Alexander I.

Alexander I., king of Scotland, the fourth son of Malcolm Canmore, was born about 1078, and in 1107 succeeded his brother, Edgar, only however to that part of the kingdom north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde (see DAVID I.). He married Sibylla, a natural daughter of Henry I. of England, and his reign was comparatively untroubled, though about 1115 he had to quell an insurrection of the northern clans. He founded the abbeys of Scone and Inchcolm, and initiated a diocesan episcopate; whilst his determined resistance to the claims of York and Canterbury to supremacy over the see of St Andrews, did much to secure the independence, not only of the Scottish Church, but of Scotland itself. He died at Stirling in 1124.