Coincidences of Names, Anglo-Scottish Connections and Anglo-Saxon Society in the late Eleventh-Century West Country

Abstract

Maelcoluim III, king of Scots (ruled 1058-93), had at least eight sons: Donnchad (Duncan) and Domnall (Donald), sons of his first wife, and Edward, Edmund, ^Ethelred, Edgar, Alexander, and David, sons of his second wife, Margaret sister of Edgar vEtheling. Donnchad (Donnchad II, 1094), Edgar (1097-1107), Alexander (Alexander I, 1107-24) and David (David I, 1124-53) were all kings of Scots; one of their sisters, Edith/Matilda married King Henry I of England in 1100.1 Donnchad was given as hostage to William the Conqueror in 1072 and thereafter he is, for the most part, absent from the record until 1094 when he invaded Scotland to wrest the throne from his uncle, Domnall III (1093-4, 1094-7). In the first part of this article he is tentatively identified with the sole Donecan in Domesday Book, a tenant of Robert, count of Mortain (d.1095), the Conqueror's half-brother, in Somerset.2 Most of the article, however, concerns the names 'David' and 'Alexander'. These soon came to be associated with the Scottish royal family, but this is their