The failure that led to the most chastening treaty in Scottish history

King William I of Scotland, was posthumously dubbed the Lion but was known in Gaelic as Uilliam Garbh (rough William) during his lifetime. He was the grandson of King David I and succeeded his brother King Malcolm IV, the Maiden, who died heirless at the age of 24, causing William to ascend to the throne at the age of 22 in December, 1165.

His utter mortification came about because he had been captured on July 13, 1174, at the Battle of Alnwick. The battle happened because King William had invaded Northumberland in support of the rebellion against King Henry II by his wife Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, and sons Henry, known as the Young King, Richard, later called the Lionheart, and Geoffrey.

William had actually twice been a guest of Henry II in Normandy and England but when the rebellion broke out in 1173, William was promised Northumberland by the rebel princes if the Scots would take their side. He duly took an army into England but turned back when the defences at Newcastle and Prudhoe Castle proved too strong.

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Since William had been Earl of Northumbria until Henry II “confiscated” the region in 1157, the Scottish king was very keen to regain his lost inheritance, and did not hesitate to rejoin the rebellion in 1174. As strong and hotheaded as his brother had been weak and meek, William led his troops to near Alnwick.

Fatally for his campaign, William split his army into sections which negated his numerical advantage and also left his own force of guards exposed. When battle was joined on July 13, the English commander Ranulf de Glanvill and his troop of armoured knights charged straight for William’s position. What the King of Scots lacked in battle experience, he made up for in courage and as he rode to meet the English, he is said to have shouted “Now we shall see which of us are good knights!”.

It was foolhardy stuff, and William was soon trapped under his dead horse and captured. He was taken to Newcastle and then Northampton and on the journey through that town was subjected to the ignominy of having his feet tied beneath the belly of his horse – the treatment usually meted out to common criminals.

Henry II ordered that William be taken to Falaise in Normandy, where the king was thrown into the dungeons. As Alistair Moffat writes in his book Scotland: A History From Earliest Times, Henry “did not hesitate to press home his advantage on his doubtless miserable and demoralised captive, held well beyond rescue in northern France”.

After five months of degradation, William agreed to sign the Treaty of Falaise, where he turned over castles such as Edinburgh, Roxburgh and Berwick to English occupation. He also had to raise taxes to pay for their garrisons. Despite being a proud supporter of the church in Scotland – he later paid for the building of Arbroath Abbey – William had to agree to the Scottish church becoming subservient to England. Most troublesome of all, William signed that he and his barons would pay homage to Henry II as overlord of Scotland. He did so in public the next year at York.

The wording of the Treaty of Falaise has survived: “William, King of Scots, has become liegeman of the lord king (Henry) against every man in respect of Scotland and in respect of all his other lands; and he has done fealty to him as his liege lord, as all the other men of the lord king (Henry) are wont to do.

“And all the bishops and abbots and clergy of the king of Scots and their successors shall do fealty to the lord king (Henry) as to their liege lord, in the same way as the lord king’s other bishops are wont to do, and they shall likewise do fealty to Henry the king, his son, and to his heirs.”

The English king even extracted a promise that William would marry an English aristocrat of Henry’s nomination – he did so, marrying Ermengarde de Beaumont in 1186.

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The Treaty of Falaise was like the 1707 Act of Union – signed under duress. Yet William had to abide by it, not least because he needed to get home to battle internal rebellions such as the rising against him in Galloway.

The bishops of the Scottish church refused to accept subjugation under the Archbishop of York, and began a campaign of writing to the Pope, Alexander III, and his successors. This finally bore fruit in 1192 when Pope Celestine III decreed that the church was a “special daughter” of the Holy See, thus ending any English control.

English claims to overlordship of Scotland had been made before William the Lion’s reign, the longest in Scottish history before the Union of the Crowns in 1603. The Treaty of Falaise, however, was the first to set in writing the assertion of the English monarchy that it was due the homage of Scotland.

Subsequent English kings would cite Falaise as proof of their superiority over Scotland – most notably King Edward I, Longshanks – but King William was happy to play the long game and began that when Henry’s son Richard came to the throne in 1189.

The one-time ally of Richard knew that the Lionheart was anxious to go on the Third Crusade, and in a new treaty known as the Quitclaim of Canterbury, William agreed to pay 10,000 marks to finance that crusade in return for the cancellation of the Treaty of Falaise.

King Richard wrote: “We have freed [William] from all compacts which our good father Henry, king of the English, extorted from him by new charters and by his capture.”

The Lionheart’s words tend to be forgotten, as the Treaty of Falaise was seen as setting out the position of the English that Scotland was subservient to them.

Some might argue that they have never stopped claiming so.