CHAPTER SEVEN
‘EDWARD THE FAIR’? THE SETTLING OF SCOTLAND
ALTHOUGH the final arrangements for the future government of Scotland were not worked out until September 1305, some form of an administrative structure was required in the meantime. Indeed, some officials – often Scots who had just changed sides – claimed to have successfully governed on Edward’s behalf north of the Forth even before the king’s arrival there.
According to an account made with him in 1305, one such recruit, Sir Alexander Abernethy, ‘held the sheriffdoms of Kincardine, Forfar and Perth, with their clerks and constabularies and all others the king’s servants there from [February 1303] till now . . .’ Abernethy had only recently submitted to Edward since he had certainly been with the Scottish force in southern Scotland in 1301. He was rewarded with the wardenship of the land from the Forth to the Scottish mountains (the Grampians) with a force of sixty men-at-arms on 29 September 1303.1 Another account gives the names of five sheriffs and two keepers of royal castles north of the Tay – all Scots – in regnal year 32 (20 November 1303–19 November 1304).2
Overall control of the north-east was given to John, earl of Atholl, previously the Scottish sheriff of Aberdeen, and now ‘warden and Justiciar of Scotland from the Forth to Orkney’ from 29 March 1304. His deputy was the earl of Strathearn.3 William, earl of Ross, released from English prison only in September 1303, was made warden beyond the Spey soon thereafter, since he accounted for the issues of Ross and the bishoprics of Caithness and Sutherland in 1304. He was given the rather onerous task of trying to bring the western isles under effective crown control, something his family had been attempting to do for nearly a century.4
Similar administrative overhauls were taking place in the south even before the Scottish government had submitted. Between 6 and 14 September 1303, the earl of Carrick and Sir John Botetourt went on a tour of the sheriffdoms of Linlithgow, Lanark and Peebles ‘and elsewhere south of the Forth to ordain and appoint sheriffs and other officials on the part of the king’. Carrick, currently sheriff of Ayr and soon also of Lanark, obviously occupied a prominent position in the English administrative hierarchy. Although there does not seem to have been any question of his becoming Edward’s chief representative in the south-west, the earl worked closely with Botetourt and there is no indication of any dissatisfaction with the arrangement.5 Sir John in fact seems to have relinquished his office on 30 April 1304. Sir John Segrave, previously the royal lieutenant in the south-east, then became lieutenant south of the Forth (ie. of all southern Scotland) and justiciar of Lothian.6
Edward also felt confident enough to despatch Sir James Dalilegh, escheator south of the Forth, with two esquires and a clerk, ‘to value and assess the king’s lands and to collect and receive farms and escheats of the same’. This took almost six months between November 1303 and May 1304. He was then joined by Sir John Weston in order to make ‘an extent of all the king’s lands in Scotland, both beyond the Scottish Sea [the Forth] towards Orkney and on this side in Galloway and elsewhere’ until Christmas Day 1304. The two were provided with an escort of sixteen men-at-arms ‘for more safely forwarding the king’s business; inasmuch as during the war and the impending siege of Stirling castle, while the men of the parts beyond the Mounth and in Galloway and Carrick had not yet fully come to the king’s peace, without such safe escort they could in no way have done the work’.
Additional numbers of men-at-arms joined their company at various stages. Sir Reginald Cheyne provided a particularly large group, both mounted and unmounted, to escort them from Elgin to Inverness ‘and staying with them there on account of the imminent peril of the enemies’. While in Elgin in June 1304, payment was made to twenty footsoldiers ‘watching nightly, through fear of some enemies who had not yet come to the king’s peace’. This was surely not very satisfactory to Scotland’s restored conqueror7.
As escheator south of the Forth, Dalilegh’s accounts over this period make very interesting reading. The sheriffdoms of Lanark, Peebles, Ayr and Dumfries brought in the very gratifying total of £668 4s. 2¾d. for the first year (1302–3); this was despite the fact that in Lanarkshire the barony of Cambusnethan and the farms of the burgh of Glasgow had apparently been laid waste by the ravenous Irish, the lands of Nemphlar and Cartland produced nothing because they were still in the hands of the Scots, and the barony of Rutherglen was granted a £10 rebate, ‘on account of the inability of the tenants’. The total value of royal lands in these four sheriffdoms should have amounted to £1037 16s. 4d.8
The total for the next year (1303–4), excluding Dumfries, was less than one third of the previous year’s total at £206 3s. This surprising decrease was presumably caused by the fact that in the previous year the king was able to draw the revenues of estates forfeited by their rebellious owners. In 1303–4, when most Scots had submitted, the escheator could only claim those issues which normally pertained to the king. This last figure therefore suggests that there had been a serious decline in revenue as a result of the war: remembering that Dumfries is missed out in the second account, these lands were now only worth between a quarter and a fifth of their pre-war value, a figure which is corroborated elsewhere.9
Segrave, Atholl and Ross, together with William Bevercotes, who became chancellor by December 1304, Sir John Sandale, appointed chamberlain by March 1305, and Dalilegh as escheator, ruled Scotland in Edward’s name in the period leading up to the finalisation of Scotland’s new constitution in September 1305.10 The re-establishment of a viable administration was vital to the success of the reconquest and there is little doubt that, despite references to continuing unrest, most of the country was reintegrated under an effective national system by the end of 1304. By August of that year, for example, writs to various Scottish sheriffs were once more sent out ‘sub magno sigilo regis quo utitur in Scocia [under the king’s great seal used in Scotland]’.11 It is undoubtedly no coincidence that the seal should have reappeared at the same time as a Scottish chancery and exchequer was re-established at Berwick.
