The accession of the girl-queen, Margaret of
Norway, put Scottish political stability to a severe test, but the work of
David I and Alexander III proved equal to that test.
A six-man committee was appointed to act as
Guardians of the Kingdom until such time as Margaret could take full
responsibilities, and the immediate crisis did not seem to bring about any
panic. She would grow, after all, and as long as her people remained loyal
the crisis would pass. However, the Scottish leaders sought support in
this dangerous moment from someone whose advice they valued and respected.
Edward I of England was Margaret's great-uncle, and might well be seen by
others, as well as by himself, as head of the family. Who was better able
to bring support and reassurance to the Scots? Edward showed himself most
willing to take charge of the situation, and now came forward with a most
helpful plan. His son and the Scottish queen, though both were children,
should marry, and with this new bond uniting the families and countries,
he and the Guardians would guide Scotland safely through this crisis,
towards days of harmony and closer unity.
This plan was approved at a conference of
representatives from Scotland, England and Norway, and in July 1290 at
Birgham on the Tweed a marriage treaty was agreed, and arrangements set on
foot for the journey of Margaret from Norway to her waiting kingdom and
her husband-to-be. Then came the final act of the tragedy which began with
Alexander's fatal fall, as, by October 1290, 'there sounded through the
people a sorrowful rumour that our Lady should be dead, on which account
the kingdom of Scotland is disturbed and the community distracted.' They
were right to be so disturbed and so distracted, as with the death of
Margaret in the Orkney Islands there died the main line of the Scottish
royal family. The succession now was a matter of controversy, and civil
war was a very real possibility.
But even this crisis might be overcome if
the Scots could arrange for arbitration instead of conflict. An arbiter
would most desirably have close and sympathetic acquaintance with the
Scots in their difficulties. He should have legal skill, and he should be
able to enforce his decision. How fortunate the Scots were to have the
very man available. King Edward was the late queen's great-uncle as well
as her bereaved potential father-in-law. The Scots had already turned to
him for advice, and would obviously do so again. He was also renowned for
his legal skills which had earned for him the approving title of 'the
English Justinian'. And he was most certainly powerful enough to enforce
his decisions.
Thus it was agreed that claimants to the
Scottish throne would present their various cases to Edward, and Edward
would make the selection. Unfortunately Edward was not prepared to deal
with the immediate problem on its own, but chose instead to turn first to
the question of overlordship. Before he would proceed further he required
from the Guardians, and from the claimants, their agreement that he was
arbiter because he was overlord. He gave them three weeks to accept his
demand, pointing out that if they persevered in their notion of
independence they were perfectly entitled to defend that notion by force
of arms. In this way Edward brought forward for immediate decision, all
the old overlordship disputes. He had come so near to achieving his
objectives in the Treaty of Birgham, that he was not going to allow the
death of Margaret to frustrate him now.
The various claimants with greedy haste,
and the other political leaders rather more slowly, accepted his demands
and the process of selection began. He had thirteen major claimants to
consider, but ten of them, for various reasons, were quickly and easily
disposed of, and his choice was to lie with one or other of the three
claimants descended from David, Earl of Huntingdon, the youngest son of
David I. Earl David had three daughters, all of whom had male descendants.
The question was, should the descendants of the eldest daughter take
precedence over the descendants of her younger sisters? Today, the answer
would be 'yes' but in 1291-92 there was not the same acceptance of the
idea that any precedence existed among daughters.
There was the added complication that the
descendant of the eldest daughter was Earl David's great-grandson, while
the descendant of the second daughter was his grandson, and therefore
closer in blood to the common ancestor.
After much examination of precedents
elsewhere in the feudal world it was decided that seniority was to be
preferred to 'nearness in blood', and the Scottish crown was therefore
awarded to Earl David's great-grandson, John Balliol, to the keen
disappointment of Earl David's grandson, Robert Bruce, who had once, in
the days of Alexander II, been designated heir, but who now, in old age,
saw all ambition ended.
