St Aelred of Rievaulx was in his earlier years master of the household to David, with whom he kept up a close friendship, and after the king's death he wrote an account of him. In it he speaks of David's reluctance to accept the crown, of the justice of his rule, of his almsdeeds and his accessibility to all, of his efforts to maintain concord among the clergy, of his personal piety, and in general of the great work he did for the consolidation of the kingdom of Scotland. Aelred's only criticism was of his failure to control the savagery and rapacity of his troops when he invaded England, on behalf of his niece Matilda against Stephen. For this David was very contrite, and is said to have looked on his defeat at the Battle of the Standard and elsewhere and the early death of his only son as just retribution therefor.
It was afterwards complained that King David's benefactions to the Church impoverished the crown, among the critics being his fifteenth-century successor, James I. For not only did he found the royal burghs of Edinburgh, Berwick, Roxburgh, Stirling and perhaps Perth, but he also established the bishoprics of Brechin, Dunblane, Caithness, Ross and Aberdeen and founded numerous monasteries. Among them were the Cistercian houses of Melrose, Kinloss, Newbattle and Dundrennan, and Holyrood itself for Augustinian canons.
St Aelred gives a circumstantial account of David's death at Carlisle on May 24, 1153. On the Friday he was anointed and given viaticum, and then spent much time in praying psalms with his attendants. On Saturday they urged him to rest, but he replied, "Let me rather think about the things of God, so that my spirit may set out strengthened on its journey from exile to home. When I stand before God's tremendous judgement-seat you will not be able to answer for me or defend me; no one will be able to deliver me from His hand". And so he continued to pray; and at dawn of Sunday he passed away peacefully as if he slept.
St David had helped to endow Dunfermline Abbey, founded by his father and mother, and he had peopled it with Benedictine monks from Canterbury. There he was buried, and at his shrine his memory was venerated until the Reformation.
For the reign of one of the greatest Scottish kings consult standard histories of that kingdom. Bishop Forbes summarizes St Aelred's panegyric in his Kalendars of Scottish Saints, and gives references to Robertson, Scotland under her Early Kings, vol. i (Edinburgh, 1862) and to Pinkerton's Vitae Antiquae Sanctorum Scotiae. See also Bellesheim's History of the Catholic Church in Scotland, vol. i, and A H. Dunbar, Scottish Kings (1906). The cultus of St David was recognized after the Reformation among Protestants by the insertion of his name in the calendar of Laud's Prayer-book for Scotland, 1637.
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(Butler's Lives of the Saints, Christian Classics, 1995)
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