Repairs to most of the castles which had housed English garrisons over the previous years of war were now able to take place. The king also decided to build a castle at Tullibothwell (some three miles north-east of Stirling, near modern-day Menstrie12) but, ‘not having a fit site’, had to order the earl of Atholl, as warden north of the Forth, and the chamberlain, Sir John Sandale, ‘to buy or provide one by exchange in a good place beyond the Forth’. Another castle was to be built near Polmaise, south of Stirling. Sir John Segrave, the warden south of the Forth, was to purchase or exchange the land there. The importance of Stirling castle, controlling the river crossing and, therefore, both the north-south and east-west routes, was clearly uppermost in Edward’s mind; a network of fortifications would thus provide sufficient protection for this vital strategic spot.13
Even by the summer of 1303, when the Scots still considered the military option to be viable, there is increasing evidence that the English administration was tightening its grip throughout southern Scotland. The holding of inquests into landholding is one such indication. The first of these took place at Lanark in January 1303, only a week after the death of Sir John Baird, whose lands were the subject of the jury’s deliberations. The issue was certainly still complicated by the fact that Baird’s feudal superior, Sir Nicholas Bigger, was presumably not at Edward’s peace since Sir John’s barony of Strathaven was currently in the hands of Sir John Segrave, Edward’s lieutenant. However, the fact that Alexander Baird, the heir, could instigate proceedings to gain entry to his inheritance so quickly must have been extremely heartening not only to Edward’s officials, but also to those whose lives were regulated by the system.14
This is not meant to imply that the Scots had been unable to administer these areas successfully in the past – we really have very little idea whether they could or not; however, the fact that evidence for such inquests only appears from 1303 onwards suggests that Edward’s officials had certainly not been able to.15
Further inquests followed in Fife in March 1303, in the presence of Sir John Cambo, lieutenant of the sheriff, Sir Richard Siward; in Lanark again in December, before Magnus of Strathearn and Nicholas Bannatyne, lieutenants of the earl of Carrick, the sheriff; at Roxburgh and Peebles in January 1304; at Dumfries at some point in regnal year 32 (20 November 1303–19 November 1304); and at Stirling in February 1304, while the castle was still occupied by a Scottish garrison.16 This last inquest produced the valuable information that the lands of Kilsyth and Callander had decreased in value from £40 to £8 6s. 8d., and from £60 to £12 respectively. They were thus now worth only one-fifth of their peacetime value, supporting the figures that Dalilegh was accounting for around the same time in southern Scotland generally.
Although most of these areas had been under English control for a number of years, the reference to Fife is particularly interesting. The inquest was held at St. Andrews, the episcopal seat of William Lamberton, who had retained control of much of his bishopric and presumably the cathedral and castle at its centre. Lamberton was now in Paris and it is quite possible that this inquest marks the end of his effective control in Fife.
The competing jurisdictions which had split Scotland asunder over the past seven or eight years certainly posed some knotty problems for the inquest juries to solve. In February 1304, for example, it was necessary to establish the precise land holding relationship between Sir John Soules ‘the fugitive’ – currently still in France – and Sir Ingram de Guines, who had served Edward as a royal officer in Eskdale.17
De Guines had leased Durisdeer castle and barony in Nithsdale to Soules in 1295, just before the outbreak of war, for a period of twelve years; Sir John subsequently transferred this lease to Sir William Conigesburgh of Lanarkshire. However, and despite the fact that the two main protagonists were now technically enemies, de Guines subsequently re-leased Durisdeer to Soules for a further twelve years in order to pay off a debt to a Dumfries burgess. Philipstoun, near Linlithgow, ultimately also owned by de Guines, was leased by Conigesburgh to Soules for five years from 21 May 1301.18
These transactions certainly appear very dubious and doubtless Edward himself would not have approved of them. However, they may indicate that those who had long occupied the same social circles tended to view the war pragmatically; it would take more than a few years of conflict to persuade the nobility in particular that their loyalties should be exclusive. English merchants were another group who felt the same way about the war.19
These inquests also make it clear that Scottish juries fluctuated in numbers rather than comprising the ‘twelve good men and true’ beloved of the English system. Edward was also happy to allow the probi homines (good men) of each sheriffdom, however recently they had submitted, to fulfill their traditional function. This had some ironic repercussions. In September 1304, the earl of Atholl presided over an investigation into one particular judicial decision made by the former Scottish government itself. Atholl and a number of the jurors, such as Sir Gilbert Hay and Sir David Wemyss, were ideally qualified to look into this case because they had themselves been part of the Scottish administration now under investigation.20
The biggest headache facing Edward during the process of resettlement was the restitution of lands to former ‘rebels’ whose estates had been granted out to others in the meantime. The king seems to have operated two different policies towards the lands at his disposal through the rebellion of their owners. Those in England were certainly granted out, but extremely rarely; the issues of such lands, in contrast to those in Scotland, were easily forthcoming and Edward was presumably keen to use them himself.21
Grants of the Scottish lands of these ‘rebels’ had been made almost immediately upon the resumption of war.22 However, in many cases the award was effectively a means of encouraging commitment to the conquest of Scotland among Edward’s supporters; any material benefit would only accrue if the recipient actually managed to recover his gift from the original owner. Sadly this often occurred only in the last year or so of the war, which meant that the new owner had to watch his lands being handed back at the very point when he had just begun to recover some of his outlay.23
However, before we feel too sorry for Edward’s loyal servants, there is no doubt that many were quite adept at profiting from the confused situation in Scotland, often at the expense of less experienced, or less powerful, colleagues. John Autry, a valet of the earl of Lincoln, discovered that he could not gain access to his gift of the manor of Duddingston because ‘Archibald Livingston [the sheriff of Linlithgow] falsely persuaded the king that the manor was in [Edward’s] hands, and procured a writ to the sheriff of Edinburgh to give him sasine and got it unfairly. When John came to the siege of Stirling with the earl . . . Archibald kept him out of the manor’. It is to be doubted whether Autry would have been satisfied with the king’s injunction to his lieutenant to ‘hear the parties and do justice to both’, especially since Thomas de Bois, whose lands he had originally been given, would now be getting them back,24 as a result of the submission agreement.
Sir Nicholas Graham, who claimed in 1304 to have ‘been long at the king’s peace’, found himself similarly dispossessed of his lands in Northumberland, seized by earl Patrick of Dunbar at the beginning of the war. Graham had spent the time since his submission suing ‘the earl and the sheriff of Roxburgh for Halsington and other lands deforced by the earl, without success’. Most revealingly, he begged the king to give orders that Dunbar’s influence would not prevent him from gaining redress.25
Those best placed to play the system were Scots at Edward’s peace, often to the disadvantage of those innocents who were not used to Scottish legal procedures. John of Bristol, a royal serjeant, fought a long and losing battle against the resourceful William Penpont. Penpont claimed to be the heir of Alan of Dumfries, whose lands Bristol had been granted. However, he was initially caught out when he first made his claim because Alan was a bastard and thus could not pass on his property. Undeterred, he came back again claiming to be cousin and heir of William Hauwyse, who had held the lands over thirty years previously. Bristol petitioned the king, claiming that Penpont was confusing a writ of sasine with a writ of mortancestor: the first, which the latter held, would only allow restitution of lands taken into the king’s hands during the war; the second, which he did not have, was the usual legal procedure whereby distant relatives could inherit after many years.
Bristol was no fool, realising that ‘the people of these parts dislike any English disinheritor among them by the king’s gift’. He did not want to be accused of keeping Penpont from his inheritance, even if the latter was not entirely convincing in this new claim. He thus begged the king to regard the property as an ‘escheat by reason of the bastardy of the last feoffee’. Edward agreed that the writ of sasine validated claims only to lands held by relatives at the beginning of the war, putting Penpont clearly in the wrong.