John Balliol's accession was marred by the
bullying approach employed by Edward, and his early experience as King of
Scots was rendered unhappy by further bullying. Anxious, no doubt, to make
his point clear, Edward required various displays of obedience from
Balliol, for whom humiliation at Edward's hands seemed likely to become a
way of life.
But even such a shrewd man as Edward was
capable of misjudgement, and even Balliol could be provoked beyond
endurance. That provocation came when, in 1295, Edward was about to mount
an expedition against France and ordered Balliol, as his feudal inferior,
to join him in the war which was about to commence. The worm now turned.
Balliol, known to his derisive subjects as 'Toom Tabard' - 'empty coat' or
'stuffed shirt' - had some pride, and some awareness that nothing but
exploitation and humiliation faced him in the future. Accordingly, instead
of obeying, he renounced his allegiance to Edward, and instead entered
into an alliance with France, whereby the two countries agreed to take
joint military action against England whenever the latter attacked either
of them. This Franco-Scottish alliance - the Auld Alliance - was to be the
basis of Scottish foreign policy for almost 300 years.
Edward's punishment of Balliol's defiance
was swift and savage. In 1296 English forces invaded Scotland. Berwick was
besieged, stormed and destroyed, its people massacred and its prosperity
gone for ever. Balliol's army was shattered in battle at Dunbar, and by
the late summer his reign was over. On 2 July he surrendered to Edward 'the
land of Scotland and all its people', and he made his own personal and
symbolic act of submission, barefoot, half-naked and unarmed, in the
church of Stracathro.
Well pleased with himself, Edward had a
brisk look around his new property, and returned home. There was to be no
new puppet king. Robert Bruce ventured to suggest that this might be his
hour, drawing from Edward the contemptuous response that he had better
things to do than go round conquering kingdoms for Bruce. Instead he
placed control of Scotland in the hands of English officials; John de
Warenne, Earl of Surrey, was military commander, and Hugh de Cressingham,
churchman and bureaucrat, was responsible for civil administration. The
absorption of Scotland into Edward's Greater England, seemed now
inevitable, and even the records of government and the symbols of
nationhood were removed to England, the fragment of the True Cross from
Holyrood and the Stone of Destiny from Scone. As for resistance, none was
to be anticipated, as the landowners of Scotland hurriedly and tactfully
rushed to place their names on a list of those doing homage to Edward - a
list which later generations were to know, derisively, as 'the Ragman's
Roll'.
And yet resistance there was - a heroic
episode which became the great national myth or folk-memory of Scotland.
Some guerrilla activity was undertaken by Sir William Douglas in the south
and by Andrew de Moray in the north, but most famous and honoured of all
these resistance leaders was William Wallace. Countless words have been
written about Wallace, most of them based upon the epic poem The Wallace,
written by Henry the Minstrel or 'Blind Harry', some two centuries after
the events which he describes. Yet Harry's narrative, where it can be
checked against the references to Wallace which are to be found in the
chronicles of his time, stands up to scrutiny rather well. The probability
must be that Harry was working from an oral tradition, which must indicate
that Wallace was a subject of hero-worship and legend for many generations
before Harry wrote his poem.
The story is now widely familiar and widely
available. Its hero is the younger son of a knight who held lands as a
tenant of the Stewards at Elderslie in Renfrewshire. Born around 1270 he
was approaching manhood as the disasters following Alexander's death were
occurring. Taught by an uncle, a priest at Dunipace, to cherish the idea
of freedom, his education was carried forward at the church school in
Dundee. His presence in the east of the country is accounted for by the
tradition that his father had become politically unpopular through his
active opposition to the growing English domination which followed the
Treaty of Birgham, and the young Wallace with his mother, moved discreetly
to live with relatives in the Carse of Gowrie. In Dundee an adolescent
dispute ended with Wallace killing the son of the commander of Dundee's
English garrison, for which deed he became - and, in English eyes,
remained - an outlaw.
