Chapter V
Disputed Succession. War of Independence.
ON the death of the Maid of Norway the nation found itself without an heir to the throne in the direct line of succession, and the signs of a contest soon appeared. As soon as the tidings of the Queen’s death became known, the Earls of Mar and Athole began to muster their army, while Robert Bruce had surrounded himself with a body of his followers and was moving through the kingdom and intently looking for more supporters. At this crisis of the nation’s destiny William Fraser, Bishop of St. Andrews, thought fit to counsel Edward I., and distinctly suggested that he should interfere in the affairs of Scotland, and at once advance towards the Border. Fraser may have wished to prevent the shedding of blood in Scotland, as he said, but it is obvious that the bishop had utterly misunderstood the character of the man whom he assumed to advise.¹ Indeed, Edward I. needed no invitation; he had already resolved to decide the fate of Scotland, formed his scheme, chosen his own path, and directed his energy to its accomplishment with great deliberation, while the current of events seemed exceedingly favourable to him.
¹ National Manuscripts of Scotland, Part I., Number 70.
Edward I. issued writs commanding his barons to attend him with horse and arms at Norham on the 3rd of June, 1291; thus he prepared for any emergency which might arise; while he invited the Scotch nobles and clergy to a conference at Norham on the 10th of May, to which they agreed. As yet Edward was proceeding with well studied policy, smoothing his way, and the documents then sent into Scotland were couched in the most courteous terms. The conference assembled at the appointed time, and the business was opened by an address from the Chief Justice of England. His Lordship strongly asserted that Edward I. was the overlord of the kingdom of Scotland, and therefore he earnestly appealed to the Scots to acknowledge this, that the settlement of the great matter before them might be facilitated. The Scots replied that they were not aware if such a right of feudal superiority belonged to him, and requested time to consult with the absent nobles, the clergy, and the community of the kingdom, before giving an answer. Three weeks were allowed to them, and then all were to reassemble at Norham. A clear answer was to be given on the question of the superiority of Edward I., and all those demurring to it or in any way opposing it, were requested to produce the documents or other evidence on which they founded their objections. The adjournment was favourable to Edward, as it tended to bring into prominence the real difficulties associated with the case.
At the appointed time the meeting assembled on a green plain opposite the Castle of Norham, and eight claimants for the crown of Scotland appeared, namely, John Baliol, Lord of Galloway; Robert Bruce, Lord of Annandale; Lord John Hastings; John Comyn, Lord of Badenoch; Patrick of Dunbar; Earl of March; Florence Count of Holland; John Vesy for his father, Nicholas Soulis; and William Ross, and they were accompanied by many of the nobles and clergy. None of these claimants were very near in relationship to the royal line of the Scottish kings; the three first names in the list stood nearest and their claims were almost equal. Thus David, Earl of Huntingdon, was a grandson of David I., and a younger brother of Malcolm IV. and William the Lion. This Earl David, as stated in a preceding note,¹ had three daughters, Margaret, Isabella, and Ada, and John Baliol claimed as a grandson of Margaret, the eldest daughter; Robert Bruce claimed as a son of Isabella, the second daughter; and John Hastings claimed as a grandson of Ada, the youngest daughter. So it was seen, at an early stage of the proceedings, that the real contest for the crown would lie between these three claimants. An interesting and peculiar characteristic of the whole of these claims for the crown was that they had all originated from marriages with females, who were related to the royal family of Scotland, and it must be admitted that in the art of contracting marriages the Norman nobles were really great men.
¹ Under page 204.
The Bishop of Bath began the business of the meeting by reading the King’s speech, which, after referring to the unhappy state of Scotland, proceeded in a fine flowing style to characterise the benignity of the illustrious prince who had come to her rescue. He then said that his royal master had allowed three weeks to the nobles and clergy of Scotland to bring forward whatever they could to impugn King Edward’s right of superiority over that kingdom, and they had adduced nothing to invalidate it. But, in connection with this emphatic statement, one important fact has recently been brought to light, for a contemporary record proves that the community of Scotland lodged an answer in writing against Edward’s claim and demand of feudal superiority; although it was not deemed relevant by Edward, as it was more convenient for him and the claimants of the Crown to ignore the people. The claimants, in their feverish heat to reach the throne, seem to have utterly forgotten that there was a community in the kingdom. When all disturbing questions were brushed aside, Edward announced that his title of Lord Superior was indisputed, and therefore he intended to act in that character. Robert Bruce was then asked whether he was willing to prosecute his claim to the Crown of Scotland in the Court of the Lord Superior; and Bruce, in the presence of the meeting, expressly recognised Edward as Lord Superior, and agreed to abide by his decision. The same question was put to each of the claimants, and they all consented without reserve to the demand of Edward, and immediately sealed their consent by letters patent.¹
¹ Historical Documents of Scotland, Volume II., pages 227, 228; Rishanger’s Chronicles, pages 240‒245, 250.
None of the Scotch nobles or clergy entered any protest, and they appear to have acquiesced in the proceedings and the result of this meeting. The claimants then proceeded a step further in the pursuit of their object, and in order that justice might be done to their claims, they at once made Edward Lord Superior of Scotland in reality. Thus:――“Inasmuch as the aforesaid King of England, cannot such manner of cognisance make and accomplish with judgment, and that judgment ought not to pass without execution, and that execution he cannot do in due manner without possession and seisin of the same lands and castles; we will, concede, and grant that he, as Sovereign Lord to perform the things aforesaid, have seisin of all the lands and castles of Scotland till right be done and performed to the claimants.”¹ It appears that the claimants of the Crown, and the nobles and clergy present at the meeting, actually transferred, or rather sold, the kingdom to Edward I.
¹ National Manuscripts of Scotland, Part I., Number 71.
The new Lord Superior did not let his powers lie dormant. He immediately commanded that all the castles in the kingdom should be surrendered into his hands; he reconstituted the government of the country, and appointed an Englishman to advise it; and the old seal of Scotland was broken into four pieces, and a new one made, more suited to the changed circumstances. A herald then proclaimed the peace of King Edward, as Lord Paramount of the Realm.
He next commanded the guardians of Scotland to exact from the Scots the oath of allegiance to him as Lord Superior of the kingdom. Stations were fixed where attendance should be given, and the swearing-in process began on the 23rd of July, 1291, and was continued for fifteen days. Edward himself visited many of the stations, proceeding by Edinburgh, Linlithgow, Stirling, Perth, ♦Dunfermline, Kinghorn, and St. Andrews, and called upon all ranks to sign the rolls of homages as the vassals of their illustrious Lord Superior. All those who were refractory, were coerced by imprisonment and other punishments;¹ and Edward was silently rejoicing over the great victory which he had so easily gained.
♦ “Dumfermline” replaced with “Dunfermline”
¹ Rishanger’s Chronicles, pages 250, 252; Hailes’ Annals, Volume I., pages 226‒229.
In 1291 eleven meetings were held, the first one in May and the last in August; and the places of meeting and all the proceedings were stated in the records with the greatest minuteness, so that everything connected with the cause, and especially the supreme position and the functions of the Lord Superior, should be placed beyond question. At the meeting held on the 3rd of August, Edward intimated that Bruce and Baliol should each select forty men as commissioners, while he should choose twenty-four or more if he thought fit; and these commissioners were directed to meet in a body and consider the claims of the candidates for the Crown, and report to the king. At this meeting twelve candidates for the Crown appeared and entered their claims; and Edward requested the commissioners to consider them all attentively, and render their report to the next meeting, to be held on the 2nd of June, 1292.¹
¹ Palgrave’s Documents.
This long adjournment was a fine politic move. As its apparent object was to give the commissioners ample time to consider the claims of the candidates in relation to the cause, while it answered the important purpose of accustoming the Scotch nobles and clergy to look to Edward as their great Lord Paramount. For similar reasons Edward welcomed all grades of claimants, and consequently several of those who came forward and claimed the Crown were illegitimate descendants of the kings of Scotland. But seeing that every claimant had a body of feudal followers, and as the first step of each claimant was to recognise Edward as his Lord Superior, and render homage to him as such, every new claimant thus strengthened Edward’s position.
When the commissioners re-assembled on the 2nd of June, 1292, a new claim was entered by Eric, King of Norway, the father of the deceased Maid of Norway; but his claim was not pressed, and judgment passed against him by default. Indeed, it was then well known that the real struggle was virtually between Bruce and Baliol, with a possible chance for Hastings. The proceedings of this meeting assumed the form of an admirable piece of acting planned by Edward I., and well performed by the Scotch commissioners. The king first asked the Scotch commissioners to inform the Court by what laws and customs judgment should be given. They answered that, owing to difference of opinion among themselves, and the importance of the cause, they were unable to come to a conclusion without deliberation, and therefore they sought the opinion of the English commissioners, but they also declined to commit themselves till enlightened by an English parliament. Edward then adjourned the meeting to the 15th of October, 1292, and declared that meanwhile he would consult the learned all over the world.¹
¹ Fœdera, Volume I., page 777; Hailes’ Annals, Volume I., page 235.
The assembly which met at Berwick on the 15th of October settled some preliminary points, one of which was that the succession to the Crown of Scotland ought to be decided in the same manner as the succession to earldoms, baronies, and other indivisible inheritances. Bruce and Baliol were then heard in turn at great length in support of their claims. Bruce determinedly insisted that his right to the Crown had been recognised in the reigns of Alexander II. and Alexander III., and urged that his claim was supported by the custom of succession to the Crown of Scotland. Baliol’s claim was well and adroitly argued, and a touching reference made to the supremacy of the Lord Paramount’s court. After the two claimants were heard, Edward requested his council and the commissioners to answer this question:――“By the laws and customs of both kingdoms, ought the issue of an elder sister, but more remote by one degree, to exclude the issue of the younger sister, although one degree nearer.” The council answered in the affirmative, which was in favour of Baliol’s claim. Other meetings were held before the final decision was given, and at one held on the 6th of November, Edward announced that Bruce was out of the contest as a claimant against Baliol. John Hastings immediately advanced his claim for one-third of the kingdom, on the reasonable ground that it was divisible like any other feudal fief. Bruce then presented a second claim for a third of the kingdom of Scotland. Hastings and Bruce in turn pleaded against Baliol that the kingdom ought to be divided into three parts, the same as other feudal fiefs and baronies, and on this ground they argued their claims to an equal division of the kingdom amongst them at great length: and according to feudalism they were right. But the most peculiar feature of the proceedings was the complete elimination of any reference to the people of Scotland. It seems never to have occurred to the grasping claimants that there lived amongst the valleys and mountains of Scotland a strong-willed race, habituated to independence and freedom, whose spirit must be broken ere even the decision of the great Lord Superior could be of much avail.¹
¹ Rishanger’s Chronicles, pages 309‒356.
On the 17th of November 1292, in the castle of Berwick, and in the presence of a large assemblage, Edward delivered judgment in favour of Baliol. The vassal King then rendered homage to his Lord Superior, and orders were issued to invest him in his feudal fief. These points and formalities were performed and recorded with great care and minuteness, that the process and the rights of the Superior of the fief might be placed beyond question. Baliol then proceeded to Scone to be crowned, with a warrant from his Lord Superior authorising the ceremony, which was accordingly performed on the 30th of November. Shortly after he passed into England, and there concluded the last act of the drama by rendering homage to Edward I. as the invested vassal King of Scotland.¹
¹ Ibid., pages 357, 358; also Ragman Rolls.
When Baliol returned to his kingdom he found himself among a people little disposed to submit to him or his Lord Paramount. If at any moment he had fancied himself fortunate in attaining to the throne of Scotland, he was speedily and rudely disabused. It does not appear that he was gifted with much talent, while he was thwarted at every turn as an unwelcome master. Indeed, it was rumoured that the poor man was in terror of his life, as he was now far away from his great lord and benefactor; yet he seems to have begun his reign with proceedings intended to benefit the kingdom. He passed an Act in February 1293, which divided the district of Argyle for administrative purposes, and re-arranged the sheriffdoms thus:――The sheriffdom of Skye was to include the western portion of Ross (then north Argyle), the lands of Glenelg, the lands of Garmoran, and the isles of Eig and Rum. The sheriffship of Lorne was to include the lands of Ardnamurchan and Morven, the lands of the Lord of Lorne, and other lands; the sheriffdom of Cantyre was to include the lands of Cantyre and the island of Bute.¹ But Baliol’s prospects of a successful reign were soon blasted.
¹ Rishanger’s Chronicles, page 371; _Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland_, Volume I., page 91.
The Lord Superior shortly had an opportunity of exhibiting his power, and he placed the vassal King in a most humiliating position. It had become known that the king’s courts were no longer supreme, as there was a higher authority which might reverse their decisions. A citizen of Berwick appealed to the Court of Edward I. against a judgment of the late administrators of Scotland; it was simply a dispute about money, and Baliol remonstrated and maintained that the appeal should not be entertained. But Edward returned a crushing reply to his vassal, and, in effect, told Baliol that he had determined to exercise direct dominion over the kingdom of Scotland whenever and wherever he thought fit. Edward was prepared to try all appeals from Scotland, and it was made a condition that Baliol should appear in person before the English courts. Macduff appealed to Edward against a judgment of the Scotch Parliament, touching lands of the Earl of Fife, and Baliol was summoned to appear and answer the statements of Macduff. The appeal came before the English Parliament on the 15th of October, 1293, and Baliol was then asked what defence he had to offer; but he declined to answer. “What means this,” said Edward I. “You are my vassal, you have done homage to me, you are here in consequence of my summons.” Still Baliol declined to make any answer to the appeal; so the Parliament declared that he was a contumacious offender, who had not shown due respect to this august assembly. Accordingly it was proposed to deprive him of the means of wrong-doing by taking three of the chief castles of Scotland into the hands of the Lord Superior, until his vassal, King John, should render proper satisfaction.¹ The hapless king crouched and returned to Scotland, where other stirring events soon followed.
¹ Historical Documents of Scotland, Volume I. pages 377, 389; Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume I. page 89.
In 1294 a quarrel arose between the King of France and Edward I., touching their feudal relations. Philip IV. of France was then exerting all his energy to extend and consolidate his kingdom, and the occurrence of an opportunity to insult his feudal vassal, the King of England, was simply the first step towards the annexation of Edward’s possessions on the opposite side of the Channel to the Crown of France. Edward knew this very well, and summoned his army and prepared for war to the knife.¹ He also summoned his own vassal, King John, and the Scotch nobles, to assist him in the French war; but instead of obeying and joining his army, they held a Parliament at Scone. They dismissed all the Englishmen from the court, and appointed a committee of twelve members, consisting of four bishops, four earls, and four barons, by whose counsel the King was to conduct the government.
¹ Crowe’s History of France, Volume I., pages 306‒308.
The kingdom was rapidly drifting into a perilous position. Negotiations were opened with France, and in October 1295, a treaty between France and Scotland was concluded. A clause of the treaty provided for the marriage of Baliol’s son to a niece of Philip IV., and the King of France engaged to assist Scotland in the event of an English invasion by sending a French force or by making a diversion; while the Scotch King undertook to send an army across the border whenever England was at war with France. This was the commencement of a line of policy which had a considerable influence on Scotland for the three succeeding centuries.
The Scotch nobles by their disobedience and overt acts had broken their allegiance to their Lord Superior; and that clause of the new treaty touching the invasion of England was quickly put into operation. They mustered an army, which, under the command of Comyn, Earl of Buchan, invaded Cumberland in March 1296, and wasted the country; and shortly after they made another raid into Northumberland.¹ These raids in the circumstances of the kingdom were extremely unwise, as the Scots were thus placed in the position of aggressors. To wantonly provoke a contest with England, which under any circumstances must have been an unequal one, but specially so as the nation then stood, with a vassal king and a divided and disorganised nobility, was most deplorable policy. At the outset many of the feudal leaders of the people deserted, and thus left the people in a helpless and hopeless position; while Edward I. had not only a numerical superiority of fighting men, but also acted with great energy and decision.
¹ The Chronicles of the Priory of Hexham contains an account of these Scotch raids, accompanied with the usual lamentation about the cruelty of the Scots.
In the spring of 1296, Edward I. marched northward with a large and well-equipped army; but he was anxious still further to increase its ranks, and on the 11th of April he issued a writ inviting all grades of men to join his army against Scotland. Criminals of every ♦description, homicides, murderers, and robbers, all were requested to place themselves under his banner. He had determined to pounce upon Berwick, then the richest town in Scotland. The citizens naturally resisted his attack, but they were soon overpowered, and without distinction of age or sex were put to the sword, eight thousand of the inhabitants being ruthlessly massacred. The town was utterly ruined. A party of thirty Flemings posted themselves in their factory, a strong building which the resident merchants of that nation were under obligation by their charter to defend against the English: and faithful to their contract these heroic men held out till evening against the English army, when their assailants, enraged by the determined defence, set the building on fire, and every one of its brave defenders perished amid the flames.¹
♦ “descripcription” replaced with “description”
¹ Rishanger’s Chronicles, pages 373, 374; Hailes’ Annals, Volume I., page 258, et seq.
Edward formed a ditch, and threw up defensive works round Berwick. On the 5th of April he received from the Abbot of Arbroath Baliol’s renunciation of his allegiance to his Lord Superior. This document enumerated the outrages and robberies inflicted on the subjects of Scotland on sea and land, and concluded with a declaration that Baliol had resolved to fight against Edward I. in defence of his kingdom. But John Baliol had little ability or energy, and he was placed in trying circumstances. Accordingly no effective resistance against the invader was offered at any point. From Berwick Edward proceeded towards Dunbar, the key of the eastern marches. A Scotch force had mustered to defend it, but on the 26th of April they were attacked, dispersed, and defeated, and many of them slain or taken prisoners. The castle of Dunbar then fell into the hands of the English, and the Earls of Athole, Monteith, and Ross, and a number of barons, submitted to Edward, and all the prisoners of rank were conveyed to England and imprisoned.¹
¹ Historical Documents of Scotland, Volume II., pages 26, 27; Rishanger’s Chronicles, page 375.
Edward I. having destroyed Berwick, scattered the Scottish army, and taken the castle of Dunbar, now proceeded rapidly with his work. The castles of Roxburgh, Jedburgh, and others on the line of his march were surrendered to him. He reached Edinburgh on the 6th of June, and attacked the castle with all the appliances at his command, pelting it day and night for a week; after this it capitulated. He continued his triumphal progress to Linlithgow and onward to Stirling, crossed the Forth unopposed, and, proceeding by Perth, passed the Tay and entered Forfarshire. Baliol had fled northward before the advance of the conquering hero, and at the castle of Brechin, on the 10th of July, 1296, the vassal king came to his lord, like a criminal suing for mercy, and submitted to Edward’s pleasure. Then the documents considered necessary to degrade and dispossess him were drawn up and signed, and Baliol and his son were sent into England as prisoners. Edward continued his progress advancing northward by Aberdeen and Banff, till he reached Elgin on the 26th of July; thence he returned by a higher route, calling at Rothes, Kildrummy Castle, and on to Brechin. Throughout this progress Edward and his army were actively employed in taking the personal oaths of allegiance from all classes of the people, the barons, knights, and churchmen of all grades, being specially called upon to record their allegiance and render homage to the Lord Paramount. There was then no evasion of this exaction, and all those who wished to escape imprisonment or death had no alternative but to render their allegiance to Edward I.¹
¹ Historical Documents of Scotland, Volume II., pages 27, 59‒61; Ragman Rolls.
When returning south Edward took away the Coronation Stone――the venerated Stone of Destiny――from Scone as he was extremely anxious to efface every vestige of the national and patriotic feeling of the Scots. He then proceeded through Fife, along the northern banks of the Forth, and reached Berwick on the 22nd of August. A few days later he held a council at Berwick, in which a number of Scotch nobles and clergy submitted to him, and their estates were restored to them. He then made arrangements for the government of the kingdom, and appointed John Warrene, Earl of Surrey, guardian of Scotland, Hugh Cressingham, treasurer, and William Ormesby, justiciary. The chief castles of the kingdom were committed to the custody of English captains and garrisoned by English troops. Having thus settled everything, Edward proceeded home with the Stone of Destiny as a memorial of his conquest of Scotland, and a suitable offering to Edward the Confessor.¹
¹ Ibid., pages 30, 31; Rotuli Scotiæ, Volume I., pages 29‒35.
The seemingly complete subjection and depression of the Scots under the heel of the invader was the result of easily understood circumstances, which have already been indicated. Edward I. obtained a footing in the kingdom through the disputed succession, and thereby gained a commanding influence over the chief Scotch nobles. Thus it occurred that many of those nobles who should have come determinedly to the front at this national crisis, as the natural leaders of the people, had joined the enemy, and left the people helpless and forlorn. But the native race of Scotland keenly felt their position, and the demeanour of the English soldiers aroused their ire. Hatred sprung up between them, and bitter strife reigned in the land. Edward I. instructed his chief officials to make the utmost efforts to extinguish the rising spirit of rebellion, and not to be sparing in the distribution of the King’s favours and money. But Edward had misunderstood the character of those men whose spirit he wished to crush or corrupt; for his treasurer, Cressingham, replied to the King thus:――“Sir, you have told me not to be sparing of your favours. Sir, I neither am nor shall be, if God pleases, for few have asked for them, in consequence of the times, which have been troublesome.”¹ It appears that Edward’s favours and money would not answer the conditions which had arisen amongst the Scots.
