17
Since the beginning of Edward II’s reign, England had been at peace with France, but in November 1323 a local clash at Saint Sandos on the border of Gascony occurred between the English and French. The ineptitude of Edward II’s brother, the Earl of Kent, whom he sent as ambassador to Charles IV, the newly crowned King of France, to smooth over matters, caused a frontier incident to expand into a threat of war. Unwilling and ill-prepared for such an event, Edward II was persuaded to choose his Queen, Isabella, as the most likely person to negotiate a settlement with her brother Charles IV. Landing in France in March 1325, she had managed by the middle of the summer to induce her brother to restore the provinces of Gascony and Ponthieu, which he had seized on condition that Edward II came to pay homage for them.1
Edward II was at that time entirely under the influence of his favourite, Hugh Despenser, whose administrative and financial reforms have excited the admiration of historians but whose greed had antagonized a formidable section of prelates and barons within the kingdom, and whose intimacy with her husband had earned the bitter hatred of the Queen. Conscious of his precarious position if Edward II left the country, Despenser accepted with alacrity the artful suggestion she made that the Prince of Wales should be sent to France to pay homage on behalf of his father. Once she had her son by her side, both she and her brother revealed their true intent. Charles IV refused to return Gascony and Ponthieu and Isabella repaired to the court of the Count of Hainault, who promised her men and money for an invasion of England in return for the offer of her son as husband for his daughter Phillipa.2
It was while matters stood thus that Bruce, who had been following events, judged that the moment was ripe for an offer of alliance to the French. A deputation, headed by Thomas Randolph, was sent to the court of France, with full powers of negotiation. They returned with the diplomatic triumph of a defensive alliance between Scotland and France. By the treaty of Corbeil signed in April 1326, both countries bound themselves to come to the aid of the other if either was attacked by England. Scotland was no longer isolated but linked to the most powerful and opulent nation in Europe.3
Through the succeeding months Queen Isabella’s invasion of England was daily expected. Ships were hastily ordered by Edward II to Portsmouth, but mutiny broke out and they never left harbour. On 24 September 1326, unopposed by an English fleet, Isabella and her lover, Sir Roger Mortimer, landed at the port of Harwich and, accompanied by the Earls of Norfolk and Leicester, advanced on London. Edward II and Hugh Despenser fled to the west as their followers melted away and took ship for Ireland, but contrary winds drove them back to Cardiff. Captured in Glamorgan on 16 November, Hugh Despenser was executed and Edward II imprisoned in Kenilworth Castle.4Bullied throughout December and January, he finally succumbed to the threat that if he did not abdicate the people of England would repudiate not only him but his son also. On 1 February 1327 the Prince of Wales was crowned Edward III.5
Donald, Earl of Mar, nephew of the Scottish King, who had been brought up with Edward II and remained his close companion, made posthaste to Scotland on the approach of Isabella’s army to enlist his uncle’s aid on behalf of his friend. Bruce, who had known him as a boy when he was his guardian, received him with great generosity, restored to him his earldom and gave him encouragement in his plots to raise a Welsh force for the release of the captive King.6 As a result of these efforts, Edward II escaped from Berkeley Castle, to which he had been removed from Kenilworth, but was captured and once more immured.
The discovery of another conspiracy to free him and the near success of his previous liberation determined his wife and her lover to end his life. Systematically he was ill-treated and starved in the hope that this would bring about his decease, but when his robust constitution failed to succumb to this treatment, a marrow bone was thrust up his rectum and through it a red hot poker to cauterize his entrails so that his body could be displayed to the public gaze without sign of injury, the victim of natural death.7 On 21 September 1327 Edward III was informed that his father was dead.
* * *
Throughout 1326 Bruce had been vexed by the attacks of English ships on his trading vessels to the Low Countries and Hanseatic towns in contravention of the Bishopthorpe truce. In some cases Scottish merchants and their womenfolk had been murdered at sea and their cargo seized, in others Scottish seamen putting into English harbours for shelter from pirates had been arrested and clapped into prison. His complaints had been unheeded.8
The abdication of Edward II automatically released him from his truce, and he made the point sharply by attacking the castle of Norham on the day that Edward III was crowned. The attack was beaten off but the English Council of Regency hastily passed an act prolonging the truce on their side of the border, 9 and on 6 March 1327 made a unilateral declaration that it was still in force.10 Commissioners were appointed to renew negotiations for peace, but as they failed to address their communications to the King of Scots it must be assumed that they were playing for time, for even before the talks broke down Isabella and Mortimer had begun the mobilization of an army.
