16

The truce signed in December 1319 held throughout 1321 and the northern counties had a short reprieve from the ravages of the Scots. But elsewhere in England events moved towards civil war. Hugh Despenser the younger, who after the death of Piers Gaveston had become the chief object of Edward II’s affections, roused the anger of the Marcher Lords by his territorial aggrandizement in Wales. Taking to arms, they joined forces with the Earl of Lancaster and, marching on London, intimidated the King into sending the favourite and his father into exile. Their triumph was short-lived. Five months later their opposition had lost cohesion. Edward II, seizing his opportunity, raised an army, recalled the Despensers and advanced against the Marcher Lords. Some surrendered without a fight: others, under the Earl of Hereford, fled north to join the Earl of Lancaster at Pontefract. The final clash between King and earl was now to take place.1

The earl had already entered into negotiations with the Scots for their support in dethroning his cousin, offering in return a permanent peace and full recognition of Scottish independence. It is unlikely that Bruce took these overtures seriously, but anything which weakened England was to his advantage and he gave Randolph and Douglas leave to arrange a meeting with Lancaster and Hereford to discuss details.2

This in no way altered his military plans. No sooner had the two-year truce ended on 1 January 1322 than he sent Randolph, Douglas and Walter Stewart on a powerful raid over the border: Randolph to Darlington, Douglas to Hartlepool and Walter Stewart to Richmond, plundering or taking ransom. In vain the northern knights appealed for help to Lancaster who was stationed with his army at Pontefract, ‘but he feigned excuse,’ says the Lanercost Chronicle, ‘and no wonder seeing that he cared not to take up arms in the cause of a king ready to attack him.’3

The English King, indeed, was on his way. Gathering his forces at Coventry, he bypassed Burton-on-Trent, where Lancaster and Hereford had posted their army to block, his passage of the river, and made for their headquarters at Pontefract. The earls hastily retreated northwards, hoping to link up with the Scots. But Andrew Harclay, the governor of Carlisle, by a brilliant move raised the levies of Cumberland and Westmorland and, avoiding the Scots in Teesdale, took up a position at Boroughbridge covering both the ford and the bridge by which the rebels would have to cross the River Ure. Mindful of the lessons of Courtrai and Bannockburn, he posted his pikemen in schiltron formation opposite the bridge and ford supported by archers on both flanks.

On 16 March Lancaster advanced to the attack, sending Hereford and the infantry to seize the bridge while he himself with the cavalry attempted to cross by the ford. Hereford was killed on the bridge as he led his men and Lancaster repulsed by the hail of arrows that decimated his horses. The next morning, with most of Hereford’s men deserting, he surrendered to Andrew Harclay. He was taken before Edward II at Pontefract who, without holding Parliament or consulting his peers, had his head cut off as ten years before the earl had done to Piers Gaveston.4

 

Edward II was now like the bullfrog in the fable, fullblown with success. He had achieved his long deferred revenge, freed himself from the bonds of the Lords Ordainers and, as he wrote exuberantly to the Pope requesting him to worry no more about the truce with the Scots, ‘determined to establish peace by force of arms’.

In furtherance of this resolution he issued orders for the muster of an army with was to excel in number that which he had led to Bannockburn. Besides the heavily armed cavalry supplied by his supporting barons under feudal service, crossbowmen and mounted spearmen were summoned from as far away as Aquitaine. Every village in England was ordered to furnish one foot soldier fully armed. Taxes were levied on the clergy, cities and towns for the hiring of archers and infantry. Sir Robert Leybourne was placed in command of a naval squadron to attack the west coast of Scotland 5 and Sir Robert Bataille of a fleet to escort the transport ships along the east coast into the Firth of Forth loaded with provisions for the army.6 When all was ready, Edward II in the early days of August set off for Newcastle towards the border at the head of an enormous force.