¹ Historical Documents of Scotland, Volume II., pages 170‒172, 227.
At this perilous moment a hero arose to fight the battle of freedom and national independence. Wallace was the son of a small landed proprietor, one of those who had never sworn allegiance to Edward I. In his early years he was under the care of his uncle, an ecclesiastic in Stirlingshire, from whom he received the rudiments of a classical training, afterwards attending a school in Dundee for two years. He was gifted with rare mental faculties; tall in stature, with an athletic frame, and a commanding presence; his personal characteristics and sterling moral qualities won respect; while he was a military genius of a high order, and a man of remarkable political sagacity. He soon kindled in the heart of the nation an unquenchable spirit of resistance to oppression.
Wallace began his public career by attacking outlying parties of the English, and his followers increased with his success. Sir William Douglas, who had lands in Northumberland as well as in Scotland, was the first man of note to ally himself with the patriot. At length Wallace resolved to assail the English Justiciary, Ormesby, in his court at Scone. The Justiciary escaped with his life, but a rich booty, and some prisoners fell into Wallace’s hands. Wallace and Douglas continued their attacks on the invaders; and they were soon joined by others, amongst whom were Sir Andrew Moray of Bothwell, the Stewart of Scotland, and Robert Wishart, Bishop of Glasgow: Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick, grandson of the claimant of the crown, after some hesitation, joined the national party. Edward I. soon made Douglas feel his displeasure, for on the 12th of June, 1297, he ordered that the lands and goods in Northumberland belonging to Sir William Douglas should be seized and sold for the use of the king.¹ After Edward’s government in the centre of Scotland had been thrown into confusion, Wallace and Sir Andrew Moray of Bothwell crossed the Tay for the purpose of recruiting and organising an army in the north-eastern and northern counties.
¹ “The lands and tenements, the goods and chattels, in the county of Northumberland, belonging to Sir William Douglas, should be taken into our hands; if there be any corn or cattle, or any other stock whatever, besides the growing crop, to sell it without delay, and to enhance the price thereof to our use as much as possible.” _Historical Documents of Scotland_, Volume II., pages 176, 177.
When Edward I. was told of the rising in Scotland he could not believe it, because so many of the nobles were with himself or in prison; he never even imagined that the Scots might attempt to act without nobles, and this lack of foresight to estimate the spirit of resistance among the people proved to be the missing link in Edward’s scheme of conquest from its inception to its termination. He sent Beck, the Bishop of Durham, into Scotland to extinguish the rising, but Beck soon had to beat a retreat, and narrowly escaped with his life. When Beck returned Edward commanded the whole military force north of the Trent to muster and crush the rebellion. An army of forty thousand foot and three hundred cavalry entered Scotland under Henry Percy, and marched through Annandale and on to Irvine, where Robert Bruce and other nobles were lying in arms. As usual, these nobles were wavering and undecided, and sought to parley with the enemy, at last they concluded a treaty with the English authorities, by which they preserved their estates, promised to give hostages for their future conduct, and then dispersed, without striking a single blow. The treaty was signed at Irvine on the 9th of July, 1297, and those who agreed to it were Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick; James, the Stewart of Scotland; his brother, John; Alexander Lindsay, Sir William Douglas, and the Bishop of Glasgow. A copy of it was sent to Wallace and Andrew Moray but they disregarded it.¹
¹ Historical Documents of Scotland, Volume II., pages 192‒194; Palgrave’s Documents, page 197.
Wallace was then recruiting and instructing men in the north-eastern counties beyond the Tay, and Andrew Moray of Bothwell was intently engaged in similar work farther north and in Strathspey. On the 17th of July 1297, Moray and his recruits, in a position protected by a bog and a wood in the valley of the Spey, repulsed the attacks and the utmost efforts of a body of Edward’s cavalry and soldiers to dislodge them. Wallace and Moray worked with great energy in conjunction with each other and soon organised an efficient army. Wallace then attacked the castles, and many of them shortly fell into his hands. The castles of Aberdeen, Forfar, Brechin, and Montrose, were successively captured.¹ He had just begun the siege of the castle of Dundee when tidings came that the English army was marching on Stirling. Wallace at once saw his opportunity, ordered the citizens of Dundee to continue the siege, and hurried off with his army to guard the passage of the Forth.
¹ Historical Documents of Scotland, Volume II., pages 211‒213.
Wallace posted his men on the rising ground which commanded the Bridge of Stirling. The English army, fifty thousand strong, under the command of John de ♦Warrene, Earl of Surrey, lay on the opposite side of the river. When the English general observed the position of his enemy he tried to temporise, and sent forward messengers of peace; but Wallace knew well the advantages of his position, and told the English envoys that he had resolved on battle,――“to set his country free.” On the 11th of September the enemy began to pass over the narrow bridge. When one half of the army had crossed it, Wallace, by a preconcerted movement, attacked the English in the rear, and intercepted between them and the bridge. When this was executed, the main body of the Scots instantly rushed down and assailed the forming lines of the English, throwing them into utter confusion; a panic seized the whole army, and a headlong rout ensued. Many were drowned in the river, and many slain in the flight. Surrey with the remnant of his army found shelter in the castle of Berwick where he remained for some months.¹
♦ “Warrence” replaced with “Warrene”
¹ Scotland in 1298, by H. Gough, Introduction, page 1, et seq., 1888.
This battle had the effect of clearing the country of the enemy, and all the castles were recovered. The Battle of Stirling in other respects was an exceedingly important event, as it raised the spirit of the people and gave them confidence in themselves, at the most perilous and trying crisis which had ever occurred in the history of the kingdom; and its result continued to have an inspiriting influence upon the mind and feeling of the nation throughout all the subsequent stages of the struggle for national independence and liberty. Indeed, at Stirling Bridge, Wallace clearly read a significant lesson to the English as well as to the Scots; but unhappily the former were unwilling to learn it or even to recognise its meaning.
Wallace was anxious to promote peaceful ♦industry, as the following circumstance shows: A document dated 11th of October 1297, was despatched to Lubeck and Hamburg, in the names of Andrew Moray and William Wallace, generals of the army of the kingdom and community of Scotland, thanking the friends of the country for their services, which the state of the kingdom had prevented the due acknowledgment, and informed them that commerce with the ports of Scotland would now be restored: “As the kingdom of Scotland, thanks be to God, has been delivered by battle from the power of the English.”¹
♦ “indnstry” replaced with “industry”
¹ National Manuscripts, Part I.; Documents illustrative of Wallace.
Shortly after the battle, Wallace retook the town of Berwick, but not the castle; and about the middle of October he advanced into Northumberland and plundered the country. The Scotch army remained in the north of England from the 18th of October to the 11th of November; and the English chroniclers described in a piteous strain the terror and misery which the Scots had caused amongst the inhabitants. As plunder was the object of the raid, no doubt the people of Northumberland and Cumberland had suffered severely. Wallace granted a protection in name of King John to the prior and convent of Hexham, which was to continue in force for three years; forbidding the Scots to injure any of the members of the convent under severe penalties. After the Scots retired, Lord Clifford led a raid into Scotland, and plundered Annandale, burned a hundred cottages, captured a few prisoners, and slew three hundred and eight of the Scots.¹
¹ Chronicles and Annals of Hexham, Preface, Volume I., pages 80‒85. “King Edward having gone to Flanders, and in his absence, the rebellious Scots under the command of the ribald William Wallace, ravaged Northumberland and Westmoorland, ♦sparing neither age nor sex.” Hemingford’s Chronicles, Volume II., pages 141‒146.
♦ “spearing” replaced with “sparing”
In the end of the year 1297 Wallace was chosen Guardian of the kingdom of Scotland and leader of its armies, in the name of King John, and with consent of the community. He adopted measures calculated to secure order, to promote peaceful industry, and the commerce of the kingdom; he also made the utmost efforts to improve the organisation and discipline of the army. The body of the people acquiesced in his government, and he received considerable support from the clergy: still the condition of the kingdom was such that no individual exertion or sagacity could have placed it in a position to meet the recurrent exigences of the time. For the feudal organisation then prevailed in Scotland, and it could not be changed in a day or a year; while, with the King banished, some of the chief nobles lurking out of the way, others in prison, and some of them actually opposing the Guardian, the feudal system of defence itself could not be effectively worked. Thus considering the state of the nation, and the circumstances above indicated, it is surprising that Wallace achieved so much under such conditions.
Since the battle of Stirling Bridge, Edward I. had been making preparation for a great invasion of Scotland to crush the rising under Wallace. On his return from the Continent in March 1298, his troops, drawn from all parts of England and Wales, were mustered and concentrated as they advanced towards the borders; and when Edward I. reached Roxburgh on the 3rd of July, his army numbered 88,000 men, of which 8000 were cavalry. He advanced towards the Forth and proceeded by Lauder, but his progress was slow, as provisions were scarce and the position of his army critical. Some of his ships, however, having arrived in the Forth, he halted at Kirk-liston, and rested his troops for a week. Wallace with his small army could not think of facing Edward’s vast host in the open field: his tactics were to protract the issue and render the advance of the enemy difficult; so he drove off everything which could be removed, and left the country behind him waste, in this way hoping to starve out the enemy. For a time he seemed likely to succeed; as we have seen above, the English army was suffering severely. At last, through treachery, Wallace was forced to give battle near Falkirk. As Edward received intelligence of the position of the Scots while his army was lying at Kirk-liston, he immediately marched rapidly ♦forward by Linlithgow, and on the morning of the 22nd of July he descried the Scots. The enemy was too near for retreat, as his eight thousand cavalry would have pursued and cut off the Scots, so that Wallace had no alternative but fight.
♦ “foward” replaced with “forward”
Wallace’s whole force was under thirty thousand men, not a third part of the number of the enemy; but he drew up his men in a form admirably fitted to resist cavalry charges. He formed his infantry into four solid circular bodies with their weapons pointing outward and crossing each other. His small company of archers, under the command of Sir John Stewart, were posted in the spaces between the circular divisions, and his one thousand cavalry were placed behind the circular bodies. After thus disposing his troops, Wallace was reported to have said to them: “I have brought you to the ring, do the best you can.” The English had one hundred and eleven banners at the battle, and their army was marshalled in four divisions. The first division was commanded by the Earl of Lincoln, assisted by the Earls of Hereford and Norfolk; the second division was led by the famous Beck, Bishop of Durham; the third division was commanded by the King in person; and the fourth by the Earl of Surrey. The Earl of March, Patrick of Dunbar, fought in the second division of the English army; and it was March and Angus who informed Edward of the position of the Scots before the march to Falkirk. The Earls of Lincoln and Hereford first advanced to the attack, Bishop Beck following. They furiously charged the Scots; but the compact circles of the spearmen repulsed the onset of the enemy; and the cavalry charges were many times repeated but always repelled. Sir John Stewart, who led the Scottish archers, was thrown from his horse and slain along with many of his men around him. The Scottish cavalry did not come into action; still the spearmen held their ground and presented an unbroken front to the enemy. Edward then suspended the cavalry charges, and ordered his slingers and bowmen to the front; and this multitude of men poured showers of stones and arrows upon the circles of the Scottish spearmen, which at length disorganised them. Then the cavalry charges of the enemy were recommenced, and the spearmen, being assailed on every side, were ultimately defeated. About ten thousand of the Scots fell on the field of Falkirk. Wallace retreated with the remnant of his army through the wood in the neighbourhood. Among the slain on the Scottish side, were Sir John Stewart of Bonkill, a younger son of the seventh High Stewart of Scotland, Sir John Graham of Dundaff, and Macduff, a grand-uncle of the Earl of Fife.¹
¹ Scotland in 1298, Gough, page 131, et seq., and Introduction, pages 11, 12; Hemingford’s Chronicles, Volume II., pages 176‒181.
Wallace continued his retreat by Stirling, thence the English slowly followed; and on the fourth day after the battle, they arrived and found the town deserted. Edward’s victory was fruitless, as he was compelled to retire with his starving host for lack of provisions; and after visiting at Ayr, he proceeded southward to Carlisle. Immediately after the battle, Edward I. granted presentations to upwards of thirty benefices in Scotland, which included bishoprics and churches in the counties of Lanark, Selkirk, Peebles, Haddington, Roxburgh, Fife, Perth, Kincardine and Aberdeen.¹ He also gave the island of Arran to Thomas Bisset, and promised his own barons extensive lands out of the territories of the Scottish nobles. After making these and other arrangements calculated to secure his hold on Scotland, Edward returned to London in the beginning of December.
¹ Scotland in 1298, Gough, pages 239‒246. This volume contains a vast quantity of interesting information, much of which is specially valuable to the genealogist.
Shortly after the battle of Falkirk Wallace resigned the Guardianship of Scotland. After he had rendered Stirling and Perth useless to the enemy, he returned with a body of his followers to the Torwood, and thence followed on Edward’s track. John Comyn of Badenoch and John de Soulis were elected Guardians, associated with William Lamberton, the Bishop of St. Andrews, who was a personal friend and supporter of Wallace, and Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick. Lamberton intimated to the King of France that Wallace’s protection at his court was requisite to the continuance of the alliance between the two kingdoms. Wallace proceeded to France on the service of his country, and endeavoured in every way to free the kingdom from the yoke of the invader and oppressor. It appears that he had intended to proceed to Rome to plead the cause of Scotland, as the following letter shows:――“Philip by the grace of God King of the French, to my loved and faithful agents, appointed to the Roman Court, greeting. We command you to request the Supreme Pontiff to hold our loved William Wallace of Scotland, Knight, recommended to his favour in those things which he has to transact with him;” dated on the 1st November 1298.¹ There is no direct evidence that Wallace actually went to Rome, but circumstantial evidence render it very probable that he had communications with the Pope touching the affairs and the position of Scotland.
¹ National Manuscripts, Part I.
Although Edward I. had made peace with France, he was somewhat embarrassed by the demands of his barons touching the great charter and the rights which they embraced every opportunity to claim; still he continued his attacks upon Scotland. In 1300 he invaded the country; but Wallace, who had returned from France, anticipated him, and marched from the Torwood into the southern counties, seized the castle of Tibbers, and other castles in Nithsdale. Edward took several castles in Dumfriesshire, and then besieged Caerlaverock castle, which, after a heroic defence against the whole English army, at last surrendered. He advanced into Galloway, but his foraging parties were often attacked and cut off by the Scots. After a campaign of five months, Edward returned to England without achieving any important result.
It was during this campaign that Edward I. was obliged to listen to one of the most severe and logical attacks which had as yet been made upon him, touching his claims of feudal superiority over the kingdom of Scotland. In the castle of Caerlaverock, about the end of August, the Archbishop of Canterbury acting as the Pope’s legate, placed a Bull from Boniface VIII. in the hands of Edward I., which was read in the presence of his assembled barons and knights. This remarkable document affirmed that Scotland owed allegiance to no one, save the Holy See. Boniface then charged Edward I. with violating all the liberties and the rights of Scotland, and proceeded to state――“that neither he nor any of his predecessors held over the kingdom any superiority; since, when in the wars between your father Henry and Simon de Montfort, he requested the assistance of Alexander III., King of Scotland, acknowledged by letters patent that he received such assistance, not as due to him, but as a special favour. Moreover, when you yourself invited King Alexander to attend your coronation, you made the request as a matter of favour and not of right. When the King of Scotland rendered homage to you for his lands in Tynedale and Penrith, he publicly protested it was rendered not for his kingdom but for these lands only, since, as King of Scotland, he was independent. Yea, further, when Alexander III. died, leaving an heiress to his Crown, a grand-daughter in her minority, the wardship of this infant was not given to you, which it would have been if you had been Lord Superior, but was given to certain nobles of Scotland elected for the office.” Touching the negotiations for the proposed marriage between the Prince of Wales and the Maid of Norway, the Pope reminded Edward I. that he had then acknowledged the independence of Scotland; and it was singular that he submitted to negotiate if he had a right to command. Regarding the changes lately made on the rights and the liberties of Scotland, with the consent of a divided nobility, or the person whom Edward had placed in charge of the kingdom, these ought not to continue, as all had been extorted by force and intimidation. The Pope exhorted Edward, in the name of God, to at once liberate the bishops and the clergy whom he had imprisoned, and to remove all the officers and officials whom he had thrust upon the Scottish nation. Finally, Boniface said, “if Edward imagined that he had any pretensions to the whole or any part of Scotland, let him send his proctors to me, and I will determine according to justice.” On the conclusion of the reading of the Pope’s letter, Edward started to his feet and exclaimed:――“I will not be silent or at rest, either for Mount Zion or Jerusalem, but, as long as there is breath in my nostrils, I will defend what all the world knows to be my right.”¹ The result, however, was that Edward soon disbanded his army, and summoned a parliament to meet in February 1301, which, having met, framed an answer to the Pope’s letter. In October 1300, he granted a truce to the Scots to continue till the middle of May 1301.
¹ Fœdera, Volume I.; Walsingham; Book of Wallace, Rogers, Volume II., pages 182‒187.
The truce was not strictly observed by either side. Edward made arrangements to secure his hold in every place where he had any footing, strengthened the garrisons of the castles which he held throughout the kingdom, and instructed the English residents at Perth, Ayr, Dundee, and Banff, to remain in these places till the termination of the truce. He released the Bishop of Glasgow from imprisonment only after he had renewed his allegiance. Edward I. seems to have had great faith in oaths and homages, but he forgot that there might be circumstances in which they were not binding.
In the summer of 1301 Edward advanced into Scotland with a great army, but the Scots managed to avoid a battle, so that the campaign was ineffective. He did not cross the Forth, and his army suffered severely from the scarcity of provisions and forage. In October he concentrated his troops at Linlithgow and Falkirk, collected stores there, and fixed his head-quarters for the winter at Linlithgow, where he erected a castle. He expected that his presence would overcome the Scots. Owing to the severe winter he lost a large number of his war-horses, and he discovered that his campaign was attended with enormous expenditure. On the 26th of January, 1302, on the suggestion of France, Edward promised to grant a truce to the Scots, which was to continue till the 30th of the ensuing November; and in the beginning of February he left Linlithgow and marched southward. Before he departed he bound Sir Alexander Baliol to hold Selkirk forest against the Scots, and exacted pledges from the captains of the castles of Linlithgow, Ayr, Edinburgh, Jedburgh, Roxburgh, and Berwick, that they would continue to defend these castles till the ensuing summer. Edward vehemently objected to the Scots being described as the “allies” of France, and on the 30th of April he protested against the truce.¹
¹ Fœdera, Volume I.; Book of Wallace, Rogers, Volume II., pages 194‒199.
Edward exerted his ingenuity to the utmost to detach the King of France from giving any encouragement to the Scots, and he completely succeeded. Further he covertly arranged with the King of France to name those Scotsmen whose absence from the kingdom Edward considered to be most convenient for the success of his scheme of conquest, and accordingly Philip’s ambassadors named Bishop Lamberton of St. Andrews, the Bishop of Dunkeld, the Steward of Scotland, Sir John Soulis, John Comyn, Earl of Buchan, Sir Ingram Umfraville, and Sir William Baliol. But ere the Scotch ambassadors arrived, a truce was arranged between England and France, in which all reference to the Scots was excluded; and in the final treaty of peace, ratified at Paris in May 1303, no reference to the Scots occurred. Pope Boniface VIII. also deserted the cause of Scotland; and in August 1302, he reprimanded Bishop Wishart for opposing the English rule, and commanded him to desist from it. At the same time the Pope commanded the other Scotch bishops to make peace with Edward.¹ Having thus far succeeded, as he imagined, in debarring the Scots from all hope of external aid in any quarter, Edward proceeded to prepare for the complete conquest of the kingdom.
¹ Fœdera, Volume I., page 972; Volume II., page 929.
The Scots held Stirling castle and the country north of the Forth, and Edward I. as yet had only a precarious hold on the southern division of the kingdom. In February 1303, an English army was mustered at Berwick, numbering twenty thousand men, which, under the command of Sir John Segrave, advanced into Scotland. Segrave marched his army northward in three divisions, not far apart from each other, in order to obtain quartering for his men and forage for the horses. John Comyn, Wallace, and Sir Simon Fraser, having learned the position of the enemy, on the morning of the 24th February, 1303, rapidly advanced from Biggar to Roslin with eight thousand men on foot, and surprised the English army. A severe contest ensued, but the three divisions of the English were defeated in detail, and sixteen knights and thirty esquires were taken prisoners.
