12

Robert Bruce took full advantage of the situation in England. No doubt he was kept informed by the Bishop of St Andrews, William Lamberton. In April 1308 Lamberton had once more pledged his allegiance to the English King and had been released from his dungeon in Winchester Castle on condition that he remained within the diocese of the Bishop of Durham.1 Edward II had used him on several occasions as his emissary to Robert Bruce, which gave him the opportunity to renew his ancient friendship with the Scottish King. Whatever promises he might make to Edward II, his heart and soul were dedicated to the cause of Scottish independence. For this he believed that peace between the two countries was of paramount importance and exerted all his diplomatic skill to bring it about. But so long as it was not achieved he had no scruple in taking advantage of his privileged position among the English to send to Bruce through the secret network of the Church vital information about his enemies.

Whether it was because of the bishop’s reports or of his own assessment, Bruce convened a parliament at Ayr in July 1312 and there decided on a large-scale invasion of England.2

Leaving a light force to screen the English-held castles of Dumfries, Dalswinton, Buittle and Caerlaverock, he crossed the Solway with his main army to Lanercost Priory, 16 miles northeast of Carlisle, and there lay for three days sacking the priory buildings and ‘doing an infinity of damage’. Leaving Lanercost he marched east to Hexham and Corbridge ravaging the district and taking much spoil and many prisoners, ‘nor was there any who dared to resist’. Setting up his headquarters at Corbridge, he sent Edward Bruce and James Douglas on a lightning raid into the county of Durham. Surprising Chester-le-Street at nightfall, they left there a holding detachment and swept on through the darkness six miles south to Durham and fell upon the inhabitants at early light just as they were putting up the stalls for market day. All who resisted were killed and the greater part of the buildings were reduced to ashes while the military defenders of the castle and abbey, too formidable for the Scots to attack, watched timorously from behind their walls the destruction of the city they were paid to protect.

An immense booty of stores, arms, armour and horses was collected and taken to Chester-le-Street and kept under guard by Edward Bruce while James Douglas hurried to Hartlepool on the coast, ransacked the town and returned with a number of wealthy burgesses and their wives to be held for ransom.

Never in the memory of living men had the Peace of the Palatinate been disturbed by foreign foes and a fearful apprehension spread through the peoples of the area at the shock of the Scottish invasion. The Bishop of Durham was in London but the leading men of the city took it upon themselves to visit Robert Bruce in a body and offer £2000 for a ten months’ truce to midsummer 1313. This offer was accepted but only on the humiliating condition that the Scots should have ‘free access and retreat through the county of Durham whenever they wished to make a raid into England’. The Northumbrians, fearing their turn would come next, hastened to follow the example of their southern neighbours and pay £2000 for the same period of truce while ‘the people of Westmoreland, Coupland and Cumberland redeemed themselves in a similar way and as they had not so much money in hand as would pay them they paid a part and gave as hostages for the rest the sons of the chief lords of the country’.3

As midsummer 1313 approached emissaries from Bruce were sent to the northern counties to warn them that if they did not purchase a fresh truce he would, reluctantly, have to repeat his punitive raids. The threat was enough. Further immunities to 29 September 1314 were arranged on a cash basis.

Throughout his life Bruce was, within the context of a savage age, a humane man. He was using his power not to butcher aimlessly in revenge but to improve the finances of his bankrupt kingdom. Discipline was maintained and a careful record kept of those who had or had not paid for their immunity, and if any failed in their dues their estates were systematically ravaged. Cumberland was a case in point. By April 1314 they had fallen further and further behind in their agreed payments, but instead of injuring their hostages Bruce sent his brother Edward with a strong detachment to take over the Bishop of Carlisle’s manor house at Rose Castle and lay waste the surrounding district. ‘They burnt many towns and two churches taking men and women prisoners and collected a great number of cattle in Inglewood forest and elsewhere and driving them off with them on April 19th, but they killed few men except those who made a determined resistance.’4

According to a contemporary account, in the short space of three years Bruce received more than £40,000 from the tributes paid to him by towns, religious houses and local communities.5

 