Robert Bruce had observed these preparations with almost contemptuous indifference. His strategy for dealing with invasion had long been decided, so much so that on 1 July, while the English were still lumbering towards their assembly area in the east, he entered England on the west. Passing through Cumberland, plundering as he went, he rode across the Duddon Sands to Furness Abbey where the abbot paid ransom for immunity. Still making use of the sands at low tide, he moved swiftly along the coast to Lancaster which he sent up in flames. There he was joined by Douglas and Randolph and together they drove south as far as Preston, which suffered the same fate as Lancaster, and by 12 July they were back on the outskirts of Carlisle after a penetration of eighty miles into England. They encamped near Carlisle for five days, trampling and destroying as much of the crops in the neighbourhood as they could with the herds of cattle they had rounded up, and re-entered Scotland on 24 July.7

Bruce had assembled his army at Culross on the north side of the Firth of Forth. He had given orders that all the southeast between the border and the Forth should be left bare of man, beast, crop and habitation.8 The inhabitants of that district had become used to such evacuations. They built their dwellings by affixing poles in the ground, filling the gaps between with turf and stones and covering the roof with brushwood and turf. To these they set fire on the approach of the English and drove their livestock into the forests and broken uplands, returning after the invasion was over to re-erect their simple homes.

Edward II marched through the scorched landscape of the Lothians unopposed. At Edinburgh he waited three days for the arrival of his provision ships but these had been delayed by contrary winds and the stores he had brought with him had begun to be exhausted. Foragers were sent into the countryside but returned to the King empty-handed except for one lame cow which had been found grazing in a field near Tranent, at which the Earl of Surrey exclaimed, ‘This is the dearest beef that ever I saw.’ By late September hunger had forced Edward II to withdraw his famished army into his own country where the crops had now been gathered in. His starving soldiers fell upon these with such avidity that an outbreak of dysentery attacked their weakened frames and their dying bodies littered the roads by which the English retired to Yorkshire.9

Such was the invasion which Edward II had boasted to the Pope would accomplish the final conquest of Scotland. The only positive actions achieved by this mighty force were the sacking of the abbeys of Holyrood and Melrose and the burning of that of Dryburgh:10 results that can have brought little consolation to the supreme head of the Church.

Meanwhile north of the Firth of Forth Robert Bruce had collected an immense host from all parts of his country, ‘all the power of Scotland, of the Isles and the rest of the Highlands’.11 On 1 October 1322, as the English King retreated across the border in the east, the Scottish King led his army across the fords of the Solway in the west. Taking the familiar route along the Eden valley and Wensleydale, with a horde of refugees fleeing before his pillagers, he reached Northallerton on 12 October.12 Here his scouts informed him that Edward II and his Queen were lodged in Rievaulx Abbey fifteen miles to the southeast.13

In an attempt to surprise them, Bruce made a forced march through the night of 13 October, but as dawn broke on 14 October he found his direct route blocked by an English force under the Earl of Richmond posted at the western edge of Scawton Moor on the heights of Sutton Bank. The single access up the steep hillside was a rocky pass manned at the summit by the enemy advance guard under Sir Thomas Uhtred and Sir Ralph Cobham. To make a frontal assault appeared suicidal, but the only detour was a fourteen-mile circuit by Helmsley and the chance of capturing Edward II would be lost.

After consulting his commanders, Bruce decided on an immediate attack believing that many of the English, after their recent experiences, were demoralized. The desperate task of scaling the pass was given to Douglas supported by a major part of the army. As he was ordering the ranks, Randolph came running to join him with three of his esquires and the two comrades-in-arms advanced side by side towards the enemy. Sir Thomas Uhtred and Sir Ralph Cobham, reputed to be two of the bravest knights of England, held the narrow gorge, and their followers above and behind discharged a hail of arrows and boulders on the ascending Scots.

Progress was painfully slow, so Bruce released his reserve of agile Highlanders to scramble up a precipitous cliff on his flank hidden by a shoulder of the hill. The last few to reach the top had hardly time to get their breath before they saw the Earl of Richmond coming over a fold of the plateau with reinforcements for his advance guard. With a wild cry the Highlanders charged and the English knights, taken by surprise, ‘fled like hares before greyhounds’, as Sir Thomas Gray scornfully reports, leaving Richmond and Henry de Sully, Grand Butler of France, in the hands of the Scots.

The advance guard was now assailed from front and rear and all resistance crumbled. Uhtred and Cobham yielded up their swords. The pass was cleared and Douglas and Randolph, joining forces with the Highlanders on the summit, moved against the main army which retreated in disorder. Walter Stewart with five hundred troopers pressed swiftly on to capture the English King. But Edward II, warned just in time, leaped on his horse, leaving behind for the second time in eight years the Great Seal of England and his royal baggage and treasure. Walter Stewart and his men pursued him from Rievaulx to Bridlington and from Bridlington to York, but the King outpaced them and when they reached the gates of the city they found them bolted and barred.

