England and Scotland in the Fourteenth Century: New Perspectives

E NGL A N D A N D SCOT L A N D I N T H E FOU RT E E N T H CE N T U RY

ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY: NEW PERSPECTIVES Edited by

Andy King Michael A. Penman

THE BOYDELL PRESS

© Contributors 2007 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner First published 2007 The Boydell Press, Woodbridge ISBN 978–1–84383–318–5 The Boydell Press is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com A catalogue record of this publication is available from the British Library This publication is printed on acid-free paper

Typeset by Carnegie Book Production, Lancaster Printed in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire

Contents

List of Contributors Acknowledgements Abbreviations 1. Introduction: Anglo-Scottish Relations in the Fourteenth Century – An Overview of Recent Research   Andy King and Michael A. Penman 2. The English Army and the Scottish Campaign of 1310–1311   David Simpkin 3. ‘Shock and Awe’: The Use of Terror as a Psychological Weapon during the Bruce–Balliol Civil War, 1332–1338   Iain A. MacInnes

vii viii ix 1 14

40

4. The Scots and Guns   David H. Caldwell

60

5. Edward Balliol: A Re-evaluation of his Early Career, c.1282–1332   Amanda Beam

73

6. Scoti Anglicati: Scots in Plantagenet Allegiance during the Fourteenth Century   Michael H. Brown

94

7. Best of Enemies: Were the Fourteenth-Century Anglo-Scottish Marches a ‘Frontier Society’?   Andy King

116

8. Dividing the Spoils: War, Schism and Religious Patronage on the Anglo-Scottish Border, c.1332–c.1400   Richard D. Oram

136

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9. The Pope, the Scots, and their ‘Self-Styled’ King: John XXII’s Anglo-Scottish Policy, 1316–1334   Sarah Layfield

157

10. Sovereignty, Diplomacy and Petitioning: Scotland and the English Parliament in the First Half of the Fourteenth Century   Gwilym Dodd

172

11. National and Political Identity in Anglo-Scottish Relations, c.1286–1377: A Governmental Perspective   Andrea Ruddick

196

12. Anglici caudati: abuse of the English in Fourteenth-Century Scottish Chronicles, Literature and Records   Michael A. Penman

216

13. Anglo-Scottish Relations in the Later Fourteenth Century: Alienation or Acculturation?   Anthony Goodman

236

Index

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List of Contributors Amanda Beam completed her doctorate in the Department of History at the University of Stirling in 2005, and is currently a teaching assistant in that institution. Michael H. Brown is a Reader in the Department of Scottish History at the ­University of St Andrews. David H. Caldwell is Keeper of Scotland and Europe for the National Museums Scotland, Edinburgh. Gwilym Dodd is a Lecturer in the School of History at the University of Nottingham. Anthony Goodman is Professor Emeritus of Medieval and Renaissance History at the University of Edinburgh. Andy King is a Research Assistant in the Department of History at the ­University of Southampton. Sarah Layfield is a doctoral student in the Department of History at Durham University, researching the development at the papal curia of concepts of nationhood and sovereignty in Scotland, Poland and Ireland, c.1299–1334, with particular focus on the pontificate of John XXII. Iain A. MacInnes is a doctoral student in the Department of History at the University of Aberdeen, researching the conduct and behaviour of Scottish armies, and the influence of chivalry on those armies, 1332–1357. Richard D. Oram is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of History, and Director of the Centre of Environmental History, at the University of Stirling. Michael A. Penman is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of History at the University of Stirling. Andrea Ruddick is a British Academy postdoctoral fellow at Pembroke College, Cambridge. David Simpkin is a Research Assistant in the Department of History at the University of Reading.

Acknowledgements The editors would very much like to thank: all the contributors for their hard work, and their forbearance during the long process of editing the book; the staff of St John’s College, Durham, for hosting the original conference which produced most of these papers; and Dr Claire Etty for helping to organise it and for her constructive comments on the Introduction. The publication of these proceedings was only made possible by the generous financial support of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Stirling, the Strathmartine Trust (St Andrews) and the Scouloudi Foundation in association with the Institute of Historical Research, London. Thanks are also due to Caroline Palmer of Boydell & Brewer for her support, guidance and – above all – patience throughout, and for that publishing house’s commitment to a growing stable of medieval collections.

Abbreviations Anonimalle, 1307–34 Anonimalle, 1333–81 ‘Annales Paulini’ APS ASR Avesbury

Barrow, Bruce BL Boardman, Stewart Kings Bower Brown, ‘War, Allegiance and Community’ Brown, Douglases Bruce, McDiarmid and Stevenson Bruce, Duncan Brut

The Anonimalle Chronicle, 1307–34, ed. W. R. Childs and J. Taylor, Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series (1991). The Anonimalle Chronicle, 1333–81, ed. V. H. Galbraith (Manchester, 1927). ‘Annales Paulini’, Chronicles of the Reigns of Edward I and Edward II, ed. W. Stubbs, Rolls Series lxxvi (2 vols, 1882–83), vol. i. The Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, ed. T. Thomson and C. Innes (12 vols, Edinburgh, 1814–75). Anglo-Scottish Relations, 1174–1328, ed. E. L. G. Stones (2nd edn, Oxford, 1970). ‘Robertus de Avesbury de gestis mirabilibus regis Edwardi Tertii’, Chronica A. Murimuth et R. de Avesbury, ed. E. M. Thompson, Rolls Series xciii (London, 1889). G.W. S. Barrow, Robert the Bruce and the Community of the Realm of Scotland (4th edn, Edinburgh, 2005). British Library (London). S. Boardman, The Early Stewart Kings: Robert II and Robert III, 1371–1406 (East Linton, 1996). Bower’s Scotichronicon, ed. D. E. R.Watt et al. (9 vols, Aberdeen and Edinburgh, 1987–98). M. Brown, ‘War, Allegiance and Community in the Anglo-Scottish Marches: Teviotdale in the Fourteenth Century’, NH xli (2004). M. Brown, The Black Douglases. War and Lordship in Late Medieval Scotland, 1300–1455 (East Linton, 1998). Barbour’s Bruce, ed. M. P. McDiarmid and J. A. C. Stevenson, Scottish Text Society (3 vols, 1980–85). The Bruce, ed. A. A. M. Duncan (Edinburgh, 1997). The Brut or Chronicles of England, ed. F. Brie, Early English Text Society (2 vols, 1906–08).



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Campbell, ‘England, Scotland’ J. Campbell, ‘England, Scotland and the Hundred Years War in the Fourteenth Century’, in Europe in the Late Middle Ages, ed. J. R. Hale et al. (London, 1965). CCR Calendar of Close Rolls (HMSO, 1892–1907). CDS Calendar of Documents Relating to Scotland, ed. J. Bain (4 vols, Edinburgh, 1881–88); vol. v: Supplementary, ed. G. G. Simpson and J. B. Galbraith (Edinburgh, 1988). CFR Calendar of Fine Rolls (HMSO, 1911–62). CPL Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers Relating to Great Britain and Ireland: Papal Letters, 1198–1513, ed. W. H. Bliss et al. (19 vols, HMSO, 1893– ). CPR Calendar of Patent Rolls (HMSO, 1891–1916). CCW Calendar of Chancery Warrants, 1244–1326 (HMSO, 1927). CIPM Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem (HMSO, 1904–68). EHR English Historical Review. ER The Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, ed. J. Stuart et al. (23 vols, Edinburgh, 1878–1908). Flores Flores historiarum, ed. H. R. Luard, Rolls Series xcv (3 vols, 1890). Foedera Foedera, conventiones, litterae et cuiuscunque generis acta publica, ed. T. Rymer (20 vols, London, 1704–35). Foedera (RC) Fœdera, conventiones, litteræ, et cujuscunque generis publica, ed. T. Rymer (4 vols in 7 parts, Record Commission edn, 1816–69). Fordun Johannis de Fordun. Chronica gentis Scotorum, ed. W. F. Skene (2 vols, Edinburgh, 1871–72). Goodman and Tuck, Border War and Border Societies in the Middle Ages, ed. Societies A. Goodman and A. Tuck (London, 1992). Great Cause Edward I and the Throne of Scotland, 1290–1296: An Edition of the Record Sources for the Great Cause, ed. E. L. G. Stones and G. G. Simpson (2 vols, Oxford, 1978). Guisborough The Chronicle of Walter of Guisborough, ed. H. Rothwell, Camden Society, 3rd ser., lxxxix (1957). Hemingburgh Chronicon domini Walteri de Hemingburgh, ed. H. C. Hamilton, English Historical Society Publications (2 vols, 1849). Haines, Edward II R. M. Haines, King Edward II. His Life, His Reign and its Aftermath, 1284–1330 (Montreal, 2003). IR Innes Review JBS Journal of British Studies. JMH Journal of Medieval History. Keen, Laws M. H. Keen, The Laws of War in the Late Middle Ages (London, 1965).

Knighton Lanercost, Maxwell Lanercost, Stevenson Lettres communes

Liber Dryburgh Liber Kelso Liber Melrose Macdonald, Bloodshed McNamee, Wars Melsa NA NAS NLS Nicholson, Edward III NH Palgrave, Docs Parl. Writs Penman, David II Penman, ‘Soules Conspiracy’ Pluscarden PROME

abbreviations

xi

Knighton’s Chronicle, 1337–96, ed. G. H. Martin (Oxford, 1995). The Chronicle of Lanercost, 1272–1346, tr. H. Maxwell (Glasgow, 1913). Chronicon de Lanercost, ed. J. Stevenson, Bannatyne Club lxv (Edinburgh, 1839). Jean XXII, 1316–34: Lettres Communes analysées d’apres les registres dit d’Avignon et du Vatican, ed. G. Mollat et al. (Bibliothèque des Ecoles Françaises d’Athenes et de Rome, Paris, 1904– ). Liber S. Marie de Calchou. Registrum cartarum Abbacie Tironensis de Kelso, 1113–1567, ed. C. Innes, Bannatyne Club (2 vols, 1846). Liber S. Marie de Calchou. Registrum cartarum Abbacie Tironensis de Kelso, 1113–1567, ed. C. Innes, Bannatyne Club (2 vols, 1846). Liber S. Marie de Melros. Munimenta vetustiora Monasterii Cisterciensis de Melros, ed. C. Innes, Bannatyne Club (2 vols, 1837). A. J. Macdonald, Border Bloodshed. Scotland, England and France at War, 1369–1403 (East Linton, 2000). Colm McNamee, The Wars of the Bruces. Scotland, England and Ireland, 1306–28 (East Linton, 1997). Chronica monasterii de Melsa, ed. E. A. Bond, Rolls Series xliii (3 vols, 1866–68). National Archives (Kew). National Archives of Scotland (Edinburgh). National Library of Scotland (Edinburgh). R. Nicholson, Edward III and the Scots. The Formative Years of a Military Career, 1327–35 (Oxford, 1965). Northern History. Documents and Records Illustrating the History of Scotland, Preserved in the Treasury, ed. F. Palgrave (Record Commission, 1837). Parliamentary Writs, ed. F. Palgrave (2 vols in 4 parts, London, 1827–34). M. A. Penman, The Bruce Dynasty in Scotland: David II, 1329–71 (East Linton, 2004). Michael Penman, ‘A Fell Coniuracioun Agayn Robert the Douchty King: The Soules Conspiracy of 1318–20’, IR l (1999). Liber Pluscardensis, ed. F. J. H. Skene (2 vols, Edinburgh, 1877). Parliament Rolls of Medieval England, ed. C. GivenWilson et al. (Leicester, 2005).

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Rot. Scot. RRS, Robert I RRS, David II RMS Ross, ‘Strathbogie Earls’

Scalacronica, King Scalacronica, Maxwell Scalacronica, Stevenson SHR Stevenson, Docs TDGNHAS TRHS Tuck, ‘Tax Haven’

Vita Edwardi VMHS Westminster Wyntoun, Laing Wyntoun, Amours Young, Comyns

Rotuli Scotiæ in turri Londinensi et in domo capitulari Westmonasteriensi asservati, ed. D. Macpherson (2 vols, Record Commission, 1814–19). Regesta Regum Scottorum V: The Acts of Robert I, 1306–29, ed. A. A. M. Duncan (Edinburgh, 1988). Regesta Regum Scottorum VI: The Acts of David II, 1329–71, ed. B.Webster (Edinburgh, 1982). Registrum magni sigilli regum Scotorum, ed. J. M. Thomson and J. B. Paul (11 vols, Edinburgh, 1882–1914). A. Ross, ‘Men for All Seasons? The Strathbogie Earls of Atholl and the Wars of Independence, c.1290–c.1335’, part i, Northern Scotland xx (2000); part ii, Northern Scotland xxi (2001). Sir Thomas Gray’s Scalacronica, 1272–1363, ed. A. King, Surtees Society ccix (2005). Scalacronica. The Reigns of Edward I, Edward II and Edward III, tr. H. Maxwell (Glasgow, 1907). Scalacronica, by Sir Thomas Gray of Heton, Knight, ed. J. Stevenson, Maitland Club (Edinburgh, 1836). Scottish Historical Review. Documents Illustrative of the History of Scotland, 1286–1306, ed. J. Stevenson (2 vols, London, 1870). Transactions of the Dumfriesshire and Galloway Natural History and Antiquarian Society. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society. A. Tuck, ‘A Medieval Tax Haven: Berwick upon Tweed and the English Crown, 1333–1461’, in Progress and Problems in Medieval England. Essays in Honour of Edward Miller, ed. R. Britnell and J. Hatcher (Cambridge, 1996). Vita Edwardi Secundi, ed. N. Denholm-Young (London, 1957). Vetera monumenta Hibernorum et Scotorum, ed. A. Theiner (Rome, 1864). The Westminster Chronicle, 1381–1394, ed. L. C. Hector and B. F. Harvey (Oxford, 1982). The Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland, ed. D. Laing (3 vols, Edinburgh, 1872–79). The Original Chronicle of Andrew of Wyntoun, ed. F. J. Amours, Scottish Text Society (6 vols, 1903–14). A. Young, Robert the Bruce’s Rivals: The Comyns, 1212–1314 (East Linton, 1997)

1

Introduction: Anglo-Scottish Relations in the Fourteenth Century – An Overview of Recent Research Andy King and Michael A. Penman

A

r ecen t volum e of conference proceedings on north-east England in the later middle ages makes reference to March 1296, the month in which an English army crossed into Scotland and sacked Berwick-upon-Tweed, as marking the beginning of a ‘Three Hundred Years War’ between those two realms. Of course, like all such generalisations, it is somewhat wide of the mark – as historians of the reign of James VI of Scotland (1567–1603), when the dynamics of dynastic succession ensured that Anglo-Scottish relations were generally peaceful, might reasonably object. Others might cry caution in the face of any impression of an inevitable or uninterrupted road from the battle of Dunbar (1296) to Pinkie (1547), via Bannockburn (1314), Otterburn (1388) or Flodden (1513). However, recent scholarship has done much to confirm that the perception of a long, continuous and unrelieved conflict must have seemed very real, not just for successive English and Scottish kings and their magnates, but more especially for the people of the Anglo-Scottish borders; between the ­ fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, the lives of successive generations of borderers – peasants, priests, monks, burgesses or lords – were fundamentally affected by full-scale, if intermittent, war, and persistent cross-border raiding. Indeed, the Wars of Independence (or the Wars of the Scottish Succession), fought between 1296 and 1328, and 1332 and 1356 (when they became ­entangled with the opening exchanges of the Anglo-French wars), were undeniably formative of a tradition, an identity and a landscape of border defences, as well as a pedigree of written histories of hostility between England and Scotland.   R. Lomas, ‘St Cuthbert and the Border, c.1080–c.1300’, in North-East England in the Later Middle Ages, ed. C. D. Liddy and R. H. Britnell (Woodbridge, 2005), 13; see also A. J. Pollard, ‘Introduction’, in ibid., 2.



england and scotland in the fourteenth century

In sum, these wars of the first half of the fourteenth century were to prove a historical source of bitter enmity which later generations continued to act on and invoke in subsequent clashes. Within the last decade scholars have further illuminated the unprecedented intensity of Anglo-Scottish warfare after 1296, most especially during Robert Bruce’s systematic raiding of northern England and Ireland between 1310 and 1322 and in 1327; and during Edward III’s early military career in Scotland from 1333 to 1337; and again in Edward’s particularly destructive chevauchée into Lothian in 1356, remembered as the ‘Burnt Candlemas’. The historical study of the impact of these raids upon northern England in particular is greatly aided by the intrusive and bureaucratic nature of fourteenth-century English government which ensured the production and survival of voluminous contemporary records (indeed, these very characteristics help to explain why attempts to impose English government upon Scotland met with such resistance at the time). But the routinely destructive business of raiding was punctuated by major battles, at Dunbar 1296, Stirling Bridge 1297, Falkirk 1298, Loudon Hill 1307, Bannockburn 1314, Dundalk 1318, Dupplin Moor 1332, Halidon Hill 1333 and Neville’s Cross 1346; and this war of arms was underwritten by an ongoing war of words both through diplomacy – in Edinburgh, London, Paris and Rome/Avignon – and in official ‘national’ and popular

  E.g. McNamee, Wars; idem, ‘William Wallace’s Invasion of Northern England in 1297’, NH xxvi (1990); idem, ‘Buying Off Robert Bruce: An Account of Monies Paid to the Scots by Cumberland Communities in 1313–14’, Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society xcii (1992); C. J. Rogers, War Cruel and Sharp. English Strategy under Edward III, 1327–60 (Woodbridge, 2000); H. Schwyzer, ‘Northern Bishops and the Anglo-Scottish War in the Reign of Edward II’, in Thirteenth-Century England VII, ed. M. Prestwich et al. (Woodbridge, 1999); A. King, ‘Bandits, Robbers and Schavaldours: War and Disorder in Northumberland in the Reign of Edward II’, in Thirteenth-Century England IX, ed. M. Prestwich et al. (Woodbridge, 2003); R. Lomas, ‘The Impact of Border Warfare: The Scots and South Tweedside, c.1290–c.1520’, SHR lxxv (1996); C. J. Brooke, Safe Sanctuaries: Security and Defence in Anglo-Scottish Border Churches, 1290–1690 (Edinburgh, 2000). See also M. Haskell, ‘Breaking the Stalemate: The Scottish Campaign of Edward I, 1303–4’, in ThirteenthCentury England VII, ed. Prestwich; F.Watson, ‘Settling the Stalemate: Edward I’s Peace in Scotland’, in Thirteenth-Century England VI, ed. M. Prestwich et al. (Woodbridge, 1997), 127–43; eadem, Under the Hammer: Edward I and Scotland, 1286–1307 (East Linton, 1998); M. Strickland, ‘A Law of Arms or a Law of Treason? Conduct in War in Edward I’s Campaigns in Scotland, 1296–1307’, in Violence in Medieval Society, ed. R.W. Kaeuper (Woodbridge, 2000). And see David Simpkin, ch. 2, and Iain MacInnes, ch. 3, below.   Neville’s Cross in particular has been the subject of considerable study, partly due to the 650th anniversary of the battle. See D. Rollason and M. Prestwich (ed.), The Battle of Neville’s Cross, 1346 (Stamford, 1998); C. J. Rogers, ‘The Scottish Invasion of 1346’, NH xxxiv (1998); M. A. Penman, ‘The Scots at the Battle of Neville’s Cross, 17 October 1346’, SHR lxxx (2001). For recent work on Bannockburn, see ch. 2, 1n., below.



introduction



historiographies, through chronicle, verse and ballad. As such, the tone was seemingly ­inevitably set for future generations of both English and Scots born and grown only to war: their mutual hostility would find expression at both local and national levels, and amongst all social and political estates. Recent studies have also turned to examine a sustained and arguably ­intensifying pattern of Anglo-Scottish rivalry, and often open conflict, in military, economic, ecclesiastical and cultural terms in the second half of the fourteenth century. Between the flashpoints in Anglo-Scottish relations – the invasions and counter-invasions of the 1380s; Henry IV’s invasion of Scotland in 1400 (when he renewed England’s claims to overlordship); the battle of Humbleton Hill in 1402; and the English capture of the Stewart Prince James in 1406, who soon became the captive James I – there remained an underlying current of tension, or cold war. It would be reasonable to state, though, that after 1356–57 (years which witnessed the English victory at Poitiers in France, and Edward III’s release of David II of Scotland, captured at Neville’s Cross in 1346) it was the Scots who were more committed as a realm to sustained aggression towards a perceived ‘auld enemy’ in England. The researches of Alexander Grant, Stephen Boardman, Michael Brown and Alastair Macdonald have elucidated the influence of the more ‘hawkish’ magnates over the Stewart court of Scotland from 1371 to 1406 (and to 1424), identifying a bellicose Anglophobia as characteristic of Scottish border lords in particular, a militant patriotism which emerged as a distinctive badge of identity and power in late medieval Scotland. Key members of the late-fourteenth-century Scottish establishment were even prepared to sideline the authority of their king in their pursuit of officially sanctioned war against England. At the same time, these magnates had ­developed an almost reflexive acceptance of the need for a military treaty with the French against England, the ‘Auld Alliance’, renewed in 1371, 1383   R. J. Goldstein, The Matter of Scotland. Historical Narrative in Medieval Scotland (Nebraska, 1993); T. Summerfield, ‘The Testimony of Writing: Pierre de Langtoft and the Appeals to History, 1291–1306’, in The Scots and Medieval Arthurian Legend, ed. R. Purdie and N. Royan (Cambridge, 2005); T. Beaumont James, ‘John of Eltham, History and Story: Abusive International Discourse in Late Medieval England, France and Scotland’, in Fourteenth-Century England II, ed. C. Given-Wilson (Woodbridge, 2002); A. J. Macdonald, ‘John Hardyng, Northumbrian Identity and the Scots’, in North-East England, ed. Liddy and Britnell; C. Given-Wilson, Chronicles: The Writing of History in Medieval England (London, 2004), 65–9, 74–6, 85–6. Diplomacy at the papal Curia is addressed by Sarah Layfield, ch. 9 below.   Boardman, Stewart Kings; Brown, Douglases; Macdonald, Bloodshed; A. J. Macdonald, ‘Profit, Politics and Personality: War and the Later Medieval Scottish Nobility’, in Freedom and Authority, Scotland c.1050–c.1650. Historical and Historiographical Essays Presented to Grant G. Simpson, ed. T. Brotherstone and D. Ditchburn (East Linton, 2000); A. Grant, ‘Fourteenth-Century Scotland’, in The New Cambridge Medieval History, VI: c.1300–c.1415, ed. M. Jones (Cambridge, 2001), 353.



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and 1391. These political trends were fuelled by a Scottish desire to reclaim English-occupied territory in Annandale and Teviotdale, most notably the economic and administrative foci of Roxburgh and Berwick. The same trends were reflected by a burgeoning Scottish national literature which celebrated the chivalry and achievements against England of Scottish aristocratic kindreds alongside those of the heroes of the Wars of Independence, exemplified in such works as John Barbour’s vernacular The Bruce (1371x1375) and John of Fordun’s Latin compilation, the Chronicle of the Scottish Nation (c.1383). The Scots would later export this belligerence to France, fighting the English forces of Henry V (who had no real interest in Scotland) on land and sea between the battles of Agincourt (1415) and Verneuil (1424). For their part, the English did take a less aggressive stance towards Scotland following the Treaty of Berwick of 1357, having given up any real intent of imposing regime change upon their neighbour. David II’s ransomed release from captivity and his recognition as king of Scots by Edward III left the Plantagenet monarchy free to focus on dealings with the captive Jean II of France, either in war or uncertain truce.10 In this period, warfare was employed by the English to subdue the Scots rather than to conquer them, while the issue of English overlordship over Scotland was raised mainly as a negotiating ploy to secure Scottish neutrality (or passivity, at the least) – Henry IV’s rehearsal of this claim in 1400 was rather more concerned with legitimating and popularising his own recent seizure of power in England than with reasserting wider English ‘rights’. Nonetheless, the latter confrontation suggests that a hawkish attitude to Anglo-Scottish affairs was not confined to north of the border. In   N. A. T. Macdougall, An Antidote to the English. The Auld Alliance, 1295–1560 (East Linton, 2001), ch. 2; E. Bonner, ‘Scotland’s Auld Alliance with France, 1295–1560’, History lxxxiv (1999).   C. Edington, ‘Paragons and Patriots: National Identity and the Chivalric Ideal in Late-Medieval Scotland’, in Image and Identity: The Making and Re-making of Scotland through the Ages, ed. D. Broun et al. (Edinburgh, 1998); S. Cameron, ‘Keeping the Customer Satisfied: Barbour’s Bruce and a Phantom Division at Bannockburn’, in The Polar Twins, ed. E. J. Cowan (Edinburgh, 2002); S. Boardman, ‘Late Medieval Scotland and the Matter of Britain’, in Scottish History: The Power of the Past, ed. E. J. Cowan and R. J. Finlay (Edinburgh, 2002). For Fordun’s compilation, see D. Broun, ‘A New Look at Gesta Annalia Attributed to John of Fordun’, in Church, Chronicle and Learning in Medieval and Early Renaissance Scotland, ed. B. E. Crawford (Edinburgh, 1999).   M. K. Jones, ‘The Battle of Vernueil (17 August 1424): Towards a History of Courage’, War in History ix (2002); D. Ditchburn, ‘Piracy and War at Sea in Late Medieval Scotland’, in Scotland and the Sea, ed. T. C. Smout (1992).   This disengagement would seem to come earlier than the fifteenth-century withdrawal stressed in G. L. Harriss, Shaping the Nation. England, 1360–1461 (Oxford, 2005), 528–39. 10  C. J. Rogers, ‘The Anglo-French Peace Negotiations of 1354–60 Reconsidered’, in The Age of Edward III, ed. J. S. Bothwell (York, 2001).



introduction



the English Marches, at least – a militarised society where regional politics and lordship, and the concomitant expectations of kingship, had been moulded by the impact of the Scottish wars – an aggressively robust attitude to relations with the Scots remained a political imperative. And this was reflected by a continuing antagonism to Scotland in other parts of the country (although antipathy to the French had surely become a stronger current of English ­ ‘patriotism’ across the realm as a whole). Just as the Stewart kings invoked Robert I as their standard of rule and war against England, so Henry IV could take Edward III as his model, a king who had in his turn sought to emulate Edward I, ‘Hammer of the Scots’. Moreover, just as the baronial houses of Douglas and Dunbar and their baronial followings vied to determine Scottish policy not only in the militarised zone of the Borders but at a national or Crown level, so too did ambitious northern English families such as the Percys and Nevilles rival each other to influence and lead Plantagenet policy towards Scotland. And the English Marcher gentry profited greatly from border tension, as the consequent need to provide for the defence of the Marches brought them a steady flow of Crown patronage and office, which more than compensated for such losses as they incurred from Scottish raiding.11 The growing animosity between these counterpart lineages is perhaps best exemplified by the Otterburn campaign of 1388. This Scottish victory, bitterly remembered in England until it was overturned at Humbleton Hill in 1402, garnered a wealth of vituperative and propagandist comment in both Scottish and English chronicles, highlighting a rivalry between royal, magnatial and gentry kindreds which also found expression in heraldry and architecture.12 In addition, in the later fourteenth century, Anglo-Scottish animosity was given 11  M. Arvanigian, ‘Henry IV, the Northern Nobility and the Consolidation of the Regime’, in Henry IV: The Establishment of the Regime, 1399–1406, ed. G. Dodd and D. Biggs (York, 2003); A. Tuck, ‘The Percies and the Community of Northumberland in the Later Fourteenth Century’, in Goodman and Tuck, Border Societies; Boardman, Stewart Kings, chs 4–5; C. R. Young, The Making of the Neville Family in England, 1166– 1400 (Woodbridge, 1996); A. King, ‘Scaling the Ladder: The Rise and Rise of the Grays of Heaton, c.1296–c.1415’, in North-East England, ed. Liddy and Britnell, 72–3 and passim. Note, however, that recent work has suggested that the Percies’ grip on the Marches was rather less all-encompassing than has often been assumed; Tuck, ‘The Percies and the Community of Northumberland’; A. King, ‘“They Have the Hertes of the People by North”: Northumberland, the Percies and Henry IV, 1399–1408’, in Henry IV, ed. Dodd and Biggs. 12  See the papers by Goodman, Grant and Reed in Goodman and Tuck, Border Societies; S. Hussey, ‘Nationalism and Language in England, c.1300–1500’, in Nations, Nationalism and Patriotism in the European Past, ed. C. Bjørn et al. (Copenhagen, 1994); M. Brown, ‘“Rejoice to Hear of Douglas”: The House of Douglas and the Presentation of Magnate Power in Late Medieval Scotland’, SHR lxxvi (1997). For heraldic rivalry see papers by Shenton and Ailes in Heraldry, Pageantry and Social Display in Medieval England, ed. P. Coss and M. Keen (Woodbridge, 2002) and Bower, viii, 17–19.



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an added edge by growing economic rivalries. Both Crowns and their key burghs vied for trade in border produce and goods (especially wool) at a time of Scottish specie depreciation and Europe-wide economic downturn.13 Finally, with the international rupture and ecclesiastical division of the Great Schism from 1378 (with England backing Urban VIII and his successors at Rome, while Scotland and France favoured their rivals at Avignon), English and Scottish military leaders could claim spiritual dispensation for waging war on enemies now regarded as heretical schismatics.14 Such a broad outline and historiographical survey would thus seem to confirm the fourteenth century as the beginning of a much longer AngloScottish conflict. Nevertheless, even for the century in which this great animosity crystallised, this assumption can and should be questioned. Just as scholars of the fifteenth century have re-emphasised the diplomacy of Edward IV, Richard III and James III (resulting in major truces in 1474 and 1485), and Henry VII and James IV (with a treaty in 1502), thus creating peace and – in Henry VII’s case – marriage out of hostility and war, so might scholars of the fourteenth century reassess levels of Anglo-Scottish tension. After all, a state of officially declared and sustained war was only in effect for roughly 55 years out of the 110-year period, from 1296 to 1406, for all that a barely contained hostility underlay many of the intervening truces. As one recent reviewer has remarked of the later middle ages, ‘in fact, for much of the period, there was little open warfare. Fighting was regular from 1296 till the truce of 1323, intermittent, though at times serious, from then till 1388; and at most occasional from then on till the Treaty of Edinburgh in 1560, after which there was no formal war.’15 Indeed, this might be further qualified, for the period 1357–77 also saw no official Anglo-Scottish war. With half of this period thus at least officially given over to truce or peace, however uneasy, we should surely take more historical notice of evidence for peaceful Anglo-Scottish accommodation and exchange revived or persisting within and beyond these periods. Admittedly, the contemporary sources of peacetime interaction – particularly from the Scottish perspective – are often sorely wanting. However, enough has survived to facilitate further recent scholarship in this direction. 13  Tuck, ‘Tax Haven’; J. Donnelly, ‘An Open Port: The Berwick Export Trade, 1311–1373’, SHR lxxviii (1999). See also H. Summerson, ‘Responses to War: Carlisle and the West March in the Later Fourteenth Century’, in Goodman and Tuck, Border Societies. 14  Bower, vii, 406; A. Goodman, ‘Religion and Warfare in the Anglo-Scottish Marches’, in Medieval Frontier Societies, ed. R. Bartlett and A. Mackay (Oxford, 1989), 256–7; A. D. M. Barrell, The Papacy, Scotland and Northern England, 1342–1378 (Cambridge, 1995). The impact of the Schism on border abbeys is discussed in Richard Oram, ch. 8 below. 15  B.Webster, ‘Anglo-Scottish Relations, 1296–1389: Some Recent Essays’, SHR lxxiv (1995), 99.



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A number of studies have emphasised the complexity of changing local and national loyalties against an uncertain backdrop of rapidly changing events in this period, a theme which is pursued by a number of papers in the present volume. Such conflicts of loyalty were perhaps nowhere felt more acutely than on the border Marches, where noble families’ and rural and urban communities’ people, lands and goods were most directly affected by war and the shifting balance of power, as the work of Andy King, Michael Brown and others has already shown.16 However, issues of geography, pragmatic politics and the territorial patterns of pre-1296 – when many noble houses, ecclesiastical institutions and the Scottish Crown had held lands in both the English and Scottish realms – could also influence the difficult choices of allegiance facing the wider community in the fourteenth century.17 Robert I’s coup of 1306, and the consequent adherence of the Comyns and their allies to the English allegiance, is increasingly now viewed in terms of a civil war between rival Scottish factions, rather than the more black-and-white nationalistic view which characterised Bruce’s party as ‘patriotic’, and the Comyns as ‘unpatriotic’, or worse, as ­traitors – a view originally peddled quite deliberately by Scottish chroniclers in the latter part of the fourteenth century, with an eye to contemporary Scottish politics. Similarly, Edward Balliol is no longer considered ‘an ignominious figure, as the catspaw of Edward III’ (and not merely because value-judgements are no longer fashionable in modern historiography).18 As the work of Alasdair Ross and Sonja Cameron has shown, even as committed a figure as Robert I could toy with the idea of a return to cross-border landholding as the basis of renewed Anglo-Scottish peace: the abandonment and collapse of this option provoked the invasion of the Disinherited in 1332 but equally could be said to have motivated in turn the defence of Robert I’s settlement by proBruce Scots.19 At the end of the century, George, tenth earl of Dunbar, was 16  A. King, ‘Englishmen, Scots and Marchers: National and Local Identities in Thomas Gray’s Scalacronica’, NH xxxvi (2000); Brown, ‘War, Allegiance and Community’; C. J. Neville, ‘Local Sentiment and the “National Enemy” in Northern England in the Later Middle Ages’, JBS xxxv (1996). Border loyalties are discussed further by Michael Brown, ch. 6, and Andy King, ch. 7, below. 17  In addition to those items already footnoted, see Ross, ‘Men for All Seasons?’; C. J. Neville, ‘The Political Allegiance of the Earls of Strathearn during the War of Independence’, SHR lxv (1986). 18  A. Young, ‘The Comyns and Anglo-Scottish Relations (1286–1314)’, in ThirteenthCentury England VII, ed. Michael Prestwich et al. (Woodbridge, 1999); M. Brown, The Wars of Scotland, 1214–1371 (Edinburgh, 2004), ch. 11; R. D. Oram, ‘Bruce, Balliol and the Lordship of Galloway: South-West Scotland and the Wars of Independence’, TDGNHAS, 3rd ser., lxvii (1992). For the Comyn family more generally, see Young, Comyns. The splendid denunciation of Balliol is from R. C. Reid, ‘Edward de Balliol’, TDGNHAS, 3rd ser., xxxv (1956–57), 38. 19  S. Cameron and A. Ross, ‘The Treaty of Edinburgh and the Disinherited (1328–32)’, History lxxxiv (1999).



england and scotland in the fourteenth century

evidently an enthusiastic participant in raids against the English. Nevertheless, he still chose to return to his family’s erstwhile English allegiance and swear loyalty to Henry IV, supporting his invasion of Scotland in 1400 – albeit in the wake of a violent falling out with Robert III.20 In much the same vein, the equally belligerent Hotspur could turn to his captive, Archibald, fourth earl of Douglas, for military support against the English Crown in 1403, while his father would flee to Scotland in 1405. According to the contemporary Scottish chronicler Andrew Wyntoun, Douglas explained away his behaviour as being a course of action that would lead to the deaths of Englishmen, with the clear implication that this was a laudable and desirable end in itself. However, this justification was offered up in a context in which both Douglas and Dunbar were seeking to recover their positions in Scotland in c.1408–09.21 Clearly, the patriotism and lordly identity born of the fourteenth century was by no means inflexibly set in stone, a reality Michael Brown explores further in his paper in this volume. Part of the seemingly flexible loyalties of these magnates surely stemmed from their involvement in the great volume of everyday interchange that occurred between the realms. Often obscured by the extant sources, this was born out of both practical necessity and desire, reviving and persisting in spite of the intermittent outbreaks of war. As the research of Michael Penman has shown, David II’s second adult reign, between 1357 and 1371, saw him seeking to negotiate closer political, dynastic and socio-economic relations with England.22 These goals were pursued not only for David’s own high political ends but also out of a genuine sense of the common heritage and interests of the two realms, despite the conflict of the first half of the century. In particular, a common culture was provided by the shared values of chivalry, which encouraged an impartial admiration of prowess, irrespective of nationality, and provided a practical code for the conduct of war and the ransoming of prisoners; this was a nexus of ideals and lifestyle given expression throughout this period in such works as Sir Thomas Gray’s Scalacronica, Jean Froissart’s Chroniques and poems such as Méliador, and even the sole extant work of John Barbour.23 20  A. J. Macdonald, ‘Kings of the Wild Frontier? The Earls of Dunbar or March, c.1070– 1435’, in The Exercise of Power in Medieval Scotland, c.1200–1500 ed. S. Boardman and A. Ross (Dublin, 2003), 151–8. 21  Wyntoun, Laing, iii, 90–1; Brown, Douglases, 105–7; King, ‘They Have the Hertes of the People by the North’, 151–2. 22  Penman, David II, chs 5–10. 23  M. Penman, ‘Christian Days and Knights: The Religious Devotions and Court of David II of Scotland, 1329–71’, Historical Research lxxv (2002); A. King, ‘A Helm with a Crest of Gold: The Order of Chivalry in Thomas Gray’s Scalacronica’, in FourteenthCentury England I, ed. N. Saul (Woodbridge, 2000); idem, ‘“According to the Custom used in French and Scottish Wars”: Prisoners and Casualties on the Scottish Marches in the Fourteenth Century’, JMH xxviii (2002).



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However, practical inducements and long-established (pre-1296) connections underpinned this elite interaction. Just as the later Anglo-Scottish unions of the Crowns (1603) and Parliaments (1707) were motivated by strong economic concerns, so Edward III’s and David II’s plans for alliance attempted to build on the interdependence of existing Anglo-Scottish trading links. A number of scholars have recently drawn attention to the heavy traffic of Scottish merchants entering England after 1357 (recorded by the bureaucratically minded English Crown in the Rotuli Scotiae, the Scottish Rolls), taking advantage of a general passport granted by Edward III at the probable request of David II.24 This suggests a potentially increasing Anglo-Scottish trade beyond the ‘porous’ cross-border markets of the Marches, focused on Carlisle, Roxburgh, Berwick, Newcastle, Durham and smaller market towns in between, providing further outlets for the exchange of Scottish raw materials for English and European finished goods. This common market of trade necessarily gave major English and Scottish landowners (lay and ecclesiastical) a continuing stake in such exchange.25 At the same time, an associated traffic in pilgrims, academics, students, diplomats, mercenaries, crusaders and tournament contenders – admittedly, predominantly Scots entering or passing through England – suggests Anglophile tendencies among sections of the Scottish populace, to match the elite minority motivated by the politics of David II’s court, and, as Anthony Goodman’s paper in this volume shows, the court of Richard II. Religion, above all, had the power to transcend borders and animosities, the Papal Schism notwithstanding; the worship of both universal and regional saints’ cults and relics proved especially resistant to erosion by conflict, ­representing a potentially mutual exchange (with English pilgrimage, say, to St Andrews or Whithorn or Our Lady’s at Whitekirk in East Lothian, to match Scottish pilgramage to Durham, Walsingham or Canterbury).26 But the degree to which this Anglo-Scottish traffic of people survived and altered with the accession of the Stewarts in 1371 has still to be fully explored. Of course, the experience of travel in war and its consequences could often be the actual mechanism, or an accelerant, for the exchange of such spiritual and cultural ideas, just as war transmitted disease on a devastating scale in this period. The search for solutions to everyday Anglo-Scottish tensions in 24  Rot. Scot., i, 815–16; Penman, David II, 190; D. Ditchburn, Scotland and Europe. The Medieval Kingdom and its Contacts with Christendom, c.1214–1560. I: Religion, Culture and Commerce (East Linton, 2001), 144–85; R. H. Britnell, Britain and Ireland, 1050–1530. Economy and Society (Oxford, 2005), chs 16–17. 25  Pollard, ‘Introduction’, in North-East England, ed. Liddy and Britnell, 5. 26  J. R. Bliese, Saint Cuthbert and War’, JMH xxiv (1998); M. Penman, ‘The Bruce Dynasty, Becket and Scottish Pilgrimage to Canterbury, c.1178–c.1406’, JMH 32 (2006); Ditchburn, Scotland and Europe, ch. 2; D.Webb, Pilgrims and Pilgrimage in the Medieval West (London, 2001), 213–24.

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the long fourteenth century was also boosted by a reaction to the deeper conflicts and regional problems predating 1357. The work of Cynthia Neville has been seminal in further illuminating the development of Border law and Days of March in the fourteenth century, particularly under the kingship of Edward III.27 The overlap of noble personnel (Percies, Nevilles, Cliffords, Douglases, Dunbars, Stewarts, etc) involved in these days of peace as well as in inter-realm pilgrimage and tournaments (and even trade), but crucially also as the instigators and leaders of raids and official war, underlines the complexity of the Anglo-Scottish dynamic in the later century. Indeed, Days of March themselves sometimes became the occasion of conflict rather than resolution, as in 1377, when an alleged English assault of one of the retainers of the earl of Dunbar at a March Day resulted in a Scottish reprisal raid on Roxburgh market on St James’ day.28 This overlap of individuals and interested parties also reminds us of the direct relationship between Anglo-Scottish relations and the balance of political power within the respective realms. Historians of late medieval Scotland have perhaps been more sensitive to the way in which her position as the weaker realm could affect internal politics. This was of course a central imperative of the first phase of the Wars of Independence and could affect English internal affairs, too: witness the crises in England of 1297, when the costs of Edward I’s Scottish campaigns provoked a major crisis which almost escalated into a magnate revolt; 1311–12, when Edward II’s Scottish expedition became embroiled in the dispute over Piers Gaveston; 1314–19, when the incompetent conduct of the Scottish wars fuelled the mutual recriminations of Edward and Thomas of Lancaster; and 1327–28, when the abject failure of the Weardale campaign, and the ‘Shameful Peace’ with Scotland, served to discredit the Mortimer regime. But recent scholarship has highlighted the continuing importance of this theme later in the century. In Scotland, David II’s antagonism towards his heirs presumptive, the Stewarts, and his capture and costly release, involved him on several occasions (1352, 1359, 1363–68) in talks to admit an English prince to the Scottish succession, thus provoking magnatial reactions in Parliament and a rebellion in 1363. Similarly, the reluctance of the Stewart monarchs, Robert II (1371–90) and Robert III (1390–1406), to commit to war against England saw their reigns compromised by bloodless coups in Councils

27  C. J. Neville, Violence, Custom and Law. The Anglo-Scottish Border Lands in the Later Middle Ages (Edinburgh, 1998); eadem, ‘Scottish Influences on the Medieval laws of the Anglo-Scottish Marches’, SHR lxxxi (2002); eadem, ‘Remembering the Legal Past: AngloScottish Border Law and Practice in the Later Middle Ages’, in North-East England, ed. Liddy and Britnell; eadem, ‘Scotland, the Percies and the Law in 1400’, in Henry IV, ed. Dodd and Biggs. 28  Bower, vii, 369–73.



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of the Scottish estates in 1384, 1388, 1399 and 1402.29 In England, relations with Scotland arguably had a less immediate or direct impact on central affairs after 1357, but were undeniably a factor in such episodes as John of Gaunt’s exile following the Great Revolt of 1381; the discrediting of the Appellant regime in 1388–89, following its military failures against Scotland, as well as in France; and, into the fifteenth century, Hotspur’s rebellion in 1403; and rumours of the survival of the Mammet Richard II (given refuge in Stewart Scotland) as a threat to the usurper Henry IV.30 The question of the Scottish card in English internal politics after 1328 is surely a matter worthy of further study. It was in just such a spirit of historical inquiry that a symposium of post­graduate and postdoctoral scholars gathered at St John’s College at the University of Durham in September 2004 under the banner of ‘War and Peace: New Perspectives on Anglo-Scottish Relations, c.1296–c.1406’. The resulting papers, eight of which are reproduced here, prompted discussions which served to further illuminate the complexity of Anglo-Scottish interaction in this period through a snapshot of current research. This work reflects the truism that the contemporary sources, by their very nature and survival, reveal more of the tensions and direct confrontations of the age; but it also suggests that medieval historians are now better prepared – in the light of the recent work outlined above – to probe beneath the surface to explore less well-known paths. And these reveal that relations between Englishmen and Scots could sometimes be warily friendly, or even inherently pacific, in what might otherwise seem a century of persistent and hardening conflict. The volume begins with three papers on aspects of warfare. David Simpkin examines the organisation of the English army which Edward II led to Scotland in 1310–11, showing how the men-at-arms raised by feudal levy were fully ­integrated in the same retinues with those serving voluntarily or for pay; the disastrous performance of English armies in Scotland under Edward cannot therefore be attributed to their ‘feudal’ organisation. Iain MacInnes ­investigates 29  M. Penman, ‘Parliament Lost – Parliament Regained? The Three Estates in the Reign of David II, 1329–1371’, and S. Boardman, ‘Coronations, Kings and Guardians: Politics, Parliaments and General Councils, 1371–1406’, in Parliament and Politics in Scotland, 1235–1560, ed. K. M. Brown and R. J. Tanner (Edinburgh, 2004). 30  A. Goodman, John of Gaunt (London, 1992), ch. 5; N. Saul, Richard II (London, 1997), 198–9; P. J. Eberle, ‘Richard II and the Literary Arts’, in Richard II. The Art of Kingship, ed. A. Goodman and J. L. Gillespie (Oxford, 1999), 238–9; Macdonald, Border Bloodshed, 149; G. Dodd, ‘Richard II and the Transformation of Parliament’, in The Reign of Richard II, ed. G. Dodd (Stroud, 2000), 75–7; P. McNiven, ‘Rebellion, Sedition and the Legend of Richard II’s Survival in the Reigns of Henry IV and Henry V’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library lxxvi (1994); P. Morgan, ‘Henry IV and the Shadow of Richard II’, in Crown, Government and People in the Fifteenth Century, ed. R. E. Archer (Stroud, 1995), 9–10.

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the effects of deliberately targetted ‘terror’ warfare on civilian populations by both English and Scottish forces in the second phase of the Wars; he details its greater impact on the rural lay populace, and how the Anglo-Balliol camp’s failure to sustain such warfare after 1337 assisted the Bruce cause. Then David Caldwell argues that the main reason the Scots did not adopt artillery after circa 1350, following England’s lead, was the unimaginative David II’s desire to reassure England of his peaceful intentions. A second group of papers then focus on aspects of identity and loyalty. Amanda Beam offers a re-evaluation of the life and career of Edward Balliol, son of King John of Scotland (1292–96). She focuses on his family heritage of close English service, lost cross-border lands and following, and his upbringing at the English royal court, to better explain his political allegiance and failed bid for the Scottish kingship. Michael Brown further develops this theme of trans-national loyalties by examining Scots in English allegiance (Anglicati), revealing a pattern which continued beyond the Bruce settlement by the 1330s and which saw a number of politically dissident and malcontent Scottish lords in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries preferring obedience to the English Crown. Approaching the same theme from a rather different angle, Andy King looks at the nature of cross-border relations and land-holding in the Anglo-Scottish Marches, arguing that although there were many points of contact across the border, these had little practical impact on the political allegiances of the marchers. Allied to this, Richard Oram offers a preliminary ­ exploration of the sorely under-studied pattern of restored cross-border landholding of monastic houses and competing Border benefice provisions after 1328. He focuses on the Scottish monastic houses of Melrose, Kelso and Dryburgh to reassess historical understanding of the impact of over a generation of English occupation and, after 1378, of the Schism. A third group of papers considers issues of policy and its expression. Sarah Layfield demonstrates that though Pope John XXII’s policy towards the Anglo-Scottish dispute may have been rather hesitant and ineffectual, he was nonetheless rather more sympathetic to the Scottish position than has previously been recognised. Though anxious to avoid alienating the English Crown, his excommunication of Robert Bruce reflected the latter’s contumacious treatment of his emissaries, rather than any hostility to Scottish independence per se, and he did little to actually further English claims to overlordship. Gwilym Dodd examines petitioning from Scotland to English parliaments, and shows that although Edward I encouraged the practice as a means of emphasising English claims of overlordship, Edward III took a rather different stance deliberately using the arrangements for receiving petitions in parliament as a diplomatic means of signalling his willingness to abandon these claims. Then, in a close linguistic analysis of chronicles and Crown documents, Andrea Ruddick looks at the tension between differing concepts of allegiance and nationality; while



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the English Crown tended towards an ‘allegiant’ model of identity, willing to accept anyone who entered its allegiance as its subjects, many English commentators took an instinctively more ‘nationalistic’ approach, viewing Scottish adherents of the English Crown as inherently suspect and potentially disloyal, though neither viewpoint was applied with any great consistency. Michael Penman’s study seeks to explain the political, cultural and practical reasons behind the curious absence of Anglophobic racial abuse and invective from Scottish ­ writings of the long fourteenth century, a stark contrast to the many Scottophobic extant English chronicles, poems and songs. To close, Anthony Goodman reflects on late-fourteenth-century episodes of acculturation, moments when the English and Scots found common grounds to ‘manage’ their relations, through pilgrimage, tournaments and combats and ongoing peace talks, based, in particular, on connections forged between Richard II, John of Gaunt and the Scottish comital houses of Stewart, Douglas, Dunbar and Lindsay and their followings. It is to be hoped these papers form the basis of future expanded studies and further encourage scholars in a reevaluation of Anglo-Scottish relations in the Later Middle Ages.

2

The English Army and the Scottish Campaign of 1310–1311 David Simpkin*

T

he devastati ng defeat of the flower of the English aristocracy at Bannockburn in 1314 has long cast a spell over medieval military historians. Despite the incessant warfare of the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, large battles were rare in this period. Anglo-Welsh and Anglo-Scottish warfare repeatedly pitched forces of unequal strength against one another, and only the most foolhardy opponents of Edwardian conquest, such as William Wallace, were willing to risk the lives of their fellow countrymen, and their long-term political objectives, in full-scale engagement. Therefore it is not surprising that this battle, which undermined the apparent invincibility of the English heavy cavalry, and which saw an unpopular king of England being driven from Scotland by a ­patriotic hero, has received so much attention from historians. Unfortunately the difficulties involved in trying to reconstruct the composition of the English army that was crushed at Bannockburn are immense. The loss of nearly all documentation giving details of the cavalry force that served in 1314 means that we can do little more than make informed guesses about the size, structure and composition of Edward II’s force. In this paper I aim

*  I would like to thank Andrew Ayton, David Crouch and Andy King for reading and commenting on drafts of this paper, particularly the former who has guided it through several transmutations.   Among the major works published on the battle are: J. E. Morris, Bannockburn (Cambridge, 1914); P. Christison, Bannockburn: The Story of the Battle (Edinburgh, 1960); Barrow, Bruce, ch. 12; P. Reese, Bannockburn (Edinburgh, 2000); W.W. C. Scott, Bannockburn Revealed: A Reappraisal (Rothesay, 2000); A. Nusbacher, The Battle of Bannockburn (Stroud, 2002).   J. E. Morris observed that ‘for the year 1314 almost every document has disappeared. We have no Marshal’s Register because it was not a strictly feudal campaign; we have no Pay-Roll and no Horse-List’. Morris, Bannockburn, 24. The proffer roll must in fact have been lost because the summons for the campaign was for the traditional servicium debitum.



the english ar my and the scottish campaign, 1310–11

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to provide a much more detailed account of an English army that served in Scotland just four years earlier, and for which the military service records are more revealing. The evidence relating to the Scottish campaign of 1310–11 might well hold the key to a better understanding of English military institutions on the eve of Bannockburn. The invasion of Scotland in 1310 was, in its own right, a very important turning point in the series of conflicts that had begun with Edward I’s attack on Berwick in the spring of 1296. No king of England had been seen north of the border for three years, and the political settlement that had been achieved in 1305 was already a distant memory. The ultimate failure of the campaign not only diminished the hopes of those northerners seeking a respite from the looming Scottish threat, but also gained Robert Bruce enough time to build up the strength of his kingship before the real hammer blow fell in 1314. Between the summer of 1311, when Edward II departed from Scotland, and the arrival of the ill-fated English army for the Bannockburn campaign three years later, Bruce, James Douglas and their followers were able to re-capture a large number of key fortresses from the occupying English garrisons. Following the sack of Perth in January 1313 the English-held castles of Buittle, Dumfries, Dalswinton, Roxburgh and Edinburgh all fell quickly into Scottish hands, enabling Bruce and his men to adopt a more aggressive stance. By surviving the invasion of 1310, the Scottish king therefore strengthened his hand enormously, and gained a victory no less important than that which he later won through battle. Edward II’s motives for raising an army to go against the Scots in 1310 were questioned at the time and have been sceptically interpreted ever since, but pro-Lancastrian sentiment among many of the chroniclers should immediately put us on our guard against any unfounded criticisms. The author of the Vita Edwardi Secundi noted the prevailing view that Edward ‘was not going at last to Scotland in order to fight Robert Bruce, but so that he might prudently avoid the king of France’s summons’. The king was convinced, he went on, that if he obeyed the summons of the king of France and left his favourite Piers Gaveston in England ‘in the midst of his enemies, death, imprisonment, or worse would perhaps befall him’. Circumstantial evidence suggests that political motives might have played some part in Edward’s decision to launch the expedition, not least because of growing unrest within the realm. The summons from Philip IV, requesting Edward to do homage for his lands in Gascony, could not have come at a worse time given the growing opposition to Edward’s rule in both England and Scotland, and there is evidence that the king tried to use the Scottish expedition as a way of drawing some of the Ordainers away

  Fordun, i, 346.   Vita Edwardi Secundi, ed. W. Childs (Oxford, 2005), 23.

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england and scotland in the fourteenth century

from London. Yet only the likelihood of civil war had prevented Edward from launching campaigns in 1308 and 1309, and later in his reign the king would pass many months in the border castles of Scotland, desperately struggling to bring the country back under English control. He wintered in the castles of northern England and Scotland five times in the years between the campaign of 1310 and the ­ inglorious conclusion to the siege of Berwick in 1319. Indeed many of the problems facing the English during these years were due not to any disinclination to go to war on Edward’s part, but rather to the non-cooperation and jealousies of large sections of the baronage. Edward arrived at Berwick with Gaveston (now accorded the rank of earl of Cornwall) and two other earls, Warenne and Gloucester, at the beginning of September. The fortifications of the town and castle had been strengthened in advance, being ‘enclosed with a strong and high wall and ditch’. This suggests that Edward expected to stay in Scotland throughout the winter, a necessary approach given that Scottish affairs had been put on hold for the previous three years. The king’s clerks had issued two forms of summons for the campaign. The first, dated 18 June, had been a request for the traditional servicium debitum; that is, the feudal quotas to serve for forty days at their own expense. An additional summons sent out on 2 August requested the magnates to bring with them as large a force as possible. Although Michael Powicke suggested that the non-feudal summons might have been issued due to ­ opposition to the original feudal summons, Michael Prestwich has since shown that the second summons was an addition to the first, not a replacement. Whilst the first, feudal summons included ecclesiastical and female tenants-in-chief, the second, non-feudal was directed only to those male tenants-in-chief who were expected to appear at the muster in person (in propria persona vestra). The response from the most important members of the Edwardian military community, the earls, was very poor; but the 42 knights and 477 sergeants sent   On 21 November Edward firmly ordered one of the ecclesiastical Ordainers, Simon of Ghent, the bishop of Salisbury, to come to Berwick-upon-Tweed ‘en propre persone’. This had nothing to do with feudal service as the bishop had made his proffer earlier in the autumn, and might well have been an attempt to thin the ranks of the king’s ­opponents. Registrum Simonis de Gandavo, diocesis Saresbiriensis 1297–1315, ed. C. T. Flower and M. C. B. Dawes, Canterbury and York Society xl (2 vols, 1934), i, 392. The war did enable the king to draw the earl of Gloucester, one of the comital Ordainers, away from London, and one of the baronial Ordainers, William Mareschal, also appears to have served on the campaign.   M. Powicke, ‘Edward II and Military Obligation’, Speculum xxxi (1956), 95.   Lanercost, Stevenson, 214.   Parl. Writs, II, ii, 394–5, 399.   M. Powicke, Military Obligation in Medieval England (Oxford, 1962), 139; M. Prestwich, ‘Cavalry Service in Early-Fourteenth-Century England’, in War and Government in the Middle Ages, ed. J. Gillingham and J. C. Holt (Woodbridge, 1984), 152.



the english ar my and the scottish campaign, 1310–11

17

on behalf of themselves and the other tenants-in-chief compares favourably with the contingents sent to other feudal musters in this period.10 The most notable absentee was the hereditary constable of England, Humphrey de Bohun, earl of Hereford. Despite repeated attempts by Edward to persuade him to join the army,11 his leading role in the organisation of the campaign was taken by Bartholomew de Badlesmere, who had a letter of protection in the company of the earl of Gloucester. The earls of Warwick, Lancaster, and Pembroke did not attend the muster in person but, like Hereford, sent contingents as part of their feudal obligations to the Crown. It was said at the time that these four earls were dissuaded from joining Edward’s army either by their collective hatred of Gaveston or commitment to the parliamentary Ordinances.12 The earl of Angus, a relatively minor earl, was the only other magnate of comital rank to join Cornwall, Warenne and Gloucester in Scotland. Although the earl of Arundel obtained a letter of protection there is no corroborative evidence to show that he served. The earl of Lincoln, a moderating influence in the politics of this period, was wisely left behind as the keeper of England, though he was to die the following February. Of the 126 men of sub-comital status who received a feudal summons in June, fifty-nine took out letters of protection and would appear to have served.13 Nearly all of the contingents summoned by Edward in the summer arrived at Tweedmouth between 10 September and the end of that month. As usual there were a few late arrivals, with some paid and feudal troops still joining the army late into October, but the majority were present in time for the main incursion against the Scots. Although the horse inventory that was compiled for the campaign has not survived, this being the only major documentary casualty, it is evident from the entries in the wardrobe book that the greater part of the household contingent had their horses appraised between 19 and 30 September.14 The busiest day for the marshal and constable was possibly 19 September, as on that day sixty-four tenants-in-chief proffered their service. Around 2,900 infantrymen were summoned from the lordships of North 10  Parl. Writs, II, ii, 401–8. This number includes those tenants-in-chief who ­ proffered themselves at the feudal muster, in addition to the cavalrymen who were proffered on their behalf. For a comparison of the varying strengths of the feudal levies that were raised in this period, with an emphasis on the number of heavily armed soldiers employed in 1300, 1303, 1310 and 1322, see Prestwich, ‘Cavalry Service’, 148. 11  Further writs were sent to the constable on 3 August and 6 September; CCR 1307–13, 331, 332. 12  Vita Edwardi Secundi, ed. Childs, 21–3. 13  Of these, thirty-one were company leaders, eleven obtained their protections independently, and seventeen were serving under other lords. Seven of those summoned rode in the company of the earl of Gloucester, who almost certainly had the largest retinue on the campaign, but not all made proffers. 14  BL, Cotton Nero C.VIII, passim.

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and South Wales, with a further 2,100 being sought by commission of array; however, only around half of this number, most of whom were foot archers, were recorded as entering royal pay on 1 November.15 The English infantry levies drawn from Lancashire, Cheshire, Durham and the Marches brought the total to 3,000 foot. Their period of paid service lasted throughout October.16 Edward must have known, from his father’s reign, that there would be high rates of desertion and difficulties in levying the full complement of footmen. What he could not have anticipated was that bad weather on the Irish Sea would also prevent a large force including 300 hobelars and 2,000 foot from crossing to Ayr in western Scotland under the command of Richard de Burgh, the earl of Ulster.17 Later in the campaign, on 9 April, Edward would ­ unsuccessfully renew his attempts to open up a western front led by Irish soldiers.18 By that date the expedition was nearing an end, and it is probable that Edward was relying on the earl and his men to provide it with fresh impetus. Here we should pause to consider the size of the cavalry force that Edward had with him when he set off from Roxburgh towards the end of September. The royal military household traditionally formed the core of English armies that were led in person by the king. From his own retainers, a medieval king could immediately activate a large number of tried and trusted warriors for the whole period of a campaign. This contrasted with troops drawn from other sources who, being obliged to serve for only a limited period of forty days, or for as long as their contracts with the king lasted, could not be relied upon so heavily. The endowment of a follower with the king’s livery imposed a dual obligation upon the recipient, a double bond of lordship. Not only did the retainer owe the homage of all subjects to their king, but he also owed the more specific duty of a man to his warlord. The bannerets and knights of the royal household had served Edward I particularly well in his conquest of Wales, and continued to form an important part of royal armies into the early stages of the Hundred Years War.19 However, Prestwich has suggested that the loyalty of household knights under Edward II was not as strong as it had been under his father, and that during his early years as king, Edward was unable to retain

15  Parl. Writs, II, ii, 396–8; BL, Cotton Nero C.VIII, fols 7r–7v. 16  Ibid. These numbers again fell well short of what was expected. 17  McNamee, Wars, 48. 18  CDS, iii, no. 203. 19  For the Welsh wars see M. Prestwich, War, Politics and Finance under Edward I (London, 1972), 41–66. For Edward III’s early French campaigns see A. Ayton, ‘Edward III and the English Aristocracy at the Beginning of the Hundred Years War’, in Armies, Chivalry and Warfare in Medieval Britain and France, ed. M. Strickland (Stamford, 1998), 184–5. Ayton has observed that 60% of the English army at Antwerp in July 1338 was connected to the royal household.



the english ar my and the scottish campaign, 1310–11 19

the services of a large body of men.20 Does the evidence for the 1310 campaign support this argument? The wardrobe paid thirty-one bannerets and other knights for companies numbering around sixty knights and 230 sergeants during the campaign.21 This hardly suggests that the king was struggling to attract followers. Yet on closer inspection it is evident that Edward’s household division was not nearly so strong. The largest retinues paid by the wardrobe were led not by feed retainers, but by leading aristocrats who had swallowed their pride and were in receipt of Crown pay. John de Segrave, Payn Tibetot, Henry de Percy and the earl of Angus alone accounted for twenty-five knights and ninetytwo sergeants. Additional contingents were led by, among others, Roger de Mortimer of Chirk, John de St John and Edmund de Hastings, increasing the contribution of non-household soldiers still further.22 Prestwich has argued that Edward II drew up contracts with men from outside of the household because of his ­‘disinclination to go to war in person’, but it is equally plausible that such contracts were drawn up to make good the shortfall caused by the opposition of the earls.23 Only the bannerets John de Cromwell and John de Charlton, in addition to the steward Robert Fitzpayn, led retinues of comparable size on behalf of the household, and most of the bachelors commanded small companies consisting of just two or three men.24 When those sporting the king’s livery are separated from the non-household men with whom they are intermingled in the pay accounts it is evident that only three household bannerets and fourteen household knights were serving in Scotland with retinues totalling fourteen knights and ninety-two sergeants.25 The inclusion of a couple of knights who were in receipt of pay and 20  M. Prestwich, ‘The Unreliability of Royal Household Knights in the Early Fourteenth Century’, in Fourteenth-Century England II, ed. C. Given-Wilson (Woodbridge, 2003). 21  Michael Powicke gave a more exact figure of sixty-two knights and 233 sergeants in the companies, but it is difficult to see how he arrived at such precision given that some of the followers were described as ‘men-at-arms’; Powicke, ‘Edward II and Military Obligation’, 118. Colm McNamee has given a rougher estimate of about 50 knights and 200 men-atarms which seems to underestimate the total slightly; McNamee, Wars, 49. 22  BL, Cotton Nero C.VIII, fols 2r, 3r, 13v, 41r, 42r, 43v. 23  Prestwich, ‘Cavalry Service’, 156. Mortimer contracted in 1310 to serve with 30 menat-arms for one year in return for £1,000. 24  Cromwell had six knights and twenty-five sergeants in his service at the beginning of the campaign. Fitzpayn, the household steward, had four knights and twenty-five sergeants, whilst Charlton had one knight and eight sergeants. BL, Cotton Nero C.VIII, fols 2r, 6r, 36r. 25  Ibid., passim. The three bannerets were John de Cromwell, John de Charlton and the steward Robert Fitzpayn. The fourteen knights were Adam de Swillington, Henry de Appleby, Walter de Birmingham, Robert de Felton, Stephen de Suthley, John de Winston, Hugh de Audley, John de Kingston, William de Montacute, Richard Lovel, Richard de Potesgrave, Bernard de Kirkby, William de Felton and John de Weston junior.

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robes but who are not stipulated as having served in Scotland would increase the total only slightly. This supports the observation that ‘in the difficult days after the Ordinances were made public in 1311, numbers of household knights were not substantial’.26 To add more weight to the household division sixteen servientes regis ad arma also served in Scotland along with around seventy other household retainers of sub-knightly rank.27 Only fifteen associates are recorded as having served with these men, though there are likely to have been others who were unpaid by the Crown. Little effort seems to have been made to expand the household force for the campaign, with only three knights being admitted to fees and robes; and one of these new men had already been serving as a household sergeant during previous years.28 In total there were around three bannerets, thirty knights bachelor and 190 sergeants within the household division, or just 220 men in all. An additional thirty soldars were paid in garrison at Berwick and might be regarded as an extension of the household force, while a number of cash prests were paid to sergeants drafted in for the war.29 The conclusion to be drawn is that at the beginning of the new reign, service in the king’s household was no longer as appealing as it had been in the past. In the years immediately following the death of Edward I the number of household retainers had shrunk, perhaps for financial reasons, to an alarming low. This contrasts markedly with the strength of the king’s familia during the Welsh wars and for the greater part of the reign of King Edward III.30 Given that the household division was numerically so weak, Edward must have relied on a large number of voluntary unpaid and paid forinsec cavalry­men in addition to his own retainers. He could also count on the service, as we have seen, of a further 500 mounted soldiers who came in response to the feudal summons. The wardrobe paid wages to fourteen knights and bannerets who were not household retainers for companies numbering some 190 men, around 145 of whom were sergeants.31 Twenty non-household retinue leaders 26  Prestwich, ‘The Unreliability of Royal Household Knights’, 4. Although no complete list of knights and bannerets in receipt of fees and robes exists for the fourth regnal year, a list for the following year reveals only three bannerets and twenty-eight knights. Eighteen new knights were recruited in the months following the 1310–11 campaign, probably in response to the weaknesses revealed during the war in Scotland. BL, Cotton Nero C.VIII, fols 90v–94r. 27  Bodleian Library, Tanner MS 197, fols 30r, 32r–35r; BL, Cotton Nero C.VIII, passim. 28  Bodleian Library, Tanner MS 197, fol. 26v. 29  BL, Cotton Nero C.VIII, fols 5r, 9r; Bodleian Library, Tanner MS 197, fol. 31r. 30  C. Given-Wilson, The Royal Household and the King’s Affinity. Service, Politics and Finance in England 1360–1413 (London, 1986), 205, Table 4. 31  The soldiers with Roger de Mortimer and Edmund de Hastings were given the generic term ‘men-at-arms’, hence the uncertainty as to precisely how many of these non-household men were knights and how many were sergeants.



the english ar my and the scottish campaign, 1310–11 21

also received prests during the course of the campaign, with those who had contracted with the king by indenture being among this number.32 It is possible that these were the only non-household men in receipt of pay and that most of the forinsec cavalry leaders and their men-at-arms were serving gratuitously. This would explain the lack of a pay roll. Of the fifty-six retinue leaders who requested letters of protection for their armed followers, only sixteen received payment from the wardrobe.33 Some of these were soldiers who had been given special commissions by the Crown and had been contracted to carry out specific tasks. The earl of Angus and Payn Tibetot appear to have been paid only for the time that they spent defending the lands north of the Firth of Forth in the spring of 1311, whilst Robert de Clifford and John de Segrave were responsible for the defence of the March. Significantly, of the forty leaders who were not paid by the household, only two can be shown to have given ‘feudal’ service to the Crown in person. These were tenants-in-chief who proffered themselves to meet their obligations and then led their men in Scotland.34 Of the others it would appear that most, if not all, were serving without Crown pay, although a few did receive respite of debts or small lump sums for their expenses.35 Such ‘voluntary’ service is what one might expect of the earls of Gloucester and Warenne, who applied for protections for forty-five and thirtyone of their men respectively, but it is probable, in the light of Prestwich’s work, that the less prominent company commanders were also serving at their own expense. The role of the feudal contingent had an important bearing on the ­composition and structure of the English army in 1310 and so will be discussed in greater detail later, but some important points relating to the feudal levy should be noted here. Powicke observed that of the 138 individuals who received a summons in 1310, only forty-five made proffers at the feudal muster in the 32  NA, E 101/374/5, fols 76r–77r; Bodleian Library, Tanner MS 197, fols 28r–28v. 33  Namely John de Cromwell, Payn Tibetot, Roger de Wingfield, John de Segrave, Roger de St John, Henry de Percy, Robert Fitzpayn, Roger de Mortimer, the earl of Angus, Robert de Clifford, Robert de Mohaut, Henry de Beaumont, Ralph de Monthermer, Robert del Isle, Henry Beaufiz and Bartholomew de Badlesmere. Most of these received prests rather than regular wages. BL, Cotton Nero C.VIII, fols 2r, 6r, 13v, 17r, 41r, 42r; E 101/374/5, fols 76r–77r. For the protections see C71/4, passim. 34  Thomas le Latimer proffered himself at the muster for half a knight’s fee. John Botetourt was the only other tenant-in-chief who applied for letters of protection for his men and who also proffered himself to meet his feudal obligations. 35  The liberate roll contains no record of wage payments, but the issue rolls show that Bartholomew de Badlesmere, Robert de Mohaut and Henry de Percy received lump sums of between £50 and £200. NA, C 62/87; E 403/155 mm. 2, 3, 6, and E 403/157 mm. 1, 2. Financial rewards were also granted to several lords in the form of respite of debts, with Fulk Fitzwarin, John de Ferrars, Robert de Mohaut and John le Latimer benefiting from such preferment in August and September 1310. NA, E 159/84 mm. 8d, 14.

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autumn.36 This is not surprising as many tenants-in-chief would simply have paid fines in lieu of their service. Another reason why so few of the summoned men made proffers is that those who received a feudal summons also had orders to bring as large a force as possible. Therefore they had the option of taking their soldiers to Scotland without troubling to have them enrolled for their feudal service. Why some chose to make proffers whilst others did not is unclear, but it is likely that those like Ralph Fitzwilliam who were summoned and brought men, but did not have their service enrolled, were regarded as having met their ­ obligations. How many of the tenants-in-chief sent men to the muster and then accompanied them in Scotland is difficult to discern with any certainty. A total of thirty-three had letters of protection enrolled during the course of the campaign. Of these, nine collected protections for themselves only, twelve also obtained letters for men in their retinues, while a further twelve had protections for service with other commanders. Given that most soldiers did not go to the trouble of applying for or collecting letters of ­protection, the number of tenants-in-chief who filled their quotas and then led their men-at-arms on the campaign must have been considerable.37 How large was the cavalry force serving with Edward II when he set off from Roxburgh to go against the Scots in late September? The total number of knights and bannerets paid by the wardrobe, irrespective of whether these men were household retainers or not, was around ninety. Sergeants, including servientes regis ad arma, totalled some 330 men. With the additional thirty soldars the combined total of cavalrymen receiving pay from the wardrobe was in the region of 450. If we account for overlap between the soldiers who were paid by the wardrobe and those who obtained letters of protection then we are still left with 320 retinue leaders and their followers with protections, plus a further 206 men whose letters were enrolled independently. We might conservatively add half as many again to the resultant total of 526 as magnates usually only requested protections for a portion of their men.38 This gives us 36  Powicke, ‘Edward II and Military Obligation’, 117. 37  The nine tenants-in-chief who obtained independent letters of protection and who made proffers were Geoffrey de Cornubia (NA, C 71/4, m. 13), Walter de Fauconberg (C 71/4, m. 11), Thomas de Bikenore (C 71/4, m. 11), John le Latimer (C 71/4, m. 9), Richard Lovel (C 71/4, m. 10), Thomas de Cailly (C 71/4, m. 7), John le Rous (C 71/4, m. 6), William de la Zouche (C 71/4, m. 5) and Theobald de Verdon (C 71/4, m. 4). Of these nine, only Lovel appears in the wardrobe book as the leader of a retinue. It is therefore probable that the other eight were retinue leaders on the campaign who served gratuitously. Over twenty men received a feudal summons and obtained letters of protection but did not proffer their service. 38  The correlation between the number of men with protections and the number of men actually serving varied from retinue to retinue. John de Segrave obtained protections for twenty-one members of his retinue, but the wardrobe book shows that fifty-two men were in his company. Only twelve of Payn Tibetot’s forty men-at-arms had letters of



the english ar my and the scottish campaign, 1310–11 23

an estimate of around 800 soldiers. Of the 519 proffered cavalrymen, around fifty appear in either the wardrobe book or with protections on the Scottish roll, and in some cases both. Reducing this figure to 450 men would therefore leave us with a combined cavalry total of around 1,700 men-at-arms.39 If hardly precise, this figure is almost certainly of the right magnitude, with the weakened household division and the absent earls accounting for Edward’s inability to put over 2,000 mounted soldiers in the field. Based on these calculations the feudal levy comprised well over a quarter of the cavalry arm, a fact that goes some way towards explaining the continued use of the servicium debitum during the early fourteenth century. Setting off with his 1,700 cavalry and 3,000 foot to go against the Scots in the autumn of 1310, Edward perhaps had reason to feel hopeful about his prospects for the campaign. The force he had with him might not have matched those of his father’s reign, when up to 30,000 soldiers had been put in the field, and his own household division was considerably under-strength, but a small army was more suited to the Scottish terrain than an unwieldy mass of men. Although the wardrobe book states that Edward set off with his army from Roxburgh on 20 September, writs sent out from court suggest that the king was still in the vicinity of the town eight days later.40 It is likely that Edward was delaying his departure until the majority of the late arrivals had joined his army. From Roxburgh the army reached Biggar in Lanarkshire by the beginning of October before increasing its pace in the second half of the month. Edward and his men moved westwards towards Renfrew, to the west of Glasgow, before traversing the country, completing a circular movement, in order to reach Linlithgow on 23 October. It is possible that the king had not originally planned to march to the west but that the absence of the Irish reinforcements under the earl of Ulster had forced him to make a detour. Following a short stay in Linlithgow the army made its way back towards Berwick, reaching that town by mid-November. The court remained there throughout the winter and for the remainder of the campaign. The aim of the main thrust into Scotland is not evident from the sources, but a battle-seeking strategy should not be ruled out.41 Bruce and his followers protection enrolled, but the ratio was twenty-three to thirty-one for the comitiva of John de Cromwell. 39  J. E. Morris thought that for the Bannockburn campaign of four years later the cavalry ‘may have been 2,500 strong’; Morris, Bannockburn, 41. 40  BL, Cotton Nero C.VIII, fol. 36r; CDS, iii, no. 171. 41  Guisborough depicted the invasion almost as a chevauchée, with the English army destroying everything in its path as far as the Firth of Forth; The Chronicle of Walter of Guisborough, ed. H. Rothwell, Camden Society, 3rd ser., lxxxix (1957), 386. Clifford Rogers has argued extensively that the chevauchée was used as a battle-seeking strategy during the reign of Edward III. C. Rogers, War Cruel and Sharp. English Strategy under Edward III (Woodbridge, 2000), passim.

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had been defeated in battle by a smaller baronial army under Aymer de Valence at Methven in 1306, and Edward must have realised that his 4,500strong host would be too powerful for the Scots if the armies clashed on an open field. Bruce was also aware of this and therefore chose to adopt a guerrilla strategy, believing, according to one chronicler, that ‘it would be better to make war against our king covertly rather than to assert his right in open battle’.42 This was the key to Bruce’s defence of Scotland in the years before Bannockburn. Avoiding capture by the enemy and refusing to throw away the lives of his supporters enabled the Scottish king to increase his armed strength and demoralise the English army. By giving battle at Bannockburn four years later Bruce diverted from this grand strategy and effectively risked all of the gains that he had made since the dark days of 1306. In 1310 he showed greater caution. According to the Lanercost chronicle, Edward II ‘advanced with his suite further into Scotland in search of the oft-mentioned Robert, who fled in his usual manner, not daring to meet them’.43 As the author of the Vita Edwardi Secundi understood it, Bruce would never be caught so long as he continued to use these tactics.44 Unfortunately, correspondence from the English court only began in earnest once the army had returned to Berwick. This means that there is no sure way of knowing whether Edward’s strategy was developing in response to Bruce’s activities, and whether the English were achieving any of their campaign objectives. Evidence from the chronicles and from the horse losses recorded in the wardrobe book suggests that the English army was suffering considerable damage and depletion as it advanced into enemy territory.45 The author of the Vita Edwardi Secundi records one particular incident when a group of English and Welsh infantry, supported by some horsemen, were attacked whilst out plundering. The reaction from the rest of the army was too late to prevent the slaughter of the English soldiers. ‘From such ambushes’, the author observed, ‘our men often suffered heavy losses’.46 The large number of English horses that were killed during the autumn and early winter supports the conclusion that such setbacks were not uncommon. Between August and January the values of 42  Vita Edwardi Secundi, ed. Childs, 25. 43  Lanercost, Srevenson, 214. 44  Vita Edwardi Secundi, ed. Childs, 27. ‘And indeed even if the king of England were to lay siege to Scotland for seven years, being shorthanded as he was, he would never commit Robert Bruce to his prison.’ 45  The exception to the general pessimism among the English chroniclers was Walter of Guisborough who stated that Edward and his army faced no obstacles during the main invasion of the autumn. It is likely, however, that the author of the Vita Edwardi Secundi had a more intimate knowledge of events than Guisborough. The former, indeed, might well have been present on the campaign. For comment on the authorship of the Vita, see N. Denholm-Young, Collected Papers (Cardiff, 1969), 267–89. 46  Vita Edwardi Secundi, ed. Childs, 25.



the english ar my and the scottish campaign, 1310–11 25

sixty-two horses had to be reimbursed by the Crown. Thirty-four of these had been killed, with a further thirteen being rendered ‘ad elemosinam’ and six delivered ‘ad karvannum’.47 The details of nine other horses that were lost are unrecorded. A large number of these horses died at Berwick during the winter, which suggests that the cause of their mortality might have been natural rather than a result of combat. Four horses were lost at Linlithgow during the march, and equine casualties were also suffered at Renfrew and Edinburgh.48 It should be remembered that the wardrobe book only recorded reimbursements to those men in receipt of Crown pay. Given that most of the cavalry force appears to have been serving gratuitously or for an obligatory forty days, horse losses were probably considerably greater than this. Edward and his army returned to Berwick during November. Bruce took immediate advantage of this retreat and launched a raid into Lothian where he ‘inflicted much damage upon those who were in the king of England’s peace’. This raid, and Edward’s subsequent pursuit of Bruce, is only mentioned in the ‘Lanercost’ chronicle. There it is stipulated that when Edward reacted to Bruce’s actions the earl of Cornwall remained at Roxburgh and the earl of Gloucester at Norham.49 An anonymous letter dated 25 November stated that the king and queen were at Berwick, whilst the earls of Gloucester, Cornwall and Warenne were at Norham, Roxburgh and Wark respectively.50 It is therefore probable that the raid and Edward’s reaction to it took place as soon as the English army returned to Berwick early in November. By the end of the month all of the leading army commanders were wintering in the border fortresses, and little action seems to have been taken until after the New Year. One interesting exception to this were the intriguing attempts made by Edward to lure Bruce into truce negotiations, or perhaps more deceptively into a trap. On 17 December Robert de Clifford and Robert Fitzpayn were given leave by the king to speak with the Scottish king in Selkirk Forest. The results of this meeting are unclear, but further attempts to parley at Melrose had to be abandoned as Bruce was warned in advance that he might be taken prisoner.51 No matter what his intentions, Edward’s desire to bring Bruce to the negotiating table 47  For a careful discussion of these terms and their application see A. Ayton, Knights and Warhorses. Military Service and the English Aristocracy under Edward III (Woodbridge, 1994), 74–6. Ayton points out that these terms appear to have been interchangeable, with both effectively referring to horses that had been withdrawn from service and delivered to the baggage train. 48  The values of the horses that were lost were not, on the whole, very high. None of the horses were valued at more than 35 marks, with only two being priced this highly. Few of the retinue leaders, however, seem to have lost their own horses, with most of those that were reimbursed belonging to valets. This would explain the lack of high valuations. 49  Lanercost, Stevenson, 214. 50  CDS, iii, no. 177. 51  Ibid., no. 197.

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shows that his armed intervention had achieved little, and that the policy of avoiding battle had paid dividends for the Scots. For the remainder of the campaign up to the end of July there was relatively little activity as Edward and what was left of his army remained garrisoned at Berwick. This may suggest that the king was content to remain in Scotland so as to protect Gaveston from his many enemies in England, but this is unlikely. Rather than staying in the company of Edward on the border, Gaveston, who seems to have been a more than competent soldier, was set the tricky and far from safe task of leading the garrison force at Perth, which at that time was a vulnerable outpost of the English occupation. He was sent to his new position at the beginning of February with 200 men-at-arms in his train. His objective was to prevent Bruce from venturing beyond the Firth of Forth in search of fresh soldiers from that region. The earl remained at Perth until three weeks after Easter when Henry de Percy and the earl of Angus took command of the garrison. One other interesting development concerning the king’s favourite during this period is revealed by an anonymous letter dated 4 April 1311. The writer claims that Robert Bruce meant to fight with the earl of Cornwall, but that he did not believe that he was able to meet the king’s forces in a plain field.52 If this was true then Bruce’s manpower reserves in 1310 must have been very weak, or his caution very great, because as we have seen, Gaveston only had a fraction of the English soldiery in his company. This contrasts markedly with the Scottish king’s attitude four years later when he confronted a much larger English army in battle. The other leading earls on the campaign, Warenne and Gloucester, were given the unenviable job of bringing the men of Selkirk Forest into the king’s peace.53 They set out on this task on 24 February, but Gloucester was forced to return to England the following month to take the place of the deceased earl of Lincoln as keeper of England. His departure dealt a further blow to the king’s plans. Edward’s own actions during the late winter and spring are difficult to discern with the various letters dating from this period simply stating that the king and queen were in good health at Berwick. The Vita Edwardi Secundi is a little more informative, recording that the king ‘had his castles put in a state of defence’ and ‘went round the cities, towns and castles, and obtained supplies of all things’.54 During this period the impetus of the campaign had slowed to a standstill, with Robert Bruce standing ‘afar off, that he might see the end’.55 It is therefore probable that from an early date Edward began to prepare for a new campaign that he planned to launch in the summer of 1311. 52  Ibid., no. 202. 53  Lanercost, Stevenson, 214. 54  Vita Edwardi Secundi, ed. Childs, 25–7. 55  Ibid., 27.



