The Complete Kingdom Trilogy (152 page)

BISSOT, Rossal de

Fictional character, descendant of Geoffrey de Bissot, one of the nine founding knights of the Templar Order. He is trying to rescue what remains of the disbanded Order while, at the same time, aware that the power and arrogance of the Poor Knights of the Temple are what has brought them to the brink. He and de Villers, Widikind von Esbeck and de Grafton are the last of the Templar Knights in Scotland, attempting to barter money and weapons with Bruce for a peaceful resting place for fleeing members who wish to remain as simple Benedictine monks.

BOHUN, Henry de

The Earl of Hereford's nephew, probably no more than twenty-two in 1314 and one of the new breed of knights excelling in
tournoi
, the new one-on-one style of knightly combat gaining ascendancy over the old-fashioned mass combat of
grande mêlée
. Famously, he charged against the lightly mounted and armoured King Robert, only to be killed. The style of fighting described as favoured by Bruce is accurate – the German Method involved avoiding heavily armoured opponents trying to bowl you over and attacking them on a faster, more manoeuvrable mount. In the
grande mêlée
, when capturing a knight meant a deal of prize, it was a sensible if unchivalric way of fighting, but such combats frequently degenerated into brutal riots with scarcely a trace of chivalry. Here, I use it as it was almost certainly designed: to hit your bigger, stronger, better-armoured opponent from behind.

BOHUN, Humphrey de

The Earl of Hereford in 1314 and Constable of England. As such, he should have been given command of the army, but was out of favour with Edward II over the murder of Piers Gaveston. Command instead went to Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester (see below). At Bannockburn, therefore,
Hereford argued with Gloucester constantly over the conduct of the army, making coherence virtually impossible. Following the
defeat, Hereford was forced north, taking refuge in the
only English-held castle left, Bothwell. However, the commander of Bothwell promptly changed sides and imprisoned him and all the other lords who had escaped with him. Hereford was eventually ransomed for Bruce's sister and
daughter – pointedly, Isabel MacDuff was not included. Historically, this is a good clue that she was probably dead by this time.

A firm opponent of the Despensers, Hereford eventually rebelled against Edward II. At the Battle of Boroughbridge, Hereford led a desperate assault to try and force the said bridge and so avoid being trapped between two armies. In the affray, he was stabbed from below the bridge, up under his armour and into his anus, the soldier allegedly twisting the pike into his intestines; his dying screams helped to panic the army into fleeing.

BRUCE, Edward

King Robert's sole surviving brother and, in lieu of any other relevant offspring, heir to the throne. History has it that his ill-conceived truce with de Mowbray, English commander of Stirling, enraged Bruce, who then had to fight a pitched battle. While I am sure it did enrage his royal brother, I am also certain Edward knew exactly what he was doing and for the reasons I mention. Rash and ambitious, Edward was given men and means to invade Ireland in 1315, ostensibly to carry the war to England's supporters. He made himself High King in Ireland but was defeated and captured in the Battle of Faughart (also known as the Battle of Dundalk) on 14 October 1318. He was hanged, drawn and quartered and his head sent to Edward II. Ironically, among the many other Scots lords who died fighting with him that day was a certain Sir Philip de Mowbray, former commander of the garrison at Stirling and reconciled to King Robert's peace upon the surrender of the fortress following Bannockburn.

BRUCE, Robert

King Robert I, now known as Robert the Bruce. His father, also Robert, was Earl of Annandale. His grandfather, also Robert, was known as the Competitor from the way he assiduously pursued the Bruce rights to the throne of Scotland, passing the torch on to his grandson. While Edward II vacillated and wilted under setbacks, the harried Bruce shouldered on; the story of the spider, though apocryphal, shows that the spirit of the man served as an uplifting moral message for later generations. The Curse of Malachy was a very real threat to the Bruces, silly though it may seem to our twenty-first-century irreligious sophistication, while the illness Bruce suffered was a continual worry. It may well have been leprosy – there are many forms of it – or a simple skin complaint, but investigations of his skull reveal extensive damage to the right cheek and a considerable wound injury above and below the left eye, though he was not blinded. The Pilkington statue at the Bannockburn Heritage Centre may well show the glory of the king, but the reality seems to have been painful, ugly and, towards the end of his life (in his mid-fifties), his face may well have been blurred and coarsened by illness as well. Myth and legend have similarly blurred the Hero King, bathing him in a golden glow that masks the reality of both appearance and character.