But Edward I. was then free from embarrassment abroad and at home, and he made ample preparations for the final conquest of Scotland. Through craft, in which he was abetted by the King of France, the Scotch envoys were induced to remain at the French court by the most base and false professions imaginable. On the 25th of May, 1303, these deluded Scotsmen at the French court communicated with Sir John Comyn, the guardian, in the following words:――“Be not alarmed that the Scots are not mentioned in the treaty. The King of France will immediately send ambassadors to divert Edward from war, and to procure a truce for us until the two kings can have a personal conference in France. At that conference a peace will be concluded beneficial to our nation: of this the King of France has himself given us the most positive assurance.... Marvel not that none of us return home at present: we would all have willingly returned, but the King of France will have us to remain till we bring home intelligence of the result of this business; wherefore, for the Lord’s sake, despair not: but if ever you acted with resolution, do so now.... The French ambassadors will be empowered to treat of peace, as well as to negotiate a truce.”¹ The men thus detained at the French court were John Soulis, one of the guardians, the Steward of Scotland, the Earl of Buchan, and Ingram de Umfraville; thus, with these men absent, and the defection of the Earl of Carrick, there were few persons of ability and rank left in Scotland to offer resistance to the crafty and ruthless invader.
¹ Fœdera, Volume I., page 955.
In the middle of May 1303, Edward I. commenced his march, having arranged his army in two divisions, one under himself and the other under the Prince of Wales. Edward advanced by Morpeth and reached Roxburgh on the 21st of May, where he was joined by the followers of the Earl of Carrick. The Prince of Wales entered Scotland by the western marches, but his advance was checked at several points by Wallace; he therefore deviated from his intended route and marched through Roxburghshire, advancing northward in the rear of his father. Edward reached Edinburgh on the 4th of June, marched by Linlithgow and thence to Stirling, crossed the Forth, and on the 10th of June entered Perth. He stayed in Perth till the middle of July, then proceeded to Dundee, and thence to Montrose. At this stage he summoned Sir Thomas Maule to surrender the castle of Brechin, but Sir Thomas declined to surrender it. Edward marched from Montrose to Brechin with his war engines, and besieged the castle. Sir Thomas made a heroic defence; but at last he was fatally wounded and expired, and the garrison then surrendered, but not till five waggon-loads of lead had been thrown into the castle.
At Brechin Edward was joined by the Prince of Wales, and, resuming his progress northward, he marched by the castle of Kincardine and arrived at Aberdeen on the 24th of August; thence he marched through Buchan and reached Banff on the 4th of September, whence marching northward, he crossed the Spey and advanced through Moray, reaching Kinross on the 20th of September. Edward advanced into Badenoch and occupied the castle of Lochindorb, one of the strongholds of the Comyns; and all the men of note in the locality were compelled to render homage to him. He returned by Kinross, and thence to the castle of Kildrummy. He next marched southward by Brechin, and fixed his headquarters at ♦Dunfermline, where he remained through the winter of 1304.¹
♦ “Dumfermline” replaced with “Dunfermline”
¹ Fœdera; Hemingford’s Chronicles; Book of Wallace, Rogers, Volume II., pages 206‒208.
It then seemed that all was lost, although the spirit of the people had enabled them to struggle against fearful odds and to endure extreme privation; still human endurance has its limits, and the stage of hope appeared to be passed. Craft, force, and cruelty, had done their work; but it had yet to be seen whether these would ultimately triumph.
Negotiations with Comyn, the guardian, were begun in the latter part of December 1303, for his submission to Edward I. These negotiations were long and tedious, and while they were proceeding Comyn remained in his camp at Strathord, in Forfarshire. The conditions as first laid down by Edward as the basis for treating of the submission of Comyn and his adherents were extremely hard, and virtually implied the complete surrender of national liberty. The terms of submission were finally adjusted and agreed to on the 9th of February, 1304. It was stipulated that their lives should be spared, and that they should retain their lands, but subject to such fines as Edward might think fit to impose upon them. The following persons were specially excluded from the benefit of the above terms――Wishart, Bishop of Glasgow, Sir John Soulis, the Steward of Scotland, Simon Fraser, William Wallace, David de Graham, and Alexander de Lindsay. To all these men, except Wallace, the chance of preserving their lives was offered on certain terms, mostly stated periods of banishment from Scotland. “As for William Wallace it is covenanted that he shall render himself up at the will and mercy of the king, if it shall seem good to him.” It appears that Edward was earnestly requested to offer reasonable terms to Wallace, but he declined to listen to such a proposal. Shortly after the surrender of Comyn and his adherents, Edward summoned a parliament to meet him at St. Andrews in March; and he arrived at St. Andrews on the 11th of March and occupied the castle. In this meeting he intimated that he had summoned to the parliament Sir William Wallace, Sir Simon Fraser, and Sir William Oliphant, governor of Stirling Castle; and he then announced that seeing they had not attended, therefore they should be forfeited and outlawed. At his request parliament resolved that the siege of Stirling should be actively prosecuted.¹
¹ Fœdera, Volume II.; Historical Documents of Scotland, Volume II., page 471; Palgrave’s Documents, pages 278‒284.
Preparations were at once begun for the siege of this fortress. Edward appealed to his English treasurer for money, and to procure from York the materials for producing Greek fire, namely, a horseload of cotton thread, a load of quick sulphur, a load of saltpetre, and a load of arrows feathered and ironed. By Edward’s orders the lead was stripped from the refectory at St. Andrews and from the churches at Perth and Dunblane. The Earl of Carrick, Robert Bruce, who had been serving Edward actively for the past year or two, promised to grant for use in the siege of Stirling Castle his great battering-ram which was lying at Inverkip. War engines, missiles, and materials of every description for the siege were in readiness, and Edward himself arrived at Stirling on the 21st of April, and summoned Oliphant, the governor of the castle, to surrender. But Oliphant declined to surrender and made a brave defence. The siege continued from the 22nd of April to the 20th of July, the King remaining at Stirling in order to urge on the operations. When the governor of the castle surrendered, the garrison only numbered one hundred and forty men, but Edward inflicted shameful indignities upon these brave and faithful men. The governor, Oliphant, was sent to the Tower of London, and the rest were despatched to various prisons in England.¹
¹ Fœdera, Volume I., page 966; Rogers’ Book of Wallace, Volume II., pages 218‒223.
Edward directed special attention to the capture of Wallace, as he was already proclaimed an outlaw. Immediately after the surrender of Stirling Castle the King exhorted the men lately admitted to his peace to exert themselves to the utmost to take Wallace, and promised that those who secured him should receive some distinctive marks of royal favour. Edward returned to England in December, 1304, but he continued to issue proclamations for Wallace’s capture, with offers of a reward. At the same time he carried on secret communications with those whom he thought best fitted to execute his purpose. The man actually instrumental, however, in the capture of Wallace was Sir John Menteith. He was engaged in the Battle of Dunbar in 1296, where he was taken prisoner, and confined in the castle of Nottingham; by consenting to serve under Edward I. abroad he was released in 1297, and after the Flanders campaign he returned to Scotland. He then joined the national party, and possibly he might have fought under Wallace at the Battle of Falkirk. At what time Menteith returned to Edward’s service has not been ascertained, but in a commission dated at St. Andrews on the 20th of March, 1304, he was then appointed Keeper of the Castle of Dumbarton and Sheriff of the County. After the surrender of Stirling Castle it appears that Wallace, with a single attendant, sought shelter in the unfrequented spots of the counties of Stirling and Lanark. Whether his refuge was within the sheriffdom of Dumbarton or not has not been ascertained; and it seems that Menteith had formed the idea of promoting his own interest by delivering Wallace into Edward’s hands. In the district of Cadder, on the north-eastern border of Lanarkshire, Wallace had taken shelter in a barn known as Robraystoun, and there on the 5th of August, 1305, he was surprised by a party of English soldiers, led by Menteith, at whose instance he was seized and fettered.¹
¹ Book of Wallace, Volume II., pages 226‒229. “Among certain memoranda in the Chapter House are these:――4. Cause to be remembered the forty marks which should be given to a valet who had watched William Wallace. 5. Item of the sixty marks that ought to be given to the others; it is the king’s will that these be divided among those persons who were at the capture of the said William. 6. Item of land for J. de Menteith, valued at £100.” Ibid., page 236. “Menteith received from Edward on the 16th of June, 1306, the revenues of the Earldom of Lennox, also the temporalities of the bishopric of Glasgow, in the county of Dumbarton, of which Bishop Wishart had been deprived. When Robert the Bruce was, in 1306, prosecuting his patriotic labours, Menteith undertook jointly with Sir Hugh Bisset to cut off by a fleet his retreat from the Western Isles; and in July of the following year he is described as, with some others, guarding, on Edward’s behalf, the town of Ayr.” Ibid., page 231.
Securely fettered Wallace was immediately conveyed to London under a strong guard. Touching his trial and execution in London minute details exist, which have been often printed, and it is quite unnecessary to repeat them at length. He was tried for treason, which he never committed, seeing that he never gave allegiance to Edward I., whom he rightly regarded as a usurper and invader. Wallace was not allowed to make any defence, but condemned and sentenced to be hanged and drawn, with all the shocking and cruel formalities of the Norman law of treason. The sentence was executed on the 23rd of August, 1305, and that it might produce the desired effect “his body should be cut and divided into four quarters, and the head set on the Bridge of London, in sight of those passing both by land and water; and one quarter suspended on the gibbet at Newcastle-on-Tyne, another quarter at Berwick, a third quarter at Stirling, and a fourth quarter at Perth, for the dread and chastisement of all that pass by and behold them.” How far the intended end was served by such spectacles of extreme barbarity subsequent history tells. Indeed, the story of the heroic action and deeds of Wallace, heightened by his sacrifice in London, became embalmed in the heart of the Scottish people, and his memory was more intensely venerated as century after century passed. Recalling the traditional incidents associated with the Cartland Crags, it has been truly said:――
“Blest Freedom flourish’d in this wild, When banish’d from each cultur’d spot. Expiring Albin saw and smil’d And all her wounds and woes forgot.”¹
Many poets have paid homage to Wallace, and the following simple lines embody the national sentiment:――
“A fair renown, as years wear on, Shall Scotland give her noblest son; The course of ages shall not dim, The love that she shall bear to him.”²
¹ Dr. Jamieson, editor of Blind Henry’s Wallace.
² Baillie’s Metrical Legends, page 78.
Edward I. was intently engaged in arranging his new form of government for Scotland. He summoned a council of the Scotch nobles, clergy, and the burghal communities, which met at Perth in March, 1305, and this meeting was instructed to elect ten commissioners to represent Scotland in the English Parliament; thus, four to be chosen by the nobles, four by the clergy, and two by the burghal communities. These ten Scotch commissioners attended a Parliament which met at London on the 15th of September, 1305, and being joined by twenty-two commissioners from the English Parliament, this body, acting in concert, framed the royal ordinance for the government of Scotland. This document is elaborate, and presents evidence of considerable intelligence and judgment; but seeing that it never came into practical operation it is historically unnecessary to expound it.¹
¹ The Ordinance for the government of Scotland was printed in the first volume of the Scots Acts of Parliament.
After twelve years of incessant craft, bloodshed, and oppression, closing with the execution of Wallace, Edward I. fancied that his conquest of Scotland was at last complete. But a worthy successor to Wallace immediately appeared upon the scene, and the shattered king, worn with the toil of years, lived to see it all passing from his grasp.
Chapter VI
War of Independence. Robert Bruce.
AS we have seen, the Earl of Carrick was assisting Edward I. in his last campaign, and supplied him with a battering-ram for the siege of Stirling Castle. His father, Robert Bruce of Annandale, died in the spring of 1304, and he then succeeded to the large family estates in England and in Scotland. Bruce was a young man, little over thirty years, and hitherto had shown a rather vacillating character. As he was the grandson of the Bruce who had fought out the contest in Edward’s court for the Crown with the deposed Baliol, he had always looked forward to the throne of Scotland. In June, 1304, he met with Bishop Lamberton; they had a conversation together touching impending dangers, and entered into a friendly covenant to resist their enemies. They engaged to seek each other’s safety in their common affairs against all persons opposed to them, both individually and by their adherents; they also agreed that the one should not enter on any great undertaking without consulting the other, and if the one became cognisant of dangers impending over the other he should forewarn him, and use his utmost efforts to avert the same. For the performance of the compact they bind themselves to each other by oath, and under a penalty of ten thousand pounds.¹ Considering the condition of Scotland at the time, and the position of the two men, this compact possibly had in view some attempt by Bruce to mount the throne and recover the kingdom. It seems that the existence of this bond became known to Edward I., and Bruce, when attending the English court, was questioned concerning it; he at once saw that his life was in danger, and one morning he mounted his horse and rode swiftly to Scotland.
¹ Palgrave’s Documents, Volume I., page 323‒325.
Bruce arrived at his castle of Lochmaben early in February, 1306. On the 12th of February, as a freeholder of the county, he attended the English judges who were then holding their courts at Dumfries, and there he met the Red Comyn, the late guardian. Bruce and Comyn entered the Grayfriars convent to have a private interview touching public affairs, and their conversation waxed warm. Bruce referred to the miserable state of Scotland, once an independent kingdom, and now nothing but a province of England. He then proposed that Comyn should take his lands and help him to be king; or, if he preferred it, Bruce was to take his lands and assist him to be king. Comyn demurred, and professed loyalty to King Edward I. Bruce charged him with betraying important secrets of his; their talk became bitter and hot, and at last Bruce drew his dagger and stabbed Comyn. He turned from the convent and rushed into the street, shouting for a horse! His friends asked if anything was amiss. “I doubt,” said Bruce, “I have slain Comyn.” Instantly Kirkpatrick, one of his followers, ran into the convent and slew the wounded man outright, and also killed his uncle, Sir Robert Comyn.¹
¹ Palgrave’s Documents, page 322. Barbour’s Bruce. It appears that in a meeting of the guardians and some of the nobles held at Peebles, July, 1299, a scuffle occurred, which originated in a proposal touching the property of Wallace, who was then in France:――“And upon that, each of these knights gave the lie to the other and they drew their daggers; and the Earl of Buchan and Sir John Comyn thought, because Sir David de Graham is with Master John Comyn, and Malcolm Wallace with the Earl of Carrick, that some quarrel was begun with intention to deceive them, and Master John Comyn leaped on the Earl of Carrick and took him by the throat, and the Earl of Buchan upon the Bishop of St. Andrews, and they held them fast, until the Stewart and others went between them and stopped the scuffle.” _National Manuscripts_, Part II., Number 8.
Probably the murder of Comyn was unpremeditated, still it removed the only competitor for the throne of Scotland whom Bruce had reason to fear. Comyn had a claim to the Crown, as his mother was a sister of the deposed John Baliol. He also claimed to be a descendant of Donald Bane, a brother of Malcolm III., which would have given him a great advantage among the people in any struggle between the two for the throne of Scotland. But Bruce had rashly committed himself and could not recede; he had assassinated the highest noble in the kingdom, stained the altar with blood, brought down on his own head all the terrors of religion, and the enmity of the kin and numerous followers of the dead earl.
Immediately after these tragic deeds Bruce drove the English judges and officials out of Dumfries and beyond the Border. The news soon spread, the people assumed a threatening attitude in Galloway, and many of Edward’s officials fled from the kingdom. Bruce resolved on a bold step, he mounted the throne, and was crowned at Scone on the 27th of March, 1306. But, as yet, his followers were not numerous; they consisted of the Bishops of St. Andrews, Glasgow, and Moray, and the Abbot of Scone; his four young and stalwart brothers, his nephew, Thomas Randolph of Strathdon, and his brother-in-law, Christopher Seton; John de Strathbogie, Earl of Athole; and the Earls of Lennox and Menteith; Gilbert Hay of Erroll and his brother Hugh, Nigel Campbell of Argyle, David of Inchmarten, Robert Boyd of Kilmarnock, Sir John Somerville of Linton, David Barclay of Cairns, Alexander Fraser, Sir James Douglas, and Robert Fleming. Against this small party――the forlorn hope of the Scottish nation――stood arrayed the mighty hosts of England, the numerous followers of the Comyns, and many of the Scotch nobles.
When tidings of these events reached the ears of Edward I., he was extremely wroth, and threatened dire vengeance. Orders with a sharp and incisive ring were issued. It was proclaimed in all the cities and towns of Scotland that all those in arms against the King should be pursued by hue and cry, from city to city, from county to county, from place to place, and taken dead or alive. All persons taken in arms against Edward I. were to be hanged and beheaded, and all in any way connected with the murder of Comyn were to be drawn and quartered. The implacable rage of Edward runs through all the royal proclamations. Another great invasion of Scotland was resolved on; the military force of Yorkshire and Northumberland were ordered to muster immediately to march against the rebellious Scots. He also invoked the aid of religion, notwithstanding his former contempt of “Mount Zion and Jerusalem.” Bruce’s estates were declared forfeited, and his execution was determined on in the event of his capture. The advance army, under the Earl of Pembroke, reached the doomed country in the spring of 1306, and Edward himself, bracing up all his remaining energy, once more moved northward; but his frailty rendered his progress very slow.¹
¹ Fœdera, Volume I., pages 982, 995; Palgrave’s Documents, pages 361‒363, 301‒318, et seq.
Pembroke advanced on Perth, and on his way he captured Bishop Wishart and sent him to Berwick. On reaching Perth, Pembroke occupied the town and fortified it. Bruce and his party found that they could not face the English army; but he encamped in the wood of Methven six miles from Perth. On the 19th of June, Pembroke attacked Bruce, and after a severe encounter, completely defeated him; he narrowly escaped capture, while many of his followers were slain and others taken prisoners. Bruce with two or three hundred of his followers retired into the forest of Athole. Among the prisoners captured at Methven were Thomas Randolph, Sir John Somerville, David of Inchmarten, Hugh Hay, and others; and Edward I. ordered that the prisoners should be immediately executed, accordingly they were hanged and quartered.¹
¹ Hemingford’s Chronicles, page 249; Barbour’s Bruce.
The desperate nature of the enterprise now appeared. Bruce and his friends were pursued as outlaws, and they soon began to feel the extreme miseries of their position. Bruce was forced to leave Athole to save his followers from starvation; and with great difficulty he moved by unfrequented tracks from Athole to Aberdeenshire. At Aberdeen he was joined by his wife and other ladies; but on the approach of a large body of the enemy, Bruce and his company betook themselves to the mountains of Breadalbane. Amid these wilds they suffered extreme privation. As food was scarce, they gathered wild berries, some of them hunted, and others fished, in order to preserve their existence; while their clothing was often in tatters, living day and night for weeks and months exposed to the open air in these high altitudes. Bruce with a number of his friends had reached the head of the Tay, and were approaching Argyleshire, the district of the Lord of Lorne. This chief was related through marriage to the Red Comyn, and naturally he was eager to vent revenge on Bruce. Lorne at the head of a strong body of his followers attacked Bruce and his small company in Strathfillan. A severe encounter ensued; but Bruce’s company was overwhelmed by numbers and fell back. Gilbert Hay of Erroll and Sir James Douglas were wounded, and many of their horses were killed. To avert the total destruction of his little band, Bruce commanded them to retreat through a narrow pass while he brought up the rear himself, and repeatedly turned his horse and drove back the assailants, till at last the pursuit of the enemy ceased.¹
¹ Ibid.
Winter was approaching, and they could not then subsist in this mountainous region. The Queen and her attendants were conveyed under an escort of cavalry to the castle of Kildrummy. Bruce then had only two hundred men on foot, and with these he resolved to seek refuge in Cantyre or in some of the islands, Sir Neil Campbell being sent forward to provide vessels and provisions for the voyage. The King and his small company proceeded in the direction of Cantyre; but they were reduced to the utmost extremities for want of provisions. While wandering amongst the hills and woods in search of food, they met the Earl of Lennox, who, since the battle of Methven, had heard nothing of the fate of Bruce, and the King and Lennox feelingly embraced each other. Lennox supplied his friends with provisions, and by his assistance they reached Cantyre, where Neil Campbell rejoined them. Angus, Lord of the Isles, welcomed Bruce and his followers, and treated them all with great hospitality; he also gave them the castle of Dunaverty to live in and enjoy themselves after their wanderings and privations. So numerous were the emissaries of Edward I. and the Comyns, and so alert in their efforts to capture Bruce, that he, with the recent fate of Wallace before him, did not deem himself safe, even in this castle, from the pursuit of his enemies. In the end of the year 1306, Bruce, with a few of his friends, passed over to the small isle of Rathlin, on the northern coast of Ireland, and remained there during the winter.