On their return to Scotland from Durham in September 1312, the Scottish army attempted to take Carlisle by surprise but the garrison were too alert and although the Scots, elated by their successful invasion, made a determined assault upon it they were beaten off with heavy losses, both James Douglas and Gilbert de la Haye receiving wounds. It was no intention of Bruce to settle down for a prolonged siege, and having failed to effect a coup de main he continued to Scotland where he had other matters with which to deal.6

During his absence in northern England he had sent his chancellor, Bernard Linton, to Norway to iron out certain disputes between the two countries and negotiate anew and reaffirm the ancient Treaty of Perth. Discussion having proceeded amicably, Bruce summoned a Parliament at Inverness and there on 29 October 1312 an agreement was sealed between the King of Scots in person and the envoys of King Haakon V resolving the differences between them and reactivating the settlement of 1266: a conclusion peculiarly satisfactory to Bruce both because of his family relationship with the Norwegian royal family and their overt recognition of his sovereignty of Scotland.7

When he rode north from Galloway to Inverness he left behind his brother Edward to harass the English garrisons in the southwest and James Douglas to police the border and raid into Lothian to bring more communities under tribute; but he took with him his third chief lieutenant, Thomas Randolph, and an unexpected addition to his entourage, the Earl of Atholl.

David, Earl of Atholl, was the son of that same John, Earl of Atholl, who had been captured with Bruce’s Queen and family in Easter Ross and had been hanged by Edward I on the special gallows in London elevated beyond the normal because of his royal blood. It might have been expected, in view of his family tradition and the execution of his father by the English, that David would have adhered to Bruce but his wife was the daughter of the ‘Red’ Comyn whom Bruce had struck down in Greyfriars church, and in the subsequent blood feud between the two families he had been drawn in on the Comyn side and had taken the field against Bruce on several occasions. In January 1312 he had been one of the emissaries sent by Edward II under the lead of William Lamberton, Bishop of St Andrews, to request Bruce to grant political asylum to Piers Gaveston.

It was important to Bruce to win over another great earl to his cause and there is little doubt that, during the close contact which these negotiations entailed, the magnetism of the Scottish King and the influence of the subtle bishop were exerted to induce Atholl to transfer his allegiance: a course to vihich a cold assessment of the odds and his natural instincts might well have inclined him. In any event he rode with Bruce to Inverness and there before the parliament his vast lands were formally restored to him and he was created Constable of Scotland, an office which good, loyal, devoted Gilbert de la Haye, the existing holder, had handed back to Bruce so that his King could use it as a bait to catch the earl.

But Bruce at the same time provided a reinsurance for his generosity to Atholl. Thomas Randolph, who after his youthful effrontery to Bruce when he was captured in July 1308 had proved to his royal uncle his daring in the field and his wisdom at the conference table, was granted the earldom of Moray, an earldom which had remained dormant in the possession of the Crown since 1130. With it he received, with wide powers, the great part of the province of that name which lay between the earldoms of Ross and Atholl and could exert an influence on each.

Judging by the actions which followed on the parliament at Inverness, a progress report and future plan must have been made concerning the destruction of the castles held in Scotland by the English. At the time of Bruce’s first parliament at St Andrews in 1309 and after the harrying of Buchan and Galloway, the English still retained of their major castles three north of the Tay: Banff, Dundee and Perth; three on the line of the Firth of Forth and Clyde: Stirling, Linlithgow and Bothwell; six in the southwest: Ayr, Loch Doon, Dalswinton, Dumfries, Buittle and Caerlaverock; and four in Lothian: Edinburgh, Roxburgh, Jedburgh and Berwick, together with numerous second and third rate strongpoints. The possession of every castle gave the English a dominance over the surrounding countryside and a base at which an invading army from England could regroup and refurbish its forces.

The policy of Bruce was to raze to the ground any castle that he captured so that it would never again become a focus of infection. His problem was how to achieve these captures. The odds were heavily weighted in favour of the defenders. Edward I, with the most sophisticated siege engines of the period at his disposal, took three months to capture Stirling in 1304. Bruce had neither the means to buy nor the skilled men to operate these formidable machines. He had to rely on patient blockade or the brilliance and daring of his stratagems.