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To stay in Scotland for two years and to summon a new army without consulting the baronage in England was ambitious and optimistic, but this is what Edward tried to do as his original campaign rapidly petered out. On 20 May he ordered the raising of an infantry force comprising one man from every vill, and set the date for their arrival at Roxburgh for 15 July. This attempt to levy new troops without baronial consent has rightly been described by Powicke as ‘unprecedented and unacceptable’.56 Edward was attempting to stretch ­ military obligation beyond anything that had been attempted by his father, even during the crisis years of the 1290s, and this at a time when the Ordainers were decreeing that no act of war should be undertaken without the common assent of the baronage. An attempt was also made to raise a new cavalry force. Requests to bring as large a force as possible were sent to ninetysix magnates on 28 May, followed by a further non-feudal summons issued to thirty-eight men in July. Many of the second group were not included on the original list.57 This could be interpreted either as an indication of Edward’s determination to succeed in Scotland, or as a desperate attempt further to postpone his meeting with his enemies in London. Both factors were probably weighing on his mind. Either way, few soldiers had arrived by the end of July, giving the king little option but to re-cross the border into northern England at the beginning of August.58 His retreat brought renewed strength to the kingdom of Scotland and heralded years of devastation at the hands of the Scots for the communities of northern England.59 The survival of Bruce and his followers in 1310 was truly a turning point in the Anglo-Scottish wars. For the men who served in the English army in 1310 the campaign must have dealt a shattering blow to their hopes of a lasting conquest of Scotland. Although the traditional image of the English aristocracy at Bannockburn is that of an over-confident body of men at the collective height of their hubris, the truth was surely somewhat different. It is difficult to believe that the hundreds of cavalrymen who had served in 1310 and who took part in the 56  Powicke, Military Obligation in Medieval England, 140. Powicke noted that Edward was aware of the need for consent as he had initially issued writs to the magnates and made plans for a parliament. 57  Parl. Writs, II, ii, 411, 415. 58  Powicke has noted that some troops did arrive in 1311: ‘a thin stream of reinforcement had reached Edward, reaching its peak in May’. Military Obligation in Medieval England, 140, n.2. Powicke’s evidence for this was the letters of protection, some of which were still being enrolled during the summer of 1311. A few reinforcements also came from Yorkshire. Bodleian Library, Tanner MS 197, fol. 50r. 59  The consequences for the northern communities of England became clear as soon as Edward and his army had departed. The ‘Lanercost’ chronicle records how on 12 August Bruce, having collected a large army, ‘invaded England by the Solway ... and burnt all the land of the Lord of Gilsland and the town of Haltwhistle and a great part of Tynedale’. He returned in September to cause even more devastation. Lanercost, Stevenson, 216.

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ill-fated expedition four years later could so easily have forgotten their most recent experiences north of the border. There certainly appears, from what little knowledge that we have of the Bannockburn army, to have been a high level of continuity in the cavalrymen who served in the two hosts. We can see from a comparison of the names on the Scottish roll of 1310 with that of 1314 that at least thirty-one of the retinue leaders in 1310 were also serving at Bannockburn, sixteen of them in the same role and fifteen in the companies of other men.60 The names of one hundred of the retainers on the protection lists in 1310 also appear on the Scottish roll four years later. Given that the Bannockburn campaign is so poorly documented in every other respect, it is clear that this must be only a small portion of the total number of soldiers who, having served during 1310 and 1311, later succumbed to Bruce’s army on the approach to Stirling castle. Are we expected to believe that these troops had learned nothing from their previous experiences in Scotland, and that they turned up in 1314 simply expecting to rout the Scottish army? If collective naivety was not to blame for the English defeat in 1314, then the problem might have lain in the way that the army was raised. One possibility is that the combination of paid, unpaid and ‘feudal’ elements prevented the formation of a clear command structure. Unfortunately, the loss of the horse inventory and proffer roll, which were most probably destroyed in the ­aftermath of the battle as the English army beat a hasty retreat, together with the absence of a wardrobe book, means that we have little knowledge of the various English contingents that served in 1314. Without this documentation it is most difficult to gain a clear impression of how the different elements of the army combined on the campaign, and to obtain a reasonable idea of what the army might have looked like on the day of the battle. Fortunately for the expedition of four years earlier we have access to all of these sources with the exception of a horse inventory. This enables us to piece together a more detailed picture of the cavalry force that served in 1310, and more particularly, to demonstrate how the individual retinues and levies combined to form a single cohesive army. The multi-faceted nature of English hosts in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries has been amply demonstrated by work carried out on the armies of Edward I. Studying the Caerlaverock campaign of 1300, and by comparing the heraldic work known as the Song of Caerlaverock with the paid and feudal contingents that served in that year, Prestwich was able to show that many men-at-arms serving in 1300 must have done so without Crown pay. 60  The sixteen men who definitely served as leaders on both campaigns were the earl of Gloucester, earl Warenne, Ralph de Monthermer, Thomas le Latimer, John de Cromwell, Payn Tibetot, Roger de Mortimer of Chirk, Henry Tyes, Henry de Beaumont, Robert de Clifford, Nicholas de Segrave, Robert Hastang, Edmund de Mauley, Edward Burnel, William Vaux and John de Segrave.



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Most of the aristocratic lords listed by the herald were evidently serving neither for wages nor as part of their obligatory feudal service.61 For the campaign of 1310 something very similar seems to have been happening. As we have seen, thirty-eight of the retinue leaders who requested letters of protection for their followers appear neither in the wardrobe accounts in receipt of Crown pay, nor as proffered men on the marshal’s register. The lack of a pay roll for this campaign, as with that of 1300, strongly suggests that many lords were giving voluntary unpaid service, and that they were paying their men from their own resources. This contrasts markedly with the armies of Edward III in which everyone, from the leading earl down to the mounted archers, was paid directly by the royal paymasters. In this way the process of recruitment was centralised, and the king was able to retain direct control over the organisation of his forces in the field.62 The continued use of the feudal summons by Edward I and Edward II, which was issued for the penultimate time in 1327, appears to have added a further layer of complexity to the armies of this earlier period.63 Aristocratic retinues, whether serving voluntarily or for pay, were distinct units with a clearly defined leader. The feudal contingent, in contrast, does not at first sight appear to have had any obvious command structure. Whilst we can see the days on which the ‘feudal’ troops arrived at muster, and although we know the names of the tenants-in-chief who proffered them, the manner in which the feudal companies were led during their periods of service has long remained a mystery. Prestwich has been drawn towards this question on more than one occasion. In 1972 he wrote that ‘the men performing their feudal service probably did not serve as a separate brigade, but were assimilated into the normal structure of the army’. Re-addressing the problem twelve years later he commented that ‘it is not clear how the feudal quotas fitted into the organisation of the army in the field; whether they served as a body or were integrated into the rest of the cavalry force’. Once again he suggested that ‘the latter seems

61  Prestwich, War, Politics and Finance, 69–70. Comparing these findings with evidence for the 1298 and 1304 campaigns, amongst others, Prestwich reached the conclusion that the cavalry forces of Edward I’s reign ‘cannot with justice be termed mercenary, feudal or contractual’. Ibid., 91. 62  Andrew Ayton, ‘English Armies in the Fourteenth Century’, in Arms, Armies and Fortifications in the Hundred Years War, ed. Anne Curry and Michael Hughes (Woodbridge, 1994), 22. 63  See N. B. Lewis, ‘The Summons of the English Feudal Levy, 5 April 1327’, in Essays in Medieval History Presented to Bertie Wilkinson, ed. T. A. Sandquist and M. R. Powicke (Toronto, 1969). The next and final summons was not issued until the reign of Richard II, on which see idem, ‘The Last Medieval Summons of the English Feudal Levy, 13 June 1385’, EHR lxxiii (1958); J. J. N. Palmer, ‘The Last Summons of the Feudal Army in England (1385)’, EHR lxxxiii (1968); and Lewis, ‘The Feudal Summons of 1385’, EHR c (1985).

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more likely’.64 The survival of the proffer roll, Scottish roll and wardrobe book for the army of 1310 offers an ideal opportunity to investigate this matter in greater detail, for it enables us to view the army from several perspectives in a way that is not possible for the host that fought at Bannockburn. By carrying out a ­prosopographical analysis of the soldiers who are named in these sources it may be possible to unlock some of the secrets relating to the way that early Edwardian armies were recruited and organised in the field. That the feudal contingents of the early fourteenth century were not ramshackle bodies thrown together without any thought, and composed only of poor quality soldiers, should immediately be obvious. It is difficult to understand what Giles de Argentine, who according to Barbour was the third best knight in Europe, was doing in the feudal levies of 1300 and 1310 if that was the case.65 It is also difficult to imagine how the 500 men giving feudal service in 1310 could have been drawn up as an independent battle within the army. If this were so then who could have led such a mass of men? It is true that large numbers of infantry were divided into groups of twenty and one hundred and led by vintenars or constables, but there is no evidence to suggest that forces of ‘feudal’ cavalry were organised in this way. Any re-distribution of knights and sergeants that did take place was on a much smaller scale. The natural unit of cavalry organisation in the early fourteenth century was the magnate retinue, and so the assumption that we should make is not that the ‘feudal’ soldiers were randomly grouped together in an unwieldy brigade, but that they served like all the other mounted soldiers within these retinues. From the perspectives of the company leaders this kind of organisation would have made the most sense. They had to pay all of their men-at-arms at a standard rate, the only difference being that in some instances the Crown might have covered the costs of their non-feudal soldiers. In 1310 the earl of Angus, Payn Tibetot, Henry de Percy and several others received money for such men. The majority of the company leaders, for whom there is no evidence to suggest that they received pay from the Crown, must have paid both their feudal and non-feudal soldiers from their own resources, unless an ecclesiastical tenant-in-chief had contracted to pay the wages of the men for forty days. From the perspectives of most leaders the two kinds of soldiers would therefore have been indistinguishable. Their companions received the same pay during their forty days of ‘feudal’ service as they did for the rest of the campaign. Only the Crown, keen to save on costs and to maintain its right to compulsory cavalry service, preserved in its records the impression of two distinct and mutually exclusive forms of recruitment. 64  Prestwich, War Politics and Finance, 82; idem, ‘Cavalry Service’, 150–1. 65  In 1300 Argentine was proffered by the Bishop of Norwich and in 1310 by Piers Gaveston. Palgrave, Docs, 212; Parl. Writs, II, ii, 403.



the english ar my and the scottish campaign, 1310–11

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The financial preoccupation that lies behind most royal records often disguises the more subtle processes of military organisation that were taking place beneath the surface. Among ecclesiastical tenants-in-chief the task of finding retinue leaders to take their feudal quotas into war began weeks in advance of the muster date. On 25 August 1310, two weeks before the date for which the muster had been set, William Greenfield, the Archbishop of York, paid a local knight, Thomas de Coleville of Coxwold, £100 to gather men to fill his feudal quota and to lead them to Scotland.66 Coleville was a prominent knight of north Yorkshire and a neighbour of one of the archbishop’s leading associates in the defence of the north of England, William de Ros of Helmsley.67 Although Coleville had a letter of protection enrolled with Ros on 22 December, a protection warrant had been issued for him alongside the same man at the earlier date of 10 September.68 Coleville would therefore appear to have been serving with Ros from the beginning of the campaign. On 12 September the Archbishop of York’s men, ten sergeants led to Scotland by Coleville, proffered their service to the Crown, followed nine days later by four sergeants proffered by Ros in his role as lord of Wark.69 The ten ‘feudal’ sergeants serving with Coleville must at this point have followed him into Ros’ larger retinue. At least eight of the fourteen sergeants proffered by Coleville and Ros were scions of neighbouring north Yorkshire families, with the head of at least one of these families giving military service for both Ros and Coleville around this time.70 These kinsmen of local landowners, including a sergeant named Thomas de Coleville, apparently a relative of the knight of the same 66  The Register of William Greenfield, Lord Archbishop of York 1306–1315, ed. W. Brown and A. Hamilton Thompson, Surtees Society clii (5 vols, 1931–40), iv, no. 2312. Coleville was paid £100 ‘pro servicio domino nostro regi a nobis debito in guerra sua Scocie faciendo’. 67  In April 1315 the archbishop requested that Ros, along with around fifty other knights, assemble at Doncaster to devise means of protecting the north against the Scots. Historical Papers and Letters from the Northern Registers, ed. J. Raine, Rolls Series lxi (1873), 246–7. 68  NA, C 71/4, m. 8; Calendar of Chancery Warrants, 1244–1326 (HMSO, 1927), 325. Only one of the nine other men on the protection warrant later went on to have his protection enrolled under Ros. For some reason the protections that were applied for on behalf of the other eight were never enrolled. 69  Parl. Writs, II, ii, 404, 407. 70  Besides Thomas de Coleville junior, four of the nine other sergeants proffered on behalf of the archbishop were from villages close to those where Coleville and Ros held their lands. Robert de Lyns was probably the relative of Roger de Lyns who held land in the same wapentake as Coleville in 1316. John Upsale, William de Holtby and Thomas de Rand were also probably kinsmen of Geoffrey Upsale, Nicholas de Holtby and Robert de Rand, landholders in villages neighbouring those of Coxwold and Helmsley. Feudal Aids, 1284–1431 (6 vols, 1899–1920), vi, 92, 175, 185. Nicholas de Holtby, himself a sergeant, served with Coleville in Ros’ retinue on what was most probably the same campaign; NA, C 81/1737, m. 47.

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name, were proffered in Scotland as tenants of the Archbishop of York in name only. As aspiring warriors looking for advancement in the service of leading local knights, they were no different from the hundreds of other sergeants recruited to the army. Other ecclesiastical tenants-in-chief in this period arranged for local contractors to gather ‘feudal’ soldiers on their behalf. This is a practice that has previously been observed by N. B. Lewis among others.71 Yet what is significant about this arrangement is that the service connections between ‘feudal’ ­cavalrymen and retinue leaders were formed before, not after, the muster. Far from being ad hoc and poorly planned, the part of the army that was serving for an obligatory forty days was organised in the same way as all the other cavalry units. The enrolment of letters of protection for ‘feudal’ soldiers in the companies of retinue leaders far in advance of the muster shows that a number of lords considered such men to be in their service before they had registered their names with the marshal. Such ‘feudal’ soldiers were not serving for forty days and then looking to attach themselves to retinues, but were riding under their noble and baronial leaders whilst officially giving ‘feudal’ service to the Crown. What we are seeing, therefore, is the simultaneous service, within the same retinues, of ‘feudal’ and ‘paid’ cavalrymen.72 On 19 September six sergeants proffered their service on behalf of the Abbot of Malmesbury. Three of these men, Henry de Rentham, John de Okesham and William Durant, had obtained letters of protection in the company of John de Ferrars on 8 September, eleven days before the muster.73 On that day Ferrars had obtained protections for fourteen of his other followers. He evidently saw no difference between the men in his retinue who would later go on to register their feudal service and those who would not. From Ferrars’ point of view they were all his

71  One such contract, drawn up between the Archbishop of York and Robert de Constable of Flamborough for the Weardale campaign of 1327, has been considered in some detail by Lewis. ‘The Summons of the English Feudal Levy’, 242–9. Michael Prestwich has elsewhere observed that tenants-in-chief would sometimes ‘engage a military contractor to provide the service that was due’; ‘Cavalry Service’, 149. 72  J. E. Morris, confronting the same problem, believed that although the troops giving feudal service were serving within the retinues, they were not fully integrated with the paid troops, hence his conviction that the retinue was at a different strength during the forty days of feudal service to when it was in pay. This also led him to conclude that when a retinue ended its period of feudal service and entered pay, it was re-organised, strengthened, and augmented in number. The Welsh Wars of Edward I (new edn, Stroud, 1996), 57, 65, 69–70, 75, 174. It is interesting that, despite his general lack of sympathy for the feudal contingents of the late thirteenth century, Morris did observe that ‘the feudal system lent itself to the new [paid] one’; idem, 70. 73  Parl. Writs, II, ii, 405; NA, C 71/4, m. 11. The date of the protections given by G. G. Simpson and J. D. Galbraith in the printed calendar, 19 August, is incorrect; CDS, v, no. 2773.



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men-at-arms, regardless of whether they were being paid for the whole period from his own pocket or for forty days by the abbot. Interestingly, just as Thomas de Coleville acted as an intermediary between the Archbishop of York and William de Ros of Helmsley, gathering troops to fill the feudal quota of the former before taking them into the service of the latter, Robert de Sapy appears to have acted in a similar role on behalf of John de Ferrars. The Robert de Sapy who famously contracted to gather men for the Bishop of Salisbury in 1322 was probably the same soldier as the Robert de Sapy who had previously served with Ferrars in 1300 and 1310. Significantly, in each of the three years that he served in the army, Sapy appears to have formed a link between a south-western ecclesiastical house and a company leader from that region. On 28 June 1300, he and ten other men-at-arms had protections enrolled in Ferrars’ war comitiva. Four days later, three of these men, including Sapy, registered their feudal service on behalf of the Bishop of Salisbury.74 Some kind of contract had most probably been drawn up between Ferrars, or one of his companions, and the bishop. Sapy’s appearance in Ferrars’ retinue in 1310 should therefore alert us to the possibility that it was he, not Ferrars himself, who had contracted with the Abbot of Malmesbury, and that this Robert de Sapy was serving as a military contractor over the course of three decades. It might have been customary for one of a retinue leader’s subordinates to act as a middle man between himself and a non-serving tenant-in-chief. Whatever the truth of this, the evidence relating to the activities of Sapy and Coleville probably only skims the surface of a vast network of military contractors who were at work within England at that time.75 Although contracting between ecclesiastical tenants-in-chief and retinue commanders is to have been expected, the knights and sergeants proffered by non-serving secular landholders also served within the cavalry retinues in 1310. On 19 September, two valets named Peter de Langford and Richard de Baskerville arrived at Tweedmouth to perform their service on behalf of William de Grandison, a tenant-in-chief with lands in Herefordshire and Gloucestershire. Langford had obtained a letter of protection with John de Ferrars on 8 September, eleven days ahead of the muster. Although Baskerville did not have a protection enrolled with the same lord, two men-at-arms named 74  Palgrave, Docs, 221; NA, C 67/14, m. 11. The two other men who obtained protections with Ferrars before registering their feudal service on behalf of the Bishop of Salisbury were Roger de Frome and Nicholas de Nowers. 75  These were not the only instances in which the feudal quotas of ecclesiastical tenantsin-chief appear to have served in the retinues of the campaign leaders. Two sergeants who obtained protections in the retinue of John de Cromwell, namely Thomas de Greille and Robert de Farnham, were proffered by the Bishop of Lincoln on 17 September. Greille’s protection was enrolled on 14 August, whilst Farnham’s was enrolled on 20 September; Parl. Writs, II, ii, 404; NA, C 71/4, mm. 11, 13.

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John and Walter de Baskerville were serving with Ferrars in 1310.76 It would therefore appear that three members of the Baskerville family were in Ferrars’ comitiva in Scotland, with one of them being momentarily dispatched in order to register his feudal service on behalf of a middle ranking tenant-in-chief. The termination of aristocratic lines over the centuries, and the subsequent disruption to their archives, mean that it is highly unlikely that more than a few of the contracts that were drawn up between such landholders and military leaders have survived.77 Contemplating the evidence for the campaign of 1310, Powicke observed that ‘sometimes a lord who had received a personal summons and made a proffer appeared in the retinue of another’.78 This is true, but what is more revealing is that the men proffered by these tenants-in-chief sometimes obtained letters of protection with the same retinue leaders who had requested protections for their feudal lords. This suggests that these proffered men followed their ­tenurial lords into the cavalry retinues, and that they did not serve with a separate allfeudal brigade. The banneret, Nicholas de Pointz, obtained a protection with the earl of Gloucester on 21 September 1310. Four days previously the two sergeants proffered by Pointz mustered at Tweedmouth, including one man named Raymond Harang. On 6 October, nineteen days after his feudal service had been registered by the marshal, this same Raymond had a letter of ­protection enrolled with the earl.79 This process was replicated when another banneret in Gloucester’s retinue, Geoffrey de Say, proffered himself and one other knight for the service of two knights’ fees. Say had obtained a letter of protection with the earl on 5 August, a month before the muster was scheduled to take place and on the same day that nine other of Gloucester’s followers had their protections enrolled.80 One of these nine men was the banneret John le Savage, who like Say came from Kent. He proffered himself immediately after Geoffrey de Say on 28 October, something that might have been purely ­coincidental were it not for the survival of a protection warrant for this campaign in which Savage 76  Parl. Writs, II, ii, 406. For Langford’s and John de Baskerville’s protections, see NA, C 71/4, m. 11. For Walter de Baskerville’s protection application, see CDS, v, no. 570. A Walter de Baskerville (d. 1312) and a Richard de Baskerville (d. post 1324), both with lands in Herefordshire, shared the arms ‘de argent a un chevron de goules e iii rondels de azure’, with Walter’s arms being differenced by the addition of golden crosslets. C. Moor (ed.), Knights of Edward I, Harleian Society lxxx–lxxxiv (5 vols, 1929–32), i, 49–50. 77  One such agreement was drawn up between John de Beauchamp and Walter de Fauconberg in 1314, in which Fauconberg contracted to serve on behalf of Beauchamp and to pay sixty marks if he failed to do so. The lack of a proffer roll for the Bannockburn campaign means that we do not know whether Fauconberg did perform the service. Prestwich, ‘Cavalry Service’, 149. 78  Powicke, ‘Edward II and Military Obligation’, 118. 79  Parl. Writs, II, ii, 403; NA, C 71/4, m. 10. 80  Parl. Writs, II, ii, 408; NA, C 71/4, m. 13.



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appears as a knight in Say’s sub-retinue. This warrant, a remnant of an earlier stage in the organisation of the campaign, confirms that both bannerets, who were ostensibly performing feudal service, were serving alongside non-feudal soldiers within the larger comitiva of Gilbert de Clare.81 The earl of Gloucester was therefore able to draw on both ‘feudal’ and ‘non-feudal’ soldiers in order to bolster the strength of his mounted troop.82 Many of the soldiers who were proffered as part of the feudal levy were rather obscure figures, and this has perpetuated the idea that they were formed up as a separate body from the main cavalry force. However, some of the men who were proffered in 1310 were regular military companions of the tenantsin-chief in whose names their feudal service was recorded. The sergeant William de Punchardon had served with the household knight Richard Lovel in 1298, 1300, 1301, 1303, and was to serve with him again at Bannockburn. On 19 September 1310 he mustered at Tweedmouth as part of Lovel’s feudal quota.83 Given that Lovel was a leader on the campaign we can be sure that Punchardon served with him in that year as well. On the same day John de Cary registered his service on behalf of Robert Fitzpayn. The latter, like Lovel, was one of Edward II’s household commanders. Cary had previously served with Fitzpayn in 1296, 1298, 1303 and 1306.84 It is extremely unlikely that such regular retainers as Punchardon and Cary were detached from the retinues of their usual leaders for this one campaign. There would have been no reason for this unless we assume that as ‘feudal’ troops these sergeants fell a priori outside the realm of the retinue leaders. Simon de Cokefield, a knight proffered in 1310 by Payn Tibetot, provides an even more interesting example. Like the others he had a long record of service with the man by whom he was proffered, having served with Tibetot in Scotland in 1303 and 1306, as well as at the Dunstable tournament in 1309.85 An entry in the wardrobe book shows that Tibetot and his contingent had their horses appraised on 24 September. On 29 October, thirty-six days later, it is recorded that one of Tibetot’s knights entered the

81  NA, C 81/1738, m. 66. 82  For a similar phenomenon under Clare’s father see M. Altschul, A Baronial Family in Medieval England: The Clares, 1217–1314 (Baltimore, Maryland, 1965), 138–9. 83  For his feudal service in 1310 see Parl. Writs, II, ii, 406. For his service with Lovel on previous and future campaigns; H. Gough, Scotland in 1298. Documents Relating to the Campaign of Edward I in that year (London, 1888), 179 (1298); NA, E 101/8/23, m. 1 (1300); E 101/9/24, m. 2 (1301); E 101/612/11, m. 1 (1303–04); C 71/6, m. 3 (1314). 84  Parl. Writs, II, ii, 406. For his service with Fitzpayn on previous campaigns; NA, E 101/5/23, m. 2 (1296); Gough, Scotland in 1298, 171 (1298); C 67/15, m. 6 (1303–04); C 67/16, m. 4 (1306). 85  Parl. Writs, II, ii, 405. For his service with Tibetot on previous campaigns; NA, E 101/612/11, m. 2d (1303–04); E 101/13/7, m. 1 (1306). Also see A. Tomkinson, ‘Retinues at the Tournament of Dunstable’, EHR lxxiv (1959), 77.

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king’s pay having served for Tibetot for forty days.86 This knight was Simon de Cokefield. For him to have neatly entered into Tibetot’s pay at the end of his period of forty days service suggests that he had been within the retinue since registering his name at the muster on 19 September. The absence of a horse inventory for the 1310 campaign means that for ­information about army composition and structure we are limited to an ­analysis of the proffer and Scottish rolls. A comparison with the 1300 and 1303 campaigns for which horse inventories have survived shows that this ­phenomenon, of feudal troops serving within the magnate retinues, was not unique to the campaign of 1310. On 8 July 1300 the household banneret William de Leyburn and his men, including two sergeants named Peter Picard and Edmund de St Leger, entered pay and had their horses appraised. Six days later both Picard and St Leger were proffered at the feudal muster by Nicholas de Kiryel, who had served under Leyburn on the Flanders campaign three years ­previously.87 That they remained in Leyburn’s retinue during their forty days’ feudal service, possibly in receipt of Crown pay, seems clear enough. This indiscretion, as with that of a certain William Flambard who was registered for feudal service on 2 July 1300 but had his horse appraised in the retinue of Thomas de Chaucombe twenty-four days later, shows that the ‘feudal’ troops cannot have been serving with a separate all-feudal brigade.88 What is particularly intriguing about this and the campaign of 1303 is that a number of men who would later go on to register their feudal service were already serving within the paid retinues in advance of the muster. Walter de Fauconberg proffered the sergeants William and Robert de Maltby on 6 June 1303, but both brothers had been serving for him in what appears to have been a household brigade since 28 May.89 Alternatively, John de St John of Lageham proffered Gerard de Clifton at the feudal muster on 2 June 1303 just five days before he and Clifton had their horses appraised in the company of the banneret William Tuchet.90 Given that feudal musters during this period usually stretched out over a number of days and weeks, it would have been both impractical and undesirable for such soldiers to leave their retinues for new formations whenever they alternated between ‘paid’ and ‘feudal’ service. 86  BL, Cotton Nero C.VIII, fol. 41r. 87  NA, E 101/8/23, m. 4; Palgrave, Docs, 228; E 101/6/37, m. 4. 88  Palgrave, Docs, 222; NA, E 101/8/23, m. 6. 89  NA, E 101/612/29, m. 1d; E 101/612/12, m. 11. Internal evidence shows that the latter document, though not headed under any particular year, refers to the campaign of 1303–04. Of 86 men who had their horses appraised, all but seven were household men. 90  NA, E 101/612/29, m. 2; E 101/612/11, m. 7. In another instance, Ralph de Scales and James de Carlton had their horses appraised under Robert de Scales just ten days after being proffered by Thomas de Inglethorp on 31 May; NA, E 101/612/29, m. 1; E 101/612/11, m. 7.



the english ar my and the scottish campaign, 1310–11 37

Such constant re-structuring would have damaged rather than enhanced the effectiveness of these armies in the field. Significantly, the pay accounts drawn up by the household clerks for the campaign of 1300 occasionally number the ‘feudal’ soldiers among those serving in the paid retinues. The pay entry for Sir William de Cantilupe states that he had three knights and eight sergeants in his service between 3 July and 31 August, but that the pay of one of these sergeants had been stopped for eight days because Cantilupe owed the feudal service of the tenth part of one knights’ fee.91 The sergeant in question was a certain William de Sutton, who was entered on the proffer roll on 3 July. Cantilupe had his horse appraised on the same day, but not with three knights and seven sergeants as one might expect, but with all eight sergeants, including William de Sutton who should have been giving feudal service at that time.92 Both his inclusion in the number of men-at-arms given in Cantilupe’s pay account, and his presence on the horse inventory among the latter’s other companions, strongly suggests that Sutton was in the retinue whilst giving his feudal service. Three of the sergeants in Sir John de la Mare’s retinue were excluded from pay for forty days because ‘they did service for the said Sir John after the appreciation of their horses’.93 One assumes that restauro equorum for these men must have been postponed until forty days after the date of appraisal. What is beyond doubt is that all three men were in de la Mare’s retinue, alongside his paid troops, at the beginning of their forty days of service, and that as soon as that service was over they re-entered pay in the same retinue.94 The most logical conclusion to be drawn is that these sergeants were in Sir John’s comitiva whilst giving feudal service to the Crown, creating a retinue stable in composition and structure, if varied in its terms of service. The interesting combinations of paid and feudal soldiers that we find in the army of 1310 were therefore not new in that year. What of those men-at-arms who, for whatever reason, were not organised into magnate retinues in advance of the muster? That there were some such men in 1310 is almost certain, given that only a few of those who gave feudal service in that year had protections enrolled before the autumn. One reason for this is that most of those who gave feudal service were sergeants rather than 91  Liber Quotidianus Contrarotulatoris Garderobae Anno Regni Regis Edwardi Primi Vicesimo Octavo, ed. John Topham (London, 1787), 198. 92  Palgrave, Docs, 223; NA, E 101/8/23, m. 2. 93  Liber Quotidianus, ed. Topham, 197. ‘Exceptis vadiis trium scutiferorum suorum, videlicet, John de Glaston’, Hugh de Ingleton et William de Stivinton, per 40 dies, 21 die Augusti pro ultimo computato, per quos fecerunt servicium pro eodem Domino Johanne post appreciationem equorum suorum’. 94  The evidence of the horse inventory which, contrary to the wardrobe book, shows that all three sergeants, along with de la Mare’s other retainers, had their horses appraised on 28 July, fourteen days after their feudal service had begun, shows that these ‘feudal’ troops were also with de la Mare in the middle of their service; NA, E 101/8/23, m. 6.

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knights, and protections were usually only obtained by the wealthier landed members of the military community. Nonetheless, some non-serving tenantsin-chief must have found it difficult to find leaders to take their men to war before the muster date. Was this remainder drawn up together in a separate battle? What little evidence that we have suggests not. Rather the constable and marshal of the army seem to have taken it upon themselves to re-distribute such men-at-arms among the aristocratic retinues at the beginning of their period of feudal service. Our main source for this practice is an account given by Matthew Paris relating to the much earlier Welsh campaign of Henry III in 1257. In that year the two knights and eight sergeants proffered by the Abbot of St Albans arrived at the muster at Chester without a leader. Rather than being grouped together with the other feudal contingents, however, they were then integrated into the main body of the army, the eight sergeants joining the constable and a multitude of other nobles in the vanguard, and the two knights serving alongside Sir Thomas de Gresley and Sir Henry de Percy in the rear.95 It is probable that those soldiers, both feudal and non-feudal, who arrived at Tweedmouth in 1310 without a retinue leader, were re-distributed among the retinues by the constable and marshal in much the same way. Given that the English army in 1310 was the last royal army to campaign in Scotland before the ill-fated expedition to Bannockburn four years later, the organisation of the feudal contingent in that year is of great historical interest. On 23 December 1313, Edward II once again issued a feudal summons for a campaign to Scotland requesting that his tenants-in-chief bring their ­servicium debitum.96 The force that he raised has been described as ‘impeccably ­conservative’, being ‘feudal, national and contractual’.97 This conservatism has generally been assumed to have been the cause of the English defeat. It has been customary, since the work of J. E. Morris, to regard the feudal cavalry forces of the early fourteenth century as wholly unsuited to the warfare of the period, but it has never been fully understood how the feudal cavalry fitted into the command structures of these armies. In 1310 the integration of the feudal cavalry force into the rest of the mounted troop was seamless. It would appear that all of the cavalrymen within the army, whether they were serving for an obligatory forty days, voluntarily, or for Crown pay, were integrated within the normal military structure of the magnate retinues. Even those knights and sergeants who arrived at the muster without a leader were re-organised among 95  Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, ed. H. R. Luard, Rolls Series lvii (7 vols, 1872–83), vi, 374. Similarly, in 1282, the Bishop of Hereford’s men ‘were assigned to the command of Roger Mortimer, senior, under whom they fought at his castle of Builth in the Upper Wye valley’. Helena Chew, The English Ecclesiastical Tenants-in-Chief and Knight Service (Oxford, 1932), 94. 96  Parl. Writs, II, ii, 421–2. 97  Powicke, Military Obligation in Medieval England, 141.



the english ar my and the scottish campaign, 1310–11 39

the magnate retinues rather than lumped together en masse. To attribute the English defeat at Bannockburn to the inadequacies of the feudal military system would therefore be to underestimate the organisational capacity of English armies of this period. In so much as such a ‘system’ existed, it did not adversely affect the way in which the heavy cavalry of this period functioned on the March, or the way that they fought in battle.

3

‘Shock and Awe’: The Use of Terror as a Psychological Weapon During the Bruce–Balliol Civil War, 1332–1338 Iain A. MacInnes

R

avagi ng l a n d, burning crops, stealing livestock and killing peasants: this is how war was fought in the middle ages. These tactics constituted a form of warfare that minimised the dangers of meeting an enemy in battle, while maximising the destruction that could be inflicted upon the opposition. They also enabled the seizure of booty, the acquisition of which was important in keeping an army in the field since armed forces of the time were often unpaid. English armies in Scotland had employed destructive tactics from the beginning of the Wars of Independence, while the Scots had behaved similarly when pursuing attacks upon northern England. The psychological impact of these attacks, whether submission of an overawed population or payment of protection money from terrified inhabitants, was essentially a by-product of the type of war being fought. Although the terrorising of a particular area was useful, it was nevertheless not the principal aim of armies in the AngloScottish conflict. The use of terror as a targeted form of war, as a weapon in and of itself, was more applicable to the conditions of the Bruce–Balliol civil conflict. Robert I had employed terror in the form of targeted violence in his herschip of Comyn lands in 1307–08, as he attempted to establish hegemony over a unified Scotland. This was the means the Bruce partisans chose to adopt in order to maintain a grip on the allegiance of the Scottish people against the Balliol threat during the renewed fighting of the 1330s. The opening phases of the Second War of Independence were relatively devoid of such action. The Disinherited army that landed at Kinghorn in August 1332 had little time to pursue any sort of terror campaign in the Scottish   For the destructive nature of Scottish raiding of northern England and its impact, see for example McNamee, Wars, 72–115; J. Scammell, ‘Robert I and the North of England’, EHR lxxiii (1958).



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countryside before it was met in battle at Dupplin Moor. Victory vindicated the arrival of Balliol and his supporters, and encouraged a large part of the local nobility and clergy to rally to the Balliol cause. A concerted campaign of violence was unnecessary in enforcing allegiance. Many of Balliol’s new supporters seem to have come of their own accord, having perceived divine intervention in the defeat of the Bruce army by the much smaller Disinherited force. The Bruce party was not, however, militarily destroyed at Dupplin. A second army remained in the field and soon besieged the Disinherited at Perth. A relief army from Balliol’s traditional base of support in Galloway drew the Bruce partisans away from the town. This provoked a violent response that included the use of destructive tactics for the first time in the Second War of Independence. The Bruce army marched into Galloway, ‘and put it to fire and flame, and drove the people from the country and took and carried off everything they could find’. This punitive raid was not primarily intended to overawe the Balliol partisans in the South West. Instead, it was intended as a distraction, forcing Edward Balliol to abandon his position around Perth in order to rescue his major Scottish supporters. Balliol then attempted to entice the Bruce partisans into a further military confrontation. In this he was partially successful, capturing Andrew Murray and John Crabbe at Roxburgh Bridge. Balliol’s determination to engage the Bruce forces in battle did not, however, involve ravaging of the countryside. No large-scale attempt was made to terrorise the rural population and despoil the landscape. This was a mistake. The essence of good lordship rested on the ability of the lord to defend his lands from attack. Sustained destruction of Bruce territory would have forced the Bruce partisans to march to its defence, or risk forfeiting the allegiance of their tenants. This would have afforded Balliol the possibility of a final decisive battle, or the allegiance of important areas of Scotland. Balliol’s forces may have been small, but the successes of Dupplin Moor and Roxburgh Bridge made the Bruce Scots fearful. They fled before Balliol’s march through southwest Scotland, and the opportunity remained for Balliol to capitalise on his early success to build a block of support in this area, before expanding further   Bower, vii, 81; Lanercost, Maxwell, 272; B.Webster, ‘Scotland without a King’, in Medieval Scotland Crown, Lordship and Community. Essays Presented to G.W. S. Barrow, ed. A. Grant and K. J. Stringer (Edinburgh, 1998), 229, 237.   The English chroniclers stated that God supported the Disinherited cause at Dupplin Moor. They were not alone in such an assertion, and the Scottish chronicler John of Fordun also supported a religious cause for the defeat, stating that the army was ‘struck down, not by the strength of man, but by the vengeance of God’. Fordun, i, 347. See also Lanercost, Maxwell, 271; Scalacronica, Maxwell, 90–1.   Lanercost, Maxwell, 272–3.   Anonimalle, 1307–34, 153.   Lanercost, Maxwell, 273–4; Scalacronica, Maxwell, 91–2; Anonimalle, 1307–34, 153–5; Bower, vii, 89.

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into the Bruce heartlands. The lack of a terror campaign instead allowed the Bruce partisans to dictate the course of the war’s early stages. It also ensured that Balliol lacked numerical support when the Bruce Scots duly attacked him at Annan and drove him from the kingdom in November 1332. The invasions of 1333 began very differently from those of the previous year. On entering Scotland, Balliol’s army now ‘raided several places and did great damage to their enemies’ before moving on to besiege Berwick. Raiding parties were sent out from the siege to attack the surrounding countryside. The earl of Atholl led one foraging expedition, while another attacked the market at Haddington. Meanwhile, the English defenders of the West March raided Scotland and ‘began to burn and kill all before them, and they took sheep and other fat beasts in great plenty’. These examples present a picture of conventional warfare, comprised of raiding, foraging and seizure of booty, but it can be argued that these attacks also involved attempts to win by force the loyalty of the southern Scots. Targeted attacks of the very lands that would be ceded to Edward III following the Bruce collapse ensured the subjection of southern Scotland. Here were the beginnings of a campaign, using terror, in order to achieve a dominance that Balliol had failed to gain in the preceding year. Circumstance once again denied Balliol the opportunity of extending such a policy over a prolonged period. The victory of the Disinherited/English armies at Halidon Hill on 19 July 1333 was emphatic. Terror was no longer required since the culmination of two heavy defeats in less than a year had shattered temporarily the ability of the Bruce partisans to resist. What followed seems to have been a return to the tactics of the previous year, with Balliol attempting to portray himself as a magnanimous conqueror and rightful king. The Disinherited took the opportunity to reclaim their lands and exercise lordship over their tenants. This seems to have been a relatively peaceful process. The chronicles contain no lurid tales of violence as the Disinherited completed their conquest. Indeed, the Steward’s principal tenants gathered at Renfrew to give fealty to David de Strathbogie as their new lord. This reflected the pattern of submissions across Scotland throughout 1333.10 Following the collapse of the Bruce cause, and the delay in mounting a counter offensive, it is hardly surprising that the population switched allegiance as readily as it did. The early use of targeted violence during this campaign, and the result of the battle of Halidon Hill, allowed a smooth transition to a Balliol/ English administration. Terror, targeting specific areas, was briefly introduced and followed by the imposition of new lords on a subdued populace. This was   Ibid., 155; Hemingburgh, ii, 306–7.   Lanercost, Maxwell, 277; Melsa, ii, 368.   Anonimalle, 1307–34, 159. See also Lanercost, Maxwell, 277–8; Hemingburgh, ii, 307; Melsa, ii, 367–8. 10  Wyntoun, Laing, ii, 407; Nicholson, Edward III, 148.



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adopted increasingly as policy by both sides in the battle for the allegiance of the Scottish people. The rebellion of the Bruce partisans in 1334 witnessed the beginning of more concerted attacks on the countryside. In Clydesdale, the Steward’s followers attacked his own lands and ‘laid the country waste, plundered for spoils, led men away as prisoners or brought them over to the Scottish side’. These attacks determined that ‘within a short time they brought under their subjection the lower part of Clydesdale and its inhabitants, regardless of whether they were willing or not’.11 The expansion of this campaign into Carrick, Cunningham and Kyle achieved the submission of Balliol’s sheriff of Ayr, Godfrey de Ros, who was ‘dragged or forced along after some resistance’.12 The involuntary nature of the defections reported by the chroniclers provides some explanation as to why terror was a necessary weapon. The notion of good lordship was accompanied by the idea of strong lordship. In the circumstances of civil conflict, it was the claimant with the ability to mete out destruction against the land that had the best chance of enforcing his will on his tenants and ensuring their support. And the Steward did have to fight to regain his lands and the support of his tenants. He launched a military campaign in Cowal to win back Dunoon Castle, whilst the rebellion of his supporters on Bute was met with armed resistance from pro-Balliol forces. Even in his Renfrewshire heartlands, the local population welcomed the Disinherited lord, David de Strathbogie, as the power in the area in 1333, while the Steward sheltered in Dumbarton Castle. Instead of returning as the rightful lord, exiled from his lands by an ­ unwelcome usurper, the Steward had to win back his territories by force, inflicting a campaign of terror and destruction on his own people in order regain their allegiance. This was possible in part because Strathbogie had never meaningfully gained the allegiance of the Steward’s tenants. Abbot Walter Bower, writing in the 1440s, stated that the barons of Renfrew ‘spontaneously approached the Steward, and humbly presented themselves to him as their own lord’. These were presumably the same men who had submitted to Strathbogie less than a year before.13 Strathbogie’s absence in the north created a power vacuum that was exploited by the Steward. A policy of terror issued a challenge to the Disinherited lord to protect his newly acquired possessions. Failure to do so demonstrated a lack of power and influence within

11  Bower, vii, 107. 12  Bower, vii, 107. Wyntoun is more ambiguous in his relation of events surrounding Ros’s submission, stating ‘And qwhat for luwe, and qwhat for awe,/Till Scottis pes (thai) can hym drawe’; Wyntoun, Laing, ii, 416. 13  Bower, vii, 107; Wyntoun, Laing, ii, 407.

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the Stewartry and reinforced the perception that the Bruce party remained pre-eminent.14 The Steward’s successes led to the deployment of similar tactics in Galloway and the southern sheriffdoms of Scotland, the latter officially held by the English crown. In July the Bruce Scots ‘violently attacked the Galwegians’, and it would seem that their raids encouraged the temporary defection of Duncan MacDowall to the Bruce side.15 Further defections followed, leading to the outbreak of civil conflict within Galloway itself, where the people ‘naturally destroyed each other’.16 MacDowell consistently changed sides throughout the remainder of the war. However, the defection of such a prominent Balliol supporter, along with others like him, supports the argument that changes in allegiance were linked to particularly violent raids. MacDowell, Godfrey de Ros and the Steward’s tenants were forced to reconsider their allegiance by violent attacks aimed at themselves and their lands. The longevity of such defections would depend on the ability of either side to continue to exert violent pressure on the same people to ensure their compliance.17 Failure to secure control of Scotland prompted the Balliol partisans and their English supporters to rethink their military strategies. Attempts to tread carefully and gather support for the new Balliol regime, following their battlefield victories, had failed. Committed support had always been limited, and their political and military efforts were undermined by the attacks of the Bruce party. In addition, the war increasingly represented an English, rather 14  Strathbogie’s concern for the Steward’s lands seems to have been minimal. He was more anxious to establish a base of support within his ancestral territory of Atholl. Bower noted Strathbogie’s pre-eminent position in the north in the autumn of 1334 ‘because of the force at his command’, against which ‘nobody was found there to gainsay him’. These men were apparently gathered from his earldom and used to further expand Strathbogie’s influence in the north as he attempted to gain dominance over former Comyn lands. Ross argues that it was this powerful position that forced the Earl of Moray to negotiate with Strathbogie and bring him into the Bruce camp in late 1334 with the promise of territorial grants. Bower, vii, 103; Ross, ‘Men for All Seasons?’, ii, 4–5. 15  Lanercost Maxwell, 286–7; R. C. Reid, ‘Edward de Balliol’, TDGNHAS, 3rd ser., xxxv (1956–57), 55–6, where Reid describes MacDowall as a ‘wobbler’. 16  Lanercost, Maxwell, 286–7; R. D. Oram, ‘Bruce, Balliol and the Lordship of Galloway: South-West Scotland and the Wars of Independence’, TDGNHAS, 3rd ser., lxvii (1992), 43. 17  Webster states that the Bruce war of the 1330s consisted of ‘a series of struggles which were able to deny effective rule to either side, but whose principal result was widespread devastation in the Scottish countryside’. However, the examples provided above show that the Bruce Scots’ principal aim was the destruction of the countryside. This did indeed deny the Balliol/English side the ability to rule, but it was also part of a wider struggle for the allegiance of the Scottish population. This war emphasised the ability of the Bruce Scots to mete out devastation. And its continual use highlighted the inability of the Balliol/English to complete the transition to a Balliol regime in Scotland. Webster, ‘Scotland Without a King’, 223.



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than a Balliol attempt to conquer Scotland.18 From the winter of 1334 new ­strategies were implemented. David de Strathbogie had already used violent means against the tenants of neighbouring Bruce lords in northeast Scotland in the autumn of 1334.19 Balliol and Edward III followed a similar pattern of behaviour during the Roxburgh campaign in the winter of 1334/35. Raiding parties were sent out to ravage the lands of their nominal subjects, and it was the lands of those who had rebelled the previous summer that were subjected to greatest devastation. The southern sheriffdoms, ceded by Edward Balliol to Edward III in grants of November 1332 and June 1334, were targeted in a march that was said to have destroyed all the profits and fruits of the land from the Tweed to the Forth.20 Balliol’s forces entered the western parts of Scotland and ravaged Annandale, Carrick and Cunningham, ‘destroying such towns and other property as they came upon, because the inhabitants had fled’.21 These demonstrations of power were intended to terrify the population of areas visited by the Bruce Scots in their raids the preceding summer, but they were merely a preliminary to greater endeavours. The summer of 1335 witnessed a larger two-pronged invasion that accentuated the devastation of the winter and spread the destruction over a wider area. One English chronicler stated that the Balliol/English armies ‘freely marched through all the land on this side of the Forth and beyond it, burning, laying waste and carrying off spoil and booty’.22 This general description of events masks the more targeted nature of the offensive. The destruction dispensed by the western invasion force’s march through Kyle, Cunningham and Clydesdale was a deliberate punishment of those areas that had been prominent in the rebellion of 1334. These successive campaigns in the South West ensured its pacification, and this allowed for the expansion of campaigning north of the Forth. The intensification of warfare encouraged many to return to their former allegiance. However, these successes were mostly illusory. Those who returned to the Balliol/English party were predominantly individuals who had supported the Disinherited from the beginning, but had adopted a Bruce allegiance due to the success of the 1334 rebellion. Individuals such as David de Strathbogie, Godfrey de Ros and Geoffrey and Alexander Mowbray were welcomed back into the faith of the two Edwards. These submissions were accompanied by those of the earl of Menteith and Robert the Steward.23 The majority of these men, fearing for 18  Webster, ‘Scotland Without a King’, 231; Nicholson, Edward III, 236. 19  Bower, vii, 103, 107. 20  CDS, iii, nos 728, 1127; Melsa, ii, 373; Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden Monachi Cestrensis, ed. C. Babington and J. R. Lumby (9 vols, Rolls Series, 1865–86), viii, 330. 21  Hemingburgh, ii, 310; Lanercost, Maxwell, 289. 22  Melsa, ii, 376. For further descriptions of destruction throughout the invasion, see Lanercost, Maxwell, 292; Avesbury, 298; Hemingburgh, ii, 310–11; Bower, vii, 109. 23  Avesbury, 302; Melsa, ii, 376; Lanercost, Maxwell, 294; Scalacronica, Maxwell, 101.

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their safety if caught fighting for the wrong side, readily submitted. That fear had arisen in response to the violent nature of warfare during the invasions of 1334–35. The submission of the Steward was in response to the determined attacks against his and his supporters’ lands. The destruction wrought in Kyle, Cunningham and Clydesdale provided a powerful object lesson. Even this, however, did not convince the majority of the Bruce partisans that the war was in any way lost. Although the Bruce party avoided opposing the Balliol/English armies in the field during 1335, they quickly returned to their previous tactics when it was safe to do so. Once again, targeted attacks were employed to reverse the changes of allegiance brought about by the two Edwards’ massive invasion. One English chronicle stated that men such as the Earls of March and Ross, Andrew Murray, Maurice Murray, William Douglas and William Keith gathered their supporters around them and ‘committed much injury upon those who had accepted peace’.24 Several of these Bruce commanders were then involved in the campaign that resulted in the battle of Culblean. David de Strathbogie had once more undertaken a campaign of terror in northeast Scotland, in an attempt to subdue areas that were consistently supportive of the Bruce cause. It was the attacks on Andrew Murray’s lands, as much as the siege of his wife in Kildrummy Castle that forced Murray to ride north. If Strathbogie had been allowed to proceed unopposed with a campaign of terror in the North East, it could have upset the balance of support for the Bruce party in this vital area.25 The success of these campaigns for the Bruce partisans prompted further violent raids and terrorisation by the Disinherited/English during the 1336 Lochindorb campaign. Violence and destruction were unleashed upon areas of Scotland hitherto relatively unscathed. The burning of much of Moray and the agri­cultural lands of the east coast on the army’s return, affected a major base of Bruce support. It also provided a direct attack against several members of the Scottish army at Culblean, principally Andrew Murray, and those local men who had assisted the Bruce Scots in the battle. Once more, however, the Bruce partisans were able to await the departure of the invading armies before descending upon the very areas recently attacked by Balliol/English forces. One contemporary Scottish chronicler was prompted to state that ‘by the continual depredations of both sides the whole land of Gowrie, Angus and the Mearns was reduced to almost irredeemable devastation and extreme poverty’.26 Once again this was a targeted attack by the Bruce Scots, devastating lands recently attacked by the Balliol/English forces, in order to emphasise their continued ability to punish those whose allegiance 24  Lanercost, Maxwell, 294. 25  Bower, vii, 115. 26  Fordun, i, 361–2.



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wavered. Murray’s campaigning continued to focus on strongholds of Balliol support. Fife was attacked in 1337. Along with the seizure and destruction of many of the castles in the earldom, the Bruce army ‘laid waste the land everywhere around, with the inhabitants captured and held to ransom’.27 Lothian too was raided during the Bruce siege of Edinburgh castle. On this occasion the area was attacked successively by the Bruce Scots, and then by the English, who attempted to ensure the area’s continuing quiescence under their rule. Bower’s comment that ‘there followed the total destruction of Lothian, both by the Scots and by the English’, probably reflected the situation rather well.28 As well as Fife, Lothian and the North East, Galloway was targeted once again. One English chronicler stated that the Scots ‘once more destroyed the wretched Galwegians on this side of the Cree like beasts, because they adhered so firmly to their lord King Edward Balliol’.29 As in previous campaigns, this had the desired effect of persuading a prominent Balliol supporter to switch sides. Eustace Maxwell, keeper of Caerlaverock Castle, ‘false to the faith and ­ allegiance which he owed to my lord King of England, went over to the Scottish side’. His tenants followed, and a retaliatory raid by Ranulph Dacre against Maxwell’s lands failed to redress these defections.30 Balliol had lost his ­principal supporter in the South West.31 Webster described the campaigns of Murray and other Bruce leaders as including an inevitable element of devastation: ‘destruction is an inescapable consequence of such warfare’.32 The argument, however, can be made that far from being a consequence of the war, destruction was a principal element in the attempts of the Bruce leaders to dominate the Scottish people, and enforce such dominance through violence and terror. The impact of these tactics on the countryside is difficult to quantify, though chronicle evidence offers some 27  Ibid., 361–3; Lanercost, Maxwell, 300–1; Bower, vii, 125–7. 28  Ibid., 131. Lothian had already suffered from targeted attacks, such as the campaign of the earl of Moray in the spring of 1335, ‘to bring the southern Scots back to loyalty’; Bower, vii, 107–9. 29  Lanercost, Maxwell, 300–1. 30  Ibid., 303–4; Anonimalle, 1307–34, 10; Oram, ‘Bruce, Balliol and the Lordship of Galloway’, 44; B.Webster, ‘The English Occupation of Dumfriesshire in the Fourteenth Century’, TDGNHAS, 3rd ser., xxxv (1956–57), 71–2. 31  Lanercost, Maxwell, 304–5. Maxwell was one of several nobles who changed sides on numerous occasions, although he seems to have been the most successful, having escaped severe punishment for his actions. Webster states that it was the importance of Maxwell, and to a lesser extent MacDowell, in the strategically important southwest that allowed for such behaviour. MacDowell was, however, eventually punished for his turncoat behaviour and imprisoned by the English in 1346. Others fared worse. The earls of Fife and Menteith were sentenced to death as traitors following their capture at Neville’s Cross. Fife earned a reprieve, but Menteith suffered a traitor’s death. Webster, ‘The English Occupation of Dumfriesshire’, 69, 73. 32  Webster, ‘Scotland Without a King’, 228.

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insight into the effects of raiding. In Galloway, the Bruce partisans attempted to drive Balliol supporters physically from the very land on which they lived. The Lanercost chronicler stated that few were killed since few remained on their land. The Anonimalle chronicle noted that the Bruce Scots had driven the people from the land, and many seem to have fled the oncoming Bruce army, some even crossing the border to relative safety in England.33 Those who remained found themselves involved in a civil conflict between the followers of Bruce and Balliol.34 The extent of the destruction caused in Galloway was not defined by the chronicles beyond the usual descriptions of burning and stealing cattle. The ability of the population to feed itself and to garner some profit from its agricultural labours was, however, presumably affected greatly. Elsewhere, similar consequences ensued. Bower stated that the people of Perth were reduced to eating grass and even to cannibalism in order to fend off starvation during the siege of 1339.35 Raiding during the Roxburgh campaign, although conducted in winter, was said to have targeted the ‘fruits of the land’.36 The Lochindorb campaign witnessed the destruction of the best and most fertile land around Elgin.37 Around Aberdeen the Balliol/English armies were involved in ‘destroying crops which were then nearly ripe for harvest’.38 And the English invasion of 1337 targeted agricultural produce, ‘burning houses and corn, which had then been stored in the barns’.39 Although these incidents all relate to English raids, it is likely that the Bruce Scots employed similar tactics. Bower commented that Andrew Murray reduced Scotland ‘to such desolation and scarcity that more perished through hunger and extreme poverty than the sword destroyed from the time of the outbreak of the war’.40 Putting aside the inherent dangers of chronicle exaggeration, the image provided by such comments is likely to be closer to the truth than not. The immediate effect on those that suffered as a result of several years of constant warfare was presumably profound. In this respect, the type of war employed in the theatre of agricultural land was very successful. It was the ability to continue such a war over a long period that would determine which side gained most from the terrorisation of the countryside. 33  Lanercost, Maxwell, 272–3; Anonimalle, 1307–34, 153. The people of Galloway had also fled to relative safety in northern England during the raids of Edward Bruce in 1308; McNamee, Wars, 44. 34  Lanercost, Maxwell, 286–7. 35  Bower, vii, 143–5. 36  Melsa, ii, 373. 37  Original Letters Illustrative of English History, ed. H. Ellis, 3rd ser. (4 vols, London, 1846), i, 37. 38  Lanercost, Maxwell, 298. 39  Ibid., 305–6. 40  Bower, vii, 125, 137.



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Terror as a military tactic was employed in the countryside to secure the allegiance of nobles, who possessed the land, and their tenants. There remained, however, two other important groups within Scottish society whose allegiance was important to both sides. The support of urban communities and the ecclesiastical establishment was vital to either party’s chances of establishing a working administration within Scotland. Towns constituted bases of local government and of commerce. With control of the towns came the ability to govern effectively. Their possession was an essential part of the war for Scotland.41 As in the countryside, the contest for control of urban centres at times involved unchecked violence and looting. This was sometimes a consequence of the inability to control victorious troops, but could also be used as a deliberate ploy to demonstrate the futility of resistance.42 Terror could be used to induce a town’s population to surrender, or to punish those within for their belligerence. It could also be used as a punitive example to others of the futility of resistance. Direct targeting of a town, with its subsequent destruction and the death of its population, was limited during Bruce–Balliol/English conflict. The sack of the town accompanied the fall of Perth to the Bruce partisans in 1332. The Bruce Scots ‘slwe at thare lykyng’, following which they destroyed Perth’s defences and possibly also set fire to part of the town.43 This early example of urban terror was deployed against burgesses who had submitted readily to the Balliol party, and it may have been applied specifically in response to their defection. The violence was not, however, uncontrolled. Despite Wyntoun’s description of general slaughter, prominent individuals were instead captured, including the earl of Fife and his family, as well as Andrew Murray of Tullibardine.44 Murray’s capture was important to the Bruce administration. His trial and execution assisted the Bruce Scots in their attempts to re-establish their position as the rightful authority in the kingdom.45 The sack of the town also acted as an example to other urban communities of the dangers of co-operating 41  McNamee, Wars, 206. 42  The most obvious example of such an occurrence in the Anglo-Scottish arena is the capture of Berwick by the army of Edward I in 1296. The descriptions of the streets running with blood and the sacking of the town for several days constituted behaviour permitted under the laws of war, as the town was taken by storm. What is open to question, however, is the extent to which Edward I had any control over his army’s actions, and whether he had intended to make an object lesson of Berwick to ease his conquest of Scotland. Keen, Laws, 121–4; M. Strickland, ‘A Law of Arms or a Law of Treason? Conduct in War in Edward I’s Campaigns in Scotland, 1296–1307’, in Violence in Medieval Society, ed. R.W. Kaeuper (Woodbridge, 2000), 64–8. 43  Wyntoun, Laing, ii, 394 (slaughter); Bower, vii, 83 (defences); Lanercost, Maxwell, 273 (burning the town). 44  Wyntoun, Laing, ii, 394; Lanercost, Maxwell, 273; Bower, vii, 83. 45  Wyntoun, Laing, ii, 394; Bower, vii, 83.

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with the Balliol opposition. Nevertheless, as an example of terrorising Scottish towns it is an isolated example from the early stages of the conflict. It was not until the winter of 1334–35 that behaviour against the urban landscape, as it had in the countryside, became much more aggressive. The invading armies of the Roxburgh campaign marched through the border sheriffdoms, ‘destroying such towns and other property as they came upon’.46 Dundee was burned in an attack by English ships during the large-scale summer invasion of 1335.47 The Bruce Scots attacked Perth once more in 1336. Balliol arrived at the town to find it ‘burnt by the Scots because they dared not await his coming there’.48 Following this, the Disinherited/English forces of the Lochindorb campaign burned the town of Forres and spent three days destroying Aberdeen.49 Damage to Scottish towns was also possible without recourse to attacks on the towns themselves. Urban communities were susceptible to attacks directed at their hinterlands. Destruction of outlying arable land jeopardised a town’s ability to feed its population, as well as damaging trade and commerce.50 The accounts of the English sheriffs of southern Scotland for 1335–36 hint at the widespread nature of such a tactic. Eustace Maxwell reported that there were no blanch-farm returns from Kircudbright as the lands were waste. Sanquhar too provided no revenue for Edward III. As a new escheat to the English crown, however, it may very well have been the English who had caused the devastation of that town.51 In Roxburgh, the bulk of town revenue was produced by the market and related tolls. The town fermes produced negligible returns and the town’s mill was destroyed.52 Similarly, the burgh of Haddington produced little from its fermes ‘because of the destruction of the war’.53 Elsewhere, the Disinherited/English armies of the Lochindorb campaign did more than destroy northeast Scotland’s towns. They specifically targeted the urban hinterlands as a vulnerable target. Forres’ hinterland was put to the flames along with 46  Lanercost, Maxwell, 289. 47  Ibid., 292. 48  Ibid., 298. Attempts had been made to strengthen the town’s defences in 1335, but these seem to have been insufficient to repel the Bruce Scots. Balliol undertook further strengthening in 1336. The accumulated efforts of those years succeeded in making Perth a more imposing target, and it was not until the major siege of 1339 that the town fell; Melsa, ii, 376; Lanercost, Maxwell, 298; R. M. Spearman, ‘The Medieval Townscape of Perth’, in The Scottish Medieval Town, ed. M. Lynch et al. (Edinburgh, 1988), 52. 49  Hemingburgh, ii, 311–12; Melsa, ii, 377–8; Wyntoun, Laing, ii, 430; Bower, vii, 119; Original Letters, ed. Ellis, i, 37–8. Aberdeen’s representatives declared in 1341 that no revenue could be raised from the burgh fermes in 1336, because the English had burned the town. They also declared that nobody dared to live within the burgh during that period, except those who were adherents of the English; ER, i, 472. 50  E. Ewan, Townlife in Fourteenth-Century Scotland (Edinburgh, 1990), 117–20. 51  CDS, iii, 317–18, 318–19. 52  Ibid., ii, 320–1. 53  Ibid., iii, 346–7.



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the town, while the lands around Elgin were treated in similar fashion. Elgin itself escaped destruction, apparently out of reverence for the Holy Trinity to which the town’s church was dedicated.54 Such religious piety does not detract from the damage that the town invariably suffered through the ­ destruction of its main source of sustenance, along with much of the ­ neighbouring countryside. The use of terror in the urban landscape was also apparent during a siege situation as a means of enticing the inhabitants to surrender. The most obvious example of this was the behaviour of Edward III at Berwick in 1333. Bower’s retrospective comment that ‘the townspeople very much feared the ferocity of ... Edward’ is probably based on the king’s actions during the siege.55 The hanging of Thomas Seton before the walls of Berwick sent a clear message to the townsmen that surrender was their only viable option if they wished to escape alive. This was further reinforced by a threat to hang two prisoners a day until the town surrendered. Chroniclers debated whether Edward was right to act in this way, their arguments reflecting their national bias. The Scottish writers reported that Edward demanded the surrender of the town a day early, and ignored a partial relief of Berwick by elements of the Bruce army.56 English commentators accused the Scots of attempting to retain the town by underhand means, which were against the tenets of the agreement reached with Edward III for its surrender.57 Whatever the case, Edward III’s actions had the desired effect. The defenders of the town submitted to further negotiations, and agreed the means by which Berwick could be relieved, which ultimately led to the battle of Halidon Hill. Two later examples offer alternative outcomes to the use of prisoners during sieges. The Lanercost chronicler related that in 1338 William Douglas captured members of the Edinburgh garrison, including John de Stirling, the castle’s custodian. Douglas led his prisoners before the walls of Edinburgh. There he threatened that if the garrison failed to surrender ‘he would cause Sir John to be drawn there at the tails of horses, and afterwards to be hanged on gallows before the gate, and all those who were prisoners there with him to be beheaded before their eyes’.58 The garrison refused and Douglas chose not to carry out his threat. Similarly at the siege of Dunbar, William Montague was said to have brought the captured earl of Moray before the castle walls. Moray was threatened with death unless his sister, Agnes countess of March, surrendered the 54  Original Letters, ed. Ellis, i, 36–7; Anonimalle, 1307–34, 7; Bower, vii, 119. 55  Wyntoun, Laing, ii, 398; Bower, vii, 91. Ironically, both these chronicles state that it was the townsmen’s fear of Edward III that persuaded them to negotiate in the first place, and hand over the very hostages that Edward was to use to his benefit. 56  Wyntoun, Laing, ii, 399–400; Bower, vii, 91. 57  Melsa, ii, 368–9; Scalacronica, Maxwell, 95; Brut, i, 282–3. 58  Lanercost, Maxwell, 312.

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castle. Her refusal to submit resulted in the return of the earl to English imprisonment, as ‘the English would not do what they had threatened’.59 The use of terror in siege situations depended on willpower and resolution. Edward III presumably felt justified in hanging Seton in response to the Berwick inhabitants reneging on agreed terms of surrender. His actions also had the benefit of terrorising the townspeople into further negotiations that were weighted in his favour. The agreement reached not only afforded the opportunity of the town’s capture, but also the defeat of the Scots in a pitched battle of his choosing. Such clinical use of terror, however, was exceptional. The examples of Douglas and Montague highlight the use of terror purely as a threat. Their respective prisoners had been captured in combat and had formally submitted to captivity and ransom. Keen states that hostages handed over as sureties of a town’s surrender did not possess the same legal status as prisoners. The lack of quarter in a siege situation was extended to such individuals if the terms to which they had agreed were not adhered. Edward III was therefore within his rights to execute as many prisoners as he saw fit. The recognition of this right was reflected in the Scottish account of events. They asserted that Edward sought the surrender of the town before the agreed date and in spite of its partial relief. In the Scottish portrayal of events, it was Edward III himself who broke the agreement, and not the defenders of Berwick.60 As with the agricultural landscape, the treatment of Scotland’s urban communities changed after the Roxburgh campaign. The severe treatment meted out against Aberdeen highlights the destructive nature of that English campaign, and the increasingly violent treatment of Scottish urban communities by both sides.61 Attacks on Scottish towns had become the norm in an attempt to overawe urban populations and influence their allegiance. By contrast the Bruce Scots had a more limited impact on the urban environment. They primarily intimidated towns by ravaging their hinterlands. Their ability to continue this form of warfare was sufficient to convince many that the Bruce partisans remained a powerful force in Scotland. The Balliol/English attempt to terrorise the Scottish urban population culminated in the direct assaults on the North East, a strong base of Bruce political and economic support. That this policy failed was in part a consequence of the refocusing of English foreign policy towards adventures in France. No longer could Edward III afford to send large armies to terrorise the Scottish population. Neither could he afford the massive outlay in men and money required for garrisoning a large 59  Ibid., 314. 60  Keen, Laws, 130–1; Wyntoun, Laing, ii, 399–400; Bower, vii, 91. 61  Both English and Scottish sources relate that there was an element of revenge involved in the destruction of Aberdeen, due to the behaviour of the town’s inhabitants. Wyntoun described the event as a consequence of the death of Thomas Rosselyn, English constable of Dunottar Castle. Wyntoun, Laing, ii, 430; Original Letters, ed. Ellis, i, 37.



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number of Scottish towns and castles. The withdrawal of forces to protect the English-administered south removed the threat of terror from much of the rest of Scotland, and the Bruce partisans were able to regain control over many of Scotland’s urban communities. The later successes with the fall of Perth (1339), Edinburgh (1341) and Stirling (1342) were the result of the greater freedom of action enjoyed by the Bruce Scots following the effective withdrawal of most of the Balliol/English forces after 1338. The treatment of the clergy and ecclesiastical property was regulated by law, in theory at least. Clerical immunity from the ravages of war was provided by canon law, while the laws of war attempted to reduce incidents of unchecked destruction of ecclesiastical property. Nonetheless, it appears that the clergy were more easily protected than their possessions.62 Accidental damage to ecclesiastical estates was often committed by the ravaging armies of both sides that had little knowledge of, or paid little attention to, ownership of the land that they destroyed. This is suggested by a willingness to pay compensation for damage done to church estates and buildings, for example the compensation paid to both Newbattle Abbey and Manuel Priory for damage sustained during the Balliol/English invasions of 1335.63 Further accidental damage could be inflicted by the indiscriminate weapons employed during sieges. Once again the English king was petitioned for financial assistance, this time by the monks and nuns of the Maison Dieu of Berwick for damage sustained during the 1333 siege.64 There was, however, a major difference between such damage and the deliberate targeting of clerics and church lands. The position of members of the clergy as secular lords, holding lands, taking part in armed expeditions and providing resources for the sustenance of war, left them open to attack. Ecclesiastical wealth also attracted looters. As with the urban communities, the support of the Scottish clergy was vitally important for the competing parties. The clergy could act as the mouthpiece for the royal line that held its support. The question was how this support would be won, and if terror, already employed in the rural and urban landscapes, had a place within the ecclesiastical sphere. It had been the unstinting support of the Scottish clergy that had assisted Robert I in his fight both to gain the kingdom against internal enemies, and then to retain it against English attacks. Several of these men were, however, actively engaged as leaders of the war at that time. Edward I’s treatment of the bishops of Glasgow and St Andrews reflected their political and military ­ position. They had forfeited their clerical immunity by their behaviour 62  Keen, Laws, 192–4. 63  Nicholson, Edward III, 205. 64  According to the claim, ‘their church and houses were utterly cast down by the engines during the siege, and the master has spent so much in repairing them that he has pledged his chalices and vestments’; CDS, iii, no. 1105.

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and were more likely to suffer severe censure because they were men of the church.65 Examples of punishment against the clergy are, however, lacking from the 1330s. This suggests that the clergy were less influential in this stage of the conflict, or at least that the clerics did not take such an active role in its leadership. The death of the bishop of Glasgow provided the only prominent example of violence against a major Scottish ecclesiastic at this time. His death aboard ship in 1337 during confused fighting for control of the vessel was ­probably accidental.66 It was not, though, a deliberate act of terror against a member of the Scottish clergy. As already indicated, the conduct of the war changed during the winter of 1334–35. Before the campaign of this year there is little evidence of attacks against the clergy and their churches. However, military action in the following years increased in severity and a more ‘total’ form of warfare became the norm, affecting ecclesiastical interests in the same manner as in the rural and urban landscapes. The Lanercost chronicler declared that the Balliol/English armies of the 1335 invasions looted various churches, the Welsh drawing special ­criticism for ‘plundering regulars and seculars impartially’.67 Particular mention was made of the dormitory and schools of the Minorite Friars in Dundee, which were plundered and burned along with a large part of the town. This attack was blamed on piratical sailors from Newcastle, and it is they who took the extreme measure of burning a member of the order who had previously been a knight. The attackers went so far as to steal the friars’ bell, which was later sold to an English monastery.68 The interesting point about these descriptions is that they came from an English source. The chronicler condemned the violence wrought upon the Scottish churches, whilst focusing the blame on renegade elements within the English army. His attempts to blame the Welsh and unruly sailors suggest that, at least in certain quarters, attacks on the ­ ecclesiastical community were regarded as unacceptable. In spite of such beliefs, further examples imply that attacks against the clergy and their possessions were quite common. During the same invasion, Bower states that English ships plundered the monastery on Inchcolm. The Scottish chronicler took the opportunity to create a religious moral from the events, stating that the sailors were punished for their crime by a storm that miraculously appeared and ­threatened to sink

65  Keen, Laws, 193–4. 66  The difficulties of combat at sea were highlighted by the death of most of the crew, but the English chroniclers spend some time explaining that the bishop died either through refusing to eat, or because of grief. It is probably safe to assume that despite his position as a man of the church, he was caught up in the fighting, and was himself killed. Lanercost, Maxwell, 305; Knighton, 5. 67  Lanercost, Maxwell, 292. 68  Ibid., 292.



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their ship, until they gave up the goods they had seized.69 Bower related a similar miraculous intervention when describing an attack mounted by English mariners who arrived in the Firth of Forth in 1336. They attacked the church at Dollar, the sailors responsible supposedly meeting a grisly end as St Columba took retribution on them for the destruction of a church that was appropriated to the saint’s own abbey on Inchcolm.70 The reliability of Bower’s moralising can be questioned. Nevertheless, events such as these were often highlighted by chroniclers who were themselves religious men and who made propaganda use of the sacrilegious behaviour of the opposition.71 The behaviour of the English sailors at Dundee suggests targeting of churches did take place, but ­primarily because of the enticement of loot and booty that such ­buildings offered. Although this example provides a basis in fact for Bower’s later ­moralistic description of similar events, it should not be taken as part of a sustained campaign aimed at the clergy and their possessions. The most notorious descriptions of such activity revolve around the conduct of John of Eltham and his force, which marched through south-western Scotland in 1336 before meeting up with Edward III at Perth. According to Bower, Eltham’s army ravaged various lands and burned a number of churches, including Lesmahagow, with little regard for those who had taken shelter within the ecclesiastical buildings.72 Accusations of this sort were commonplace in medieval writing, and represented the propaganda element of chronicle reportage.73 The narrative evidence, as expected, was split along national lines. The English chronicles made no mention of the events.74 The Scottish ­commentators described the destruction of the church at length, and were keen to stress that divine justice prevailed against a man who had destroyed 69  Bower, vii, 109. 70  Ibid., 119–21. 71  The ‘Lanercost’ Chronicle contains many later examples of the chronicler’s hatred of the Scots when describing their treatment of English border churches during the raids of the 1340s. He goes as far as to compare their behaviour to that of devils, and moralises that the defeat at Neville’s Cross was God’s judgement upon them for the desecration of so many religious houses on their march to Durham. Lanercost, Maxwell, 332–5, 338–42. 72  Wyntoun, Laing, ii, 418–19; Bower, vii, 123. Wyntoun has no mention of the burning of the people within the church, suggesting that Bower may have added his own graphic details for effect. Wyntoun agrees, however, that Lesmahagow was the victim of a ­deliberate act of arson by Eltham, for which no explanation is given. 73  Strickland, ‘A Law of Arms’, 43–7. 74  The ‘Lanercost’ chronicler states that the army ‘marched together into Carrick and the western parts of Scotland which were not in the king’s peace, laying them waste as much as they could, burning and carrying away splendid spoil, but the people of the country fled before them’. The events at Lesmahagow may well have been included in that broad description. The lack of detail in the chronicler’s report of events may be due to problems with his source of information. However, the details may also have been glossed over due to the involvement of the king’s brother in this instance. Lanercost, Maxwell, 299.

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ecclesiastical property with the death of Eltham at Perth soon after.75 Bower’s creative licence, however, expanded the story into a graphic tale of fratricide by the English king, Eltham being slain against the backdrop of the high altar in the church of St John.76 It is highly unlikely that these events actually took place. Nevertheless, the use of such a tale by an ecclesiastical chronicler highlighted the belief that religious property ought to remain sacrosanct during times of war. A further example of damage to church property is provided by the accounts of a siege of Loch Leven Castle in Fife.77 The Disinherited force, led by John de Stirling, built a siege castle with which to observe the castle garrison and ensure the successful blockade of the island fortress.78 Stirling’s choice of position for his structure lay within the cemetery of Kinross church. ‘In this way, shocking as it was, a church of Christ was despised by people that were Christians only in name, and wrongly converted into a den of robbers’.79 The indignation of the Scottish chroniclers, ecclesiastical men themselves, decrying the use of sanctified land for the purpose of war, highlights their belief in the immunity of religious property. However, Wyntoun provided a more ambiguous element to his description of events.80 He related that on St Margaret’s Day, Stirling and his immediate entourage, leaving a small force behind to continue the siege, ­travelled to Dunfermline presumably to celebrate the feast of Scotland’s ­sanctified Anglo-Saxon queen.81 Despite the earlier protestations 75  Bower states that Edward III found fault with Eltham’s behaviour ‘as was his duty’, and that it was his younger brother’s insolent reply that led to his murder. Wyntoun provides the moral to the tale: ‘For qwha till Haly Kyrk doys ille,/ Suld nevyre to do welle have wenyng,/ Bot gyve thai come till amending’. Wyntoun, Laing, ii, 419; Bower, vii, 123. 76  Ibid., 123. The addition of such a detail created parallels between this event and the death of John Comyn at the church of Greyfriars in Dumfries at the hands of Robert Bruce. Indeed, the element of fratricide portrays this as an action even more terrible than Bruce’s own. 77  The date of the siege is difficult to estimate, but the editors of Bower’s chronicle have tentatively suggested the spring of 1334 as a possibility; ibid., 214n. 78  The Disinherited force included some Englishmen as well as a number of Scots who had sworn allegiance to the Balliol party. John de Stirling was himself a Scot by birth (see ch. 7, 00, below). Also included were Balliol Scots such as Michael Arnott, Michael and David Wemyss and Richard Melville. David and Michael Wemyss were both knights from Fife who seem to have submitted to Balliol at the same time as their earl. Webster, ‘Scotland Without a King’, 229. 79  Wyntoun, Laing, ii, 409–12; Bower, vii, 97–103. 80  Wyntoun’s relation of events may be firmly based in the truth, as he was prior of St Serf’s priory in Loch Leven. He may have based some of his narrative on local knowledge and oral accounts. Penman, David II, 9. 81  Wyntoun, Laing, ii, 410–11. Stirling’s decision to leave the siege with his retinue for the observance of a religious festival was a notable expression of piety. However, in view of the events that took place following his departure, it seems somewhat naïve from a



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of the chroniclers, the besiegers were not irreligious men. Indeed, it was the observance of this holy day that allowed the Bruce garrison to overrun the skeleton force manning the siege castle. The Bruce Scots had little compunction in ignoring the festival of a royal saint when a tactical advantage beckoned. And this would seem to represent the position of the ecclesiastical community during this stage of the Second War of Independence. Clergymen and religious possessions suffered from the depredations of war, but in this they were similar to the land and people within both rural and urban landscapes. The increasingly violent ­ conditions of the war after 1334 meant that churches and clergy were more likely to be caught up in the general violence of the period. Unlike the situation in the countryside or in relation to towns, there was no real attempt at systematically attacking the Scottish ecclesiastical community. The use of terror against clergy and churches was never really attempted, and certainly never established as an effective way to gain ecclesiastical support. Terror as a weapon had its place in the theatre of medieval warfare. And it had its place in the struggle between the Bruce Scots, the Disinherited and the English during this phase of the Second War of Independence. The use of terror, however, was not deployed equally against the principal elements of Scottish society. The ecclesiastical community suffered from the destruction of war, particularly in 1335 and 1336 as the conflict intensified. Nonetheless, the clergy and churches of Scotland were not specifically targeted with terror by either side. At worst, their privileged status was at times ignored as the fighting of the war took precedence over religious sensibilities. The urban communities of Scotland suffered some destruction at the hands of those who captured or passed through their towns. During siege conditions, the use of terror could prove effective in achieving a town’s surrender, or in persuading others to do likewise. Of greater import was the destruction of a town’s hinterland. By denying urban communities the opportunity to feed themselves, towns could be forced to alter their allegiance. Terror through the destruction of crops and the starvation that followed was an important tool in gaining control of the urban landscape. These same tactics were employed with even greater effect in the agricultural landscape. It is in the attacks on the Scottish countryside and its peasant population that we can perceive the use of terror as an invaluable weapon in the war for Scotland. Barrow described the nature of the English war in southern Scotland in the 1330s as one of dispossession of recalcitrant rebels. ‘Their land must be tactical point of view. This raises the possibility that some negotiation had taken place with the castle garrison for a brief truce to enable the observance of St Margaret’s day. It seems unlikely that he would simply assume that the Bruce Scots would stop fighting for the duration of the feast. This possibility would then explain the description of Stirling’s fury when he learned of the destruction of the siege castle, the theft of his supplies and the defeat of his men. (Ibid., ii, 411–12.)

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ruined, and since agricultural land has a way of recovering after a few years from even the worst forms of devastation ... the deliberate ruination of the land must be inflicted many times over’.82 This is certainly true of the English attempt to gain authority over its newly acquired territories. It overlooks, however, the fact that the Bruce Scots employed exactly the same tactics, and to a similar end. Individuals who adhered to the Balliol/English party were targeted over a period of years and forced to change allegiance. The description of individuals and communities submitting to either side following a raid may have been purely short-term attempts at staving off further attacks. It was the return of raiding armies over successive years that reinforced the perception within Scotland that it was the Bruce Scots who were in the ascendant. The argument that the result of the conflict was long in doubt, and that Scottish independence remained in danger until the Treaty of Berwick in 1357, can be questioned by an examination of the use of terror.83 By emphasising its role, and its use by the Bruce Scots as an instrument of policy in their attempts to win the war, another possibility emerges. The Bruce partisans, from their hiding places and refuges in Scotland, were always in a position to descend upon the land and ravage those people whose allegiance wavered. The ability of the Balliol/English to do likewise increasingly rested upon the capability of the English crown to raise and fund sufficient forces to harass the Scottish communities. If Balliol had gained a suitable base of support in Scotland, he would have been able to call upon his own forces to repeat the tactics of the Bruce partisans. In this case, stalemate would have ensued in the civil war, and the support of English forces could then have been pivotal in deciding its outcome. Balliol’s lack of support allowed the Bruce Scots to choose a war that made use of violence and terror. In this they held the advantage. The Balliol/English forces came close to nullifying this position following the defeats at Dupplin and Halidon, but they lacked further battlefield successes which would have ended the resistance. And the raids of 1334–37, although destructive, failed to successfully overawe the Scottish population to the extent that the Bruce partisans would give up the fight and submit. As Campbell has stated, ‘large areas and a wide allegiance could be won by the use of big armies, but were lost when they left’.84 After failed attempts at a more peaceful transition, the Disinherited and their English allies increasingly followed a similar approach to the Bruce partisans and attempted to use violence to terrorise Scotland into submission. The invasions of large English armies brought temporary support to the Balliol cause, but these were 82  G.W. S. Barrow, ‘The Aftermath of War: Scotland and England in the Late Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries’, TRHS, 5th ser., xxviii (1978), 125. 83  Webster, ‘Scotland Without a King’, 235; idem, ‘The English Occupation of Dumfriesshire’, 64. 84  Campbell, ‘England, Scotland’, 187.



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increasingly exposed as purely short-term defections. While Edward Balliol was deprived of the support required to rule, Edward III ‘lacked the means to suppress the guerilla war [the Bruce Scots] waged’.85 This conflict was one that involved the use of terror against Scottish lands and people, by the very men who claimed lordship over them. It was this ability of the Bruce Scots to attack areas recently devastated by the Disinherited/English, to harass communities outwith the campaigning season, and to return time and again to reinforce their position as the pre-eminent force in Scotland that ultimately led to the success of the Bruce cause.

85  Ibid., 186. Campbell goes on to say that by 1336, Edward III ‘found himself still involved in a war which he could neither win nor abandon’; ibid., 190.

4

The Scots and Guns David H. Caldwell

T

he ea r ly use a n d dev elopm en t of guns in Britain took place at a time when there were hostilities between Scotland and England, or at least the threat of warfare. It was Scotland’s great misfortune to share her only land frontier with a country whose military reputation was not only deservedly high for much of the period we are considering but which also had vastly superior resources in wealth and manpower. What is more, the English believed they had a right to the kingdom of the Scots and were to advance this claim as late as the sixteenth century. One of the most remarkable aspects of the growth of the new gun ­technology was just how slow the Scots were to adopt it, apparently lagging behind the English by a good sixty years. Perhaps Scottish scholars have failed to think anything amiss in this, inured as many are to tired old assumptions that ­everything new comes from south of the border and only takes root in Scotland long after its currency in England. In the case of guns, it is clearly time to ­reexamine the Scottish position. The late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries were dominated by a determined English attempt to affect the conquest of Scotland. Government was, initially at least, to be imposed by means of garrisons installed in castles up and down the country, but the first major English effort in the struggle came to a disastrous end with their resounding defeat at Bannockburn in 1314 and the succeeding years were to see them cowed by great Scottish raids into their own country which achieved the Scots’ aim of having their king Robert I and his independence fully recognised. King Robert died in 1329 and, as was to happen so often in Scotland, was succeeded by a child, David II. Before long, the Scots were almost completely subjected to the rule of the English or their puppet king, Edward Balliol. They were, however, just as surely expelled again by the early 1340s though the occasion was not marked this time by a great victory in a pitched battle. This was by no means the end of Scotland’s ­misfortunes; she was worsted by the English on numerous occasions and suffered the indignity of having two of her kings captured, David II in 1346 and the young James I,



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kidnapped at sea in 1406 while the heir to the throne; but the English were not able to make a serious attempt at dominating the country again until the mid-sixteenth century. The Scottish military system, in that it depended first and foremost on the premise that it was the duty of the male population to prepare and equip itself for personal service in defence of the realm, had its origins in the dawn of Scotland’s emergence as a state, and while other institutions and elements of defence were added through time, nothing altered the basic importance of this assumption, which, far from being challenged by the lieges, was a right not to be given up lightly. The sixteenth-century historian, Bishop John Leslie, expressed this ­sentiment beautifully in his explanation of why the nobility would not suffer a tax to be raised in 1556 for the hiring of an army of mercenaries to defend the borders. Not only was it the custom but also the law that they should defend the king’s right. The kings were styled ‘of Scots’, not ‘of Scotland’ because of their trust in their people. Hired soldiers were not so zealous in fighting for liberty or able with such courage to defend their wives and children, goods and ­dwellings. Moreover, the realm was not rich enough to maintain ‘ydle men’, as many as were thought necessary to defend the borders and make raids against the English. The Scottish fencibles could be, and often were a force to be reckoned with in our period. There is a telling story in John Barbour’s The Bruce which has Sir Ingram Umfraville advising King Edward II to make a long truce with the Scots in the hope that the Scottish yeomen, who through long experience of warfare are as good as knights, will return to their farming and lose their military skills. The Scots were clearly not unaware of a wider European world and several participated directly in military campaigns beyond the British Isles. In 1330 a contingent led by Sir James Douglas fought the Moors at Teba in Spain. Others took part in the Prussian crusade, intermittently, from the 1350s through to 1410, and there were Scots present at the sack of Alexandria in Egypt in 1365. King David II spent his formative teenage years in France with his own court at Chateau Gaillard and in 1339 participated in the army of the French King Philip VI in the campaign against the English. While in captivity in England from 1346 to 1352 he actually spent much of his time in the Tower of London that also contained the main English military workshops and arsenal. Here gunners were employed in looking after and manufacturing guns. We should therefore   The Historie of Scotland wrytten first in Latin by the most reverend and worthy Jhone Leslie bishop of Rosse and translated in Scottish by Father James Dalrymple, 1596, Scottish Text Society (Edinburgh, 1895).   Bruce, McDiarmid and Stevenson, iii, 213–15 (bk XIX, ll. 141–86).   A. MacQuarrie, Scotland and the Crusades 1095–1560 (Edinburgh, 1985), 69–91.   O. F. G. Hogg, English Artillery 1326–1716 (London, 1963), 84–9.

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accept that the Scots would generally have been aware of new trends in warfare and of the most recent developments in equipment and technology. There is, however, sometimes a misconception that the Scots were not ­interested in, or versed in the use of siege equipment. This is far from the truth. Like the English, the Scots used engines of war during the Wars of Independence. The contemporary English poem (in French) of the siege of Caerlaverock Castle in Dumfriesshire in 1300 describes how the Scottish defenders had furnished the castle with men, engines and provisions, and how they fired bows, crossbows and springalds against their English assailants. At the siege of Stirling Castle in 1304 Edward I had a narrow escape from a spiculum (bolt) fired from a springald in the castle. Springalds, like crossbows, fired bolts or quarrels, but were pieces of torsion artillery. The force that unleashed their bolts was stored in two sturdy skeins spun from animal sinew or hair. Two arms were inserted into the skeins and connected by a string that acted in the same way as the bowstring of a bow or crossbow. The skeins were tensioned by means of a screw-winch. When the Scottish patriot Sir William Douglas of Lothian was shot through the thigh by one at the siege of Perth in 1339 he appears not to have suffered any lasting damage. As for taking fortified towns and castles, the Scots at this time are famous for their audacious feints and daring escalades, sometimes executed quite simply with ladders. Nevertheless, when appropriate, they used engines of war too. The most detailed account is of a failed attempt on the city of Carlisle in 1315. The ‘Chronicle of Lanercost’ describes how King Robert Bruce came with his army to Carlisle in July 1315, surrounded the city and besieged it for ten days. Every day an attack was made on one, or all, of the three gates of the town, but the Scots were always driven back by the darts, arrows and stones fired at them by the defenders. On the fifth day the Scots erected an engine near the church of the Holy Trinity (the cathedral) and used it to cast great stones towards the Caldew Gate and at the wall, but to little effect. They erected a great berefray or tower, the height of which exceeded the town walls, but they were prevented from bringing it into action because its wheels stuck fast in boggy ground. They also made long wooden bridges running on wheels which could be drawn rapidly by cords up to and over the town ditch. They had ladders to get over the walls, and a sow (a covered shed or wagon) which could be brought alongside the walls so that workers in it could undermine them. All of this, however, proved of no avail and Bruce raised the siege on the eleventh day.   The Siege of Carlaverock, ed. N. H. Nicolas (London, 1828), 61, 79; Flores, iii, 119.   Stevenson, Docs, ii, 322–5, 333–5; CDS, iv, 392; Wyntoun, Amours, vi, 129. For an account of springalds see J. Liebel, Springalds and Great Crossbows, Royal Armouries, Leeds, Monograph v (1998).   Lanercost, Maxwell, 230–2.



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There is a remarkable contemporary illustration of this siege, contained in the initial letter of a charter of King Edward II of England to Carlisle, dated 12 May 1316. The most prominent figure, on top of one of the town’s towers, is identifiable by the coat-of-arms on his shield as Sir Andrew de Harcla, the English commander. Beside him a soldier is spanning or firing a large crossbow. It is mounted on a stand with a windlass for drawing its string. The Scots’ attempts to scale the walls by ladder and undermine them with picks are also shown, and in the left hand margin appears their stone-throwing machine – a trebuchet – ready to fire a large stone ball. It has a swinging counterweight and the ball is in a sling that trails along the ground between two guiding rails. A worker with a hammer in his hand may be about to use it to release a peg or trigger and so set the engine in motion. The devastating power of such trebuchets was amply demonstrated by an experiment with replicas at Urquhart Castle on Loch Ness in 1998. In 1319 it was the turn of the Scots to defend a town, this time the burgh of Berwick-upon-Tweed where they were ably helped by John Crabb, a burgess of Flemish origin, who was renowned in his day as a military engineer. He is known to have been of good service to the Scots until he was captured by the English in 1332, and not being ransomed, worked for his captors in Edward III’s Scottish campaign of 1335 and at the siege of Dunbar Castle in 1337. For the siege of Berwick in 1319 Crabb organised the provision of engines, including springalds. When the English attempted to bring a sow against the town wall, Crabb positioned a great engine of war opposite it and destroyed it with the third stone it fired. He had also prepared a crane which ran on wheels and which was intended to hold the sow or other enemy contraptions fast by a chain while they were burned with combustibles dropped from the walls. The Exchequer Rolls from 1327 onwards provide a little more information on engines and engineers. In 1327 they record the expenses on machines at Berwick and those erected at the siege of Norham Castle. John Crabb was involved with these but in the following year mention is made of another engineer called Peter.10 In 1337 the loyal Scots under the lieutenant Sir Andrew Murray bent machines against St Andrews Castle and Leuchars Castle, both in Fife, forcing their surrender, and from there moved on to batter Murray’s own Bothwell Castle in Lanarkshire with an engine tellingly called ‘Boustour’. It apparently had the desired effect.11 Sir William Douglas of Lothian, later ‘the Knight of Liddesdale’, took Dalkeith Castle and then Dunbar in quick   M. J. Fisher and D. E. Fisher, Mysteries of Lost Empires (London, 2000), 22–53.   E.W. M. Balfour-Melville, ‘Two John Crabbs’, SHR xxxix (1960); Bruce, McDiarmid and Stevenson, ii, 597–705 (bk XVII, ll. 245–9). 10  ER, i, 64, 98, 311. 11  Bower, vii, 125.

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succession in 1341 with the aid of engines. Expenses on the making of these are recorded at Edinburgh in 1342 and Stirling in 1361.12 In 1382 the payment of fees to an artilarius in Edinburgh Castle and Teodoricus the carpenter is recorded. Artilarius in this context probably means a keeper of crossbows and other engines – that is artillery. Teodoricus – or Dedericus – was probably of Flemish or German origin and was active making engines at least until 1388. In that year it is recorded with evident satisfaction that he had completed a large machine which could fire (shot) per tres vices – that is three shot at a time or in succession? Dedericus seems to have been based in Edinburgh Castle and at the same time there was Maurice the Gunner at Stirling Castle, the unnamed artilarius at Edinburgh, and by 1388 Alan the keeper of crossbows and equipment for ‘gunnys’.13 As we will see below, it is fairly likely that these new terms, gunner and guns, at this time do indicate the arrival of early cannon. Much of the evidence for war engines and artillery just cited comes from the Exchequer Rolls, many of which survive from 1327 onwards. There are enough for reasonable certainty that guns were not a significant matter of interest or expenditure prior to the 1380s. Indeed, it would be remarkable if only those which mention engines and artillery should survive, and any detailing guns should have been lost. Opinions amongst scholars on the origins of guns have swung alarmingly to and fro, from east to west. It now appears clear that the earliest evidence for ‘true’ guns – metal tubes that fired projectiles through the explosive effect of gunpowder – comes from China. They were almost certainly in use there about 1290, and possibly much earlier, with a developmental phase of several centuries including flame-throwers and fireworks.14 It is probable, but not proven, that gun technology was transmitted from China to Europe in the late thirteenth century through the activities of western envoys and merchants travelling east and Nestorian pilgrims going west. The existence of guns in Europe is first unambiguously referred to in the records of Florence in Italy. The Town Council authorised the delegation of one or two persons to the making of iron bullets and cannons of metal for the defence of the castles and territory of the Republic in February 1326. An awareness of guns is also documented in England about the same time, and by the 1340s they are well attested in Spain, France, the Low Countries and Germany.15 12  Les Chroniques de Sire Jean Froissart, ed. J. A. C. Bouchon (Paris, n.d.), iii, 243–4; ER, i, 487, 494, 508; ii, 63–4. 13  Ibid., iii, 87, 117, 118, 659, 660, 665, 667, 676, 683, 687, 693. 14  H. L. Blackmore, ‘The Oldest Dated Gun’, Arms Collecting xxxiv/2 (1995). 15  J. R. Partington, A History of Greek Fire and Gunpowder (Cambridge, 1960); J-F. Fino, ‘L’Artillerie en France a la fin du Moyen Age’, Gladius xii (1974); J. Lavin, ‘An Examination of some Early Documents Regarding the Use of Gunpowder in Spain’, Journal of the Arms and Armour Society iv (1962–64); R. C. Clepham, ‘The Ordnance of the Fourteenth and



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The early English evidence for the use of guns is of more than passing interest to us since the Scots were amongst the first they were aimed at. There are illustrations of guns in two manuscripts by Walter de Millemete, dedicated to the young king Edward III. One of these, entitled De Nobilitati Sapientiis et Prudenciis Regum (Concerning the Nobility, Wisdom and Prudence of a King), is dated 1326 and its picture of a gun is the earliest outside China. Both of de Millemete’s guns are bulbous with flaring muzzles, rather like a roundbottomed vase, and rest on their side on a table. Both are shown with arrows flying from their mouths as a soldier applies a hot poker or lighted match to their vents. These weapons are clearly of a very primitive type, but nevertheless recognisably guns. There is a small cast bronze gun with a swollen breech-end from Lochult in Norway that is a slightly more developed form. It is only 0.3m long with a calibre of 31mm and technically would have presented no greater difficulty to manufacture than the excellent bells widely made in Europe in the medieval period, many still in use.16 Some scholars would even suggest that the English used guns against the Scots at the 1304 siege of Stirling Castle. The basis of this argument is a draft writ in the National Archives at Kew which shows that Edward I had recently ordered a supply of sulphur and saltpetre (with charcoal the constituents of gunpowder) to be sent from York. Gunpowder was certainly known to the English at this date and it is probable that these materials were for making it or some other combustible mixture, but it is important to appreciate that evidence of gunpowder or its constituents is not in itself evidence for guns since they had many other uses. At the same time, that the English might have used guns in 1304 is not inherently unlikely.17 It is easier to dismiss the assertion in Hary’s Wallace, a late-fifteenth-century semi-historical poem on the life of William Wallace, that the English defenders of Perth used ‘hand gunnys’ against the Scots in 1297.18 Guns were certainly fired by the English at the battle of Crécy against the French in 1346, and it seems that the Scottish poet John Barbour believed they had been used by the English against the Scots several years earlier. This is probably how the Scots first became acquainted with these new weapons. Fifteenth Centuries’, Archaeologial Journal lxviii (1911); T. F. Tout, ‘Firearms in England in the Fourteenth Century’, EHR xxvi (1911); A.V. B. Norman, ‘Ribaudekins’, Journal of the Arms and Armour Society viii (1975); P. Contamine, War in the Middle Ages (London, 1984), 137–48. 16  T. Lenk, ‘Medeltidens Skjutvapen’, Nordisk Kultur, 12b, Vaaben (1943), 149, fig. 25. 17  NA, SC 1/12/177, cited in The History of the King’s Works, ed. R. A. Brown et al. (6 vols, London, 1963–73), i, 418n. See also Partington, A History of Greek Fire, ch. 1, ‘Incendaries in Warfare’. 18  Vita nobilissimi defensoris Scotie Wilelmi Wallace militis, ed. M. P. McDiarmid, Scottish Text Society (3 vols, Edinburgh, 1968), i, 168 (bk. VII, line 996).

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Barbour first penned his epic poem The Bruce about 1375 and it includes two passages that are of relevance here. Firstly, in connection with the English siege of Berwick in 1319, he describes how the Scottish engineer John Crabb had no ‘gynis for crakkis’ for they had not yet made an appearance in Scotland. Secondly, in describing the campaigning in Weardale in the north of England in 1327, in which a Scottish raiding party under the earls of Moray and Mar and Sir James Douglas successfully outmanoeuvred the English army under the newly crowned Edward III, Barbour mentions two novelties amongst the English equipment, not hitherto seen by the Scots – ‘tymmeris for helmys’ (crests for helmets) and ‘crakys off wer’.19 ‘Gynis for crakkis’ and ‘crakys off wer’ can reasonably be identified in these contexts as guns. It should be noted that the word ‘gynis’ used by Barbour is not a version of the word ‘gun’ but a shortened form of ‘engine’, a military machine. ‘Cracks’ or loud noises, however, are precisely what distinguished guns from other engines of the time. By the time Barbour was writing guns were mentioned quite commonly in English documents and already by 1369 a sub-department for gunnery had been established within the Tower of London. This was superseded at the beginning of the fifteenth century by the nascent Office of Ordnance.20 In searching for early evidence of the use of guns in Scotland it is axiomatic that the Scots word ‘gun’ and the related term ‘gunnare’ for a specialist who operated and serviced them should only mean guns as we now understand them. It is salutory to be aware that ‘gyne’ and ‘gynour’ were words employed in relation to other types of artillery, for example in Barbour’s Bruce: Ye gynour yan gert bend in hy Ye gyne and wappyt out ye stane.21 The scope for writers not interested or knowledgeable in the finer points of fourteenth-century military technology to get their guns and gynes muddled is surely clear. In the light of early interest by England in guns and the growing awareness of their uses in warfare it might not be surprising to find that the Scots also explored their possibilities about the same time. The late Douglas Simpson was of the opinion that they employed a gun themselves at the siege of Dundarg Castle in 1334.22 He also believed that this was the earliest record of the use 19  Bruce, McDiarmid and Stevenson, iii, 159 (bk XVII, l. 256), 223 (bk XIX, ll. 400, 403). 20  Tout, ‘Firearms in England’; Hogg, English Artillery, 80–96. 21  Bruce, McDiarmid and Stevenson, iii, 175 (bk XVII, ll. 690–1). 22  W. D. Simpson, Dundarg Castle, Aberdeen University Studies cxxxi (1954), 20–1; idem, ‘The Tower-Houses of Scotland’, in Studies in Building History, ed. E. M. Jope (London, 1961), 230.



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of a gun at a siege in Britain. His case was based on a passage in the Wemyss Manuscript of the Orygynale Cronikil of Scotland compiled by Andrew of Wyntoun about 1400. It describes how Sir Henry de Beaumont, one of those supporters of the Balliols dispossessed by Robert Bruce, had repaired the old castle of Dundarg on the coast of Aberdeenshire and was now besieged there by a force of ‘loyal’ Scots under Sir Andrew Murray, described by Wyntoun as the ‘wardane’: The wardane gert the gunnare syne Dress up stoutly the engyne, And warpit at the toure a stane. The first cast at it kest, bot ane, It hit the toure a sturdy straik, That the mast gest of the toure brak. The Beaumond tretit thaim inhy, To sauf him and his company, And zauld the toure to the wardane.23 The Cottonian manuscript of the Cronikil substitutes ‘wrightis’ for ‘gunnare’ but otherwise the passage is quite close. The account of the siege in the fifteenth-century chronicle by Walter Bower has it that the castle was reduced ‘fulminacione ingenii’.24 This might be translated into English as ‘by the ­explosion of a siege machine’, or perhaps in old Scots, ‘by ye crak of ane gyne’. According to Froissart the Scots employed kanons against Stirling Castle (in 1341).25 There is little doubt that the term cannon, derived from the Greek or Latin word for a tube, has always been reserved for guns, and so this is the first time that the use of guns is unambiguously attributed to the Scots. Froissart is known to have visited Scotland in 1365 and could therefore have discussed the siege with people who took part in it.26 On the face of it, these descriptions of the sieges of Dundarg Castle and Stirling Castle would seem to add up to evidence for the Scots’ employment of guns by the 1330s, as good as that for English use in 1327. The difference is that Barbour’s assertion for the latter is backed up by incontrovertible contemporary early-fourteenth-century evidence for interest by the English in guns and an increasing amount of documentation for their manufacture and deployment by them as the century proceeds. There is nothing else to back up the claims for Scottish gunnery at this time, either in contemporary or later documentation. Although guns are known to 23  Wyntoun, Amours, vi, 72. 24  Bower, vii, 119. 25  Chroniques de Froissart, ed. Bouchon, iii, 243–4. 26  P. Contamine, ‘Froissart and Scotland’, in Scotland and the Low Countries, 1124–1994, ed. G. G. Simpson (East Linton, 1996), 51–2.

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have been used at sieges in the fourteenth century, for instance by the English at Calais in 1346–47,27 there is little to suggest that they were of anything but small size, and certainly not large enough by 1334 to have an immediate effect on a castle, even allowing for the timbered reconstruction of the upper part of the tower at Dundarg postulated by Simpson. It would seem wise to dismiss these claims for early Scottish guns as unsubstantiated and unlikely. Much more convincing evidence for Scottish guns comes in the 1380s, this time from contemporary documentation. In 1384 saltpetre and sulphur were bought by the government for the royal castles, and also an instrument called a gun for equipping Edinburgh Castle.28 There can be little doubt that this was a gun in the sense of a military engine projecting stone or metal balls by means of the explosive power of gunpowder. By the 1380s the term gun had been so used exclusively in England for forty years. The association in the account for the Edinburgh Castle gun of ingredients for making gunpowder adds weight to this identification. These military preparations in Scotland may have been undertaken in anticipation of the troubles likely to ensue on the expiry of the fourteen-year truce made with the English in 1369. The evidence actually comes from the accounts rendered by the Chamberlain, Robert Stewart, Earl of Fife (the future Duke of Albany), for the years 1383–84 and 1384–85, but perhaps these initiatives should be associated with the party of Fife’s brother, John Earl of Carrick (the future King Robert III) and the second earl of Douglas, who took over the administration of the country in November 1384.29 The English saw fit about this time to strengthen Berwick and Roxburgh Castle, then held by them, with various guns, nineteen being mentioned in all.30 Also in 1384 a small unofficial French expeditionary force came to the assistance of the Scots, followed by a larger force in the following year, under the leadership of the French admiral, Jean de Vienne, well supplied with money, arms and armour to encourage their allies. Of special interest is the fact that de Vienne purchased handguns and gunpowder at Sluis in the Netherlands for this expedition.31 Handguns at this time, however, were unlikely to be very effective. They were not to become an effective battlefield weapon until the sixteenth century.

27  Tout, ‘Firearms in England’, 673–4. 28  ER, iii, 672. 29  Boardman, Stewart Kings, passim. 30  Tout, ‘Firearms in England’, 678. 31  Francisque-Michel, Les Ecossais en France, Les Francais en Ecosse (London, 1862), i, 80– 90; B. and H. Prost, Inventaires mobiliers et extraits des comptes des ducs de Bourgogne de la Maison de Valois (1363–1477), tome II (Paris, 1908–13), 178, cited by C. Gaier, L’Industrie et le Commerce des Armes dans les Anciennes Principautes belges du XIIIme a la fin du Xvme siecle (Paris, 1973), 120; MacDonald, Bloodshed, 87–8.



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In the 1380s there is in Scotland rather more evidence for the existence of specialists paid by the government to use, look after and make engines of war. Apart from Teodoricus the carpenter and an ‘artilarius’ (keeper of crossbows) in Edinburgh Castle, there were in Stirling Castle Maurice the gunner and Alan the keeper of crossbows and ‘instrumentorum pro gunnys’.32 It is clear that guns required gunners to look after them, specialists who concentrated their skills and experience on this one type of weapon. Since there are no records of guns in Scotland from 1385 until the personal reign of James I (commencing in 1424) there has to be some doubt over whether these initiatives in the 1380s were temporary with no lasting impact. The intervening years saw the country governed for most of the time by guardians or lieutenants but there are enough surviving exchequer rolls that could have provided information on gun expenditure if there had been any to record. In the course of the fifteenth century a royal gunnery establishment was to be developed in Scotland. As elsewhere, artillery became the concern of the government alone at national level. There were historical and financial reasons for this state of affairs that were not always intended by those in power. King James II and James III certainly thought that their nobles should supply ‘cartis of weir’ (war carts, carts mounted with guns) for royal campaigns and parliament ordered some of the great barons to supply them in 1455, and twice in the early 1470s.33 The barons had an obligation to fight for their king, but while laws might be promulgated as to what weapons and armour they should have, the provision of artillery was regarded as a different matter, an unwarranted and unacceptable extension to the theory of personal service in defence of the realm. Guns, and the specialists who looked after them, became a separate establishment, given more status by the creation of a new post, Master of Artillery, normally held by a man of rank with administrative experience. The first may have been a certain John Paule or Paulis, paid his fee for 1436 as Master of the King’s Machines.34 There is nothing more heard of him in the surviving records, either before or after, and it is possible he was only appointed in this year to supervise the guns and engines for the siege of Roxburgh Castle. If not Paule, the first Master of the Artillery would appear to have been William Bonar appointed in the 1450s.35 The siege of Roxburgh Castle in 1436 may well have been the first occasion on which the Scots seriously used guns against a major stronghold, ­unsuccessfully in this case. The fifteenth-century chronicler of Pluscarden tells how the ­ expedition soon had to be disbanded with great ignominy, nothing 32  ER, iii, 667, 676, 683, 687, 693. 33  APS, ii, 45, 99–100, 105. 34  ER, v, 31, 33. 35  Ibid., vi, 302, 383.

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having been achieved, owing to internal strife. The siege train, consisting of ­excellent great machines such as cannon and artillery with slings (nobilibus magnis machinis, tam cannalibus quam fundalibus, artilliariis), and gunpowder, carts and carriages and various other things were all lost.36 There is also remarkably good evidence for one of the guns James I lost to the English.37 This was a bronze bombard (a large gun, especially for siege work) cast in the Low Countries for the king in 1430, with the following inscription on it: Illustri Jacobo, Scotorum principo digno. Regi magnifico, dum fulmino castra reduco. Factus sum sub eo, nuncupor ergo Leo.38 (‘For the illustrious James, worthy prince of the Scots. Magnificent king, when I sound off, I reduce castles. I was made at his order; therefore I am called “Lion”’). There is now no trace of this gun or any others of similar date that might have been like it. It is known, however, that about 1430 the Duke of Burgundy had guns ‘in the form of lions’, and he lent two bronze guns (‘veuglaires’) called ‘Lyons’ for the siege of Compiegne in 1430.39 Possibly they had muzzles or cascabels (the buttons at the breech) shaped like lions’ heads. Various expenses connected with the purchase of the Lion, probably in Bruges, are detailed in the Exchequer Rolls. Nicholas Plumbar, one of the king’s servants, was given money while in Bruges in 1430 to pay certain craftsmen for several bombards, engines and other warlike instruments and equipment, and there is another payment to cover the cost of a pitcher of wine broken on the ship which brought these items to Scotland. In accounts for 1434–35 expenses on iron and carriages ‘for making lead in the castle of Edinburgh’ are listed.40 Plumbar was clearly a metalworker himself since his widow sold his anvil in 1455 to the king for the use of his smith, David Wright.41 At the siege of Roxburgh Castle the leaders of the Scottish host failed to pull together as a result of dissatisfaction with James I’s leadership. This, rather than proven shortcomings in the guns and other engines of war, resulted in a fiasco. At any rate it did not deter the government in the ensuing reign from undertaking at least three major sieges in the period before James II took the government into his own hands: of Methven Castle in 1444 or 1445, 36  Pluscarden, i, 380; ii, 287. 37  Ibid., i, 376. 38  Bower, viii, 263, 265. 39  Gaier, L’Industrie et le Commerce des Armes, 171. 40  ER, iv, 605, 627, 677–8, 681. 41  Ibid., vi, 133.



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Edinburgh Castle in 1445, and Dunbar Castle two or three years later. All three castles were taken but the records are silent as to what part guns might have taken. On the other hand, James II’s personal reign is marked by a series of sieges in which guns are known to have played a prominent part. James’ efforts were primarily directed against the great house of Douglas which rivalled the crown in wealth, power and prestige. The first blows were struck by James in a campaign in 1450 while the Earl of Douglas was on pilgrimage to Rome. He is said to have besieged the earl’s strongholds and put many of his freeholders to death, while in the following year, just after the earl’s return, James took and demolished the castle of Douglas Crag in Ettrick Forest.42 The Scots went on to use guns successfully on many occasions in the period before union with England, and in the first part of the sixteenth century were casting state-of-the-art guns in the royal gun-foundry in Edinburgh Castle. For most of the fifteenth and the first half of the sixteenth century the overall assessment must be that the Scots kept abreast of military and technological developments elsewhere as far as artillery is concerned. In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries they were innovators in the manufacture of firearms.43 So why does the evidence presented above suggest that the Scots were slow to embrace the new technology of guns? Undoubtedly, there were many factors in play at different times. It certainly cannot be argued that the Scots were unaware of guns, and so a lack of them must result from deliberate policy decisions. In the period in question these decisions must have been made at the highest level by the king or a lieutenant acting in his stead. The lieutenants who governed in the years from 1329 to 1341 on behalf of the young David II while the country was riven by civil war and war with England may not have had the resources, freedom or contacts to adopt guns, or the will when they evidently could achieve so much by tried and trusted methods of taking castles. The expense of the new technology, the need to recruit and pay specialists and the requirement to purchase supplies and some of the equipment from abroad were difficulties that could be overcome in the years from 1341 onwards if there was a serious interest in doing so. The failure to adopt guns must be blamed on David II himself. The contrast between 42  The only major source for these royal campaigns of 1450 and 1451 is a brief statement in a continuation of a manuscript abridgement of Bower’s Scotichronicon in Edinburgh University Library. The relevant excerpt is given in ER, v, p. lxxxv, n. 43  D. H. Caldwell, ‘Royal Patronage of Arms and Armour Making in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Scotland’, in Scottish Weapons and Fortifications, 1100–1800, ed. D. H. Caldwell (Edinburgh, 1981), 82; D. H. Caldwell, ‘The Royal Scottish Gun Foundry in the Sixteenth Century’, in From the Stone Age to the ’Forty-Five, ed. A. O’Connor and D.V. Clarke (Edinburgh, 1983); D. H. Caldwell, ‘The Lutiger Gun Barrel and the Manufacture of Long Guns in Sixteenth-Century Scotland’, The Fourth Park Lane Arms Fair (1987).

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him and James I is noteworthy. Both spent a number of years in captivity in England with ample opportunity to learn about the English gunnery establish­ ment, but whereas David seems to have done nothing with this knowledge James created an artillery establishment, bought guns abroad and used them to undertake a siege of a major castle. When guns were adopted by the Scots in 1384 it may have been through pressure from a pro-war party. If this was, as seems likely, merely a temporary policy, then the continued lack of expenditure on the new technology until the personal reign of James I has to be accounted for. That can be done, at least partially, by drawing attention to the dismal lack of strong leadership by Kings Robert II and III in the years up to 1406, followed by the imprisonment of the young James I in England until 1424. The main power in the land throughout this period, the Duke of Albany, may have lacked the incentive to take ­initiatives that did not immediately enhance his own interests. It was surely under the strong leadership of David II that guns should have been adopted. A recent study of this king suggests a man motivated by ­chivalric values44 but it would be remarkable indeed if an outcome of this was an ­ antipathy to guns so strong that he could not countenance their use. It is possible, though in my opinion unlikely, that in the years from 1357 onwards the failure to adopt gun technology was part of a deliberate policy to reassure the English of David’s good intentions in seeking friendship and an English royal heir to succeed him. His long reign has been seen by many as a dark period with more than its fair share of troubles and grief, contributed to, or created by, a problem king. The failure by the Scots to adopt guns by the midfourteenth century is perhaps best seen in the wider context of a monarch who has left little evidence as a scholar, an innovator or a patron of art and architecture. He will certainly not be remembered as a great military leader. He was apparently a strong-willed man who knew what he wanted, and that did not include guns.

44  Penman, David II, passim.

5

Edward Balliol: A Re-evaluation of his Early Career, c.1282–1332 Amanda Beam

T

he patr i a rch of the Balliols of Barnard Castle and Galloway from 1229 to 1268, Sir John (I) Balliol, was unquestionably an English lord, yet his involvement in such events as both the guardianship of Alexander III of Scotland in the 1250s and the English Barons’ War in the 1260s illustrates the important position which he held on both sides of the Anglo-Scottish border. John (I)’s political ambitions and achievements had a direct influence upon those of his son, John (II), king of Scots (1292–96), and his grandson, Edward, king of Scots (1332–56). The impact of John (I)’s status as a great Northern lord in the service of the English crown, especially in Northumberland and Durham where his vast lordships created a strong support base, would be a key factor in Edward Balliol’s personal and political campaigns of the fourteenth century. But Edward would also be much more closely involved with the Plantagenet house. Although King John was exiled to France after 1299, Edward was kept in the English royal household, then in the custody of his grandfather, the earl of Surrey, and later was residing with Edward II’s brothers. However, Edward Balliol’s time in England has received little attention from historians, neither has his life on the continent until 1329 when he may have ended a marriage to Margherita of Taranto in order to return to the British Isles to claim the Scottish throne after the death of Robert Bruce in 1329. Under John (I), who died circa 22 October 1268, the family was at its height of power and influence in Anglo-Scottish politics. John’s marriage in 1233 to one of the heiresses of the lordship of Galloway, Dervorguilla, provided him with an opportunity to increase his wealth, becoming in the process one of the great cross-border nobles of the thirteenth century. With offices such as sheriff of Cumberland, keeper of Carlisle castle (1248–55) and co-guardian of the realm of Scotland during the minority of Alexander III (1251–55), John proved his political capability at the time. However, continuing disputes with the bishops of Durham (which resulted in the foundation of Balliol College,

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Oxford) mixed with John’s tenacious and stubborn personality – and possible alcoholism – accounted for his fall from royal favour in 1255. John (I) indeed augmented the wealth and power of the family to such an extent that two years later, he was able to buy a pardon from Henry III ‘by supplying him in his necessity with money, of which he possessed abundance’. From his reconciliation with the English king in 1257 until his death, John was increasingly loyal to the monarch. The Barons’ War from 1258 to 1265 saw Balliol at the forefront of various advising councils under the Provisions of Oxford and present at the battles of Lewes (where he was captured) and Evesham. It was his position as a great baron of the North which accounted for his release after Lewes as well as his appointment as the king’s mediator to receive certain Northern barons into the king’s peace after their defeat at Evesham in 1265. For these services, John was rewarded well, including appointments as sheriff of Nottingham and Derby, keeper of Nottingham castle, keeper of the Honour of Peverel, keeper of the City of London and many gifts of land, deer, wine and marriages for his children. The influential position which John (I) had built during his lifetime as a loyal subject of Henry III can be seen, albeit on a diminished level, in the political career of his fourth son, John (II), who in 1278 would become head of the Balliol family. John (II)’s own Anglo-Scottish heritage in addition to his well-matched union in 1281 with Isabelle de Warenne, daughter of the powerful earl of Surrey and a cousin of King Edward I, ensured his potential as a great Balliol lord. His later kingship in Scotland underlines his political ambitions to become a loyal king’s man like his father. However, despite contemporary opinions of his rule, his behaviour in November 1290 and his defiance of Edward I in 1296 show that he was perhaps a more independent politician than

  For Balliol’s appointments, see CPR 1247–1258, 13, 30; The Pipe Rolls of Cumberland and Westmorland 1222–1260, ed. F. H. M. Parker (Kendal, 1905), 128; CDS, i, no. 1731; Flores, ii, 378; ASR, no. 10. For his disputes with the bishops of Durham, see Lanercost, Stevenson, 69; CDS, i, nos 1209, 1242, 1552, 1989; A. Beam, ‘The Political Ambitions and Influences of the Balliol Dynasty, c.1210–1364 (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Stirling, 2005), chs 1–2.   Matthew Paris, Chronica majora, ed. H. R. Luard, Rolls Series lvii (6 vols, 1872–82), v, 507.   R. E. Treharne, Documents of the Baronial Movement, 1258–67 (Oxford, 1973), no. 4; Flores, ii, 496; The Chronicle of Melrose ed. J. C. Stevenson (Edinburgh, 1850, repr. 1991), 99; H. Rothwell (ed.), English Historical Documents III, 1189–1327 (London, 1975), 207; CPR 1258–66, 520, 595, 601; Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous, i, no. 847; CDS, iv, no. 1759.   CPR 1258–66, 191, 200–1; CDS, i, no. 2288; CCR 1261–64, 9, 43, 62–3; J. Burn, A Defence of John Balliol (privately published, c.1970), 103–4.   John (I)’s elder sons, Hugh, Alan and Alexander, had died in 1271, before 1271 and 1278 respectively; thus, the diminished inheritance had fallen to John (II).



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­ reviously realised. Similarly, when John (II) surrendered in 1296 and was p stripped of his kingship and lands he retained hopes that his family’s loyalty would provide him with a pardon, the recovery of his English holdings and a possible earldom. This hope was abandoned in 1297 with the threat of another baronial revolt in England and Balliol’s continued imprisonment. Yet through Edward Balliol, who was to be reared at the English court from at least the age of thirteen after 1296, the Balliol family would once again be presented with the opportunity to recover from its fallen fortunes. Edward Balliol’s position in relation to the royal household had been strengthened as an infant born circa 1282 when, according to the late fourteenth-century Chronicle of Melsa, King Edward I became his godfather. King Edward’s act of lifting the infant from the holy font and naming him immediately elevated his status and installed him as an intimate member of the English royal household. As Nicholas Orme relates, the fact that Edward I gave the Balliol heir his own name emphasises ‘the close relationship, social as well as spiritual’, which had now been created. Most importantly, though, the familial bond provided protection and security to the child: if a godparent saw their children in trouble or need and did not relieve them, they risked penance in purgatory. This ­intimate, personal connection which the English king now had with Edward Balliol brings a new perspective to any study of Balliol’s life and his relationship with the English crown, especially after 1296. Young Edward does not appear in the records until 1293, probably aged eleven, less than six months after his father had become king of Scotland. On 29 April at Mortlake (an archiepiscopal manor on the Thames outside London) King Edward’s son, Prince Edward, held a feast for Pentecost and in attendance were ‘Edward, son of the king of Scotland, Lady Agnes de Valencia [his aunt, being the widow of Hugh Balliol], the prior of Merton, Master I. de Lacy, the two brothers of ... [Henry?] de Leyburn, knights, and Lady [Isabella] de Vescy, who returned seven days ago, and many others, strangers, with her’.10 Balliol remained with the prince until that Monday, when he, Lady de Valencia and Lady de Vescy departed after breakfast.11 Although it may appear that the young heir to the Scottish throne had thus been travelling with his aunt in   ASR, no. 23; Foedera (RC), I, iii, 156–7; Fordun, i, 322.   M. Blount and E. L. G. Stones, ‘The Surrender of King John of Scotland to Edward I in 1296: Some New Evidence’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research xlviii (1975); M. Prestwich, ‘The English Campaign in Scotland in 1296, and the Surrender of John Balliol: Some Supporting Evidence’, ibid., xlix (1976).   Melsa, ii, 362; Nicholson, Edward III, 71.   N. Orme, From Childhood to Chivalry: The Education of the English Kings and Aristocracy, 1066–1530 (London, 1984), 10. 10  ‘The Household Roll of Lord Edward, the King’s Son’, Issues of the Exchequer, ed. F. Devon (London, 1837), 109. 11  Ibid.

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England, instead of living with his father at the Scottish court, Agnes’ itinerary does not suggest nor imply that he was with her, except in April 1293.12 Instead, Balliol may have been resident in the household of Prince Edward during his father’s reign: this can be attributed to his status as godson of Edward I. Edward Balliol’s absence from the Scottish court might also indicate that King John was not simply obeying the wishes of Edward I but rather distancing his heir from the dominant Comyn party of government in Scotland and limiting their influence over him. As Edward was heir to the Balliol family and the Scottish throne, his childhood would be different than that of his father, the youngest of four sons, who had received clerical training. Because of his upbringing in the household of Prince Edward, Edward Balliol and other nobles’ sons at the English court, such as Gilbert de Clare and Piers Gaveston, would have received a secular education and military training. This intimate environment provided the young Edward with the opportunity to forward his military career, or at least learn some knightly pursuits.13 It is likely, though, that Edward was removed from England and brought north to his father circa 1294 when King John began to defy his English lord as the son was offered in marriage to the French as a term of alliance in 1295. But Edward returned south after less than two years alongside his captive father in July 1296. From King John’s perspective, his family history and his lenient treatment while in English custody (1296–99) gave him stronger expectations that perhaps, as a previously loyal English lord, his lands would be restored and he, or his son, would be returned to royal favour.14 John (I), after all, although not subjected to forfeiture, had been out of royal favour for only two years circa 1255–57. John (II)’s hopes were thwarted, however, by the uprising of William Wallace and Andrew de Moray in 1297 as well as by baronial opposition in England.15 If King Edward had contemplated Balliol’s release or restoration of his English lands, the victory of the Scots (and the defeat of Balliol’s father-inlaw, the earl of Surrey), had surely compromised that attitude. Edward Balliol’s treatment in English custody, comparable to that of his father, was certainly that of a privileged prisoner. By late 1297, Walter de Frene, a yeoman of Prince Edward, had become Balliol’s valet and was given 113s 5d ‘to offer on Sundays and other feast days’ and for saddles, bridles and other 12  CPR 1292–1301, 11, 27, 125, 128, 210; CCR 1288–96, 439; J. R. S. Phillips, Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, 1307–1324. Baronial Politics in the Reign of Edward II (Oxford, 1972), 15. 13  Orme, From Childhood to Chivalry, 10, 28–9. 14  For Balliol’s treatment, see: NA, E 101/7/27; BL, Add. MS 24514, fol. 135; CCR 1296–1302, 1; CDS, ii, no. 854; Stevenson, Docs, ii, 121, 138–9, 163; CPR 1292–1301, 231. 15  For more on this, see M. Prestwich, Edward I (London, 1988), 412–35; F.Watson, Under the Hammer. Edward I and Scotland 1286–1307 (East Linton, 1998), 40–5.



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various items.16 From September 1297 until at least January 1299, Balliol was kept in the Tower of London with his father and other prisoners; yet some time after this – possibly when his father was released into papal custody that July – he was released back to Prince Edward’s household, as evident from his transfer from there on 18 November 1299 into the custody of his grand­father, John de Warenne. According to negotiations for John (II)’s release in the  summer of 1299, Edward may have been used as a hostage or surety for John’s exile. After July 1299, Edward probably never saw his father again; however, as discussed below, they at least had the opportunity to meet again in 1308. Warenne had apparently discussed the release of his grandson with Edward I: this coincided with John (II)’s transfer to Châtillon-sur-Marne, near Reims, France.17 Although Warenne died in September 1304, Balliol would remain in custody of the earl’s grandson, another John de Warenne (d. 1347), until 1310.18 In early November 1309, Balliol petitioned to be released from his ­ cousin’s custody in order to reside in the royal household of Edward II’s brothers, Thomas (b. 1300) and Edmund (b. 1301), which was granted the following September.19 However, although Balliol was considered to be in the formal custody of the Warennes from 1299 to 1310, he does not appear to have been resident with either his grandfather or cousin but rather can be found staying frequently with Prince Edward and his brothers in various castles and manors throughout England. This illustrates not only a degree of allegiance to the future king of England, but also a great deal of liberty for the young Balliol heir as not only was he relatively free in his activities, but he was viewed neither as a prisoner nor a threat. It was this leniency which allowed Balliol to retain some hopes that a future restoration to his patrimony would have been forthcoming. After the threat of John (II)’s return to Scotland from France had been successfully suppressed circa 1302–04, there is evidence that Edward I did consider restoring Edward Balliol’s English patrimony. After 1296, these lands had been retained by the crown until they were alienated only in 1306–07 to Guy de Beauchamp, earl of Warwick and Jean de Bretagne, earl of Richmond. This suggests that King Edward had perhaps contemplated a restoration when there was an appropriate opportunity. Indeed, the grant to Warwick ­specifically stated that if Edward I or his heirs should wish to restore the lands 16  Stevenson, Docs, ii, 135l; CCR 1296–1302, 60. 17  Ibid., 288; CDS, ii, no. 1113; Stevenson, Docs, ii, 402–5; NAS, GD 439/142: A. Cameron, ‘Two Groups of Documents Relating to John Balliol, from the Vatican Archives’ (reprinted from the Papers of the British School at Rome, xii, 1931). 18  CCR 1296–1302, 288; CDS, ii, no. 1113, iii, no. 162; Stevenson, Docs, ii, 405. 19  CDS, iii, nos 106, 162; CCW, 1244–1326 (HMSO, 1927), 327; CPR 1307–13, 283, 329; R. C. Reid, ‘Edward de Balliol’, TDGNHAS, 3rd ser., xxxv (1956–57), 38.

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to Edward Balliol in the future, then he would do so and compensate Warwick with other lands in England or Scotland.20 Just after the death of Edward I in July 1307, Balliol petitioned Edward II ‘for God and in salvation of his soul and the soul of his father’ to restore his father’s lands in England and Galloway to him, although this was not fulfilled.21 The reluctance of both Edward I and Edward II to restore either John or Edward to their lands between 1296 and 1307 can be attributed to the strained Anglo-Scottish relations at this time. Seemingly, both kings also appeared indifferent to Edward Balliol’s position as a young English lord who was approaching his majority. This is seen more regularly in Edward II’s continuous failure to oblige Edward with certain requests, discussed below. In the summer of 1301, shortly before the release of John Balliol into French custody at Bailleul in Picardy, Edward Balliol and his retinue were conducted from Whitwick (Leicestershire)22 to London by John de Benstede, controller of the Wardrobe, before moving ‘by the king’s order’ to Wallingford Castle (Berkshire) where he appears to have remained until at least February 1305.23 Evidently, Balliol was allowed to venture to other parts of England while staying at Wallingford, as in March 1303 he was permitted the use of the king’s houses in the forest of Woodstock, as well as the opportunity ‘to take one or two deer when he shall come to the king’s forest ... to have his sport there’.24 He and his retinue were also provided with robes ‘according to the season ... so long as the king [Edward I] is in Scotland’.25 20  CPR 1301–07, 470–1, 492; Calendar of Charter Rolls 1300–26, 78–9; BL, MS Stowe 930, fol. 146b; Nicholson, Edward III, 71, app., no. 2. For Balliol’s lands given to Warwick and Richmond, see CPR 1301–07, 470–1, 492. 21  NA, SC 8/319/387; Nicholson, Edward III, 71, app., no. 3. 22  Whitwick was forfeited in 1299 by John Comyn, earl of Buchan. However, in 1304, the lands and manor were returned until Robert the Bruce defeated the Scots at the Battle of Inverurie in 1308. Comyn died the following year at which time a dispute arose concerning landownership, but in 1327 the lands were secured for Alice Comyn, niece of the earl of Buchan, by her husband, Henry de Beaumont. CDS, ii, no. 672, iii, no. 249; Foedera (RC), II, ii, 175; Nicholson, Edward III, 15; S. Smith, A Brief History of Whitwick (Leicester, 1984), 11–12. 23  NA, E 101/308/30, m. 3; CDS, ii, no. 1948, v, nos 251, 472, writ dated 28 June 1307. Benstede delivered Balliol to the constable of Wallingford Castle; C. L. Kingsford, ‘John de Benstede and his Missions for Edward I’, in Essays in History Presented to R. L. Poole, ed. H.W. C. Davis (Oxford, 1927), 336. The constable, Walter de Aylesbury, received half a mark per day for Balliol’s expenses, suggesting that Balliol – heir of the ex-king of Scotland – was a valuable, if not privileged, prisoner, as the average maintenance fee for an imprisoned Scottish knight appeared to be 4d per day and lesser Scottish prisoners, 2d per day. CDS, ii, no. 1948; iii, no. 72, dated 2 August 1301. An increase by 1313 ensured Balliol 10s per day while in the royal household of Thomas and Edmund; ibid., v, no. 586. 24  CCR 1296–1302, 460; CCR 1302–07, 21; CDS, ii, no. 1213. 25  Ibid., no. 1636.



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In August 1307 the newly crowned Edward II installed his favourite, Piers Gaveston, as earl of Cornwall and shortly afterwards gave him the great fief of Wallingford as well as the title of lord.26 After Gaveston’s marriage to the king’s niece, Margaret (sister of Gilbert de Clare, earl of Gloucester), on 1 November 1307, Piers held a tournament on 2 December at Wallingford castle with many nobles in attendance, including Thomas, earl of Lancaster,27 Humphrey de Bohun earl of Hereford, Aymer de Valence earl of Pembroke, and John de Warenne earl of Surrey.28 Considering Balliol’s ‘custody’ under Warenne and indeed his close relationship with King Edward, it is possible that Balliol, now about twenty-five years old, was also in attendance and participated in the festivities.29 Balliol’s petition in 1309 requesting a transfer from his cousin’s custody to the household of the king’s brothers may have been due to his annoyance at Warenne’s sudden friendship with Gaveston, who was not admired by the majority of English nobles. The contemporary Vita Edwardi Secundi claims that the earl had become ‘[Gaveston’s] inseparable friend and faithful helper’ at the request of the earl of Lincoln,30 raising the possibility that Balliol disapproved and subsequently asked to be removed from his custody. The petition, within a few years of Gaveston’s receipt of the earldom of Cornwall, also suggests that Balliol sympathised with Edward’s brothers over the loss of Cornwall. It also implies that Balliol was hoping to strengthen his relationship with Thomas de Brotherton, who was (until the birth of Prince Edward in 1312) Edward II’s heir. Due to this situation, Balliol probably did not answer Edward II’s summons for military action against Scotland in 1310 or 1314.31 Edward Balliol also remained absent from the English civil strife and political problems which occurred immediately after Bannockburn, as the death of his father later in the year required his attention. While this might be related to Balliol’s personal feelings towards the English king and his adherents, it must also be remembered that Edward had no feudal obligation to serve in King Edward’s campaigns since he possessed no lands and had been refused his inheritance.32 Although in later years Balliol would appear keen to be involved in Scottish affairs, at 26  J. S. Hamilton, Piers Gaveston Earl of Cornwall, 1307–1312: Politics and Patronage in the Reign of Edward II (London, 1988), 37, 39. 27  Son of Edward I’s brother, Edmund (d. 1296 and who had crusaded with John (II)’s brother, Hugh and Alexander), who, along with his brother, Henry, escorted King John from Montrose in 1296. 28  ‘Annales Paulini’, 259; Vita Edwardi, 2; Hamilton, Piers Gaveston, 38. 29  NA, E 101/325/4; Hamilton, Piers Gaveston, 38. 30  Vita Edwardi, 7. 31  Ibid., 10–11; CDS, iii, no. 166. 32  My thanks to Dr Gwilym Dodd for this suggestion.

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this time the death of his father kept him in France and he still seemed too preoccupied with the status of his former English estates and endeavours to regain them rather than to take a deep interest concerning the Scots. Moreover, because of his financial dependence on Edward II, Balliol would not risk blatant defiance of the king by refusing to serve in his military. In January 1315 Edward II, while at King’s Langley, wrote to King Louis of France after hearing of the death of John Balliol, who had died circa 25 November 1314 at his ancestral castle at Hélicourt, Picardy. Edward begged favour for Balliol, ‘his alumpnus’, asking that the French king graciously receive Balliol’s fealty by proxy through Reginald de Picquigny, vindame of Amiens, and deliver his fees to him.33 Fealty by proxy was refused; yet, in May 1315, ‘the magnates and lieges of the Council’ agreed that Balliol could travel to France to do homage to King Louis. Subsequently, John de Weston, steward of the ­household of Thomas, now earl of Norfolk, and Edmund, now earl of Kent, who had received Balliol ‘at his risk’, was discharged as his custodian ‘to prevent him from being harassed at any future time’.34 Balliol was given a safe-conduct on 2 July with leave until Michaelmas, although he had appeared before Sir John de Sandale, the English chancellor, at Sandale’s inn near Alegate, London, on 21 September to announce his return.35 Although the reasons behind Edward II’s request for fealty by proxy are not clear, it can be speculated that, in the wake of Bannockburn, he felt a greater need to keep Balliol in England because of any aid Balliol could provide against Robert Bruce and the Scots. Edward II was perhaps now willing to support Balliol’s claims to the Scottish throne, a cheaper alternative to war which he certainly recognised within a few years when he turned a blind eye, and perhaps supported, the Soules plot of circa 1318–20 to overthrow Robert Bruce. But Anglo-French relations at this time must also be taken into ­consideration. In May 1315, English ambassadors were also preparing to travel to France with further petitions concerning Edward II’s claims on Gascony.36 The issue of homage for Gascony had arisen again upon the death of Philip IV and the accession of his son, Louis X. Edward II was reluctant to perform homage and by January 1316, he had been sent citations to renew it. The death of Louis in 33  CDS, iii, no. 348, 449; Rot. Scot., i, 143; Foedera (RC), II, i, 75; The Itinerary of Edward II and His Household, 1307–28, ed. E. M. Hallam, List and Index Society, ccxi (1984), 122. Alumpnus is most likely a misinterpretation of alumnus (a nursling or foster child). Picquigny was likely a distant cousin of Balliol; R. Belleval, Jean de Bailleul, Roi d’Ecosse et sire de Bailleul-en-Vimeu (Paris, 1866), 84. 34  CPR 1313–17, 281. 35  Ibid., 338; Rot. Scot., i, 143; CCR 1313–18, 236, 305; CDS, iii, no. 449; Foedera (RC), II, i, 87. Balliol took two men with him to France – Robert de Stangrave and John Pik. 36  Haines, Edward II, 311. Philip IV had died on 29/30 November 1314 but Louis was not crowned until August 1315.



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June caused unexpected changes and homage was again postponed. Whether or not these circumstances affected Edward II’s decision to ask Louis to accept Balliol’s fealty by proxy cannot be determined. However, since Balliol was a vassal of France and under the patronage of the English king there may have been an underlying suspicion or threat that the French king would seize Balliol upon his arrival, pressurising Edward II over Scotland to force his homage for Gascony. Sometime between February 1316 and October 1317, Balliol sent a petition to King Edward asking if he could again reside with the earl marshal (Thomas, earl of Norfolk), from whom he had been discharged in May 1315. He requested that Thomas be paid a daily allowance, and that the arrears of past allowances for the cost of Balliol’s maintenance be paid up as well. This would have included payments from 1311–13, which had been delayed but were still being made in 1317, as well as those for Balliol’s expenses while in the household from 1 December 1314 to 31 January 1316 (except ninety-two days when he was in France following his father’s death).37 The irregular schedule of payments made for his previous stay accounts for the suggestion made by Balliol in this petition that part of his father’s English patrimony should be delivered to him for his maintenance until King Edward could learn the terms under which John Balliol had come into Edward I’s peace. Only recently, Guy de Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, who held much of the Balliol lands, had died and as his heir, Thomas, was only an infant the lands reverted to the crown.38 Finally, Balliol made clear to King Edward that he could not support himself from his estates newly inherited in France, as his father’s debts to the king of France as well as local creditors left him nothing.39 Although these financial pleas were not met, and Balliol remained in the English king’s pay, his requests underline his desire to be a legitimate, independent English lord just as his grandfather had been. Balliol’s request for permission to take up residence with Thomas of Norfolk may not have been granted either. Thomas was mentioned as ‘having’ Balliol in his household by a writ of 20 October 1317 and later payments to Thomas for Balliol’s expenses do not account specifically for the latter’s whereabouts.40 For example, on 10 November 1318, the bishop of Winchester, who was the 37  For Balliol’s expenses from December 1314 to January 1316 (£167 10s) see NA, E 101/376/7, m. 17, dated 20 October 1317. There is a discrepancy of ten days, however, as 2 July to 21 September only accounts for eighty-two days. 38  CIPM, v, no. 615, writ dated 16 August 1315; CFR 1319–27, 30. 39  NA, SC 8/317/274; Nicholson, Edward III, 71. This can be dated from February 1316, when Thomas became Earl Marshal, and October 1317, when Thomas was mentioned as having Balliol in his household at the cost of the king. 40  NA, E 101/376/7, m. 17. ‘Having’ in this sense, however, could imply those dates mentioned in the writ, i.e., 1 December 1314–31 January 1316, before Balliol’s petition to reside with Thomas.

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‘­principal collector of the tenth of the clergy granted by the pope to the king’, was ordered to pay Thomas a large payment of £200 ‘in part payment of £500 that the king promised to give him for the stay of Edward Balliol in his company by the king’s order’.41 A similar writ dated 17 November 1319 was given to the Abbot of Burton-upon-Trent to pay 100 marks of £600 owed to Thomas for Balliol’s expenses ‘as contained in a brieve of the lord king ... at the end of Michaelmas anno twelve [1318–19]’.42 Contrary to Michael Penman’s suggestion that Balliol had returned to England from France in November 1318, neither of these documents definitively confirms his presence at the English court nor do subsequent payments in 1319, which were all made to Thomas for previous expenses.43 Rather, King Edward might have been attempting to compensate Thomas for the much delayed expenses from 1311–13 as well as current expenses up to January 1316, which possibly accounts for the generous sum. Indeed, the years 1311 to 1313 illustrated Edward II’s precarious financial situation, mostly related to the king’s lavish patronage of Gaveston and the latter’s greed.44 The implications are that between early 1316 and early July 1320, at which time he was present at Westminster, Balliol perhaps returned to his French estates in Picardy. Between 1318 and 1320, however, Scottish events indicate that Balliol was at least indirectly involved with the English court, if not personally present at some point. By this time it was clear that his attempts to regain his forfeited English lands were fruitless and he turned instead to his growing interest in Scotland, aided by the ambitions of the young Disinherited nobles, who had lost lands under Bruce’s regime. Balliol may have become involved in a coup, discovered in 1320, to oust Robert Bruce from the Scottish throne in favour of Balliol, who at the time of the plot would have been in his late thirties.45 Shortly before his appearance in England in July 1320, Balliol may have been residing in France according to evidence that Patrick de Dunbar, earl of March – a member of the embassy en route to Avignon with the Declaration 41  CCR 1318–23, 26; Penman, ‘Soules Conspiracy’, 38. On 5 January 1324, another payment of £200 was to be given to Thomas, earl of Norfolk, in part payment of £500 (presumably the same from November 1318?), which the king again promised to give him; CCR 1323–27, 52. 42  NA, E 403/189, m. 8; /190, m. 8. Both of these writs were to be taken from the tenths of the dioceses of Durham and Coventry and Lichfield, respectively. 43  Penman, ‘Soules Conspiracy’, 39. For example, payments were made on 6 February, 27 and 30 April, 3 May; NA, E 403/186, m. 8; /187, mm. 1, 7; /188, m. 5. In a separate claim on 29 May 1319 at York, Thomas de Briggesherth acknowledged that he owed Balliol 100s, which might suggest Balliol’s presence there, although again, this is ­ inconclusive; CCR 1318–23, 140. 44  J. R. Maddicott, Thomas of Lancaster, 1307–22: A Study in the Reign of Edward II (Oxford, 1970), 131. 45  Penman, ‘Soules Conspiracy’, 38–9; Fordun, i, 348–9.



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of Arbroath – turned back from France having allegedly discovered news of ‘treasonable’ contacts involving William de Soules, Ingram de Umfraville and Edward Balliol.46 Ingram de Umfraville, who had replaced Bruce as coguardian circa May 1300 and was co-heir to the Balliol barony of Redcastle in Angus, had requested an English safe-conduct to travel overseas, issued on 20 April 1320, which might suggest that Balliol was present in France at this time.47 Indeed, the Scottish embassy delivered the Declaration probably in late June or early July 1320, providing enough time for Balliol to meet the ­conspirators in April or May and return to England by mid-July.48 Others accused in the conspiracy, including Agnes, Countess of Strathearn, Sir Roger Mowbray and Sir David Barclay of Brechin, had connections to the former Balliol regime while Eustace Maxwell would support Edward Balliol following his victory over the Bruce Scots at Dupplin Moor in 1332. These connections certainly suggest Edward Balliol’s involvement.49 Although the conspiracy was a failure and Bruce remained on the throne until his death in 1329, the idea that Edward Balliol could have seized the Scottish kingship so soon after Bannockburn is significant. Admittedly, this might have been realised had Edward II been more receptive to him, such as not denying or delaying Balliol’s requests of lands, payments and residence, which could have provided him the opportunity to secure a support base strong enough to foster political backing in Scotland. Instead, Balliol’s attempts to be the loyal English king’s man, which his father and grandfather had so ­sufficiently been, were constantly thwarted during the reign of Edward II in favour of that king’s other interests and problems, such as Piers Gaveston’s patronage and the looming civil war under the Lancaster administration. From 1307 until 1314, Balliol’s situation appeared precarious especially in England. His inheritance and ability to strengthen his position as an English lord was at a standstill because of Edward II’s reluctance. The period after Bannockburn and John Balliol’s death appears to have been the turning point in Balliol’s behaviour, shifting from his desires to regain his English heritage or equal compensation to his long struggle to seize the Scottish throne from the Bruce kings. The overthrow of Edward II in 1327 and the death of Robert Bruce two years later would give Balliol a second chance to reclaim the throne with the support of Edward III.

46  A. A. M. Duncan, ‘The War of the Scots, 1306–23’, TRHS, 6th ser., ii (1992), 130. 47  Ibid., 127, 129; CPR 1317–21, 441. For Ingram’s Balliol inheritance, see R. C. Reid, ‘The Mote of Urr’, TDGNHAS, 3rd ser., xxi (1936–38). 48  G. G. Simpson, ‘The Declaration of Arbroath Revitalised’, SHR lvi (1977), 20–1. 49  Great Cause, ii, 80–5; Handlist of the Acts of Alexander III, the Guardians, and John (1249–96), ed. G. G. Simpson (Edinburgh, 1960), nos 381, 384, 387; Stevenson, Docs, ii, 8–15; Penman, ‘Soules Conspiracy’, 26, 43, 48–9; Young, Comyns, 72.

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Balliol’s whereabouts are certain in July 1320 (Westminster) and on 20 January 1321 (York) when he received certain payments of 20 marks and 80 marks, respectively, the former of which was received ‘in aid of his expenses, by the king’s gift’ from Aymer de Valence, earl of Pembroke as ‘warden of the realm’.50 Balliol received a further payment made in the fifteenth year of Edward’s reign (July 1321–22) of 80 marks ‘for his sustenance’.51 Edward II can be placed at Barnard Castle from the end of September to mid-October 1322, during which time he had been preparing for military action against Bruce and the Scots, and again in September 1323, and although this Balliol caput in Durham was no longer in the family’s hands, if Edward Balliol was also there with the king, it could indicate Balliol’s possible efforts to recover it.52 Edward II’s last stay at Barnard Castle came after the thirteen-year AngloScottish truce (of Bishopthorpe), concluded in May 1323.53 But, given the uncertain whereabouts of Edward Balliol during these years, it is difficult to place him or his involvement in any of the negotiations. Balliol, who was now about forty-one years old, was perhaps preoccupied with attempts to arrange (or annul) a marriage, discussed below. The Bishopthorpe truce, though, may have been a water-shed for Balliol, who would have been in his mid-fifties when the truce was due to expire: its conclusion thus perhaps underlined the urgency for him to take action in Scotland. Support from Balliol’s Warenne cousin does not appear to have been forthcoming either, as Lancaster and Warenne were currently involved in much animosity and feuding, related to the Ordinances – the observation of which Lancaster strongly advocated – as well as the recent abduction of Lancaster’s wife by the earl.54 Warenne’s own commitment to Edward II was also equivocal. After the execution of Gaveston by the order of Lancaster, Warenne supported the king. However, in early 1319 after a reconciliation with Lancaster (who himself had entered Edward II’s peace in March 1318), both earls campaigned for the banishment of the Despensers.55 Yet within a few years, Warenne was back on Edward II’s side, fighting against Lancaster. His allegiances lacked the stability that Edward Balliol would certainly require should he hope to gain 50  NA, E 403/191, m. 4; /193, m. 4; /194, m. 5; CDS, iii, no. 701; Itinerary of Edward II, 192. Edward II was in France where he remained from 19 June to 22 July 1320, during which time Valence was warden; ibid., 200. 51  NA, E 361/2, mm. 2, 18d. 52  Itinerary of Edward II, 231–2, 247; Royal Charter Witness Lists of Edward II (1307–26), ed. J. S. Hamilton, List and Index Society, cclxxxviii (2001), 182; J. H. Ramsay, The Genesis of Lancaster, or the Reigns of Edward II, Edward III and Richard II (2 vols, Oxford, 1913), 130–5. Barnard Castle was in the hands of the king at this time, the earl of Warwick’s heir being a minor (CFR 1319–27, 4, 30, 219). 53  Flores, iii, 215–16; Haines, Edward II, 273–4; McNamee, Wars, 236. 54  Vita Edwardi, 80, 85, 87. 55  CCR 1318–23, 531, 658; Vita Edwardi, 93, 91.



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support for his claims to the Scottish throne. However, with the ­ accession of Edward III in 1327, Warenne would become more involved in Scottish affairs and indeed he and Balliol had settled any differences which may have arisen between them during Balliol’s early custody as evident from Balliol’s grant to Warenne in 1334, as king of Scotland, to his cousin of the earldom of Strathearn.56 Balliol was thus in need of alternative English champions. Balliol, who had apparently returned to his ancestral lands in France after October 1322, was issued a safe conduct on 2 July 1324 by Edward II from Surrey allowing Balliol, his household and their horses to come to the king ‘from beyond seas’, although he most likely travelled in late August under a second permit.57 It was during his time in France that Balliol may have become involved with Henry de Beaumont, who would later become the leading ‘Disinherited’ noble, claiming the earldom of Buchan through right of his wife, Alice Comyn. In 1323 during negotiations of the thirteen-year truce, Beaumont had refused to give his opinion on the terms, which were unpopular to those who had lost their lands in Scotland and was subsequently ordered by Edward II to leave the council.58 If Beaumont had then gone to France, it is possible that he came into contact with Balliol. Balliol again appears to have returned to France but in July 1327, he was given yet another safe conduct – issued at Topcliffe (Yorkshire) – to join King Edward III, who had now succeeded as king following his father’s forced ­abdication in January.59 If the dates are correct, Balliol would have arrived just in time to answer, perhaps, Edward’s call for military support against the invasion by the Scots, led by the earl of Moray, Sir James Douglas and the earl of Mar.60 Those who took part in the abortive Weardale campaign included Thomas de Brotherton, the earl marshal, David de Strathbogie, son of the late earl of Atholl, and Henry de Beaumont. The latter two Disinherited knights would later champion Edward Balliol’s return to the Scottish throne in 1332 in hopes of recovering their lost lands and titles. If Edward Balliol had 56  CPR 1330–34, 555; CDS, iii, no. 1118; Reid, ‘Edward de Balliol’, 60. As Warenne still had no legitimate heir at this time, Balliol may have granted this in an attempt to be recognised as his heir. 57  CDS, iii, no. 841; CPR 1321–24, 434. Foedera (RC), II, ii, 102, 109. The second was dated 20 August. 58  Haines, Edward II, 274; Foedera (RC), II, ii, 73. Beaumont had also been dismissed from the council in October 1311 by the Ordainers (Vita Edwardi, 57–8 and 57n) and was exiled in 1329–30 along with Thomas Wake for their involvement in the Lancaster rebellion, headed by Henry, earl of Lancaster, brother of Thomas; W. M. Ormrod, The Reign of Edward III. Crown and Political Society in England, 1327–77 (London, 1990), 5. 59  CDS, iii, no. 923; CPR 1327–30, 137, dated 12 July. 60  Lanercost, Stevenson, 259–60; Nicholson, Edward III, 35–7, 41; Haines, Edward II, 277– 8. Lanercost dates the invasion as just before 20 July 1327.

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­ articipated in this campaign with them it would have given him a chance to p move one step closer to reclaiming the Scottish throne. However, as Nicholson points out, because of King Edward’s embarrassing withdrawal, any hopes Balliol may have had were ‘wrecked by the blow which the Scots had newly inflicted on English prestige’.61 In late 1327, negotiations began for a peace settlement between England and Scotland, which was concluded by the Treaty of Edinburgh in April 1328. The issue of the Disinherited nobles, such as Henry Percy, Thomas Wake, Beaumont and his son-in-law, Strathbogie, was evidently a major concern at the negotiations, especially due to the looming death of an ailing Robert Bruce. Many of these nobles, notably Percy, Wake and Beaumont, were allegedly granted the promise of reinstatement of their lost lands in Scotland as well as some in England, although these provisions would remain unfulfilled, giving them ample reason to support an invasion of Scotland in hopes of regaining lands under a new (Balliol) regime.62 It is not known how long Balliol stayed with the king in 1327, but he ­eventually returned to France, only to be given another safe conduct to return ‘on a visit’ to England on 20 July 1330 with a further protection granted on 16 October 1330 for one year.63 Between 1327 and 1330, while in France, Balliol and the Disinherited were likely making arrangements for a Scottish invasion and coup to put Balliol on the throne. The fact that King Robert had died the previous June (1329) and his son, David II, had not yet been crowned king of Scots, presented an opportune situation which enabled Edward Balliol to obtain enough support, both from the rancorous Disinherited and from the English king, who just three days after issuing Balliol’s October protection would witness a successful coup against his mother, Isabella, and her lover, Roger Mortimer.64 Yet, while Balliol likely had support in England, he would not receive aid from his other superior lord, the king of France, particularly after the Treaty of Corbeil. This Franco-Scottish treaty, reached in April 1326 between Robert I and Charles IV, stipulated that if there were to be an Anglo-French war, Scotland would join the side of France as soon as the 1323 Truce of Bishopthorpe had ended (i.e. in 1336). Following the War of St Sardos (1323–25) between Edward II and Charles IV over Gascony, tensions between the two countries remained visible and in 1325, Queen Isabella had returned to France in hopes of ­finalising a peace between her husband and her brother. Of course, Isabella’s return to 61  Nicholson, Edward III, 41. 62  S. Cameron and A. Ross, ‘The Treaty of Edinburgh and the Disinherited (1328–1332)’, History lxxxiv, 274 (1999), 239–42; Penman, David II, 29. 63  CPR 1327–30, 547, from Woodstock; CDS, iii, no. 1010; CPR 1330–34, 12; Foedera (RC), II, iii, 51. 64  Nicholson, Edward III, 64.



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England signalled the fall of Edward II’s power and kingship. What these events meant for Balliol was that if he attempted to take Scotland in the late 1320s, especially with the knowledge and connivance of the English, he would receive no assistance from the French king. Furthermore, if he succeeded in his conquest, he would face an immediate war against France and Bruce Scots while lacking a powerful support base in either England or Scotland. Unfortunately for Balliol, this would be the case anyway when he finally invaded Scotland six years later, although it may have been this reasoning which caused him to hold off until 1332. At some point after October 1330, he again returned to France. It was during these frequent journeys from 1324 to 1332 that Balliol, who would have been about fifty years old in 1332, may have been attempting to secure a marriage to Margherita de Taranto, daughter of Philip, Prince of Taranto (d. 1332), brother of King Robert I of Naples (d. 1343), which may have been annulled later.65 The pro-French Charles II of Naples (1289–1309), father of Philip and Robert, had been in attendance at the marriage of Edward II and Isabella in January 1308, which may have given Balliol, then about twenty-six and hopeful to inherit vast estates soon, an opportunity to negotiate a marriage and meet his father, John (II). Unfortunately, no contemporary evidence has survived to confirm this. Such a marriage, if it did exist, was likely annulled upon Balliol’s departure for England, his invasion of Scotland (France’s ally) and the immediate confiscation, as an enemy of France, of certain of his ancestral French estates.66 Before the invasion two of Balliol’s French lordships had already been confiscated. By 18 December 1330, Edward Balliol was being sought out by the procurators of the new French king, Philip VI, on account of the murder of Jean de Candas, a squire, which resulted in the forfeiture of Dompierre.67 Jean’s brother, Ferrand, appeared to have no intentions to join the ­procurator in the pursuit and instead was ‘holding back to pursue the said knight [Balliol] by 65  W. Betham, Genealogical Table of the Sovereigns of the World (London, 1795), table 626; G. Boccaccio, The Decameron, ed. by G. H. McWilliam (London, 1995), 812; A. Beam, ‘One Funeral and a Wedding: the Neglected History of Scotland’s Forgotten Kings’, History Scotland, iii, 1 (Jan./Feb. 2003). 66  Balliol must have been divorced by 1333/4 when he offered to marry Joan, Edward III’s sister, then aged twelve, who had married David Bruce in 1328. NA, E 39/11; CDS, iii, no. 1108; Rot. Scot., i, 395, 397–8, 410, 417, 431. 67  Actes du Parlement de Paris, 1254–1350, ed. H. Furgeot (Paris, 1863–67), 2nd ser., ii, no. 5504, dated 21 February 1344; Brut, i, 274; NAS GD199/230/12: A. Sinclair, ‘Remarks on the Table of the Heirs of the Royal House of Balliol’ (c.1870), 4. Hornoy was also confiscated in 1330. R. Belleval (ed.), Les Fiefs et Les Seigneuries de Ponthieu et de Vimeu (Paris, 1870), 23, 176; idem, Jean de Bailleul, 11, 12; C.V. Langlois, Inventaire d’Ancien Comptes Royaux dressé par Robert Mignon sous le Règne de Phillipe de Valois (Paris, 1889), no. 183, which dates the forfeiture of the four lordships from 2 August 1331 until after the Assumption (15 August 1332) with a clause to restore them for £76 4s 7d ob.

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way of accusations or of pledge of battle’. Balliol was subsequently ­imprisoned by the king and was to be guarded ‘until the end of the ­inquisition’.68 Philip’s reasoning behind his retention of Edward Balliol does not appear to have ­diplomatic ­ motivation, but rather was because of Balliol’s obvious criminal behaviour. While Edward III by this time had asserted his majority by taking royal authority away from Isabella and Mortimer, Philip does not seem to counter this by incarcerating Balliol. King Edward, moreover, may not have been aware of Balliol’s situation because of his own domestic priorities. However, it appears that Edward was soon released by the interest of Henry de Beaumont. The late-fifteenth-century chronicle, The Brut, claims that Beaumont spoke privately with the king (styled [sic] as Louis) and requested that Balliol be handed over to him and that Beaumont ‘wold graunt him of his grace Sir Edward Bailoilles body unto the next parlement, that he might leve with his owen rentes in the mene-tyme, and that he must stande to be judged by his piers at the parlement’.69 Indeed throughout the next decade, Philip considered Balliol ‘outlawed and stripped of all his goods in France by reason of the crime of lèse majesté resulting from his alliance with the king of England’.70 The murder of Jean de Candas as well as Balliol’s planned invasion of Scotland certainly compromised his situation in France and it also would have severely damaged Balliol’s prestige regarding his royal marriage since Philip VI and Margherita de Taranto were cousins. Beaumont and Strathbogie had apparently travelled to Picardy in the summer of 1331. By this time, Edward III might have become aware of Balliol’s imprisonment and gave leave to Beaumont and Strathbogie to negotiate with King Philip. Indeed, Beaumont was given another safe conduct on 6 August to cross from Dover in the king’s service on an unspecified foreign mission, which, in its timing, may validate the above story of Balliol’s liberation from prison.71 He appears to have persuaded Balliol to join the Disinherited and return to Scotland as Balliol is found residing, possibly by October 1331, at the Warenne manor of Sandal-upon-Ouse in Yorkshire with Beaumont’s sister, Lady de Vescy.72 Certainly, the Scottish parliament called in November 1331 in order to crown the child Bruce king illustrates the concern the Scots felt for 68  Actes du Parlement de Paris, Parlement Criminel, nos 3117.v.C., 3137A, B (dated 11 January 1331), 3137.v.A. 69  Brut, i, 274. 70  Actes du Parlement de Paris, 2nd ser., ii, no. 5504. 71  CCR 1330–33, 316, 332–3; CPR 1330–34, 223, 227; Nicholson, Edward III, 70. On 19 November, Beaumont was given £100 for his expenses going overseas in the king’s service to treat with Philip VI concerning a joint crusade (NA, E 403/259). Further letters were given on 28 November to Beaumont (for this same business) and Walter Comyn (CPR 1330–34, 223). 72  Brut, i, 274; Nicholson, Edward III, 64, 70, 72; Penman, David II, 43.



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Balliol’s recent arrival in England seemingly under the influence of Beaumont and the Disinherited.73 Although it appears that Beaumont was responsible for inviting Balliol to return and claim the throne of Scotland from David II, there are still conflicting stories by the chroniclers. The author of The Brut, states that Donald, earl of Mar, the regent for David Bruce from August 1332, went to Balliol in 1331 after hearing of Balliol’s arrival in England and: made with him grete joye of his commyng agayne, and saide to him, and bihight that alle grete lordes of Scotland shulde bene to him entendant, and holde for him as Kyng, as right heir of Scotland, and so miche thai wolde done, that he shulde be crounede Kyng of that lands, and to him ded feaute and homage.74 Indeed, Mar had been given a protection on 15 October 1331 to go south into England with his retinue, which considering Balliol’s residence on Beaumont’s Yorkshire lands near this time may be ample evidence to suspect Mar of giving support – either openly or secretly – to Balliol and the Disinherited.75 Although Mar was a nephew of Robert I, he had been in England from 1305, refusing to return to Scotland after 1314 because he preferred to serve Edward II. Incidentally, during his time in England he appears to have fathered a bastard son, Thomas, by a Balliol woman, perhaps a cousin – through the Balliols of Cavers in Roxburghshire – or an unknown sister of Edward Balliol.76 Following Edward II’s deposition in early 1327, Mar returned to Scotland and was restored to his earldom by Robert Bruce.77 Yet, the Lanercost chronicler goes so far as to say that in the summer of 1327 when Mar invaded England with Douglas and Randolph during the Weardale Campaign, it had been in hopes to ‘rescue [Edward II] from captivity and restore him to his kingdom ... by the help of the Scots’.78 As Michael Penman has argued, in 1332 Mar and other Scots may have seen Balliol’s restoration as an opportunity to make fresh land grants, which they would be unable to do until David Bruce had reached adulthood.79 The Lanercost chronicler partly corroborates the validity of Mar’s pro-English– Balliol stance by claiming that ‘he had always hitherto encouraged my lord Edward de Balliol to come to Scotland in order to gain the kingdom by his aid; but when he found himself elected to the guardianship of the realm [following 73  APS, i, 511–12; Penman, David II, 44–6. 74  Brut, i, 274; Penman, David II, 43–4; Nicholson, Edward III, 73. 75  CDS, iii, no. 1040. 76  Rot. Scot., i, 836, 850; Penman, ‘Soules Conspiracy’, 41n. 77  M. Brown, The Wars of Scotland, 1214–1371 (Edinburgh, 2004), 228; Barrow, Bruce, 354. 78  Lanercost, Stevenson, 259. 79  Penman, David II, 44.

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the death of Thomas Randolph, earl of Moray on 20 July], he deserted Edward and adhered to the party of David’,80 perhaps because of kinship ties to the Bruces. Although he may have been pro-English or favourable to Balliol, he supported the Bruce party after his election on 2 August and died just over a week later while fighting against Balliol and his forces at Dupplin. According to the fifteenth-century chronicles of Wyntoun, Bower and Pluscarden, the person responsible for inviting Balliol back to Scotland was a certain traitor by the name of Twynam Laurison. Laurison had been recently punished for his adultery and ‘degenerate’ character and in his anger, he seized Master William Eckford, the official who had ‘thundered a sentence of ­ excommunication’ against him, just outside Ayr. Sir James Douglas, postponing his voyage with Robert I’s heart, drove Laurison out of the country, who then went to France and, passing over to Edward Balliol, said to him, ‘Behold, my lord king of Scotland, the time has come for thee to reign ... for Robert Bruce, that strong usurper of thy throne, is dead, and his son is a youth under age and could not put any obstacle in thy way ... Thou knowest about the death of many nobles put to death at the Black Parliament: their kinsfolk will readily flock to thee and lend thee aid. The king of England will willingly rise and help thee. Therefore lift up thy heart and be strong in thy right and act manfully, and call upon thy friends to help thee, and reign long and happily.’ 81 Whether it was Beaumont (perhaps assisted by Strathbogie), Mar or Laurison who was responsible for Edward Balliol’s return and invasion is not known; however, it could have been Balliol’s own initiative which drove him to seek support for the invasion. Indeed, there is enough evidence to support Nicholson’s view that Balliol had been convinced of invasion by the militarily experienced Henry de Beaumont.82 Beaumont’s role in private talks conducted with Edward III before the invasion of 6 August indicate that he had been the chief organiser of the campaign. According to The Brut, Beaumont had asked permission from Edward III to allow the expedition to set out by land from Yorkshire, which the king denied as it was not becoming to harass his brotherin-law, David Bruce. Edward III reputedly permitted the invasion to take place but only with the understanding that should it be a failure, it would be the king’s prerogative to disavow any connections he held with the Disinherited, including the ability to seize their English lands and possessions.83 80  Lanercost, Stevenson, 267. 81  Wyntoun, Amours, v, 397–9; Bower, vii, 65–7, 73; Penman, David II, 33. 82  Nicholson, Edward III, 75; Brut, i, 274–5. 83  Ibid., 275; Lanercost, Stevenson, 267; Melsa, ii, 362–3; J. Capgrave, Liber de Illustribus Henricis, ed. F. C. Hingeston (London, 1858), ii, 195; Nicholson, Edward III, 75–6.



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As king, Balliol would have to display his strength and ability to rule Scotland, an ability which thus far was dependent on his military skills and victories. Balliol needed to consolidate his power but in order to do this, he would require finances, men and a stronger authority with which to demonstrate his strength – inevitably this came from Edward III. Edward’s involvement, indeed, can be related directly to the Balliols’ loyalties to the English kings and the relationship which Edward Balliol had with the royal family throughout his life. But had his upbringing made him an English servant in the mould of his Balliol ­ predecessors? Edward was perhaps more conscious of his family’s English loyalty than John (II) was since Edward was influenced by the English kings and royal household as a young boy and into manhood, becoming as Duncan puts it ‘a creature of England’.84 Yet admittedly, Edward Balliol’s situation was quite different after 1296 as he could not be a true ‘creature’ of a king and country in which he possessed nothing. Because of his upbringing at the English court, his political influences and ambitions cannot be necessarily a reflection or continuation of those of his grandfather and father, but rather they seemed to stem and increasingly intensify from his treatment while in the custody of Edward I, and especially of Edward II. The longer Edward II delayed Balliol’s inheritance, in turn causing him to be more dependent on the king’s patronage, the more Balliol appears to have become obsessed with the Scottish throne, which his increased involvement with Soules and the Disinherited reveals. A large part of Balliol’s limitations after 1332 were due to the lack of support base which Balliol could claim in his campaigns to recover his family’s English estates and the Scottish throne. One very important aspect, however, must be emphasised. The fact that Balliol himself had not been successful in regaining his own English or Scottish lands from English kings underlines the problems he would face during his kingship. John (I) and John (II) had exercised their power and had been able to advance their political careers in English service through their landed resources, wealth and influence in both realms, but ­especially in northern England. The Balliols’ great English lands in Northumberland and Durham formed the basis of their power over the centuries and their loss in 1296 signified a turning point in the family’s influence. The fact that Edward Balliol had been detached from this during his minority as well as his denied inheritance after 1307 is something which must be taken into consideration when examining Balliol’s importance to Edward II. Balliol’s lack of landed resources would affect his ability to rule and the consequences he faced after his capitulation to Edward III in 1356. This would explain why his campaign to recover either his family’s ranking in England or the Scottish throne failed. Moreover, he lacked deep-rooted influence in either realms 84  Duncan, ‘War of the Scots’, 127.

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because of John (II)’s forced abdication and forfeiture. However, in order to fairly evaluate Edward Balliol’s status and reputation, it is ­essential not to assess him – or his father – as a Scottish king. The Balliol family had remained loyal to the English crown since the conquest of 1066 and their behaviour and ­ambitions can only be judged as noble English lords. In the thirteenth century they remained successful partly because of John (I)’s recovery in the late 1250s. John (II) had expected to recover his estates following his forced abdication in 1296 and thus can be viewed as giving up too easily for the Scots. Undoubtedly Edward had hopes of recovery as well. This was an ambitious, baronial and political family which strove to acquire all it could by means of English service. However, without their northern English lands, the family would not have had the political standing and affluence it did, which is visible after 1296 and through Edward’s unsuccessful attempts to regain the lands. Nonetheless, there can be no doubt that Edward Balliol had remarkable determination. It is not known if he would have continued (or even begun) his struggle to claim the Scottish throne had Edward II been willing to grant him the former Balliol lands, or an earldom. The years 1296–1332 saw Edward Balliol being consistently blocked by Edward II’s domestic problems and the rivalries of the English aristocracy. After years of constant denials, Balliol may have been distancing himself from the English crown, leaning towards the small group of Disinherited who would follow him on his quest to retake Scotland. Unlike John (I) and John (II), he was forced to build his status from nothing, which proved to be a very difficult path. Yet, what drove him so strongly to take what he believed was rightfully his must certainly be attributed to the political ambition he inherited from his father and grandfather. It would be his misfortune – and that of the Balliol dynasty – that he would fail.



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Payments to Edward Balliol from the English Crown before 133285 5 Dec. 1296 15 Apr. 1298 19 June 1305 3 July 1305 19 Sept. 1305 25 Sept. 1305 12 Nov. 1305 22 Nov. 1305 27 Nov. 1305 28 Dec. 1305 29 Dec. 1305 3 Jan. 1306 9 Jan. 1308 29 Jan. 1308 12 Apr. 1308 17 June 1308 15 July 1308 18 Nov. 1308 21 Dec. 1308 6 Feb. 1309 23 June 1310 10 Sept. 1310–7 July 1311 3–4 Ed. II (1309–11) 3–4 Ed. II (1309–11) July 1313–14 10 July 1320 20 Jan. 1321 15 Ed. II (1321–22)

100s 113s 5d 40s 40s 20s 40s 60s 50s 20s 50 marks 1 mark 5 marks 10 marks 10 marks 10 marks £11 6s 8d £10 + £10 £10 20 marks 20 marks 20 marks 34s 3d 10 marks £10 100s 20 marks 80 marks 80 marks

Westminster Westminster Arundel London Havering Westminster Westminster Bassildon (Berks) Oseney (Oxford) Kingston (Dorset) Kingston Kingston Boulogne Windsor Windsor Windsor King’s Langley King’s Langley Canterbury

Westminster

85  NA, C 47/4/7, m. 2; E 101/367/16, m. 37; /368/6, mm. 6d., 19; /374/11; /374/20; /619/45 mm. 3, 4; E 361/2, m. 2; E 403/140, m. 1; /141, mm. 3, 6, 9; /143, mm. 3, 7; /144, m. 4; /145, mm. 2, 4; /154, m. 3; /191, m. 14; /193, m. 4; Stevenson, Docs, ii, 135; CDS, ii, no. 1948.

6

Scoti Anglicati: Scots in Plantagenet Allegiance during the Fourteenth Century Michael H. Brown

A

t the begi n n i ng of the second decade of the fourteenth century the conflicts termed ‘the Scottish Wars of Independence’ were at a ­critical stage. From this period two petitions survive written on behalf of the ‘commune’ or ‘people’ of Scotland to their royal lord, seeking his protection and complaining of misgovernment by his officials. In turn, their king clearly sought to alleviate their problems and asked the leaders of this community as his ‘loyal subjects’ for their advice and support in the war. The role played by the community of the realm of Scotland and Robert Bruce’s conscious association of ideas of community with his own kingship have long been recognised. However, the ‘commune’ referred to here was not composed of those who regarded Bruce as the rightful defender of Scottish liberties, but his enemies. The two ­petitions, from between 1311 and 1313, were written by Scots who rejected Bruce’s authority and who continued to recognise Edward II king of England as their royal lord. It was Edward’s protection they sought and Edward’s war effort they aided. It is easy to regard the claims of these Scottish opponents of Bruce to act as a ‘commune’ as hollow. Between 1310 and 1314 they were a dwindling group. They were confined to Lothian and the borders, exposed to attacks by Bruce’s partisans and faced by demands for blackmail to protect their lands. By the end of 1314 these Scots would be forced to choose between submission to King Robert or exile and disinheritance. However, over the longer term, the existence of Scots who adhered to the English king and even claimed to act as a community demonstrates an element of the Anglo-Scottish conflicts which has generally been underplayed. The numbers, motivations and experiences of those Scots who recognised the claims of English kings to rule Scotland form a phenomenon which casts light on both the development of Scottish political   CDS, iii, nos 186, 337.