Bruce’s response showed all his accustomed skill. Taking advantage of the disorders in Ulster stemming from the death of his father-in-law the Red Earl, he landed in Antrim soon after Easter 1327 and by July of that year had forced Sir Henry Mandeville, the Ulster Seneschal, to sign a humiliating truce to last one year from 1 August 1327.11 a While he was engaged in rendering the English in Ireland ineffective, three flying columns under Douglas, Randolph and Donald, Earl of Mar, crossed the English border through the Kielder Gap on 15 June and fanned south to Weardale, wasting the country as they went.12
Queen Isabella and Sir Roger Mortimer as regents, with Edward III the young King of England, had assembled an army of vast proportions at York, including a crack contingent of 2500 heavy-armed Flemish cavalry under John of Hainault hired by the English treasury for the sum of £14, ooo and a spectacular new weapon, the gunpowder cannon.13 After a splendid feast arranged by Queen Isabella for the Hainaulters and other foreign knights from as far away as Bohemia, which infuriated the xenophobe English and led to a riot,14 the huge army with its long column of baggage wagons left York on 10 July and moved slowly to Durham. There on 18 July they had the first evidence of their enemy from the distant sight of smoke rising from farms and homesteads burnt by the Scottish raiders.
For two days they trundled across boggy moorland in pursuit but never came in view of their quarry, for they were dealing with men skilled in mobile warfare, as has been vividly described by Le Bel:
These Scots arc exceedingly hardy through their constant wearing of arms and experience in combat. When they enter England they will in a single day and night cover twenty-four miles; for they ride on sturdy horses and bring no wagons with them. They carry no provisions of bread and wine: for their abstemiousness is such that they will live for a long time on stewed meat and drink river water. They need neither pots nor pans for wherever they invade they find plenty of cattle and use the hides of these in which to boil the flesh. Each man carries under the flap of his saddle an iron plate and behind the saddle a little bag of oatmeal. When they have eaten the stewed meat they place the plate on the fire and when the plate is hot they spread on it a little paste made of oatmeal and water and make a thin cake in the manner of a biscuit which they eat to comfort their stomachs. So it is no wonder that they can travel farther in a day than other soldiers.15
It became apparent to the English leaders that moving in heavy marching order with all their camp gear they would never come up with their opponents. On the mistaken intelligence that the Scots were heading for the Tyne to cross the ford at Haydon Bridge by which they had passed southwards, orders were given for the baggage train to be left behind and for the rest of the army, unhampered by provision wagons but with each man carrying a loaf of bread slung at his back, to make a forced march to the northern bank of the river to cut off the retreat of the enemy.
Setting out at daybreak on 20 July, they reached their objective at dusk. All night they stood to arms, with the knights resting on the ground beside their horses with the reins in their hands ready to mount at a moment’s warning. But the Scots did not come and the rain began to fall. it fell and fell without a break for eight days and nights while the English waited for the Scots. The river waters rose and their encampment became a sea of mud. Their scant provisions were soon exhausted and little could be obtained from the nearest towns of Carlisle and Newcastle and even less from the ravaged countryside. There was no shelter: few fires could be kindled from the green and sodden wood and the very leather of their saddlery rotted from the continuous downpour.
