KING ROBERT
THE BRUCE:

KING ROBERT
THE BRUCE

BY
A. F.
MURISON

FAMOUS
SCOTS
SERIES

PUBLISHED BY
OLIPHANT ANDERSON
& FERRIER · EDINBURGH
AND LONDON

ALMAE MATRI
VNIVERSITATI ABERDONENSI

6

7

PREFACE

The present volume on King Robert the Bruce is the
historical complement to the former volume on Sir William
Wallace. Together they outline, from the standpoint of
the leading spirits, the prolonged and successful struggle
of the Scots against the unprovoked aggression of Edward I.
and Edward II.—the most memorable episode in the
history of Scotland.

As in the story of Wallace, so in the story of Bruce, the
narrative is based on the primary authorities. Happily
State records and official papers supply much trustworthy
material, which furnishes also an invaluable test of the
accuracy of the numerous and wayward race of chroniclers.
Barbour’s poem, with all its errors of fact and deflections
of judgment, is eminently useful—in spite of the indulgence
of historical criticism.

There is no space here to set forth the long list of
sources, or to attempt a formal estimate of their comparative
value. Some of them appear incidentally in the
text, though only where it seems absolutely necessary to
name them. The expert knows them; the general reader
will not miss them. Nor is there room for more than
occasional argument on controverted points; it has very
frequently been necessary to signify disapproval by mere
silence. The writer, declining the guidance of modern8
historians, has formed his own conclusions on an independent
study of the available materials.

After due reduction of the exaggerated pedestal of
Patriotism reared for Bruce by the indiscriminating, if
not time-serving, eulogies of Barbour and Fordun, and
maintained for some five centuries, the figure of the
Hero still remains colossal: he completed the national
deliverance.

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CONTENTS

11

KING ROBERT THE BRUCE

CHAPTER I
THE ANCESTRY OF BRUCE

When Sir William Wallace, the sole apparent hope of
Scottish independence, died at the foot of the gallows in
Smithfield, and was torn limb from limb, it seemed that at
last ‘the accursed nation’ would quietly submit to the
English yoke. The spectacle of the bleaching bones of the
heroic Patriot would, it was anticipated, overawe such of
his countrymen as might yet cherish perverse aspirations
after national freedom. It was a delusive anticipation. In
fifteen years of arduous diplomacy and warfare, with an
astounding expenditure of blood and treasure, Edward I.
had crushed the leaders and crippled the resources of
Scotland, but he had inadequately estimated the spirit of
the nation. Only six months, and Scotland was again in
arms. It is of the irony of fate that the very man destined
to bring Edward’s calculations to naught had been his
most zealous officer in his last campaign, and had, in all
probability, been present at the trial—it may be at the
execution—of Wallace, silently consenting to his death.
That man of destiny was Sir Robert de Brus, Lord of
Annandale and Earl of Carrick.

The Bruces came over with the Conqueror. The theory
of a Norse origin in a follower of Rollo the Ganger, who
established himself in the diocese of Coutances in Manche,
Normandy, though not improbable, is but vaguely supported.
The name is territorial; and the better opinion
is inclined to connect it with Brix, between Cherbourg and
Valognes.

12
The first Robert de Brus on record was probably the
leader of the Brus contingent in the army of the Conqueror.
His services must have been conspicuous; he died (about
1094) in possession of some 40,000 acres, comprised in
forty-three manors in the East and West Ridings of Yorkshire,
and fifty-one in the North Riding and in Durham.
The chief manor was Skelton in Cleveland.

The next Robert de Brus, son of the first, received a
grant of Annandale from David I., whose companion he
had been at the English court. This fief he renounced,
probably in favour of his second son, just before the Battle
of the Standard (1138), on the failure of his attempted
mediation between David and the English barons. He
died in 1141, leaving two sons, Adam and Robert.

This Robert may be regarded as the true founder of the
Scottish branch. He is said to have remained with David
in the Battle of the Standard, and, whether for this adherence
or on some subsequent occasion, he was established
in possession of the Annandale fief, which was confirmed
to him by a charter of William the Lion (1166). He is said
to have received from his father the manor of Hert and the
lands of Hertness in Durham, ‘to supply him with wheat,
which did not grow in Annandale.’ He died after 1189.

The second Robert de Brus of Annandale, son of the
preceding lord, married (1183) Isabel, daughter of William
the Lion, obtaining as her dowry the manor of Haltwhistle
in Tyndale. His widow married Robert de Ros in
1191. The uncertainty as to the dates of his father’s death
and his own has suggested a doubt whether he ever
succeeded to the lordship.

William de Brus, a brother, the next lord, died in 1215.

The third Robert de Brus of Annandale, son of William,
founded the claim of his descendants to the crown by his
marriage with Isabel, second daughter of David, Earl of
Huntingdon, younger brother of William the Lion. He
died in 1245.

The fourth Robert de Brus of Annandale, eldest son of
the preceding lord, was born in 1210. In 1244, he
married Isabel, daughter of Gilbert de Clare, Earl of
Gloucester. Next year he succeeded to Annandale, and,
on his mother’s death in 1251, he obtained ten knight’s13
fees in England, her share of the Earldom of Huntingdon.
He took an active part in public affairs. In 1249–50 he
sat as a Justice of the King’s Bench, and in 1268 he
became Chief Justice of England, but Edward, on his
accession (1272), did not reappoint him. He served as
Sheriff of Cumberland and Governor of Carlisle Castle in
1254–55, and in 1264 he fought for Henry at Lewes, and
was taken prisoner.

At the same time, de Brus was a prominent figure in the
baronage of Scotland. The alleged arrangement of 1238
whereby Alexander II., with the consent of the Scots
parliament, appointed de Brus his successor in the event
of his dying childless, was frustrated by the King’s second
marriage (1239), and the birth of a son, Alexander III.
(1241). As one of the fifteen Regents (1255) during the
minority of Alexander III., he headed the party that
favoured an English alliance, cemented by the young
King’s marriage with Margaret, daughter of Henry III.
At the Scone convention on February 5, 1283–84, he was
one of the Scots lords that recognised the right of Margaret
of Norway. The sudden death of Alexander III., however,
in March 1285–86, and the helplessness of the infant
Queen, put him on the alert for the chances of his own
elevation.

On September 20, 1286, de Brus met a number of his
friends at Turnberry Castle, the residence of his son, the
Earl of Carrick. There fourteen Scots nobles, including
de Brus and the Earl of Carrick, joined in a bond obliging
them to give faithful adherence to Richard de Burgh, Earl
of Ulster, and Lord Thomas de Clare (de Brus’s brother-in-law),
‘in their affairs.’ One of the clauses saved the
fealty of the parties to the King of England and to ‘him
that shall obtain the kingdom of Scotland through blood-relationship
with King Alexander of blessed memory, according
to the ancient customs in the kingdom of Scotland
approved and observed.’ The disguise was very thin. The
instrument meant simply that the parties were to act together
in support of de Brus’s pretensions to the crown when
opportunity should serve. It ‘united the chief influence
of the West and South of Scotland against the party of
John de Balliol, Lord of Galloway, and the Comyns.’14
There need be no difficulty in connecting this transaction
with the outbreak of 1287–88, which devastated Dumfries
and Wigton shires. The party of de Brus took the castles
of Dumfries, Buittle and Wigton, killing and driving out
of the country many of the lieges. There remains nothing
to show by what means peace was restored, but it may be
surmised that Edward interfered to restrain his ambitious
vassal.

For, by this time, Edward was full of his project for the
marriage of the young Queen with his eldest son, Prince
Edward. The Salisbury convention, at which de Brus
was one of the Scottish commissioners, and the Brigham
conference, at which the project was openly declared,
seemed to strike a fatal blow at the aspirations of de Brus.
But the death of the Queen, reported early in October
1290, again opened up a vista of hope.

When the news arrived, the Scots estates were in session.
‘Sir Robert de Brus, who before did not intend to
come to the meeting,’ wrote the Bishop of St Andrews
to Edward on October 7, ‘came with great power, to
confer with some who were there; but what he intends to
do, or how to act, as yet we know not. But the Earls of
Mar and Athol are collecting their forces, and some other
nobles of the land are drawing to their party.’ The
Bishop went on to report a ‘fear of a general war,’ to
recommend Edward to deal wisely with Sir John de
Balliol, and to suggest that he should ‘approach the March
for the consolation of the Scots people and the saving of
bloodshed.’ The alertness of de Brus and his friends is
conspicuously manifest, and the foremost of the party of
Balliol is privately stretching out his hands for the cautious
intervention of the English King.

The Earl of Fife had been assassinated; the Earl of
Buchan was dead; and the remaining four guardians
divided their influence, the Bishop of St Andrews and
Sir John Comyn siding with Balliol, and the Bishop of
Glasgow and the Steward of Scotland with de Brus. Fordun
thus describes the balance of parties in the early part
of 1291:

The nobles of the kingdom, with its guardians, often-times discussed
among themselves the question who should be made their15
king; but they did not make bold to utter what they felt about the
right of succession, partly because it was a hard and knotty matter,
partly because different people felt differently about such rights and
wavered a good deal, partly because they justly feared the power of
the parties, which was great, and partly because they had no superior
that could, by his unbending power, carry their award into execution
or make the parties abide by their decision.

The most prominent competitors were liegemen of Edward,
and, whether they appealed to warlike or to peaceful methods,
the decision must inevitably rest with him.

At the Norham meeting of June 1291, de Brus, as well
as the other competitors, fully acknowledged the paramount
title of Edward. He had no alternative; he had as large
interests in England as in Scotland, and armed opposition
was out of the question. Availing himself of his legal
experience, he fought the case determinedly and astutely.
If Fordun correctly reports the reformation of the law of
succession by Malcolm, de Brus was, in literal technicality,
‘the next descendant’; as son of David of Huntingdon’s
second daughter, he was nearer by one degree than Balliol,
grandson of David’s eldest daughter. But the modern
reckoning prevailed. De Brus’s plea that he had been recognised
both by Alexander II. and by Alexander III. was
not supported by documentary evidence, and his appeal
to the recollection of living witnesses does not seem to
have been entertained. His third position, that the crown
estates were partible, was but a forlorn hope. He must
have seen, long before November 1292, that an adverse
decision was a foregone conclusion. He entered a futile
protest. Already, in June, he had concluded a secret
agreement with the Count of Holland, a competitor never
in the running, but a great feudal figure, for mutual aid
and counsel; he had also an agreement with the Earl of
Sutherland, and, probably enough, with others. But an
active dissent was beyond the powers of a man of eighty-two.
Accordingly, he resigned his claims in favour of his
son, the Earl of Carrick, and retired to Lochmaben, where
he died on March 31, 1295, at the age of eighty-five.

The fifth Robert de Brus of Annandale, the eldest son
of the Competitor, was born in 1253. On his return from
the crusade of 1269, on which he accompanied Prince
Edward, afterwards Edward I., he married Marjory (or16
Margaret), Countess of Carrick, and thus became by the
courtesy of Scotland Earl of Carrick. Marjory was the
daughter and heiress of Nigel, the Keltic (if Keltic be the
right epithet) Earl of Carrick, grandson of Gilbert, son of
Fergus, Lord of Galloway, and she was the widow of
Adam of Kilconquhar, who had died on the recent crusade.
De Brus is said to have met her accidentally when she
was out hunting. Fordun gives the romance as follows:—

When greetings and kisses had been exchanged, as is the wont of
courtiers, she besought him to stay and hunt and walk about; and,
seeing that he was rather unwilling to do so, she by force, so to
speak, with her own hand made him pull up, and brought the
knight, though very loth, to her castle of Turnberry with her. After
dallying there with his followers for the space of fifteen days or more,
he clandestinely took the Countess to wife, the friends and well-wishers
of both parties knowing nothing about it, and the King’s
consent not having been obtained. And so the common belief of all
the country was that she had seized—by force, as it were—this youth
for her husband. But when the news came to the ears of King
Alexander, he took the castle of Turnberry and made all her other
lands and possessions be acknowledged as his lands, for the reason
that she had wedded with Robert de Brus without consulting his royal
majesty. Through the prayers of friends, however, and by a certain
sum of money agreed upon, this Robert gained the King’s goodwill
and the whole domain.

It may be, of course, that the responsibility was thrown
on the lady in order to restrain the hand of the incensed
king. But she was half a dozen years older than de Brus,
who was still in his teens and was never distinguished for
enterprise. In any case, she acted only with the legitimate
frankness of her time, and the marriage put a useful
dash of lively blood into the veins of the coming king.

In every important political step, de Brus followed with
docility his father’s lead. He stood aloof from Balliol,
and, in spite of marked snubbing, steadily adhered to
Edward. From October 1295, he was for two years
governor of Carlisle Castle. After the collapse of Balliol
at Dunbar, he is said to have plucked up courage to claim
fulfilment of a promise of Edward’s, alleged to have been
made in 1292 immediately after the decision in favour
of Balliol, to place his father eventually on the Scottish
throne. The testy reply of ‘the old dodger’ (ille antiquus
doli artifex), as reported by Fordun, is at any rate characteristic:17
‘Have I nothing else to do but to win kingdoms
to give to you?’ The story, though essentially probable,
is discredited by the chronicler’s assertion that the promise
was accompanied by an acknowledgment on the part
of Edward that his decision of the great cause was an
injustice to de Brus, the Competitor.

But while de Brus took nothing by his loyalty to
Edward, he suffered for his disloyalty to Balliol. He had,
of course, ignored the summons of Balliol ‘to come in arms
to resist the King of England,’ and consequently Balliol’s
council had declared him a public enemy and deprived
him of his lands of Annandale, giving them to Comyn,
Earl of Buchan. At the same time, and for the like reason,
his son Robert was deprived of the Earldom of Carrick,
which de Brus had resigned to him on November 11,
1292. Annandale, indeed, was restored to de Brus in
September 1296, but the state of Scotland was too disturbed
for his comfort, and he retired to his English possessions,
where, for the most part at least, he lived quietly
till Edward had settled matters at Strathord. He then
set out for Annandale, but died on the way, about Easter,
1304, and was buried at the Abbey of Holmcultram in
Cumberland.

De Brus left a large family of sons and daughters, most
of whom will find conspicuous mention in the story of the
eldest brother, Robert, Earl of Carrick, the future King of
Scotland.

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CHAPTER II
OPPORTUNIST VACILLATION

Robert Bruce, the sixth Robert de Brus of Annandale
and the seventh de Brus of the Annandale line, was the
eldest son of the preceding lord and a grandson of the
Competitor. He was born on July 11, 1274. The place
of his birth is uncertain—Ayrshire says Turnberry; Dumfriesshire
says Lochmaben. Geoffrey le Baker calls him
an Englishman (nacione Anglicus), and records that he was
‘born in Essex,’ to which another hand adds, ‘at Writtle,’
a manor of his father’s. Geoffrey, it is true, like several
other chroniclers, confuses Bruce with his grandfather, the
Competitor; and he may mean the Competitor, though he
says the King. Hemingburgh makes Bruce speak to his
father’s vassals before the Irvine episode as a Scotsman, at
any rate by descent. In any case Bruce was essentially—by
upbringing and associations—an Englishman. It was
probably in, or at any rate about, the same year that
Wallace was born. At the English invasion of 1296, they
would both be vigorous young men of twenty-two, or thereabouts.
During most part of the next decade Wallace
fought and negotiated and died in his country’s cause,
and built himself an everlasting name. How was Bruce
occupied during this national crisis?

Considering the large territorial possessions and wide
social interlacings of the family in England, their English
upbringing, their traditional service to the English King,
their subordinate interest in Scottish affairs, the predominance
of the rival house of Balliol, and the masterful character
of Edward, it is not at all surprising that Robert
Bruce should have preferred the English allegiance when
it was necessary for him to choose between England and
Scotland. On August 3, 1293, indeed, he offered homage
to Balliol on succeeding to the Earldom of Carrick. But19
on March 25, 1296, at Wark—three days before Edward
crossed the Tweed—he joined with his father and the
Earls of March and Angus in a formal acknowledgment
of the English King; and on August 28 he, as well as
his father, followed the multitude of the principal Scots
in doing homage to the conqueror at Berwick.

With this political subjection one is reluctant to associate
a more sordid kind of obligation. Some six weeks later
(October 15) it is recorded that ‘the King, for the great
esteem he has for the good service of Robert de Brus,
Earl of Carrick, commands the barons to atterm his debts
at the Exchequer in the easiest manner for him.’ But the
elder Bruce continued to be designated Earl of Carrick in
English documents after he had resigned the earldom to
his son, and it can hardly be doubted that the debts were
his. It is a small matter, indeed, yet one would like to
start Bruce without the burden.

Early in 1297, Scotland was heaving with unrest.
Edward, while busily arranging ‘to cross seas’ to
Flanders, was also pushing forward preparations for a
‘Scottish War.’ In May, Wallace and Douglas had
summarily interrupted the severities of Ormsby, the
English Justiciar, at Scone, and driven him home in
headlong flight. About the same time, or somewhat later,
Andrew de Moray took the field in Moray, Macduff rose
in Fife, and Sir Alexander of Argyll set upon the adherents
of Edward in the West. On May 24, Edward had addressed,
from Portsmouth, a circular order to his chief
liegemen north and south of Forth, requiring them to attend
certain of his great officers to hear ‘certain matters which
he has much at heart,’ and to act as directed. Bruce was
ordered to attend Sir Hugh de Cressingham and Sir Osbert
de Spaldington at Berwick. But before the order could
have reached him, he must have heard of the expulsion of
Ormsby, and had probably conceived dynastic hopes from
the aspect of affairs. Indeed, he appears to have fallen
under English suspicions. For, no sooner did the news
from Scone reach Carlisle than the Bishop and his advisers—the
Bishop was acting governor in the absence of the
elder Bruce at Portsmouth—’fearing for the faithlessness
and inconstancy of Sir Robert de Bruys the younger, Earl20
of Carrick, sent messengers to summon him to come on a
day fixed to treat with them about the King’s affairs, if so
be that he still remained faithful to the King.’

Bruce duly appeared with a strong following of ‘the
people of Galloway,’ and repeated the oath of fealty upon
the consecrated Host and upon the sword of St Thomas
(à Becket). What more could the Bishop want or do?
But Bruce went a step further. He summoned his people,
says Hemingburgh, and, ‘in order to feign colour, he proceeded
to the lands of Sir William de Douglas and burnt part
of them with fire, and carried off his wife and children with
him to Annandale.’ For all that, he was already in secret
conspiracy with the Bishop of Glasgow, the Steward of
Scotland, and Sir John of Bonkill, the Steward’s brother.
Douglas, indeed, presently appears as one of the leaders in
the rising; but his relations with Bruce would be subject
to easy diplomatic adjustment.

When the time for open action arrived, Bruce appealed
to his father’s men of Annandale. He repudiated his oath
at Carlisle as extorted by force and intimidation, and professed
a compelling sense of patriotism. The Annandale
men deferred reply till the morrow, and slipped away to
their homes overnight. With his Carrick men, however,
he joined the Bishop and the Steward, and began to slay
and harry the English in the south-west.

Engrossed in the outfitting of his expedition, Edward
delegated the suppression of the Scots to Warenne, Earl of
Surrey, the Guardian of Scotland, who sent ahead his kinsman,
Sir Henry de Percy, with a strong force. Percy
advanced through Annandale to Ayr, and, two or three
days later, stood face to face with the insurgents near
Irvine. There was dissension in the Scots camp. Sir
Richard Lundy went over to Percy, ‘saying that he would
no longer war in company with men in discord and at variance.’
Besides, the English force was no doubt much
superior. The insurgent leaders at once asked for terms.
The provisional agreement was that ‘their lives, limbs,
lands, tenements, goods and chattels,’ should be unharmed,
that their offences should be condoned, and that they
should furnish hostages. Such was the humiliating fiasco
of July 7, 1297, at Irvine.

21
So far their skins were safe; and now, on the counsel of
the Bishop, they appealed to Cressingham and Warenne to
confirm the agreement, and to vouchsafe an active interest
in their behalf with Edward. The full flavour of their
pusillanimity can only be gathered from the text of their
letter to Warenne.

They were afraid the English army would attack them to burn and
destroy their lands. Thus, they were told for a certainty that the
King meant to seize all the middle people of Scotland to send them
beyond sea in his war [in Gascony], to their great damage and destruction.
They took counsel to assemble their power to defend
themselves from so great damages, until they could have treaty and
conference with such persons as had power to abate and diminish such
kind of injury, and to give security that they should not be exceedingly
aggrieved and dishonoured. And, therefore, when the host of England
entered the land, they went to meet them and had such a conference
that they all came to the peace and the faith of our Lord the King.

The hostage for Bruce was his infant daughter, Marjory.
It would be interesting to know why Douglas failed to provide
hostages. It may be that his native obstinacy was
aroused by the objurgations of Wallace, who then lay in
Selkirk Forest, and who is said to have displayed intense
indignation at the ignominious surrender. Edward ratified
the convention; but somehow it was not till November 14
that powers were conferred on the Bishop of Carlisle and Sir
Robert de Clifford ‘to receive to the King’s peace Robert
de Brus, Earl of Carrick, and his friends, as seems best to
their discretion.’

Midway between the shameful collapse at Irvine and
the formal submission at Carlisle lay September 11, 1297,
and Wallace’s memorable victory at Stirling Bridge. In this
great triumph of patriotism Bruce had neither part nor lot.
Neither was he present at the disastrous battle of Falkirk
on July 22, 1298. The Scottish chroniclers, indeed, relate
the popular story that the English victory was primarily
due to Bruce, who, with Bishop Bek, stealthily caught the
Scots in the rear and broke up the schiltrons. But this is
a complete misconception, due possibly to a confusion of
Bruce with Basset, who, with Bek, delivered the attack on
the left wing, not on the rear, or with Bruce’s uncle, Sir
Bernard, who fought on the English side. In any case,
Bruce stands clear of Falkirk. For English chroniclers22
relate that, when Edward withdrew towards Carlisle, Bruce
burnt Ayr Castle and fled away into Carrick. Yet it seems
all but certain that he was in Edward’s allegiance within
three weeks before the battle. He had gone over before
the result reached him, possibly on learning the dire straits
of Edward immediately before, or on the strength of a false
report of the issue.

The stormy meeting of Scots nobles at Peebles on August
19, 1299, discovers Bruce in a remarkable attitude. One
object of the meeting was to choose Guardians of the realm.
The discussion was sufficiently warm; for Sir John Comyn—the
Red Comyn, afterwards slain at Dumfries—seized
the Earl of Carrick by the throat, and his cousin of Buchan
tried a fall with de Lamberton, Wallace’s Bishop of St
Andrews. The outcome of the wrangle was a purely
personal accommodation of an essentially momentary
character. It was settled that the Bishop of St Andrews,
the Earl of Carrick, and Sir John Comyn should be the
Guardians, the Bishop as principal to have custody of the
castles. Bruce, through the Wallace influence, had gained
the upper hand. But it must have cost him a pang to
consent to act in the name of Balliol.

Bruce, with Sir David de Brechin, returned to the attack
of Lochmaben peel, where the Scots had been pressing
Clifford since the beginning of August. They were unsuccessful
in direct assault, but they seriously hindered the
victualling of the place by infesting the lines of communication.
Bruce would seem to have been in consultation with
his colleagues in the Torwood on November 13, when the
Guardians, who were then besieging Stirling, despatched to
Edward an offer to cease hostilities on the terms suggested
by the King of France. At any rate he is named as
Guardian, and it is to be noted that the Guardians write
‘in the name of King John and the community of the
realm.’ Edward was compelled to abandon Stirling
to its fate, and Lochmaben fell in the end of the year.
Warenne’s December expedition to the western March
was a failure. Edward, in fact, had been paralysed by
his refractory barons.

During the next two years, while Comyn was doing his
best in the field and Wallace was busy in diplomatic23
negotiation, there is no trace of Bruce in the records. He
may have felt it too irksome to pull together with Comyn.
But he reappears—in a new coat—in 1301–2. On February
16, Edward, ‘at the instance of the Earl of Carrick,’ granted
pardon to a murderous rascal, one Hector Askeloc. And
by April 28, 1302, the King had ‘of special favour granted
to the tenants of his liege Robert de Brus, Earl of Carrick,
their lands in England lately taken for their rebellion.’
And Bruce attended Edward’s parliament towards the end
of October.

In the next year or two Bruce manifested special devotion
to the English King. When Edward was going north
on the campaign of 1303, he ordered Bruce to meet him
about the middle of May at Roxburgh with all the men-at-arms
he could muster, and with 1000 foot from Carrick
and Galloway. On July 14, Bruce received an advance of
pay by the precept of Sir Aymer de Valence, the King’s lieutenant
south of Forth. On December 30, he is Edward’s
sheriff of Lanark; on January 9, he is Edward’s constable
of Ayr Castle. His star was deservedly in the ascendant by
diligent service.

His ardour steadily increased. After the surrender of
Comyn and his adherents in February 1303–4, he threw
himself heartily into the pursuit of Wallace. On March 3,
Edward wrote to ‘his loyal and faithful Robert de Brus,
Earl of Carrick, Sir John de Segrave, and their company,’
applauding their diligence, begging them to complete the
business they had begun so well, and urging them, ‘as the
cloak is well made, also to make the hood.’ Wallace and
Sir Simon Fraser were hotly pursued southwards, and
defeated at Peebles within a week.

About this time Bruce must have received news of the
death of his father, probably not unexpected. On April 4,
1304, he was at Hatfield in Essex, whence he wrote to Sir
William de Hamilton, the Chancellor, asking him to direct
quickly the necessary inquisitions of his father’s lands in
Essex, Middlesex and Huntingdon, as he wished to go to
the King with them to do homage. On June 14, having
done homage and fealty, he was served heir. The succession
to the paternal inheritance was happily achieved.

Meantime, on his return north, Bruce had found Edward24
in hot eagerness to commence the siege of Stirling, and
worked with the energy of gratitude that looks towards
favours to come. He undertook the special task of getting
up the King’s engines to Stirling. On April 16, the King
wrote him thanks for sending up some engines, and gave
particular instructions about ‘the great engine of Inverkip,’
which appears to have been unmanageable for want of ‘a
waggon fit to carry the frame.’ Bruce seems to have been
at Inverkip and Glasgow, and wherever else any of the
thirteen engines were lagging on the road to Stirling. His
energy operated in congenial harmony with the fiery
expedition of the King.

Yet there was something in the background of all this
enthusiastic service. On June 11, only three days before
‘his loyal and faithful Robert de Brus’ did homage and
fealty to Edward on succession to his father, Bruce met
Bishop Lamberton at Cambuskenneth and formed with
him a secret alliance for mutual aid and defence ‘against
all persons whatsoever.’ Seeing dangers ahead, and wishing
to fortify themselves against ‘the attempts of their
rivals,’ they engaged to assist each other to the utmost of
their power with counsel and material forces in all their
affairs; ‘that neither of them would undertake any important
enterprise without consultation with the other’;
and that ‘they would warn each other against any impending
danger, and do their best to avert the same from each
other.’ No particular motives or objects, of course, are
specified. But the Bishop may have foreseen the likelihood
of an invasion of English ecclesiastics; and Bruce
would not be slow to perceive the possible value of the
moral support of the Church, and of the material aid derivable
from the men and lands of the religious houses of the
wide episcopate of St Andrews. At such a moment neither
party would affect to forget the Bruce’s royal pretensions.
We shall hear of this bond again.

Stirling surrendered on July 20, the last of the Scottish
fortresses that held out against Edward. Wallace, the last
centre of opposition, was a fugitive, dogged by emissaries
of the English King. In March next year, Bruce was with
the King at Westminster, petitioning him for the lands
recently held by Sir Ingram de Umfraville in Carrick—a25
petition substantially granted—and he attended Edward’s
parliament in Lent. It is hardly any stretch of probability
to believe that he was present, in August, at the trial and
execution of the illustrious Wallace—the man that, above
all others, paved the way for his elevation to the Scottish
throne.

Bruce was now in his thirty-second year. From his
twenty-second year onwards, through the ten years’
struggle of Wallace and Comyn, he was two parts of the
time the active henchman of Edward, and during the other
part he is not known to have performed any important
service for Scotland. His action during this period—the
period of vigorous manhood, of generous impulses and
unselfish enthusiasms—contrasts lamentably with the
splendour of Wallace’s achievement and endeavour, and
gravely with the bearing of Comyn. One looks for
patriotism and heroism; one finds not a spark of either,
but only opportunism, deliberate and ignoble, not to say
timid—the conduct of a ‘spotted and inconstant man.’
Yet Bruce was tenaciously constant to the grand object of
his ambition. In the light of his kingly career this early
period has puzzled the historians very strangely; but one
cannot affect to be surprised that the friendliest critic is
compelled to pronounce the simple enumeration of the
facts to be, ‘in truth, a humiliating record.’

26

CHAPTER III
THE CORONATION OF BRUCE

Stirling surrendered and Wallace a fugitive, Edward
went home and meditated measures for the government
of the conquered country. While yielding no point of
substance, he recognised the policy of conciliation in form.
He took counsel with the Bishop of Glasgow, the Earl of
Carrick, and Sir John de Mowbray; and, ostensibly guided
by their suggestions, he appointed a meeting of ten Scots
and twenty English representatives to be held in London
in the middle of July. The meeting was subsequently
postponed to September. On September 23, all the representatives
were ‘sworn on our Lord’s body, the holy
relics, and holy Evangels, each severally.’ The joint
commission settled ten points, which were embodied in an
Ordinance—’not a logical or methodical document,’ but
‘mixing up the broadest projects of legislation and administration
with mere personal interests and arrangements.’
First, the official establishment was set forth:
Sir John de Bretagne, junior, Edward’s nephew, being
appointed King’s Lieutenant and Warden, Sir William de
Bevercotes Chancellor, and Sir John de Sandale Chamberlain.
Next, Justiciars were appointed, a pair for each of the
four divisions of the country. Then a score of Sheriffs were
named, nearly all Englishmen, though Scots were eligible.
Thereafter, the law was taken in hand: ‘the custom of
the Scots and Brets’ was abolished; and the King’s
Lieutenant, with English and Scots advisers, was ‘to
amend such of the laws and usages which are plainly
against God and reason,’ referring difficulties to the King.
For the rest, the articles were mainly particular. One of
them applied specifically to Bruce: ‘The Earl of Carrick
to place Kildrummy Castle in the keeping of one for whom
he shall answer.’ The King confirmed the Ordinance at27
Sheen. At the same time (October 26), apparently, the
King’s Council for Scotland—twenty members, including
the Bishop of St Andrews, the Earls of Carrick, Buchan,
and Athol, Sir John Comyn, and Sir Alexander of Argyll—was
sworn in. Bretagne was unable to proceed to Scotland
till Lent (and then till Easter), and meantime a
commission of four was appointed to act for him, the first
commissioner being the Bishop of St Andrews.

The King rejoiced at the sure prospect of peace in
Scotland. The country was outwardly quiet. Edward
had put on the velvet glove. He had restored submissive
barons, knights, and lairds to their lands; he had that
very day at Sheen doubled the periods within which they
might pay their several fines; and he had displayed a
general friendly consideration in his Ordinance. A fortnight
before (October 14), he had instructed all the
English sheriffs that he desired honourable and courteous
treatment to be shown to all Scots passing through their
jurisdictions. In a short time, he was contemplating a
more complete assimilation of the two countries, to be
arranged in a Union convention at Carlisle. But, in
February next, the whole face of affairs was suddenly
transformed by the report that Sir Robert de Brus, Earl
of Carrick, had done sacrilegious murder on Sir John
Comyn at Dumfries.

The accounts of the train of events leading to the death
of Comyn, though agreeing in essentials, vary considerably
in details. The Scots story may be told first. Fordun,
like his compatriots, colours his narrative deeply with the
fanciful glow of Bruce’s patriotism. He tells how Bruce
‘faithfully laid before Comyn the unworthy thraldom of
the country, the cruel and endless torment of the people,
and his own kindly project for bringing them relief.’
Bruce, he says, ‘setting the public advantage before his
own,’ proposed to Comyn two alternatives: either take
you the crown and give me your lands, or else take my
lands and support my claim to the crown. Comyn chose
the latter alternative; and the agreement was guaranteed
by oaths and embodied in indentures duly sealed. Eventually,
however, Comyn betrayed Bruce’s confidence, ‘accusing28
him again and again before the King of England,
by envoys and by private letters, and wickedly revealing
his secrets.’ Edward acted with restraint: he sounded
Bruce; he even showed him his adversary’s letters; he
feigned acceptance of his explanations. One evening,
however, ‘when the wine glittered in the bowl,’ he expressed
his definite determination to put Bruce to death
on the morrow. On hearing this, the Earl of Gloucester
at once sent Bruce a broad hint in the form of twelve
pence and a pair of spurs. Bruce promptly mounted
his horse, and rode day and night to his castle of
Lochmaben. As he was nearing the Border, he met
a messenger of Comyn’s bearing to Edward the very
bond he had made with Comyn. He struck off the
man’s head and hurried on his way. By appointment,
he presently met Comyn in the church of the Friars
Minorites at Dumfries. He charged Comyn with treachery.
‘You lie!’ replied Comyn. Whereupon Bruce stabbed him
on the spot. The friars stretched Comyn on the floor
behind the altar. ‘Is your wound mortal?’ he was asked.
‘I think not,’ he replied. The hopeful answer sealed his
fate. ‘His foes, hearing this, gave him another wound,
and thus, on February 10,1 was he taken away from the
world.’

According to Barbour, the alternative proposal proceeded,
not from Bruce, but from Comyn, which is far
from likely; and it was made ‘as they came riding from
Stirling,’ presumably—Blind Harry, indeed, expressly
says so—when Edward and his barons were going home
from the siege. Barbour goes beyond Fordun in stating
that Comyn actually rode to Edward and placed in his
hands the indenture with Bruce’s seal. Thereupon, he
says, the King ‘was angry out of measure and swore that
he would take vengeance on Bruce’ for his presumption,
summoned a council, produced the bond, and demanded
of Bruce whether the seal was his; but Bruce obtained29
respite till next day in order to get his seal and compare
it with the bond, and fled the same night with the document
in his pocket. The embellishments of later writers—the
conversion of Gloucester’s twelve pence into other
coins, the reversal of Bruce’s horses’ shoes because of the
new-fallen snow, and so forth—need not be considered.
Barbour makes no mention of an appointment: Bruce
rode over to Dumfries, where Comyn was staying, and
the tragedy was enacted. Barbour has the same outline
of the interview as Fordun, but he remarks that other
accounts were current in his time.

