Dunfermline

The first historic record for Dunfermline was made in the 11th century. According to the fourteenth-century chronicler, John of Fordun, Malcolm III married his second bride, the Anglo-Hungarian princess Saint Margaret, at the church in Dunfermline between 1068 and 1070; the ceremony was performed by Fothad, the last Celtic bishop of St Andrews. Malcolm III established Dunfermline as a new seat for royal power in the mid-11th century and initiated changes that eventually made the township the de facto capital of Scotland for much of the period until the assassination of James I in 1437. Following her marriage to King Malcolm III, Queen Margaret encouraged her husband to convert the small culdee chapel into a church for Benedictine monks. The existing culdee church was no longer able to meet the demand for its growing congregation because of a large increase in the population of Dunfermline from the arrival of English nobility coming into Scotland. The founding of this new church of Dunfermline was inaugurated around 1072, but was not recorded in the town’s records. King David I of Scotland (reigned 1124-53) would later grant this church, dedicated to the Holy Trinity, to “unam mansuram in burgo meo de Dunfermlyn” which translates into “a house or dwelling place in my burgh of Dunfermline”. The foundations of the church evolved into an Abbey in 1128, under the reign of their son, David I. Dunfermline Abbey would play a major role in the general romanisation of religion throughout the kingdom. At the peak of its power the abbey controlled four burghs, three courts of regality and a large portfolio of lands from Moray in the north down into Berwickshire. From the time of Alexander I (reign 1104-28), the location of the church - later granted Abbey status - would also become firmly established as a prosperous royal mausoleum of the Scottish Crown. A total of eighteen royals, including seven Kings, were buried here from Queen Margaret in 1093 to Robert Stewart, Duke of Albany in 1420. During the fight for Scottish Independence from English rule, between 1296 and 1329, Robert The Bruce had insisted as early as 1314, he wanted to be buried in the royal mausoleum in Dunfermline. This was so he could maintain the legacy of previous Scottish Kings interred here, referring to them as our ‘predecessors’. Robert The Bruce (reigned 1306-29) would ultimately become the last of the seven Scottish Kings to be given this honour in 1329, although his heart was taken to Melrose Abbey. Dunfermline had become a burgh between 1124 and 1127, if not before this time. Dunfermline Palace was also connected to the abbey and the first known documentation of the Auld Alliance was signed there on 23 October 1295.