Oure gold was changed into lede.
Cryst born into virginyte,
Succour Scotland and remede
That stad in its perplexte.
How far the sentiment here expressed may have been heightened, as in the parallel case of Edward the Confessor, by the calamities which followed—the disputed succession and the English wars—it is not possible to say. The monks, the only historians of these times, rarely aid us by details, leaving the facts to speak for themselves, or making reflections in which the prejudices of superstition, their country, or their order warp their judgment. It must, however, have required a strong character, after so long a subjection to rival factions and the influence of the English king, to restore the royal authority and maintain the independence of the kingdom. While Henry's contest with his barons and the storm which dispersed Haco's fleet seconded Alexander's efforts, his continued prosperity during the decade after the accession of Edward I, and his care in the administration of justice for which all writers give him credit, are proofs of wise government; and, on the whole, we may accept as free from much exaggeration the panegyric of Wyntoun, one of the most trustworthy of our authorities, who wrote within a century from his death:—
Scotland mournyd hym than full sare,
For undyr hym all his leges ware
In honoure, qwiete, and in pes;
Forthi cald pessybill king he wes,
He honoured God and holy kirk,
And medfull dedys he oysed to werk.
A splendid architecture, of which the monuments still remain in the Scottish cathedrals of the Early English style, and the purity of the coinage, are real witnesses of the well-being of Scotland during the reigns of Alexander and his father.
[Chronicles of Melrose, Lanercost, and Dunfermline, Bannatyne Club; Matthew Paris; Chronicle of Man (Munch's Notes), Manx Soc.; Wyntoun, Cronykil; Fordun, Scotichronicon; Exchequer Rolls Record Edition, i.; Concilia Scotiæ (Joseph Robertson's Notes, Bannatyne Club); Hailes's Annals; Tytler's History of Scotland; Robertson's Scotland under her Early Kings; W. F. Skene's Celtic Scotland.]
ALEXANDER (d. 1148), bishop of Lincoln, was a Norman by birth, the son of the brother of that famous Roger, bishop of Salisbury, ‘nepos ejus ex patre’ (Will. Malm. Hist. Novell. lib. ii. p. 102), who, from being a humble parish priest in the suburbs of Caen, had risen through the favour of Henry I to be bishop of one of the chief sees of England, and, as chancellor and finally justiciar, had become the most powerful man in the realm. The name of Alexander's mother, we learn from the Lincoln obit book, was Ada. Alexander was adopted by his uncle, and brought up by him in the utmost luxury, ‘nutritus in summis deliciis’ (Hen. Hunt. p. 226, ed. Twysden), imbibing from him that pride of place and love of lavish display, ‘superbiæ non tepidus æmulator’ (Wykes, Chron. Rer. Anglic. Scriptores, ed. Gale, ii.), which caused him to be known in after days as ‘Alexander the Magnificent.’ Alexander and his cousin Nigel, afterwards bishop of Ely, received a liberal education, such as to qualify them for the dignities they were destined to fill (Will. Malm.), to which their uncle's all-powerful influence with Henry I speedily raised them. On the elevation of Everard to the see of Norwich in 1121, Alexander was appointed by Roger to the archdeaconry of Sarum. He only held this dignity two years. Bishop Robert Bloet of Lincoln was struck with a fatal apoplectic fit in January 1123, while riding with the king and Roger of Salisbury, and the latter obtained from Henry without delay the promise of the vacant see for his nephew. Alexander's official nomination took place the following Easter at Winchester, where Henry was holding his court, and on 22 July he received consecration at Canterbury from the newly appointed archbishop, William of Corbeuil, who had just returned from Rome with his pall. The gatehouse of Eastgate in the city of Lincoln with the tower over it was granted to him as his episcopal residence by Henry I (Dugdale, Monast. (1830), viii. 1274, No. xliii.) Two years later, 1125, Alexander, probably for the purpose of receiving investiture at the hands of the pope, accompanied the two archbishops, William of Canterbury and Thurstan of York, and John the bishop of Glasgow, on that momentous visit to Rome, when the Archbishop of Canterbury, with the view of securing the subordination of the see of York, condescended to receive legatine authority from Honorius II, from which event, writes Dr. Inett, ‘we are to date the vassalage of the church of England.’ On his return to England we find Alexander taking part in the councils held during this period, chiefly directed against the marriage of the clergy. He and his uncle Roger were present at the council of Westminster in 1127, when the sentence of deprivation was pronounced against every parish priest who was guilty of the crime of matrimony (Flor. Wigorn. Contin. p. 85, published by Eng. Hist. Soc.), a sentence which, though solemnly renewed