A picturesque tradition tells how Bruce, on striking the
blow, hurried out of the church to his friends, whereupon
Roger de Kirkpatrick and James de Lindsay, seeing his
excitement, anxiously inquired how it was with him. ‘Ill!’
replied Bruce; ‘I doubt I have slain the Red Comyn.’
‘You doubt!’ cried Kirkpatrick; ‘I’ll mak’ siccar’ (make
sure). And they rushed into the church and buried their
daggers in Comyn’s body. But if the Justiciars were then
sitting, and Roger de Kirkpatrick was still one of them—for
he and Walter de Burghdon were appointed Justiciars
for Galloway on October 25—there may be some difficulty
in accepting the tradition.

The English story commences in Scotland, and it introduces
a very important element wholly absent from the
principal Scottish versions. The English authorities
expressly allege a deliberate purpose on Bruce’s part to
rid himself of his rival. Both Hemingburgh and the
Lanercost Chronicler state that Bruce sent two of his
brothers, with guileful intent, to invite Comyn to an interview;
Hemingburgh names Thomas and Nigel. The
fullest account is given by Sir Thomas Gray, who wrote
in 1355—just half a century later, but still twenty and
thirty years earlier than Barbour and Fordun. Gray
records that Bruce dispatched his brothers, Thomas and
Nigel, from Lochmaben to Dalswinton, where Comyn was
staying, to invite him to meet Robert in the church at
Dumfries; and, moreover, that he instructed them to fall
upon Comyn on the way and kill him—a purpose thwarted
by the softening effect of Comyn’s kindly reception of the
youths. ‘Hm!’ said Bruce, on hearing their report, ‘milk-30sops
you are, and no mistake; let me meet him.’ So he
advanced to Comyn, and led him up to the high altar.
He then opened the question of the condition of Scotland,
and invited Comyn’s co-operation in an attempt at freedom
on the terms already mentioned as contained in
the alleged bond between them. ‘For now is the time,’
he said, ‘in the old age of the King.’ Comyn firmly
refused. ‘No?’ cried Bruce, ‘I had other hopes in
you, by promise of your own and of your friends. You
discovered me to the King by your letters. Since while
you live I cannot fulfil my purpose, you shall have your
guerdon!’ On the word, he struck Comyn with his
dagger, and some of his companions completed the crime
with their swords before the altar.

Hemingburgh works up artistically the pacific bearing
of Comyn in the face of Bruce’s accusations; and this
would be likely enough if it be true that Comyn was
unarmed and attended by but a small escort. The writer
of the Merton MS. of the Flores Historiarum, who says
Comyn was unarmed, states that he endeavoured to wrest
Bruce’s weapon from his hand; that Bruce’s men rushed
up and freed their leader; that Comyn got away to the
altar; and that Bruce pursued him, and on his persistent
refusal to assent, slew him on the spot.

A distinct English variation occurs in at least five of the
records. The Meaux Chronicle states that Bruce, on returning
to Scotland after the settlement of the Ordinance,
summoned the Scots earls and barons to Scone to consider
the affairs of the realm, and put forward his hereditary
claim. He received unanimous support, except that Comyn
stood by his oath of fealty to Edward, rejected Bruce’s
claim with scorn, and at once left the council. The
council was adjourned to a future day at Dumfries.
Meantime Bruce sent Comyn a friendly invitation. Comyn
appeared at Dumfries and was cordially received by Bruce,
but still he maintained his objections, and again he left the
council. Bruce drew his sword and followed him, and
ran him through the body in the Church of the Friars
Minorites. The Cambridge Trinity College MS., it may
be noted, states that Bruce sent his two brothers to invite
Comyn to meet him at the ‘Cordelers’ of Dumfries; and31
Geoffrey le Baker makes Bruce kill Comyn in the midst of
the magnates. But these councils may safely be set aside
as grounded on misconceptions.

The English allegation of Bruce’s purpose of murder
seems to invest with a special interest Blind Harry’s casual
story, with its coincidences and discrepancies. Bruce, says
Harry, charged his brother Edward, whom he found at
Lochmaben on his arrival, to proceed next day with an
armed escort to Dalswinton, and to put Comyn to death,
if they found him; but they did not find him.

On the fall of Comyn, his followers pressed forward and
blows were hotly exchanged. Comyn’s uncle, Sir Robert,
assailed Bruce himself, but failed to pierce his armour
(which, the Meaux Chronicler says, he wore under his
clothes), and was cut down by Sir Christopher de Seton,
probably in the cloister, not in the church. Barbour adds
that ‘many others of mickle main’ were killed in the
mêlée; and the statement is amply confirmed.

While this scene was enacting, the English Justiciars
were in session in the Castle. Thither Bruce and his
friends, having overpowered Comyn’s adherents, at once
proceeded. The Justiciars had prudently barricaded the
doors, but, when Bruce called for fire, they instantly
surrendered. Bruce spared their lives, and allowed them
to pass over the Border without molestation. According
to Hemingburgh, it was only after Bruce had got possession
of the Castle that he learned that Comyn was still alive
after his first wound; whereupon, by order of Bruce, the
wounded man was dragged from the vestibule, where the
friars were tending him, and slain on the steps of the high
altar, which was bespattered with his blood.

Comyn was slain (according to the usually accepted
date) on February 10. Less than two months later (April 5),
Edward affirmed that he had placed complete confidence
(plenam fiduciam) in Bruce. The profession may be accepted
as sincere, for it is on record, under date February 8
(the order would have been made some days earlier), that
Edward remitted scutage due by Bruce on succession to
his father’s estates. We may, therefore, put aside the
English part of the Fordun and Barbour story and refuse
to believe that Edward dallied with Comyn’s allegations,32
or was such a simpleton as to let Bruce keep possession
of the incriminating bond. But was there a bond at all?
It is generally accepted that Edward did hold in his hands
a bond of Bruce’s; but this bond is usually taken to have
been the Lamberton indenture, which is supposed to have
come into Edward’s possession through the instrumentality
of Comyn. Still, there is nothing to show that this indenture
was yet in Edward’s hands. It may also be gravely
doubted whether Comyn would ever have entered into any
bond with Bruce. There is much significance in the silence
of the English records. Nor is there more than a very
slight English indication of any communication about
Bruce from Comyn to Edward. It is likely enough,
however, that Comyn informed Edward of Bruce’s private
pushing of his claims; and it may be that the details of the
story of a bond were evolved on mere suppositions arising
out of the Bruce-Lamberton compact.

The allegation that Bruce deliberately murdered Comyn
is the most serious matter. But the English writers do not
satisfy one that they had the means of seeing into Bruce’s
mind; and the allegation may be reasonably regarded as
inference, not fact. There can scarcely be any doubt that
Bruce resumed the active furtherance of his claims on
observation of the declining health of Edward, but without
any immediate intention of a rupture. He could hardly
have found support enough to counterbalance the far-reaching
power of Comyn, to say nothing of the power
of Edward. Clearly it was of the very first importance
that he should, if possible, gain over Comyn. He may
have offered Comyn broad lands and high honours. But
to expect the practical heir of the Balliol claims to support
him was, on the face of it, all but hopeless; and to speak
of patriotism to Comyn would have been nothing less than
open insult. Comyn, of course, would stanchly reject
Bruce’s overtures. Despite all his prudence, Bruce had
a hot and imperious temper; and Comyn’s obstinacy—it
may be Comyn’s frank speech—most probably broke down
his self-command. If it had been Bruce’s deliberate purpose
to kill his rival, he would scarcely have chosen a
church for the scene, or have left the deed to be afterwards
completed either by others or by himself. The mere fact33
that he was totally unprepared for a struggle with Edward
tells almost conclusively against the theory of premeditation—unless
there was a very clearly compromising bond with
Comyn, which is wholly improbable. The bond with
Lamberton—the only bond that certainly existed—was
capable of easy explanation, and was a wholly insufficient
reason to urge him to murder a rival, whose adherents
would make up in bitterness what they lost in leadership.

Nor is there any reason to believe that Lamberton was
implicated. True, he was charged, on his own bond, with
complicity in the deed. There still exist letters patent,
dated Scotland’s Well, June 9, 1306, in which Lamberton
declares to Sir Aymer de Valence, then Edward’s lieutenant
in Scotland, his anxious desire ‘to defend himself in any
way the King or Council may devise against the charge
of having incurred any kind of guilt in the death of
Sir John Comyn or of Sir Robert his uncle, or in relation
to the war then begun’; and on August 9, at Newcastle,
he acknowledged the Cambuskenneth indenture. But
there is no necessary connection between the compact and
the crime; and it is in the last degree improbable that
Lamberton had any anticipation whatever of the Dumfries
tragedy. His sympathy with Bruce’s rising is quite a
different consideration.

Having garrisoned Dumfries Castle, Bruce sent out his
messengers to raise adherents. The Galwegians having
refused to join him, he ravaged their lands; and he took
the castles of Tibbers, Durisdeer, and Ayr. But he was
not strong enough to keep the castles for more than a
very short period. After the first surprise, Comyn’s men
asserted their superior force; and aid arrived from Carlisle.
The Lanercost chronicler records that Bruce pursued a Galwegian
noble and besieged him in a lake, but that the Carlisle
contingent raised the siege, compelling Bruce to burn
his machines and ‘ships,’ and take to flight. Probably
Carlaverock is meant.

Leaving the local struggle to lieutenants, Bruce hastened
to Bishop Wishart in Glasgow. At Arickstone, in the upper
end of Annandale, Barbour says, he was joined by James
of Douglas, who had been staying with the Bishop of St.34
Andrews—a young man destined to play a great part in
the history of Bruce. Bishop Wishart joyously received
his visitor, cheerfully broke his sixth oath of fealty to
Edward, pronounced absolution of Bruce for the murder
of Comyn, and produced coronation robes and a royal
banner. There was nothing half-hearted about the flexible
prelate. Already the country was in eager expectation,
and Bruce and the Bishop proceeded boldly to Scone.

On March 27, 1306, in the Chapel Royal of Scone, the
immemorial scene of the inauguration of the Kings of the
Scots, Robert Bruce was crowned King. The ceremony
inevitably lacked certain of the traditional accessories that
strangely influenced the popular mind. The venerable
Stone of Destiny had been carried off by Edward ten
years before. The crown—if crown there had been—was
also gone; and the ancient royal robes—if such there
had been—were no longer available. The prescient Bishop,
however, had provided fresh robes, and a circlet of gold
was made to do duty for a crown. Still, there was lacking
an important functionary—the person whose office and
privilege it was to place the crown on the head of the
King. The proper official was the chief of the clan MacDuff;
but Duncan, Earl of Fife, was in wardship in England,
and again, as on the coronation of Balliol, arose the
difficulty of finding an efficacious substitute. No substitute
was forthcoming, and the coronation had to pass
with maimed rites.

Two days later, however, this difficulty was dramatically
solved. Isabella, Countess of Buchan, and sister of the
Earl of Fife, had hastened south with an imposing retinue,
and appeared to claim the honour and privilege of her
house. A second coronation—not mentioned by the
Scottish writers—was held on March 29. The wife of a
Comyn, nearly related to the murdered Sir John, the
Countess yet performed the mystic function. It would be
an exceedingly interesting thing if one could now disentangle
the extraordinary complication of ideas and influences
involved in this remarkable ceremonial. The
subsequent punishment of the Countess by Edward continued
the romance of the occasion; and it may be added
here that, on March 20, 1306–7, Edward, at the instance of35
his queen, pardoned one Geoffrey de Conyers for concealing
the coronet of gold with which King Robert was crowned.

The coronation might have been expected to strike the
imagination of the Scots, and to rally the spirit that
cherished the memory of Wallace. Fordun asserts that
Bruce’s friends in Scotland, as compared with his collective
foes, were but ‘as a single drop compared with the waves
of the sea, or as a single grain of seed compared with the
multitudinous sand.’ The hyperbole has a considerable
basis of fact. Bruce, indeed, was supported at his coronation
by the two chief prelates of Scotland, the Bishops of
St Andrews and Glasgow, and by the Abbot of Scone; by
strong-handed relatives—his four brothers, Edward,
Thomas, Alexander, and Nigel; his nephew, Thomas Randolph
of Strathdon (better known afterwards as Randolph,
Earl of Moray), and his brother-in-law, Sir Christopher de
Seton (husband of his sister Christian); by the Earls of
Lennox, Athol, and Errol; and by such valorous men as
James de Douglas, Hugh de la Haye (brother of Errol),
David Barclay of Cairns, Alexander, brother of Sir Simon
Fraser, Walter de Somerville of Carnwath, David de
Inchmartin, Robert Boyd, and Robert Fleming. Apart
from the episcopal influence, however, the array is not very
imposing. Yet how vastly superior to the meagre beginnings
of Wallace! Bruce, indeed, lacked one vital source
of strength that his great predecessor had—intimate association
and sympathy with the common folk; but, on the
other hand, he was admitted, except by the Comyn interest,
to be the legitimate sovereign, and ‘is not the King’s name
twenty thousand names?’ And so it would have been but
for his inglorious record. It is only the servile adulation
of later writers that has pictured Bruce as animated by
patriotism. He was simply a great Anglo-Norman baron
in quest of aggrandizement; and it took many years to
satisfy the people generally that their interests were safe in
his keeping. But he was a man with deep reserves of
strength, freed at last from the paralysis of worldly prudence
by a sudden shock, and compelled to defend his crown
and his life with his back to the wall. Happily, if only
incidentally, such self-defence involved the championship
of the independence of Scotland.

36

CHAPTER IV
DEFEAT AND DISASTER: METHVEN AND KILDRUMMY

The new King buckled to his task with fiery energy. ‘All
the English’ had not, though many of them had, ‘returned
to their own land’; and Bruce instantly issued a proclamation
requiring those that remained to follow those that had
gone. According to the Meaux chronicler, he proceeded
to expel them; but the particular acts are not recorded.
At the same time he imperiously insisted on the submission
of such Scots as had not yet joined him. He threw the
Perth bailies into prison, and required them, on pain of
death, to pay up £54 of the King’s Whitsunday rents. A
detailed example of his procedure remains in the memorial
of exculpation addressed by Malise, Earl of Strathearn, to
Edward. The Earl alleges that, on Monday, the day after
the coronation, Bruce sent to him the Abbot of Inchaffray,
requiring him to repair forthwith to his presence to perform
homage and fealty. On his refusal, Bruce, with the Earl of
Athol, entered Strathearn in force, occupied Foulis, and
despatched another summons, with a safe conduct, to the
Earl, who took counsel with his followers in the wood of
Crieff. Bruce’s messenger seems to have been Sir Malcolm
de Inverpeffry, who had been Edward’s sheriff of Clackmannan
and Auchterarder, and had been one of the first to
go over to Bruce. Taking the advice of Sir Malcolm and
of his own friends, he went to Bruce, but still he refused to
comply with the peremptory demand of submission. Next
day, he again met Bruce by appointment at Muthill. In
the course of the interview, Athol, who had been stung by
a sharp home thrust of Strathearn’s, urged Bruce to break
his promise of safe conduct and give the Earl into custody,
while Athol’s men should go and ravage his lands. Strathearn
was taken to Inchmalcolm, where he steadily maintained
his refusal. Sir Robert de Boyd thereupon advised37
Bruce to cut off his head and grant away his lands, and to
do the like to all others afflicted with such scruples. Strathearn
then gave way, and they let him go. The story may
be coloured to suit Strathearn’s new difficulties, but it may
at least be taken as an indication of Bruce’s resolute, yet
prudent, action.

The memorial further shows that Strathearn was again at
issue with Bruce before the battle of Methven. Bruce sent
him a letter, he says, directing him to bring his power to
Calder; but, instead of obeying the order, he communicated
the letter to Sir Aymer de Valence, then at Perth,
and prepared to follow with his men. Just as he was
starting, Bruce came upon him, laid siege to the place
where he was, and ravaged his country. At an interview,
Strathearn flatly refused to join Bruce in an attack on
Valence; and Bruce had to let him go recalcitrant and
unpunished, for the sake of the hostages in the hands of
Strathearn’s party.

The news of Bruce’s revolt and the death of Comyn roused
Edward into full martial vigour. He at once despatched
judicious instructions to his officers in Scotland and on
the Borders. In March he was directing military supplies
to be accumulated at Berwick; and in the beginning of
April he commanded the Irish authorities to divert supplies
destined for Ayr to Skinburness, and to send them ‘with
the utmost haste,’ giving ‘orders to the seamen to keep the
high seas and not to approach the ports of Ayr or Galloway
on any account.’ On April 5 he issued orders for the
immediate muster of the forces of the northern counties at
the summons of Valence and Percy.

Having set his army in motion, Edward held a great
feast at Westminster at Whitsuntide. By proclamation
he invited all such youths as had a hereditary claim to
knighthood, and such as had the means to campaign,
to come and receive knighthood along with the Prince
of Wales. In the middle of April he had despatched
his clerks to St Botolph’s Fair, with orders to his sheriffs
and other lieges of Southampton and Wilts to aid them
‘in purchasing 80 cloths of scarlet and other colours,
2000 ells of linen cloth, 4000 ells of canvas, 30
pieces of wax, and 20 boillones of almonds,’ for the38
outfit and entertainment of the new knights. The
Royal Palace could not contain the visitors. The
Prince and the more noble of the candidates kept vigil
in Westminster Abbey; the rest made shift to keep
vigil in the Temple. Next day the King knighted the
Prince, and made him Duke of Aquitaine. Thereupon
the Prince went to Westminster Abbey and conferred
knighthood upon his companions. The crush before the
high altar was so severe that two knights died and many
fainted; and the Prince ordered in a ring of war-horses
to fence off his knights from the crowd. The number
of new knights may be taken roundly at three hundred.

Then followed a remarkable ceremony. As the King
and the knights sat at table, there entered a splendid
procession, attended by a train of minstrels, in the midst
of which were borne two swans in golden nets amid gilt
reeds, ‘a lovely spectacle to the beholders.’ On seeing
them, the King chivalrously vowed a vow to God and
to the swans—emblems of purity and faith—that he would
go to Scotland, and, alive or dead, avenge the outrage
to Holy Church, the death of Comyn, and the broken
faith of the Scots. Turning to the Prince and the nobles,
he adjured them by their fealty that, if he should die
before accomplishing his vow, they should carry his body
with them in the war, and not bury it ’till the Lord gave
victory and triumph’ over the perfidious Bruce and the
perjured Scots. One and all, they engaged their faith by
the same vow. Trevet adds that Edward further vowed
that, when the war in Scotland was successfully ended, he
would never more bear arms against Christian men, but
would direct his steps to the Holy Land and never return
thence. ‘Never in Britain, since God was born,’ says
Langtoft, ‘was there such nobleness in towns or in cities,
except Caerleon in ancient times, when Sir Arthur the
King was crowned there.’

The brilliant ceremony over, the Prince set out for
Carlisle, where his army was ordered to be in readiness on
July 8. He was accompanied by a large number of his
new-made knights. The King was to follow by slow stages.

Amidst the pomp of the gallant ceremonial, Edward’s
mind was keenly bent upon the business of the expedition.39
Writing to Valence on May 24, he desires ‘that some
good exploit be done, if possible, before his arrival.’ Two
days later (May 26), he is delighted to hear that Valence,
then at Berwick, is ready to operate against the enemy,
and urges him to strike at them as often as possible, and
in concert with the forces at Carlisle. As regards ‘the
request by some for a safe-conduct for the Bishop of
St Andrews,’ Valence, he orders, ‘will neither give, nor
allow any of his people to give such.’ The Bishop, if he
pleases, may come to the King’s faith, and receive his
deserts. Let Valence take the utmost pains to secure the
Bishop’s person, and also the person of the Bishop of
Glasgow; and let him send frequent news of his doings.

Valence had a stroke of luck. On June 8, Edward ‘is
very much pleased’ to learn from him ‘that the Bishop of
Glasgow is taken, and will soon be sent to him.’ The
Bishop had been taken in arms on the recapture of Cupar
Castle by the English. A week later (June 16), Edward
informs Valence that ‘he is almost as much pleased as if
it had been the Earl of Carrick,’ and directs him to send
the Bishop ‘well guarded’ to Berwick, ‘having no regard
to his estate of prelate or clerk.’ The order was executed
without any undue tenderness to the Bishop. The Bishop
of St Andrews, however, was still at large. ‘I understand
from many,’ wrote Edward to Valence in the letter of
June 8, ‘that the Bishop of St Andrews has done me
all the mischief in his power, for, though chief of the
Guardians of Scotland appointed by me, he has joined
my enemies.’

As yet the edge of Edward’s appetite was but whetted.
On June 12, he ‘is well pleased to hear that Valence has
burned Sir Simon Fraser’s lands in Selkirk Forest,’ and
commands him ‘to do the same to all enemies on his
march, including those who turned against him in this
war of the Earl of Carrick, and have since come to his
peace as enemies and not yet guaranteed; and to burn,
destroy, and waste their houses, lands, and goods in such
wise that Sir Simon and others may have no refuge with
them as heretofore.’ At the same time, Valence is to
spare and honour the loyal, and in particular to compliment
the foresters of Selkirk on their loyal and painful40
service. In successive letters he reiterates the caution
to beware of surprise and treason, and his anxiety for
constant news.

Still more vindictive is his tone on June 19. He
commands Valence to burn, destroy, and strip the lands
and gardens of Sir Michael de Wemyss’s manors, ‘as
he has found nor good speech nor good service in him,’
and this for an example to others. Likewise, to do the
same, or worse, if possible, to the lands and possessions
of Sir Gilbert de la Haye, to whom the King did great
courtesy when he was last in London, but now finds he
is a traitor’: the King will make up the loss to the
persons to whom he has granted his lands!

Meantime the Pope made his voice heard. On May 6,
he had written to Edward, promising to send a nuncio to
deal with the Bishop of Glasgow and others; and on May
11, he had strongly denounced to the Archbishop of York
the assumption of the Bishop, desiring him to order the
culprit peremptorily to come to his Holiness at Bordeaux.
The Archbishop replied that the Bishop had been captured
in arms, and that the King thought it inexpedient to serve
the citation on his prisoner, but would send envoys with
explanations. On June 18, the Pope addressed a bull to
the Archbishop of York and the Bishop of Carlisle directing
them to excommunicate Bruce and his adherents, and
to lay their lands, castles, and towns under ecclesiastical
interdict till they should purge their offence. Already, on
June 5, according to the London Annalist, the Archdeacons
of Middlesex and Colchester had formally excommunicated
Bruce and three other knights at St Paul’s for the death of
Comyn.

However the sacrilegious deed at Dumfries may have
affected the attitude of Scotsmen generally to Bruce, it did
not produce revulsion in the minds of the more ardent
patriots, any more than in the minds of Bruce’s personal
friends. Yet not only the powerful Comyn interest, but also
a very large section of the rest of the population, adhered,
formally at least, to the English cause. The particular
movements of Bruce are not on record; but it appears that
his adherents were pressing Sir Alexander de Abernethy
in Forfar Castle, and that Irish as well as Scots allies were41
active in Fife and Gowrie. The foresters of Selkirk, as
we have seen, had stood by Edward, and apparently had
suffered not a little for their fidelity. Hemingburgh says
Bruce ‘did great wonders’: undoubtedly the impression
is that he must have been fighting a strenuous uphill
battle. The great mass of the nation, however, was waiting
for more definite developments.

In June, Sir Aymer de Valence had advanced from
Berwick to Perth. In his company were several prominent
Scots—Sir John de Mowbray, Sir Ingram de Umfraville,
Sir Alexander de Abernethy, Sir Adam de Gordon,
Sir David de Brechin, and others that leant to Comyn.
He had received to the peace some complaisant Scots
whose lands or dwellings lay on his northward route.
Bruce probably kept him under observation, retiring before
him beyond the Forth, and not attempting to bar his progress
to Perth.

On June 25, Bruce, no doubt reinforced, appeared before
the walls of Perth, and challenged Sir Aymer to come out
and fight him, or else to surrender. Hemingburgh assigns
to Valence only 300 men-at-arms and some foot, a smaller
force, he says, than Bruce had; but it is most unlikely that
Valence was not the stronger, though possibly not by 1500
men, as Barbour alleges. Valence seems to have been
ready to accept Bruce’s challenge, but to have been dissuaded
by his Scots friends. Umfraville, says Barbour,
advised him to promise battle on the morrow, but to attack
that night when the Scots were off guard in reliance on his
promise. Bruce—’too credulous,’ says Hemingburgh—accepted
the promise. He was not in a position to establish
a siege, and he retired to Methven Wood. His main
body set about preparing food, and disposed themselves at
ease, while parties went out to forage. In the dusk of the
evening, Valence issued from Perth and took Bruce by
surprise. It is not to be supposed, as the chroniclers
narrate, that Bruce was so inexperienced as to allow his
men to lie in careless unreadiness: no doubt many of
them would have laid aside their arms; but the very fact
that his knights at least fought with loose linen tunics over
their armour to hide their distinctive arms would seem to
show that they at any rate were prepared. Still they did42
not expect attack. They promptly rallied, however, and
met with vigour the sudden and furious onset. Bruce,
keenly realising the importance of the issue, bore himself
with splendid valour. Before his fierce charge, the enemy
gave way; and, Langtoft says, he killed Valence’s charger.
Thrice was he unhorsed himself, and thrice remounted by
Sir Simon Fraser. According to Sir Thomas Gray, he was
taken prisoner by John de Haliburton, who let him go the
moment he recognised him. Barbour tells how he was
hard beset by Sir Philip de Mowbray, and was rescued by
Sir Christopher de Seton. But the day was going against
him, and it was in vain that he made a supreme effort to
rally his men. He was compelled to retreat. Barbour
asserts that the English were too wearied to pursue, and
retired within the walls of Perth with their prisoners, keeping
there in fear of the approach of Bruce; but it seems far
more likely, as Langtoft relates, that they kept up the pursuit
‘for many hours.’ The statement of Hemingburgh
and others that the English pursued Bruce to Cantyre, and
besieged and took a castle there, mistakenly supposing him
to be in it, is evidently a misconception, and a confusion
of Dunaverty with Kildrummy.

Bruce lost comparatively few men in the battle—the
7000 of the Meaux chronicle need not be considered—but
a number of his ablest supporters were taken prisoners,
notably Thomas Randolph, his nephew, Sir Alexander
Fraser, Sir David Barclay, Sir Hugh de la Haye, Sir David
de Inchmartin, and Sir John de Somerville. The Bishop
of St Andrews had surrendered to Valence before the battle,
but had taken care to send his household to fight for Bruce.
His calculation is said to have been ‘that if the Scots beat
the English they would rescue him as a man taken by force
for lack of protection, whereas, if the English won the day,
they would mercifully regard him as having been abandoned
by his household, as not consenting to their acts.’ But
this looks like a speculation of the chronicler’s. Valence
displayed humane consideration for his prisoners, all the
more honourable as he had not yet received Edward’s
letter of June 28, modifying his previous bloodthirsty
orders.

After the defeat, Bruce’s party broke up into several43
groups. Sir Simon Fraser was captured at Kirkincliffe,
near Stirling. Sir Christopher de Seton was taken at
Lochore Castle in Fife. The Earl of Lennox made for
his own fastnesses. Bruce himself proceeded northwards
to Aberdeen. Barbour says he had about 500 followers,
the most prominent of whom were his brother Sir Edward,
the Earls of Athol and Errol, Sir William Barondoun,
James of Douglas, and Sir Nigel Campbell. He kept
to the high ground, not venturing to the plains, for the
population had outwardly passed to the English peace
again. Barbour tells pitifully how the fugitives’ clothes
and shoon were riven and rent before they reached Aberdeen.
Here they were met by Nigel Bruce, the Queen,
and other ladies; and here Bruce rested his company ‘a
good while.’

The English, however, followed up, and Bruce was
unable to show fight. The whole party, therefore, took
to the hills again. The exact date is not recorded; but
we know that Valence was at Aberdeen on August 3.
The very next day (August 4) a painful scene was enacted
at Newcastle. Fifteen Scots, all prisoners from
Methven, including Sir David de Inchmartin, Sir John de
Cambhou, Sir John de Somerville, Sir Ralph de Heriz,
and Sir Alexander Scrymgeour, were arraigned before
nine justices, whose instructions directed that ‘judgment
be pronounced as ordained, and none of them be allowed
to answer.’ They were all hanged. At the same time,
John de Seton, who had been taken in Tibbers Castle,
which he was holding for Bruce, and who had been
present with Bruce at the death of Comyn, and at the
capture of Dumfries Castle, of which Sir Richard Siward
of Tibbers was constable, was condemned, drawn, and
hanged. It appears to have been due to the earnest
intervention of Sir Adam de Gordon that Randolph—as
we shall henceforth call Thomas Randolph (Thomas
Ranulphi) Bruce’s nephew, later Earl of Moray—was
spared.

Bruce and his followers suffered serious privations in
the hill country. Barbour engagingly tells how Douglas
especially exerted himself in hunting and fishing, and, as
became a chivalrous youth hardly out of his teens, served44
indefatigably the ladies as well as his lord. The party
pushed south-westwards by ‘the head of the Tay.’ Eventually,
they found themselves face to face with the Lord of
Lorn, Alexander MacDougal, a ‘deadly enemy to the King,’
says Barbour, ‘for the sake of his uncle John Comyn.’
Alexander was really Lord of Argyll, and had married
Comyn’s third daughter; it was his son, John of Lorn,
whose uncle Comyn was, and Barbour may mean John.
Alexander is said to have had over 1000 men, with the
chiefs of Argyll as his lieutenants. Bruce was in no case
for battle, but he was encouraged, in his necessity, by
the nature of the ground, and put on a bold front. A
stern combat ensued at Dalry—the ‘Kings Field’—in
Strathfillan, near Tyndrum. Fordun gives the date August
11; and, if this be correct, Barbour has misplaced the
episode. The men of Lorn, wielding their great pole-axes
on foot, did serious execution upon Bruce’s horses;
and they wounded badly some of his men, including
Douglas and Sir Gilbert de la Haye. Bruce satisfied
himself by a determined charge that further contest would
cost him too many men, and, forming close, he retreated
steadily, protecting his rear in person so vigilantly and
boldly that none of the Lorns durst advance from the
main body.

The wrath of Lorn incited two brothers named MacIndrosser—that
is, sons of Durward (the Doorkeeper) as
Barbour explains—to perform an oath they had sworn to
slay Bruce. This oath may possibly be connected with
the fact that Alan Durward, the celebrated Justiciar of
Scotland, had vainly endeavoured to get his family claims
to the throne forwarded by the legitimation of his daughters,
his wife being an illegitimate daughter of Alexander II.
Joined by a third man—possibly the MacKeoch of the
Lorn tradition—they rushed on Bruce in a narrow pass—perhaps
between Loch Dochart and Ben More—where
the hill rose so sheer from the water that he had barely
room to turn his horse. One caught his bridle, but Bruce
instantly shore off his arm. Another had seized his leg
and stirrup; but Bruce rose in his stirrups and spurred his
horse, throwing down his adversary, who still grimly maintained
his grip. The third meanwhile had scrambled up45
the incline and jumped on Bruce’s horse behind him; but
Bruce at once dragged him forward and clove his head.
He then struck down the man at his stirrup. This exploit
cowed the Lorns. Barbour glorifies Bruce by citing the
admiring comment of MacNaughton, a Baron of Cowal.
‘You seem to enjoy our discomfiture,’ said Lorn angrily.
‘No,’ replied MacNaughton; ‘but never did I hear tell of
such a feat, and one should honour chivalry whether in
friend or in foe.’ Bruce rode after his men, and Lorn
retired in chagrin. Barbour, it will be observed, makes no
mention of a personal encounter between Bruce and Lorn,
or of the capture of the famous Brooch of Lorn,

Bruce, according to Barbour, now applied himself to
comfort his party, though probably he was less versed
than the devoted Archdeacon in historical examples
of courage in despair. There was need for comfort;
things were going rapidly from bad to worse. The ladies
began to fail. And not only the ladies, but some of the
harder sex: the Earl of Athol, Barbour says, could hold
out no longer on any terms. A council of war was called,
with the result that Bruce himself, with some 200 of the
tougher men, took to the higher hills, and Sir Nigel Bruce,
taking all the horses, even the King’s, essayed to conduct
the Queen and the other ladies, as well as the more exhausted
of the men, back to the Aberdeenshire stronghold
of Kildrummy.

Sir Nigel reached Kildrummy in safety. The castle
was well provisioned, and was deemed impregnable. It
had not been taken by Valence in early August, when
he ‘well settled affairs beyond the Mounth, and appointed
warders there.’ Sir Nigel was soon besieged, probably by
the Prince of Wales. A vigorous attack was met by a
spirited defence, the besieged frequently sallying and
fighting at the outworks. There was hardly time for the
besiegers to despair of success, as Barbour says they did,
when a traitor set fire to the store of corn heaped up in the
castle hall, involving the place in flames, and driving the
garrison to the battlements. The English seized their46
opportunity and attacked as closely as the fire permitted,
but they were gallantly repelled. The entrance gate,
though burnt, is said to have been so hot that they could
not enter. They accordingly waited till the morrow. The
defenders, with great exertion, managed to block up the
gate overnight. At daybreak, the attack was renewed, with
all the energy of certain hope. The besieged, however,
having neither food nor fuel, recognised that further defence
was impossible, and surrendered at discretion. The
precise date is not clear. A calendered letter, anonymous,
dated September 13, states that ‘Kildrummy was lately
taken by the Prince’; but, if this date be correct, it seems
strange that Edward, writing on September 22, should
not say more than that ‘all is going well at Kildrummy
Castle.’

The prisoners included Sir Nigel Bruce, Sir Robert de
Boyd, Sir Alexander de Lindsay, ‘and other traitors, and
many knights and others.’ Hemingburgh mentions the
Queen; but Barbour and Fordun relate that she and the
Princess Marjory, in order to escape the siege, had been
escorted to the sanctuary of St Duthac at Tain, where they
were taken by the Earl of Ross, who delivered them to
Edward. It may be incidentally noted that some two years
afterwards (October 31, 1308), the Earl of Ross did fealty
and homage to King Robert at Auldearn, and was reinstated
in his lands.

