A People's History of Scotland (4 page)

In response, Edward advanced northwards, capturing stronghold after stronghold until only Stirling Castle still resisted. Before its fall in 1304, John Comyn submitted to Edward. Robert Bruce was fighting alongside Edward that year when he also became Earl of Carrick.
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In truth, the future ‘patriot king' had already had a chequered career. In 1296, after John Balliol broke off his allegiance to Edward,
Bruce pledged fealty to Edward and served in his conquering army. A year later he raided Lanarkshire alongside an English force. The next year Bruce sided with Wallace only to surrender to Edward in return for a pardon. The year after that he fought for Edward in Galloway, although twelve months later he attacked the English garrison at Lochmaben. In 1302, Bruce attended the English Parliament (at this stage an assembly of great nobles and Church leaders) while appealing to the French king for aid in a possible rebellion against Longshanks. A year on, he was Edward's Sheriff of Lanark with his salary paid in advance. Bruce sent help to the English forces besieging Stirling Castle in 1304 and in the following year was quite possibly a witness against Wallace and was granted new lands in Carrick by the English king.

The Bruce family were out to get the kingship of Scotland by any means, and hoped Edward would confer it on them. When it was clear Edward wished to abolish any separate kingdom north of the Tweed, their thoughts turned to rebellion. This was a risky venture, as it might mean loss of their lands, certainly those the family still owned in England.

Robert the Bruce, as he would become known, had support in the west of the country where his lands lay. His opponents, the Comyns, were based in Buchan and allied to the MacDougalls of Argyll. This, the War of Independence as it became known, was also a civil war in which Bruce had to defeat the supporters of Balliol as well as those Scots nobles allied to Edward. In March 1306, Bruce was crowned king of Scotland at Scone Abbey, which, however, was missing the Stone of Destiny and much of the royal regalia which had already been looted by Edward.

In June, Bruce and his men were surprised at Methven near Perth by an English force and routed. Bruce was forced to go on the run. He may have holed up in Ireland, in Kintyre or the West Highlands, where as legend has it, despairing in a cave, he was inspired by a spider trying to spin its web from one side to the other. Six times the spider tried and failed. But on the seventh attempt it was successful. Bruce, supposedly, reckoned he had lost six battles, so why shouldn't he ‘try, try again'.

The story owes much to Sir Walter Scott, writing five centuries later, but Bruce must have thought of submitting to Edward again. The king's barbaric retribution against his family must have weighed heavily with him. His brother, Neil, had been executed by Longshanks; his wife, Elizabeth, and daughter Marjorie were captured on route to find refuge in Orkney. Both were imprisoned.

They were luckier than Bruce's sister Isabella, and the Countess of Buchan, who had crowned King Robert, in keeping with the family's traditional ceremonial role. They were placed in cages, open to the elements and suspended from the ramparts of Roxburgh and Berwick Castles for four years, before being sent to convents.

Despite these threats, Bruce had made one ally, the chiefs of a rising force in the West Highlands and Hebrides, Clan MacDonald. Descendents of the Norse-Gaelic ruler Somerled, their rivals were the MacDougalls, allies of Bruce's opponents the Comyns, and they saw alliance with Bruce as a way to win back regional hegemony.

The next year, 1307, Bruce was back on his home turf and met an English army at Loudon Hill in Ayrshire. Bruce's men held the high ground. The only approach was along a narrow track through a bog. Bruce ordered ditches to be dug on either side to ensure the advancing English were restricted to the narrow track.

The poet John Barbour would write in ‘The Bruce':

The result was similar to Stirling Bridge. Hemmed in and unable to deploy their heavy cavalry, the English were defeated.

Two months later Longshanks was dead at Burgh on Sands on the English side of the Solway Firth, en route to inflict another punishment on the rebel Scots. Bruce's decisive victory over his internal enemies came in 1308 at Inverurie, where the Comyn forces were defeated. What followed was a bold and heroic conquest of one stronghold after another, with the Bruce, for instance, personally leading a night assault on Perth in January 1313 when he forded the icy moat and was first to mount the ramparts.
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That year Bruce's nephew Sir Thomas Randolph took Roxburgh Castle and, by clambering up the rock and over the ramparts, Edinburgh Castle. The other outstanding commander was Sir James Douglas, who also led daring attacks on English-held fortresses.

Having already convened a Scottish parliament and invaded northern England, Bruce was effectively king of Scotland. His brother Edward agreed with the English commander of one of the last castles to hold out, Stirling, that if he was not relieved within a year he would surrender. That deadline ended on 24 June 1314.

In the history books this was why Longshank's successor and son, Edward II, had to come north with his army. Just as likely was Bruce's declaration that if his noble opponents did not surrender by October 1314 they would lose their lands. Edward II had to act or his allies would be forced to surrender.

Bruce chose well as to where the Scots would make a stand at Bannockburn. It was a good defensive position, ideal for the Scottish pikemen. Before the battle he rode out on a pony to review his troops. An English knight, de Bohun, took the chance to ride out to attack him. Facing de Bohun, Bruce skilfully avoided the attack and struck the knight dead with an axe. That did no harm to the morale of the Scots army.

As the battle swung in Bruce's favour, the ‘small people', his camp followers, sensing booty, charged forward. To the English this seemed to be fresh reserves, and tired and on the back foot, they broke. It was one of the few occasions in medieval history where the common people were credited with any role in a military success.

Bruce was now king of Scotland, and in 1329 the nobility and bishops gathered at Arbroath Abbey to acknowledge him as sovereign. What came out of that was the Declaration of Arbroath, which rousingly
declared: ‘For we fight not for glory, nor riches, nor honour, but for freedom alone, which no good man gives up except with his life.'
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These words reflect the fact that the War of Independence had ultimately involved a section of the common people, but it should not obscure the fact this was a nobles' document, and it was their independence that was being asserted. There was little in the way of ‘freedom' for the ordinary folk over the coming centuries.

