Edward I had failed to recognize the difference between the Scottish
barons and the Scottish people, to which we have referred in a former
chapter. To the Norman baron, who possessed lands in England and
Scotland alike, it mattered little that he had now but one liege lord
instead of two suzerains. To the people of Scotland, proud and
high-spirited, tenacious of their long traditions of independence,
resentful of the presence of foreigners, it could not but be hateful to
find their country governed by a foreign soldiery. The conduct of
Edward's officials, and especially of Cressingham and Ormsby, and the
cruelty of the English garrisons, served to strengthen this national
feeling, and it only remained for it to find a leader round whom it
might rally.[44] A leader arose in the person of Sir William Wallace, a
heroic and somewhat mysterious figure, who first attracted notice in
the autumn of 1296, and, by the spring of the following year, had
gathered round him a band of guerilla warriors, by whose help he was
able to make serious attacks upon the English garrisons of Lanark and
Scone (May, 1297). These exploits, of little importance in themselves,
sufficed to attract the popular feeling towards Wallace. The domestic
difficulties of Edward I rendered the time opportune for a rising, and,
despite the failure of an ill-conceived and badly-managed attempt on the
part of some of the more patriotic barons, which led to the submission
of Irvine, in 1297, the little army which Wallace had collected rapidly
grew in courage and in numbers, and its leader laid siege to the castle
of Dundee. He had now attained a position of such importance that Surrey
and Cressingham found it necessary to take strong measures against him,
and they assembled at Stirling, whither Wallace marched to meet them.
The battle of Stirling Bridge (or, more strictly, Cambuskenneth Bridge)
was fought on September 11th, 1297. Wallace, with his army of knights
and spearmen, took up his position on the Abbey Craig, with the Forth
between him and the English. Less than a mile from the Scottish camp was
a small bridge over the river, giving access to the Abbey of
Cambuskenneth. Surrey rashly attempted to cross this bridge, in the face
of the Scots, and Wallace, after a considerable number of the enemy had
been allowed to reach the northern bank, ordered an attack. The English
failed to keep the bridge, and their force became divided. Surrey was
unable to offer any assistance to his vanguard, and they fell an easy
prey to the Scots, while the English general, with the remnants of his
army, retreated to Berwick.
Stirling was the great military key of
the country, commanding all the
passes from south to north, and the
great defeat which the English had
sustained placed the country in the
power of Wallace. Along with an
Andrew de Moray, of whose identity we
know nothing, he undertook the
government of the country, corresponded
in the name of Scotland with
Luebeck and Hamburg, and took the
offensive against England in an
expedition which ravaged as far south
as Hexham. To the great monastery
of Hexham he granted protection in
the name of "the leaders of the army
of Scotland",[45] although he was
not successful in restraining the
ferocity of his followers. The
document in question is granted in the
name of John, King of Scotland,
and in a charter dated March 1298,[46]
Wallace describes himself as
Guardian of the Kingdom of Scotland, acting
for the exiled Balliol. In
the following summer, Edward marched into
Scotland, and although his
forces were in serious difficulties from want
of food, he went forward
to meet Wallace, who held a strong position at
Falkirk. Wallace
prepared to meet Edward by drawing up his spearmen in
four great
"schiltrons" or divisions, with a reserve of cavalry. His
flanks were
protected by archers, and he had also placed archers between
the
divisions of spearmen. On the English side, Edward himself commanded
the centre, the Earls of Norfolk and Hereford the right, and the Bishop
of Durham the left. The Scottish defeat was the result of a combination
of archers and cavalry. The first attack of the English horse was
completely repulsed by the spearmen. "The front ranks", says Mr. Oman,
"knelt with their spear-butts fixed in the earth; the rear ranks
levelled their lances over their comrades' heads; the thick-set grove of
twelve-foot spears was far too dense for the cavalry to penetrate." But
Edward withdrew the cavalry and ordered the archers to send a shower of
arrows on the Scots. Wallace's cavalry made no attempt to interfere with
the archers; the Scottish bowmen were too few to retaliate; and, when
the English horse next charged, they found many weak points in the
schiltrons, and broke up the Scottish host.
