The Howl of the North: The Anglo-Scottish War of 1138
The year was 1138, and England was cracking. The death of Henry I had set off a dynastic crisis so profound it would later be called The Anarchy—a civil war between Henry’s daughter Empress Matilda and her cousin Stephen of Blois, each grasping for the English crown with a tenacity matched only by their disregard for the realm’s stability. The kingdom’s barons chose sides, castles became private armies, and for over a decade England smoldered in feudal disorder. In the north, however, the chaos became something else entirely. It became invasion.
David I of Scotland, a deeply pious and shrewdly calculating monarch, seized his opportunity. A seasoned warrior and one-time courtier of Henry I, David had his own dynastic loyalties—he was uncle to Empress Matilda. Her claim was his cause, but his ambitions reached farther than her crown. With England distracted and divided, he marched south not merely as a champion of Matilda’s rights, but as a king with designs on Northumbria.
“David was no raider,” writes Richard Oram in David: The King Who Made Scotland, “but a monarch with a plan—to extend his frontier, to redefine Scotland’s place in the British Isles” (Oram, 2004, p. 156). His forces crossed the border into Northumberland in early 1136, briefly occupying lands before withdrawing under a treaty. But war flared again in 1138, when David’s armies returned in force, ravaging Yorkshire and pushing deep into the north of England.
This was no neat campaign of maneuver. The army that David brought into England was vast and unruly—possibly over 15,000 strong—but only partially disciplined. It was a coalition of feudal knights, Anglo-Norman supporters, and a large contingent of Gaelic and Pictish warriors from the Highlands and Isles. Many came barefoot, half-armoured, wielding axes and spears. They were ferocious in battle, but less so in formation. “The army David brought south was medieval in the truest sense,” writes R. R. Davies, “a mosaic of loyalties, languages, and motives, barely held together by royal command” (The First English Empire, 2000, p. 211).
Opposing them was not Stephen himself—still entangled in southern struggles—but a hastily raised English army led by William of Aumale, Walter Espec, and Archbishop Thurstan of York, the last of whom would leave his mark not with the sword, but with faith. At Northallerton, the English assembled beneath holy banners mounted atop a wagon—a makeshift standard from which the battle would draw its name. It bore the flags of St. Peter, St. Cuthbert, and other northern saints, symbols meant to stiffen the resolve of levied men standing against the fury of a northern host.
The Battle of the Standard, fought on 22 August 1138, began with promise for the Scots. Their charge was thunderous, particularly the Galwegian warriors, who attacked the English line with terrifying ferocity. But English discipline, terrain, and the defensive strength of the standard wagon formation held. After hours of combat, the Scots faltered. David’s lines broke under sustained counterattack. His son, Prince Henry of Scotland, led a desperate cavalry assault but was repelled. The Scottish army collapsed in retreat, with thousands dead and their ambition in ashes.
Yet for all its martial glory, the English victory was not absolute. David, though beaten, retained control of Carlisle and large parts of Cumberland and Northumberland. In 1139, through diplomacy rather than war, he extracted a remarkable concession: his son Henry was granted the Earldom of Northumbria by King Stephen. “It was a paradoxical end to a failed campaign,” notes Michael Brown, “for David gained in treaty what he had failed to take by force” (The Wars of Scotland, 2004, p. 198).
Politically, the war and its outcome redefined Scotland’s relationship with England. David’s ambitions had overreached, but he had succeeded in projecting Scottish military might deep into English territory. His dynasty, the House of Dunkeld, was now a player in English affairs. The lines of division between England and Scotland had hardened—not through a final treaty, but through experience and blood. “From Northallerton onward,” writes Oram, “the Anglo-Scottish border was no longer a frontier of opportunity, but of tension” (Oram, 2004, p. 164).
The Battle of the Standard, then, was not merely a clash of armies, but of worldviews. The Anglo-Norman knights and churchmen, rallying under sacred banners, faced a tribal fury from the north—a mosaic of ambition, loyalty, and raw violence. And in true medieval fashion, the field decided little. The war bled into diplomacy, and the border remained a land where no peace lasted long.
William Manchester, in writing of another civil war, once said: “Wars between brothers are never clean. They are fought with the whole body—fist, tooth, and boot—and leave scars deeper than mere conquest.” Such was the war of 1138—a brotherly war in a divided kingdom, a northern king reaching south while England tore itself apart. And when the mist lifted over Northallerton, all that remained was the Standard, flapping in the wind, a monument to a war that changed everything but decided nothing.
References:
- Oram, Richard. David: The King Who Made Scotland. Tempus Publishing, 2004.
- Brown, Michael. The Wars of Scotland, 1214–1371. Edinburgh University Press, 2004.
- Davies, R. R. The First English Empire: Power and Identities in the British Isles 1093–1343. Oxford University Press, 2000.
- Prestwich, Michael. Plantagenet England 1225–1360. Oxford University Press, 2005.
- Crouch, David. The Reign of King Stephen: 1135–1154. Routledge, 2000.