The fate of the more important prisoners demands particular
notice. Most of the captives were interned in English
castles; but

The Queen was sent to stay at the manor of Burstwick,
in Holderness, Yorkshire. Edward certainly meant to
treat her handsomely. His directions were that she should
have ‘a waiting-woman and a maid-servant, advanced in
life, sedate, and of good conversation; a butler, two man-servants,
and a foot-boy for her chamber, sober and not
riotous, to make her bed; three greyhounds, when she
inclined to hunt; venison, fish, and the “fairest house in
the manor.”‘ Hemingburgh gives two reasons. First, her
father, the Red Earl of Ulster, had proved faithful to him.47
Second, he was pleased with a reported saying of hers
on the coronation of her husband. ‘Rejoice now, my
consort,’ Bruce said, ‘for you have been made a Queen,
and I a King.’ ‘I fear, Sir,’ she replied, ‘we have been
made King and Queen after the fashion of children in
summer games.’ Other chroniclers give the story with
slight variation. In a letter, without date, but apparently
belonging to next year, she complains to Edward ‘that,
though he had commanded his bailiffs of Holderness to see
herself and her attendants honourably sustained, yet they
neither furnish attire for her person or her head, nor a bed,
nor furniture of her chambers, saving only a robe of three
“garmentz” yearly, and for her servants one robe each for
everything’; and she prays him ‘to order amendment of
her condition, and that her servants be paid for their labour,
that she may not be neglected, or that she may have a yearly
sum allowed by the King for her maintenance.’ In autumn
1310, she was at Bistelesham; in 1311–12, at Windsor Castle;
in autumn 1312, at Shaftesbury; in 1313, at Barking Abbey;
in 1313–14, at Rochester Castle; in October 1314, at
Carlisle Castle, on her way back to Scotland, in consequence
of Bannockburn.

Marjory, Bruce’s daughter, had first been destined to
a ‘cage’ in the Tower of London, but was placed by
Sir Henry de Percy in the Priory of Watton in Yorkshire.
She returned to Scotland with the Queen.

Mary Bruce, sister of the King, and wife of Sir Nigel
Campbell, was kept first in Roxburgh Castle, in a ‘cage,’
and then at Newcastle till June 25, 1312, when she was
probably exchanged.

Christian Bruce, another sister of the King, and widow
of Sir Christopher de Seton, was relegated to the Priory
of Sixhill, in Lincolnshire, whence she was released on
July 18, 1314, and returned with the Queen.

The Countess of Buchan was put in a ‘cage’ in Berwick
Castle. The Earl, it is said, wanted to kill her, but Edward
delivered judgment thus: ‘As she did not strike with the
sword, she shall not perish by the sword; but, because of
the unlawful coronation she performed, let her be closely confined
in a stone-and-iron chamber, fashioned in the form of a
crown, and suspended at Berwick in the open air outside48
the castle, so that she may be presented, alive and dead, a
spectacle to passers-by and an everlasting reproach.’ In
fact, she was placed in a room—or rather an erection of
three storeys or rooms—of stout lattice-work in a turret of
the castle. She was to be kept so strictly that ‘she shall
speak to no one, and that neither man nor woman of the
nation of Scotland, nor other, shall approach her,’ except
her keeper and her immediate attendants. The ‘cage’
was simply an arrangement for ‘straiter custody,’ though
but rarely judged necessary in the case of ladies. About
a year later, the ex-Constable of Bristol Castle was reimbursed
certain expenditure, part of which was for
‘making a wooden cage bound with iron in the said
house for the straiter custody of Owen, son of David ap
Griffith, a prisoner, shut therein at night.’

A harder fate awaited the foremost knightly defenders
of Kildrummy. Sir Nigel Bruce and several others were
drawn, hanged, and beheaded at Berwick. The handsome
person and gallant bearing of the youthful knight excited
general sympathy and regret.

The Earl of Athol had escaped from Kildrummy and
taken to sea, but was driven back by contrary winds and
took refuge in a church, where he was captured—’the news
whereof eased the King’s pain.’ In the end of October he
was taken to London, and tried and condemned. When
friends interceded for him, and urged his royal blood, ‘The
higher the rank,’ said Edward, ‘the worse the fall; hang
him higher than the rest.’ In virtue of his royal blood he
was not drawn, but he was hanged fifty feet high (twenty
feet higher than others), taken down half-dead, beheaded
and burnt, and his head was set on London Bridge, again
higher than the rest.

Sir Christopher de Seton had been taken at Lochore
(Hemingburgh, Trevet)—if not at Kildrummy (Gray)—betrayed,
says Barbour, by MacNab, ‘a man of his own
household,’ ‘a disciple of Judas.’ ‘In hell condemnèd
mot he be!’ prays the good Archdeacon. He was taken
to Dumfries, in consideration of the part he played at
the death of Comyn, and there (not, as Barbour says, at
London) he was drawn, hanged, and beheaded. He was
only twenty-eight years of age.

49
Sir Simon Fraser had been captured about August 24,
by Sir David de Brechin, near Stirling, and conducted to
London on September 6. He was tried and condemned,
drawn, hanged, and beheaded; his body, having been rehung
on the gallows for twenty days, was burnt; and his
head was carried, with the music of horns, to London
Bridge, and placed near the head of Wallace. Fraser,
since turning patriot, had extorted the admiration of foes
and friends alike. ‘In him,’ says Langtoft, ‘through his
falseness, perished much worth.’ ‘The imprisoned Scots
nobles,’ says another English chronicler, ‘declared he
could be neither beaten nor taken, and thought the
Scots could not be conquered while he was alive.
So much did they believe in him that Sir Herbert de
Morham, handsomest and tallest of Scotsmen, a prisoner
in the Tower, offered his head to the King to be cut off
the day Simon was captured.’ Sir Herbert’s squire, Thomas
du Bois, joined in his master’s confident wager. Both of
them were beheaded on September 7, the day after Sir
Simon’s arrival at the Tower.

But Edward dared not imbrue his hands in the blood of
great churchmen. The Bishops of St Andrews and Glasgow
and the Abbot of Scone were conducted to Newcastle-on-Tyne
in the warlike guise in which they are said to have
been taken. From Newcastle (August 10) they were led
by stages, still traceable, to their separate places of confinement—the
castles of Winchester, Porchester, and Mere.
On the way they were not allowed to communicate with
each other, or with anyone else, ‘excepting their keepers
only’; and, on arrival at their several destinations, they
were loaded with irons. Edward was keenly anxious to
get hold of the Bishop of Moray also, whom he believed—no
doubt wrongly—to have been a party to the murder
of Comyn, but who certainly adhered to Bruce. The
Bishop, however, had fled to Orkney, and for a twelvemonth
left Edward to negotiate with the King of Norway
for his surrender.

The Bishop of St Andrews had sagaciously surrendered
to Valence four or five days before Methven. He had
already (June 9) warmly repudiated the charge of complicity
in the death of Comyn. On August 9, he was50
severely examined at Newcastle. Why had he concealed
his bond with Bruce when he was admitted of the Council
at Sheen? He had ‘entirely forgotten’ it—which is not
quite improbable, for, on the face of it at all events, and
possibly in fact, it related to the immediate contingencies
of eighteen months back. Why did he hasten to Bruce’s
coronation? He went to see him ‘on account of grievous
threats against his person and substance, and for no other
reason’—but he was not so stiff as the Earl of Strathearn.
Neither these nor his further answers are satisfactory.
Already he was declaring himself ‘heartily sorry.’ On
June 1, 1308, on an order dated May 23, he was released
from Winchester Castle, where he had lain from August
24, 1306, but he was taken bound to remain within the
county of Northampton. At Northampton, on August 11,
he swore fealty to Edward in abject terms, and made oath
to remain within the bounds of the bishopric of Durham.
He was creeping northwards. The Pope sent a strong
remonstrance in his favour, but Edward II. had anticipated
it by the Bishop’s release. On February 16, 1309–10, the
Bishop figures at the head of a commission of seven, invested,
on the urgency of the Pope, with full powers to
treat with Bruce for a cessation of hostilities. On July 24,
1311, he was back in Scotland, and Edward writes to the
Pope excusing his absence from a General Council holden
at Vienna, on the ground that ‘he is much needed to give
right direction to the minds of Scotsmen, and in these
days no one’s exhortations are more readily acquiesced
in.’ Indeed, ‘we have laid upon him various arduous
tasks touching the state of the country, and especially
its tranquillity.’ Besides, ‘his absence would be a danger
to souls.’ In a second letter of excuse, on December 4,
Edward testifies emphatically to his continued fidelity.
About two years later, November 30, 1313, the Bishop
was still so much in favour that Edward dispatched him
on an embassy to the King of France. On September 25,
1314, he ‘is going abroad on business of his own, by our
leave’; which implies his final release as a consequence of
Bannockburn.

The Bishop of Glasgow was more strictly dealt with.
Apparently about the date of his internment in Porchester51
Castle (say August 25, 1306), he prayed the King, ‘for
God and for charity and the salvation of his soul, to allow
him to remain in England within certain bounds at the
King’s will, on such surety as the King may demand,
till the rising of the Scots be entirely put down.’ On
December 1, 1308, Edward II. delivered him to Arnaud,
Bishop of Poitiers, to be taken to the Pope; but three
days later he wrote to his Holiness, and to a number of
cardinals, that the Bishop’s crimes forbade any hope that
he could be allowed to return to Scotland. He set forth
at large the supreme wickedness of the Bishop, ‘the sower
of universal discord,’ the traitor, the sixfold perjurer, the
ecclesiastic taken in arms; ‘not a pacific overseer, but a
belligerent; not a Levite of the altar, but a horsed warrior,
taking to himself a shield for a diocese, a sword for a stole,
a corslet for an alb, a helmet for a mitre, a spear for a
pastoral staff.’ Begging the Pope on no account to permit
the return of the Bishop to Scotland, or even ‘elsewhere
within the King’s power,’ he recommends the appointment
of Master Stephen de Segrave, Professor of Canon Law
and Dean of Glasgow, to the western bishopric. To the
Pope the Bishop went; and with the Pope he apparently
remained for two years, for in January 1310–11, Edward
wrote from Berwick to his Chancellor informing him that
he had heard that the Bishop was ‘busy suing his deliverance
at the Court of Rome,’ and commanding him, ‘in
concert with the Earl of Lincoln, the Lieutenant and
Guardian, and the Treasurer of Scotland, to issue letters
under the Great Seal to the Pope, and to the Cardinals
named in the enclosed list, urgently opposing the Bishop’s
restoration either to his office or to his country, and pointing
out his evil bearing (mavoys port), and his repeated
violation of his oath, and anything else likely to induce
the Pope to refuse him leave even to return to Scotland.’
These representations appear to have stayed the Pope’s
hand; and again, on April 23, Edward repeated with
especial urgency his request for the supersession of the
Bishop by Master Stephen de Segrave. Late in 1313,
the Bishop was sent back to Edward ‘to be detained by
the King at pleasure till Scotland was recovered’; and
Edward, on November 20, committed him to the charge of52
the Prior of Ely, ‘to remain at the Priory at his own expenses,
and not to go forth except for the purpose of
taking the air, under sufficient escort.’ On July 18, 1314,
Edward ordered him to be brought to York, where he
joined Bruce’s Queen and other Scots prisoners, with
whom he was sent to Carlisle on October 2, and thence
to Scotland. Physically, however, he was worn out; he
had become totally blind. He survived his restoration
but two years, dying in 1317. It stands to the credit of
Bruce that he always retained a strong feeling of gratitude
and sympathy for the patriotic, flexible, gallant, and much
enduring Bishop.

The campaign of the east was over. On October 4,
Edward conferred on Sir Aymer de Valence lands and
official honours in the shires of Peebles and Selkirk; and,
on October 7, he made him keeper of the castle and forest
of Jedburgh. On October 23, Edward received the
homage and fealty of James, Steward of Scotland, and
restored to him his lands. Of course the English lands
and possessions of Bruce and all his adherents were distributed
as rewards to the deserving officers and the
favourites of the conqueror. The active opposition to
the English in Scotland was smothered in blood, except
in the parts of Galloway and Carrick.

53

CHAPTER V
THE KING IN EXILE

When Sir Nigel Bruce parted for the last time with his
brother and passed on his fated way to Kildrummy, the
King was left with some two hundred men, all on foot.
He kept steadily to the hills, where he suffered severely
from hunger, cold, and wet, till at last he resolved to
make southward to Cantyre. Despatching Sir Nigel
Campbell, whose kinsmen dwelt in these parts, to obtain
boats and victuals, and to meet the party ‘at the sea’—either
on Loch Long or on the Firth of Clyde—Bruce,
says Barbour, struck for Loch Lomond, probably about
Rowardennan. Here he could find no boats, and either
way round was long and beset with foes. At last Douglas
discovered a sunken boat, capable of holding but three
men. In the course of a night and a day the party were
ferried over, two by two, a few of them, however, swimming
‘with fardel on back.’ Meanwhile Bruce cheered their
drooping spirits by reading from the old romance how
Fierabras was overcome by the right doughty Oliver, and
how the Twelve (Eleven) Peers held out in Aigremont
against Lawyne (Laban, Balan) till they were delivered by
Charlemagne.

The most pressing difficulty was lack of food. Presently,
however, this was relieved by the Earl of Lennox, who had
noted the sound of the King’s horn and joyfully hastened
to him. Shortly Sir Nigel returned with boats and food
in abundance. Bruce and his friends embarked. Barbour
has a dramatic story how Lennox made delay in starting,
how his boat was pursued—probably by Lorn’s men—and
how he escaped by throwing overboard his belongings,
which the enemy stopped to appropriate. The boats
ran down the Firth and safely landed the party in Cantyre.

Here Bruce received a friendly welcome from Angus
of Islay, Lord of Cantyre, who placed at his disposal the54
rock fortress of Dunaverty. He entertained suspicions of
treachery, however, and stayed only three days. Then,
with all his following, he passed over to the island of
Rathlin, an exile from his kingdom.

Such is Barbour’s story. Taking it, meantime, as it
stands, let us see what the English had been doing in the
south-west. The details of operation are very scanty.
Percy, the King’s lieutenant on the western March, had
exerted himself during June, July and August in fortifying
and provisioning the castles. Lochmaben Castle fell on
July 11, and Prince Edward felt himself free to go to
Valence at Perth a few days later, and to carry through
the siege of Kildrummy by the middle of September.
He seems to have acted with more zeal than prudence.
Rishanger says he took ‘such vengeance that he spared
neither sex nor age; towns, too, and hamlets, wherever he
came he set on fire, and he mercilessly devastated the
country.’ This conduct ‘is said to have gravely displeased
the King his father, who chid him severely.’ The King
had moved northwards by slow stages, borne in a litter on
horseback. It was September 29 when he reached the
priory of Lanercost, eight miles from Carlisle, and this
house he made his headquarters till March 26.

In September, the siege of Dunaverty was proceeding
under the direction of Sir John Botetourte, the King’s
ablest engineer. The local people were very slack in
aiding the English, and Edward, on September 25,
ordered Sir John de Menteith to compel them to supply
the besiegers with provisions and necessaries, ‘if they
will not with a good grace.’ Next month Edward empowered
Sir John of Argyll to receive to his peace, on
special conditions, Donald of Islay, Gotheri his brother,
John MacNakyld, and Sir Patrick de Graham. The conditions
suggest that they had been in a position to drive
a good bargain; and the submission of the first three at
least may, perhaps, be connected with the capitulation of
Dunaverty towards the end of October.

Now, at what date did Bruce pass from Dunaverty to
Rathlin? Even were it not for Barbour’s weather indications,
and for the necessity of the awkward admission
that, for some good reason—say commissariat—Bruce
fled before the English approach and left some of his55
stanchest supporters in Dunaverty, it is difficult to suppose
that he could have lain undisturbed in Rathlin from mid
September to the end of January. Sir Thomas Gray records
that Prince Edward, on his return from Kildrummy (say
mid September), had an interview with Bruce, ‘who had
re-entered from the Isles and had collected a force in
Athol,’ at the bridge of Perth, much to the displeasure of
the King his father. Gray is manifestly wrong in some
points, and he may be wrong in all. Still, Bruce, finding
his way barred by Alexander of Argyll and not daring
to descend to the plains, may likely enough have turned
back to Athol, and, on hearing of the disaster of Kildrummy
and the capture of his Queen, his daughter, and
his sisters, may have felt driven to a desperate attempt at
accommodation. On such a supposition, it becomes easy
to accept Barbour’s Perthshire and Atlantic weather, to
absolve Bruce from an apparent sacrifice of friends in
Dunaverty, and to shorten to a credible length his stay in
Rathlin. There are two difficulties to this view. One is
that the English should have gone so far out of their way
as to besiege Dunaverty so zealously, or at all. They seem,
however, to have been under the impression that Bruce
himself was there. The other difficulty is that Dunaverty had
just been taken by the English. But if the astute Angus
Oig was governor when Bruce arrived, Dunaverty was remote
enough to allow him large scope for temporising.

The secret of Bruce’s retreat appears to have been well
kept. In October, indeed, Edward had commissioned Sir
John of Argyll admiral on the west coast. But he did
not find Bruce. It was not till January 29, that Edward
commanded the Treasurer of Ireland to aid Sir Hugh
Bisset in fitting out ‘as many well-manned vessels as he
can procure, to come to the Isles and the Scottish coast,
and join Sir John de Menteith in putting down Robert de
Bruce and his accomplices lurking there, and in cutting off
their retreat.’ More precise are the terms of appointment
of Sir Simon de Montacute (January 30) as commander
of the fleet specially destined ‘for service against the rebels
lurking in Scotland, and in the Isles between Scotland and
Ireland.’ On February 1, Edward ordered up vessels from
Skinburness and neighbouring ports ‘towards Ayr in pursuit
of Robert de Bruce and his abettors, and to cut off his56
retreat.’ Bruce, therefore, must have left Rathlin some
days before the end of January, and probably because of
the menace of the English fleet.

Barbour keeps him in Rathlin till winter was nearly
gone—not really an inconsistency; but he seems to
attribute the exodus to Douglas’s chafing at inaction.
Douglas, he says, proposed to Boyd an attempt on
Brodick Castle, which Boyd knew well. With Bruce’s
leave they proceeded to Arran, and overnight set ambush
at the castle. As they lay in wait, the sub-warden arrived
with over thirty men in three boats, bringing provisions
and arms; and Douglas and Boyd set upon them. The
outcry brought men from the castle, who fled, however,
before the bold advance of the Scots, and barred the
gate. The Scots appropriated the sub-warden’s provisions
and arms, and took up a position in a narrow
pass; and the garrison does not seem to have even
attempted to dislodge them.

On the tenth day, it is said, Bruce arrived with the rest
of his men, in thirty-three small boats, and was conducted
by a woman to the glen where Douglas and Boyd lay,
strangely ignorant of his coming. Then Bruce determined
to dispatch the trusty Cuthbert of Carrick to sound the
people on the mainland, arranging that Cuthbert, in case
he found them favourable, should raise a fire on Turnberry
Point at a time fixed. Cuthbert found Percy in Turnberry
Castle, with some 300 men; and, as for the Scots, some
were willing, but afraid, while most were distinctly hostile.
He dared not fire the beacon.

At the appointed time, Bruce looked eagerly for the
signal. He descried a fire. The party put to sea, 300
strong, and rowed, in the dusk and the dark, right on
the fire. Cuthbert was at his wits’ end; he dare not
extinguish the fire. He met Bruce at the shore, and
explained the untoward attitude of the people. ‘Why,
then,’ demanded Bruce angrily, with a suspicion of
treachery, ‘why did you light the fire?’ Cuthbert explained
it was none of his doing, and beyond his help.
What was to be done? A council of war was held. Sir
Edward Bruce is said to have decided the question by a
point-blank refusal to retire. He, for one, would strike at
once, let come what might.

57
Cuthbert had learned that two-thirds of the garrison
were lodged in the town. Bruce and his men entered
quietly in small parties, breaking open the doors and
slaying all they found. Percy did not venture to sally
from the castle. Bruce stayed three days, testing the
feeling of the people; but even those that secretly
favoured him were afraid to show an open preference.
It is said that a lady, a near relative of his own, Christian
of the Isles, came and encouraged him, and afterwards sent
him frequent supplies of money and victuals. While mewing
up Percy, he harried the country with increasing daring. A
strong force of Northumberland men, however, raised the
siege. Hemingburgh places Bruce’s attack on Turnberry
Castle ‘about Michaelmas’; but it seems very unlikely
that Bruce ventured to take the field in the south-west
before he passed to Rathlin.

Apart from Barbour’s details, it is plain that Bruce had
struck a heavy blow. On February 6, Edward wrote to his
Treasurer expressing surprise ‘at having no news of Valence
and his forces since he went to Ayr, if they have done any
exploit or pursued the enemy.’ He commands him
‘quickly to order Valence, Percy, and Sir John de St
John, and others he sees, to send a trustworthy man
without delay with full particulars of their doings and the
state of affairs.’ And he is ‘not to forget in his letter to
them to say on the King’s behalf that he hears they have
done so badly that they do not wish him to know.’ To
the same effect he wrote himself to Valence on February
11, and commanded him ‘to write distinctly and clearly
by the bearer the news of the parts where he is, the state
of affairs there, and the doings of himself and the others
hitherto, and how he and they have arranged further proceedings.
For he suspects from his silence that he has so
over-cautiously conducted matters that he wishes to conceal
his actions.’ At the same time he addressed similar letters
to the Earls of Gloucester and Hereford, St John, and
Percy. The tone is too earnest to permit the supposition
that Edward was dissembling knowledge of the facts.

Bruce had at last regained a footing—though but a precarious
footing—in his kingdom, and rendered Edward
anxious about the immediate future.

58

CHAPTER VI
THE TURN OF THE TIDE

In the midst of his new success, another severe family blow
was impending on Bruce. On February 10, 1306–7—the
first anniversary of the Dumfries tragedy—his brothers
Thomas and Alexander made a raid on Galloway, with
some 300 Scots and 700 Irish auxiliaries, landing at Loch
Ryan, in the territory of Sir Dougal MacDowall. In a
desperate fight, the force was completely crushed by
MacDowall, who captured Thomas and Alexander, and
Sir Reginald Crawford, Wallace’s uncle, all ‘wounded
and half-dead.’ Hemingburgh says the Scots were caught
by surprise; Trevet adds ‘in the night.’ MacDowall
delivered his chief prisoners, together with the heads of
a baron of Cantyre and two Irish kinglets, to Prince
Edward, at Wetheral, near Carlisle. These prisoners were
all executed at Carlisle on February 17. Sir Thomas
Bruce was drawn, hanged, and beheaded; Alexander
Bruce, being a beneficed clergyman (Dean of Glasgow),
was not drawn, but he and Sir Reginald Crawford, and
apparently Sir Brice de Blair, were hanged and beheaded.
Thomas’s head was placed on the castle tower, and the
heads of the others graced the three gates of the city.
MacDowall was rewarded with the lands and possessions
of Sir Robert de Boyd and Sir Brice de Blair, and on
February 19, he received fifty marks and a charger; while
on March 1, a profitable privilege was conferred, at his instance,
upon his son.

According to Gray and Trevet, Bruce had sent his
brothers to Nithsdale and Annandale ‘to gain over the
people.’ It may be that the expedition was intended first
to operate as a diversion, and then to join Bruce himself in
Nithsdale. For Bruce, if not already in these parts, was
moving thitherwards. On February 12, Sir John Botetourte,59
with a considerable force, including over a score of knights,
started to make a raid on Bruce in Nithsdale; and on
March 8, he was reinforced by 180 archers from Carlisle.
The details, however, are not recorded.

It was probably in February, upon the landing of Bruce
in Carrick, that Edward issued from Lanercost an ordinance
intended to conciliate the Scots, while it graded carefully
the degrees of punishment for the worst classes of delinquents.
Contrary to the King’s intention, the ordinance
had been interpreted as too harsh and rigorous. On
March 13, therefore, he materially modified it. A few
days later, he directed steps to be taken for the repair
and fortification of several castles on the east side beyond
Forth, and ordered fresh levies from the northern counties
of England to muster, 2300 strong, at Carlisle by a fortnight
after Easter.

In a lull of the Nithsdale operations, Bruce is said to
have reluctantly granted Douglas leave to proceed to
Douglasdale, accompanied only by two yeomen. On
arrival, Douglas disclosed himself to Tom Dickson of
Hazelside, a stanch old warrior-tenant of his father’s, who
was overjoyed to see the youth, and introduced him to
the other leal men of the land, one by one, at private
conferences. It was quickly decided to fall upon the
unsuspecting garrison of Douglas Castle in St Bride’s
Church on Palm Sunday (March 19). The countrymen
would bring concealed weapons, and Douglas would
appear, with his two men, in the guise of a corn-thresher,
a threadbare mantle on his back and a flail on his
shoulder. The moment he raised his war-cry, they would
overpower the soldiers, and then the castle would offer no
resistance. Everything fell out as planned, except that
an over-eager friend prematurely raised the Douglas war-cry.
Dickson instantly fell upon the English in the
chancel, and a neighbour followed his example; but both
were slain. At this moment Douglas came on the scene,
raised his war-cry, and pressed hard on the English, who
manfully defended themselves. About twenty were killed;
the remaining ten were taken prisoners. At the castle,
Douglas found only the porter and the cook; and so he
barred the gates, and dined at leisure. After dinner, he60
packed up valuables, arms, and other portable things, and
proceeded to destroy what he could not take away. He
piled the wheat, flour, meal, and malt on the floor of the
wine cellar, beheaded the prisoners on the pile, and
broached the wine casks. This ghastly mess was locally
designated ‘the Douglas Larder.’ He then spoilt the
well by throwing in salt and dead horses. Finally, he set
fire to the castle, and left nothing but stones. The party
dispersed, and hid away their wounded. But Clifford, for
whom the castle had been held, soon had it rebuilt and
regarrisoned.

A later petition, by Lucas de Barry, represents that
Lucas had been ‘under Sir Robert de Clifford in Douglas
Castle when Sir Robert de Brus and Sir James Douglas
attacked it, the year when the late King died.’ But this
does not necessarily mean that either Clifford or Bruce
was there in person.

On the same Sunday morning, Edward entered Carlisle
with Peter, Cardinal Bishop of St Sabine, a papal legate,
who had just arrived to arrange terms of peace between
the English and French kings on the basis of a marriage
between Prince Edward and Isabella, daughter of the
King of France. On the Wednesday following, in the
Cathedral, the legate explained the objects of his mission,
and, with bell, book and candle, excommunicated the
murderers of Comyn, with all their aiders and abettors.
The like denunciation was busily repeated through the
churches, especially of the north of England. On Friday,
the peace was proclaimed.

Towards the end of March, Sir John Wallace is said
to have been captured ‘in the plain, pursued by the northeners,’
and was taken to Carlisle. Edward sent him to
London, ‘fettered on a hackney,’ to undergo the same
barbarous death as his heroic brother. His head was
fixed on London Bridge, ‘raised with shouts,’ says Langtoft,
‘near the head of his brother, William the Wicked.’
It could not have been more nobly honoured.

By the middle of April, Bruce had moved to Glen
Trool, where he was hard beset for some three weeks by
superior forces under a number of able knights, young
Sir John Comyn among them. The incidents of the61
period have not been preserved. Barbour, indeed, tells
how Valence and Clifford advanced stealthily on Bruce,
with over 1500 against less than 300 men, and found
him in a narrow pass, where horse could not reach him.
Valence sent a woman, disguised as a beggar, to spy
out the position; but Bruce saw through the dodge, and
the spy confessed. The English had to advance on foot.
Bruce dashed upon them with fury, seizing with his own
hand their foremost banner. Some of his men, Barbour
admits, had gone off, but came back on seeing how the
fight went. The foremost English company being overpowered,
the main body retreated; and a quarrel between
Clifford and Vaux seems to point to a fruitless attempt
of Clifford’s to rally the fugitives. One can only say
that some such incidents are probable enough. Anyhow,
Bruce appears to have baffled all the attempts of the
English in Glen Trool, and to have got away towards
Lothian.

In Lothian, Bruce found friends. The people, Hemingburgh
explains, had been exasperated during the preceding
year by the justice of the English justiciars; and, therefore,
‘as if unanimously, they rose and went with Bruce, willing
rather to die than to be judged by the English laws.’
Thus reinforced, Bruce turned back to meet Valence.
Perhaps it was now that he over-ran Kyle and Cunningham.
Valence, says Barbour, despatched from Bothwell 1000
men under Sir Philip de Mowbray, whom Douglas with
60 men met at Ederford, a narrow pass between two
marshes, and, by skilful strategy, totally defeated. Stung
by this ignominious reverse, Valence challenged Bruce,
who lay at Galston, to meet him on May 10, at Loudon
Hill—the scene of Wallace’s father’s death and of Wallace’s
first victory. Bruce accepted the challenge. Choosing
his ground between two stretches of moss, he cut three
deep trenches (with adequate gaps for the passage of his
men) across the hard moor between, and marshalled his
600 followers, so that Valence’s 3000 men could come
into action only in detail. He ordered a fierce onset
on the foremost, with the view of discouraging the rest—the
successful tactic in Glen Trool; and Sir Edward
and Douglas, as well as himself, are said to have performed62
prodigies of valour. The English gave way, and,
despite his utmost efforts, Valence was driven from the
field. Barbour says he retreated to Bothwell; Gray states
that Bruce pursued him to Ayr. Three days later, Bruce
also defeated the Earl of Gloucester with even greater
slaughter (says Hemingburgh) than had reddened Loudon
Hill, and besieged him in Ayr Castle.

From a letter, anonymous, dated May 15, we learn without
surprise that Edward ‘was much enraged that the
Warden and his force had retreated before King Hobbe’—his
familiar designation of Bruce. What does surprise
one is to learn, on the same authority, that ‘James of
Douglas sent and begged to be received, but, when he saw
the King’s forces retreat, he drew back.’ It would be quite
intelligible that the hardships of his first terrible year of
service had shaken the nerve of the youthful warrior. But
there were now ‘rumours of treasonable dealings between
some of the English and the enemy,’ and it seems far more
probable that Douglas was engineering one of his ruses.
It needs better evidence to stamp this solitary suggestion
of a blot on the clear scutcheon of Douglas.

The news of Bruce’s success, no doubt exaggerated and
distorted, produced a great sensation in the northern parts
of Scotland. A calendared letter, anonymous, written
from Forfar to some high official under date May 15,
graphically pictures the local feeling.

The writer hears that Sir Robert de Brus never had the goodwill of
his own followers or the people at large, or even half of them, so
much with him as now; and it now first appears that he was right,
and God is openly with him, as he has destroyed all the King’s power
both among the English and the Scots, and the English force is in
retreat to its own country not to return. And they firmly believe, by
the encouragement of the false preachers who come from the host,
that Sir Robert de Brus will now have his will. And these preachers
are such as have been attached before the Warden and the justices as
abettors of war, and are at present freed on guarantees and deceiving
the people thus by their false preachment. For he (the writer) believes
assuredly, as he hears from Sir Reginald de Cheyne, Sir Duncan de
Frendraught, and Sir Gilbert de Glencairney, and others who watch
the peace both beyond and on this side of the mountains (Mounth),
that, if Sir Robert de Brus can escape any way ‘saun dreytes’ or
towards the parts of Ross, he will find them all ready at his will more
entirely than ever, unless the King will be pleased to send more men-63at-arms
to these parts; for there are many people living well and
loyally at his faith provided the English are in power, otherwise they
see that they must be at the enemies’ will through default of the King
and his Council, as they say. And it would be a deadly sin to leave
them so without protection among enemies. And may it please God
to keep the King’s life, for when we lose him, which God forbid, say
they openly, all must be on one side, or they must die or leave the
country with all those who love the King, if other counsel or aid be
not sent them. For these preachers have told them that they have
found a prophecy of Merlin, how, after the death of the grasping King
(le Roi Coueytous), the Scottish people and the Bretons shall league
together, and have the sovereign hand and their will, and live together
in accord till the end of the world.

It was probably reports of this tenor that drew Valence
and Bevercotes on a hasty visit to the north immediately
after Loudon Hill. They were both in Inverness on
May 20.

The reverses sustained by Valence and Gloucester led to
increased activity on the English side. The Bishop of
Chester, with his successor as treasurer (the Bishop of
Lichfield and Coventry), was at Lanark on May 15, at
Dumfries next day, and on May 18 he was back at Carlisle,
having seen to the provisioning of the fortresses. Edward
was ‘so greatly pleased with his account that he kissed
him—especially for his borrowing the castle of Cumnock
from its owner, Earl Patrick, for a term, and garrisoning it
with 30 men-at-arms under Sir Ingram de Umfraville and
Sir William de Felton, besides 100 foot.’ The Bishop
went south next day to represent Edward at the funeral of
the Countess of Gloucester, the King’s daughter Joan.

Edward himself was too ill to travel. Besides, he was
immersed in military preparations, summoning reinforcements
and hurrying up supplies. Bruce, though unable to
maintain the siege of Ayr, did considerable damage; for
on June 1, Valence requisitioned masons and carpenters
from Carlisle ‘to repair the castle and houses.’ At the
same time, Valence added some 300 men to the garrison,
‘to strengthen the castle and secure the country round,
while he is on his foray towards Carrick and Glen Trool.’
He was following up Bruce. Probably, too, he avenged
Loudon Hill before the arrival of Edward’s fresh levies,
which had been summoned to be at Carlisle by the middle
of July. Hemingburgh says the English ‘defeated Bruce64
with great slaughter, so that he lurked thereafter in moors
and marshes’ with the ridiculous force of ‘some 10,000
foot, and the English could not get at him, as he always
slipped out of their hands.’ Gray says that Bruce was so
badly beaten ‘that he retired on foot through the mountains,
and from isle to isle, and sometimes he had not so
much as a single companion with him.’ One is inclined to
give the credit of this defeat to Valence—if defeat there
was. Bruce may have taken refuge again in Glen Trool;
Gray’s mention of the isles may result from a confusion
with earlier events. This record of fresh disaster finds no
mention in Barbour or in Fordun.

Sir Thomas Gray, professing to quote from ‘the chronicles
of his deeds,’ relates how at this time Bruce came, all alone,
to a passage between two islands, over which he was ferried
by two boatmen. Had he heard any news of what had
become of Bruce? they asked. ‘None,’ he replied.
‘Certes,’ said they, ‘we would we had grip of him at this
moment; he should die by our hands.’ ‘And why?’
queried Bruce. ‘Because he murdered John Comyn, our
lord,’ was the answer. They landed him. ‘My good
fellows,’ said Bruce, ‘you wanted to get hold of Robert de
Bruce. Look at me!—that will give you satisfaction. And
were it not that you have done me the courtesy of ferrying
me over this narrow passage, you should rue your wish.’
So he went on his way.

Barbour recounts various exploits of Bruce and Douglas
between the landing in Carrick and the first retreat to Glen
Trool; but, if they represent facts, they must clearly be
spread over a longer period.

For example. Sir Ingram Bell, the governor of Ayr—Barbour
writes Sir Ingram de Umfraville, who was probably
in Cumnock Castle—intrigued with a personal attendant of
Bruce’s, a man of local importance, a one-eyed, sturdy
rascal, nearly related to Bruce. The villain was promised
a reward of £40 in land to compass the King’s death.
With his two sons, who were also trusted by Bruce, he lay
in wait one morning for his master, when he had gone out
with only a page in attendance. Bruce, suspecting the
men, ordered them to stand. As they still came on, he65
drew his page’s bow, and shot the father in the eye; and
with his sword he cleft the skull of one son after the other.
This may be one of half a dozen possible variants of the
story of the Brooch of Lorn.

