Page:EB1911 - Volume 07.djvu/884

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DAVID II.—DAVID, FÉLICIEN
  

afterwards concluded peace. In 1141 he joined Matilda in London and accompanied her to Winchester, but after a narrow escape from capture he returned to Scotland. Henceforth he remained in his own kingdom and devoted himself to its political and ecclesiastical reorganization. A devoted son of the church, he founded five bishoprics and many monasteries. In secular politics he energetically forwarded the process of feudalization which had been initiated by his immediate predecessors. He died at Carlisle on the 24th of May 1153.

DAVID II. (1324–1371), king of Scotland, son of King Robert the Bruce by his second wife, Elizabeth de Burgh (d. 1327), was born at Dunfermline on the 5th of March 1324. In accordance with the terms of the treaty of Northampton he was married in July 1328 to Joanna (d. 1362), daughter of the English king, Edward II., and became king of Scotland on his father’s death in June 1329, being crowned at Scone in November 1331. Owing to the victory of Edward III. of England and his protégé, Edward Baliol, at Halidon Hill in July 1333, David and his queen were sent for safety into France, reaching Boulogne in May 1334, and being received very graciously by the French king, Philip VI. Little is known about the life of the Scottish king in France, except that Château Gaillard was given to him for a residence, and that he was present at the bloodless meeting of the English and French armies at Vironfosse in October 1339. Meanwhile his representatives had obtained the upper hand in Scotland, and David was thus enabled to return to his kingdom in June 1341, when he took the reins of government into his own hands. In 1346 he invaded England in the interests of France, but was defeated and taken prisoner at the battle of Neville’s Cross in October of this year, and remained in England for eleven years, living principally in London and at Odiham in Hampshire. His imprisonment was not a rigorous one, and negotiations for his release were soon begun. Eventually, in October 1357, after several interruptions, a treaty was signed at Berwick by which the Scottish estates undertook to pay 100,000 marks as a ransom for their king. David, who had probably recognized Edward III. as his feudal superior, returned at once to Scotland; but owing to the poverty of the kingdom it was found impossible to raise the ransom. A few instalments were paid, but the king sought to get rid of the liability by offering to make Edward III., or one of his sons, his successor in Scotland. In 1364 the Scottish parliament indignantly rejected a proposal to make Lionel, duke of Clarence, the next king; but David treated secretly with Edward III. over this matter, after he had suppressed a rising of some of his unruly nobles. The king died in Edinburgh Castle on the 22nd of February 1371. His second wife was Margaret, widow of Sir John Logie, whom he divorced in 1369; but he left no children, and was succeeded by his nephew, Robert II. David was a weak and incapable ruler, without a spark of his father’s patriotic spirit.

See Andrew of Wyntoun, The orygynale cronykil of Scotland, edited by D. Laing (Edinburgh, 1872–1879); John of Fordun, Chronica gentis Scotorum, edited by W. F. Skene (Edinburgh, 1871–1872); J. H. Burton, History of Scotland, vol. ii. (Edinburgh, 1905); and A. Lang, History of Scotland, vol. i. (Edinburgh, 1900).

DAVID, the name of three Welsh princes.

David I. (d. 1203), a son of Prince Owen Gwynedd (d. 1169), came into prominence as a leader of the Welsh during the expedition of Henry II. in 1157. In 1170 he became lord of Gwynedd (i.e. the district around Snowdon), but some regarded him as a bastard, and Gwynedd was also claimed by other members of his family. After fighting with varying fortunes he sought an ally in the English king, whom he supported during the baronial rising in 1173; then after this event he married Henry’s half-sister Emma. But his enemies increased in power, and about 1194 he was driven from Wales by the partisans of his half-brother Llewelyn ab Iorwerth. The chronicler Benedictus Abbas calls David rex, and Rhuddlan castle was probably the centre of his vague authority.