During the three and a half years between the parliaments of 1309 and 1312 a beginning had been made. North of the Tay, Banff in the winter of 1309–10 and Dundee in the spring of 1312 had been starved into surrender. In the southwest, by the end of 1311, a similar fate had befallen Ayr and Loch Doon. Now, with Edward II still embroiled with his barons and the northern counties of England under tribute, a determined effort was decided upon to deal with the remaining strongholds.

Bruce’s first action was to move from Inverness to Perth and there invest the town. Leaving part of his force to prosecute the siege probably under the command of the Earls of Moray and Atholl,9 he rode south for a daring attempt to capture Berwick by surprise. Berwick was the town nearest to the English border and the headquarters of their Scottish command. The audacity of the project has the touch of Douglas about it and it is reasonable to assume that it was on his initiative that Bruce came to join him in the attack which so nearly succeeded.

‘Coming unexpectedly to the castle on the night of St Nicholas,’ writes the Lanercost chronicler, that is on 6 December 1312,

he laid ladders against the walls and began to scale them: and had not a dog betrayed the approach of the Scots by loud barking it is believed that he would quickly have taken the castle and, in consequence, the town.

Now these ladders, which they placed against the walls, were of a wonderful construction as I, myself, who write these lines, beheld with mine own eyes. For the Scots had made two strong ropes as long as the height of the wall, making a knot at the end of each cord. They had made a wooden board also, about two feet and a half broad, strong enough to carry a man and in the two extremities of the board they had made two holes through which the two ropes could be passed; then the cords having been passed through as far as the knots, they had made two other knots in the ropes one foot and a half higher and above these knots they placed another board and so on to the end of the ropes. They had also made an iron hook, measuring at least one foot along one limb and this was to lie over the wall but the other limb being of the same length hung downwards towards the ground having at its end a round hole wherein the point of a lance could be inserted and two rings on the sides wherein the said ropes could be knotted.

Having fitted them together in this manner they took a strong spear as long as the height of the wall, placing the point thereof in the iron hole and two men lifted the ropes and boards with that spear and placed the iron hook (which was not a round one) over the wall. They then were able to climb up by those wooden steps, just as one usually climbs an ordinary ladder and the greater the weight of the climber the more firmly the iron hook clung over the wall. But lest the rope should lie too close to the wall and hinder the ascent they had made fenders round every third step which thrust the ropes off the wall. When therefore they had placed two ladders upon the wall the dog betrayed them, as I have said, and they left the ladder there which next day our people hung upon a pillory to put them to shame. And thus a dog saved the town on that occasion, just as of old geese saved Rome by their gobble.10

Although the ingenious invention of the hempen scaling ladders failed to bring success on this occasion, it was to prove of inestimable value in the future.

Foiled in this attempt to take Berwick by surprise, Bruce left as swiftly as he had arrived and returned to Perth to take over the control of the siege.

 

Throughout the wars of Scottish independence the English regarded the town of Perth as of immense strategic importance. Easily provisioned from the sea, dominating the rich cornlands of Angus and Fife, menacing the whole central part of Scotland, positioned as an ample caravanserai for invading armies moving up from the south, it was the most pampered outpost of the English occupation. Its defences were constantly being improved and by 1312 it was girdled by massive stone walls with towers at intervals along the ramparts. Around its base it was lapped by the River Tay on the east and a deep and wide moat on the other three sides.

At the time of Bruce’s approach it was strongly garrisoned by 120 mounted men and a greater number of footmen and archers, all under the command of Sir William Oliphant, the stubborn and courageous knight who in 1304 at Stirling Castle had held the might of Edward I at bay for more than three months. After he had surrendered there he was imprisoned in England for four years and was only released on condition that he fought for the English Crown.

Although the Scots had surrounded the town preventing any access from outside, they had no heavy artillery with which to batter down the walls and after six weeks saw no weakening among the defenders from lack of supplies. Bruce was unwilling to immobilize in a long siege his armed forces, many of whom were Highlanders who do not take kindly to static war. Fertile in resource as ever, he resorted to a stratagem. Secretly by night he had the moat sounded for depth and at last discovered a place ‘where men might to their shoulders wade’.