CAMPBELL, Dougald, Laird of Craignish

The 6th Laird of Craignish, the lands on the wild Argyll peninsula, is in his early forties at the time of Bannockburn and heading off to support his chief, Neil Campbell. The Campbell of Craignish shields are defiantly recognizable and much copied by re-enactors, even over the famous black galley on gold of the MacDonalds of Angus Og. Described as
gyronny of eight or and sable, the shield hanging from the mast of a lymphad sable
, it simply means a series of eight triangles, alternated yellow and black, on a shield seemingly hung from a horizontal black bar. It is, in fact, an even older runic symbol which gives more than a hint at the Craignish Campbells' Viking ancestry.

CAMPBELL, Sir Neil

Known as Niall mac Cailein (Neil, Colin's son), he was a firm adherent of Edward I, having sworn fealty to him on the Ragman Roll of 1296. A decade later, however, with Edward handing Campbell lands to English knights, Neil Campbell was ripe for rebellion and finally joined Robert the Bruce in 1306. He was one of the few men who stuck with the ill-fated King Robert following defeats at Methven and Dalrigh. Eventually, as a reward, Neil Campbell received Bruce's sister, Mary, as a wife and the lands confiscated from the turncoat David Strathbogie, Earl of Atholl (see below). His son, Iain, eventually became earl.

CLARE, Sir Gilbert de

Earl of Gloucester, whose mother was Joan of Acre, Edward I's sister. Being so closely related to Edward II, he was yet another of those favourites who replaced Gaveston. Aged only twenty-three, he was given command of the army over the head of Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford (see above), who was Constable of England. In fact, Edward fudged the issue by declaring them joint commanders, which was a recipe for disaster since they disliked one another. Unhorsed and barely rescued on the first day of Bannockburn, Gloucester was killed the next day, though the actual circumstances remain unclear.

CLIFFORD, Sir Robert

One of Edward I's trusted commanders and a member of the original gilded youth of the Feast of the Swans in 1306 – but, eight years on, the youth and gilt are wearing thin on all that band. Clifford and Sir Henry Percy were given the task of subduing the initial Scottish revolt and negotiated Bruce and other rebel Scots nobles back into the ‘King's Peace' in 1297, but could not overcome Wallace. Clifford also brought a retinue to fight at Falkirk which included knights from Cumbria and Scotland, one of the latter being a certain Sir Roger Kirkpatrick of Auchen Castle, Annandale, and the ‘real' Kirkpatrick who murdered the Red Comyn. Clifford was at the Siege of Caerlavrock Castle in 1300, according to the Caerlavrock Roll – the list of knights present – and at Bannockburn in 1314, where he was killed.

CRAW, Sim

A semi-fictional character. Sim of Leadhouse is mentioned only once in history, as the inventor of the cunning scaling ladders with which James Douglas took Roxburgh by stealth in 1314. Here, he is Hal of Herdmanston's right-hand man, older than Hal – who is himself old – powerfully built and favouring a big arbalest, a steel-constructed crossbow spanned (cocked) using a winding mechanism and usually used in sieges.

DALTOUN, Thomas

Technically, a real character. A Thomas was Abbot of Inchaffray in 1296 and I have found references to Thomas Daltoun as Bruce's chaplain. Since the Bruce chaplain in 1314 was supposedly Maurice, the abbot who came after Thomas, I fancy there has been a confusion somewhere and that Thomas, resigning as abbot in favour of Maurice, then became the Bruce chaplain. Consequently, I have arbitrarily decided that it was he who famously blessed the army at Bannockburn with the arm of St Fillan.

DOG BOY

Fictional character, the lowest of the low, a houndsman in Douglas and of age with the young James Douglas. By 1314, the skinny youth has grown into a formidable warrior and the very image of the equally fierce Sir James. It is clear to most folk that they are sprung from the same sire. However, while the long years of brutal warfare have simply honed the hate of Sir James, the Black Douglas, they are beginning to tell on Dog Boy.