But ruin and death befell many of Bruce’s friends and supporters, as the English troops scoured the country and seized all suspected persons. The Bishop of Glasgow, as already mentioned, was imprisoned at an early stage. Bishop Lamberton, of St. Andrews, and the Abbot of Scone, were sent in fetters to England. Bruce’s wife and his daughter were captured and imprisoned in England; the Countess of Buchan, who had dared to assist at the coronation of Bruce, was taken to Berwick and placed in a wooden cage, specially built for her, which hung in one of the centre turrets of the castle. The English besieged and took the castle of Kildrummy, and Nigel Bruce, the King’s brother, was sent in fetters to Berwick, and there executed. The Earl of Athole and Sir Simon Fraser were conveyed to London and executed as traitors; and their heads were placed upon London Bridge beside that of Wallace. Sir Christopher Seton, Sir Walter Logan, Bernard Mouat, Herbert Morham, Ralph Herries, Thomas Bruce and Alexander Bruce, brothers of the King, these and many others were executed with all the horrible and shocking cruelties of the period. Further, many of the people were struck down and slain without trial, evidence, or question, in any form; and for several years a scene of bloodshed, enormous cruelty, and oppression, prevailed throughout the kingdom.¹
¹ Fœdera, Volume I., page 996; Hemingford’s Chronicles, Volume I., page 247, et seq.; Barbour’s Bruce.
In the spring of 1307, Sir James Douglas and Sir Robert Boyd, with Bruce’s sanction, sailed from the island of Rathlin with a small band of followers, and made a descent upon the island of Arran. They landed during the night, and Douglas placed his men in ambush in the vicinity of the Castle of Brodick. The following morning he attacked the escort of a convoy which was proceeding with stores for the garrison, defeated and scattered the escort, and thus secured a store of provisions, arms, and clothing. The governor of the castle sent out a body of soldiers to assist the escort, but they were repulsed by the Scots and driven back to the castle. Douglas then retired to a prehistoric fort on a woody spot in the neighbourhood; and soon after Bruce arrived with a company of about two hundred men and joined Douglas. Bruce then despatched one of his followers into the district of Carrick, to ascertain how his own vassals were affected; but the report of this messenger was disheartening. He informed Bruce that Lord Percy had a strong garrison in Turnberry Castle, and many of his men stationed in the town; that the people were dispirited, and that there was little hope of assistance from them. Bruce seemed perplexed, and consulted with his brother Edward, who said that he would pursue the enterprise. They then attacked the English troops stationed in the village of Turnberry, and defeated them. Three days after Bruce retired into the mountainous range of Carrick; and being deprived of aid which he had expected from Ireland, his position was perilous. His enemies and the emissaries of Edward I. were constantly hunting him, and he had several very narrow escapes. At Cumnock, in Ayrshire, he was joined by his friend Sir James Douglas, who had collected a body of men in his own barony. With his followers thus increased, Bruce determined to give a good account of himself.
In the beginning of May 1307, Pembroke advanced into Ayrshire at the head of three thousand cavalry, with the intention of extinguishing Bruce. But the King in his wanderings had acquired some experience, and he fixed on a position at Loudon Hill. After inspecting the ground, he limited the space for the evolutions of the enemy’s cavalry, and at the same time protected both his flanks, by three deep trenches on each side of his position; beyond these trenches the ground was marshy. Having thus prepared the ground, Bruce posted his six hundred spearmen, and coolly awaited the attack of the English cavalry. On the 10th of May, the English cavalry under Pembroke advanced in two lines; and the first line at full gallop charged the Scotch spearmen, but they stood firm and unhorsed many of their assailants. The cavalry reeled and then broke, and retired in disorder upon the second line; the Scots with their spears levelled, followed them at the double, and completely defeated them. Pembroke fled to the castle of Ayr, and reported his defeat. Bruce’s followers now began to have confidence in him, and from this time he gradually gained ground. Three days after the encounter at Loudon Hill, Bruce completely defeated a body of the English commanded by the Earl of Gloucester. The result was that many of the Scots joined Bruce.
The leading spirit of the conquest, Edward I., by short stages had advanced within sight of Scotland; but the hand of the grim and implacable enemy was upon him, and on the 7th of July 1307, he expired. He had inflicted enormous suffering upon the Scots; and when his feet were on the brink of the grave, the venom of his heart was not appeased, for he then implored his son and barons to continue his scheme of torturing the Scots. Edward II. was weak and vacillating. He advanced to the outskirts of Ayrshire, and without effecting anything of importance, he returned home. Shortly after he removed Pembroke from the Guardianship of Scotland, and appointed the Earl of Richmond to the office. Edward Bruce assailed the English in Galloway; while Sir James Douglas expelled them from Douglasdale, and the forests of Jedburgh and Selkirk.
Bruce crossed the Tay, and marched northward to Aberdeenshire, with the object of reducing Comyn, the Earl of Buchan, who upheld the English authority in this quarter of the kingdom. He was, however, attacked by a severe illness, caused by the exposure and privation which he had endured; and the war operations were somewhat delayed. The King’s army proceeded by Inverurie, and in the march northward several skirmishes took place between his troops and the followers of the Comyns. Bruce’s army retired into Strathbogie, to obtain a supply of provisions and to afford their leader some rest. When he had partly recovered from his illness, they returned to Inverurie. At the same time, the Earl of Buchan, with a force numbering upwards of a thousand men, had advanced to Old Meldrum; and Comyn’s ally, Sir David de Brechin, with a small party rapidly marched on Inverurie, and surprised some of Bruce’s outposts. This was the signal for a general attack. The King instantly rose from his bed, called for his horse, and mounting, led his army direct to Old Meldrum. There he delivered a decisive attack upon the Earl of Buchan, and utterly defeated his army, and slew and pursued them for many miles. Bruce then proceeded with merciless severity to waste and destroy the territories of the Comyns in Buchan, so that their power was broken. The castles in the hands of the English were attacked, and when taken they were levelled to the ground, in order to prevent the enemy from again occupying them. The citizens of Aberdeen, assisted by a few of Bruce’s followers, captured the castle and expelled the English garrison. The castle of Forfar was taken and the English garrison slain; after which the King marched southward.
The recovery of the kingdom steadily proceeded, and the Scots readily submitted to the King; indeed the people soon recognised the abilities of Bruce. On the 24th of February, 1309, in a general council held at Dundee, the estates recognised Bruce’s right to the throne; at the same time the clergy of Scotland formally proclaimed their recognition of his title and their adherence to him as king. The document then issued by the clergy is of great historic value, inasmuch as it boldly asserted the constitutional rights of the people even in the choice of the king. The main points of the document are the following:――“To all the faithful, to whose knowledge the present writing shall come, the bishops, abbots, priors, and the rest of the clergy of the kingdom of Scotland.... Be it known to you all that when between the Lord John de Baliol, long ago in fact raised to be King of Scotland by the King of England, and the deceased Lord Robert de Bruce, grandfather of our Lord Robert the King who now is, a ground of dispute had arisen which of them, to wit, was nearest by right of blood to inherit and reign over the Scotch people; the faithful people without doubt always held, as from their predecessors and ancestors they had learned and believed to be true, that the said Lord Robert, the grandfather, after the death of King Alexander and his grand-daughter, the daughter of the King of Norway, was the true heir, and ought, in preference to all others, to be advanced to the government of the kingdom, although the enemy of the human race sowing tares, by the various machinations and plots of his rivals, which it would be tedious to narrate in detail, the thing has turned contrariwise; on account of whose overthrow, and the want of kingly authority, heavy calamities have thenceforth resulted to the kingdom of Scotland and its inhabitants.... The people, therefore, and the commons of the aforesaid kingdom of Scotland, worn out by the stings of many tribulations, seeing the said Lord John, by the King of England, on various pretexts, taken, imprisoned, stripped of his kingdom and people, and the kingdom of Scotland by him also ruined and reduced to slavery; laid waste by a mighty depopulation and overwhelmed by the bitterness of frequent grief, desolated from the want of right government, exposed to every danger, and given up to the spoiler, and the people stripped of their goods, tortured by wars, led captive, bound, and imprisoned; by immense massacres of the innocent, and by continual conflagrations, oppressed, subjected and enslaved, and on the brink of total ruin ... being no longer able to bear so many and so great losses of things and persons more bitter than death, often happening for want of a captain and faithful leader ... the said Lord Robert, with the concurrence and consent of the said people, was chosen to be king, that he might reform the deformities of the kingdom, correct what required correction, and direct what needed direction; and having been by their authority made King of Scots, with him the faithful people of the kingdom will live and die ... and if any one on the contrary claim right to the kingdom in virtue of letters in past times, sealed and containing the consent of the people and the commons, know ye that all this took place, in fact, by force and violence, which could not at the time be resisted, and through multiplied fears, bodily tortures, and various terrors, enough to confound the senses and distract the minds of perfect men.... We, therefore, the bishops and the rest of the clergy, acting under no compulsion, knowing that the premises are based on truth, and cordially approving the same, have made due fealty to our Lord Robert, the illustrious King of Scotland, and we publicly declare that the same ought to be rendered to him and his heirs by our successors for ever.”¹ Seeing that Bruce was then under the excommunication of the Pope for the slaughter of Comyn, this announcement of the Scotch clergy was a great accession of strength to his cause.
¹ National Manuscripts of Scotland, Part II., Number 17.
In the spring of 1309 there was an attempt to make peace, but the Scots were not inclined for peace till the English were expelled from all the castles and the territories of Scotland. Edward II., in September 1310, entered Scotland with a great army, but Bruce wisely avoided a battle. After driving off their cattle and sheep into the narrow glens, the Scots retired to the woods and mountains; while the invading army advanced to Renfrew, looking intently for an enemy to conquer, but in vain. The English soon began to suffer for want of provisions and forage, and without effecting anything of the slightest moment, the army retreated to Berwick. Several of Edward’s subsequent expeditions came to a similar end. In the summer of 1311 Bruce thought that his turn to invade the territories of the enemy had at last come. He accordingly marched his army into the northern counties of England and plundered the country, levying heavy contributions; and having remained for eight days, he returned home laden with booty.¹
¹ Chronicles of Hexham, Appendix, pages 58, 59.
Bruce then resolved to besiege Perth, which still remained in the bands of the English. The town was fortified by a strong wall, and surrounded by a deep moat full of water. The garrison made a brave and determined resistance, and for six weeks repelled all the efforts of the besiegers. But Bruce having ascertained and marked the shallowest part of the moat, marched off to a considerable distance, as if he had abandoned the siege. Ten days after, the king, at the head of a picked party of his men, furnished with scaling ladders, returned to Perth during the night, and they then waded through the moat, scaled the wall, and surprised the garrison in their beds. The town was soon taken, and the fortifications were completely demolished in accordance with the policy of the king. The lives of the English garrison were spared; and the Earl of Strathern, who then served under the English, was taken prisoner. On renewing his allegiance to Bruce, the Earl was pardoned.
Shortly after the castles of Dumfries and Linlithgow were captured; and on the 7th of March, 1312, the castle of Roxburgh was taken by Douglas, and by the orders of the king both the castle and the town were levelled to the ground. The Castle of Edinburgh, which had been for nineteen years in the possession of the English, on the 14th of March the same year, after a desperate struggle, was captured by Randolph. Edward Bruce had expelled the English from Galloway and Nithsdale, and demolished the castles in these districts; he also took the castles of Rutherglen, and Dundee, and at last besieged the Castle of Stirling――the citadel of the kingdom. The English Governor, Mowbray, defended the castle with great determination, but at length his provisions were becoming exhausted, and he then made an agreement with Edward Bruce to surrender it, unless it should be relieved, before the 24th of June, 1314. This agreement was very favourable to England, inasmuch as it compelled the Scots to peril the fate of the kingdom on a pitched battle.
As we have seen, the siege of Stirling Castle had cost Edward I. enormous labour, and he deemed its capture one of his greatest achievements. It was then the most important stronghold in Scotland, and if England intended to retain a hold of the country she must relieve it within the appointed time. So another great invasion was resolved on, and great preparations were made. The whole feudal array of England was called out, and levies drawn from Wales and Ireland; vast quantities of all kinds of provisions for the troops were collected from all quarters of England, and the army was well provided with cars and waggons for the transport of the baggage, tents, and arms. Edward II. entered Scotland in June, 1314, at the head of the largest and best equipped army that had ever marched from England; for in all it numbered one hundred thousand fighting men, one half of them cavalry, who were then considered the chief arm of strength in battle.
To face this mighty host the Scots made a supreme effort. Bruce ordered his force to muster in the Torwood, between Falkirk and Stirling, where he found that his fighting men only numbered thirty thousand infantry, and five hundred cavalry. He resolved to fight on foot, and prepared to guard and strengthen his position to the utmost. After a careful examination of the ground he determined to dispose his army in four divisions――three of them forming a front line, inclining to the south-east, facing the advance of the enemy, the fourth division being held in reserve and placed behind the centre. The formation of the Scottish spearmen was a series of solid circles, so inclined in front as most effectively to resist the shock of cavalry charges: it was similar to Wallace’s circles at the Battle of Falkirk. The right flank of Bruce’s line was well protected by the rugged ground and the broken banks of the Bannock burn, while his left wing was admirably secured by a series of trenches and pits, which effectively limited the space for the movements of the enemy’s cavalry. By this limitation of the space in front of his line, Bruce hampered the development of the cavalry charges of the English, which gave him a great advantage. The right wing of the Scots was commanded by Edward Bruce, the centre by Randolph, Earl of Moray, and the left wing by Sir James Douglas and the Steward of Scotland, the reserve or fourth division was under the command of the King himself, and it consisted of the men of the Isles, Argyle, and Cantyre, accompanied by Angus, the Lord of the Isles, and Bruce’s own vassals of Carrick; and there also the five hundred cavalry, under Sir Robert Keith, was stationed, ready to execute their special duty, when the proper moment came.
On the 23rd of June the enemy appeared, and made a bold attempt to throw a body of cavalry into the castle of Stirling, but they were repulsed by Randolph, the Earl of Moray. Bruce asked his leaders whether they thought it best to fight or to retreat, and they unanimously declared that they were determined to fight and to abide the issue of the conflict. The Scots then made all the necessary arrangements for the battle, passing the night under arms on the field. At night the Mayne of St. Fillan, that is, the enshrined arm of the saint, was shown to the Scottish army. At daybreak, the 24th of June, the Abbot of Inchaffary celebrated mass on an eminence in front of the army. He then passed along the line and in a few words exhorted the Scots to fight for their rights and liberty. After this they breakfasted, and then placed themselves under their different banners in battle array.
The mighty host of Edward II. was early in motion on that memorable Monday morning, and the English began the battle by the advance of a body of lancers under the command of the Earls of Hereford and Gloucester. The lancers charged at full gallop on the right wing of the Scots, but the spearmen firmly withstood the impetuous onset of the enemy, and some of the lancers were pitched from their saddles and slain. The main body of the enemy’s cavalry rapidly advanced and charged the Scottish centre, which for a moment appeared to be engulphed amid the seething mass of the English. The whole Scottish line was soon assailed and wrestling in a hand-to-hand combat with the enemy. The battle raged with the utmost fury, while the English attempted by desperate charges, many times repeated, to break through the Scottish spearmen, but in vain. At this all-important hour they thought of the home of their fathers, and their native hearths; and remembering, too, the many grinding injuries, galling outrages, stinging insults, cruel and unmitigated suffering inflicted upon them during long years of dire oppression, they repelled every attack with steady valour and slew heaps upon heaps of their assailants. The English bowmen and archers, who supported the cavalry charges, were beginning to gall the ranks of the Scottish spearmen; but Bruce sent Sir Robert Keith with five hundred cavalry to charge the left flank of the archers, and, as they had no weapons to defend themselves at close quarters, they were instantly broken and scattered in all directions, and so completely cowed that they declined to return to their posts. In front the battle continued to rage with unabated fury, but with obvious disadvantage to the English. Seeing the enemy flagging, Bruce encouraged his leaders to strive on, assuring them that the victory would soon be won. He then brought up the reserve, all the four divisions of his army being now engaged. The English fought bravely and determinedly, making many but unavailing attempts to pierce through the front of the spearmen, and at every successive charge losing more men and horses, and falling into greater confusion. Then was heard afar the clashing and crashing of armour, the commingled whooping and shouting of the war-cries, and withal the agonising moans and groans of the wounded and dying; many masterless horses were madly running hither and thither, heedless of friend or foe; the ground was streaming with blood and strewn with shreds of armour, broken spears, arrows, and pennons, rich scarfs and armorial bearings torn and soiled with blood and clay.
The Scots continued to gain ground, and pressed with increasing energy upon the confused and tottering mass of the enemy, rending the air with shouts of “On them! on them! they fall!” The English gave way slowly along the whole line. Bruce perceiving this, placed himself at the head of the reserve, and raising his war-cry, which was repeated by the Lord of the Isles, they pressed with redoubled and unbearable fury on the falling ranks of the enemy. This onset, well seconded by the other divisions of the army, decided the fate of the day. The English broke into disjointed squadrons and began to quit the field, and in spite of all the efforts of their leaders to rally them and restore order, they dispersed and fled headlong in all directions. King Edward stood gazing intently upon the fatal field till he saw that all was lost, when he fled in utter bewilderment. The struggle was over, the enemy in flight, and the victory complete. Glory to the heroes who fought, and bled, and fell on Bannockburn. Peace to the ashes of Robert Bruce, who skilfully planned, ably led, and won the field on that memorable day; while Scotsmen’s blood runs warm and human sympathies endure, the nation’s heart will throb over the remembrance of Bannockburn.
Thirty thousand of the English fell upon the field, and the standards of twenty-seven barons were laid in the dust, their owners being slain. Two hundred knights and seven hundred esquires were among the fallen. The prisoners consisted of twenty-two barons, sixty knights, and a multitude of the lower ranks. Although only two men of note, Sir Walter Ross and Sir William Vipont, were slain on the Scottish side, nearly four thousand of the rank and file fell on the field. A large number of the English must have been trampled to death by their own cavalry, especially after the confusion in their lines began. For though the Scottish spearmen stood in their positions like a rock so long as the issue of the battle was doubtful, whenever Bruce placed himself at the head of the reserve there was then an instantaneous forward movement of the whole line, and a series of successive charges were made upon the confused and entangled mass of the enemy, and it seems to have been then that the greater part of the English were killed. Edward II. fled by Linlithgow and thence to Dunbar, escorted by five hundred cavalry, who were pursued all the way by Douglas at the head of sixty horsemen. There was no rallying point after the battle, and Edward escaped from Dunbar to Berwick in a fishing-boat.
Bruce showed a noble forbearance in the hour of victory, and treated his fallen enemies and the prisoners with much respect and humanity. In this he exhibited a striking contrast to the cruel and rancorous policy of the Edwards. Of course some of the prisoners who were rich, paid large sums of money for their ransom. The enormous spoil of the English camp fell into the hands of the Scots, amongst which was the military chest containing the money for the payment of the troops, and the privy seal of Edward II. Mowbray, the governor, surrendered Stirling Castle the day after the battle, according to the agreement, and he then entered into the service of Bruce. The Earl of Hereford had taken refuge in the castle of Bothwell, which, after a short siege, surrendered to Edward Bruce; he was exchanged for Bruce’s queen and daughter, and his sister Christina, Bishop Wishart of Glasgow, and the Earl of Mar.
The Battle of Bannockburn was not only one of the greatest events in the history of Scotland, but it was also one of the greatest events in the history of Britain. Its immediate effects were obvious; while its results have been continuously felt in the internal history of Britain to the present time, and will continue to be felt throughout all time; as it contributed an element to human freedom which in its essence can never be lost.
After the Battle of Bannockburn, Bruce’s chief aim was to bring the English government to equitable terms of peace, but they refused to treat him as a king. The result of this was a succession of invasions and border raids which, for many years, kept both countries in a state of turmoil; for the Scots naturally resorted to a convincing mode of showing the advantages which they had gained, and they crossed the Border in force and plundered and wasted the northern counties of England. This was carried to such extremities that England became anxious for peace, but the Scots would listen to it only on the condition of the full acknowledgment of the independence of the kingdom. The English were still extremely loth to recognise this; and Edward tried the weapons of spiritual warfare and applied to the Pope for a pacifying Bull, which was issued in the beginning of the year 1317. This papal document was addressed to the illustrious Edward, King of England, and the noble Robert de Bruce, conducting himself as King of Scotland; it ordered the observance of a truce between England and Scotland for two years. Two cardinals appeared in England as the papal legates to enforce the observance of the truce, but Bruce declined to observe it or to treat with the representatives of the Pope unless he was addressed as King of Scotland. He told them that he would listen to no Papal Bulls until he had taken Berwick. Bruce pushed on the siege of Berwick, and it surrendered in the end of March, 1318. The Scots then invaded Northumberland, and took the castles of Wark, Harbottle, and Mitford. They advanced into Yorkshire, plundered the country, and levied contributions, returning home laden with booty, driving their prisoners before them like a flock of sheep.¹
¹ Walsingham’s Chronicles, Volume I., page 142, et seq.; Chronicles of Hexham, Volume I., page 59, et seq.; Fœdera, Volume II., pages 317, 340.
The two papal legates in England excommunicated Bruce and his adherents. Owing, however, to the keen national sympathies of the Scotch clergy, this had little effect in Scotland.