In other words, it was a warning to the king of England to stay away, but also to Robert the Bruce not to overstep the mark by attacking feudal rights.

Were those who fought at Bannockburn fighting for Scotland? The taxes imposed by the English occupiers and their press-ganging of people to serve in their army, including in France, led to ordinary people rising up. Others simply had to follow their lord if he decided to resist. The national anthem, ‘Flower of Scotland', is nearer the truth when it says they were fighting for their ‘wee bit hill and glen'. Most had no choice, having to fight for their feudal lord. As one historian argues: ‘In Scotland it is surely unlikely that many people, at least below the class of magnates, saw their primary loyalty as being to the crown as opposed to their village, burgh or province.'
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It was only in 1328 that the English recognised the Bruce as king of Scotland. The new English king, Edward III, was an infant, the country was facing civil war in which the Scots might intervene and, powerless to do much else, the English authorities had to recognise independence. Nevertheless, when Edward III came of age he would renew the war to conquer Scotland. What saved the kingdom was the outbreak of the Hundred Years' War between England and France. Once more the attention of English monarchs was focused on the richer gains to be had across the Channel, and Scotland was left to itself. Yet some notion of freedom flickered in the memory. So the poet John Barbour wrote in 1375 in ‘The Bruce':

Those words of Barbour carry greater weight because he wrote them long after Bruce's death in order to idolise Bruce as the ideal warrior king and his lieutenant, Sir James Douglas, as the ideal knight and loyal vassal. The stress of the poem is loyalty to one's superior.
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In reality the kingdom of Scotland's independence was not guaranteed. English armies, often allied with Scottish noble allies, would repeatedly invade over the next two centuries, not with the aim of occupying the country but to force the Scottish kings to acquiesce to the wishes of the king in London. Bruce's successors would find that their power was limited by a nobility keen to maintain their control over their territories.

The Unstable House of Stewart

For much of the fifteenth century England was gripped by civil war, the War of the Roses, as two aristocratic factions, the houses of Lancaster and York, fought for the throne. It was only with the victory of Henry Tudor at the Battle of Bosworth, where Richard III was killed and Henry took the Crown, that Scotland became the target of English dynastic ambitions. The English kings were determined to secure their northern border from any incursion by the Scots, who were allied by now with the French. The result was virtual permanent war during the first half of the sixteenth century. Henry VIII was also ambitious, and he was determined to annexe Scotland through dynastic marriage or military means.

Elsewhere in Europe the crisis of the late Middle Ages was resolved in two ways. In France, Spain and Austria monarchs arose who maintained the nobility in their positions of wealth but ended their right to rule as semi-kings and domesticated them by bringing them to the royal court, where they had to compete for favours and office.

The monarchs of these kingdoms also relied on the growing wealth of the towns to offset that of the nobility, for example by
borrowing heavily from them. The nobility and the top churchmen retained, though, a monopoly of the top political and military positions. They were absolute monarchs, proclaiming the divine right of kings to rule, but in reality balancing different class forces, though ultimately tied to the old feudal order. As a result the monarch failed to impose control and the country effectively became governed by warring nobles.

This was especially true in Scotland. Robert the Bruce died in 1329 and was succeeded by his son David II, who suffered a series of defeats at the hands of the English, being captured and eventually ransomed. He died childless, and was succeeded by Robert II, who was effectively removed as a ruler by rebel nobles. Next up was Robert III, whose reign was marked by wars with England and between rival nobles. When his younger brother seemed set to take the Crown, the king's son James was sent to France, but was captured en route and spent eighteen years at the English court before being allowed to return to Scotland.

James I proved a capable ruler, which ensured his assassination by nobles. James II died at the siege of Roxburgh Castle when one of his cannons blew up. James III died in battle against rebel nobles. His son took the throne as James IV and was able to break the power of the Lord of the Isles, the semi-independent realm of Clan Donald, but in order to police the Highlands had to rely on magnates, the Earls of Argyll and Huntly, heads of the Campbell and Gordon clans.

James married an English princess and tried to balance England and France, but when those two states went to war he invaded England in 1514, but was defeated and killed at Flodden Field. His infant son was crowned James V, and when he assumed control, he allied Scotland with France only to be defeated and killed in battle with the English. His heir, the infant Mary, Queen of Scots, was dispatched to France for safety and then married to the French heir, the Dauphin. Her mother, the French princess Mary of Guise, ruled in Scotland with the help of a French army.

In these years Scotland was thrust into chaos. For two centuries no Scots monarch succeeded to the throne in adulthood. For much of that time the country was ruled by a regent until the infant monarch
came of age. The regency was in turn fought over by the great nobles. This crisis of royal control led to the fragmentation of power throughout Scotland. This fragmentation continued longer in the Highlands, which remained free of royal control, and it was during this time that the clan system, feudal rule which used supposed kinship to reinforce its control, was created.
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In the course of this chaos the nobility acquired great power from the Crown, including the right to administer law as they saw fit through their own courts. The Borders, the front line with England, was relatively free of royal rule, as were the Highlands. Nobles seized hereditary control of sheriffdoms (supposedly the agents of royal control) and implemented the law through their own courts.

Such independence extended to the upper echelons of the peasantry. The churchman and historian John Major wrote in 1521 that they had a remarkable spirit of freedom and were more ‘elegant' than their French counterparts, by which he meant they tried to match the dress and arms of the lesser nobility. They were quick to draw those weapons if they felt slighted and would follow their lord anywhere if he had their respect. War and feuding were a feature of their lives, along with poverty.
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