Alexander II (Scotland)

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Seal of Alexander II

Alexander II (born August 24, 1198 in Haddington , † July 8, 1249 in Oban (Scotland) ) was King of Scotland from 1214 until his death. As a staunch advocate of royal power, he was able to expand his authority over the border regions of his empire, making Scotland one of the more important medium-sized empires in Europe during his reign. He established the good relationship with the southern neighboring country England, which began a period of peace between the empires that was unprecedented for the Middle Ages and lasted until 1296.

Childhood and youth

Alexander II was the only son of King Wilhelm the Lion and his wife Ermengarde . He still had three sisters. On October 12, 1201, the Scottish magnates in Musselburgh recognized him as heir to the throne. The young heir to the throne played a major role in the treaties that his father concluded in 1209 and 1212 with the English King John Ohneland . The exact content of the treaties is not known, but in the Treaty of Norham signed in 1209 , Alexander offered homage to the English king for the possessions his father held as a fiefdom of the English crown, namely Tynedale and supremacy over the Honor of Huntingdon . The Scottish king entrusted the English king with his two older daughters Margarete and Isabella so that he could marry them off. Apparently, King Wilhelm expected that at least one of his two daughters would marry one of the sons of the English king. In a further treaty, signed in 1212, the English king was granted the right to marry Alexander. It is possible that Johann Ohneland promised to marry Alexander to his eldest daughter, Johanna , who was then two years old . The Scots hoped that the English princess would bring Northumberland as a dowry into the marriage. Alexander and Johanna actually married, but not until nine years later, and the bride did not receive Northumberland as a dowry. On March 4, 1212 Alexander was knighted by Johann Ohneland in Clerkenwell . The young heir to the throne was carefully prepared to take the throne from his aging father. William the Lion participated in the government and in the summer of 1212 made him supreme command of the army, which was campaigning against the rebel Guthred MacWilliam in Moray and Ross . Eventually Guthred was captured, brought before the young heir to the throne, and executed. When Wilhelm the Lion was on his deathbed in Stirling , he again asked his courtiers to promise to recognize Alexander as the next king. One day after the death of his father, Alexander was installed as king in Scone on December 5, 1214 .

Relationship with England

Conflict with Johann Ohneland

The young Alexander took over an unstable empire. In the north , which is dominated by Gaelic , and in western Scotland, which is influenced by Norway , the crown had little authority. No Regency Council was formed for the minor Alexander, but the young king was heavily dependent on his father's advisers, whom he confirmed in their offices in early 1215. In 1215 there was another revolt in Moray or in Ross when Donald Ban MacWilliam , a brother of Guthred who was executed in 1212, claimed the crown himself. However, Donald Ban and his supporters were put down by an army loyal to the king under the north Scottish magnate Farquhar MacTaggart , Donald Ban was executed. Relations with England were also quickly strained, as Johann Ohneland, to whom his father had made considerable concessions, now claimed supremacy over Scotland. In addition, he did not want to keep the promises he had given Wilhelm. But when the conflict between the king and an opposition from the nobility came to a head in England, Alexander tried to take advantage of this to maintain his position. He renewed the Scottish claims to the northern English border counties that his father had already raised. When Johann Ohneland was forced by his barons to recognize the Magna Carta in June 1215 , he had to admit in Article 59 that he would not only implement his promises regarding the still unmarried sisters of Alexander, but also the unspecified rights and privileges of the Scottish king to be observed.

Participation in the war of the barons

Successful Scottish attack on northern England

When Johann Ohneland disregarded the regulations of the Magna Carta in August 1215, Alexander II invaded Northumberland and began the siege of Norham on October 19, 1215 . Since the war between the English barons and Johann Ohneland began at the same time , the Scots were initially superior to the English in this war. Alexander II even had the full support of the northern English barons, so that at least 25 English castles north of the Humber offered no resistance to the Scots. The leaders of the northern English barons, Robert de Ros and Eustace de Vesci , had married illegitimate daughters of King Wilhelm I and were related by marriage to Alexander II. Negotiations between the barons and Alexander II resulted in a treaty in which the barons recognized Alexander's claims to Northumberland, Cumberland and Westmorland . They even went so far as to actively urge local landowners to recognize the rule of the Scottish King. Eustace de Vesci officially declared Alexander II Lord of Northumberland during the Siege of Norham, and much of the county's nobility paid homage to him on October 22, 1215 at Felton, near Alnwick .

Counterstrike from Johann Ohneland and another Scottish attack

After Alexander II burned the royal castle in Newcastle in December 1215 , Johann Ohneland undertook a campaign north. He captured numerous rebel castles including Carlisle and Richmond and forced the rebellious Yorkshire barons to flee to Scotland. There they pledged allegiance to Alexander II on January 11, 1216 in Melrose . The English king now crossed the Scottish border, conquered Berwick on January 15th, 1216 and plundered and devastated Lothian up to Haddington . But without an open battle, Alexander II was able to drive out the English, who retreated south again. The Scots followed them all the way to Richmond . Then he besieged Carlisle from July 1216 , which was captured on August 8, except for the castle. Carlisle Castle surrendered on an unknown later date.

Alliance with France and attempt to occupy northern England

After conquering Carlisle, Alexander II made an unprecedented advance across England to the Kent coast . There he met the French Prince Ludwig , to whom the rebellious barons had offered the English crown. In mid-September Alexander paid homage to the French in Dover for the Honor of Huntingdon and for the three northern English counties. In return, Ludwig assured him of his support. Then Alexander withdrew to the north, where he could not only avoid an ambush by Johann's troops on the River Trent , but also loot their camp. Alexander II had agreed with Prince Ludwig that his northern English conquests should continue to belong to England. Soon, however, he no longer kept this agreement, but tried to unite the northern English counties with his empire. Although his rule over Northumberland was not yet secured, he appointed Alan of Galloway lord of northern Westmorland and gave him extensive viceroyal authority over all of Cumbria . Before April 1217, Alexander also claimed the royal right to nominate a candidate for the diocese of Carlisle, which had been vacant since the death of Bishop Bernard in 1214 .

Defeat and peace agreement

While Alexander II tried to take possession of northern England, the forces loyal to the king gained the upper hand in England. After the death of King Johann Ohneland in October 1216, English barons loyal to the king, with the help of the papal legate Guala Bicchieri, crowned his son Heinrich as the new English king and recognized the Magna Carta in his name. This removed two of the main reasons for the English barons' rebellion, and after the defeat of a French army at the Battle of Lincoln in May 1217, Alexander's chances of asserting his conquests dwindled too. In May and July 1217 he led raids through Northumberland, which however only accelerated the peace negotiations between France and England. In September 1217 the Peace of Lambeth was signed between England and France, after which the remaining French troops left England. In addition, Heinrich III. the support of Pope Honorius III. from which he held his kingdom as a fief. Legate Guala took action against the Scots. He excommunicated Alexander II and his leading nobles and imposed the interdict on Scotland . Abandoned by his French allies, Alexander II recognized his defeat in the face of this pressure. The English Government had to admit in the Peace of Lambeth that the peace would also apply to Scotland if it were to vacate the occupied territories in northern England. On December 1, 1217, Alexander surrendered Carlisle to the English, whereupon the excommunication of him and his subjects was lifted. On December 19, or shortly before, he submitted to the young English king in Northampton , who ignored Alexander's claims to the frontier counties and accepted his homage to Tynedale and the Honor of Huntingdon. As a result, the interdict imposed on Scotland was relaxed in early 1218, although several leading Scottish bishops only received absolution later in the year .

Consequences for the further relationship with England

Despite the initial Scottish successes, England, as in the war from 1173 to 1174 , successfully asserted itself in the war against Scotland. In view of this experience, Alexander II pursued a realistic policy towards his militarily superior neighbor until his death. He successfully avoided another military conflict, although there were political differences of opinion between him and the English King Henry III. gave.

Improving relations with England

In 1221 Alexander finally married the English king's daughter Johanna. In the same year, the English justiciar Hubert de Burgh married Alexander's sister Margarete. These weddings, complemented by the marriage of Alexander's sister Isabella to the English magnate Roger Bigod, 4th Earl of Norfolk in 1225, further improved Anglo-Scottish relations, although the Scottish princesses were treated shabbily in England. Hubert de Burgh was later accused of having married one of the princesses himself, although it had been agreed in 1209 that one of them should be married to an English prince. In addition, Alexander II had to raise high taxes in Scotland to raise the dowries for his sisters. These taxes raised about £ 10,000. Joan of England, on the other hand, did not bring any land holdings as a dowry when she married Alexander. Nevertheless, the Anglo-Scottish relationship continued to improve. In July 1223 Alexander II met the English king in Worcester and in December 1229 he came to the English royal court on a friendship visit. In 1235 he finally married his youngest sister Marjorie to the English magnate Gilbert Marshal, 4th Earl of Pembroke , after various other marriage plans had failed for her.

Stabilization of relations through the treaties of York and Newcastle

The treaty of York signed on September 25, 1237 was a visible sign of the good relationship between England and Scotland . He released the English king from all marriage obligations that still existed after the treaty concluded in 1209. In return, Alexander II solemnly renounced all claims of the Scottish kings on Northumberland, Cumberland and Westmorland forever. As compensation, the English king awarded him land in the north of England, from which he should have an annual income of £ 200. Indeed, before 1242 Alexander received several estates in Cumberland with the center in Penrith . Still, relations between England and Scotland were not entirely untroubled. Alexander knew that he angered the English king when he looked for a new bride in France after the death of his wife Johanna in 1238 and eventually married Marie de Coucy . Above all, the English fear of a new alliance between Scotland and France almost led to a new war between England and Scotland in 1244. After the English king had called up an army, Alexander II also called up his army. The crisis was then quickly resolved through negotiations that led to the Treaty of Newcastle on August 14, 1244 . In this contract Alexander renounced all measures against Heinrich III. with the exception of measures to defend Scottish interests. To seal the alliance, he betrothed his heir Alexander to Margaret , the eldest daughter of the English king. Neither in the peace of 1217 nor after the crisis of 1244 did Alexander recognize the English king as overlord, but overall Alexander pursued a conciliatory policy towards England. Despite the temporary tensions, this policy has been instrumental in consolidating the Kingdom of Scotland and therefore cannot be valued highly enough.

Alexander II coat of arms

Domestic politics

Extension of royal power to northern and western Scotland

Alexander II had both the desire and the opportunity to expand royal power to northern and western Scotland. In early 1221 he moved to Inverness , where he put down the revolt of Donald MacNeil , a clan leader from the Highlands . In 1221 and 1222 he led two major campaigns to Argyll , whereby he gained control of Kintyre and perhaps also of Cowal . To this end, he expanded Tarbert as a royal castle. In September 1222, Bishop Adam of Caithness , his main supporter in northern Scotland, was assassinated. The king then led a punitive expedition to northern Scotland that same year. The murderers were caught and mutilated, and the king temporarily confiscated half of the estates of the unreliable John Haraldson, Earl of Caithness . Probably in 1228 he again moved with an army to northern Scotland to put down another revolt by Clan MacWilliam , who had already rebelled in 1212 and 1215. Before retiring, he hired William Comyn, Earl of Buchan , to completely put down the revolt in Moray. Alexander's supporters were brutal. The severed heads of the leaders of the revolt were presented to the king, and in 1230 supporters of the king smashed the head of a little girl from the MacWilliam clan at the Forfar market cross . This ruthless policy enabled the king to subdue Northern Scotland. He consolidated this success by forming new territories. In the 1230s he founded the two great lordships of Badenoch and Lochaber in the Highlands, renewed the Earldom Ross and created the Earldom Sutherland . To this end, he appointed Magnus, a new Earl of Caithness who was loyal to him . When Alan of Galloway got involved in a power struggle on the Isle of Man , which was under Norwegian suzerainty , in the spring of 1230 a Norwegian fleet appeared off western Scotland . The Norwegians plundered numerous West Scottish islands, but also the Isle of Bute and other possessions of Walter Fitzalan . In support of Walter Fitzalan and Alan of Galloway, Alexander II led an army to Ayrshire at the end of May 1230 . The Norwegians stopped attacking Galloway, but Alan of Galloway had to end his intervention on Man.

Submission of Galloway

When Alan of Galloway died in 1234, leaving only one illegitimate son and three daughters, the king took the opportunity to extend his power to south-west Scotland. He ignored the traditional Celtic inheritance law and thus the inheritance claims of Alan's illegitimate son Thomas . Instead, he divided Galloway under feudal law among Alan's three daughters, all of whom were married to English barons. When it came to a revolt in Galloway in favor of Thomas, the king moved with an army to Galloway. On July 15, 1235, the rebels raided the camp of the royal army, but when the loyal Farquhar MacTaggart, now Earl of Ross, arrived with more troops, the king was able to win the battle. Alexander II installed Walter Comyn, Earl of Menteith as administrator of Galloway, who until the end of 1235 forced Thomas to give up. Thomas was incarcerated in a castle belonging to his half-sister, Dervorguilla de Balliol , while two of his Irish allies in Edinburgh were torn apart by horses.