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society and the efforts of the Plantagenet kings to make good their claims in the century from the outbreak of war in 1296. In its general outlines, discussion of the Scottish wars leave little room for this group. During the fourteenth century the kings of England waged war against the Scots with the ultimate aim of establishing their sovereignty over the Scottish realm. These claims were pressed most energetically by Edward I, his son and his grandson between the 1290s and the 1330s but they did not fade or perish and were still held and pursued by Henry IV in the 1400s. Above all, these kings sought to establish their rights through military means. A hostile Scottish political class would be compelled to do homage by defeat in war and by the control exercised over them by garrisons and officials appointed and maintained by the English kings. It took the resistance of several generations of Scottish leaders from the 1290s to the 1350s to prevent the final victory of Edward I and his heirs and to shape a Scottish cause which linked the existence of the kingdom, its values and liberties, to the rejection of Plantagenet claims of sovereignty. The statements produced by Scottish regimes in the early ­fourteenth century characterised the English kings as foreign tyrants without rights or friends who had inflicted terrible violence against the Scots and were intent on the suppression of their rights as a people and community. The Scottish wars certainly altered the internal character of the kingdom. The fourteenth century witnessed the development of a Scottish elite which possessed an exclusive allegiance to the king of Scots and recognised the legitimacy of Bruce and, later, Stewart claims to the kingship. This recognition meant, by definition, the rejection of the English crown’s claims in Scotland by the nobility, even at the price of losing estates held by their forebears in the English kings’ dominions. Though magnate families of major importance in the thirteenth century, such as the Comyns, MacDougalls and Strathbogies, disappeared from the kingdom or lost their previous status, discussion of the process of fall and rise can give the impression that it was a natural ­redefinition of loyalties and identities in which one dynasty, like the Umfravilles, chose the English side and another, like the Douglases, emerged to fill their place. By looking at those members of the Scottish political class who chose to enter the allegiance of the English king for significant periods, recognising his rights and authority, this chapter is designed to cast new light on the issues of allegiance and identity facing Scots in the fourteenth century. It will be argued that the experience of these Scots reveals the complexities of such questions of allegiance and the range of factors which determined individual or collective   For discussions of this process of aristocratic change see Young, Comyns; A. Ross, ‘Men for all Seasons?’; R. D. Oram, ‘Bruce, Balliol and the Lordship of Galloway: SouthWest Scotland and the Wars of Independence’, TDGNHAS, 3rd ser., lxvii (1992); Brown, Douglases.

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loyalty. It will also be suggested that the way in which questions of allegiance had been a recognised feature of Scottish political life up to the 1350s left a legacy in the politics of the later medieval kingdom. Contemporary narratives show an awareness of the significance of issues of allegiance and of the presence of Scots in the English king’s peace. In Barbour’s Bruce and Thomas Gray’s Scalacronica such choices and shifts of allegiance are regarded in an almost neutral fashion. The records of Ingram Umfraville in the Bruce or Patrick earl of March in Scalacronica in changing sides are treated without hostility or negative judgements. In Scotichronicon, compiled by Walter Bower in the 1440s, but drawing for its information on events between the 1330s and 1390s on a fourteenth-century narrative, there are frequent references to Scots hostile to the claims of the Bruces. Such references occur, in particular, in the account of the 1330s where this group is referred to as ‘those adhering to’ the English, as ‘Scots who supported Edward Balliol’, the English-backed claimant and as ‘Anglicati’ or ‘Anglicati Scoti’. As during the period between 1306 and 1314, the Scots who opposed the Bruce cause were a group of ­recognisable size and identity. During the century of open war and general hostility between the two realms, the kings of England always had Scottish adherents. The ­ submissions of the Scottish community to Edward I in 1296 and 1304 meant that virtually all of the kingdom’s political class had recognised Plantagenet lordship at least once, even if only for a brief period. Such submissions were key military and political events. In the same way, the readiness of some Scots lords to pay homage to the kings of England, whilst the war continued was an important phenomenon. To gauge this importance, some idea of the numbers and ­ significance of those involved needs to be formed. In the brief campaign of conquest in 1296, for example, Edward I received the allegiance of three Scottish earls, Carrick, Angus and Dunbar, while the course of the Scottish collapse during the early summer revealed the first example of the politics of submission. Some magnates, such as James Stewart and his cousin, Alexander earl of Menteith, did homage to Edward so rapidly that they were employed by the king to extend his authority against less amenable Scots. In the long, gruelling struggle which followed the rising of 1297 and the Scottish defeat at Falkirk in 1298, though he enjoyed some support from southern lords, such as the earl of Dunbar, Richard Siward and Alexander Balliol of Cavers, Edward I found Scottish allegiances much harder to win. However, from 1301 there are signs of a gradual drift to Edward’s lordship by certain magnates which preceded the general submission of early 1304. One of the earliest and most   Bruce, Duncan, 702–6; Scalacronica, King, 117–19; Bower, vii, 97, 117, 141.   ASR, no. 22.   Rot. Scot., i, 22, 23, 29, 30; CDS, ii, no. 737.



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prominent of these was Robert Bruce earl of Carrick, who famously made his peace in early 1302, but between then and 1304 the earls of Atholl, Menteith, Lennox and Ross and leading Islesmen had followed his example. Such submissions led to the general surrender of 1304–05 and, when Robert Bruce seized the throne in 1306 he was both breaking his own fealty to the English king and asking others to do the same. As has been mentioned, between 1306 and 1314 a group of Scots refused to follow Bruce. With those adhering to the English king including established leaders in the previous war against Edward I, such as John Comyn earl of Buchan, David Brechin, Ingram Umfraville, John Mowbray and Robert Keith, and previous supporters of the king such as Alexander Abernethy, the Dunbars and Alexander Balliol of Cavers, the claims of this group to be a rival community to Bruce’s party gain some weight. This level of support was, however, reduced and undermined by the course of the war which culminated in Bannockburn. In the aftermath of the battle, though many in this group chose to submit to Bruce, others remained in English allegiance. They were joined by a new influx of Scots in 1320 following the failure of a conspiracy against Robert, forming a group of irreconcilables with leaders such as David Strathbogie earl of Atholl, the Mowbrays and Ingram Umfraville. Chief amongst these disinherited was obviously Edward Balliol, son of King John, whose rights Bruce had usurped. Balliol was also on the English payroll from 1318, if not formally in English allegiance. When Balliol made his bid for the throne in 1332 it was with the backing of exiled Scots such as Atholl and the Mowbrays. His campaigns and those of Edward III of England, now Balliol’s lord, between 1333 and 1336, also extracted the allegiance of a significant group of Scots. Though chronicles from the later fourteenth century tend to ­exaggerate this support, it is possible to identify magnates such as the earls of Fife, Strathearn and Dunbar, as well as many lesser Scots as entering the ‘peace’ of Edward III and Balliol. Though many remained only briefly in this ­position, some, like the knights, John Stirling, Godfrey Ros, Adomar of Atholl and Eustace Lorraine adhered to the English king for most of the subsequent period of warfare into the 1350s and beyond. Moreover, this picture of allegiance is not confined to individuals. Certain local communities were identified in narratives of the next century as being in English allegiance for long periods. Between 1296 and 1314 the inhabitants of Lothian and Teviotdale were largely in English allegiance, while between 1346 and 1384 the men of the sheriffdom of Roxburgh or Teviotdale were said to have ‘unwaveringly adhered to the   E. L. G. Stones, ‘The submission of Robert Bruce to Edward I, c.1301–02’, SHR xxxiv (1955); CDS, ii, nos 903, 1440, 1471, 1489.   Foedera (RC), II, i, 8, 119, 124; CDS, iii, nos 15, 47.   Penman, ‘Soules Conspiracy’.   Bower, vii, 93, 115–17; Webster, ‘Scotland without a King’.

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English’.10 For long periods of the early fourteenth century the English king’s adherents also predominated in Nithsdale, Annandale and the Berwickshire Merse. Local knights, burgesses and freeholders as well as barons such as the Maxwells of Caerlaverock, the Lethams from the Merse and the Colvilles of Oxnam in the Cheviots were in English allegiance for much of the century.11 Except for brief periods in the 1290s and 1300s such lords and communities represented a small proportion of the whole political class and the geographical focus of such groups tended to be on the southern margins of the realm. However, it also appeared that for most of the period between 1296 and 1384 the kings of England had Scottish adherents who were not simply English lords with titles to land in Scotland, such as the Umfraville earl of Angus or later the Percies and Cliffords. For the Plantagenet kings from Edward I onwards, the decision of Scots to perform homage and accept their lordship was not marginal but the key to the achievement of their aims. A victory based on purely military success was never realistic. Instead it could only be won by obtaining the acceptance and recognition of their sovereignty by the Scottish political elite. Edward I’s concern to record the formal homage of over 1,500 Scottish landowners on the Ragman Roll in 1296 was a mark of his recognition that such submissions provided the basis for his authority in Scotland.12 It was the objective of most campaigns launched in Scotland by the Plantagenet kings between the 1290s and 1350s, and even as late as 1400, to make Scottish leaders and communities submit. The defeat of the enemy in battle or the capture of castles were merely means to this end. As an indication of this crucial element in the wars, the English king’s military commanders and local officials were regularly given the power to accept Scottish enemies into their master’s ­allegiance. As early as the 1296 campaign Edward I was granting such powers to his Scottish adherents such as Robert Bruce earl of Carrick and by the 1330s it was a normal element of the commissions given to leaders of English armies and to those acting as sheriffs for the Edwardian regime.13 Powers ‘to receive our men of Scotland and those who have been our enemies into our faith and peace’ could also be directed to a specific group or area.14 In 1301 Edward I empowered his admiral to receive the leading magnates and the ‘husbandmen’ and ‘mesnes’ of the Western Isles to his peace, while during 1306 the king gave his lieutenant, Aymer de Valence, authority to accept the submissions of that influential but elusive group the ‘middling’ men.15 Similarly a named ­ individual could be received as when Henry Percy and two others 10  Brown, ‘War, Allegiance and Community’; Bower, vii, 402. 11  Ibid., 269; M. Brown, The Wars of Scotland (Edinburgh, 2004), 307. 12  CDS, ii, nos 1204, 1755. 13  Rot. Scot., i, 23, 30. 14  Ibid., 318, 382, 509. 15  CDS, iii, nos 1204, 1755.



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were authorised by Edward III ‘to treat with ... William Douglas concerning a league between us and William and his receipt into our faith, peace and friendship’ in 1343.16 Rewards and guarantees could be offered to Douglas in the king’s name in circumstances very different to those of 1296 and 1301 but, as in these situations, the ­ commission demonstrated the vital importance of winning the allegiance of Scots. The general submissions of 1296 and 1304 and the more limited ­capitulations in 1333 and 1335 represented the highpoints of Plantagenet authority in Scotland but the recognition or support received from individuals and localised groups of Scots was still crucial in conferring a degree of legitimacy and backing for the claims of the English kings in the northern kingdom. In international terms it allowed Edward I and his heirs to claim Scottish acceptance for their lordship, as in the letters from the king to the pope in 1301. Within Scotland the value of such submissions was even greater. The homage of significant magnates, such as Robert Bruce earl of Carrick in 1301, his grandson, Robert Stewart in 1335 or John Comyn in 1304, encouraged wider submissions and reduced the leader­ship of his enemies.17 Such actions also provided the king of England with significant Scottish leaders for his own forces and especially those recruited in Scotland. In 1303–04, for example, Bruce commanded a body of several thousand men from south-west Scotland, while several other magnates served during Edward’s siege of Stirling.18 The allegiance of these lords also allowed the king of England to access their followings and use their local influence near their earldoms and other estates to extend Plantagenet authority. Nobles such as David Strathbogie earl of Atholl in 1335 and Patrick earl of Dunbar in 1302 raised their own retinues and employed them in the service of the king of England.19 Finally the ability to form an administration, at least partially staffed by Scots, was a clear advantage in securing the acquiescence of local ­communities for the rule of the English king. The lesson of the risings of 1297, partly provoked by the actions of English sheriffs, was clear in the ordinance passed by Edward I for ‘the good governance’ of Scotland in 1305. In this ordinance the majority of sheriffs appointed was Scottish and thirty years later the terms negotiated for submissions of David Strathbogie and Robert Stewart stated that ‘the offices of Scotland should be ministered by men of the same nation’.20 As a reflection of this, in the 1300s and 1330s the Edwardian administration relied on a number of Scots as wardens and sheriffs able to provide leadership for their compatriots 16  Rot. Scot., i, 639. 17  For 1304 see F.Watson, Under the Hammer: Edward I and Scotland, 1296–1306 (East Linton, 1998), 181–94; Nicholson, Edward III, 229–36. 18  CDS, ii, no. 1356. 19  Ibid., nos 1286, 1321, 1324; Bower, vii, 115–17. 20  Avesbury, 298–302; ASR, no. 33.

100 england and scotland in the fourteenth century and recognise the rules by which the Scottish community traditionally operated. One example of this can be provided by Alexander Balliol of Cavers. Balliol had been chamberlain for his kinsman, King John, but from 1297 was in Edward I’s service. As warden of Selkirk Forest, Balliol was in charge of key strategic region of the south and in 1302 undertook to raise large retinues for its defence, presumably from local Scots who looked to him for leadership.21 Unlike Balliol, Alexander Abernethy did oppose Edward I before 1301–02. However, thereafter, he, too, was a key Scottish adherent of the English kings until his death around 1312. Abernethy was from an important baronial family with lands in Angus, Fife and Perthshire and he was employed in this region by Edward I and his son. In 1305–06 he was keeper of Forfar, Perth and Kincardine and in 1310 was warden of the lands between Forth and the Mounth. Like Balliol he performed these roles with his own retinue, again conceivably including tenants and allies from his family’s estates.22 A third example of the employment of Scottish agents is provided by John Stirling. Described as ‘a knight of the English king’ and ‘a Scottish knight’, Stirling was probably an exiled Scot who returned with Edward Balliol in 1332 before entering Edward III’s service. In 1334 he besieged Loch Leven Castle ‘with a great multitude of both English and Anglicati’, while from late 1335 he was sheriff of Edinburgh and keeper of the castle, where his garrison included numerous Scots.23 As military and political agents able to raise Scottish forces and hopefully also equipped to bind local communities into English allegiance, men such as Balliol of Cavers, Abernethy and Stirling were important to Plantagenet attempts to rule Scotland. The reasons why English kings were so keen to win the support of Scots in pursuit of their political objectives were clear. However, the motives of those Scots who, individually or collectively, adhered to these kings were more varied and complex. The most obvious element in such choices was fear of the ­military power and physical threat posed to their lives and possessions. The points at which the greatest numbers of Scots submitted to the English kings were the periods of greatest English military success. The capitulation of 1296 and the negotiated submissions of 1304 occurred in response to Edward I’s ­ military successes and evidence of significant numbers of Scots entering Edward III’s 21  CDS, iii, nos 658, 660, 1226, 1230, 1287–8, 1321, 1693; Rot. Scot., i, 22; Registrum episcopatus Glasguensis, ed. C. Innes (Maitland Club, 1843), 249; The Douglas Book, ed. W. Fraser (4 vols, Edinburgh, 1885), iii, no. 10; Stevenson, Docs, i, 421–2; Miscellany of the Spalding Club V, ed. J. Stuart (Edinburgh, 1852), 313–14. 22  CDS, ii, nos 1462, 1694; iii, nos 154, 238; Lanercost, Maxwell, 177; Scalacronica, King, 53. 23  Lanercost, Maxwell, 296, 308, 312; Bower, vii, 97–102, 123, 139; Rot. Scot., i, 386; CDS, iii, nos 1194, pp. 327–43, 347–63; A. King, ‘Englishmen, Scots and Marchers: National and Local Identities in Thomas Gray’s Scalacronica’, NH xxxvi (2000), 219–20. And see ch. 7, below.



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allegiance in 1333 and 1335 followed either battlefield defeat or sustained campaigning by the English king. Following the English victory at Neville’s Cross in 1346, local communities in the Marches once more entered the English king’s peace in the face of the threat of renewed attack. However, the limited results of this battle and of subsequent campaigns suggest the diminishing effect of coercion on the Scottish polity, as the repeated recoveries of the Bruce regime created stronger bonds of allegiance. Coercive means of extracting allegiance did not occur solely via general displays of Plantagenet military strength. Individual magnates and nobles and local groups were subjected to specific pressure. Edward prince of Wales’s campaign in 1301 placed military pressure on Robert Bruce earl of Carrick, capturing Turnberry Castle, the centre of his earldom, and leaving forces in the vicinity. Bruce’s decision to come to Edward I’s peace within the next few months was a direct product of the loss of lands in war, while related campaigns in the west also persuaded other nobles from the west and the Hebrides to make similar submissions in 1302 and 1303.24 In parallel circumstances, over thirty years later Robert Stewart made a short-lived submission to Edward III in August or September 1335 following the arrival of an Irish fleet which targeted Stewart’s lordship round the Firth of Clyde.25 Similarly the submissions of Duncan earl of Fife to Edward Balliol and Edward III in 1332 and 1335 were a reaction to the invasion of his province. Least secure were those whose principal estates lay in the Marches. The earls of Dunbar’s adherence to the English crown between 1296 and 1314 and again in the early 1330s was primarily a product of the vulnerability of their earldom to English forces.26 The threat of dispossession was a powerful tool in retaining the allegiance and service of the leading magnate of Lothian and Berwickshire who played a major role in the Edwardian administration. The same was also true for lesser lords in the sheriffdoms of southern Scotland. These local communities were most vulnerable to English attack and were directly under Edwardian administration. Landowners in these areas refusing homage would face forfeiture of lands and goods and the lists of forfeited royal tenants in the mid-1330s indicate both gaps in general patterns of allegiance as well as the determination of the Edwardian government to enforce these sentences, partly as a warning to others.27 For an individual lord such as Robert Colville of Oxnam, inheritance of land and status depended on allegiance to the king of England. Colville had grown up as the ward of William Wessington, the English knight who had captured Colville’s father and, with English garrisons nearby at Roxburgh and 24  Barrow, Bruce, 121–4; CDS, ii, nos 1238, 1283, 1296. 25  Nicholson, Edward III, 215–16, 227. 26  Webster, ‘Scotland without a King’, 226, 229; C. J. Rogers, War Cruel and Sharp. English Strategy under Edward III (Woodbridge, 2000), 96–102. 27  CDS, iii, pp. 317–47.

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Jedburgh, Robert had little choice in terms of loyalty. The treatment of Colville as a ward raises another method of coercion. English kings could keep hostages to guarantee the continued adherence of key Scots. Even a trusted agent such as Alexander Balliol had his son held in England to ensure his good service.28 It should be recognised that the use of coercion was not confined to the English crown. The men of Lothian only left Edward II’s allegiance after seven years of raiding and blackmail by Robert Bruce’s partisans while similar attacks between the 1340s and 1380s were required to win control of Teviotdale from the English king’s faith. The attitude of the earl of Dunbar, said to have had no great liking for either side, may have been a natural response from southern landowners. In the course of the wars both the Plantagenets and their ­opponents waged war to win the recognition of their authority from Scots ‘through force or persuasion’, and sought to preserve this allegiance against enemy pressure.29 It is obvious, however, that those leaders who fought for a Scotland free from subjection to the English crown enjoyed levels of active support without the need for the demonstration of force. English kings never achieved this position. The readiness of Scots to renew opposition to Edwardian administrations in 1297, 1306 and after 1335 despite submissions meant that there was a continued need to demonstrate their military resources through expensive garrisons and field armies. However, it is a mistake to see the adherence of Scots to English kings as simply the result of threats posed by military and political pressure. For many Scots there were other reasons for their choice of allegiance. The single most significant of these was the political division within the Scottish community between the competing claims of Bruce and Balliol to the kingship. This ­division was a constant element in the readiness of Scots to serve Edward I and his heirs, but its significance varied over decades of warfare and dynastic rivalry. In the opening period of warfare between 1296 and 1304 it was the Bruce family and its associates who were forced to choose between support of John Balliol’s rights as king and adherence to Edward I as direct ruler of Scotland. Neither proved satisfactory. In 1296 the Bruces supported Edward I but their hopes of securing the throne were dashed by the English king. Between 1297 and 1301 while the elder Robert Bruce remained in Edward’s camp, his son, Robert earl of Carrick, played an active role in support of Balliol. Carrick’s defection to Edward I in 1301–02 was only partly due to coercion. He was also responding to the possibility of King John’s return to Scotland, an event which would made continued adherence to his cause unrewarding and unpalatable.30 Carrick may not have been alone. Between 1302 and 1304 ­ associates of the 28  Ibid., ii, no. 1349; Brown, ‘War, Allegiance and Community’, 230. 29  Bower, vii, 403. 30  Barrow, Bruce, 122–3; Stones, ‘Submission’.



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Bruces such as the earls of Atholl, Menteith and Lennox also seem to have entered Edward’s ­allegiance, perhaps due to a similar ­combination of military pressure and political disaffection.31 Bruce’s seizure of the throne in 1306 marked a revolution in patterns of ­a llegiance. Atholl, Lennox and Menteith were now the three earls who attended Bruce’s inauguration. By contrast it was the closest adherents of the Comyns and Balliol who were faced with problems of loyalty between the English king or their Scottish enemy. Robert’s usurpation of Balliol’s throne and killing of John Comyn led many of the staunchest upholders of the Scottish cause in the earlier wars to remain in the king of England’s allegiance after 1306. Active ­ opponents of Edward I up to 1304, such as the ex-guardian, Ingram Umfraville, John Mowbray and his kin, David lord of Brechin and John Comyn earl of Buchan were now leaders of the ‘commune’ of Scotland which recognised Plantagenet lordship.32 Umfraville and Philip Mowbray were in de Valence’s army when it routed Bruce at Methven in 1306, while Buchan, John Mowbray and Brechin led the forces which fought Robert with less success in the North East in 1307–08.33 Though Buchan died soon after in December 1308, the others continued to be active adherents of Edward II despite his waning fortunes and their personal losses as a result. Brechin lost his castle and was captured, as was Umfraville at Bannockburn and, while the Mowbrays, Henry Sinclair, William Soules and John Maxwell retained lands which were in areas of English predominance, their allegiance was also linked to these families’ links with the Comyns.34 These lords were from families with an established place in the Scottish kingdom. The Comyns, Sinclairs, Mowbrays, Maxwells and Souleses were all active in the pre-war realm as royal councillors and officials. Like many from such backgrounds, the heads of these families had backed Balliol’s claim in the Great Cause and were active in his brief kingship.35 After 1296 they continued in their support, remaining in opposition to Edward I until John Comyn’s submission in early 1304. Despite these unimpeachably Scottish credentials and claims to be the kingdom’s natural political leaders, these lords failed to accept Bruce as king. Their hostility to the Bruce claim clearly overrode the appeals Robert made to the defence of Scottish liberties. The sense of their rightful leadership of Scotland and of the illegality of the usurpation perhaps inevitably led to this group remaining in the English king’s peace after 1306. If this choice of allegiance was a flag of convenience, events would turn it into 31  CDS, ii, nos 903, 1440, 1471, 1489; Ross, ‘Men for all Seasons?’, i, 1, 8–9. 32  CDS, ii, 1876, 1931, 1938, 1958, 1961; Foedera (RC), II, i, 8. 33  Bruce, Duncan, 90–1, 318–19, 324. 34  Ibid., 332n.; Foedera (RC), II, i, 119, 124; Rot. Scot., i, 113–14; CDS, iii, no. 219. 35  Young, Comyns, 170–80; Rot. Scot., i, 22; Registrum episcopatus Glasguensis, 249; CDS, ii, nos 658, 660, 872.

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the basis of a long-term alliance which provided the Plantagenets with their key Scottish supporters. The collapse of Edwardian Scotland before and after Bannockburn changed matters. In November 1314 Robert I’s parliament at Cambuskenneth issued a statute forfeiting all those who had failed to pay homage to Bruce.36 As all those who did fealty to Robert would be deprived of those lands held from the English king, the Cambuskenneth statute presented the old Balliol partisans with a choice between submission to Bruce or exile in England as ­‘disinherited’. While most chose submission, as Penman has shown, it was these same ­ families who led the conspiracy against King Robert in 1320. The suppression of this forced several, such as Ingram Umfraville and Alexander Mowbray, back into English allegiance. The role of Edward II of England and Edward Balliol, the son of King John, in the conspiracy indicates this group were looking to their natural backers against Bruce.37 In the early 1330s the conjunction of these Plantagenet and Balliol claims to lordship was formalised. In November 1332, following Edward Balliol’s coronation as king of Scots, an agreement was reached with Edward III’s representatives. In this, Balliol stated his readiness to perform liege homage for Scotland to the king of England and advanced a version of recent history which emphasised Edward I’s ­ judgement ‘as sovereign lord of the realm of Scotland’ that John Balliol was the rightful king. Glossing over the confiscation of Scotland by Edward I ‘for certain excesses’, Balliol then stated that the realm had been ‘stolen’ by the Bruces ‘who had clearly been judged and had no right’. Edward Balliol had ‘now ... come into our realm of Scotland, as into our heritage [and] ... crowned king’ by the ‘sufferance’ of the English king and ‘by aid of some of his good people ... dispossessed’ by Bruce.38 In 1334 Balliol performed homage and assigned £2,000 worth of lands from his realm to the English king becoming the greatest of the English king’s Scottish adherents. However, Edward III had conceded the claims of his father and grandfather to direct sovereignty, restoring Balliol to the kingship his father had forfeited. As with lesser Scottish agents, Edward III hoped the employment of a vassal king would win a body of support in the realm. Balliol did enjoy a core of support from English and French ‘disinherited’ claimants and from Scottish families hostile to the Bruces. Some of these had been in exile during the 1320s, like Alexander, John and Geoffrey Mowbray who brought their own followers with them from England.39 Similarly David (III) Strathbogie earl of Atholl whose father had defected to Edward II on the 36  RRS, Robert I, no. 41. 37  Penman, ‘Soules Conspiracy’; idem, David II, 20–1, 32–3, 40–1. 38  Foedera (RC), II, ii, 876. 39  CDS, iii, no. 724; Bower, vii, 81, 813.



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eve of Bannockburn had retained some contact with their Scottish affinity.40 Others, like Eustace Maxwell, had remained in Scotland but kept their ­sympathies. Maxwell rose in support of Balliol in 1332, acted as Edward III’s sheriff of Dumfries in 1335–36, before finally entering Bruce allegiance in 1337.41 Whether recognition of Balliol’s kingship by Edward III made the English king’s lordship more acceptable to the wider Scottish community is less clear. Between 1332 and 1335, a considerable number of Scots switched allegiances on at least one ­ occasion. In part this reflected the violent swings in the military balance during the period, but the changes of sides made by magnates such as Duncan earl of Fife and Malise earl of Strathearn were also the responses of the traditional leaders of the nobility who possessed a limited attachment to the Bruce regime.42 Chronicle accounts of the period certainly contain references to Anglicati with their own leaders. The garrisons at Edinburgh and Perth were the largest maintained by Edward III and both contained a consider­able number of Scots. At Perth, the Yorkshireman, Thomas Ughtred, ‘had with him many Scots who adhered to Edward Balliol’, including knights and squires from the North East, Fife, Ayrshire and Roxburghshire.43 The garrison of Edinburgh Castle under its Scottish keeper, John Stirling, was about a third Scottish, with knights, men-at-arms and workmen all specifically named as Scots on the payroll.44 Like Stirling there were a number of Scottish officials in the administration of Edward III and Balliol, several of whom continued to serve the English during the subsequent decades. Though such Scottish adherents were not magnates, several knights and captains can be identified in English allegiance who had connections to the disinherited houses of Comyn and Strathbogie. One example of this is provided by the Ros family from Cunningham in Ayrshire. As a vassal of John Comyn earl of Buchan, who witnessed a charter of King John in 1295, Godfrey Ros was linked to this group in the kingdom.45 His submission in 1304 in the company of John Comyn and John Mowbray indicated continued links with this party and, though not a prominent opponent of Bruce after 1306, Godfrey was deprived of his lands of Ardneil and Kilbride.46 The family may have maintained local connections and in 1333 Godfrey Ros (probably the son of the man forfeited) was appointed as sheriff of Ayr and Lanark by Edward Balliol. The next year Robert Stewart, the lord of Cunningham, compelled Ros to submit along with

40  Ross, ‘Men for all Seasons’, i, 13–14, 17; ibid., ii, 4–5. 41  Lanercost, Maxwell, 272, 303; CDS, iii, no. 1143, p. 317. 42  Webster, ‘Scotland without a King’, 226, 229; Brown, Wars of Scotland, 236, 242–3. 43  Bower, vii, 141; Rot. Scot., i, 537. 44  CDS, iii, pp. 360–3. 45  Rot. Scot., i, 35; Registrum episcopatus Glasguensis, 249. 46  CDS, ii, no. 1741; RRS, Robert I, no. 67.

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the local communities in Cunningham and Kyle.47 In August 1335 Ros was one of those negotiating for the submission of Stewart and Strathbogie with Balliol, suggesting Godfrey’s natural allegiance was to Balliol, but that he was an influential figure. The breach with Stewart occurred soon after. In January 1336, Ros was firmly in Edward III’s allegiance, while Stewart was seeking to return to his own natural allegiance to the Bruce king. The following month, during peace talks, Ros was killed by one of the Bruce leaders, Maurice Murray, whose brother Ros had previously slain.48 It was probably no accident that by the early 1340s Ros’s forfeited lands of Stonehouse in Lanarkshire were held by Murray’s son.49 Ros’s own son, a third Godfrey, had remained in English allegiance where he was rewarded for his service in 1341, and in 1344 he ­ petitioned for the compensation for the loss of his Scottish lands to the value of 600 marks.50 Forfeiture in Scotland, a feud with a leading Bruce adherent and the rewards of Edward III confirmed Godfrey in English allegiance, but the ­family’s place as tenants and adherents of the Comyns was the connection which formed their loyalties. From the late 1340s until his death in 1375, Godfrey Ros continued in Edward III’s service in France as well as Scotland and received lands in Teviotdale as compensation for his other losses.51 The Ros family was not unique. A second example was provided by Eustace Lorraine. The Lorraine family had long-standing connections to the house of Strathbogie, the earls of Atholl who had been in English allegiance since 1314. In 1323 Lorraine was in contact with the exiled earl and in the early 1330s he was quick to support David earl of Atholl when the earl returned to Scotland with Balliol.52 Lorraine was part of a group of former Strathbogie dependants who rejoined the earl. Eustace apparently also followed David when he submitted to the Bruce party in 1334 as, like Ros, he was one of those who negotiated the earl’s return to Balliol the following year. The defeat and death of Strathbogie at Culblean in late 1335 left Lorraine in English allegiance and by the early 1340s he was deprived of his Scottish lands.53 This led to a fresh defection in about 1344 and in 1346 Lorraine was in the following of William Douglas, and was in Douglas’s garrison in Roxburgh Castle. After the capture of Douglas at Neville’s Cross Lorraine surrendered Roxburgh to the English to secure the release of his son. Unsurprisingly, after this he remained in English

47  Bower, vii, 107; Lanercost, Maxwell, 296. 48  Avesbury, 298–302; Rot. Scot., i, 397; Lanercost, Maxwell, 296. 49  RMS, i, appendix 2, no. 904. 50  CDS, iii, nos 1390, 1432; Rot. Scot., i, 612, 615. 51  CDS, iii, nos 1455, 1490, 1634; iv, nos 88, 92, 206, 228. 52  Ibid., iii, no. 832. 53  Avesbury, 298–302; CDS, iii, no. 1410.



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allegiance and his son, James, continued to serve Edward III in Teviotdale receiving lands and a pension into the 1380s.54 The political and tenurial connections of Eustace Lorraine and the Ros family made them responsive to appeals based on the legitimacy of the Balliol claim and the restoration of the disinherited. Their ultimate allegiance to the English made them unusual but not unique. In the decade after Bruce’s ­ usurpation and in the years following Edward Balliol’s coronation, a significant number of Scots was prepared to recognise the English king as their ultimate lord. Their motivation involved doubts about the legitimacy of the Bruce regime and distaste for the leadership of the Scottish cause which prompted them to seek English support for the establishment of a Scottish realm liberated from Bruce control. Whether for the earl of Buchan, Ingram Umfraville or even Edward Balliol recognition of Plantagenet suzerainty was ever more than a necessary evil is hard to say. For such lords, and for many of their own friends and followers, the rival appeals of Bruce and Plantagenet left them with difficult choices and wavering allegiances. While the power of the Plantagenet kings to compel Scottish recognition and the decision of Balliol partisans to support the leading enemy of the Bruce cause were key elements in Scottish support for the English crown, there were more positive factors at work. English kings also sought to encourage this support through the exercise of good lordship to their adherents. If there is a tendency in the modern era to reduce lordship to material considerations, to the nobility in the fourteenth century the ability of a lord to reward and support his followers was the basis of his obligation to loyal service. Barbour’s Bruce is shot through with a message of service and reward, most obviously expressed via King Robert’s relationship with James Douglas, but English kings too knew the value of such methods to win and keep followers.55 Despite his reputation for harshness, Edward I did not regard his job in Scotland as simply about compulsion. He also recognised the need to provide incentives for Scots to serve him. Though neither Edward or his heirs exercised such lordship ­effectively or consistently, approaches based on reward and patronage were present throughout the wars. The key to such lord-man relations was typically about land. In this respect, even when their position in Scotland was weak, English kings possessed leverage. During the thirteenth century a considerable proportion of the Scottish community possessed estates in England, not just earls and barons but many knights and burgesses. The Scottish realm was part of an ‘aristocratic nexus’ which spanned most of the British Isles. With hindsight the wars from 1296 and the statute of Cambuskenneth of 1314 were key elements in the 54  RMS, i, nos 293, 463. 55  Bruce, Duncan, 84–6.

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break up of this network of land and family. This was not so clear at the time. The ability of the king of England to deprive Scots of their English holdings, as with the large scale forfeitures of 1296 and 1306, was a potent threat. The possibility of restoration or of continual enjoyment of lucrative estates in the Plantagenet dominions was a valuable inducement to service. In 1302, when he did homage to the English king, Robert Bruce was keen to obtain a promise that he would inherit his family’s English estates, retained up until then by his father’s unbroken allegiance to Edward I. Robert’s submission also included his Scottish tenants who recovered their own forfeited estates in England as a result.56 Similarly in 1335 much of the terms of David (III) earl of Atholl’s submission to Edward III concerned the recovery of his English estates, especially the valuable manor of Chilham in Kent.57 Thirty years before, the desire to retain the same manor was a major factor in Alexander Balliol’s decision to adhere to Edward I. Balliol held the estate in right of his wife and was initially allowed to keep it after her death as a courtesy.58 The importance of such an estate was not simply ­material. When David (II) earl of Atholl received Chilham from Edward II he did so in return for a promise of service to the king in all his enterprises on pain of forfeiture.59 Lands formed the basis of the bond of allegiance between Scottish earl and English king. With this in mind it is not surprising that large-scale restorations of English holdings accompanied the general peace settlements of 1296 and 1304. The king of England was the only means by which the large constituency of Scots with English interests could maintain their cross-border lands and this provided a useful means for Plantagenets to exert a pull on these individuals. Robert I had himself experienced this pull before 1306 and was not surprisingly reluctant to allow the restoration of English lands to his own adherents or disinherited Scots. As well as the possibility of restoring lands, Edward I and his heirs also had great powers of patronage to reward service. In particular, within Scotland, the forfeiture of enemies allowed English kings to redistribute their estates to Scottish adherents. One example of this was the grant to Patrick earl of Dunbar allowing him to receive lands forfeited by his own tenants in the early 1300s.60 In 1306, following Bruce’s rebellion there were clearly expectations that Edward I would grant out the lands of Robert and his supporters to his own adherents. Amongst those seeking a portion of these were Scots such as Alexander Abernethy and Alexander Balliol, stalwarts of the Edwardian regime, and John Menteith, a previous opponent. As keeper of Dumbarton 56  Stones, ‘Submission’; CDS, ii, no. 1302, 1303. 57  Avesbury, 298–302. 58  CDS, ii, no. 1721. It was taken away from him and granted to Bartholomew Badlesmere in 1310 (ibid., iii, no. 128). 59  Ibid., ii, nos 742. 60  Ibid., nos 853, 1292.



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Castle, John had refused Bruce’s approaches and was rewarded with a grant of the earldom of Lennox before June 1306. The grant was prospective. Menteith was clearly expected to use Dumbarton as a base to win the province for Edward I and energetically pursued Malcolm earl of Lennox during the late summer.61 The grant made by Edward III to one of his leading Scottish knights, John Stirling, may well have been prospective too. In July 1336, Stirling was rewarded for his service as sheriff of Edinburgh with a grant of Bathgate and Ratho in Lothian which had been forfeited by Robert Stewart. However, on the same day letters were issued stating that if these lands, worth 300 marks, were occupied by the Scots, Stirling would receive lands in England and an annuity worth 200 marks, as well as the grant of offices for life. Stirling was clearly keen to guarantee his benefits should the estates fall beyond his reach and Edward III was ready to offer terms to safeguard the loyalty of this key Scottish adherent.62 The terms of this grant also indicate a second form of reward. As the rulers of extensive dominions the Plantagenet kings had the resources to compensate their adherents for losses of Scottish lands in the wars. In 1302 Bruce received the promise of a ‘reasonable income’ should he be unable to enjoy his Scottish lands due to his allegiance to Edward I, while David (II) Earl of Atholl was compensated for his loss of his lordships in Scotland with grants of English lands forfeited by his father or taken from the Templars.63 During the period after 1314, in the late 1330s and after 1346 as the extent of English lordship in Scotland diminished, such grants of compensation became more frequent. Thus John Stirling was indeed given other lands after the fall of Edinburgh Castle in 1341. He received temporary custody of the Strathbogie lands in Yorkshire and lands in Berwickshire forfeited by the Scottish guardian, Andrew Murray, and those of Margaret Abernethy, daughter of the one-time English adherent, Alexander Abernethy.64 As late as 1385, after the submission of most 61  Bruce, Duncan, 140. 62  Rot. Scot., i, 437; CDS, iii, no. 1209, p. 378. There are a confusing plethora of figures named John Stirling during the early fourteenth century and it is not always difficult to distinguish them from one another. However, the John Stirling named here was a landowner in Northumberland, having married Barnaba Swinburne in 1327–28, and who held lands in Berwickshire and Lothian by grant of Edward III. He continued to serve Edward III until his death in the 1360s. He should not be confused with another John Stirling who was sheriff of Perth for Edward Balliol in 1334 and was again in Perth in 1338 and married to Mary the aunt of John MacDougall of Argyll. He returned to Bruce allegiance and was named as an ancestor of the Stirlings of Keir. Ibid., nos 1305, 1515, 1547; The Blackfriars of Perth: The Chartulary and Papers of their House, ed. R. Milne (Edinburgh, 1893), no. 7; The Stirlings of Keir and their Family Papers, ed. W. Fraser (Edinburgh, 1858), no. 2; and see ch. 7, 125–6, below. 63  Stones, ‘Submission’; Foedera (RC), II, ii, 35. 64  CDS, iii, nos 1319, 1330, 1466; Rot. Scot., i, 588.

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of Teviotdale and the fall of Lochmaben had reduced the English king’s lordship to Berwick, Roxburgh and their immediate environs, a local squire, John Burrell of Teviotdale was given land in the Cheviots forfeited by his neighbours who had chosen adherence to the Stewart king of Scots. His own lands had been lost to ‘Scottish enemies’ and it is likely that Burrell was never able to make good the grant.65 As the area of their Scottish holdings shrank it became more normal, and more acceptable, for English kings to retain Scots by the payment of annuities. In the 1340s, for example, Eustace Lorraine, Edward Letham and Thomas McCulloch were paid daily or annual fees ‘until they recover their lands in Scotland, lost for adherence’ to the English king.66 The kings of England were accustomed to paying for loyal service, either in compensation for losses or, more normally, for the performance of military duties with a retinue. If financial payments or grants of land represented the means to bind Scots into the English king’s allegiance, these rulers could also forge more personal connections. A number of marriages occurred which were clearly sponsored by the crown and were designed to bind Scots more firmly into the English king’s allegiance. The best known of these alliances were the marriage between James Stewart and Gelis de Burgh in 1296 and that of Robert Bruce with Elizabeth de Burgh in 1302.67 These ladies were the sister and daughter respectively of Richard de Burgh earl of Ulster and the alliances linked these two west coast magnates and ex-guardians to Edward I’s chief Irish supporter. These bonds of family were intended to influence these lords in their allegiances. Though they clearly failed in this respect, the de Burgh connection was used as a conduit to Bruce after 1306. Similar motives were behind other alliances. In 1307 Edward II arranged a marriage between Duncan earl of Fife, who had grown up in England, and Mary Monthermer, the English king’s niece.68 Marriage was also employed to unite Scottish families in English allegiance. In 1310 Edward II sought a dispensation for the marriage of two of his adherents, Roger Mowbray and Margaret, daughter of Alexander Abernethy.69 A similar match was probably arranged between Edward’s Scottish friend, Donald earl of Mar, and Isabelle, a member of the Balliol of Cavers family. As Donald’s widow, Countess Isabelle then remarried another Anglicati, Geoffrey Mowbray, in about 1334, bringing him her lands and claims of hereditary office.70 The value of these alliances to the English kings was to give incentives to service and to tighten ties of loyalty. As the dispensation for the Mowbray–Abernethy 65  Ibid., ii, 75. 66  CDS, iii, nos 1410, 1413, 1432, 1494. 67  Stevenson, Docs, ii, no. 401. 68  Foedera (RC), II, i, 5–6. 69  Ibid., 192. 70  Rot. Scot., i, 278, 323.



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match (which probably never took place) stated ‘through this union between our said subjects it is hoped to bring peace, tranquillity and sweetness’.71 In more general terms, these words could be taken as a statement of the efforts of Edward II, his father and his son to build and maintain structures of lordship within the Scottish community through patronage. In communications with their Scottish adherents, English kings often strove to present the face of a good lord. In November 1313, in dire circumstances for these ­adherents, Edward II wrote ‘sympathising with the position of the men standing in our faith ... who endure innumerable evils through the hostile invasions of Robert Bruce’.72 The king promised ‘to provide them with peace and quiet’ and ordered his officials to ‘treat our liegemen favourably in all things’. Similarly, in 1356, Edward III wrote to ‘our men of Teviotdale’, and considering ‘their good deeds in coming to our obedience and adhering loyally to us against our Scottish enemies’, granted them ‘the liberties and privileges given to them by Alexander late king of Scots’, for as long as they stayed loyal.73 Concern for individual and communal rights amongst his Scottish adherents also influenced Edward III’s dealings with Isabelle countess of Mar. In the 1330s the king respected Isabelle’s claim to the hereditary sheriffdom of Roxburgh, first leasing the office from her and then allowing her fourth husband, William Cresswell, to hold the office in her name.74 Such actions suggest a desire to be recognising local sensibilities and seeking legitimacy for his local officials with the aim of persuading, rather than just compelling, local communities and leaders to remain in his allegiance. By recognising such rights and employing Scots such as John Stirling, Balliols of Cavers, Alexander Abernethy and Eustace Maxwell as local agents, the English kings revealed an awareness of the importance of winning and keeping Scottish loyalties in ways which went beyond straightforward coercion. However, despite the use of such methods and the reluctance of a proportion of the Scottish political class to accept the Bruce dynasty, the kings of England failed to maintain sufficient support in England to sustain their claims. On one level, the reasons for this are those which lie behind the overall failure of Plantagenet ambitions. The political dissensions which dogged Edward II, Edward III’s continental wars and the success of the Bruce party in winning the support of Scots were key factors in the outcome of the Scottish conflicts. Yet the course of the wars, especially after 1306, also hinged on the limited appeal of the Plantagenets to Scottish landowners. The combination of military success, the exploitation of rival claimants to the Scottish throne, offers of reward, restoration and compensation were never turned convincingly into 71  Foedera (RC), II, i, 192. 72  Rot. Scot., i, 113–14. 73  Ibid., 558, 794. 74  CDS, iii, nos 1204, 1310–11, 1371, 1447, 1497.

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a long-term or stable basis of support. Instead small and generally shrinking numbers of committed Scottish adherents were combined with larger numbers whose submissions were temporary and expedient responses to political and military conditions. Robert I and his followers proved much more successful in turning advantage in war into allegiance. Their claim to uphold Scottish liberties and the rights of the political class was ultimately accepted by the bulk of that community. Despite the loss of lands and connections within the Plantagenet dominions, a factor not to be underestimated, the rejection of the English king’s lordship associated with the Bruce cause was a major element in appeal to Scots. In the longer term, too, the success of Bruce partisans in defeating the English king and a, not inconsiderable group of Scottish supporters in the years between 1307 and 1314 and from 1335 to 1343 created a sense that allegiance to the Bruce dynasty was the only way to secure one’s Scottish inheritance. Faced by the choice of allegiance to the Plantagenet kings and the permanent loss of family lands and status in Scotland, adherents of Edward II and his son were pulled towards the Bruce kings’ peace. This was true, not just of those whose allegiance was shaped most clearly by the waning ability of Edwardian administrations to protect and coerce. It was also the case with longer-term and apparently more committed supporters such as the Abernethys, Balliols of Cavers and Mowbrays. For example, Margaret Abernethy, the daughter of Edward II’s warden in the north, ultimately chose to recognise Robert I. In 1325 Margaret was given permission to return to Scotland by the English king to ‘recover her hereditary lands’. She had been forfeited of these extensive lands by Robert but was allowed to recover at least a portion of them. In return, Margaret entered the Bruce king’s allegiance, marrying his supporter, John Stewart earl of Angus.75 She remained in the Bruce camp through the conflicts of the 1330s. During these decades the Mowbrays generally adhered to Balliol and Plantagenet, however, ultimately one of the family, Philippa, one of the daughters of Philip Mowbray had entered Bruce allegiance by 1346. Though the bulk of the family’s estates had been granted to stalwart Bruce supporters, Philippa and her husband were able to recover the barony of Barnbougle in Lothian.76 The third example was provided by the Balliols of Cavers. The much married Isabelle Balliol countess of Mar died in the English king’s peace but her son, Thomas earl of Mar recovered Cavers as her heir and a share of it was held by his half-brother, Thomas Balliol.77 As well as indicating the motives of 75  Ibid., nos 860, 1330; RMS, i, nos 141, 247, 315, 321, 489; appendix 2, no. 356. 76  Ibid., nos 24, 197; appendix 2, nos 85, 88, 125, 839; RRS, Robert I, no. 414. Alexander Mowbray and his son Robert did remain in English allegiance (Rot. Scot., i, 850). 77  Rot. Scot., i, 708; Liber Melrose, ii, nos 464, 468. Thomas Balliol was clearly a son of Isabelle countess of Mar by a previous husband. His rights to Cavers were, however, inherited by her son Thomas earl of Mar.



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these heirs and heiresses to Anglicati families as the fourteenth century wore on, these examples also demonstrated the readiness of the Bruce regime to accommodate their former enemies in Scotland as late as the 1340s. Such restorations increased the feeling of legitimacy attached to the settlement of the realm by the Bruces. It would encourage the remaining adherents of the Plantagenets, especially in the Marches, to seek a similar accommodation with the Bruce and Stewart kings. Between the 1350s and 1380s the landowners of Teviotdale were gradually brought into this allegiance by ‘force’ and ‘negotiation’. While the borderers who switched sides suffered forfeiture by the English administration, the ‘negotiation’ of their Scottish allegiance also involved the confirmation or restoration of their Scottish lands. Some Scots, such as James Lorraine, John Stirling, Godfrey Ros and John Burrell remained in English allegiance, sustained by new lands or pensions, but talk of Scots in Richard II’s peace in the 1390s referred to a dwindling group of exiles.78 In truth, outside Teviotdale, the existence of a significant body of Anglicati Scoti had ended in the early 1340s. Though the adherence of lesser lords such as Robert Colville and Edward Letham was used as a political and diplomatic weapon by the English negotiations of the early 1360s, as an element in Scottish warfare and politics, these adherents were no longer sufficiently strong or central to events.79 However, the conflict for allegiance between rival claimants for sovereignty in Scotland during the early fourteenth century was not without long-term implications. The gradual erosion of lordship within Scotland did not lead the English kings to renounce or forget their claims to authority there. In his campaign of 1400 which reached Edinburgh, Henry IV proclaimed his superiority with as much force as his grandfather, Edward III, summoning the Scottish king and his nobility to perform homage, though without result.80 In one sense these claims had been elevated by Edward Balliol’s resignation of his rights to the Scottish throne to Edward III in 1356, allowing the Plantagenets to appeal directly to remaining Balliol sympathies. By the 1350s these were too limited or weak to be a real focus for authority as they had been in the 1300s and the 1330s.81 Despite this, the continued claims of king of England to be the legitimate rulers of Scotland did influence political behaviour within that realm. It meant that for Scots in Bruce or, from 1371, Stewart allegiance who were aggrieved at events within Scotland there was an alternative source of protection and support available. Such grievances involving ‘normal’ political 78  For a discussion of this process in Teviotdale see Brown, ‘War, Allegiance and Community’, 228–9. 79  CDS, iv, no. 92. For Letham, see ch. 7, 124–5, below. 80  CDS, iv, nos 552–4; Foedera (RC), III, 188–9. For Henry IV’s campaign of 1400 see Brown, ‘The English campaign in Scotland, 1400’; MacDonald, Bloodshed, 132–43. 81  Rot. Scot., i, 793–4.

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issues of landholding and private lordship had long played a role in influencing choices of allegiance to royal lord. The decision of David (II) Strathbogie to defect from Robert I on the night before Bannockburn was supposedly due to his sister’s mistreatment by Edward Bruce. It was a process which could work both ways. In 1334 a dispute over the lands of John Mowbray between his sisters and their husbands and his uncle, Alexander, led to the latter entering the allegiance of the Bruce king, albeit temporarily.82 However, as the Bruce regime became more secure and political relationships and rivalries within the Bruce party developed, the possibility of seeking Plantagenet lordship remained a persistent element in Scottish politics. The decision of Robert Stewart and David (III) Strathbogie to negotiate their own submission to Balliol and Plantagenet kings in 1335 was influenced by the ­ antagonisms between them and other leaders of the Bruce party which had flared up earlier in the year.83 The shape of things to come was shown even more clearly by the career of William Douglas lord of Liddesdale. A key adherent of David II in the 1330s, Douglas’s killing of his rival, Alexander Ramsay, in 1342 had sparked a major feud and put him at odds with the Bruce king. In response, in 1343 Douglas negotiated with the English, offering to enter Edward III’s ­ allegiance. Had he gone through with this plan, his holdings in the Marches would have been open to English control. Instead Douglas used the threat of such a move to negotiate a settlement with King David.84 Nine years later, in very different circumstances, Douglas, now an English captive, did enter Edward’s allegiance. He promised to serve his new lord against any ‘except the nation of Scotland’ in return for recovering his border lands. Even before this the English king had given Douglas licence to recruit aid against ‘a certain party who wish to rise up or rebel against David Bruce’. As the Bruce king was also Edward’s prisoner, this licence could be seen as a plan to use Douglas’s defence of David’s rights to win Scottish support in an attack on the regime ruling Scotland. This was headed by Robert Stewart who, though acting in David’s name, had refused to negotiate his release. The refusal of David to countenance this action and Douglas’s violent death the next year ended this plan but marcher politics and central rivalries continued to provide possible catalysts for renewed Plantagenet lordship in Scotland.85 During the late fourteenth century shifts of political power within Scotland, especially involving the Marches, resulted in defection which held out the prospect of renewed adherents and influence. In 1389, for example, a group of disappointed claimants to the extensive southern lands of the earl of Douglas 82  Bruce, Duncan, 504–5; Bower, vii, 95. 83  Ibid., 109; Penman, David II, 57–60. 84  Rot. Scot., i, 639; Brown, Douglases, 41–3. 85  Rot. Scot., i, 748, 752–3, 758; Brown, Douglases, 44–6; Penman, David II, 153–71.



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entered England and placed these lands under the protection of the English king. Though they may not have performed homage, these claimants, led by Malcolm Drummond, were clearly hoping to persuade the English to lend them aid in the winning of the lordships which would then, inevitably, come under the orbit of the English crown. The prospect was offered of the recovery of areas such as Teviotdale which had been under Plantagenet lordship for most of the preceding century.86 Such prospects may have been illusory and were not pursued by the English government but in 1400 an even greater opportunity was presented when George Dunbar earl of March defected to England in reaction to his loss of influence to his rival Archibald earl of Douglas. March’s earldoms and lordships made him one of the most important magnates in southern Scotland. His defection in early 1400 was one of the factors which persuaded Henry IV to launch his invasion in the summer. As Henry moved north, March met him at Newcastle and promised to ‘gif up al manere of homage, feaute and service ... to Robert that pretendes hymself king of Scotis’ and performed homage to the English king. Though his main stronghold of Dunbar had already been taken by his Scottish enemies, March’s action opened the eastern Marches and even Lothian to attack and a possible renewal of English lordship.87 The opportunities presented by the results of political dissension were not fully exploited by English kings between the 1370s and 1460s but were still significant. The continued claims of these kings to sovereignty in Scotland, illustrated by March’s oath to Henry IV, and the legacy of disputed ­allegiance which had coloured Scottish political attitudes for over a century were behind the decisions of lords such as Douglas, Drummond and Dunbar to seek Plantagenet lordship. Though war was not resumed after the manner of the 1300s and 1330s, this hindsight was not so obvious to Scottish kings and magnates. It is certainly right to emphasise the victory of the Bruce cause and the security of its success in the years after 1340, but the reminders of writers such as Barbour and Bower to beware division and reject English interference were not simply nationalistic posturing. As the actions of the Black Douglases showed in the 1450s, the propensity of Scottish malcontents to seek the protection and even the lordship of the English crown remained a feature of internal conflicts in the fifteenth century.88 The legacy of the wars of Scotland and the Anglicati remained at large.

86  CDS, iv, no. 391; Boardman, Stewart Kings, 166–7. 87  Foedera (RC), III, 188. 88  For the Black Douglases and England in the 1450s see Brown, Douglases, chs 13, 14.

7

Best of Enemies: Were the Fourteenth-Century Anglo-Scottish Marches a ‘Frontier Society’? Andy King*

I

n August 1388 a force of northern Englishmen was overwhelmed at the battle of Otterburn, in Redesdale, Northumberland. Writing shortly after the event, a monk at Westminster Abbey sought to explain this defeat. He attributed it partly to the ‘impetuous spirit and excessive audacity’ of Sir Henry Percy, and partly to the failure of the bishop of Durham to turn up with his forces. But in addition, he wrote, the English were defeated: because the darkness deluded our Englishmen so much that when they struck carelessly at a Scotsman, due to the chorus of voices speaking a single language, they struck down an Englishman. Writing some eighty years earlier, the northern chronicler Walter of Guisborough had described similar confusion, when a Scottish raiding party defeated another northern English force near Wark-on-Tweed in Northumberland, at Easter 1296, in a skirmish which marked the outbreak of the Scottish wars. He relates that the Scots had arranged a password, so as to be able to distinguish friend from foe. However, many of the English simply repeated the passwords themselves and so escaped by pretending to be Scots. As these examples demonstrate, the men on both sides of the Anglo-Scottish borders spoke the same northern dialect of English. They also shared the same culture, and indeed, for most of the thirteenth century, the border had been of very little political or cultural significance, and cross-border links had flourished and multiplied. Many in the

*  I would like to thank Dr Claire Etty for her thoughtful, constructive – and ­ruthless – criticisms of various drafts of this paper.   Westminster, 348 (my translation).   Guisborough, 271–2; A. King, ‘War, Politics and Landed Society in Northumberland, c.1296–c.1408’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Durham University, 2002), 1.



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border counties held lands or other property in both England and Scotland – including the Scottish Crown, which had held Tynedale in Northumberland as a regality since the mid-twelfth century. Many Scotsmen took English wives and vice versa, thereby extending the network of cross-border landholding, and forging cross-border familial links. Some Englishman served in the administration of the kings of Scots (particularly in Tynedale); and cross-border disputes were settled in accordance with a codified body of March Law administered jointly by men of both kingdoms. And so, until 1296, the Englishmen and Scotsmen of the borders comprised – in some respects – a single community. Consequently, the Anglo-Scottish conflict has been characterised, for northern England at least, as, ‘something of a civil war, in which it could not be entirely clear to which side a man’s loyalty should be given’. But did these cross-border ties survive the onset of war in 1296? And did new bonds emerge between the English and Scottish marcher gentry, forged through their common experiences of war? It has indeed been argued that ‘the Scottish and English borderlands certainly developed as two halves of a singular society after the Wars of Independence’. With its own cross-border institutions, including a separate legal system with its own laws and courts, it is suggested that the Anglo-Scottish Marches displayed many of the characteristics of a ‘frontier society’, with distinctive values and interests shared by the marchers on both sides of the border, finding expression in a common crossborder culture. But did these links across the border lead to a weaker sense of national identity amongst the English and Scottish ‘men of the Marches’ in the fourteenth century, perhaps something akin to the sentiment of the sixteenth-

  Cross-border landholding and affiliations before 1296 are examined by G.W. S. Barrow, ‘Frontier and Settlement: Which Influenced Which? England and Scotland, 1100–1300’, in Medieval Frontier Societies, ed. R. Bartlett and A. Mackay (Oxford, 1989); K. Stringer, ‘Identities in Thirteenth-Century England: Frontier Society in the Far North’, in Social and Political Identities in Western History, ed. C. Bjørn, A. Grant and K. J. Stringer (Copenhagen, 1994); A. Young, ‘The North and Anglo-Scottish Relations in the Thirteenth Century’, in Government, Religion and Society in Northern England, 1000–1700, ed. J. C. Appleby and P. Dalton (Stroud, 1997); J. C. Holt, The Northerners. A Study in the Reign of King John (2nd edn, Oxford, 1993), passim; G.W. S. Barrow, The Anglo-Norman Era in Scottish History (Oxford, 1980), passim; J. A. Tuck, ‘Northumbrian Society in the Fourteenth Century’, NH vi (1971), 22–4; idem, ‘The Emergence of a Northern Nobility, 1250–1400’, NH xxii (1986), 1–7; R. Lomas, ‘St Cuthbert and the Border c.1080–c.1300’, in North-East England in the Later Middle Ages, ed. C. D. Liddy and R. Britnell (Woodbridge, 2005).   Tuck, ‘Northern Nobility’, 7.   A. Goodman, ‘The Anglo-Scottish Marches in the Fifteenth Century: A Frontier Society?’, in Scotland and England, 1286–1815, ed. R. A. Mason (Edinburgh, 1986) 19, and passim; idem, ‘Introduction’, in Goodman and Tuck, Border Societies, 1–10.

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century surnames, ‘that will be Scottishe when they will, and English at their pleasure’, as Sir Thomas Musgrave so famously put it?  Obviously, many of the long-standing, peacetime cross-border links did not withstand the outbreak of war. In particular, cross-border landholding came under intense pressure even before the start of the fighting. In October 1295, as relations between England and Scotland rapidly deteriorated, Edward I ordered the confiscation of the lands and goods of John de Balliol, along with those of ‘any others of the realm of Scotland who ... stay in that realm’. There followed a series of tit-for-tat expulsions and seizures of lands. Edward I’s settlement of 1304, which promised the restoration of forfeited lands, offered the ­possibility of a return to the status quo ante; but any such hopes were quashed by Robert Bruce’s coup d’état of 1306, which led to a fresh outbreak of war, swiftly followed by a new round of confiscations. By the time the truce of 1323, cross-border landholding had been almost completely eliminated. Nevertheless, despite the onset of hostilities, there remained many points of contact across the border, whilst the routines and customs of medieval warfare created new ones. Prisoners of war and ransom negotiations, and the chivalric niceties associated with them, provided a frequent occasion for social engagement between enemies. William Douglas was entertained by the Prior of Tynemouth after he was captured at the battle of Neville’s Cross in 1346 – having rashly written to the Prior before the battle ordering him to prepare a dinner for the invading Scots; and when Ralph, Lord Greystoke, was captured in 1380, his captor George Dunbar, earl of March, offered him similarly generous hospitality at the great hall of Dunbar castle. Further down the social scale, the Cumbrian Matthew Redman, taken at Otterburn by the Scottish knight Sir James Lindsay but immediately paroled, was able to invite his captor to dinner when Lindsay was himself taken prisoner immediately thereafter, having pursued Redman with rather too rash an enthusiasm. March Days, where the wardens of the March from both sides met to try to settle cross-border disputes, provided a forum for more regular contact. Many of the marcher gentry were involved in these proceedings, albeit on occasion somewhat reluctantly – in the 1380s, the Northumbrian Sir William de Swinburne was threatened by the earl of Northumberland with distraint of his

  Cited by G. MacDonald Fraser, The Steel Bonnets. The Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers (repr. London, 1995), 65.   CFR 1272–1307, 361.   King, ‘War, Politics and Landed Society’, 1–32.   A. King, ‘“According to the Custom Used in French and Scottish Wars”: Prisoners and Casualties on the Scottish Marches in the Fourteenth Century’, JMH xxviii (2002), 271–2.



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lands if he failed to show up for a March day.10 Such meetings were frequently marred by acrimony or even violence,11 but nevertheless, they could undoubtedly lead to a degree of real co-operation. For example, Hugh, Lord Dacre, was convicted at a March Day in 1370, ‘by a solemn assize of both Englishmen and Scots’;12 and in 1378, the Scottish warden, George Dunbar, offered to help Henry Percy to recapture Berwick castle after it was seized by a group of freelance Scottish borderers.13 More prolonged and less formal contacts might be provided through hostages or wardships. When the sons and heirs of twenty Scottish earls and magnates were handed over as hostages for David II, at Berwick in October 1357, they were put in the custody of various English ‘lords and persons’, most of whom were prominent marchers such as John de Coupland, John de Eure, Thomas Gray and Alan, Henry and William del Strother.14 Chivalric mores would have ensured that such eminent hostages were treated as guests. That such contacts could be amicable is suggested by William de Felton’s wardship of Isabella, sole daughter of Duncan, earl of Fife, and great-granddaughter of Edward I. According to the Scalacronica, an arrangement had been made for her to marry Robert Stewart, but she chose to marry Felton instead, ‘for love’ – though from Felton’s point of view, her potential claim to the earldom of Fife must have added to her attractions.15 The marriage can probably be dated to 1338,16 by which time, Felton’s chances of eventually acquiring his father-in-law’s earldom would have appeared somewhat remote. Nonetheless, the marriage would have given him a direct interest in Scottish affairs. There is also the touching tradition that the Herons of Kirrouchtree in Galloway were descended from one Gerald Heron, a scion of the Herons of Northumberland. According to this story, Heron was badly wounded in a border skirmish early in the fourteenth century and imprisoned by the local laird, who intended to ransom him. To this end, he was nursed back to health by a local girl, but they fell in love and he married her instead, subsequently settling in Scotland.17

10  Northumberland Record Office, Gosforth, ZSW 1/102. See also ZSW 1/101 for a similar letter couched in only slightly less ominous terms. 11  See ‘Introduction’, above, 00. 12  NA, SC 1/40/188 (calendared in CDS, v, no. 847). For the circumstances, see C. J. Neville, Violence, Custom and Law. The Anglo-Scottish Border Lands in the Later Middle Ages (Edinburgh, 1998), 54; Macdonald, Bloodshed, 29. 13  Goodman, ‘Introduction’, 24. 14  CDS, iii, 434–5. 15  Scalacronica, King, 149. 16  Penman, David II, 102–4. 17  B. M. H. Rogers, ‘Andrew Heron and his Kinfolk’, TDGNHAS, 3rd ser., v (1916–18), 212. Sadly, this story has no contemporary warrant, and nor is there any record of any Gerald amongst the well-documented Herons of Ford. There was a Gerard Heron alive

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Religious houses provided another (usually) peaceful point of contact.18 The name of William, earl of Douglas, was entered in the Liber Vitae of Durham Priory (containing the names of people to be prayed for by the monks), ­probably in 1381; and the priory also benefited from the support of the earl of March in its dispute with Dunfermline Abbey over Durham’s Berwickshire dependency of Coldingham in the 1390s.19 And in October 1390, just two years after the battle of Otterburn, the abbot of Melrose was asked to be godfather to the newborn Gilbert de Umfraville, son and heir of Thomas de Umfraville, lord of Redesdale, who was baptised at Harbottle castle within the liberty. Some twenty-one years later, at the inquest to prove Gilbert’s coming of age, one of the witnesses remembered the baptism because on that day he had ridden to Gamelspath, across the border, to meet the earl of March – though for what purpose, he did not specify.20 Cross-border relations were, however, greatly complicated by the fact that for much of the fourteenth century, a large part of the Scottish borders was subjected to English lordship. The English administrations in Berwickshire, Roxburghshire and Dumfriesshire, established after 1296 and ejected by Robert Bruce in the 1310s, were re-instated after the English victory at Halidon Hill, 1333; and again, after Neville’s Cross in 1346. The towns of Berwick and Roxburgh still remained in English hands at the end of the century.21 These administrations gave rise to new cross-border links, for many of their leading office-holders were recruited from the English Marches. In June 1334, following Edward Balliol’s ceding of much of southern Scotland to the English Crown, the Northumbrians Gilbert de Burghdon (a former sheriff of Northumberland), and Robert Manners were appointed sheriffs of Peeblesand Selkirk respectively, while William de Presfen was granted the constableship of Jedburgh castle. The new sheriff of Dumfries, Sir Peter Tilliol was a Cumbrian,22 and Geoffrey in the mid-fourteenth century, but he married Elizabeth, the daughter and co-heiress of the Northumbrian Robert de Eslington. CIPM, xvi, no. 247. 18  See ch. 8, below. 19  Liber vitae ecclesiae Dunelmensis: A Collotype Facsimile of the Original Manuscript, ed. A.H.Thompson, Surtees Society cxxxvi (1923), fol. 72v.; L.Rollason, ‘The Late Medieval Non-Monastic Entries in the Durham Liber vitae’, in The Durham Liber Vitae and its Context, ed. D.Rollason et al. (Woodbridge, 2004); A.L.Brown, ‘The Priory of Coldingham in the Late Fourteenth Century’, IR xxiii (1972). 20  ‘Proofs of Age of Heirs to Estates in Northumberland in the Reigns of Henry IV, Henry V and Henry VI’, ed. J. C. Hodgson, Archaeologia Aeliana, 2nd ser., xxii (1900), 121. 21  Aspects of these English administrations are examined by B.Webster, ‘The English Occupation of Dumfriesshire in the Fourteenth Century’, TDGNHAS, 3rd ser., xxxv (1956–57); R. C. Reid, ‘Edward I’s Peel at Lochmaben’, TDGNHAS, 3rd ser., xxxi (1952–53); Brown, ‘War, Allegiance and Community’; Tuck, ‘Tax Haven’. And see also ch. 6 above. 22  Rot. Scot., i, 271.



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de Mowbray, appointed sheriff of Roxburgh, was a Scot from a family which had held the manor of Bolton in Allerdale, Cumberland, before 1296. The manor had been forfeited when Geoffrey’s father, Roger de Mowbray, adhered to the Scots after Bannockburn, but it was recovered in 1322 by Geoffrey’s brother, Alexander, who fled to England following the collapse of the Soules conspiracy against Robert Bruce in 1320.23 Some of these men came from families with links to Scotland from before the wars, and it may have been these links which brought them their appointments. Burghdon’s family had held land in Scotland; Walter de Burghdon did homage to Edward I for lands in Roxburghshire in 1296, and was appointed sheriff of Perth by Edward in the same year.24 Tilliol’s family may have had interests across the border as well; amongst the Scottish landowners who did homage in 1296 were Master William Tilliol, a canon of Dunkeld in Perthshire; and Master Peter Tilliol, parson of Cultre in Lanarkshire.25 Edward Balliol’s successful bid for the Scottish crown gave rise to a revival of cross-border landholding, for his followers were largely made up of the ‘Disinherited’, Englishmen and Scots who had lost lands in Scotland during Robert Bruce’s reign. The establishment of Balliol’s regime was therefore swiftly followed by the restoration of many of the Disinherited’s Scottish lands. The extent of this redistribution is unclear, for the survival of Edward Balliol’s acta is (unsurprisingly) rather haphazard; most are known only from the records of the English Crown.26 However, in addition to these restorations, many of his followers were rewarded with additional lands forfeited by Scots who failed to submit to him. A number of such grants were made in October 1332, in the initial flush of the victory at Dupplin Moor in August, while Balliol held court at Roxburgh.27 Among the recipients were the English marchers Sir John de Orreton, of Cumberland, who was granted lands in Wauchope, Dumfriesshire, ‘in the said king’s hands [i.e. Balliol’s] by reason of the rebellion of ... John de Lyndesey’; and the Northumbrian Sir Walter de Selby – himself no stranger 23  CPR 1313–17, 185; Calendar of Charter Rolls 1300–26, 449–50; Calendar of Charter Rolls 1327–41, 301; Penman, ‘Soules Conspiracy’, 31. For an account of the Mowbrays, see A. C. Smith, ‘Wallace’s Capture of Sanquhar and the Rising in the South-West’, TDGNHAS, 3rd ser., xi (1923–24), 49–63. 24  Instrumenta publica sive processus super fidelitatibus et homagiis Scotorum domino regi Angliæ factis, ed. W. Adam and S. Shepherd (Edinburgh, 1834), 127; Stevenson, Docs, ii, 17. The precise relationship between Walter and Gilbert is not clear, but Walter was probably either Gilbert’s father or an uncle. 25  Instrumenta publica, ed. Adam and Shepherd, 164, 165. 26  A handy list is provided by R. C. Reid, ‘Edward de Balliol’, TDGNHAS, 3rd ser., xxxv (1956–57), 59–63. Many of these grants are recorded only because their recipients took the trouble to have them confirmed by Edward III – itself a telling indication of contemporary perceptions of where the real power in Balliol’s Scotland lay. 27  Nicholson, Edward III, 97.

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to forfeiture – granted the barony of Prenderleith, Roxburghshire, forfeited by Sir William Wishart.28 Clearly, this redistribution of lands was necessary to reward Balliol’s English supporters, on whom he remained dependent; yet it can have done little to engender support within Scotland for his regime. There was a further revival of cross-border landholding when the Scottish borders again came under English control after Neville’s Cross, albeit on a much more limited scale.29 But with Edward Balliol’s role in English policy now greatly reduced, there was no longer the same imperative to reward his English followers, and so there was no great effort to restore estates held by Englishman before 1296. Now, virtually all cross-border grants were made from lands forfeited by recalcitrant Scots, as in February 1347, when Sir John de Stirling – a Scot who had settled in Northumberland – was granted considerable lands in Lothian deemed to have been forfeited to Edward III.30 Nevertheless, some English marcher families appear to have pursued their claims to Scottish lands with dogged determination in the face of increasing adversity. As late as 1385, at the request of the earl of Northumberland, the Northumbrian Alan Horsley obtained a lease of the vills of Maxwell and Softlaw in Teviotdale, Roxburghshire, forfeited by their Scottish tenants for rebellion.31 By this time, the whole of Teviotdale had been brought ‘into the fealty and peace of the king of Scots’.32 Some concession to this harsh reality was made by the English Crown, stipulating that Horsley was initially to pay 40d per year, which payment was to be reviewed, ‘if the truce with the Scots shall hold beyond two years’. Nevertheless, although the lease was apparently not put into effect, it was renewed as an outright grant in 1389, in aid of Horsley’s ransom following his capture at the battle of Otterburn (where he was in the company of Henry Percy le filz).33 Presumably, the Crown had now given up any hope that the Scottish tenants of the lands would return to the English allegiance, but it is hardly likely that Horsley ever managed to get hold of them. However, Horsley may have been pursuing a hereditary claim, for a Richard de Horsley had made submission to Edward I for land in Lanarkshire in 1296; and this was probably Alan’s forebear, the Richard de Horsley who was elected as a knight of the shire for Northumberland in 1300.34 Possibly, Richard had held Maxwell and Softlaw as well, which his descendents were still hoping to recover nearly a century later.

28  CPR 1340–43, 173; Rot. Scot., i, 820. For Selby’s forfeiture, below, 129–30. 29  Goodman, ‘A Frontier Society?’, 20. 30  Rot. Scot., i, 689. For Stirling, see below, 125–6. 31  CDS, iv, no. 348. 32  Bower, vii, 402; Wyntoun, Amours, vi, 298–9. 33  CDS, iv, no. 393; Rot. Scot., ii, 99 (1389). 34  Instrumenta publica, ed. Adam and Shepherd, 167, 173.



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As well as lands redistributed by forfeiture or forcible restoration, the mid-fourteenth century did see a few rather more peaceful cross-border land transactions. At some point before April 1338, William de Felton, then constable of Roxburgh, was granted property in the town by Thomas Vigorous, a burgess.35 In circa 1354, also while serving as keeper of Roxburgh, John de Coupland acquired lands in Altonburn, Roxburghshire, from Adam de Roule.36 Although Coupland was frequently less than scrupulous in his land dealings, there is no reason to suppose that these were anything but straightforward business transactions. These isolated cases did not, however, amount to the revival of a cross-border land market. Neither Felton nor Coupland seem to have had any family connections with Scotland, and in the event, neither maintained their newly acquired Scottish interests for long: Felton granted his Roxburgh lands to Dryburgh Abbey in April 1338 (at about the same time that he married his Scottish wife), while Coupland disposed of his Altonburn properties to John Kerr of Selkirk Forest in 1358, just four years after obtaining them.37 It is a revealing indication of the necessarily flexible allegiances of the Scottish marchers that Kerr was probably the son of John Kerr, who had been killed fighting against the garrison of Roxburgh in 1340 – one of three brothers whom Felton described at that time as the greatest enemies the English had in the forest.38 However, whether through purchase or forfeiture, most of this renewed cross-border landholding involved Englishmen acquiring land in Scotland. Grants of lands in England to Scots were much less common; where these did occur, they usually involved the restoration by the Crown of lands previously forfeited by the recipient’s family, as was the case with Alexander de Mowbray.39 Generally, Scots in the English allegiance tended to be rewarded, or – more frequently – compensated for lands lost, with estates in the English-controlled borders of Scotland forfeited by obdurate Bruce-partisans, or with annuities and pensions. Such grants of forfeited land did ensure that landholders of proven disloyalty to the English Crown were replaced by men who were entirely dependent on the continuation of English authority for title to their lands, and who therefore had a direct interest in perpetuating that authority. Conversely, annuities could easily be withdrawn in the event of their recipients 35  Liber Dryburgh, no. 313; Brown, ‘War, Allegiance and Community’, 228; and see below, ch. 8, 00. My thanks to Michael Penman and Sarah Layfield for supplying me with details of the Liber Dryburgh references. 36  ‘MSS. of the Duke of Roxburghe’, Historical Manuscripts Commission, Fourteenth Report, Appendix, iii (1894), 8. 37  Liber Dryburgh, nos 314–15; ‘MSS. of the Duke of Roxburghe’, 8. 38  SC 1/54/30, printed in Scalacronica, King, 206–9; Brown, ‘War, Allegiance and Community’, 236. 39  Above, 121.

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deserting the English allegiance, as was indeed made explicit in the terms of many such grants.40 However, rather less Machiavellian considerations also lay behind the Crown’s reluctance to grant English lands to its Scottish followers, for there was no surplus land available south of the border to grant to them. Such lands in the English Marches as did come into the Crown’s hands were generally granted to the English marcher gentry, who clamoured loudly and constantly for reward for their military service against the Scots, citing their own losses and expenses in the king’s service.41 For similar reasons, grants to Scots of wardships, marriages and custodies within England were also rare.42 An exception was Sir Edward de Letham, a Berwickshire knight in the English allegiance, granted the wardship of Etal Castle in Northumberland in October 1355, during the long minority of John Manners. He held it until his death, and his widow, Joan, still held it in 1368, ‘in aid of the sustenance of her children by Edward’.43 Letham had a long record of service to the English Crown, having served on the Scottish campaigns of 1336 and 1337, and in the garrison of Roxburgh, 1340–42, and was already in receipt of a generous annuity.44 The wardship of Etal was granted just a week before the Scots ambushed the garrison of Norham Castle, and three weeks before they briefly re-captured Berwick;45 it may well have been intended to ensure that Letham would remain loyal at a time of mounting crisis. However, his military service had brought him connections with the Northumbrian gentry; having served alongside the Northumbrian man-at-arms John de Clifford in 1336 and 1337, he married John’s niece, Joan de Clifford, in circa 1338, to whom he was related ‘in the third and forth degrees of consanguinity’. Significantly, in their petition for papal dispensation, Edward and Joan emphasised that ‘their ­respective relatives on the borders of England and Scotland, where many ­homicides and evils have been formerly committed among them, earnestly desired that they be joined in marriage’.46 Clearly it was hoped that the marriage 40  Thus in May 1343, grants of annuities pending the recovery of their lands were made to Edward de Letham, Thomas Bisset, Michael and Thomas McCulloch, and others, ‘during good behaviour’; CPR 1343–45, 40–1. See also ch. 6, above, 110. 41  King, ‘War, Politics and Landed Society’, 105–8. 42  Naturally, wardships in English-controlled Scotland were commonly granted to Scots, as when John Kerr was granted the wardship of the Teviotdale lands of the late William de Rotherford, with the marriage of his son and heir, in 1363; CPR 1361–64, 407. 43  CPR 1354–58, 283; CPR 1367–70, 119. For Letham’s lands, see CIPM, xii, no. 231. 44  NA, E 101/19/36, mm. 3d, 4; E 101/20/17, m. 9; E 101/22/40, m. 1; CPR 1343–45, 41; CPR 1345–48, 537. 45  Scalacronica, King, xxxix–xli; Campbell, ‘England, Scotland’, 199–200. 46  CDS, iii, no. 1257. For the Cliffords of Ellingham (who should not be confused with the Cliffords of Cumberland and Yorkshire), see Northumberland County History (15 vols, Newcastle upon Tyne, 1893–1940), ii, 229; W. P. Hedley, Northumberland Families (2 vols, Newcastle upon Tyne, 1968–70), ii, 3.



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would go some way to restoring the old harmonious cross-border links, links embodied by the familial relationship which necessitated the petition in the first place. And as Letham already had a stake in Northumbrian society, the grant of the wardship of Etal would not have aroused resentment; indeed, in 1362, he joined with Thomas de Clifford (John’s nephew), and Sir William Heron, lord of Ford in Northumberland, to acquire the wardship of Thomas de Heton, heir to the castle and extensive estates around Chillingham.47 Marriage was also the means by which John de Stirling made his way in English marcher society. Born in Scotland,48 he became a leading figure in the English administration there, and was granted the shrievalty of Edinburgh for life by Edward III, ‘for good service, freely given’, in July 1336.49 However, his marriage was not a reward for his services, for it pre-dated them; rather, he owed his standing in English-occupied Scotland to his existing standing across the border in England. In 1327 or 1328, Stirling had married Barnaba, daughter and co-heiress of the late Sir Adam de Swinburne, an erstwhile knight of Edward II’s household who had held extensive lands in Northumberland, Cumberland and the liberty of Tynedale – and whose father had held land in Ayrshire in 1296.50 As well as a landed base in Northumberland, the marriage brought him connections with two of the dominant gentry families of Northumberland, for his wife’s elder sisters were married to John de Widdrington and Roger Heron. Until he married Barnaba, neither Stirling nor his family appear to have had any lands or interests in England. Quite why he should appear in the English allegiance at this rather inauspicious point, when the ‘Shameful Peace’ had just been sealed, is not clear; possibly he was caught up in the Soules conspiracy, and had fled to England after it failed. But whatever the cause of his becoming English, the Swinburnes had had extensive links with Scotland before 1296 (and were suspected of pro-Scottish sympathies at various times after 1296), and so the marriage may reflect long-standing cross-border connections.51

47  CFR 1356–68, 235. 48  At the inquest post mortem on his Yorkshire lands, in 1378, jurors at York mentioned that he had been born in Scotland; CIPM, xv, no. 144. And aside from the obvious evidence of his toponym, Stirling is twice described as ‘Scottish’ by the ‘Lanercost’ Chronicle; Lanercost, Stevenson, 285, 293. 49  Rot. Scot., i, 437. For a summary of his career, see G. E. Cockayne et al. (ed.), The Complete Peerage, rev. and ed. V. Gibbs (12 vols, London, 1910–59), xii, part i, 407–8; and see ch. 6, 110, above. 50  CIPM, vi, no. 164; ibid., no. 751; Instrumenta publica, ed. Adam and Shepherd, 129. Barnaba was unmarried in December 1326 (CIPM, vi, no. 751), but was married to John by February 1329, when the couple acquired some property in Tynedale; Feet of Fines, Northumberland, 1273–1346, Newcastle upon Tyne Record Series xi (1932), no. 223. 51  As the Swinburnes had held their lands in chief, the marriage of Barnaba was presumably in the gift of the Crown, but the marriage may well have been granted out to an

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Despite his Scottish origins, Stirling became thoroughly English. Made a banneret, he was appointed sheriff and escheator of Northumberland in 1343 – although he was unable to take up the appointment, because ‘he [had] been wounded, so that his life was despaired of’. Having recovered, he went on to serve at Crécy, and was eventually elevated to the peerage.52 Similarly, English marchers who acquired Scottish interests, such as Coupland, Felton and Orreton, continued to be active in county administration on the English side of the border. The year before Orreton obtained his grant of Wauchope from Edward Balliol, he was appointed to the commission of the peace for Cumberland, and had been busy receiving Scots back into the king’s peace.53 In 1341, when Orreton took the trouble to have this grant confirmed by Edward III, he was appointed to two Crown commissions in the county concerning the collection of the wool tax.54 In 1340, while still serving as sheriff and constable of Roxburgh, Felton was elected to represent Northumberland at the Westminster parliament, which sat from March to May; while he was there, he took the opportunity to obtain letters of protection for his service at Roxburgh, and to acquire the advowson of the church of Abbotsley, Huntingdonshire, forfeited by the abbot of Jedburgh.55 As for Coupland, his attendance to his duties in Scotland would appear to have been somewhat less than assiduous. He was appointed sheriff and escheator of Northumberland in April 1350, while still serving as keeper of Roxburgh; however, in April 1353, it was reported that he spent most of his time in Northumberland and was rarely seen in Roxburgh. Consequently, his letters of protection for service in the garrison there (issued in the previous November) were revoked, so that the abbot of Furness could pursue litigation against him concerning land in Lancashire.56 Nevertheless, he was still acting as sheriff of Roxburgh in August of that year, and managed to retain the keepership until September 1355; and he was subsequently reappointed in November 1361.57 The continued loyalty of men such as Stirling or Orreton, with property and interests on both sides of the border, could be relied upon because the patronage of the English Crown far outweighed anything they could hope to gain from allegiance to the Scots; and their military service kept them in interested party in Northumberland. For the Swinburnes’ Scottish interests, see King, ‘War, Politics and Landed Society’, 6, 18–19. 52  CFR 1337–47, p. 320; CPR 1343–45, p. 115; CCR 1343–46, p. 281, 325; Crécy and Calais, ed. G.Wrottesley (London, 1898), passim. 53  CPR 1330–34, 136, 211, 281. 54  CPR 1340–43, 151, 315. 55  CDS, v, no. 3702; CPR 1338–40, 461 (and see ch. 8, below). 56  CCR 1349–54, 539–40. For Coupland’s letters of protection, see CDS, v, no. 3861. 57  Rot. Scot., i, 761, 781, 858.