As the battle of
Stirling had created the power of Wallace, so that of
Falkirk
completely destroyed it. He almost immediately resigned his
office of
guardian (mainly, according to tradition, because of the
jealousy with
which the great barons regarded him), and took refuge in
France. Edward
was still in the midst of difficulties, both foreign and
domestic, and
he was unable to reduce the country. The Scots elected new
guardians,
who regarded themselves as regents, not for Edward but for
Balliol.
They included John Comyn and Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick, the
future
king. The guardians were successful in persuading both Philip IV
of
France and Pope Boniface VIII to intervene in their favour, but
Edward
disregarded the papal interference, and though he was too busy to
complete his conquest, he sent an army into Scotland in each of the
years 1300, 1301, and 1302. Military operations were almost entirely
confined to ravaging; but, in February 1302-3, Comyn completely defeated
at Rosslyn, near Edinburgh, an English army under Sir John Segrave and
Ralph de Manton, whom Edward had ordered to make a foray in Scotland
about the beginning of Lent. In the summer of 1303, the English king,
roused perhaps by this small success, and able to give his undivided
attention to Scotland, conducted an invasion on a larger scale. In
September, he traversed the country as far north as Elgin, and,
remaining in Scotland during the winter of 1303-4, he set to work in the
spring to reduce the castle of Stirling, which still held out against
him. When the garrison surrendered, in July, 1304, Scotland lay at
Edward's feet. Comyn had already submitted to the English king, and
Edward's personal vindictiveness was satisfied by the capture of Wallace
by Sir John Menteith, a Scotsman who had been acting in the English
interest. Wallace was taken to London, subjected to a mock trial,
tortured, and put to death with ignominy. On the 23rd August, 1305, his
head was placed on London Bridge, and portions of his body were sent to
Scotland. His memory served as an inspiration for the cause of freedom,
and it is held in just reverence to the present hour. If it is true that
he did not scruple to go beyond what we should regard as the limits of
honourable warfare, it must be remembered that he was fighting an enemy
who had also disregarded these limits, and much may be forgiven to brave
men who are resisting a gratuitous war of conquest. When he died, his
work seemed to have failed. But he had shown his countrymen how to
resist Edward, and he had given sufficient evidence of the strength of
national feeling, if only it could find a suitable leader. The English
had to learn the lesson which, five centuries later, Napoleon had to
learn in Spain, and Scotland cannot forget that Wallace was the first to
teach it.
It is not less pathetic to turn to Edward's scheme for
the government of Scotland. It bears the impress of a mind which was
that of a statesman and a lawyer as well as a soldier. It is impossible
to deny a tribute of admiration to its wisdom, or to question the
probability of its success
in other circumstances. Had the course of
events been more propitious
for Edward's great plan, Scotland and
England might have been spared
much suffering. But Edward failed to
realize that the Scots could no
longer regard him as the friend and
ally to whose son they had willingly
agreed to marry their queen. He
was now but a military conqueror in
temporary possession of their
country, an enemy to be resisted by any
means. The new constitution was
foredoomed to failure. Carrying out his
scheme of 1296, Edward created
no vassal-king, but placed Scotland under
his own nephew, John of
Brittany; he interfered as little as might be
with the customs and laws
of the country; he placed over it eight
justiciars with sheriffs under
them. In 1305, Edward's Parliament, which
met at London, was attended
by Scottish representatives. The
incorporation of the country with its
larger neighbour was complete, but
it involved as little change as was
possible in the circumstances.
