11

The astonishing reversal of fortune which within two and a half years had transferred the hunted fugitive in the heather into the ruler of two-thirds of Scotland must in the first place be credited to the man himself. Bruce’s physical strength, his cheerfulness in adversity, his resourcefulness in danger, his brilliance in tactics and strategy alike marked him as a leader who could animate the courage and inspire the affection of all who followed him.

But no man can operate in a vacuum. It was because in the second place he had behind him the widespread support of the Scottish Church, whose network provided him with military intelligence and whose preachings with recruits, that the latent goodwill of the community was conjured into positive action on his behalf.

And in the third place the death of Edward I and the subsequent political troubles of his successor allowed him to deal with his opponents in two separate phases.

The character of that successor is depicted with remarkable unanimity by the chroniclers of the age. Edward II, they write, was large, handsome and brave but weak-willed, indolent and frivolous, caring neither for politics, war nor business but only how to amuse himself1 The principal provider of his amusement was his boyhood friend and companion, Piers Gaveston, whom he married to his niece and created Earl of Cornwall.2 This irrepressible young man, who entertained his King by nicknaming the leading magnates of the realm with such epithets as ‘Burst-belly’, ‘Joseph the Jew’, ‘The Cuckold’s bird’ and ‘The Black Dog of Arden’ and compounded his insults by unhorsing them at every tournament, not unnaturally provoked in them a furious resentment.3 For the five years between the death of Edward I on 7 July 1307 and the capture by treachery and the beheading of Piers Gaveston on 19 June 1312 at the command of the Earl of Lancaster, both English King and nobles were constantly distracted from the business of Scotland by the struggle of one to retain and the others to remove the favourite from his side.

In November 1308 Philip IV of France, whose daughter Isabella had been married to Edward II in January of that year, sought to help his son-in-law. He sent his eldest son to the English court to suggest that the King should negotiate a truce with the Scots and so leave himself free to concentrate his energies against his rebellious barons. At the same time he wrote to Bruce, expressing his special love for his royal person, reminded him of the ancient alliance between Scots and French and asked for his assistance in a forthcoming crusade: a somewhat ingenuous attempt, it would seem, to divert him from prosecuting his war against England.

Whatever the reason, such a message from the leading power in Europe was in itself of immense importance to Bruce for it not only recognized his claim to be King of Scots but by wooing his friendship acknowledged him as master of his kingdom.

While his lieutenants had been fighting in Galloway Bruce had made a stately progress through eastern Scotland from Ross to Perthshire and from there, freed at last from the pressure of campaigning, had issued the first three acts of government of his reign and on 16 March 1309 convened a parliament at St Andrews to consider among other business a reply to the French King.4

The reply was tinged with irony. After thanking Philip IV for his affection for their King, the parliament recalled to him the innumerable ravages which the English had inflicted on their country. Nevertheless, they continued, when ‘the pristine liberty’ of Scotland had been restored and peace obtained from their aggressors, not only the King of Scots but all his nation would rally behind the Holy Crusade on which the King of France was intent.5

Not for eighteen years had a free assembly of parliament been held in Scotland and it was now attended by a notable gathering of noblemen and clergy. The three Earls of Ross, Lennox and Sutherland were there in person. The earldoms of Fife, Menteith, Mar, Buchan and Caithness, whose heirs were in wardship, were represented by deputies from their communities as were the other earldoms of the kingdom with the exception of Dunbar and Angus. Among the knights and laymen were Edward Bruce, who had been created Lord of Galloway by his brother after his successful campaign in that province, the Constable Gilbert de la Haye, James the Steward, Robert Keith the Marischal, who had recently returned to Bruce’s side, the King’s close adherents James Douglas, Thomas Randolph, Neil Campbell, Alexander Lindsay, William Wiseman, David Barclay, Robert Boyd, Angus Macdonald of the Isles and Hugh, son of the Earl of Ross.

