A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen/Alexander I.

ALEXANDER I., surnamed Acer, or the Fierce, king of Scots from 1106 to 1124, was the fifth son of Malcolm III. by his wife Margaret of England. Lord Hailes conjectures that his name was bestowed in honour of Pope Alexander II.; a circumstance worthy of attention, as it was the means of introducing the most common and familiar Christian name in Scotland. The date of Alexander's birth is not known; but as his four elder brothers were all under age in 1093, at the death of their father, he must have been in the bloom of life at his accession to the throne. He succeeded his brother Edgar, January 8, 1106-7, and immediately after married Sybilla, the natural daughter of Henry I. of England, who had married his sister Matilda, or Maud. Such an alliance was not then considered dishonourable. Alexander was active in enforcing obedience to his dominion, and in suppressing the bands of rebels or robbers with which the northern parts of the kingdom were infested; but the chief events of his reign relate to the efforts made by the English church to assert a supremacy over that of Scotland. These efforts were resisted by the king of Scots, with steady perseverance, and ultimate success, notwithstanding that the Pope countenanced the claims of the English prelates. It is to be presumed that this spirit would have incited the Scottish monarch to maintain the independency of his kingdom, had it ever been called in question during his reign. Alexander died April 27, 1124, after a reign of seventeen years and three months. As he left no issue, he was succeeded by his next and last-surviving brother David, so memorable for his bounty to the church. Alexander was also a pious monarch. Aldred, in his genealogy of the English kings, says of him, that "he was humble and courteous to the clergy, but, to the rest of his subjects, terrible beyond measure; high-spirited, always endeavouring to compass things beyond his power; not ignorant of letters; zealous in establishing churches, collecting relics, and providing vestments and hooks for the clergy; liberal even to profusion, and taking delight in the offices of charity to the poor." His donations to the church were very considerable. He made a large grant of lands to the church of St Andrews, increased the revenue of the monastery of Dunfermline, which his parents had founded, established a colony of canons regular at home, and built a monastery on Inch-colm in the Firth of Forth, in gratitude for having been preserved from a tempest on that island.