The Parliament of 1305 was attended
by Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick,
who attended not as a representative
of Scotland, but as an English
lord. Bruce was the grandson of the
Robert Bruce of Annandale who had
been promised the crown by Alexander
II, and who had been one of the
claimants of 1290. His grandfather had
done homage to Edward, and Bruce
himself had been generally on the
English side, and had fought against
Wallace at Falkirk. When John
Balliol had decided to rebel, he had
transferred the lands of Annandale
from the Bruces to the Comyns, and
they had been restored by Edward I
after Balliol's submission. From 1299
to 1303, Bruce had been
associated with Comyn in the guardianship of the
kingdom, but, like
Comyn, had submitted to Edward. Nobody in Scotland
could now think of a
restoration of Balliol, and if there was to be a
Scottish king at all,
it must obviously be either Comyn or Bruce. The
claim of John Comyn the
younger was much stronger than that of his
father had been. The elder
Comyn had claimed on account of his descent
from Donald Bane, the
brother and successor of Malcolm Canmore; but the
younger Comyn had an
additional claim in right of his mother, who was a
sister of John
Balliol. Between Bruce and Comyn there was a
long-standing feud. In
1299, at a meeting of the Great Council of
Scotland at Peebles, Comyn
had attacked Bruce, and they could only be
separated by the use of
violence. On the 10th February, 1305-6, Bruce
and the Comyn met in the
church of the convent of the Minorite Friars at
Dumfries. Tradition
tells that they met to adjust their conflicting
claims, with a view to
establishing the independence of the country in
the person of one or
other of the rivals; that a dispute arose in which
they came to blows;
and that Bruce, after inflicting a severe wound upon
his enemy, left
the church. "I doubt I have slain the Red Comyn," he
said to his
followers. "Doubt?" was the reply of Sir Roger Fitzpatrick,
"I'll mak
siccar." The actual circumstances of the affair are unknown to
us; but
Bruce may fairly be relieved of the suspicion of any
premeditation,
because it is most unlikely that he would have needlessly
chosen to
offend the Church by committing a murder within sanctuary. The
real
interest attaching to the circumstances lies in the tradition that
the
object of the meeting was to organize a resistance against Edward I.
Whether this was so or not, there can be no doubt that the result of the
conference compelled the Bruce to place himself at the head of the
national cause. A Norman baron, born in England, he was by no means the
natural leader for whose appearance men looked, and there was a grave
chance of his failing to arouse the national sentiment. But the murder
of one claimant to the Scottish throne at the hands of the only other
possible candidate, who thus placed himself in the position of undoubted
heir, could scarcely have been forgiven by Edward I, even if the Comyn
had not, for the past two years, proved a faithful servant of the
English king. There was no alternative, and, on the 27th March, 1306,
Robert, Earl of Carrick and Lord of Annandale, was crowned King of the
Scots at Scone. The ancient royal crown of the Scottish kings had been
removed by Balliol in 1296, and had fallen into the hands of Edward, but
the Countess of Buchan placed on the Bruce's head a hastily made coronet
of gold.
It was far from an auspicious beginning. It is difficult
to give Bruce credit for much patriotic feeling, although, as we have
seen, he had been one of the guardians who had maintained a semblance
of independence. The death of the Comyn had thrown against him the
whole influence of the Church; he was excommunicate, and it was no sin
to slay him. The powerful family, whose head had been cut off by his
hand, had vowed revenge, and its great influence was on the side of the
English. It is no small tribute to the force of the sentiment of
nationality that the Scots rallied round such a leader, and it must be
remembered that, from whatever reason the Bruce adopted the national
cause, he proved in every respect worthy of a great occasion, and as
time passed, he came todeserve the place he occupies as the hero of
the epic of a nation's freedom.
The first blow in the renewed
struggle was struck at Methven, near
Perth, where, on the 19th June,
1306, the Earl of Pembroke inflicted a
defeat upon King Robert. The
Lowlands were now almost entirely lost to
him; he sent his wife[47] and
child to Kildrummie Castle in
Aberdeenshire, whence they fled to the
sanctuary of St. Duthac, near
Tain. In August, Bruce was defeated at
Dalry, by Alexander of Lorn, a
relative of the Comyn. In September,
Kildrummie Castle fell, and Nigel
Bruce, King Robert's brother, fell
into the hands of the English and was
put to death at Berwick. To
complete the tale of catastrophes, the
Bruce's wife and daughter, two
of his sisters, and other two of his
brothers, along with the Countess
of Buchan, came into the power of the
English king. Edward placed some
of the ladies in cages, and put to
death Sir Thomas Bruce and Alexander
Bruce, Dean of Glasgow (February,
1306-7). Meanwhile, King Robert had
found it impossible to maintain
himself even in his own lands of
Carrick, and he withdrew to the island
of Rathlin, where he wintered.