However, this did not stop the latter from claiming in 1305 that he had recovered sasine of his lands and property in Dumfries through an inquest, but remained disinherited by Bristol’s continued possession. Parliament ordained that a writ should be sent to the Scottish chancellor, ordering him to ‘make remedy according to the customs of those parts’, an edict which did not perhaps augur well for Bristol.26 Penpont may not have been merely pushing his luck, but the fact that he needed two attempts at establishing his claim to these lands makes it rather likely that he was.
Conflicting claims also arose among Edward’s non-Scottish officers who had been granted lands by the king’s gift, particularly when access to these lands was finally won. Sir John de St. John, junior, was unhappy about his ability to enforce his rights of feudal superiority, as owner of John Balliol’s Galloway lands, over those to whom the king had granted other parts of these estates.
One such case involved the lands of Ardrossan, held of St. John by Sir William Latimer until his death on 5 December 1304. According to St. John, a ‘stranger’, Sir Thomas Latimer, who was in fact Sir William’s second son, tried to gain entry to those lands, but was prevented by Sir John’s bailiffs. Sir Thomas therefore went to court where he argued that Ardrossan was held directly from the king. However, St. John’s claims to hold these lands in chief were eventually upheld and Latimer was told to perform his homage and fealty to him ‘according to the custom of these parts’.27 Distance from the king (and hence access to him) was always crucial in the administration of property rights, and those in Scotland – both the Scots themselves and English officials serving there – were therefore in a potentially vulnerable situation. Still, at least these grants of Scottish lands were proving useful for endowing younger sons.
In general, the English chancery, which issued the writs of sasine activating a claimant’s right to property, seems to have been distinctly unable to make impartial – and final – judgements based on a full appraisal of the facts. There was thus considerable scope for the pursuit of fraudulent claims, even if it is impossible now to prove that this was going on. There may even have been a belief among the Scots at Edward’s peace that he took a favourable attitude to their land claims because the king was unwilling to risk accusations of injustice and oppression. Edward certainly seems to have gone to great lengths, often at the expense of his own supporters, to ensure that no Scot could complain of being unfairly dealt with.
This did not mean that the dispossessed necessarily took their removal tamely: there are certainly examples of vocal and even violent opposition to the return of property after the implementation of the submission agreements. For example, Lady Alice Beauchamp, widow of Edward’s steward, petitioned the king for ‘restitution of, or compensation for, her dower’ from lands granted to her husband. However, it was explained firmly to her that even if Sir Walter had been alive, he could not retain the land-grant ‘on account of the agreement between the king and John Comyn’. There was no mention of any liability for compensation.28
Edward was not entirely consistent, however. The earl of Norfolk, who had, rather unusually, been granted one of Sir Edmund Comyn’s English manors (Fakenham Aspes in Suffolk), was to be granted ‘land or something else in lieu to the same amount’ when Comyn reclaimed the manor after his submission. However, the earl Marshal was a particular political hot potato whom Edward was currently trying to deal with.
The earl of Ross found himself on the sharp end of a far more vigorous reaction to his submission and subsequent rehabilitation than a mere complaining petition. During the period when he remained in prison in England, refusing to accept Edward as his liege lord, his wife’s inheritance in the sheriffdom of Edinburgh had been given to Sir Thomas Morham. Sir Thomas was most unwilling to relinquish these lands, which had been granted to him as a reward for his service to Edward, and continued to uplift their issues after the earl had been given sasine in 1303. He also pulled down houses and caused other destruction. The sheriff of Edinburgh was ordered to stop Morham and to make amends to Ross, but the incident illustrates the depth of feeling involved. The issue of disinherited in the Anglo-Scottish wars began a long time before the 1330s.29
Some of the complaints which came before Edward in February 1305 stemmed from a basic ignorance of laws and customs peculiar to Scotland among those who were ultimately responsible for its government. This was a serious problem for the English king, since he was already aware of his newest subjects’ sensitivity on this subject; however, Edward presumably did not want to place total reliance for the running of the judicial system on those who had so recently fought against him.
The Scots, probably heartened by the third clause of the submission document, were more than happy to provide information about usual practice on a wide range of issues. For example, Sir John Sulleye, an Englishman, informed the king that
The people of Scotland . . . say . . . that the king’s chamberlain does not have anything more than the robes of his office and half a mark which is owed for doing homage to the king, according to what he has had up till now, as was usual during the time of King Alexander . . .
It is easy to imagine the howls of outrage among those faced with demands for payment beyond what they were used to for an unavoidable service; accusations of foreign oppression similar to those voiced in 1297 were surely but a short step away if redress was not swiftly forthcoming. Edward duly agreed that the chamberlain should ‘inquire into the usual customs of these parts in previous times’, indicating the de facto reliance on native expertise.30 However, this also created a potential conflict since the chamberlain obviously had an interest in this matter (hence, presumably, the use of Sulleye in the first place).
It is interesting also that, even though homage to the king was performed only by certain sections of the landholding class (though not exclusively the top level), the above petition was ostensibly from ‘the people of Scotland’; this was probably a deliberate attempt to illustrate to Edward a solidarity of feeling among all sections of Scottish society, with perhaps an insinuation that this could still be transformed into action. Doubtless such unity was largely exaggerated. However, this may indicate that the community of the realm continued to act as arbiter and mouthpiece of Scottish public opinion even after its surrender in 1304. After all, Edward was himself doing much to encourage such active participation, particularly through the ongoing consultation process prior to the final settlement. This was very different indeed from 1296.
There was even a petition from Edward’s new Scottish chancellor, the Englishman, William Bevercotes. He had discovered ‘that other chancellors, his predecessors, who have been given the office of chancellor of the land of Scotland have been given in their office in the king’s name all the hospitals which were vacant and in the king’s gift in the land of Scotland’. Again, the king ordered an investigation ‘as to what was usual in the times of the kings of Scots’.31 It is amazing how quickly a sense of history can develop.
However, as we might expect with Edward, there were limits to this apparent sensitivity. One of the first indications of this related, interestingly enough, to the earl of Carrick. On 31 August 1304 an inquest was held into ‘the privileges claimed by Robert Bruce’, following the death of his father in April.32 The inquest jury’s findings provided the king with a dilemma, since it was concluded that the earl had the following rights in Annandale:
. . . that no sheriff of Dumfries or other servant of the king or his ancestors may enter the bounds of Annandale to make attachments, summonses, or distraints, nor have they done so for time beyond memory; but that the king may choose a coroner from one of the earl’s homagers in Annandale and issue writs to him direct, who shall represent and answer to the king and his justices of Lothian at Dumfries; that the earl has these liberties by the title of antiquity, that is, from the time of William, king of Scotland and all his successors uninterruptedly till this day.