In December 1318, Robert I. assembled a parliament at Scone, in which a number of wise laws were passed. Acts were passed touching the administration of justice, the organisation and mustering of the army, and the freedom of the Church. The King commanded that the old and common law of the kingdom should be rightly administered to rich and poor alike. Acts relating to cattle-lifting, and to the salmon-fishing were passed. It was enacted that every man who had goods of the value of one cow, should arm himself with a good spear, or with a bow and a sheaf of twenty-four arrows. An act was passed, which prohibited all persons holding fiefs in Scotland from sending money or rents out of the kingdom, under severe penalties. This parliament settled the succession to the throne. In the event of the King dying without a lawful male heir, Robert, the son of the Princess Marjory, should succeed to the crown and kingdom; and in the event of the succession falling to a minor, Randolph, Earl of Moray, should be appointed tutor to the heir and guardian of the kingdom, and, failing him, Sir James Douglas. The rule of succession was then settled thus:――“The male nearest to the King at his death, in the direct line of descent, should succeed to the Crown, and, failing such, then the nearest female in the same line; and, failing the direct line, then the nearest male in the collateral line, respect always being had to the right of blood by which the last king reigned.”¹
¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume I., pages 105‒114.
Edward II. attempted to retake Berwick, but failed. To divert Edward from the siege of Berwick, the Scots marched into Yorkshire and wasted the country. This continual warfare was ruinous to both kingdoms; and on the 21st of December 1319, a truce was concluded for two years. About this time the Pope renewed his excommunication of Bruce and his adherents: many denunciatory edicts had been issued from Rome against Bruce and Scotland since he mounted the throne, and England had done all that she could to increase their number and to enforce them. The immaculate Edward II. pretended that he could not treat with an excommunicated man like Bruce without a papal dispensation. Thus obstacles were constantly thrown in the way of peace, and the policy of King Robert was greatly hampered. At the same time, it was keenly felt that the attitude of the King and the nation towards the head of the Church was unsatisfactory. Therefore it was resolved by a parliament, which met in the Abbey of Arbroath in April 1320, to prepare an address to the Pope, and present to him the real state of the nation. This address is of much historic and constitutional importance, and may be quoted at some length. After referring to the antiquity of the kingdom and its long line of kings, the conversion of the nation by Saint Andrew, and the many favours which preceding popes had granted to the kingdom, it proceeds:――
“So that our nation under their protection has hitherto continued free and peaceful, until that prince, to wit, the King of the English, Edward, the father of him who now is, under the semblance of a friend and ally, in a most unfriendly way harassed our kingdom, then without a head, and our people conscious of no guilt, and at that time unaccustomed to wars: and the injuries, slaughters and deeds of violence, plunderings, burnings, imprisonments of bishops, spoliations and murders of men of religion, and other outrages, which this prince perpetrated on the people, sparing no age or sex, religion or order, no one could describe or fully understand but he who has learned it from experience. From these innumerable evils, by the help of Him who, after wounding, heals and restores to health, we were freed by our most gallant prince and king, Lord Robert, who, for the delivering of his people and heritage from the enemies’ hands, like another Joshua, has cheerefully endured toil, fatigue, hardship, and danger. The Divine Providence, the laws and customs of the kingdom which we will maintain till death, the right of succession, and the due consent and assent of all the people, have made him our prince and king. To him we are obliged and resolved to adhere in all things, both on account of his right and his merits, as the person who has restored the people’s safety, and will defend their liberty. But, if this prince should leave those principles which he has so nobly pursued, and consent that we or our kingdom be subjected to the King or people of England, we will immediately endeavour to expel him as our enemy and the subverter of his own and our rights, and make another king who would defend our liberties; for, so long as one hundred of us remain alive, we will never consent in any way to subject ourselves to the English. Since it is not for glory, nor riches, nor honours, but liberty alone that we fight and contend for, which no good man will lose but with his life. For these reasons, Reverend Father and Lord, we earnestly beseech and entreat your Holiness, ... to deign to admonish and exhort the King of England to rest satisfied with his own dominions, seeing that of old England was enough for seven kings or more, to let us live in peace in our small kingdom of Scotland, beyond which we have no habitation, and desire nothing but our own, ... if your Holiness do not implicitly believe these things, but trusting too much to the reports of the English, and thus continue to favour them to our destruction, we must believe that the Most High will lay to your charge all the loss of life, the ruin of souls, and other evils which they will inflict on us and we on them.... We commit the defence of our cause to the Supreme King and Judge, casting our care on Him and firmly trusting that He will give courage to us and bring our enemies to nought.”¹
¹ National Manuscripts, Part II., Number 24.
This spirited and constitutional address had an immediate effect at the papal court; the severe measures against Scotland were suspended for some time. Sir Adam Gordon and another baron were sent as ambassadors to the papal court, and the Pope consented to address Bruce by the title of the King of Scotland. But no final settlement of the difficulty was obtained. In September 1320, commissioners were appointed by England, empowered to treat with Scotland for peace; but it appeared that Edward II. and his government were not sincere, as they shortly after announced their intention to make peace by force of arms.¹
¹ Fœdera, Volume II., pages 431, 481.
Another great invasion of Scotland was resolved on, and in August 1322, Edward II. marched into the doomed kingdom at the head of an army numbering one hundred thousand men. Bruce adopted the tactics of starving out the enemy, and all the cattle and provisions in the Merse and the Lothians were removed to places beyond the reach of the invading host. This was completely effective, as Edward II. and his vast army, without striking a single blow, were compelled to retreat in a state of wretchedness; many of the soldiers having died from starvation and the effects of the fine generalship of their King. In their retreat the English were harassed by Douglas and Randolph, who, with a body of the Scots, hung on their rear and slew the stragglers. When Bruce received tidings of the success of his tactics, he immediately recrossed the Forth, marched rapidly southward, and with a strong army advanced into England. On hearing that Edward II. was encamped with the remnant of his army at Biland Abbey in Yorkshire, Bruce determined to surprise him, and at once marched forward. He found his enemies posted in a strong position on the summit of a steep hill, accessible only on one side. But the sagacity and experience of Bruce was equal to the occasion; and he ordered a party of the men of the Isles and Argyle to march to a certain spot at the foot of the hill, and then climb the rocks and attack the flank and rear of the enemy posted on the summit. The Islemen shortly reached the ridge of the hill and drove the English from the heights, and then the main body of the Scots advanced and attacked the enemy. The English were completely defeated, and fled in all directions; Edward escaped and rode to York, hotly pursued by the Steward of Scotland. The baggage of the army, the privy seal of England, and several prisoners of note, amongst whom were the Earl of Richmond and Henry de Sully, fell into the hands of the Scots. They proceeded to waste the country and advanced to the banks of the Humber, levying contributions. In the middle of October they returned home with their booty.¹
¹ Walsingham, Volume I., page 166; Barbour’s Bruce; Hailes’ Annals, Volume II., pages 216‒218.
Indeed it had become manifest that if peace was not soon concluded with Scotland, the consequences would be disastrous to England. The inhabitants of the border counties of England saw and felt that Edward II. was quite unable to protect them; and if the war was to be continued, it seemed probable that these counties would soon be annexed to Scotland. The prospect of this induced the English government to make proposals of peace. Still the difficulty of Edward II. and his advisers was their extreme reluctance to recognise Bruce as the King of an independent kingdom; a truce, however, was agreed to, on the 7th of June 1323, which was to continue in force for thirteen years.¹
¹ Fœdera, Volume II., page 510, et seq.
Although Edward II. and his government were very anxious for a truce with the Scots, they were loth to relinquish their ideas of the conquest of Scotland, which they had received from the great hammer――Edward I. Accordingly Edward II. continued his efforts to stir up the Pope against Bruce and the Scots; and he intimated to the Pope that the Scotch clergy encouraged the people in their rebellion to the utmost; and by their contempt of the solemn censures of the Church, they had certainly incurred the suspicion of heresy; and therefore he thought that no Scotsman should be elected to the office of a bishop in his native land. Bruce sent Randolph, the Earl of Moray, to the papal court; and he so far succeeded as to induce the Pope to address a Bull to Bruce with the title of King. On his way home, Randolph was joined by other Scotch envoys, and they concluded a treaty of alliance with France, in which it was agreed that in future wars with England, France and Scotland were to assist each other against her.¹
¹ Fœdera, Volume II., page 541.
Further attempts were made to arrange a final peace; but the English government was still invidious, and persistently continued to instigate the papal court to renew its denunciatory edicts against Scotland. On the 20th of January 1327, Edward II. was dethroned. He was murdered on the 21st of September, the same year; and his son was crowned on the 25th of January under the title of Edward III. The new King and government of England, however, was not inclined to recognise the independence of Scotland, and the negotiations were broken off. The truce was terminated, and both kingdoms prepared for a renewal of the struggle.
The King ordered the Scots to muster, and in June 1327, an army of twenty thousand men, under the command of Randolph and Douglas, marched over the western border and plundered Northumberland. They out-manœuvred the English army, and after staying three weeks in the enemy’s country they returned home. Preparations were immediately made for another expedition. Bruce himself at the head of a large army invaded England; one division of the army under the King besieged the castle of Norham; another division attacked the castle of Alnwick; and the third division proceeded to waste the open country of Northumberland. Thus Bruce by his energy at last compelled the English government to sue for peace on equal terms, as commissioners came to the Scottish camp and offered proposals of a peaceful character. One of these was, that a marriage should be contracted between David, the King’s son, and Joanna, the sister of Edward III.
But Bruce determinedly insisted that the independence of Scotland should be first recognised as the basis of any treaty between the two kingdoms. This was conceded. In a Parliament held at York, on the 1st of March 1328, it was agreed that England should renounce for ever all claims of superiority over Scotland; the main points of this document were these:――“Whereas we, and others of our predecessors, Kings of England, have endeavoured to obtain a right of dominion and superiority over the kingdom of Scotland, and have thereby been the cause of long and atrocious wars between the kingdoms, ... we have, by the assent of the prelates, barons, and commons of our kingdom, in parliament assembled, granted, and hereby do grant, for us, and our heirs and successors, that the kingdom of Scotland shall remain for ever to the magnificent prince and lord, Robert, by the grace of God the illustrious King of Scots, our ally and dear friend, and to his heirs and successors, free, entire, and separated from the kingdom of England by its respective marches, as in the time of Alexander III., King of Scotland, without any subjection, servitude, claim or demand whatsoever. And we hereby renounce and convey to the said King of Scotland, his heirs and successors, whatsoever right we or our ancestors in times past, have laid claim to in any way over the kingdom of Scotland. And we renounce and declare void, for ourselves and our heirs and successors, all obligations, agreements, or treaties, touching the subjection of the kingdom of Scotland and the inhabitants thereof, entered into between our predecessors, and any of the Kings thereof, or any of their subjects.”
After the adjustment of this preliminary condition, the negotiations proceeded smoothly and rapidly; the treaty of peace was concluded at Edinburgh on the 17th of March 1328, and formally ratified by the English parliament at Northampton, on the 4th of May, the same year. The stipulations of the treaty of peace may be indicated thus: The King of England and the King of Scotland promised to be faithful allies of each other; reserving the obligations of the King of Scots to his ally, the King of France. If the Irish people rebelled against the King of England, the King of Scots should not assist them; and, if any one rose in arms against the King of Scots in the Isle of Man or in the other islands of Scotland, the King of England should not assist them. It was provided that a marriage should be solemnised between David, son and heir of the King of Scots, and Joanna, sister of the King of England. Scotland agreed to pay a sum of £20,000 sterling to England, within three years, at three separate terms: further, it was stipulated that Sir James Douglas should be reinstated in the lands which he had forfeited in Northumberland; and that Henry Beaumont, Earl of Buchan, Thomas, Lord Wake of ♦Liddel, and Henry Percy, should be restored to their lands and lordships in Scotland. The King of England promised to aid in obtaining the recall of all proceedings instituted by the Pope’s authority against the King and people of Scotland.¹
♦ “Liddell” replaced with “Liddel” for consistency
¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume I., page 126; National Manuscripts, Part II., Number 26; Fœdera, Volume II., pages 762, 806.
Robert I. had now secured to the people of Scotland the full acknowledgment of their national independence and liberty. To obtain this he had struggled hard and long against fearful odds, cheerfully endured the utmost privation, and bore with a strength of spirit unrivalled in the annals of the world, the successive blows of bereavement inflicted upon him by the implacable rage of his enemies. The justice and the glory of his culminated achievement, was amply attested by his enemies, when they at last pleaded guilty as above, admitted, and stated that they had been the cause of the manifold and extreme suffering inflicted upon the people of Scotland and the people of England.
The King’s son, David, who had been made Earl of Carrick, a boy five years of age, proceeded with a large retinue from Cardross to Berwick to meet his bride; and there Joanna, a girl of eleven years, was handed over, in accordance with the treaty, to Sir James Douglas and the Earl of Moray. On the 18th of July 1328, the marriage was celebrated at Berwick, amid great rejoicing. Robert I. was unable to be present at the marriage of his young son, as he had been for years afflicted with an illness brought on by the privations which he had endured in the early stage of his career. In the latter years of his life, he spent much of his time at Cardross on the Clyde, a manor which he acquired in 1326. He occupied his attention and in some measure assuaged the tedium and pain of his malady by improving his residence at Cardross. He repaired the park there, and greatly improved the garden; he had a house for falcons which was surrounded by a hedge, and it appears that he kept a pet lion. The Earl of Moray, Randolph, was often with the King, and both devoted much of their time to shipbuilding. The King had a ship of his own which plied on the Clyde and the neighbouring waters. At Cardross the King lived in a quiet but hospitable style, as appears from the large number of sheep, salted salmon, haddocks, eels, lampreys, and other provisions which were consumed. He gave gifts and pensions to a number of persons, and charities to poor men.¹
¹ Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, Volume I.
Robert I. had done his work; and when he found his life drawing to its close, he dictated a letter to his son, giving him his last paternal advice, and directing that his heart should be buried at Melrose. A portion of this letter may be quoted:――“Robert, by the grace of God King of the Scots, to David his most beloved son and the rest of his successors, wishes health, and so to keep his precepts that they may reign with his blessing. Dearest son, he appears worthy to be esteemed a son, who, imitating his father’s example in good things, endeavours to follow out his devout wishes, nor does he properly take the name of heir who does not adhere to the goodly designs of his predecessor. Desiring therefore that you, and the rest of our successors, should follow out in devout sincerity that pious love and sincere regard which we have conceived toward the Monastery of Melrose, where, of our special devotion, we have appointed our heart to be buried.... And this exhortation, supplication and command, do you our son, and the rest of our successors, take care with earnest resolution to fulfil, if ye would have our blessing together with the blessing of the Son of the Most High King, who taught sons to do the will of their fathers, in that which is right.... And in witness of our devotion towards Melrose, so loved and chosen by us, we give this present letter to the aforesaid religious, to be shown to our successors in time to come.”¹ This letter was written twenty-seven days before the King’s death, yet we know that the instructions which it gave touching the burial of his heart were superseded by a later expression of his wishes. There appears to be no doubt that Bruce in his last hours besought Sir James Douglas to carry his heart to Jerusalem. It is also certain that Douglas actually made an attempt to fulfil the wishes of the King, although he failed to reach Jerusalem. It is, however, uncertain what became of Bruce’s heart in the end.
¹ National Manuscripts, Part II., Number 29.
Robert I. died at Cardross on the 7th of June, 1329, in the fifty-fifth year of his age, and thus ended a remarkable career and a memorable reign. His remains were interred in the choir of the Abbey Church of Dunfermline, and a marble monument, made in Paris, was erected over the grave. Bruce married Isabella, a daughter of the Earl of Mar. By her he had one daughter, Marjory, who married Walter the Steward of Scotland. Bruce’s second wife was Elizabeth, a daughter of the Earl of Ulster, and by her he had two sons, David, mentioned in preceding pages, and John, who died in infancy, and two daughters. King Robert had two natural sons, Walter of Odistown, on the Clyde, who predeceased his father, and Sir Robert Bruce, who fell at the battle of Dupplin in 1332. A papal bull, dated a few days after the death of Robert I., but addressed to him, finally cleared Scotland from the interdict, and authorised the Bishop of St. Andrews, or the Bishop of Glasgow, to solemnly anoint and crown the Kings of Scotland.
Chapter VII
Narrative to the Return of James I.
ON the death of Robert I., in accordance with his expressed request, Randolph, Earl of Moray, assumed the government of the kingdom. He was an energetic man, and during his short regency the kingdom was admirably governed. The regent became aware that Edward III. had begun to entertain hostile intentions against Scotland, as in 1330, Edward Baliol, a son of the deposed King John, received permission from Edward III. to reside in England as long as he pleased. Baliol, in concert with a number of nobles who had forfeited their Scotch estates, was then projecting an invasion of Scotland, under the connivance of Edward III. After the battle of Bannockburn, the nobles who held lands in Scotland, but preferred to give their allegiance to the King of England, then forfeited their lands on the north of the Tweed; as it had at last, from bitter experience, become plain that a divided allegiance had already caused enormous suffering in Scotland. Still these forfeited nobles were extremely loth to relinquish their hold upon the lands of Scotland, and, as we have seen, the claims of three of them were recognised in the treaty of Northampton. But the regent was unwilling to restore extensive territories to the sworn enemies of the kingdom.
On the 24th of November, 1331, King Robert’s son, a boy of eight years, was crowned and anointed by the Bishop of St. Andrews, under the title of David II. But perils were impending. The regent received tidings of Baliol’s movements, and immediately mustered an army to defend the kingdom. At this crisis the regent suddenly died at Musselburgh, on the 20th of July, 1332. The Earl of Mar was elected regent, but he had no qualification for the office, and led the nation to disaster. In the beginning of August 1332, eleven days after the death of Randolph, Edward Baliol appeared in the Firth of Forth with a fleet, and immediately landed his troops on the coast of Fifeshire. His force numbered about three thousand men on foot, and four hundred cavalry; and his most ardent supporters were Henry Beaumont, who claimed the earldom of Buchan, Lord Wake of Liddel, and Henry Percy. Besides these there were many others under Baliol’s banner who were hungering for land in Scotland, and pretended that they had claims to it. Among the Scotch supporters of Baliol the most notable was the Earl of Athole; he had estates in the south of England; his territories in Athole and in Strathbogie were forfeited by Robert I., who gave Strathbogie to Sir Adam Gordon. Thus Baliol’s supporters were animated by strong motives, and they marched forward to Strathern with remarkable spirit, surprised the Scotch army, under Mar, at Dupplin on the 11th of August, and completely defeated the Scots. Mar himself, Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick, the Earl of Monteith, and many of the Scots were slain. The day after the battle, Baliol and his followers took possession of Perth, and commenced to fortify it.
The Earl of March was at the head of another Scotch army superior in numbers to Baliol’s force, but it appears that he secretly favoured the invaders. March advanced towards Perth, as if he intended to attack Baliol; but he soon disbanded his army without striking a single blow. Baliol for the moment was master, and accordingly on the 24th of September he was crowned at Scone. He then proceeded southward to Roxburgh, surrendered the independence of Scotland to Edward III., and gave up Berwick and territories on the borders to his Lord Superior. But whilst he was transacting this business, Sir Robert Keith, and James and Simon Fraser, surprised and captured Perth. A party led by the young Earl of Moray, Randolph’s son, and Sir Archibald Douglas, then proceeded southward in search of the new made King, who lay encamped at Annan. At midnight they entered his camp, and after a short resistance, his men were utterly routed and many of them slain, and Baliol himself fled half-naked into England.¹
¹ Hemingford’s Chronicles, Volume II., pages 303, 306; Register of the Great Seal, pages 4, 14, 15; Hailes’ Annals, Volume II., pages 158‒161; Fœdera, Volume II., pages 876, 888; Volume III., page 317, et seq.
Edward III. threw off the mask and openly assisted Baliol, who returned to Scotland in March, 1333. The English army besieged Berwick, and made the utmost efforts to take it. Sir Archibald Douglas, who was then regent, attempted to raise the siege, and with an army numbering about ten thousand men, attacked the English at Halidon Hill on the 20th of July. But the Scots were completely defeated, Douglas, the regent, was slain, and the Earls of Lennox, Strathern, Ross, and Sutherland, and the greater part of the Scotch army. Berwick immediately surrendered, and the southern part of the kingdom was under the heel of the invader. Baliol held a Parliament at Edinburgh in February 1334, at which he parcelled out the southern half of Scotland among his own adherents; and then formally rendered homage to Edward III., surrendering to him the remainder of the kingdom. His supporters, however, soon began to quarrel with him, as he had no real hold of the nation. The Scots still held the castles of Dumbarton, Lochleven, Lochdun in Carrick, Kildrummy, and Inverness. In May, 1334, the young King, David II., and his queen were sent to France for safety, and Philip VI. rendered material aid to the national party.
