he early years of David I are the most obscure of his life. Because there is little documented evidence, historians can only guess at most of David's activities in this period. David was born on a date unknown in 1084 in Scotland. He was probably the eighth son of King Malcolm III, and certainly the sixth and youngest born by Malcolm's second wife, Margaret of Wessex. He was the grandson of the ill-fated King Duncan I.
David I came to the Scottish throne when his brother King Alexander I died in 1124 without an heir. David's two wars with England failed to bring northern English lands into his realm. He first marched south on the pretext of protecting the interests of his niece Matilda, daughter of Henry I, against Stephen, who had claimed the English throne. The Scottish army was routed at the Battle of the Standard, fought at Cutton Moor in 1138. David, however, was able to secure recognition of his son, Henry, as holder of Northumberland and Huntingdon, to which David's wife had been heiress. When a second invasion of England in 1140 proved as futile as the first, David gave up his program of expansion and devoted himself to internal Scottish affairs.
David brought a number of Norman nobles and churchmen with him when he traveled from England to take the Scottish crown. Norman nobles displaced Celtic leaders in the north, and their castles began to rise to symbolize the shift of political power. Landholdings based on Scottish customary rights were made subject to Norman charters, and Norman practices in law and administration were introduced. For the man in the field, however, it was a quiet revolution; no one was displaced, and the new system was grafted onto the old in a peaceful way.
Norman influences were especially apparent in the Church. David increased the number of dioceses from four to nine and named Normans as bishops of the new ones. He also founded 10 monasteries, welcoming to Scotland new orders that were popular south of the border, the Cistercians and the Augustinian canons regular. His active patronage of the Church won for David an enduring reputation for piety.
David was truly the father of the city, or burgh, in Scotland. He himself chartered only four or five burghs, but he allowed the development of private burghs under the aegis of his ecclesiastical and lay nobles. The rise of cities was related to a developing commerce, and to help the growing trade David broke new ground by issuing a silver penny, the first Scottish coinage. Within the cities a new class developed, the townsmen.
However, while there may be debate about the importance or extent of the historical change in David I's era, no historian doubts that it was taking place. The reason is what Barrow and Lynch both call the "Davidian Revolution". David's "revolution" is held to underpin the development of later medieval Scotland, whereby the changes he inaugurated grew into most of the central institutions of the later medieval kingdom.
David married Maud, 2nd Countess of Huntingdon, who was the heiress to the Huntingdon–Northampton lordship. As her husband, David used the title of earl, and there was the prospect that David's children by her would inherit all the honours borne by Matilda's father Waltheof.
In the later part of 1113, King Henry gave David the hand of Matilda of Huntingdon, daughter and heiress of Waltheof, Earl of Northumberland. The marriage brought with it the "Honour of Huntingdon", a lordship scattered through the shires of Northampton, Huntingdon, and Bedford; within a few years, Matilda bore a son, who David named Henry after his patron.
