nd
boded future trouble and humiliation to all thrones and temporal
dignities. Much antiquarian speculation has been exerted, but without
very obvious success, to fathom the motives for this act of
munificence. William had invaded those parts of the north of England
which were previously held in a species of feudality by the Kings of
Scotland, and was disgracefully defeated at Alnwick, and committed to
captivity, just at the time when the English monarch, whose forces
accomplished the victory and capture, was enduring his humiliating
penance at the tomb of the canonized archbishop. Lord Hailes, who says
that "William was personally acquainted with Becket, when there was
little probability of his ever becoming a confessor, martyr and
saint," endeavoring to discover a motive for the munificence of the
Scottish King, continues to say: "Perhaps it was meant as a public
declaration that he did not ascribe his disaster at Alnwick to the
ill-will of his old friend. He may, perhaps, have been hurried by the
torrent of popular prejudices into the belief that his disaster
proceeded from the partiality of Becket towards the penitent Henry;
and he might imagine that if equal honors were done in Scotland to the
new saint as in England he might, on future occasions, observe a
neutrality."[4] It is remarkable that several of the early chroniclers
allude to this friendship between the Scottish monarch, who was a
resolute champion of temporal authority, and the representative of
ecclesiastical supremacy....

Princes may be induced, by personal circumstances, to change their
views, and in the times when they were not controlled by responsible
ministers, they gave effect to their alterations of opinion. It is
quite possible that at the time when he founded the Abbey, William was
partial to Church ascendency, for his celebrated contest with the
ecclesiastical power arose out of subsequent events. This King's
disputes with the Church have a somewhat complex shape. The clergy of
his own dominions had a spiritual war against the English hierarchy,
who asserted a claim to exercise metropolitan authority over them; and
it might have been supposed that William, if he sought to humble his
own clergy, would have found it politic to favor the pretensions of
those of England. But the interests of the two clerical bodies became
in the end united. Thus the war which had so long raged in England,
passed towards the north, with this difference, that th