About this time Sir Andrew Moray, who had been taken prisoner, returned from England after two years imprisonment, and the Steward, who had taken refuge in the Island of Bute, also appeared on the scene, and the people began to rally round them. The invaders were driven out of Renfrew, Kyle, and Carrick, and Beaumont, the Earl of Buchan, was captured in his Castle of Dundarg, but on the payment of a large ransom was allowed to return to England. Baliol fled a second time across the Border to seek the protection of his Lord Superior. Edward III., like his grandfather, was always willing to oppress the people of Scotland, and within five years he led, in person, four successive invasions into the kingdom. During the short intervals between these invasions the Scots assailed Baliol’s supporters, and allowed them no rest. The Earl of Athole wavered, and repeatedly changed sides. In the service of Edward III. he besieged the castle of Kildrummy, but in 1335 he was attacked by Sir Andrew Moray at ♦Culblean, and defeated and slain. The fall of Athole was a severe blow to Edward III., and his tool Baliol. At a meeting held in Dunfermline, Sir Andrew Moray was elected Regent of the kingdom, and he struggled to the utmost against the enemies of the nation. Edward III. resolved to crush all resistance, and in 1336 invaded Scotland at the head of a great army. He proceeded by Perth, and thence marched to Aberdeen, wasting the country and burning villages and towns along his route. He then advanced through the counties of Aberdeen and Banff, crossed the Spey, and onward till he reached Inverness. Moray, the regent, wisely avoided a battle, but he ♠harassed his enemy most effectively, and Edward returned to England without having subdued Scotland. Shortly after Edward III. concentrated his attention on France, where he found a more tempting field for his inordinate ambition.
♦ “Culblen” replaced with “Culblean”
♠ “harrassed” replaced with “harassed”
Sir Andrew Moray, the Stewart, Sir William Douglas, and others, assisted by the body of the people, continued their efforts to expel the invaders. Several of the castles were retaken from the enemy. The upstart Baliol, when left to his own resources, soon disclosed his nakedness. The regent, Moray, died in 1338, and the Steward of Scotland succeeded him as regent. He besieged Perth, which had been for years the headquarters of the English, and the citadel of Baliol’s supporters. After the siege had continued for some time, the governor of the town capitulated on terms, and he and the garrison were permitted to retire into England. By this time Baliol had become an object of hatred, suspicion, and contempt, among all classes of the Scots, and in 1339 he finally fled from the kingdom, and assumed his natural position as a pensioned dependant on England.¹
¹ Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, Volume I.; Hemingford’s Chronicles, Volume II., pages 336‒340; Buchanan’s _History of Scotland_, Book IX., Chapter 27.
The regent proceeded with the work of expelling the invaders and the re-organisation of the government. He besieged Stirling castle, which was captured in 1341; and Edinburgh castle was surprised and taken on the 17th of April the same year. At this time the regent reported to the King that the country was almost clear of the enemy, and suggested that he should return to his kingdom. The King and Queen embarked for Scotland, and landed safely at Inverbervie on the 4th of June 1341; thence they proceeded to Aberdeen, and were warmly received and hospitably entertained by the magistrates and the citizens. After a short stay in the city, the royal party paid a visit to the aged sister of Robert I., the widow of Sir Andrew Moray, who then resided in the castle of Kildrummy. The King returned to Aberdeen, and was present at a council held there on the 21st of February 1342; and on the 14th of April he was again at Kildrummy. This year the King sojourned for some time at Ayr, and visited Dumbarton, Stirling, Linlithgow, Haddington, Inverkeithing, Cupar, Scone, and other towns. The King along with the Queen and his sisters spent a night at Banff; and in August and November he was again at Kildrummy; on this occasion the royal party stayed for some time at Aberdeen. It appears that the King took part in the popular amusements of the period. So far it seemed that the young King had a bright future before him, and it was evident that the people had great faith and hope in the son of Robert I.¹
¹ Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, Volume I.
David II. was then a youth of eighteen years, and, on his return from France, the Steward gave over the government to him. The state of the kingdom then needed a ruler who possessed the characteristics of energy, sagacity, and experience, but unhappily it became apparent that David II. lacked these qualifications. The war with England still continued on the borders; a truce was concluded in 1344, which was to continue till November 1346; but so long as the English held any portion of the kingdom, the Scots could not refrain from attempting to recover it.
In 1346, at the request of his French ally, David II. mustered an army at Perth and marched southward. He entered England by the western marches and plundered the country, advancing as far as the neighbourhood of Durham. There the English army approached, and the Scots hastily formed for action in three divisions. Their left wing was under the Steward, their right under the Earl of Moray, and their centre led by the King himself. At Neville’s Cross, on the 17th of October, the English began the battle by an attack on the right wing of the Scots. The Earl of Moray was slain, and his division was driven back and thrown into disorder; the English then assailed the centre in flank and in front; but David II. fought bravely, and for three hours he maintained the contest against fearful odds; although severely wounded, he continued to encourage his men, who fell fast around him, till he was seized and disarmed by the enemy. When the royal banner fell, the Steward retreated with the remnant of his army. The battle was extremely disastrous to the Scots. The High Chancellor of Scotland, the Chamberlain, the Marshall and the Constable, the Earls of Moray and Strathern, many other nobles, and about fourteen thousand men were slain upon the field. While the King, the Earls of Fife, Sutherland, Monteith, and many other nobles and knights were taken prisoners. The King and the prisoners were conveyed to London. By the orders of Edward III., the Earls of Monteith and Fife were selected as traitors, and tried and condemned. Monteith was executed with all the shocking cruelties of the English law of treason, but Fife’s life was spared.¹
¹ Walsingham, Volume I., page 269; History of Scotland, Winton, Volume III., pages 476‒477; Rotuli Scotiæ, Volume I., pages 690‒696, 705; Fœdera, Volume III.
The English followed up their victory, entered Scotland, and overran anew the greater part of the kingdom south of the Forth. The castles of Roxburgh and Hermitage were surrendered to the enemy. But the national spirit of resistance survived the calamitous defeat of Durham. The Steward was elected guardian of the kingdom, and he assumed the functions of his office, and exerted himself to the utmost to maintain the liberty of the nation. In 1347 a truce was concluded between England and France, which included Scotland, and it was continued by renewals to 1354.
The adjustment of the King’s ransom was a most difficult and tedious matter. It appeared that the main aim of Edward III. was to extort an enormous ransom for his royal prisoner, accompanied by stipulations which the Scots, impoverished to the brink of utter ruin by a war of fifty years, would be unable to implement; by this and secret intrigue, Edward hoped and endeavoured to obtain possession of the throne of Scotland. Attempts were made to treat with David II. on conditions entirely subversive of the independence of Scotland; the poor, captive King, however, could give no assurance that such conditions would be fulfilled, so this came to nothing. After many abortive negotiations and much wrangling, the King’s ransom was fixed at 100,000 marks, to be paid to England by ten yearly instalments of 10,000 marks; twenty hostages drawn from the chief families of the kingdom were to be placed in the hands of the King of England until the ransom was paid; and a truce was to be observed between the two kingdoms for ten years. The treaty was concluded at Berwick on the 3rd of October 1357, and the payment of the first instalment of the ransom was to be due on the 25th of June 1358. After the ratification of this treaty David II. was released and returned to Scotland.¹
¹ Fœdera, Volume III., pages 242, 365, et seq.; _Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland_, Volume I., page 155 et seq.
The first matter that demanded attention was how to raise the money to pay the annual instalment of the King’s ransom. On the 6th of November 1357, David II. met his Parliament which assembled at Scone to concert measures to raise this money. It was proposed that the King should be empowered to purchase all the wool and fleeces in the kingdom at the price of four marks for each sack of wool, which was two-thirds of the actual market price of wool at the time, thus giving two marks as a tax on every sack. The Estates sanctioned this provision. Directions were given for a re-valuation of all the lands and rents of the kingdom; the produce, corn, cattle, sheep, and every kind of goods, and also lists of the names of all the merchants and tradesmen in the country, as a tax was to be laid on the rents and profits of land according to their real value; and an inquiry was to be made as to how much each person was likely voluntarily to contribute toward the payment of the King’s ransom. Various arrangements were made for collecting these taxes, and for punishing those who might attempt to avoid payment. It was then enacted that all the lands, rents, and other rights of the Crown which had been alienated should now be resumed; that such alienations by the King in the future should not be made without mature deliberation with his council. The great customs of the Crown were raised to three times their former amount.
The payment of the King’s ransom pressed extremely hard upon the impoverished nation. In spite of all the efforts of the parliament and the people, the payment of the annual instalment fell into arrears. This caused new arrangements to be proposed and concluded, which always entailed more expense and increased the national taxes and debt. The King himself was irregular and extravagant in his habits. It seems that after his release he found little in Scotland to satisfy him, as he frequently returned to England, and thus he entailed more annoyance and expense upon his people; while the internal government of the kingdom was neglected and the higher nobles became turbulent and lawless.¹
¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume I., pages 133‒134.
David II. had no children by his wife, the princess Joanna, and she died in England on the 14th of August 1362. The following year the King married Margaret Logie, but he had no family by her, and it seems she had been superseded by a new favourite, Agnes of Dunbar, a daughter of the Earl of March, who had attracted David’s attention. Accordingly, in 1369 David II. divorced his queen, Margaret Logie. These facts enable us in some measure to understand the public conduct of David II., and his proceedings with Edward III., touching the succession to the throne of Scotland.
In the month of October 1363, David II. proceeded to London, and a project was then matured for transferring the Crown of Scotland to England. The main points of the project agreed on between Edward III. and David II., were that an immediate discharge of the ransom would be given, on the condition of the Crown of Scotland being settled on Edward III., in the event of David leaving no male issue; and elaborate provisions were framed for preserving the separate laws and institutions of Scotland. David II. undertook to ascertain the inclinations of the Scots on the matter, and report the result to Edward. In a parliament held at Scone on the 4th of March, 1364, David suggested that the Estates should choose Edward III., or one of his sons, to fill the throne of Scotland after his own death; but the Estates rejected the proposal and threw it out with scorn, although they were quite willing to make great concessions for peace. The negotiations were continued; and at a General Council, which met at Perth on the 13th of January, 1365, in order to obtain peace and relieve the kingdom from its financial embarrassment, the meeting agreed to offer to restore the forfeited nobles to the estates which they claimed in Scotland, to settle the Isle of Man and the lands of the Baliols on one of Edward’s sons, if the unpaid balance of the ransom was totally remitted. The result of this was a treaty, which was ratified by David II. on the 12th of June, 1365, and by Edward III. on the 20th of the same month. This treaty contained an agreement to pay £100,000 by annual instalments of £4000; and a truce to continue for four years. The Scots desired a peace for a much longer period, and sent envoys to England empowered to make further concessions. But Edward III. expected greater concessions than the Scots were even yet prepared to yield, before he would listen to proposals of a permanent peace. At a council which met at Holyrood on the 8th of May, 1366, it was declared that the proposals of Edward III., touching the homage, the succession, and the dismemberment of the kingdom, were intolerable, and could not be admitted as matter for deliberation. The Estates were to attempt, if necessary, to pay the whole ransom within the four years of the truce; and, with this in view, valuation rolls of all the lands in the kingdom were ordered to be presented to the next parliament.¹
¹ Fœdera, Volume III., pages 715, 770; _Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland_, Volume I., pages 134, 137‒139; Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, Volume II.
When parliament met at Scone on the 20th of July, 1366, the new valuation, which had been made under the Act of 1357, was laid before it. Orders were then issued for a further valuation of the property of burgesses and husbandmen, to be presented to a council which was to be held on the 8th of September next. But £8000 had to be raised immediately to pay the debts of the King and the expenses of the envoys, who were again to proceed to England and attempt to negotiate for a peace or a truce to continue for twenty-five years. The efforts to obtain peace or a long truce with Edward III. failed, and he seemed to be resolved on driving Scotland to the utmost extremities. The extravagance of David II. was excessive, considering the financial condition of his kingdom; he had borrowed large sums from burgesses both in Scotland and in England. In spite of all the efforts to extricate the nation, her financial difficulties were increasing.¹
¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume I., pages 140‒143; Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, Volume II.
Meantime the kingdom was drifting into a deplorable state of internal disorder. The nobles were becoming lawless; and it appears that the Earl of Ross, the Lord of Lorne, some other nobles, and John, the Lord of the Isles, had declined to pay their share of the national taxes, and defied the royal authority and absented themselves from the meetings of parliament. But in 1369 the Earls of Ross and Mar promised to assist the royal officers within their territories, and the Steward promised to extinguish disorder in the districts of Athole, Strathern, and Monteith. The Lord of the Isles, however, maintained that his vassals were under no obligation to pay any portion of the national taxes. In the end of the year 1369 he tendered his submission at Inverness, and undertook to assist the royal authority; and he actually paid a contribution to the national tax.¹
¹ Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, Volume II., page 431; _Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland_, Volume I., pages 145‒149.
The four years truce was almost expired; year after year Edward III. had spurned all the concessions and offers and efforts of the Scots to make a lasting peace between the two kingdoms. The Scots were burdened with a load of taxation, and the national debt was still accumulating, while the prospect of a renewal of the war was impending over the nation. But the historic relations between England and France took a sudden turn, and war ensued between them. Edward III. then thought fit to come to terms with Scotland, and granted a truce for fourteen years, which was proclaimed on the 18th of June, 1369, and ratified at Edinburgh on the 20th of July, and at Westminster on the 24th of August. By this treaty 56,000 marks were recognised as the balance of the ransom due, which the Scots undertook to pay by annual instalments of 4000 marks. All other claims under the treaty of 1365 were cancelled; Edward III. also allowed the Scots half the rent of the lands subject to him in the sheriffdom of Roxburgh.¹ In January 1370, David II. paid his creditors by a composition of 13s. 4d. in the pound; and a parliament which met in February 1370, at Perth, cancelled all the remaining debts which he had contracted before 1368, and then enjoined his majesty to live within his means for the future. The instalments of the ransom were pretty regularly paid up till 1377, but it seems that a balance of 24,000 marks was never paid.²
¹ Fœdera; Rotuli Scotiæ, Volume I., page 924.
² Fœdera; Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, Volume II. The point of the non-payment of this balance is discussed in the Preface to the third volume of the Exchequer Rolls. See pages 54‒59.
David II. had been a costly King to the Scots. The circumstances in which he was placed in his youth were unfavourable to the development of his faculties, his character, and his habits. He was not responsible for his marriage with Joanna, the sister of Edward III.; he was not responsible for his residence in France, or for his training there: these were the result of the exigences of the position of the nation. This partly accounts for the strange career which he ran after his return from France, and his unfortunate capture at Durham. His race was approaching its close, and he died on the 22nd of February, 1371, in Edinburgh Castle, in the forty-seventh year of his age, after a nominal reign of forty-two years.
David II. having died without issue, under the settlement of 1318, was succeeded by his nephew, Robert, the Steward of Scotland. He was crowned and anointed by the Bishop of St. Andrews at Scone on the 26th of March, 1371, under the title of Robert II., in presence of the nobles, the clergy, and a great assemblage of the people from all quarters of the kingdom. Robert II. was then in his fifty-fifth year, and, as we have seen, he had been twice regent. He was a man of ability and good judgment, and was inclined to follow the paths of peace, but unhappily the Scotch nobles were not as yet disposed to tread in the quiet walks of life. The King had been twice married, and had a large family of sons and daughters. The day after his coronation, in the parliament assembled for the occasion, a declaration was read and passed touching the succession to the Crown, a part of which may be quoted:――“The most serene Prince Lord Robert, by the grace of God the illustrious King of Scots, being at Scone at the time of his coronation, the bishops, earls, barons, and others of the clergy and people of his kingdom assisting, after the solemn rites of the anointing and coronation completed, and a declaration made of the law by which the most serene prince succeeded, and ought to succeed, as well by nearness of blood as in virtue of a certain declaration made in the time of Lord Robert, of illustrious memory, King of Scotland, the grandfather and predecessor of the said Lord our King, there produced and read: also having received the usual oaths of homage and fealty from the bishops, earls, barons, and others of the clergy and people there present, which of old were accustomed and required to be taken at the coronation of the kings of Scotland; and willingly, after the manner and example of that good King, of illustrious memory, Robert, his grandfather, in presence of the clergy and people, to declare there his successor and true heir, although with regard to him it was, and is evident, yet for the greater certainty and with the unanimous consent and assent of the said bishops, earls, nobles, and great men indicated, asserted and acknowledged, declared and willed, that when it shall happen that he, by the Divine dispensation, departs this life, the Lord John, his first born son, Earl of Carrick and Steward of Scotland, shall and ought to be his true and lawful heir; and, the Lord so ordaining, shall and ought to sit upon the throne of his kingdom.” In 1373, in a Parliament held at Scone on the 4th of April, another declaration was made which limited the succession to the male line. The reasons given for this limitation were that evils and calamities had happened from the succession of female heirs. The assembled Estates of the realm――“declared, ordained, and enacted that the sons of the King of his first and second wives now born, and their heirs male only, shall succeed one after another to the said King in the kingdom and in the right of reigning; and the said Lord John and his heirs――male happening to fail, but may it not be, the Lord Robert, Earl of Fife and Menteith, the second born son of our Lord the King by his first wife, and his heirs――male only, shall in turn and immediately succeed to the kingdom and the right of reigning; and the said Robert and such heirs of his happening also to fail, but may it not be, the Lord Alexander, Lord of Badenoch, the third born son of our Lord the King by the same wife, and his heirs male only, shall, after their death, in like manner, in turn and immediately succeed to the kingdom and the right of reigning; and the said Lord Alexander and his heirs happening in like manner to fail, but may it not be, the Lord David, Earl of Strathern, son of our Lord the King, born of his second wife, and his heirs――male only, the said parties thus failing wholly, shall, in like manner, in turn and immediately succeed to the kingdom and the right of reigning; and the said Lord David and his heirs happening in like manner to fail, Walter, son of our Lord the King, and his heirs male only, shall in like manner succeed to the kingdom and the right of reigning: and the aforesaid five brothers and their heirs male from them descending, happening finally and wholly to fail, but may it not be, the true and lawful heirs of the royal blood and parentage shall thenceforward succeed to the kingdom and the right of reigning.” The above was enacted and ordained by the Estates of the kingdom, and the bishops, earls, nobles, and others present, each individually touched the “Holy Gospels and swore their bodily oath that they would inviolably observe these declarations, ordinances and statutes for themselves and their heirs, and cause them to be observed for ever by others to the utmost of their power. And immediately thereafter the whole multitude of the clergy and the people in the church of Scone, before the great altar, being specially convened for that purpose, the aforesaid declaration, ordinance, and statute thus sworn, being explained to them in a loud and public voice, each raising his hand, after the manner of faith-giving, in token of the universal consent of the whole clergy and people, publicly expressed and declared their consent and assent. In witness of all which our Lord the King ordered his great seal to be affixed to the present writing. And for the greater evidence and fuller security all the bishops, earls, barons, and nobles above named caused their seals to be affixed to this writing for the sake of testimony and for a perpetual memorial to posterity.”¹
¹ National Manuscripts Part II., Numbers 43 A, 43 B.
In the spring of 1371 Archibald Douglas and three other envoys were sent to France, empowered to treat for the renewal and the amendment of the former treaty of friendship and alliance between the two kingdoms. On the 30th of June, at Vincennes, the new treaty was concluded, and ratified by Robert II. at Edinburgh on the 28th of October. The two nations agreed to mutually assist each other against English aggression, and that no truce or peace should be concluded by either kingdom in which the other was not included; this was an important stipulation, which past experience had no doubt suggested to the Scots. In the event of a disputed succession for the crown of Scotland the king of France should support the right of the man whose claims were sanctioned by the Parliament of the kingdom. The truce with England was continued, although it was not strictly observed on either side. So long as England held portions of Scotch territory in the southern countries, the Scots could not refrain from driving out the invaders, but they frequently went farther and made destructive and irritating raids into the north of England.
Robert II. was anxious for peace, but a number of his nobles and several of his own sons delighted to make inroads into England. In 1380 the Duke of Lancaster advanced to the Border with a strong army to check the raids of the Scots and make peace. The Earls of Douglas and March and the Bishops of Glasgow and Dunkeld were commissioned to meet the Duke of Lancaster at Berwick, where a truce was concluded to continue for a year. Lancaster then disbanded his army, and promised to meet the Scotch commissioners in the summer of 1381 to continue the negotiations. The Earl of Carrick and other Scotch envoys met the Duke of Lancaster near Ayton, in Berwickshire, and they agreed to a renewal of the truce for three years; but a party of the Scots, in spite of the orders of the King, would not desist from hostilities.
