I'm Bruce Fummey. Whether you're interested in Scottish clans and monarchs, Jacobites or British history
in general, you can't fail to have noticed the Stewarts. Of course the fall of the Royal House of
Stewart came because of a struggle for the English throne in the late 17th Century, but did it occur
to you that the rise of Clan Stewart, the Stewart Monarchy of Scotland, and hence England, started
with a fight for the English crown 500 years earlier? Sound intriguing? Then this is the video
for you. If you're interested in the people, places and events in Scottish history, then click the
subscribe button at the bottom right hand side of the screen, in the meantime let me tell you a story.
You may think of the Stewart dynasty as tragic, in fact on this channel you'll find videos where
I describe the tragedies of James the First, James the Third, James the Fourth, Mary, Queen of Scots, Charles the First,
and of course, the demise of the Stewart and the Jacobite cause. At the end of this video I'll leave
a link to a playlist with some of those videos. The thing is that there will be hours of video on this
and other channels about how the Stewart dynasty ended, but little about how it began, and that's why
today I've brought you to Dundonald Castle, just outside Kilmarnock in Ayrshire. Later it'll be obvious
why the seat of early Stewart authority was in this area, but this is the castle that Robert the Second had
built for himself when he became the first Stewart King. Come with me. Robert the Second is one of the Scottish
Monarchs from whom people most often tell me that they're descended. Now that's maybe not entirely
surprising given that he's said to have had 21 children, 21! Nine by his first wife, who's marriage to him was
questioned because it was a wee bit too .. well let's just say nine children, 108 fingers! You get me, no?
There are still people in Alabama, Norfolk and Fife wondering why it's only them that can count
the 12 times table on their fingers! Anyway you had loads of illegitimate children too, in fact I'd be
tempted to ask, if you're not descended from Robert the Third, what was your 18 times great granny up to?
It's the children from Robert's second marriage that would lead to the conflict around the throne
for the next two generations, and of course the future Stewart Kings of Scotland, thus of England,
and finally very briefly, the United Kingdom, but how did Robert the Second become King in the first place?
Well, he succeeded David the Second of Scotland, the son of Robert the Bruce. He died without heirs. Now,
during the Second War of Scottish Independence, incidentally I've got some videos on that, the boy
King, David the Second, spent some time in exile in France, and then he was later captured by the English, and
during these periods, Robert Stuart, the future Robert the Second, got to practice the whole being royal
thing, looking after the country as regent. As I say David the Second died without heirs, and the rest is history,
which is kind of the whole point of these videos, that and visiting places of interest. This one
is run by friends of Dundonald Castle and you should definitely come and visit some time. Anyway
Robert, Robert the Second's mum was Robert the Bruce's daughter, Marjory, but who was his dad and how
did he get himself married to the daughter of Robert the Bruce? I mean that must have been
the scariest meet the parents experience ever! Imagine you're going out with some girl and she
takes you home and meet her dad, and it's Robert the Bruce! What are your intentions young man?
Uh ... well right now I was going to just wet my pants and then I was going to wing it after that!
Actually it wasn't quite like that, it was the other way round in fact.
Walter, that was the young lad who married Marjory Bruce and gave us the Stewart line.
Walter the Steward, had been a key supporter of Robert the Bruce. He'd fought alongside him at Bannockburn,
and he'd done other stuff as well. So the marriage arranged with Marjory Bruce was a kind of reward.
That must have been the scariest meet your fiancée experience ever. Imagine a marriage
has been arranged for you, the day's come and gone, you're in that fumbly, awkward first thing,
you know on the wedding night, and you can't even say who's the daddy because it's Robert the Bruce.
The truth is that Walter the Steward was used to being around the Scottish Royal Family.
He was the High Steward of the King. Now what that meant was that he ran the King's household, which
presumably meant that the first Stewart King had to look after his own house.
You'd see him down a DIY store crown on the head, pencil behind his ear, but he'd been used to it.
You see, his ancestors had been stewards to the Kings of Scots for generations. That's how over
the generations what had been the job title of Steward to the King became the family name Stewart.
Walter was the sixth of his family to be High Steward of Scotland, since King David the First
made it an hereditary title to Walter's three times great granddad, who coincidentally was also
called Walter; Walter Fitz Alan. In truth it's probably not that much of a coincidence. It'd be
more of a coincidence if he was called Tony, I don't know. Even Tony's not that much of a coincidence
I'll be honest, it was gonna be a Chinese name, but whatever I said it sounded a wee bit racist, so hmmm!
The point is that a few years after David chose Walter Fitz Alan as his steward, he made the title
hereditary. In those few years he obviously decided that not only could Walter Fitz Alan get the job
for life, but his son would be pretty good at it too, and his grandson, his three times great grandson
all the way down to the present Prince Charles. How crazy is that? Can you imagine if they chose
football managers that way? Of course this wasn't so much skills based employment
as patronage. Oh incidentally, if you want to become a Patreon and support this channel then
click the white tab up there, alternatively you can support the channel by buying coffee
in the description below. Patreon members don't have to put up with those annoying adverts.