Openly giving orders to call off the siege, he and his men packed up their gear and in full view of the enemy formed up and marched away to the shouts and jeers of the garrison.

When he had reached a concealing wood at a safe distance from Perth he halted his army and set them to work constructing rope ladders long enough to reach to the top of the town’s ramparts. After eight days, which he reckoned would be enough to lull the defenders into a sense of security, he set out on the black night of 7 January 1313 towards the sleeping town. Horses and grooms were left behind and his knights and foot soldiers crept stealthily through the darkness to the edge of the moat and there waited in silence. When no sentinels were seen nor heard Bruce himself, with a ladder slung around his shoulders and a spear in his right hand, lowered himself in full armour into the icy water and began to wade across testing the depth with his spear as he went. The water presently reached his neck but then grew less until he reached the other side, and placing his spear in the iron hole of his ladder with his great strength lifted it up and hooked it on the rampart.

Among his company at that time there was a young French knight who, when he saw the King lead the way through the water carrying his ladder as a common man, crossed himself exclaiming, ‘What shall we say of our nobles in France who think only to stuff their bellies when so renowned a knight will risk his life for a miserable hamlet?’ He followed the King through the moat and was first up the ladder with Bruce behind him. All the Scots followed and set their ladders to the walls and climbed onto the battlements. Still there was no alarm. Bruce rapidly divided his men into two detachments keeping himself a chosen band to guard the rampart above the ladders and sending the rest to range through the town. The night was suddenly filled with uproar as the Scots, scattering in all directions, ‘put their foes to great confusion, who in their beds were or fleeing here and there’. Surprise was complete and resistance negligible. By sunrise the town was in Bruce’s hands.11

An immense booty was garnered by Bruce’s men ‘till some who were before poor and bare became rich and mighty with the spoil’,12 but few of the defenders were killed for Bruce had given strict orders to spare all who did not resist. Many of the townsfolk were Scots and Bruce sought always to heal rather than exacerbate the divisions of his countrymen. In his political outlook he was a man of his time, believing in the feudal structure as the basis of his kingdom, and in dealing with the great nobles who had opposed him he erred on the side of magnanimity in seeking to reconcile them to his rule. So now to the Earl of Strathearn, who had been captured at Perth by his own son who was on Bruce’s side, he returned all his lands on his vowing allegiance.13

Even more remarkable in this respect was his action at Dumfries. After giving orders for the castle and town of Perth to be razed to the ground, he moved to the southwest where his brother Edward had been preventing, as far as he could, any supplies reaching the quartet of castles, Dumfries, Dalswinton, Buittle and Caerlaverock, from the solid English base at Carlisle. Dumfries was commanded by that same Dugald Macdowall who had been responsible for the death of two of Bruce’s brothers in 1307, yet when on the verge of starvation the garrison surrendered on 7 February 1313, Bruce allowed Macdowall to go free in the hope that as head of the great Macdowall clan in Galloway he would end their persistent disaffection by accepting the actuality of Bruce’s kingship. In this Bruce was disappointed for whatever Dugald may have promised when he surrendered, no sooner was he out of range than he once more threw in his lot with the English.14

The castles of Dalswinton, Buittle and Caerlaverock held out a little longer, but by 31 March 1313 all had surrendered and were razed to the ground.

There now remained outside Lothian only two strongholds in English hands, Both well and Stirling. Walter FitzGilbert, the Governor of Bothwell, surrounded as he was by the Stewart lands whose young owner, Walter Stewart, was fighting with Bruce, kept studiously inactive awaiting events and could be ignored, but Stirling was the gateway between north and south Scotland and Edward Bruce was given the vital task of bringing about its submission.

