WILLIAM TaTE LxoN, one of the early kings of Scotland. succeeded his brother, Malam IV., in 1165. He is commonly called William the Lion, but why he obtained that title is one of the mysteries of history. When heraldry long afterward became a science, and was supposed to have been in use earlier than it really was, tt was not un naturally supposed that he was the first king who used, as a heraldic the• lion, afterward the chief feature in the arms of Scotland. His predecessors had long contested with the kings of Ekidand the sovereignty of and other districts of what is now the north of England. Under Malcolm, these claims were virtually abandoned, and the king of Scots received, as a sort of equivalent for them, the earldom of Huntingdon and other valuable estates holding of the English crown. William hind still, however, a hankering after the Northumbrian districts. He Henry of England in his continental wars, and is supposed, when doing so, to have pressed for a portion at least of the old disputed districts. In his disappointment, he.
invaded them, after the example of his ancestors. On July 13, 1174, he fell, almost by accident, into the hands of an English party. For security, he was conveyed to :Normandy, mind there he consented, as the price of his liberation, to perform that hom age for his kingtIoni which the English kings so long in vain attempted to exact front the goverumen, of Scotland. How far the Scots community would have admitted that he had a right to bind them to such a condition, may be doubted. The treaty of Falaise, however, as the transaction was termed, from the place where it was adjusted, was revoked in the year 1189 by Richard I. of England, in consideration of a payment of 10,000 marks, which he wanted for his celebrated expedition to Palestine. S illiam had several disputes with the church, but he was one of the early benefactors of the regular ecclesiastics, and founded, in 1178, the great abbey of Arbroath, which lie dedi cated to Thomas ft Becket, who had been slain eight years earlier. King William died in 1214.