On 26 October 1304 the result of this inquest, which was a fair interpretation of King William’s original charter to the Bruces, was sent by Edward to John Langton, bishop of Chichester, the English chancellor. Langton, together with the rest of the royal council, was to peruse its contents and advise the king.33 The almost vice-regal powers which the lords of Annandale had clearly long enjoyed were of great concern to Edward, who was always very careful to ensure that his own royal rights, as he perceived them, were not infringed. Just because Carrick and his ancestors had enjoyed such privileges under previous kings of Scots did not mean that they would automatically be allowed to continue. Indeed the whole point of Edward’s famous Quo Warranto inquiries in England earlier in the reign was that ‘tenure from time out of mind was not now adequate warrant for the exercise of rights of jurisdiction which properly belonged to the king’.34
The earl of Carrick petitioned the king a few months later, presumably pressing for a favourable judgement.35 Unfortunately we do not know what that final judgement was, though it is highly likely that Edward remained hostile to the maintenance of such extensive privileges. We know that Bruce had been canvassing for unspecified, but almost certainly treasonable, support among the Scottish élites as early as the siege of Stirling in the summer of 1304;36 this questioning of his traditional liberties in Annandale cannot therefore have marked the beginning of the road towards his seizure of the throne. However, whatever the outcome of Edward’s deliberations, it may well have hardened the young earl’s resolve.
Land was not the only issue which Scotland’s new master had to address in the mopping-up period after the war. A petition was sent in from all the Scottish burghs, seeking the preservation of their traditional liberties from the meddling of sheriffs and other royal officials. They also requested that the burghs should maintain their monopoly of the holding of markets, ‘as was usual before this time’. There was also a complaint about the activities of the burgesses of Berwick and Roxburgh, who had allegedly imposed taxes on the merchandise from other burghs, contrary to the latter’s charters. This was almost certainly a thinly veiled criticism of the communities of English burgesses who lived permanently in both these towns.37
However, the burgesses of Roxburgh ‘from the nation of England’ had their own complaint to make, asserting that they were hindered from carrying out their business by the ‘burgesses of that town from the nation of Scotland’. They rather fancied having a charter of privileges such as that granted to Berwick and confirmed in 1302.38 Although there was certainly antagonism between Scots and English before the outbreak of war, this hostility was perhaps becoming a little more entrenched, particularly along the border.
Burghs, like individual landowners, could and did take advantage of the unsettled state of Scotland during the period of conflict to advance their own interests. According to a petition from the burgesses of Perth, the burgesses of Dundee had ‘attracted certain profits which belong by right to the town of Perth and are now endeavouring to harm them in other ways, as far as they can’.39 Whatever the rights or wrongs of such cases, the overall impression is that neither Edward nor the guardians had previously been able to wield sufficient authority to prevent abuses occurring.
One petition presented to Edward in February 1305 stands out in marked contrast to the rest, which were usually concerned with re-establishing previous conditions: ‘the king’s husbandmen’ in Scotland wished to improve their customary situation, whereby they could be ‘removed from year to year’, by being allowed to hold their lands in the same way as husbandmen in England, who could not. As usual, although an investigation as to ‘what would be to the king’s profit’ was ordered, there is no record of the final result.40 However, this is a truly remarkable petition, not least because of the collective approach, together with the fact that the situation in England was obviously known north of the border.
In his article ‘Colonial Scotland: The English in Scotland under Edward I’, Michael Prestwich has written about Edward’s policy towards the granting of lands to his supporters. In contradicting the view of the chronicler, Pierre Langtoft, that the English king’s lack of generosity in dispensing patronage during the Scottish wars was responsible for his inability to hold the northern kingdom, Prestwich states:
Edward was much less ungenerous in the case of Scotland than he had been in Wales, and the danger in his policy was less that English magnates would be discontented at receiving inadequate rewards for service, than the alienation of the Scottish nobles whom the king was anxious to win over to his cause.41
This synopsis is certainly theoretically correct. Edward’s grants of Scottish lands to his supporters were indeed numerous – the fact that fifty-one of these grantees were required to provide men-at-arms for castleguard illustrates this. However, as so many of these court cases indicate, many never actually gained access to their lands, or, if they did, were in possession for only a short space of time.
The Scots whose lands formed this potential patronage thus had little cause to feel alienated. The restoration of their property was a usual condition of their submission, either as individuals, such as the earl of Carrick, or through the general agreement concluded by John Comyn, the guardian. Indeed, Edward’s own supporters, who were forced to step aside in favour of those whom they had just spent six years fighting, had far more cause for resentment. In addition, the barrage of petitions for lands and offices addressed to the king after the second conquest of 1303–4 makes it quite clear that only then was Scotland regarded as an attractive source of preferment. Any policy of colonialism, ‘in a broad sense of conquest, expropriation, exploitation and settlement’,42 was restricted to the town-planning exercise at Berwick.
With the settlement of Scotland almost completed, this erstwhile Siberia of English office-holding seems to have become a land of opportunity. The king was thus faced with a barrage of petitions for offices and lands in Scotland, some from men who had experience of working in the north, and others from those who had previously done no more than go on campaign there.
Richard Vigrous, a burgess of Roxburgh and member of the garrison there since 1298, requested a grant of land for his services. Margaret of Hawick sought confirmation of lands conceded for the service of her father, probably Ralph of Hawick, who had also served in the Roxburgh garrison. Geoffrey Ampelford, another Roxburgh man and member of the royal household, requested the constabulary of Berwick or Dundee. John Cave, the royal clerk in charge of victuals at Glasgow and Kirkintilloch, petitioned the king for the lands of Dalile in Lanarkshire.43
Newcomers included John Perraunt who requested the constabulary of Berwick castle, John Cunningham, who wanted to be coroner of Lothian, an office unfilled in the previous decade, and Thomas Cotingham, another member of the royal household, who sought ‘possession of things pertaining to the custody of the gate of Stirling’.44 Such offices brought in little or no salary – the fees and issues attached to them were the source of their value. This implies that Scotland was regarded as a land of potential, since most of these offices were paid by the demanding of fees from customers’ tips, effectively.
However, the line between ‘making the most’ of an office and downright corruption was a fine one and the Scots were not slow to make accusations of misconduct against royal officials now that they were apparently being listened to. Sir Matthew Redmayne, Edward’s sheriff of Dumfries, was first on the list, with complaints arriving as early as April 1304. Led by a leading burgess, William Jargun,45 several local men asserted that Redmayne extorted payments from them in order to regain possession of their lands after submitting to Edward. They also accused the sheriff and his officials of seeking ‘to grieve and distress the poor people by tallages’, though it should be noted that any tax which was not popular, no matter how lawful or customary, was described as a tallage. Redmayne had also allegedly acquired the lands of John Heytone and Matthew Terregles by various dubious methods, including ‘champetry’ (or bribery), another pejorative term.46
Some of these accusations, which included the taking of carts, corn and beasts for the use of the king himself, together with the ‘tallages’ which presumably Edward had also authorised, are reminiscent of the complaints levied in 1297. It is impossible to establish whether or not these were completely novel demands made on the Scottish people, or whether the petition resulted from a general aversion to handing over anything to this re-established, but still perceptibly foreign, central government. However, some of the other accusations, if true, do suggest that Redmayne had been abusing his position. The activities of such over-zealous officials would do little to enhance the reputation of Edward’s government among the Scots, however willing he himself was to listen to their petitions.