Meanwhile Bruce took advantage of the strong Scottish force he had spare to hand in Galloway after the surrender of the castles to link up with Angus Macdonald of the Isles and with his fleet invade the Isle of Man. ‘On the 18th May, Lord Robert King of Scotland put in at Ramsay with a large number of ships and on the following Sunday went to the nunnery at Douglas where he spent the night and on Monday laid siege to the castle of Rushen.’15 Early in June the castle surrendered and the island, which had been so treacherously taken by Edward I in 1290, became once more Scottish. In December 1313 Bruce handed over the lordship of the island to his nephew Thomas Randolph, Earl of Moray, in return for feudal dues of one hundred marks and the provision of six ships each of twenty-six oars. In 1315 John of Lorne temporarily seized the island16 but was driven out in 1317 by the Earl of Moray and it remained a Scottish possession until 1333 when it passed to England for good.17

Bruce returned to Scotland after his successful expedition to be greeted by the heartbreaking news that his brother Edward had committed him to an agreement which threatened to undo all that he had so painfully achieved.

 

His brother Edward did not take kindly to sieges. He was essentially a cavalry leader, delighting in mobile war, impatient with the dull recurrent routine of blockade. Already he had shown his lack of perseverance when he was conducting the siege of Dundee the year before. There, tired of sitting still, he had accepted from William Montfichet, the governor of the town, an offer to surrender if the castle was not relieved by the English on a certain date. Fortunately for the Scots, Edward II furiously denounced his subordinates agreement and threatened Montfichet with death if he did not continue his resistance. Dundee had to be starved into submission.18

For more than three months Edward Bruce had been camped with his men around Stirling Castle. There was little he could do against the massive fortifications without any engines of siege warfare. He had to wait and wait until the provisions of the defenders failed them. In the end he must have succeeded for he had sealed off all means of access and the King of England was too occupied in his own kingdom to give a thought to the beleaguered garrison.

But Sir Philip Mowbray, the castle’s commander, had a shrewd knowledge of Edward Bruce’s impetuous character. At midsummer 1313, as he took stock of his diminishing supplies, he offered as one chivalrous knight to another that, ‘if by midsummer a year thence he was not rescued by battle, he would yield the castle freely.’ Edward fell headlong into the trap, and without consulting their respective monarchs the two men pledged their honour to fulfil the treaty.19

Possibly Edward Bruce believed that the King of England was too locked in conflict with his great barons and too outraged by their murder of his favourite to turn his attention to Scotland. But, in view of his knowledge of his brother’s policy never to risk a pitched battle against the English,20 the length of time he allowed for the rescue displays at least an appalling lack of judgement, at worst a selfish desire to be rid of the tedium of a blockade. The challenge to the honour of England was too great and too public to be ignored and nothing was more calculated to compose the differences between Edward II and his nobles than the prospect of settling with Scotland once and for all.

The difficulty for Bruce was compounded by the impossibility of disowning the pledged troth of his brother and there is no wonder that he upbraided him in the words put into his mouth by Barbour:

That was unwisely done indeed. Never have I heard so long a warning given to so mighty a King as the King of England. For he now has in his hand England, Ireland, Wales and Aquitaine, with all under his seigneury, and a great part of Scotland, and he is so provided with treasure that he can have plenty of paid soldiers. We arc so few against so many. God may deal us our destiny right well but we arc set in jeopardy to lose or win all at one throw.21

From now on through the coming year the efforts of Bruce were to be concentrated on capturing the great English castles in Lothian and training his men for the inevitable clash with England.

His lieutenants nobly responded but the lead was taken by a simple countryman whose name still glows in the minds of Scotsmen. He was called William Bunnock and it was his custom to bring to the castle at Linlithgow the harvest from the fields. On a day in September 1313 he sent a message to the garrison that he had for them a load of hay greater and of better quality than any he had delivered that year. Indeed he spoke the truth for eight armed men were hidden beneath the hay and nearby the castle gate others had concealed themselves in the undergrowth.

He drove towards the castle with his wagon of hay and had a stout farm hand with a bill hook in his belt by the horses’ heads. As he approached, the porter opened the gate and in the gate’s entrance Bunnock halted the waggon. Then with a loud voice he cried, ‘Call all, call all’, at which the farm hand cut the horses’ traces leaving the wagon to prevent the portcullis falling. Bunnock leapt off the driving seat to dash out the porter’s brains, the eight armed men brushed out of the hay to deal with the loiterers standing by and the men concealed in ambush rushed from their hiding place through the castle gate with their swords drawn and quickly overcame the unsuspecting garrison. With the castle taken Bunnock sent the news to Bruce, who quickly dispatched reinforcements, had the fortress dismantled and gave Bunnock a rich reward.22