If an outlaw he was, he seems to have felt
that he might as well act the part; and from 1292 he is found making
trouble for the English authorities in widely-scattered parts of the
country. It is possible that he fought in Balliol's army at Dunbar in
1296; and certainly in 1297, he emerged as the sharpest thorn in English
flesh. His travels in 1297 brought him into repeated skirmishes with
English forces over an area ranging from Loch Awe in the north to
Lochmaben in the south. His father had by now fallen victim to English
soldiers, and Wallace suffered the further tragedy of having his wife -
actual or intended - killed by the English commander in Lanark, because
she had assisted him to escape from an English force which had come near
to capturing him. To his nationalist motives there was now added the
incentive of personal revenge, and the killer of Marion Braidfute fell
victim to Wallace's rage and grief.
The Wallace Monument at
Bemersyde near Dryburgh. (Photo: Gordon Wright)
He was capable of taking vengeance for
others as well. When the English governor of Ayr invited local Scottish
leaders to meet him and then had them all hanged as they arrived, Wallace
responded by taking his men into Ayr, securing the doors of the buildings
where English soldiers lay, and setting fire to them. There is a local
tradition that the Scots watched Ayr burn from a hilltop near Tarbolton a
few miles from the stricken town.
By now Wallace was no mere outlaw; he was
intolerable to King Edward and his officials in Scotland who mounted a
full-scale military operation to destroy him. He was engaged in besieging
the castle of Dundee when reports came to him of English preparations to
cross the Forth to seek and destroy 'this robber' as the English
chroniclers dubbed him. Leaving the siege to his local supporters, Wallace
made for the only route north which an English army could take - the
crossing of the Forth at Stirling. There he positioned his men on the
north bank of the river, and awaited the English attack.
Argument on tactics raged briefly in the
English camp. Surrey, who knew more than most about battles, had no wish
to direct his army across the narrow bridge, preferring to delay matters,
and make a crossing over a ford a short distance upstream. His civilian
colleague, Cressingham, whose duties included providing for payment of the
costs of the campaign, preferred a quick strike, and strutted off across
the bridge. Wallace held his men back until he felt that the English force
which had reached the northern bank was as large as his army could handle;
then he had a small Scottish force seize the northern end of the bridge
while the bulk of his army set about the destruction of the English who
had crossed. The result was a total defeat for Edward's army of
occupation. Cressingham was killed, and the Scots made souvenirs of his
skin. Surrey fled with the remains of his army to Berwick, and Wallace and
his men were now the only power in Scotland. Wallace himself was left in
sole command (his ally, Andrew de Moray, having died of wounds received in
the battle), and, as though to bring some show of normality into the
administration of the country, he now took the title of 'Guardian of
Scotland', acting in the name of King John.
The amazing thing about his success, apart
from his obviously remarkable talents as a fighting leader, was that this
man had no aristocratic advantages. He was not born into leadership or
into statecraft, but had earned leadership and honour by his courage, his
skill and his devotion to his country. Wallace's career proves beyond
argument that Scotland was now more than a mere theory or legal concept,
but was a nation in the minds and hearts of its people - which is what
really matters.
But his modest social status did present
problems. It would never be easy for the nobility to endure leadership
even of a proven patriot and warrior indefinitely. Some were jealous no
doubt; most had played no part whatever in the national struggle, and some
who had, like the young Robert Bruce of Annandale and Carrick, could not
be expected to follow the lead of a leader who acted in the name of John
Balliol. The probability had to be that Wallace's tenure of power and
influence would be purely temporary.
He made what use he could of his time as
Guardian, seeking to restore normality in trade and diplomacy, trying to
persuade the rulers of Europe to accept that Scotland was once more a free
participant in world affairs. Most were perfectly civil, and may even have
been sympathetic, but all would know that Edward was not the man to let
matters rest.
In
1298 Edward led his army - enormous by the standards of the time - into
Scotland to punish this bandit, this terrorist, who had so defied and
humiliated him. Against such power as Edward's, no Scottish force could
reasonably hope for success in battle. The best hope, then and always, for
the Scots, lay in retreat and delay; avoiding pitched battles, keeping an
armed force in existence, while the English were drawn further from their
bases into remoter parts until winter approached, supplies ran short and
retreat became necessary. Wallace appears to have intended to follow such
a strategy, but Edward was able to keep up such a hot pursuit that the
Scottish army found itself forced to turn and fight at Falkirk.
Even then there was still
hope. The Scottish schiltrons - densely assembled circles of spearmen -
could be relied upon to beat back as many cavalry charges as an enemy
cared to make, but unfortunately for the Scots Edward had a new military
tactic at his disposal. Before he had found the opportunity to seize
control of Scotland he had already conquered Wales, and his army at
Falkirk had a large force of Welsh archers. These bowmen were able to
inflict heavy losses upon the schiltrons from a safe distance, tearing
gaps in the Scottish ranks through which English cavalry could in due
course charge. The way to deal with archers was to send cavalry against
them, and this Wallace tried to do. But cavalry - armoured knights - were
drawn from the ranks of the nobility and the gentry, who alone could
afford horses and armour. Here at last Wallace's lack of aristocratic
support proved crucial. The small cavalry force which he did have, saw
itself overmatched, considered the likely outcome of the battle, and ran
away. The Scottish formation was gradually broken down, and was soon
retreating into the safety of the Torwood, which Wallace had perhaps seen
as a refuge if things went badly.
With his defeat, his power was
gone. He resigned his position as Guardian, being replaced by the leaders
of the two main political factions in Scotland - John Comyn and Robert
Bruce, together with Bishop Lamberton of St. Andrews. Wallace continued,
it seems, to conduct some guerrilla operations, which were still possible,
because he had come so near to success. Only a few weeks after his
victory, Edward had had to lead his hungry army back home, leaving
Scotland far from properly under control. Also, Wallace seems to have gone
on diplomatic missions seeking moral support in Norway, in France and,
perhaps, in Rome.
It is said that Edward tried
to win Wallace over, offering perhaps even the crown itself, if only he
would agree to hold it as Edward's subordinate. No temptations worked;
Wallace remained irreconcilable, and English pride and security alike
required his destruction.
Comyn and Bruce, and various
lesser persons, were all at one time or another bidden by Edward to secure
and hand over Wallace to him. How hard they tried, we do not know, but for
a man hunted as Wallace now was, there must always be the danger of
betrayal.
On 5 August 1305, Wallace and
two followers settled for the night in the house of Ralph Rae at
Robroyston. During the night, we are told, one of Wallace's companions, a
relative of Sir John Stewart of Menteith (who in his time had held
Dumbarton Castle for both the Scots and the English), betrayed Wallace and
opened the door to Menteith's men. Their story at firstwas that, in the
interests of peace, Wallace was to go to be in Menteith's charge at
Dumbarton, but once subdued, he was instead handed over to an English
escort, and hurried to London. Menteith's reward was £151.
On 23 August in Westminster
Hall, Edward at last confronted this man who had refused all attempts to
win him over, or to make him abandon his loyalty to his own independent
country. He was an outlaw in English eyes, and, as such, received no
trial, but simply a statement of his offences and the sentence which they
incurred. Edward personally had devised the English penalty for treason.
Wallace was slowly tortured to death and his head displayed on Tower
Bridge. His limbs were exhibited at Newcastle, Berwick, Stirling and Perth
as a warning to others. Edward, the English Justinian, and probably
England's greatest King, was also a demented sadist it would seem.
So Wallace died, his bravery
and his defiance maintained to the end. His heroism and his total
selflessness have earned for him the unforgetting reverence of his people.
Only one other Scot has become a national legend, and he - Robert Burns -
was moved in all his opinions by the story and the memory of Wallace. 'The
story of Wallace,' Burns wrote, 'poured a tide of Scottish prejudice into
my veins, which will boil along there till the floodgates of life shut in
eternal rest.' Millions of Scots down through the centuries have
experienced exactly the same emotion.