DOUGLAS, Sir James

Lord of Douglas Castle in south-west Scotland, son of Sir William the Hardy, he was known both as the Black Douglas (if you were his enemy and demonizing him with foul deeds) and the Good Sir James (if you were a Scot lauding the Kingdom's darling hero). In the years between his return to Scotland – just as Bruce became king – and 1314 he has become a byword for vicious cruelty. Particularly memorable is the Douglas Larder, where he famously slaughtered the garrison and collaborators of his own castle, then held by the Cliffords, put them in the storehouse and burned the place. His implacable hatred of the English is matched only by his daring and, save for one slight hiccup, his loyalty. Following Bannockburn, Sir James Douglas made the Border area uniquely his own, and the form of warfare – fast raiders on light horses – a lasting legacy for that region. In 1327, he surprised and destroyed an army led by yet a third Edward, almost capturing the young King. In 1329, following the death of Bruce, he famously took the royal heart on Crusade, to Spain to fight the Saracens. At Teba in Granada the following year, he took part in a battle where the Scots pursuit of the broken enemy led them too far and some were surrounded. Attempting a rescue, Douglas himself was surrounded and, taking the casket with Bruce's heart, flung it forward into the enemy, yelling that, as always, he would follow Bruce. He and all the men with him were killed. Ironically, the knight Douglas originally went to rescue was a certain Sir William Sientcler of Roslin.

EDWARD II

King of England. At the time of this novel he has spent seven years being frustrated in his attempts to secure Scotland – each campaign he has led there has resulted only in an increase of Robert the Bruce's power. Finally, facing the constrictions of the Ordainers, his own rebellious barons, he seizes the chance to finally bring the Scots to a decisive battle in 1314. The result was, arguably, the worst defeat for the English since Hastings in 1066. It plunged Edward into a vicious struggle with the Ordainer barons and, eventually, with his own queen (see below) and her lover, Roger Mortimer. Deposed and imprisoned, he was subsequently murdered, according to some accounts, by having a red-hot poker shoved into his anus. Historian Ian Mortimer argues a decent case for Edward II actually having survived, the death being faked by Mortimer and Isabella – but other historians disagree with his methodology.

GRAFTON, Sir William de

Real character whose life I have stolen and fictionalized. He is listed as one of the Preceptors of Templar commanderies in Yorkshire, arrested in 1308 and then released to the care of Henry, Baron Percy of Alnwick, in 1313, who was at odds with Edward II over the murder of Piers Gaveston. Here I have shamelessly used de Grafton as a recusant Templar sent to spy on Bruce's Spanish adventure by Henry Percy – who then does not inform his king of the vital findings. De Grafton, of course, then decides to make his own profit on the affair with ruthless murder and villainy. I chose Henry Percy as the baron betraying the English at Bannockburn with his omissions simply because he died at age forty-one of unknown cause – and rumoured poison – in October 1314 …

GRAY, Sir Thomas

Real character, whose quarrel with Henry de Beaumont led him to a rash charge at Bannockburn and his unhorsing and imprisonment. Ransomed and freed, he returned to the family lands at Heaton, where he died circa 1344. Ironically, his son, also called Sir Thomas, was captured by the Scots in 1355 and also held for ransom, whiling away the hours in Edinburgh Castle by writing the
Scalacronica
, a history of Britain from the Creation. The portion concerning Edward I and onwards is based on what he learned from his father and so is an interesting and near-contemporary record – allowing for a son's bias regarding his father's exploits, of course.

ISABELLA, Queen of England

Seen here briefly on an actual and vital mission to her father on behalf of her husband, one of the many she undertook. Still a teenager, her son – the future Edward III – is already two years old. I almost certainly malign the woman with the ‘She Wolf' image she was handed by history. Despite her later betrayal of her husband and her desposing him to rule with her lover, Mortimer, I don't actually think she was as vicious or calculatingly clever as that makes her appear.

KILWINNING, Bernard of

Bruce's Chancellor in 1314, former Abbot of Kilwinning and later Abbot of Arbroath from 1310 to 1328, he served as Chancellor until 1328 and died two years after his king, in 1331. More importantly, he is generally considered to be one of the chief authors of the Declaration of Arbroath, the stirring document asserting independence in general and Scotland's in particular, which includes the famous and much-quoted lines: