A Short History of Scotland | Page 7

Balliols and Bruces, with the Archbishop of York, now opposed him and his son Prince Henry. On August 22, 1138, at Cowton Moor, near Northallerton, was fought the great battle, named from the huge English sacred banner, "The Battle of the Standard."
In a military sense, the fact that here the men-at-arms and knights of England fought as dismounted infantry, their horses being held apart in reserve, is notable as preluding to the similar English tactics in their French wars of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
Thus arrayed, the English received the impetuous charge of the wild Galloway men, not in armour, who claimed the right to form the van, and broke through the first line only to die beneath the spears of the second. But Prince David with his heavy cavalry scattered the force opposed to him, and stampeded the horses of the English that were held in reserve. This should have been fatal to the English, but Henry, like Rupert at Marston Moor, pursued too far, and the discipline of the Scots was broken by the cry that their King had fallen, and they fled. David fought his way to Carlisle in a series of rearguard actions, and at Carlisle was joined by Prince Henry with the remnant of his men-at-arms. It was no decisive victory for England.
In the following year (1139) David got what he wanted. His son Henry, by peaceful arrangement, received the Earldom of Northumberland, without the two strong places, Bamborough and Newcastle.
Through the anarchic weakness of Stephen's reign, Scotland advanced in strength and civilisation despite a Celtic rising headed by a strange pretender to the rights of the MacHeths, a "brother Wimund"; but all went with the death of David's son, Prince Henry, in 1152. Of the prince's three sons, the eldest, Malcolm, was but ten years old; next came his brothers William ("the Lion") and little David, Earl of Huntingdon. From this David's daughters descended the chief claimants to the Scottish throne in 1292--namely, Balliol, Bruce, and Comyn: the last also was descended, in the female line, from King Donald Ban, son of Malcolm Canmore.
David had done all that man might do to settle the crown on his grandson Malcolm; his success meant that standing curse of Scotland, "Woe to the kingdom whose king is a child,"--when, in a year, David died at Carlisle (May 24, 1153).

SCOTLAND BECOMES FEUDAL.
The result of the domestic policy of David was to bring all accessible territory under the social and political system of western Europe, "the Feudal System." Its principles had been perfectly familiar to Celtic Scotland, but had rested on a body of traditional customs (as in Homeric Greece), rather than on written laws and charters signed and sealed. Among the Celts the local tribe had been, theoretically, the sole source of property in land. In proportion as they were near of kin to the recognised tribal chief, families held lands by a tenure of three generations; but if they managed to acquire abundance of oxen, which they let out to poorer men for rents in kind and labour, they were apt to turn the lands which they held only temporarily, "in possession," into real permanent property. The poorer tribesmen paid rent in labour or "services," also in supplies of food and manure.
The Celtic tenants also paid military service to their superiors. The remotest kinsmen of each lord of land, poor as they might be, were valued for their swords, and were billeted on the unfree or servile tenants, who gave them free quarters.
In the feudal system of western Europe these old traditional customs had long been modified and stereotyped by written charters. The King gave gifts of land to his kinsmen or officers, who were bound to be "faithful" (_fideles_); in return the inferior did homage, while he received protection. From grade to grade of rank and wealth each inferior did homage to and received protection from his superior, who was also his judge. In this process, what had been the Celtic tribe became the new "thanage"; the Celtic king (_righ_) of the tribe became the thane; the province or group of tribes (say Moray) became the earldom; the Celtic Mormaer of the province became the earl; and the Crown appointed _vice- comites_, sub-earls, that is sheriffs, who administered the King's justice in the earldom.
But there were regions, notably the west Highlands and isles, where the new system penetrated slowly and with difficulty through a mountainous and almost townless land. The law, and written leases, "came slowly up that way."
Under David, where his rule extended, society was divided broadly into three classes--Nobles, Free, Unfree. All holders of "a Knight's fee," or part of one, holding by free service, hereditarily, and by charter, constituted the communitas of the realm (we are to hear of the communitas later), and