 

The whole province of Lothian, which covered the present day counties of Edinburgh, Haddington and Berwick, the eastern half of Roxburgh, the eastern corner of Selkirk, the eastern confines of Peebles and the southern and eastern portions of Linlithgow, had been seething with disaffection. Their situation was indeed unhappy. Officially they were within the King of England’s peace but they got no protection from him and by Bruce they were treated in the same manner as the northern counties of England: they paid tribute or suffered the consequences. Yet when they paid tribute to Bruce the garrisons of the English-held castles which lay so thick upon the ground would sally forth and seize their goods and hold them as prisoners for ransom on the grounds that they had dealt with the enemy.23

Their feudal lord the Earl of Dunbar, who had consistently supported the English, and their Lord Chief Justice, Adam Gordon, appealed to Edward II detailing their lamentable plight, but though he reprimanded the governors of his castles, the populace was still oppressed and knew not where to turn. In the words of the Lanercost Chronicle,

Since the hearts of these people were for Scotland, Bruce’s lieutenants were able to take risks which only a friendly populace made possible.

On Shrove Tuesday, 27 February 1314, the garrison of Roxburgh were holding a feast before the oncoming of Lent. Taking advantage of this James Douglas approached the castle with sixty picked men. Over their armour they wore black cloaks and went along a path in single file on hands and knees as if they were cows or oxen which had not been herded in for the night.

As they came near the castle they heard one of the sentries on the wall say to his companion, ‘The local farmer nearby must be making good cheer, for he has left out all his cattle,’ to which the other replied, ‘Good cheer tonight but Douglas will have them tomorrow,’ and so, laughing, they left the ramparts. Then Douglas and his men came to the walls and hooked up their ladders. The first man up, named Sim of Leadhouse, was seen by a sentry as his head and shoulders came over the parapet, but before the alarm could be given Sim caught him by the throat with one hand and with a knife in the other stabbed him in the heart; then hissed to those waiting below, ‘All’s well, speed quickly.’

When all were up they went silently in each direction along the sentry walk and it is said by Sir Walter Scott, in his Tales of a Grandfather, that Douglas, leading one party, coming round a corner saw a woman sitting on the wall with her back turned singing a lullaby to her baby.

‘Hush ye, hush ye, little pet ye

Hush ye, hush ye, do not fret ye

The Black Douglas shall not get ye’

at which he placed a hand upon her shoulder and growled ‘Do not be sure of that’, and she turned and saw in horror the Black Douglas beside her: but he promised to protect her.25

The garrison were all in the great hall, dancing and singing as the custom was on Shrove Tuesday, when suddenly there was a cry of ‘Douglas, Douglas’, and the men of Douglas poured through the doors. Although greatly superior in numbers, the English were taken by surprise and fled incontinently in all directions.

Only the governor, William de Fiennes, rallied a few men around him and shut himself in the keep. Although at daylight he saw that the rest of the castle was in the hands of the Scots, he continued to hold out until he received an arrow wound in his face so severe that, after yielding on condition that he and his companions had safe passage to England, he died on return to his home.

Sim of Leadhouse brought to Bruce the news of Roxburgh’s capture and was suitably rewarded, and a gang of workmen under Edward Bruce was sent to level to the ground the tower and walls of the castle.26

Thomas Randolph, Earl of Moray, was not to be outdone. He and Douglas had been close friends ever since he had been captured by Douglas and had lived with him as his prisoner until he had sworn allegiance to Bruce. In looks there was a striking contrast between the two young men. Douglas was tall, thin and dark; Randolph of medium height, thickset with fair hair and complexion.27 Their temperaments matched their physical appearance. Both indeed were noted by all for their courteous and modest demeanour. But Douglas remained always the brilliant commando, intense, restless, ruthless and inspired, while Randolph even in his youth was more measured in his approach to his problems with a larger understanding of statecraft, as Bruce had observed and made good use of in placing wide areas under his administration.

But however measured his approach, a comradely rivalry would spur him to feats as dramatic as those of his friend.