Undeterred by this long series of
calamities, he took the field in the
spring of 1307, and now, for the
first time, fortune favoured him. On
the 10th May, he defeated the
English, under Pembroke, at Loudon Hill,
in Ayrshire. He had been joined
by his brother Edward and by the Lord
James of Douglas (the "Black
Douglas"), and the news of his success,
slight as it was, helped to
increase at once the spirit and the numbers
of his followers. His position, however, was one of extreme difficulty;
he was still only a king in name, and, in reality, the leader of a
guerilla warfare. Edward was marching northwards at the head of a large
army, determined to crush his audacious subject. But Fate had decreed
that the Hammer of the Scots
was never again to set foot in Scotland.
At Burgh-on-Sand, near Carlisle, within sight of his unconquered
conquest, the great Edward
breathed his last. His death was the
turning-point in the struggle. The
reign of Edward II in England is a
most important factor in the
explanation of Bruce's success.
With the death of Edward I the whole aspect of the contest changes. The
English were no longer conducting a great struggle for a statesmanlike
ideal, as they had been under Edward I--however impossible he himself
had made its attainment. There is no longer any sign of conscious
purpose either in their method or in their aims. The nature of the
warfare at once changed; Edward II, despite his father's wish that his
bones should be carried at the head of the army till Scotland was
subdued, contented himself with a fruitless march into Ayrshire, and
then returned to give his father a magnificent burial in Westminster
Abbey. King Robert was left to fight his Scottish enemies without their
English allies. These Scottish enemies may be divided into two
classes--the Anglo-Norman nobles who had supported the English cause
more or less consistently, and the personal enemies of the Bruce, who
increased in numbers after the murder of Comyn. Among the great families
thus alienated from the cause of Scotland were the Highlanders of Argyll
and the Isles, some of the men of Badenach, and certain Galloway clans.
But that this opposition was personal, and not racial, is shown by the
fact that, from the first, some of these Highlanders were loyal to
Bruce, _e.g._ Sir Nigel Campbell and Angus Og. We shall see, further,
that after the first jealousies caused by Comyn's death and Bruce's
success had passed away, the men of Argyll and the Isles took a more
prominent part on the Scottish side. In December, 1307, Bruce routed
John Comyn, the successor of his old rival, at Slains, on the
Aberdeenshire coast, and in the following May, when Comyn had obtained
some slight English assistance, he inflicted a final defeat upon him at
Inverurie. The power of the Comyns in their hereditary earldom of Buchan
had now been suppressed, and King Robert turned his attention to their
allies in the south. In the autumn of 1308, he himself defeated
Alexander of Lorn and subdued the district of Argyll, his brother Edward
reduced Galloway to subjection, and Douglas, along with Randolph, Earl
of Moray, was successful in Tweeddale. Thus, within three years from the
death of Comyn, Bruce had broken the power of the great families, whose
enmity against him had been aroused by that event. One year later the
other great misfortune, which had been brought upon him by the same
cause, was removed by an act which is important evidence at once of the
strength of the anti-English feeling in the country, and of the
confidence which Bruce had inspired. On the 24th February, 1309-10, the
clergy of Scotland met at Dundee and made a solemn declaration[48] of
fealty to King Robert as their lawful king. Scotland was thus united in
its struggle for independence under King Robert I.