Scottish resistance after
Wallace's defeat did continue and some modest local successes were
recorded, but there was no real prospect that the Comyns and Bruce would
for long be able to co-operate. John Comyn, head of the family since his
father's death in 1303, was Balliol's nephew, his supporter and possibly
his successor, assuming that King John would never venture to return from
his exile. Bruce on the other hand, was rival to both Balliol and Comyn.
The co-operation between them ended with Bruce's resignation of his
position as joint Guardian. Comyn and other leaders continued to offer
defiance to England, but this resistance crumbled when Edward himself
reappeared in Scotland, and compelled the submission of all the Scots
leaders in February 1304.
Only Stirling Castle held out
longer and its Governor, Oliphant, surrendered in July. With these
surrenders, and the capture of Wallace in the following year, Scotland
once again must have seemed subdued beyond all hope of recovery.
What Bruce did during those
years remains a matter for controversy. Entering into Edward's peace, he
was from time to time shown marks of the English king's approval and
favour. Yet, given his pedigree and the ambitions of his family for which
he was now responsible, it was unlikely that Bruce any more than Comyn,
would accept English conquest and the permanent extinction of the Scottish
monarchy. Just what intrigues these men and their various supporters were
up to will never be known, but, for whatever purpose, they met by
arrangement on 10 February 1306, in Greyfriars Church, Dumfries.
The generally accepted view is
that they had already been plotting to take joint action against Edward,
and that Comyn had, deliberately or otherwise, allowed this to become
known. Certainly Bruce had left London in great haste some weeks earlier
(warned, according to legend, by the Earl of Gloucester), and he is
thought to have come to suspect Comyn of treachery. At all events, the two
met and quarrelled, and Bruce stabbed Comyn close by the very altar of the
church. The murder was then completed by some of Bruce's associates, and
Bruce was now in a desperate position. The murder had turned the political
rivalry of two families into a blood feud. The location of the deed made
him guilty of sacrilege in the eyes of the Church, from which he was in
due course excommunicated. And when people, among them King Edward, began
to ask themselves just why the meeting had taken place, and why Bruce had
struck down Comyn, they were bound to assume that some sort of conspiracy
was afoot. For Bruce to submit to legal process for the murder was
inviting the end of all his hopes, and perhaps his life. To attempt to
offer any explanation to a suspicious Edward was no more attractive a
task. In the circumstances, making the best of a bad job, his wisest
course might be openly to claim the crown, and call for support.
His first act was to make
contact with his old family ally, Bishop Wishart of Glasgow, who proved
remarkably unconcerned about sacrilege and perfectly ready to back Bruce
in his pursuit of the throne. On Palm Sunday, 27 March 1307, Wishart and
Lamberton supervised the crowning of Bruce as King of Scots at Scone by
Isabel, Countess of Buchan.
Of his adventures thereafter,
there is a wealth of information. English and Scottish chronicles give
much more information about Bruce than they ever did about Wallace. Bruce
had so many advantages that Wallace never could hope for. He was of royal
blood, and now king; he had many powerful friends, and he was fighting in
his own name to maintain his new dignity. Where the chronicles are silent,
the story of Bruce can be picked up in the epic poem The Brus, by John
Barbour, who did for Bruce what Blind Harry did for Wallace.
From these sources we learn of
Bruce's desperate struggle in the early years of his kingship. Surprised
and defeated by an English force at Methven in Perthshire in 1307; coming
close to death in a skirmish with the Macdougalls of Lorne, relatives and
supporters of the Balliol/Comyn cause; a fugitive, reduced to a mere
handful of followers, tracked by hunting dogs, and a fugitive again,
driven into exile on some remote island, where close to despair, he is
reputed to have learned determination from the labours of a spider.
