Heroes are human

When it gets to Kings, the story of the Israelites is the story of a whole nation, or a major corporation and we can see all the politics of multi nation companies at work. Nevertheless, let’s look at David. David is a hero king yet he is humble; his real concern is for the wellbeing of the nation. The nation is bigger than David, not the other way round as some politicians come to imagine. Yet the story tells of David lusting after another man’s wife, not only lusting but engineering the man’s death so that he can have her for himself. If this is true, why not just ignore it and keep the hero king’s moral reputation clean? Because it shows David as a human being. We have so many heroes from history who have no faults or defects, Arthur, Robert Bruce, yet David is not one of them. This is one of the non- religious lessons the Bible teaches – honour people for what they do, but remember they are humans and have human motivations: Robert Burns poetry is a gift to the world and should not be tainted with his human failings; Turner’s landscapes are magnificent and his treatment of women should not detract from that. The wonder of it is that humans could create such things and that should be a motivation for each of us to try.

David and the aged warrior

How the Bruce connection at the time of Matilda and Stephen slipped through the net, I do not know but before we get to deeply into the lead up to Bannockburn, let me do a bit of time travel. You'll remember that the Empress of Maud or Matilda was the niece of David 1, King of Scots, and her right to the Throne of england was disputed by Stephen. David gathered a host to invade England in support of his niece. The host, a motley collection, especially the wild men of Galloway, gathered to plunder the north of England. They set off but when they got to Northallerton, according to Sir Walter Scott, an aged warrior by the name of Bruce, who had known David in the past and had estates in both countries, went into the Scottish camp and advised David not to fight. The Galloway men accused Bruce of being a traitor and, when David had second thoughts about fighting, accused him of cowardice and rabble roused the army to charge. Prince Henry of Scotland led the Scottish cavalry, broke through the English lines and started to hack their rear while the Galloway men hacked them at the front. Things were going well when a perfidious Englishman chopped off someone's head, raised it on a pole and shouted it had belonged to the King of Scots. Whether it was Bruce or not, no one seems to have noticed, but the Scots lost heart and, encouraged by the English longbowmen, ran off home. It was this aged warrior who begat the Bruce line.
To show how unpredictable politics can be, when the peace treaty was signed, except for Newcastle and Bamborough, the whole of Northumberland and Durham became Scottish. Which confirms that, sometimes, you get more from losing than winning.
Of course, you could say that, with typical Scots stupidity, David didn't move his capital south, in accordance with English tradition, but kept it at Edinburgh in what was the middle of his realm, and an opportunity to consolidate was lost.

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