Among the clergy were the Chancellor, Bernard Linton, Nicolas Balmyle, who had been chancellor in 1301 and was now Bishop of Dunblane, the Bishops of Moray, Ross, Brechin and Dunkeld, a representative of the Bishop of Glasgow, Robert Wishart, who had been handed over by Edward II to the Pope the previous December, and the Bishop of St Andrews, William Lamberton who, unlike his compatriot, had been released on parole by Edward II to act as an emissary between the two countries.6

This impressive concourse was seized upon as an occasion to proclaim to the world the right of the Scottish people to their independence and of Robert Bruce to be their King.

On 17 March, the day after the reply to Philip IV’s letter had been issued, ‘the bishops abbots, priors and others of the clergy duly constituted in the realm of Scotland’ made a solemn declaration that Robert, Lord of Annandale, ‘the Competitor’, ought by reason of his superior title, the wishes of the community and the laws and customs of the country to have received the Crown of Scotland and that because of the elevation of John Balliol to the throne, his subsequent deposition and the invasions of England great and manifold evil had fallen upon the kingdom until, by the workings of divine providence, ‘the people, not wishing any longer to bear the calamities which had been brought upon them through want of a captain and faithful leader, had taken for their King, Robert Bruce, grandson of the Competitor and had raised him to the throne’. Before concluding with an expression of loyalty to King Robert, they added the warning that

if anyone in opposition should claim right to the Scottish Kingdom by means of documents sealed in the past and containing the consent of the people be it known that all this was effected by irresistible force and violence, by numberless fears, bodily torture and other terrors which could well pervert the opinions and minds of righteous men and strike dread into the stoutest hearts.7

A few days later a similar declaration was made by the nobles, affirming that King Robert was the true and nearest heir of King Alexander last deceased.8

In both these declarations the emphasis is on the legitimacy of Bruce’s kingship. The coronation of John Balliol is treated as an aberration brought about by overwhelming force. The direct descent of Robert I from Alexander III is clearly enunciated.

On this point Bruce would neither make or would be allowed to make any concessions.

In consequence the negotiations for peace which Edward II initiated in 1309, at the instigation of his father-in-law, first by sending the Bishop of St Andrews, then in March Oliver des Roches, the French ambassador, and finally in August Bruce’s own brother-in-law, the Earl of Ulster, to meet with Scottish representatives ended in deadlock.9 Edward was not prepared to grant and Bruce was not prepared to accept anything less than recognition of his right to be King of an independent realm.

 

During these protracted negotiations Edward II had been able to effect a temporary accommodation with his barons and to bring back to his side Piers Gaveston who, at their insistence, had been banished to Ireland the summer before. Now with the talks broken off and in response to the recurrent cries for assistance from his English-held castles in Scotland, he put a full-scale invasion in train that autumn.

Two separate armies, under the command respectively of Sir John Segrave and the Earl of Hereford and of Sir Robert Clifford and Sir John Cromwell, were sent to Berwick and Carlisle. No sooner had they reached their headquarters than the prospect of a winter campaign among the sodden hills of Scotland appeared so uninviting that they promptly arranged a truce with the Scots.

When it expired on 14 January 1310 Edward II was once more in trouble with his barons and it was prolonged to 8 March. By then he had been forced to accept the surveillance of a reform committee which gave itself the name of ‘the Lords Ordainers’ and the truce was extended yet again to June, ‘for,’ as the Lanercost Chronicle sagely remarks, ‘the English do not willingly enter Scotland to wage war before summer, chiefly because earlier in the year they find no food for their horses’.10

The lull in hostilities throughout 1309 and the early part of 1310 enabled Bruce to visit various areas of his kingdom and deal with administrative matters which needed his attention. He had not forgotten the help he had received from the Western Highlands in the desperate winter of 1306–7 so during the summer and autumn of 1309, with the aura of majesty still about him from the acclamations of the St Andrews Parliament, he made a royal progress along the western seaboard from Ross and Cromarty to the southern shores of Argyll, greeting the Highland chieftains and receiving their allegiance to one who was now a king indeed and not in name only as he had been when they last met.11