It now remained
to attack the English garrisons who held the castles of
Scotland. An
invasion conducted by Edward II in 1310 proved fruitless,
and the
English king returned home to enter on a long quarrel with the
Lords
Ordainers, and to see his favourite, Gaveston, first exiled and
then
put to death. While the attention of the rulers of England was thus
occupied, Bruce, for the first time since Wallace's inroad of 1297,
carried the war into the enemy's country, invading the north of England
both in 1311 and in 1312. Meanwhile the strongholds of the country were
passing out of the English power. Linlithgow was recovered in 1311;
Perth in January, 1312-13; and Roxburgh a month later. The romantic
capture of the castle of Edinburgh, by Randolph, Earl of Moray, in
March, 1313, is one of the classical stories of Scottish history, and
in the summer of the same year, King Robert restored the Scottish rule
in the Isle of Man. In November, 1313, only Stirling Castle remained in
English hands, and Edward Bruce rashly agreed to raise the siege on
condition that the garrison should surrender if they were not relieved
by June 24th, 1314. Edward II determined to make a heroic effort to
maintain this last vestige of English conquest, and his attempt to do so
has become irrevocably associated with the Field of Bannockburn.
In
his preparations for the great struggle, which was to determine the
fate of Scotland, the Bruce carefully avoided the errors which had led
to Wallace's defeat at Falkirk. He selected a position which was
covered, on one side by the Bannock Burn and a morass, and, on the other
side, by the New Park or Forest. His front was protected by the stream
and by the famous series of "pottes", or holes, covered over so as to
deceive the English cavalry. The choice of this narrow position not only
prevented the possibility of a flank attack, but also forced the great
army of Edward II into a small space, where its numbers became a
positive disadvantage. King Robert arranged his infantry in four
divisions; in front were three schiltrons of pikemen, under Randolph,
Edward Bruce, and Sir James Douglas, and Bruce himself commanded the
reserve, which was composed of Highlanders from Argyll and the Islands
and of the men of Carrick.[49] Sir Robert Keith, the Marischal, was in
charge of a small body of cavalry, which did good service by driving
back, at a critical moment, such archers as made their way through the
forest. The English army was in ten divisions, but the limited area in
which they had to fight interfered with their arrangement. As at
Falkirk, the English cavalry made a gallant but useless charge against
the schiltrons, but it was not possible again to save the day by means
of archers, for the archers had no room to deploy, and could only make
vain efforts to shoot over the heads of the horsemen. Bruce strengthened
the Scots with his reserve, and then ensued a general action along the
whole line. The van of the English army was now thoroughly demoralized,
and their comrades in the rear could not, in these narrow limits, press
forward to render any assistance. King Robert's camp-followers, at this
juncture, rushed down a hill behind the Scottish army, and they appeared
to the English as a fresh force come to assist the enemy. The result was
the loss of all sense of discipline: King Edward's magnificent host fled
in complete rout and with great slaughter, and the cause of Scottish
freedom was won.
The victory of Bannockburn did not end the war,
for the English refused to acknowledge the hard-won independence of
Scotland, and fighting continued till the year 1327. The Scots not only
invaded England, but adopted the policy of fighting England in Ireland,
and English reprisals in Scotland were uniformly unsuccessful. Bruce
invaded England in 1315;in the same year, his brother Edward landed
with a Scottish army at Carrickfergus, in the hope of obtaining a
throne for himself. He was
crowned King of Ireland in May, 1316, and
during that and the following
year, King Robert was personally in
Ireland, giving assistance to his
brother. But, in 1318, Edward Bruce
was defeated and slain near Dundalk,
and, with his death, this phase of
the Bruce's English policy
disappears. A few months before the death of
Edward Bruce, King Robert had captured the border town of
Berwick-on-Tweed, which had been held by
the English since 1298. In
1319, Edward II sent an English army to
besiege Berwick, and the Scots
replied by an invasion of England in the
course of which Douglas and
Randolph defeated the English at
Mitton-on-Swale in Yorkshire. The
English were led by the Archbishop of
York, and so many clerks were
killed that the battle acquired the name
of the Chapter of Mitton. The
war lingered on for three years more. The
year 1322 saw an invasion of
England by King Robert and a
counter-invasion of Scotland by Edward II,
who destroyed the Abbey of
Dryburgh on his return march. This
expedition was, as usual, fruitless,
for the Scots adopted their usual
tactics of leaving the country waste
and desolate, and the English army
could obtain no food. In October of
the same year King Robert made a
further inroad into Yorkshire, and won
a small victory at Biland Abbey.