But gradually the tide turned,
and supporters rallied to him. His best piece of good fortune was the
death in 1307 of the great King Edward, who died on the way north yet
again to deal with this latest piece of Scottish disobedience. Bruce's
supporters proved to be men of some military skill, showing especial
talents in capturing castles from their English garrisons. Thomas Randolph
captured Edinburgh, after a hair-raising climb up the Castle rock. James
Douglas made himself especially feared by the English as he waged ruthless
war in his own family lands in the Border country. Even humble men like
the Linlithgow farmer, Binning, showed great ingenuity, jamming a cart
between the drawbridge and portcullis of Linlithgow Castle, opening the
way for Scots to break in and overpower the garrison. The campaign to win
back castles went on relentlessly. When a castle was captured it was 'slighted',
its foundations undermined and one or more of its walls collapsed. There
was no attempt to place Scottish garrisons in the castles. If Bruce had
followed that plan he would merely have spread his forces thinly about the
country, to be picked off one by one by English counter attacks. The
castles were rendered useless, depriving the English of their strong
points, their armouries, and their stores. By 1314 only two major castles -
Bothwell and Stirling - remained in English hands.
Stirling had been besieged by
a Scottish force under King Robert's brother Edward. Edward was an
impatient soul, who fretted at the long drawn out siege. His patience
ebbing fast, he and the English governor, Philip Mowbray, agreed to bring
matters to a head by a kind of challenge. Mowbray agreed that if Stirling
was not relieved by an English force by midsummer 1314, he would
surrender. By this bargain Mowbray left his king, Edward II, no choice but
to try to break the Scottish siege; and Edward Bruce left his brother no
choice but to confront the English army which must now appear. Such a
pitched battle was what King Robert had sought to avoid; the fate of
Wallace's army at Falkirk did not encourage any such course of action, but
there was no escape now.
The English army - greater
than any ever before mustered against Scotland - made its way north,
starting from its assembly point at Wark on 10 June. By 21 June Edward was
in Edinburgh, planning to be in Stirling by 23 June.
Bruce had spent the spring and
early summer preparing his ground and drilling his men. His army,
organised in three divisions with a reserve behind them, lay across the
road which led into Stirling from the south. There were no natural
obstacles to place between the Scots and charging English cavalry, so
artificial obstacles had to be provided. Metal spikes or 'calthrops' which
would lame horses, were scattered along the Scottish front; and pits were
dug which, it was hoped, would serve as traps for the attackers.
By late afternoon on 23 June,
the armies were in contact, and it became evident that Edward and his
generals intended to waste no time. Sir Henry de Bohun, correctly
identifying as King Robert the Scottish officer who was moving back and
forth along his lines, decided that matters could be settled quickly, and
charged at full gallop upon his intended victim. At the last possible
moment Bruce turned his horse aside, and as de Bohun went thundering past,
brought his axe down upon the knight's head, leaving him lifeless before
the astonished gaze of both armies.
First
blood to the Scots, but more discouragement awaited the English. An
attempt to outflank Randolph's division on the Scots' left was beaten back
in a skirmish around St. Ninian's church, and as darkness fell there was
doubt and anxiety in the English camp. Edward and his generals had seen
fit to move their men to their right, eastward, on to the low-lying ground
through which flowed the Bannockburn. The result of this manoeuvre was
that Bruce's prepared defences were now useless. The English charge would
come not from the south, but from the east. Bruce had to reorganise his
men in some haste, and as dawn broke the Scots were ready, looking down
the slope at the mighty force which they would shortly have to face.
At some stage during the
night, Bruce had revised his plans. Deprived of his static defences he may
have been considering retreat, losing thereby the opportunity of gaining
Stirling castle, but saving his army to fight in more favourable
surroundings. But there had come to the Scottish camp Sir Alexander Seton,
a Scot who had been in the English army, presumably as a Balliol partisan,
but who had now either repented, or had detected a change in the winds of
war. Seton brought Bruce news of an English army, worried and ill-at-ease,
vulnerable to any attack which the Scots might care to mount. It may be
that this advice lay behind the decision which Bruce now took. Not only
would he fight, but he would not have his men stand passively in their
schiltrons to await the English attack. On the contrary, he would take the
initiative, and move upon the English who would not be anticipating this
mobility from the Scots.
