History, Wonder Tales, Fairy Tales, Myths and Legends The Flemish | Page 63

Pepin). Simon de Senlis died in 1111 and Maud, his widow, took as her second
husband Malcolm Canmore’s youngest son, David and when he ascended the
Scottish throne in 1124 as David I, Maud went north with him as his queen,- followed,
inevitably, by a large retinue of her Flemish kinsmen. They received large estates in
Scotland and it was thus that a new feudal system soon took the place of the older
Celtic way of life. These Flemish knights were the ancestors of many Scottish families:
Balliol, Beaton, Brodie, Bruce, Cameron, Campbell, Comyn, Crawford, Douglas,
Erskine, Fleming Fraser, Graham, Hamilton, Hay, Innes, Leslie, Lindsay, Lyle, Murray,
Oliphant, Seton, Stewart.
The Rebellion in Moray, during the
reign of David I., was actively
suppressed with the aid of
Flemings, who obtained grants of
land for their services. The
evidence of the influence of these
powerful newcomers on the fabric
of David I’s kingdom can be found
on the ground, in those traces of
military activity which the Flemings
were so swift to provide. As early
as they could be built, castles
great and small were flung up at
every vulnerable point. Modern
research into the character of
Scottish mottes began as long ago
as the 1890s and in the unhappy
fashion of the time, they were
immediately classed as Norman,
though their strategic disposition
as well as their method of
construction was pure Flanders.
As in Flanders, the royal castles
were most often to be found in
towns, places which would be
quickly fortified and named as
burghs. This was a strategy
borrowed
directly
from
Charlemagne who had called his
fortified centers “burgs”. Large
numbers of Scottish mottes developed as soon as feasible into private stone castles.
Some writers have commented on the peculiar height of these tower houses,
considering them unnecessary and expensive in a Scotland where there were so
many natural high points on which to place them. But this kind of construction was a
direct descendant of the defensive needs in the landscape which had provided the
model; the flat lands of so much of Flanders demanded an artificial high look-out if the
defenders of the region were not to be taken by surprise and Flemish soldiers in
Scotland built what they knew.

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