As their discomforts increased the murmurs of mutiny grew louder so that in desperation the word was given to recross the river and make for their base camp. But before they left a proclamation was made throughout the army offering, in the King’s name, a knighthood and a landed estate to any man who could locate the Scots.16
Sixteen squires set off in different directions. Four days later, when the army had reached Blanchland, one of these, named Thomas Rokeby, came galloping into the camp. He had been taken prisoner by enemy scouts and brought before Douglas. When Douglas heard of his mission he sent him back to gain his reward and to tell the King of England that for more than a week they had been waiting to give him battle.17 The English army was thereupon drawn up in formation and having heard Mass, was guided by Rokeby to where the Scots awaited them. About midday on 31 July they came in sight of their enemy posted on a rocky ridge south of the River Wear which, after the rains, was rushing in spate at the foot of their position. Attack was impossible. The English therefore sent heralds to ask the Scots either to come over to their side of the river or allow them to cross unhindered to the Scottish side so that they could have a stand-up fight. To which the Scots scornfully replied, ‘We are here in your kingdom and have burnt and wasted your country. If you do not like it then come and dislodge us for we shall remain here as long as we please.’18
Noting that their army lay between the Scots and their native country, the English leaders conceived the idea that, although half-starved themselves, they could blockade the Scots into surrender by remaining static in front and sending probing pincers on either flank. Some success attended both opponents. Douglas lured one of the flanking attacks into an ambush and destroyed some and captured others, but in turn the English circumvented Randolph’s position and surprised and killed a large body of his men who were resting in a wood behind.
Aware from prisoners of the English plan, the Scots presented a façade of roistering festivity on their rocky eminence with fires blazing and ‘such blasting and noise with their horns’, as Froissart relates, ‘as if all the devils of Hell had come there.’19 Under cover of this commotion they quietly removed themselves to a stronger position in a wood called Stanhope Park, two miles off, with a marsh protecting their rear and the turbulent river still in front.20
It almost seemed as if Douglas was playing games with his enemy. The English army shifted its ground and the blockade recommenced, but no sooner had they erected their bivouacs than Douglas with two hundred picked followers fetched a wide circle over the River Wear during the night and rode openly up to the far side of the English camp. A sentry challenged him but, roundly dressing down the man for slackness, he was let pass and swept with his two hundred through the lines of tents, slashing their straining ropes left and right until he reached the pavilion of the young King Edward. Only the suicidal gallantry of the royal household enabled the King to escape and for troops to gather against the marauding Scots.
But Douglas blew his horn for retreat to the river and charged through the thickening mass of his enemies into the black night. By the arranged path to the river’s edge he waited to check his men as they passed. After a little, as no more came by, he was about to follow when an enemy straggler, roused from his sleep, came out of the darkness and hit him a violent blow with his club. Though tottering and stunned, he warded off his foe until his senses cleared and then dispatched him. Meanwhile his followers at the water’s edge were about to turn back to look for him when they heard his horn and rode to welcome him tumultuously. On his return to the main army, Randolph asked him how he had fared. ‘We have drawn blood,’ he replied laconically.21
Randolph sought always to emulate his companion-in-arms and was eager to attack the English with a larger force, but Douglas dissuaded him by telling him the fable of the fisherman and the fox.* Instead they contrived once again to dupe the English. They remained quiet for several days and then, by much movement and marshalling of troops in the late afternoon, they gave the impression that they were preparing for a night attack. The English stood to arms but the Scots, leaving their camp fires burning brightly and scattered trumpeters sounding their horns, thinned away onto the apparently impassable marsh behind them. They had laid down a series of hurdles over the boggy patches and as they moved forward lifted them up as they went so that none could follow. When morning came and the English saw before them only a bare hillside, the Scots were many miles distant on their way to their native soil.22
The news was brought to the royal tent and when Edward III, who was only sixteen, realized that after all the hardships and misery of his first campaign the Scots had escaped without his ever having been able to show his prowess by a feat of arms, he burst into tears of vexation.23
His army was now in a pitiable condition and towards the end had only been buoyed up by the hope of a decisive battle. The chivalry of Flanders, which had cost him so dear, reduced by the privation of a form of war which they had never yet experienced, limped back on foot beside their English hosts to the city of York, bereft of their famous horses which were either dead or unserviceable. Once arrived there, the whole army was disbanded.
This was the signal for the completion of Bruce’s strategy. He had neutralized Ireland, he had exhausted the English and allied troops by the cat-and-mouse tactics of his raiders: now, on his return to Scotland to welcome his fellow countrymen back, he marshalled a fresh army and early in September crossed into Northumberland at its head. One part of the force surrounded Norham Castle and the ingenious John Crab began to erect his siege engines for its destruction;24 another invested Alnwick and passed the time until it should be starved into submission by conducting formal tournaments outside its walls. Such had become the consciousness of complete superiority among the Scots. The King himself made a leisurely progress through the countryside, hawking and hunting as he went, receiving tribute and letting it be known everywhere that he proposed to annex the northern counties and parcel them out among his followers.25
His bluff succeeded. Edward III and his regents were impotent. Their previous campaign had cost them £70,000, and when they summoned a parliament at Lincoln at the end of September to ask for funds to finance a further war, they met with a blank refusal.26 Faced with the possibility of losing part of the kingdom, they had no alternative but to sue for peace. Early in October two English envoys empowered to open talks for a lasting peace waited on King Robert at Norham, where thirty-five years before Edward I had thrown off his mask and claimed the overlordship of Scotland.