Justice and Finance

Alexander II was not only able to extend royal power to the outskirts of Scotland, but also strengthened the royal judiciary and pursued a successful financial policy. This was shown when he was able to give large sums of money to his sisters as dowry. In addition, he collected a treasure for the planned purchase of the West Scottish islands from Norway. As king, he was able to confirm and expand his position as chief judge. The judiciary changed during his reign. At the beginning of his rule, conflicts were often resolved through court battles, but these became increasingly discredited and were replaced by jury courts . The judgments passed by royal judges were generally accepted, and the judicial system was supplemented by the increasing jurisdiction of ecclesiastical courts. Alexander II passed numerous laws, the most important of which was the provisions on the punishment of robbery and unlawful expropriation. He was also likely to have laws protecting underage heirs.

Relationship to the nobility

As king, Alexander II insisted on the right to enforce his rule as king also against the nobility. He owed the strength of his rule to the loyal support of the magnates of the Scottish east coast, the center of medieval Scotland. In contrast to the English King Henry III, who had to assert himself against his barons, the authority of Alexander in Eastern Scotland was almost unchallenged. He was even able to settle the bitter feud between the Comyn and Bisset families , with remarkable skill. In the next few years no aristocratic family could claim a supremacy. When two rival aristocratic factions formed around Walter Comyn, Earl of Menteith and Patrick, 5th Earl of Dunbar , Alexander II appointed the previously insignificant Alan Durward as the new Justiciar of Scotia in 1244 . Durward was not assigned to either group and was the new chief advisor to the king. The king also had no qualms about executing or mutilating oppositional nobles. This mainly affected members of the traditional Gaelic nobility. They also had to accept losses of possessions which the king gave to members of the Anglo-Norman families, especially the Comyns, Murrays and Stewarts . That is why chroniclers also regarded him as a ruthless, modern king who persecuted and subjugated the Gaelic nobility. On the other hand, he treated the subjugated Galloway mildly in 1235, and in 1245 he was also ready to recognize that in Galloway the old traditional law was partly valid. Nor did he dispossess the Caithness nobles involved in the crime after the murder of Bishop Adam. Instead, they got their properties back in exchange for fines. Not least because of this, the king was able to gain increasing authority in northern and western Scotland. This was compounded by working with traditional nobles like Farquhar MacTaggart and Alan of Galloway.

The ruins of the Balmerino Abbey founded by Alexander II

Relationship to the Church

Alexander II wanted to strengthen his position through an anointing and coronation based on the Central European model. His attempts in 1221 and 1233 to get the Pope's approval for it were unsuccessful, mainly due to the resistance of the English king. Nevertheless, Alexander achieved a strengthening of the Scottish identity as a separate empire, not least through his pragmatic policy towards England, which secured his independence. When Pope Gregory IX. 1235 at the urging of Heinrich III. ordered the English king to be recognized as overlord, he simply disregarded this decree. This led to the Treaty of York, signed in 1237, which found a compromise for relations between the two kingdoms that was acceptable for England and Scotland.

During his reign, Pope Honorius III. 1218 confirmed the privileges of the Scottish Church and in 1225 granted the right to hold its own provincial synod. Subsequently, the Scottish bishops supported the king in repelling English attempts to gain greater influence in Scotland. Personally, Alexander was pious and supported the Church. He made donations in favor of several dioceses, in addition he generously supported the monasteries Scone , Coldingham , Dunfermline , Coupar Angus , Melrose , Newbattle and Arbroath . Before 1229 he founded the Cistercian monastery Balmerino in Fife together with his mother Queen Ermengarde . Around 1230 he founded Pluscarden Priory in Moray according to the new rule of the Val-des-Choues monastery . In 1230 or 1231 he brought the first mendicant monks of the Dominican order to Scotland, possibly coming from Paris. At his death there were nine Dominican and at least three Franciscan settlements in Scotland, almost all of which were royal foundations. At the same time, Alexander also used the church to strengthen his politics. He made sure that the dioceses of Argyll , Caithness , Moray and Whithorn in the Gaelic part of Scotland were under the supervision of the Scottish Church.