This was also true of the activities of such royal stalwarts as Dalilegh and Weston, whom we left peregrinating round Scotland assessing the extent of royal lands and revenues. The king could certainly not accuse them of lacking assiduousness on his behalf; however, those, such as the abbot of the convent of Jedburgh, and Sir Reginald Cheyne, who had suffered ‘great injury and loss . . . by reason of his loyalty . . . to the king who now is’, were not so happy about being deprived of their lands despite, in many cases, clear title.47 Edward’s officials do seem to have been very keen to prevent revenues, in particular, from being restored to their original recipients. Perhaps Dalilegh and Weston had had the wool pulled over their eyes by those who provided information about the level of peacetime exactions, for example; the tax payer is often not the best person to ask about how much tax he/she pays. Nevertheless, this was not a situation that Edward could allow to continue unchecked.
Lucrative church lands and revenues certainly caused much litigation in the royal courts before they were completely restored to those holding them in 1296. It is also clear that, in many cases, the war had taken a great toll on ecclesiastical property and that many churchmen now welcomed the English king as their defender. Thus, when each church or religious house petitioned the king to be restored to their lands and revenues, they also asked Edward to take them into his protection and maintain them.48 Such an attitude may well have been shared by many other inhabitants of Scotland.
The plethora of court cases which Edward was determined to consider before he turned his attention to the final settlement of Scotland indicates the extent to which the war had disrupted so much of normal life. Although many doubtless welcomed the fact that rents and taxes had been less easily collected by either government, at least as many suffered from the lack of a nationally competent authority to provide redress for all manner of grievances. Edward, whose enthusiasm for the law characterised his reign,49 was doubtless keen both to illustrate the benefits of his justice to his Scottish subjects and also to modernise the more archaic aspects – certainly in his eyes – of Scotland’s judicial system. The former required the king’s immediate and concentrated attention; the latter could wait until he was ready to put the finishing touches to the settlement of his new acquisition.
Most of the first category of judicial activity was completed in the parliament of February 1305. There was then one important outstanding piece of legal business to complete, although its resolution was by no means certain until the summer. According to the chronicler, Pierre Langtoft, William Wallace and Simon Fraser sought to come to Edward’s peace some time in 1303, but did not turn up on the appointed day. At some point after Christmas 1303, Wallace again apparently sought to come to Edward’s peace ‘without surrendering into his hands body or head’; he also requested ‘an honourable allowance of wood and cattle’, a request which Edward angrily refused.50
Andrew Fisher, the best of Sir William’s many biographers, has stated that ‘the Wallace we read of here . . . is neither the Wallace of history nor of tradition’. It would certainly have been uncharacteristic of both Wallace and Fraser to offer to submit before the general peace was agreed with Sir John Comyn, though Langtoft could have got the year wrong; however, it would surely do Sir William no dishonour to suggest that he might have offered to surrender – on terms – once it had become perfectly clear that almost no-one now remained active against Edward. Since we know so very little of ‘the Wallace of history’, and he is so easily confused with ‘the Wallace of tradition’, it would be rash to state categorically that the ex-guardian totally rejected the idea of honourable surrender when the odds were so clearly stacked against him. However, Edward’s refusal to consider anything other than an abject and total submission would equally have given Wallace little choice but to remain a fugitive.
The declaration of outlawry at the St. Andrews parliament of 1304 was almost certainly accompanied by the grant to someone described as the king’s ‘dear valet’ of ‘all goods and chattels of whatever kind he may gain from Sir William Wallace, the king’s enemy’. The name of the beneficiary was originally Edward Bruce, one of the earl of Carrick’s younger brothers, but the surname was subsequently deleted and that of Keith substituted. Bruce was certainly a royal valet in the prince of Wales’ household, while there is no evidence that Edward Keith, Sir Robert Keith’s brother, was similarly employed.51 There is perhaps nothing sinister about the change of beneficiary of this grant – it could easily have been a scribal error. However, it is really rather fortunate for the historical reputation of the future patriotic hero, Robert Bruce, that his brother did not profit at the expense of William Wallace.
The last mention of Wallace before his capture was in September 1304, when members of the Dundee garrison under Thomas d’Umfraville gave chase to him ‘beneath’ Yrenside (Ironside), a hill behind Dundee.52 He disappears for almost a year until 3 August 1305, when he was finally captured by men of the keeper of Dumbarton, Sir John Menteith, near Glasgow. A mere twenty days later, Wallace was brought to trial and executed at Smithfield. The charges brought against him – such as the holding of Scottish parliaments and the maintenance of the Franco-Scottish alliance – can also be read as a list of his achievements.53
Edward’s experiences in Scotland ‘undoubtedly crystallized [his] theories and practices in dealing with treason’. Prior to Wallace’s trial, a number of Scots had been charged with treacherous behaviour but this was the first time that trial, sentence and execution had actually been carried out. Wallace, of course, denied the charge that he had betrayed his king, though he accepted the other crimes attributed to him. Having been declared an outlaw at the St. Andrews parliament, the record of the charges which Edward accused him of was regarded in the middle ages as proof in itself, and thus Wallace had no right to put himself on a jury: ‘in such circumstances there was no proper trial but merely the passing of sentence and its execution’.54
In strictly legal terms, Edward’s justification for the charge of treason – that Balliol’s return to the English king’s homage and fealty in 1296, which conceded that the latter’s conquest of Scotland was ‘by right’, together with the homage and fealties gathered generally, rendered all Scots Edward’s vassals – was probably more ‘correct’ than Wallace’s assertion that the lack of a personal oath to the English king exonerated him from that charge. However, the law was by no means clear-cut and Edward was himself in the vanguard of attempts to refine such legal uncertainties to the advantage of crown and state. The only thing we can be absolutely sure of is that both protagonists passionately believed that they were right; and that Wallace had absolutely no chance once he fell into Edward’s hands.55
Similarly, the gruesome methods by which Wallace met his death were not thought up specially for him by the bloodthirsty English king: each punishment corresponded to one of the crimes with which Wallace was charged and ‘the process was akin in the sentence pronounced to the one which concerned David ap Gruffydd’, the Welsh prince executed by Edward in 1283. Nevertheless, it is hard not to agree that ‘from the political view-point the trial and sentence were ill-judged and personal animosity may have clouded the king’s vision’.56 The clemency shown to the Scots in general therefore contrasts sharply with the fate of William Wallace and stamps the trial and execution with a degree of vindictiveness which does Edward no credit.