So, as the English soldiers
began to make their preparations they were astonished to see the Scottish
divisions on the slopes above them begin to march down upon them. As one
chronicler says, 'the English army . . . mounted in great alarm.' For a
brief moment their alarm may have subsided, as the Scottish force was
suddenly seen to kneel, while along their ranks rode the Abbot of
Inchaffray, leading the Scots in the Lord's Prayer, and granting them
absolution. Edward himself misunderstood the meaning of the scene. The
Scots, he suggested, were kneeling for mercy from him, their aggrieved
overlord. Another Balliol Scot, watching beside Edward, put him right. The
Scots he pointed out, many of them on the point of death, were asking for
God's mercy, not his.
Bruce, so Barbour tells us,
spoke briefly to encourage his men. He would know that all the painfully
won gains of the past eight years could now be lost in a matter of
minutes; and he and his supporters must also have known that if Bruce
failed here, there was no one else to whom Scotland could look for
leadership and victory. It had become, as Burns was later to put it, a
matter of do or die.
The various chroniclers do
their best to explain what then happened. The advancing Scots were
subjected to volleys from the English - or Welsh - archers, who were in
turn counter-attacked by the Scottish horse, whose absence had doomed
Wallace at Falkirk. So, the archers fell back, and the English cavalry
moved through to take up the attack. 'The great horses of the English
charged the pikes of the Scots as it were into a dense forest . . . and so
they remained without movement for a while.' In that sentence lies the key
to an understanding of the battle. The field, from the English point of
view, was over-crowded. By their manoeuvre of the 23rd, they had turned
the Scottish flank, but in doing so they had placed themselves on a
restricted arena, with marshes and streams to their right and their rear;
and, to their left, a short but fairly deep gorge through which flowed the
Bannock burn. There was no way out, except uphill through the Scottish
ranks; and as the Scots pressed forward, and the English archers struggled
among the English cavalry, and the English foot were pushed forward to
play their part, the English found themselves in such a tangle that their
cavalry leaders sought to give ground and regroup for a fresh attack.
But they had no ground to
give. 'They were jammed together and could not operate against them, so
direfully were their horses impaled on the pikes.' The troops in the
English rear fell back upon the ditch of Bannockburn, tumbling one over
the other. 'Many nobles and others fell into it with their horses in the
crush . . . never able to extricate themselves from the ditch.'
The true victor of Bannockburn
in a sense, therefore, was the battlefield. Marshes and streams claimed
armoured men, unable to rise if they fell. The gorge, we are told, was so
filled with the bodies of men and horses that it was possible to walk
across it from one bank to the other as though on level ground. From this
horror the English army now broke and fled. Edward himself escaped around
the Scots' left, and made for Stirling Castle. Mowbray reminded his king
that he would be handing the castle over to the Scots in accordance with
his bargain with Edward Bruce, and so the hapless king had to circle the
battlefield once more, seeking an escape route which would bring him to
Dunbar and ships which would take him back to England and safety.
Monument to King Robert the
Bruce at Bannockburn. (Photo: George Wright)
An English rearguard fought
on, their last shreds of confidence destroyed by the appearance from the
Gillies Hill of what seemed to them a new Scottish army. The old-fashioned
view was that this force was 'the camp followers', little more than
vultures come to pick up whatever spoils could be got from the dead and
wounded of the defeated army. In more modern times other explanations have
been suggested. One recently advanced idea is that a body of Knights
Templars, persecuted and expelled from most kingdoms in western Europe,
had found a friendly home in Scotland and now repaid their welcome by
bringing their superb professional experience to the battlefield on the
Scottish side. It is an intriguing idea, though why such first-rate
troops, if available, should have been held back until the outcome of the
battle was fairly predictable, is not at all clear. A more favoured
explanation has been that these 'small folk' were a kind of enthusiastic
but only half-armed reserve, commendably anxious to play their part in the
victory. The English were probably beaten anyway, but it is reasonable to
assume that any lingering confidence would vanish as what seemed to be
Scottish reinforcements appeared.