At last, in March, 1323, a truce was
made for thirteen years, but as
Edward II persisted in declining to
acknowledge the independence of
Scotland, it was obvious that peace
could not be long maintained.
During the fourteen years which followed his victory of Bannockburn,
King Robert was consolidating his kingdom. He had obtained recognition
even in the Western Highlands and Islands, and the sentiment of the
whole nation had gathered around him. The force of this sentiment is
apparent in connection with ecclesiastical difficulties. When Pope John
XXII attempted to make peace in 1317 and refused to acknowledge the
Bruce as king, the papal envoys were driven from the kingdom. For this
the country was placed under the papal ban, and when, in 1324, the pope
offered both to acknowledge King Robert and to remove the
excommunication, on condition that Berwick should be restored to the
English, the Scots refused to comply with his condition. A small
rebellion in 1320 had been firmly repressed by king and Parliament. The
birth of a son to King Robert, on the 5th March, 1323-24, had given
security to the dynasty, and, at the great Parliament which met at
Cambuskenneth in 1326, at which Scottish burghs were, for the first
time, represented, the clergy, the barons, and the people took an oath
of allegiance to the little Prince David, and, should his heirs fail, to
Robert, the son of Bruce's daughter, Marjorie, and her husband, Robert,
the High Steward of Scotland. The same Parliament put the financial
position of the monarch on a satisfactory footing by granting him a
tenth penny of all rents.
The deposition and murder of Edward II
created a situation of which the
King of Scots could not fail to take
advantage. The truce was broken in
the summer of 1327 by an expedition
into England, conducted by Douglas
and Randolph, and the hardiness of
the Scottish soldiery surprised the
English and warned them that it was
impossible to prolong the contest in
the present condition of the two
countries. The regents for the young
Edward III resolved to come to
terms with Bruce. The treaty of
Northampton, dated 17th March, 1327-28,
is still preserved in Edinburgh.
It acknowledged the complete
independence of Scotland and the royal
dignity of King Robert. It
promised the restoration of all the symbols
of Scottish independence
which Edward I had removed, and it arranged a
marriage between Prince
David, the heir to the Scottish throne, and
Joanna, the sister of the
young king of England. A marriage ceremony
between the two children was
solemnized in the following May, but the
Stone of Fate was never
removed from Westminster, owing, it is said, to
the opposition of the
abbot. The succession of James VI to the throne of
England, nearly
three centuries later, was accepted as the fulfilment of
the prophecy
attached to the Coronation Stone, "Lapis ille grandis":
"Ni
fallat fatam, Scoti, quocunque locatum, Invenient lapidem,
regnare tenentur ibidem".
Thus closed the portion of Scottish
history which is known as the War of
Independence. The condemnation of
the policy of Edward I lies simply in
its results. He found the two
nations at peace and living together in
amity; he left them at war and
each inspired with a bitter hatred of the
other. A policy which aimed
at the unification of the island and at
preventing Scotland from
proving a source of danger to England, and
which resulted in a warfare
covering, almost continuously, more than two
hundred and fifty years,
and which, after the lapse of four centuries,
left the policy of
Scotland a serious difficulty to English ministers,
can scarcely
receive credit for practical sagacity, however wise its
aim. It created
for England a relentless and irritating (if not always a
dangerous)
enemy, invariably ready to take advantage of English
difficulties.
England had to fight Scotland in France and in Ireland,
and Edward IV
and Henry VII found the King of Scots the ally of the
House of
Lancaster, and the protector of Perkin Warbeck. Only the
accident of
the Reformation rendered it possible to disengage Scotland
from its
alliance with France, and to bring about a union with England.
Till the
emergence of the religious question the English party in
Scotland
consisted of traitors and mercenaries, and their efforts to
strengthen
English influence form the most discreditable pages of
Scottish
history.