Attempt to subjugate the Hebrides and death

With the conquest of Galloway, the king had acquired 200 warships, which he used to extend his power to the Hebrides . These were formally under the sovereignty of the Norwegian king, but the Lord of the Isles had possessions on the mainland and were thus under the sovereignty of the Scottish king. De facto, however, they ruled largely autonomously over their possessions. While the Norwegian King Håkon IV increasingly expanded his influence on the Hebrides, Alexander II had little influence in the region so far. Already in the 1220s Alan of Galloway had tried in vain to subdue the islands of Syke , Lewis and Man . These attacks had only provoked a Norwegian retaliatory attack in which a fleet sent by Håkon IV, with the support of ships from the Orkneys and the Hebrides, attacked Bute and Kintyre from 1230 to 1231 , thus humiliating Alexander II. Since Alexander II could not subjugate the Hebrides, he made the Norwegian king a first offer to buy in 1244, which was followed by more. Håkon IV refused, however, and when he even commissioned Ewen of Argyll to re-establish the authority of the Norwegian king in the Hebrides, Alexander II undertook a large-scale attack from water and from land to target the Hebrides in the summer of 1249 conquer. After he had successfully driven Ewen from mainland Scotland, the king fell ill with a fever in the further course of the campaign and died on Oban Bay on the Island of Kerrera . His sudden death led to the campaign being broken off. He was buried in Melrose Abbey.

Marriages and offspring

Probably on June 19, 1221 Alexander II married Joan of England in York . The marriage remained childless. After Johanna's death in 1238, Alexander married Marie de Coucy on May 15 in Roxburgh. With her he had a child, a son:

The king also had an illegitimate daughter, Margaret , whom he married to his counselor Alan Durward.

His heir was his underage son Alexander, for whom several Guardians initially took over the reign.

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Alexander II.  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Brown: The wars of Scotland, 1214-1371 . Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 2004, ISBN 0-7486-1237-8 , p. 21.
  2. ↑ Michael Brown: The wars of Scotland, 1214-1371 . Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 2004, ISBN 0-7486-1237-8 , p. 28.
  3. ^ Archibald AM Duncan: Scotland. The Making of the Kingdom (The Edinburgh History of Scotland; Vol. I ). Oliver & Boyd, Edinburgh 1975. ISBN 0-05-00203-7-4 , p. 521.
  4. ^ Archibald AM Duncan: Scotland. The Making of the Kingdom (The Edinburgh History of Scotland; Vol. I ). Oliver & Boyd, Edinburgh 1975. ISBN 0-05-00203-7-4 , p. 523.
  5. ^ David Carpenter: The minority of Henry III . University of California Press, Berkeley 1990. ISBN 0-520-07239-1 , p. 69.
  6. ^ Archibald AM Duncan: Scotland. The Making of the Kingdom (The Edinburgh History of Scotland; Vol. I ). Oliver & Boyd, Edinburgh 1975. ISBN 0-05-00203-7-4 , p. 524.
  7. ^ David Carpenter: The minority of Henry III . University of California Press, Berkeley 1990. ISBN 0-520-07239-1 , p. 196.
  8. ↑ Michael Brown: The wars of Scotland, 1214-1371 . Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 2004, ISBN 0-7486-1237-8 , p. 74.
  9. ↑ Michael Brown: The wars of Scotland, 1214-1371 . Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 2004, ISBN 0-7486-1237-8 , p. 78.
  10. ^ Archibald AM Duncan: Scotland. The Making of the Kingdom (The Edinburgh History of Scotland; Vol. I ). Oliver & Boyd, Edinburgh 1975. ISBN 0-05-00203-7-4 , p. 539.
  11. ^ Alan Young: The Political Rôle of Walter Comyn, Earl of Menteith, during the Minority of Alexander III of Scotland. In: The Scottish Historical Review. 57, 1989, p. 123.
  12. ^ Archibald AM Duncan: Scotland. The Making of the Kingdom (The Edinburgh History of Scotland; Vol. I ). Oliver & Boyd, Edinburgh 1975. ISBN 0-05-00203-7-4 , p. 307.
predecessor Office successor
Wilhelm I. King of Scotland
1214–1249 		Alexander III
personal data
SURNAME Alexander II
BRIEF DESCRIPTION King of Scotland
DATE OF BIRTH August 24, 1198
PLACE OF BIRTH Haddington (East Lothian)
DATE OF DEATH July 8, 1249
Place of death Oban (Scotland)