David I. (often called ST DAVID), king of Scotland, was the youngest of the six sons of Malcolm Ceannmor and St Margaret (q.v.). Born in 1084, he was sent in 1093 to England along with his sister Matilda (who in 1100 married Henry I. of England), and remained for several years at the English court—a residence that powerfully affected his after career. There, as his contemporary William of Malmesbury puts it, he was 'polished from a boy' until he 'had rubbed off all the rust of Scottish barbarity.'
In 1107, when his elder brother Alexander succeeded to the throne, David, by express bequest of Eadgar, became Prince of Cumbria, a territory which, besides part of the modern shire of Cumberland, included the whole district between the Tweed and Solway and the Firths of Forth and Clyde, except the shires of Haddington, Edinburgh, and Linlithgow. Over the greater part of this domain he appears to have held absolute sway. Alexander seems at first to have been inclined to dispute David's right to the district, but the success of his claim was secured without contest by the influence of the great Norman barons who had by this time acquired extensive possessions in the south of Scotland, and to whom David's English training rendered him peculiarly acceptable. By David's marriage in 1110 to Matilda, widow of Simon de Senlis, and heiress of Waltheof, Earl of Northumberland, he still further increased his power, becoming Earl of Huntingdon and Earl of Northampton.
In 1124 he succeeded his brother on the Scottish throne, but had in 1130, and again in 1137, to fight for his crown against the heirs of the old Celtic dynasties supported by the wild tribes of the north and west. On both occasions the Anglo-Norman chivalry which David had gathered around him gave him decisive victories. Having sworn, along with the other great barons of England, to maintain the right of his niece, Matilda, to the English crown, David took up arms on her behalf in 1135 when Stephen mounted the English throne, and penetrated into England as far as Durham, where at a meeting between him and Stephen peace was restored by the grant of the earldom of Huntingdon, and the promise of the earldom of Northumberland, to David's son Henry. In 1138 the war was, however, renewed, and the king of Scots, deserted by Bruce and others of his Anglo-Norman vassals who owned large estates in England as well as in Scotland, was signally defeated at the 'Battle of the Standard,' near Northallerton. The next year, a second peace was concluded, when the promised earldom of Northumberland was bestowed on Prince Henry.
The rest of David's reign—which marks the end of Celtic and the beginning of Feudal Scotland—was devoted to the accomplishment of the great designs begun by his father and mother, and continued by his two predecessors—the union of the different races of Scotland into one nation, and the civilisation of the people. How well he succeeded may be traced in the two centuries of prosperity that followed his reign. By the introduction of the feudal system, and the promulgation and vigorous personal superintendence of the working of wise laws, he endeavoured to secure the peace and safety of the country; and he looked for aid in this work to the Anglo-Normans whom he had brought from the south. By the erection of burghs he promoted the trade, manufactures, and commerce of the nation, and laid the foundations of its freedom. In his civilising efforts he depended also largely on the church, the extension and influence of which he greatly fostered and encouraged. Immediately after he became Prince of Cumbria he restored the fallen bishopric of Glasgow, and after his accession he founded and endowed the bishoprics of Ross, Aberdeen, Caithness, Brechin, and Dunblane; besides enriching the previously established sees of St Andrews, Moray, and Dunkeld, and reviving the old see of Galloway (Whithorn). He also founded or restored the abbeys of Kelso, Jedburgh, Melrose, Newbattle, Holyrood, Cambuskenneth, and Kinloss, as well as a number of minor religious establishments. So far indeed did this process of endowment go, that according to Bellenden, 'the crown was left indegent throw ampliation of gret rentis to the kirk,' a state of matters that led James I. (of Scotland) to remark, while standing by David's tomb at Dunfermline, that 'he was ane sair sanct for the crown.' On the other hand one who was a hard judge of monarchs—George Buchanan—said with much more truth, that 'if men were to set themselves to draw the image of a good king, they would fall short of what David showed himself throughout the whole course of his life.' Though King David is often called St David, he was never formally canonised; but his name was inserted in the calendar prefixed to Laud's Prayer-book for Scotland, printed at Edinburgh in 1637.
King David died at Carlisle, 24th May 1153. His son Henry had died in the previous June, and he was succeeded by his grandson, Malcolm, then in his twelfth year.
The oldest Scottish painting now known to exist—an illuminated charter to the monks of Kelso, written in 1159—preserves rude miniatures of the young king Malcolm and his saintly grandfather. It is preserved at Floors Castle, and engraved in fac-simile in the Liber S. Marie de Calchou (Bannatyne Club, 1846). See also Innes's Scotland in the Middle Ages (1860); Robertson's Scotland under her early Kings (1862); and Skene's Celtic Scotland (1876). The remains of David's legislation, including the interesting code of the Leges Burgorum, have been carefully collected in the first volume of The Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland (1844).