Not long afterwards, in the dusk of evening, Bruce with
60 men was attacked by over 200 Galwegians, who had
brought a sleuth-hound to track him. Warned by his
sentinels, he drew his men into a narrow pass in a bog,
and, leaving Sir Gilbert de la Haye in charge, went out
with two men to reconnoitre the position. Passing some
way along the water side, he found the banks high and the
water deep, and no ford but the one he had crossed. Here
he sent his men back to camp, and watched alone. Presently
he heard the deep baying of the hound, and soon
the enemy appeared, under a bright moon. He determined
to stand; they must come on singly in the strait passage.
They plunged confidently into the water, but Bruce bore
down the foremost with his spear, and stabbed the horse,
which fell in the ascent from the water and impeded the
others. He kept the ford; and, when his men came up,
they found fourteen slain, and the rest in retreat. The
rumour of this exploit drew many to his side.

Again Douglas repaired to Douglasdale and set an
ambush near Sandilands. With a small party he then
took some cattle near the castle of Douglas and drove
them off. Thirlwall, the constable, sallied out and pursued
the party past the ambush. Attacked suddenly,
he was slain in attempted defence, together with most of
his men. The survivors fled to the castle, barred the gate,
and manned the walls. Douglas had to content himself
with what booty he could find about the castle.

Presently Douglas, hearing of the approach of Valence
with a strong force, joined the King in a narrow pass near
Cumnock. Bruce had but 300 men. Valence was
accompanied by John of Lorn, who headed over 800
and had a sleuth-hound, said to have been once a
favourite of Bruce’s. On finding himself caught between
the two bodies, Bruce divided his men into three companies,
anticipating that the enemy would follow his own track,
and that so his other two companies would escape. The
hound followed Bruce, who gradually dispersed his company,66
at last keeping only his foster-brother with him.
Still the hound persisted. John of Lorn then sent forward
five of his stoutest men to take Bruce. Three attacked
Bruce; two assailed his foster-brother. Bruce killed one
of his opponents, and, marking the dismay of the others,
jumped aside to help his foster-brother, and smote off the
head of one of his assailants. He then killed his own two
pursuers, while his foster-brother despatched the only one
remaining. Meantime Lorn closed up with the hound.
Bruce, with his companion, made for a wood, and threw
himself down by a stream, declaring he could go no farther;
but, yielding to his friend’s remonstrances, he got up, and
they waded together some way down the stream, thus
baffling the hound and escaping further pursuit. Another
account, according to Barbour, was that the King’s companion
lurked in a thicket and shot the hound with an
arrow. Anyhow, Bruce escaped. It is said that Randolph
captured Bruce’s banner in the pursuit, much to the satisfaction
of the English King.

Having cleared the forest, Bruce and his companion
were crossing a moor, when they came on three men,
armed with swords and axes, one of them carrying a
sheep on his shoulder. The men said they wished to
join Bruce, and Bruce said he would take them to him.
They perceived that he was Bruce, and he perceived that
they were foes. Bruce insisted that, till better acquaintance,
they should go separate and in front of him. Coming
to an empty house at night, they killed the sheep, roasted
it, divided it, and dined at opposite ends of the room.
Bruce, tired and hungry as he had been, must sleep, his
man promising to keep watch. His man, however, fell
asleep too; he ‘might not hold up an e’e.’ The men then
attacked Bruce, who instantly awoke, grasped his sword,
and trod heavily on his man. Bruce slew the three, but
lost his companion, who was killed in his sleep.

Bruce now made for the rallying-point of his dispersed
companies. Here he found the goodwife of the house
‘sitting on a bink.’ In answer to her exhaustive inquiries,
he said he was a wayfarer. ‘All wayfarers,’ said she, ‘are
welcome for the sake of one—King Robert the Bruce.’
Then the King revealed himself. Where were his men?67
He had none. Thereupon the gallant woman declared her
two big sons should become his men. As he sat at meat,
he heard the tread of soldiers, and started up to offer
defence. It was Douglas and Sir Edward Bruce with
150 men.

Bruce now suggested that the enemy, confident that his
force was dissipated, would lie open to surprise. He made
a forced march overnight, and at daylight caught a large
detachment—certainly nothing like 2000 (Barbour’s figures)—in
some town, and slew two-thirds of them. He retreated
before the main body began to stir, and Valence did not
pursue.

On another occasion Bruce went a-hunting alone, with
two hounds. He had his sword, but had laid aside his
armour. Presently he saw three men with bows approaching—men
that had in fact been watching for such an
opportunity to take vengeance for Comyn. Bruce taunted
them for attacking with arrows, three to one, and they
chivalrously threw down their bows and drew their swords.
Bruce struck down one; a hound fixed in another’s throat
and brought him to the ground, when Bruce cut his back
in two; and the third, fleeing to the wood, was seized and
pulled down by a hound and despatched by Bruce.

These stories represent early traditions and may easily
be true, though they may be merely imaginary. The three-men
stories may be variants of a single original, but by no
means necessarily.

On July 7, 1307, Edward I. died at Burgh-on-Sands,
some three miles from Carlisle. Owing to the poor success
of his lieutenants, the gallant King had determined to
move forward in person. On Monday, July 3, he is said
to have advanced from Carlisle; but it was Thursday
before he reached Burgh-on-Sands. On Friday, as his
attendants raised him up in bed to eat, he died in their
hands. On his sick-bed—or, as Walsingham says, on his
death-bed—Edward had again charged the Prince to persist
steadily in the war against Bruce, taking his bones with
him in a casket. ‘For,’ said the dying King, with heroic
confidence, ‘no one will be able to overcome you while
you have my bones borne with you.’ But all his dying68
advice and solemn charges the Prince eventually disregarded.

The body of the late King was conveyed south in great
state, to lie in the church at Waltham till a definite settlement
was attained in Scotland. The Prince attended
the cortège several stages, and then returned to Carlisle.
Edward was buried at Westminster on October 28.

Edward I. was not only the greatest of English Kings,
but one of the greatest of Englishmen. His treatment of
Scotland, however he may have reasoned out the justice of
it, must always remain a very dark blot on his memory.
Never was his military ardour or his personal resolution
more signally manifested than in the last months and days
of his latest expedition. He died in harness, his valiant
spirit shining undimmed till the moment it was quenched
by death itself. The virile judgment and stern purpose of
Edward I. was succeeded by the childish incompetence
and obstinacy of Edward II. The death of the great King
assured the eventual triumph of Bruce. The moment anticipated
by nationalists with hope and by anti-nationalists
with dread was come. It was the turn of the tide.

69

CHAPTER VII
RECONQUEST OF TERRITORY

While the great Edward was passing south on his last
march, Valence was actively engaged in strengthening the
English positions in Kyle and Carrick. Percy held Ayr
Castle, and John of Argyll guarded Ayr town and neighbourhood
with a large force, which was presently joined
by half a score of redoubtable Scots knights with their
followings.

The young King started from Carlisle on July 31, 1307,
for Dumfries, where many Scots nobles obeyed his
summons to do homage and fealty. Advancing up the
valley of the Nith, he was at Cumnock on August 21, and
stayed there fully a week. At Tinwald, on August 30, he
confirmed Valence in the office of Warden of Scotland.
He offered to receive to his peace all Scotsmen not
implicated in the murder of Comyn. The Lanercost
chronicler says he divided his army into three bodies to
pursue Bruce, but the pursuit was unsuccessful, and on
September 4 he returned to Carlisle with empty hands.

The effects of the accession of Edward II. were quickly
apparent. No sooner had he retired than the whole
Border was ablaze. Even the faithful men of Selkirk and
Tweeddale and of the Forest, tenants of the Warden himself,
rose in force, and on September 12 the Sheriff of
Roxburgh reported that ‘the poor tenants’ of his district
had fled into England with their goods for fear of the
enemy. The weight of the Scots attack, however, was
thrown upon Galloway and the MacDowalls. The English
settlers fled in numbers; for, on September 25, Edward
ordered Clifford, the justiciar of the forest beyond Trent,
‘to allow the men of Galloway to feed their flocks and
herds in Englewood Forest, whither they have come to
take refuge for fear of Robert de Brus and his accomplices.’70
On the same day he directed Sir Thomas de
Multon of Egremont and four other northern barons to
hasten to Lancashire, Cumberland, and Westmorland, to
assist John, baron of Wigton, and Richard le Brun, his
justices there, ‘for the salvation and quiet of the men of
those parts,’ and to redress the wrongs and losses they
sustained, and to repel the incursions of the Scots. It looks
as if a swift foray had been executed by the men of Selkirk
and Tweeddale. On September 30, Edward, who had
now learned further from St John, MacDowall, and other
officers in Galloway, that Bruce was ‘burning and plundering,
and inciting and compelling the inhabitants to rebel,’
commanded Sir John de Bretagne, who had just succeeded
Valence, to march against the enemy. At the same time
he summoned to the Warden’s assistance Earl Patrick and
half a dozen other powerful Scots, as well as the baron of
Wigton and Richard le Brun, apparently already relieved
of their Selkirk visitors, and the keepers of the peace of
Northumberland and Tyndale. The Lanercost chronicler
admits that the Galwegians purchased peace, being unable
to resist the forces of Bruce.

Sir Thomas Gray also bears testimony to Bruce’s
activity, and explains the favour he steadily gained, in
part at least, by the harsh conduct of English officials
‘for purposes of individual advantage.’ We have already
seen that as early as May Scotland beyond the Forth was
ready for the advent of Bruce, and the English officers
were looking forward with dread to the death of Edward I.
And now Bruce turned from Galloway to the north.

According to Fordun, Bruce advanced as far as Inverness,
where he took the castle and levelled it with the
ground, slaying the garrison; and the other fortresses of
the north he dealt with in like drastic fashion. In this expedition,
no doubt, it was—in late October and November
1307—that Bruce overran Ross, Sutherland, and Caithness,
and compelled the Earl of Ross to take truce. The Earl’s
apologetic petition to Edward explains how Bruce came
against him with 3000 men and subjugated these counties,
‘and would have destroyed them utterly if we had not
taken truce with him at the entreaty of the good people,
both religious and other, till Whitsunday next.’ Ross71
declares that he could get no help from the Warden of
Moray. The Bishop of Moray, who had taken refuge in
Orkney for about a year and whose lands had been
loyally raided by Ross, had by this time returned to
Edward’s peace, and was demanding damages for the
wasting of his lands. He, at any rate, was not likely to
have moved a finger against Bruce; on the contrary, he
no doubt privately aided him. Ross’s apologies were
accepted; for in May 1308 he appears as Lieutenant of
the Warden of Scotland, and is requested to remain in
office till midsummer. But on October 31, he submitted
to Bruce, who reinstated him in his lands (with fresh
additions), and his name heads the roll of Bruce’s Parliament
at St Andrews on March 16, 1308–9.

Barbour, making no mention of these exploits, brings
Bruce north of the Mounth and on to Inverurie in
Aberdeenshire. Bruce is joined by Sir Alexander Fraser
and Simon Fraser—the famous Sir Simon’s brother and
son—who had apparently been acting in his interests in
the north, opposed mainly by Comyn (Earl of Buchan),
Sir John de Mowbray, and Sir David de Brechin. At
Inverurie Bruce fell very sick. He could neither eat nor
drink; no medicine did him any good; he became too
weak to ride or to walk. Sir Edward Bruce, says Barbour,
tried to comfort the men, but it seems much more likely
that Sir Edward remained in command in Galloway, while
Douglas made excursions towards the eastern border.
At any rate, Bruce’s men would not fight while their chief
was ill, or Bruce had too much prudence to allow them;
so they placed him on a litter and carried him into the
Slevach (mountain fastnesses). Comyn, hearing of Bruce’s
serious illness, advanced against him with Mowbray and
Brechin, and with a largely superior force. The time, says
Barbour, was ‘after Martinmas, when snow covered all the
land.’ Bruce quietly awaited attack. On three successive
days there occurred skirmishes between bodies of archers,
Buchan’s men getting the worst of the encounter day after
day. Buchan’s force, however, was continuously obtaining
additions, while Bruce was getting pinched with hunger.
Placing the King in his litter again, Bruce’s men changed
quarters, marching slowly in fighting order, with their sick72
chief in the centre, and restricting themselves rigidly to
defence. They took up a position in Strathbogie, a little
further north, and Buchan’s force abandoned the pursuit
and dispersed.

The King gradually regained strength and returned to
Inverurie, ‘to be in the plains for the winter,’ for the better
chances of food. Again Buchan proceeded to attack him,
reaching Oldmeldrum ‘on the evening before Yule even’
(January 4) 1307–8, with about 1000 men. Next day
Brechin made a dash at Inverurie; whereupon Bruce, in
spite of remonstrances, determined to mount and fight,
though, says Fordun, ‘he could not go upright, but with
the help of two men to prop him up.’ He is said to have
had ‘near 700 men.’ He advanced towards Oldmeldrum,
and as the enemy retreated, pressed steadily upon them,
pushing their retreat into flight, and pursuing them, Fordun
says, as far as Fyvie. Buchan and Mowbray fled to England,
while Brechin stood a siege in his own castle of
Brechin. Bruce’s ‘herschip’ (harrying) of the district of
Buchan is said to have been so exemplary that men
lamented it for half a century afterwards.

There are discrepancies between Barbour’s account and
Fordun’s. Fordun dates Buchan’s retirement from the
Slevach on Christmas day (on which Barbour fights at
Inverurie and Oldmeldrum), and he arranges a truce on
the occasion. It is in the Slevach that he makes Bruce’s
illness commence. He dates the battle of Inverurie, without
mention of Oldmeldrum, vaguely in 1308. He also
calls Mowbray Philip, not John, and he says nothing of
Brechin. Buchan and Mowbray, if they did not then flee
to England, at any rate went south not very long after this
time; and if Brechin surrendered his castle, it was certainly
not, as Barbour says it was, to David, Earl of Athol, who
was on the English side. On May 20, 1308, Edward
writes to thank a great number of his officers in Scotland,
including Athol, Buchan, Brechin, John de Mowbray, and
others, for their faithful service, and he requests Buchan
to remain ‘in the district committed to him’ till August 1.
This may mean that up to May he had remained in
command in the north, though keeping clear of Bruce’s
devastating track.

73
Having reduced the country beyond the Grampians
(‘benorth the Mounth’), Bruce descended upon Angus.
Barbour says nothing of an attack on Brechin Castle,
having already recorded its capture and the submission
of Sir David to Bruce; but, as we have seen, Sir David
was still—and, indeed, for several years to come—on the
English side; and Barbour was evidently misinformed.
Forfar Castle was taken by Philip the Forester, of Platter;
the watch had not been vigilant, and Philip scaled the
walls. Bruce demolished the castle; whether because it
was of the old ineffective type, or because he had no means
of holding it. He then, according to Barbour, invested
Perth, which was strongly fortified, and was held by Moffat
and Oliphant—Sir William Oliphant, the gallant defender
of Stirling, who had been released from the Tower on
May 24, 1308, having lain rusting there for nearly four
years. The Earl of Strathearn, says Barbour, was also in
the garrison, while his son and his men were in Bruce’s
camp; but Barbour is mistaken, for though Strathearn had
been transferred from Rochester Castle to York Castle in
the preceding November, he does not appear to have
been released till November 18 of this year. Frequent
skirmishes took place during a six weeks’ siege, when
Bruce suddenly decamped, amid the premature jeers of
the garrison. After eight days he returned suddenly in
the night, and, finding the English lulled in security,
plunged into the moat up to his neck, mounted the walls
by ladder, and surprised the sentinels. His men, dispersed
in groups, gave the garrison no chance to marshal for
effective defence. The English leaders were taken; but
few men were slain, in consideration of their decent treatment
of Scots. There was much booty for the victors.
Bruce demolished the walls and the towers. ‘Was none
that durst him then withstand.’ Whether this capture of
Perth be fact or not—and probably it should be placed at
a later date—Bruce now had the upper hand north of
Forth.

While Bruce was re-conquering his kingdom in the
north, Edward II. had married Isabella of France at
Boulogne on January 28, 1307–8, and had been crowned
at Westminster on February 25. He had at once plunged74
himself in difficulties with his barons by his infatuation for
Piers de Gaveston. In June some purpose of accommodation
with Bruce appears to have been pressed upon the
English king. There exists a memorandum dated June,
without the year, which Mr Bain rightly, it seems, assigns to
1308. It sets out that the levies summoned to meet the
King at Carlisle on August 23 shall be countermanded;
and that the King shall take no truce or sufferance from
Bruce, but the Wardens of Scotland—Sir Robert de
Umfraville, Earl of Angus, and Sir William de Ros of
Hamelake (appointed on June 21)—’may take such, for
as long time as possible, as they have done hitherto of
their own power or by commission, so that the King,
however, may furnish his castles with men and victuals,
and that no one be taken or other “mesprision” made
during such truce.’ Then the wardens of districts are
arranged. The Earl of Buchan, Sir John de Mowbray,
and Sir Ingram de Umfraville are to be wardens of Galloway,
Annandale, and Carrick respectively; Sir Alexander
de Abernethy, Sir Edmund de Hastings, and Sir John
Fitz Marmaduke, are to be wardens beyond the Forth.
The endorsement bears that the Wardens of Scotland shall
‘take truce from Robert de Brus as from themselves, as
long as they can, but not beyond the month of Pasques’
(April), and—curiously enough—that ‘the King may break
the truce at pleasure if the others will yield this point, but,
if they will not, the truce may be made without it.’ The
memorandum testifies to the strength of Bruce’s hold on
the country, and to the recalcitrance of Edward’s barons.
Still Edward struggled on. On June 21, he requested a
large number of officers to retain their posts till specified
dates, and to join the Scottish expedition at Carlisle on
August 23. On July 10, he requisitioned ships and men
from Shoreham all round to Bristol, for the King ‘needs a
great fleet.’ But on August 11, he countermanded the order
for these ships and men, ‘the King having deferred his
expedition for the present.’ The English barons were too
strong for the young King.

It is not clear at what date Bruce proceeded to reduce
Argyll. Probably, however, he undertook the expedition
immediately after the reduction of the north. If he75
conducted a six weeks’ siege of Perth, and Sir William
Oliphant was one of the defenders, he could not have
been free to go west till the very end of July 1308.
Fordun states that, within a week after August 15, Bruce
defeated the men of Argyll and subdued the whole land;
that he then besieged Alexander of Argyll ‘for some time’
in Dunstaffnage Castle (some three miles from Oban); and
that Alexander, on surrendering, refused to do homage, but
was allowed a safe-conduct for himself and his followers to
England. Barbour tells how Lorn—John, the son of Alexander—gathered
some 2000 men and opposed Bruce in a
narrow pass between a steep mountain and the sheer bank
of a loch—perhaps between Ben Cruachan and Loch Awe.
Lorn held the loch in his boats, and ambushed a party on
the ridge commanding the pass. Bruce, having despatched
Douglas, Sir Alexander Fraser, Sir William Wiseman, and
Sir Andrew Gray, with a body of archers, to fetch a circuit
above Lorn’s ambush, boldly advanced up the pass. Lorn’s
men attacked, tumbling stones down the slope; but, finding
themselves caught in the rear, they fled down hill to a
bridge crossing the river at one end of the loch, and, having
crossed, attempted to break down the bridge. Bruce was
upon them before they could effect their purpose, and
completely defeated them. Having rapidly overrun Lorn’s
country, he took Dunstaffnage, and received to his peace
Alexander of Argyll, while John of Lorn, ‘rebel as he was
wont to be,’ escaped by water. Bruce then received the
homage of all the men of Argyll, and returned to Perth.

But these events must have been spread over a considerable
time, and they may not have been continuous. The
record of Bruce’s Parliament at St Andrews on March 16,
1308–9, places it beyond doubt that Alexander of Argyll
came to Bruce’s peace; it states that Alexander himself
and ‘the barons of the whole of Argyll and Inchegall’
were present as liegemen of Bruce. Again, on June 16,
1309, both Alexander and John of Lorn were present at
Edward’s council at Westminster as liegemen of the English
king. Further, we have a letter of Lorn’s, undated, but
replying to a letter of Edward’s dated March 11, in which
he says that he had been on sick-bed for half a year; that
Bruce ‘had approached his territories with 10,000 or 15,00076
men, it was said, both by land and sea,’ while he ‘had no
more than 800 to oppose him,’ and ‘the barons of Argyll
gave him no aid’; that a truce had been made, at the
instance of Bruce; that ‘he hears that Bruce, when he
came, was boasting that he (Lorn) had come to his peace,’
‘which God and he (Lorn) knows is not true’; that, on
the contrary, ‘he is, and will ever be, ready to serve him
(Edward) to the utmost of his power’; that ‘he has three
castles to guard, and a loch twenty-four leagues long, on
which he has vessels properly manned, but is not sure of his
neighbours’; and that ‘so soon as the King or his power
arrives, he will be ready with lands, ships, and others to
aid him,’ either in person (if he be not sick), or by his son.
Neglecting minor discrepancies, one may safely accept Mr
Bain’s reconciliation of the various accounts. Alexander
came to Bruce’s peace after the affair of Loch Awe; John
was still holding out in March, but was driven from Dunstaffnage
within the next two months; and Alexander
thereupon retired, with John, to England. Alexander
died in Ireland in the end of 1310. John lived to fight
for Edward some seven or eight years more; but, as Mr
Bain gently remarks, ‘Barbour has strangely misrepresented
his later career.’

Bruce was now master in the west as well as in the north.
Beyond Forth, however, Perth, if ever captured, must soon
have been recovered; and Dundee—and even Banff—remained
in English hands, as well as the key-fortress of
Stirling on the south bank of the dividing river. Still
Bruce was master of the country, and he was free to turn
his attention to the south.

Sir Edward Bruce, after an arduous struggle, had taken
a firm grip of Galloway by the end of 1308. With Lindsay,
Boyd, and Douglas he had attacked the Galwegians—’notwithstanding
the tribute they received from them,’ says the
Lanercost chronicler, who also admits that they ‘subdued
almost all that land.’ According to Barbour, Sir Edward
met the English near Cree, routed them, slew some 1200,
and pursued Umfraville and St John to Buittle Castle. St
John then rode to England and brought up over 1500
men; on hearing which, Sir Edward instantly mounted,
with 50 men, followed up the trail of the enemy in the77
morning mist, and, when the day cleared and he found
himself within bowshot, charged with his usual reckless
audacity. The English believed there must be more men
with Sir Edward than they saw. At the third charge he
routed them, slaying or taking many; St John, however,
escaping. Sir Allan de Cathcart, Barbour affirms, ‘told
me this tale.’ Sir Edward had all Galloway at the King’s
peace.

Fordun, again, relates that Sir Edward, on November 18,
inflicted a crushing defeat on Donald of the Isles and the
Galwegians on the river Dee (not Cree), taking Donald
prisoner in his flight, and slaying ‘a knight named Roland,
with many of the nobles of Galloway.’ Whatever the dates
and the details, Sir Edward must have done some stern
fighting. The Lanercost chronicler even records that it
was said that the English king would have liked, if he
could, to give Bruce peace on terms of aiding him against
his earls and barons.

No doubt the MacDowalls were uprooted. But Mr Bain
seems somewhat lax in stating that ‘before April 1, 1309,
Sir Dougal, their head, had been driven into England,
where for thirty years he and his family were obliged to
remain to escape the vengeance of the Bruces.’ On April
1, 1309, it is true, Sir Dougal received as a reward for his
services, ‘whereby he has become hated by the enemy,’
the manor of Temple Couton, in Yorkshire, ‘for the
residence and support of his wife and children.’ But he
himself was constable of Dumfries Castle in 1311, sheriff
also in 1312, and he had the mortification of surrendering
the castle to Bruce on February 7, 1312–13. Edward made
provision for him from time to time till his death (before
January 27, 1327–28). A petition by his son and heir
Duncan, dated 1347, represents that Sir Dougal lost £100
in land for his allegiance to Edward I. and Edward II.;
that Sir Dougal’s brother was slain (in revenge for Bruce’s
two brothers); that the petitioner’s eldest brother had been
slain at Bannockburn; and that he and his six brothers were
destitute. It shows a dark glimpse of the losing side.

In the meantime, according to Barbour, Douglas had
done some useful work on his account. Some time after
Bruce went north, he proceeded to Douglasdale again78
and placed an ambush near his ancestral castle. He sent
fourteen men with sackfuls of grass on horses’ backs to
pass along as if bound for Lanark fair. Sir John Webton,
the constable, sallied upon them; whereupon they cast
down the sacks, threw off their frocks, and, mounting their
horses, showed fight. Douglas now broke ambush and cut
off Webton from the castle, eventually slaying him and all
his men. Barbour relates that there was found in Webton’s
pouch a letter from a lady engaging to marry him if he kept
‘the auenturous castell of Douglas’ for a year—a story
worked up by Sir Walter Scott in his boldly unhistorical
‘Castle Dangerous.’ Douglas took the castle and demolished
it.

Douglas also, Barbour says, did a great deal of hard
fighting in Selkirk Forest. On one occasion, in a house
on the Water of Lyne (which joins the Tweed a few miles
above Peebles), he lighted upon Sir Alexander Stewart of
Bonkill, whose father, Sir John, distinguished himself so
brilliantly at Falkirk, Randolph, Bruce’s nephew, Sir Adam
de Gordon, and others, who were really in search of himself.
He surrounded the house, and a fierce fight resulted.
Gordon got away safe, but Douglas captured Stewart, who
was wounded, and Randolph, and took them next morning
to the King—who, in that case, must already have returned
south. Barbour tells of the proud bearing of Randolph,
and how Bruce put him ‘in firm keeping’ till he acknowledged
his authority. This must have taken place before
March 4, 1308–9, when Edward conferred on Sir Adam de
Gordon Randolph’s forfeited manor of Stichill, in Roxburghshire.
Never afterwards did Randolph swerve from
his uncle’s allegiance.

Early in 1308–9 (January 14, Hemingburgh; February
12, Lanercost chronicle), there came papal envoys to
Edward and Bruce, at the instance of the French king,
and a truce was made, to run to November 1. But Bruce
is said to have ignored it in practice, and perhaps that is
why a new sentence of excommunication was fulminated
against him and his adherents in the summer of 1309. On
June 18, Edward summoned his array; and, on July 30,
he renewed the summons, requiring his army to muster at
Newcastle at Michaelmas, and declaring that the Scots had79
‘notoriously broken’ the truce. Yet, only three days
later (August 2), he authorised the Earl of Ulster to treat
with Bruce for peace; and, on August 21, he renewed the
commission, and granted safe-conducts for Bruce’s envoys,
Sir Nigel Campbell and Sir John de Menteith—the captor
of Wallace, who must have joined Bruce before March 16,
when he was present at the St Andrews parliament. Still
Edward hurried on his preparations. He had summoned
auxiliaries from Wales (August 5), and filled afresh the
chief offices in Scotland (August 16); and presently he
appointed the Earl of Gloucester captain of the army of
Scotland (September 14), and despatched fresh wardens
to the Marches (about October 18). Again, however, the
Pope intervened, and on November 29, Edward granted
full powers to four of his magnates to treat in his name for
a truce. The Wardens of the Marches, according to the
Lanercost chronicle, had just forestalled the step by taking
provisional truce till the middle of January; and Edward
extended the period to March 8, and afterwards ‘to summer,’
1310—for, says the chronicler, ‘the English do not
like to enter Scotland to war before summer, especially because
of the lack of fodder for their horses.’ Probably the
extension to summer was arranged by the commission of
seven appointed on February 16, headed by the Bishop of
St Andrews.

There had been a round year of peace negotiations and
futile truces, with warlike preparation in the background.
On February 24, 1309–10, Bruce’s position was strengthened
by a formal recognition of his royal title by a special meeting
of the prelates and other clergy at Dundee. In the
beginning of June 1310, there was an outbreak on the
Border, the Priory of Coldstream being sacked, and the
prioress and nuns dispersed; and in the middle of the
month the English fleet was ordered north to strengthen
Perth and to harass the eastern seaboard. Then, on
August 15, Edward again mustered his army at Newcastle
(Hemingburgh), or at Berwick (Lanercost chronicle). The
Earls of Lancaster, Pembroke (Valence), Warwick, and
Hereford would not accompany him, displeased with his
favour for Gaveston, though professing to be absorbed in
their duties as ‘Ordainers’; but they sent their feudal80
services. The Earls of Gloucester, Warenne, and Cornwall
(Gaveston), with Percy, Clifford, and many other magnates,
did attend the muster. The expedition, according to Walsingham,
was said to be a mere pretext to excuse the King
from going to France to do fealty for his French possessions.
He dreaded to leave Gaveston ‘among his enemies,’
lest that troubler of the realm should ‘meet death, prison,
or worse.’ ‘Such things were said among the people;
whether true or false,’ says the chronicler, ‘God knows, I
don’t.’ The expedition crossed the Border early in September,
and passed by Selkirk, Roxburgh, Biggar, Lanark,
Glasgow, to Renfrew, back to Linlithgow, and thence to
Berwick. The progress occupied just over two months.
Bruce stood aloof; on October 6, when Edward was at
Biggar, he was reported to be with his forces ‘on a moor
near Stirling.’ Fordun says there was famine in Scotland
this year, many being reduced ‘to feed on the flesh of
horses and other unclean cattle.’ But Edward was liberally
supplied by the religious houses with ‘oxen, cows, wethers,
wheat, oats, barley, malt, beans, and peas,’ besides friendly
contributions from other quarters. On November 22, he
issued a proclamation prohibiting the importation of provisions
from England.

When Edward withdrew from Linlithgow, Bruce hung
upon his rear through Lothian, severely harassing the
army, and all local sympathisers. Walsingham records
an instance. A party of English and Welsh had gone out
to plunder, supported by cavalry. Bruce suddenly attacked
from ambush, and, though aid quickly arrived, he killed 300,
and retired as suddenly as he had advanced. ‘Indeed,’
says the chronicler, ‘I should extol Bruce, whose policy
was to fight thus and not in open field, but for his lying
under the charge of homicide and the brand of treachery.’

Edward wintered at Berwick. Bruce seems to have
actively developed offensive operations on the west coast,
to draw him home by a flank attack, as well as to obtain
supplies. For, on December 15 and 16, Edward roused
his officers in the north-western counties, and in Wales
and Ireland, to counteract Bruce’s reported purpose ‘to
send his whole fleet in the present winter to take the Isle
of Man, and seize all the supplies therein for the sustenance81
of his men.’ Bruce’s adherents in Man are stated
to have caused much trouble and mischief. A week before
Christmas, Clifford and Sir Robert Fitz Pain met Bruce at
Selkirk to discuss terms of peace, and another interview
was arranged with the Earls of Gloucester and Cornwall
near Melrose; but ‘it was said,’ writes a high official on
February 19, ‘that Bruce had been warned by some that
he would be taken, and therefore departed, so that they
have had no parley.’

A memorandum, undated, but assignable to 1307–10,
addressed by the ‘Commune’ of Scotland to Edward and
his great officers in the country, affords a glimpse of the
English high-handedness that always did—and does—so
much to thwart the English policy. The Commons represent
that ‘though they have purchased a truce for the
safety of the country and their allegiance, and included
the castles and towns in their bounds—namely, the sheriffdoms
of Berwick, Roxburgh, and Edinburgh,’ yet ‘some
of the sheriffs allow no goods to leave their castles, or their
garrisons to pay for what they buy’—the sheriff of Edinburgh,
in particular—’and the country is so poor that
they cannot get on without ready money.’ Again, ‘when
the enemy’s people come to bargain under the truce,
their goods are taken by some of the castellans and King’s
officers, endangering the truce, as the robbers are harboured
in the castles.’ They earnestly plead for redress of such
oppressions, and complain that the King’s former letters
on the subject have been suppressed by the officers inculpated.
Only an occupation in overwhelming force could
stand against such a course of official misconduct. Meantime
this fatal administrative weakness was greatly counterbalanced
by the political divisions among the Scots.

In 1310–11, Gaveston, for whom Edward could find no
resting-place elsewhere, was established as lieutenant north
of Forth and warden of Dundee and Perth. ‘It is said,’
writes a high official, anonymous, on April 4, 1311, ‘that
Bruce meant to fight with the Earl of Cornwall’ (Gaveston):
but either he was unable to do so, or deemed it prudent to
weary out the enemy by harassing evasion. On April 9,
Edward issued instructions hastening the outfit of the
fleet destined for the coast of Argyll under Sir John of82
that ilk—’seeing it is one of the greatest movements of
the Scottish war’; and throughout May and June great
pressure was brought to bear upon the ports of England
and Ireland, though not always with effect. On July 14,
the muster of the army at Roxburgh was postponed to the
1st of August. ‘This expedition,’ said Edward, ‘lies especially
close to our heart.’

Edward, however, was in deep trouble with his
‘Ordainers,’ and Bruce was beforehand with him. On
August 12, Bruce burst into England at the Solway,
burned the whole of Gilsland, the town of Haltwhistle,
and great part of Tyndale, returning to Scotland in eight
days with great droves of cattle. The Lanercost chronicler
admits that he killed few besides those that offered resistance,
and that, though he took several of the canons, and
did infinite mischief during the three days he made the
monastery his headquarters, yet he released the canons of
his own accord. The latter episode is recorded as a separate
foray, but probably it belongs to the August operations.

The same chronicler gives an account of a more serious
raid on September 8, by Harbottle, Holystone and Redesdale,
down to Corbridge and back through Tyndale,
occupying fifteen days. The Wardens of the Marches,
he says, could offer no resistance, and confined their
efforts to wasting the country in anticipation of the Scots,
only ‘they did not burn houses or slay men.’ The stress
of opposition fell upon the Bishop of Durham. Both
Edward and the Bishop paint the invasion in the usual
lurid colours. At the same time the people had certainly
not been handled with tenderness. The Northumbrians
protected themselves by payment of £2000 for a respite
till February 2, 1311–12. In the middle of December
Bruce appears to have made another raid into England; and
on January 26, 1311–12, Edward appointed six commissioners
to treat in his name for truce with the Scots.

The rising power of Bruce is variously testified otherwise
than by the progress of his army. The Lanercost chronicler
admits that, in spite of the adherence of so many Scots to
the English side, ‘their hearts, though not their persons, were
always with their countrymen.’