It is not entirely clear why Wallace should have inspired such fury. The English king usually reacted violently only against those whom he regarded as having betrayed him personally in some way, as was evident both in the trial of David ap Gruffydd and the submission terms of February 1304. However, Edward may well have felt most uncomfortable with Wallace’s ideals of liberty and nationalism, ideals which, if developed logically, clearly challenged the established order of society. If the freedom of a country was accepted as more important than the rights of a king, it also followed that the freedom of the individual was more important than the rights of the landowner. And then where would society be? Wallace was perhaps a man ahead of his time in more ways than one.
His death may well have been witnessed by many of the Scots who were in London to attend the parliament of September 1305 in which the ordinances for the future government of Scotland were set out. Their silence at Wallace’s fate does imply condonement, if not complicity. However, we must ask ourselves what they could have done when it was abundantly clear that the judgement was a foregone conclusion. They would have been on dangerous ground to plead clemency by virtue of Wallace’s denial of the charge of treason, and no-one disputed the other charges. Nevertheless, the ferocity of this execution should not be forgotten when discussing Edward’s statesmanlike behaviour during much of the period between 1304 and 1305.
The final settlement of Scotland was a far more protracted and considered process than it had been in 1296. In the Westminster parliament of February 1305 the bishop of Glasgow, the earl of Carrick and Sir John Moubray were ordered to advise the king as to how this settlement might best be achieved. This is a most remarkable trio: Carrick we might expect to be involved, but the inclusion of Moubray, Sir John Comyn’s right-hand man, and Robert Wishart, whom Edward regarded as particularly seditious, attests to the king’s desire to accommodate rather than alienate. It is unfortunate that we do not know whether they were the choice of Edward or the Scots. Whichever, they were still accepted. As a result of their advice, ten Scottish representatives, chosen at a Scottish parliament in May 1305, were sent to Westminster in September to help to frame, or at least consent to, the ordinances.57
The ordinances promulgated in the September parliament listed not only the offices which were to form the new administration, but also named those who were to hold them. However, since the English administration had been up and running throughout much of Scotland since at least 1304, the changes instituted in September 1305 should be regarded as the end of the process of re-establishment, not the beginning.
In the first instance, the number of Scots holding the office of sheriff both before and after the publication of the ordinances, as shown in Table 8,58 is striking. In 1304, only four out of a total of seventeen sheriffs were English; equally, out of the thirteen Scottish sheriffs, only three – Sir Richard Siward, Sir Alexander Comyn, and Sir Archibald Livingston – had held office under King Edward after 1296. It is also possible, especially in the north-east, that many of the men installed by Edward as sheriffs in 1303 had held office under the guardians precisely, in both cases, because they were natural leaders in these areas. Even Alexander Pilche, the leader of the burgesses of Inverness, who had caused so much trouble in 1297, was allowed to retain charge of Inverness castle, albeit temporarily. Heritable sheriffdoms, which Edward had previously completely ignored, were also reinstated, as was the attachment of the office of escheatry to the sheriff’s functions ‘as usual’.59
Those whose names are in italics held the same office both before and after the ordinances.
Aberdeen – Sir Alexander Comyn
Ayr – earl of Carrick
Aucterarder – Sir Malcolm Innerpeffay
Banff – Sir Duncan Frendraught
Clackmannan – Sir William Biset
Dumbarton – Sir John Menteith
Dumfries – Sir Matthew Redeman60
Edinburgh – Sir Ebulo Mountz
Fife – Sir Richard Siward
Forfar – John Pollok/Henry Preston
Inverness (constable of castle) – Alexander Pilche
Lanark – earl of Carrick
Linlithgow – Sir Archibald Livingstone
Mearns (Kincardine) – Sir Richard Dundemor
Nairn (constable of castle) – Gervase the clerk
Peebles – Robert Hastangs61
Perth – Sir Robert Harcars
Roxburgh – Sir Robert Hastangs
Stirling – Sir Archibald Livingston
Table 8b: Sheriffs of the ordinances62
Aberdeen – Sir Norman Leslie
Ayr – Sir Godfrey Ros
Clamannan & Aucterarder – Sir Malcolm Innerpeffray
Cromarty – Sir William Mowat (heritable)
Dumbarton – Sir John Menteith
Dumfries – Sir Richard Siward
Edinburgh, Haddington & Linlithgow – Sir Ivo Aldeburgh
Elgin – William Wiseman
Fife – Sir Constantine of Lochore
Forfar – Sir William Airth
Forres & Nairn – Alexander Wiseman
Kincardine (Mearns) – Sir Richard Dundemor
Kinross – the heritable sheriff
Lanark – Sir Henry Sinclair
Peebles – Robert Hastangs
Perth – Sir John Inchmartin
Selkirk – the heritable sheriff
Stirling – William Bisset
Wigtown – Thomas MacCullough
The sheriff of Berwick was to be named by the chamberlain of Scotland, who had the keeping of Berwick castle. The lieutenant of Scotland was to hold the castles of Roxburgh and Jedburgh, and thus could choose a sheriff at Roxburgh.63
In 1305 only two Englishmen were named as sheriffs – Sir Ivo Aldeburgh, who was to hold the reunited sheriffdoms of ‘the three Lothians’, Edinburgh, Haddington and Linlithgow, and Robert Hastangs, who continued as sheriff of Peebles. All these officers could be appointed or removed by the lieutenant or the chamberlain; they were also to be ‘sufficient men and most profitable for the king and people, and the maintenance of peace’. It is likely that the Scottish delegates had a big say in these appointments, given that most of the appointees were local to the area in which they served.
In 1296 Edward had actually conformed to Scottish practice with the appointment of justiciars of Lothian, Galloway and north of the Forth. This format was adapted slightly in the ordinances of 1305. Instead of three justiciars, there were now to be four ‘pairs’, one Englishman and one Scotsman. The extra pair was to have authority ‘beyond the mountains’. The justiciars normally went round their area of jurisdiction on ayre hearing criminal cases previously prepared by the coroners. Edward clearly did not feel comfortable about giving sole responsibility for criminal justice to Scotsmen, but he also recognised that he could not do without them completely. All eight appointees – Sir John Lisle and Sir Adam Gordon for Lothian, Sir Walter Burghdon and Sir Roger Kirkpatrick for Galloway, Sir William Inge and Sir Robert Keith for north of the Forth, and Sir John Vaux and Sir Reginald Cheyne for beyond the mountains – were men of considerable, though varying, administrative experience.64 The coroners themselves were to be appointed by the three main officers of state, if the present holders were found to be unfit, ‘unless the latter hold by charter’, in which case the king was to be consulted.