So how did Walter Fitz Alan get the job of looking after the King's household in the
first place? Well, there was a civil war in England. You see Henry the First of England
wanted his daughter Matilda to rule after him, but when Henry died, her cousin Stephen of Blois,
managed to get in before her and have himself crowned King.
That led to civil war that they call the Anarchy. Now for our international viewers let's be clear,
this was the English Anarchy, as opposed to 'Anarchy in the UK', a seminal punk album by the Sex Pistols.
Yeah it's difficult to say which had more significant effect on British history,
they were both very different eras. I'd argue that the grandchildren of William the Conqueror
had a bigger impact on the nobility, but the Sex Pistols had a better album cover.
Just my opinion. Anyway, not only was Matilda the daughter of Henry the First of England, she was
also the niece of David the First of Scotland, so he came in on her side and invaded England,
and Walter Fitz Alan was a key supporter of his, and that's why he was rewarded with the title High
Steward. The title became hereditary, Stewart became a family name, and of course the rest is history.
I mean I'll still make a couple of stupid jokes as well, but largely the rest of this will be history.
My point is that the Stewart line may have ended with a struggle for the English throne, but it also
started with a struggle for the English throne, which has been my premise from the start. Now,
most YouTubers would have ended it there with that neat completion of the circle, but you know
that's not my style. We can't end it there because we still have to answer the question, how did Walter
Fitz Alan become an ally to David the First and a landowner in Scotland in the first place.
As the name suggests, Walter Fitz Alan, Walter was the son of a guy called Alan, who gained lands in
Shropshire. Now Walter wasn't Alan's eldest son, so he wasn't going to inherit lands. What younger sons
had to do, was to go away and win their own lands by showing loyalty to some Lord or noble elsewhere.
Now, David the First grew to maturity in the Norman court in England. You see Henry the
First's daughter wasn't his niece by accident, no, the King of England was pumping David's sister.
There David rubbed shoulders with the recent French immigrants
that had been brought to England as part of the Norman takeover.
When David the First came north to Normanise Scotland. He brought these Knights with him as
enforcers, to impose himself on, and control the parts of Scotland, where the Kings didn't quite
run. Now Galloway was still wild and independent at the time, and so David granted the first Robert
the Bruce, from whom our warrior King was descended, lands in Annandale to act as a buffer
to Galloway. The West Coast and the Hebrides were similarly controlled by the Norse or the
Lordship of the Isles, oh check out my videos on the Lord of the Isles. So as a buffer here
in the west, David gave lands in Renfrew, Mearns, Kilmacolm and Ayrshire to Walter Fitz Alan and
that's how Walter Fitz Alan became a landowner in Scotland in the first place. Now here's the thing,
when David gave these lands to Robert the Bruce, Walter Fitz Alan and other
French Knights, he wasn't really giving them the lands, essentially he was giving his permission
for them to go and take the lands, secure them and control them on David's behalf. Now I've
seen it suggested, that the reason that David the First gave Walter Fitz Alan lands in Strathclyde,
was because it was the part of Scotland, which had been the kingdom of the Britons.
Walter was a Breton, from Brittany in France, and so he would have a mutual linguistic and
cultural understanding with these northern Britons, whose language would have been a bit like Welsh.
Now I don't know to what extent that was the motivation, but we do know that Walter
Fitz Alan's dad, like around 10% of William the Conquerors invasion force wasn't Norman but Breton,
and that's where the family had been hereditary Stewards to the Bishops of Dol just south of
Saint Malo Walter's dad, Alan Fitz Flaad was brought from Brittany by Henry the First and given lands
in Shropshire on the border with Wales to do exactly the same job that his son would do here in
the West of Scotland a generation later. The thing is that when we talk about Stewart Monarchs, people
speak about the Italian fop that was Bonnie Prince Charlie, or his grandad ousted from the throne, or
tragic Scots-born Monarchs that were beheaded by the English. The patriarch of what we now call
the Stewarts was a guy called Alan Fitz Flaad, who secured land by fighting for it, as part of the
wave of Norman immigration to England. His son stepped up to be a major landowner as a warrior
immigrant to Scotland. The family remained close to the crown, then acceded to the crown, survived
as our nation's longest reigning dynasty, before claiming the English crown, and what would become
the British Empire. Through it all, they outlived the English house of Normandy, the House of Blois,
the House of Anjou, Plantagenet, Lancastrians, Yorkists and the Tudors. Maybe the Stewarts
weren't a tragic dynasty after all! Maybe they were the great survivors. I've put together
a playlist in my videos relating to the Stewart Monarchs in a chronologically ordered playlist,
and you'll find it here. In the meantime, tha mi an dochas gum bith lath math leibh. Tiorridh an drasda.