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contact with Westminster and ensured that their interests were furthered. But conflicts of loyalty could arise in cases where cross-border interests were more evenly balanced; when Edward II put the town of Berwick into the hands of its burgesses, ‘to save himself the huge expenses which he had previously incurred’, the town was lost (in April 1318), ‘by the treasonous connivance of Piers de Spalding, one of the townsmen’.58 Spalding is recorded as a man-at-arms in the garrison in 1311–12, and according to the Historia Aurea, he was subsequently retained by the burgesses. Described as a townsman or burgess by both Gray and Barbour, ‘Lanercost’ refers to him as an Englishman, and indeed his name would suggest Lincolnshire origins.59 Most English sources ascribe Spalding’s treachery to greed; the Historia Aurea reports that he was bribed £800 by James Douglas.60 However, Barbour relates that Spalding was motivated by resentment of the town’s captain, who held ‘all Scottismen in suspicioun ... and tretyt thaim rycht ill’ (interestingly, the captain of Berwick castle at this time was Roger de Horsley, whose family had held land in Scotland before 1296). According to Barbour, Spalding was married to a cousin of Sir Robert Keith, the marshal of Scotland; presumably, Spalding came under the captain’s suspicion because of his Scottish wife, a suspicion which proved self-fulfilling, for it was Keith he contacted to arrange the betrayal of the town.61 The two versions are not, of course, incompatible; there is no reason to doubt that Spalding had indeed married a Scot, while his resentment may well have been inflamed by cupidity. Nevertheless, the case demonstrates that cross-border links could continue to influence national loyalties for long after 1296. Having recaptured Berwick, the Scots took no chances, and expelled all the ‘English’ from the town.62 On a lesser scale, the Bridlington chronicler reported contemporary opinion that the Scottish invasion of Northumberland in 1327 ‘could not have been carried without the conspiracy of certain Englishmen’; and in his account of a Scottish incursion into the West March in October 1337, the ‘Lanercost’ chronicler added that it was ‘commonly said’ that ‘a certain magnate of the 58  Scalacronica, King, 79, 87. Berwick was entrusted to its burgesses in July 1317; CPR 1313–17, 671. 59  CDS, iii, p. 399; Illustrations of Scottish History from the Twelfth to the Sixteenth Century, ed. J. Stevenson (Edinburgh, 1834), 5; Scalacronica, King, 79; Bruce, McDiarmid and Stevenson, iii, 151 (bk XVII, l. 23); Lanercost, Stevenson, 234–5. It should be noted that the Historia Aurea, a chronicle written in England in the mid-fourteenth century, is generally very well informed on northern matters. 60  Illustrations of Scottish History, ed. Stevenson, 5. See also Lanercost, Stevenson, 234–5. The ‘Annales Paulini’, 282, claims that Spalding had accomplices, naming John Drory as one of them. 61  Bruce, McDiarmid and Stevenson, iii, 150–3 (bk XVII, ll. 16–95; note that Barbour names the betrayer as Syme of Spalding, whereas all other sources name him as Piers). For the Horsleys, see above, 122. 62  Lanercost, Stevenson, 235.

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northern parts was excessively favourable to the Scottish party’, tipping them off when it was safe to invade England, and warning them when to retreat.63 Usually however, it was disenchantment with the government in Westminster which led English marchers to have dealings with the Scots, rather than any fellow feeling for their Scottish neighbours. Walter de Selby’s adherence to the Scots in 1318, in the aftermath of Gilbert de Middleton’s robbery of the cardinals; the negotiation of a private peace agreement with Robert Bruce by the Westmorland knight Andrew de Harclay, newly ennobled earl of Carlisle, in December 1322; and the Northumbrian Sir John de Clifford’s flight to Scotland after murdering John de Coupland in 1364, were all the result of English politics. Thomas Gray attributed Gilbert de Middleton’s rising to the arrest of the Northumbrian household knight Sir Adam de Swinburne, ‘for speaking too plainly about the state of the Marches’; and the conspiracy originated in the factionalism of Edward II’s court.64 Andrew de Harclay did not negotiate with Bruce out of any sympathy for his aims; rather, he was alienated by the failure of Edward II to provide adequately for the defence of the Marches, even after the defeat of Edward’s rebellious English opponents.65 And Coupland was murdered only after the Northumbrian victims of his numerous extortions and abuses had tried and failed to obtain any redress from the English Crown.66 In all of these cases, adherence to the Scots remained the last resort. Disaffected English marchers generally resorted to outlawry rather than defection;67 the ‘Westminster’ chronicler relates how ‘certain squires of the north’ responded to the sacking of Wark Castle by the Scots in June 1383, in a blatant breach of the truce, by raiding Scotland, where they fired villages and seized large numbers of cattle. John of Gaunt, recently appointed as warden of the Marches, negotiated an agreement whereby, in return for reparations from the Scots, he promised to hand over the English squires responsible; the latter, ‘declining to be unjustly delivered into the hands of their enemies’, formed an armed gang 63  ‘Gesta Edwardi de Carnarvon auctore canonico Bridlingtoniensi’, Chronicles of the Reigns of Edward I and Edward II, ed. W. Stubbs, Rolls Series lxxvi (1883), ii, 97; Lanercost, Stevenson, 293. Unfortunately, both the Bridlington and ‘Lanercost’ ­ chroniclers draw a discreet veil over the precise identity of these ‘certain Englishmen’. 64  Scalacronica, King, 79–81; A. King, ‘Bandits, Robbers and Schavaldours: War and Disorder in Northumberland in the Reign of Edward II’, in Thirteenth-Century England IX, ed. M. Prestwich et al. (Woodbridge, 2003), 125–7. This is the same Adam de Swinburne whose daughter was to marry John de Stirling. 65  For Harclay’s career and conspiracy, see Iain Hall, ‘The Lords and Lordships of the English West March: Cumberland and Westmorland from c.1250 to c.1350’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Durham University, 1986), 291–362; H. R. T. Summerson, Medieval Carlisle, Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society, Extra Series xxv (2 vols, 1993), i, 230–56. 66  King, ‘War, Politics and Landed Society’, 154–73. 67  Macdonald, Bloodshed, 205–8.



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and hid out in the inaccessible highlands of the Cheviots, where Gaunt was unable to catch them.68 They did not, however, cross the Cheviots into Scotland, but remained in the English allegiance. Thomas Walsingham may on occasion have complained of the ‘stupidity and arrogance’ of the Northumbrians in the late fourteenth century, but he never accused them of treachery.69 For the gentry of the English Marches, there was a great deal to be gained from a career of loyal service to the Crown, in terms of both office and land. Marchers such as the Grays, the Feltons and John de Coupland made or maintained their fortunes by these means.70 Against this, co-operation with the Scots was decidedly risky. Just how risky was brought home to the English marchers in the late 1350s by the nefarious activities of the escheator for the northern counties, William de Nessfield, acting in collusion with Coupland. These two mounted an extraordinary campaign of retroactive forfeitures, apparently on their own initiative, dredging up old accusations of adhering to the Scots during the reigns of Edward I and Edward II, and holding the sons and grandsons of those accused to account for the alleged treachery of their forebears.71 Similarly, many who had sided with the Scots during Edward I’s reign returned to the English allegiance only to discover that in the meantime, their English estates had been granted out to royal servants, who were understandably reluctant to give up the hard-earned rewards of their service.72 It was by no means impossible for English adherents of the Scots to regain the favour of the king of England and so their lands – but it could be a protracted and difficult business. Perhaps the most telling example is that of Walter de Selby, who adhered to the Scots in 1318, following his involvement in Gilbert de Middleton’s notorious robbery of the cardinals. His lands were confiscated for his pains, and he spent some years in the Tower of London; it was not until the beginning of Edward III’s reign that he was eventually pardoned.73 Even then he had considerable difficulties recovering his lands, which had been granted out to others; for the time being, he had to make do with a grant of the reversion of his manor of Seghill, Northumberland, which 68  Westminster, 40–2; Macdonald, Bloodshed, 72. 69  The St Albans Chronicle. The Chronica maiora of Thomas Walsingham. I, 1376–1394, ed. J. Taylor et al. (Oxford, 2003), 232. 70  King, ‘War, Politics and Landed Society’, 105–8; idem, ‘Scaling the Ladder: The Rise and Rise of the Grays of Heaton, c.1296–c.1415’, in North-East England, ed. Liddy and Britnell. 71  King, ‘War, Politics and Landed Society’, 154–73. For a somewhat different view of these forfeitures, see M. C. Dixon, ‘Retrospective Treason? The Nessfield Escheats’, Archaeologia Aeliana, 5th ser., xxix (2001). 72  King, ‘War, Politics and Landed Society’, 20–4. 73  Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous 1307–49, nos 365–5; Parl. Writs, II, ii, app., 239; CCR 1323–27, 125; CPR 1327–30, 36. For Selby’s part in Middleton’s rising, see King, ‘Bandits, Robbers and Schavaldours’, 127–8.

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had been granted to Bertram de Monboucher for life, and he had still not managed to recover his manor of Felling in the bishopric of Durham as late as 1341.74 Having ­ eventually recovered his estate in England, partly through assiduous military service in Scotland, he was then regarded as a traitor to the Scots; and so when he was captured at Liddel Peel in Cumberland, just before Neville’s Cross, he was duly executed on the orders of David II.75 In fact, there are few signs that the English Crown was seriously concerned about the loyalty of the English marchers. It has been suggested that the stipulation (usually included in wardens’ indentures from 1380s onwards) that March wardens should recruit their retinues largely from outside the Marches was inspired at least partly by fears that ‘local men might prove unreliable, being prone to desert or even to collude with the Scots’.76 However, this policy was more probably driven by financial parsimony than fears of collusion. It was hoped – somewhat optimistically – that as the men of the Marches were directly in the path of any Scottish incursions, they could be expected to serve without having to be paid, under their obligation to defend the realm against invasion. The Crown was therefore anxious to ensure that its money would be spent on retaining men from other parts of the country, whose services could not called upon for free.77 Landholders on the Scottish side of the border faced a rather more delicate balancing act. As the boundaries of English lordship fluctuated, those who wished to keep hold of their lands needed to be able to make timely changes of allegiance. Both the English and the Scots were aware of the need to win over hearts and minds, and clearly neither side could afford to alienate ­ potential supporters by too ruthless a policy of forfeiture. Consequently, Scots who changed sides were not generally penalised for their previous adherence to the enemy, provided they jumped at the right moment. Families such as the Kerrs of Selkirk Forest thus managed to carve out a lasting position for themselves in Teviotdale society by some timely switches of allegiance.78 However, those who went over to the Scottish allegiance faced the certain loss of any lands

74  CPR 1327–30, 332; Northern Petitions, Illustrative of Life in Berwick, Cumbria and Durham in the Fourteenth Century, ed. C. M. Fraser, Surtees Society cxciv (1981), nos 184–5, 193, 197–8; CCR 1341–43, 98. In the event, Selby did not have to wait too long for Seghill, for Monboucher was dead by December 1332; Northumberland County History, ix, 261. 75  King, ‘According to the Custom Used in French and Scottish Wars’, 282–3. 76  J. A. Tuck, ‘War and Society in the Medieval North’, NH xxi (1985), 45. See also Goodman, ‘Introduction’, 22; Macdonald, Bloodshed, 212. 77  A. King, ‘“Pur Salvation du Roiaume”: Military Service and Obligation in FourteenthCentury Northumberland’, Fourteenth-Century England II, ed. Chris Given-Wilson (Woodbridge, 2002), 26–8. 78  Brown, ‘War, Allegiance and Community’, 235; and see ch. 6, above, 111–12.



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they might hold on the English side of the border, a factor which must have discouraged Scots from seeking lands in England. In fact, the Scottish borderers who adhered to the English usually did so out of political expediency. This might be because the English were in ­occupation, as with the Kerrs; or it might be because of Scottish politics. This was the case with William Douglas, the Knight of Liddesdale, who did homage to Edward III in 1352, because his kinsman William, Lord Douglas, had taken advantage of his absence in English captivity to usurp his authority in the Scottish Marches. It was also true of the earl of March, who went over to Henry IV in the spring of 1400, after the duke of Rothesay, the heir to the Scottish throne, repudiated his marriage to March’s daughter.79 Certainly, some on the English side of the border harboured no illusions concerning the true loyalties of the Scots. In his account of Robert Bruce’s invasions of the  Marches in 1311, the ‘Lanercost’ chronicler wrote that the Scots were divided amongst ­ themselves, some siding ‘with the Scots’ and some ‘with the English’. Nevertheless, he continued, ‘all those with the English were feigning, either to be with the stronger party, or to save the lands which they had in England; but in their hearts, if not their bodies, they were always with their own’.80 Unlike many medieval border societies, such as the English in Ireland, ­‘acculturation’ – in the sense of the opposing sides picking up and identifying with facets of each other’s culture – was not an issue in the Anglo-Scottish Marches; by 1296, the two societies, English and Scottish, were already ­thoroughly and comprehensively acculturised, to the point where, as the Monk of Westminster complained, each side was unable to distinguish the other on the battlefield.81 Paradoxically however, this acculturation may actually have made the problem of allegiance less difficult; it became a question of (more-orless) straightforward political or familial loyalty, uncomplicated by side issues of cultural identity; there was, for instance, little chance of English officials in Berwickshire or Teviotdale ‘going native’. Furthermore, the border was sharply defined, and had been fixed for most of its length since long before the Treaty of York of 1237.82 And notwithstanding the waxing and waning of English 79  Brown, Douglases, 44–6; Boardman, Stewart Kings, 203–4, 226–7; A. J. Macdonald, ‘Kings of the Wild Frontier? The Earls of Dunbar or March, c.1070–1435’, in The Exercise of Power in Medieval Scotland, c.1200–1500, ed. S. Boardman and A. Ross (Dublin, 2003), 151–8 (I would like to thank Dr Macdonald for sending me a copy of his paper). 80  Lanercost, Stevenson, 217. 81  Goodman, ‘Introduction’, 2; and see above, 116. For acculturation in Ireland, see J. Lydon, ‘The Middle Nation’, in The English in Medieval Ireland, ed. J. Lydon (Dublin, 1984), 15–17. 82  G.W. S. Barrow, The Kingdom of the Scots: Government, Church and Society from the Eleventh to the Fourteenth Century (2nd edn, Edinburgh, 2003), 112–29. The dispute over the ‘Debatable Land’ in the West March was not taken up until the mid-fifteenth century;

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authority over southern Scotland, the border remained fixed throughout the fourteenth century. While it may have shared some of the same personnel, and was answerable to the same Crown offices in Westminster, the English administration of ‘the king’s land beyond the Tweed’ remained entirely ­ separate from the county ­ administrations south of the border in Northumberland, Cumberland and Westmorland. And in deference to Scottish sensibilities, the law it ­administered was Scottish law.83 This had the effect of re-emphasising the border as a political boundary, notwithstanding that for much of the fourteenth century the marchers on both sides of it were in the allegiance of the king of England. During this period, parliament became an increasingly important point of contact between the English Crown and the shires, providing a forum where the men of the English border counties could bring their concerns to the attention of the crown.84 But for all the time they remained under English control, no representatives from Dumfriesshire, Roxburghshire or Berwickshire, nor from the boroughs of Berwick or Roxburgh, were elected to English parliaments. Consequently, when the ‘men of the Marches’ petitioned parliament, they did so as men of the English Marches, and not the Anglo-Scottish Marches. There were certainly occasions when the English marchers made common cause with the Scots who remained in the English allegiance across the border, such as the petition of circa 1379/80 from ‘les comunes des countees de Northumbr’, Cumbr’ et Westmerland’, which, as well as enumerating their own many woes, also addressed the concerns of their Scottish neighbours. Amongst other matters, they complained that the lands of many of ‘[the king’s] lieges in the ­ counties of Berwick, Roxburgh and Dumfries’ had been overrun; that the ‘town of Berwick’ had been forced to pay tribute to the Scots; that the ‘king’s lieges of the county of Roxburgh’ had had to pay 100 marks; and that ‘diverse lieges of the king in the counties of Cumberland and Dumfries’ had paid £100.85 This certainly suggests a degree of cross-border co-operation, particularly in the case of the men of Cumberland and Dumfriesshire, who seem to have joined together to buy off the Scots. Nevertheless, it remains the case that the petition was delivered in the name of the three English border counties, and not specifically in the name of the Scottish border communities which it partly concerns John M. Todd, ‘The West March on the Anglo-Scottish Border in the Twelfth Century, and the Origins of the Western Debatable Land’, NH xliii (2006). 83  Tuck, ‘Tax Haven’, 149. 84  J. R. Maddicott, ‘The County Community and the Making of Public Opinion in Fourteenth-Century England’, TRHS, 5th ser., xxviii (1978); idem, ‘Parliament and the Constituencies’, in The English Parliament in the Middle Ages, ed. R. G. Davies and J. H. Denton (Manchester, 1981). 85  Northern Petitions, ed. Fraser, 146–9. As Fraser points out, the petition should be dated to between Midsummer 1379 and Midsummer 1380.



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– if only because it was probably delivered in parliament, by the elected representatives of the three English counties. If this was indeed the case, it must have been the Westminster parliament of January 1380. One of Cumberland’s knights of the shire at that parliament, William de Culwen, had served as constable of Lochmaben, near Dumfries, and keeper of Annandale, in 1376; and one of Northumberland’s knights of the shire, Sir William Delaval, had served as chancellor and ­chamberlain of Berwick in the 1360s.86 Presumably, it was through contacts with men such as Culwen and Delaval that the Scottish borderers in the English allegiance were able to convey their concerns to ­parliament. Nevertheless, they could only do so indirectly, at a remove; they remained outside the English national political community. There were indeed many points of contact between English and Scottish marchers during the fourteenth century, some surviving from before 1296, and perhaps rather more arising from the changed circumstances of the AngloScottish wars. But though the amount of contact can be gauged, its influence at a local level is harder to measure. At the least, it did ensure a steady flow of news and information across the border. Thus, one of the best sources for Scottish politics in the mid-fourteenth century is an English chronicle, the Scalacronica. This is not altogether surprising, for its author, the Northumbrian knight Sir Thomas Gray, started work on it while he was a prisoner in Edinburgh Castle, following his capture in October 1355. However, although Gray was back in England after no more than a year, his chronicle shows a detailed knowledge of – and interest in – Scottish politics in the early 1360s; clearly, its author remained well informed of events across the border even after his release from Edinburgh.87 Perhaps more significantly, cross-border contacts engendered a degree of familiarity, and even a wary respect, a respect which found expression in border ballads such as ‘The Battle of Otterburn’, and in works such as the Scalacronica, both of which are notably lacking in overt hostility to the Scots.88 On a practical level, this familiarity greatly facilitated the conduct of ­practical business across the border, such as the conduct of ransom ­negotiations 86  Rot. Scot., i, 883, 884, 912, 975, 978, 980. 87  For the date of his release, see Scalacronica, King, xli. 88  J. Reed, ‘The Ballad and the Source: Some Literary Reflections on The Battle of Otterburn’, in Goodman and Tuck, Border Societies, 112–13; A. King, ‘Englishmen, Scots and Marchers: National and Local Identities in Thomas Gray’s Scalacronica’, NH xxxvi (2000), 219–20. It has been suggested that ‘The Battle of Otterburn’ dates to the early fifteenth century, and that it reflects late-fourteenth-century attitudes; Goodman, ‘Introduction’, 2, 7–8; A. Grant, ‘The Otterburn War from the Scottish Point of View’, in Goodman and Tuck, Border Societies, 32. For a more sceptical view, see Macdonald, Bloodshed, 236–7.

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and the administration of March Law (both themselves major factors in maintaining and propagating these contacts); and so ransoms were generally lower, and prisoners generally better treated than was the case in France.89 This familiarity did not, however, lead to a politically significant cross-border community of interest, even between the English marchers and their Scottish neighbours in the English allegiance (perhaps if it had, the English occupation of southern Scotland might have proved longer lasting). Part of the reason for this was the waxing and waning of English authority, which precluded the stability necessary for the revival of any permanent cross-border links. By the time the English victory at Neville’s Cross ushered in a comparatively long-lasting period of English administration in the Scottish borders (at least in Berwickshire and Roxburghshire, if not so much in Dumfriesshire), half a century of forfeitures, redistributions and restorations of lands had rendered cross-border landholding a somewhat unattractive proposition. And it must anyway have proved difficult to actually take control of estates across the border, in the face of potentially hostile tenants, in a country with a different common law and courts. On a more fundamental level, however, the outbreak of war in 1296 saw the rapid dismantling of a cross-border society which had flourished for two centuries, with a thoroughness that speaks volumes for the authority and power which the English Crown, in particular, was able to exert in the farthest extents of its realm. The marcher societies which emerged in its place on both sides of the border were militarised communities shaped by warfare, in which advancement was linked to military service – service which drew these communities into close contact with their respective national governments.90 The inter­mittently intensive warfare of the fourteenth century thus had the effect of making the northern periphery of England much less peripheral – if only for a while. On the Scottish side of the border, Berwickshire and Teviotdale, at least, had never been peripheral to the Scottish Crown;91 and though the increasing power and influence of border magnates such as the Douglases effectively reduced the direct authority of Scottish kings in these areas, by the same token, it ensured that they remained closely attached to the Scottish national polity. Certainly, there were many on the Scottish borders who accepted long periods of English lordship; however, the separate administration of the Plantagenets’ Scottish lands, a necessary concession to avoid alienating their Scottish adherents, ensured that these adherents remained separated from the wider English polity, and thus from their neighbours on 89  King, ‘Prisoners and Casualties on the Scottish Marches’, 272, 284. 90  M. H. Brown, ‘The Development of Scottish Border Lordship, 1332–58’, Historical Research lxx (1997); idem, ‘War, Allegiance and Community’, 236; King, ‘War, Politics and Landed Society’, 246–50; idem, ‘Englishmen, Scots and Marchers’. 91  Macdonald, Bloodshed, 204–5; Goodman, ‘Introduction’, 12.



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the English side of the border. Though the Anglo-Scottish Marches may have exhibited some of the characteristics of a ‘frontier society’ in the fourteenth century, the ­ imperatives of warfare, ­ politics and administration ensured that the marcher gentry on either side of the border thought of themselves as Englishmen or Scots first, and marchers only second.

8

Dividing the Spoils: War, Schism and Religious Patronage on the Anglo-Scottish Border, c.1332–c.1400 Richard D. Oram

I

n a ser ies of stu dies since the 1980s, the long-held view that the Anglo-Scottish war of 1296–1328 ended with the severing of the cross-border landholding network that had developed in the course of the twelfth and ­thirteenth centuries has been challenged and overturned. The treaty which ended the war made provision for the return of the heritage of specific AngloScottish nobles or their successors and, although the number of restorations made good before the re-opening of hostilities with Edward Balliol’s Englishbacked invasion of 1332 remained low and the attitudes of leading figures in the Bruce regime in Scotland decidedly lukewarm towards the process, it appears that the possibility of a pan-British nobility holding property in both kingdoms and their constituent territories had not ended with Robert Bruce’s ‘final’ forfeitures of his domestic opponents in 1314. For the top echelons of the Anglo-Scottish secular nobility, the decisive moment in that respect perhaps occurred as late as the death on 30 November 1335 of David de Strathbogie, earl of Atholl, but to date the demise of the reality of significant cross-border landholding to that event is to read history backwards and, more importantly, is also to ignore the continued existence of a network of such landholding into the fifteenth century in the form of the estates of the great Border abbeys.   See, for example, J. A. Tuck, ‘The Emergence of a Northern Nobility’, NH xxii (1986); S. Cameron and A. Ross, ‘The Treaty of Edinburgh and the Disinherited (1328–1332)’, History lxxxiv (1999).   Tuck, ‘Northern Nobility’, 8. For the career of Strathbogie, see Ross, ‘Men for All Seasons?’, part ii. Resistance to the financial losses which would have been suffered by members of the nobility who had benefited most from the redistribution of the estates of the Disinherited by the Bruce regime played a significant part in the failure of David II’s efforts to secure a peace settlement with the Edward III involving a Plantagenet succession to the Scottish throne in the 1350s and 1360s.



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Although the future of a truly international landholding nobility may have perished with Strathbogie at Culbean, and with it, perhaps, Edward III’s schemes for an English client-state in Scotland, the survival of the cross-border interests of the monasteries offered an avenue for the fuller integration of his territorial gains in southern Scotland into an enlarged kingdom of England and a potential mechanism for securing the identification of the nobility of the acquired territories with the new political order. The settlement of peace with England in October 1328 after the ratification of the treaty of Edinburgh had seen the beginning of a slow process of restoration of not only secular estates but also of properties belonging to important religious corporations on both sides of the border. On 28 October, mandates were issued by Isabella and Mortimer’s government in England for the restoration of pensions paid to the abbots of Jedburgh, Kelso and Melrose from churches in England, and the abbot of Dundrennan from Ireland. In December, the monks of Dundrennan were petitioning for the return to them of property at Burtonstown in Meath, while around the same time the canons of Jedburgh requested that their possession of the churches of Arthuret in Carlisle diocese and Abbotsley in Lincoln diocese, from which they had been expelled on account of the war, be restored. Early in 1329, following an inquest into its rights and a personal appeal to Edward III from Robert I, the monks of Arbroath were restored to possession of the church of Haltwistle in Durham diocese. Other petitions and mandates presumably involved lands and rights belonging to Dryburgh, Holyrood and Lindores abbeys and the priory of Whithorn, while in England Holmcultram and Furness abbeys, the priories of Durham and St Bees, and the small nunnery of Holystone, were amongst a number of other communities with cross-border interests who looked for restitution after 1328. The Scottish monasteries, however, had barely regained their pre-war possessions in England before Anglo-Scottish warfare erupted anew. In 1332, Edward Balliol mounted an invasion of Scotland in a bid to win the crown from David II with the tacit support of Edward III of England, and in 1333 the English king brought an army north in support of Balliol and on 19 July routed the Scots at Halidon Hill. As a preliminary to his invasion, Edward III had again ordered the seizure of property in England of supporters of the Bruce family, including ecclesiastical properties. Some were swiftly regranted to Englishmen, as in the case of Arthuret church, forfeited by the abbot of Jedburgh ‘a Scots enemy and rebel’, which barely a fortnight after Halidon Hill was granted to John de Pocklington, but Edward III was soon looking   CDS, iii, no. 967.   Ibid., nos 969, 973. For the restoration of Arthuret church, see ibid., no. 999.   Ibid., nos 976, 984, 985.   Ibid., no. 1087. Abbotsley may also have been lost at this time and there is no later evidence for its restoration to Jedburgh. In April 1340, Edward III granted the church of

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towards a new order in the Border region which would allow an alternative solution to such situations. English assistance did not come cheaply for the would-be Scottish king. In February 1334 Edward Balliol secured parliamentary agreement for the cession to Edward III of a huge swathe of territory, comprising the sheriffdoms of Berwick, Roxburgh, Dumfries, Selkirk, Peebles and Edinburgh, with the constabularies of Linlithgow and Haddington, and the forests of Jedburgh and Ettrick, a settlement which placed the Border abbeys once more in the sphere of direct English lordship. Almost immediately, Edward sought to bind these annexed territories firmly into his kingdom as his lands beyond Tweed, not simply that part of the kingdom of Scotland which was under English occupation. Scots who entered his faith and peace were restored or confirmed in their holdings, except where those holdings formed part of inheritances forfeited by former adherents of the Balliols or the English crown in Scotland before 1328, while newly forfeited properties were granted to primarily northern English lords. Edward’s aim was to construct an Anglicised community in the region, particularly in the zone dominated by the major economic centres of Berwick and Roxburgh, and through policies of accommodation, plantation and intermarriage, foster a readier identification in at least burgess and noble society with England than with Scotland. The church, whose regional standing was founded as much on its pre-eminent landholding position as on its spiritual leadership, would play a key role in that attempted process and was courted by Edward from 1334 onwards. The church, however, also presented a major obstacle to securing the acceptance of his vision for the future of the annexed territories, for the post-1334 borderline cut through the middle of the two major Scottish dioceses of St Andrews and Glasgow. The hostility or complaisance of the two bishops would determine the success of Edward’s efforts to integrate the clergy of the archdeaconries of Lothian and Teviotdale, the principal ecclesiastical components of the zone encompassed by his acquisitions, into the Anglicised community he envisaged. The role of the Scottish church in the post-1332 phase of the Bruce–Balliol and Anglo-Scottish wars is a grossly neglected field of study. While the prominent roles of bishops Lamberton of St Andrews and Wishart of Glasgow in the reign of Robert I are well known, their successors in the early years of the reign of David II have been criticised for their lack of political or moral leadership

Abbotsley, described as forfeited by the abbot of Jedburgh in Scotland, to Sir William de Felton; ibid., no. 1329.   Ibid., no. 728.   Penman, David II, 53, highlights the numbers of clerics who performed a central role in the Bruce regime between 1329 and 1346, but his discussion also emphasises the failure of Scottish historians to undertake any detailed study of these men.



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if not personal cowardice. For Edward, the flight of James Bennet, bishop of St Andrews, to continental exile and a speedy death in 1332, followed by the protracted vacancy until the consecration of William Landallis in 1342, perhaps proved to be an unexpected boon, for this vacuum in ordinary authority within the portion of the annexed territories which included Berwick facilitated the insertion of pro-English clerics into vacant benefices and deprived the ­incumbent Scottish clergy of political leadership. At Glasgow, however, William Rae, bishop from 1339 until 1367, was resolutely hostile towards Edward’s activities in the archdeaconry of Teviotdale, wherein he was ordinary for the major monasteries of Jedburgh, Kelso and Melrose as well as the burghs of Dumfries, Peebles, Selkirk and Roxburgh, and blocked the establishment of English clergy into regional benefices by refusal to induct them. Rae’s career has never been studied in depth, but it appears that he was of critical importance in maintaining a strongly Scottish identity in the secular clergy of that portion of his diocese which fell under English jurisdiction, a role which William Landallis also assumed for St Andrews after 1342. The loss of episcopal rights of visitation and oversight of the major monasteries in the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries may have diminished the role of the bishops in the internal affairs of the great regional abbeys, but a continued role in abbatial consecrations, confirmations of monks as priests, and monastic involvement in diocesan and archidiaconal synods preserved a significant level of influence. This role was perhaps most crucial for Rae in respect of Kelso Abbey, where the abbot, William de Dalgarnock, was absent from his monastery from 1334 as tutor for the exiled David II in France.10 In the absence of its spiritual father and administrative head, this powerful monastery whose landholding influence dominated eastern Teviotdale and the archdeaconry of Lothian south of Lammermuir, was perhaps most susceptible to Edward’s interference. The abbeys in any case were perhaps more open to the idea of a secure, albeit English, future. Issues of identity aside, the reinstatement of English lordship over Tweeddale and Teviotdale in particular after 1334 brought positive but short-term material benefits to the major Border monasteries, for Edward III and his regional administration needed to consolidate possession swiftly and gain the allegiance of the incumbent Scottish landholders. The Border abbeys, with their extensive networks of landholding and dependence, and their preeminent social role as regional spiritual centres, offered him an opportunity to win influence quickly within the local landholding community. Within days of the territorial cession by Edward Balliol, the English king was issuing

  R. Nicholson, Scotland. The Later Middle Ages (Edinburgh, 1974), 141–2. 10  Wyntoun, Amours, v, 422.

140 england and scotland in the fourteenth century i­ nstructions for the ­ restoration to Kelso Abbey of its possessions in Berwick, the first stage in a policy of ­cultivating this highly influential community.11 A significant part in this process was played by the prominence within Edward’s regional administration of northern English lords, including men whose families had long-standing kinship or landholding links in Scotland. It was probably such established cross-border connections rather than any ­strategic political considerations which encouraged renewed English patronage of Scottish religious houses in Teviotdale and the Merse. One early ­beneficiary was Dryburgh Abbey, which received a valuable gift of property from the Northumberland knight Sir William de Felton, keeper of Roxburgh Castle and sheriff of Roxburgh from July 1336.12 In 1338, Felton purchased a burgage in King Street in Roxburgh, which he then granted to the canons, adding significantly to their already substantial property portfolio in the burgh.13 The motive behind Felton’s gift may have been preparations for the establishment of a chantry, such as that founded by the prominent burgess family, the Auldtons, in the parish church of St James at Roxburgh in 1329 and further endowed by them through the 1330s and 1340s.14 Such a move on Felton’s part would have signalled a strong personal, spiritual commitment to the monastery or institution receiving the award but also perhaps indicates a personal identification with and physical commitment to the defence of the territory in which it was located.15 The steady recovery of most of Lothian and the Border region north of Tweed in the years after 1337–38 and culminating in the temporary ­recapture of Roxburgh by the Scots early in 1346, however, does not appear to have diminished English families’ efforts to identify with these occupied territories and secure their integration into a new border region polity, for the same processes resumed, at least in lower Teviotdale and the Merse, in the years after Neville’s Cross. The identification of members of the English administration with the monastic church in the annexed territories was paralleled by a process of attempted Anglicisation in the secular church in the region. From 1334 Edward III assumed rights of patronage and presentation in the territories 11  Rot. Scot., i, 268. 12  The Felton family was associated with the exiled pro-Balliol Strathbogie earls of Atholl, cadets of the earls of Fife, a connection perhaps dating from the late twelfth-century marriage of Roger de Merlay, lord of Morpeth, to Ada, daughter of Earl Donnchad II of Fife (CDS, i, no. 191). Sir William de Felton was husband of Isabella, countess of Fife, see ch. 7, 00, above. 13  Liber Dryburgh, nos 313–16. Amongst documents missing with the loss of the post-1338 folios of the Dryburgh cartulary are those detailing Felton’s spiritual purpose behind the gift. 14  Liber Kelso, i, nos 479, 482–9, 491, 492, 496–9. 15  A. Goodman, ‘Religion and Warfare in the Anglo-Scottish Marches’, in Medieval Frontier Societies, ed. R. Bartlett and A. MacKay (Oxford, 1989), 252.



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ceded to him by Edward Balliol which had previously been exercised by the kings of Scots. These rights provided him not only with an increased reservoir of patronage from which to reward his household clerks for their service but also a potential means of entrenching English influence at a local level as benefices fell vacant. As with the secular administration, Northumberland men were advanced by this process. Edward III’s two successive presentations to the wardenship of the hospital of Rutherford beside Roxburgh, for example, were the Northumbrian clerks William de Embleton (1348) and John de Bamburgh (1360).16 The policy of seeking to integrate the annexed territories fully into England, however, meant that local Scots were also advanced by Edward III to fill vacancies. Thus, in January 1348, one Richard de Swinehope, whose surname suggests a Peebles-shire origin, was presented to the church of Old Roxburgh and the prebend and canonry to which it was annexed in the cathedral church of Glasgow.17 Presentation, however, did not guarantee induction, for William Rae, bishop of Glasgow, the ordinary of the church, refused to admit an English appointee to a prebend in his cathedral. While induction as a canon of Glasgow may have been withheld from Richard, Bishop William could not prevent Edward III from awarding him the revenues of a parish which lay firmly in English hands.18 Ralph de Malton, another English presentee, experienced the same difficulties in the Berwickshire church of Duns in 1350, where the bishop of St Andrews refused induction.19 Here, too, King Edward was able to enforce payment of the fruits to the clerk although he had not been formally instituted into the parish. Given the refusal of the diocesan to formally induct the presentees, how effective these men were as parish priests and benefice-holders is open to question. It appears, however, that despite opposition from the Scottish bishops, English incumbents were established in and commanding the resources of some of the more lucrative or influential secular benefices of the occupied zone. By the mid 1350s, eastern Roxburghshire and much of Berwickshire had been in English hands for two decades, perhaps sufficient time for inter­marriage and service relationships to blur Anglo-Scottish distinctions and produce an ambivalence in national identities amongst important components of the region’s political community. Negotiations for the ransoming of David II in 1353–54 may have triggered some uncertainty over political ­ allegiance,20 which can perhaps be seen in Roger de Auldton’s almost simultaneous further endowment of his chantry chapel in St James’s church at Roxburgh for the souls of David II 16  Rot. Scot., i, 708, 852. 17  Ibid., 709. 18  CDS, iii, no. 1558. In 1369, Edward presented the clerk Roger de Bromley to the benefice; Rot. Scot., i, 852. 19  Ibid., i, 737. 20  Penman, David II, 177–8.

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and ‘the most excellent prince, my lord, the lord Edward, by God’s grace illustrious king of England and France’, and confirmation of the same in David’s name on 1 April and by Edward III on 1 May 1354.21 Such hedging of bets, however, appears only to have been a temporary wavering and a third example of religious patronage, by the family of Felton’s successor at Roxburgh, Sir John Coupland, another northern Northumberland knight, saw an ­ articulation of unequivocally English identity in the establishment of a chantry. In November 1368, the escheator of Northumberland reported a favourable verdict on his inquest into Coupland’s widow Johanna’s intention to mortify a portion of her lands at Lanton in Glendale to provide an annuity for a chaplain to say masses for the soul’s ease of her late husband and herself in Kelso Abbey, for which a royal licence was granted in July 1370.22 Johanna Coupland was herself a prominent figure in the English border regime, displaying her own close identification with the region in 1365 with her taking up of a seven-year lease on the castle and lordship of Wark-on-Tweed, only 10km downstream from Kelso.23 What the establishment of the Coupland chantry in Kelso perhaps reveals most clearly, however, is how full the integration of the districts controlled from Roxburgh and Berwick with the rest of Edward III’s kingdom was after over three decades of almost uninterrupted English lordship. Lanton lies on the ‘English’ side of the Tweed, but there was no objection raised over a gift of property unquestionably in England to a community in what, pre-1334, was part of the Scottish political and economic heartland. Kelso should not perhaps be regarded by that date as a ‘Scottish’ monastery in a precariously held English salient but as a spiritual focus for the nobility of Anglo-Scottish Tweeddale and lower Teviotdale. Evidence for a parallel effort to maintain the Scottish identity of monasteries in the annexed territories, as opposed to straightforward territorial recovery, is slight. The reconquest by David II’s supporters of most of Roxburghshire and the western districts of Berwickshire in 1342–46 did restore the abbeys of Melrose, Dryburgh and Jedburgh to Scottish lordship, but the only significant display of Scottish patronage to the recovered houses during this brief interlude was Sir John Maxwell’s grant of the advowson of Pencaitland kirk to the canons of Dryburgh.24 Maxwell, although primarily a Lothian landholder, was a cadet of a family of Tweeddale origin and near neighbours of the abbey, but who had shown no previous favour towards it. The heads of the family, the Maxwells of Caerlaverock in Dumfriesshire and lords of Maxwell in Roxburghshire, however, who were amongst the most prominent supporters 21  Liber Kelso, nos 496–9. 22  CDS, iv, nos 148, 172. 23  Ibid., no. 112. 24  RRS, David II, no. 89; Liber Dryburgh, app., nos iii–v.



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of Edward Balliol in south-western Scotland in the 1330s and finally re-entered David II’s peace only c.1360,25 had been generous patrons of Kelso and Melrose abbeys in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when members of the family had served as sheriff of Teviotdale or Roxburgh.26 The emergence of John Maxwell in David’s service by c.134027 and his patronage of one of the major monasteries in a region where his head-of-kin had traditionally been an active ecclesiastical patron, coincided with Eustace Maxwell’s return to the Balliol camp and may thus represent an attempt to supplant the regional role of the pro-English Maxwells of Caerlaverock. After 1346, with the king an English prisoner and many of the leaders of the Scottish recovery in the South East, including John Maxwell, dead or imprisoned, the impetus behind that recovery halted abruptly. Political reality again dictated that the abbeys accept that they were under English ­overlordship, a position which was to prevail for over two decades. Hindsight should not be permitted to obscure the fact that for over a generation after 1334 the Border monasteries were almost continuously under English lordship and, regardless of any personal loyalties on the parts of the monks and canons, were bound into a relationship which was frequently beneficial to them. Of the major abbeys, Kelso, whose estates fell almost entirely within the sphere of English control and who enjoyed the patronage of leading Northumberland, Roxburgh, and Berwick-based families, perhaps moved most comfortably into the new relationship. Melrose, however, was quite badly affected by Edward III’s territorial annexation as, unlike the other monasteries, it had substantial estates on both sides of the post-1334 or post-1346 borders and no conveniently located daughter-house or cell to which it could entrust management of its lands outwith Roxburghshire.28 Melrose itself, however, lay within the ­effective orbit of the garrison of Roxburgh and this exposure required the adoption of pragmatic realism rather than adherence to political principles. The monks had re-entered Edward III’s peace swiftly in the aftermath of Neville’s Cross, and consequently were restored to possession of Trowup in Northumberland which had probably been forfeited soon after the fall of Roxburgh in 1342.29 25  R. D. Oram, ‘Bruce, Balliol and the Lordship of Galloway’, TDGNHAS, 3rd ser., lxvii (1992), 43–4; CDS, iv, no. 88. 26  Liber Kelso, i, nos 12, 140, 166, 207, 208, 210, 213, 384, 395, 423, 493–5, etc.; A. M. T. Maxwell-Irving, ‘The Maxwells of Caerlaverock’, in Lordship and Architecture in Medieval and Renaissance Scotland, ed. R. D. Oram and G. Stell (East Linton, 2005), 206. 27  Penman, David II, 107–8. 28  For the extent of the Melrose estate see R. Fawcett and R. D. Oram, Melrose Abbey (Stroud, 2004), ch. 3. Jedburgh’s position was eased by its possession of dependent cells at Canonbie in Dumfriesshire and Restenneth in Angus, to which its main properties outside Teviotdale had been assigned before the end of the thirteenth century. 29  Rot. Scot., i, 690–1.

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Restoration of this small property in the Cheviot uplands, however, was little compensation for the potential loss of revenue from its extensive lands in Kyle, Carrick and Nithsdale, which lay firmly in the sphere of Scottish control. Despite the potential financial implications, the abbot of Melrose, like his counterparts in the other great monasteries of the region, appears to have moved easily into a vassalic relationship with Edward III and to have accepted a role as one of the landed magnates of the English-held district south of the Lammermuirs. Such decisions were probably a pragmatic recognition of the military status quo, of force majeure, rather than overt declarations of willing adherence to the English crown. Willing or not, however, the leading clergy of the region were integral to the Anglo-Scottish political and landholding community of the occupied territory and functioned fully in that capacity, answering English royal summonses and attending assemblies of the lay and ecclesiastical leadership of the English-occupied district. It was as vassals of the English crown as well as the spiritual leaders of regional society that on 20 January 1356 the abbots of Dryburgh, Jedburgh, Kelso and Melrose, witnessed Edward Balliol’s resignation of his whole right to the crown of Scotland into the hands of Edward III at Roxburgh.30 That gathering, however, may have represented the high-water mark of Edward III’s success in drawing the regional clergy into his orbit, for the conclusion of negotiations for the release of David II in October 1357 heralded a long-term and decisive change of fortunes in the struggle for effective lordship in Teviotdale and Tweeddale. The 1357 treaty provided for a freezing of the territorial status quo while ­negotiations continued for a lasting peace, and David II was obliged to recognise the implications of that freeze by acknowledging that Melrose was ‘of necessity in the peace of the English’ and consequently required special protection for that portion of its extensive landed estate which lay under his lordship.31 It was a form of words, however, which suggests that he did not regard the current political geography as a permanent arrangement. David renewed the declaration the following year and, even more significantly, granted Melrose a regality jurisdiction over the core portion of its estate immediately surrounding the abbey.32 This grant has been described as evidence ‘for the special affection of the Bruces for the abbey’,33 and certainly David’s favour to it could be viewed, prima facie, as inspired by Melrose’s standing as the burial-place of his father’s heart, but there was probably policy as well as filial devotion at work. In 1358, while the affirmation of royal protection of all of Melrose’s property which lay within the effective sphere of the Scottish crown was a practical measure to 30  Ibid., 788. 31  Melrose Liber, ii, no. 433. 32  Ibid., ii, no. 435. 33  Brown, Douglases, 187.



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s­ afeguard the possessions of a community which had perforce come to terms with the English king, the territory encompassed by the new regality ­jurisdiction fell within the area under English lordship. David lacked any means to make this award effective at that juncture but, perhaps more significantly, the simple fact of his making even a speculative gift of jurisdictional powers which lay in Edward III’s hands, even during the time of truce following the treaty of Berwick, constituted a bold declaration of the Scottish king’s determination to restore the integrity of his kingdom as well as an overt reminder to the monks of where their interests would be better served. At once of more practical value to Melrose and symbolic of his efforts to secure the monastery’s loyalty was David’s grant to it in 1358 of the custom yield of all its wool exports, both from the clip of its own flocks and that received as teind from appropriated parishes.34 This was an inducement to the monks to export their produce through Scottish outlets rather than through English-held Berwick, and was a major cash concession on David’s part given his pressing need for money to meet his ransom payments. It is likely that the Border abbeys had maintained their traditional exporting of the bulk of their woolclip through Berwick after 1333, where customs duties were charged at the lower Scottish rate of 6s 8d rather than the rates of 26s 8d and up to 46s 8d per sack levied at English ports in the 1340s, although David II’s government had sought to encourage south-eastern Scottish producers to export through Edinburgh and Haddington.35 The trebling of Scottish customs duties by autumn 1358 was a powerful inducement for regional producers to maintain trade through Berwick and the timing of David’s concession to Melrose implies that he recognised that the financial loss which the waiver entailed could be more than offset by the enhanced political influence in Teviotdale which his favour to the monks brought in return. David’s financial needs, however, ensured that the 1358 concession to Melrose was not a permanent arrangement and the restoration of a reduced rate of duty at Berwick by the English crown in 1362 appears to have once again drawn most Scottish regional producers to export through the English-held port, a position further boosted by the quadrupling of the Scottish rate of customs duty in 1368.36 Scottish efforts to undermine the regional dominance of Berwick included the granting in February 1370 of burgh of barony status to Dunbar with rights to engage in foreign trade reserved normally for royal burghs, a move intended to attract the wool-clip of the eastern Lammermuirs, a region in which Melrose was one of the major

34  Melrose Liber, ii, no. 436. 35  For discussion of the wool trade and custom levels at Berwick, see Tuck, ‘Tax Haven’, 148–67. 36  Ibid., 157.

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producers.37 In addition, Melrose was given the concession of exporting its wool through Edinburgh at a reduced rate of customs, a ­ development which may have produced a significant shift in the direction of the abbey’s export trade as it coincided with a period of higher duty at Berwick. While the volume of revenue generated by the wool customs was of great significance to both David II and Edward III, it is likely that the territorial influence of the ­monasteries was of greater importance to both kings in these manoeuvres than the tax yield. The greater importance of the need to maintain English influence in Teviotdale over revenue generation, for example, can be seen in Edward III’s concession to the Border abbeys in May 1373 of the right to export eighty sacks each of their wool through Berwick at a discounted custom rate of half a mark, the level paid by merchants resident in the port and 20s less than that levied on other wool produced in English-occupied southern Scotland.38 Although the manoeuvring for regional influence which these financial concessions reflected was largely a product of increasing tension in the negotiations to secure a lasting Anglo-Scottish peace in the later 1360s, they were also in part bound up with Scottish domestic politics. This counterpoise is underscored by the case of Holmcultram Abbey in Cumberland, which had apparently managed to retain possession of its grange at Kirkgunzeon in Galloway after the final collapse of the Balliol and English position there in the 1350s. Holmcultram was dispossessed in 1368 when David II granted the grange and its various pendicles on the Galloway coast to Sir John Herries of Terregles ‘until peace between our kingdom and England should be repaired’.39 David, however, was not simply using the dispossession of an English monastery of its Scottish property to apply some limited pressure in his efforts to secure a beneficial renegotiation of his ransom and a satisfactory final peace with Edward, but was using Kirkgunzeon as a means of enhancing the local position of Herries, whom he had been advancing for some years as part of a policy of subverting the local dominance of the first earl of Douglas.40 That local landed power and influence was at stake in this act is emphasised by the fact that although the abbey lost a substantial piece of real property which it had controlled for nearly two centuries, it was permitted to retain its spiritual rights in the parish (discussed below). David’s strategic needs also ensured that despite the settling of an extended truce in June 1369, the question of restoration of the property seems never to have been raised. Perhaps somewhat ironically from Holmcultram’s perspective, while its own situation was ignored the Anglo-Scottish negotiations of May–June 1369 led to the ­ restoration of 37  RRS, David II, nos 460, 462. For the Melrose estates on the Berwickshire–East Lothian border, see Fawcett and Oram, Melrose Abbey, 221–6. 38  Rot. Scot., i, 958; Tuck, ‘Tax Haven’, 158. 39  RMS, i, no. 282. 40  Penman, David II, 343–4, 358.



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Dundrennan Abbey’s properties in Cumberland and Meath,41 another arrangement which was probably bound up with David II’s efforts to advance the interests of his own supporters in eastern Galloway, in this case on behalf of Archibald Douglas ‘the Grim’. Although there were a few signs of optimism during this period of heightened tension, such as Jedburgh’s securing of papal permission to grant indulgences to pilgrims who visited it on specified days and gave alms towards the repair of its war-damaged church,42 the failure to secure a lasting Anglo-Scottish peace before David II’s death in 1371 bode ill for the future. The deteriorating security of the border zone after 1371 and signs of English governmental recognition that the earlier policy of integration had failed can be seen in the developing trend for the monasteries to secure protections for themselves, their dependants, property and rents in both England and Scotland. The protections, moreover, now explicitly identified the abbeys as Scottish although they were in the English king’s peace.43 For Jedburgh and Kelso, the proximity of the English garrisons in Jedburgh and Roxburgh castles, and the location of the bulk of the former community’s landed estate in the disputed territory of lower Teviotdale and Jed Forest underscored their vulnerability. Although Dryburgh lay off the main invasion corridor into Lothian via Dere Street, the bulk of its properties straddled that route as it passed through Lauderdale. Melrose, however, was in perhaps the most invidious position, for it lay in a zone over which both David II and Edward III claimed right. Negotiations for a shared jurisdiction44 were ultimately fruitless and the Black Douglases continued to make good their claim to lordship and to nibble away at the area under English control. Nevertheless, as late as 29 October 1377, the government of Richard II of England was issuing letters of protection to the abbot and convent of Melrose, who were described as ‘in our faith and peace’, clearly still under the impression that the abbey lay within the remaining sphere of English authority.45 By circa 1380 the country around Melrose was largely under Scottish control although the abbey may still have acknowledged English overlordship. The extent of the erosion of the English-controlled zone is revealed in a memorandum prepared to brief English commissioners negotiating with the Scots in that year for a settled border line. While calling for a fixing of the border on a course running along the Berwickshire border from Cockburnspath to Lauderdale and west from there to the Gala Water to embrace Melrose’s estate between Gala and Leader, an arrangement which appears to confirm that the 41  Rot. Scot., i, 933. 42  CPL, iv, 163. 43  Rot. Scot., i, 958; ibid., ii, 3, 8. 44  Ibid., i, 965. 45  Ibid., ii, 3, protection for two years.

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abbot and convent still recognised Richard II’s lordship, the memorandum also lists properties taken by the Scots in the last decade which comprised most of upper Teviotdale plus the lordships of Nenthorn, just four ­kilometres north-west of Roxburgh and Fairnington, which lies approximately mid way between the abbey and Roxburgh itself.46 Why this significant re-advance of Scottish territorial control over the bulk of the English-occupied region in which the abbey’s possessions were concentrated had not persuaded the abbot and convent to abandon their submission to Richard II is unknown, but half a century of accommodation within the sphere of English power had ­apparently produced some affinity which could not easily be cast off. The difficult position in which the abbey was placed is emphasised by King Robert II’s ­ re-grant in 1382 of David II’s concession permitting the monks to deal with the English ‘of necessity’.47 Robert, like his predecessor, or perhaps more likely the Black Douglases who had been instrumental in re-establishing Scottish lordship in Teviotdale,48 were looking towards the imminent restoration of Melrose to Scottish allegiance. Despite the Douglases’ numerous breaches of the Anglo-Scottish truce in the course of their steady erosion of English-held territory there was no reopening of general warfare between the kingdoms until the mid 1380s. Scottish provocation finally led to a breakdown of the truce in 1383 and in April 1384, John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster led a major English army on a chevauchée, or fast-moving and highly destructive raid, through south-east Scotland. On this occasion he spared the abbeys of Holyrood and Melrose, which lay in his path,49 but rather than chivalry or piety moving him to pity it was probably only the payment of a substantial ‘ransom’ such as that offered by the burgesses of Edinburgh for time to be given them to remove their goods from the town before he unleashed his troops on it. The raid also caused widespread damage across a broad swathe of country from Roxburghshire, through Berwickshire to Lothian, in which many of Melrose’s estates were concentrated. Although the abbey itself may have been spared sacking on this occasion, it is therefore quite likely that Gaunt’s invasion wrought havoc with Melrose’s finances. Through the summer of 1384 and into 1385, the Scots and their French allies steadily increased pressure on the remaining English-held strongholds in Scotland and began to raid deep into northern England. Eventually, in August 1385 the English king, Richard II, struck back and led a major invasion force on a devastating raid through the Borders and Lothian as far as Edinburgh, which he burned. Once again, however, the Scots refused to give battle and 46  CDS, iv, no. 295. 47  Melrose Liber, ii, no. 477. 48  Brown, Douglases, 187–90. 49  Westminster, 67.



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stripped the countryside of supplies, forcing Richard to head south after a campaign of less than a fortnight having achieved little beyond the widespread destruction of property. Unlike John of Gaunt in his 1384 chevauchée or Edward III earlier, Richard ordered the sack and burning of the major Scottish monasteries that lay along his route: Dryburgh, Melrose and Newbattle.50 The brutality of this action has been regularly condemned by past generations of Scottish historians, many of whom presented it simply as another example of the wanton vandalism inflicted on Scotland by her southern neighbour in the course of their long conflict, but there is also a suggestion that the violence towards the monasteries was inspired by the religious divisions of the Great Schism, which since September 1378 had divided western Christendom into two camps supporting the rival popes Urban VI in Rome and Clement VII in Avignon.51 French support for Clement VII had the concomitant effect of aligning England with the supporters of Urban VI. International politics rather than religious conviction consequently ranged Scotland alongside its French allies, an alignment which may have produced a crisis of conscience for some Scottish clergy in the English-controlled zone, for although since 1334 they had existed for the most part under English temporal lordship they had continued to lie under the spiritual jurisdiction of the Scottish bishops of St Andrews and Glasgow. There is, however, little evidence for any significant direct impact of the Schism on the religious life of the Border region before the 1380s, and the first crisis caused by the expulsion of English clerics from a Scottish institution, that of the Durham monk, Robert Claxton, from the priorship of Coldingham, originated in July 1378, two months before the election of Clement VII.52 Conflicting provision to benefices, however, was inevitable, especially where the English crown attempted to exercise rights of presentation to important endowed positions. Such was the case with the church of Old Roxburgh, which was annexed as a prebend and canonry of Glasgow Cathedral, with both Bishop Walter Wardlaw of Glasgow and Richard II presenting candidates to the benefice in September 1379.53 It was perhaps only in churches securely within the zone of continuing English domination, such as Yetholm, where Richard II presented Richard Clifford in November 1379, that no rival Scottish presentation was made.54 If this is the case, then the gradual appearance of letters from Clement VII in response to petitions from monks in monasteries within the English sphere 50  Bower, vii, 407. 51  See, for example, N. Saul, Richard II (London, 1997), 145. 52  The most detailed analysis of the Coldingham dispute is in A. L. Brown, ‘The Priory of Coldingham in the Late Fourteenth Century’, Innes Review xxiii (1972). 53  Calendar of Papal Letters to Scotland of Clement VII of Avignon, 1378–1394, ed. C. Burns (Edinburgh, 1976), 30; CPR 1377–81, 445; Goodman, ‘Religion and Warfare’, 257n. 54  Rot. Scot, ii, 19.

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perhaps provides an indication of the progressive erosion of the efficacy of Richard II’s control. From early 1380, individual Melrose monks rather than the convent as a whole began to petition Clement VII for ­ particular spiritual favours, while in April 1381 the abbot and convent of Dryburgh petitioned for the confirmation of churches which had been granted to it by Scottish nobles between the 1320s and 1340s, a development which mirrors the progressive isolation of Melrose from the remaining core of English-held Teviotdale and the probable re-entry of Dryburgh into Scottish lordship.55 The absence of any petitions from Jedburgh or Kelso possibly reflects the continuing recognition of English lordship enforced by the garrisons of Jedburgh and Roxburgh castles. Perhaps more significantly, however, there were no petitions from any of the Border abbeys to Urban VI, a blank which points strongly towards where their spiritual allegiance lay. Of contemporary English accounts of the events of 1385, only the Westminster Chronicle claims that the Schism was a significant factor in the destruction of the monasteries, most simply reporting and lamenting the fate of such a noble and famous monastery as Melrose.56 The Leicester monk, Henry Knighton, however, claimed that the burning had been merited, for Richard, moved by mercy and by reverence of God and Church, had not set out with any intention of causing such damage. As a sign of peace, he had sent his standards to be set up over the gates of Melrose and Newbattle and the main English force had passed on without committing any damage. Some Englishmen, however, had remained behind and were set upon and killed, news of which outraged Richard who ordered the burning of the abbeys as an act of revenge.57 For Jean Froissart, Richard’s motive for destroying the abbey, which he claimed had been spared in all earlier hostilities, was vindictive determination ‘to ruin everything in Scotland ... because the Scots had allied themselves with the French’.58 The Westminster Chronicle apart, the late-fourteenth- and earlyfifteenth-century accounts are united in viewing the burning of the abbeys as a calculated act of terrorism conducted in the midst of a large-scale punitive raid. It is striking, however, that the two abbeys burned were those that had made overt approaches to Clement VII. Suggestions that it was solely remorse for his actions in 1385 that prompted Richard to offer financial restitution to the monks four years later, and that he believed the abbey still to be under his lordship, are unlikely to be correct, especially since in the interval the Scots had soundly beaten an English army 55  Papal Letters to Scotland of Clement VII, ed. Burns, 40, 43, 56–7. 56  Westminster 127–9; Chronicon Angliae, ab Anno Domini 1328 usque ad Annum 1388, auctore monacho quodam Sancti Albani, ed. E. M. Thompson (London, 1874), 364. 57  Knighton, 337. 58  Chronicles of England, France, Spain, etc., by Sir John Froissart, tr. T. Johnes (3 vols, London, 1839), ii, 52.



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at Otterburn in Redesdale and consolidated their military hold over most of Teviotdale. Richard’s instruction on 15 October 1389 to the chancellor to issue letters allowing Melrose an abatement of 2s a sack on the custom of Scottish wool exported through Berwick, for up to 1,000 sacks, rather than being a measure designed primarily to recompense the monks for the destruction of 1385 needs to be seen in the context of the English government’s wider efforts to halt the collapse of trade in that commodity through the port.59 As a measure to restore Berwick’s domination of the Teviotdale wool trade it was a failure and was in any case rescinded by Richard only a year later. Of far greater importance to Melrose in its drive to raise finance for its rebuilding were the concessions on custom duty which it received from the Scots. David II’s grant of the custom on their wool had been confirmed by Robert II in 1386, and in April 1389 Robert Stewart, earl of Fife, the chamberlain of Scotland and Lieutenant on behalf of his father the king, sent instructions to the custumars of Edinburgh, Haddington and Dunbar re-stating the monks’ exemption.60 As both the perhaps highly optimistic letters of protection issued to the monks and their men for trade with northern England as part of the three-year truce which ended the war of 1384–89, and Abbot Gilbert of Melrose’s willing service as godfather for the new-born Gilbert Umfraville (of Prudhoe) in spring 1390 reveal, however, the violence of 1385 could not end long-established crossborder links.61 As at Melrose, the damage inflicted on Dryburgh in 1385 was apparently extensive and potentially beyond the convent’s slender resources to repair, but here neither Richard II nor the Scottish administration offered recompense.62 The abbey’s lack of a significant patron, however, presented itself as an opportunity to men who were seeking to establish their regional political dominance, but only after the Scottish regime change of Autumn 1388 which brought Robert, earl of Fife, and the new third earl of Douglas, Archibald the Grim, to power. Archibald’s succession to the bulk of the Black Douglas inheritance following the death of the second earl at Otterburn had not passed ­uncontested and after royal confirmation of his right to the title he was faced with the task of reasserting the Douglas earls’ position of political-military leadership in the Scottish Middle March.63 Adding the role of patron and protector of Dryburgh Abbey to his family’s portfolio of interests would have served to extend that leadership significantly into a region which was otherwise regarded as the preserve of the Dunbar earls of March. 59  Tuck, ‘Tax Haven’, 159. 60  Melrose Liber, nos 479, 480. 61  CDS, iv, no. 820. 62  R. Fawcett and R. D. Oram, Dryburgh Abbey (Stroud, 2005), 27. 63  Brown, Douglases, 86–90.

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The Douglas connection brought rapid benefits to the canons, Earl Archibald and his allies Robert, earl of Fife, and Walter Traill, bishop of St Andrews, probably being instrumental in securing the award by King Robert III of their largest property acquisition since the twelfth century.64 The king’s charter of March 1391 narrates that the Cistercian nunnery outside Berwick-upon-Tweed, which had been founded by David I, had been all but destroyed, its buildings collapsed and the place ‘destitute entirely of both divine service and religious observance’, and that the two remaining nuns had ‘[thrown] off continence by slipping the bridle to indulge in acts of insolence and dissolution’. Since it was effectively moribund, the pious wishes of its original founder and subsequent benefactors had been frustrated and their gifts, instead of being turned to ­religious ends, frittered away on the dissolute living of the sisters, the souls of these former patrons were placed in jeopardy unless the nunnery’s resources could be returned to their intended purpose. Consequently, the king granted all of the nunnery’s lands, rents and rights to Dryburgh ‘to the honour of God and the increase of Divine cult and towards the rebuilding of the aforesaid monastery consumed a short while ago by hostile fire’. Prima facie, this gift is presented as a straightforward assignment of the resources of a defunct community to aid in the reconstruction and continuing religious function of a surviving but struggling house. It was probably no coincidence, however, that the nunnery lay within the sphere of English lordship in the East March that had been disjoined from the Scottish (Avignonese) bishopric of St Andrews and placed under the jurisdiction of the English (Roman) diocese of Durham in 1390.65 On a political level, this dispossession may have sought to remove property in Scotland from the hands of a community effectively in English, that is to say, schismatic hands, the seizure occurring at the height of the Great Schism, with Scots supporting the Avignonese pope, Clement VII, and the English adhering to his Roman rival, Boniface IX. But a dispossession simply and overtly on the grounds of the adherence of the nuns to the Roman papacy risked setting a dangerous precedent and also opened the possibility of future claims for restitution once the seamless garment of the universal Church had been restored under a single pope. Consequently, the disendowment of Berwick was achieved through a secular act, with the Scots using Robert III’s inherited responsibility to ensure that the pious wishes of the founder and benefactors of the house were adhered to in order to safeguard their souls’ welfare to place the gifts where those wishes could be guaranteed. The nunnery, lying as it did in the shadow of Berwick, was probably also in a poor physical and religious state, but it is likely that the Scots were simply stripping the assets of what they considered to be a nest of schismatics. Although the award of the nunnery’s 64  RMS, i, no. 832. Traill, Fife and Douglas all witnessed the charter. 65  Goodman, ‘Religion and Warfare’, 256.



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property to Dryburgh was challenged both from within Scotland and by the surviving Berwick sisters, with the backing of both Douglas and Fife it was unlikely that the canons’ possession was ever seriously threatened.66 It was to Clement VII at Avignon rather than Boniface IX at Rome, however, that the un-named prioress of Berwick appealed in a move which probably exploited the nunnery’s ambiguous political and spiritual location in a territory that lay between two papal allegiances. The appeal was successful, securing a mandate in September 1391 which instructed the bishop of Glasgow to confirm the nunnery’s rights, but which is couched in general terms which indicate that the nuns had not divulged the full details of their situation.67 Rather than indicating that the Schism was not a major consideration in secular business in the disputed border zone, the disingenuousness of the cases made by both the Scottish government and the nuns underscores how the religious rift exacerbated already complicated cross-border relationships. Despite Clement VII’s mandate, the nuns failed to secure the return of their property in Scottish-held territory and while the convent may not have been as moribund as claimed by the Scots in 1391 the loss of its main endowments may have led to a serious decline in its state. A mandate to the abbot of Kelso from Pope Benedict XIII in 1411 to examine an agreement made between the monks of Melrose and the nuns of Berwick over payment of certain annuities68 perhaps points to efforts to safeguard their respective property interests in territories under different political and spiritual overlordship with a reciprocal arrangement, but the source of the annuities is unrecorded. After the end of the Schism in 1418, although the nunnery still lay in English-held territory, efforts to restore religious life there were initiated by Scots, but all failed to recover the properties which both James I and James II confirmed to Dryburgh.69 Alongside the political motivation, however, stands the language of the charter and the fact that the endowment was allocated to religious uses elsewhere and not diverted to lay uses. There is, moreover, a stated intention to fulfil the wishes of the ­original 66  The 1391 grant marked the start of a protracted exercise before the canons finally gained undisputed possession of the nunnery’s lands, with a succession of appeals and counter-appeals by would-be prioresses of the house and the canons and their supporters; Calendar of Scottish Supplications to Rome, 1418–1422, Scottish History Society (1934), 152–3 [22 January 1420], 196–7 [13 May 1420]; Calendar of Scottish Supplications to Rome, 1428–1432, Scottish History Society (1956), 30–1 [31 July 1429], 66–8 [30 December 1429]; 243–4 [7 August 1432]. As late as November 1464, the government of the young King James III was issuing confirmations of Robert III’s grant; RMS, ii, no. 820. 67  Papal Letters to Scotland of Clement VII, ed. Burns, 168. Although under the jurisdiction of the bishop of Durham, the nuns had evidently presented themselves as still of the diocese of St Andrews. 68  Calendar of Papal Letters to Scotland of Benedict XIII of Avignon, 1394–1419, ed. Francis McGurk (Edinburgh, 1976), 246. 69  RMS, ii, no. 820.

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benefactors, a careful rehearsal of the aim to use these resources properly and efficiently to advance the cause of religion, and a stipulation that in return the canons would offer masses for the souls of the king, his successors and ancestors, who included the original benefactors. Religion and politics were inextricably bound together in this case, but despite the underlying territorial ambitions of Archibald the Grim the driving motive seems to have been to ensure that the pious gifts of past generations were put to their intended use. While the Scots may have been coy about the reasons for the seizure of the Berwick properties, an explicit identification of the Anglo-Scottish wars and the Schism as reasons for the alienation of land and rights in Scotland by an English monastery was made in the case of Holmcultram. In June 1391, Clement VII issued a mandate to the archdeacon of Glasgow instructing the interim appointment of a monk from the Scottish abbey of Glenluce to serve the parish church of Kirkgunzeon in eastern Galloway. The petition which produced the mandate, however, came not from the Scots but from the abbot of Holmcultram, whose statements that the parish was normally served by a Holmcultram monk ‘but on account of the wars in those parts, as well as on account of the Schism, no Englishman may dwell in Scotland’, were repeated in the papal document.70 At Kirkgunzeon, however, there was always the clear inference that the interests of the English appropriator would be restored when circumstances changed, which the request that the parish be placed in the charge of a fellow Cistercian underscores, and Holmcultram’s rightful possession continued to be recorded in successive changes of incumbent until the end of the Schism.71 In 1419, Pope Martin V confirmed possession of the church by Scottish priests for as long as warfare between the two kingdoms continued but reaffirmed the abbey’s rights.72 Forty years after its ‘temporary’ placing in Scottish hands, Holmcultram had still not recovered possession and all reference to its interest in the church had been dropped in papal documents concerning Kirgunzeon.73 In retrospect, it appears that it was the war of 1384–89 which marked the final collapse of English relations with the clergy in the occupied territories rather than the outbreak of the Schism in 1378. That does not mean that the Schism was unimportant in hastening the end of the English project for the integration of parts of southern Scotland into England, and it did increase friction in the already tense Anglo-Scottish relationship, but it was a rather onesided process. While it was the English clergy who fulminated in words against 70  The Register and Records of Holm Cultram, ed. Francis Grainger and W. G. Collingwood, Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archæological Society Record Series vii (1929), 89; Papal Letters to Scotland of Clement VII, ed. Burns, 166. 71  Papal Letters to Scotland of Benedict XIII, ed. McGurk, 207, 290. 72  Scottish Supplications to Rome, 1418–1422, 22. 73  Scottish Supplications to Rome, 1423–1428, 202.



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their schismatic counterparts in Scotland it was the Scots who capitalised in deeds on the opportunity presented by the religious fracture to advance their own political and territorial interests in the border zone. The Schism provided them with just another weapon to be deployed in a progressive erosion of the English position which had been gathering pace since the late 1350s. The Schism, however, does not appear to have been the catalyst for the wholesale abandonment of their allegiance to the English crown by the major monasteries, for only Dryburgh as a community seems to have adhered openly to the Scottish and Clementist cause by c.1380. While Melrose may have been wavering in its allegiance in the early 1380s, an uncertainty possibly reflected in its failure to secure a renewal of its letters of protection from Richard II on their expiry in October 1380 and the overtures made by members of the convent to Pope Clement VII, the English campaign of 1385 succeeded in precipitating it, and possibly the monastic communities at Jedburgh and Kelso, into the arms of the Scots. As the collapse in Scottish wool sales through Berwick after 1389 reveals, despite Richard II’s efforts to stimulate the trade with generous concessions on customs to regional producers and merchants, the loss of the allegiances of the monasteries signalled a wider collapse in the remaining sphere of authority of the English crown and the more extensive zone of English economic influence in southern Scotland. The extent of the contraction of the zone of English power in the decade after the 1385 campaign can perhaps be measured by the contrast between the protections issued to the monks of Kelso and Melrose in 1377 and 1378 and Henry IV’s listing of Dryburgh, Jedburgh, Kelso and Melrose, along with Edinburgh, as the chief places ‘in Scotland’ where his demand for homage from the Scots should be proclaimed in August 1400.74 Recognition of the loss of the allegiance of the Border monasteries, however, did not bring about the end of cross-border monastic landholding or an end to connections between Scottish and English monasteries. As late as 1473, Melrose was still function­ing as an effective mother-house for its former colony at Holmcultram and preserved its claims to property in Berwick, enjoying brief restoration during the Scottish occupation of the town between 1461 and 1482.75 More remarkable, perhaps, given the traditional view of a severing of such connections before the end of the fourteenth century, was Whithorn Priory’s preservation of its landholding in Man into the 1500s.76 For the most part, however, 1385 constituted the death throes of a failed policy and while the English crown continued to make appointments to ­benefices in 74  CDS, iv, no. 554. 75  Melrose Liber, ii, no. 577; ibid., app., no. 29. 76  For the Whithorn properties in Man, see San Marino, California, Huntington Library, Derby Papers, MS Ellesmere 993. The Manx properties, known as the ‘barony of St Trinians’ are discussed in B. R. S. Megaw, ‘The Barony of St Trinians in the Isle of Man’, TDGNHAS, 3rd ser., xxvii (1948–49).

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the still secure territories behind its remaining frontier fortresses,77 it had lost the struggle to Anglicise the church in the annexed zone. Roxburgh, Berwick and Jedburgh were reduced from being centres of English shrieval jurisdictions to little more than isolated garrison-posts in hostile territory, foci for a shrunken rump of English-held land, severed from the hinterland which had given their attendant burghs economic power and from the monasteries which gave social and spiritual cohesion to the regional community.

77  For example, Rot. Scot., ii, 93, dated 28 May 1388, where Richard II assigns the clerk Bertin Harre the income from the vicarage of the church of St John in the castle at Roxburgh. The mandate for his provision notes that the diocesan, Bishop Wardlaw of Glasgow, was a schismatic, enemy and rebel who adhered to ‘that alumnus of perdition, Clement antipope’ and that Bertin was being installed by Richard’s special grace.

9

The Pope, the Scots, and their ‘Self-Styled’ King: John XXII’s Anglo-Scottish Policy, 1316–1334 Sarah Layfield

D

iscussions of pa pa l i n volv em en t in the resolution of temporal disputes in the early fourteenth century have tended to emphasise the ineffectuality of the Holy See in enforcing its judgements and managing to evade accusations of partiality. When, in 1319, the pope ordered the Teutonic Knights to restore Pomorze to the Polish kingdom, the Order refused on the grounds that the ruling had been made by partisan judges-delegate. The potency of the pontiff’s subsequent attempts to enforce the judgement was outweighed by the political and military strength of the Order in the region, coupled with its distance from Avignon. Attempts at papal intervention could be met with weapons from an increasingly sophisticated armoury belonging to the spokesmen of temporal rulers. The spiritual authority on which rested the right to intervene was seemingly no longer the preserve of the pontiff: the rhetoric of the ‘negotium terrae sanctae’ could be appropriated by any ruler – irrespective of their actual commitment to the cause, or of the military ­realities of Outremer. Moreover, it was a rhetoric by which papal policy itself might be judged in its dealings with temporal powers: the Declaration of Arbroath of 1320 famously urged the pope to act as an impartial father in adjudicating between warring nations, else the needless shedding of Christian blood would be the scandal of his reign, at a time when the borders of Christendom were continually threatened. In many ways, the pontificate of John XXII (1316–34) bore all the hallmarks of ineffectual arbitration, most notably perhaps in the pope’s policy towards the French crown and its dealings with the county of Flanders. John was unstinting in his support for the French monarchy and used the idea of the Holy Land to   P.W. Knoll, The Rise of the Polish Monarchy: Piast Poland in East Central Europe, 1320– 1370 (Chicago, 1972), 42–4.   A. A. M. Duncan, ‘The Nation of Scots and the Declaration of Arbroath’ (Historical Association, 1970), 36–7.

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condemn the Flemish rebels, denouncing their actions as a direct hindrance to the recovery of the Holy Land – an enterprise to which the king of France had demonstrated a clear commitment. While John refrained from explicitly declaring the king’s attempt to suppress rebellion in Flanders to be a crusade in itself, he did go as far as granting a four-year tenth to aid the king in his ­military efforts. His use of the Holy Land rhetoric was not only partial, but, more importantly, was seen to be so in Flanders, and led to widespread criticism of papal policy in the region. As a consequence, it has been argued, long-term support for the papacy within the county waned, John’s policy having created an image for the pontiff within Flanders as a supporter of the more powerful monarchies in Christendom. It is within this climate that John XXII’s involvement in the Anglo-Scottish dispute has been understood by Sophia Menache. She draws a parallel between the pope’s approach to the conflict and his dealings with the French crown and the county of Flanders, maintaining that both instances demonstrate his ‘deep commitment to advance royal interests against separatist movements’. She argues that, akin to their Flemish counterparts, the Scottish ‘rebels’ harboured a long-standing distrust of papal involvement, as was evident in the warning offered by the Declaration. Compounding the situation, according to Menache, was John’s inability to recruit support even from within the Scottish clergy. While conceding that papal-Scottish relations improved during the 1320s, she perceives the series of privileges granted to the Scots by John – namely, using the royal title in addressing Bruce in written correspondence from 1324 onwards, and the crowning and unction granted to the king and his successors in 1328 – as largely a token response to threatening words of the Declaration. Moreover, she dismisses Bruce’s acceptance of these privileges as simply opportunistic, rather than indicative of any particular regard for, or trust in, papal authority. Indeed, testament to the irrelevance of papal arbitration in the dispute by the late 1320s, so Menache argues, was the Scots’ decision to involve the French crown in negotiations – an authority on whom they found themselves able to depend more readily than on Christ’s Vicar. There is certainly some mileage in interpreting John’s policies towards the Scots and the Flemish, and their effects, as broadly similar. Certainly before 1320, John’s castigations of Bruce and his adherents do appear to have been articulated in very similar terms to his condemnation of the Flemish: war with Scotland was spoken of as hindering an English expedition to the Holy   N. Housley, The Avignon Papacy and the Crusades, 1305–1378 (Oxford, 1986), 109–10.   Ibid., 109.   S. Menache, ‘The Failure of John XXII’s Policy towards France and England: Reasons and Outcomes, 1316–34’, Church History lv (1986), 423–37.   Ibid.   Ibid., 434.



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Land – an enterprise for which Edward’s apparent commitment had been communi­cated to the pontiff. John certainly showed little sympathy with the Scots’ cause in the language of his early correspondence. When writing to Archbishop Melton in 1317, John lamented ‘the horrible seed of dissension blown abroad by Satan’s pestiferous breath’ that threatened peace, and in November of the same year John assured Edward II that he was ‘ready with counsel and help to repress rebellion in England and Scotland’.10 Even after the insincerity of Edward’s crusading intentions had become apparent, there are several indications that John was reluctant to offend the sensibilities of the English crown in handling the dispute. His decision to address Bruce with the royal title, and then finally to absolve him in 1329 and confer the privileges of plenary remission, crowning and unction, were made only after Anglo-Scottish truces had been concluded, according to which the English crown agreed not to hinder Scottish appeals to Rome.11 And it seems that the powerful English lobbying at the Roman court along with the high-profile embassy of Stratford in 1324, continually served to put a cap on any headway made by the Scots. Testament to the sophisticated network of influence orchestrated by English representatives at Avignon in this period and their ability to more-or-less make or break Scottish efforts at the Curia is the wording of the negotiations for the Treaty of Edinburgh/Northampton,12 in which it was agreed that the king of England, ‘in order to [aid the Scots’ appeal] ..., and to bring it about ... will send a private letter of request to the pope and to the cardinals’.13 Accordingly, letters were sent,14 paving the way for a successful legation from the Scots later in the year. Even in the absence of such prompting, it might be noted, John occasionally sought English opinion on his dealings with the Scots. Before addressing Bruce as king in 1317, the pope commissioned Cardinals Gaucelin and Luke to invite Edward II’s opinion on the matter. Having received no indication of the king’s stance by October,15 John wrote to Edward, begging him not to take offence at the decision to use the royal title in writing to Bruce, explaining   CPL, ii, 423–39.   Quoted in R. M. T. Hill, ‘Belief and Practice as Illustrated by John XXII’s Excommunication of Robert Bruce’, in Popular Belief and Practice, Studies in Church History viii, ed. C. J. Cuming and D. Baker (Cambridge, 1972), 136; cf. CPL, ii, 433, 434; VMHS, no. 412; Foedera (RC), II, i, 327–8, 364. 10  CPL, ii, 434. This however, was offered in conjunction with the pope’s exhortation that England meet its debts to the papal Camera. 11  A copy of the truce was sent to John; Foedera (RC), II, i, 542; ibid., II, ii, 730. 12  ASR, 161–70; E. L. G. Stones, ‘An Addition to the “Rotuli Scotiae”’, SHR xxix (1950), 39. 13  ASR, 168. 14  Foedera (RC), II, i, 739–40. 15  CPL, ii, 418.

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that, in accordance with a constitution of Clement V, his doing so would not itself confer or approve it.16 When receiving the earl of Moray in 1323–24, he was quick to assure Edward that no support would be given to any of the earl’s proposals that might be ‘to the prejudice of his realm’.17 And in response to the suggestion then put forward that Bruce might himself visit the Curia with the king of France, Moray was told that until peace was made with the king of England it would not be fitting or expedient to receive them.18 Clearly, John would have been ill-advised had he not shown some sympathy for English complaints regarding the Scots: England was a powerful and ­lucrative ally not to be shunned. Indeed, on several occasions the support offered by this fiscally minded pope was quite blatantly done so in the hope of gaining ­financial return: John, it seems, was willing to back Edward if Edward ensured the regular payment of papal taxes. In 1318, when John offered his help and counsel in repressing rebellion in England and Scotland, this was in conjunction with an exhortation that Edward would allow William de Baleato, the papal legate, to collect various outstanding papal dues in England. Again, in 1319, Edward was told to make ‘due and prompt satisfaction’ of these outstanding debts, which the kings’ officials had been so instrumental in obstructing, and John reminded the king in the same letter of the appointment of Egglescliffe, as requested, to the see of Glasgow. The letter leaves little doubt that John may have seen the matter of Scotland as a useful tool for exacting much-needed revenue from England. It is not surprising, then, that the papacy has been described by one Scottish historian as rather a ‘fickle friend’ to the Scots.19 That the Scots may have been disillusioned with John, and resigned to the unlikelihood of attaining his support, was seemingly evident during the first few years of his pontificate, certainly before 1320, when Bruce proved consistently defiant of papal efforts at arbitration, famously refusing to receive papal representatives or read papal correspondence, and flouting the papally negotiated truce by seizing Berwick in 1318. According to a report of the papal nuncios, it was common belief within the Bruce camp that the royal title had been withheld from the papal letters due to English influence at the Curia:20 no doubt the imprisonment of Scottish envoys in 1318 did little to allay such suspicions.21 In defending the legitimacy of their cause against claims to English overlordship, papal sanction was quite dispensable as far as the Scots were concerned: the Declaration has

16  Ibid., ii, 418, 432, 457. 17  Foedera (RC), II, i, 541; CPL, ii, 461; cf. Foedera (RC), II, i, 542. 18  Foedera (RC), II, i, 541; CPL, ii, 461. 19  D. E. R.Watt, Medieval Church Councils in Scotland (Edinburgh, 2000), 104. 20  Foedera (RC), II, ii, 370–1. 21  RRS, Robert I, 148.



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been seen by at least one historian22 as part of a European tradition of baronial letters which inherently questioned papal involvement in temporal affairs, and by another as buying into a rhetoric which queried the spiritual integrity of the pontiff.23 What might be regarded as Scotland’s spiritual self-sufficiency had surely been evinced in the preaching of David Murray, bishop of Moray (1299– 1326) who likened fighting the English with fighting the Saracens. Similarly, it was ­ exemplified not only by Bruce’s earlier absolution by Bishop Wishart for the murder of John Comyn, despite vociferous papal condemnation of the act, but also by the way in which the interdict was ignored by leading Scottish bishops.24 And yet in many ways the Flanders analogy is rather limited in its use as a framework for analysing papal involvement in the Anglo-Scottish dispute, certainly beyond 1320. It lends itself to a somewhat skewed understanding of John’s approach to the conflict, as well as his perception of Bruce, Scotland, and the Scots. It also overlooks some important features of papal-Scottish ­relations during the 1320s, not only the fact that the Scots were actually able to make some important gains at the Curia, before Bruce’s absolution in 1328, but also that papal policy in itself did not in fact contradict the claim to Scottish independence from English overlordship or, indeed, Bruce’s legitimacy. In playing down the significance of the privileges in particular, Menache has overstated the disillusionment of the Scots in using the Curia as a forum for attaining recognition and legitimacy, and airing their political grievances. John’s early interest in the dispute does not necessarily smack of undue partisan­ship. This is clear not least in the reported papal response to the English embassy early in 1317: the ambassadors lobbied ‘for sentence of excommunication to be promulgated against Robert Bruce and all his supporters, and for the land of the Scots to be put under interdict, until the same Robert should make good the wrongs committed by him against the King of England, and should utterly give up the kingdom of Scotland, which he is known to have seized wrongfully.’ Far from assenting to this, John decreed that the kingdom of Scotland was not to be put under an interdict until the rights of the parties had been ascertained.25 John’s subsequent condemnation of Bruce and the imposition of ecclesiastical censures were entirely usual responses to the belligerent actions of Bruce and his adherents. Bruce had famously refused to read the papal letters addressed to him without the royal title, entrusted to the Cardinals Gaucelin and Luke who had been sent to negotiate a truce, and 22  G. G. Simpson, ‘The Declaration of Arbroath Revitalised’, SHR lvi (1977), 11–33. 23  B.Weiler, ‘The Negotium Terrae Sanctae in the Political Discourse of Latin Christendom, 1215–1311’, International History Review xxv (2003). 24  See VMHS, no. 427; Barrow, Bruce, 320; Hill, ‘Belief and Practice’, 138. 25  Vita Edwardi, 78–9.

