David I of Scotland only after Henry II ordered David's child successor Máel Coluim IV to hand over the most important of David's gains. It is clear that neither one of these interpretations can be taken without some weight being given to the other. Henry I had arranged his inheritance to pass to his daughter Empress Matilda. Instead, Stephen, younger brother of Theobald II, Count of Blois, seized the throne. David had been the first lay person to take the oath to uphold the succession of Matilda in 1127, and when Stephen was crowned on 22 December 1135, David decided to make war. Before
David, Prince of the Cumbrians the greatest warriors of the age, and applauded if they ended in conquest – nor should it be any surprise that he soon sought to express them upon Henry’s death. That he should seek to place those ambitions upon a solid basis of propriety would have been even less remarkable, had a suitable excuse to attack not been conveniently at hand. When Henry I died in 1135, David had already sat upon the throne of Scotland for nearly eleven years. He had also, in his capacity as a great English nobleman, been the first to swear obedience to Henry’s daughter,