The French Government had resolved to stimulate the Scots against England. In May, 1385, a French force of two thousand men arrived at Leith, under the command of John de Vienne, Admiral of France. The French Admiral also brought with him a thousand stand of arms, and fifty thousand franks of gold. The gold pieces were distributed between the King and the chief nobles; but there was much difficulty in finding quarters for the French army. As Edinburgh could only afford quarters to a limited number, parties of them were billeted in Dalkeith, Dunfermline, Kelso, Dunbar, and other places. They gave the Scots much annoyance, and their foraging parties were sometimes resisted by them. Misunderstandings and quarrels arose between the French soldiers and the people, and on the 1st of July Parliament passed an ordinance, to which the French Admiral agreed, to regulate the relations between the French soldiers and the Scotch people. In this ordinance it was stated that no pillage was permitted in Scotland, under the penalty of death, and everything which the French troops required from the people was to be duly paid. If one soldier killed another he should be hanged, and if any servant defied a gentleman, he should lose his ears. If a riot arose between the French and the Scots no appeal to arms should be permitted, but the ringleaders should be immediately arrested, and tried and punished by a council of officers.¹
¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume I., pages 190, 191.
But the French had the pleasures of a raid into England, and of wasting Northumberland to the gates of Newcastle. The French and Scotch modes of warfare, however, were so different that disputes arose between the leaders of the Scots and the Admiral. The French commander insisted that they should face the English in battle, and at once strike a blow; the Scots said such an attempt would be disastrous. The dispute waxed warm; the Frenchmen talked contemptuously of the spirit of their allies, and they were only silenced when taken to the top of a mountain and shown the strength of the enemy’s force. Still the French Admiral said, “if you do not give the English battle they will destroy your country.” The Earl of Douglas replied, “Let them do their worst, they will find but little to destroy.” The English army entered Scotland and advanced to Edinburgh, burning empty villages and homesteads, and plundering the churches and monasteries. But provisions soon began to fail, and many of the English troops perished from want of food, and their commander was forced to order a retreat. Meanwhile the Scots and their French allies invaded and plundered the district of Cumberland.¹
¹ Froissart, Volume II., pages 49‒55, 1842.
After returning from the raids to Edinburgh, the French prepared to go home. The Admiral settled various claims for damages and injuries which the Scots alleged to have been caused by the French troops. The Scots then provided vessels in which the French troops departed, much displeased with their Scotch allies. The war with England still continued; the Scots made many destructive inroads into the northern counties of England; the result of these intensified the animosity of the two nations towards each other and produced much evil. Robert II. was averse to this incessant warfare, but the nobles followed their own counsel and disregarded the views of their King.
In the summer of 1388 the Earls of Douglas, Fife, Moray, and other nobles, held a conference, and resolved to muster an army near Jedburgh in the beginning of August, in order to make a great invasion of England. On the appointed day this army was arranged in two divisions. The first division consisted of three hundred cavalry and two thousand men on foot, under the command of the Earl of Douglas, with the Earls of Moray and March, Sir James Lindsay, and others; the second division consisted of the main body of the army, under the command of the Earl of Fife, with the Earls of Strathern, Monteith, Mar, and Sutherland, and Archibald Douglas. The main army marched on Carlisle, while the Earl of Douglas advanced through the eastern marches. Douglas rapidly marched through Northumberland till he reached the diocese of Durham, and then the plundering began. After wasting this district to the gates of Durham, the Scots retired to Newcastle, where Sir Henry Percy, “Hotspur,” his brother, Sir Ralph, and other English barons were lying. Douglas remained two days in the vicinity of the town; but the English seemed to have imagined that the main body of the Scotch army was not far off, and therefore they did not then attack the Scots. Douglas resumed his march towards Scotland, and the Scots pitched their camp in a strong position on the banks of the Reed water, near Otterburn, thirty miles from Newcastle. Percy having ascertained that Douglas was not supported by the main body of the Scots, at once mustered five hundred cavalry and a strong body of infantry and marched in pursuit of Douglas. After sunset on the evening of the 10th of August 1388, the Scots descried Percy approaching, and their leaders were at supper when the war cry of “Percy!” “Percy!” startled them. The English attacked the Scottish camp furiously, but the camp followers defended the waggons and baggage for some time, and Douglas rapidly advanced round a wooded height and attacked the flank of the English while they were entangled in the marsh near the Scottish camp. But Percy drew back his men to firm ground and met the attack of the Scots with surprising valour. The battle raged furiously for hours. Then the Scots began to fall back, but Douglas followed by a few fought his way into the midst of the enemy, where he was borne down and mortally wounded. The combat continued to rage, and Sir James Lindsay and Sir John Sinclair found Douglas lying in a dying state, but he was able to tell them to raise his banner and cry Douglas, which was instantly done. The Scots imagining that their leader was still on his feet, assailed the enemy with unbearable fury. At last the English began to waver and then broke, and many of them were slain. Henry Percy, Hotspur, and his brother Ralph, and a number of other English barons were taken prisoners. The body of Douglas was carried to Scotland, and interred at the Abbey of Melrose.¹ The main body of the Scotch army, under the Earl of Fife, were plundering the western district of England when tidings of the victory at Otterburn reached them.
¹ Froissart.
While the warfare briefly touched on in the preceding pages was engrossing the attention and energy of the nobles, the material and social progress of the nation was much retarded. The power of the nobles was rapidly increasing, but the power of the Crown was becoming feeble. The age and infirmity of Robert II. rendered it necessary that something should be immediately done to maintain order in the kingdom. Robert’s eldest son was lame and deemed unfit for public life; but his second son, the Earl of Fife, was a man of energy, and in a Council held at Edinburgh in December 1388, he was appointed regent. This man, afterwards known in history under the title of the Duke of Albany, held the reins of government for many years. A truce was concluded between France and England in 1389, which was accepted by Scotland, and continued by renewals to 1399. This cheered the last days of the aged King, who had long desired peace. He died in April 1390, in the seventy-fourth year of his age and the twentieth of his reign, and was interred at Scone.
Robert II. was succeeded by his eldest son, John, Earl of Carrick. But “King John” was a name extremely odious to the Scots, owing to its association with the hapless Baliol, and Carrick assumed the favourite name of Robert. After the funeral of his father he was immediately crowned at Scone, under the title of Robert III. He was an amiable and discreet man, but he lacked the strength of character to restrain the restless and lawless nobles. His brother, the Earl of Fife, who acted as regent in the later years of his father’s reign, continued to wield the chief authority under the name of Governor of the kingdom. Alexander, another brother of the King, Lord of Badenoch and Earl of Buchan, who ruled the northern part of the country, earned for himself the name of “the Wolf of Badenoch.” Amongst other oppressive acts he took possession of land which belonged to the bishopric of Moray. For this he was excommunicated; but he retaliated by advancing with a body of his followers to Elgin, and burning the grand cathedral, the chantry, and the city.¹
¹ Registrum Episcopatus Moraviensis, pages 204, 348‒349, 376, 381.
Shortly afterwards the Wolf’s natural son, Duncan Stewart, led a party of his adherents across the mountains which divide the counties of Aberdeen and Forfar, and plundered the Lowlands. In 1392 the landed gentry, headed by Sir Walter Ogilvie, Sheriff of Angus, mustered and met him at Gasklune, near the water of Isla; but he completely defeated them. Ogilvie the sheriff, his brother, and others were slain. The Government, in a General Council held at Perth, ordered Duncan Stewart and his accomplices to be proclaimed outlaws, for the slaughter of Walter Ogilvie and others. The weakness of the Crown and the lawlessness of the nobles were the most striking features of this period. The state of the kingdom and the suffering of the people were deplorable. In 1397 parliament passed an act, which opened with a declaration that continual burnings, harryings, and slaughters, were common throughout the country. It was then enacted that no one should ride through the kingdom with a greater retinue than they could pay for, as it was common for such riders to seize whatever they wanted without payment, and besides, they burned and destroyed the property of the people. Those who committed such oppressive acts in future were to suffer the penalty of death, and the sheriffs were enjoined to proclaim this statute, bring offenders to trial, and execute them.¹
¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume I., pages 208, 217.
In a Parliament which assembled at Perth on the 27th of January, 1399, it was asserted, in the preamble to the acts, that the misgovernment of the kingdom and the maladministration of the laws should be imputed to the King and his officers. “If, therefore, the King chose to make excuses for his own shortcomings then, if he thinks fit, he can call his officers to whom he had given commission, and accuse them in the presence of his council; and their answers heard, the council should be ready to judge their defaults, since no man ought to be condemned until he be called and accused.” This seems a fine and important statement, but it is quite certain that the greatest offenders were amongst those very men who drew up the statement itself, and they knew well that the feeble King was not in a position to accuse them in any way. Parliament then announced that, owing to the infirmities of the King, he could not govern the kingdom nor repress trespassers and rebels. The Duke of Rothesay, the King’s eldest son, was appointed Lieutenant-General of the kingdom for three years, and entrusted with full regal power. He took the coronation oath to preserve the freedom and rights of the Church, the laws and the loveable customs of the people, to restrain and punish all manslayers, robbers, and other masterful misdoers, and especially all cursed men and heretics who were expelled from the Church. Parliament appointed a council to assist the Duke of Rothesay in the Government; amongst those named were his uncle, the Duke of Albany, the Earls of Douglas, Moray, Ross, and Crawford, the bishops of St. Andrews, Glasgow, and Aberdeen, and his acts as ruler were to be recorded, with the date, place, and the names of those present, that it might be known on whom to fix responsibility.
The act lately passed at Stirling touching those who rode through the country without paying their way was repeated. The sheriffs were ordered to proclaim the laws, to search out and arrest vagabonds and criminals, and bind them to appear in court and stand their trial at the next justiciary circuit.¹
¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume I., pages 210‒212.
It appears that the King, instead of being in a position to accuse the chief offenders or the administrative officials of the Crown, was entering into bonds with the nobles for the protection of himself and his heir. Indeed, the weak monarch was reduced to the extremity of purchasing the favour of the nobles. The bonds between the King and his nobles were numerous, and assumed the form of annual grants of money under the condition that they were to defend him and his eldest son. Thus he bound himself to give large sums annually to individual nobles for the natural period of their lives, and in some instances of the lives of their children. The Duke of Albany, Lord Stewart of Brechin, Lord Murdoch Stewart, the Earl of Moray, Sir John Montgomery of Eglisham, Sir William Stewart of Jedworth, Sir William Lindsay, and many others, were parties to bonds of this character.¹
¹ Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, Volume III., pages 251, 287, 280, 326, et seq.
The truce terminated in 1399, and war was immediately recommenced on the Borders. The Scots entered into the northern counties of England and plundered the country; the English retaliated, and thus the former mode of cruel warfare proceeded. The Duke of Rothesay had promised to marry a daughter of the Earl of March, but the young prince changed his mind, and contracted a marriage with a daughter of the Earl of Douglas; thus he incurred the bitter enmity of the Earl of March, who at once fled to England, and gave his allegiance to Henry IV. The King of England, in return for the Earl’s homage, granted him lands and possessions; the Earl of Douglas then seized his estates in Scotland. Thus the personal and family affairs of two Scotch nobles embittered the political relations of both nations.
Two English invasions of Scotland soon followed. The first one was led by Sir Henry Percy and the Earl of March. They marched into Scotland at the head of two thousand men, advanced through the Earldom of March, wasted the country, burned villages, and collected booty, and pitched their camp at Linton. A strong body of the Scots, under Archibald Douglas, rapidly marched from Edinburgh to attack them, but on the approach of Douglas they fled, and left their tents and plunder behind them. In the summer of 1400 Henry IV. mustered his army and marched northward, and despatched a herald to summon Robert III. and the nobles of Scotland to meet him at Edinburgh on the 23rd of August, and there to render homage to him as their Lord Paramount; but no response was returned to this ghostly demand. Henry, at the head of his army, advanced to Edinburgh, and his fleet appeared in the Forth and supplied his troops with provisions; for, unlike all his predecessors, he did not stain his name by acts of cruelty and pillage. The Castle of Edinburgh was defended by Rothesay, the Lieutenant-General of the kingdom, who had a strong and well provisioned garrison under him. The Duke of Albany mustered an army and advanced towards Edinburgh, and pitched his tents on a moor near Calder. Henry’s troops began to suffer from want of provisions, and a rebellion, which was raging in Wales, caused him to return home with his army without effecting anything of the slightest importance in Scotland. He was the last English king who led an army in person against Scotland, and henceforth the scheme of a complete conquest of the kingdom seems to have been relinquished.
Rothesay was a somewhat rash young man, impatient of opposition, yet open and courageous, and not beyond hope of improvement under the sobering effect of experience. But his uncle Albany, the late governor, was an ambitious man, fond of power, calculating and crafty, and cold and pitiless: their position made them rivals, if not enemies of each other; and it seems that Albany laid a trap to ensnare the young prince, who was unable to cope with his unscrupulous relative. Sir John Ramorgny, Sir William Lindsay, and others joined Albany, and means were soon found for executing their purpose. The Bishop of St. Andrews died in 1401. It was then customary for the castle of a deceased bishop to be occupied by the Crown till the election of a new one. With this idea in his mind Rothesay was proceeding to occupy the castle of St. Andrews, but when within a mile of it he was arrested on a warrant obtained from the King on the representations of Albany and Lindsay, and conveyed to the castle of Falkland and imprisoned. The warrant for arresting him was granted on the ground that his excesses and irregularities should be restrained. A few weeks after his imprisonment, his body was removed and interred in the monastery of Lindores, and a report issued that he had died of a bowel complaint; but the people asserted that he had been murdered by the cruel mode of utter starvation, and suspicion pointed to Albany and the Earl of Douglas as his murderers. There was a parliamentary inquiry into the cause of his death, in which it was gravely stated that “he died by the visitation of Divine Providence, and not otherwise.” Albany and Douglas admitted their share in his arrest, and they and all their accomplices were indemnified for whatever breach of the law this act involved, and everyone was forbidden to spread false rumours against them.¹ The aged and unhappy King bitterly lamented the fate of his son, but he was utterly powerless. On the death of Rothesay, Albany resumed his position as governor of the kingdom.
¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume I., page 220.
The evidence that Rothesay was murdered is mainly circumstantial, but it is very strong. Although it may be difficult to see what motive the Earl of Douglas had which could have induced him to become a party to this crime――the acts of a Scotch noble of the fourteenth century were often strange――while the murdered prince was the husband of Douglas’ daughter: yet the extensive territories of the Earl of March were then hanging in the balance, and may have come into Douglas’ reckoning in connection with this crime. The circumstantial evidence against Albany is almost complete. The national records show that Rothesay during his few years of office was not inattentive to his public duties,¹ though he had not escaped from the follies of youth.
¹ Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, Volume III., pages 378, 465, 472, 402, 412, et seq.
The border warfare continued, and on the 14th of September 1402, the Scots sustained a severe defeat at Homeldon Hill in Northumberland. In this battle the Earl of March fought in the English ranks against the Scots.
It was resolved that the King’s other son, Prince James, a boy of fourteen years, should be sent to France for safety and to complete his education. He sailed early in March, 1406, and when off Flamborough Head he was captured by the English, conveyed to London, and lodged in the Tower. When his guardians remonstrated, Henry IV. replied that he knew the French language very well, and therefore his father could not have sent him to a better master. The Duke of Albany seems to have looked at the capture of the prince very calmly, but when the tidings of his son’s capture reached the unhappy King he sank rapidly, and died on the 4th of April, 1406, having reigned sixteen years. His remains were interred in front of the high altar in the Abbey Church of Paisley. On the death of Robert III. the captive prince was recognised as the heir to the throne, in a Council which met at Perth in June; and Albany, as the next in the male line of succession, was elected regent, and continued to rule the kingdom. In February, 1407, the league between France and Scotland was renewed.¹
¹ Extracta ex variis chronicis Scotiæ, page 216; Winton; Buchanan.
The Scots were gradually pressing the English out of the positions which they had long occupied in the southern counties. In 1409 the Castle of Jedburgh was recovered, which had been in the enemy’s hands since 1346, and to prevent the enemy from retaking it the Scots levelled it to the ground. About the same time the castle of Fast was taken. A truce with England was concluded, in which it was stated that from the River Spey to the Mount of St. Michael, in Cornwall, all hostilities between the two kingdoms should cease after the 17th of May, 1412, for a period of six years.¹
¹ Fœdera, Volume X., page 166, et seq.
In 1411 an event occurred which has been strangely mis-interpreted and exaggerated, namely, the Battle of Harlaw. This battle has been represented as a great and decisive contest between the Celtic race and the Lowland race. Now, as a matter of historic fact it was nothing of the kind; it was entirely a personal and family quarrel, in its origin, its cause, and its effect, and it arose in this way:――Robert II. married, as his second wife, a sister of William, Earl of Ross; Margaret, a daughter of Robert II., married John, Lord of the Isles, and their son, Donald, succeeded to the Lordship of the Isles, and he married Mary, a daughter of Walter Lesley, Earl of Ross; but Mary’s brother, Alexander Lesley, who in due time became Earl of Ross, married Isabel, a daughter of the Duke of Albany, Regent of Scotland, and they had an only daughter, Euphemia, Countess of Ross, who, on the death of her father in 1406, became a nun, and she then proposed to assign the earldom of Ross to her maternal uncle, the Earl of Buchan, the second son of Albany, the regent. But Donald of the Isles, in right of his wife, had a legal claim to the earldom of Ross, which was preferable to that of the Earl of Buchan, Albany’s son, and therefore Donald was legally and morally right in resisting the ambition and the enormous greed of the Duke of Albany, to aggrandise his own family in defiance of law and justice. Eventually, after the death of Albany, Donald’s right to the earldom of Ross was recognised and confirmed by James I. Such, then, was the origin and the cause of the Battle of Harlaw; a mere family quarrel from beginning to end, with no more real national or racial significance than any other family quarrel and battle between two nobles.
Owing to the determination of Albany to ignore the claim of Donald of the Isles to the earldom in question, the island chief mustered his vassals and followers, and at the head of about six thousand men he crossed to the mainland, and marched through the earldom of Ross, in which he received much support, and greatly increased the strength of his army. Proceeding onward he advanced through Moray, crossed the Spey, and continued his advance through the higher grounds of Strathbogie and the Garioch, and pitched his camp on the Hill of Benachie. There he posted his army, and awaited the attack of his adversary, the Duke of Albany, but that grasping schemer had not the courage to face the man whom he had been the cause of bringing so far from home. Albany found a fit agent in Alexander Stewart, a natural son of “the Wolf of Badenoch,” and who was then Earl of Mar, and the Regent entered into a bond with him for mutual support. This Earl of Mar had been a freebooter and a murderer of the deepest dye, so in the family cause of the Duke of Albany, Mar led the people of Angus and Mearns and Aberdeenshire against Donald of the Isles. The battle was fought on the 24th of July, 1411, on a moor edging up the Hill of Benachie. The action was long and furiously contested; many fell on both sides, and night put an end to the desperate struggle. There was no victory on either side, but Donald and his followers retreated. Many of the Lowland barons and a considerable number of their followers, and of the citizens of Aberdeen and Dundee, were slain on the field, and thus, locally, the Battle of Harlaw was a great event; but it had not the slightest national or racial significance, being entirely a family affair from beginning to end. As stated above, Albany failed in his object, for Donald retained possession of the earldom of Ross, and his son succeeded him.
The Regent’s eldest son, Murdoch, was a prisoner in England, and his father managed to obtain his liberation in 1416. Many of the people were longing for the return of James I., and efforts were made to negotiate for his freedom, but these were abruptly broken off. Albany died on the 3rd of September, 1420, at the advanced age of eighty-one. He had ruled the kingdom for a period of thirty years, though his regency only extended to sixteen years, but he had established his power so firmly that his son quietly succeeded him in the regency. Murdoch, however, had not the energy and talent of his father, but he imitated his father’s style, and granted crown charters under his great seal; and, like his father, he had £1000 a year as Governor of the kingdom, and 200 marks as Keeper of Stirling Castle, and other sums from the burghs of Linlithgow, Cupar, and Aberdeen. It seems probable that Murdoch had also bound himself to uphold the acts of the Earl of Douglas, for in the year 1421 Douglas received more than two-thirds of the gross customs of Edinburgh.¹
¹ Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, Volume IV., page 310, Preface, page 79.
In August, 1423, negotiations were opened for the release of the King, and the following year a treaty was concluded. It was agreed that Scotland should pay to England £40,000, within six years, by half-yearly instalments, and for this sum the burghs of Edinburgh, Dundee, Perth, and Aberdeen, were to give security, and the Earls of Crawford, Moray, and a number of other nobles were to become hostages as additional security. It was stipulated that the King should contract a marriage with some English lady, and 10,000 marks was to be deducted from the ransom and given to such lady as a dowry. On these conditions James I. was to obtain his freedom. James selected Johanna Beaufort, a daughter of the Earl of Somerset, and their marriage was celebrated at Southwark in March, 1424, with great regal pomp. A truce for seven years was concluded. All the arrangements for the King’s return having been completed, he moved northward, accompanied by many of his own subjects. He crossed the Border on the 9th of April, and was warmly welcomed by the people.
Chapter VIII
Reign of James I.
