in 1251, married Margaret, Henry’s eldest daughter.  The relations of Alexander to Henry III and to Edward I will be narrated in the following chapter.  Not once throughout his reign was any blood spilt in an English quarrel, and the story of his reign forms no part of our subject.  Its most interesting event is the battle of Largs.  The Scottish kings had, for some time, been attempting to annex the islands, and, in 1263, Hakon of Norway invaded Scotland as a retributive measure.  He was defeated at the battle of Largs, and, in 1266, the Isles were annexed to the Scottish crown.  The fact that this forcible annexation took place, after a struggle, only twenty years before the death of Alexander III, must be borne in mind in connection with the part played by the Islanders in the War of Independence.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 34:  Art of War in the Middle Ages, p. 391.]

[Footnote 35:  Cf.  App.  A.]

[Footnote 36:  In the final order of battle, David seems to have attempted to bring all classes of his subjects together, and the divisions have a political as well as a military purpose.  The right wing contained Anglo-Norman knights and men from Strathclyde and Teviotdale, the left wing men from Lothian and Highlanders from Argyll and the islands, and King David’s reserve was composed of more knights along with men from Moray and the region north of the Forth.]

[Footnote 37:  The Empress Maud, daughter of Henry I, and niece of David, must be carefully distinguished from Queen Maud, wife of Stephen, and cousin of David, who negotiated the Treaty of Durham.]

[Footnote 38:  Ailred credits Bruce with a long speech, in which he tries to convince David that his real friends are not his Scottish subjects, but his Anglo-Norman favourites, and that, accordingly, he should keep on good terms with the English.]

[Footnote 39:  William’s English earldom of Huntingdon, which had been forfeited, was restored, in 1185, and was conferred by William upon his brother, David, the ancestor of the claimants of 1290.]

[Footnote 40:  As Alexander III was the last king of Scotland who ruled before the War of Independence, it is interesting to note that he was crowned at Scone with the ancient ceremonies, and as the representative of the Celtic kings of Scotland.  Fordun tells us that the coronation took place on the sacred stone at Scone, on which all Scottish kings had sat, and that a Highlander appeared and read Alexander’s Celtic genealogy (Annals XLVIII.  Cf.  App.  A).  There is no indication that Alexander’s subjects, from the Forth to the Moray Firth, were “stout Northumbrian Englishmen”, who had, for no good reason, drifted away from their English countrymen, to unite them with whom Edward I waged his Scottish wars.]

CHAPTER III

THE SCOTTISH POLICY OF EDWARD I