On 18 October the Scottish King replied from Berwick with a letter dictating his terms. He was to have the kingdom of Scotland ‘free, quit and entire’ for himself and his heirs for ever without any kind of homage. His son was to marry Edward III’s sister. No one in Scotland or England should hold lands in the other country. A pact of mutual support was to be concluded in so far as it did not infringe the Franco-Scottish treaty. The Scottish King would pay twenty thousand pounds within three years of peace being signed. The English King would use his good offices to persuade the Pope to revoke his interdict. If the King of England was prepared to accept these six demands, Scottish envoys would meet his representatives at Newcastle-on-Tyne to hammer out the details of a final peace.27
Still unable to accept the degree of England’s humiliation, Edward III assumed the lofty language of a conqueror. He could only agree, he wrote from Nottingham on 30 October, to the second and fifth of the terms received and must reserve judgement on the rest. But when the Scots made clear that without a watertight agreement on the first there would be no negotiations, the weakness of his position compelled him to climb down. After appointing a commission on 23 November headed by the Archbishop of York and issuing safe conducts to the Scottish envoys on 25 January 1328, he summoned his Parliament to York in February. There on 1 March, in the presence of the Scottish representatives, the following letters patent were endorsed ‘by the King himself and Council in Parliament’ and placed in their hands.
To all Christ’s faithful people who shall see these letters, Edward, by the grace of God, King of England, Lord of Ireland, Duke of Acquitaine, greeting and peace everlasting in the Lord. Whereas, we and some of our predecessors, Kings of England, have endeavoured to establish rights of rule or dominion or superiority over the realm of Scotland, whence dire conflicts of wars waged have afflicted for a long time the Kingdoms of England and Scotland: we, having regard to the slaughter, disasters, crimes, destruction of churches and evils innumerable which, in the course of such wars, have repeatedly befallen the subjects of both realms, and to the wealth with which each realm, if united by the assurance of perpetual peace, might abound to their mutual advantage, thereby rendering them more secure against the hurtful efforts of those conspiring to rebel or to attack, whether from within or without: We will and grant by these presents, for us, our heirs and successors whatsoever, with the common advice, assent and consent of the prelates, princes, earls, barons and the commons of our realm in our Parliament, that the Kingdom of Scotland, within its own proper marches as they were held and maintained in the time of King Alexander of Scotland, last deceased, of good memory, shall belong to our dearest ally and friend, the magnificent prince, Lord Robert, by God’s grace illustrious King of Scotland, and to his heirs and successors, separate in all things from the Kingdom of England, whole, free and undisturbed in perpetuity, without any kind of subjection, service, claim or demand. And by these presents we denounce and demit to the King of Scotland, his heirs and successors, whatsoever right we or our predecessors have put forward in any way in bygone times to the aforesaid Kingdom of Scotland. And, for ourselves and our heirs and successors, we cancel wholly and utterly all obligations, conventions and compacts undertaken in whatsoever manner with our predecessors, at whatsoever times, by whatsoever Kings or inhabitants, clergy or laity, of the same Kingdom of Scotland, concerning the subjection of the realm of Scotland and its inhabitants. And wheresoever any letters, charters, deeds or instruments may be discovered bearing upon obligations, conventions and compacts of this nature, we will that they be deemed cancelled, invalid, of no effect and void, and of no value or moment. And for the full, peaceful and faithful observance of the foregoing, all and singular, for all time we have given full power and special command by our other letters patent to our well-beloved and faithful Henry de Percy our kinsman, and William de la Zouche of Ashby and to either of them make oath upon our soul. In testimony whereof we have caused these letters patent to be executed.28
At long last and in full measure the King of Scots and his people had received what for thirty years of warfare they had striven to obtain. The language suggests the hand of Bernard Linton and it is possible that it was drafted in Scotland and then presented to the English Parliament for acceptance as the necessary preliminary to treaty discussions.