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then flouted the truce in 1318 by seizing Berwick.26 Clearly the Bruces’ wars in Ireland also constituted an affront to papal authority: not only could the Bruces be castigated on the grounds of their belligerence, but Ireland was also a particular concern of the pontiff in view of it having been granted by the Holy See to the English Crown in the mid-twelfth century. So, while the denunciation of these actions may have been phrased in similar terms to the warnings given to the Flemish, it was not a direct condemnation of the Scottish claim to independence from English overlordship. Nor was the Holy Land rhetoric being used simply to veil support for the English – Bruce and his supporters had demonstrated their clear defiance of papal authority themselves. It cannot be denied that, in urging both sides to make peace, there was a disparity in emphasis put on the crusading ambitions of the two parties: the suggestion that the crusade would be advanced if peace were brought about was only ever made in reference to Edward, who had in fact declared his intention of assisting the Holy Land in 1317.27 Thus, in the summer of 1320, John urged Edward to make peace with Scotland, ‘so that not only may he be free from the cost and calamity of war, but also may be able to come to the assistance of the Holy Land’:28 there was never any suggestion by the pontiff that Bruce might be willing to take the cross. But John’s use of this rhetoric appears far from partial, for it lasted only as long as he was assured of Edward’s sincerity in fulfilling his expressed intention.29 Moreover, the rhetoric was used by John not so much to condemn the behaviour of the Scots, as to exhort both sides to make peace.30 Of course, it could be argued that John’s alleged Anglophilia was implicit in the fact that the papal letters addressed to Bruce did not address him as king – the insult which incited him to reject the papal overtures altogether. Certainly, John’s reluctance to recognise him as king is testament to his concern for English sensibilities. But, more than anything, his approach to the issue of Bruce’s title epitomised his more general hesitancy, and, particularly by the 1320s, a reluctance to make any formal pronouncement on the constitutional complexities of the dispute. John’s disassociation with the issue of the constitutional relationship between the two kingdoms seems at odds with the terms on which he was invited to judge the dispute, and for which he agreed to send

26  Barrow, Bruce, 321–2. 27  CPL, ii, 423. 28  VMHS, no. 430; CPL, ii, 427. 29  Although papal letters dating from the early 1330s also betray such assumptions about the crusading commitment of the two crowns, this probably reflects the fact that King David of Scotland was still then only an infant. Vatican Archives, Reg. Vat., t. 117, fols 117–117v. 30  E.g. VMHS, no. 209.



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nuncios.31 It appears that, by the 1320s, a truce agreed by the two opponents signalled the extent of John’s interest in the conflict – a stance made evident in his responses to the series of English petitions presented by John Stratford in 1323.32 The first of the petitions presented urged the pope to persist in the process against the Scots. John replied that he had entrusted the process to two cardinals, who were in receipt of all the necessary material to inform their judgement. Stratford presented the pontiff with a copy of the Thirteen Year truce, which John confirmed. But he then informed the bishop that he himself would no longer be concerned with the Anglo-Scottish ‘business’, or willing to proceed with the case against the Scots, since the principal purpose of his office was simply to make peace. Menache has suggested that such caution reflected John’s perception of Edward II’s ‘helplessness’ as a monarch, declaring that ‘the papal alliance with the kings of England was conditional upon the kings’ ability to strengthen the royal position in the realm’.33 As such, John apparently proved more favourable to Edward III, and abandoned the Scots once again after the removal of Isabella and Mortimer: hence the author of the Annales Paulini was with great satis­faction able to report on how the Scots’ legation of 1333 returned from the Curia ‘empty-handed’.34 While John may have been fonder of Edward III than he was of his father, this is hardly credible as an explanation for the steady caution with which John approached the Anglo-Scottish dispute. John in fact continued to adopt a tentative approach until the end of his pontificate. In fact, events of the 1330s demonstrate the extent to which John’s position transcended the influence of personal bonds. Despite the evidently high level of understanding and trust between John XXII and the young Edward III,35 there were clear limits to how far the pontiff was willing to concur in the young king’s Scottish policy. When Edward decided to flout the ‘shameful peace’ and sponsor the ambitions of Edward Balliol, John was unresponsive, merely exhorting both Edward and David to ensure that neither they nor their adherents did anything to break this peace.36 For the remainder of his pontificate the name Balliol does not feature at all in papal letters, despite John having been informed in 1332 by the English king

31  According to the Vita Edwardi Secundi, as cited above. His stance was also notably at odds, of course, with the approach taken by Boniface VIII and the professions of papal overlordship to be found in his bull of 1299, Scimus fili. For this bull, see ASR, 81–7. 32  Foedera (RC), II, i, 542. 33  Menache, ‘John XXII’s Policy’, 430. 34  Ibid., 433–4; ‘Annales Paulini’, 359. 35  See C. G. Crump. ‘The Arrest of Roger Mortimer and Queen Isabel’, EHR xxvi (1911), 331–2. 36  CPL, ii, 510.

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of Balliol’s coronation.37 In the summer of 1333 Edward sent two envoys to the Curia, with various petitions. In September John replied that he was prepared to give a favourable answer to these, although, with regard to the petition ‘touching the realm of Scotland’, he had been unable to bring it forward in consistory, due to there being too much other business and too little time for the preaching of the crusade.38 It is possible that the petition in question was related to the St Andrews appointment,39 for which Edward had put forward a candidate whom he urged the pope to confirm in recognition of the traditional rights of the English crown to make such appointments in Scotland. Whether or not John would have been willing to give a favourable answer to this is ­ uncertain, but in any case the petition appears to have been evaded until the pope’s death in 1334. Although Menache recounts the crowing of English chroniclers at the supposedly ‘failed’ Scottish legation to the Curia in 1333, it would seem that English interests also suffered at the hands of John’s indifference. It is clear, therefore, that, in many ways, the papal stance, and the pope’s conception of his involvement, was not inherently geared to favour one ­particular party over the other. In some ways the terms in which papal ­arbitration of the dispute were framed by the pontiff were more in line with the agenda of Bruce and his supporters than that of the English crown. The way in which his understanding of the dispute was articulated during the 1320s and 1330s allowed little scope for the recognition (even implicit) of English claims to overlordship. A glance at the language employed in papal letters in reference to Scotland serves to highlight this. Most significantly perhaps, in no extant papal letters can there be found references to Scotland constituting a ‘land’ of the English king. This is in clear contrast to those letters being sent to the Curia from the English ­chancery, in which the realm was almost always referred to as ‘terra nostra’.40 For instance, in response to Moray’s requests to have the interdict lifted and to take the crusading vow, the pontiff maintained that the ‘subjects’ of the kingdom of Scotland – ‘Scotiae regnicolae’ – were unworthy of such favours.41 Despite the purpose of the letter, the language is significant. Scotland was clearly viewed by the pontiff as a kingdom, not a land of the English king. There is no extant reference to it being seen as a ‘subregnum’, and there is even an occasional reference to the kingdom being described as Bruce’s land.42 The result of John’s reluctance to be involved in the 37  Foedera (RC), II, ii, 849. 38  CPL, ii, 512. 39  Foedera (RC), II, ii, 866–7. 40  Ibid., II, i, 337, 372, 428, 443–4, 454; Stratford petitions. There are three exceptions to this: VMHS, nos 408 and 481, and Lettres Communes, no. 45668. 41  CPL, ii, 461; Foedera (RC), II, i, 541. 42  VMHS, no. 431.



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complexities of the dispute was that, by the 1320s, it was frequently denoted in papal ­correspondence as a conflict between two peoples,43 or two kingdoms.44 While some of the letters betrayed a belief that the violence against England was very much an enterprise of Bruce and his supporters – his ‘gens’, by which the meaning in this case is clearly his faction rather than his nation.45 However, this should not detract from the fact that there also appears to have been an awareness in the papal Chancery that Scotland constituted a coherent polity, an independent realm inhabited by a specific people, and presided over by one ruler, be he excommunicate or not. In replying to Bruce over the ­question of episcopal appointments in Scotland, John even made reference to ‘your nation’.46 Indeed, it is surely significant that, when urging the pope not to use the royal title when addressing Bruce in 1324, Edward II felt the need to remind John of England’s claims to overlordship.47 It is also notable, as John’s response to Moray’s petition suggests, that within this conceptual framework, there was little room for account to be taken of the factional complexities in Scottish politics, which had become apparent most famously during the Soules conspiracy. According to the idea of ‘collective guilt’, by which the subjects of a ruler were to be punished for his offence, the entire Scottish kingdom was put under interdict.48 While the papal letters relating to the interdict might appear to be ambiguous, inasmuch as the censuring occasionally appears to apply only to Bruce and his adherents without mentioning the kingdom of Scotland explicitly, when taken as a whole, they suggest that Scotland was viewed as a coherent polity, over which Bruce presided. Thus, while the use of politically loaded language to the advantage of the English crown was rare, in some ways the manner in which papal involvement in the dispute was conceived and expounded reinforced the pillars of Bruce’s cause – Scottish independence, and his own legitimacy in opposition to rival factions. This jars with Menache’s suggestion that John’s overall outlook was essentially founded on an understanding of the dispute in constitutional terms, by which he perceived Bruce and his associates to be rebels of the English king. In reality, John’s propensity to limit his involvement in the dispute meant that 43  In this instance, a practice which in fact reflects English Chancery usage; Lettres Communes, nos 9424, 9426, 10,387; Foedera (RC), II, i, 541. 44  Lettres Communes, nos 5155, 5160, 5167, 5174, 5175, 5184, 5321, 5324, 10674, 10675, 10801, 10802, 40617; VMHS, no. 421; Foedera (RC), II, i, 327–8. 45  E.g. VMHS, no. 428. 46  Ibid., no. 431. 47  Foedera (RC), II, i, 549. 48  See P. D. Clarke, ‘A Question of Collective Guilt: Popes, Canonists and the Interdict c.1140–1250’, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte. Kanonistische Abteilung cxvi (1999), 104–46; and VMHS, no. 431.

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claims to English overlordship received a limited audience at the Curia, and were certainly not reflected in the correspondence emanating from the papal Chancery. Moreover, while such language, as has been argued, was a product of the pope’s general indifference to the dispute, it is also possible that, to some extent, John’s understanding of the Scottish kingdom and the Scottish claim to independence was increasingly informed by the ideas of Bruce’s clerical spokesmen, as communication with them improved after 1320. His perception of Ireland certainly appears to have been influenced by the Remonstrance of the Irish princes, since, in his response to Edward’s proposal to visit the ­lordship in 1330, he advised the king that, ‘as there are in that country two sorts of people, pure Irish, and those of a mixed race, care should be taken to have governors and officers of the same respectively’.49 The pope’s condemnation of Bruce, therefore, should not obscure the possibility that John was convinced by the arguments in favour of Scottish independence. But whatever his personal understanding, the assumptions found in the papal letters appear to be much more in line with the Scottish claims to independence than with English claims to overlordship. In fact when such language is interpreted in conjunction with other areas of Papal-Scottish relations, notably episcopal appointments, it seems that, while John did little to outwardly flout English sensibilities, the shifts in the English position in 1323 and 1328 did not dictate the papal stance, but rather, simply made it easier. In dealing with Scotland, John was influenced by several considerations which clearly took precedence over his concern for English claims. Regarding episcopal appointments, John’s spiritual priorities, rather than any deference to English concerns, enabled Bruce and his supporters to withstand English claims to overlordship and even secure favourable appointments. In 1318, at the request of Edward II, the pope appointed one of the king’s penitentiary friars, John Egglescliffe, to the see of Glasgow (appointments to which he had reserved on the previous incumbent’s death),50 overriding the claims of two Scottish candidates by doing so.51 But this was as far as he ever allowed Edward to dictate the fate of Scottish benefices. In the same year Edward petitioned the pope that William Lamberton might be replaced by Thomas Rivers as the bishop of St Andrews, maintaining, falsely, that Clement V had agreed to the proposal.52 John replied that he was unable to do this, and, having ordered a careful search, had found no evidence for Clement’s stance on the matter.53 In 1324 Edward petitioned that Egglescliffe was, on no account, to be ­transferred 49  CPL, ii, 500; Vatican Archives, Reg. Vat., t. 116, fols 42v–43. 50  NAS, RH 2/6/1–6: Transcripts from the Vatican, i, 1273–1396, no. i. 51  CPL, ii, 173, 426. Egglescliffe was unable to reside in his see and had to be transferred. 52  Foedera (RC), II, i, 363–4. 53  Ibid., II, i, 374.



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from the see of Glasgow, and that no Scottish prelate be appointed to a Scottish bishopric.54 John stressed that he was unable to satisfy either of these requests in view of the fact that English clerics, such as Egglescliffe, were incapable of residing in their sees and fulfilling their pastoral duties. It is possible that John’s approach was informed by his understanding of the long-standing ‘special daughter’ status enjoyed by the ecclesia Scoticana in ­relation to the Roman see. Clearly he would have been fully aware of this status: Clement V had made explicit reference to it when appointing bishops, and John had been reminded of it at least twice in 1320.55 Explicit papal reference to the status is perhaps surprisingly rare, but John’s actual dealings with the church certainly resonate with the traditional status of the nine dioceses of the ecclesia Scoticana. That John was certainly uninterested in recognising English claims to overlordship regarding the Scottish church was evident in his response to the petitions presented by Stratford. One of these petitions requested that, supposedly in accordance with custom, the English king be written to for the release of temporalities to all new bishops appointed in Scotland. The pope endorsed the petition, promising to write to the king regarding any future appointments.56 This in fact had not been the custom during John’s pontificate, or indeed that of his predecessor:57 certainly no such notification had been given when appointing Maurice to the bishopric of Dunblane in 1322.58 And nor does it seem that John, even after 1324, was prepared to honour his word by involving the English crown in the process of appointments: in the provision of John Pilmor to Moray in 1326, no concurrent letters appear to have been sent to the English king informing him of the appointment.59 In ignoring the claims of the English crown in such matters, the Scottish appointments conformed neatly to the centralising tendencies for which John’s pontificate is renowned, and, in the process, consolidated Bruce’s interests.

54  Ibid., II, i, 542. 55  It is hinted at in the Declaration and Bruce evidently mentioned it in his letter to the pope of 1320, judging from the contents of the reply; VMHS, no. 431. 56  Foedera (RC), II, i, 542. 57  Although Clement V sent concurrent letters to Edward when confirming the election of the bishop of Caithness in 1306, he ordered no such letters for the later appointments of Dunblane and Dunkeld (1306 and 1309 respectively). The Dunkeld election was contested, with Edward supporting both candidates at different stages of the dispute. Nevertheless, in making his decision Clement ignored the interference of the English king, and declared the see of Dunkeld to be ‘immediately subject to the Roman church’. VMHS, no. 398. 58  VMHS, no. 441. 59  Ibid., no. 460. None of the relevant information survives to discuss the other two appointments to Scottish sees after 1324 in this respect – Roger (?de Ballinbreich) to Ross and Bernard de Linton to Sodor.

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Throughout the 1320s, John’s priorities began to work directly to Bruce’s advantage – every bishop appointed could be deemed one of his allies.60 The most notable of these is perhaps Maurice, appointed to Dunblane in 1322, having been famed for his pre-battle encouragement at Bannockburn as abbot of Inchaffrey.61 His election to the see, probably in 1318, was contested, and so, along with the other candidate Roger de Balnebrich, he proceeded to Avignon. Since his confirmation was not made until several years later, it may be presumed that the litigation was lengthy. Dowden ascribed its protracted ­character to John’s sympathies lying with the English king: Edward II had made efforts to secure his own candidate, Richard Pontefract, and this was done seemingly in propitious circumstances, since the letter may well have arrived in the summer of 1320, just prior to the Declaration, and long after the deadline for the Scottish prelates’ summonses had elapsed.62 And yet, ­ultimately, it was a famed ally of Bruce whom John chose to confirm in his election, despite Edward II’s efforts.63 Clearly the pope was not prepared to populate the Scottish church with more Egglescliffes. But the appointment of Scottish clerics in no way appears to have been done grudgingly. In Bishop Maurice of Dunblane, John possessed an invaluable link with the Scottish kingdom, granting him the power to appoint two notaries in 1322,64 and in the same year commissioning him to ex­communicate afresh the four recalcitrant bishops of his national church. In 1324, it was to this same bishop that John turned when attempting to negotiate the release of John de Brittany and Henry, lord of Sully, who had been captured by the Scots at Byland.65 The importance for the pontiff of preserving workable relations with the episcopacy of this remote kingdom is perhaps most evident in the ways which the interdict, on occasion, appears to have been by-passed. In June 1320, Bishop William Lamberton of St Andrews was commissioned to suspend a canon of Dryburgh despite being excommunicate, and in 1321 the similarly censured bishop of Aberdeen was given a mandate to grant a marriage dispensation.66 The four bishops had been cited to the Curia in 1319 on the grounds that they had failed to observe the interdict and had continued to perform mass and marriage ceremonies. And yet in many ways the same accusation could have been levied at the Curia in the 1320s, not least regarding Episcopal 60  Barrow, Bruce, 347. 61  See J. Dowden, The Bishops of Scotland (Glasgow, 1912), 202. 62  Foedera (RC), II, i, 428. 63  Similarly, as Barrow points out, Egglescliffe’s successor had been Bruce’s initial candidate for the see of Glasgow in 1317; Barrow, Bruce, 344. 64  NA, PRO31/9/61. 65  CPL, ii, 450. 66  Ibid., 201, 217.



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a­ ppointments.67 Episcopal appointments in areas under interdict were not forbidden.68 Nor is it surprising that they were made in terms of the financial outlook of the papacy: while in theory the papal camera might have claimed revenues from vacant bishoprics, perhaps it was all too aware that the collection of these would be difficult, if not impossible – Scotland’s record in making payments to Avignon was poor: in 1329 the agreement that Scotland would pay Peter’s Pence included an agreement to pay all arrears on the papal tenth.69 The more realistic possibility of receiving obligation payments after the new ­incumbents had taken office may have outweighed the unlikely prospect of collecting revenues as an incentive for the appointments. These obligation payments were, on the whole, paid.70 But whatever the motive, it is surely notable that there is no mention of the interdict in any of the letters of appointment, which, in fact, follow the usual formula: the new appointees were ordered to go and reside in their sees, and to govern them correctly, without mention of any limitations on this authority.71 The privileges granted to Bruce in 1328 are also instructive in establishing John’s approach to Scotland. The decision to recognise Bruce and his successors as legitimate rulers of Scotland and to grant them the privilege of coronation and unction, were more prestigious favours. The decision may not have been unrelated to the financial considerations of the papal Camera since, as part of the negotiations giving rise to these grants, it is speculated that the Scots agreed to pay Peter’s Pence.72 Nevertheless, a comparison with John’s response to Edward II’s bid for unction perhaps throws the significance of the Scottish grant into relief. The pope’s response to the proposal for a second unction using the Becket oil in 1318 was far from enthusiastic. Despite the clearly 67  In September 1325, for example, Andrew Moravia and Christina Seton ‘of the diocese of Glasgow’ were given a dispensation to marry – not because they were inhabitants of a kingdom under interdict, but because of consanguinity; CPL, II, 246; NAS, RH2/6/1– 6: Transcripts from the Vatican: Dispensations, 1290–1418, no. 10. Nevertheless, other dispensations in the 1320s were made in view of the interdict. For examples of these, see ibid. 68  I am grateful to Dr Peter Clarke for advice on this matter. 69  B. Crawford, ‘Peter’s Pence in Scotland’, in The Scottish Tradition. Essays in Honour of Ronald Gordon Cant, ed. G.W. S. Barrow (Edinburgh, 1974), 16. 70  They were paid by the new incumbents of Dunblane (1322), Glasgow (1323), and Ross (1325), though seemingly not by Caithness or Moray. See H. Hoberg, Taxae pro communibus servitiis (Città del Vaticano, 1949). 71  See VMHS, nos 441, 448, 460. 72  See Crawford, ‘Peter’s Pence in Scotland’, 16. As Crawford demonstrates, however, there is no evidence that this payment was ever made by Scotland. The suggestion that it was ever even agreed is perhaps rather debateable in view of the fact that the evident non-payment was not met with a response from the Camera, in contrast to the censures imposed for non-payment in parts of the old ‘regnum poloniae’. For this see A. Theiner, Vetera Monumenta Poloniae et Lithuaniae (4 vols, Rome, 1860–64), i, no. 328.

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difficult domestic circumstances facing Edward at the time and the apparent need for a demonstration of papal support, John deigned to give ‘no special counsel’ on the matter, and suggested ‘that to avoid scandal it should be done privately’.73 The pope further reduced the ceremonial potential of the proposal by remarking that unction could be repeated indefinitely and it would still lack sacramental efficacy.74 In contrast, no such proviso was offered with the grant of unction made to Bruce. While the contrast cannot be interpreted as a direct rebuff to Edward II, it suggests a degree of understanding, and perhaps even sympathy, for the Scottish cause that extends beyond mere concurrence in English policy. It signifies an appreciation of the Scots’ long-standing desire for these privileges and their importance in consolidating the juridical status of their kingdom.75 Menache’s suggestion that the Scots felt the need to resort to French rather than papal arbitration underplays the importance of several features of papalScottish relations that have been discussed.76 Moreover, that Bruce sought assistance from the French crown is hardly surprising, and seemingly far from being at the expense of papal involvement, which the Scots appear to have encouraged up until John’s death in 1334: that efforts were made to involve the pope in negotiations with France is suggested by Thomas Randolph’s ­presence at the Curia at around the time of the Franco-Scottish negotiations;77 an examination of the negotiations for the treaty of Edinburgh undertaken by Professor Duncan perhaps serve to reinforce this.78 The clause relating to the payment of £20,000 in return for the surrendering of English claims to overlordship was recorded by Scottish notaries in Latin, rather than French, and submitted to papal authority. This is in notable contrast to the English recording of the negotiations, in which there is no mention of the involvement of papal authority. Of course, the Scots were no shyer of dispensing with papal authority when it suited them than any other temporal power in this period. But the ­irrelevance of the papacy from the Scottish perspective has surely been over-stated.79

73  CPL, ii, 437. 74  F. Kern, Kingship and Law in the Middle Ages, tr. S. B. Chrimes (Oxford, 1948), 55; also see English Coronation Records, ed. L. G.Wickham Legg (New York, 1901), 72. 75  Of course it had been argued by John Hastings, and at one point Bruce, that Scotland did not qualify as a kingdom due to the absence of these privileges. See B. C. Keeney, ‘The Medieval Idea of the State: The Great Cause, 1291–92’, University of Toronto Law Journal viii (1949–50), 63. 76  Menache, ‘John XXII’s Policy’, 433. 77  RRS, Robert I, 154. 78  Ibid., no. 345, and 159. 79  The only substantive evidence used by Menache in defence of her argument is the Declaration of Arbroath and the account of the 1333 legation given in the ‘Annales Paulini’, 359.



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There can be little doubt that John was rather ineffectual in the resolution of the dispute. Indeed, the disparity between his own narrow definition of involvement and the degree of intervention solicited by both parties is stark. His hesitancy in approaching the details of the dispute no doubt reflected a reluctance to alienate the English crown: he chose not to draw on the ­precedent set by Boniface VIII in intervening in the dispute, as supposed overlord of Scotland. And yet the support he offered did not extend to recognition of English overlord­ship. Indeed, it seems plausible that his rather ‘hands-off’ approach may have reflected a degree of genuine impartiality which has rarely been attributed to him. Menache’s account of his outlook on the dispute needs qualification: John was not inclined to perceive Scotland in the same way as Flanders, nor to bolster the English cause with the spiritual justifications that he used for the French; John appears to have been sympathetic to the Scottish claim to independence – his condemnation of Bruce should not be read as sympathy for the English cause, or a condemnation of the Scottish claim to independence. But whatever his own outlook, his limited involvement in the dispute during the 1320s and 1330s resulted in a conceptualisation of the dispute that, in various ways, was in accordance with Bruce’s agenda. Nor was English overlordship accounted for in the pope’s attitude towards the church in Scotland. That Bruce and his adherents were able to make considerable gains at the Curia – not only the ecclesiastical appointments but also the important privileges of 1329, explains why they continued to seek arbitration and ­recognition from the Roman see.

10

Sovereignty, Diplomacy and Petitioning: Scotland and the English Parliament in the First Half of the Fourteenth Century Gwilym Dodd*

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n e of the pecu li a r ities of scholarship on the medieval English parliament is that the appointment of the committees of receivers and triers have received so little attention. This is surprising, not least because the long lists of receivers’ and triers’ names constitute one of the most visually striking sections of the contemporary record of parliament, the parliament roll. The receivers and triers formed the administrative and judicial framework which enabled parliament to handle complaints and requests of a private nature – that is to say, private petitions. Their appointment in parliament took place immediately after the chancellor’s opening speech in which the reasons for summoning parliament were explained to the assembled Lords and Commons. The speech normally ended with a statement to the effect that the king wished to provide justice to all his subjects and that those who wished to submit complaints should hand them to the receivers within a certain specified time. The receivers (who were normally chancery clerks) would then pass the petitions on to the triers (royal judges and members of the lay and spiritual peerage) who would expedite as many as they could, sending any particularly difficult cases which required the application of the king’s grace onto the king and council. One of the reasons why these committees of receivers and triers have been neglected by scholars is because of an ambivalence about their true significance in the medieval parliament. Ironically, the historians who have done most to enlighten us about who the receivers and triers were and what tasks they performed – H. G. Richardson and G. O. Sayles – have also done most *  I would like to thank Cynthia Neville for kindly commenting on an earlier draft of this paper. Any errors are entirely my own.   See PROME.



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to discourage further investigation. This is because neither felt that private petitions were particularly relevant to the English parliament after the midfourteenth century; the continued appointment of receivers and triers after this time was, they have stated, primarily to serve ceremonial purposes. More recent work has gone some way towards establishing the idea that the committees of receivers and triers continued to handle private petitions throughout the late medieval period; but this work has focused on ‘English’ petitions. However, as is well known, the panels of receivers and triers were assigned to deal not only with English petitions, but also with petitions originating from beyond England’s borders – that is to say, primarily, but not exclusively, from Wales, Ireland, Gascony and Scotland. In a typical English medieval parliament two committees of receivers and two panels of triers were appointed. Until 1355 one set of receivers and triers was assigned to the ‘English’ petitions, whilst the other handled the ‘foreign’ business; thereafter, England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales were grouped together, whilst Gascony and other ‘foreign parts’ were dealt with separately. The existence of these ‘foreign’ lands, for which the English parliament could theoretically dispense justice, is an important reminder that this was not simply a domestic institution serving domestic needs, but was (from a judicial perspective at least) ‘international’, both in its outlook and in the influence it sought to exert. We should imagine a typical session of the English parliament in the early fourteenth century attracting a remarkably diverse and cosmopolitan collection of supplicants hoping to secure a ­favourable outcome to their individual cases. But petitioning did not just represent a legal process. The very act of presenting a request or complaint involved an implicit acknowledgement by the supplicant that the recipient of their petition possessed both the authority and the legitimacy to take action in response to their plea. When the king received petitions, and made judgements on them that were neither transgressed, ­ challenged nor circumvented, this was a true measure of his power and authority in the realm. In England, petitioning the king represented a last resort because there was no superior judicial authority to whom the petitioner could appeal if their case was turned down. The act of submitting a petition was thus a highly effective validation of the king’s sovereign power within his

  H. G. Richardson and G. O. Sayles, ‘The King’s Ministers in Parliament, 1272–1307’, in idem, The English Parliament in the Middle Ages (London, 1981), ch. xxii, 382.   G. Dodd, ‘The Hidden Presence: Parliament and the Private Petition in the Fourteenth Century’, in Expectations of the Law in the Middle Ages, ed. A. Musson (Woodbridge, 2001).   This is a point emphasised by R. A. Griffiths ‘The English Realm and Dominions and the King’s Subjects in the Later Middle Ages’, in idem, King and Country: England and Wales in the Fifteenth Century (London, 1991), 53.

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realm. Such considerations probably did not cross the minds of those who engaged in a petitionary system that confined itself to within the borders of a sovereign state such as England, but when a ruler invited petitions from lands beyond his own immediate domain petitioning acquired an altogether different significance. In the hands of a capable, ambitious and bold monarch, ­petitioning could be a vital tool in the empire-building process because it enabled far-flung regions to be brought within the jurisprudence of the crown, thus stimulating increased centralisation of administration and standardisation of legal ­processes. It also reminded the inhabitants of these regions that the king, and not the local ruler, was the source of ultimate authority there, and it enabled the feudal relationship between the king and local ruler to be more closely and sharply defined. In short, inviting petitions from ‘foreign’ lands was a cheap, easy and efficient way for a king to extend and establish his sovereign power over subject territories. For this reason, ‘cross-border’ petitioning could play a vital role in shaping and defining international relations (and conflict) in the late medieval period. This is shown to good effect in the late thirteenth century when Philip IV’s ­ aggressive use of the Parlement of Paris resulted in the undermining of Edward I’s seigneurial position in Gascony and, eventually, to the complete breakdown in relations between England and France when war broke out in 1294. Philip IV was nothing if not a fine model to follow for the aggressive and rapacious assertion of sovereign power and historians have not been slow to read into Edward I’s treatment of his dominions the lessons he learnt as a victim of this Capetian king. For much of Edward’s reign (and that of his son and grandson), the steady flow of petitions from Wales and Ireland and even from   For discussion on the medieval concept of sovereignty, and the importance of ­judicial integrity of a kingdom in maintaining sovereign power, see J. P. Canning, ‘Law, Sovereignty and Corporation Theory, 1300–1450’, in The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought c.1300–c.1450, ed. J. H. Burns (Cambridge, 1991), 464–9; W. Ullmann, ‘“This Realm of England is an Empire”’, in idem, Jurisprudence in the Middle Ages: Collected Studies (London, 1980), ch. 12.   The role that petitioning played in ‘state formation’ has been most recently discussed in a French context by A. Harding, Medieval Law and the Foundations of the State (Oxford, 2002), 160–70.   J. Le Patourel, ‘The Origins of the Hundred Years War’, in idem, Feudal Empires Norman and Plantagenet (London, 1984), 33; M.Vale, ‘England, France and the Origins of the Hundred Years War’, in England and Her Neighbours 1066–1453. Essays in Honour of Pierre Chaplais, ed. M. Jones and M.Vale (London, 1989), 208–9; M.Vale, The Angevin Legacy and the Hundred Years War 1250–1340 (Oxford, 1990), 67–71; Prestwich, Edward I (2nd edn, Yale, 1997), 298–311, 376–81; J. A. Kicklighter, ‘French Jurisdictional Supremacy in Gascony: One Aspect of the Ducal Government’s Response’, Journal of Medieval History v (1979), 127–34.   See, most recently, A. A. M. Duncan, The Kingship of the Scots, 842–1292. Succession and Independence (Edinburgh, 2002), 254.



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Gascony (in spite of the availability of the Paris Parlement) was a clear demonstration and affirmation of English power in these territories. Welsh and Irish petitions continued to be presented in the English parliament throughout the late medieval period. In the case of Scotland, the appointment of receivers and triers to deal with Scottish petitions belies the fact that the amount of Scottish business which the English parliament dealt with was at best sporadic, and very often, non-existent. Some of the explanation for this will be obvious, but it is an aspect of English parliamentary history and the history of Anglo-Scottish relations which I would like to consider more carefully in the following discussion. There is a long tradition of historical writing on the Anglo-Scottish conflict of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, much of which hinges on the central question of the sovereignty which England claimed to enjoy over Scotland; but the full practical implications of the English parliament’s claim to exercise appellate jurisdiction over the northern kingdom still awaits attention in its own right.10 In an attempt to offer a new perspective on some of the old issues and debates surrounding English attitudes towards the status of Scotland and the extent (and definition) of the sovereignty which English kings claimed to exercise over the northern kingdom, this paper considers how far, if at all, Scotsmen and women made use of the petitionary system that was available in the English parliament. The paper has been divided into three chronological sections dealing, in turn, with the 1290s; the period of English ascendancy in 1304–06; and the period thereafter of Scottish resurgence (finishing in the mid-fourteenth century). For Edward I, inviting petitions from Scotland to the English parliament was an important component of the aggressive ‘imperialist’ policy he pursued against the northern kingdom towards the end of his reign. Interestingly, in 1290, before he involved himself in Scottish affairs, and in particular before the ‘Great Cause’ of 1291–92, there is no evidence that Scottish petitions were either solicited or presented in the English parliament, even though rolls of Irish and Gascon petitions have survived for this year.11 In the course of the thirteenth century occasional appeals were made by members of the Scottish political   Many of these petitions have been calendared in Calendar of Ancient Petitions Relating to Wales, ed. W. Rees (Cardiff, 1975) and by P. Connolly, ‘Irish Material in the Class of Ancient Petitions (SC 8) in the Public Record Office’, Analecta Hibernica xxiv (1987), 1–106. 10  Note Le Patourel’s comment in ‘Origins of the Hundred Years War’: ‘this is what sovereignty really meant – the king of France’s right to hold a supreme court of appeal’ (67). 11  For the roll of Irish petitions see Documents Illustrative of English History in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, ed. H. Cole (London, 1844), 55–82 (published and translated in PROME, Roll 3). For the roll of Gascon petitions see Richardson and Sayles, ‘King’s Ministers in Parliament’, 542, n 3.

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community to Henry III, especially during the minority of Alexander III. However, there is no evidence for anything like a regular flow of supplications from Scotland to Westminster.12 Indeed, a petition presented in the Michaelmas Parliament of 1290, about a dispute on the Scottish border, was endorsed by the English crown: ‘let it wait until there is a king in Scotland’. This suggests that Edward had no intention at this stage of using appeals to reinforce his claims to overlordship over the northern kingdom.13 In 1305, however, when we next have evidence for parliamentary petitioning, the ­ situation was quite different: not only were panels of receivers and triers assigned to deal with Scottish ­ petitions, but significant numbers of the requests themselves have survived, as ­ enrolments, on four extant membranes. Three of these were ­originally published by Maitland in his Memoranda de Parliamento, but all are now easily ­ accessible after the recent publication of The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England.14 This important collection of Scottish petitions, or at least summarised Scottish petitions, contains as many as 200 separate cases, but they have never as a body, been closely scrutinised. For this reason two key questions have yet to be addressed. First of all, and crucially, how typical were the two parliaments of 1305 in receiving and dispatching a large quantity of petitions relating to Scotland? And secondly: what was the nature of the ­petitions of 1305 and, in particular, who was doing the petitioning? Let us turn to the first of these questions and consider how far the English parliament was utilised by Scotsmen before 1305. It was only after the Great Cause of 1291–92, which affirmed Edward I’s overlordship over Scotland, that the English king was in a position realistically to offer justice and grace to the Scottish people through the mechanism of petitioning to the English crown. Yet, it would be wrong to assume that Edward’s intention was to ‘capture’ the ­ petitionary market and redirect all such business south of the border to Westminster. Apart from the practical difficulties of the English parliament having to cope with extra business at a time when it was struggling to handle those petitions of a merely domestic nature, in the early 1290s it is quite evident that Edward’s desire was to preserve the Scottish parliamentary system, though to have it operate within a wider context of English overlordship. The outlines of two policies are clear. In the period when the Scottish monarchy was ­temporarily in abeyance, between June 1291 and November 1292, Scottish parliaments met respectively at Stirling (July 1291) and Berwick (June 1292) under the direct presidency of the English king.15 This, undoubtedly, was a very 12  See Young, Comyns, 134–5. 13  Duncan, Kingship of the Scots, 199 (with references). 14  Memoranda de Parliamento, ed. F.W. Maitland, Rolls Series xcviii (1893), 168–232. PROME, Roll 12, mm. 10–13. 15  H. G. Richardson and G. O. Sayles, ‘The Scottish Parliaments of Edward I’, in idem, The English Parliament, ch. xiii, 306–7.



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clear expression of Edward I’s direct feudal control over the northern kingdom, a point no doubt emphasised by the fact that the auditors of complaints in these assemblies were Englishmen.16 At the same time, however, these Scottish parliaments preserved an important point of constitutional principle, for they met in light of Edward I’s promise of 12 June 1291 that he would not hear cases nor hold parliaments outside Scotland or its marches if they raised matters which pertained to the Scottish realm.17 In other words, the Scottish parliament was being allowed to retain complete institutional sovereignty within Scotland’s borders, albeit with the English king as its overseer. When Scotland regained its monarchy in November 1292, in the person of John Balliol, a new policy emerged, one that was in many ways much more oppressive from the Scottish point of view. Scotland now had a king who could sit at the head of the Scottish parliament and act as its ‘president’. The kingdom as a whole had regained a large degree of its territorial integrity. But because Balliol was Edward’s liege man, any decisions he took in parliament (or elsewhere) were subject to English approval. In effect, this opened up the Scottish parliament to outside interference, thereby seriously undermining its position as the highest court of appeal within the Scottish realm. It is a measure of the importance attached to the system of appeals that Edward I made a particular point of insisting in January 1293 that his earlier promise not to hear such cases outside Scotland was no longer valid as this, he insisted, was a key aspect of his overlordship over the northern kingdom.18 Richardson and Sayles asserted categorically that there was no system of ‘subordinate and superior’ parliaments in the British Isles at the end of the thirteenth century, but (in the minds of Englishmen at least) it is difficult to conclude that there was anything else.19 By the terms laid down in the Ordinance drafted during the Easter (London) parliament of 1293, which echoed the sentiments expressed earlier in January, it is quite clear that the Scottish parliament was intended by Edward to function as a clearing house for the bulk of Scottish cases that were brought before it, but that the English parliament was to enjoy ultimate jurisdiction over the decisions which had been reached. Edward used the opportunity presented by John Balliol’s harsh 16  A. A. M. Duncan, ‘The Early Parliaments of Scotland’, SHR xlv (1966), 38–9. 17  Duncan, Kingship of the Scots, 243–4. 18  Ibid., 319. The instrument may have been prompted by the case of Roger Bartholomew, a burgess from Berwick, who successfully circumvented an unfavourable judgement given to him by the court of the Guardians in October 1291, by appealing directly to Edward in Newcastle in December: ibid., 318; Barrow, Bruce, 68–9. 19  Richardson and Sayles, ‘The Scottish Parliaments of Edward I’, 309. Also stated in H. G. Richardson and G. O. Sayles, ‘The Irish Parliaments of Edward I’, in idem, The English Parliament, ch. xv, 133. Somewhat confusingly, Richardson and Sayles then qualify this statement by asserting that ‘the parliament in England was a superior tribunal’ (133).

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treatment of Macduff 20 to spell out the subordinate jurisdiction of the Scottish king (and by implication the Scottish parliament) to the English legal system: And be it known that when any complainant or appellant makes complaint or appeals to the overlord about a false judgement on any matter given to him in the court of the king of Scotland, the king of Scotland will be commanded in this case to produce the record and process of the suit on the matter in his court before his overlord.21 It used to be thought that this Ordinance heralded a period in which significant numbers of Scotsmen took up Edward’s offer to hear their appeals; but Geoffrey Barrow has correctly pointed out that only a handful of individuals – eight are known – ever chose this route to secure redress.22 It is interesting to speculate why this may have been the case. It may be, as already suggested, that Edward’s primary concern was to establish a principle, and that he was little interested in pushing through the practical implications of this Ordinance if it entailed clogging the English system up with even greater numbers of petitions, ­especially if these were petitions from individuals who held no particular political importance. Scotland had a parliament and therefore a perfectly adequate system in place to cope with this petitionary business. In very rudimentary terms, this might explain why so many more Welshmen and Gascons sought to make use of the English parliament than Scotsmen, because neither Wales nor Gascony had an equivalent system or institution for appeals to which they could turn as a last resort.23 Yet, in Ireland this was not the case. Ireland had held regular meetings of its own parliament since the early thirteenth century and, like the early English parliament, it too spent much of its time considering petitions and appeals of a domestic nature.24 Even so, at least from 1290, large numbers of Irish petitioners took the trouble of crossing the Irish sea to secure 20  For what little is known about Macduff, who was a younger son of Malcolm, earl of Fife (d. 1266), see Barrow, Bruce, 77; and J. Bannerman, ‘Macduff of Fife’, in Medieval Scotland. Crown, Lordship and Community, ed. A. Grant and K. J. Stringer (Edinburgh, 1988), 37–8. 21  PROME, Roll 7, item 1. 22  Barrow, Bruce, 75–7. 23  For Welsh petitions see Calendar of Ancient Petitions Relating to Wales, ed. Rees. Gascon petitions are scattered throughout NA, SC 8 ‘Ancient Petitions’ and many have been enrolled on the Gascon Rolls (NA series, C 61). For a discussion see P. Chaplais, ‘Les Appels Gascons au Roi d’Angleterre sous le Règne d’Edouard Ier (1272–1307)’, in idem, Essays in Medieval Diplomacy and Administration (London, 1981), ch. vi. 24  H. G. Richardson and G. O. Sayles, The Irish Parliament in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia, 1964), 57–70. Membranes recording the ‘pleas of parliament’ (i.e. petitions, other judicial business; and administrative decisions) survive for the Irish parliaments of 1299, 1300, 1302 and 1307. They are printed in Calendar of the Justiciary Rolls of Ireland, ed. J. Mills et al. (3 vols, Dublin, 1905–56), i, 237, 303–6, 382–6, 450–2; ii, 350–4.



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judgements and redress from the English parliament.25 In other words, what happened in the Irish context was exactly what Edward had spelled out as his intentions for Scotland in the Ordinance of 1293 and the significant number of Irish petitions which survive in TNA series SC 8 suggests very strongly that there was no discouragement by the English towards Irish men and women bringing their cases to Westminster. Perhaps the fundamental difference lay not in the parliamentary systems of these territories, but in their political structures, and the obvious fact that Scotland (unlike Wales, Gascony and Ireland) possessed a monarchy, as well as an administrative and judicial system that had developed and had operated self-sufficiently and very successfully over the course of at least two centuries.26 Inevitably, even in the most conducive of circumstances, it would take time for Scotsmen to become accustomed to taking their grievances outside the existing system of appeal and engage with an altogether different jurisdiction whose locus was frequently hundreds of miles away from the Scottish border. But the existence of monarchy in Scotland placed a much greater obstacle in the path of any Scotsman/woman wishing to make use of Edward’s lordship. In Ireland, Wales and Gascony inhabitants wishing to petition the English parliament did so by circumventing the jurisdiction of a local official: in the case of Ireland and Wales, the Justiciar; and in Gascony, the Seneschal.27 Crucially, these men were English appointees, and almost all of them were Englishmen themselves. Thus, seeking recourse outside the local judicial structure in these regions simply involved moving from one level of English administration to a higher, more centralised level of English administration.28 The Irish justiciar might complain (as he did in 1352) that Irishmen and women were bypassing the Dublin administration and going straight to Westminster in order to secure judgements against him and his ministers; but his complaints were directed 25  Connolly, ‘Irish Material’, passim. 26  For the development (and distinctiveness) of the Scottish legal system in the thirteenth century, see H. L. MacQueen, ‘Scots Law under Alexander III’, in Scotland in the Reign of Alexander III 1249–1286, ed. N. H. Reid (Edinburgh, 1990), 74–102. 27  For the nature and duties of the Justiciar in Ireland (though for a slightly later period) see R. Frame, English Lordship in Ireland 1318–1361 (Oxford, 1982), 87–9. The Justiciar acted as the king’s representative in the Irish parliament: see Richardson and Sayles, ‘Irish Parliaments’, 130–1. For the legal structure of Wales under Edward I, see R. R. Davies, Conquest, Coexistence, and Change: Wales 1063–1415 (Oxford, 1987), 366–70. For the Seneschal in Gascony, see M.W. Labarge, Gascony: England’s First Colony 1204– 1453 (London, 1980), 56–7 and P. Chaplais, ‘The Chancery of Guyenne 1289–1453’, repr. in idem, Essays in Medieval Diplomacy, ch. viii. 28  For the administrative and judicial structure of Ireland (and its assimilation of English influence) see R. Frame, The Political Development of the British Isles 1100–1400 (Oxford, 1990), 85–9; H. G. Richardson and G. O. Sayles, The Administration of Ireland, 1172–1377 (Dublin, 1963); G. J. Hand, English Law in Ireland, 1290–1324 (Cambridge, 1967), esp. 1–20.

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towards Westminster and he had no hold over the Irish people themselves to persuade them that their appeals should be confined to Ireland and the Irish institutions (including parliament) that were in place to receive them.29 In Scotland, because a king and not an office holder was at the head of the judicial system, seeking redress outside this system was tantamount to a renunciation of allegiance to the Scottish monarchy. This much was made clear by the Scottish political community in the Treaty of Birgham (1290) when it was explicitly stated that the preservation of an independent system of ­ appellate jurisdiction within Scotland was a key aspect to the kingdom’s continued ­existence as a sovereign state. Clause 15 of the treaty stipulated that: Parliament shall not be held outwith the realm of Scotland or its marches to deal with those matters which concern that realm or its marches, or to deal with the status of the inhabitants within that realm30 The unstated implication of this declaration was that any Scotsman voluntarily appealing to the English king on a matter that could be settled by the Scottish king would, by this act, violate a central pillar of the Scottish political community’s sense of its own legal and political integrity. Thus, Scottish petitioners did not descend on the English parliament in large numbers because they probably calculated that the advantages to be gained by this course of action were far outweighed by the recriminations they were almost certainly bound to face once they returned north of the border. There is also the more pragmatic point that Edward’s control of Scotland in the period of Balliol’s kingship, though total at one level (i.e. over the person of Balliol himself) was rather less than comprehensive in terms of the legal and administrative structure of Scottish government. Possibly Scottish petitioners (particularly the more humble supplicants) kept away from Westminster in the 1290s simply because they calculated that staying within the Scottish system afforded them a better chance of resolution, because decisions would be taken by officers of the Scottish crown who had an intimate knowledge of Scottish laws and customs and who were readily able to mobilise the machinery of local government to have these decisions properly instituted. These factors could explain why the only people who petitioned Edward I during John Balliol’s 29  See R. Frame, English Lordship in Ireland, 1318–1361 (Oxford, 1982), 122; Hand, English Law in Ireland, 137–40; B. Hartland, ‘Edward I and Petitions Relating to Ireland’, in Thirteenth-Century England IX, ed. M. Prestwich et al. (Woodbridge, 2003), 60–1. For discussion on the relationship between the Irish parliament, the justiciar and the king of England, see J. Lydon, ‘Parliament and the Community of Ireland’, in Law and Disorder in Thirteenth-Century Ireland: The Dublin Parliament of 1297, ed. J. Lydon (Dublin, 1997), esp. 13–16. 30  As translated by G.W. S. Barrow, ‘A Kingdom in Crisis: Scotland and the Maid of Norway’, SHR lxix (1990), app.



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period of rule between 1291 and 1296 were either English subjects (who had grievances of a Scottish nature) or Scottish lords (including Macduff) who were disaffected from the Balliol regime.31 In the cases presented by the Scottish lords, their grievances were of sufficient import as to make Edward’s inter­ vention worthwhile and necessary (their requests required an act of grace by the English king), and each supplicant had nothing to lose by snubbing the Scottish king and the Scottish parliament because their power and position was secure enough in Scotland to withstand the fallout resulting from their ‘unpatriotic’ action. So, there may be some truth in Barrow’s assertion that appeals were not a factor in the breakdown of relations between England and Scotland up to 1296 because of the ‘indifference and hostility’ of the Scots to the new facilities offered by the English. If the possibility that Edward did not wish to press the Scots to make their appeals seems unlikely, then at the least Edward cannot have been surprised that his ‘opening up’ of the Westminster courts in the 1290s attracted so little business from inhabitants north of the border. One further point ought also to be borne in mind. If there is little evidence for extensive recourse by the Scots to the Westminster parliament in the 1290s, there is equally little evidence to suggest that the Scots converged on their own parliaments in such great numbers. Naturally, one must allow for the possibility that records have been lost; but the extant Scottish ‘parliament roll’ described by Duncan for the assembly of February 1293 recorded only a handful of cases arising from petitions that were brought by members of the Scottish political elite.32 This suggests that the Scottish parliament had not developed in any way to the same scale as the English parliament in its handling and dispatching of petitionary business. It may well be true, as argued by Richardson and Sayles and more recently endorsed by McQueen, that the primary function of the late-thirteenth-century Scottish parliament was the dispensation of justice, but this should not obscure the point that the scale of judicial business it was dealing with was small indeed.33 Partly this is to be explained by the comparative youth of the Scottish parliamentary institution and the fact that it had really only been in existence as a regular and ­distinctive 31  As discussed by Barrow, Bruce, 75–7. The cases brought before Edward have been discussed most recently by A. A. B. McQueen, ‘Parliament, the Guardians and John Balliol, 1284–1296’, in Parliament and Politics in Scotland, 1235–1560, ed. K. M. Brown and R. J.Tanner (Edinburgh, 2004), 38–40. 32  Duncan, ‘Early Scottish Parliaments’, 41–2. ‘The hearing of such plaints in the ­parliament of King John has left no record and it would be rash to assume that the ­invitation to complain was repeated at other parliaments [other than 1293], that the number of plaints was very high or geographically widespread, or that the hearings were comprehensive’, 46. 33  Richardson and Sayles, ‘Scottish Parliaments of Edward I’, 303; McQueen, ‘Parliament, the Guardians and John Balliol’, 40.

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national assembly for less than a decade, since the beginning of the period of guardianship following the death of Alexander III in 1286.34 Partly it could also be explained by the different socio-political structure of the northern kingdom and the comparatively decentralised state of its judicial structure.35 Thus, in this sense, if Edward had wished to subjugate Scotland to his lordship through the use of the system of appeals, just as Philip IV had brought Gascony closer within the orbit of Capetian control by using the Parlement of Paris, he not only underestimated the strength of loyalty and vested interest Scottish people felt towards the Scottish crown, he also seriously misunderstood the judicial structure of Scotland which depended far less than England on the ­intervention of the crown to settle disputes and grievances. John Balliol’s abdication in 1296 marked another important shift in Edward’s policy towards Scotland. Once again the kingdom was without its own king, only this time the situation was a direct result of actions taken by Edward himself. With the political head of Scotland now removed, and with the kingdom itself now firmly under English control, the people of Scotland now had no choice but to submit to Edward’s adjudication on matters which required the intervention of the crown. One group of people particularly reliant on Edward’s goodwill were the wives of those Scotsmen whose captivity in English hands had left them in dire straits. At least two dozen of these ‘war widows’ pleaded for clemency at the (Scottish) parliament held at Berwick in August 1296, over which Edward himself presided.36 Interestingly, it seems that only women sought to make use of English jurisprudence at this point, possibly because they were the only type of petitioner who could hope to gain the king’s grace by pleading their case as non-combatants. The full extent of Edward’s plans for Scotland would not, of course, become apparent until after Wallace’s insurrection had been suppressed in 1304. However, a hint of what was to come can be found in Edward’s insistence (as one of the conditions for their retention of their lands) that Scottish magnates attend the English parliament that was to meet at Bury St Edmunds in November 1296.37 Once again, one suspects that a point of ­principle was being laboured: the attendance at the English parliament 34  Ibid., 30–8. 35  ‘Scottish lordships retained a compact territorial character until well on in the later medieval period, a factor tending towards relative self-containment of disputes and their resolution within the lordship’; H. L. MacQueen, Common Law and Feudal Society in Medieval Scotland (Edinburgh, 1993), 252. For more general discussion see Frame, Political Development, 89–97. 36  Stevenson, Docs, ii, 92–8. For discussion of these petitions see C. Neville, ‘Widows of War: Edward I and the Women of Scotland during the War of Independence’, in Wife and Widow in Medieval England, ed. S. S.Walker (Michigan, 1993), 117–18. 37  Stevenson, Docs, ii, 31; Richardson and Sayles, ‘Scottish Parliaments of Edward I’, 310.



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by Scottish magnates accorded precisely with the new status which Scotland now faced as a ‘land’ without a political head of its own.38 It was a reminder that an individual summons to parliament in this period was not merely a privilege bestowed upon members of the political elite in recognition of their status and political importance; it was also an obligation or duty expected of noblemen as part of their acceptance and recognition of the sovereign power of their lord. Attendance also furnished parliamentary acts with the critical element of consensus; if Scottish lords attended the English parliament, this was tantamount to acknowledging that the English parliament had the authority to take decisions and implement policies that directly affected Scotland. We have no records showing whether Scottish landowners did in fact attend the parliament of November 1296, but in 1305 it was precisely this calculation which induced Edward to summon a group of Scottish magnates to the English parliament in order to oversee the setting up of the new administration in Scotland. In 1305 Edward seems finally to have achieved his goal of establishing an international membership for the English parliament. However, it is important to remember even at this stage that the Scottish parliament was not now disbanded. At some point in 1305 Edward instructed his lieutenant to hold a separate, Scottish, parliament at Scone. Though the circumstances of the meeting (and its deliber­ ations) are unclear,39 the fact that it was summoned suggests that Edward wished to retain a parliamentary system in Scotland, but have it run along similar lines of the Irish parliament, presided over by an English official and answerable ultimately and in a very direct way to the English judicial system. If this was the plan – to extend the ‘British’ supra-parliamentary system by having the Scottish institution join the Irish institution as subordinate bodies to the English parliament – this provides a useful contextual framework with which to understand why, for the first time, the English parliament in 1305 began attracting supplications from a broad cross-section of the Scottish people. There were, however, more immediate circumstances to explain this shift in the Scottish stance. In the first place, and perhaps most importantly, the settlement of 1304–05 (as is well known) was reached after a process that involved consultation, negotiation and agreement between Edward I and the Scottish nobles.40 This meant that potential Scottish supplicants no longer risked ­abrogating their allegiance to the Scottish crown or to the Scottish kingdom by crossing the border and seeking redress from the English king. The leaders 38  Scotland’s ‘status’ of course was ambivalent at this point, though Edward’s superior lordship over the land was not in any doubt; Prestwich, Edward I, 475. 39  Richardson and Sayles, ‘Scottish parliaments of Edward I’, 312. 40  Barrow, Bruce, 172–7; F. J.Watson, ‘Settling the Stalemate: Edward I’s Peace in Scotland, 1303–1305’ in Thirteenth-Century England VI, ed. M. Prestwich et al. (Woodbridge, 1997).

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of Scottish political society had indicated their acceptance of Edward I’s lordship in Scotland by performing personal homage to the English king in Spring 1304 (and later by their compliance in the framing of the ‘Ordinance for the Government of the Land’ in 1305). This was surely crucial in signalling to the broader population that they could now engage English institutions without fear of recrimination. In other words, the political climate had changed dramatically; the physical and psychological barrier that had previously separated Scottish administration from English interference had come down and many elements within Scottish society now fully (if reluctantly) embraced Edward’s lordship. Secondly, without a king as its ‘president’, it is debatable how far Scottish parliaments could now offer definitive judgement on cases brought to it by Scottish supplicants. If the choice now lay between, on the one hand, staying within the Scottish system of appellate jurisdiction to gain a resolution that would not ultimately stand up to a challenge through the English courts or, on the other hand, seeking recourse beyond Scotland’s borders for a ­resolution that was immediately safe and authoritative, then the evidence suggests that most Scotsman placed their private interests above all other considerations and pursued the second of these options. This was the consideration that probably induced Irish supplicants to bypass parliaments held in Dublin and go straight to Westminster, and it was probably what happened once the settlement of 1304 was established and Edward’s lordship over Scotland accepted. This leads us to the third factor to consider. In 1304–05, unlike in the 1290s, Scottish administration and justice had come to pass almost completely under the control of the English crown. True, there was no top-to-bottom, wide ranging governmental reform, as Wales had experienced a decade before, but the Scottish legal and governmental system was nevertheless completely ­subordinated to English control by the appointment of Englishmen to the most senior positions in Scottish administration.41 These included the royal ­lieutenant, the chamberlain, the chancellor and most sheriffs in the Border and Lothian regions. With this framework in place, supplicants from Scotland could petition the English king with reasonable confidence that any decision taken on his/her case could be implemented via the actions of officials who were now answerable directly to the English crown and who possessed sufficient power and authority in the localities to turn decisions taken by the English crown into real and concrete action. In any case, the appropriation by the English of the main offices of (the Scottish) state provided little ­ alternative to Scottish supplicants than to resort to the English parliament if they wished Scottish government to be mobilised on their behalf. Either way, the large number of responses to the petitions of 1305, which instructed the lieutenant or chamberlain of Scotland to act on a case brought before the English ­parliament, usefully 41  Barrow, Bruce, 174–6; Prestwich, ‘Colonial Scotland’, 7.



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illustrates how central government in Scotland was now being stimulated into action by Scotsmen who were passing through an English administrative ­structure located at Westminster. What can be said about the petitions presented in 1305? 42 The first point to make is that a large majority of the so-called ‘Scottish’ petitions enrolled for the two English parliaments which met in 1305 were in fact presented by Englishmen (and some women) whose grievances or requests related to Scottish affairs. For the most part these petitions can be grouped into three distinct categories: firstly, petitions asking for the restitution of lands, either held by the supplicant before the war and now in the king’s hands, or held illegally by a third party;43 secondly, petitions asking for royal patronage, in the form of a grant or favour;44 and thirdly, petitions seeking compensation or repayment of debts, often accrued during the supplicant’s war service on the English side.45 Leaving these examples to one side the remaining petitions (roughly a third of the overall total) can be identified with reasonable certainty as having been drafted by Scottish subjects. One is immediately struck by the predominance of Scottish religious houses amongst these supplications. These included establish­ ments at Scone, Sweetheart, Dundrennan, St Andrews, Jedburgh, Melrose, Kelso, Coupar, Arbroath, Coldstream, Coldingham and Eccles. The subjects of these petitions included the following requests: 1) for compensation (for goods taken – often during war – without payment, or the destruction of buildings by the English); 2) for permission to raise revenue (e.g. from tithes or the farms of shrievalties or towns); 3) for confirmation of charters; 4) for redress against injustice; and finally 5) for the restitution of rents for lands held south of the border.46 Why religious houses should figure so prominently amongst these Scottish petitioners is an interesting point to consider. Perhaps, as institutions with a non-secular outlook whose allegiance to domestic political authority was to some extent watered down by an affiliation to Rome and to their respective, internationally based, religious Orders, these establishments were better equipped than most lay petitioners to adapt to, and to take advantage of, 42  There is some discussion of this in F.Watson, Under the Hammer: Edward I and Scotland 1286–1307 (East Linton, 1998), 203–9. 43  E.g. PROME, Roll 12, items 280 (268); 305 (292); 306 (293); 314 (301); 321 (305); 325 (309); 344 (326) and 339 (321). 44  E.g. PROME, Roll 12, items 307 (294); 308 (295); 311 (298); 312 (299); 322 (306); 346 (328); 347 (329); 360 (342); 362 (344); 369 (351); and 372 (354). 45  E.g. PROME, Roll 12, items 282 (270); 284 (272); 286 (274); 287 (275); 345 (327); 367 (349); 376 (358); and 377 (359). 46  PROME, Roll 12, items 289 (277); 292 (279); 293 (280); 294 (281); 295 (282); 296 (283); 297 (284); 298 (285); 299 (286); 313 (300); 315 (302); 317 (303); 318; 319; 323 (307); 328 (312); 334 (317); 343 (325); 373 (355); 379 (361); 380 (362); 381; 382; 383; 390 (369); 396 (373); 406 (379); 407 (380); 409 (382); 414 (385); 428 (398); 436; 437; and 449.

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changed ­ political circumstances. At the very least, one would expect these houses to have been very familiar with the petitionary form in their dealings with Rome, and to have had the secretarial and legal expertise to make the drafting of supplications to the English crown a fairly straightforward and familiar process. More pertinently, many of the houses would have been familiar with the English crown as possessors of land south of the border, a situation which no doubt meant they were already accustomed to approaching the English king with requests and/or grievances. Furthermore, many of these institutions may have calculated that they stood a good chance of receiving favourable responses to their requests (which, in fact, they did) not only because they could appeal to the English king’s sense of obligation to protect and underpin the clergy (who should theoretically have enjoyed immunity from the ravages of war),47 but also because they were one step removed from the armed rebellion that Edward had endured in recent years. The regular clergy, unlike the secular clergy, seem for the most part to have remained distant from the Anglo-Scottish conflict.48 Finally, this ‘non-combatant’ status also meant that they had grievances (such as unpaid debts or destruction of property) which only they could realistically expect Edward to pay attention to: few secular Scottish petitioners stood any chance of securing compensation from the English king for damage caused by what, in the eyes of the English, was considered to have been an armed rebellion. The remaining ‘secular’ petitions were presented by Scotsmen and women from a wide spectrum of social rank. At the top end were petitions from some of the Scottish nobility including a petition from John Comyn earl of Buchan who requested the wardship of one of his tenants;49 a petition from Patrick of Dunbar earl of March who asked for sustenance in light of the destruction of his estates;50 and a petition from William earl of Ross asking for certain lands in fee farm having spent a considerable sum of his own money subduing the islands of Scotland.51 We should not perhaps be too surprised to see these nobles making use of English justice since they belonged to the section of the Scottish nobility who had readily comes to terms with Edward and now fully accepted his overlordship.52 Like the religious houses, both Comyn and the earl of March also held land south of the border and so would not have been unfamiliar in dealing with the English crown. There were also petitions from 47  Keen, Laws, 189–94. 48  G.W. S. Barrow, The Kingdom of the Scots: Government, Church and Society from the Eleventh to the Fourteenth Century (London, 1973), 250–1. 49  PROME, Roll 12, items 329–30 (313) and 427 (397). Note that the brother of this tenant, Gilbert de Lasceles, also petitioned for custody of these lands: NA, SC8/10/454. 50  PROME, Roll 12, items 450 and 452. 51  PROME, Roll 12, items 451 and 453. 52  See Young, Comyns, 186–95.



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‘gentry’. A good example – because it mirrors exactly the type of complaint English supplicants were presenting to parliament – was the request of Hamelin de Trup and his son that they receive justice against the sheriff of Bannffshire, Duncan of Frendracht, who had burnt down his houses and unjustly imprisoned his men.53 And there were petitions from relatively humble individuals, such as Eve of Stirling who requested to be restored in possession of a messuage and three acres of land in Stirling which had been taken from her by the Scots for her collaboration with the English during the latter’s siege of Stirling castle in 1304.54 There was also a petition from Dougal the ferryman requesting the English king’s support for maintenance of two ferryboats on the river Spey. There were also petitions from communities: a complaint presented by the burgesses of Perth against the burgesses of Dundee, who were alleged to have usurped to themselves certain profits that by right belonged to Perth, demonstrates that the inhabitants of some towns were not slow to seize the opportunity to gain advantage over their competitors by seeking the inter­vention of the English crown.55 Perhaps the most intriguing petition was presented by the ‘king’s husbandmen in Scotland’ which asked Edward to allow them to hold their land ‘in the manner in which the king’s villeins do in England’ so that they would no longer be arbitrarily removed from this land as they claimed to be at the present time.56 This, and a few other examples of ‘collective petitions’ from the ‘burgesses of Scotland’,57 can probably be taken to represent the first examples of Scottish ‘common petitions’. They demonstrate that for some, the fundamental change in the political system opened up welcome opportunities to seek deep-seated reform to long-standing grievances. After 1306 there is almost no evidence to show that Scotsmen utilised the English parliament for their own purposes. With Bruce’s resurgence and a state of civil war in Scotland government effectively broke down and the border was closed off. Once Bruce’s kingship had stabilised, and with Edward II’s succession to the English throne in 1307, the relationship between England and Scotland fundamentally changed. Far from aggressively seeking to assert its lordship over the northern kingdom, England now struggled merely to provide adequate defence from Scottish incursions into its northern counties. The ‘Scottish’ ­ petitions that were now presented in the English parliament reflected this dramatic change of fortune: virtually the only business which the receivers and triers 53  PROME, Roll 12, items 416 (387); 417 (388); and 418 (389). For original petition see SC 8/9/436. 54  PROME, Roll 12, item 300 (287). For original petition see SC 8/9/441. 55  PROME, Roll 12, item 326 (310). 56  PROME, Roll 12, item 430 (400). This has been briefly alluded to by G.W. S. Barrow, Kingship and Unity. Scotland 1000–1306 (London, 1981), 138. 57  PROME, Roll 12, items 351 (333); 410 (383); and 412.

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handled in the decades following Bruce’s seizure of power were presented by Englishmen and women on matters relating to the consequences of Scottish military ascendancy: the destruction of property and the impoverishment of local communities caused by Scottish raiding; the impoverishment of army veterans as a result of long and ruinous service fighting against the Scots; and the loss of territory in Scotland as a result of confiscation by the Scottish crown.58 These sorts of issues predominated throughout the reign of Edward II and it is not until 1328 that we have evidence of Scottish subjects once again making use of the English parliament. Just two petitions have been found, both tellingly from religious establishments. One was from the abbot of Jedburgh who requested the restitution of the church of Arthuret (Cumberland) and the advowson of the church of Abboteley (Huntingdonshire) that had been confiscated from the abbey as a result of the Anglo-Scottish conflict in Edward II’s reign – an enquiry was ordered to ascertain the facts.59 The other petition, which had a similar result, was presented by the abbot of Arbroath in the same year.60 In this case, the ­petitioner’s predecessor, John de Angus, was alleged to have deserted the Scottish cause early in Edward II’s reign and had come to reside at Durham whilst living off the proceeds of the church of Haltwhistle (Northumberland).61 On the abbot’s death, the king of England had granted the church to a third, unnamed party. The petition requested restitution on the basis of the peace treaty recently agreed between England and Scotland and also (interestingly) because Angus had died in the English king’s faith – a fine example of a religious community seeking to cash in on what, at the time, must have seemed a gross act of betrayal by their abbot. These two petitions were clearly taking advantage of the brief diplomatic rapprochement between England and Scotland which followed the signing of the treaty of Northampton/Edinburgh in 1328. They differ fundamentally from the petitions of 1305 because they concerned the income from lands that the petitioners held in England. Thus, neither ­ transgressed any sensitivities over English claims to exercise appellate jurisdiction over Scotland because the petitioners were petitioning as aliens holding land in England rather than as Scottish subjects

58  A large number of these petitions have been calendared in Ancient Petitions Relating to Northumberland, ed. C. M. Fraser, Surtees Society clxxvi (1966); Northern Petitions Illustrative of Life in Berwick, Cumbria and Durham in the Fourteenth Century, ed. C. M. Fraser, Surtees Society cxciv (1981). 59  NA, SC 8/16/756. 60  NA, SC 8/16/757. 61  This case is outlined in The Heads of Religious Houses in Scotland from the Twelfth to Sixteenth Centuries, ed. D. E. R.Watt and N. F. Shead (Edinburgh, 2001), 5. Angus was probably demitted from office as a result of his English connections in 1309, though English documents were still addressing him as abbot of Arbroath as late 1313.



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of the English king petitioning on matters relating to the internal affairs of Scotland. The picture after 1307 is complicated by a more significant aberration which occurred in the early 1330s. This decade is particularly ill-served by parlia­mentary records, for not only do the parliament rolls survive for only a proportion of the English parliaments that met in these years, but large numbers of the individual petitions that were presented in these assemblies are also likely to have been lost as a result of centuries of neglect and dispersal. Fortunately, successful petitions often left an imprint on other government records and in certain contexts this provides a way to overcome the gaps in the archive.62 In the Rotuli Scotiae there are a series of entries marked with the warranty note per peticionem de Consilio (by petition of the council). These entries cluster around two periods: the first group, comprising twenty-one separate entries, all date to 4 March 1334; and the second group, comprising nine separate entries, date to between 10 June and 12 July 1334.63 No other entries warranted ‘by petition of the council’ have been identified either in the period before or after these dates. In 1334, an English parliament sat at York between 21 February and 2 March, so it is highly likely that the first group of entries were prompted by petitions which had been presented to the king in parliament. In all likelihood, the petitions had been dealt with individually throughout the course of this parliament and were then held over to a quieter time, shortly after parliament had ended, where clerks acted on their endorsements by making the relevant entries in the Rotuli Scotiae as a single ‘job lot’. The second batch of petitions date to a period when no English parliament was in session, but the first five almost certainly were handled by the English crown during Edward III’s stay at Newcastle in June 1334 when Edward Balliol submitted himself and Scotland to English overlordship. These remaining petitions, judging by the date and location marked on the entries in Rotuli Scotiae, were probably dispatched by Edward during his leisurely return southwards in July. Without a doubt these petitions were generated by the sudden change in the political makeup of Scotland following the Scottish defeat at Halidon Hill and the subsequent capture of Berwick in July 1333. Almost all the petitions seek the restitution of lands and tenements that the supplicants had previously held in Berwick, but which had been lost when Robert Bruce had captured the city in 1318. As such, they are predominantly from Englishmen seeking to regain possessions that they had formerly held in Scottish territory. Though it is hard to prove, one suspects that some of these petitioners may have been men who 62  I develop this methodological approach in greater detail in Justice and Grace: Private Petitioning and the English parliament in the Late Middle Ages (OUP, forthcoming). 63  Rot. Scot., i, 264–72, 275. Seven of the originating petitions from the series SC 8 have been printed by Fraser in Northern Petitions, 12–27.

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filled the lower ranks of the army of ‘dispossessed’ that was led by Edward Balliol and which, with the support of Edward III, spearheaded the campaign to remove the Bruce dynasty from power. The parliament of February 1334 was the first to meet following the recapture of Berwick. Its location at York, within relatively easy reach of the north, may have been intended in part to facilitate the redistribution of Scottish lands in favour of men loyal to the English crown. The crown’s evident willingness to accommodate the petitioner’s requests in relation to Berwick may also have indicated its concern to repopulate the town in light of the departure of the majority of Scottish merchants who refused to swear allegiance to the English king.64 Insofar as Berwick remained, in legal terms at least, a Scottish town,65 the parliament of February 1334 can be seen in the same light as the assemblies of 1305 in that it played an important role in providing concrete expression to English overlordship over Scottish territory. It also provided a focal point for those who wished to be rewarded (or ­reimbursed) for their allegiance to the English crown. As in 1305, the use made of parliament in 1334 rested overwhelmingly on there being the bureaucratic and admini­strative apparatus in place to ensure that ­ decisions taken on the petitions would be implemented.66 We should not, however, ­ exaggerate the importance of these petitions: few Scottish subjects seem to have resorted to the English parliament at this point, and the disappearance of the warranty note ‘by pet of council’ in the Rotuli Scotiae after 1334 suggests that the English parliament never really gained much of a jurisdictional foothold over the Scottish lands which were now in English possession.67 Soon, most of this land would be recovered by the Scots anyway, leaving just Berwick and Lochmaben in English control by 1342.68 For the present purposes, the true significance of 1334 lay not in the two dozen petitions presented in the English parliament by former citizens of Berwick, but in the terms agreed by Edward III for the settlement of what remained of Scotland on Edward Balliol. For understandable reasons, historians have placed great emphasis on the cession to Edward III of a large part of southern Scotland to English rule and Balliol’s agreement that he should perform homage for the territories which remained in his hands.69 There is no 64  B. L. Atkinson, ‘Berwick Upon Tweed in the Wars of Edward III’ (unpublished MA thesis, University of Leeds, 1959), 43–9. 65  On the status of Berwick and the other lands ceded by Balliol to Edward III in 1334, see Tuck, ‘Tax Haven’, 149. 66  On the administration of Berwick, see Nicholson, Edward III, 142–3. 67  The exception was Berwick which, in spite of having no parliamentary representation, made effective use of the English parliament across the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; Northern Petitions, ed. Fraser, Section I; Tuck, ‘Tax Haven’, 164. 68  B.Webster, ‘Scotland without a King, 1329–1341’, in Medieval Scotland, ed. Grant and Stringer, 229–36. 69  See, for example, Webster, ‘Scotland without a king’, 230.



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doubting that these terms (re)established in a very explicit manner the vassal status of the new Scottish king in relation to the English king. However, it is easy to overlook the fact that in return for these conditions Edward III agreed that Balliol was not to be bound to attend English parliaments and, crucially, that English parliaments would not have jurisdiction to hear appeals from those parts of Scotland retained by the Scottish crown.70 These concessions effectively ensured that the Scottish legal and administrative systems would continue to operate free from external interference. They meant, in effect, that Balliol would be supreme lord in his land without his subjects undermining his authority by seeking the intervention of the English king against decisions that he had taken. The settlement of 1334 thus re-imposed a feudal relationship between England and Scotland, but it in a form which suggested a far less vigorous assertion by the English of the feudal rights Edward III’s grandfather had sought to impose so comprehensively. Edward III probably had good reason to uphold the integrity of the Scottish government, not least because a large part of Scotland was now under his direct control anyway; but there is no escaping the fact that the negation of his right to hear appeals represented an important climb-down on a point of principle that Edward I had considered to be absolutely intrinsic to English claims of sovereignty over the Scottish people. The evident flexibility of Edward III towards the question of appeals may provide useful background for the final part of the discussion. From 1341, David II was de facto king of Scotland: the Balliol cause had been lost and Scotland had now, almost in its entirety, returned to the allegiance of the Bruce dynasty. Co-incidentally, it is from the early 1340s that we have the start of a virtually unbroken series of parliament rolls for the English parliament.71 Each of these rolls records the appointment of receivers and triers to handle petitions from Scotland and the other territories over which England claimed sovereignty. Their appointment clearly bore no relevance to the reality of political life in Scotland; but it did at least symbolise the continued claim of overlordship which England maintained over the Scottish kingdom. In the 1350s this pattern of appointment was interrupted: in the parliaments of 1351 and 1352 no triers were appointed to handle Scottish petitions and in the following parliaments 70  Rot. Scot., i, 262 (1 March 1334); Nicholson, Edward III, 155. It is true, as Nicholson points out (155, n. 2), that Balliol was summoned to attend the English parliaments of January and April 1349 but by this point the scheme of 1334 had long since collapsed and Balliol was now permanently resident in England. 71  There are no extant parliament rolls for the assemblies that met between 1334 and 1338. From October 1339 there is an uninterrupted series until 1355: see H. G. Richardson and G. O. Sayles, ‘The Parliaments of Edward III, Pt 1’, in idem, The English Parliament, ch. xxi, app.

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of 1354 and 1355 neither triers nor receivers for Scotland were recorded on the parliament roll. When receivers and triers are next recorded,72 in the parliament of 1362, Scotland had resumed its place with Ireland, Gascony and Wales as the territories over which the English parliament claimed jurisdiction. It is possible, of course, that these omissions were simply the result of ­clerical error or confusion. The evident confusion which existed in the minds of the exchequer and chancery clerks over the status of David Bruce and Edward Balliol demonstrates that government records were not immune to such irregularities.73 But if we accept that the system of appeals lay at the very heart of questions relating to the sovereignty and status of Scotland – questions not easily confused in a forum as public as parliament – then the possibility that the omissions were the result of design rather than error should at least be considered. This is particularly important when we consider that the rather haphazard way in which Scotland was either partially or wholly left out of the committees of receivers and triers in the 1350s was quite uncharacteristic of the general performance of fourteenth-century parliamentary clerks who normally recorded the personnel and remit of these committees assiduously. The obvious connection lies with the protracted negotiations that occurred in the 1350s over the terms of David II’s release from captivity.74 Until 1350 England had tried to exact as high a price as possible from the Scots in return for the Scottish king’s release. This ‘no compromise’ approach – which laid particular stress on the feudal obligations which future Scottish kings would have to fulfil (including homage, the attendance at English parliaments and a requirement that Scotland should sever all ties with France) – cut little ice with the Scots and it soon became obvious that if the diplomatic stalemate was to be broken a compromise of sorts would have to be reached. At the end of 1350 both Edward III and David II pinned their hopes on achieving a final peace between England and Scotland by settling Scotland on one of Edward’s younger sons, assuming David II died childless. The prerequisite for this settlement was recognition of David II’s dignity as king of Scotland, for he was to be allowed to return to Scotland and see out his reign. This provision was incorporated, albeit tacitly, into an agreement reached at Newcastle in August 1351, though as early as May 1350 David had been referred to in an English

72  No parliament rolls exist for the assemblies of 1357, 1358, 1360 or 1361. 73  Duncan notes that both Balliol and Bruce were described as ‘king of Scotland’ in the same exchequer roll dating to 1350: A. A. M. Duncan, ‘Honi soit qui mal y pense: David II and Edward III, 1346–52’, SHR lxvii (1988), 113–41, 119–20. Contrary to Duncan’s assertion, chancery clerks also occasionally bestowed royal status on David II: there are letters recorded in the Rotuli Scotiae dating to 7 July 1353, 18 June 1354, 8 May 1357 and 14 July 1358 which refer to David as king: Rot. Scot., i, 759, 765, 803 and 828. 74  This paragraph relies on Duncan, ‘Honi soit’, passim.



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exchequer record as ‘David Bruce king of Scotland’.75 The significance of the plan was summed up by Duncan who stated that it entailed ‘the willingness of Edward III [not only] to settle for presumptive succession by a younger son, [but also] it seems, the abandonment of a claim for homage to the English king by the king of a distinct Scottish kingdom’.76 In other words, the arrangement meant that Scotland would eventually be ruled by a junior branch of the English royal family, but that there would be no feudal – or administrative – ties between the two kingdoms. Though it must be stressed that the argument is speculative, the omission of Scottish receivers and triers may in some way have been linked to Edward’s desire to come to terms with David II during the 1350s. The apparent shutting down of the English parliament’s facilities to deal with petitions from Scottish subjects could have been conceived to impress on the Scottish political community Edward’s intention to guarantee Scotland’s administrative independence if the succession was decided in his favour. It is to be noted that at least three out of these four parliaments met at times when English terms for a settlement were in the process of being considered by Scottish nobles. The parliament of 1351 (9 February–1 March), for example, met at a time when William Douglas had returned to Scotland to present English terms to the Scottish council; the parliament of 1352 (13 January–11 February) assembled at a time when David II himself had returned to Scotland to put the Newcastle agreement to the Scottish political community; and the parliament of 1354 (28 April–20 May) met at a time when more negotiations were underway which finally resulted in the proposed treaty of July 1354.77 Indeed, it is possible, at this point, that David had once again returned to Scotland to press his and Edward’s case for the heritable accession to the Scottish throne of an English prince. The parliament of 1355 presents difficulties since by this point AngloScottish relations would seem to have been shaped by the agreements reached in July 1354, which simply shelved the proposals for Plantaganet succession to the Scottish throne. However, the treaty of 1354 was not ratified and it may well be that Edward considered the resumption of parliament’s theoretical claim to jurisdiction over Scotland to be an imprudent act when there still remained the possibility that David would persuade the Scottish political community of his good intentions.78 This is hinted at by the fact that in the

75  The original text for the proposed peace treaty is in NA, E 39/2/2, but it is printed as an Appendix in Duncan, ‘Honi Soit’, 139–41. 76  Duncan, ‘Honi Soit’, 124. 77  Duncan, ‘Honi Soit’, 121–4, 128–9; E.W. M. Balfour-Melville, Edward III and David II, Historical Association (1954), 16 78  A. A. M. Duncan, ‘A Question about the Succession, 1364’, 7; Balfour-Melville, Edward III and David II, 16–17.

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revised ­ documentation for agreement in 1354, David was referred to by the English as ‘king of Scotland’.79 It is interesting to note that in the early 1360s, when the idea of succession to the Scottish throne by Edward or his son was revived, receivers and triers for petitions from Scotland were now appointed in the English parliament. At first sight, this would appear to undermine the reasoning put forward to explain their disappearance in the 1350s. But in the 1360s, the diplomatic climate had changed significantly after the signing of the Anglo-French treaty of Brétigny at the start of the decade. Scotland was now left isolated and vulnerable, and could no longer trade, as it had done in the 1350s, on its alliance with France to exert pressure on the English. In these more favourable circumstances, Edward was less willing to compromise on his ultimate ambition to inherit the throne of Scotland and the appointment of receivers and triers for Scotland may have been intended to convey to the Scots his determination to press this claim, just as their absence in the 1350s was (arguably) used to convey his willingness to come to terms.80 The other significant factor to harden English attitudes towards the question of Scottish succession was that in April 1363 David married his mistress Margaret Drummond, thus throwing into serious doubt whether David would now in fact die childless. So it is possible, but by no means certain, that the pattern of appointment of the receivers and triers in parliament was determined by, and responded to, the diplomatic position which England held towards its northern neighbour. Someone in parliament, possibly the king himself, appreciated the importance that the appointment of receivers and triers had for English claims to exercise sovereign power over Scotland. Their withdrawal in a series of assemblies in the 1350s could have signalled Edward’s desire to solve the Scottish ‘problem’ by neutralising one of the most powerful ways England expressed it sovereignty over the northern kingdom: the English parliament’s claim to act as the highest court of the Scottish realm. In the end, then, Richardson and Sayles were right, to a degree. Insofar as they asserted that the receivers and triers of private petitions served no real purpose after the mid-fourteenth century, this judgement most certainly can be applied to the receivers and triers of Scottish petitions who never seem to have had their hands full dealing with complaints from Scottish subjects, except in the parliaments of 1305. Few Scottish petitions reached the English parliament, but so long as England claimed sovereignty over Scotland, the English crown was obliged to make these appointments as a matter of principle. For a year or so, at the end of Edward I’s reign, the theoretical claim to exercise 79  Campbell, ‘England, Scotland’, 198–9. 80  Duncan, ‘Question About Succession’, 10.



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appellate juris­diction over Scotland became a reality and it is possible, had Bruce not seized the throne, that the use made of Westminster by Scottish supplicants would have gone far towards assimilating Scottish society and its political community into the orbit of English control. But 1305 turned out to be an aberration. For virtually all the period considered in this discussion English claims to juris­prudence over Scotland simply did not match the political reality on the ground. Scottish petitioners stayed away from the English parliament not out of a sense of ­ patriotic duty but simply because (for most of the time) the English parliament was completely powerless to offer effective remedy to their ­ grievances. In the end, perhaps the most important role fulfilled by the appointment of the receivers and triers for Scotland lay in the diplomatic sphere and the facility it offered Edward III to express his willingness to countenance a fully independent and sovereign Scotland in the negotiations he held with the Scots in the 1350s.

11

National and Political Identity in Anglo-Scottish Relations, c.1286–1377: A Governmental Perspective Andrea Ruddick*

D

u r i ng the r eigns of Edward I, II and III, the king of England claimed dominion over a number of territories beyond England itself: Wales, Ireland, Gascony and other remaining French possessions, and, from 1337, the whole of France. English claims to overlordship of Scotland from 1290 thus fitted into the broader context of what the late Rees Davies has dubbed ‘the first English empire’, a shifting range of territories over which the king of England claimed varying degrees of authority. Consequently, while all English people were subjects of the king of England, not all subjects of the king of England were English. What, then, was the role of national identity and nationality in this complex political world? What was the relationship between national ­identity and political allegiance? Was nationality politically significant at all? The issue is particularly complicated with respect to Scotland because the English king’s lordship there was, for the most part, much less direct than the colonial-style rule imposed in Ireland, Gascony and Wales. Moreover, it is well known that the relationship between allegiance and nationality during the Scottish Wars of Independence was far from straightforward. By 1296, when conflict broke out, a long period of relatively peaceful co-existence had created networks of cross-border landholding, office-holding, inter-marriage, *  This essay was revised for publication during a British Academy Postdoctoral fellowship.   R. R. Davies, The First English Empire. Power and Identity in the British Isles, 1093–1343 (Oxford, 2000).   Compare with, e.g., R. Frame, ‘England and Ireland, 1171–1399’, in England and her Neighbours, 1066–1453. Essays in Honour of Pierre Chaplais, ed. M. Jones and M.Vale (London, 1989), 144–5, 151–4; R. R. Davies, Conquest, Coexistence and Change: Wales, 1063–1415 (Oxford, 1987), 289–317, 356–73; M.Vale, The Angevin Legacy and the Hundred Years War, 1250–1340 (Oxford, 1990), 63–78.