They returned to Rievaulx, where Bruce had made his temporary headquarters to deal with the immense booty abandoned by the English and to sort out the prisoners.

The Earl of Richmond was the first of these to be brought before the Scottish King and was received with extreme coldness. Whether because he had spoken slightingly of Bruce or insulted Bruce’s Queen when she was captive in England or for some other reason, Bruce referred to him, in the presence of all, as a caitiff, had him imprisoned closely for two years and only released him in return for the prodigious ransom of £20,000.

In marked contrast he received Henry de Sully and the other French lords with great courtesy. Conscious of the advantage of winning the goodwill of the King of France, he assured them that he was well aware that they took part in the battle not from personal enmity to him but, as honourable knights should, in support of their host. He offered them his hospitality for as long as they should wish to remain, and in due course returned them to their country free of ransom.14

This politic gesture brought its reward. Henry de Sully, the leading French prisoner, acted as a skilful go-between in the negotiations which led to the Anglo-Scottish truce of 1323. During the course of these negotiations, Bruce had occasion to write a letter to de Sully which reveals both his own unruffled good humour and the perverse refusal of his royal opponent to face reality.

But if Edward II would not appreciate the weakness of his situation, others could.

The Scots had returned to their country by 2 November 1322, adding to the spoils of their victory at Old By land near Rievaulx by extracting ransom from the town of Beverley still further south.16 Soon after their departure Andrew Harclay, Governor of Carlisle, reached Edward II at York. He found him ‘all in confusion and no army mustered’.17

Harclay was a man of strong character, a stern administrator and a brave and able soldier. For eight years he had maintained his city inviolate while the countryside around went up in flames before the invading Scots. During the barons’ revolt he had, by sheer personality, drummed up within a few weeks a scratch force from the disheartened populace of Cumberland and Westmorland and inspired it with the resolution to defeat the mighty Earl of Lancaster and save the King of England. For this he had been created Earl of Carlisle and Warden of the Western Marches.18

Now when the Earl of Carlisle perceived that the King of England neither knew how to rule his realm nor was able to defend it against the Scots, who year by year laid it more and more waste, he feared lest at last the King should lose the entire kingdom: so he chose the lesser of two evils and considered how much better it would be for the community of each realm if each King should possess his own kingdom freely and peacefully without homage instead of so many homicides and arsons, captivities, plunderings and raidings taking place each year.

Returning to Carlisle, Harclay disbanded his levies and on 3 January 1323 went secretly to Robert Bruce at Lochmaben. There, after protracted discussion with Thomas Randolph, Earl of Moray, a treaty was signed between the King of Scots and the Earl of Carlisle. Pointing out that both kingdoms had prospered so long as each had a king from its own nation and was maintained with its own laws and customs, the signatories agreed that Robert Bruce and his heirs should be upheld as sovereign rulers of an independent Scotland and that they in turn should do all that they could for the realm of England.

For this purpose there were to be twelve commissioners, six to be chosen by the community of Scotland and six by the Earl of Carlisle, and these would work out the details for the common profit of both countries. If within a year the King of England consented that the King of Scotland ‘shall have his realm free and quit for himself and his heirs’, then the King of Scotland would found an abbey for the souls of those slain in the war and endow it with 500 marks a year, and would pay to the King of England 40,000 marks at the rate of 4000 a year and would grant to that King the right to choose a wife from his own family for the male heir of Scotland, provided the twelve commissioners consider that this would redound to the common advantage of both countries.19

Andrew Harclay made no secret of this treaty. On returning to Carlisle, he summoned the chief men of his earldom who endorsed his action, while ‘the poor folk, middle class and farmers in the northern parts were very content that the King of Scotland should freely possess his Kingdom on such terms that they themselves might live in peace.’20

But however statesmanlike the solution presented by Harclay and however welcome in the north, he was impinging on the prerogative of the Crown and aroused the fury of his King. Too weak to attack him in his earldom, Edward II had him taken by stealth through the treachery of a friend21 and, after a summary trial on 3 March 1323, degraded him from his earldom and knighthood and condemned him to be drawn, hanged, disembowelled, beheaded and quartered.

