♂Henry of Scotland

Henry of Scotland^W (about 1114 – 12 June 1152) was a Scottish prince, the only surviving son of King David I of Scotland, who held the English earldoms of Huntingdon and Northumberland and died in his father’s lifetime, so that he never became king. He was the twenty-fourth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his daughter Margaret of Scotland.

A king’s son in England

Henry was the younger son of David I^W, King of Scotland, and of Maud of Huntingdon, the widow of Simon de St. Liz, Earl of Huntingdon; his elder brother, Malcolm, had died in infancy. He and his mother witnessed a charter his father gave to the abbey David had founded at Selkirk in 1113, which was later moved to Kelso. When Stephen^W seized the English crown, David took up arms for the Empress Matilda^W, and when peace was made about March 1136 David resigned the earldom of Huntingdon in Henry’s favor, and Henry did homage to Stephen.

War broke out again, and Henry fought on the Scottish side at the Battle of the Standard^W in 1138. At the peace of 1139 he received the earldom of Northumberland, all but the cities of Newcastle and Bamborough. He became a favorite of Stephen’s and stayed with him in England for some time.

Founder and husband

As “Henry the Earl, son of the King of Scotland,” he made grants to St. Andrew’s Priory at Northampton, and in 1150 he founded Holmcultram Abbey^W in Cumberland. He married Ada de Warenne, a daughter of William de Warenne, Earl of Surrey, and of Isabel of Vermandois. Their daughter Margaret of Scotland later married Humphrey de Bohun, hereditary Constable of England. Through Margaret’s descendants the line probably reaches John Washburn (died 1547), by a descent given in the Notes.

Death

Henry died on 12 June 1152, a year before his father, and was buried at Kelso Abbey^W. The Scottish chronicler Fordun described him as handsome, virtuous, beloved by all and most compassionate to the poor, and St. Bernard of Clairvaux called him a brave and wise knight. Because he died first, the crown passed to his sons Malcolm and William, who became one after the other Kings of Scotland.

Notes

Sources

Henry’s birth about 1114, his parentage, his earldoms, the Battle of the Standard, his time with King Stephen, his grants, the founding of Holmcultram, his marriage, his death and burial and his sons’ reigns are given in the Complete Peerage (2nd ed., vol. 6, 1926, pp. 641–642 and notes, under Huntingdon), citing Aelred of Rievaulx, Richard of Hexham, Fordun’s Scotichronicon, the Vita et Passio of Waltheof and the Chronicle of Melrose. The charter he and his mother witnessed is cited there from the Kelso Chartulary. The Complete Peerage (same volume, p. 457, under Hereford) names Margaret as the daughter of “Prince Henry of Scotland, Earl of Huntingdon, by Ada, da. of William (de Warenne), Earl of Surrey”. Douglas Richardson, Magna Carta Ancestry (2005), p. 57 (Bohun 1), calls him Earl of Northumberland.

His birth

The year is an estimate. Aelred of Rievaulx called Henry adolescens, a youth, in 1138; the Vita et Passio puts his birth after his father became king in 1124, which the Complete Peerage thinks too late.

The descent through John Washburn

That the John whom the pedigrees give as a son of Joyce Botetourt’s great-granddaughter Joan Mitton was John Washburn of Bengeworth, who died in 1547, is the identification of the Washbournes’ historian, James Davenport, not a record’s, so the descent through him is given here as probable.