David II. (c. 1208–1246) was a son of the great Welsh prince, Llewelyn ab Iorwerth, and through his mother Joanna was a grandson of King John. He married an English lady, Isabella de Braose, and, having been recognized as his father’s heir both by Henry III. and by the Welsh lords, he had to face the hostility of his half-brother Gruffydd, whom he seized and imprisoned in 1239. When Llewelyn died in April 1240, David, who had already taken some part in the duties of government, was acknowledged as a prince of North Wales, doing homage to Henry III. at Gloucester. However, he was soon at variance with the English king, who appears to have espoused the cause of the captive Gruffydd. Henry’s Welsh campaign in 1241 was bloodless but decisive. Gruffydd was surrendered to him; David went to London and made a full submission, but two or three years later he was warring against some English barons on the borders. To check the English king he opened negotiations with Innocent IV., doubtless hoping that the pope would recognize Wales as an independent state, but here, as on the field of battle, Henry III. was too strong for him. Just after Henry’s second campaign in Wales the prince died in March 1246.

David III. (d. 1283) was a son of Gruffydd and thus a nephew of David II. His life was mainly spent in fighting against his brother, the reigning prince, Llewelyn ab Gruffydd. His first revolt took place in 1254 or 1255, and after a second about eight years later he took refuge in England, returning to Wales when Henry III. made peace with Llewelyn in 1267. Then about 1274 the same process was repeated. David attended Edward I. during the Welsh expedition of 1277, receiving from the English king lands in North Wales; but in 1282 he made peace with Llewelyn and suddenly attacked the English garrisons, a proceeding which led to Edward’s final conquest of Wales. After Llewelyn’s death in December 1282 David maintained the last struggle of the Welsh for independence. All his efforts, however, were vain; in June 1283 he was betrayed to Edward, was tried by a special court and sentenced to death, and was executed with great barbarity at Shrewsbury in October 1283. As the last native prince of Wales, David’s praises have been sung by the Welsh bards, but his character was not attractive, and a Welsh historian says “his life was the bane of Wales.”

DAVID, FÉLICIEN (1810–1876), French composer, was born on the 13th of April 1810 at Cadenet, in the department of Vaucluse. As a child he showed unusual musical precocity, and being early left an orphan he was admitted into the choir of Saint Sauveur at Aix. He was for a time employed in an attorney’s office, but quitted his service to become chef d’orchestre in the theatre at Aix, and chapel-master at Saint Sauveur. Then he went to Paris, being provided with £100 a year by a rich uncle. After having studied for a while at the Paris Conservatoire, he joined the sect of Saint Simonians, and in 1833 travelled in the East in order to preach the new doctrine. After three years’ absence, during which Constantinople and Smyrna were visited and some time was spent in Egypt, he returned to France and published a collection of Oriental Melodies. For several years he worked in retirement, and wrote two symphonies, some chamber music and songs. On the 8th of December 1844 he suddenly leapt into fame through the extraordinary success obtained by his symphonic ode Le Désert, which was produced at the Conservatoire. In this work David had struck out a new line. He had attempted in simple strains to evoke the majestic stillness of the desert. Notwithstanding its title of “symphonic ode,” Le Désert has little in common with the symphonic style. What distinguishes it is a certain naïveté of expression and an effective oriental colouring. In this last respect David may be looked upon as the precursor of a whole army of composers. His succeeding works, Moïse au Sinai (1846), Christophe Colomb (1847), L’Éden (1848), scarcely bore out the promise shown in Le Désert, although the second of these compositions was successful at the time of its production. David now turned his attention to the theatre, and produced the following operas in succession: La Perle du Brésil (1851), Herculanum (1859), Lalla-Roukh (1862), Le Saphir (1865). Of these, Lalla-Roukh is the one which has obtained the greatest success. In 1868 he gained the award of the French Institute for the biennial prize given by the emperor; and in 1869 he was made librarian at the Conservatoire instead of Berlioz, whom subsequently he succeeded as a member of the Institute. He died