Most remaining English forces
clustered around the castle rock and there surrendered. They may well have
saved their king and many of their escaping leaders, because, with such a
large force to guard, Bruce could never allow his own army to break up in
pursuit of the fugitives.
Edward's escape meant that
Bannockburn was not as decisive as it might have been, but for the moment
the Scottish victory was total. Bothwell Castle was abandoned, and the
remnants of the English army fled back to Carlisle, where the monks of
Lanercost Priory were first to hear of the disaster, and the horrors of
that dreadful gorge.
Bruce was now king beyond
dispute and Scotland had, under him, maintained its independence by force
of arms, as Edward I had sarcastically suggested they might feel free to
try, those many years ago at Birgham. But the war did not end, because the
English acceptance of defeat was not offered. Each year brought Scottish
armies raiding into the north of England, and Edward Bruce even contrived
to attack the English in Ireland, and to make himself briefly king of that
country.
In their desire for peace and
acknowledgement of their independence, the Scots turned for help to the
best international authority available - the Pope, whose wish, they
suggested, ought to be to see peace among Christian peoples. Popes,
however, were usually political partisans, and the Papacy in the years
after Bannockburn was pro-English. The Scots persevered with diplomacy and
with propaganda, and in 1320 produced a document which had characteristics
of both.
The Scottish church had been
steadfastly nationalist all through the years since 1286. Bishops Wishart
and Lamberton were proven patriots, but others too deserve to be similarly
remembered. Churchmen were after all, the literate class in medieval
society, and Scottish churchmen had undertaken the task of expounding and
justifying the Scottish case for independence. In 1320, meeting at
Arbroath Abbey, the leaders of the community of Scotland put their seals
to a document prepared, almost certainly, by Bernard de Linton, abbot and
civil servant, which yet again, but more fully now than ever before,
spelled out Scotland's claim to identity and independence.
Scotland, they reminded Pope
John, to whom the Declaration was addressed, had been a kingdom when
England was big enough for seven kings. They had endured attack from King
Edward who had taken advantage of their misfortunes and had worked to
destroy their freedom under guise of friendship. Fate had given them as
leader and deliverer, King Robert. Yet - and this is the remarkable
passage - 'if he should abandon our cause . . . we should make every
endeavour to expel him as our enemy and the subverter of his rights and
ours, and choose another for our king.' There are those who look for the
origins of monarchy dependent upon popular will, in the writing of
seventeenth century English philosophers. Very clearly the Scots had
stumbled upon the concept of conditional monarchy several centuries
earlier.
Finally, in case Pope John or
his cardinals thought that Scottish resistance to English ambitions was
merely a passing fad, de Linton offered to his countrymen for their
approval a pledge of determination free of all ambiguity. 'For so long as
a hundred of us shall remain alive we shall never accept subjection to
the
The Declaration of Arbroath,
1320. (From the original in the Scottish Record Office)
domination of the English. For
we fight not for glory, or riches or honour, but for freedom alone which
no good man will consent to lose but with his life.' And yet the Pope
remained full of complaint and censure; the English would not concede
independence, and the war dragged on. Not until political crisis in
England had brought about the deposition and murder of Edward II did the
English Parliament weary of paying the bills for endless warfare, and
force peace upon their boy King Edward III and his advisers. So, in 1328
the English parliament, meeting at Northampton, agreed to terms of peace.
Bruce was at last addressed with all terms of respect due to an
independent monarch, and the English claims to overlordship were
renounced.
Bruce's heir, the
four-year-old David, son of King Robert's second marriage, was married to
Joan of England, the six-year-old sister of Edward III. It was almost as
though the kingdoms were as they had been when King Edward had arranged
the future at Birgham. In the years which lay between, Edward had earned
and gloried in the title 'Hammer of the Scots', but his hammer blows had
moulded and tempered the Scottish nation. The long wars fought to maintain
independence had removed, for the moment, any doubt that independence was
something to be regarded as normal. |