 years old and several claimants to his throne advanced their causes during his reign, but he managed to fight or fob them off while also making peace with King Henry II of England, though he had to do homage to that monarch for his lands in England.

These at one time included Cumbria and Northumbria, but Henry wanted them back and that was a huge blow to the future King William, as he had been granted the earldom of Northumbria when his elder brother became King.

Malcolm, known as the Maiden, died without children at the age of just 24 in 1165, and William became King, being crowned at Scone on Christmas Eve that year.

In contrast to his virginal brother, William was a large and powerfully built man with unruly ginger hair, and certainly a lusty individual. A chronicler of the time wrote of him: “In his youthful years he some while acted as a youth and did not curb to the full the impulses of the flesh, and did not, by prevention and superiority of reason, subdue the assaults of sensuality.”

It is reckoned that over his lifetime he fathered at least six illegitimate children that we know of, and reportedly many more whose names have been lost to history, as well as his four legitimate children.

At this time, Scotland’s independence was far from assured, largely because the kingdom was riven with rebellion and Henry II was standing by to assert his overlordship of Scotland.

From the start of his reign William wanted Northumbria back – and no wonder, as it was both a centre of the Christian religion and a fertile and rich land. Henry said no, and William turned his attention to his hobby of fighting in tournaments – he was said to be a champion in the lists – before heading north to subdue rebellions and build castles.

Northumbria remained his obsession.

He began talks with King Louis VII of France in a bid to persuade Henry to cede Northumbria rather than see the Scots allied to the French, but the notoriously hot-tempered English king was having none of it.

We know how badly Henry felt about William because the cleric John of Salisbury wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, as follows: “On a certain day when King Henry was at Caen, and was eagerly conducting the affair that he had with the king of Scotland, he broke out in insulting language against Richard de Hamez, who seemed to be speaking to some extent in the king of Scotland’s favour.

“And the king, roused to his usual fury, flung his cap from his head, put off his belt, threw far from him the mantle and clothes that he had on; removed with his own hands the silken coverlet that was over the couch; and, sitting as it were in a manure-heap, began to chew the stalks of straw.”

THAT was in 1170, the year of the Yuletide murder of Thomas Becket by four of Henry’s knights. Three years later, and still doing penance for the killing of the swiftly canonised Saint Thomas Becket, Henry II was having his own rebellions, and in 1173-74 his own queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and three of his sons supported the revolt against the king that lasted almost 18 months.

William’s brother David, the Earl of Huntingdon, ancestor of Robert the Bruce, marched into England to lead the rebellion in the north, and William followed him in both 1173 – he returned home when castles were deemed too tough to capture – and again in July 1174, when disaster struck the king and his kingdom.

With a large army, William laid siege to the strategically important castle of Alnwick – where King Malcolm Canmore was killed in 1093 – and in a military error of some consequence he spread his army around the area. That enabled a party of 400 battle-hardened English knights to find William on his own with a bodyguard of just 60 men.

Nothing daunted, William charged at the English shouting: “Now we shall see which of us are good knights.” Unfortunately for him it turned out to be the English, and he was unhorsed and captured – the site was marked with a commemorative plaque, but that was moved to the entrance of Hulne Park in the early 19th century.

William was brought before Henry II, and we know that the two men had a difficult negotiation about what was to happen. Henry was prepared to set William free, but asked a very high price to which the King of Scots had to agree.

The Treaty of Falaise in Normandy, to where William had been transported as a prisoner, saw William accept that he had to do homage to Henry, who was also allowed to send garrisons to several Scottish castles. Henry also got to nominate a bride for William, and gave him Ermengarde de Beaumont, whose dowry was the return of Edinburgh Castle to Scottish control.

It turned out to be a lucky nomination for William, as his queen eventually gave him four children and was also a very good influence on the king, who came to love her greatly and to whom he remained faithful.

Even though he had to tax the people of Scotland to pay for his freedom, for the rest of his reign William suppressed rebellions and built castles to spread a system of justice across the country – and eventually he was acknowledged as a just and powerful king.

His nickname, which he never had in his life, came from the description of him by the chronicler Walter Bower as “the Lyon of Justice”. His actual nickname in life was “the Rough” – the erudite Scottish playwright and director Bill Bryden referenced that name with his play Willie Rough.

Nor is there any great evidence that the Lion name came from William creating the Lion Rampant as his royal standard, as that heraldic device was in existence in Scotland many years before he became king.

Some 15 years after his capture at Alnwick, William was finally able to buy out his deal with the English king, who was by then Richard the Lionheart – he needed money for the Crusades and William again raised a tax to pay off Richard.

He also had to deal with the Lionheart’s successor, his brother John, who forced William to abandon his claim to Northumbria and to marry his daughters to English noble husbands. In return, John sanctioned William’s only son Alexander II as heir to the throne. The latter years of William’s life were marred by illness and Queen Ermengarde was often effectively the ruler of Scotland in his stead.

William the Lion died, greatly mourned, on December 4, 1214, aged 71. He was buried in Arbroath Abbey, which he founded and endowed. His burial stone can be seen there to this day, not far from where the Declaration of Arbroath was signed in 1320.