An inquisition at Edinburgh on February 20, mentions83
seven landed knights and others that had gone over to
Bruce in the past three or four years, including Sir Robert
de Keith, Sir Thomas de la Haye, and Sir Edmund de
Ramsay. Again, a list of land rewards to Sir Robert
de Hastang on March 20 mentions twelve, among whom
are Sir David de Brechin (who, however, is made warden
of Berwick on April 20, though Sir Edmund de Hastings
receives the post on May 3), Sir Alexander de Lindsay,
Sir Geoffrey de Mowbray, and Sir Herbert de Maxwell.
In five hard years Bruce had recovered three parts of his
kingdom, and carried fire and sword through the English
March.

84

CHAPTER VIII
RECOVERY OF FORTRESSES

Bruce was now in a position to turn his main energies
against the strongholds still in English occupation.

Towards the end of March 1312 he was preparing to
besiege Berwick with an unusually large force. But the
operations are not known; and, in any case, they were
soon postponed. On April 26, he held a parliament at
Ayr, and carefully settled the succession to the throne.

The dissensions between Edward and his barons appear
to have induced Bruce to carry the war into the enemy’s
territory. While the incensed barons were hunting down
Gaveston, he raided the March again, took tribute, burned
Norham, and carried off prisoners and booty. Again, in
the end of June, after Gaveston was beheaded, Bruce made
another foray into the episcopate of Durham. He burnt
Hexham, and dealt so severely with the Priory, that even
in 1320, it is said, the canons were unable to return, while
their collectors were still ‘wandering about in the country
in 1326, with the archbishop’s brief, in quest of funds for
the canons and their church.’ It may have been on this
occasion that Bruce sent Douglas to pillage the region of
Hartlepool. It is, no doubt, in reference to a subsequent
raid, that the Lanercost chronicler tells how a detachment
entered Durham on market day, burned most of the
town, and slew all that resisted, but did not touch the
castle or the abbey. The episcopate compounded for
peace till next midsummer at £2000, the Scots bargaining
for free passage ‘whenever they wanted to ride further
into England!’ The Palatinate Register records the date
as August 16. The Northumbrians, too, paid down £2000;
Westmorland, Coupland, and Cumberland also paid
ransom—money in part, and for the rest hostages, ‘sons
of the greater lords of the country.’ And meantime85
Edward was squabbling with his barons. It was enough
to make his martial father rise from his grave.

At last, on December 6, the Lanercost chronicle relates,
Bruce suddenly pounced upon Berwick. His men had
placed two ladders, and ‘he would soon have had the
castle, as is believed,’ had the garrison not been warned
by the barking of a dog. The ladders, says the chronicler,
‘were of a remarkable make, as I myself, who write this,
witnessed with my own eyes.’ He describes ladders of
ropes, with wooden steps, and iron hooks to grip the
wall top. The alarm being raised, Bruce retired, leaving
the two ladders for the monk’s inspection. ‘So a dog on
that occasion saved the town, as once geese by their
cackling saved Rome.’

Bruce turned north to Perth. According to the Lanercost
chronicle, he took the town by surprise in the night
of January 10 (Fordun says January 8), 1312–13. The
governor, Sir William Oliphant—probably this is the
capture of Perth antedated by Barbour—’was bound and
sent to the islands afar’; but, if so, he did not stay long
there, for he was in England within two months, and
on October 21, he obtained a safe-conduct to return to
Scotland. The chronicler says that Bruce slew the better
Scots burgesses, but permitted the English to go free;
while Fordun records that he put ‘the disloyal people,
Scots and English alike,’ to the sword. ‘In his clemency,’
adds Fordun, ‘he spared the rabble, and granted forgiveness
to such as asked it; but he destroyed the walls and
dykes, and consumed everything else with fire.’

Bruce next swept down upon Dumfries. Here his old
enemy, Sir Dougal MacDowall, constable of the castle,
had experienced much difficulty all through summer and
autumn in obtaining adequate supplies. He gave up the
castle to Bruce on February 7, the short siege probably
indicating that he was starved into surrender. It is likely,
as Mr Bain surmises, that Buittle, Dalswinton, Lochmaben,
and Carlaverock were all recovered about the same time.

The Scots appear to have derived considerable supplies
from Flanders. On February 15, 1312–13, Edward remonstrated
with the Count of Flanders, begging him to
restrain his subjects from all intercourse with Scotsmen.86
The Count seized the occasion to demand compensation
for losses and injuries inflicted on his subjects by Englishmen.
An English commission, much to the disgust of
the Flemish envoys, rejected the claims; and presently
Flemish seamen plundered English vessels, the chief
depredator being the ingenious John Crab, whom we
shall meet again. On May 1, 1313, Edward invited the
Count to send his aggrieved subjects back to London;
but ‘now,’ he added, ‘we hear that thirteen ships of
your power, laden with arms and victuals, quite lately
crossed from the port of Swyn to Scotland—whereat we
very much marvel.’ The Flemish quarrel went on; but
on May 17, at the instance of the French king, Edward
appointed four commissioners ‘to negotiate a truce or
sufferance with the Scots.’

Within a week, however, as Edward was on the point
of embarking for France to confer with Philip about
Gascony, he learned from a special messenger from the
lieges of Cumberland that the Scots were again upon
them. He could only tell them to do their best, and
he would hasten back to take order for their safety. On
June 6, Bishop Kellawe of Durham testifies to the forlorn
state of the nuns of Halistan on the March; there are
hostile incursions daily, goods and cattle are reived, and
the very nuns are insulted and persecuted by the robbers,
and driven from their homes suffering miserably. Such
are examples of the state of affairs in the mind of the
Lanercost chronicler when he records that ‘the people
of Northumberland, Westmorland, and Cumberland, and
other men of the Marches, neither having nor hoping
from their King defence or aid, he being then in the
remote parts of England and not appearing to trouble
himself about them, offered no moderate amount—nay,
a very large amount—of money to Robert for truce till
September 29, 1314.’ Bruce was striking hard and persistently,
and Edward was giving way all along the line
of war.

On his return, indeed, Edward at once took measures
of retaliation. As early as April 2, he had answered
applications from Northumberland for aid by a promise
of relief before midsummer—a promise that remained87
unfulfilled. On July 6, he demanded a subsidy from the
bishops, and on August 13 he made a like appeal to the
abbots and convents. In warlike mood, in the end of
July, he had ordered something like a press-gang muster
of boats at the ports from the Wash round to Plymouth.
It was but a spasmodic effort of weakness. About the
beginning of October, Sir Ralph Fitz William reported
that ‘they are grievously menaced with treason at Berwick,
but, if the garrison are loyal, they will defend it against
the King of France and the King of Scotland for a while
till succour reaches them.’ In the end of next month,
the Bishop of St Andrews proceeded to France in the
interest of Edward, no doubt with the object of detaching
Philip from co-operation with Bruce. It was a fatuous
choice of an envoy.

The wretched inefficiency of Edward had by this time
rendered the position of his adherents in Scotland all but
insupportable. In November they despatched the Earl
of March and Sir Adam de Gordon to lay their grievances
before him. Their petition recounts their heavy losses
at the hands of the enemy during the past three years;
their costly purchase of truce; and especially their intolerable
sufferings from the lawless outrages committed upon
them by the garrisons of Berwick and Roxburgh, who are
alleged to have plundered, killed, and held them to ransom
at will, as if they had been enemies. Here is a substantial
repetition of the memorandum of 1307–10. Sir Adam de
Gordon could tell how he had himself been arrested by
the constable of Roxburgh Castle and required to find
security for his good behaviour. The King, replying on
November 28, could only give them the cold comfort
of an assurance of his intention to march to their relief
at next midsummer. It is quite natural that such slackness
of the central authority should have given head to
such marauding scoundrels on the Border as Sir Gilbert de
Middleton and Thomas de Pencaitland. That notorious
knight of the road, Sir Gilbert, will cross our path again.

It could not have been earlier than autumn 1313 that
Bruce recovered the Peel of Linlithgow, which was held
by Sir Archibald de Livingstone, under the orders of Sir
Peter Lubaud, warden and sheriff of Edinburgh. Barbour88
makes it harvest time. The peel garrison had cut their
hay, and engaged William Bunnock, a neighbouring
farmer, who hated them patriotically, to ‘lead’ it for them.
Bunnock conceived the notion of elevating the familiar
harvesting process to an operation of war, and arranged
the strategic details with his friends. He planted an
ambush in the early morning, and let the hay lie till
the peel men had gone out to cut their crop. Loading
the hay, with eight men hid in it, he set a hardy yeoman,
with a hatchet under his belt, to drive the waggon, himself
walking idly beside. When the waggon was half-way
through the gate, Bunnock shouted the signal, ‘Thief!
Call all! Call all!’ The driver instantly severed the
traces, stopping the waggon; Bunnock slew the porter;
the eight men leapt down from the midst of the hay,
and the ambush swarmed up. They slew the men they
found in garrison, and pursued those that were in the
fields towards Edinburgh and Stirling, killing some in
their flight. For this exploit Bruce rewarded Bunnock
worthily. The peel he at once demolished. The story
of Bunnock rests on the sole authority of Barbour.

The next castle to fall was Roxburgh. Douglas had
been keeping the Forest, and harassing Roxburgh and
Jedburgh castles. Resolving to win Roxburgh, he got a
handy man, Simon of the Leadhouse, to make him ladders
of hempen ropes, with strong wooden steps and iron hooks,
after the Berwick pattern. Then gathering some sixty men,
he approached the castle on Fastern’s Even (Shrove Tuesday),
February 27, 1313–14, and waited till dark. The party
left their horses, put black frocks over their armour, and
crept forward on all fours like cattle. The deception succeeded;
Barbour says they overheard the garrison jesting
at the expense of the neighbouring farmer, who, they
imagined, had left his cattle at large to be carried off by
the Douglas. The click of a hook on the wall attracted
a sentinel, but Simon, who had mounted first, stabbed the
man dead, and the party quickly scaled the wall. The
garrison were making merry in the hall, when the Scots
burst in upon them with the Douglas war-cry. A sharp
conflict ensued. At length Sir William de Fiennes, the
constable, a valorous Gascon, retreated to the great tower.89
With daylight, the Scots plied the tower with arrows, and
eventually wounded Sir William so badly in the face that
he yielded, on terms that he and his men should pass safe
to England. Douglas conducted them over the Border,
and Sir William soon afterwards died of his wound. Bruce
sent his brother Sir Edward to demolish the castle. Sir
Edward, says Barbour, secured all Teviotdale except Jedburgh
and other places near the English border. On main
points Barbour is corroborated by Sir Thomas Gray and
the Lanercost chronicler.

The news of the capture of Roxburgh stimulated the
rivalry of Randolph, who was besieging Sir Peter Lubaud
in Edinburgh Castle. Hopeless of taking the place by
assault, Randolph cast about for some likely stratagem,
when William Francis (or William the Frenchman), one
of his men, suggested a plan of extreme boldness. Francis,
according to Barbour, stated that he had at one time lived
in the castle, and, having a sweetheart in the town, had
been accustomed to climb the sheer rock in the darkest
nights. All that was needed was good nerve, and a twelve-foot
ladder for the wall on the top. So, on a dark night—Fordun
gives March 14, 1313–14—Randolph, with thirty
picked men, essayed the adventurous ascent. About half
way up they stopped to rest. Here their nerves were dramatically
tested. One of the watch overhead threw down a
stone, exclaiming ‘Away! I see you well.’ It was a mere
joke, the sentry saw nothing; and the stone passed harmlessly
over them. The watchmen passed on without suspicion,
and Randolph with his men hastened up the steeper
and steeper crag to the foot of the wall. Instantly the
ladder was fixed, Francis mounting first, then Sir Andrew
Gray, and Randolph himself third. Before all the party got
over the watch was alarmed, the cry of ‘Treason! Treason!’
resounded through the castle, and a desperate struggle
ensued. Randolph himself was very sorely bested, but he
succeeded in killing the commandant; whereupon the garrison
gave in. The Lanercost chronicler states that a strong
assault was made on the south gate—the only point reasonably
open to assault—where the garrison offered a vigorous
resistance; and that the party mounting the rock on the
north side under cover of this front attack, having surprised90
and overcome the defenders, opened the gate to their comrades.
Sir Peter Lubaud, the warden, says Barbour, had
been deposed from the command of the garrison on account
of some suspicious intercourse with the enemy, and was
found by Randolph in prison in fetters. He became
Bruce’s man, but soon afterwards he fell under suspicion
of treason, and, by Bruce’s order, was drawn and hanged
(Gray)—or at any rate put in prison, where he died miserably
(John of Tynmouth). The Lanercost writer states that
the victors ‘slew the English,’ probably meaning the garrison;
but the extant rolls show that there were many
Scotsmen in the garrison, ‘two of them,’ as Mr Bain remarks,
even ‘bearing the surname of Douglas.’ Bruce
demolished the castle.

Barbour states that Sir Edward Bruce, having won all
Galloway and Nithsdale, and taken Rutherglen Peel and
Dundee Castle, laid siege to Stirling Castle from Lent to
midsummer, 1313; and that then Sir Philip de Mowbray,
the constable, agreed to yield the castle, provided it were
not relieved by midsummer 1314. The most recklessly
chivalrous terms are indeed consonant with Sir Edward’s
character. But if, as Barbour and the Monk of Malmesbury
agree, Mowbray was influenced by a threatened failure of
provisions, the period must have been much less. He
in Stirling would hardly be in any better case for supplies
than was MacDowall in Dumfries. Immediately on investment
of the castle, he would begin to feel the pinch;
and the fall of Edinburgh would at once intimate the
hopelessness of his position. But, further, we have seen
Sir Edward demolishing Roxburgh Castle in early March,
and it does not seem likely that he would have left a
substitute to look after Stirling. Besides, the Lanercost
chronicler can hardly be mistaken when he says that
Sir Edward entered England on April 17, taking up his
headquarters at the Bishop’s manor house at Rose, and
sending his army as far as Englewood Forest, south
and west, for three days to burn and plunder—because
the tribute had not been duly paid. Once more, the
Monk of Malmesbury represents that it was after the
fall of the other castles that Mowbray carried to Edward
the news of his agreement for surrender. On the whole,91
it may be seriously doubted whether the respite extended
beyond a couple of months, or even six weeks. It is not,
apparently, till May 27, that Mowbray’s conditional agreement
for surrender is mentioned in any existing official
document.

Besides Stirling, the only fortresses of any importance
that now remained in the hands of the English were
Berwick, Jedburgh, and Bothwell. But the immediate
interest centres in the fateful attempt to relieve the castle
of Stirling.

92

CHAPTER IX
THE BATTLE OF BANNOCKBURN.

As far back as December 23, Edward II. had summoned his
army to assemble at Berwick on June 10, 1314, for the war
against Scotland. In March, he was busily ordering his
fleet for service on the east and west coasts, and hastening
the muster of the Irish contingent under the Lord of Ulster.
On May 27, from New Abbey, he issued an urgent reminder
to the sheriffs and barons of the northern and midland
counties to have their men at Wark by June 10. He has
learnt, he tells them, that the Scots are massing great
numbers of foot in strong positions protected by marshes
and all but inaccessible to cavalry; and he fires their
zeal by informing them of the agreement of Mowbray to
surrender the castle of Stirling unless the siege be raised
by midsummer day. Bruce, then, had already chosen
his ground, and commenced his measures of defence.

The English and Welsh troops summoned on May 27,
numbered together 21,540. The numbers of the Irish
contingent are not preserved, but, on analogous cases,
they can hardly be reckoned beyond 3000. The Gascons,
Hainaulters, and other foreigners are not likely to have
numbered more than the Irish. ‘After allowing,’ with Mr
Bain, ‘10,000 light horsemen and 3000 heavy cavalry, the
whole English army probably did not exceed 50,000’—at
the very outside. The Earls of Lancaster, Warenne,
Arundel, and Warwick did not join the expedition, on the
ostensible ground that the King had not first consulted
Parliament in conformity with the Ordinances, and thus
they would be laid open to ecclesiastical censure; but they
sent their feudal services. The outfit of the army was on
the most ample, not to say magnificent, scale. ‘The
multitude of waggons, if extended one after another in
file,’ says the Monk of Malmesbury, ‘would have stretched93
over twenty leagues.’ In truth, he says, it was universally
acknowledged that ‘such an army did not go out of England
in our time.’ The Monk’s testimony lends a sober
colour to the assertion of Robert Baston, the Carmelite
friar that went to celebrate an English victory and was
captured and made to sing the Scottish triumph. ‘Never,’
he declared, ‘was seen a more splendid, noble, or proud
English army.’

There is no definite clue to the numbers of the Scots.
‘But,’ as Mr Bain says, ‘in so poor and thinly populated a
country, devastated by long war, 15,000 or 16,000 would
be a fair estimate of the comrades of Bruce. The Scots,
twenty years later, could raise no more for the almost
equally important object of relieving Berwick.’

The estimates usually given follow Barbour, who says
there were over 100,000 English—enough ‘to conquer the
whole world’—and some 50,000 Scots, of whom 30,000
were fighting men. No doubt Barbour includes in the
English 100,000 the miscellaneous ‘pitaille,’ or rascalry,
that swarmed about the baggage trains of mediæval armies.
But Mr Bain’s estimate seems to be as near as the authorities
will admit. The proportion of English to Scots was most
probably somewhere about three to one.

The army that mustered under Edward was indeed ‘very
fair and great,’ yet, in the eye of the Church—probably
enlightened by later events—there was one needful thing
lacking. When Edward I. was on the warpath towards
Scotland, says the Lanercost chronicler, ‘he was wont to
visit on his way the saints of England—Thomas of Canterbury,
Edmund, Hugh, William, Cuthbert—and to offer
them fair oblations, to commend himself to their prayers,
and to dispense large gifts to the monasteries and the
poor’; but his degenerate son, omitting these pious
duties,’ came with great pomp and circumstance, took the
goods of the monasteries on his route, and, it was stated,
did and said some things to the prejudice and injury of the
saints,’ by reason whereof ‘certain religious of England
prophesied’ that no good would come of the expedition.
To the same effect, Robert of Reading records that Edward
permitted his troops, on their march, to ravage with violence
the patrimony of ‘religious’ and other churchmen, as if94
they had been robbers (more prædonum). Still the Archbishop
of York and the Bishop of Durham, rehearsing the
long list of Bruce’s alleged enormities, officially enjoined
all within their jurisdiction to pray for the success of
the King’s arms, offering an indulgence of forty days in
reward of such patriotic piety.

The King was in high spirits over the splendour of his
army. Apparently he anticipated an easy and complete
triumph. He started from Berwick only a few days before
the fateful day of St John. ‘From day to day,’ says the
Monk of Malmesbury, ‘he hastened to the place fixed on
beforehand, not like a man leading an army to battle, but
rather as if he were going on pilgrimage to Compostella.
Short was the stay for sleep; shorter still the stay for
food; in consequence of which the horses, horsemen,
and foot were worn out by labour and fatigue.’ On Friday,
June 21, the English army lay at Edinburgh; and on
Saturday it lay at Falkirk, little more than ten miles from
Stirling.

The problem for Bruce was to keep the English out of
Stirling till St John’s day had passed. In good time he
had selected and laid out the inevitable field of battle with
military prescience of the first order. He had mustered
his forces in the Torwood, in a position commanding the
approach to Stirling from the south; and on the morning
of Saturday, the 22nd of June, on news of the approach of
the English, he marched them to the chosen spot on a
plain some two miles south of Stirling within the last large
loop of the Bannock Burn, called the New Park—a hunting-ground
of the Scots kings. The Park was a piece of firm
ground rising on the north and west into the swelling ridges
of Coxet Hill near St Ninian’s, and Gillies Hill on the left
of the Bannock above the bend towards the Forth. Eastwards
it fell away into a marshy tract filling the angle of
the two rivers and intersected by watercourses. Southwards,
too, the hard ground was broken by two morasses—Halbert’s
Bog and Milton Bog—between the Park and the
Bannock. Bruce rested his right wing on the steep bank
of the Bannock below Gillies Hill; his left wing stretched
away past St Ninian’s nearly to the gates of Stirling; his
rear was protected by Gillies Hill and the Bannock behind.95
The English would be compelled to advance either across
the Bannock between Parkmill and Beaton’s Mill—a
breadth of a short mile, free from precipitous banks—to
the line of hard ground, with a contracted front, to be
immediately divided by the intervening bogs; or else
along the line of low and marshy flat between the Park and
the Forth. To reduce the superiority of the English
cavalry, Bruce had industriously dug pits along the parts
of the firm route by which they would probably, if not
inevitably advance—pits a foot wide, round, and deep as a
man’s knee, honeycombing the ground; and these holes he
covered loosely with a disguise of brushwood, turf, and
grass. He is also said to have inserted in them stakes
shod with iron points. Sir Thomas de la Moore mentions
long transverse trenches, similarly covered so as to bear
men aware of them, but not horses. Later writers add
that Bruce strewed the ground with calthrops, or metal
spikes, to cripple the English horses. He himself had
determined to fight on foot.

Bruce marshalled his troops in four divisions, facing
south-eastwards. The van was led by Randolph. The
second and third divisions were ranged behind the wings
of the van; the former, to the right and resting on the
Bannock, led by Sir Edward Bruce, the latter by Walter
the Steward (‘that then was but a beardless hyne’) and
Douglas. The rearguard, consisting of the men of Carrick,
Argyll, Cantyre and the Isles, was stationed right behind
the van at some interval, under the immediate command
of Bruce himself. All the divisions could thus be promptly
massed on the English whether they should select the
higher or the lower line of advance. It was of the very first
importance that no detachment of the English should be
allowed to outmanœuvre the main body of the Scots and
throw themselves into Stirling; and Randolph, who held
the most advanced position, was especially charged to
guard against this fatal contingency. The non-combatants
retired behind the hill in the rear, afterwards named from
them the Gillies’ (that is, Servants’) Hill.

The dispositions of the English army are not known in
certain detail. There is little help in Barbour’s statement
that it was divided into ten companies of 10,000 each.96
We know that the van was led by the Earl of Gloucester;
and that, if Robert of Reading and the Monk of Malmesbury
may be relied on, the appointment of Gloucester was
hotly resented by the hereditary constable, the Earl of
Hereford. The King’s bridle was attended by Sir Aymer
de Valence and Sir Giles d’Argentine, the latter of whom
was regarded as the third knight in Christendom, and had
been released from captivity at Salonica in the end of the
preceding year through Edward’s urgent representations to
the Emperor, and even to the Empress, of Constantinople.

At sunrise on Sunday, June 23—the eve of St John—the
Scots heard mass. Bruce then devoted special attention
to the pits that were still preparing. After midday—the
Scots observed the fast on bread and water—the
English were reported to be advancing from the fringe
of the Torwood. Bruce issued his final orders. Then
he is said to have addressed his men in terms of high
resolution, bidding every man depart that was not ready
for either alternative—to conquer or to die. Not a
man moved from the ranks. More than five centuries
later, at Balaclava, ‘Men,’ cried Sir Colin Campbell, ‘you
must die where you stand.’ ‘Ay, ay, Sir Colin, we’ll do
that,’ was the cheery response. Such, too, was the spirit
of the same race on the field of Bannockburn.

At this point, according to Barbour, Douglas and Sir
Robert de Keith (hereditary marshal) proceeded, by order
of Bruce, to reconnoitre the enemy’s advance. They returned
with such a report of the numbers and equipment
of the English as they deemed it prudent to render to
Bruce only ‘in great privity.’ Bruce, however, put a bold
face on the situation, and directed them, says Barbour,
to spread a depreciatory account of the enemy.

The main body of the English appears to have halted
while the leaders should take counsel. But Gloucester,
with the vanguard, ignorant of this and ardent for the fray,
dashed through the Bannock and advanced on the Park,
where Sir Edward Bruce was ready to receive him. King
Robert himself was riding in front of Sir Edward’s division
on a small palfrey, with only a battle-axe in hand. On his
basnet, according to Barbour’s haberdashery, he wore a
hat of jacked leather, surmounted by ‘a high crown, in97
token that he was a king.’ Some of the English knights,
says the Monk of Malmesbury, rode out between the lines
and flung their challenges to the Scots. Sir Henry de
Bohun, a knight of the house of Hereford, spurred at
Bruce himself, and Bruce, swerving at the critical moment
of attack, rose in his stirrups as de Bohun passed and clove
his head at a stroke, the shaft of his axe shivering in his
hand. It may be remarked incidentally that Gray calls
the luckless knight Sir Piers de Mountforth. The Scots
pressed forward; the English fell back; but Bruce prudently
soon recalled his men from the conflict. The
Monk of Malmesbury, however, acknowledges that there
was ‘sufficiently keen fighting, in which Gloucester was
unhorsed.’ It is not surprising that the leading Scots
remonstrated earnestly with Bruce for exposing himself
to such an unequal chance. According to Barbour, he
made no answer, only regretting the breaking of his good
axe-shaft. There can hardly be any doubt that Bruce took
the risk deliberately, in calculated reliance on his dexterity
and strength, and not without a judicious eye to the moral
effect on both armies. The feat, in any case, damped the
ardour of the English and raised the spirit of the Scots.

Almost contemporaneously with the advance of Gloucester,
Clifford and Beaumont, with 300 men-at-arms—Gray,
whose father rode with them, says 300, while
Barbour makes them 800—hurried along the lower
ground on the English right towards Stirling. Their
evident object, as Barbour says, was to relieve the
castle; but the Lanercost chronicler ingenuously explains
that it was to prevent the Scots from escaping by flight.
Randolph, strangely ill-served by his scouts and by his
eyes, if Barbour be right, is said not to have been aware
of the movement till he received a sharp message from
Bruce (as if Bruce’s attention was not fully engaged elsewhere),
telling him significantly that a rose had fallen
from his chaplet. This is sheer monkish imagination. Gray
makes no mention of this incredible inadvertence, but
represents Randolph as fired by the news of Bruce’s repulse
of the English van; and the Lanercost chronicler
states that the Scots deliberately allowed the advance of
the party. Of course they did; Randolph undoubtedly98
descried them the moment they debouched on the carse.
To do so was no less important than it was for Sir Edward
to be ready for Gloucester’s onset. The next step for
Randolph was to tackle his enemy at the right spot and
not elsewhere. With a strong detachment he rapidly
traversed the wooded edge of the Park, so as to converge
upon the English horsemen at the narrow neck
between St Ninian’s and the Forth—the only point, in
fact, where he could calculate upon holding them without
moving his whole division down into the low-lying ground
(if even that would have done it), and deranging the order
of battle. When they were ‘neath the kirk,’ he issued
from the wood and menaced their further progress.

‘Let us retire a little,’ said Beaumont; ‘let them come;
give them the fields.’

‘Sir,’ remarked Sir Thomas Gray, the elder, ‘I suspect
if you give them so much now, they will have all only too
soon.’

‘Why,’ rejoined Beaumont tartly, ‘if you are afraid you
can flee.’

‘Sir,’ replied Gray, ‘it is not for fear that I shall flee
this day.’

Whereupon Sir Thomas spurred his steed between Beaumont
and Sir William d’Eyncourt and charged the Scots.
Randolph, whose men were on foot, instantly threw them
into a schiltron, ‘like a hedgehog.’ D’Eyncourt was slain at
the first onset. Gray’s horse was speared and he himself
was taken prisoner. The horsemen were wholly unable to
make the slightest impression on the schiltron: they could
not ride down the Scots; they could only cast spears and
other missiles into their midst. Occasionally, on the other
hand, a Scot would leap out from the ranks and strike down
horse or rider. Douglas, seeing the Scots surrounded,
entreated Bruce to permit him to go to Randolph’s aid.
Bruce, however, sternly refused to disorder his array, but
at last yielded to his importunity. The temporary absence
of Douglas and a small party could not really matter at the
moment, and it was wise to make doubly sure of the vital
object dependent on Randolph’s defence. On getting near,
however, and perceiving that Randolph was holding his own,
Douglas chivalrously halted his men. But his appearance99
was not without effect upon the English party. They gave up
the contest. The movement had completely failed. Some
of them straggled to Stirling Castle; the main body of the
survivors fled back the way they had come; and Randolph
returned in triumph. It may be, as Barbour says, that
Bruce used the occasion to deliver to his men another
rousing address. At any rate he had gained a marked
success in each of the operations of the day.

Though Gloucester had retired, apparently he did not
withdraw beyond the Bannock, but encamped for the
night along the north bank. According to the unanimous
testimony of the chroniclers, the English host was struck
with serious discouragement. It may have been, as
Barbour says, that they talked in groups disconsolately
and forebodingly, and that the encouragement of the
leaders predicting victory in the great battle on the morrow
failed to shake off their depression. Still there was activity
in the vanguard camp. Barbour says that at night efforts
were made to render bad parts of the low-lying land in the
angle of the rivers passable, and even that aid in this work
was furnished by the Stirling garrison. According to the
Malmesbury chronicler, the English anticipated attack in
the night; and Gray states that they lay under arms, their
horses being ready bridled. Bruce, however, had resolutely
restricted himself to the tactics of defence; but the anticipation
was a natural one enough. Some of the men, very
probably, sought artificial means of consolation and courage.
Sir Thomas de la Moore, following Baston, pictures the
English camp as a lamentable and unwonted scene of
drunkenness, men ‘shouting “Wassail” and “Drinkhail”
beyond ordinary’; and he sets forth, in forcible contrast,
the quiet self-restraint and patriotic confidence of the Scots.

In all the circumstances, it would seem an inexplicable
thing that the Scots should have been on the point of
retiring in the night and making for the fastnesses of the
Lennox. Yet Gray records that such was their intention.
Sir Alexander de Seton, he says, came secretly from the
English host to Bruce, and told him that they had lost
heart, and would certainly give way before a vigorous onset
next day; whereupon Bruce changed his plans and braced
himself to fight on the morrow. The Scots had, indeed,100
‘done enough for the day,’ but they had not done enough
for the occasion. Stirling Castle might yet be relieved. It
is likely enough that Seton visited Bruce, and that there
were weak-kneed warriors in Bruce’s lines; but that the
matter of the interview is correctly reported by Gray seems
absolutely incredible.

On the morning of St John’s day, June 24, the Scots
heard mass at sunrise, broke their fast, and lined up with
all banners displayed. Bruce made some new knights,
and created Walter the Steward and Douglas bannerets.
He then made fresh dispositions of his troops, in view of
the position of the English van along the Bannock.
There, clearly, the battle would be fought. Accordingly,
he brought forward Randolph’s division from the wood,
placing it probably by the north-west corner of Halbert’s
Bog, almost parallel to Sir Edward’s division; while the
third division lay across the south-east slopes of Coxet
Hill. The formation was in echelon by the right, with
unequal intervals. Behind the general line, the rear
division stretched from the south-west slopes of Coxet
Hill towards Gillies Hill.

The Scottish array appears to have made a deeper impression
on the English veterans than on the English king.
The Malmesbury chronicler states that the more experienced
leaders advised that the battle should be postponed
till the following day, partly because of the solemn
feast, partly because of the fatigue of the soldiery. The
advice was scorned by the younger knights. It was supported,
however, by Gloucester, himself a youthful knight.
On him, it is said, the King turned with vehement indignation,
charging him even with treason and double-dealing.
‘To-day,’ replied the Earl, ‘it will be clear that I am
neither traitor nor double-dealer’; and he addressed
himself to preparation for battle.

The Scots seem to have made but a paltry show in the
eyes of Edward. ‘What! Will yonder Scots fight?’ he is
said to have asked his attendant knights, incredulously.
Sir Ingram de Umfraville assured him they would; at the
same time suggesting that the English should feign to
retire, and so draw the Scots from their ranks to plunder,
when they would fall easy victims. Neither did this suggestion101
jump with the high humour of Edward. At the
moment, he observed the Scottish ranks falling on their
knees as the Abbot of Inchaffray passed along the lines,
bearing aloft the crucifix.

‘Yon folk kneel to ask for mercy,’ he exclaimed.

‘Sire,’ said Umfraville, ‘ye say sooth now; they crave
mercy, but not of you; it is to God they cry for their
trespasses. I tell you of a surety, yonder men will win
all or die.’

‘So be it!’ cried Edward, ‘we shall soon see.’ And
he ordered the trumpets to sound the charge.

At the very moment when the hostile armies were closing
in stern conflict, says the Monk of Malmesbury, Gloucester
and Hereford were in hot wrangle over the question of
precedence; and Gloucester sprang forward, ‘inordinately
bent on carrying off a triumph at the first onset.’ His
heavy cavalry, though hampered for space and disconcerted
by the treacherous pits, went forward gallantly,
under the cover of a strong force of archers, who severely
galled the Scots, and even drove back their bowmen. They
crashed against Sir Edward Bruce’s division, which received
them ‘like a dense hedge’ or ‘wood.’ The great horses
with their eager riders dashed themselves in vain against
the solid and impenetrable schiltron. Those behind pressed
forward, only to bite the dust, like their comrades, under
the spears and axes of the Scots. ‘There,’ says the Monk
of Malmesbury, ‘the horrible crash of splintered spears, the
terrible clangour of swords quivering on helmets, the insupportable
force of the Scottish axes, the fearsome cloud
of arrows and darts discharged on both sides, might have
shaken the courage of the very stoutest heart. The redoubling
of blow on blow, the vociferation of encouragements,
the din of universal shouting, and the groans of the dying,
could be heard farther than may be said.’ The Lanercost
writer goes near to justifying Scott’s remarkable expression,
‘steeds that shriek in agony.’ Seldom in history has
there been so fierce a turmoil of battle.

According to Barbour, Randolph, noting the strain
upon the first division, bore down to Sir Edward’s support
and drew an equally heavy attack upon himself. Steadily
the second division won ground, though they seemed lost102
in the swarms of the enemy, ‘as they were plunged in the
sea.’ But not yet did victory incline to either side. Then
Bruce threw into the scale the weight of the third division,
the Steward and Douglas ranging themselves ‘beside the
Earl a little by.’ With splendid tenacity, the English
grappled with the newcomers in stubborn conflict, till,
Barbour says, ‘the blood stood in pools’ on the field.

The engagement was now as general as the nature of
the position allowed. Both sides settled down to steady
hard pounding, and it remained to be seen which would
pound the hardest and the longest.

The English were at enormous disadvantage in being
unable to bring into action their whole force together.
They could, indeed, supply the gaps in the narrow front
with sheer weight of pressure from the rear, and they took
bold risks on parts of the softer ground, especially along
the north bank of the Bannock; but, even so, the fighting
line was grievously hampered for space, and the wild
career of wounded steeds defied the most strenuous efforts
to preserve order. The archers, however, worked round
to the right of Sir Edward’s division, plying their bows
with such energy and discrimination as greatly to disconcert
Sir Edward’s men. The moment had come for King
Robert to order into action the marshal, Sir Robert de
Keith, with his handful of 500 horsemen ‘armed in steel.’
Keith dashed upon the archers in flank, and scattered
them in flight. This successful operation gave the Scots
archers the opportunity to retaliate with effect, while it
relieved the foremost division to reconcentrate their
energies on the heavy cavalry steadily thundering on their
front. But more English cavalry pressed to occupy the
ground abandoned by the English archers. And now
Bruce appears to have brought his rear division into
action upon the English flank. It was his last resource.
The Scots, says Barbour, ‘fought as they were in a rage;
they laid on as men out of wit.’ But still the English
disputed every inch of ground with indomitable resolution.

