ole force of his realm, from Orkney to
Galloway, into Yorkshire. His Anglo-Norman friends, the Balliols and
Bruces, with the Archbishop of York, now opposed him and his son Prince
Henry. On August 22, 1138, at Cowton Moor, near Northallerton, was
fought the great battle, named from the huge English sacred banner, "The
Battle of the Standard."

In a military sense, the fact that here the men-at-arms and knights of
England fought as dismounted infantry, their horses being held apart in
reserve, is notable as preluding to the similar English tactics in their
French wars of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

Thus arrayed, the English received the impetuous charge of the wild
Galloway men, not in armour, who claimed the right to form the van, and
broke through the first line only to die beneath the spears of the
second. But Prince David with his heavy cavalry scattered the force
opposed to him, and stampeded the horses of the English that were held in
reserve. This should have been fatal to the English, but Henry, like
Rupert at Marston Moor, pursued too far, and the discipline of the Scots
was broken by the cry that their King had fallen, and they fled. David
fought his way to Carlisle in a series of rearguard actions, and at
Carlisle was joined by Prince Henry with the remnant of his men-at-arms.
It was no decisive victory for England.

In the following year (1139) David got what he wanted. His son Henry, by
peaceful arrangement, received the Earldom of Northumberland, without the
two strong places, Bamborough and Newcastle.

Through the anarchic weakness of Stephen's reign, Scotland advanced in
strength and civilisation despite a Celtic rising headed by a strange
pretender to the rights of the MacHeths, a "brother Wimund"; but all went
with the death of David's son, Prince Henry, in 1152. Of the prince's
three sons, the eldest, Malcolm, was but ten years old; next came his
brothers William ("the Lion") and little David, Earl of Huntingdon. From
this David's daughters descended the chief claimants to the Scottish
throne in 1292--namely, Balliol, Bruce, and Comyn: the last also was
descended, in the female line, from King Donald Ban, son of Malcolm
Canmore.

David had done all that man might do to settle the crown on his grandson
Malcolm; his success meant that standing curse of Scotland, "Woe to the
kingdom whose king is a child,"--when, in a year, David died at Carlisle
(May 24, 1153).

SCOTLAND B