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kinship and ecclesiastical patronage, connections which appear to have created what Tuck has called ‘a genuine dilemma’ of allegiance for some, ­particularly ­landholders, when they were forced to choose sides. Such choices have sometimes surprised modern scholars; for example, the motivation of border-dwelling Scots who served in English garrisons has long preoccupied some Scottish historians. Meanwhile, it has been suggested that the English ­ inhabitants of the Anglo-Scottish borders had a weaker sense of national ­identity than people elsewhere in the kingdom, on the basis of their fluctuating allegiance to the king. The situation also created problems for the English royal government at the time, as it became necessary to accommodate these complexities into a political discourse which, as we shall see, was centred upon the presumption of a clear-cut dichotomy between nations, in which it was normally assumed that allegiance was determined by nationality. This paper therefore seeks to address the vexed relationship between national identity and political allegiance in Anglo-Scottish relations and, in doing so, to shed light on the broader significance of national identity in the political culture of late-medieval Britain. These questions will be examined principally from a governmental perspective, by exploring the vocabulary of English official documents, primarily in the Scottish Rolls. Although these documents were usually addressed to local officials or magnates, their contents were often transmitted to a wider audience by means of public proclamation and, more indirectly, by providing local ­officials with arguments to justify their demands. Consequently, it is likely that the language used in official documents, and the political thought that it represented, was available to a wider section of society than just the political elite to whom the documents were addressed, particularly in view of the broadening of political society in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century England, by   J. A. Tuck, ‘Northumbrian Society in the Fourteenth Century’, NH xxi (1971), 22–5, 30. See ch. 6, 00n., above, for fuller bibliography.   A phenomenon noted in Barrow, Bruce, 245–9; A. D. M. Barrell, Medieval Scotland (Cambridge, 2000), 135–6.   Tuck, ‘Northumbrian Society’, 25–30; A. Goodman, ‘Introduction’, in Goodman and Tuck, Border Societies, 1–10; idem, ‘Religion and Warfare in the Anglo-Scottish Marches’, in Medieval Frontier Societies, ed. R. Bartlett and A. Mackay (Oxford, 1989) – a view challenged by MacDonald, Bloodshed, 235–40.   On political culture, see L. Clark and M. C. Carpenter (ed.), The Fifteenth Century, IV. Political Culture in Late Medieval Britain (Woodbridge, 2004), esp. ‘Introduction’, 1–19.   Rot. Scot., i.   J. R. Maddicott, ‘The County Community and the Making of Public Opinion in Fourteenth-Century England’, TRHS, 5th ser., xxviii (1978), 33–6; idem, ‘Parliament and the Constituencies, 1272–1377’, in The English Parliament in the Middle Ages, ed. R. G. Davies and J. H. Denton (Manchester, 1981); B. C. Keeney, ‘Military Service and the Development of Nationalism in England, 1272–1327’, Speculum xxii (1947), 543; J. A. Doig, ‘Political Propaganda and Royal Proclamations in late Medieval England’, Historical Research lxxi (1998).

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which an increasing proportion of the population was drawn into an orbit of shared political awareness and official responsibilities. How, then, were Anglo-Scottish relations portrayed in official rhetoric, and what was the role of national identity in this discourse? In some ways, much of the rhetoric used by the government to appeal to the English population in this period was inherently ‘national’, even before its specific comments on the Scots are examined. By the middle years of Edward II’s reign, a ‘package’ of related elements, considered essential to English national culture and identity, had emerged in official rhetoric as the justification for financial and military demands, which centred upon the honour of the king and the defence of the kingdom of England, often accompanied by the English people and, sometimes, the English church.10 This vocabulary of king and kingdom as a national political unit did not emerge from a vacuum, but reflected developments in political thought across Europe over the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In common with other emergent national monarchies, notably France, Spain and Bohemia, such vocabulary reflected the appropriation of Roman law ­ terminology and concepts by royal bureaucrats to claim that a king was ‘emperor in his own realm’, independent of papal or imperial authority.11 This greatly enhanced the theoretical public power of the king, on the basis that he was a ‘national’ monarch, with complete sovereignty within his kingdom, in contrast to the more limited powers of feudal monarchy. Such powers included the right to demand taxation and military service from all subjects directly, overriding private property rights in an emergency for the common good.12 Of course, in England, this was accompanied by the growth and ­ institutionalisation of the common law, which had a greater impact on the extension of the king of England’s practical power over the twelfth and thirteenth centuries than   E.g. G. L. Harriss, ‘Political Society and the Growth of Government in Late Medieval England’, Past and Present cxxxviii (1993), 28–57; W. M. Ormrod, Political Life in Medieval England, c.1300–1450 (Basingstoke, 1995), 39–60; M. C. Carpenter, ‘Gentry and Community’, JBS xxxiii (1994), 340–80; Maddicott, ‘Parliament and the Constituencies’; idem, ‘County Community’. 10  E.g. Rot. Scot., i, 196 – ‘nos et honorem nostram ac salvationem regni nostri et populi ...’ (1319). For further examples, see Rot. Scot.; Parl. Writs, vol. ii., especially for the years 1314–27. See also A. Ruddick, ‘National Sentiment and National Identity in England, c.1272–c.1377’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 2005), 76–105. 11  A. Black, Political Thought in Europe, 1250–1450 (Cambridge, 1992), 92–104, 113, 139; J. H. Burns (ed.), The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought, c.350–c.1450 (Cambridge, 1988), 159, 349–52, 363, 433, 464–9; E. H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies. A Study in Medieval Political Theology (Princeton, 1957), 247–8; G. Post, Studies in Medieval Legal Thought. Public Law and the State, 1100–1322 (Princeton, 1964), 318–19, 434, 448–93. 12  G. L. Harriss, King, Parliament and Public Finance in Medieval England to 1369 (Oxford, 1975), 17–18, 21–6, 45; Black, Political Thought in Europe, 24–8, 138–9, 187; Post, Medieval Legal Thought, 21–2, 316–20.



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did Roman law theory. Nonetheless, Roman law clearly affected English legal thought and practice in this period, even if this did not amount to a coherent theory of sovereignty.13 It is in this context, therefore, that the rhetoric of English government ­documents needs to be understood. References to the defence of king, kingdom and people against the Scots were not just rhetorical devices calculated to appeal to the population’s purse-strings; they represented specific strands of political thought relating to national monarchy, at the expense of older ideas of universal empire and feudal kingship. What is more, the ‘national’ nature of these emergent European kingdoms was also reinforced by their frequent coincidence with perceived racial or genealogical people groups, believed to derive from biblical or classical origins, which produced the expectation of a correspondence between political and ethnic boundaries as well.14 In turning to Anglo-Scottish relations after 1296, it is therefore unsurprising to find that government documents often portrayed the situation in terms of a war between two clear-cut national groups. Throughout the period, the standard shorthand expression used in official rhetoric to describe the enemy was ‘the Scots, our enemies and rebels’, grouping them together as one homogeneous national unit.15 This impression of national homogeneity was supported by the stock phrases used to describe raids into England. Accounts of Scottish plans in 1314 ‘to invade and inhumanely to commit destruction, fires, murder and diverse other crimes’ will be a familiar litany to anyone acquainted with these sources, and the same language continued to appear in official rhetoric for the rest of the fourteenth century.16 In addition, such descriptions were usually accompanied by the attribution of negative moral characteristics to the Scots, such as wickedness, inhumanity, pride and stubbornness.17 Letters to foreign allies offered particularly lurid accounts of Scottish activities, perhaps in order to justify a war against fellow Christians at a time when crusading aspirations still informed a great deal of political rhetoric.18 For example, a letter to the 13  J. C. Holt, Magna Carta (2nd edn, Cambridge, 1992), 75–122, esp. 86–97; J. Hudson, The Formation of the English Common Law. Law and Society in England from the Norman Conquest to Magna Carta (London, 1996), 56, 118–56, 160–1. 14  Black, Political Thought in Europe, 109–13; B. Guenée, States and Rulers in Later Medieval Europe (Oxford, 1985), 49–65; P. Geary, The Myth of Nations. The Medieval Origins of Europe (Princeton, 2002), 41–62; S. Reynolds, ‘Medieval Origines Gentium and the Community of the Realm’, History lxviii (1983), 379–80, 389–90. 15  ‘Scotis inimicis et rebellis nostris’, Rot. Scot., passim. For fuller references, see Ruddick, ‘National Sentiment and National Identity’, 114. 16  E.g. Rot. Scot., i, 117, et passim. 17  See ibid.; Parl. Writs; Treaty Rolls, 1234–1325, ed. P. Chaplais (London, 1956); passim. For full references, see Ruddick, ‘National Sentiment and National Identity’, 194–6. 18  For references to crusading, e.g. Treaty Rolls, 1234–1325, ed. Chaplais, 62, 87; Treaty Rolls, 1337–39, ed. J. Ferguson (London, 1972), 40; CCR 1341–43, 245.

200 england and scotland in the fourteenth century count of Flanders in 1315 noted that the Scots were ‘barbarously thirsting to spill the blood of Christians’, by invading England and ‘suddenly setting alight to towns and fortresses in hostile attacks, and wickedly killing people by the sword, men, women and children alike’.19 The picture that such descriptions painted was one of unequivocal national distinctions: the barbarian, marauding Scots on the one hand, and the valiant but victimised English on the other, with the assumption of a straightforward correlation between nationality and political allegiance. Of course, elements of convention governed these descriptions; almost identical language can be found in official accounts of attacks by Welsh rebels in the 1280s, and the French from 1338, with the same attendant moral characteristics, and the language of barbarism was applied to all Celtic peoples in this period, not just the Scots.20 Nonetheless, despite the parallels between official language used in respect of the Scots and that employed for all enemy groups, the implication of such rhetoric was that the Scots formed one uniform national group, exhibiting shared behaviour and national characteristics. As a letter to arrayers of English troops in 1336 put it, England was under threat from ‘the innate wickedness of the Scots our enemies’.21 Nor was this ‘national’ rhetoric exclusive to official documents. Chroniclers certainly demonstrated a similarity in viewpoint to the official perspective, although this is perhaps unsurprising, given the overlap in background and – sometimes – personnel between the educated, mainly clerical, elite who produced government documents, their recipients, and the readers and writers of many chronicles.22 Indeed, some chroniclers relied heavily on official documents, often reproducing whole documents verbatim, including descriptions of Scottish raids.23 Moreover, the use of governmental phrases also spilled over into accounts of similar events written by the chroniclers themselves.24 Writers 19  Rot. Scot., i, 136. See also ibid., 149, 193. 20  E.g. ‘Welsh Rolls’ in Calendar of Chancery Rolls, Various, 1277–1326 (London, 1912); Treaty Rolls, 1337–39, ed. Ferguson; CCR 1369–74, passim. For fuller references, see Ruddick, ‘National Sentiment and National Identity’, 185–6, 193–5. On English views of Celtic peoples as barbarians, see J. Gillingham, The English in the Twelfth Century. Imperialism, National Identity and Political Values (Woodbridge, 2000), 3–18, 27–31, 101– 5; Davies, The First English Empire, 89–95, 108–41; R. Bartlett, Gerald of Wales, 1146–1223 (Oxford, 1982), 158–77. 21  Rot. Scot., i, 462. 22  E.g. K. Kerby-Fulton and S. Justice, ‘Langlandian Reading Circles and the Civil Service in London and Dublin, 1380–1427’, New Medieval Literatures i (1997); T. F. Tout, ‘Literature and Learning in the English Civil Service in the Fourteenth Century’, Speculum iv (1929). 23  See, e.g., Lanercost, Stevenson, 174; Guisborough, 343, for accounts of the destruction of Hexham priory in 1296, lifted from Edward I’s correspondence with Pope Boniface VIII, reproduced in ASR, 106–7. 24  E.g. Lanercost, Stevenson, 190, 216–17, 219–20, 224, 230–5, 240, 246–8, 346–7.



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also tended to describe battles in terms of two distinct national sides, Anglici against Scoti, even though they are likely to have been aware that, in reality, the composition of armies was more complex.25 Meanwhile, truces were commonly described as being ‘between the English and the Scots’.26 More literary sources, too, reflected similar attitudes towards the Scots to those revealed in official rhetoric. The Song on the Scottish Wars, probably composed after the English victory at Falkirk in 1298, called the Scots a ‘barbarous, brutal and foolish people’ and a ‘savage kilted people’, and suggested that the inability to live peaceably under English rule was congenital in the ‘spontaneously wicked’ Scots.27 Again, this overlap in viewpoint is unsurprising, in view of the fact that most such literature was read, and sometimes produced, by the same literate, governing classes who were the main recipients of official documents.28 However, it certainly seems to indicate that governmental vocabulary represented a form of language and political outlook with which these writers and readers felt comfortable, and suggests that official rhetoric did, indeed, have some impact on, or relationship to, the way in which they thought about politics. The views of the wider population remain, inevitably, more elusive; indeed, the whole concept of ‘public opinion’ in the period is debatable.29 Although, as already noted, official rhetoric is likely to have reached a relatively wide section of society by this period, historians are forced to rely on second-hand evidence for its reception, by reading between the lines of official documents, and by examining chroniclers’ reports of what was ‘commonly believed’.30 However, at 25  E.g. ibid., 155, 191, 225–6, 268, 333, 351. For further examples, see Ruddick, ‘National Sentiment and National Identity’, 197. On the composition of armies, see M. Prestwich, War, Politics and Finance under Edward I (London, 1972), 206–18. 26  E.g. ‘Annales Paulini’, 305, 341; Avesbury, 283. 27  Peter Coss (ed.), Thomas Wright’s Political Songs of England: From the Reign of John to that of Edward II (Cambridge, 1996), 171, 166, 178. 28  M. T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record. England 1066–1307 (London, 1979), 231– 40; T. Turville-Petre, ‘Some Medieval English Manuscripts in the North-East Midlands’, in Manuscripts and Readers in Fifteenth-Century England, ed. D. Pearsall (Cambridge, 1983); P. Coss, ‘Aspects of Cultural Diffusion in Medieval England. The Early Romances, Local Society and Robin Hood’, Past and Present cviii (1985); A. I. Doyle, ‘English Books In and Out of Court from Edward III to Henry VII’, in English Court Culture in the Later Middle Ages, ed. V. J. Scattergood and J.W. Sherborne (London, 1983), 163–81. 29  E.g. J.Watts, ‘The Pressure of the Public on Later Medieval Politics’, in The Fifteenth Century IV, ed. Clark and Carpenter, 159–80; D. McCulloch and E. D. Jones, ‘Lancastrian Politics, the French War and the Rise of the Popular Element’, Speculum lviii (1983); I. M.W. Harvey, ‘Was There Popular Politics in Fifteenth-Century England?’, in The McFarlane Legacy. Studies in Late Medieval Politics and Society, ed. R. H. Britnell and A. J. Pollard (Stroud, 1995). 30  E.g. ‘Annales Paulini’, 259, 262; ‘Gesta Edwardi de Carnarvon auctore canonico Bridlingtoniensi’, Chronicles of the Reigns of Edward I and Edward II, ed. W. Stubbs, Rolls Series lxxvi (1883), ii, 81, 97; Scalacronica, Stevenson, 137.

202 england and scotland in the fourteenth century times, chroniclers agreed with popular views, indicating elements of political culture that were genuinely ‘national’ in social depth, as well as in geographical breadth, and it seems that opinions on Anglo-Scottish relations can be included in this category. For example, northern and southern chroniclers’ disapproval of the ‘shameful peace’ made between England and Scotland in 1328 also seems to have existed on a popular level, at least in London, where citizens refused to allow the stone of Scone to be returned to Scotland following the treaty.31 This also suggests that the intended symbolic significance of such items was not lost on the wider population. Similarly, the London-based Annales Paulini described popular opposition to an earlier Anglo-Scottish truce in 1308, reporting that it was made ‘not without the amazement and ­ indignation of many’.32 Such comments suggest that the descriptions of nationally determined enmity between English and Scots in government documents both influenced, and were themselves influenced by, wider public opinion, creating a set of assumptions about Anglo-Scottish relations that were quite ‘nationalistic’, even by modern definitions.33 In reality, however, such a neat dichotomy between English people on one side, and Scots on the other, was patently not the case, and on closer examination the rhetoric reveals inconsistencies. In 1333, following their victory at Halidon Hill, the town of Berwick-on-Tweed was in English hands, but its officials now faced the problem of pacifying and supervising a town with a population of mixed allegiance. A particular problem was caused by local monks, who were caught helping the rebels. Edward III therefore wrote to the provincial priors of various orders with the following instructions: all your Scottish brothers now residing in our town and county of Berwick are to be sent to the houses of your orders in England to stay amongst your English brothers, so that by a change of places, a change of their souls may follow, and that in those places they may be taught by wise and suitable English brothers, who instruct the people by their wholesomeness, and be consolidated in our allegiance and love, and also that they might sow true charity between the nations, by God’s leading.34

31  For chroniclers’ views, e.g. Avesbury, 67; ‘Adæ Murimuth continuatio chronicarum’, Chronica Murimuth et Avesbury, ed. Thompson, 283; Scalacronica, Stevenson, 155–6; cf. Lanercost, Stevenson, 261–2, on the actions of the Londoners. 32  ‘Annales Paulini’, 265. 33  For some modern definitions of nations and nationalism, see, e.g. S.Woolf (ed.), Nationalism in Europe, 1815 to the Present. A Reader (London/New York, 1996), 1–7, 25–6; B. Jenkins and S. A. Sofos (ed.), Nationalism and Identity in Contemporary Europe (London, 1996), 9–32. 34  Rot. Scot., i, 258.



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This document appears to assume a binary opposition between the two nations: Scottish monks will support Scots, while English monks will be loyal to the king. Even a religious vocation was not expected to eradicate national sentiment, nor corresponding political allegiance. However, while it acknowledged the tendency for nationality to determine loyalty, this document also presented an alternative. The transfer of the monks to English houses for re-education offered the possibility of a separation between political and national identity. The aim was not to make the monks in question ‘English’, but to effect a switch in their political allegiance, leaving their Scottish nationality intact. Consequently, it appears that, alongside an essentially ‘national’ model of political identity, in which it was assumed that political and national boundaries coincided, government rhetoric also offered another model. In this alternative model of political identity, the significant thing was not nationality, but loyalty to the king of England, regardless of nationality, something that might be termed ‘allegiant’ identity. These terms, therefore, represent not two different types of national identity, as in the concepts of ‘civic’ and ‘ethnic’ national identity identified by some analysts of modern nationalism, but two forms of political identity: one which coincided with nationality, and one which very deliberately did not.35 ‘Allegiant’ identity corresponded closely with the notion of subjecthood, a category which, in the fourteenth century, included most lands under the king of England’s lordship, including Wales, Ireland and Gascony.36 However, the Scots were less frequently listed as the king of England’s subjects. The reasons for this are obvious: unlike the rest of these territories, Scotland had a king of its own for most of the period in question. Thus, although the Scottish Rolls contain a few examples of references to Scots as the king of England’s subjects, these were rare.37 Nonetheless, the characterisation of the Scots as ‘rebels’ against the king of England, even during the reign of the English-sponsored candidate Edward Balliol (1332–56), suggests that, from an official perspective, the king of England’s overlordship implied a fairly direct element of Scottish subordination. ‘Allegiant’ identity can therefore be said to have included not just the king of England’s subjects, but all those held to be in some degree of political subjection to him, direct or indirect; and, in Edward I’s opinion, from 1296 this included the Scots. It will be helpful to ground the discussion in some case studies, where the tensions between the idea of a nationally determined political identity and that of a non-national, ‘allegiant’ identity can be seen in practice. The remainder of this paper will examine three areas of interaction between these models in Anglo35  E.g. A. D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford, 1986), 129–52. 36  E.g. C. Bémont (ed.), Rôles Gascons (1906), vol. iii, 331–2 – ‘et omnibus aliis fidelibus et subditis nostris in terris nostris Vasconie et ducatus Aquitannie, Anglie, Hibernie, Wallie’. See also, e.g. Treaty Rolls, 1234–1325, ed. Chaplais, 119, 127–8, 133–4, 142–5. 37  E.g. Rot. Scot., i, 875, 887.

204 england and scotland in the fourteenth century Scottish relations: first, descriptions of enemy groups; secondly, the vocabulary of truces and treaties; and finally, admission into the king’s peace. In considering official descriptions of the enemy, we have already seen how it was common to describe the Scots as one homogeneous enemy nation. Yet qualifications to this can be found, particularly during the reign of Robert Bruce (1306–29). During this period, documents varied between references to ‘the Scots, our enemies and rebels’, and to ‘Robert Bruce and his accomplices, our enemies and rebels’.38 It is difficult to trace any obvious rationale governing the variations between these two descriptions. It is noticeable, however, that most references to the enemy as Bruce and his supporters, as opposed to the whole Scottish people, occurred in letters addressed to Welsh or Irish ­notables, or to officials in Scotland.39 This may represent an attempt to conciliate Celtic subjects, by identifying the enemy as individual rebels, rather than as whole nations. On the other hand, this was not consistently the case; letters for Welsh or Irish audiences occasionally referred to ‘the Scots, our enemies and rebels’, while less nationality-specific ‘allegiant’ references to the enemy as Bruce and his supporters were sometimes made in letters addressed to an English ­audience.40 Indeed, in 1327, a group of Lincolnshire officials was sent two letters, one in July referring to an expedition against ‘the Scots our enemies and rebels’ and another, in September, ordering a levy of men for the defence of the kingdom against Robert Bruce and his accomplices, ‘enemies and traitors to us and our kingdom’.41 Such fluctuation between the two phrases, particularly to the same audience within a short space of time, warns us against reading too much into the difference, especially as generalised references to ‘the Scots’ remained by far the most common. This might imply that, from the viewpoint of an English audience, there was little distinction between the activities of Bruce and his supporters, on the one hand, and of the Scots as a whole, on the other, which might point to an essentially ‘national’ interpretation of the rhetoric in all cases. Certainly, the latter of the two Lincolnshire documents, despite its reference only to Bruce and his men, still stressed the threat to the kingdom as a whole, alleging that Bruce planned ‘to destroy us and the people of our kingdom and subjugate it to his tyranny’.42 Indeed, it could be argued that these fluctuations were just stylistic or random. However, as we shall see, other evidence indicates that it was the deliberate intention of the government, in some contexts, to create 38  E.g. ibid., 56 – ‘ad resistendum Roberto de Brus et complicibus suis inimicis et rebellibus nostris’. See also, e.g., 78, 83, 84, 118, 122, 132–3, 148, 222. 39  E.g. Rot. Scot., i, 78, 79–80, 84, 91, 118, 119, 122. 40  E.g. ibid., 67–8 (to Welsh Marcher lords, 1309), 75–6 (to the justiciar of Ireland, 1309) Cf. examples to an English audience, 56, 83. 41  Ibid., 217, 221. 42  Ibid., 221.



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a political discourse that offered an ‘allegiant’ model of political loyalty, not dependent on nationality. The vocabulary used in peace negotiations and truces between England and Scotland sheds further light on this, as it was increasingly acknowledged that both Scots and English fought on either side. The development of the language to express this seems to have been aided by the tendency in diplomatic documents to categorise warring parties by allegiance to a particular leader, rather than by nationality. So, for example, in negotiations in 1308, representatives were appointed to work out a truce ‘between us, our men, our subjects and our supporters on one part, and them [Bruce and his men] and their allies and supporters on the other’.43 However, at this stage, although the nationality of the participants was not specified, it seems that the default assumption was that the king’s subjects and supporters were primarily English, and Bruce and his supporters Scottish. This impression is reinforced by references to truces in less formal contexts, such as a royal letter in 1327, which blamed the renewal of war on Scottish breaches of the truce previously agreed ‘between the English and Scottish people’.44 Yet, in rhetoric used elsewhere, there were already hints that Bruce’s supporters included more than just Scots, such as the wording of the papal Interdict of 1318, which was applied not only to Bruce and the kingdom of Scotland, but also to ‘each and every one of his accomplices, helpers, supporters, advisers, patrons and followers’.45 It is possible that the wording of this particular document was influenced by papal suspicions of Anglo-Scottish collusion in the robbery of the two cardinals sent to negotiate with the Scots, as they travelled north with the bishop-elect of Durham for his consecration in September 1317. Certainly, after the event, there appears to have been a suspicion by some that the leader of the attack, Sir Gilbert de Middleton, had been acting in collusion with the Scots, and a number of his followers were subsequently accused of adhering to the Scots.46 Yet such inclusive, ‘allegiant’ language may also suggest a broader recognition of more complex patterns of allegiance in the north. However, it was not until negotiations between Edward III and the king of France in 1354 that the non-national nature of allegiance in Anglo-Scottish relations was explicitly acknowledged in the rhetoric of the English government itself with respect to truces. The terms of Anglo-French peace included the ransoming of David II of Scotland, and a truce ‘between us and all our people 43  Ibid., 59. 44  Ibid., 219. 45  Foedera (RC), II, i, 362–3. See also ‘Gesta Edwardi’, ed. Stubbs, 53. 46  I am grateful to Dr Andy King for drawing my attention to this possibility. See also M. Prestwich, ‘Gilbert de Middleton and the Attack on the Cardinals, 1317’, in Warriors and Churchmen in the High Middle Ages, ed. T. Reuter (London, 1992).

206 england and scotland in the fourteenth century both in England and in Scotland ... and the said David de Bruce and all the other people of Scotland and their adherents’.47 It is not certain that the king of England’s ‘people’ in Scotland were all Scottish, for some English people did continue to reside in Scotland, even after the war had forced landowners to choose sides.48 The wording is likely to have included the Scottish supporters of Edward Balliol, however, and seems deliberately chosen to acknowledge that men of both English and Scottish nationality supported the English king. The rebels, on the other hand, were still assumed mainly to be Scottish, albeit with a few additional ‘adherents’. Exactly the same ‘allegiant’ phrases were then used again in documents relating to further negotiations in 1357 and 1363.49 After 1363, however, the vocabulary appears to have reverted to a more ‘national’ mode, perhaps reflecting Edward III’s recognition of David II as king of Scots, and, from 1371, his successor Robert II. In 1373, for example, in ­provisions for punishing contraventions of the truce, Edward agreed to punish crimes committed ‘by any inhabitants or subjects of our kingdom [emphasis added]’, as long as Robert II of Scotland also punished ‘his men of Scotland ... and their adherents [for crimes] against our subjects’.50 The implication seems to be that political loyalties again corresponded to national, territorial ­boundaries; that is, that Edward’s subjects came from the kingdom of England, while Robert’s supporters were ‘of Scotland’. Yet even this was not completely unambiguous, for the reference to additional ‘adherents’ of Robert is again suggestive that reality was not quite so straightforward. This impression of the deliberate cultivation of an alternative political culture, in which allegiance did not always coincide with nationality, is further reinforced by descriptions in truces of people as being ‘in the faith or ­ obedience’ of a particular leader, rather than of a particular nationality. Negotiations in 1357, for example, referred to people who were ‘in the lordship or obedience’ of either the king of England or David Bruce, and described Edward III’s supporters as ‘people who are of the faith of the king of England’, rather than as Englishmen.51 A similarly nationality-‘blind’ intent can be seen in the phrases used to describe raids on Annandale, a Scottish border region with a population of mixed English and Scottish descent.52 From 1363–4, the 47  Rot. Scot., i, 768–9. 48  Barrow, Bruce, 7–9, 331–7; Barrell, Medieval Scotland, 28–31; G.W. S. Barrow, Scotland and its Neighbours in the Middle Ages (London, 1992), 155–76; Tuck, ‘Northumbrian Society’, 26–30. 49  Rot. Scot., i, 811–14, 871. 50  Ibid., 958. 51  Ibid., 811–14. 52  G.W. S. Barrow, The Kingdom of the Scots. Government, Church and Society from the Eleventh to the Fourteenth Century (London, 1973), 144–7, 281; Barrow, Robert the Bruce, 20–1; Barrell, Medieval Scotland, 16–18; M. Prestwich, ‘Colonial Scotland. The English



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king received complaints from its then lord, the earl of Hereford, of attacks there by the king’s subjects, ‘both from England and from Scotland’, against ‘both Scots who are of the Scottish faith and who remain in the valley by our licence, and other Scots and English of our faith there’.53 Such language demonstrates that both Scottish and English inhabitants of Annandale were among those recognised to be loyal to the king of England in this period. Nonetheless, once again, those ‘of the Scottish faith’ were assumed to be mainly Scots. This ­recurrent assumption may suggest that, despite governmental attempts to introduce a more inclusive ‘allegiant’ model of political identity, it remained difficult to escape from the traditional connection between nationality and political ­allegiance, even if people were aware that such generalisations did not accurately reflect reality. Such tensions were also apparent in uses of the king’s peace. Like subjecthood, entering the king’s peace conferred an ‘allegiant’ political identity that implied loyalty and obedience to the king of England, without necessarily making the person English. As in Wales and Gascony, this concept was used extensively in Scotland to draw former rebels into a loyal political community in periods of settlement, and numerous provisions can be found for ‘those of our enemies of Scotland’ who wanted to enter the king’s peace, alternatively referred to as the king’s faith, obedience, or will.54 This divided the population of Scotland into two groups: those in the king’s peace, and those ‘men of Scotland who are not in our faith and peace’.55 However, it was not only Scots who entered the king’s peace, but also Englishmen who had supported them. This confirms what is suggested by the references to the rebels’ ‘adherents’; that, contrary to the implications of much official rhetoric, the enemy was not always entirely made up of foreigners. As early as 1296, arrangements for the admission of rebels into the king’s peace explicitly included ‘both English and Scottish’.56 The frequency with which this occurred suggests that it was not particularly unusual to find Englishmen supporting the Scots. In 1316, for example, Edward II gave the warden of Carlisle powers to receive into his peace any of ‘our own people of the county of Cumbria who adhered to the Scots, our enemies and rebels’, and the use of such phrases continued into the reign of Edward III.57 In 1354, the same year in which the vocabulary of truce negotiations explicitly acknowledged Scottish support for the English, instructions were again issued concerning in Scotland Under Edward I’, in Scotland and England, 1286–1815, ed. R. A. Mason (Edinburgh, 1987), 10. 53  Rot. Scot., i, 875, 887. 54  E.g. ibid., 26–31, 76, 82, 121, 152, 318, 676–7, 771–2, 794, 871, 944. 55  E.g. ibid., 418. 56  Ibid., 23. 57  Ibid., 153.

208 england and scotland in the fourteenth century the admission of ‘both Scottish and English’ into the king’s peace, including one Stephen de Gylcrouse, described as ‘an Englishman who recently adhered to the Scots our enemies against us’.58 This points again to the exploitation of a pragmatic, ‘allegiant’ definition of identity on the part of the government. Moreover, this worked in two directions – it not only acknowledged that Scots could be loyal to the king, but also that English nationality did not always guarantee loyalty. Indeed, the overall impression is that, frequently, what mattered to the government was less a person’s nationality, and more a practical concern to ensure the loyalty of all subjects. This was particularly the case during attempts at political settlement, to the point that nationality was sometimes deliberately downplayed. Ordinances for an attempted settlement in 1305, for example, included the appointment of reliable officials, who would serve ‘to the honour and profit of the king and the welfare of the people’, with instructions to choose the most suitable candidates, whether they were ‘men born in the land of Scotland or English’.59 Indeed, on the few occasions where the Latin word natio (or, occasionally, its French equivalent nacion) appeared in government documents – a term which, although used in the middle ages to convey a primarily biological and racial sense of nationhood, also had territorial and political connotations by this period – it was almost always to stress that it was not significant.60 Negotiations concerning the surrender of Berwick in 1333, for example, allowed all those ‘in the faith of the king of England’ to remain in the town, while those who did not wish to enter the king’s peace were given fourteen days to leave.61 It was made clear that the opportunity to choose sides applied to all inhabitants of Berwick, ‘of whatever estate, nation or condition they may be’.62 Yet, how far beyond the realms of government rhetoric did this ‘allegiant’ model of identity extend, particularly among the king’s non-English subjects? Although, as we have seen, chroniclers often preferred clear-cut national distinctions, one chronicle that did show a greater amount of light and shade in its treatment of the relationship between nationality and political allegiance was the so-called ‘Lanercost’ Chronicle, despite the notoriously anti-Scottish

58  Ibid., 763. 59  Parl. Writs, I, 160–3. 60  D. R. Howlett (ed.), Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources: N (Oxford, 2002), 1888; R. E. Latham, Revised Medieval Latin Word-List (London, 1965), 311. For parallel meanings in French, see W. Rothwell et al. (ed.), The Anglo-Norman Dictionary (London, 1992), 440. 61  Rot. Scot., i, 253. 62  Ibid., i, 253–4 – ‘a tut le people enclos dedeinz la dite ville de Berewyk de quel estat nation ou condition q ils soient.’



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tone of some passages.63 Explaining Robert Bruce’s growing body of support in the years leading up to Bannockburn, for example, the writer avoided use of the term ‘Scots’, instead describing Bruce’s supporters as ‘people who were then adhering to him’.64 Then, in 1334, the chronicler noted how some Scottish nobles entered the king’s peace, while others ‘did not come into the peace, but ... committed many evils against those who had surrendered themselves to the peace’.65 This is a double-edged example for, at the same time as it shows that allegiance to the king of England and his cause in Scotland was not restricted to the English, it also suggests that such an adherence by Scots was viewed unfavourably by some of their fellow-countrymen. Indeed, this is supported by evidence from official documents, such as Edward II’s plans in 1310 to deal with attacks by Scottish enemies, who were said to be: ‘killing our people, both those from England and those of Scotland who remain in our faith’.66 Such examples, therefore, may point to a more ‘national’ outlook in reality than existed in government rhetoric, in Scotland as in England. The writer of the Lanercost Chronicle also offered some psychological insight into the motivation of Scots who entered the king’s peace, explaining that this did not always involve heartfelt convictions. Concerning the surrender of Bothwell castle in 1336, for example, he commented that the men involved were ‘led more by fear than by love’.67 It was also this chronicler who supplied the well-known description of Scots fighting on the English side only ‘to save the lands that they held in England; their hearts, if not their bodies, were always with their own people’.68 The assumption behind this comment appears to be that loyalty lay inevitably and instinctively with one’s own people and that, consequently, there was a felt need to justify aberrations from this. Such anecdotal evidence of motivations for changing allegiance helps to explain why those admitted to the king’s peace did not become loyal subjects overnight. Nor was this something about which the government was under any illusions. The rebellious monks of Berwick in 1333 have already been noted, but this was not an isolated incident. In 1336 Edward III heard reports that, when Scottish spies had entered England, ‘these enemies have been received, cherished and maintained both by Scots of our faith and allegiance and by others, in contempt of us and to the 63  In fact, probably compiled for the most part by the Franciscans at Carlisle, see A. Gransden, Historical Writing in England, c.550 to c.1307 (London, 1974), 487; eadem, Historical Writing in England, c.1307 to the Early Sixteenth Century (London, 1982), 12–13. 64  Lanercost, Stevenson, 210 – ‘populi qui sibi tunc adhaeserat’. 65  Ibid., 283. 66  Treaty Rolls, 1234–1325, ed. Chaplais, 194–5. 67  Lanercost, Stevenson, 287. 68  Ibid., 217. On cross-border landholding, see ch. 7, above.

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manifest peril of the people of our kingdom’.69 He therefore ordered the arrest and imprisonment of those responsible. Although these orders allowed for the possibility of those culpable being English, the main suspects were clearly Scots living in England. Scottish inhabitants of England had already been arrested in 1296, and later, in 1377, public concerns about their presence in northern England contributed to the Commons’ demands for the expulsion of all enemy aliens.70 Exceptions could be made, but, in general, it was difficult for Scots who had entered the king’s peace to shake off the stigma of expected disloyalty ­ associated with their nationality. Such suspicions were sometimes well founded; for example, the case of the Scottish woman who had lived with her English husband in Cumberland for forty years, but who lit a beacon in 1389 to alert Galwegian Scots of an imminent English raid.71 Consequently, Scots loyal to the king of England often had to take extra measures to compensate for their nationality. In 1363, for example, Sir Roger de Clifford had to seek permission from the king to retain in his service John de Corry, a Scot from Annandale ‘whose father in Scotland remains in the Scottish faith’, on the basis that John himself had shown ‘goodwill and peace towards us and our people’, almost as if disloyalty could be passed on by heredity.72 It seems that, despite the reality of mixed and sometimes shifting allegiances which ‘allegiant’ vocabulary sought to describe, non-English subjects were expected to, and evidently sometimes did, retain the associations and attachments entailed by their nationality, in a way that militated against their acceptance of English rule. Nor was it just a case of the government seeking to persuade its non-English populations to accept this ‘allegiant’ model of political identity. The difficulty of breaking the association between nationality and political loyalty is also apparent in the government’s appeals to the English population. Whether in the repeated refrain of the ordinances for Anglo-Scottish settlement in 1305 that new officials could be either Scottish or English, the insistence in 1333 that the settlement in Berwick applied equally to Scots and English, or the reminders that the population of Annandale included not only pro-Bruce Scots, but also English people and Scots loyal to the king of England, and that none of these groups should be attacked, the implication is that the English recipients of these instructions also needed some persuasion to accept that nationality was not politically significant. Indeed, this is hardly surprising given the nationalistic tone of government rhetoric in other contexts. It appears that, in spite of attempts to promote an alternative ‘allegiant’ model of political identity when 69  Rot. Scot., i, 463. 70  Tuck, ‘Northumbrian Society’, 25; C. J. Neville, ‘The Law of Treason in the English Border Counties in the Later Middle Ages’, Law and History Review, ix (1991), 10. 71  MacDonald, Bloodshed, 224–5. I am grateful to Jackson Armstrong for bringing this example to my attention. 72  Rot. Scot., i, 879.



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this suited governmental purposes, nationality continued to be perceived by many in England and Scotland as the most common and instinctive basis for loyalty. Yet, paradoxically, the expected relationship between nationality and loyalty could also break down in the opposite direction, for, as we have seen, some English subjects supported the king’s enemies, primarily among inhabitants of border regions.73 As noted above, this has led some historians to question the significance of national identity to these groups, particularly among English nobles with cross-border interests and ties.74 The independent agreements and truces made with the Scots by inhabitants of the far north of England during Edward II’s reign are also well known, and, even in less desperate times, there was resistance by northerners to governmental demands for financial and military support against their neighbours.75 During Edward III’s reign, the tone of the rhetoric concerning such practices hardened, royal letters warning that anyone who failed to co-operate would be reputed ‘cherishers of our said enemies’, and punished ‘as enemies of us and of our kingdom’.76 However, the continued appearance of such clauses suggests that the problem was persistent.77 Nonetheless, at the same time, there is evidence of strong opposition from local inhabitants towards English neighbours who co-operated with the Scots. Cynthia Neville has shown how local juries in the northernmost counties repeatedly indicted for treason neighbours whom they suspected of helping the Scots, and argues that there was a deep intolerance of Scottish sympathisers throughout the period.78 This impression is reinforced by northern chroniclers, such as the writer of the Lanercost Chronicle, who reported that northern nobles had been advising the Scots of favourable times to invade England, ‘which, if it is true, may God reveal to the king and kingdom such deceitful traitors’.79 Meanwhile, Alastair MacDonald argues that the non-co-operation of the northern counties with the government reflected their alienation from the central government, rather than pro-Scottish sentiment.80 Even the choice of a Scottish allegiance after 1296 by certain prominent Northumbrian landholding families, identified by Tuck, need not indicate uncertainty about their

73  See above, 205–8. 74  See above, n. 5. 75  M. Prestwich, The Three Edwards. War and State in England, 1272–1377 (London, 1980), 56–7; Barrow, Bruce, 258–9, 322–4; Barrell, Medieval Scotland, 121. 76  Rot. Scot., i, 206, 214. 77  E.g. ibid., 356, 668, 669–70, 673. 78  Neville, ‘The Law of Treason’, 1–14. 79  Lanercost, Stevenson, 293. See also ‘Gesta Edwardi’, ed. Stubbs, 97. 80  MacDonald, Bloodshed, 201–15.

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national identity.81 Indeed, given the evident importance of nationality in other contexts, at all levels of society, as seen in the official rhetoric and literary sources discussed above, it would be strange if these border landholders had no idea at all whether they were English or Scottish.82 The events of 1296 undoubtedly forced some of them to make difficult decisions about political allegiance, but it can hardly be concluded from this that English national ­identity was weaker among this group, only that national identity was not the sole ­determinant of allegiance in such circumstances.83 It appears that what happened on the borders of England is not that national identity became more indistinct – indeed, borders were often places where it was crucially important to know a person’s nationality – but rather that the political implications of national identity became more complex. That is to say, national identity did not always translate into the expected political actions, because behaviour was influenced by other factors, such as self-­protection, economic advantage or resentment of governmental demands. As we have seen, the default expectation of the greater part of the English and Scottish ­populations at the time was that political allegiance would overlap with nationality. Such incidents from the borders, however, demonstrate that challenges to the traditional ‘national’ model of identity were not always imposed from the top down on a reluctant population, nor did they always operate in a way that was advantageous to the government. How, then, were these ambiguities handled by the government? Official rhetoric appears to have employed two, essentially contradictory, models of political identity. In one model, national identity was inextricably associated with political allegiance, pitting ‘the Scots’ against ‘the English’ as two implacably opposed national sides. Yet, according to the alternative model, Scots could support the English king and his choice of Scottish ruler, and enter his peace, regardless of their nationality. At the same time, a significant minority of English people supported the Scottish rebels. In fact, neither model was consistently applied, and sometimes the two concepts of identity, the ‘national’ and the ‘allegiant’, appeared side-by-side in the same documents. A final example, which sums up some of these contradictions, comes from the truce negotiations of 1354, and involved Elizabeth, the widow of Sir William Douglas. Douglas had fought against Edward Balliol and was rewarded by David Bruce with ­ substantial grants, including the strategically important border lordship of Liddesdale and its castle at Hermitage in 1338.84 However, after his capture at Neville’s Cross in 1346, Douglas held to the allegiance he 81  Tuck, ‘Northumbrian Society’, 25–6, 30. 82  See above, 198–202. 83  See also MacDonald, Bloodshed, 207–8. 84  Barrow, Bruce, 27, 366–7; Barrell, Medieval Scotland, 127; Brown, Douglases, 36–40.



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had sworn to Edward III to gain his freedom, and allowed the English army to pass through Liddesdale. This did not go down well with his kinsmen and, in 1353, he was murdered by his godson.85 Douglas’s history may explain the combination of kindness and caution in negotiations regarding his widow. In return for entering Edward III’s ‘faith and obedience’, along with her men, she would be granted her husband’s lands and castle in Scotland for life. If, ­subsequently, she married an Englishman, the property would be held by their heirs in perpetuity, by liege homage to Edward III. If, however, she were to marry a Scotsman without licence, the lands and castle would be forfeit.86 In the meantime, the castle was to be held in English hands, against Scottish enemies. In some ways, this arrangement reflects an ‘allegiant’ model of identity, whereby loyalty to the king could override suspect nationality; as long as Elizabeth and her men entered the king’s peace and behaved well, their Scottishness need not pose a problem. Yet the wording of the document also implies that nationality did determine loyalty – only if Elizabeth went on to marry an Englishmen would her offspring inherit. Although theoretically she could marry a Scot, he would first have to be vetted by the king. This again suggests that, despite the supposedly nationality-blind rhetoric, Scottish nationality carried a stigma of anticipated disloyalty which, although not impossible to overcome, was persistent and often needed special dispensation. Conversely, English nationality carried a basic presumption of loyalty, even though this was demonstrably not always the case. Indeed, this latter possibility was also covered, for it was further specified that any Englishman Elizabeth married must be ‘of our faith’. In the event, the king ensured this, by marrying her to loyal Englishman Hugh, Lord Dacre, within a year.87 The picture that emerges, therefore, of the role of nationhood in the ­official rhetoric and political culture of England, particularly with respect to AngloScottish relations, is one of contradiction and ambiguity. The result was a political discourse which contained two quite different models of political identity, although, of course, neither of these ‘models’ existed as a coherent political theory. Broadly speaking, however, in the first, nationality overlapped exactly with political allegiance, and ‘national’ rhetoric was used to encourage loyalty to the king and kingdom as a coherent national unit against foreign enemies. In the second, a dissociation between nationality and political loyalty was promoted, offering an alternative ‘allegiant’ identity, based on loyalty to 85  Ibid., 43–6. 86  Rot. Scot., i, 771–2. Little is known about Elizabeth Douglas herself, or her own nationality. However, the key issue here is that she was suspect because of her late (Scottish) husband’s allegiance. 87  Brown, Douglases, 72, n; G. E. Cockayne et al. (ed.), The Complete Peerage, rev. and ed. V. Gibbs (12 vols, London, 1910–59), i, 310.

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the king. This did not obliterate ethnic national identity; rather, it rendered it ­ politically neutral. Even the role of the king himself was ambiguous – he was at once a ‘national’ figure, whose interests were intrinsically tied up with his kingdom, and, at the same time, the centrepiece of a multi-national quasi-empire. It is difficult to identify a clear rationale for the selection of one model of identity over the other in government rhetoric. It could be argued that the ‘national’ model was aimed at an English audience, while the ‘allegiant’ model was employed to appeal to other groups subject to the king’s authority. Indeed, most governmental efforts to rule and reconcile the crown’s subject populations revolved around this non-national, ‘allegiant’ model of identity, through strategies of inclusion such as the king’s peace, and truces and settlements, which encouraged people to see themselves as part of a broader political community, defined by loyalty to the king. However, the distinction was not this clear-cut: at the same time as berating English subjects for co-operation with foreign enemies, the crown was trying to persuade them that Scots should receive equal treatment in other contexts. Nor can a direct linear progression over time towards a more ‘national’, even ‘nationalistic’, discourse be observed. If anything, as the English crown claimed lordship over an expanding number of territories, the possibility of non-national, ‘allegiant’ identity became more explicit in government rhetoric. It might be more accurate to see a fluctuation between the two models, depending on context: in periods of war, the ­connection between national and political identity in government rhetoric generally increased, while in times of settlement it was downplayed. However, the difficulties which the government had in persuading its audiences, both English and Scottish, to accept this model suggests that the traditional ­expectation that nationality determined allegiance was hard to shake off, and that the population at large remained unconvinced that national and political identity could be separated. Even the government itself seemed unable to break completely free from nationalist assumptions, oscillating between descriptions of the enemy as narrow groups of rebels, and as homogeneous national groups, while Scots who had entered the king’s peace continued to be suspected of disloyalty. In fact, neither the government nor the population adhered consistently to one model or the other. If the English population was instinctively ‘nationalistic’ in theory, as is indicated by much of the literature of the period, this could break down in practice, particularly on the borders, where local interests dictated a more flexible approach. The government, on the other hand, may have inclined towards the ‘allegiant’ model in theory, which better fitted the pragmatic needs of the king’s wider dominion, but was often pushed towards taking a more ‘national’ line in practice, not only to justify nation-wide ­taxation and military demands by linking the interests of king and kingdom, but also



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because of the need to appeal to its English audience’s engrained expectations. It seems, therefore, that although nationality did not always coincide with political loyalty, either in reality or in the rhetoric, it remained a persistent, and politically significant, means by which people were identified. Consequently, this had unavoidable implications for the complex politics of allegiance generated by Anglo-Scottish relations in the period, and, particularly, the language used by the government to describe it.

12

Anglici caudati: abuse of the English in Fourteenth-Century Scottish Chronicles, Literature and Records Michael A. Penman*

T

he r esea rch for this pa per began with a simple premise: that it should be a relatively straight-forward task to assemble a survey of Scottish writers’ increasingly abusive depictions of the English in fourteenth-century government records, diplomatic papers, propaganda and correspondence, as well as in historical annals and chronicles, verse, literature and song. It might also be assumed, given the generations of war between England and Scotland after 1296 – punctuated by major battles in 1297, 1298, 1314, 1318, 1332, 1333, 1346, 1388 and 1402 – that such Scottish portrayals of their most common enemy would also take on an increasingly heated ethnic tone and adopt a racialist discourse, deploying not merely a conventional canon of English atrocities, sacrilege and villains but graduating to juicy stereotypes, national characteristics and repeated slanders to strong effect. This would build, one might naturally presume, on the infamous Scottish medieval gibe (which seemingly has its origins in fourteenth-century France) that the English had tails. The received Scottish memory of singular incidents such as the sacking of Berwick in 1296, the execution of William Wallace in 1305 or the destruction of the Lothians in the ‘Burnt Candlemas’ of 1356, spring to mind as likely catalysts to such a perceived birth and growth of Scottish racial hatred of the English, passionately expressed in records and compositions, in the ‘long’ fourteenth century.

*  This paper was first given at the International Medieval Congress at Leeds in 2004 in a session focused on the theme of ‘Clash of Cultures: The Devils they Knew’.   Bower, vii, 75, 201n. As the editors of Bower’s chronicle of the 1440s report, the prophesies of John of Bridlington, consulted by Bower, recorded French abuse of the English with this jibe at the battle of Poitiers in 1356: Bower may then have transposed this abuse back to 1332 reporting Scottish songs at the battle of Dupplin.



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Were we, indeed, to find this anticipated treatment of their enemy in the extant Scottish chronicles, literary works and relevant records of the day it would be reasonable to conclude, too, that such representation simply reciprocates and fits closely with the historical pattern established for English depiction of the Scots in this century. That is, that roughly between 1300 and 1350 those Englishmen writing about their kingdom’s opponents in war, and they are by and large churchmen, became no longer merely concerned just to produce convincing propaganda to assert the feudal or ecclesiastical jurisdiction of their king and realm over their northern neighbour. Instead, in this period and thereafter such writings took on an increasingly native voice, a belligerent nationalist and racial flavour, one which by far exceeded any outbursts against the Scots as a proud and destructive people expressed in earlier English sources commenting upon periodic tensions before 1296. As the published studies of Barnie, Coleman, Beaumont James, GivenWilson and others have shown, this growing ‘discourse of abuse’ of the Scots after 1296, spurred on by war, can be found in a variety of contemporary English sources. As early as 1298 when Edward I engineered a statement by the captive and de-throned John Balliol in which he denounced the ‘malice, deceit, treason, wickedness and [poisonous] stratagems’ of the Scots, this discourse took on a pejorative nationalist tone, employing deliberately abusive language and not merely identifying the Scots as the enemy but focusing on Scottish character traits consistently exhibited in their dealings with England. From Edward I’s royal standpoint, of course, such strong language was justified by the treason of his Scottish vassals, and was repeated in his regime’s letter of 1301 to Pope Boniface VIII, defending England’s claim to hold Scotland in the face of Scottish treachery and (exaggerated) war crimes such as the murder of English women and the burning of innocent schoolboys at Hexham. But in late-­thirteenth- and fourteenth-century English chronicles, from that of the vulnerable Anglo-Scottish border priory of Lanercost (which ends in 1346) through to the work of Henry Knighton (circa 1337–96), such attacks were taken beyond legally justified labels and became increasingly potent in unleashing a   J. Barnie, War in Medieval Society. Social Values and the Hundred Years War, 1337–99 (London, 1974), 34–5, 49–51; J. Coleman, English Literature in History 1350–1400 (London, 1981), 74–8. Particular English chronicles certainly abused Scottish stereotypes to some degree in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, for example, Ailred of Rielvaux decried Galwegian attackers who drank their victims’ blood and enslaved captives. M. Strickland, ‘A Law of Arms or a Law of Treason? Conduct in War in Edward I’s Campaigns in Scotland, 1296–1307’, in Violence in Medieval Society, ed. R.W. Kaeuper (Woodbridge, 2000), 47; R. Marsden, ‘Race and Imperialism: Twelfth-Century Attitudes Towards Scotland’, in A Panorama of Scottish History, ed. S. K. Kehoe and I. H. MacPhail (Glasgow, 2004).   ASR, no. 27   Ibid., no. 30; Strickland, ‘A Law of Arms’, 59–78.

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graphic picture of detestable Scottish physical and moral character­istics. In such histories the Scots people, not just their kings, are labelled variously as ‘thieves’, ‘traitors’, ‘deceivers’, ‘wretches’, ‘sots’, ‘cursed caitiffs’, ‘berebags’, ‘Satan’s ­satellites’, ‘degenerates’, with rough animal-like hides for skin (‘riveling’) or ‘like dogs returning to their vomit’. At the same time, these histories regularly report Scottish atrocities against the English during raids across the border and emphasise the Scots’ perceived national and racial ­ characteristics of savagery, cruelty and greed, as well as their barbaric and often impoverished appearance: in English works these were, then, typical Scottish traits, just as the French were increasingly typified by the English as having an effeminate and perverse nature and seeking the destruction of the English people as the Hundred Years’ War progressed. There were perceived Scottish qualities which the English even seem to have attempted to impress upon their guest in the mid-century, Jean Froissart (1337–1410), the prolific chronicler and romantic poet. He remarked upon the poverty of the northern kingdom in the 1340s and, of course, visited Scotland himself in 1365 and later gathered details of the French expedition to Scotland in 1385 from both French and Scottish witnesses: in doing so he noted, of course, that the Scots were ‘just as fond of war with the English as they are of peace, especially the Scottish bachelerie’. But in his coverage of the 1385 joint operation, written circa 1388–89, Froissart condemned the Scots for their greed, mean-ness, lack of chivalry and brutality and, in doing so, reflected surely not only the disgust of the French at their harsh treatment by their hosts but also his own preference for the persons and views of Edward III and Richard II of England with whom he had spent much more time and to whom he gifted books. Hence, Froissart wrote: ‘in Scotland you will never find a man of worth; they are like savages, who wish not to be acquainted with any one, and are too envious of the good fortune of others, and suspicious of losing anything themselves, for their country is very poor’. English perceptions of Scottish barbarity and cruelty also extended to the graphic in this period. Most famously, in the Luttrell Psalter of circa 1324–34,   Lanercost, Maxwell, 344; Knighton, 388. Further examples given at: Barnie, War in Medieval Society, 50–2; R. J. Goldstein, The Matter of Scotland: Historical Narrative in Medieval Scotland (Nebraska, 1993), 222; T. Beaumont James, ‘John of Eltham, History and Story: Abusive International Discourse in Late Medieval England, France and Scotland’, in Fourteenth-Century England II, ed. C. Given-Wilson (Woodbridge, 2002); idem, Chronicles: The Writing of History in Medieval England (London, 2004), 65–9, 74–6, 85–6.   Barnie, War in Medieval Society, 47–8; A. Gransden, ‘Propaganda in English Medieval Historiography’, JMH i (1975).   P. Contamine, ‘Froissart and Scotland’, in Scotland and the Low Countries, 1124–1994, ed. G. G. Simpson (East Linton, 1996), 56; H. Brown, Early Travellers in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1891, reprinted 1978), 7–15, at 10–11.



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the marginalia and illuminations, commissioned by a veteran of the Scottish wars, Sir Geoffrey Luttrell, depicted the Scots as cowardly invaders, murderers of civilians and as ‘rough, ragged’ hairy beasts, their faces darkened with woad, a depiction similar to contemporary images of that great late medieval barbaric ‘other’ – the Saracens. Such images were a powerful visual realisation of a strong current in contemporary English literature where there can also be found a mounting tide of xenophobia towards the Scots and their national characteristics: from a set of mock annals of circa 1307, which satirised the first months of the reign of Robert Bruce, through to the bitter fervour of the poetry of Laurence Minot (fl. 1333–52), which reflected rougher soldiers’ songs about English military victories in the 1330s and 1340s, many composed in response to Scottish ballads (and vice versa).10 Such Minot poems as The Battle of Halidon Hill or The Battle of Neville’s Cross damned the barbaric ‘wild Scots’ for their greed, pride and treacherous alliance with the French and their war atrocities in northern England. These were themes still active in such later fourteenth-century works as the Morte D’Arthur in its blast at ‘noxious Scots’ and their violence as well as in poetry and song which sprang up in the wake of English defeat at Otterburn in 1388 but victory at Humbledon in 1402.11 As such, it might be suggested that this emotive abuse in English sources reflects at one level a popular response to both English royal propaganda as well as to decades of border raiding and several famous pitched battles. But at another level it also betrays, as Beaumont James has argued, a swelling ‘raw racism’ amongst the higher social strata of England directed at the Scots (as well as at the French).12 This may thus reflect a definitive erosion of the strong sense of shared Anglo-Scottish heritage and international chivalric and Christian values and conventions which had limited earlier representations of opponents to more neutral tones before 1296.

  BL, Add. MS. 42130; M. Camille, Mirror in Parchment: The Luttrell Psalter and the Making of Medieval England (London, 1998), 284–305 and plates 129, 131, 133; T. Hahn, ‘The Difference the Middle Ages Makes: Colour and Race before the Modern World’, The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, xxxi (2001); R. Bartlett, ‘Medieval and Modern Concepts of Race and Ethnicity’, 39–56, ibid.   The Marquess of Bute, ‘Note of a Manuscript of the Latter part of the Fourteenth Century entitled Passio Scotorum Perjuratorum’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland xix (1884–85). 10  The Poems of Laurence Minot, 1333–52, ed. T. B. James and J. Simons (Exeter, 1989), 33, 51, 84–8; Historical Poems of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, ed. R. H. Robbins (New York, 1959), 31–3, 50–60. One poem even went so far as to slander David II as cacator, defecator, for allegedly spoiling the altar when crowned as a child; Melsa, ii, 361–2. 11  Barnie, War in Medieval Society, 51. 12  James, ‘John of Eltham’, 63–4.

220 england and scotland in the fourteenth century It might, then, be perfectly understandable to expect a similar or perhaps even more intensive pattern of expressed abuse of the English to emerge in fourteenth-century Scottish writings, not least in those celebrated early works of the Scottish late-medieval historiographic tradition, The Bruce of circa 1372–75 by John Barbour (d. 1395), John of Fordun’s Chronicle of the Scottish Nation assembled circa 1371–87 and Andrew Wyntoun’s Original Chronicle of circa 1408–24. These works certainly built upon the Scottish tradition of myth histories of kingdom foundation established in twelfth- and thirteenth-century chronicles and developed by Scottish churchmen in defence of their kingdom against the overlordship of Edward I at the papal Curia about 1300 and in propaganda overseen by Robert Bruce’s regime before 1329. This scholarly and legalistic aspect of Scottish replies to the English has been well studied elsewhere.13 Nonetheless, there is sufficient evidence that the work of Barbour and the anonymous contemporary sources used by Fordun and Wyntoun could have drawn upon a mounting popular tide of anti-English sentiment expressed in Scottish chronicle, poetry, song and sermon between 1296 and circa 1350, most of it now lost in the original. By and large, those early-fourteenth-century Scottish works which are extant make Edward I, rather than the English nation or ‘gens’, the focus of their anger. But by 1301, in their defence of Scottish independence to the pope, Scottish clerics were already referring to ‘a natural hatred’ between the realms.14 In particular, Edward I’s order of the slaughter of the citizens of Berwick-uponTweed in 1296 was a perceived atrocity sufficient to justify revenge against ‘the English’, not just their king. Scottish churchmen continued this role in the early days of Robert Bruce’s kingship with a number of key bishops indicted about 1306 for preaching that ‘those who rise with the lord Robert to help him against the king of England and his men ... can not merit less than if they had gone to the Holy Land against the pagans and Saracens’.15 But Bruce himself commissioned works which identified the evils not only of English kings but of their subjects generally. For example, fragments of contemporary poetry survive celebrating the Scots’ victory at Bannockburn (1314): this verse underlined the perceived arrogance of the superior English forces, who were thus guilty of ‘treachery’, ‘pride’, ‘braggartry’, [and the] ‘overweening’ aim of enslaving the Scots.16 The Bruce regime’s engineered letter from the Scottish nobility to the papacy of April 1320 – now celebrated as the ‘Declaration of Arbroath’ – is similarly conventional and obvious in its detailing of English destruction of Scottish churches and the slaughter of innocents but in its tone, 13  Goldstein, Matter of Scotland, passim. 14  1301 document reproduced in Bower, vi, 135–89, quote at 171–3. 15  CDS, ii, nos 1,827 and 1,926; Palgrave, Docs, 330; Lanercost, Maxwell, 139. 16  Preserved in Bower, vii, 357–77.



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despite calls for peace, it is certainly Anglophobic, warning the Pope not to heed the ‘tales of the English’ (no pun intended?).17 But there is also some evidence of more spontaneous, more freely abusive treatment of the English at this time which may represent the true state of Scottish feeling behind the rhetoric of formal declarations. A number of contemporary and later fourteenth-century English chronicles – to be treated with caution, of course – report that at Berwick and Dunbar in 1296 and at Perth and Stirling about 1301 Scottish garrisons assailed their English besiegers with ribald rhyme and song (composed, significantly, in English), calling them ‘dogs’ and bearing their buttocks, airing, stated the chronicler of Lanercost, ‘ballads, stuffed with insults and filth, to the blasphemy of our illustrious prince and the dishonour of our race’ (although the chronicler did not single out ‘tail’ jibes).18 A similar level of disgust from an English chronicler was expressed by Knighton later in the century when he recorded Scottish mockery of ‘the foul death of England’ during the first mortality caused by the Black Death of circa 1348 and an opportunistic Scottish invasion (which, as Knighton noted, took the plague north).19 It is easy to infer from such scattered references the sense that this Scottish abuse of the English represented the tip of an iceberg of inherent anti-English feeling among Scots of all classes after 1296 and masks a now lost wealth of anti-English sentiment current in Scotland before 1329, certainly long before 1400, a popular spirit expressed through an evolving discourse which may increasingly have included articulation of perceived racialist traits and which thus mirrored and responded to English writing about the Scots. However, any expectancy of locating such trends in Scottish writings of the fourteenth century must give way to the apparently stark contradiction that there is an almost total absence in the key extant Scottish works of this period of any really unpleasant, pejorative language used to describe the appearance or characteristics of the English host or people as a whole. There is, of course, quite conventional reporting of English war atrocities against Scottish churches, churchmen and civilians but without any allied vitriol or vituperation: this 17  G.W. S. Barrow (ed.), The Declaration of Arbroath: History, Significance, Setting (Edinburgh, 2003), xiii–xv. The Arbroath Declaration follows a model earlier exhibited in the ‘Remonstrance of the Irish Princes’ to the papacy (as well as Edward I’s reply to Rome in 1301), a document which may have been influenced by the Bruce regime and which denounced the ‘snarling and viperous slanders ... and [the] arrogance and excessive lust for power’ of the English; Bower, vi, 385. 18  Lanercost, Maxwell 123; Guisborough, 277–8, 307; Strickland, ‘A Law of Arms’, 65 and n148. 19  Knighton, cited in R. Horrox, trans. and ed., The Black Death (Manchester, 1994), 78. My thanks to Richard Oram for this reference. This report chimes in with those of English border officials in June 1349 that ‘the Scots are greatly cheered because of the pestilence ...’; CDS, v, no. 810.

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represents a fundamental contrast with contemporary English writings about the Scots. Moreover, it might be argued that this lack of such racial attacks by the Scots at this time can only partly be explained by any or all of the following factors: i. the chivalric and Christian literary conventions of the age; ii. an infamously poor survival rate of Scottish sources; iii. Robert Bruce’s great need for peace with England and papal recognition; and iv. a powerful Scottish longing for a return to the amity, inter-marriage and cross-border landholding of pre-1286. This paper will thus seek to argue that this dearth of abusive discourse in Scottish writings depicting the first and second phases of the Wars of Independence may in large part be explained by the Scottish political situation of the later fourteenth century. A historian might expect it to be the case that the four explanations listed above can certainly not be used to explain the striking absence of racial discourse about the English in the key Scottish works from the last quarter of the fourteenth century. After a second and third generation of Anglo-Scottish war after 1332 should not the works of Barbour, Fordun and Wyntoun, written under Stewart kings consistently allied to the French, naturally reflect a much longer-run, racialised antipathy towards the English? 20 Yet this turns out not to be the case. Turning to Archdeacon Barbour’s The Bruce of circa 1372–75, in this ­vernacular verse a ‘wykkyt and covatous’ Edward I is certainly blamed for turning the ‘Inglis natioun’ to the bad and aiming at the subjection of Scotland.21 Occasionally, Barbour’s poem does hint at characteristic pride and military arrogance on the part of the English: some individual English commanders are criticised and in reporting the long truce of 1323 Barbour does note the ‘inyquyte’ of the English in breaking the ceasefire at sea.22 Furthermore, in general, the broad sweep of war which Barbour portrays is always named as a national conflict of ‘Ingliscmen’ against ‘Scottismen’, although a noble could become one or the other simply by changing sides (i.e. for Barbour, even in the 1370s, these were not racial labels determined by place of birth but by feudal allegiance).23 Nevertheless, there is no application in The Bruce of really negative language to describe the English or their physical or behavioural characteristics. On the contrary, English knights are universally depicted as ‘valiant’, ‘fearsome’, ‘fair’, and ‘sturdy’ and Barbour even expresses sympathy

20  A. Grant, ‘The Otterburn War from the Scottish Point of View’, in Goodman and Tuck, Border Societies; MacDonald, Bloodshed, passim. 21  Bruce, Duncan 50–7, 102. 22  For example, in anticipating an easy campaign in relieving Stirling castle just before Bannockburn. Ibid., 405; for other examples see ibid., 413, 461. 23  Ibid., 721–3, 745.



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for ‘the marchis of Ingland’ during devastating Scottish raids, criticising the Scots’ looting of Berwick in turn in 1318.24 Admittedly, we might expect such seemingly honourable coverage of aristo­ cratic war in what was a work of courtly romantic and chivalric conventions and a poem which otherwise whitewashes the Bruce cause: the contemporary verse lives of Robert Bruce, Edward Bruce, James Douglas and others which Barbour seems to have used to source much of his material would also have been at pains to stress that the Scottish king and his knights had triumphed over worthy foes.25 In that context, both these lost earlier sources and Barbour’s poem were the Scottish equivalent of The Scalacronica, the history of the reigns of Edward I, Edward II and Edward III penned by Northumbrian knight, Sir Thomas Gray, the son of a veteran of Bannockburn and himself a captive of the Scots circa 1355–56, whose work is primarily a record of chivalric events.26 However, it is much more surprising to survey a similar restraint of language used to depict the English enemy in John of Fordun’s assembled Latin Chronicle of the Scottish Nation from ancient times to circa 1387, bringing together and spinning the work of churchmen undeniably bound to the national Scottish cause before and after 1296. Fordun’s history of pre-1296 events, building on older Scottish chronicles and record material, contains, of course, manu­ factured king lists designed to legitimise Scotland as an ancient independent realm and the history and annals thereafter reproduced (and surely at times embellished) by Fordun are often highly critical of Saxon kings of England and their attitude to Scotland.27 But Fordun is more selective in his chosen coverage of the behaviour of individual post-Conquest English kings towards Scotland: Henry I, brother-in-law of David I of Scotland (1124–53) was praiseworthy; William I of Scotland (1165–1214) clashed with Henry II as ‘he had always been on bad terms with the English, and their lasting foe’; John I made ‘lying promises’ to Alexander II of Scotland (1214–49). But this is as far as Fordun and his original sources go against the English in his coverage of this period and, equally, it might be said that he omits more fulsome comment on key historical moments of national tension which would have allowed scope for pejorative, racialist critique. For example, he does not elaborate on a Scottish 24  Ibid., 102, 120, 246–8, 346, 408, 430, 460, 566, 644, 660, 720–4, 744. 25  Ibid., 14–30; S. Cameron, ‘Chivalry in Barbour’s Bruce’, in Armies, Chivalry and Warfare in Medieval Britain and France, ed. M. Strickland (Stamford, 1998); C. Edington, ‘Paragons and Patriots: National Identity and the Chivalric Ideal in Late-Medieval Scotland’, in Image and Identity: The Making and Re-making of Scotland Through the Ages, ed. D. Broun et al. (Edinburgh, 1998). 26  Scalacronica, King; A. King, ‘A Helm with a Crest of Gold: The Order of Chivalry in Thomas Gray’s Scalacronica’, in Fourteenth-Century England I, ed. N. Saul (Woodbridge, 2000). 27  D. Broun, The Irish Identity of the Kingdom of the Scots (Woodbridge, 1999), passim.

224 england and scotland in the fourteenth century uprising against Malcolm IV (1153–65) for being too close to England’s Henry II or about English claims of ecclesiastical control of Scotland or demands for overlordship in 1251 and 1278.28 Moreover, this selective, generally non-racialist tone continues into Fordun’s coverage of the Wars of Independence. Edward I does receive severe censure as ‘that most wicked king’ but there is no Anglophobic linguistic ire vented over, say, the English sack of Berwick in 1296, the crimes of Cressingham before William Wallace’s victory at Stirling in 1297 (where English chronicles had dwelt upon Wallace’s cruel flaying of the vile English treasurer), the loss of Falkirk in 1298 or subsequent Scottish defeats at Dupplin in 1332 and Halidon Hill in 1333.29 No ‘typical’, negative English traits are christened by Fordun or his clerical sources. At its worst, Fordun’s criticism of the English after 1306 continues to assume a moral, homiletic rather than a racialist tone: by the power of God, the faithless English nation, which had unrighteously racked many a man, was now [1311– ], by God’s righteous judgement, made to undergo awful scourgings; and whereas it had once been victorious, now it sank vanquished and groaning.30 Such a measured voice allowed Fordun’s original source for the fourteenth century to praise English valour (e.g. in 1356, both in invading the Lothians with ‘great power and majesty’ and at Poitiers) and, quite often, to criticise the Scots themselves (e.g. for arguing amongst themselves and breaking truces circa 1356–57) in much the same manner as the English under Richard II are then criticised by Fordun for sacking Melrose in 1385.31 However, much of this seeming ambivalence or curious absence of pejorative comment may be explained by the fact that Fordun’s work is incomplete and reliant upon an anonymous contemporary source and note-style annals for much of the period 1296–1363.32 But this source, discussed further below, surely only explains in part why throughout Fordun’s history, as in Barbour, we find none of the kind of venomous, stereotypical descriptive language applied to the English as we find in abundance about the Scots in, say, the Lanercost chronicle or Minot’s poems and songs. It is, perhaps, only in the vernacular verse of the Original Chronicle of Prior Andrew Wyntoun of St Serf’s at Loch Leven in Fife, completed over forty 28  Fordun, i, 154–5, 170–1, 199; and ii, 226–48, 251, 252, 255, 258–9, 271, 279, 287, 291, 298. 29  Ibid., ii, 317–18, 321–2, 331–2, 336, 339–40, 352; for English chronicle reports of Cressingham’s demise see Guisborough, 303. 30  Fordun, ii, 338. 31  Ibid., 362–72. 32  D. Broun, ‘A New Look at Gesta Annalia Attributed to John of Fordun’, in Church, Chronicle and Learning in Medieval and Early Renaissance Scotland, ed. B. E. Crawford (Edinburgh, 1999).



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years after Fordun’s assemblage, circa 1408–24, that we begin to find stronger expressions of anti-Englishness. Even then, however, such a voice remains muted. Wyntoun’s early history is brief and devoid of pejorative comment on the English as a people: it even celebrates the intermingling of Scottish and Saxon blood in Malcolm III (1058–93) and St Margaret. Edward I, though, remains a ‘fell tyrand’, one sufficiently awful to corrupt the Scottish succession ­hearings of 1290–92 and to cause ‘the Inglismen slew doun/ All the Scottish folkis in [Berwick] toune’ in 1296. Wyntoun also gives much greater coverage to William Wallace than had Fordun’s source, including a rallying speech to get ‘the Inglismen out of oure land’, a call emulated in Wyntoun through a second speech by Sir Simon Fraser in 1302 invoking God, SS. Andrew, Margaret and Ninian and ‘our heritage’ against thraldom.33 But for the events of 1306–29 Wyntoun simply refers his readers or ­audience to John Barbour’s earlier and, by 1400, widely popular poem.34 Thereafter, Wyntoun’s coverage of 1329–57 and beyond, dependent upon another anonymous contemporary source of the second half of the fourteenth century, is really just chivalric reporting with no biting negatives cast upon the English in terms of national character or appearance and with Edward III again described with respect. True, Wyntoun does report on David II’s attempt in 1363–64 to admit an English prince to his succession (probably John of Gaunt, then set to wed into the Lancastrian inheritance), thus displacing David’s nephew, heir presumptive and main domestic anatagonist, Robert the Steward, earl of Strathearn (Robert II, 1371–90): this came in the wake of David’s release from eleven long years of English captivity after the battle of Neville’s Cross (1346) and the ‘rycht gret specialtie’ which he had developed with Edward III over the common interests of Christian chivalry and peacetime stability. Wyntoun’s source emphasises the fact that David’s subjects rejected this peace plan to favour ‘ony Inglis mannys son’ (something Fordun’s pro-Bruce source omitted entirely).35 Yet in his coverage of the period of increasing Anglo-Scottish hostility after David’s death in 1371, Wyntoun’s source does not slander the general English character, spirit or appearance, commenting favourably upon John of Gaunt’s period of exile in Scotland in 1381 and presenting the Percies as worthy family rivals for the Douglas earls. Only, indeed, in its closing sections to 1408, does Wyntoun’s work hint at a deeper natural Scottish dislike of the English, gently noting the arrogance of renewed English overlordship claims under Gaunt’s son, Henry IV, in a manner which for the first time hints at over-confidence as a perceived national characteristic of the southern realm’s people and leaders: 33  Wyntoun, Amours, iv, 258–60, 322, 366; v, 96, 132–4, 280–5, 300–6, 330–4, 338. 34  Ibid., v, 370. 35  Ibid., vi, 14, 251–3; Fordun, ii, 370–1; Penman, David II, 301–25.

226 england and scotland in the fourteenth century It is of Inglis nacioune The common kind conditione Off trewis the vertu to forget ...36 Why is it, then, that these three major Scottish works – Barbour, Fordun, Wyntoun – should be apparently so tepid in their treatment of their English foe? Neither simple accident of survival, literary convention, fear of English wrath, an anxious need for peace and foreign recognition of Scottish independence or a transcendent spirit of honourable aristocratic rivalry seems sufficient to explain this repeated and consistent divergence with the starkly racialist English and French writing tradition which had emerged circa 1300–50. Admittedly, it may be the case that the Scots, particularly the elite of crown, nobility, educated clergy and merchant class, simply did not perceive a sufficient difference of language, dress, physical appearance, character, outlook and ­ aspirations between themselves and their English counterparts, either as nations or as individual estates or subjects, between 1296 and circa 1406, despite sixty years and more of intermittent war.37 There is some evidence to give weight to this theory. English knights could after all pass themselves off as Scots by impersonating their enemies’ voices in night time border raids in the 1390s just as they had done in 1296: English was by circa 1350 the established everyday tongue of both England and much of lowland Scotland while Latin remained their common script of administration and church and in diplomacy both realms deployed French.38 Furthermore, the wars of the 1330s saw equal destruction inflicted on the Scottish countryside by both English and Scottish forces: as Iain MacInnes’ paper illustrates the Scottish ­chroniclers noted this and they thus surely found it difficult to single out the English alone for hatred and blame.39 Besides, in the second half of the fourteenth century Scottish pilgrims, merchants and students could also pass productively to England between 1357 and circa 1390 in large numbers, as the chronicle of Henry Knighton (sponsored by the House of Lancaster) put it, ‘as though they were one people and 36  Wyntoun, Amours, vi, 280–2, 294, 312, 323–34, 358–62, 368–70, 392, 401–9. 37  My thanks to Dr Len Scales of Durham University for emphasising this point in discussion. 38  A. King, ‘Englishmen, Scots and Marchers: National and Local Identities in Thomas Gray’s Scalacronica’, NH xxxvi (2000), 217–18; A. Grant, ‘Aspects of National Consciousness in Medieval Scotland’ in Nations, Nationalism and Patriotism in the European Past, ed. C. Bjørn et al. (Copenhagen, 1994), 76–8; S. Hussey, ‘Nationalism and Language in England, c.1300–1500’; in ibid., 96–7. Although, by 1400 George Dunbar, earl of March, could excuse his inability to write French clearly in a vernacular letter to Henry IV; BL, Cotton Vespasian F.VII, fol. 22; Nat. MSS. Scot., ii, no. liii; M. Dominica Legge, ‘In fere of were’, SHR xxxv (1956). My thanks to Dr Steve Boardman for these references. 39  Fordun, i, 361–3; Wyntoun, Amours, vi, 100–54; Bower, vii, 137–51. This same mutual destruction might be construed in the 1370s and 1380s, for example, the devastation of Roxburgh’s St James fair by the Dunbars in 1377; ibid., 369.



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one nation’.40 Moreover, it might be argued that ­ notorious moments of laterfourteenth-century violence between the English and Scots were just as often fuelled by personal rivalries and jealousies of wealth and military prowess as by racial hatred. For example, Abbot Walter Bower of Inchcolm, author of the Scotichronicon circa 1441–49 (a continuator of Fordun who also consulted Barbour and Wyntoun and many of their sources), ­ attributed Sir William Douglas of Nithsdale’s murder in Prussia while on crusade in 1390 to the long-running envy of Lord Clifford.41 Bower also noted Sir William Dalziel’s taunting in London about that time of a showy English knight for displaying an embroidered falcon on his sleeve, a tale which illustrates the difficulty of distinguishing between armoured knights of any nation other than by armorial livery or fashion. As Anthony Goodman’s paper below has shown these jousts in London were besides showpieces designed to foster stronger AngloScottish political relations in the late century.42 Finally, Henry IV – familiar with many Scottish knights from his own Prussian adventures in the 1380s – could invade Scotland as far as Edinburgh in 1400 and presume that his appeal to be accepted as ‘half a Scot’ and thus claimant to the throne through his Coymn and Lancastrian ancestry (and David II’s succession deals with his father, John of Gaunt) would win over many Scots.43 If these episodes are proof that significant Scots perceived no great ethnic or racial difference between themselves and the English in the later fourteenth century, historians should perhaps look for Scottish recognition of a racial ‘other’ within that realm’s own borders, namely the Gael. Fordun’s chronicle contains the famous (or infamous?) description of the differences between the ‘home-loving, civilised, trustworthy, tolerant and polite, decently attired, affable and pacific’ English-speaking people of Lowland Scotland as opposed to the ‘wild and untamed race’ speaking Gaelic in the Highlands and Islands, ‘primitive and proud ... handsome in appearance, though slovenly in dress ... hostile and cruel’. On the surface at least this does suggest an internal Scottish racial, physical, social, linguistic and geographic division far more potent than any perceived differences with the English kingdom and its king and subjects.44 However, even behind these examples there must have waxed and waned a swelling tide of national enmity between English and Scots. After all, the 40  Rot. Scot., i, 811; ibid., ii, 1–20; Knighton, 163; M. Penman, ‘The Bruce Dynasty, Becket and Scottish Pilgrimage to Canterbury, c.1178–c.1404’, JMH 32 (2006). 41  Bower, vii, 447. 42  Ibid., viii, 17–19; see ch. 13, below. 43  A. L. Brown, ‘The English Campaign in Scotland, 1400’, British Government and Administration. Studies Presented to S. B. Chrimes, ed. H. Hearder and H. R. Loyn (Cardiff, 1974). 44  Fordun, i, 38; Grant, ‘National Consciousness in Medieval Scotland’, 76–7; Bartlett, ‘Medieval and Modern Concepts of Race and Ethnicity’, 47–50.

228 england and scotland in the fourteenth century traffic of Scots travelling into or through England on business of various kinds dwindled after 1377;45 the jousts of the 1390s served really only to intensify Anglo-Scottish rivalry rather than firm truce or peace around chivalry; and Henry IV’s overtures to the Scots in 1400 fell on deaf ears – by 1401 Scottish ambassadors were ready to dismiss the peace terms offered by this king ‘with the addition of some very undiplomatic language’ while Robert III gave refuge to the Mammet pretender Richard II.46 Finally, as Alexander Grant has shown, the emergent national identity of the Scottish kingdom did not necessarily demand racial or linguistic purity of its subjects and Fordun’s comments were not exclusionary but in truth quite favourable to the Gael.47 We must, then, continue to seek an alternative explanation of why the chief Scottish texts of this period are devoid of such comparable anger towards the English or any other barbaric ‘other’. One possible answer may lie in the agenda of David II whose reign covers much of the striking lacunae of identifiable and datable Scottish written works, between circa 1315 and circa 1371. David’s pursuit of an English Prince as his heir presumptive after 1346 instead of the Scottish Stewarts involved him in at least four, possibly five, personal embassies to London after 1357 and in negotiating numerous provisional indentures for peace with Edward III’s regime.48 In this context powerful influence must have been placed upon chroniclers and composers such as Barbour and Fordun, or Fordun’s and Wyntoun’s ­anonymous sources for the mid- to late century. King David, who of course had an English wife in Joan (d. 1362), sister of Edward III, would have wanted to project a history of Scotland and her recent struggle against England as inoffensive to his potential English allies as possible but one still strong on Bruce dynastic legitimacy and Scottish independence: a fresh examination of these Scottish sources suggest that this is exactly what the works of Barbour, Fordun and Wyntoun actually could have given David and his court and council, devoid as they are of overt pejorative comment on the English and most of their kings (except, really, Edward I). This may be taken further. Barbour, Fordun and Wyntoun all had access to earlier sources now lost to modern historians: their extant works may therefore represent the careful editing of earlier much more Anglophobic works of pre-1371, really, pre-1357, such as the verse commissioned by Robert Bruce to celebrate his achievements. Fordun’s anonymously authored section of annals (now known as Gesta Annalia) may thus have taken their form not simply as 45  Rot. Scot., ii, 20. 46  ASR, no. 42; Goodman, ‘Anglo-Scottish Relations’. 47  ‘They are however, loyal and obedient to their king and country, and provided they be well governed they are obedient and ready enough to respect the law’; Grant, ‘National Consciousness in Medieval Scotland’, 77. 48  Penman, David II, chs 7–10.



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notes for an incomplete chronicle to be written out in the future but in fact as sanitised summaries of earlier works which had contained much fuller antiEnglish comment, especially from the period circa 1306–57. There was perhaps, then, censorship of Anglophobia at work, sponsored by a second Bruce king and government anxious for peace with England and for political stability in which to reduce the power of the houses of Stewart and Douglas (which had benefited most from alliance with France circa 1332–57).49 It is certainly possible to suggest that historians might now revise their general perception of the loyalties of Barbour and of Fordun and Wyntoun and their sources against a fluctuating and complex political background in Scotland circa 1329–1406. All three authors certainly completed their work under Stewart kings after 1371 and might thus be presumed to have had a broadly anti-English, pro-French outlook. However, although Barbour may have been employed by the first Stewart king, Robert II, at court from 1373 and pensioned for his great poem, his annuity only in fact began in 1378, a year after the death of Edward III and the resumption of more overtly aggressive diplomacy and raiding towards England.50 The Bruce was therefore completed at a time when many Scots, including the king, were still unsure and hesitant about an absolute commitment to war against England and the Scottish ­a lliance with France remained inactive really until circa 1383–85.51 More importantly, though, before the death of David II, Barbour had been among the first named Scottish clerics to receive safe-conduct to study at Oxford under a scheme for closer Anglo-Scottish connection fostered by David in person. Barbour’s career had first taken off circa 1355–56 perhaps, indeed, under Stewart patronage. But he moved from the precentorship of Dunkeld to his Aberdeen office just when support for David in Scotland revived and the clergy took a leading role in organising his release from captivity with Barbour representing the Aberdeen diocese in London talks in 1357: another pass to Oxford was granted to Barbour in 1364.52 Thus although Barbour was also ­ probably a student among the ‘English nation’ at Paris University in the 1360s it is possible that much of The Bruce, and its chivalric, rather than any anti-English tone, was first conceived by Barbour in the 1360s to service the agenda of David II and his sizeable following of young men of chivalry (which included the illegitimate son of Barbour’s other hero, Sir James Douglas, namely Archibald ‘the Grim’ Douglas, whilst Sir James’ nephew, William the first earl of Douglas (d.1377), was repeatedly at odds with the Bruce king between 1357 49  Ibid., chs 2–6 for this period. 50  Bruce, Duncan, 2–4 and D. E. R.Watt (ed.), A Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Graduates to 1410 (Oxford, 1977), 28–9 for this and what follows of Barbour’s career. 51  MacDonald, Bloodshed, ch. 2. 52  Rot. Scot., i, 808–9, 886; Penman, David II, 185–93.