When he heard news of Douglas’s success as Roxburgh he was lying with his men below the castle of Edinburgh intent on its capture. Perched on its pinnacle of rock the castle seemed invulnerable to all means of attack but the wearing away of its defenders by starvation. Yet weeks of blockade had passed by and no parleys of surrender had been made. So Randolph made enquiries among the citizens and promised a reward to any who should know a way up the face of the crag. By and by a stalwart man, named William Francis, came before him.

‘When I was young,’ he told Randolph, ‘my father was keeper of the watch house at the castle, and since I was young and giddy and much in love with a girl in the town here below, I made a ladder of ropes to hang from the wall of the castle and found a way down the rock so that I might visit her secretly and without suspicion. Often, I would descend at night and stay with her and when it drew near to day I would climb up again without discovery so that however dark it may be I can find the path aright. If you would make the attempt I can bring you to the wall.’

Randolph told him to make a rope ladder sufficient in length to reach the top of the wall and from his men selected thirty who had knowledge of mountain climbing, of whom there were many among his Highlanders from Moray. Then on 14 March, the night being dark, he arranged for the main body of his force to make an assault on the south gate of the castle which, because of the position of the castle, was the only quarter on which an assault could be made, while he and his thirty followed William Francis up the north face of the rock which was very high and fell away steeply from the foot of the wall.

With finger holds and toe holds in the crevices, they followed William Francis, sometimes near behind him, sometimes held up seeking for a handgrip, clinging to the rock face, knowing that if they slipped they would be broken to pieces on the boulders below. Halfway up the crag they came to a ledge just broad enough on which to crouch, and there they rested to get their wind. As they were sitting there, they heard the officers of the watch, who were doing their rounds, meet on the ramparts above them and stop to talk. One of them, wishing to startle his companions, suddenly threw a stone over the wall and cried, ‘Away, I see you all!’ There was one ghastly moment for the little party as the stone bounded down the crag before the man moved on with the rest of the watch.

Now the climbers had to negotiate the steepest part of the rock but at last reached the foot of the wall. It was nearly twelve foot high and, without knowing what lay beyond, William Francis hooked on the ladder and was the first to mount it, followed by Sir Andrew Gray and Thomas Randolph. The rest climbed up behind them, but before they were all up the watch heard the clatter of arms and, raising the cry of ‘Treason’, hurled themselves on the invaders.

Hearing the clamour, Randolph’s main force, which had been lying near the south gate in pitch darkness waiting for a signal, rushed forward to batter the doors. Slowly fighting every yard, Randolph and his little band of thirty worked their way towards the mêlée at the gate and while some, meeting the constable of the castle, engaged him in a fierce struggle which ended in his death, others opened the gate to their comrades.

As the main force surged in through the open gate the garrison sought only to save themselves, some slipping through the gate, some sliding over the walls.28

The pride of Edinburgh was captured and soon afterwards undermined so that it toppled in a ruin to the ground.29

The spectacular capture of Edinburgh came as a climax to the campaign against the castles of Lothian, of which many of the smaller ones had already fallen unrecorded by history. When Edward II led his great army into the province three months later, only Dunbar, Jedburgh and Berwick remained in the hands of the English. Their long predominance in Lothian had at last been destroyed.

NOTES - CHAPTER 12

1 Cal. Doc. Scots, iii, 50

2 ibid., iii, 279

3 Lanercost, 197, 199–200

4 ibid., 205

5 Vita Edwardii, 48

6 Guisborough, 397

7 Barrow, 287, 288

8 Barron, 398

9 Scalaronica, 52

10 Lanercost, 201, 202

11 Barbour, 149–151

12 ibid., 152

13 ibid., 151

14 Cal. Doc. Scots., iii, 304

15 Barron, 410

16 Cal. Doc. Scots, iii, 420

17 ibid., iii, 562

18 Rotuli Scotiae, i, 108

19 Barbour, 182

20 Cal. Doc. Scots, iii, 202

21 Barbour, 184

22 ibid., 165–8

23 Cal. Doc. Scots, iii, 186, 337

24 Lanercost, 195

25 Scott, 164

26 Barbour, 170–74

27 ibid., 169

28 ibid., 175–9

29 ibid., 181