During this progress or at its end he must have had Angus Macdonald of the Isles in his company and been satisfied by him that he had sufficient control of the western seas to keep open the route between Ireland and Scotland for the passage of goods. For a trade had sprung up with the Irish for the supply of provisions, armour and weapons to the Scots of which they were sorely in need. Since there was no manufacture in Ireland of the latter two commodities, the merchants met the demand by importing them from England and the continent and re-exporting them to Scotland: to such an extent that in January 1311 Edward II had a proclamation made ‘in all towns, ports and other places where vessels touch’ throughout Ireland prohibiting any trade with the insurgent Scots on pain of the severest penalties.12

But because of the dominance of Angus Macdonald and his galleys trade continued virtually unhindered. In the east, his possession of most of the ports on the North Sea gave Bruce the opportunity to obtain similar supplies from Scandinavia, the Hanseatic towns and Flanders through the enterprise of Scottish privateers or shipmasters of those countries who were prepared to run the gauntlet of the English navy. In return they took back timber, hides and in particular Scottish wool which then, as now, attracted a higher price for its quality.

The improvement of Scottish sheep and fleeces had been largely the work of the Scottish Church and at its annual convocation on 13 February 1310 it showed itself no less mindful of its human flock and their shepherd. During the previous year Pope Clement V, a Gascon like Piers Gaveston and friendly to Edward II, had pronounced excommunication on Bruce and all who gave him aid ‘for damnably persevering in iniquity’ and outlined with relish the horrors that awaited them in the life hereafter if they continued in their frowardness.13 Now as the clergy of the Scottish realm gathered together they set at rest the apprehensions of the devout by brushing aside the fulminations of the Holy Father and issuing a manifesto ‘to all the faithful’ in splendid and resonant Latin that Robert the Bruce had been chosen before God and man as the rightful King of Scotland ‘ut deformata reformet, corrigendaque corriget et dirigat indirecta’: that he might reform what is deformed, correct that which needs correction and straighten that which has gone awry.14

Though, unlike Bruce, Edward II had the support of the Pope, he was being harassed in every other direction. The Lords Ordainers, twenty-one in number, were preparing restrictive ordinances for him to sign. His favourite was being threatened with violence and a coolness had arisen between his father-in-law and himself. He had discovered that while the dispatches to Robert Bruce from Philip IV which had been shown at the English court had been addressed to Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick, those which had been handed to Bruce by the French envoy had been addressed to Robert Bruce, King of Scots.

He therefore sent a furious letter to his father-in-law accusing him of double-dealing. Philip IV, who had learned from his daughter that she was being entirely neglected by her husband in favour of his minion, responded by demanding Edward II’s presence in Paris to do fealty to him, as his lord, for the lands which he held in France. According to the Monk of Malmesbury who wrote a contemporary history of Edward II’s reign, ‘The King was convinced that if he obeyed the summons of the King of France and left Piers Gaveston in the midst of his enemies, death, imprisonment or worse might befall him.’15 He therefore sought to evade the French summons and postpone the reforms which the Lords Ordainers were trying to impose upon him by leaving London for the north, to which he had already sent his favourite, and from there issuing a royal edict throughout the kingdom that all who were bound by feudal duty to join him with a fixed quota of armed men when he went to war should assemble at Berwick on 8 September for an invasion of Scotland.

At the same time orders were issued to the Mayor of Dover and the mayors of forty-one other ports to provide ships for the provisioning of the expedition.

In the event his call to arms was boycotted by all the great barons with the exception of Piers Gaveston, Earl of Cornwall, and the Earls of Gloucester and Surrey.16 Nevertheless there was a powerful influx of the lesser barons and knights, among them those seasoned veterans of the Scottish wars, Henry Percy and Robert Clifford, and ‘a numerous crowd of Welsh and English infantry intent on gain’.