The Earl of Carlisle, ‘with most steadfast countenance and bold spirit, as it seemed to the bystanders, went to suffer all those pains … then under the gallows, whole in body, strong and fiery in spirit and powerful in speech, he explained to all men the purpose he had in making the treaty with the Scots and so yielded himself to undergo his punishment.’22

So died the most resolute and capable of Edward II’s lieutenants who, by his own efforts, had raised himself from obscurity to the highest rank of chivalry. It is impossible to believe that he had not intended to present the treaty to Edward II with a plea for its endorsement: but he was never given the chance. Four times before his death he made confession to different priests, the last to the Warden of the Minorite Friars, and all ‘justified him and acquitted him of intention and taint of treason’. 23 He was not the first nor the last to learn by experience how frail can prove the friendship of princes.

 

Andrew Harclay’s bold initiative and grisly death were not in vain. A little over two months later the English government, conscious of the popular support his proposals had received and the risk of a leaderless Carlisle falling to the Scots, concluded at Bishopthorpe, near York, on 30 May 1323 a truce for thirteen years. This was ratified by Bruce at Berwick eight days later under the style and appellation of King: a ratification which Edward II accepted and in so doing tacitly acknowledged the royal title he affected to deny.24

Apart from clauses to improve peaceful relations between the two countries, the main concessions by the English were an undertaking not to oppose a Scottish approach to the Pope for the removal of his interdict and to concede a neutral status to ships trading between Scotland and other countries, whether at sea or driven to the shores of England by the stress of weather.

The latter clause was particularly relevant in view of the change of affairs in Flanders. The Count of Flanders had long been a friend of Scotland, and as recently as 1319 had snubbed Edward II when he asked him to break off relations with that country. By the summer of 1322 this friendship had become so marked that the English feared Flemish naval attacks on their coast.25 But in September 1322 the Count of Flanders died. His heir was a child and the regents of Flanders, won round by English diplomacy or gold, on 18 April 1323 expelled all Scots from their land.26 A valuable source of supply and convoy protection was suddenly removed and the merchant ships to and from Scotland exposed to greater harassment by the English fleet. As a result of the treaty such anxieties were abated.

Freed from the opposition of the English Crown, the opportunity had now been given for Scotland to seek return within the pale of Christendom. Although her Church had nobly supported Bruce in spite of papal wrath, there were yet tender consciences among all classes which would receive consolation from the relenting of the Holy See. It was decided to send Thomas Randolph on an unofficial mission to ascertain the temper of the Pope. In the closing months of 1323 he made his way to Avignon accompanied by Henry de Sully, Grand Butler of France.

Henry de Sully during his residence with Robert Bruce after the battle of Old Byland, evidently conceived a great liking for his host. He acted as his intermediary for the Bishopthorpe truce, and it would appear that it was by his good offices that Randolph was received in audience by the Pope, for Sully was present throughout.

The details of this interview on New Year’s Day 1324 arc given in a letter sent by the Pope to Edward II later in January. They reveal with what skill the veteran soldier manipulated the Pope to his purpose. He began by humbly asking his permission to go and fight in the Holy Land in fulfilment of a private vow. The Pope replied that he was unable to grant this to one whom he had excommunicated, and in any event the impact of a single warrior would have little effect on the heathen. How different it would be if Randolph could bring about a permanent peace between Scotland and England and so release their armies for this great enterprise. Randolph, in answer, said that Scottish ambassadors had already been appointed to appear before his Holiness to plead for reconciliation so that this might be brought about, and he asked that safe conducts might be issued for their journey to Avignon.

The Pope regretted that it would be unseemly for him to grant credentials to excommunicated persons but, having so salved his conscience, promised to make their travel possible by requesting the rulers through whose territories they would pass to give them protection.

Randolph then explained that it was the dearest wish of his uncle, the King of Scots, to join with the King of France in a crusade to the Holy Land and, even if the French King was prevented, to send a Scottish expedition headed by himself or his nephew. The Pope answered that he could not give his blessing to such an expedition while Randolph’s uncle was still unreconciled to Holy Church.

To this Randolph replied that no man was more aware of his obligations to Holy Church than his uncle, nor more anxious to prove his obedience if he would be shown how. Unfortunately, owing to clerical errors, he had been prevented from knowing the wishes of the Holy Father: but, said Randolph, offering as it were a helpful suggestion from a private individual, these difficulties could be overcome by the simple method of addressing a letter to him by the title of King27

Put in these terms it seemed clear to the Pope that if he could improve the prospects of a crusade by a mere technical alteration, it was his duty to consent.

However, a subsequent uneasiness caused him to write to Edward II in apologetic tones.