THE return of James I. was an important event in the history of Scotland. He was crowned at Scone on the 21st of May 1424. He then with his Queen visited Dundee, and thence returned to Perth. His first parliament was opened in Perth on the 26th of May 1424, in which many important acts were passed. An inquiry was ordered to be made concerning the Crown lands and rents since the death of Robert I. onward to the regency of Murdoch, Duke of Albany. The object of this was plain. It was further announced that if the King thought fit, he could summon all his vassals and freeholders to produce their charters or other evidence, that it might be seen what lands lawfully belonged to them. This act was executed with a determination which convinced the turbulent nobles that the hand of a master was upon them. James I. had resolved to humble the power of the nobles, and his plans were well conceived, and carried out with remarkable energy. Acts were passed for restoring order and a more efficient administration of justice.¹
¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume II., pages 2‒8.
On the 13th of May 1424, Sir Walter Stewart, eldest son of the Duke of Albany, Malcolm Fleming, brother-in-law of Albany, and Thomas Boyd, one of the Kilmarnock family, were arrested and imprisoned; and about the end of this year, the Earl of Lennox, father-in-law of Albany, and Sir Robert Graham, were seized and imprisoned. But these acts of the King were only the prelude of the tragedy, for he was then meditating a bold and desperate move.
James summoned a parliament which met at Perth on the 12th of March 1425. For eight days it was engaged in passing laws against the diffusion of heresy, bonds among the nobles, the reform of hospitals, and the restoration of the lands of the Church, which had been wrested from her and illegally possessed, the imposition of new customs, and an inquiry touching the execution of the acts passed in the last parliament. On the ninth day, the Duke of Albany and his son, Sir Alexander Stewart, the Earls of Douglas, March, and Angus; William Hay of Errol, Sir Alexander Seton of Gordon, Sir Alexander Irvine of Drum, and others, altogether about thirty nobles and knights were arrested. At the same time the King seized the castles of Falkland and Doune, and imprisoned Albany’s wife in the castle of ♦Tantallon. These proceedings astonished the aristocracy, and were presented as a lesson to the whole body of the nobles, but the move was specially directed against the Duke of Albany and his family. So the other nobles were released after a very short imprisonment.
♦ “Tantallion” replaced with “Tantallon”
Parliament reassembled at Stirling in May, and prepared to settle the fate of Albany and his family. A court was held in the palace of Stirling, and on the 26th of May 1425, Walter Stewart, the eldest son of Albany, was brought to trial before the King and a jury of twenty-one nobles. Walter was found guilty, condemned, and immediately beheaded. The next day the King’s own cousin Albany, and his son Alexander, and the aged Earl of Lennox, were tried, convicted, and sentenced to death, and they were all executed before the castle of Stirling. No record has been preserved of these trials, so the nature of the crimes of which they were accused can only be conjectured; some of the chronicles report that they were accused of robbery. Albany and his sons were men of stalwart and commanding presence, and their fate excited much sympathy among the people.¹ Indeed this action of the King, which flooded the scaffold with the blood of his own kindred, cannot be justified. It was not even wise as a political measure. Although probably James intended to exhibit a striking example of severity, he may have wished the nobles to understand that a change had taken place in the government and the administration of justice, and that the lawlessness which had prevailed must henceforth cease.
¹ Scotichronicon, Volume II., pages 484, 485; _Extracta ex variis chronicis Scotiæ_, page 228. It may be mentioned that Alexander Earl of Ross and Lord of the Isles, son of Donald who led at Harlaw, was one of the jurymen in the above trials.
After the executions, it followed as a consequence that the large estates of the families of Albany and the Earl of Lennox were forfeited to the Crown. Unfortunately James I. had failed to forecast the inherent strength of the class whose feelings and passions he had aroused, and whose interests he had infringed. In 1425 the King, however, proclaimed his intention to grant a remission of any injury committed on persons or property in the Lowlands, on the condition that the offenders made reparation to the injured parties, in all cases where the extent of the loss could be ascertained by a jury of the good men, who were to modify and fix the amount of damages.¹
¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume II., page 8.
James I., having thus far restored order in the Lowlands, next directed his attention to the Highlands and the Western Isles, and summoned a parliament to meet at Inverness. In 1427 he mustered an armed force and proceeded to Inverness, and summoned the Lord of the Isles and upwards of fifty of the most notable chiefs to attend his parliament. They obeyed and attended, and were instantly seized, put in fetters, and imprisoned. On this occasion, as when Albany and the other nobles were arrested and imprisoned, James I. exhibited a characteristic craftiness and duplicity. Amongst those arrested were, the Lord of the Isles and his mother; Angus Duff with his four sons, leader of four thousand men; Kenneth More with his son-in-law, leader of two thousand men; John Ross, Angus of Moray, William Leslie, and many others. A number of the chiefs were immediately executed, and the rest were conveyed to various prisons; and after a time some of them were executed and others liberated. The Lord of the Isles and his mother were among those who were liberated. But he seems to have been displeased with the whole proceedings of the parliament at Inverness, and after the departure of the King and his army he mustered his followers in Ross and the Isles. He then advanced on Inverness, wasted the Crown lands, and set the town on fire. The King returned to the north at the head of a strong force, and the Lord of the Isles retreated to Lochaber; and there the King attacked and defeated him, and pursued his retreating followers over the mountains and from glen to glen. At last he surrendered to the King, and in 1429 he was imprisoned in the castle of ♦Tantallon, and his mother was arrested and imprisoned in Inchcolm.¹
♦ “Tantallion” replaced with “Tantallon”
¹ Scotichronicon, Volume II., pages 488, 489; _Exchequer Rolls_, Volume IV., pages 541, 621, 633.
But a rising in the Highlands under Donald Balloch, a cousin of the Lord of the Isles, ensued, and he encountered the royal army under the command of the Earls of Mar and Caithness, at Inverlochy in 1431. After a severe engagement, the royal troops were completely defeated, and the Earl of Mar, and many others were slain on the field. Shortly after this the Lord of the Isles was liberated, and the King appointed him to the office of Justiciary of Scotland north of the Forth.¹
¹ Coronation of James I., page 11; Dr. Skene’s _Celtic Scotland_, Volume III., page 298.
In July 1428, a treaty of marriage was concluded between the Dauphin of France and the princess Margaret, daughter of James I. The marriage was celebrated at Tours in 1436, when the princess had attained her twelfth year and the Dauphin his thirteenth. It appears that the King’s ransom money promised to England was never paid, except a part of the first year’s instalment; and in consequence of this, the Scotch hostages were detained in England. Many of them died in England, some ransomed themselves, a few escaped; and in June 1453, the Earl of Strathern, who had gone to England as a hostage, was liberated from Pontefract castle, when his son Alexander surrendered himself in his stead, the Earl of Douglas and Lord Hamilton becoming sureties for his return in case of the escape of his son. Many allusions to the ransom hostages occur in the Rotuli Scotiæ long after the death of James I.¹
¹ Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, Volume IV., Preface pages 133‒134.
James I. was an able legislator, administrator, and organiser, and it may be said that the regular statute law of Scotland commenced in his reign. The chief aim of his policy was to make the nobles more dependent upon the Crown, to restrain them from oppressing the people, and to rule the kingdom through Parliament, acting with the executive power of the Crown. He attempted to introduce the principle of representation in the election of members of Parliament. In his short reign Parliament was assembled fifteen times; and besides transacting other important business, his Parliaments passed upwards of one hundred and sixty distinct statutes, which were written and proclaimed in the language of the people. These Acts were admirably brief, incisive, and clearly expressed, and dealt with many important matters, especially the reform of the administration of justice.
At the outset it was announced that all the subjects of the kingdom should be governed by the King’s laws and statutes, not under any special laws or spiritual privileges of any foreign authorities. In 1426 a notable attempt was made to give precision to the common law of the kingdom, as it was then enacted by the King in Parliament that six wise and discreet men who knew the laws best should be selected from each of the three Estates, “and since fraud ought not to help any man, they should examine the books of the law of this realm, and amend the laws that needed amendment, and to carefully expunge all fraudulent and frivolous exceptions, so that no man might obtain an unjust judgment against another.” In the same year James I. instituted the court known under the name of “the Session.”
As it is a primary requisite that the laws should be made intelligible to the people, and more especially to those who have to administer the law, therefore the King, with the consent of Parliament, commanded that all the statutes should be recorded in the King’s register, and copies of them given to all the sheriffs throughout the kingdom. Every sheriff was directed to proclaim the statutes in the chief towns of the sheriffdom and in other places, and also to give copies of them to the bishops, the barons, and burghs of barony. The sheriffs were ordered to cause the tenor of the Acts to be obeyed in town and country, and to declare to the people that it was their duty to obey the laws, so that no man might have any ground to allege ignorance as an excuse for his crime. To render the administration of justice free from outside influence it was enacted that parties coming to the courts with their causes should not appear with a multitude of their armed followers, but simply accompanied only by their counsel and the necessary witnesses for the trial of their causes. The King commanded that justice should be equally distributed in every quarter of the kingdom, “to the rich as to the poor, without fraud or favour”; and it was further enacted that “If there be any poor creature who, for want of means, cannot follow his case, then the King, for the love of God, shall ordain that the judge provide and get a wise advocate to follow such a one’s case; and if such a case be gained, the wrongdoer shall pay the injured party and the advocate’s expenses: and if any judge refuses to obey this law, then the party who has been defrauded shall have recourse to the King, who shall so punish such a judge that he shall be a striking example to all others.”
It was enacted that the statutes should be interpreted according to their real tenor and the intention of the legislature. With a similar aim it was ordered that no one should be permitted to practice in the King’s courts unless they were known to have sufficient knowledge and discretion for the proper performance of such functions; while no judge or officer of justice in the kingdom, nor any man who had indicted another for any action, should be allowed at the trial to sit as a juryman under a penalty of ten pounds. Many acts bearing on the internal order of the kingdom, and the arrestment and punishment of criminals were passed. Rebellion against the king was proclaimed to entail the loss of life and lands. Various attempts were made to attach more responsibility to all those in positions of authority throughout the nation.
Measures were passed relating to commerce, the coinage, and weights and measures. Careful regulations were framed for preventing and extinguishing fires in the towns, which were ordered to be strictly observed. Every burgh was enjoined to provide a number of ladders at the public cost――six, seven, eight, or more, according to the extent of the town――and to keep them always in a convenient place ready for use in case of fire; they were also to keep in readiness three or four saws, and six or more iron clicks to pull down the timber and roofs at fires. These and many other minute regulations were to be enforced under penalties.¹
¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume II., pages 2‒24.
James I. was a firm friend of the Church. His Parliaments passed several acts in favour of the privileges of the Church and the searching out of heretics, and it was stated that the secular power would support the Church in her mission of executing heretics. In the year 1433 the Church found a heretic, Paul Crawar, a native of Bohemia. He was a skilful physician, but it was reported that he embraced every opportunity of sowing opinions contrary to the doctrines of the Church, so he was seized and accused of heresy, and, although he argued and defended his views with much force and clearness, that only rendered his conviction more certain. He was convicted and condemned, and as he declined to renounce his opinions, he was brought to the stake and burned at St. Andrews on the 23rd of July.¹ It seems that he had made some converts in Scotland.
¹ Ibid., pages 3, 7, 9; Scotichronicon, page 495.
But the King was aware of the state of the Church. On the 8th of June, 1425, he sent a mandate to the Bishop of St. Andrews commanding him to take immediate steps to recover the possessions of his See, which had been robbed by the greed and the nepotism of his predecessors. The same year he addressed a letter to the abbots and the priors of the Benedictine and Augustine monasteries of Scotland, which exhorted them to shake off their torpor and sloth and set themselves to restore their fallen discipline and rekindle their decaying fervour, that they might save their houses from the ruin which menaced them.¹
¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume II., pages 24, 25.
James I. encouraged industry and commerce; he had an establishment of his own at Leith, which was used as a shipbuilding-yard, a workshop, and a storehouse. He had several ships, and entered into trading on his own account. The wool and hides of the crown lands, instead of being sold to the Scotch merchants, were directly exported by the King to Flanders duty free. The remissions of custom show that in one year the King had exported wool and hides representing a value of about £900. The King’s ships were frequently mentioned in the records; and John Hannay, a burgess of Aberdeen, Andrew Baxter, and Henry of Crawford, were named as masters of King’s ships. James I. commenced to rebuild the palace of Linlithgow, and in many other ways left traces of his energy.¹
¹ Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, Volume IV.
But the great aim of James I. was to reduce the overgrown power of the nobles. To accomplish this he endeavoured to raise the influence of the small barons and freeholders as a counterpoise to the higher nobles. Although it is impossible not to admire the legislative and administrative abilities of James I., still some of his proceedings against the nobles were not wise politically, or morally defensible. After the execution of the Duke of Albany and his family, the Earldoms of Fife and Monteith became the property of the Crown. In the case of the Earl of Lennox, though no sentence of forfeiture was pronounced against him, yet the King took possession of his estates and Earldom, and retained them in his own hands during his reign. Yet James went further, and in 1431, in a parliament held at Perth, it was decided that the late regent Albany had no power to alienate any lands which, by the death of a bastard, might have fallen to the Crown, and on this ground, a grant of land to Adam Ker was declared to be invalid. In this way the King prepared for a great stroke. The Earl of March, who usually commanded the castle of Dunbar, and held large estates in the south of the kingdom, had often been a cause of annoyance to the Crown. As we have seen, the Earl of March fled to England in the reign of Robert III., renounced his allegiance, and fought in the English ranks against the Scots in several engagements; but he returned to Scotland, and in 1409 his estates were restored to him by the regent Albany. He died in 1420, and his son George succeeded to the lands of the Earldom; and it was this man that the King resolved to humble. His loyalty was not questioned, and he had rendered service to James I. in many ways; but in 1434 his castle of Dunbar was seized, and he was arrested and imprisoned in the castle of Edinburgh, on the ground that Albany had exceeded the powers of a regent in restoring his father. A parliament was assembled at Perth in January ♦1435, and proceeded to discuss the cause of the Earldom of March. It was debated on both sides at length:――First, touching the treason and forfeiture of the late Earl, and the consequent reversion of his estates to the Crown; and second, the position and claim of his son then in possession. After a long debate, it was affirmed that Albany had exceeded his powers, and, therefore, the verdict of the judges was against the Earl, and all the lands of the Earldom were annexed to the Crown. The dispossessed Earl and his family retired to England.¹
♦ “1335” replaced with “1435”
¹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Volume II., pages 22, 23.
In 1435 the Earl of Mar, Alexander Stewart, the hero of Harlaw, died, and on the ground of his illegitimacy, the Earldom reverted to the Crown. The King ignored the claim of Robert, Lord Erskine, the rightful heir to the Earldom of Mar. The Scotch nobles were greatly alarmed and enraged at the proceedings of the King. One of James’ bitterest enemies was Sir Robert Graham, uncle of the deprived Earl of Strathern, mentioned in a preceding page as one of the ransom hostages detained in England. Graham in the parliament of 1435 had delivered a vehement speech, in which he touched on the encroachments of the King upon the nobles, and in his presence denounced him as a cruel tyrant. He was immediately arrested and banished. Graham retired, brooding on revenge, and matured the plot against the King. He addressed a letter to the King renouncing his allegiance, and stating that James had ruined his family and rendered himself houseless and landless; and, therefore, he warned the King that he would pursue him to the utmost as his enemy and slay him. The King issued a proclamation for his apprehension, and offered a sum of gold for his head.¹
¹ Contemporary Account of the Death of James I.
Yet it appears from circumstantial and direct evidence that Graham was not the originator of the plot against the King, although he was one of the chief actors in the tragedy. The real originator of the dismal plot was Walter Stewart, Earl of Athole, son of Robert II., and uncle of the King. In the preceding chapter, it was stated that Robert II. had been twice married, and at the date of his settlement of the succession to the crown in the male line (which was quoted at length) there were three sons of the first marriage, and two of the second, named in the instrument of the succession, these were all dead, except Walter, Earl of Athole, who was the second son of Robert’s second wife. Then it had been known that several of Robert’s children by his first wife were born before he married their mother, and in spite of the solemn settlement of the succession, a doubt hung over the legitimacy of the first family of Robert II., and the children of the second marriage cherished the idea that they had been unjustly excluded from the throne; and the Earl of Athole was the representative of this branch in the male line. It was suspected that he had been concerned in the proceedings which terminated in the death of the young Duke of Rothesay. He was one of James’ most trusted advisers, and he was one of the jury who sanctioned the execution of the Duke of Albany and his sons; then only James I. and his boy stood between him and the throne. It seems that the King had no suspicion of Athole, and conferred on him honours and wealth. He was appointed Justiciary of Scotland, and the Exchequer Rolls from year to year contain remissions of custom and gifts to him, and his grandson and heir was made private Chamberlain to the King. Meanwhile Athole had been devising his plot against the King, with his grandson as his accomplice, and Graham and others as his tools.¹
¹ Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, Volume IV.
The King was gifted with a bold and fearless spirit, and he seems to have forgot or disregarded the threats of Graham. James had resolved to hold his Christmas at Perth, in the Black Friars Monastery. Thus he unwittingly placed himself in the midst of his enemies; although he had been warned of the impending danger to his life before he had crossed the Forth, still he disregarded it and proceeded to Perth. The King was cheerful and bent on enjoying himself; and on the arrival of the royal party at Perth, day after day was spent in the pleasures and amusements which were then customary at that happy season. It seems that the King had not the slightest suspicion of the fate that was hanging over him. The Earl of Athole, the arch-conspirator, and his grandson the Chamberlain, were amongst the royal guests, and contributing their share of mirth to the company, while everything was going on in the most harmonious style.
The outside and subordinate agents of the conspiracy, headed by Sir Robert Graham, had completed the arrangements, and they resolved to execute the horrid crime on the night of the 20th of February 1437. They proceeded in their dismal work with great calmness and surprising cunning; the hour of the attack was fixed, and the conspirators inside the monastery executed their part in the tragedy. Stewart the Chamberlain removed the bolts of the doors which made communication in the interior of the building easy. On this night the amusements of the court were continued till past midnight, and the Earl of Athole remained till a late hour, and when the King called for a parting cup, the company retired, and Stewart, the Chamberlain, was the last to leave the apartment. The King had undressed, and was standing in his nightgown before the fire talking with the Queen and the ladies of the bedchamber, when suddenly he was alarmed by the clang of arms and the glare of torchlights in the outer court. The Queen and the ladies rushed to secure the door, but the bolts were gone. The King instantly saw his peril, and called to the ladies to keep the door as long as they could; he tried to force the windows, but they were barred with iron stanchions; he then seized the tongs, wrenched up a flag, and descended to a vault below. The Queen and the women replaced the flag, and tried to barricade the door; but the cruel ruffians soon forced it, and broke Catherine Douglas’ arm, which she had heroically thrust into the staple to replace the removed bolt. The conspirators on not finding the King in the room, rushed in fury through the buildings and feared that their victim had escaped. But Thomas Chambers suspected what had happened, and returned to the bedchamber, and seeing that the floor had been newly broken, instantly tore it up, and their victim appeared. Although the King was unarmed and half naked, he made a desperate resistance. Sir John Hall leaped down with a dagger in his hand, the King seized him by the throat and threw him under his feet. A brother of Hall’s followed and met with the same fate. Sir Robert Graham then entered the room, and sprang down with his drawn sword, and the King implored for mercy; but Graham called him a cruel tyrant, who had never shown mercy to his own kindred, and in an instant thrust his sword through the King’s body. Thus perished, by the hands of atrocious villains, the ablest King of all the Stuart line.
By this time the citizens of Perth were hastening to the monastery with torches and weapons, and on their approach the conspirators fled and escaped. The pursuit of the murderers and conspirators was prosecuted with the utmost energy, and within a month after the murder the principal culprits and actors were captured and executed. The record of their trials has not been preserved, but the chronicles present details of the horrible modes in which they were tortured and put to death. The Earl of Athole was seized by the Earl of Angus, tried, condemned, tortured, and executed. Robert Stewart, the Chamberlain, Graham, Chambers, and others, were captured and executed, and the public feeling was at last appeased.¹
¹ Contemporary account.
James I. was cut off in the forty-fourth year of his age and the thirteenth of his reign. He was popular among the people, who appreciated the advantages and the effects of his Government. He struggled hard to redress the oppression and to reform the intolerable evils which Norman feudalism had generated in Scotland. He clearly understood and thoroughly realised in his mind that which all his ♦predecessors had failed to see, namely, that Norman feudalism contained in itself the essence of anarchy and injustice. He had a true conception of the form of government which the people of Scotland needed; though, unhappily, his ideas were too far in advance of his time. No historian who has studied his legislation can fail to admire his grasp of the fundamental principles of effective government, and the efficient administration of justice. Still the historian may not justify all his proceedings, and it seems to me that James I. sometimes pushed his depression of the nobles beyond the limits of justice and political wisdom.
♦ “precedessors” replaced with “predecessors”