At the head of this army, which compared in numbers with any that his father had launched against Scotland, Edward II in mid-September advanced from Berwick to Roxburgh and then through the forests of Jedburgh and Selkirk to Biggar17 on the borders of Lanark and Peebles. Biggar, almost at the centre of southern Scotland, was a strategic point from which he could strike at the Scottish army from whichever direction it might appear. There, from 14 October, he waited in expectation of its approach but waited in vain.

Bruce had received ample warning of the invasion and reacted in accordance with his cardinal military principle: to avoid at all costs a pitched battle. He withdrew his main army beyond the Firth of Forth and left to his lieutenants with small flying columns the task of harassing the lumbering progress of the English army.

Throughout the south of Scotland in that year the harvest had failed and there was widespread famine. The country folk, aware of the English massing on their borders, had gathered up their meagre stock of corn and had retreated with their sheep and cattle into the remote fastnesses of mountain and forest.18 Edward II and his army found themselves in an empty and silent land.

Breaking camp at Biggar, they moved down the valley of the Clyde to Both well which was still in English hands, and as they moved James Douglas and his men, who had known this countryside since their birth, kept pace with them in the forest shadows and took their toll of straggling footmen and foundered food wagons and melted again into the woods.

From Both well the English pressed on to Renfrew,19 presumably to link up with John of Lorne, Admiral of the Western Seas, who since April had been receiving reinforcements of ships at Carlingford Bay in Ulster with orders to sail to Argyll and rouse the Macdougalls once more against the Scottish King.20 But Angus Macdonald of the Isles must have held them at bay with his fleet, for when the English army crossed north over the estuary near Dumbarton, they found neither friend nor enemy.

They now began to suffer the want of fodder and provisions, and as the knights and barons observed their valuable warhorses grow gaunt and falter beneath their weight, their resentment at this fruitless expedition became vocal. Edward II therefore turned eastwards along the line of the Campsie Hills to Linlithgow21 and, after resting there for five days, on 28 October retired to his base at Berwick.

Upon this dispirited and retreating army Bruce now let loose, in greater strength, his raiding parties whose morale had been raised by the failure of the English forces to achieve any positive result.

The Monk of Malmesbury writes:

And as the Lanercost Chronicle relates, ‘So soon as the English had retired to Berwick Robert Bruce and his people invaded Lothian and inflicted much damage upon those who were in the King of England’s peace.’23

On hearing of the presence of the elusive Scottish army in Lothian, Edward II again entered Scotland but by the time he reached the province the Scots had once more disappeared.

 

For the next six months Edward II remained at Berwick24 with his army still in being, partly to distance himself from the troublesome Lords Ordainers in the south and partly in anticipation of further attacks on Lothian where he had left Piers Gaveston in control at Roxburgh. During this period he was constantly baffled by the behaviour of Bruce, to whom the initiative had now passed.

In mid-December he learned, by what seems a calculated leak from Bruce, that the Scottish King was collecting an army to invade the Isle of Man. Edward hastily ordered the English ships on the eastern seaboard to sail round to the west to defend it.25 By this action he weakened his own commissariat and at the same time strengthened that of Bruce, who was able to receive into the eastern seaports of Scotland, which the English navy had been blockading, supplies from Northern Europe invaluable in this year of famine.

Yet within a fortnight of this news of an Isle of Man invasion, Bruce was on his doorstep in Selkirk forest prepared to arrange a truce. Two envoys were sent to the Scottish King and after a preliminary meeting a further discussion was arranged at Melrose, but Bruce suspected treachery and did not attend.26 Instead he moved to Galloway and by February 1311 was threatening to raid the western marches. Rumour had it that reinforcements for the attack were being recruited in the Mounth and Piers Gaveston was sent with a cavalry contingent to Perth to cut the communication between the Mounth and Galloway, 27 but rumour had lied and within two months bitter cold and lack of forage had driven the favourite back to Berwick.

