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
Henry I of England gave birth to a sequence of two sons, Henry and Geoffrey, in 1133 and 1134. Relations between Henry, Matilda, and Geoffrey became increasingly strained during the King's final years. Matilda and Geoffrey suspected that they lacked genuine support in England. In 1135 they urged Henry to hand over the royal castles in Normandy to Matilda whilst he was still alive, and insisted that the Norman nobility swear immediate allegiance to her, thereby giving the couple a more powerful position after Henry's death. Henry angrily declined to do so, probably out of concern that Geoffrey would try to seize power in