The Battle of the Standard, sometimes called the Battle of Northallerton, took place on 22 August 1138 on Cowton Moor near Northallerton in Yorkshire, England. English forces under William of Aumale repelled a Scottish army led by King David I of Scotland.
King Stephen of England, fighting rebel barons in the south, had sent a small force (largely mercenaries), but the English army was mainly local militia and baronial retinues from Yorkshire and the north Midlands. Archbishop Thurstan of York had exerted himself greatly to raise the army, preaching that to withstand the Scots was to do God's work. The centre of the English position was therefore marked by a mast (mounted upon a cart) bearing a pyx carrying the consecrated host and from which were flown the consecrated banners of the minsters of York, Beverley and Ripon: hence the name of the battle. This cart-mounted standard was a very northerly example of a type of standard common in contemporary Italy, where it was known as a carroccio.
David's forces had already taken much of Northumberland apart from castles at Wark and Bamburgh.
Advancing beyond the Tees towards York, early on 22 August the Scots found the English army drawn up on open fields 2 miles (3 km) north of Northallerton; they formed up in four 'lines' to attack it. The first attack, by unarmoured spearmen against armoured men (including dismounted knights) supported by telling fire from archers, failed. Within three hours, the Scots army disintegrated, apart from small bodies of knights and men-at-arms around David and his son Henry. At this point, Henry led a spirited attack with mounted knights; he and David then withdrew separately with their immediate companions in relatively good order. Heavy Scots losses are claimed, in battle and in flight.
The English did not pursue far; David fell back to Carlisle and reassembled an army. Within a month, a truce was negotiated which left the Scots free to continue the siege of Wark castle, which eventually fell. Despite losing the battle, David was subsequently given most of the territorial concessions he had been seeking (which the chronicles say he had been offered before he crossed the Tees). David held these throughout the Anarchy, but on the death of David, his successor Malcolm IV of Scotland was soon forced to surrender David's gains to Henry II of England.
Some chronicle accounts of the battle include an invented pre-battle speech on the glorious deeds of the Normans, occasionally quoted as good contemporary evidence of the high opinion the Normans held of themselves.
Background
David had gained the Scottish throne largely because of the support of his brother-in-law Henry I of England, and he had attempted to remodel Scotland to be more like Henry's England. He had carried out peaceful changes in the areas of Scotland over which he had effective control and had conducted military campaigns against semi-autonomous regional rulers to reassert his authority; in administration, in warfare, and in the settling of regained territory, he had drawn on the talent and resources of the Anglo-Norman lands. The death of Henry I in 1135, weakening England, made David more reliant on his native subjects, and allowed him to contemplate winning control over substantial areas of northern England.
Henry I had wished his inheritance to pass to his daughter Matilda, and in 1127 made his notables swear an oath to uphold the succession of Matilda (David was the first layman to do so). Many of the English and Norman magnates and barons were against Matilda because she was married to Geoffrey V, count of Anjou. On Henry's death, Stephen, younger brother of Theobald, count of Blois, seized the throne instead.
When Stephen was crowned on 22 December, David went to war. After two months of campaigning in northern England, a peace treaty ceding Cumberland to David was agreed. Additionally, David's son Henry was made Earl of Huntingdon. David declined to swear the required oath of loyalty to Stephen, since he had already sworn allegiance to Matilda.
In spring 1137, David again invaded England: a truce was quickly agreed. In November, the truce expired; David demanded to be made earl of the whole of the old earldom of Northumberland. Stephen refused and in January 1138 David invaded for a third time.
Campaigning in 1138 before the battle
David invades Northumberland
David first moved against English castles on the Tweed frontier. Norham Castle belonged to the Bishop of Durham and its garrison was under-strength; it quickly fell. Having failed to rapidly seize the castle at Wark on Tweed, David detached forces to besiege it and moved deeper into Northumberland, demanding contributions from settlements and religious establishments to be spared plunder and burning.