Doubtless the appointment which concerned the Scots most was the top job, that of lieutenant. John of Brittany, the king’s favoured nephew and currently governor of Aquitaine,65 was given that honour, with a company of sixty men-at-arms. His salary, which not only maintained him in office, but also paid for his retinue and the garrisons of the castles of Jedburgh and Roxburgh, was to be 2000 marks per annum, to be received from the chamberlain from the issues of the land of Scotland. This was not overly generous, since Surrey had been given the same amount with only fifty in his retinue and without responsibility for Jedburgh and Roxburgh. Indeed, Brittany clearly felt it wasn’t enough since it was increased to 3000 marks on 15 October 1305, before he had even arrived in Scotland.66 Presumably the appointment of a single royal lieutenant brought to an end the role of the earls of Atholl and Ross in the north, as well as Segrave in the south.
The earl was due to take up office on 2 February 1306. In the meantime Sir Brian FitzAlan and the bishop of St. Andrews were to act as guardians of Scotland. In the event, Brittany was unable to leave Gascony until at least 17 April 1306 and Lamberton, Sir John Sandale, the chamberlain, Sir Robert Keith and Sir John Kingston were all ordered on 16 February to act as guardians until his arrival.67
Twenty-one Scots – four bishops, four abbots, five earls and eight barons – were to form the lieutenant’s council, along with the chancellor and the chamberlain, the justiciars and other royal officials. Again, this included some of the most prominent members of the former patriotic cause, such as the bishops of St. Andrews and Dunkeld, the earls of Buchan, Atholl and Carrick, Sir John Moubray, Sir Alastair of Argyll, Sir Robert Keith and Sir Adam Gordon. This was rehabilitation on a grand scale. The only surprising omission is the bishop of Glasgow, against whom Edward still seems to have held a grudge.
The king, mindful of his promises in the submission agreement but with his own personal agenda in mind, was keen to tackle the thorny subject of Scottish law and custom. There was no compromising on one issue: the ancient ‘usage of Scots and Brets’ was banned from henceforth. However, the lieutenant, when he finally arrived, was also to assemble ‘the good people of Scotland in a convenient place, and there the laws of King David, and amendments and additions by other kings shall be rehearsed’. Brittany could then, ‘with the aid which he shall have there of both English and Scots men . . . amend such of these laws and usages which are plainly against the king’. Those matters requiring Edward’s attention were to be sent to him in writing, along with the amendments already agreed, all before 12 May 1306. There was certainly to be a serious overhaul of the Scottish legal system, by means of public consultation even if the king had the final word.
But the parliament of September 1305, which in itself could be regarded as an exemplary piece of statesmanship, must be placed within a wider context. During the eighteen months preceding the promulgation of the ordinance and with the brutal example of Wallace still fresh in their minds, the Scottish élites were well aware that Edward considered that the ‘despites, trespasses, outrages and disobediences’ which they had perpetrated during the war were so great that they could never make sufficient amends. However, the king was still keen that they should nevertheless endure some form of punishment. He was also gracious enough to intimate that because the Scots had ‘borne themselves well and loyally’ since his return from Scotland, and in anticipation of their future good behaviour, he would allow the terms of their submission to stand with regard to the saving of life and limb, and the quittance of imprisonment and disinheritance.
The only clearcut exception was King John’s own lands, which had again been forfeited and were Edward’s to dispose of as he wished. They were to be treated as separate ‘from the demesnes pertaining to the roiaute [kingship] of Scotland’, which could not be given away. Balliol was effectively being treated like any other landowner (except that he had lost his lands) rather than as a king; equally, and despite the use here of the word roiaute, Scotland was now consistently described as a ‘land’ and not a ‘kingdom’. That was one highly significant deterioration since 1296.
In order to satisfy his apparent twin desire to punish and be merciful, Edward devised a scheme in October 1305 under which the Scottish nobility would pay over the annual value of their lands for a varying number of years. This also satisfied his far greater need for money, which the original plan for exile would have done nothing to alleviate. The money thus paid over by Sir John Comyn and the rest was to be used ‘for the work of the castles that we are having built in the said land of Scotland for the security of the said land and keeping the peace, or to be put to another use, as we see should be done’.68 Perhaps Edward did see the irony of having the Scottish nobility pay for new fortifications which could be used against them should they harbour any thoughts of rebellion.
It could be argued that the Scots were buying their lands back, but it is perhaps more helpful to look at this as a system of fines, prompted primarily by Edward’s desire, after so many years of major expenditure, to have Scotland pay for the emptying of his coffers. In return the sentences of exile were dropped. Those Scots who had submitted to Edward before Comyn were to pay the value of their rents for two years instead of three, except if they could show that they were completely free of this burden by the king’s special command. The Scottish clergy, with the exception of the bishop of Glasgow, were to pay over the value of one year’s rents. Wishart, still correctly identified as a – perhaps the – driving force behind the maintenance of Scottish resistance, was to pay three years’ rents. Sir Ingram d’Umfraville, who had only recently returned from abroad to submit, was to be punished accordingly for his ‘cowardliness’ with the payment of the value of five years’ rents.69 Two knights who had returned with him, Sir William Balliol and Sir John Wishart, were each to pay four years’ rents.
In order to facilitate the payment of these fines, the lieutenant and chamberlain of Scotland, ‘when they have come’, were ordered to make an assessment of the relevant lands. Their owners would then hand over half of the annual revenue each year until the total had been paid, thoughtfully giving them something to live on. It was also made quite clear that these conditions were in no way to apply to those Scots who had been imprisoned or who had not yet submitted.70 Given that many Scottish estates must have been in a state of some disorder after the war, Edward may have been rather optimistic in expecting much of a return in the immediate future. Still, he wasn’t to know that another rebellion was just around the corner.
Geoffrey Barrow has asserted that
. . . despite the conversion of old enemies into new advisers, the real power was to be vested in the lieutenant, chancellor and chamberlain. . . . To say therefore that the official element was derived ‘mainly from Scotland’ is true only in the rather unreal numerical sense. There was no escaping the fact that Scotland was once more what she had been in 1296, a conquered country, occupied by foreign garrisons and governed by the foreign officials of a foreign king.71
There is a large degree of truth in this, especially for those living in the south-east, where the sheriffs were all English and where the centre of Edwardian government resided. There is also no getting round the fact that this was indeed a reconquest, despite all the consultation. All the same, there is a danger of overemphasising this point. For most people living far from Berwick, the local officer was still a familiar face, and the rules and regulations which he was there to enforce were also – so far – easily recognisable. The new administration was therefore far less obviously novel and intrusive than it had been in 1296; indeed, all this care was taken precisely to foster consensus and acquiescence at all levels of society. Edward had learned his lesson well.