These now moved swiftly to a conclusion. English commissioners, consisting of the Bishops of Lincoln and Norwich, Sir Geoffrey Le Scrope (the English Chief Justice), Henry Percy and William de la Zouche, travelled north to Edinburgh and reached the Scottish capital on 10 March with full powers to conclude and proclaim a final peace.29 Within a week the terms of the treaty had been agreed and on 17 March there took place a ceremony which must rank as momentous in the annals of Scottish history.
‘In a chamber within the precincts of Holyrood where the Lord King [of Scotland] was lying’ stricken by a benumbing illness after his campaigning the previous summer, there gathered about him a great company of ‘bishops, abbots, earls, barons, freeholders and sufficient persons delegated by the burghs’ to receive the English representatives and witness the sealing of the documents.30 Close beside him were his two commanders, James Douglas and Thomas Randolph, whom long ago when they were young men he had chosen as his lieutenants and whose feats of arms since then had made the name of Scotland renowned among the chivalry of Christendom. William Lamberton, the aged Bishop of St Andrews, was there-to die later that year-and must have murmured a Nunc Dimittis as he watched the culmination of his thirty years of unending toil for the nationhood of his country. The chief officers of the household were present: faithful Gilbert de la Haye the Constable, Robert Keith the Marischal, and many others who had fought beside Bruce from his earliest days. Only the Queen was not there to share his triumph. She had died on 26 October 1327 but had lived just long enough to know the certainty of his success.31
And success it was. All six articles of the terms he had dictated in October 1327 were written into the treaty in entirety, with the exception of the third which related to landholding in the two countries. The fourth article on the part of mutual support was enlarged by a clause that the Scots would not help the Irish if they rebelled against the English, nor the English the Hebrideans and the Manxmen if they rose against the Scots. In the second article on the marriage between Joan, Edward III’s sister, and David, son of Bruce, the Scottish King undertook to settle £2000 a year on his daughter-in-law. She was to be allowed to return to England if she became a widow and so wished: but if she was pregant she would have first to obtain the permission of the Scots King and his barons.32
So much store did the English set by the royal marriage as a guarantee of the treaty that they asked for an indemnity of £100,000 from the Scots if it did not take place by Michaelmas 1338. In actuality both sides were anxious to hasten the event, and as soon as the English Parliament had met at Northampton and ratified the treaty signed at Edinburgh and Edward III had affixed his seal on 4 May, arrangements were put in hand for the wedding. Early in July Isabella, the Queen Dowager, and her daughter set out for Scotland and on 12 July Joan, aged six, and David, aged four, in the presence of a great gathering of prelates and noblemen from both countries, were married in the church at Berwick. The King of England could not bring himself to attend. The King of Scotland absented himself on the plea that he had not recovered from his illness.
It would appear, however, that this was a diplomatic excuse to counter the discourtesy of the English King, for within a few weeks Bruce had sailed for Ulster. William de Burgh, grandson and heir of the Red Earl of Ulster, Bruce’s father-in-law, was a guest at the wedding. His patrimony and the control of Carrickfergus were in dispute. The truce between Bruce and Sir Henry de Mandeville was about to end. Throughout his life Bruce had taken an intense interest in maintaining a friendly presence in Northern Ireland. Now, on the understanding, presumably, that his great-nephew would ensure the continuance of amicable relations with Scotland, he escorted him with sufficient force to make certain the occupation of his Ulster heritage. 33
* * *
It was Bruce’s last military expedition. From now on he retired to his manor at Cardross and diverted himself by sailing on the Clyde or improving his garden and his orchards. His infirmity was increasing. Later medieval writers refer to it as leprosy, but this is highly unlikely for throughout the Middle Ages the segregation of lepers was so strict that even kings were cut off from their fellow men.
It is pleasantly related by Barbour that after Douglas and Randolph had escorted Queen Isabella and her cortege to the border on their way south from the wedding festivities, Bruce had sent for his two old companions to bring to his house the little bride and bridegroom and had there entertained them all.34 For Bruce with his humane nature to risk infecting with a fatal disease two children, one of whom was his heir, is beyond belief. His symptoms much rather suggest recurrent increasingly serious attacks of scurvy.