Scots slave-raiding and Anglo-Norman alarm
The actions of the army that invaded England in early 1138 shocked the English chroniclers. Richard of Hexham records that:
an execrable army, more atrocious than the pagans, neither fearing God nor regarding man, spread desolation over the whole province and slaughtered everywhere people of either sex, of every age and rank, destroying, pillaging and burning towns, churches and houses.
Monastic chroniclers often deplore depredations made by foreign armies and sometimes even those of their own rulers but some Scots forces were going beyond normal Norman 'harrying' by systematically carrying off women and children as slaves.
Remember what they did in the lands across the Tyne, and hope for nothing gentler if the Scots conquer. I am silent about the slaughter, the rapine, the fires that the enemy employed in something like a human way. I would tell such acts as no stories tell and no histories relate of the fiercest tyrants. I would tell them, I say, if words did not fail before such horror, or the listener flee. They spared no age, rank or sex. The high born, boys as well as girls were led into captivity
In contemporary Britain, this was regarded as a useful source of revenue, like (and not significantly more reprehensible than) cattle-raiding.
Then (horrible to relate) they carried off, like so much booty, the noble matrons and chaste virgins, together with other women. These naked, fettered, herded together; by whips and thongs they drove before them, goading them with their spears and other weapons. This took place in other wars, but in this to a far greater extent.
The practicalities of this would support the chroniclers' tales of sexual abuse of the slaves and casual slaughter of unsalable encumbrances:
For the sick on their couches, women pregnant and in childbed, infants in the womb, innocents at the breast, or on the mother's knee, with the mothers themselves, decrepit old men and worn-out old women, and persons debilitated from whatever cause, wherever they met with them, they put to the edge of the sword, and transfixed with their spears; and by how much more horrible a death they could dispatch them, so much the more did they rejoice."
In February, King Stephen marched north with an army to deal with David. David successfully evaded him, and Stephen returned south.
Scots raid into Craven and the Battle of Clitheroe
In the summer, David's nephew William fitz Duncan marched into Yorkshire and harried Craven; on 10 June, he met and defeated an English force of knights and men-at-arms at the battle of Clitheroe. He also destroyed the recently founded Calder Abbey in Copeland. The choice of targets has no obvious strategic logic; it may be pertinent that William eventually inherited both the Honour of Skipton in Craven, and the Lordship of Copeland, previously held by his father-in-law William de Meschines and which should have passed to him on the death of William de Meschines' son Ranulph Meschin, the founder of Calder.
Peace feelers fail; David enters Yorkshire
By late July David had crossed the river Tyne and was in "St Cuthbert's land" (the lands of the Bishop of Durham). With him were contingents from most of the separate regions of his kingdom, amounting to more than 26,000 men (many sources say this is wrong, that it was more like 16,000). Eustace fitz John had declared for David and handed over to him Alnwick Castle in Northumberland. The garrison of Eustace's castle at Malton to the North East of York began to raid surrounding areas in support of David (or Matilda).
The magnates of Yorkshire gathered in York to discuss the worsening crisis:
Archbishop Thurstan of York (who, as will presently appear, greatly exerted himself in this emergency), William of Aumale, Walter de Gant, Robert de Brus, Roger de Mowbray, Walter Espec, Ilbert de Lacy, William de Percy, Richard de Courcy, William Fossard, Robert de Stuteville
Much irresolution was caused by distrust of each other, arising from suspicions of treachery, by the absence of a chief and leader of the war (for their sovereign, king Stephen, encompassed by equal difficulties in the south of England, was just then unable to join them), and by their dread of encountering, with an inadequate force, so great a host
However, urged by the 70-year-old Thurstan ('Lieutenant of the North' in addition to his ecclesiastical duties; Walter Espec was High Sheriff of Yorkshire), to stand and fight and if needs be die in a holy cause, they agreed to gather their forces and return to York, where they were joined by reinforcements from Nottinghamshire under William Peverel and Geoffrey Halsalin, and from Derbyshire led by Robert de Ferrers. They advanced to Thirsk, from where they sent Robert de Brus and Bernard de Balliol (recently arrived with a few mercenaries sent by King Stephen) on an embassy to David, whose army was now approaching the River Tees and North Yorkshire.