We are not here dealing with the domestic history of
Scotland; but it is impossible to avoid a reference to the subject of
the influence of the Scottish victory upon the Scots themselves. It has
been argued that Bannockburn was, for Scotland, a national misfortune,
and that Bruce's defeat would have been for the real welfare of the
country. There are, of course, two stand-points from which we may
approach the question. The
apologist of Bannockburn might lay stress on
the different effects of conquest and a hard-won independence upon the
national character, and might fairly point to various national
characteristics which have been,
perhaps, of some value to
civilization, and which could hardly have been
fostered in a condition
of servitude. On the other hand, there arises a
question as to material
prosperity. It must be remembered that we are
not here discussing the
effect of a peaceful and amicable union, such as
Edward first proposed,
but of a successful war of conquest; and in this
connection it is only
with thankfulness and gratitude to Wallace and to
Bruce that the
Scotsman can regard the parallel case of Ireland, which,
from a century
before the time of Edward I, had been annexed by
conquest. The story we
have just related goes to create a reasonable
probability that the fate
of Scotland could not have been different;
but, further, leaving all
such problems of the "might have been", we may
submit that the misery
of Scotland in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and
sixteenth centuries has
been much exaggerated. It is true that the
borders were in a condition
of perpetual feud, and that minorities and
intrigues gravely hampered
the progress of the country. But, more
especially in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries, there are not
wanting indications of prosperity.
The chapter of Scottish history which
tells of the growth of burghs has
yet to be written. The construction of
magnificent cathedrals and
religious houses, and the rise of three
universities, must not be left
out of account. Gifts to the infant
universities, the records of which
we possess, prove that for humble
folk the tenure of property was
comparatively secure, and that there was
a large amount of comfort
among the people. Under James IV, trade and
commerce prospered, and the
Scottish navy rivalled that of the Tudors.
The century in which
Scottish prosperity received its most severe blows
immediately
succeeded the Union of the Crowns. If for three hundred
years the
civilizing influence of England can scarcely be traced in the
history
of Scottish progress, that of France was predominant, and
Scotland
cannot entirely regret the fact. Scotland, from the date of
Bannockburn
to that of Pinkie, will not suffer from a comparison with
the England
which underwent the strain of the long French wars, the
civil broils of
Lancaster and York, and the oppression of the Tudors.
Moreover, there
is one further consideration which should not be
overlooked. The
postponement of an English union till the seventeenth
century enabled
Scotland to work out its own reformation of religion in
the way best
adapted to the national needs, and it is difficult to
estimate, from
the material stand-point alone, the importance of this
factor in the
national progress. The inspiration and the education which
the Scottish
Church has given to the Scottish people has found one
result in the
impulse it has afforded to the growth of material
prosperity, and it is
not easy to regret that Scotland, at the date of
the Reformation, was
free to work out its own ecclesiastical destiny.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 44: There is no indication of any racial division in the
attitude of the Scots. Some Highlanders, from various personal causes,
are found on the English side at the beginning of the War of
Independence; but Mr. Lang has shown that of the descendants of Somerled
of Argyll, the ancestor of the Lords of the Isles, only one fought
against Wallace, while the Celts of Moray and Badenach and the Highland
districts of Aberdeenshire, joined his standard. The behaviour of the
Highland chiefs is similar to that of the Lowland barons. If there is
any racial feeling at all, it is not Celtic _v._ Saxon, but Scandinavian
_v._ Scottish, and it is connected with the recent conquest of the
Isles. But even of this there is little trace, and the behaviour of the
Islesmen is, on the whole, marvellously loyal.]
[Footnote 45:
Hemingburgh, ii, 141-147.]
[Footnote 46: _Diplomata Scotiae_,
xliii, xliv.]
[Footnote 47: Bruce had married, 1st, Isabella,
daughter of the 10thEarl of Mar, by whom he had a daughter, Marjorie,
and 2nd, in 1302,Elizabeth de Burgh, daughter of the Earl of Ulster.]
[Footnote 48: Nat. MSS. ii. 12, No. XVII. The original is preserved in
the Register House.]
[Footnote 49: Pinkerton suggests that King
Robert adopted this arrangement because he was unable to trust the
Highlanders, but this is unlikely, as their leader, Angus Og, had been
consistently faithful to him throughout.]
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