IN the long long list of Scottish monarchs, the further back you go, the less is known about the kings of Scots – and they were nearly all kings before the Union of Crowns in 1603, there being just one crowned queen regnant, Mary, Queen of Scots, with her distant predecessor Margaret, the Maid of Norway never having ruled before her death at the age of seven.

One king we should know a lot more about is Alexander II who was born in this week of 1198 at Haddington in what is now East Lothian. He reigned from 1214 to 1249 and he should be much more celebrated as he established the border with England and also created the first Scottish Parliament.

Alexander II was born to King William the Lion and Ermengarde de Beaufort.

She came from France, appointed to be William’s queen consort by England’s King Henry II who had seized overlordship of Scotland by capturing William in battle and forcing him to sign the Treaty of Falaise.

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In Scotichronicon, Walter Bower described her as “an extraordinary woman, gifted with a charming and witty eloquence”, which is the biggest compliment he pays any woman.

She more or less ran the country as William’s health deteriorated badly during his sixties, and it was she who negotiated with Henry’s sons Richard the Lionheart and John even while William lived. Such was the good relationship that she had with John that he knighted young Alexander in 1213.

A year later on December 6, 1214, at the age of just 16, Alexander was crowned King of Scots at Scone two days after the death of his father, and in the initial years of his reign he very much relied on his mother for advice. It was Ermengarde who had negotiated with John for Alexander to be recognised as King of Scots.

At first the teenaged king contented himself with dealing roughly with rebels in his own land. In 1215, two powerful clans, the Meic Uilleim (McWilliams) and MacHeths, mounted an armed revolt but Alexander sent an army to deal with them under the command of Ferchar mac in tSagairt who defeated the rebels and sent the heads of their leaders to Alexander. Ferchar would be made Mormaer (Earl) of Ross by a grateful Alexander.

Forgetting his family’s previous good relationship with King John, Alexander joined the English barons in their plot against him, invading England with an army to support the barons, even as they forced John to sign Magna Carta at Runnymede. That Scottish army got all the way to the south coast where Alexander met Prince Louis of France whom the barons wanted to replace John who meanwhile sent an army north to sack Berwick-upon-Tweed.

For several months there was warfare in the north of England with John taking a loyal army north to confront the northern barons who still had the assistance of Alexander. In October 1216, the conflict ended with the mysterious collapse and death from dysentery of John, by common consent one of England’s worst monarchs.

His son Henry III was not quite 10 when he gained the throne and he had the support of the papacy and the English aristocracy which resulted in peace breaking out, cemented by the Treaty of Kingston between England, France and Scotland in September, 1217. With their French allies going home, the Scots withdrew north while England settled down under the powerful regent William Marshall.

Scotland was not so peaceable, and in 1222, a horrific indecent occurred in Halkirk in Caithness when Bishop Adam, head of the local diocese, was burned alive in his hall. Several people said the killers were led by the local Norse jarl (earl), Jon Haraldsson, but he strongly denied this.

Alexander decided to investigate himself and went north to confront the farmers who carried out the killing, supposedly because the bishop had demanded that they pay the tithes of hay that the church, and indeed the king, claimed from them. Alexander showed ruthless justice, beheading some of the assailants and mutilating the rest. He received a commendation from Pope Honorius III for his actions.

That same year saw Alexander set up a council of nobles and clerics to advise him, Scotland’s first version of a Parliament.

It was probably William Marshall who negotiated the marriage of Princess Joan, the sister of Henry III, to Alexander II, which took place in June, 1221, when he was 23 and she was just 10. She would suffer ill-health throughout her marriage, so much so that her brother gave her lands and a house in England where she spent a lot of time recuperating before dying there in March 1238.

Joan and Alexander had become estranged, but she was still with him in 1237 when Alexander decided to regulate the position of the border with England.

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It was important to him that Henry II make no claim to be overlord of Scotland, and so the two kings sealed the pragmatic Treaty of York which established the border as running between the Tweed in the east and the Solway in the west, which is more or less the line of the border to this day.

Alexander then turned his attention to securing his dynasty, and married Marie de Coucy, a beautiful and very wealthy woman of 21, and a member of the French royal house. Two years later she gave birth to their only son, the future Alexander III.

During his reign, Alexander consolidated his kingdom by conquering those nobles who reigned as sub-kings in various parts of the west of Scotland such as Argyll and Galloway. He saw his biggest task, however, as subjugating the Western Isles which were still under Norse control.

Ewen, King of the Isles, would not break his link to King Haakon IV of Norway. Alexander gathered an army and navy and set out to subdue Ewen in the summer of 1249, but he died of a fever while on the way west at Kerrera near Oban on July 6, 1249, at the age of 50.