It was probably about this time that the gallant young
Gloucester fell. After brilliant efforts to penetrate the
impenetrable wedge of Scots, he had his charger slain
under him, and was thrown to the ground. The mishap103
is said to have dazed his men, who ‘stood as if astonied,’
instead of aiding him to rise, burdened as he was with the
weight of his armour, and possibly trammelled by his
horse. He was thus slain in the midst of the 500 armed
followers he had led into the front of the battle. The
Monk of Malmesbury raises a loud lament over Gloucester’s
luckless fate: ‘Devil take soldiery,’ he exclaims in
pious energy, ‘whose courage oozes out at the critical
moment of need.’ It may be, however, that others are
right in stating that Gloucester was slain in consequence
of his rash and headlong advance at the very first onset.

The prolonged and doubtful struggle naturally wearied
out the patience of the non-combatants behind Gillies
Hill. Choosing a captain, says Barbour, they marshalled
themselves—15,000 to 20,000 in number—improvised
banners by fastening sheets on boughs and spears, and
advanced over the brow of the hill in view of the battle
raging below. The English, it is said, believing them to
be a fresh army, were struck with panic. Bruce marking
the effect shouted his war-cry and urged his men to their
utmost efforts. The English van at last yielded ground,
though not at all points. The Scots, however, seized
their advantage, and pressed with all their might. The
English line broke, falling back on the Bannock. Confusion
increased at every step. Horsemen and foot,
gentle and simple, were driven pell-mell into the Bannock,
and but few of them were lucky enough to gain the south
bank; the burn, Barbour says, was ‘so full of horses and
men that one might pass over it dry-shod.’ The panic
ran through the whole English army. The day was lost
and won.

King Edward refused to believe the evidence of his
senses, and obstinately refused to quit the field. But it is
the merest bravado—though countenanced by Scott—when
Trokelowe relates how the King, in the bitterness
and fury of his wrath, ‘rushed truculently upon the enemy
like a lion robbed of whelps,’ copiously shed their blood,
and was with difficulty withdrawn from the orgy of massacre.
Unquestionably he stood aloof from the battle,
watching its progress at a safe distance. When the
English gave way in hopeless rout, Valence and Argentine104
seized his rein and hurried him off the field in spite of all
remonstrance. It was not a moment too soon, for already,
says Gray, Scots knights ‘hung with their hands on the
trappings of the King’s destrier’ in a determined attempt
to capture him, and were disengaged only by the King’s
desperate wielding of a mace. They had even ripped up
his destrier, so that presently he had to mount another.
Once the King was clear of immediate pursuers, Argentine
directed him to Stirling Castle and bade him farewell. ‘I
have not hitherto been accustomed to flee,’ he said, ‘nor
will I flee now. I commend you to God.’ And striking
spurs to his steed he charged furiously upon Sir Edward
Bruce’s division, but was quickly borne down and slain.

The turning of the King’s rein was the signal for the
general dispersal of the army in flight.

King Edward, attended by Valence, Despenser, Beaumont,
Sir John de Cromwell, and some 500 men-at-arms,
made for Stirling Castle. Mowbray, with the plainest
commonsense—the suggestion of treachery is preposterous—begged
him not to stay, for the castle must be surrendered;
in any case, it would be taken. So the King was
conducted in all haste round the Park and the Torwood
towards Linlithgow; the Lanercost writer assigns as guide
‘a certain Scots knight, who knew by what ways they
could escape.’ But for Bruce’s anxious care to keep his
men in hand in case of a rally, it seems quite certain that
Edward would not have escaped at all. Douglas went in
pursuit, but he had only some sixty horsemen. On the
borders of the Torwood he met Sir Lawrence de Abernethy,
who was coming to assist the English, but at once
changed sides on learning the issue of the day, and joined
Douglas in pursuit of the fugitive King. At Linlithgow
Douglas came within bowshot of the royal party, but, not
being strong enough to attack, hung close upon their rear,
capturing or killing the stragglers. The pursuit was continued
hot-foot through Lothian; Douglas

till at last Edward found shelter in Earl Patrick’s castle of
Dunbar. The King, with seventeen of his closest attendants,105
presently embarked on a vessel for Berwick (Barbour
says Bamborough), ‘abandoning all the others,’ sneers the
Lanercost writer, ‘to their fortune,’ These others, according
to Barbour, had not even been admitted to Dunbar
Castle; but Douglas let them go on to Berwick unmolested,
and with a drove of captured horses speedily rejoined
Bruce at Stirling. Sir Thomas de la Moore attributes the
King’s escape ‘not to the swiftness of his horse, nor to the
efforts of men, but to the Mother of God, whom he invoked,’
vowing to build and dedicate to her a house for
twenty-four poor Carmelites, students of theology. This
vow he fulfilled, in spite of the dissuasion of Despenser,
and the house is now Oriel College, Oxford.

Another party, headed by the Earl of Hereford, made for
Carlisle. According to the Lanercost chronicler, it included
the Earl of Angus, Sir John de Segrave, Sir Antony
de Lucy, Sir Ingram de Umfraville, and many other
knights, and numbered 600 horse and 1000 foot. They
appealed to the hospitality of Sir Walter Fitz Gilbert, who
held Valence’s castle of Bothwell for Edward with a
garrison of sixty Scots. Fitz Gilbert admitted ‘the more
noble’ of them—Barbour says fifty; the Meaux chronicler,
120; Walsingham, a still larger number. Fitz Gilbert at
once secured them all as prisoners, and delivered them to
Sir Edward Bruce, who was sent with a large force to take
them over. Hereford and others were eventually exchanged
for the Queen, the Princess Marjory, and the
Bishop of Glasgow; the rest were held to heavy ransom.
The main body of the party struggled forward to the
Border, but many of them—Barbour says three-fourths—were
slain or captured. Everywhere, in fact, the inhabitants,
who ‘had previously feigned peace’ with the English,
rose upon the hapless fugitives. Thus, Sir Maurice de
Berkeley escaped with a great body of Welshmen, but,
says Barbour, many were taken or slain before they
reached England. A large number fled to Stirling Castle,
where Barbour pictures the crags as covered with them; but
these at once surrendered to a detachment of Bruce’s force.

It is hopeless to number the slain that strewed the field
of battle, choked the Bannock, or floated down the Forth.
Barbour says roundly that 30,000 English were slain or106
drowned. The Meaux chronicler admits 20,000. Walsingham
numbers no less than 700 knights and squires.
Besides Gloucester and Argentine, the veteran Sir Robert
de Clifford, Sir Pagan de Tybetot, Sir William the Marshal,
Sir William de Vescy, Sir John Comyn (the son of the
Red Comyn, slain at Dumfries), Sir Henry de Bohun, Sir
William D’Eyncourt, and many other notable warriors,
had fallen in the forefront of battle. Sir Edmund de
Mauley, the King’s seneschal, was drowned in the Bannock.
The undistinguished many must remain uncounted.
The Scots losses, which, though comparatively insignificant,
must yet have been considerable, are equally beyond
reckoning. The only men of note mentioned are Sir
William Vipont and Sir Walter Ross.

In dealing with his prisoners, Bruce displayed a princely
generosity. Trokelowe frankly acknowledges that his
handsome liberality gained him immense respect ‘even
among his enemies.’ Walsingham declares that it ‘changed
the hearts of many to love of him.’ The Monk of Reading
is fairly astonished. There was no haggling over exchanges
or ransoms, though no doubt many of the ransoms were at
a high figure. Sir Ralph de Monthermer, who was captured
at Stirling, and was an old friend of Bruce’s, was
released without ransom, and carried back to England the
King’s shield, which Bruce freely returned. Sir Marmaduke
Twenge, a relative of Bruce’s, who yielded himself to
the King personally on the day after the battle, was sent
home, not only without ransom, but with handsome gifts.
The bodies of Gloucester and Clifford were freely sent to
Edward at Berwick with every token of respect for gallant
foes; and, while the common men that fell on the field
were interred in common trenches, the more noble were
buried with noble ceremonial ‘in holy places.’

The spoils collected by the victors were enormous.
Walsingham ventures on an estimate of £200,000; ‘so
many good nobles, vigorous youths, noble horses, warlike
arms, precious garments and napery, and vessels of gold—all
lost!’ Bruce made generous distribution among his
valiant men. The individual ransoms largely increased the
individual acquisitions. ‘The whole land,’ says Fordun,
‘overflowed with boundless wealth.’

107
The chroniclers labour to assign reasons for the great
disaster. The religious reason seems rather thin; for, if
Edward and his barons broke the Ordinances, and also
fought on a feast day, Bruce and his friends lay under
multiplied excommunications. There is more substance
in other allegations—presumptuous confidence on the part
of the English leaders; discord in their councils; their
impetuous and disorderly advance; the fatigue and hunger
of the men by reason of the rapid march from Berwick.
One would be unwilling to press a certain lack of enthusiasm
for their King, or a suspicion of inadequate generalship.
There is sufficient explanation in the skill, prudence, and
iron resolution of Bruce, supported by able generals of
division, and by brave and patriotic men. Had the result
been otherwise, it would have been, for England, a greater
disaster still.

‘Yet’—and the word of honest sympathy and justification
will not jar now on any generous mind—

108

CHAPTER X
INVASION OF ENGLAND AND IRELAND

The battle of Bannockburn might well have been the
historical, as well as the dramatic, close of the struggle.
But Edward refused to be taught by experience, and the
desultory welter of war was miserably prolonged for nearly
half a generation to come. The disaster rankled in
Edward’s mind, ever craving vengeance, impotently. With
childish wilfulness, he would not even concede to Bruce
the formal title of King of Scots, though the Lanercost
chronicler admits that the victory at Bannockburn extorted
a general recognition of his right by conquest.

Edward retired from Berwick to York. It was plain
that Bruce would instantly follow up his victory, and
already there was anxiety on the Border. Berwick was
not only vexed by the Scots, but still more seriously
menaced by the violence of the Northumbrians, who had
been exasperated by the hanging of a number of their
countrymen for alleged treachery; and the storm burst
upon the north of England before Edward could send up
reinforcements. Before the middle of July, Sir Andrew de
Harcla, the constable of Carlisle, was in daily expectation
of an attack, and complained that he was hampered by
lack of promised support. Bishop Kellawe could not
attend Parliament, so busy was he in preparations for the
defence of his episcopate; ‘all the people say that, if he
now leave the district, they will not venture to stay behind.’

Immediately after the battle, Sir Philip de Mowbray
surrendered Stirling Castle, and passed over to the side
of the victor. Towards the end of July, Sir Edward Bruce
and Douglas, with other Scots nobles, crossed the eastern
Border and ravaged Northumberland, leaving the castles
unassailed. They spared the episcopate of Durham from
fire in consideration of a large sum of money. Crossing109
the Tees, they penetrated beyond Richmond, the people
fleeing before them to the south, to the woods, to the
castles. They turned up Swaledale, and on Stainmoor
severely handled Harcla, who had seized the opportunity
of quietness at Carlisle to make a luckless raid upon them.
On their northward march they burnt Brough, Appleby,
Kirkoswald, and other towns, and trampled down the crops
remorselessly. Coupland bought off a visitation. They
re-entered Scotland with many prisoners of price, and with
great droves of cattle. They had met with no resistance,
except Harcla’s futile effort. ‘The English,’ says Walsingham
dolefully, ‘had lost so much of their accustomed
boldness that a hundred of them fled from the face of two
or three Scots.’

On September 9, Edward held a parliament at York.
He readily confirmed the ordinances, changed ministers,
even retired Despenser—anything for the military help
of his barons. But further operations against Scotland
were postponed till Hereford and the other prisoners
of note could be ransomed home. About a week later,
Edward had a communication from Bruce expressing a
strong desire for accord and amity. Safe conducts were
issued, and truce commissioners were appointed. Meantime,
however, the negotiations were too slow for the
Scots; for, on the very day that Edward appointed his
commissioners, the Prior and Convent of Durham signed
a bond for 800 marks to Randolph for a quiet life till
the middle of January. Randolph, in fact, penetrated
Yorkshire, committing the usual depredations. Still the
negotiations, which apparently had been entered into at
the instance of Philip of France, went forward. But in
November the English envoys returned from Dumfries
with empty hands, and with the news of the likelihood
of another invasion of the Scots, ‘owing to the lack of
food in their country.’ Already, indeed, a body of Scots
had occupied Tyndale, and were pushing down towards
Newcastle. About Christmas they again ravaged Northumberland,
and let off Cumberland till midsummer day
next year for the sum of 600 marks. The Archbishop of
York, whose manor of Hexham had suffered, vigorously denounced
the invaders; and at York Minster on January 17,110
barons and clergy resolved on making a stand at Northallerton
three days later. But the only serious effort
of the season was Harcla’s valorous November raid on
Dumfriesshire, where he was well punished, despite the
local knowledge of his recreant lieutenant, Sir Thomas
de Torthorwald. About the beginning of February, indeed,
John of Argyll overpowered the Scots in the Isle
of Man, and recovered it for Edward. But ‘the terror
that prevailed throughout the north of England,’ as Canon
Raine says, ‘was something unexampled’; ‘with the exception
of a few fortresses, two or three of the northern
counties were almost permanently occupied by the Scots.’

On April 26, 1315, a Parliament was held in the Parish
Church of Ayr, to consider ‘the condition, defence, and
perpetual security of the Kingdom of Scotland.’ The
business was to settle the succession to the throne. It
was enacted that, failing lawful male heirs of King Robert,
Sir Edward and his lawful male heirs should succeed;
failing these, Marjory; and failing Marjory, the nearest
lineal heir of the body of Robert. In case the heir
were a minor, Randolph was to be guardian of both heir
and realm. Failing all these heirs, Randolph was to be
guardian until Parliament should determine the succession.
Presently Marjory married Sir Walter the Steward. She
died in her first confinement on March 2, 1315–16, leaving
a son, who became Robert II. of Scotland.

The settlement no doubt was influenced by the imminence
of a large expansion of policy—the ill-starred
Irish expedition. On May 25, 1315, Sir Edward Bruce
landed at Carrickfergus with 6000 men. On his staff
were some of the foremost Scots knights—Randolph, Sir
Philip de Mowbray, Sir John de Soulis, Sir John the
Steward, and many others. The true motives of the enterprise
are by no means clear. There was no immediate
object in dividing the English forces, and in any case
there was involved a like division of the Scots forces.
The suggestion of the discontentment of the Scots with
their territorial boundaries, growing out of repeated successes
in the field and a superfluity of money, seems to
be a mere speculation of the Lanercost chronicler. There
is more probability in Barbour’s assertion that Sir Edward111
Bruce, ‘who stouter was than a leopard, thought Scotland
too small for his brother and himself.’ It may be that
this particular outlet for his restless and ambitious spirit
was opened up by an offer of the crown of Ireland by
independent Ulster kinglets either in the first place to
King Robert or directly to Sir Edward himself. It is not
improbable, however, that the movement may have been
a serious attempt at a great flank attack on England.
Walsingham mentions ‘a rumour that, if things went well
in Ireland, Sir Edward would at once pass over to Wales.’
‘For these two races,’ he says, ‘are easily stirred to
rebellion, and, taking ill with the yoke of servitude, they
execrate the domination of the English.’

The Irish expedition despatched from Ayr, King Robert
and his lieutenants again turned to the Border. In the
end of May, a meeting of the clergy and magnates of
the north had been convened at Doncaster by the Archbishop
of York, at the instance of the Earl of Lancaster
and other barons, who appear to have been in a conciliatory
mood; and on June 30, Edward issued his summons
for the muster at Newcastle by the middle of August.
But already, on June 29, Douglas had entered the episcopate
of Durham. Pushing on to Hartlepool, he occupied,
but did not burn the town, the people taking refuge on
the ships; and he returned laden with plunder. Sir
Ralph Fitz William had given Edward a week’s warning,
but nothing had been done in consequence. It does
seem odd, therefore, to stumble on an account of payment
to nineteen smiths of Newcastle for ‘pikois,’ ‘howes,’ and
other instruments sent to Perth in August.

On July 22, Bruce himself invested Carlisle, which was
held by the redoubtable Harcla. His army was amply
supplied by forays into Allerdale, Coupland, and Westmorland.
Every day an assault was delivered upon one
of the three gates of the city, and sometimes upon all at
once; but the besieged replied manfully with showers
of stones and arrows. On the fifth day of the siege, the
Scots brought into action a machine that hurled stones
continuously at the Caldew gate and the wall, but without
effect; and the defenders answered with seven or eight
similar machines, as well as with springalds for hurling112
darts and slings for hurling stones, ‘which greatly frightened
and harassed the men without.’ The Scots next
erected a wooden tower overtopping the wall; whereupon
the besieged raised over the nearest tower on the wall
a similar wooden tower overtopping the Scots one. But
the Scots tower proved useless, for its wheels stuck in
the mud of the moat, and it could not be got up to the
wall. Nor could the Scots use their long scaling ladders,
or a sow they had prepared to undermine the wall; they
could not fill up the moat with fascicles; and, when they
tried to run bridges of logs on wheels across the moat,
the weight of the mass, as in the case of the tower, sank
the whole construction in the mud. On the ninth day,
Bruce abandoned his engines, and delivered a general
assault; but still the besieged made manful defence.
Next day the attack was renewed with special vigour
on the eastern side, while Douglas with a determined
band attempted to scale the wall on the west, at its highest
and most difficult point, where an assault would not be
expected. His men mounted the wall under the protection
of a body of archers; but the English tumbled
down ladders and men, killing and wounding many, and
baffling the attack. On the morrow (August 1), the siege was
raised. The Lanercost chronicler, who writes as if he had
been present, affirms that only two Englishmen were killed
and a few wounded during the eleven days’ investment.

Whether Bruce was hopeless and disgusted, or had been
informed of the approach of a relieving force under Valence,
or had heard the false report of the defeat and death of Sir
Edward in Ireland, at any rate he hurried back to Scotland.
Harcla promptly sallied in pursuit, harassing flank and rear,
and making two important captures—Sir John de Moray
and Sir Robert Baird. Moray had been conspicuous at
Bannockburn, and had been enriched by the ransom of
twenty-three English knights, besides squires and others,
who had fallen to his share. Baird is described as ‘a
man of the worst will towards Englishmen.’ Harcla delivered
the prisoners to Edward, receiving (November 8) a
guerdon of 1000 marks; but the money was to be raised
from wardships, and the accrual of it was spread over eight
years. The King’s treasury was low.

113
There is very little news of the Scots navy in those days,
but it seems to have been reasonably active. On September
12, one bold mariner, Thomas Dunn, ‘with a great navy
of Scots,’ followed an English ship into Holyhead harbour,
and, in the absence of the master on shore, carried it off
to Scotland. About the same time John of Argyll was
in Dublin, impatiently expecting reinforcements from the
Cinque Ports. Edward retained part of the squadron to
assist the French king against the Flemings.

On January 15, 1315–16, Bruce and Douglas made a
sudden attack on Berwick, by land and sea simultaneously,
during the night. They hoped to effect an entrance from
the sea, at a point between the Brighouse and the castle,
where there was no wall. The attempt failed. It was
bright moonlight, and the assailants were promptly observed
and repulsed. Sir John de Landells was slain, and
Douglas himself escaped with difficulty in a small boat.

The garrison of Berwick had only too much reason to
complain. Writing on October 3, Edward’s Chamberlain
of Scotland had informed him that the provisions expected
from Boston in the end of July had never been sent, and
‘the town is in great straits, and many are dying from
hunger.’ Indeed, ‘if the Mayor and himself had not
promised the garrison food and clothing for the winter,
they would have gone.’ Two days later, Sir Maurice de
Berkeley, the warden, wrote that the town and the inhabitants
never were in such distress, ‘and will be this
winter, if God and the King don’t think more of them,’
and quickly. Unless money and provisions arrive by the
end of the month, they will give up their posts and leave
the town, to a man. On October 30, indeed, a vessel had
brought in malt, barley and beans, but the master had
had to throw overboard a great part of his cargo to escape
the enemy. On November 26, Edward sent £300 by way
of pay to the garrison; but he could not succour them
effectually, and apparently Valence, who was warden north
of Trent, had fallen into a lethargy. The repulse of Bruce
was therefore signally creditable to the defence.

A series of four official despatches during the latter half
of February and the first week in March exhibit the deplorable
state of the town from famine. On February 14,114
part of the garrison, in the teeth of the warden’s orders, had
gone out on a foray, declaring it was better to die fighting
than to starve. They had captured many prisoners and
cattle, but Douglas, on the information of Sir Adam de
Gordon, who had recently changed sides, caught them at
Scaithmoor, slew their leader, and furiously broke up their
schiltron, killing or capturing twenty men-at-arms and sixty
foot. Considering that the men were struggling to keep
the means of rescuing them from starvation, Barbour may
well be right in declaring it to be the hardest fight that
Douglas ever fought. The foray brought no relief to the
garrison, except by diminution of mouths. The men were
‘dying of hunger in rows on the walls.’ ‘Whenever a
horse dies,’ wrote Sir Maurice de Berkeley, ‘the men-at-arms
carry off the flesh and boil and eat it, not letting the
foot soldiers touch it till they have had what they will.
Pity to see Christians leading such a life.’ He will remain
warden no longer than his term, which expires a month
after Easter.

Meantime Sir Henry de Beaumont, warden of the
March, had gone to Lincoln to represent to the King
and Council his conferences with some of the Scots
leaders for a truce. On February 22, Edward appointed
commissioners to treat with Bruce, Sir Maurice de Berkeley
being one; and on April 28, 1316, he authorised safe
conducts for the Scots envoys. But the business did not
get forward, and the Mayor of Berwick, on May 10, sent
urgent news to the King. Berwick has provisions for a
month only; the enemy’s cruisers have cut off supplies, and
have just captured two vessels with victuals; the warden
will serve an extended term till Whitsunday, but no longer;
Bruce will be at Melrose in a fortnight with all his force.
And all the time Edward was hampered in his measures
against Scotland by the war in Ireland and by a rising in
Wales.

At midsummer 1316, the Scots again crossed the Border
with fire and sword, and penetrated to Richmond, where
they were heavily paid to abstain from further burning in
the town and neighbourhood. Then they headed west as
far as Furness, burning and ravaging without opposition.
They carried home immense booty, as well as many115
prisoners, men and women; and they were particularly
delighted with the quantity of iron they found at Furness,
there being very little iron in Scotland. The leader of this
expedition is not named.

For many years there had been great scarcity in both
countries, a natural consequence of predatory warfare.
‘This year,’ says the Lanercost chronicler, ‘there was
both in England and in Scotland a mortality of men from
famine and pestilence unheard of in our times; and in the
northern parts of England a quarter of corn sold at 40s.’
Walsingham says the distress was worst in the north, where,
he heard, ‘the people ate dogs and horses and other unclean
animals.’

In Ireland it was still worse; in these wretched years of
intestine broils, it is said ‘men were wont to devour one
another.’ Sir Edward Bruce had now been fighting there
for a full year. With his Irish allies, he had raided the
English adherents in Ulster; occupied Carrickfergus after
a great fight, but failed to take the castle; captured and
burnt Dundalk (June 29, 1315); defeated the joint forces
of the Earl of Ulster and the King of Connaught at Connor
(September 10); besieged Carrickfergus in vain (till December
6); marched down into Kildare, defeating first Sir Roger
de Mortimer at Kenlis, and afterwards (January 26) Sir
Edmund le Butler, the justiciar, at Arscott; and returned
to the siege of Carrickfergus, which was starved into surrender
some time in summer. On May 2, 1316, Sir Edward
was crowned King of Ireland.

In autumn of 1315, and again in the following March,
Randolph had returned to Scotland for reinforcements.
On the latter occasion he brought Sir Edward’s urgent
request that King Robert would come in person, for then
the conquest would be assured. In autumn, 1316, accordingly,
Bruce appointed Douglas and the Steward Guardians
in his absence, and sailed from Loch Ryan to Carrickfergus.
His operations during the winter in Ulster do not appear
to have advanced the cause materially, and in spring he
set out on an adventurous expedition throughout Ireland.

Barbour’s account, though considerably detailed, can be
treated only with the greatest reserve. King Edward led
the van, King Robert brought up the rear. The enemy116
lay in wait at Moyra Pass, ‘the Gap of the North,’ the
immemorial route of invaders north and south, some three
miles north of Dundalk. Edward, says Barbour, rode past
the ambush. When the rear came up, two archers appeared
in view, immediately suggesting the nearness of an enemy;
and Bruce held back his men. Sir Colin Campbell, son of
Sir Nigel and nephew of Bruce, pressed forward and killed
one of them, but the other shot his horse; whereupon
Bruce, in great wrath, felled Sir Colin with his truncheon
for disobedience, which ‘might be cause of discomfiting.’
Emerging at length from the gorge, they found Richard de
Clare with 40,000 men drawn up on the plain, whom they
presently defeated: in all the Irish war ‘so hard a fighting
was not seen.’ When Edward heard of it, ‘might no man
see a wrother man.’ But only a cloistered ecclesiastic can
be held responsible for such military procedure.

Advancing on Dublin, the Scots took Castle Knock on
February 23; two days later they were at Leixlip; in four
days more, they had reached Naas; and on March 12, they
were at Callan in Kilkenny. The southernmost place they
visited was Limerick, where they stayed two or three days.
As they were starting northwards again, King Robert heard
a woman’s wail, and on inquiry learned that it was a poor
laundress that had been seized with the pains of labour and
was lamenting to be left behind; upon which he countermanded
the march till she should be able to accompany
the army. Such is Barbour’s story; let us call it, after
Scott, a ‘beautiful incident.’ The expedition then, somehow,
passed back to Dublin, and on to Carrickfergus. It
is an amazing narrative. Possibly the Bruces anticipated
that they would gain over the tribes of the south and west;
possibly they expected to tap ampler and more convenient
sources of supplies; possibly they were trying the effect of
a grand demonstration. At any rate they did not win any
permanent support; ‘in this march,’ says Fordun, ‘many
died of hunger, and the rest lived on horse-flesh’; and the
demonstration was utterly futile. Towards the end of the
march, the English hung upon the Scots, but ‘hovered
still about them and did nothing.’ Yet it seems unreasonable
to blame the English commanders, for it cannot be
doubted that they would have exterminated the Scots if117
they could. A change of Lord-Lieutenant was impending;
and Sir Roger de Mortimer of Wigmore, who had been
appointed to succeed Sir Edmund le Butler (November 23),
was delayed by want of outfit and did not arrive in Ireland
till April 7, when the expedition was practically over.

King Robert returned to Scotland in May 1317, after an
absence of about half a year, bringing with him ‘many
wounded men.’ Meantime his lieutenants had kept Scotland
with a strong hand. During 1316, Edward’s efforts to
conduct an army against the Scots had been again and
again thwarted, and towards the end of November negotiations
were in progress for a truce. At the same time the
redoubtable Harcla had been defeated and captured by
Sir John de Soulis (Barbour says) in Eskdale, and was
begging Edward for Sir John de Moray and Sir Robert
Baird, his former prisoners, ‘in aid of his ransom, as he
does not see how he can free himself otherwise.’ Truce or
no truce, the Earl of Arundel, who was in command on
the March, conceived the notion of sending a force to hew
down Jedburgh Forest. Douglas, who was building himself
a house at Lintalee on the Jed, took 50 men-at-arms and a
body of archers and planted an ambush at a wooded
pass. When the English—certainly nothing like 10,000,
as Barbour estimates them—had well entered, the archers
assailed them in flank, and Douglas struck upon the rear,
killing their leader, Sir Thomas de Richmond, and routing
them disastrously. A detachment that had taken possession
of Douglas’s quarters at Lintalee he surprised at dinner and
slew almost to a man. Jedburgh Forest was left unfelled.

About the same time, it came to the ears of Douglas that
Sir Robert de Neville, ‘the Peacock of the North,’ irritated
by the recurrent praise of his deeds, had boasted at Berwick
that he would fight him on the first chance. Douglas
instantly took the road to Berwick, marching in the night,
and in the early morning he displayed his broad banner,
and lit up the landscape by firing several villages. Neville
issued at the challenge and posted himself on a hill, expecting
that the Scots would scatter in search of plunder.
Douglas, however, impatiently advanced, and quickly met
Neville, man to man. It was an unequal contest. Neville
fell under the sword of Douglas. His troops fled. His118
three brothers, Alexander, John, and Ralph were among
the prisoners captured, and were held to ransom for 2000
marks each.

The English, beaten at all points on the Border, made
an attempt by sea, landing a force of 500 men near Inverkeithing
to raid Fife. The Earl and the Sheriff of Fife,
though apprised of their coming, had not the pluck or the
numbers to prevent their landing, and retired. Bishop
Sinclair of Dunkeld, however, rode up at the head of 60
horsemen, his episcopal cloak covering a suit of full armour.
He scouted the Earl’s excuse of superior numbers, and told
him to his face that he deserved to have his gilt spurs hewn
off his heels. ‘Follow me,’ he cried, ‘and, in the name of
the Lord, and with the aid of St Columba, whose land they
are ravaging, we will take revenge.’ Thereupon, casting off
his cloak and wielding a formidable spear, he spurred right
on the enemy, routed them, and drove them to their ships
with great slaughter. So precipitate was their flight that
one barge was overladen and sank with all on board. Ever
after Sinclair was called by King Robert ‘my own Bishop,’
and popularly he was ‘the Fechtin’ Bishop.’

Bruce had now complete control of every part of his
kingdom, excepting Berwick, and the northern counties
of England lay open to him at his will. It was more than
time for a final peace.

119

CHAPTER XI
CONCILIATION AMID CONFLICT

On January 1, 1316–17, the Pope declared a truce of two
years between Edward and Bruce ‘acting as King of
Scotland’ (gerentem se pro rege Scotiæ), and denounced
excommunication against all breakers thereof. By a Bull
dated March 17, he exhorted Edward to peace with Bruce
‘now governing the realm of Scotland’ (impraesentiarum
regnum Scotiæ gubernantem), representing not only the
waste of good lives and property but also the hindrance
to the recovery of the Holy Land, and announcing the
despatch of his nuncios, Guacelin d’Euse and Lucca di
Fieschi, to effect a solemn concord. Presently he drew up
two more Bulls, dated March 28—one, to certain English
prelates, excommunicating all enemies of Edward invading
England and Ireland; the other, to certain Irish prelates,
excommunicating Robert and Edward Bruce—but these
the Cardinals would hold in reserve till the issue of their
mission should declare itself. In these Bulls, King Robert
is ‘late Earl of Carrick’ (dudum Comes de Carrik); Edward,
by profession of eagerness to go on a crusade—and otherwise—is
the Pope’s ‘most dear son in Christ.’ In view of
the crusade, it was essential that Edward should also enjoy
peace at home; and, on April 20, the Pope wrote to the
chief magnates urging them to support their King with
counsel and with help.

Towards the end of June 1317, the two Cardinals
arrived in England, and were conducted with great
ceremony to London. Edward had gone to Woodstock,
where, on July 1, he summoned his parliament to meet at
Nottingham on the 18th, to consider, before the Cardinals
should come to his presence, the questions he would have
to discuss with them. On July 27, he authorised safe
conducts for the Cardinals’ party, and assigned specially120
to the two prelates two officers of his personal staff. The
Cardinals started for the north, ‘as the manner of the
Romans is,’ with great pomp and circumstance. On the
way, they were to consecrate the new Bishop of Durham,
Louis de Beaumont, who proceeded in their train. They
were also accompanied by Sir Henry de Beaumont, the
brother of the Bishop elect, and other magnates. In the
pride of ecclesiastical security, they contemned all warnings
of danger. They had an unexpected welcome to the episcopate.
On September 1, as they were passing Rushyford,
within nine miles of Durham—if not at Aycliffe, three miles
south of Rushyford—they were suddenly assailed by Sir
Gilbert de Middleton and his robber band, and despoiled
of all their valuables. The prelates and their personal
attendants Sir Gilbert permitted to proceed to Durham,
perhaps on foot, unharmed; the Bishop elect, Sir Henry,
and the rest he consigned to Mitford Castle—the eyrie
whence he swooped upon the country around, harrying
as far as the Priory of Tynemouth. Arrived at Durham, the
Cardinals, having duly adored St Cuthbert and venerated
the venerable Bede, let loose upon their sacrilegious assailants
all the powers of excommunication. The malison, says
the Malmesbury chronicler, was efficacious; for, before the
year was out, Middleton was captured and taken to London,
where he was drawn, hanged, beheaded, and quartered.

The Cardinals’ advance messengers, and their special
envoys (praecursores)—the Bishop of Corbau and the
Archdeacon of Perpignan—had reached the Border in
safety. There the messengers had been stopped. The
envoys, however, were met, about the beginning of September,
by Douglas and Sir Alexander de Seton, and
allowed to proceed, but only after handing over their
letters for King Robert. They were conducted to Roxburgh
Castle. There the King received them graciously,
listened with reverent attention to the Pope’s open letters
in favour of peace, and replied that he would welcome a
good and lasting peace, whether arranged by the mediation
of the Cardinals or otherwise. He also listened respectfully
to the Cardinals’ open letters. But as for the
close letters, he positively refused to break the seal of one of
them. They were addressed to Robert de Brus, ‘governing121
the realm of Scotland.’ ‘There are several others of
the name of Robert de Brus,’ he said, ‘who take part
with the other barons in the government of the realm of
Scotland. These letters may be for one of them; they
are not addressed to me, for they do not bear the title
of King.’ No; he would not risk opening other men’s
letters. Still, he would assemble his Council and consult
with them whether he should nevertheless receive
the Cardinals to audience; but, as his barons were engaged
in various distant places, it would be impossible
for him to give his decision till Michaelmas (September 29).

The envoys had their apology ready. They explained
that it was the custom of Holy Mother Church, during
the pendency of a question, not to say or write anything
calculated to prejudice either party. ‘If my Father and
my Mother,’ replied Bruce, holding up the Pope’s letters,
‘wished to avoid creating prejudice against the other party
by calling me King, it seems to me that they ought not,
while the question is still pending, create prejudice against
me by withholding the title from me; especially when I am
in possession of the realm, and everybody in it calls me
King, and foreign kings and princes address me as King.
Really, it appears to me that my Father and Mother are
partial as between their sons. If you had presented a letter
with such an address to another king, it may be that you
would have received another sort of answer.’ This caustic
reply, the envoys reported, he delivered with a benign mien,
‘always showing due reverence for his Father and Mother.’