Apart from a foray into the forests of Selkirk and Jedburgh by the Earls of Gloucester and Warwick, a stalemate now ensued.28 Edward II busied himself with the refurbishing of the English-held castles in Lothian and Galloway from the bases of Berwick and Carlisle. Bruce remained in his ancestral domains of Annandale and Carrick, slowly throttling into submission by land and sea the citadel and town of Ayr and building up a disciplined force to take advantage of the situation which he anticipated would soon arise: the departure of Edward II south to face the demands of his intransigent barons.

That moment came soon after midsummer 1311 when the Lords Ordainers assembled in London to lay their ordinances before parliament and required the presence of their King to declare it open.29 Compelled by shortage of funds with which to pay his army, Edward II unwillingly returned to his capital after securing the safety of his favourite in the rugged castle of Bamburgh on the Northumbrian coast.

Then, says the Lanercost Chronicle,

Robert the Bruce, taking note that the English King and all the nobles of the realm were in such distant parts and in such discord about the accursed Piers Gaveston, having collected a large army invaded England by the Solway on Thursday before the feast of the Assumption of the Glorious Virgin 12 August and burnt all the land of the Lord of Gilsland and the town of Halt whistle and a great part of Tynedale and after eight days returned into Scotland taking with him a very large booty in cattle. But he had killed few men besides those who offered resistance.30

Bruce had used this raid to test the quality of the resistance he might expect, and having found it wanting he resolved to enlarge the scale of his invasion. Taking his army east to link up with James Douglas and his men in Douglasdale and the forest of Selkirk, he first harried the lands of the pro-English Earl of Dunbar, which lay to the west of Berwick and then, on 8 September, crossed the Cheviot Hills into Northumberland as far as Harbottle and Holystone. From there, in a wide sweep over the plains to Redesdale, he burned and looted the crops that were ripening for harvest, drove south as far as Corbridge, which went up in flames, and then fanned out along the valleys of the north and south Tyne on his homeward journey, laying waste those parts which he had overlooked before, and returned to Scotland fifteen days after crossing the border.31

Observing that the wardens of the marches appointed by the English King were impotent in the face of the numbers against them, the Northumbrians took the only course open if they wished to survive. They sent envoys to Bruce to offer money for a temporary truce.

The Scotsmen were in no mood for moderation. For fifteen years their country had been ravaged and impoverished by the English. Their corn crops had been burned, their livestock slaughtered, their farms destroyed, their people killed and throughout their trading ports and burghs the hum of business had been reduced to silence. Slowly the life blood of commerce was beginning to circulate once more through the body politic but the revenue was pitifully small to meet the demands of government and defence.

When Bruce embarked on the raids into northern England which he continued throughout his reign he had two aims in mind: to obtain the money and supplies for the administration of his country and to keep in fighting trim the nucleus of an army.

Now that he had temporarily regained the upper hand his terms were going to be severe. Immunity was granted to the Northumbrians only to February 1312, and for this brief period they were compelled to pay what was for those days the enormous sum of £2000. A similar tax was imposed on the men of Dunbar.32 A formidable protection racket was in the making: but the unwritten rules were observed. The monks in Lanercost Abbey, which was situated only a short distance within the English side of the border, had the best opportunity to know what was happening. They record again and again in their Chronicle that during these raids it was only those who repelled with force the Scottish demands who suffered death.

Nevertheless the inhabitants of northern England must sometimes have felt that an armed knight on a campaign of blackmail was not the highest example of chivalry. The ideals of King Arthur’s knights, to uphold justice and champion the defenceless, were still supposed to be the basic principles of the warrior class. But, even before the War of Scottish Independence, they had seldom been observed in practice. The habit of violence had taken over throughout Europe as exemplified by Edward I. His barbarous executions of the royal kin and knighthood of Scotland during the course of that war had brought chivalry between the two countries to an end. The northern English were in the unfortunate position of being left unprotected either by a code of honour or a covering armed force, abandoned by the very rulers who had intolerably provoked their next-door neighbours.

