"For when the nobles of the kingdom were assembled at London, he promised that the laws should be reformed to the satisfaction of every one of them, and William, Archbishop of Canterbury, who was the first of all the nobles to take the oath of fidelity to the Empress as Queen of England, now consecrated Stephen to be King. In fine, all the bishops, earls, and barons who had sworn fealty to the King's daughter and her heirs gave their adhesion to King Stephen, saying that it would be a shame for so many nobles to submit themselves to a woman." Having obtained the crown, Stephen assisted in burying the corpse of his uncle, being one of those who sustained the coffin on their shoulders. How suggestive such a scene must have appeared to many who were present. The dead King had broken the closest ties of relationship and blood in obtaining the crown; the retribution that took the shape of his son's untimely death was to some extent compensated by the death of his nephew; but no sooner is the old King dead than his nephew usurps the crown, maugre his vows of allegiance to Matilda, and piously assists in conveying him to the grave. For the moment no man seemed disposed to maintain the claims of the ex-Empress: the first to move on her behalf being her uncle David, King of Scotland, a humane and religious prince, who occupied the same relationship to Stephen's wife that he did to the ex-Empress. In his first invasion David succeeded in occupying Carlisle and Newcastle, but being confronted by Stephen at the head of a powerful army, a treaty was entered into at Durham, whereby King David engaged to abandon hostilities on certain territorial concessions being made to him. Thrice in one year Northumbria was inundated by the wild Scots, and Stephen, harassed by his treacherous barons, could only avenge his unhappy subjects by laying waste the frontiers of Scotland. The wildest storm of war swept over Northumbria in the year 1138, the unfortunate inhabitants of that province being mercilessly slaughtered in requital for the sins of their princes and nobles--sins in which they had neither art nor part. David was deeply afflicted by the enormous cruelties which his troops perpetrated, but he was utterly unable to control their passions, and endeavoured to quieten his conscience by condemning the acts of his armies, and by his royal munificence to the church--James the First expressed his appreciation of the liberality of his predecessor by remarking that, "He kythed a sair saint to the crown." The tumultuary army which followed him "consisted of Normans, Germans, and English, of Cumbrian Britons, of Northumbrians, of men of Teviotdale and Lothian, of Picts commonly called men of Galloway, and of Scots."