The emissaries promised to obtain the earldom of Northumberland for Henry, if the Scots army withdrew. Ailred of Rievaulx gives de Brus a speech in which he tells David that the English and the Normans have always been his true friends (against the Gaels), and without their help he may not be able to keep his kingdom together. Whatever was initially said, it ended in hard words being exchanged. Having failed to persuade David to withdraw, the emissaries returned to Thirsk, with de Brus angrily withdrawing his homage to David. David's forces crossed the Tees and moved south. The English forces moved northwards and took up a defensive position to the north of Northallerton.
Battlefield and English dispositions
Moving south from the Tees David's army would have had the high ground of the North Yorkshire Moors on its left, and the River Swale on its right. Nearing Northallerton, the distance between hills and river is about 8 miles (13 km), much of it low-lying and (then) poorly drained. The road to Northallerton from the Tees (the Great North Road) therefore approaches the town along a ridge of slightly higher ground running north–south. Minor ups and downs break the line of sight along the ridge, but the 'ups' are hills only in relation to the low ground on either side of the ridge. The English army deployed across this ridge about 2 miles (3 km) north of Northallerton in a single solid formation with the armoured men and most of the knights (who had dismounted, and sent their horses to the rear) to the front supported by the archers and the more lightly equipped men of the local levies. The barons stood with the remaining dismounted knights at the centre of the line around the standard. Their left is thought to have straddled the road, with its flank protected by a marsh; it is not known if the low ground to the east of the ridge was similarly boggy, or if the English formation extended that far.
Scots arrive and deploy
John of Worcester says that David intended to take the English by surprise, there being a very close mist that day. Richard of Hexham says simply that the Scots became aware of the standard (and by implication the army underneath it) at no great distance.
In front of the battle were the Picts [ie the Galwegians]; in the centre, the king with his knights and English; the rest of the barbarian host poured roaring around them. The king and almost all his followers were on foot, their horses being kept at a distance."
Ailred of Rievaulx gives the eventual deployment of the Scots as being in four 'lines'. The Galwegians [from Galloway in south-west Scotland] – described by a later chronicler as "men agile, unclothed, remarkable for much baldness [shaven heads?]; arming their left side with knives formidable to any armed men, having a hand most skillful at throwing spears and directing them from a distance; raising their long lance as a standard when they advance into battle" – were in the first line. "The second line the King's son Prince Henry arranged with great wisdom; with himself the knights and archers, adding to their number the Cumbrians and Teviotdalesmen ... The men of Lothian formed the third rank, with the islanders and the men of Lorne [in the South-West Highlands]. The King kept in his own line the Scots and Moravians [men from Moray in North-East Scotland]; several also of the English and French knights he appointed as his bodyguard."
Henry of Huntingdon's account of the battle would imply that the men of Lothian with their 'long spears' were in the first line; however, the generally accepted view is that the long spears were those of the Galwegians.
Scots argue
Ailred says (but this may be a literary device) that this order of battle was decided at the last minute; David had intended to attack first with his knights and armoured men-at-arms, but had faced strong protests from the Galwegians that they should be given the honour of attacking first, since they had already demonstrated at Clitheroe that the vigour of their attack was sufficient to rout Normans in armour. David, however, paid more attention to the counter-argument of his Normans; that if the Galwegians failed the rest of the army would lose heart. The Galwegians resumed their protest, and the debate was not aided by a mormaer (one of David's native 'great lords') asking why David listened to 'foreigners' when none of those with armour on would this day outdo the mormaer who wore no armour.
And Alan de Percy, base-born son of the great Alan – a most vigorous knight, and in military matters highly distinguished – took these words ill; and turning to the earl he said, 'A great word hast thou spoken, and one which for thy life thou canst not make good this day.'
Then the king, restraining both, lest a disturbance should suddenly arise out of this altercation, yielded to the will of the Galwegians.