Hardly had the truce expired when the Scots attacked the castle of Norham just inside the English border and near to Berwick, burning the town and carrying away many prisoners and cattle. This feat so close to the headquarters of the English command in Scotland was a clear warning to the men of Northumberland and Dunbar that they could look for no defence from England and both areas renewed their tribute.

 

Meanwhile civil war had broken out in England. Edward II, whose affection for Piers Gaveston, however misplaced, had a depth and sincerity which must elicit respect, had twisted and turned like a fox before the hounding barons in an attempt to protect his friend. At the parliament in August 1311 he had offered to accept all the forty-one articles of the ordinance placed before him by the Lords Ordainers if they would delete that which demanded the banishment of Piers Gaveston. But they were resolute in their refusal. In mid-October 1311 Piers sailed for Flanders, but early in January 1312 he returned secretly to England and was received by the King and taken by him to York for fear of the barons33 ‘and because there was no safety for Piers in England, Ireland, Wales, Gascony or France he tried to arrange for Piers residence in Scotland until the baronial attack should cease.’34

The commissioners he chose to treat with Bruce were all Scotsmen, the Bishop of St Andrews, the Earls of Atholl and March, Sir Alexander Abernethy and Sir Adam Gordon, and through them, so anxious was he for his charge, he continually upgraded his offers from truce to lasting truce and ‘at length that the kingdom of Scotland itself should be allowed to Sir Robert freely and forever’. To which in chilling terms the Scottish King replied, ‘How shall the King of England keep faith with me since he does not observe the sworn promises made to his liege men, whose homage and fealty he has received and with whom he is bound to keep mutual faith? No trust can be put in such a fickle man, his promises will not deceive me.’35

Deprived of this last vain hope and denied funds from the exchequer even ‘so much as a halfpenny or a farthing’36, Edward II made his headquarters now in York, now in Newcastle, plundering the country around to pay for his expenses while the Lords Ordainers slowly gathered their private armies together and then marched north. Piers took refuge in Scarborough Castle while his King sought to raise more troops elsewhere, and there, after a siege by the Earl of Pembroke, surrendered on 31 May 1312 in return for the earl’s word of honour that his life would be spared. But as he was being conducted to Pembroke’s castle at Wallingford in Oxfordshire, he was seized by the Earl of Warwick and on the order of the Earl of Lancaster beheaded on 19 June.

Furious at the execution of his favourite, Edward II joined forces with the Earl of Pembroke, whose honour had been impugned, and marched against Lancaster and his fellow earls.37

NOTES - CHAPTER 11

1 Scalaronica,45

2 Lanercost, 186

3 Vita Edwardii, 2, 8

4 A.P.S., i, 459

5 Dickinson, 122–4

6 Α.P.S., i, 459, i, 289

7 ibid., i, 459

8 ibid., i, 289

9 Cal. Doc. Scots, iii, 100

10 Lanercost, 190

11 Barrow, 272 footnote

12 Cal. Doc. Scots, iii, 190

13 MacKenzie, 220

14 Dickinson, 125

15 Vita Edwardii, 11

16 Lanercost, 190

17 Cal. Doc. Scots, iii, 166

18 Pluscarden, 181

19 Cal. Doc. Scots, iii, 171

20 ibid., iii, 203, 206

21 ibid., iii, 171

22 Vita Edwardii, 12

23Lanercost, 191

24 Cal. Doc. Scots, iii, 176

25 Foedera, ii, 118

26 Cal. Doc. Scots, iii, 197

27 Lanercost, 191

28 ibid., 191

29 ibid., 193

30 ibid., 194

31 ibid., 195

32 ibid., 195

33 ibid., 196

34 Vita Edwardii, 22

35 ibid., 23

36 Lanercost, 196

37 Vita Edwardii, 24–8