I remember to have told you [he wrote] that my bestowing the title of King on Robert Bruce would neither strengthen his claim nor impair yours. My earnest desires are for reconciliation and peace: and you will know that my Bull issued for attaining these salutary purposes will never be received in Scotland if I address it under any appellation but that of King. I, therefore, exhort you in your royal wisdom that you would be pleased patiently to suffer me to give him that title.28

Edward II replied angrily that to give his opponent the title of King could not be regarded as a matter of indifference in that ‘the Scottish nation would naturally conclude that the Pope intended to acknowledge the right where he had given the title’, and, in spite of his promise in the Bishopthorpe truce not to inhibit a rapprochement between the Scots and the Holy See, he sent a powerful mission to the papal curia with the chief purpose of widening the breach between the two parties. Claiming that the Scots had incurred the suspicion of heresy, he demanded, through his representatives, that the Pope should refuse to sanction the election of Scotsmen to episcopal office in their own country ‘because the Scottish prelates are they who cherish the nation in its rebellion and contumacy’.29

The Pope reasonably replied that this would deprive the flock altogether of their religious shepherds as no Englishman could receive admittance to Scotland.30 But though refusing this demand, he remained sufficiently intimidated by English pressure to take no further steps to lift his interdict. On the specious excuse that Berwick had been seized by the Scots in contempt of a papal truce, he claimed that absolution could not be granted unless they handed back the town. The Scots preferred to remain excommunicate.

Nevertheless the papal recognition of Bruce’s right to be addressed as King of Scots was a diplomatic triumph which the English could not gainsay. It came at an opportune moment: for two months later, on 5 March 1324, Queen Elizabeth gave birth to a boy who was christened David in honour of his great forebear David I, who had summoned the Bruces to Scotland.31

Edward II, as a calculated slight, celebrated the event by inviting Edward Balliol, the son of ‘Toom Tabard’, from his paternal estates in Normandy to the English court: there to disparage by his presence the legitimacy of the Bruce kingship.32

But throughout Scotland there was widespread rejoicing that the good King Robert, as he had now become known, had at last a son and heir. The Chancellor, Bernard Linton, composed a graceful tribute in Latin verse.

Few can have rejoiced more thankfully than the Queen herself. She had not had an easy life. Married in 1302 while still in her teens, she had spent the next four years on and off at the court of Edward I with a husband daily at risk for his secret plans of revolt, and a monarch whose savage temper was as unpredictable as a bull’s; then the escape to Scotland and the hard and hazardous days as a new-crowned Queen; the flight to the heather after Methven; the struggle through the ice and snow in the bitter winter of 1306 to St Duthac’s shrine; the capture, the eight weary years of house arrest, often not knowing whether her husband was alive or dead, the forced moves from the Yorkshire manor of Burstwick in 1308 to Bistelsham in Oxfordshire,33 from that to Windsor in 1312,34 from there to Shaftesbury 35 and then again to Barking Abbey in 1313,36 and finally to Rochester prison in 1314,37 allowed only the attendance of a few elderly ladies and often short of food and furniture. After that came the reunion with her husband who, after so many years of separation, must have seemed a stranger, and then the frustrating six years when all looked to her for an heir and she remained barren, and even her stepdaughter was snatched away by death. But now she was the mother of a prince and one born at a time when at last a rest from strife seemed possible.

 

It is true that negotiations held at York in November 1324 to translate the truce into a final peace ended in the usual stalemate, but there was no resumption of hostilities. She was at last granted the comfort and relaxation of a domestic life; for the King her husband, after years of nomadic existence, in 1325 put in hand the building of a manor house for his family. He chose for the site the village of Cardross on the north side of the Firth of Clyde, close to Dumbarton. It was in no way a fortified castle but a substantial dwelling with hall, King’s chamber, Queen’s chamber, chapel, kitchen and larder. The roofs were thatched and it had the luxury of glazed windows. There was a garden, a hunting park, an aviary for the royal falcons and a slipway for the King’s yacht. The land was bought from the Earl of Lennox and its situation is significant both of the king’s love of the sea and of the importance he attached throughout his reign to the security of the western approaches.38

