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The single royal rival of medieval English kings in the Britain lay in the Lion of the North. The kings of the Scots were the heirs to a line of more than 100 royal forebears, rulers of a society unconquered by invaders. Rival insistences for land and power dictated about 1300 onward relations between the two kingdoms in Britain in the north of Britain. These claims energized sporadic war for almost 400 years. After the rough definitions of both kingdoms in the 9th century, Anglo-Scottish relations rested on an equalization between an English wish to bring Scotland into its national trajectory, and Scottish territorial initiatives in northen England. These aspirations had by the 11th century encouraged Scots expansion from its heartland. north of the Forth. The annexation of Strathclyde and of the English settlements Lothian identified Scotland as an aggressor scheming for Cumbria and Northumberland. After 1058, Scotland, unlike the other Celtic kingdoms, was ruled by a single royal dynasty; the Canmores cast aside other claimants and moved from being kings of a boisterous federation to be dominators. Kings of the Scots territory. The Normans recognized this situation and there was no Norman conquest of Scotland. Instead the Norman kings sought to increase their influence with the Canmores. David I (1124 1153), as brother-in-law and vassal of Henry I of England, was part of the Anglo-Norman world. The politics and culture of twelfth century Scotland were transformed by the arrival of the personnel and practices of Norman nobility, church, government, and trade, If change was not entirely peaceful, in Scotland it did not sweep away native power. The Canmores used the new techniques of war and administration to increase central authority. King David I, although influenced heavily by their powerful neighbour did not became vassal rulers nor did his successors; from 1124 to 1 286, designs on northern England were still pursued and English claims to be lords of Scotland still resisted. In the last decades of the 13th century, at the end of the Canmore dynasty and Edward I of England*s search for real influence in Scotland combined to sweep away the balance between English claims and Scottish independence. From 1296 until 1 560 war was the normal state of relations between the two kingdoms. English aims varied between the destruction of the Scottish kingdom and its reduction to a vassal-state. The greatest efforts to achieve these goals came in the half-century up to 1346, but claims to overlordship were never abandoned. English kings continued to press these claims and from 1544 union based on war was revived in the ‘Rough Wooing* of Scotland by Henry VIII. The demands of a war for survival shaped late medieval Scotland. The language of resistance to Edward I and his heirs stressed the existence of Scotland as a community whose rights were under threat. The usurpation of Robert the Bruce 1306 harnessed effective royal leadership to this sense of grievance. Bruce*s military success against English forces was exploited to create a bond between his kingship nd the aristocratic community. This was cemented by the rise of Anglo-Normand families. The Bruce family, now kings in Scotland, were Anglo-Norman. The local Celt nobles had been displaced one by one by Anglo-Normans. They replaced the local aristocrats at the edges of Royal authority. At the unruly areas became established the family St. Clair. If we look at a Norman expansion map that earlier marges of the Norman Kingdom were occupied by fortified towns with the name of St. Clair. Sustained war in Scotland from 1329 on blunted the power of the king and increased the power of the local lords. I have become more and more to believe that Sinclair was the title used for the guardians for the edges of the Norman Empire. One of those Sinclairs who can trace their ancestry directly back to the Sinclairs of Caithness may be directly related. This theory could account for the unrelated Sinclairs of Argyle. The connection between Roslyn and the Jarldom of Orkney would show a man, Prince Henry, serving two masters: the King of Norway and the Anglo-Norman Scots. We find that on the southern end of modern day Germany strong Sinkler influence. In the middle ages, the original basket hilt sword was developed in this area- it is called a Sinclair. Are we a Highland Clan? What is a Highland Clan? Sinclair REF: A Travellers History of Scotland - Andrew Fisher (The Windrush Press 2nd Edition 1997) Home Under the Clans - George Way of Plean (Harper Collins, Glasgow 1998) Europe, A History - Norman Davis (BCA, Oxford 1996) Violence, Custom and Law: The Anglo-Scottish borderlands in the later middle ages - Cynthia Jane Nevell (Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 1998) Micropedia British History - Professor Eric Evans (Paragon, Bath 1999) Micropedia Scottish History - Dr James Mackey (Paragon, Bath 1999) Hutchison Illustrated British History - Various (Helicon, Oxford 1995) The Lion in the North - John Prebble (Penguin, London 1973) The Middle Ages - H.R. Hoyn (Thames and Hudson, London 1989) State Paper Office - State Papers, Scotland Inc. Bords, Transcripts Anglo- Scottish Relations 1174-1328- E.L.F.G Stones (Oxford University Press, Oxford 1965) The Asloan Manuscript Ed. -W. A. Craigie, 2 Volumes (Scottish Text Society, New Series, 1923-24) |