Of course, many might still have harboured the suspicion that the leopard could not really change his spots. Edward’s arrogant assumption that aspects of Scots law would require amendment if it offended ‘God and reason’ might well have set off just such alarm bells. It was also the case that the two issues which had ostensibly sparked off many of the revolts in 1297 – taxation and overseas military service – were in no sense addressed by any of the king’s edicts during the settlement of Scotland. In the short term, these issues were unlikely to trouble relations between Edward and his newest subjects since there was no other war on the horizon. In the long term, however, there was nothing to stop Scotland from being hit by the kind of intensive government which they were quite unaccustomed to, and which contrasted greatly, with a touch of rose-tinted nostalgia, with life under the kings of Scots.72 As it turned out, there was no time for the relationship between Edward and the Scots to turn sour in this respect; however, that does not mean either that such an antagonism would inevitably have developed, or that the deep-seated animosity which this war had undoubtedly fostered would have fizzled away in a new dawn of fellowship and mutual respect.
NOTES
1 CDS, ii, no. 1694.
2 Ibid., no. 1646.
3 Ibid., nos. 1592, 1682, 1689.
4 Ibid., no. 1403; pp. 438–9; no. 1669; Duncan, Scotland: The Making of the Kingdom, p. 197; CCR, 1302–1307, p. 336.
5 E101/11/19, m. 4; CDS, ii, nos. 1657, 1658, 1420: E101/101/15.
6 CCR, 1302–1307, p. 25; CDS, ii, nos. 1659, 1707.
7 E101/19/11, m. 11 (dorso); CDS, ii, no. 1646, p. 443.
8 Bateson, ‘The Scottish King’s Household’, p. 25.
9 CDS, ii, no. 1608.
10 CDS, ii, no. 1611, p. 442, nos. 1520, 1689, 1654–6, 1658.
11 CDS, iv, p. 484.
12 See Registrum Monasterii de Cambuskenneth 1147–1535 (Grampian Club, 1872), p. 41, for a reference to the lands of Tulybethwyne.
13 CDS, ii, no. 1722.
14 Ibid., ii, no. 1420.
15 Inquests were held at both Berwick and Roxburgh in 1299, but this was as a prelude to the granting out of ‘rebel’ lands and so was not part of usual peacetime procedure: CPR, 1292–1301, p. 428.
16 CDS, ii, p. 198, nos. 1420, 1435, 1436, 1619, 1457.
17 Stevenson, Documents, ii, p. 331.
18 CDS, ii, p. 203, no. 1452.
19 See, for example, W. Stanford Reid, ‘Trade, Traders, and Scottish Independence’, in Speculum, no.xxix (1954), p. 213.
20 Ibid., no. 1592.
21 See CPR, 1292–1301, p. 560; CDS, ii, nos. 982, 992, for these few examples.
22 See above, p. 65.
23 See, for example, CDS, ii, no. 1621.
24 Ibid., no. 1613.
25 CDS, iv, no. 1804.
26 CDS, ii, no. 1423; Memo. de Parl., no. 403.
27 Guisborough, p. 363; CDS, ii, no. 1615; Rev. C. Moor (ed.), The Knights of Edward I (Harleian Society, volume 80, 1930) iii, p. 20.
28 CDS, ii, no. 1621.
29 CDS, v, no. 365. See R. Nicholson, Edward III and the Scots (London, 1965), for the role of the Disinherited in the period after the death of Robert Bruce.
30 Memo. de Parl., no. 384.
31 Ibid., no. 323.
32 CDS, ii, no. 1493.
33 Ibid., ii, no. 1589; RRS, ii, no. 80, pp. 178–9.
34 Prestwich, Edward I, pp. 346–7.
35 CDS, ii, no. 1604.
36 See Barrow, Bruce, p. 131.
37 Memo. de Parl., nos. 333, 383.
38 Ibid., no. 319.
39 Ibid., no. 310.
40 Ibid., no. 400. Husbandmen were peasants who had their own holdings but also worked their lord’s lands (in this case, the king’s).
41 Prestwich, ‘Colonial Scotland: The English in Scotland under Edward I’, pp. 7–8.
42 Ibid., p. 6.
43 Memo. de Parl., nos. 294, 349, 337; CDS, ii, nos. 1686, 1921.
44 Memo. de Parl., nos. 338, 339, 372.
45 Jargun was actually the Dumfries burgess to whom Sir Ingram de Guines had owed money: see above, p. 201.
46 CDS, ii, no. 1526.
47 Ibid., no. 1724; Memo. de Parl., nos. 382, 385, 305; see RRS, i, no. 195, pp. 231–2 for Jedburgh’s claim to Restenneth.
48 Memo. de Parl., nos. 280, 283, 303, 362, 398.
49 See, Prestwich, Edward I, Chapter 10.
50 Langtoft, ii, p. 353.
51 CDS, ii, no. 1424; E101/364/13, m. 9. The date and place of this document is obscured at the end, but enough remains to suggest that it was issued at St. Andrews.
52 CDS, iv, no. 477. Professor Barrow has suggested that ‘Yrenside’ is Earnside: Barrow, Bruce, p. 136. However, the presence of the constable of Dundee, together with the fact that a ‘Y’ is more like to have turned into an ‘I’, rather than an ‘Ea’, makes Ironside more likely.
53 Barrow, Bruce, pp. 136–7.
54 J.G. Bellamy, The Law of Treason in England in the later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1970), pp. 31–2, 35.
55 Ibid., pp. 37–8; Barrow, Bruce, p. 137, n.. 39.
56 Bellamy, The Law of Treason in England in the later Middle Ages, pp. 38–9.
57 Memo. de Parl., nos. 14, 293; APS, i, pp. 119–120; Barrow, Bruce, p. 134.
58 Most, if not all, of these sheriffs were actually appointed in 1303.
59 CDS, ii, no. 1691, p. 457; Bateson, ‘The Scottish King’s Household’, p. 42.
60 CDS, ii, nos. 1474, 1514, 1586, 1646.
61 This esquire was presumably a relative of Sir Robert and Sir Richard Hastangs, the stalwart constables of Roxburgh and Jedburgh.
62 All references to the ordinances are CDS, ii, no. 1691.
63 Ibid., p. 457; Palgrave, Documents, i, p. 292.
64 CDS, ii, nos. 678, 715; Feodera, i, p. 925; CDS, ii, no. 546, p. 443.
65 See Prestwich, Edward I, p. 132.
66 Stevenson, Documents, ii, p. 225; Rot. Scot., i, p. 34.
67 CPR, 1301–1307, p. 415. This was, in fact, six days after the murder of Sir John Comyn at Dumfries.
68 These were presumably the castles of Tullibothwell and Polmaise or their alternative sites.
69 The order restoring Sir Ingram’s lands in England was issued as late as 8 October 1305: CCR, 1302–1307, p. 291.
70 Rot. Parl., i, pp. 211–2.
71 Barrow, Bruce, p. 135, also quoting from F. M. Powicke, The Thirteenth Century, p. 711.
72 See above, p. 1.