By this time he had so arranged matters that the whole seaboard of the western Highlands was in friendly hands, from his son-in-law, Hugh Earl of Ross, in the north at Wester Ross, down through the lands of Thomas Randolph, Earl of Moray, on the Sound of Sleet, those of his sister-in-law by marriage, Christiana of the Isles, and her half-brother Ruairi Macruarie at Garmoran, and of Sir Neil Campbell, his brother-in-law, and Angus Macdonald in southern Argyll, to both of whom he had made grants from the forfeited lands of John of Lorne and the Macdougalls. From all these, as part of their feudal service, he could call for the supply of a varying number of twenty-six oared galleys to keep open communications to Northern Ireland and maintain control of the Hebridean seas.39

For himself he had built ‘a great ship’ and other vessels. The Clyde became the natural centre of his western navy. From his new home it would be under his personal supervision and for its protection, contrary to his usual policy of dismantling fortresses, he left intact the royal castle of Dumbarton near his manor, repaired and victualled the castle of Skipness in Kintyre and, most remarkably, in 1325 built a new royal castle at Tarbert. Across the mile-wide isthmus between its east and west lochs, he cut a track for the haulage of galleys, giving a quicker passage between the open sea and the sheltered waters of the Clyde estuary.40

To encourage commerce with Ireland, which had proved in the past an entrepôt between the continent and Scotland when the trade routes across the North Sea had suffered blockade or harassment from the English navy, he created two new royal burghs, one at Ayr and the other alongside the castle at Tarbert, and as a final gesture towards his strategy in the west, in 1328, when he knew his life was nearing its end, he called on Bernard Linton, his wise and brilliant chancellor, to leave his abbey at Arbroath to become the bishop of the Isles and watch over the area which his King had built up and nurtured with such care.41

The peaceful years from 1323 to 1327 gave Bruce the opportunity to deal with political and economic matters in other directions.

On the political side his approach was conservative, conforming, as far as possible, to the pattern which had been established by his predecessor, Alexander III. The problem of rewarding those who had supported him from the earliest years, without disturbing existing landowners and creating centres of disaffection, was happily resolved by having at his disposal lands forfeited by a small group of irreconcil- ables: the Earl of Atholl, John Balliol, John Comyn of Badenoch, John Comyn Earl of Buchan, John Macdougall and Dugald Macdowall. From these estates and the royal demesne he was able to make munificent grants to his two outstanding lieutenants, Thomas Randolph and James Douglas, and other grants, in varying degrees, to his companions in the dark days of 1306 and 1307: Sir Gilbert de la Haye, the Constable, Sir Robert Boyd, Sir Robert Keith the Marischal and Angus Macdonald of the Isles. Apart from these his largesse went to his close relatives: his son-in-law Walter Stewart, his brother-in-law Sir Neil Campbell, married to Mary Bruce, and Sir Alexander Fraser who married her after Sir Neil’s death, and to his sister Matilda’s husband, Hugh, Earl of Ross.

In short the transfers remained within the baronial class and, contrary to the usual outcome of civil war and chaos, no new men of humble origin emerged to join the ranks of nobility. The fabric of society retained its traditional texture and gave stability to his realm.42

On the economic side his difficulties were less easy to overcome. In Scotland it was held that the king must ‘live of his own’. His kingdom was, as it were, a vast private estate from which he had to obtain the means to pay for its administration, protection and upkeep. It followed that in times of war his revenues were doubly hit by the need to purchase mounts and munitions and the falling off in the proceeds of trade and agriculture as men were drawn into the forces. Bruce partly resolved the problem by his recurrent raids into England. These were as much for the subsistence of Scotland as to compel the enemy to sue for peace.

It is significant that the export of wool from Scotland in 1327 was the highest from that country throughout the fourteenth century.43 This was due partly to farmers along the borders and in the Lothians turning from arable to pastoral agriculture as standing crops were too vulnerable to hostile raids, but also because for ten years the Scots had turned the northern counties of England into a huge backyard from which to augment their stock of sheep, oxen and horses.

The consequent increase in the export of wool and hides brought much needed income to the King from the duties that had to be paid before the goods were shipped. Goods could only be shipped legally on the production of an export licence to which had been affixed a special seal (a coket) by the customs officer. Throughout his reign Bruce encouraged the merchants of Scotland by the creation or revival of royal, baronial and ecclesiastical burghs with their complex of guilds, but it was only to the royal burghs, among which the most important were Berwick, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dundee and Perth, that he granted the use of the coket with resultant prosperity to their inhabitants: on this prosperity he was soon to draw.44

It was natural that he should wish to recompense the Scottish Church for all the support he had received in his struggle for independence, but his generosity so far exceeded the expectations of reward that it would seem that he retained throughout his life remorse for his sacrilege in the Friary church at Dumfries and sought expiation by his veneration of the saints and the endowment of their shrines. St Fillan, St Thomas, St Cuthbert and St Andrew were the special objects of his benevolence. He was the first king to acclaim St Andrew as the patron saint of Scotland. On 5 July 1318, accompanied by a concourse of magnates, clergy and common folk, he attended the consecration of St Andrew’s Cathedral, begun in 1162 and completed during the bishopric of his old friend William Lamberton, and endowed the cathedral priory with an annual sum of one hundred marks.