He spent the Christmas of 1328 at Cardross and in February 1329, feeling a little better, he set out on a pilgrimage to the shrine of St Ninian near the southern coast of Wigtownshire. In October 1328 the Pope had at last removed his interdict from Scotland and excommunication from its King. But Bruce, as death approached, felt a stronger urge to make his peace with God and sought the intercession of the saint. St Ninian was the first missionary to bring Christianity to Scotland in the fifth century, and his name was linked in Bruce’s memory with the first victorious clash at Bannockburn hard by St Ninian’s kirk. The King was carried slowly in a litter along the coastal road of Ayrshire and had reached a little short of Castle Kennedy by Stranraer when he had a relapse. After resting there a month, he recovered sufficiently to continue south, reaching St Ninian’s shrine at Whithorn on 1 April. Here he spent four or five days fasting and praying to the saint. From there by slow stages he travelled northwards through Galloway and Carrick. His route may have taken him by Glen Trool, the scene of his first victory, and to Turnberry Castle, where he had set up a household for his little son whom he had created Earl of Carrick. By the end of April he was back at Cardross.35
He now felt his weakness increase daily and sent letters to all the leading men in his kingdom to come to his bedside. When they were there assembled, he pledged them all to give their strength and loyalty to his son and obey him when he came of age to be their King.
‘Sirs,’ he then said to them, ‘my day is far gone and there remains but one thing, to meet Death without fear, as every man must do. I thank God he has given me the space to repent in this life, for through me and my wars there has been a great spilling of blood and many an innocent man has been slain. Therefore I take this sickness and this pain as a penance for my sins.’36
He went on to say that he had made a vow to God that if he should live to see the end of his wars and be able to leave the realm in peace and security, he would go in person to fight against the heathen. But when that time had come his body had been stricken by mortal sickness and since it could not go forward he asked them to choose one among their number to carry his heart against the enemies of Christ.
At this they could not refrain from tears, but he chided them that it was better they set about what he had asked. So they retired and came back saying that they had chosen Sir James Douglas. To which the King replied that, ever since he had thought of this enterprise, he had longed that Sir James would undertake it, and since they were all agreed he was the more pleased if Sir James would consent.37
Then James Douglas knelt beside the King, and when he could speak for weeping he thanked him for all the benefits he had received since he first came into his service, but above all that he had been given the honour of taking into his keeping his master’s heart, which all the world knew was so full of nobleness and valour. Then the King thanked him tenderly and ‘there was none in that company but wept for pity’.38
A few days later on 7 June 1329, a little short of his fifty-fifth birthday, Robert Bruce, King of Scots, died. When he had been embalmed his heart was taken out* and given to Sir James Douglas, and his body carried in a funeral procession of great splendour to Dunfermline Abbey and buried in the choir near to his Queen Elizabeth and among the former kings and queens of Scotland. ‘And when his people knew that King Robert was dead, the sound of sorrow went from place to place.’39
1 Lanercost, 248, 249
2 ibid., 250, 251
3 Dickinson, 135–6
4 Walsingham, 184, 185
5 Lanercost, 256
6 ibid., 257
7 Walsingham, 189
8 Barbour, 332
9 Cal. Doc. Scots, iii, 907
10 ibid., iii, 914
11 ibid., iii, 922
12 Barbour, 334
13 ibid., 339
14 Le Bel, 34–40
15 ibid., 47
16 ibid., 52–8
17 Cal. Doc. Scots, iii, 936
18 Le Bel, 59–63
19 Froissart, 65
20 Barbour, 341
21 ibid., 343, 344
22 ibid., 345–8
23 Lanercost, 258
24 Nicholson, 119
25 Barbour, 350
26 Nicholson, 119
27 Stones, 317–21
28 ibid., 323–5; Lanercost, 261, 262
29 ibid., S.H.R., xxix, 48
30 ibid., S.H.R., xxviii, 125
31 Dunbar, 139
32 Stones, 329–41
33 Nicholson, S.H.R., xlii, 34–8
34 Barbour, 353
35 Barrow, 438, 439
36 Barbour, 355
37 ibid., 356
38 ibid., 357
39 ibid., 357, 358