William the Lyon

William the Lyon, king of Scotland, was born in 1143, a grandson of David I., and brother of Malcolm IV., whom he succeeded in 1165. Whence he derived his designation is one of the mysteries of history. When heraldry long afterwards became a science, and was supposed to have been in use earlier than it really was, it was not unnaturally supposed that he was the first king who used, as a heraldic achievement, the lion, afterwards the chief feature in the arms of Scotland. His predecessors had long contested with the kings of England the sovereignty of Northumberland and other districts of what is now the north of England. Under Malcolm these claims were virtually abandoned, and the king of Scots received, as a sort of equivalent for them, the earldom of Huntingdon and other valuable estates, holding of the English crown. William had still, however, a hankering after the Northumbrian districts. He attended Henry of England in his continental wars, and is supposed, when doing so, to have pressed for a portion at least of the old disputed districts. In his disappointment he invaded them after the example of his ancestors. On the 13th July 1174 he fell, near Alnwick Castle, into the hands of an English party. For security he was conveyed to Normandy, and there he consented, as the price of his liberation, to perform that homage for his kingdom which the English kings so long in vain attempted to exact from the government of Scotland. How far the Scots community would have admitted that he had a right to bind them in such a condition may be doubted. The treaty of Falaise, however, as the transaction was termed, from the place where it was adjusted, was revoked in the year 1189 by Richard I. of England in consideration of a payment of 10,000 marks, which he wanted for his celebrated expedition to Palestine. William had several disputes with the church, but he was one of the early benefactors of the regular ecclesiastics, and founded in 1178 the great abbey of Arbroath, which he dedicated to Thomas Becket, slain eight years earlier. William died at Stirling in 1214.