The envoys passed to the next point. They requested
him to cease meantime from further hostilities. ‘That,’
he replied, ‘I can in no wise do without the consent of
my barons; besides, the English are making reprisals upon
my people and their property.’

In the confidence of authority, the envoys had taken
with them one of the Cardinals’ advance messengers, who
had been sent on with a letter announcing the Pope’s
coronation, but had been stopped at the frontier. They
now entreated King Robert to grant him a safe conduct;
but he denied their request ‘with a certain change of
countenance,’ not uttering a word.

Turning to Bruce’s staff they inquired anxiously, Why122
was this? Why, simply because King Robert was not
suitably addressed. But for this blunder, he would have
willingly and promptly responded on every point.

So wrote the Cardinals to the Pope from Durham on
September 7. They added that they expected nothing
better than a refusal of an audience at Michaelmas; for,
even if Robert were himself disposed to receive them, it
was evident that his barons would offer opposition. The
friends of Bruce had made no secret of their opinion that the
reservation of the royal title was a deliberate slight at the
instance of English intriguers—an opinion avowedly based
on information from the papal court. The contrary assurances
of the envoys had been worse than useless, and they
despaired of further intercommunication unless and until
the resentment of the Scots should be mollified by concession
of the royal title. Some considerable time after
Michaelmas, Bruce confirmed by letter the anticipations
of the Cardinals. He must have his royal title recognised.
At the same time he repeated his desire for peace, and
his readiness to send representatives to negotiate; but
when the bearer brought back the Cardinals’ reply, he
was stopped at the frontier, and had to take the letters
back—no doubt because they were still improperly
addressed.

Three days later (September 10), Edward wrote to the
Pope from York, whither he had hastened on hearing
of the assault on the Cardinals, assuring him that he
would promptly ‘avenge God and the Church,’ and see
that the prelates had their temporal losses made good.

To do the Pope justice, he had been anxious to keep
clear of the difficulties obviously involved in the reservation
of Bruce’s royal title. In his letter of March 18, he had
apologetically prayed Bruce not to take it ill that he was
not styled King of Scotland. On October 21, he sends
the Cardinals letters—one for Bruce explaining the former
omission of the royal title, and apparently conceding it
now; another for Edward, begging him not to be offended
at his styling Bruce King; and a third for themselves,
blaming them for not telling him whether or not they
had Edward’s consent that he (the Pope) should address
Bruce as King. They are to request Edward to give way123
on the point; and they are to present or to keep back
the letters as they may see expedient. The information
of the Scots from Avignon was evidently well grounded.

Meantime the Cardinals made another attempt. They
proclaimed the truce in London, and had it proclaimed
by other ecclesiastics ‘in other principal places of England
and Scotland.’ But they must bring it directly to the knowledge
of Bruce. Accordingly they despatched Adam de
Newton, the Guardian of the monastery of the Friars
Minors in Berwick, to King Robert and the leading prelates
of Scotland, to make the proclamation. Adam prudently
left his papers in safe keeping at Berwick till he had
provided himself with a safe conduct. On December 14, he
set out for Old Cambus, twelve miles off, and found Bruce
in a neighbouring wood hard at work, ‘day and night, without
rest,’ preparing engines for the siege of Berwick. He
at once obtained his safe conduct, and fetched his Bulls
and other letters from Berwick to Old Cambus; but Sir
Alexander de Seton refused to allow him to wait upon the
King, and required him to hand over the letters. Seton
took the letters to Bruce, or professed to do so, but presently
brought them back, delivered them to Adam, and
ordered him to be gone. Bruce would have nothing to do
with Bulls and processes that withheld from him the title of
King, and he was in any case determined, he said, to have
the town of Berwick. Adam, however, was not to be
baffled. He proclaimed the truce publicly before Seton
‘and a great assembly of people.’ The Scots, however,
would not take it seriously. Not the most solemn adjurations
could procure for Adam a safe conduct either back to
Berwick or on to the Scots prelates, and he was summarily
ordered to get out of the country with all speed.
So he took his way to Berwick. But he was waylaid and
stripped to the skin, and his Bulls and processes were torn
in pieces. Still Adam was undaunted. ‘I tell you, before
God,’ he wrote to the Cardinals on December 20, ‘that I am
still ready as ever, without intermission, to labour for the
advancement of your affairs.’

From midsummer 1317, Edward’s officers had been
kept busy on the March. About the beginning of July,
Sir John de Athy had taken the Scots sea-captain, Thomas124
Dunn, and killed all his men, except himself and his
cousin, from whom Sir John had learned that Randolph
was preparing to attack the Isle of Man, and even had
designs on Anglesey, where English traitors were in league
with him. Before January there had been large submissions
to Bruce in the northern counties, partly from
compulsion of arms, partly from starvation; and the
chronic feuds between the town and the castle of Berwick
were dangerously aggravated by the high-handedness of the
constable, Sir Roger de Horsley, who hated all Scots
impartially and intensely.

At last a burgess of Berwick, Peter (or Simon) de
Spalding, exasperated by Horsley’s supercilious harshness—bribed
with ready money and promise of lands, the Lanercost
chronicler says; corrupted by Douglas, says John of
Tynmouth—entered into communication with the Marshal
(or the Earl of March) for the betrayal of the town. By
direction of the King, the Marshal (or March) ambushed at
night in Duns Park, where he was joined by Randolph and
Douglas. Advancing on foot, the Scots planted their
ladders unperceived and scaled the wall at the point
where Simon was in charge. The temptation to plunder
upset the order of attack, two-thirds of the party scattering
themselves over the town, breaking houses and slaying
men. The opposition of the town’s people was easily
overcome, but when the garrison sallied, Randolph and
Douglas were dangerously weak. Sir William de Keith,
however, exerted himself conspicuously, as became a
brand-new knight, in collecting the Scots, and after very
hard fighting the garrison was driven in. Bruce presently
came up with large reinforcements, but the castle held out
tenaciously, and surrendered only to famine. The town
was taken on March 28 (Fordun), or April 2 (Lanercost);
the castle held out gallantly till past the middle of July,
and even then Horsley marched out his famished garrison
with the honours of war. Bruce installed as warden
Sir Walter the Steward. Peter of Spalding, says John
of Tynmouth, proved troublesome in insisting upon his
promised reward; and, on an accusation of plotting against
the life of King Robert, was put to death. The allegation
recalls the case of Sir Peter de Lubaud.

125
Edward was extremely incensed at the Mayor and burgesses
of Berwick, who had undertaken, for 6000 marks,
to defend the town for a year from June 15, 1317. He
ascribed the loss of it to their carelessness, and in the
middle of April he ordered that their goods and chattels,
wheresoever found, should be confiscated, and that such
of them as had escaped into England should be imprisoned.
On June 10, 1318, he summoned his army to meet him at
York on July 26, to proceed against the Scots.

Meantime the Scots were proceeding with vigour against
him. For soon after the capture of Berwick town, Bruce
detached a strong force to ravage the northern counties.
They laid waste Northumberland to the gates of Newcastle,
starved the castles of Harbottle and Wark into surrender,
and took Mitford Castle by stratagem. They sold immunity
to the episcopate of Durham, excepting Hartlepool,
which Bruce threatened to burn and destroy because some
of its inhabitants had captured a ship freighted with his
‘armeours’ and provisions. Northallerton, Ripon, Boroughbridge,
Knaresborough, Otley and Skipton were guiding-points
in the desolating track of the invaders. Ripon and
Otley suffered most severely, and Ripon paid 1000 marks
for a cessation of destruction. Fountains Abbey also paid
ransom; Bolton Abbey was plundered; Knaresborough
Parish Church bears to this day the marks of the fire that
burnt out the fugitives. The expedition returned to Scotland
laden with spoils, and bringing numerous captives and
great droves of cattle. The Archbishop of York postponed
misfortune by being too late with measures of resistance.
But he energetically excommunicated the depredators, all
and sundry.

On hearing of Bruce’s reception of the envoys, the Pope
had authorised the Cardinals, on December 29, to put in
execution the two Bulls of excommunication prepared in
the previous March. The Cardinals, however, would seem
to have delayed. On June 28, 1318, when the Pope
heard of the woeful adventures of Adam de Newton and
of the capture of Berwick despite his truce, he ordered
them to proceed. For Bruce, he said, had ‘grievously’
(dampnabiliter) ‘abused his patience and long-suffering.’
In September accordingly they excommunicated and laid126
under interdict Bruce himself, his brother Edward, and all
their aiders and abettors in the invasion of England and
Ireland. ‘But,’ says the Lanercost chronicler, ‘the Scots
cared not a jot for any excommunication, and declined to
pay any observance to the interdict.’ In October, Edward
followed up his diplomatic success by pressing hard for
the deposition of the Bishop of St Andrews, but the
Pope easily found good technical pleas whereby to avoid
compliance.

The Irish expedition came to a disastrous close on the
fatal field of Faughart, near Dundalk, on October 5 (or
14), 1318. A vastly superior English army, under Sir
John de Bermingham, moved against the Scots; and King
Edward the Bruce, wrathfully overruling the counsels of
his staff, disdaining to wait for the approaching reinforcements
from Scotland, and despising the hesitations of his
Irish allies, dashed against the tremendous odds with his
native impetuosity.

Barbour gives the numbers at 2000 against 40,000, no
doubt with generous exaggeration. King Edward fell at
the first onset, killed by a gigantic Anglo-Irish knight, Sir
John de Maupas, who was found lying dead across his
body. Sir John the Steward, Sir John de Soulis, and
other officers were slain. Barbour tells how Sir Philip
de Mowbray, stunned in action, was led captive by two
men towards Dundalk; how he recovered his senses
sufficiently to realise his position, shook off his captors,
drew his sword and turned back towards the battle-field,
and how he cleared a hundred men out of his way as
he went. John Thomasson, the leader of the Carrick
men, took him in charge, and hurried him away towards
Carrickfergus. But the brave defender of Stirling had
received a mortal wound. King Edward’s body was
dismembered, the trunk buried at Faughart, and the
limbs exposed in Irish towns held by the English. The127
head is said to have been sent to England to Edward;
but Barbour tells how King Edward the Bruce had that
day exchanged armour with Gilbert the Harper, as he
had done before at Connor, and how it was Gilbert’s
head that had been mistakenly struck off and despatched
to England. The remnants of the Scots army reached
Carrickfergus with the utmost difficulty, and hastily took
ship for Scotland, where the news was received with great
lamentation. Bermingham was created Earl of Louth for
his victory. It is curious to observe that his wife was a
sister of the Queen of Scotland.

The death of Edward Bruce disturbed the settlement of
the succession, which was again brought under consideration
of Parliament, on December 3, at Scone. Robert,
the son of Sir Walter the Steward and the late Princess
Marjory, was recognised as heir, with a proviso saving
the right of any subsequent male issue of King Robert.
In case of a minority, Randolph was to be guardian; and
failing Randolph, Douglas.

No sooner had the sentences of excommunication been
promulgated than King Robert took measures to have
them revoked or mitigated. He had good friends at
Rome. Letters from these had fallen accidentally into
the hands of Edward, who, on January 12, 1318–19, sent
them to the Pope by the hands of Sir John de Neville,
and asked His Holiness to deal suitably with the writers.
A few days before, he had urged the two Cardinals to
press the Pope to reject the applications that he heard
were being made on behalf of Bruce and his friends, and
stated that he would presently send envoys to the Pope
himself. Neville was graciously received, and the Pope
ordered the Scots and their abettors at his court to prison.
On April 24, the Pope granted Edward’s request for a
Bull permitting him to negotiate for peace with the Scots
notwithstanding their excommunication. But the pressure
was not all on one side; the nuncios in England boldly
exercised their powers, and had often to be restrained
even by royal menace, while every ecclesiastical office was
steadily claimed for the papal nominee. Bruce appears
to have deemed it prudent to raise little formal objection
to the papal appointment of ecclesiastics up and down128
Scotland, though some of them evidently had but a seat
of thorns.

From March to May there was an interesting correspondence
between Edward and some minor states and
municipalities on the other side of the North Sea, whose
people, Edward understood, had harboured, or even
assisted, his Scots enemies. They all denied the allegation.
The statesmanlike answer of the Count of Flanders,
however, is peculiarly notable. ‘Our land of Flanders,’
he wrote, ‘is common to all men, of whatever country,
and freely open to all comers; and we cannot deny
admission to merchants doing their business as they
have hitherto been accustomed, for thereby we should
bring our land to desolation and ruin.’

But Berwick must be recaptured. On the loss of
Berwick town, Edward had angrily summoned his forces
to muster at York on July 26, 1318. So few of them
appeared, however, that he was forced to postpone the
expedition. On June 4, 1319, he ordered the Welsh
levies to be at Newcastle by July 24 at latest; and, two
days after, he wrote to the Pope that he hoped now ‘to
put a bit in the jaws of the Scots.’ But another postponement
was forced on him. On July 20, however, he
issued a peremptory order for a muster at Michaelmas.
His May parliament at York had granted him certain taxes,
his treasury being ‘exhausted more than is believed’; and
his good friend the Pope had added a material contribution.
But the levy could not be collected till Michaelmas,
and meantime the King appealed for an advance. There
must have been a favourable response, for early in September
he encamped before Berwick with some 10,000 or 12,000
men, his fleet occupying the harbour. Having entrenched
his lines, he delivered a general assault on September 7.
The besiegers hastily filled the dykes and placed their
scaling-ladders, but the garrison threw them down as
fast as they were raised. The lowness of the wall was
not altogether in favour of the assailants, for the besieged
on the top could easily thrust their spears in their faces.
In the course of the afternoon the English brought a ship
on the flood-tide up to the wall, with a boat lashed to midmast,
whence a bridge was to be let down for landing a129
storming party. They were embarrassed in their efforts,
however, and the ship, being left aground by the ebb-tide,
was burned by the Scots, the sallying party with difficulty
regaining the town. The fight went on briskly till night,
when the combatants agreed to postpone its renewal for
five days.

Though King Robert had mustered a considerable
force, probably as large as Edward’s, he deemed it more
prudent to despatch it on a raid into England than to
launch it directly against the English entrenchments. He
had, indeed, good reason to rely upon the skill and energy
of the Steward. The five days’ truce over, the English,
on September 13, moved forward on wheels an immense
sow, not only covering a mining party, but carrying
scaffolds for throwing a storming party on the wall. By
this time, John Crab, whom we have already met as a
sea-captain or pirate, and whom the Count of Flanders
presently assured Edward he would break on the wheel,
if he could only get hold of him, had proved himself
engineer enough to devise a ‘crane,’ which must have
been of the nature of a catapult; and this engine he ran
along the wall on wheels to encounter the sow. The
first shot passed over the monster; the second just fell
short; the third crashed through the main beam, and
frightened the men out. ‘Your sow has farrowed,’ cried
the Scots. Crab now lowered blazing faggots of combustible
stuff upon the sow, and burnt it up. But presently
another attempt was made from the harbour, and
Crab’s engine was hurried up to fight ships with top-castles
full of men, and with fall-bridges ready at midmast.
The first shot demolished the top gear of one
of the ships, bringing down the men; and the other ships
kept a safe distance.

Meantime the general attack raged all along the wall.
Sir Walter the Steward rode from point to point, supplying
here and there men from his own bodyguard, till it
was reduced from a hundred to a single man-at-arms.
The severest pressure was at Mary Gate. The besiegers
forced the advance barricade, burned the drawbridge,
and fired the gate. Sir Walter drew reinforcements from
the castle, which had not been attacked, threw open Mary130
Gate and sallied upon the foe, driving them back after a
very hard struggle, and saving the gate. Night separated
the combatants. Barbour tells how the women and
children of the town had carried arrows to the men
on the walls, and regards it as a miracle that not one
of them was slain or wounded. But clearly the Steward
could not sustain many days of such heavy fighting.

The Scots army under Randolph and Douglas had
meanwhile followed the familiar track through Ripon
and Boroughbridge, harrying and burning and slaying.
They appear to have made a serious attempt to capture
Edward’s Queen, who was then staying near York; but
the Archbishop, learning this intention from a Scots spy
that had been taken prisoner, sallied forth and brought
her into the city, and sent her by water to Nottingham.
Trokelowe speaks of certain ‘false Englishmen’ that had
been bribed by the Scots, and Robert of Reading specifies
Sir Edmund Darel as the guide of the invaders in the
attempt. Next day the Archbishop, with Bishop Hotham
of Ely, the Chancellor of England, and an unwieldy
multitude of clergy and townspeople numbering some
10,000, advanced against the Scots between Myton and
Thornton-on-Swale, about twelve miles north of York.
‘These,’ said the Scots, ‘are not soldiers, but hunters;
they will not do much good.’ For the English ‘came
through the fields in scattered fashion, and not in united
order.’ The Scots formed a schiltron, and set fire to some
hay in front, the smoke from which was blown into the
faces of the English. As they met, the Scots raised a great
shout, and the enemy, ‘more intent on fleeing than on fighting,’
took to their heels. The Scots mounted in pursuit,
killing (says the Lanercost chronicle) clergy and laymen,
about 4000, including Nicholas Fleming, the Mayor of
York, while about 1000, ‘as was said,’ were drowned in the
Swale. Many were captured and held to heavy ransom.
The Archbishop lost, not only his men, his carriages, and
his equipment generally, but all his plate, ‘silver and bronze
as well,’ which his servants had ‘thoughtlessly’ taken to
the field; and yet the blame may rest elsewhere, for
the York host appears to have fully anticipated that the
Scots would flee at sight of them. The Primate’s official131
cross was saved by the bearer, who dashed on horseback
through the Swale and carefully hid it, escaping himself in
the dusk of the evening. Then a countryman, who had
observed the cross and watched the bearer’s retreat, discovered
it, wound wisps of hay about it, and kept it in his
hut till search was made for it, whereupon he restored it
to the Archbishop. Such is John of Bridlington’s story.
The whole episode contrasts markedly with the exploit of
Bishop Sinclair in Fife. It was contemptuously designated,
from the number of ecclesiastics, ‘the Chapter of Myton.’

The Myton disaster occurred on September 20, and on
September 24 Edward raised the siege of Berwick. Certain
chroniclers speak of intestine dissensions, and particularly
of a quarrel with Lancaster over the appointment of wardens
of town and castle once Berwick was taken. The Lanercost
chronicler says Edward desired to detach a body to
intercept the Scots, and with the rest to carry on the siege;
but his magnates would not hear of it. He accordingly
abandoned the siege, and marched westward to cut off the
retreat of the Scots. Randolph had penetrated to Castleford
Bridge, near Pontefract, and swept up Airedale and
Wharfdale; and, passing by Stainmoor and Gilsland, he
eluded Edward’s army, and carried into Scotland many
captives and immense plunder. It remained for Edward
but to disband his troops, and go home, as usual, with
empty hands.

About a month later (November 1), when the crops were
harvested in northern England, Randolph and Douglas
returned with fire and sword. They burnt Gilsland, and
passed down to Brough (Burgh) under Stainmoor; turned
back on Westmorland, which they ravaged for ten or twelve
days, and went home through Cumberland. They mercilessly
burnt barns and the stored crops, and swept the
country of men and cattle.

Edward began to think of truce. In his letter of December
4 to the Pope, he represents that urgent proposals
for peace had come to him from Bruce and his friends. In
any case, the step was a most sensible one. On December
21, terms were agreed on, and next day Bruce confirmed
them. This truce was to run for two years and the odd
days to Christmas. Bruce agreed to raise no new fortresses132
within the counties of Berwick, Roxburgh, and Dumfries.
He delivered the castle of Harbottle to Edward’s commissioners,
‘as private persons,’ with the proviso that, unless
a final peace were made by Michaelmas, it should be either
redelivered to him or demolished. On August 25, 1321,
Edward commanded that it should be destroyed ‘as secretly
as possible.’

In autumn 1319, the Pope, at the instance of Edward,
had given orders for a revival of the excommunications
against Bruce and his friends; but on January 8, 1319–20,
he cited Bruce and the Bishops of St Andrews, Dunkeld,
Aberdeen, and Moray, to compear before him by May 1.
The summons went unheeded; he had not addressed
Bruce as King. Excommunications were again hurled at
Bruce and his bishops, and Scotland was laid under
ecclesiastical interdict. Meanwhile, however, the Scots
‘barons, freeholders, and all the community of the realm’—no
churchmen, be it observed—assembled at Arbroath
Abbey on April 6, and addressed to his Holiness a memorable
word in season. First, as to their kingdom and their
King:

Our nation continued to enjoy freedom and peace under the protection
of the Papal See, till Edward, the late King of the English, in
the guise of a friend and ally, attacked our realm, then without a head,
and our people, then thinking no evil or deceit, and unaccustomed to
war or aggression. The acts of injury, murder, violence, burning,
imprisonment of prelates, burning of abbeys, spoliation and slaying of
ecclesiastics, and other enormities besides, which he practised on our
people, sparing no age or sex, creed or rank, no man could describe
or fully understand without the teaching of experience. From such
countless evils, by the help of Him that woundeth and maketh whole,
we have been delivered by the strenuous exertions of our Sovereign
Lord, King Robert, who, for the deliverance of his people and his
inheritance from the hands of the enemy, like another Maccabeus or
Joshua, cheerfully endured toils and perils, distress and want. Him
the Divine Providence, that legal succession in accordance with our
laws and customs, which we are resolved to uphold even to death, and
the due consent of us all, made our Prince and King. To him, as the
man that has worked out the salvation of the people, we, in maintenance
of our freedom, by reason as well of his merits as of his right,
hold and are resolved to adhere in all things. If he should abandon
our cause, with the intention of subjecting us or our realm to the King
of England or to the English, we should instantly strain every nerve
to expel him as our enemy and the subverter of both his own rights
and ours, and choose another for our King, such a one as should133
suffice for our defence; for, so long as a hundred of us remain alive,
never will we be reduced to any sort of subjection to the dominion of
the English. For it is not for glory, or riches, or honours, that we
contend, but for freedom alone, which no man worthy of the name
loses but with his life.

With this noble and resolute declaration, they appealed to
the Pope to ‘admonish’ Edward, who ought to be content
with his own dominions, anciently held enough for seven
kings, and ‘to leave in peace us Scotsmen, dwelling in our
poor and remote country, and desiring nothing but our
own,’ for which ‘we are ready and willing to do anything
we can consistently with our national interests.’ But,
further, as to the Pope himself:

If, however, your Holiness, yielding too credulous an ear to the
reports of our English enemies, do not give sincere credit to what we
now say, or do not cease from showing them favour to our confusion,
it is on you, we believe, that in the sight of the Most High, must be
charged the loss of lives, the perdition of souls, and all the other
miseries that they will inflict on us and we on them.

This memorable declaration was not without effect. On
August 13, the Pope earnestly impressed Edward with the
duty of keeping on good terms with Bruce. And on
August 18, he wrote that, on the prayer of Bruce by his
envoys, Sir Edward de Mambuisson and Sir Adam de
Gordon, he had granted suspension of the personal citation
and of the publication of the sentences till the 1st of April
next year.

134

CHAPTER XII
PEACE AT THE SWORD’S POINT

The Scots manifesto of April 6, 1320, presented a united
and firm front to English pretensions and Papal intrigues.
Yet there were traitors in the camp. Little more than four
months had elapsed when the Black Parliament, held at
Scone on August 20, was investigating a conspiracy to kill
King Robert and elevate to the throne Sir William de
Soulis. Sir William was a brother of Sir John, and a
grandson of Sir Nicholas, one of the Competitors in 1292.
Edward’s emissaries had been tampering with the fidelity
of King Robert’s barons.

The plot still remains involved in obscurity. It was
discovered to the King, Barbour heard, by a lady. Gray,
however, as well as John of Tynmouth, states that the
informant was Sir Murdoch de Menteith, who had come
over to Bruce in 1316–17, and remained on the Scots side
till his death some sixteen years later; but, apart from his
name, there seems no reason to suppose that he was in
Edward’s pay. Sir William was arrested at Berwick, with
360 squires in his livery (says Barbour), to say nothing of
‘joly’ knights. He openly confessed his guilt, and was
interned for life in Dumbarton Castle. The Countess of
Strathearn was also imprisoned for life. Sir David de
Brechin, Sir John de Logie, and Richard Brown a squire,
were drawn, hanged, and beheaded. Sir Roger de Mowbray
opportunely died; but his body was brought up and
condemned to be drawn, hanged, and beheaded—a ghastly
sentence considerately remitted by the King. Sir Eustace
de Maxwell, Sir Walter de Barclay, Sheriff of Aberdeen,
Sir Patrick de Graham, and two squires, Hamelin de
Troupe and Eustace de Rattray, were fully acquitted.
Soulis, Brechin, Mowbray, Maxwell, and Graham had all135
attended the Arbroath parliament, and put their seals to
the loyal manifesto.

It is far from evident why Soulis escaped with imprisonment
while Brechin and others were sent to the gallows.
Robert may have judged that Soulis was a tool rather than
prime mover of the plot; he may have regarded the long
service of the culprit; he may have softened at the recollection
of his brother Sir John’s death by his own brother
Edward’s side. Brechin, no doubt, had considerable services
to his credit. But his record shows grievous instability,
and Robert probably had sound reasons for putting
a period to his dubieties. His fate aroused painful regrets.
Barbour narrates that Sir Ingram de Umfraville openly
censured the sight-seers at his friend’s execution, obtained
leave to give the body honourable burial, and prepared to
quit Scotland, telling the King he had no heart to remain
after seeing so good a knight meet with such a fate. This
story of Barbour’s has been too hastily discredited.

The position of Bruce remained unshaken. On November
17, Edward instructed various high officers to receive
to his peace, ‘as secretly as they could,’ such Scots as felt
their consciences troubled by the papal excommunication;
and, on December 11, the Archbishop of York was empowered
to release all such renegades from the censure of
the Church. Sir Ingram de Umfraville was re-established
in his Northumberland estates (January 26), and Sir Alexander
de Mowbray (February 18) and Sir William de
Mohaut (May 20) obtained Edward’s pardon. But Bruce
was practically unaffected by Edward’s subterranean diplomacy.

Openly, Edward maintained due observance of the
truce, and by the middle of September 1320, had taken
steps towards a final peace. The negotiations begun at
Carlisle at Michaelmas were resumed at Newcastle on
February 2, and continued for nine weeks; papal commissioners
being present, and French envoys fostering the
cause of peace. But the deliberations were fruitless. The
Earl of Richmond’s production of a mass of old parchments
to demonstrate Edward’s overlordship of Scotland
indicates how little the English King and commissioners
realised the facts of the situation.

136
Throughout the summer and autumn of 1321, Edward
was in hot water with the barons of the Welsh border. At
the July parliament at Westminster, he was compelled to
banish the Despensers, and to send home the turbulent
lords with pardon. These troubles prevented him from
sending the promised envoys to ‘enlighten the consciences’
of the Pope and his Cardinals as to the wickedness of the
Scots. On August 25, however, he wrote the usual
denunciatory generalities, and yet again impressed on his
Holiness the necessity of dealing severely with Bruce and
his adherents. The summons of Bruce and his four
Bishops had meanwhile been postponed to September 1;
but even then they did not compear. Edward’s envoys,
at last despatched on December 8, were still in very good
time. Having taken Leeds Castle in Kent and driven
back the marauding Marchers to the Welsh border, he
informed the Pope that his domestic troubles were settling
down, and, in view of an expedition on the expiry of the
Scots truce at Christmas, he appealed for a subsidy from
Rome. But already Lancaster was stretching one hand to
Bruce and the other to the malcontents of the Welsh
March.

The Marchers rose, but Edward proved himself the
stronger, and by the third week of January received the
submission of the Mortimers. On February 8, he tried
conciliation with Lancaster, and also authorised Harcla to
treat with Bruce for ‘some sort of final peace.’ Lancaster,
however, received the Welsh insurgents, and harassed
Edward’s advance, but was compelled to fall back on his
castle of Pontefract.

Lancaster’s negotiations with the Scots had begun as
early as December. His emissary, Richard de Topcliffe,
an ecclesiastic, had obtained a safe-conduct from Douglas
(December 11) to visit Jedburgh, and one from Randolph
(January 15) to come to him wherever he could find him.
Randolph was then at Corbridge on a swift raid, while
Douglas and the Steward advanced, the one towards Hartlepool
and the other towards Richmond, harrying or taking
ransom. Immediately on the junction of Hereford and his
Marchers with Lancaster at Pontefract, in the beginning
of February, before they went south to oppose Edward’s137
advance, the rebel chiefs despatched John de Denum with
a letter to Bruce, Randolph, and Douglas, ‘or which of
them he shall soonest find,’ asking an appointment for a
final agreement. The precise terms proposed were presently
found on the dead body of Hereford at Boroughbridge.
Bruce, if not detained by illness or other serious cause,
and Randolph and Douglas, with their power, shall join
the Earls in their enterprise ‘in England, Wales and
Ireland, and with them live and die in the maintenance
of their quarrel, without claiming conquest or dominion
in the said lands of England, Wales, and Ireland.’ The
Earls, on their part, shall never aid Edward against the
Scots, and, their quarrel ended, shall do their best to
establish and maintain peace between the two countries
on the footing of independence. Fortunately for Edward,
John de Denum lost ten days in his peregrinations. He
missed Douglas on February 7, and was unable to obtain
his reply till February 17. On February 16, Randolph,
then at Cavers, near Hawick, had issued a safe-conduct
for Sir John de Mowbray and Sir Roger de Clifford to
come to him in Scotland. In either case, the ten days
were gone. But for this accident, the history of the
English crown would probably have been turned into another
channel.

The approach of the royal troops decided the insurgents
to retire towards the Scots, to Lancaster’s castle of Dunstanburgh.
At Boroughbridge, however, they were confronted
by Harcla on March 16, and disastrously defeated.
Hereford was slain on the bridge; Lancaster was captured,
tried, and beheaded. Harcla was created Earl of Carlisle.
‘Do not trouble yourself,’ wrote Edward to the Pope
(March 25), ‘to proclaim a truce between me and the Scots.
Formerly some exigencies inclined me to a truce, but now,
thank God, these no longer exist, and I am constrained, by
God’s help, to war them down for their broken faith.’

Edward at once summoned his army to muster at Newcastle
by the second week in June; but early in May he
postponed the assembly till July 24. By that time, however,
the Scots had completed another destructive raid. Before
mid June, a force had crossed the western March; and in
the beginning of July, Robert himself, with Randolph and138
Douglas, penetrated beyond Preston and ravaged the
length and breadth of Lancashire and the archdeaconry
of Richmond, burning Lancaster town and castle ‘so entirely
that nothing is left,’ and carrying off what cattle had
not been driven for safety into the remoter parts of Yorkshire.
They do not seem to have encountered local opposition.
As they returned, they lay five days before Carlisle,
without drawing forth the prudent Harcla; and on July 24,
they struck their tents for home.

The English army followed them, entering Scotland by
the eastern March in the first days of August. Robert
withdrew both men and cattle from the Merse and the
Lothians, either to the strongholds or beyond the Forth,
and lay with his army at Culross. Barbour tells how an
English foraging party found but one lame cow at Tranent:
‘It is the dearest beef I ever saw yet,’ remarked Warenne,
‘it must have cost £1000 and more.’ Edward himself
subsequently wrote that he had ‘found neither man nor
beast’ in the Lothians. The English fleet failed to bring
up provisions, and, on August 23, Edward found himself with
some 7000 men at Leith, in like predicament with his
father before the battle of Falkirk. He was starved into
retreat. Immediately the Scots hung upon his rear, and
Douglas cut up an advance company of 300 men near
Melrose. The English had sacked Holyrood; they now
sacked Melrose Abbey, killing the prior and others; and
they burnt to the ground Dryburgh and other monasteries.
‘But,’ says Fordun, ‘God rewarded them therefor.’

Bruce instantly followed up his advantage. By the
middle of September, the Scots were before Bamborough
and Norham. Bamborough bought off the invaders; and
on September 26, Sir Roger de Horsley, the constable, as
well as the constables of Warkworth, Dunstanburgh, and
Alnwick castles, received a severe wigging from Edward
for not showing fight against such an inferior force. Norham
was defended by Sir Thomas Gray the elder against an
inadequate body of 200 Scots. Edward displayed great
energy of rebuke and counsel, while Robert steadily advanced
southwards. On October 14, the English army
barred the way on the ridge of Blackhowe Moor between
Biland and Rievaulx; but Bruce’s rapid action enabled139
him to strike a decisive blow before the Earl of Carlisle,
who was at Boroughbridge with 2000 (surely not, as some say,
20,000) horse and foot, could effect a junction, if indeed he
really meant to do so.

Douglas at once offered to storm the English position,
and Randolph, leaving his own division, led the way up the
hill as a volunteer. The Scots were strongly opposed by
Sir Ralph de Cobham, who was held to be the best knight
of his day in England, and by Sir Thomas Ughtred, constable
of Pickering, whose gallantry in the fight raised him
to a higher position than even Cobham. The assailants
were grievously embarrassed by stones rolled down upon
them and by the fire of the archers. Robert supported
them by sending ‘the Irishry,’ the Argyll Highlanders, and
the men of the Isles to scramble up the crags in flank. At
the top they were confronted by the main body under the
Earl of Richmond, but they charged with such impetuosity
as broke the English ranks and scattered them in flight;
Gray even uses the conventional expression, ‘like a hare
before hounds.’ ‘In these days,’ says John of Bridlington,
‘the Lord took away the hearts of the English.’ Richmond
was captured and held to heavy ransom (14,000 marks).
Lord Henri de Sully and other French knights surrendered
to Douglas; by arrangement with whom, King Robert soon
released them by way of diplomatic compliment to the King
of France. Edward narrowly escaped from Biland Abbey
and fled through the night to Bridlington, whence the prior
conducted him to Burstwick. Sir Walter the Steward pursued
as far as York. Robert occupied the abbeys of Biland
and Rievaulx and divided the spoils of the English camp
and the king’s baggage. Then, making Malton his headquarters,
he wasted Yorkshire at his will, taking ransoms
from Ripon, Beverley, and other towns, and despoiling
religious houses; and he returned, with immense booty,
to keep Christmas in Scotland.