An annual rent of forty marks was granted to the Franciscan friars of Dumfries and twenty to each of the other Franciscan houses in Scotland. Melrose Chapter was the recipient of an annual rent of £100 on 26 January 1326, and in March of that year of the very large sum of £2000 for the reconstruction of its abbey.45 Payments were made for masses to be said daily for his brother Nigel Bruce and his brother-in- law Sir Christopher Seton, nor did he forget to provide for a candle and lamp to burn perpetually on the altar of the Blessed St Malachy in the Abbey of Coupar-Angus. * 46

This beneficence played its part in creating a crisis in the royal finances. On 15 July 1326 the King summoned a parliament at Cambus Kenneth Abbey and reported to the assembled prelates, earls, barons and burghers that ‘the lands and rents which of old used to pertain to his Crown had been so diminished by divers gifts and transfers occasioned by the war that he did not have means of maintenance befitting his station.’ He asked that in recognition of the hardships that he and his family had borne in the fight for the freedom of them all they should make provision for an increase in his income. Admitting that his request was ‘reasonable’, they passed a resolution granting him for his lifetime a tenth of all rents and profits throughout the realm, while he in turn conceded that he would limit the requisition of goods and food to which he was entitled under an ancient royal prerogative.47

At the same parliament a new Act of Settlement was passed, by which the King’s son David, now two years old, was designated successor to his father in precedence to Robert Stewart, and all present swore fealty to the infant child.48

Robert Stewart’s father, Walter, had died three months earlier to the general grief and in particular to that of his father-in-law, the King. For he had trusted him with responsibility from an early age as a stripling at Bannockburn, as a governor of Berwick, as a cavalry leader at Old Byland, and had never found him wanting.49 His mourning coincided with that for the Queen’s second son John, who died in infancy: but as some compensation the royal family were rejoiced by the marriage of Bruce’s sister Christina, widow of the Earl of Mar and of Christopher Seton successively, to Andrew Moray, son of the patriot hero of Stirling Bridge, an inheritor of great estates and soon to become a guardian of the realm.50

NOTES - CHAPTER 16

1 Lanercost, 229, 230; Vita Edwardii, 108

2 Cal. Doc. Scots, iii, 746

3Lanercost, 230, 231

4 ibid., 231–4; Vita Edwardii, 124

5 Cal. Doc. Scots, iii, 754

6 ibid., iii, 752

7 Lanercost, 239

8Barbour, 318

9ibid., 318

10 Pluscarden, 190

11 Scalaronica, 69

12 Cal. Doc. Scots, iii, 790

13 ibid., iii, 791

14 Barbour, 320–25

15 Nicholson, S.H.R., xlii, 38–9

16 Lanercost, 240

17 ibid., 240

18 Cal. Doc. Scots, iii, 773

19 Stones, 309–15

20 Lanercost, 242

21 ibid., 243

22 ibid., 245

23 ibid., 244

24 A.P.S., i, 479–81

25 Cal. Doc. Scots, iii, 778

26 Nicholson, 106

27 Burton, 294–6

28 Foedera, ii, 541

29 ibid., ii, 541

30 ibid., ii, 542

31 Dunbar, 145

32 Cal. Doc. Scots, iii, 841

33 ibid., iii, 169

34 ibid., iii, 239

35 ibid., iii, 305

36 ibid., iii, 323

37 ibid., iii, 354

38 Barrow, 439–40

39 ibid., 406–7

40 Nicholson, 113

41 ibid., 113

42 Barrow, 396–402

43 Nicholson, 107

44 ibid., 107–8

45 ibid., 113–14

46 Barrow, 438

47 A.P.S., i, 475

48 Fordun, 343; Pluscarden, 190

49 Barbour, 337

50 Balfour Paul, ii, 435

* cf note X