Three calamitous invasions in one year might well have
induced reflection in a statesmanlike mind. They merely
excited Edward’s impotent eagerness for revenge. But the
Earl of Carlisle, as doughty a warrior as the best, saw that
the contest was both hopeless and ruinous; and on January 3,
1322–23, he was closeted with Randolph at Lochmaben.140
There and then they drafted an agreement. The fundamental
provisions were: (1) that each realm should have
its own national King; (2) that the Earl should aid King
Robert in maintaining Scotland against all gainsayers; and
(3) that King Robert and the Earl should maintain the
realm of England under the direction of a council of
twelve, six to be chosen by each party. Then, if the
King of England should assent to these conditions within
a year, King Robert was to found an abbey in Scotland,
of 500 marks rent, for the souls of the men slain in war,
and to pay an indemnity of 40,000 marks within ten
years; and the King of England was to have the marriage
of the heir male of the King of Scotland under advice of
the council of twelve.

Harcla at once published the terms of the agreement,
and they were received with intense satisfaction on the
Border. He appears to have acted in concert with the
chief officers in these parts, and to have believed, or at
least professed, that he acted within the terms of his commission.
Edward, however, on January 8, ordered that
no truce be made without his knowledge, and summoned
Harcla to his presence; and on January 19, he sent a copy
of the Lochmaben indenture to his Council at York, with
the comment that it appeared to him ‘fraught with great
danger.’ He had already (January 13) instituted a search
of the Chancery rolls for any authorisation to Harcla to
treat with the Scots. On February 25, Harcla was arrested
in Carlisle Castle; and on March 3, he was tried, condemned,
and barbarously executed. The charge of treason, though
formally too well grounded, was essentially baseless; otherwise
it is unintelligible that Harcla should have limited his
measures of self-defence to the procurement of the formal
oaths of the northern sheriffs to stand by him ‘in all things
touching the common good of England and the said peace.’
His action was simply the action of a strong, business-like,
and patriotic man, forgetful of finesse. His mistake lay in
omitting to obtain express authority to treat, and in neglecting
either to veil his contempt for the King, or to provide
against his natural resentment, inflamed as it was sure to
be by the envy of personal enemies.

The death of Harcla, the keenest and ablest warrior in141
England, did not remove the difficulties from Edward’s
path. In a fortnight he was treating for peace—’was
frightened, and begged for peace,’ according to the Flores
Historiarum—though in his own perversely maladroit
fashion. On March 21, Robert wrote to Lord Henri de
Sully, Edward’s envoy, in substance this:

The King of England’s letter, of which you sent me a copy yesterday,
bears that he has granted a cessation of arms to the people of
Scotland at war with him. This language is very strange to me. In
former truces taken between us, I was named principal of the one
part, as he was of the other part, although he did not vouchsafe to
me the title of King. But on this occasion, no more mention is made
of me than of the least person in my realm; so that, in case of a
breach, I should be no more entitled than another to demand redress.
Do not be surprised, then, that I do not agree to this truce. If, however,
it were put before me in the proper way, I should willingly
sanction it, as I promised you. I send you a copy of the King’s
letter; for I imagine you have not seen it, or, if you have, you have
paid but scant attention to its terms.

After some futile negotiations at Newcastle, a truce was
at last concluded at Bishopsthorpe, near York, to last till
June 12, and for thirteen years thereafter. On May 30,
1323, Edward ordered it to be proclaimed throughout
England; and on June 7, Robert ratified it at Berwick.
Each party was to evacuate all lands of the other by
June 12; neither party was to build or repair fortresses
on the March, excepting constructions in progress; and
Edward was to interpose no obstacle to any attempt of
Robert and his friends to obtain absolution at Rome.
During the negotiations, Edward had been summoning
his forces in England, Ireland, and Gascony, in the
belief that the Scots were really purposing another invasion;
but in the first days of June he countermanded
the muster.

King Robert was sincerely anxious to set himself and
his people right with the Church. He despatched Randolph
as his ambassador. On his way south, Randolph,
with the Bishop of St Andrews, treated with Edward’s
commissioners for a final peace; and, at any rate, on
November 25, he got Edward to write to the Pope and
the Cardinals in favour of a grant of absolution to the
Scots during the peace negotiations. How Randolph142
fared at Rome we learn from a letter of the Pope’s to
Edward, dated January 1, 1323–24. First, he begged for
the usual indulgences necessary to enable him to fulfil his
vow to go on a crusade. The Pope refused: there would
be little good to the Holy Land or to his own soul, while
he lay under the Church’s censure; but the request might
be reconsidered if he would effect a permanent peace with
England and satisfy the Church. Secondly, Randolph
prayed for safe conducts for Bruce’s envoys, presently to
be sent to procure reconciliation with the Church. The
Pope refused, for the present, but he agreed to direct the
usual application to the princes on the line of route.
Thirdly, Randolph put forward Robert’s readiness to join
the King of France in his proposed crusade, or, if the
King of France did not go, then to proceed himself or
send Randolph instead. The Pope replied that reconciliation
with the Church was an indispensable condition
precedent. Fourthly, Randolph declared that King Robert
and himself desired above all things to obtain peace and
reconciliation, and that it really lay with His Holiness to
bring their ardent desires to fruition. Let him address
himself to Robert as King, and Robert would readily
respond to his wishes; it was the reservation of the
royal title that blocked the way. The Pope consented
to address Robert by the royal title.

Edward was keenly annoyed. The Pope, after setting
forth the facts of Randolph’s interview, had earnestly
begged Edward not to take it ill that he had consented
to address Robert as King. It could do him no harm;
it could do Robert no good. He was intensely anxious
for peace, and, if he did not give Robert the royal title,
Robert would not look at his letters any more than he had
done before. But Edward did not agree. He bluntly
urged that the concession would prejudice his right and
his honour, bring discredit on the Church, and enable
Bruce to make capital of his wrong-doing. He recapitulated
his claims to Scotland, contended that no change
should be introduced during the truce, and pointed out
that the concession would be popularly construed as a
papal confirmation of Bruce’s title. Let the title therefore
be reserved as before.

143
Then Edward played another card: he invited Edward
de Balliol, son of ex-King John, to come over to England.
The safe-conduct was issued on July 2; and it was not
Edward’s fault that Balliol postponed his visit. Meantime,
in the midst of conflict with France over Aquitaine, Edward
continued negotiations with Robert for final peace. But
no agreement could be reached. The true cause appears
in Edward’s letter of March 8, 1324–25, to the Pope.
There had recently been a meeting of envoys at York,
but the Scots would not yet budge from their old position,
and ‘I could not meet their wishes without manifest
disherison of my royal crown.’ His envoys had proposed
to refer the knotty point to the decision of His Holiness;
but ‘this they absolutely declined.’ The Scots, indeed,
had apparently stiffened their demands. According to
the Monk of Malmesbury, they had claimed not only the
independence of Scotland, but also the north of England
down to the gates of York (by right of conquest), and the
restoration of Bruce’s manor of Writtle in Essex, as well
as of the famous coronation stone.

In May, Scots envoys were again on the road to Rome,
and Edward wrote to the Pope, informing him that he was
sending ambassadors to guard his own interests. Again,
on September 23, he wrote to the Pope and the Cardinals
urging them not to recall the sentences of excommunication
till the Scots should surrender Berwick to him—Berwick,
captured treacherously in defiance of the papal truce.
The Pope consented, and on October 18 Edward expressed
effusive thanks. But he reaped no advantage
from the diplomatic victory: in three months he was
deposed by his Parliament for notorious incompetence.

On January 25, 1326–27, Edward, Prince of Wales, a
boy of fifteen, was proclaimed King. He presently confirmed
the thirteen years’ truce (February 15), and
appointed envoys to treat for final peace (March 4).
The meeting was to take place on the March on May 17.
But, on April 5, Edward III. summoned his power to
be at Newcastle by May 18, averring that he had sure
information that Robert was massing his troops on the
Border with the intention of invading England if his own
terms of peace were not conceded. It seems much more144
likely that Robert’s action was purely precautionary in
view of the disturbed condition of the English March;
but a hostile construction was favoured by the fact that
many of the most turbulent fellows in Northumberland
were Scots. On the other hand, Barbour is likely enough
to be right in asserting that Robert was unable to
obtain redress for the seizure of Scots vessels in English
and Flemish waters; and it may be, as he says, that for
this reason Robert openly renounced the truce. At the
same time, Robert must have heard of Edward’s warlike
preparations by land and sea. This may be what Fordun
has in view when he says that the duplicity of the English
was at length laid bare. Edward’s summons was issued
on April 5, and Froissart places Robert’s formal defiance
‘about Easter’ (April 12); but this date must be nearly
two months too early. One thing is certain: Robert
was in no aggressive mood, and would not have resumed
hostilities without really serious provocation.

About the middle of June a body of Scots crossed the
Border, and on July 4 they were at Appleby, almost in
touch with the Earl Marshal. Edward was at York, where
he had been joined by Sir John of Hainault, Lord of
Beaumont, with a body of heavy cavalry, between whom
and the English archers much bad blood had been spilt
in the streets of York. His army was very large—Barbour
says 50,000; Froissart says upwards of 40,000 men-at-arms;
Murimuth says three times as large and strong
as the Scots army—a force difficult alike to handle and
to feed in a rough and wasted country, especially in face
of the Scots veterans. On July 13, Edward had reached
Northallerton, and had learned that the Scots intended
to mass their forces near Carlisle.

By this time the Scots army, under Randolph and
Douglas, had ravaged Coquetdale and penetrated into
the Episcopate of Durham. When Edward reached Durham
city, he was apprised of the passage of the Scots
by a track of smoking ruins and devastated fields. He
decided to bar their return. Advancing with his cavalry,
he crossed the Tyne at Haydon Bridge (July 26), leaving
his infantry on the south side. But the Scots did not
come, and between drenching rains and lack of provisions145
his troops were worn out in body and in temper. The men,
says Froissart, ‘tore the meat out of each other’s hands’;
and ‘great murmurs arose in the army.’ After a week’s
distressful experience, he determined to seek the enemy
southwards, and offered a reward of £100 a year in land,
as well as knighthood, to the man that should bring him
in sight of them ‘on hard and dry ground’ fit for battle.
He crossed the Tyne at Haltwhistle fords, losing many
men in the swollen river. On the fourth day, Thomas
de Rokeby reported the Scots, and brought Edward face
to face with them on the Wear.

The Scots were strongly posted on a rising ground
on the south bank: Froissart numbers them 24,000;
Barbour, much more probably, 10,000. Douglas made
a reconnaissance, and reported a strong army in seven
divisions. ‘We will fight them,’ cried Randolph, ‘were
they more’; but Douglas counselled patience. Presently
Edward sent heralds, offering to retire far enough to allow
the Scots room to array themselves for battle on the north
side on the morrow; or, if the Scots preferred, to accept
like terms on the south side. It was an unconscious
repetition of the offer of Tomyris, Queen of Massagetai,
to Cyrus, on the Araxes river. But the Scots, evidently
too weak to fight in a plain field, replied that they would
do neither the one thing nor the other; that the King
and his barons saw they were in his kingdom and had
burnt and pillaged wherever they had passed, and that,
if this displeased the King, he might come and amend
it; for they would tarry there as long as they pleased.’
That night the English lay on their arms. Part of the
Scots also kept themselves in readiness, while the rest
retired to their huts, ‘where they made marvellously great
fires, and, about midnight, such a blasting and noise with
their horns that it seemed as if all the great devils from
hell had been come there.’

The next two days the Scots and English lay watching
each other across the Wear. On the first day, a thousand
English archers, supported by men-at-arms, attempted to
draw the Scots. Douglas, planting an ambush under
the Earl of Mar (who had at length joined the Scots)
and his own son Archibald of Douglas, rode forward,146
with a cloak over his armour, and gradually gave way
to their onset, till he had enticed them within reach of
the ambush. At Douglas’s signal, the ambush broke
upon the pursuers, and slew 300 of them. Next day,
the English put 1000 horsemen in ambush in a valley
behind the Scots position, and delivered a front attack.
Douglas was advancing to repel the assailants when he
was informed of the force in rear, and instantly drew
back his men. ‘They flee,’ cried some Englishmen;
but John of Hainault explained the manœuvre, and,
according to Barbour, pronounced the Scots captain fit
‘to govern the Empire of Rome.’

On the following morning—probably August 3—the
Scots were gone. They had moved about two miles
along the river, and occupied a still stronger position in
Stanhope Park. In the afternoon the English were again
facing them. About midnight, Douglas, with 200 horsemen—Barbour
says 500—crossed the Wear, and rode
boldly into the English camp. ‘No guard, by St George!’
he exclaimed, on being discovered, as if he were an English
officer. He made right for the King’s pavilion, and, shouting
his war-cry, actually ‘cut two or three of its cords.’
The King most narrowly escaped capture or death.
Douglas got clear with but insignificant loss, and, collecting
his men by a prearranged note of his horn, he returned
to camp. Randolph, who was waiting under arms, ready
for rescue or aid, eagerly asked the news. ‘Sir,’ replied
Douglas, ‘we have drawn blood.’

The success of Douglas suggested to Randolph that a
larger party might have inflicted defeat on the English.
Douglas had his grave doubts. Randolph again proposed a
pitched battle. Douglas objected, in view of the disastrous
effects in case of defeat. No; better treat the English as
the fox treated the fisherman. The fox had entered the
fisherman’s cottage and was eating a salmon. The fisherman
discovered him, and stood on the threshold with a
drawn sword in his hand. The fox, seeing the fisherman’s
cloak on the bed, dragged it into the fire. Thereupon the
fisherman rushed to save his cloak, and the fox bolted out
at the unguarded door. Douglas, in fact, had planned a
mode of escape, and, though somewhat wet (‘sumdele147
wat’), it would serve. Randolph gave way. So the Scots
made merry in the day time, burnt great fires at night, and
blew their horns ‘as if all the world were theirs.’ Occasional
skirmishes took place, and the English drew round the
Scots on both sides, leaving their rear open on a morass
believed to be impassable. Meantime Douglas made his
preparations.

It was probably on the night of August 6–7 that Douglas
led the Scots army out of Stanhope Park. He took them
across the morass, about a mile wide, over a causeway of
branches, which the rear demolished as they passed. The
men led their horses, and only a few baggage animals stuck
fast. By daybreak the Scots were far on the way homewards.
The English had been completely outwitted. On
the day before, they had captured a Scots knight, who told
them that orders had been issued ‘for all to be armed by
vespers and to follow the banner of Douglas,’ he did not
know where. The English lords suspected a night attack,
and remained under arms. In the morning, two Scots
trumpeters, who had been left to blow misleading blasts,
were brought into camp. ‘The Scots,’ they said, ‘are on
the march home, since midnight; they left us behind to
give you the information.’ The English, fearing a ruse,
continued to stand to their arms till their scouts confirmed
the mortifying intelligence.

The Scots were soon met by a considerable body of their
countrymen under the Earl of March and Sir John the
Steward. They all hurried back to Scotland by the western
march. The English retired to Durham, and then to York,
where the army was disbanded on August 15. Edward
is said to have shed bitter tears over the collapse of his
expedition. Some of the chroniclers allege unsupported
charges of treachery, and mistakenly accuse Mortimer of
accepting a heavy bribe to wink at the escape of the Scots.
But the plain fact is that the English were outgeneralled at
every turn.

It was neither age nor sickness, as the chroniclers allege,
that prevented King Robert from leading the Weardale
foray. He was away in Ireland, creating a diversion. On
July 12, at Glendun in Antrim, he granted a truce for a
year to Henry de Maundeville, the English seneschal of148
Ulster, and his people, on condition of their delivering a
certain quantity of wheat and barley at Lough Larne. The
expedition does not seem to have been directly prosperous;
the Irish, whom he had expected to rise and join him in
Ulster, having apparently broken faith.

Immediately on the return of the Scots from Weardale,
King Robert passed into Northumberland. He sent Randolph
and Douglas to besiege Alnwick Castle; set down
another division before Norham Castle; and, with a third
body, himself overran the neighbourhood. He even granted
away the English lands to his chief followers. The attempt
on Alnwick was unsuccessful, and, the open country having
bought a truce, the leaders concentrated on Norham. On
October 1, while Bruce still lay before Norham, Edward
appointed commissioners to treat with him for final peace.
After negotiations at Newcastle and York, the treaty was
signed by Robert at Edinburgh on March 17; confirmed
by the English Parliament on April 24; and finally, on
May 4, signed by Edward at Northampton. Edward conceded
in the fullest terms the absolute independence of
Scotland as the marches stood in the days of Alexander III.,
and agreed to deliver up all extant documents relating to
the overlordship, and in any case to annul them; and he
consented to aid Robert to obtain the revocation of the
papal processes. Robert agreed to pay £20,000 sterling
in three years. And the peace was to be cemented by the
marriage of David, the Scots heir-apparent, a boy of four,
with Joan, King Edward’s sister, a girl of six. In England,
the peace was freely stigmatised as ‘shameful,’ and the
marriage as ‘base’; partly on patriotic grounds, partly from
dislike of Queen Isabella and Mortimer, who guided the
policy of the King. The news of the death of the King of
France no doubt gave an impulse to the English decision,
for it would be necessary for Edward to have his hands
free to assert his claim to the succession. The conditions
were alike ‘honourable for the Scots and necessary for
England.’

149

CHAPTER XIII
THE HEART OF THE BRUCE

King Robert the Bruce died at Cardross on the
Clyde, on June 7, 1329, a little more than a month
before the completion of his fifty-fifth year. The cause
of his death is said to have been leprosy. Barbour says
it was the development of a severe cold, a benumbment
contracted in the hardships of his early wanderings.
Apart from specific disease, the strain of his laborious
reign of nearly a quarter of a century would have shaken
the strongest constitution of man.

In the last three years he had been struck by two severe
bereavements: the death of his son-in-law, Sir Walter the
Steward, a knight of great promise, on April 9, 1326; and
the death of the queen, at Cullen, on October 26, 1327.
In the latter year, indeed, in spite of increasing illness, he
had taken the field in Ireland and in Northumberland.
But he had been unable to attend the marriage of David
and Joan at Berwick in July 1328. Still he continued to
move about quietly. When, however, Douglas brought
him back from a visit to Galloway in the end of March
1329, it was not to be concealed that ‘there was no way
for him but death.’ And, accordingly, he set his house
in order.

On October 15, 1328, the Pope had at last granted
absolution to Robert from the excommunication pronounced
by the cardinals, and, on November 5, authorised
his confessor to give him plenary remission in the hour
of death.

At a parliament held on November 14, 1328, at Scone,
it had been settled that, in the event of David’s dying
without heir male of his body begotten, Robert the
Steward, son of Marjory, should succeed; and that, if
King Robert died during David’s minority, Randolph150
should be regent, and, failing Randolph, Douglas. David
and Joan were crowned, and David received homage and
fealty.

On May 11, 1329, the King assembled his prelates and
barons to hear his last wishes. He gave directions for
liberal largess to religious houses, with special consideration
for Melrose Abbey, where he desired his heart to
be buried. He declared his long-cherished intention—Froissart
says his ‘solemn vow’—after bringing his realm
to peace, ‘to go forth and war with the enemies of Christ,
the adversaries of our holy Christian faith.’ As he had
been unable to carry out his fixed purpose, he wished
his heart to be taken and borne against the foes of God.
On Douglas was laid this great and noble charge. Froissart
mentions a specific instruction: ‘I wish that you convey
my heart to the Holy Sepulchre where our Lord lay, and
present it there, seeing my body cannot go thither. And
wherever you come,’ added the King, ‘let it be known
that you carry with you the heart of King Robert of Scotland,
at his own instance and desire, to be presented at the
Holy Sepulchre.’ Douglas solemnly pledged himself to this
last faithful service.

On the death of King Robert, his heart was embalmed,
and enclosed in a silver casket ‘cunningly enamelled,’
which Douglas bore always about his neck. Strangely
enough, even in death, the King came in conflict with
Rome; for the excision of his heart was a breach of a
Papal Bull of 1299, involving excommunication of the
mutilators, and excluding the body from ecclesiastical
burial. On August 13, 1331, the Pope, at the prayer of
Randolph, granted absolution to all that had taken part
‘in the inhuman and cruel treatment’ of the King’s body.

The body was embalmed, and carried through the
Lennox, and by Dunipace and Cambuskenneth, to
repose with the body of the Queen in Dunfermline
Abbey—since Malcolm Canmore, the last resting-place
of the Kings of Scotland. Over the King’s grave was
erected a marble monument, which he had ordered from
Paris a twelvemonth before his death. It might have been
supposed that never in time would any Scotsman lay a rude
hand on the sepulchre of the greatest of Scottish kings;151
yet on March 28, 1560, an insensate rabble of ‘Reformers’
razed the abbey to the ground, and broke in pieces the
royal monument. In 1818, when foundations for a new
church were being cleared, there were found, in a grave in
front of the spot where the high altar of the Abbey Church
had stood, the bones of a man whose breast-bone had
been sawn asunder, and who had been buried in fine linen
shot with gold thread. The probability that these were the
bones of Bruce was enhanced by the surrounding fragments
of black and white marble, well-polished, carved, and gilt.
There lay also a mouldering skull, which five centuries
agone may have held the powerful brain that dominated
the field of Bannockburn.

Douglas set about his preparations. Now that peace
with England was established, and Randolph held the
reins of State, there was no national reason why Douglas
could not be spared for a time. Nor would warriors like
Bruce and his paladins have ever weighed for a moment
the risks of the sacred mission. It seems a misapprehension
to suggest either selfishness or ingratitude on the part of
the dying King. Nor is there any substantial ground for
imagining that Robert feared any lack of harmony between
his two great lieutenants. Barbour’s casual suggestion of
petty rivalry between them cannot weigh for a moment
against their constant association in scores of enterprises.
Their rivalry was of noble quality. The King had made a
knightly vow, and that vow he must, as far as might be,
perform; it was hardly less a national than a personal
obligation.

On September 1, Douglas obtained from Edward III.
letters of protection for seven years, and a letter of commendation
to Alfonso XI., King of Castile and Leon.
On February 1, 1329–30, the day of the patron saint of
his house, St Bride, he bestowed lands on the Abbey of
Newbattle to secure her special intercession in his spiritual
interests. Shortly thereafter he set out on his mission,
with ‘a noble company’—one knight banneret, seven
other knights, twenty-six squires, and a large retinue.
According to Froissart, he sailed from Montrose to Sluys,
where he lay twelve days, thinking he might be joined by
other knights ‘going beyond the sea to Jerusalem’; and152
then to Valencia in Spain. According to Barbour he
sailed from Berwick direct to Seville. In any case, he
proceeded to the camp of Alfonso, then on his frontier
warring against Osmyn, the Moorish King of Granada,
and was received with honour befitting his fame and his
mission. The knights with Alfonso were eagerly curious
to see the famous Scot; and one notable warrior expressed
his great surprise that Douglas’s face was not seamed with
scars like his own. ‘Praised be God!’ said Douglas, ‘I
always had hands to defend my head.’

On August 25, 1330, the Christian and Moorish armies
faced each other near Theba on the Andalusian frontier.
Froissart states that Douglas mistook a forward movement
of the Spanish troops for the onset of battle, and charged
the Moors furiously; but the Spaniards had halted and
left him unsupported. The story seems little consonant
with Douglas’s warlike intelligence. Barbour says that
Alfonso assigned to Douglas the command of the van—which
is very unlikely, unless he also assigned him an
interpreter. He also asserts that Douglas hurled the
precious casket ‘a stone-cast and well more’ into the
ranks of the enemy, exclaiming—

and that he fought his way to it and recovered it, ‘taking
it up with great daintie.’ This, too, is but a fantastic
embellishment of the cloister. Barbour, of course, proceeds
to rout the Moors and to make Douglas press on
ahead of his company, attended by only ten men. Seeing
Sir William de St Clair surrounded, however, Douglas
spurred to his friend’s rescue, but was overpowered by
numbers and slain. Among those that fell with him were
Sir William de St Clair and Sir Robert and Sir Walter
Logan.

The bones of Douglas were brought home by Sir
William de Keith, who had been kept out of the battle by
a broken arm, and were buried in the church of St Bride
of Douglas. The silver casket with the heart of Bruce
was buried by Randolph, ‘with great worship,’ in Melrose
Abbey.

153
Douglas has been charged with breach of trust. It is
argued that he ought not to have gone to Spain, but to
have crossed the continent to Venice or the south of
France, and made direct for Jerusalem. It is hardly
worth while to remark that this is just what Boece says he
did, his death taking place in Spain on his way home. It
is more to the purpose that the Holy Sepulchre was then
in the hands of the Saracens, and that Spain was the
central point of opposition to the infidels. But what
Douglas ought or ought not to have done depends solely
on the precise terms of his trust; and it may be taken as
certain that he knew King Robert’s mind better than
either Barbour or Froissart, or even their critics, and that
he decided on his course in consultation with Randolph
and the other magnates, prelates as well as barons.
Edward’s safe conduct and commendatory letter show by
their terms that his going to Spain was no afterthought,
but his original intention. To attribute to Douglas lack of
‘strength of purpose’ is to miss the whole significance of
his career.

King Robert must obviously have been a man of
powerful physique and iron constitution. The early hardships
and continuous toils of his reign could not have been
sustained by any ordinary frame; and his recorded feats of
strength, such as in the case of Wallace have been scouted
as fabulous, have always been accepted without question.
The Merton MS. of the ‘Flores Historiarum’ calls him ‘a
very powerful man,’ on the occasion of his striking down
Comyn. The killing of Sir Henry de Bohun in face of
both armies speaks convincingly of muscle as well as of
nerve. If the bones discovered in 1818 were his, they indicate
that he stood about six feet in height. ‘In figure,’ says
Major, ‘he was graceful and athletic, with broad shoulders.
His features were handsome, and he had the yellow hair
of the northern race, and blue and sparkling eyes.’

Bruce’s outstanding characteristic, in Barbour’s analysis,
was his ‘hardiment:’ he ‘hardy was of head and hand.’
That is to say, he was a strong, bold, and resolute soldier.
But with hardiment he joined ‘wit’—judgment, prudence,
measure; and the union of the two is ‘worship.’ This154
‘worship’ was undoubtedly the fundamental cause of
Bruce’s great career; and the most simple and conspicuous
illustration of it is seen in the dramatic episode of De
Bohun’s death. Fordun pronounces that he ‘was, beyond
all living men of his day, a valiant knight.’ And Barbour
sums up—

It was this splendid hardiment controlled and directed
by cool judgment, and supported by untiring industry in
details, that ranked King Robert not merely as the second
knight in Christendom, but as one of the most renowned
generals of the age. His patient drudgery of preparation,
his wary dispositions, his firmness of resolution, his promptitude
to mark and remedy a weakness of his own and to
strike hard at a weakness of the enemy, were superbly
illustrated on the field of Bannockburn. King Robert’s
military renown does not need the false attribution of
tactical discoveries that he certainly did not make. It was
not Bannockburn that showed him what infantry could do
against mailed cavalry; nor was it the example of the
Flemings at Courtrai. Sir William Wallace had proved
the power of the schiltron before Bannockburn and before
Courtrai; and he is not to be deprived of the honour by
the imperfect historical knowledge of Sir Thomas Gray.
If the tactic was known in these islands before the time of
Wallace, or if Wallace gained the knowledge of it from
elsewhere, the fact yet remains to be historically demonstrated.
King Robert and his generals simply practised
the lesson of Wallace with notable ability. Nor did they
advance beyond Wallace in the still more important
principles of large strategy. But, apart from this, the
Bruce’s capacity as a military commander stands forth pre-eminent.
And though many painful incidents inevitably
stain the records of his campaigns, they are attributable
more to the age than to the man. It is impossible to
charge on his memory any reckless or wanton cruelty.
His mind with all its sternness ever tended to clemency,
and his constitutional prudence, or measure, forbade
purposeless excess.

155
The incessant demands of war left Robert but scant
leisure for internal administration, notwithstanding the
diligent service of his eminently capable lieutenants.
Apart from necessary inference and from incidental indications,
his care for civil order and good government is
conspicuously manifested in the legislation of the Scone
Parliament, December 3, 1318; and there is abundant
evidence of his fostering watchfulness over the commercial
traffic with Continental countries. The Cambuskenneth
Parliament, July 15, 1326, has a constitutional interest, as
the first great council where burgesses are known to have
sat with the baronage. The trading communities were
worth consultation when a heavy war tax was to be levied,
and the country was so cruelly impoverished. There can
be no doubt that Robert’s management of home affairs
was watchful, energetic, and liberal.

In the conduct of his foreign relations, the Bruce proved
himself an adept in diplomacy. His dealings with the
Continental princes, mainly in regard to shipping and
commerce, were conciliatory and businesslike. His political
transactions with the English sovereign and with the
Pope were uniformly characterised by astute perception,
reasonableness to the point of generosity, courteous but
rigid firmness on every essential point, and fidelity to
engagements.

The occupations of the King’s late and brief leisure may
be read between the lines of the Exchequer Rolls: how he
kept open house at Cardross, dispensed gifts and charities,
pottered (with Randolph) at shipbuilding, sailed his great
ship between Cardross and Tarbet, built Tarbet Castle,
added a wing to his mansion, tended his garden, and so
forth; and how he kept a pet lion at Perth, where he
seems to have spent parts of his last two years.

Bruce was twice married. First, to Isabel, daughter of
the Earl of Mar, the mother of Marjory. Second, to
Elizabeth, eldest daughter of De Burgh, Earl of Ulster,
who bore him two sons and two daughters: Matilda and
Margaret, after 1316; David, March 5, 1324; and John,
who died in infancy. The most distinguished of his
other children, Sir Robert de Brus, fell at Dupplin in
1332.

156
Bruce has been called by Lord Hailes (after Rapin) the
‘restorer of Scottish monarchy.’ The monarchy was a
small matter; Bruce was the restorer of Scottish independence.
But the conditions of the case are apt to be misconceived.
The incalculable services of Sir William
Wallace, through nearly ten years of incomparably heroic
struggle against the great Edward in his full vigour, are too
often forgotten, or belittled. But for Wallace, it is more
than probable that Bruce would never have been King of
Scotland. He built on Wallace’s foundations.

Comyn being dead, Bruce possessed the admitted right
to the crown, without even the semblance of competition—a
powerful aid in his enterprise. He started in the
acquisitive spirit of an Anglo-Norman baron, and was
carried through largely by his personal gallantry, his
military capacity, his consummate prudence, and his
indomitable resolution. Though the mass of the people
rallied to him but slowly through many years, yet he at
once gained the more ardent patriots; and, in particular,
he had the instant support of the leading prelates, and, at
the Dundee Parliament on February 24, 1308–9, the formal
adhesion of the clergy generally. Nor is it easy to overestimate
the aid of three such paladins as Edward de Brus,
Randolph, and Douglas. And not the least of the grounds
of Bruce’s success is to be sought in the feebleness and
foolishness of Edward II. and the stupid oppressions
practised by his local officers. Still, with full acknowledgment
of these supports, King Robert was and is the central
figure in the final establishment of the independence of
Scotland.

One is strongly inclined to believe that the services of
Sir Edward de Brus, Lord of Galloway and Earl of
Carrick, have been seriously underrated, partly no doubt
through his own besetting fault. When we remember how
boldly he is said to have counselled action on the return
from Rathlin, how vigorously he cleared the English out of
his lordship of Galloway, and how ably he bore the brunt
of the heaviest fighting at Bannockburn, we cannot but
suspect that his glory has been unduly dimmed by the
splendour of his brother, and by the inappreciation of his
monkish critics. The main certainty about his hapless157
expedition to Ireland is the certainty that he fought with
the most chivalrous ardour. He was not only ‘hardy’
but, according to Barbour, ‘outrageous hardy’—a prototype
of Hotspur. His habitual exaltation of mind is well
expressed by the Archdeacon, when he describes him in
face of vastly superior numbers at Kilross:

Undoubtedly his ‘hardiment’ overbore his ‘wit’; yet one
may safely doubt whether the Archdeacon was the man
to take his military measure. At the very least, he must
have been a powerful force in urging unmitigated hostility
against the English; and his dash in battle must have
proved a potent force on many a stricken field.

In the absence of Sir Edward, Randolph ranked as first
lieutenant. He was Bruce’s nephew, son of Isabel de
Brus and Thomas Randolph of Strathdon.2 From Lord
of Nithsdale, he blossomed into Earl of Moray, and Lord
of Annandale and of Man. As soldier, diplomatist, and
statesman, he displayed pre-eminent ability. Barbour represents
him as of moderate stature, proportionably built,
‘with broad visage, pleasing and fair,’ and a courteous
manner. ‘A man he was,’ says Lord Hailes, most justly,
‘to be remembered while integrity, prudence, and valour
are held in esteem among men.’ He survived King
Robert a little over three years.

The good Sir James of Douglas ranked second to Randolph158
only because Randolph was the King’s nephew.
From his early teens he displayed a gallant and chivalrous
spirit, a mind set on honour, and withal a conspicuous gift
of strategic device. If we may rely on Barbour, he was
even more cautious than the well-balanced Randolph; yet,
when occasion served, he could display the adventurous
dash of Sir Edward de Brus; and he exhibited a splendid
tenacity. According to Froissart, he was ‘esteemed the
bravest and most enterprising knight in the two kingdoms.’
Like most great commanders, he rendered his men devoted
to him by a large generosity, not merely in division of the
spoils, but also in recognition of valiant deeds. Barbour
tells us that

a bold principle that often decided the fight—like Bruce’s
principle of striking hard at the foremost line. After he
slew Sir Robert de Neville,

And Barbour had often heard tell that wives would frighten
their wayward children into obedience by threatening to deliver
them to the Black Douglas. The Leicester chronicler
says ‘the English feared him more than all other Scotsmen’;
for ‘every archer he could take, either his right
hand he cut off or his right eye he plucked out,’ and, for
the sake of the archers, he always took his vengeance on
an Englishman in the severest form he could devise. This
view is not corroborated, however, and it may be a generalisation
from some particular case. But, while terrible to
the enemy—’a brave hammerer of the English,’ as Fordun
says—Douglas is represented as charming to his friends.

Scott’s picture of the Knight of the Tomb, while based on
Barbour’s description, verges on caricature.

Was King Robert the Bruce a patriot? The question,
startling as it may be, especially to trustful readers of uncritical
laudations, may no longer be avoided.

It is not necessary to repeat the outlines of his political
attitude during the storm and stress of Wallace’s memorable
struggle. Can it be supposed, then, that a man may become
patriotic after his thirty-first year? With his assumption of
the kingly office, Bruce’s baronial and royal interests coincided
with the interests of Scotland, and it may be that
some feeling of the nature of patriotism may have thus developed
in his breast. The manifesto of the barons and
other laymen in 1320, apart from its dramatic purpose, may
be taken to indicate that the external reasons for the King’s
profession of patriotism were not less potent than his private
reasons. Let us concede to him the benefit even of grievous
doubt. For, be his motives what they may, the practical
outcome was the decisive establishment of the independence
of the realm of Scotland, and he remains for ever the
greatest of the line of Scottish Kings.