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and 1371).53 But after the last Bruce king’s early death in 1371 the Stewarts sought to adapt and re-shape the poem as it was completed and to thus serve their own aims of affirming Stewart links with Robert I and a more open 1314spirit of anti-Englishness: hence, as Sonja Cameron has shown, the creation by Barbour of a phantom division led by Sir Walter Steward (d. 1326) and Sir James Douglas (d. 1330) in his poem’s depiction of Bannockburn.54 Barbour’s career path may, then, have changed with the times and his now lost genealogy of the new royal house, The Stewartis Originall, which traced the British dynastic descent of that family as a challenge to Plantagenet claims of superiority, may have been a later commission: it may thus have contained a more overtly anti-English, post-1377, racially slanderous tone and discourse.55 In a similar fashion, Fordun’s annalia, based on material which that author claimed to have collected on travels through England and elsewhere, may also have been designed to be favourable to a potential English successor to David II as well as openly negative about the Stewarts: the anonymous contemporary source which Fordun used for David’s reign halts abruptly in 1363, the very year David again re-negotiated a peace agreement with England which involved the admission of an English prince to his succession.56 In the same way, Wyntoun’s anonymous chronicle source is oddly strained in tone, at once pro-Stewart but respectful and at times openly complementary of David II and by no means abusive to the English.57 In this complex political and diplomatic context, chroniclers clearly had to serve competing patrons and agendas. Thus, putting aside, for now, the lack of unsubtle, pejorative language applied to descriptions of the English king, armies and people in these three major written works, even some of the more apparently obvious instances of anti-English propaganda collected by Fordun might deserve review. For example, might we reconsider Dr Beaumont James’ recent argument that the depiction by Fordun’s anonymous source of Edward III’s killing of his own brother, John of Eltham earl of Cornwall, in Perth church in 1336 for destroying Scottish monasteries, is bluntly antiEnglish? 58 True, fifteenth-century Scottish chroniclers such as Wyntoun (who also used an anonymous late-fourteenth-century source) and Walter Bower 53  Wyntoun, Amours, vi, ch. xix, opens with the hint that Barbour may have written his poem in ‘King Davy’s day’. 54  S. Cameron, ‘Keeping the Customer Satisfied: Barbour’s Bruce and a Phantom Division at Bannockburn’, in The Polar Twins, ed. E. J. Cowan and D. Gifford (East Linton, 2000). 55  S. Boardman, ‘Late Medieval Scotland and the Matter of Britain’, in Scottish History: The Power of the Past, ed. E. J. Cowan and R. J. Finlay (Edinburgh, 2002), 50–2. 56  Penman, David II, 301–7. 57  Ibid., 428–33, 438–9, 441–2. 58  James, ‘John of Eltham’, 67–73.



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(writing in the 1440s), did embellish this tale by adding strong anti-English tones about sacrilege, cruelty and the shedding of innocent blood. But Fordun’s source’s spare original might be conceived as pro-English propaganda recast by a former enemy now keen for peace, an olive-branch which actually depicted Edward III in a favourable light for defending Scottish church rights, crucially placed that king on the same moral plane as Robert Bruce (who had killed John Comyn of Badenoch in a church in 1306) and thus, in the manner of a mirror of princes advising a monarch, urged any future English lord in Scotland to do the same.59 This last was something Henry IV did do in 1400, as noted in Wyntoun, when he spared the Scottish monasteries which had given his father, John of Gaunt, refuge in 1381; but this was a mercy which Richard II had neglected to show (with the exception of Holyrood) in 1385.60 It may thus be the case that because of David II’s (and, perhaps, as we shall see, James I king of Scot’s) political aims, a Scottish literary and chronicle tradition of open racial abuse of the English did not finally emerge (or, rather, survive) until circa 1440 and thus lagged far behind such a development in English nationalist writings by over a century. This was twice as long, it would seem, as the delay in Scottish adoption of artillery following English ­practice, a trend illustrated by David Caldwell in this volume and, again, caused by David II’s policy choices (but one which would be consciously reversed by James I). However, if this is accepted then we must also recognise that the language used in the celebrated Scottish written works of the later fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries in fact hides what must have been a severe ­division and source of tension within the Scottish political community, the very people which Barbour, and Fordun and Wyntoun and their sources sought to ­represent and affect. For the hard reality must be that many Scots were inherently anti-English by circa 1350 if not long, long before, but that sentiment was denied a clear presence in the works derived by Barbour, Fordun and Wyntoun from earlier writings, by Scots – like David II and his many knightly, clerical and mercantile supporters – who were supportive of close links with England despite events since 1296. At the other end of the period in question, circa 1400–37 59  See S. Boardman, ‘“Thar Nobill Eldyrs Gret Bounte”: Politics, History and Literature in the Reigns of Robert II (1371–90) and Robert III (1390–1406)’, in Scottish Kingship: Essays in Honour of Norman Macdougall, ed. M. H. Brown and R. J. Tanner (forthcoming, 2007), for persuasive evidence that Fordun’s anonymous source is probably the work of Thomas Bisset, prior of St Andrews (d. 1363), and that the preface, language (e.g. avoiding ‘we’ or ‘our’) and much of the content of Fordun’s chronicle suggests that it may in fact have been a handbook of Scottish history penned for an English Prince, surely John of Gaunt, the man David II identified as his preferred heir in 1351–52, 1359 and 1363–68. 60  Fordun, i, 371–2; Wyntoun, Amours, vi, 282, 312–14, 392–5; Bower, vii, 397–409 and viii, 35–7 for Richard II’s attack.

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(including the period when Wyntoun as prior of Lochleven in Fife was at work), similar pressure to play down anti-Englishness in Scottish historical and courtly writing may have resulted from the final failed challenge of Robert III (1390–1406) to Albany Stewart and Douglas power in Scotland and then James I’s desire for an Anglo-Scottish peace to secure his release from English captivity and to return home in 1424 with his new English bride (Joan Beaufort, significantly a grand-daughter of John of Gaunt): thereafter James also looked to reduce the independent power of the Albany Stewarts and Douglases who had enjoyed over a decade of royal absence and service to the French against England.61 We might expect that in the attractive and potentially profitable theatre of the Hundred Years’ conflict in France in which many Scots fought after 1415 – scoring a famous victory against the English at Baugé in 1421 – a virulent strain of Anglophobia would finally break through to Scottish writing, openly decrying English national stereotypes and crimes. Pope Martin V’s post-Baugé expostulation about the Scots as ‘truly ... an antidote to the English’ could only have encouraged such a development.62 But the parallel between the political pressures on Scottish writers in this period is remarkably similar to those recording events under David II. In other words, James I’s regime in turn, like David’s recovering from the consequences of the prolonged captivity of the king in England, may have overseen a considerable amount of censorship and re-writing of any overtly anti-English discourse of abuse which had emerged in new Scottish writing penned circa 1377–1424: this suppression would have been facilitated by the annihilation of the Scottish army in France in 1424 at the battle of Verneuil and the subsequent destruction of the Albany Stewarts by James I in 1425.63 That monarchs and other significant individuals and institutions made strategic use of chronicles, literature and visual imagery to depict past events so as to further their political agendas and to project a sense of personal and national identity, cannot be denied. Edward I of course had made frequent use of monastic chronicles to prove his overlordship of Scotland (and suppressed

61  Boardman, Stewart Kings, chs 7–10; M. Brown, James I (2nd edn, East Linton, 2000), chs 1–2. 62  N. A. T. Macdougall, An Antidote to the English. The Auld Alliance, 1295–1560 (East Linton, 2001), 29–73, quote at 3. 63  Brown, James I, ch. 2. It is tempting to speculate that the loss of the full text of Barbour’s other great work, his Stewartis Originall of Brut-like genealogy, was the work of such censorship under James I: but both Wyntoun and Bower were aware of the work and referred to its contents. R. J. Lyall, ‘The Lost Literature of Medieval Scotland’, in Bryght Lanternis: Essays on the Language and Literature of Medieval and Renaissance Scotland, ed. J. D. McClure and M. R. G. Spiller (Aberdeen 1989), 39.



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unhelpful annals and doctored official records in the same cause).64 A Scottish parliamentary debate of 1364 recorded, too, that Robert I, who surely learnt much from Edward, often listened to the histories of ‘ancient kings and princes’ at court; Bower informs us that Robert also forced the captured English poet, Baston, to pen pro-Scottish verse after Bannockburn.65 And Stephen Boardman has illustrated both how rival Stewart/Douglas political camps in the 1370s and 1380s presented alternative views of recent events through the works of Wyntoun and Froissart, and how the first Stewart kings, employing Barbour, toyed with chronicle and literary associations with the ‘British’ heritage of their ancestors in an abortive challenge to English superiority.66 Given this track record, it is all too likely that David II, and later James I, indulged in their own crafting of Scottish chronicles and literature. There are, though, some other Scottish works and documents which give more than a hint that despite the control exerted by David II’s regime, Anglophobia was straining to break through in fourteenth-century Scottish writing and certainly did so once the political climate changed in Stewart Scotland after 1436–37. For example, in 1364, Scotland’s parliament was briefed on David II’s plans for an English Prince using the aforemementioned document which weighted the pros and cons of the proposed treaty. The cons as presented were far more compelling than the pros and much more bitter in their perception of an inherent, ever-present English threat than were Barbour, Fordun or Wyntoun in the following decades. According to the 1364 brief, drawn up by Aberdeen cleric Walter Spyny (another student to Oxford in 1365), the Scots had long been treated ‘inhumanely’ by the English who were greedy, cunning, more war-like and who would not keep good faith and would exterminate the Scottish nobility ‘because of long-rooted enmity’ and live in Scotland ‘by robbery’, cheating them like ‘English merchants always did’.67 Similarly, cleric Thomas Barry, rector of Bothwell church for the Black Douglas earls (and, again, an Oxford visitor in 1365 on the same pass as Spyny), wrote a poem to celebrate the victory of Otterburn (1388) which can be found preserved in Bower’s Scotichronicon of the 1440s. Barry’s verse was, again, remarkably equitable in tone, praising brave warriors on both sides; but it did blame the

64  A. A. M. Duncan, The Kingship of the Scots: Succession and Independence, 842–1292 (Edinburgh, 2002), 234, 249, 251, 265, 274, 277, 282, 292, 308, 310; Given-Wilson, Chronicles, 65–9. 65  A. A. M. Duncan, ‘A Question about the Succession, 1364’, Miscellany of the Scottish History Society XII (Edinburgh 1994), 25; Bower, vi, 367. 66  Boardman, Stewart Kings, ch. 7; idem, ‘Late Medieval Scotland and the Matter of Britain’. 67  Duncan, ‘A Question about the Succession, 1364’, especially clauses 3, 26–9, 32, 40, 43, 49–51; Rot. Scot., i, 891 (Spyny to Oxford).

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English leaders’ characteristic ‘great arrogance’ for their defeat and attributed a speech to the Douglas earl which invoked that: These are our age old enemies who are trying to steal our possessions by deceit ... Those serfs want us to bear the yolk And to wipe us out with all that is ours Besides they do the church wrong. They are schismatics [following the Papal Schism of 1378] ...68 It is probable that Barry’s work and the 1364 debate represent only a ­fraction of the natural, deeply ingrained Anglophobia of many Scots of the war generations by the late fourteenth century. This was itself a national, racial characteristic all too apparent to Froissart (as we’ve seen) and also later to Aeneas Sylvius (the future Pope Pius II), a Tuscan visitor to the Scottish court in 1435, who remarked that ‘there is nothing that the Scots like to hear more than abuse of the English’: this came at a time when Scotland’s queen was English and the two realms were at peace, although this ended emphatically in 1436–37 with the marriage of James I’s daughter to the French Dauphin and a failed assault on Roxburgh castle, and then Anglo-Scottish war under the adult James II (1437–60).69 In conclusion, it would fall instead to fifteenth-century Scottish clerics schooled exclusively in France and Scotland (at St Andrews from circa 1411) to further nationalise and inject the Scottish literary and chronicle tradition with the kind of racial discourse and venom which the Lanercost chronicle, Minot’s songs and many other works had expressed of England’s foes as early as circa 1300–50. That is, first of all, though tentatively, in the Scotichronicon of Bower of the 1440s, which at last included explicit application of the slander that the English had tails and that they were inherently over-confident and deceptive.70 Bower entitled one of his chapters ‘The double-dealing of King Edward III and the character of the English’ and he did record Scottish parliamentary ­opposition to both David II’s succession plans of 1363–64 and James I’s proposals for a full peace with England and the abandonment of alliance with France in 1433.71 Still, Bower displayed a marked degree of churchman’s restraint in his depiction of Scotland’s neighbouring Christian realm. However, by the time of Blind Hary’s The Wallace of circa 1474–78, designed as a response to James III’s 68  Bower, vii, 429. 69  Pius II Commentaries, ed. M. Meserve and M. Simonetta (Harvard, 2003), 23; C. McGladdery, James II (Edinburgh, 1992), ch. 6. An alternative account of his visit by Pius asserts that he was there to incite the Scots to war against England; Brown, Early Travellers, 24–5. 70  Bower, ii, 91–3; v, 99; vii, 75, 201n. 71  Ibid., 85, 323 and viii, 287–9.



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unpopular marriage treaties with England and drawing, perhaps, on over two centuries of Scottish folk and court tradition, then slander and contempt for ‘the Southron’ and their ‘cursit Saxonnis blude’ in such Scottish vernacular and courtly writing could be allowed full flow. Hary’s epic verse is shot through with the copious spilling of English blood in revenge for their crimes and sins of murder, rape, pride, greed, cunning and falsity.72 But just as Hary’s work should be analysed in its exact political context, so there were particular and important political reasons why such written Scottish abuse of the auld enemy is surprisingly absent from Scottish written works of circa 1296–1424 and came only slowly, more than a century later than most might expect. This is an anomaly which speaks to the complexity of the Anglo-Scottish dynamic in the fourteenth century.

72  Vita nobilissimi defensoris Scotie Wilelmi Wallace militis, ed. M. P. McDiarmid, Scottish Text Society (3 vols, Edinburgh, 1968), i, xxiv, 9, 23, 31, 35, 367–8, 382.

13

Anglo-Scottish Relations in the Later Fourteenth Century: Alienation or Acculturation? Anthony Goodman

T

he v isit of David II to England in 1363–64 marks the high point in cordial relations and chivalrous acculturation between the Scottish and English courts and higher nobilities in the later middle ages. It left a decided afterglow, in the volume of visits to England, or passage through it, or by its coasts, of courtiers, diplomats, scholars, traders and crusaders. After the renewal of the Anglo-French conflict in 1369, Scottish soldiers conspicuously served the English Crown down to the making of the 1375 truces. However, the manifold breaches of truce between Scotland and England in the later 1370s and early 1380s, and the major campaigns between 1384 and 1389, rekindled cross-Border enmities, and renewed widely in the two realms a sense of mutual alienation, reflected in the stridently nationally orientated anecdotes and denunciations characteristic of chroniclers. Did this strenuous and destructive warfare finally set hostility between Scot and English in stone? Or were there further episodes of acculturation which demonstrated and strengthened a hardy, perennial mutual ability to resume harmonious relations, and use them to manage conflict? The rapprochements of the 1360s were certainly undermined in the next decade in a variety of ways. The accession of Robert II weakened the links between the two courts. He had not participated in their mergings, and the disfavour he showed to David’s affinity and allies embraced some who notably had done so. Moreover, in Edward III’s declining years, and the early ones of Richard II’s minority, the English court no longer offered the attractions to foreign noble visitors of providing a field of honour and fame, and a source   Penman, David II, 302–5, 328. I owe thanks to the late Ranald Nicholson for ­stimulating conversations about the Scots and Richard II.   D. Ditchburn, Scotland and Europe. The Medieval Kingdom and its Contacts with Christendom, c.1214–1560. I: Religion, Culture and Commerce (East Linton, 2001), 221–2.   Boardman, Stewart Kings, 109–10.



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of regal patronage. In the first four years of Richard’s reign Walter Leslie, lord of Ross (who had been close to David II) was unusual among his peers in receiving a licence (in 1379) from the English Crown. However, for numerous Scots, there continued to be pressing reasons for seeking such safe-conducts, in some cases, in order to stay in England. One was the provision of higher education. For instance, in 1378 six Scottish clerics were licensed to study for a year at Oxford, and Donald, called son of the Lord of the Isles, was licensed too. Shrines in England continued to have an attraction. In 1379 Robert Chartres intended to visit some, and Stephen de Malkarston, abbot of Holyrood, to visit that of St Thomas of Canterbury. William Bailly wished to come to England to receive treatment for a grave illness. In 1380 William Colvill needed a ­protection for his intended pilgrimages to Rome and the Holy Land. The outbreak of the Great Schism has been seen as a factor exacerbating Anglo-Scottish hostility, providing the occasion for the expulsion of English monks from Coldingham Priory, and the annexation of this cell of Durham Priory to Dunfermline Abbey. Richard II’s sack of Scottish abbeys on his 1385 campaign was long-remembered bitterly, despite his attempt to make amends to Melrose Abbey. Walter Bower gave God’s displeasure at these sackings of churches as the reason for the king’s deposition. The Schism was certainly uncomfortable for Scots who were domiciled in England, or wished to travel there or that way, if they did not hail from parts within the English Crown’s residual ‘Lordship of Scotland’. There was the possibility that priests in the Roman obedience would refuse to say Mass in the presence of schismatics – as happened to the crusader Sir William Douglas, lord of Nithsdale, at Königsberg.10 There might be problems in receiving Christian burial in England. In 1389 one of the Scottish envoys staying in London to confirm Robert II’s adherence to the truce made between the English and French Crowns died there. According to the monk-chronicler of Westminster, ‘since he was an unrepentant schismatic who refused to be converted from his error, his corpse lay for some time unburied until, in an evil hour for them, the Friars Preachers seized it and wickedly gave it burial’.11 The Schism was particularly awkward for Scottish clerics studying in England. Gilbert de Mousfeld, a chaplain at

  Rot. Scot., ii, 14, 17; Boardman, Stewart Kings, 25, 75.   Rot. Scot., ii, 8, 11. One of the six scholars was a monk of Lindores.   Ibid., 15, 19.   Ibid., 13.   Ibid., 31. He may have been a kinsman of Sir Robert Colville, then in the English allegiance (Boardman, Stewart Kings, 121, 140).   Bower, viii, 407. 10  Westminster, 475; Ditchburn, Scotland and Europe, 70 and n. 168. 11  Westminster, 405.

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Oxford in 1380, procured a safe conduct to return in all haste to Scotland.12 Others hedged their bets. Hugh Moigne, monk of Paisley Abbey, petitioned to be permitted to continue his studies at Newark, and to visit Scotland as well.13 Master Simon Cryche was concerned in 1381 that, if he took a vacation from his prolonged studies in Oxford, he would not be allowed to return. Letters patent assured him that he would be allowed to do so, as long as the truce (made the previous year) held.14 Other Scottish clerics were licensed in the 1380s and 1390s to study in England. For instance, in February 1380 twelve clerks, including Mousfeld and a monk of Sweetheart Abbey, were permitted to study at Oxford for a year, and in December three more were for a year there or at Canterbury.15 Presumably Scots in England ostensibly conformed to the Roman obedience, as Sir William Douglas attempted to do in Prussia. English ecclesiastical authorities apparently turned a blind eye to likely schismatics in their midst. Unlike the Westminster monk, many regulars were prepared to countenance receiving them, and even, perhaps, housing them. In 1380–81, servants of the Abbot of Paisley stayed in Durham Priory – which needed to cultivate Scottish clerics in its dispute over Coldingham.16 The monks of Christ Church Priory, Canterbury, continued to tolerate Scottish pilgrims at St Thomas’s shrine. John of Gaunt, as Lieutenant of the Marches, issued a safe conduct to the Abbot of Holyrood to go there in December 1381.17 As for the English government, its main concerns about Scottish visitors in Richard’s reign were to regulate the length of their stay, and the number of companions they might bring, as well as to make sure, especially in the case of great nobles, that they and their affinities did nothing prejudicial to the realm. The assumption that English knights were nonchalant about associating with their schismatic Scottish peers, and about the possibility of dying alongside them in battle, is implicit in Gaunt’s expression in the 1385 parliament of the hope that he could fetch away on his proposed invasion of Castile, ‘the flower of Scotland’s chivalry [milicie Scocie]’.18 He was making an even more cynical assumption about the Scots – that they might be prepared to fight in a crusade against fellow schismatics. Indeed, he may well have been aware that he was suggesting an improbable scenario but, nevertheless, one that he considered 12  Rot. Scot., ii, 25. 13  Ibid., 26. This may have been the Augustinian house at Aldbury (Surrey). 14  Ibid., 29, 35. 15  Ibid., 20, 31. 16  A payment of 2s is recorded in the bursar’s roll to the men of the Prior of Paisley; Extracts from the Account Rolls of the Abbey of Durham, ed. J. T. Fowler, Surtees Society xcix, c, ciii (3 vols, 1901), 592. 17  John of Gaunt’s Register, 1379–83, ed. E. C. Lodge and R. Somerville, Camden Society, 3rd ser., lvi–lvii (2 vols, 1937), ii, no. 1192. 18  Westminster, 143.



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would appear plausible to Richard II and the Lords in parliament. In the event, Scottish knights apparently stayed at home. One might have thought that the Peasants’ Revolt – regarded with horror and contempt by the Scottish nobility – would have been another factor putting off Scottish visitors, especially as English governing elites remained nervous about the possible recurrence of outbreaks of popular discontent. Yet the Abbot of Holyrood, whose recent hospitality to Gaunt had given him a particular insight into the dire effects of the Revolt – was not put off from contemplating a visit to the city which had been the first to experience its horrors. Also in December 1381, Scottish secular nobles acquired English licences on a ­ significant scale for the first time in Richard’s reign. Four knights received protection for their journey to the Holy Land. Two earls and two other leading lords were licensed to visit England.19 A likely consequence of the Peasants’ Revolt was that Scottish nobles were habitually permitted to travel with large retinues. Whereas the earl of Ross’s entourage was limited to fifteen in 1379, in 1381 the earls of March and Moray were allowed to bring fifty attendants each. This trend continued in Richard’s reign, giving the households and affinities of Scottish nobles putatively a high profile in England. One context in which the safe conducts given to Scottish nobles at the end of 1381 (and early in 1382) can be viewed is that of Gaunt’s relations with the Scottish court and nobility. He had considerable, long garnered experience of Scottish affairs. As a youth, he had experienced the problems of retaliatory campaigning in Scotland on his father’s expedition of 1356. David II’s advocacy of his succession to the Scottish throne in 1364 reflected the good impressions which he made on the king and his court. However, that episode had positioned him, if fleetingly, as a rival for the Crown of the future Robert II. Gaunt, and members of the ‘continual councils’ governing in Richard’s name in the first three years of his reign keenly appreciated the potential threat posed by aggressively minded magnates under a new dynasty lacking in cordiality towards Edward III’s kin. Consequently, leading figures in English government bivouacked annually in the Scottish Borders, accompanied by large military retinues, intent on negotiating the enforcement and extension of poorly observed truces. Gaunt’s maintenance of a court and affinity befitting his pretension to the Crown of Castile gave him the best means of impressing and overawing the Scots. He set great store on forming personal relationships with those magnates whose alliance was dominant in Scottish government, and who were among prime movers in instigating or countenancing major trucebreaking – the king’s son the earl of Carrick, the second earl of Douglas and Archibald Douglas, lord of Galloway. Gaunt was in the Borders meeting the

19  Rot. Scot., ii, 40–1; cf. Boardman, Stewart Kings, 81.

240 england and scotland in the fourteenth century two earls in 1378, the two Douglases in 1380, and Carrick in 1381 and 1383.20 He was even-handed in trying to secure redress for breaches of truce, though English Border gentlefolk could be reluctant to co-operate.21 At least he helped to stave off open war until 1384. An attempt had been made to negotiate a final peace in 1379, doubtless with his consent, perhaps at his instigation. Central to the negotiation was the proposal that Richard should marry a daughter of Robert II. Both parties must have realised that this proposal was only an earnest for future peace terms, since a minority council was not in a position to surrender any of the Crown’s historic claims over Scotland. Conciliar government formally ended in 1380, but the English discarded a trump card in negotiating peace with the Scots by pursuing a grander imperial marriage for the king, which they hoped would turn the tables on the French Crown.22 The personal relationships which Gaunt forged with the earls of Carrick and Douglas, and some lords associated with them, were reflected in their behaviour towards him in his dire necessity during the Peasants’ Revolt. He showed his appreciation of Carrick’s willingness to grant him a safe conduct to take refuge in Scotland, and Douglas’s attendance on him, and attention to his needs whilst he was in Edinburgh, by the magnificence of the presents he gave them. ‘Master’ James Douglas (the earl’s son and heir?), the ‘lord of Lindsey’ (Sir James?) and Sir John Edmonstone were also recipients of his largesse.23 Edmonstone was an experienced diplomat, who may have given hospitality to Gaunt in his house at Edmonstone, near Edinburgh, on the duke’s way there.24 We can perhaps see in some of the safe conducts granted to Scottish nobles in the winter of 1381–82 tokens of Gaunt’s success in forging amicable bonds with the earls of Carrick and Douglas, and their circles, and in persuading them to adhere to the truce which he had concluded with Carrick before entering Scotland. Intent in December 1381 on visiting England were Sir James Douglas – probably the earl’s son – and Sir James Lindsay, a leading political ally of the earl and Carrick. They planned to travel together.25 Gaunt issued a safe conduct to Sir William Cunningham to visit the shrine of St Thomas of Canterbury. He may have already been a member of Carrick’s household.26 Other intending visitors were the earl of March and his brother the earl of Moray; March had 20  Macdonald, Bloodshed, ch. 2. 21  Gaunt’s Register, 1379–1383, i, no. 439; Macdonald, Bloodshed, 67. 22  CDS, v, no. 274. A Scottish marriage was only one of the options being considered for Richard; A. Tuck, ‘Richard II and the House of Luxemburg’, in Richard II. The Art of Kingship, ed. A. Goodman and J. L. Gillespie (Oxford, 1999), 216–19. 23  Gaunt’s Register, 1379–1383, i, nos 564, 643. 24  A. Edmonstone, Genealogical Account of the Family of Edmonstone of Duntreath (Edinburgh, 1885), 20–1. Edmonstone had been a valettus of David II in 1363. 25  Rot. Scot., ii, 40–1; Boardman, Stewart Kings, 117. 26  Gaunt’s Register, 1379–1383, ii, no. 1195; Boardman, Stewart Kings, 139.



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also attended on Gaunt in exile. As he had taken a lead in truce-breaking, and rolling back the vestiges of English rule in Scotland, his intention to make a peaceful visit was notable. Could it be that, in return for the hospitality he had received, Gaunt had invited Scottish lords to come to his court? Could it be, too, that they were invited to attend the reception and coronation of Richard’s queen? The four Scottish knights planning in December 1381 to go to the Holy Land were also looking forward to a period of relatively peaceable relations with England. They were Edmonstone, Sir James Lindsay’s cousin Sir Alexander Lindsay, their kinsman Sir John Abernethy, Sir John Towers, an adherent of the earl of Douglas from East Lothian, and another local landowner vulnerable to English attack, Sir Patrick Hepburn of Hailes.27 The most intriguing manifestation in this period of Gaunt’s ‘scotophile’ leanings was his retaining of a Scottish knight. The remarkable career of Sir John Swinton in both Scottish and English service has been much commented on. From 1372 until the outbreak of open war in 1384 he received from Gaunt exceptionally large annuities for service to him in peace and war, first as an esquire, and then as a knight.28 However, in 1379 a charter confirmed his right in ancestral lands in Berwickshire. The first witness was William earl of Douglas; James and Alexander Lindsay were also witnesses. Presumably the acquisition resulted from the erosion of English control in the region. In 1382 Robert II granted Swinton an annuity of £20 sterling (half of what he received from Gaunt), and Carrick referred to him as ‘my bachelor’.29 Clearly, as Dr Stephen Boardman has indicated, the king, Carrick and Douglas all valued Swinton’s services highly. What are they likely to have been, and how did they square with his continued honourable service to Gaunt? In the contracts retaining Swinton for life which Gaunt made in 1372 and 1374, he granted that he would not expect Swinton to serve him against his allegiance, and anticipated that he might have periods serving Robert II. There is, however, no conclusive evidence that Swinton returned for long to Scotland whilst retained by Gaunt. In 1377 Swinton received an English safe conduct permitting him to travel from France to England, and on to Scotland. En route he was to visit Richard II, which suggests that he was entrusted with a diplomatic mission to the Scottish court.30 It is unlikely that Gaunt strained 27  For Towers, ibid., 121. 28  G. S. C. Swinton, ‘John of Swinton: A Border Fighter of the Middle Ages’, SHR xvi (1919); Boardman, Stewart Kings, 112–14; S.Walker, The Lancastrian Affinity 1361–1399 (Oxford, 1990), 282. 29  A.C.S., ‘The Swintons of That Ilk and their Cadets’ (Edinburgh, 1883), NLS, MS. 350A, Appendix of Charters, etc., ii–vii. 30  John of Gaunt’s Register, 1372–76, ed. S. Armitage-Smith, Camden Society, 3rd ser., xx–xxi (2 vols, 1911), ii, nos 789, 868; CDS, iv, 77. Swinton shared this safe conduct with Sir John Sibbald.

242 england and scotland in the fourteenth century Swinton’s allegiance by taking him on his highly militarised diplomatic expeditions to Scotland – most notably when he negotiated with an army at his back in 1380. Swinton does not appear to have been one of the few companions with whom Gaunt entered Scotland as an exile in 1381: at Berwick on 13 July, when he was preparing to return to England, he sent letters to his officials taking Swinton, his servants and his goods into his special protection.31 Perhaps he recalled that in 1377 the knight had been almost lynched by a London mob for parading his devotion to the ducal honour. The letter shows Gaunt’s continuing high regard for Swinton, who remained one of his principal confidantes, privy to the secrets of his chamber. For he was one of his fifteen knights who was in attendance in the ducal household probably for much of 1381 – certainly for some days in January, for most of June, and on occasion in July and either September or December.32 Moreover, after Swinton had left ducal service, returning to Scotland, and had taken a prominent part in campaigning against the English, he was thought at the Scottish court to retain the confidence of its English counterpart. Carrick was presumably responsible for sending him to Richard II and his council in 1386, when Gaunt was unaccustomedly in his nephew’s good grace, and, in 1391, when Gaunt was the magnate on whose advice and support Richard was principally relying to restore his battered authority.33 It may, indeed, have been highly satisfying to Gaunt that his chamber knight was patronised and retained by the highest in Scotland, even though they had helped Swinton to profit from Durham Priory’s loss of control over Coldingham Priory. Their patronage of him forged potential links between Gaunt and the Stewarts, Douglases, Lindsays, and Border gentry not in the English allegiance. Swinton may have been employed as a trusted diplomatic broker, who could open selected secrets of one prince’s bosom to another. Patronage links between a prince’s favourites and his potential opponent were not unknown in the later middle ages, as Louis XI’s retaining of leading councillors of Edward IV in 1475 shows. Robert II and the Scottish lords may have been anxious to ensure that a subject possessing such outstanding military and diplomatic talents, and unique access to and insights about the Plantagenets, would return permanently to Scotland. For he had made a fortune in England, and had once had a wife there (though it is not clear of what nationality).34 31  Gaunt’s Register, 1379–1383, ii, no. 1189. 32  John of Gaunt’s Household Rolls, Waleys Cartulary, Glynde Place Archives, East Sussex Record Office, MS 1139, no. 3469, A5 (4–30 June), A7 (1–30 July), B5 (September or December), B10 (1–30 January); The Glynde Place Archives, A Catalogue, ed. R. F. Dell (Lewes, 1964), 260–2. K. B. McFarlane helped to date the rolls. 33  Rot. Scot., ii, 80, 110. Swinton also had safe conducts dated November 1391 and July and December 1392 (ibid., 113, 117, 118). 34  NA, SC8/139/6910. Swinton, in a petition to Richard II, claimed that his wife had died while he was serving on the expedition to Brittany (1374–75) under Edmund of Langley,



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There was the possibility that he would marry again, to an English heiress, and abandon his Scottish interest. However, for Swinton, pride in possession of his ancestral properties outweighed his pride in Lancastrian service. He made what might seem a rash, but certainly proved a well-informed judgement – that he and his heirs stood a good chance of flourishing as lords of precariously placed Border properties, held of the Scottish Crown. The links between the Stewart and Lancastrian courts atrophied with the outbreak of war and Gaunt’s disappearance abroad from 1386 to 1389. Few English safe conducts for Scottish nobles were enrolled in the period.35 Proposed visits resumed on a significant scale after Scotland adhered to the 1389 truces. They were at first prompted by incidents in the Border campaign earlier that year. Apparently in emulation of James earl of Douglas’s famous challenge to Sir Henry Percy outside the wall of Newcastle the previous year, Scottish nobles issued challenges to their leading opponents – the earl of Moray to the English commander, Thomas Mowbray, earl of Nottingham (and Earl Marshal), Sir William Douglas (lord of Nithsdale) to Thomas Lord Clifford, and Sir David Lindsay of Glen Esk to Mowbray’s brother-in-law John Lord Welles. The Scots received licences in 1390 for brief visits to London with large retinues under stringent conditions.36 Moray’s and Lindsay’s passages of arms, performed there during May, made a great stir, reflected in the animated if partisan accounts in chronicles. At least one other international challenge took place there: Richard II’s chamber knight Peter Courtenay fought a Scottish knight on the same day as Moray and Mowbray fought. He may have been Sir William Dalziel, who certainly fought Courtenay on one such occasion. He had been licensed to come to London to buy arms for Moray, and was with him there when he performed his challenge early in May. He had picked a quarrel with Courtenay in a chance street encounter in the city. It is not clear whether the fixture between Douglas and Clifford took place.37 Why was it arranged that these challenges, made in the Borders, were settled in London? They were usually fulfilled in well established venues in the region. London was more convenient for Mowbray and Welles, who were not Border landowners, but jousting there obliged the Scots to accept inconveniences and hazards for themselves. They were risking the health of mounts they depended on in potentially deadly combats – for at least some of the courses were jousts and that Alice Perrers (Edward III’s mistress) took her jewels to the value of £400. 35  The earl of March received safe conducts in January and December 1387, for his spiritual and domestic needs (Rot. Scot., ii, 87, 91; CDS, iv, 83). Maybe the intention behind the second one was for March to help Lord Neville protect the interests of his brother, the Archbishop of York, against the supporters of Richard II’s opponents, the Lords Appellant, who accused the archbishop of treason. 36  Rot. Scot., ii, 103–4; CDS, iv, 90–2. 37  Wyntoun, Laing, iii, 147–50; Bower, viii, 13, 15–19, 155, 156; Westminster, 435–7.

244 england and scotland in the fourteenth century of war, performed with unrebated lances. In the aftermath of years of ­strenuous warfare, they were likely to face widespread hostility, especially dangerous when they were not allowed to come armed. The deciding factor in setting the field was surely insistence by Richard II that these jousts should be held, under the auspices of his Court of Chivalry, in his presence and that of his court. Mowbray and Clifford, high in his favour, would have been eager to comply, and to persuade their challengers to do so. Richard was no great lover of chivalrous sports, but doubtless he considered that the settlement of these high challenges under his auspices would augment his honour and that of his court. Political circumstances required that he enhance his precariously exercised personal authority, and the dignity of his Crown. Gaunt (a connoisseur of jousting) may have advocated the advantages of cultivating and patronising Scottish nobles. Indeed, the example of Sir Malcolm Drummond and his allies in seeking Richard’s protection the previous year had demonstrated to him the possibilities of extending his influence to the Scottish nobility.38 After Moray and Lindsay had honourably discharged their obligations, the king rewarded them and other Scots munificently. Moray, Dalziel and Lindsay received large sums (the first two from the king’s hands), and, besides, a silver cup and a ewer with a gilt cover each. Sir John Haliburton (an ally of Drummond) and John Broun, esquire, received similar gifts.39 The favourable impression Richard made on Scottish nobles – probably hitherto generally unacquainted with him – is reflected in the anecdotes repeated by Wyntoun and Bower. Their focus was on Lindsay’s and Dalziel’s combats, performed on the same day. According to Wyntoun, Richard arbitrated the fight between Lindsay and Welles with fairness and courtesy. Bower says that he invited Lindsay and his knights to dinner on the next day. When it was reported to him that, after dinner, in his chamber, there had been an exchange between an English knight and Dalziel insulting to their respective nationalities, he made them repeat to him in public what they had said. He then ‘rebuked the English knight sharply and praised the Scot for his answer with a splendid reward’. At the bad-tempered and controversial jousts between Dalziel and Courtenay, according to Bower, Richard had to quell fighting which broke out between English and Scottish knights present. He praised Dalziel’s courtesy and valour.40 The king’s fairness, courtesy and largesse on these occasions were incentives for Scottish nobles to visit England, and, in particular, his court. His decision that in future such combats should be performed with rebated lances was probably prompted by the need to avoid the bad injuries inflicted, and to lessen the potential for riotous and unseemly 38  Boardman, Stewart Kings, 166–7. 39  CDS, iv, 91; Boardman, Stewart Kings, 166. 40  Wyntoun, Laing, iii, 48–50; Bower, viii, 15–19.



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partisanship.41 Some 1390 visitors, and their kin, were prominent among the nobles who were to apply for licences to visit England again or pass through or by it in the 1390s – Moray, March, Lindsay, Dalziel and Haliburton. Some of the safe conducts issued to Sir David Lindsay and Dalziel were connected with their roles in Anglo-Scottish diplomacy.42 Sir David, one of the leading personalities in the household of Robert III’s son and heir David earl of Carrick, can be envisaged as making political and cultural links between the Scottish and English courts. Dalziel and Sir John Haliburton had links with Sir David Lindsay and Carrick’s affinity.43 Expressions of hostility at the jousts, and quarrelling between Border lords in the 1390s, make one wonder whether disagreeable relations between the Scottish and English elites, based on national as well as personal enmities, had become the norm. However, though there is little detailed evidence, the assumption is made here that the jousts of May 1390 initiated anew a process of bonding between some elements in the nobilities. Ambitious English courtiers would have mimicked the king’s benevolent attitude to the Scots. The challengers and challenged of 1390 had entered into prior contracts whose discharge was intended to enhance their honour, binding them together in good fame. If Lindsay did, indeed (as Wyntoun asserts), raise the stricken Welles, instead of striking him, as the king adjudged it to be his right to do, that created an ­obligation between the combatants (as well as one between Lindsay and the queen, to whom he surrendered Welles). However, whatever the outcome of Douglas’s challenge to Clifford, it did not staunch bad blood between them, resulting in the riot at Königsberg in 1391 and the killing of Douglas by English crusaders. On the Borders, the challenges of 1390 (and, doubtless, the famous jousts at St Inglevert which preceded them) apparently stimulated chivalry. In 1391, Ralph Neville was preparing to respond to the challenge of Sir Alexander Lindsay, and English knights and squires with him to those of their Scottish counterparts. In 1392 the king’s half- brother, John Holand, earl of Huntingdon, was licensed with his company to deliver Scottish knights and squires ‘of all points of arms which they may demand’, during his stay in Berwick; in 1393 Sir Richard Redman was preparing to joust against Sir William Haliburton at Carlisle, both with three companions.44 There is a piece of evidence which provides a later connection between the Mowbray/Welles affinity and the Scottish court. Bower says that an English knight, Robert Morley visited Robert III’s court in 1397–98 with a distinguished retinue, in order to compete in jousts for the gold cup which the king kept on his ­ sideboard. Sir James 41  Westminster, 437. 42  Rot. Scot., ii, 110 (Moray), 110, 136 (March), 110, 113, 118–19, 136, 145 (Lindsay), 117, 138 (Dalziel), 124 (Haliburton). 43  Boardman, Stewart Kings, 196, 204, 224. 44  CDS, iv, 94, 96, 97–8.

246 england and scotland in the fourteenth century Douglas of Strathbrock took up the challenge. Morley, on his way home, fought both Sir Archibald Edmonstone and Hugh Wales on the same day at Berwick, and Sir Thomas Trail (the bishop of St Andrews’ nephew) on the next day. Professor Donald Watt plausibly identified Morley as the son and heir of Thomas Lord Morley. The father was close to Mowbray: he was his deputy as Marshal of the Realm in 1397. He was one of the principal landowners in Norfolk, a leading figure in its knightly elite.45 The son was eager to establish a chivalrous ­reputation, perhaps particularly in emulation of his stepmother’s famous forbears Bartholomew Lord Burghersh and Edward Lord Despenser. Sir Robert had enrolled for Richard’s expedition to Ireland in 1394, and had been retained with a generous royal annuity.46 His probable Scottish quest suggests that at the English court, and in Mowbray’s and his own family’s circles, Robert III had come to be seen as presiding, like King Richard, over a court where visitors could win honour and fame. That reputation is likely to have been enhanced by Scottish royal patronage of the jousters of 1390. There is another, more tentative connection between the Scottish court and Norfolk society. In 1396 Sir John Hamilton of Cadzow, with two of his kinsmen and six other Scots, was under arrest at Norwich. Possibly they constituted a group on pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, a cult popular among Scots.47 Could it be that a courtier of Robert III was welcome among the Norfolk gentry, and perhaps was entertained with his company by the Morleys? Sir Robert Morley, and a select group of English lords and knights, had another interest in common with Scottish lords – crusading. In 1395 a protagonist of Philippe de Mézières’ proposed crusading Order of the Passion compiled lists of those who had promised to join or patronise the Order, the list being divided according to nationality.48 The English contingent contained a strong courtier element, and, among its manifold noble connections, ones with Gaunt, Mowbray and East Anglian gentry. Twenty-two names were listed, headed by the king’s uncle, Edmund of Langley, duke of York, his son the earl of Rutland (high in royal favour), Mowbray, the earl of Northumberland, and John Gilbert, bishop of St David’s. Several of the knights listed were attached to the king’s chamber. Sir Thomas and Sir Hugh Despenser (the former also riding high in 45  Bower, viii, 11–13; F. Blomefield, An Essay towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk (2 vols, London, 1805), ii, 437–40; G. E. Cockayne et al. (ed.), The Complete Peerage, rev. and ed. V. Gibbs (12 vols, London, 1910–59), ix, 209–18. Sir William Douglas of Strathbrock (Uphall, Lothian) received an English safe conduct in 1393; Rot. Scot., ii, 119. 46  CPR 1396–99, 471, 479. 47  CCR 1396–99, 6; Macdonald, Bloodshed, 129; Rot. Scot., ii, 135. 48  M.V. Clarke, Fourteenth-Century Studies, ed. L. S. Sutherland and M. McKisack (Oxford, 1937), 288–9. John of Gaunt, his brother Thomas of Woodstock, and his son-inlaw the earl of Huntingdon promised to be patrons.



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the king’s favour) were the brothers of Robert Morley’s stepmother. Sir Simon Felbrigge, the king’s standard bearer, and Sir Thomas Erpingham, Gaunt’s leading retainer, were Norfolk landowners. Felbrigge may have already been concerned in Lord Morley’s propertied affairs. Sir William Elmham was an East Anglian landowner and royal retainer with a strong personal connection with Mowbray: in 1398 he was one of only two knights who, with Lord Welles, saw him off at Lowestoft, and he was licensed to be one of his council during his exile.49 The last named knight listed with such distinguished veterans as willing to join the Order was the irrepressible Robert Morley. Two Scottish knights were listed separately – Sir David Lindsay and his brother Sir Alexander.50 It is likely that their connections with the English court and nobility were factors in inducing them to declare their willingness to join. The links which Scottish nobles established with the English court and nobility in 1390 were especially useful in the following years for Robert III and his son, David Stewart earl of Carrick, since, whereas during Richard’s minority, the English Crown had needed to contain aggressive Scottish aspirations, in the 1390s the Scots needed to curb Richard’s. As Professor Michael Bennett has pointed out, Philippe de Mézières sought to flatter Richard in 1395 by addressing him, along with other fanciful titles, as ‘King of Great Britain’. Richard’s aspiration to be regarded as such is implicit in one interpretation of the Wilton Diptych, which was probably painted for Richard’s private chapel, circa 1395. The roundel depicted in it at the top of the shaft of St George’s banner, being presented to him with the infant Christ’s blessing, bears a depiction of a triangular island, surely representing the whole of Britain.51 In the early 1390s Richard attempted to make a final peace with the Scottish Crown, at the same time as he was trying to do so with the French. Commissions were appointed in 1392, but produced no positive results. Robert wrote to Richard in 1393 proposing the appointment of leading magnates and councillors. He suggested that his brother the earl of Fife (well versed in Anglo-Scottish diplomacy) and one of Richard’s uncles should be involved, their roles to be to ratify any agreement reached.52 However, that spring and summer, Richard’s most influential uncle was unavailable. Gaunt was at first heavily involved in negotiating peace terms with the French, and then, with his brother Thomas of Woodstock, in suppressing revolt in Cheshire. In August Bishop Gilbert was appointed to head envoys to make a final peace with Scotland. The ­ presence of Richard’s veteran chamber knight Richard Stury the following month at 49  Rotuli Parliamentorum, ed. J. Strachey et al. (6 vols, London, 1767–77), iii, 384. 50  N. Iorga, Philippe de Mézières (Paris, 1896), 491. 51  M. J. Bennett, ‘Richard II and the Wider Realm’, in Richard II, ed. Goodman and Gillespie, 200–2; Goodman, ‘Introduction’, in ibid., 11. 52  The Diplomatic Correspondence of Richard II, ed. E. Perroy, Camden Society, 3rd ser., xlviii (1933), 115, 126, 238–9, 240–1.

248 england and scotland in the fourteenth century Robert III’s court in Edinburgh, to ratify the truce, may have raised hopes of more momentum in the negotiations.53 Richard, confident that an AngloFrench peace would be concluded in 1394, pitched tough terms to the Scots. The instructions issued to the envoys in February, as Professor Anthony Tuck has noted, included demands for Robert’s homage, recognition by Scottish nobles of the English Crown’s sovereignty, and the return of the sheriffdoms ceded to Edward III by Edward Balliol in 1334. Nevertheless, they were to be prepared to make peace in return for the cession in sovereignty of the parts of the lordship recovered by the Scots since 1369. Perhaps the English council calculated that Robert would be prepared to pay this price in order to clip the earl of Douglas’s wings (and, incidentally, the more modest ones of the earl of March). Such impossible demands certainly did not terminate negotiations.54 In April Richard wrote to Robert that he would send members of his council to Kelso in August to negotiate marriages between some of his kinsfolk and some of Robert’s children.55 Presumably, it was hoped that such alliances would help to break deadlocks over rival claims, interlocking with a final peace. They might have produced a settlement of the contentious residual issue of the English Crown’s ‘Lordship of Scotland’ by its bestowal on a princely cadet – a settlement in some respects in parallel with the proposed bestowal of the duchy of Aquitaine on Gaunt and his heirs, a key component in the peace negotiations with the French Crown. In August 1394, appointments were made for highlevel delegations to meet at Kelso. The Scottish secular lords were headed by Carrick, who had become increasingly active in Scottish government since the end of the Lieutenancy of his uncle, Robert Stewart earl of Fife (later Duke of Albany), the previous year and was establishing a role in Border affairs, challenging to Douglas’s ascendancy there. Perhaps Carrick’s marriage to an English princess was on the table. The earls of Douglas and March (whose territorial interests would be vitally affected by any settlement), and Sir James and Sir David Lindsay were also among those appointed. The English delegations, for both the marriages and the peace, were less impressive in composition: they were headed by Bishop Skirlaw of Durham and the earl of Northumberland.56 The negotiations failed; the Scots may have been emboldened to resist English terms by the failure to conclude an Anglo-French peace.

53  Ibid., 240–1; Rot. Scot., ii, 121–2. 54  A. Tuck, Richard II and the English Nobility (London, 1973), 163–4. In October 1393 Richard had given powers to his envoys to negotiate alliances with them, possibly in the hope of compromising over the English and their claims in the Scottish Borders (Rot. Scot, ii, 122). 55  Diplomatic Correspondence, ed. Perroy, 147, 246–7. 56  Rot. Scot., ii, 125–6; Diplomatic Correspondence, ed. Perroy, 246–7.



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The will to make a final peace and/or marriage alliance still existed in 1395 – as correspondence between Richard and Queen Annabella shows.57 Yet the instructions to the envoys going to negotiate for Richard’s marriage to a daughter of Charles VI of France, dated July 1395, show that he still dreamt of one day being in a meaningful sense ‘King of Great Britain’. They were to request that, if there were sons by the proposed marriage, and Scotland came within the authority of the English Crown, Charles would provide military aid to help if Richard decided to give Scotland to one of them.58 The current pressure to make an Anglo-Scottish peace was not sapped by these futuristic hankerings, but by the inclusion of Scotland in the general truces concluded in 1396, intended to last for twenty-eight years. For the Scottish king, it was now more pressing to use his children’s marriages in order to strengthen his dynastic position domestically. The wary cordiality established between the two royal houses did not evaporate in Richard’s last years. In November 1395 Robert III’s brother Thomas, archdeacon of St Andrews, had a safe conduct to visit England.59 Sir Walter Steward, retained by Richard in 1393, had his huge annuity, exceptionally, entailed in 1398. He was to serve Richard against all men, including Scots – except for the King of Scots.60 Both rulers had a mutual interest in maintaining the truces, ill-kept on the Borders. Visits to England by trusted members of Scottish princely households were proposed, such as Sir John Ramornie and Adam Forester, royal envoys in 1397, and frequently paired in English safe conducts.61 In March 1399, when Richard was planning to be absent from the realm in Ireland, he revived proposals for peace with Scotland, appointing some of his most trusted nobles and councillors to negotiate – John Trevaur, Bishop of St Asaph, the duke of Aumale (earl of Rutland) and earl of Salisbury, the chamber knights John Bussy and Henry Grene, and the squire Laurence Dru. Key proposals were that the two kings were not to receive each other’s traitors, and would attempt to arrest them, and hand them over. They should also be prepared to give aid to each other against their own traitors. In the wake of the arrests and convictions of 1397, Richard was especially concerned about treason, and he may have wished to ensure that the exiled Bolingbroke or Mowbray should not find refuge in Scotland, and military aid in returning to England such as Scottish lords had offered to Bolingbroke’s father in 1381.62

57  Ibid., 161, 251. In October 1395 Robert III’s envoys had licences to come to Richard’s presence; Rot. Scot., ii, 130. 58  J. J. N. Palmer, England, France and Christendom, 1377–99 (London, 1972), 256–7. 59  Rot. Scot., ii, 130. 60  CPR 1391–96, 327; CPR 1396–99, 361. 61  Rot. Scot., ii, 138. 62  Foedera, viii, 69–70, 72.

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The interest which Scottish chroniclers of the fifteenth century displayed in Richard’s rule and deposition, the information they had about his demise, and their hostility to Bolingbroke’s usurpation can be put in the context of ties formed in the previous decade between the two courts and nobilities. Andrew Wyntoun’s account relies on sources independent of English chronicles. He mentions Mowbray’s challenge to Bolingbroke in 1398 and its outcome, and has a telling description of Richard’s visit to Gaunt shortly before his death, a visit confirmed to have taken place by a later English source. However, Wyntoun’s account is a distinct and independent one, more respectful to the duke, more plausible. Significant details of what went on in the ducal bedchamber are prefaced by the phrase, ‘I herd men say’.63 They may have been derived, indirectly, from an eyewitness at Leicester Castle. Wyntoun is hazy and inaccurate about events in North Wales when Richard went there, after his return from Ireland in 1399, to confront the rebellious Bolingbroke.64 He gives versions in Scots, with insignificant variants, of the official texts in English of the claim to the throne that Bolingbroke recited to the estates, and the terms of his acceptance.65 Bower was to give the official version of Richard’s resignation of the Crown, as well as of Bolingbroke’s two speeches.66 A unique feature of Wyntoun’s indignant narrative of the demise of Richard is the detail which he gives about Richard’s gaolers at Pontefract, whom he names as ‘Swynburn’ and ‘Wattyrtown’. He says that they were famous knights of great reputation.67 The former was probably the knight called Swinford whom the contemporary chronicler Adam Usk describes as having starved Richard to death, most plausibly identifiable as Henry IV’s half-brother Sir Thomas Swynford.68 The latter was Sir Robert Waterton, a dedicated Lancastrian retainer, and constable of Pontefract Castle in 1400.69 However, the fact that the impostor thought to be Richard was maintained by Robert III from 1401–02, and later by the Regent, the Duke of Albany, may have led Wyntoun to doubt whether Henry IV and his minions had murdered Richard, too, even though he was sceptical about the pretender’s identity.70 Bower’s account of the events leading up to the deposition has interesting features. He says that its origins lay in Richard’s recognition of Roger Mortimer 63  Wyntoun, Laing, iii, 67–9; A. Goodman, John of Gaunt (London, 1992), 166–7. 64  Wyntoun, Laing, iii, 70–3. 65  Ibid., 73–5. 66  Bower, viii, 25–9, 157. 67  Wyntoun, Laing, iii, 75. 68  The Chronicle of Adam Usk, ed. E. M. Thompson (London, 1904), 68–9; Chronicles of the Revolution 1397–1400, ed. C. Given-Wilson (Manchester and New York, 1993), 243n. Wyntoun may have meant another Lancastrian retainer, Sir Thomas Swynburne. 69  R. Somerville, History of the Duchy of Lancaster (2 vols, London, 1953–96), i, 515. 70  Wyntoun, Laing, iii, 75. Bower gave Richard’s escape as a fact; Bower, viii, 29.



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as his heir in the parliament of 1397–98. There is no evidence that this took place, but the assertion that Richard did so (though not then) was made in England in the early fifteenth century. Bower may have been echoing and ­reinforcing the claim of some English rebels in this period that Henry had ignored a superior Mortimer right to the throne in 1399. Bower claimed that the earl of Northumberland and his son Sir Henry Percy were, with Bolingbroke, the principal architects of rebellion in 1399, a shift of emphasis from contemporary English accounts, stressing Percy treachery. His account of events in North Wales is more accurate and detailed than Wyntoun’s, and is similar in outline to Jean Creton’s eyewitness account, and the French ones based on it. As Professor Watt pointed out, Bower has some different details. He names the Bishop of St Asaph (John Trevaur) and Lord FitzWalter as among the envoys, headed by Archbishop Arundel and the earl of Northumberland, whom Bolingbroke sent from Flint Castle to negotiate with the king at Conwy.71 These additions are plausible and telling. FitzWalter emerged in 1399 as a strong Lancastrian supporter. Trevaur had owed his elevation to Richard, but joined Bolingbroke, and, soon after Richard’s capture, was rewarded by his new patron. Trevaur was on the committee of deposition, and read out the sentence on Richard in parliament. If the king had still trusted Trevaur when he came to Conwy, his treachery may have been a factor in persuading Richard that Bolingbroke would negotiate with him, as his envoys promised, in good faith. Perhaps Bower’s additional information was derived indirectly from the bishop himself. For Trevaur, after joining Henry IV’s Welsh and domestic opponents, fled to Scotland with the earl of Northumberland in 1405.72 ‘There is nothing the Scots like better to hear,’ wrote Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, ‘than abuse of the English.’ His remark was doubtless informed by his visit to Scotland in 1435. Expressions of anti-English sentiment at that point are likely to have been stoked up by the deterioration of Anglo-Scottish relations, which resulted in the outbreak of war the following year.73 Can it be safely assumed that the same pitch of Anglophobia was the norm amongst the inhabitants of Lowland Scotland, a defining characteristic among them, overshadowing the variety of their group loyalties and hatreds, and giving them an overwhelming sense of nationality? Since our mindsets derive from the evolution and deepening of nationalist ideology for over two centuries, we are biased in favour of identifying and perhaps magnifying the significance of medieval expressions of nationality. That has become a happy huntingground for modern medievalists, especially, in the present context, in the 71  Ibid., 21, 23, 157–8. 72  A. B. Emden, A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to AD 1500, 3 (Oxford, 1957), 1898–9. 73  Pius II Commentarii, ed. A.Van Heck (Vatican, 1984), 47–8.

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wake of the intensifi­cation of Scottish nationalism and its re-awakening of English ­ nationalism. In medieval society gens and communitas had multiple embodiments, ranging from the universal to the highly localised, and giving individuals a variety of important identities, whose significance to them might vary in time and space, and which they might either don or put in a press as expedient, in contrast to the regimented uniform of nationalism with which we are perforce mainly clad. It may throw some light on Aeneas’s opinion of Scottish abusiveness that he landed at Dunbar, and that five years previously, when Ghillebert de Lannoy passed through the port, he singled it out as ‘devastated by war’. This contrasted with his reaction to other burghs – he thought that St Andrews, Perth, Stirling and Dumfries were goodly places.74 Maybe in more flourishing parts of Scotland, and ones less vulnerable to large-scale invasion, distant memories of the depredations of English armies were just one element in folk tradition. Can we assume that – except when war with the English again made general demands on manpower and goods – hatred of them was a consuming, defining characteristic of Scots, a dynamic in the behaviour of burgesses, shipmen, artisans and husbandmen as well as noblemen? There is, indeed, as Dr Alastair Macdonald has shown, compelling evidence of how the intense warfare of the later fourteenth century generated individual and group hatred between Scots and English. Thus the slain earl of Douglas’s distraught followers were minded to kill the captured Sir Henry Percy in the bleak aftermath of battle, even though by doing so they would have startlingly breached Christian precept and the laws of war. Echoes of mutual insults between Scottish and English nobles, breaching the norms of polite discourse, have significantly come down to us from the 1390s. Do they represent the norm in peaceful times? Were Scottish nobles eager to participate in English courtly society, and welcomed into it, just in order to play irritating, point-scoring roles? The importance of the cultural and religious ideals and habits shared by Scots and English needs to be stressed, and the stimulation which they gave to sociability, civility and bonding. The courtesy with which distinguished Scots might be received in noble or royal English households helps to account for Scottish chroniclers’ generally favourable accounts of John of Gaunt and Richard II, and their treatment of the king as an iconic regal figure (unlike their own contemporary kings). The shock and revulsion which they expressed at Richard’s deposition seem to have been an accurate gauge of contemporary feeling at Robert III’s court and among his nobility. The chroniclers stressed the haste, and documented the intellectual crudity with which treacherous Englishmen abandoned their allegiance and abased 74  Oeuvres de Ghillebert de Lannoy, ed. C. Potvin and J. C. Houzeau (Louvain, 1878), 168.



relations in the later fourteenth century

253

their monarchy. They did not need to doctor the key Lancastrian documents concerning Richard’s ­ abdication, and Bolingbroke’s claim; all they needed to do, in order to condemn the usurpation, was to reproduce them, shorn of other official justificatory propaganda. There was, surely, an implied contrast with the elegant propriety with which the Scots solved problems in the exercise of royal authority, by the appointment of Lieutenants of the Realm. It is curious that the pseudo-Richard, the ‘Mammet’, was maintained at the Scottish court and treated with royal honours long after his political usefulness had diminished. Moreover, from his first appearance in Scotland, there were many Scottish nobles who could instantly have recognised whether he was the real Richard. His existence recalled and symbolised in Scottish eyes the flourishing of a once noble English court and polity, and the shame and tarnish of its abandonment.75 Scottish involvement in English courtly society, and not just the experience of Anglo-Scottish wars, might continue to foster complex views of the English realm and nation, not uniformly unfavourable, as well as helping to repair fractured goodwill and revive amity.

75  R. Nicholson, Scotland. The Later Middle Ages (Edinburgh, 1974), 222 and n., 269, 247. Professor Nicholson was not inclined to dismiss out of hand P. F. Tytler’s argument that the Mammet was indeed Richard.

Index

Abbotsley, church, 126, 137, 188 Aberdeen, 48, 50, 52 diocese, 229 Abernethy, Alexander, 97, 100, 108, 109, 111 Margaret, 109, 110, 111, 112 Sir John, 241 Agincourt, battle of (1415), 4 Aldbury, Augustinian house at, 238n Alexander II of Scotland (1214–29), 223 Alexander III of Scotland (1249–86), 111 death of, 182 minority, 73, 176 Alexandria, 61 Altonburn, 123 Anglicati, 12, 96, 100, 105, 110, 113, 115 Anglo-Scottish Marches, 18, 39, 113, 114, 117, 132, 135 English Marches, 120, 124, 129, 131, 132 West March, 42, 127 Scottish Marches, 101, 131, 177 East March, 152 Middle March, 151 Angus, 46 earls of, see Stewart, John; Umfraville, Robert de Angus, John de, abbot of Arbroath, 188 Annabella, Queen of Scotland, 249 ‘Annales Paulini’, 163, 170n Anonimalle chronicle, 48 Antwerp, 18n Appellants, 11, 243n Appleby, Henry de, 19n Aquitaine, duchy of, 248 Arbroath, Declaration of (1320), 82–3, 157, 160, 167n, 168, 170n, 220, 221n Arbroath, abbey, 137, 185 abbot, 188 monks, 137

Ardneil, 105 Argentine, Giles de, 30 Arnott, Michael, 56n Arthuret church, 137, 188 Arundel, 93 Arundel, Thomas, archbishop of Canterbury, 251 Atholl, 44 Atholl, Adomar of, 97 earls of, see Strathbogie, David (I), (II), (III); John Audley, Hugh de, 19n ‘Auld Alliance’, the, 3–4 Auldtons of Roxburgh, 140 Roger de, 141 Avignon, 2, 6, 82, 149, 153, 157, 159, 168, 169 Aylesbury, Walter de, keeper of Wallingford castle, 78n Ayr, 18, 105 Ayton, Treaty of (1502), 6 Badlesmere, Bartholomew de, 17, 21n Bailleul, 78 Baleato, William de, papal legate, 160 Ballinbreich, Roger de, bishop of Ross, 167n, 169n Balliol, Alan, 74n Alexander, 74n, 79n Edward, 7, 12, 78, 80, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 92, 93, 104, 136, 137, 163, 190 godson of Edward I, 75, 76 his army, 42 in custody, 77, 79 in Prince Edward’s household, 76, 77 in the household of Thomas and Edmund de Brotherton, 77, 78n, 79, 81, 82

256

england and scotland in the fourteenth century

King of Scotland (1332–56), 41, 42, 43, 45, 47, 50, 56n, 58, 59, 85, 90, 91, 96, 97 102, 105, 106, 107, 113, 121, 122, 126, 143, 164, 191, 192, 203, 205 acknowledges English overlordship, 144, 189 cedes lands to Edward III, 42, 45 138, 139, 141, 190n, 248 in exile in France imprisoned by Phillip VI, 88 murders Jean de Candas, 87 offers to marry Joan, sister of Edward III, 87n Hugh, 74n, 75, 79n John (I), 74, 76, 78, 92 guardian of Alexander III, 73 his English offices, 73, 74 marries Dervorguilla, co-heiress of lordship of Galloway, 73 John (II), 79n, 91 death, 80 exiled to France, 73, 77, 87 King of Scotland (1292–6), 12, 76, 97, 100, 102, 103, 104, 105, 177, 180 abdication, 92 181, 217 captive of Edward I, 1296, 76, 77, 217 defies Edward I, stripped of lands and kingship, 74–5, 118 marries Isabelle de Warenne, 74 Thomas, illegitimate son of Donald, earl of Mar, 89 Balliols of Cavers, 111, 112 Alexander, 96, 97, 102, 108 warden of Selkirk Forest, 100 Isabelle, 110 countess of Mar, 111, 112 Thomas, 112n Balliol College, Oxford, 73 Bailly, William, 237 Balmyle, Nicholas de, bishop of Dunblane, 167n Balnebrich, Roger de, 168 Bamburgh, John of, 141 Bannockburn, battle of (1314), 1, 2, 14, 15, 24, 27, 28, 30, 34n, 35, 38, 79, 80, 83, 97, 103, 105, 114, 121, 168, 209, 220, 222n, 223, 230, 233 Barbour, John, 30, 65–6, 67, 115, 127, 222, 223, 224, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 231, 233

The Bruce, 4, 8, 61, 66, 96, 107, 220, 222, 225, 229 The Stewartis Originall (lost), 230, 232n Barclay, Sir David of Brechin, 83 Barnard castle, 84 Barnbougle, barony of, 112 Barons’ War (1258–65), 73, 74 Barry, Thomas, rector of Bothwell church, 233 Bartholomew, Roger, 177n Baskerville, John de, 34 Walter de, 34 Richard de, 33 Richard de (other), 34n Bassildon, 93 Baston, (Robert?), English poet, 233 Battle of Otterburn, 133 Baugé, battle of (1421), 232 Beauchamp, Guy de, earl of Warwick, 17, 28n, 77, 81 John de, 34n Beaufiz, Henry de, 21n Beaumont, Henry de, 21n, 28n, 78n, 85, 86, 88, 90 Louis de, bishop-elect of Durham, 205 Becket oil, 169 Belegaume, Fercard, bishop of Caithness, 167n Benedict XIII, 153 Bennet, James, bishop of St Andrews, 139 Benstede, John de, 78 Berwickshire Merse, 98 Berwick, Treaty of (1357), 4, 58, 145 Berwick-upon-Tweed, 1, 4, 9, 15, 16, 23, 24, 25, 26, 42, 51, 52, 63, 68, 110, 119, 120, 132, 133, 138, 140, 142, 143, 154, 155, 156, 190, 210, 221, 223, 242, 245 castle, 127 captured and sacked by Edward I, 1296 49, 216, 220, 224, 225 by Edward III, 1333, 189, 190, 202, 208 by the Scots, 124, 162 by Robert Bruce, 1318, 189 nunnery outside, 152 prioress, 153 nuns of, 152, 153 parliaments at, 176, 182 garrison, 20 Maison Dieu of, 53 rebellious monks, 209 sheriffdom, ceded to Edward III, 138



index

Biggar, 23 Bikenore, Thomas de, 22n Birghan, Treaty of (1290), 180 Birmingham, Walter de, 19n Bishopthorpe, Truce of (1323), 84, 86 Bisset, Thomas, prior of St Andrews, 124n Black Death, 221 Black Parliament, 90 Blind Hary Vita noblissimi defensoris Scotie Wilelmi Wallace militis, 65, 234, 235 Bohemia, 198 Bohun, Humphrey de, earl of Hereford, 17, 79, 207 Bolton-in-Allerdale, manor of 121 Bonar, William, Master of Artillery, 69 Boniface VIII, 163n, 171, 217 Boniface IX, 152, 153 Botetourt, John, 21n Bothwell castle, 63 Boulogne, 93 Bower, Walter, abbot of Incholm, 43, 44n, 47, 48, 50, 54, 55, 56, 67, 115, 216n, 227, 232n, 233, 237, 244, 250, 251 Scotichronicon, 71n, 90, 96, 227, 230–1, 233, 234 Brechin, David, 97 Brechin, David, lord of, 103 Brétigny, Treaty of (1360), 194 Bretagne, Jean de, earl of Richmond, 77, 168 Bridlington Chronicler, 127 Bridlington, John of prophecies of, 216n Briggesherth, Thomas de, 82n Brittany, 242n Bromley, Roger de, 141n Brotherton, Edmund de, 77 earl of Kent, 80 Thomas de, 77 earl of Norfolk, 80, 82 earl Marshall, 81, 85 Broun, John, 244 Bruces, 96 Bruce, Edward, 48n, 114, 223 Bruce, Robert, see Robert I of Scotland Bruges, 70 Brut Chronicle, 88, 89, 90 Buchan, earls of, see John Comyn Buittle castle, 15

257

Burgh, Richard de, earl of Ulster, 18 Gelis de, 1296 Elizabeth de, 110 Burghdon, Gilbert de, 120 Walter de, 121 Burghersh, Bartholomew, lord, 246 Burgundy, Phillip III, Duke of, 70 Burnel, Edward, 28n ‘Burnt Candlemass’ (1356), 2, 216 Burrell, John, of Teviotdale, 110, 113 Burton-on-Trent, abbot of, 82 Burtonstown, 137 Bury St Edmonds, parliament at, 182 Bussy, Sir John, 249 Bute, 43 Byland, 168 Caerlaverock, 28 castle, 47, 62 Song of, 28 Cailly, Thomas de, 22n Caithness, bishop of, see Belegaume, Fercard Calais, 68 Cambuskenneth, statute of (1314), 104, 107 Candas, Ferrand de, 87 Jean de, 87 Canonbie, 143n Canterbury, 9, 93, 238 archbishop of, see Arundel, Thomas Christ Church priory at, 238 Cantilupe, Sir William de, 37 Carlisle, 9, 63 cathedral, 62 diocese, 137 Franciscans at, 209 warden of, 1316, 207 Carlisle, earls of, see Harclay, Andrew de Carlton, James de, 36n Carrick, 43, 45, 55n, 144 earls of, see Robert Stewart; Robert III; David Stewart Cary, John de, 35 Castile, 238, 239 Charles II of Naples, 87 Charles IV of France, 86 Charles VI of France, 249 Charlton, John de, 19 Chartres, Robert, 237 Chaucombe, Thomas de, 36 Chester, 38

258

england and scotland in the fourteenth century

Cheviots, 129, 144 Chene, Henry le, 168 Chilham, 108 Chillingham, manor of, 125 Chronica Monasterii de Melsa, 75 Clare, Gilbert de, earl of Gloucester, 16, 17, 21, 25, 26, 28n, 34, 35, 76, 79 Claxton, Robert, monk of Durham, 149 Clement V, 160, 166 Clement VII, 149, 150, 152, 153, 154, 154, 155, 156n Cliffords, 10, 98 Sir Roger de, 210 Richard, 149 Robert de, 21, 25, 28n Thomas, lord, 227, 243, 244, 245 Cliffords of Ellingham, 124n Joan de, 124 John de, 124, 125, 128 Thomas de, 125 Clifton, Gerard de, 36 Coleville, Thomas de, of Coxwold, 31, 33 Thomas de (other), 31 William de, 31 Colvilles of Oxnam, 98 Robert, 101–2, 113 William, 237 Cockburnspath, 147 Cokefield, Simon de, 35, 36 Coldingham, 120 priory, 185, 237, 238, 242 prior, 149 Coldstream, religious house at, 185 Comyns, 7, 76, 95 Alice, 78n, 85 John, earl of Buchan, 56n, 78n, 97, 99, 103, 105, 107, 160, 186, 231 lands, 40, 44n Walter, 88n Constable, Robert, of Flamborough 32n Conwy, 251 Corbeil, Treaty of (1326), 86 Cornwall, earls of, see Eltham, John of; Gaveston, Piers Corry, John de, 210 Coupar, religious house at, 185 Coupland, John de, 119, 129 keeper of Roxburgh, 121, 126, 142 murdered, 128 sheriff of Roxburgh, 126 his wife, Johanna de, 142

Court of the Guardians, 177 Courtenay, Peter, 243, 244 Coventry, diocese of, 82n Cowell, 43 Coxwold, 31n Cornubia, Geoffrey de, 22n Cromwell, John de, 19, 21n, 28n, 33 Crabb, John, 63 Crabbe, 41 Crécy, battle of (1346), 65, 126 Cressingham, Hugh de, 224 Cresswell, William marries Isabelle, countess of Mar, 111 Creton, Jean, 251 Cryche, Master Simon, 238 Culblean, battle of (1335), 46, 106, 137 Culwen, William de offices in Scotland, 133 Cunningham, 43, 45, 46, 105, 106 Cunningham, Sir William, 240 Curia, 159, 160, 161, 164, 166, 168, 170, 171, 220 Dacre, Hugh, lord, 119, 213 Ranulph, 47 Dalderby, John, bishop of Lincoln, 33n Dalgarnock, William de, abbot of Kelso, 139 Dalkeith castle, 63 Dalswinton castle, 15 Dalziel, Sir William, 243, 244, 245 David I of Scotland (1124–53), 152, 223 David II of Scotland (1329–71), 8, 90, 114, 130, 137, 138, 142, 143, 145, 146, 147, 148, 151, 163, 191, 192, 193, 194, 212, 231, 232, 233, 237 capture by Edward III, 3, 10 death, 147, 229 in French exile, 139 marries Joan, sister of Edward III, 87n, 228 Margaret Drummond, his mistress, 194 minor, 162n, 86, 88, 89 favours an English successor, 9, 10, 12, 136n, 192, 193, 194, 225, 227, 228, 230, 231n, 234, 239 ransom and release, 3, 4, 10, 119, 141 144, 192, 205, 225 visits England, 236 Delavel, Sir William, 133



index

Despenser Edward, lord, 246 Hugh (the elder), 84, 246 Hugh (the younger), 84 Sir Thomas, 246 Disinherited, 7, 40, 41, 42, 45, 46, 57, 58, 59, 82, 85, 86, 88, 90, 91, 92, 97, 103, 107, 121, 136n Dollar, 55 Dompierre, 87 Donald, called son of the lord of the Isles (1378), 237 Doncaster, 31n Douglas Crag castle, 71 Douglases, 5, 10, 13, 95, 147, 148, 229, 232, 233, 242 Archibald, lord of Galloway, 239, 240 earls of, 225, 233 Archibald ‘the Grim’, third earl 147, 151, 152, 153, 154, 229 Archibald, fourth earl, 8, 115 James, second earl, 68, 114, 239, 240, 243, 245, 248 killed, 252 Sir James Douglas, his son, 240 Sir William, first earl, 120, 146, 229 William, eighth earl, 71 Sir James, 15, 61, 66, 85, 89, 90, 107, 127, 229, 230 Sir James of Strathbrock, 246 William, lord of Liddesdale, 46, 51, 52, 99, 106, 118, 131, 223 captured at Neville’s Cross, 212 his widow, Elizabeth, 212 swears allegiance to Edward III, 213 murdered, 213 swears allegiance to Edward III, 213 Sir William of Lothian, 62, 63 Sir William of Nithsdale, 227, 237, 238, 243 William, 193 Dru, Laurence, 249 Drummond, Malcolm, 115, 244 Margaret, mistress (later queen) of David II, 194 Dryburgh abbey, 12, 123, 137, 140, 142, 147, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 155 abbot, 144, 150 canons, 142, 168

259

cartulary, 140n Dublin, 179, 184 Dumbarton castle, 43, 108–9 Dumfries, 105, 133, 139, 252 castle, 15 sheriffdom, ceded to Edward III, 138 Dunbar, 145, 151, 221, 252 battle of (1296), 1, 2 siege of (1338), 51 Dunbars, 5, 10, 13, 97, 226n Agnes, countess of March, 51 earls of March, 151 George, ninth earl 7, 10, 115, 118, 131, 239, 240, 243n, 245, 248 swears English allegiance (1400), 8 warden of the Scottish March, 119 Patrick de, seventh earl, 96, 99, 102, 108, 186 swears allegiance to Edward I, 96 Patrick de, eighth earl, 42, 82 John, earl of Moray, 239, 240, 243, 244, 245 Dunblane, see of, 167n bishops of, see Balmyle, Nicholas de; Maurice Dundalk, battle of (1318), 2 Dundarg castle, 66, 67, 68 Dundee, 50, 55 burgesses, 187 Minorite friars of, 54 Dundrennan abbey, 147, 185 abbot, 137 monks, 137 Dunfermline, 56 abbey, 120, 237 Dunkeld, see of, 167n bishop, see Sinclair, William de Dunoon castle, 43 Dunottar castle, 52n Duns church, 141 Dunstable, 35 Dupplin Moor, battle of (1332), 2, 41, 58, 83, 90, 121, 216n, 224 Durant, William, 32 Durham, 9, 18, 55n bishop, 153n, see also Skirlaw, Walter; Beaumont, Louis de bishopric, 130 diocese, 82n, 152, 188 priory, 120, 237, 238, 242

260 england and scotland in the fourteenth century Eccles, religious house at, 185 Eckford, William, 90 Etal castle, 124, 125 Edinburgh, 2, 25, 53, 113, 145, 146, 151 burgesses, 148 castle, 15, 47, 51, 64, 68, 69, 71, 100, 109, 133 garrison, 51, 105 sheriffdom, ceded to Edward III, 138 Treaty of (1328), 86, 170 Treaty of (1560), 6 Edmonstone, Sir Archibald, 246 Sir John, 240, 241 Edward I of England (1272–1307), 5, 10, 12, 27, 28, 29, 53, 74, 75, 76, 77, 91, 97, 100, 101, 129, 174, 194, 196, 221n, 222, 224, 228, 233 as overlord of Scotland, 95, 96, 98, 99, 102, 103, 104, 107, 108, 109, 110, 121, 122, 175, 176, 177, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 191, 203, 217, 220, 232 captures and sacks Berwick, 49n, 225 confiscates lands and goods in England of those with Scottish allegiance, 118 conquest of Wales, 18 death, 20, 78 Edward II of England (1307–27), 10, 11, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 38, 61, 73, 79, 80, 81, 83, 84, 85, 86, 91, 92, 94, 102, 103, 104, 108, 110, 111, 112, 125, 128, 129, 159, 160, 162, 163, 165, 166, 167n, 168, 169, 170, 187, 196, 198, 207, 211 as Prince Edward, 75, 77, 101 deposition, 87, 89 loses Berwick to the Scots, 127 Edward III of England (1327–77), 5, 10, 18n, 20, 29, 45, 55, 65, 66, 83, 85, 90, 91, 99, 114, 125, 131, 137, 139, 140, 141, 142, 146, 163, 164, 195, 196, 209, 213, 218, 225, 234, 236, 239 Alice Perrers, his mistress, 243n as overlord of Scotland, 7, 97, 99, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 111, 113, 114, 122, 137, 144, 191, 207 asserts his majority, 88 captures Berwick, 51, 52, 189, 190, 202, 208 captures David II, 1346, 3 death, 229

kills his brother, John of Eltham, earl of Cornwall, 56, 230–1 makes peace with David II, 205–6 negotiates with David II for an English succession, 9, 10, 12, 136n, 192, 193, 194, 225, 227, 228, 230, 231n, 234, 239 releases David II, 1357, 3 recognises David II as king of Scotland, 4, 206 Scottish lands ceded to, 42, 45, 59, 138, 139, 141, 143, 145, 147, 190n, 248 Edward IV of England (1461–83), 6, 242 Egglescliffe, John de, bishop of Glasgow, 160, 166, 167, 168n Elgin, 48, 51 Elmham, Sir William, 247 Eltham, John of, earl of Cornwall, 55, 56, 230 Embleton, William de, 141 Erpingham, Sir Thomas, 247 Eslington, Elizabeth, 120n Robert de, 120n Ettrick Forest, 138 Eure, John de, 119 Fairnington, 148 Falkirk, battle of (1298), 2, 96, 201, 224 Farnham, Robert de, 33n Fauconberg, Walter de, 22n, 34n, 36 Felbrigge, Sir Simon, 247 Felling, manor of, 130 Feltons Robert de, 19n Sir William de, 19n, 119, 126, 138n constable of Roxburgh, 123, 140 marries Isabella, countess of Fife, 140n sheriff of Roxburgh, 140 Ferrars, John de, 21n, 32, 33, 34 Fieschi, Luke, Cardinal, 159, 160 robbed by Gilbert de Middleton, 205 Fife, 47, 56n, 105 earls of Donnchad (II), 140n his daughter Ada, 140n Duncan, 47n, 49, 97, 101, 105 his daughter, Isabella, 119, 140n marries Mary Monthermer, 110 Malcolm, 178n Macduff, his son, 178, 181



index

see also Stewart, Robert Fitzpayn, Robert, 19, 21n. 25, 35 Fitzwalter, Walter, lord, 251 Fitzwarin, Fulk, 21n Fitwilliam, Ralph, 22 Flambard, William, 36 Flanders, 158, 161, 171 Robert III, count of, 200 Flint castle, 251 Flodden, battle of (1513), 1 Florence, 63 Fordun, John of, 222, 223, 224, 225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 231 Chronicle of the Scottish Nation, 4, 41n, 220, 223 Gesta Annalia, 228, 230 Forester, Adam, 249 Forfar, 100 Forres, 50 France, 196, 197, 216, 229, 234 Fraser, Sir Simon, 225 Frendrach, Duncan of, sheriff of Bannffshire, 187 Frene, Walter de, 76 Froissart, Jean, 67, 150, 218, 233, 234 Chroniques, 8 Méliador, 8 Frome, Roger de, 33 Furness, Abbey, 137 abbot, 126 Gala, 147 Galliard, Château, 61 Galloway, 41.44, 47 Gamelspath, 120 Gascony, 15, 80, 86, 173, 174, 175, 179, 182, 192, 196, 203, 207 Gaunt, John of, 11, 13, 148, 149, 225, 232, 239, 240, 241, 242, 243, 244, 246, 247, 248, 250, 252 as David II’s successor, 225, 227, 231n, 239 pursuit of Castilian Crown, 238, 239 warden of the Marches, 128, 238 Gaveston, Piers, earl of Cornwall and lord of Wallingford, 10, 15, 16, 17, 25, 26, 30n, 76, 79, 82, 83 executed, 84 marries Margaret de Clare, 79 Ghent, Simon of, bishop of Salisbury, 16n, 33

261

Gilbert, John, bishop of St David’s, 246, 247 Gilsland, lands of the lord of, 27n Glasgow, bishop of, 149 see also Egglescliffe, John de; Glendonwen, Matthew de; Lindsay, John de;Rae, William de; Wardlaw, Walter; Wishart, John de; Wishart, Robert de archdeacon, 154 cathedral, 41, 149 diocese, 138, 167 Glaston, John de, 37 Glendonwen, Matthew de, bishop of Glasgow, 153 Glenluce abbey, 154 Gloucester, earls of, see Clare, Gilbert de Gowrie, 46 Graham, Sir John, earl of Menteith, 45, 47n Grandison, William de, 33 Grays, 129 Sir Thomas, 119, 127, 133, 223 Scalacronica, 8, 96, 119, 133, 223 Great Cause (1290–92), 175, 176 Great Schism (1378), 6, 9, 149, 150, 153, 154, 155, 234, 237 Great Revolt (1381), 11, 239, 240 Greenfield, William, archbishop of York, 31, 32, 33 Greille, Thomas de, 33n Grene, Sir Henry, 249 Gresley, Sir Thomas de, 38 Greyfriars church, Dumfries, 56n Greystoke, Ralph, lord, 118 Guînes, Treaty of (1354), 205 Guisborough, Walter of, 116 Chronicle of Walter of Guisborough, 23n Gylcrouse, Stephen de, 208 Haddington, 42, 50, 145, 151 constabulary, ceded to Edward III, 138 Haliburton, Sir John, 244, 245 Sir William, 245 Halidon Hill, battle of (1333), 2, 42, 51, 58, 120, 137, 189, 202, 224 Haltwhistle, 27n church, 137, 188 Hamilton, Sir John of Cadzow, 246 Harang, Raymond, 34 Harbottle castle, 120

262 england and scotland in the fourteenth century Harclay, Andrew de, earl of Carlisle, 128 Harre, Bertin, 156n Hary, Blind, see Blind Hary Hastang, Robert, 28n Hastings, Edmund de, 19, 20n John, 170n Havering, 93 Historia Aurea, 127 Hebrides, 101 Hélicourt, 80 Helmsley, 31n Henry I of England (1100–35), 223 Henry II of England (1154–89), 223, 224 Henry III of England (1216–72), 38, 176 Henry IV of England (1399–1413), 5, 8, 130, 155, 250, 251 as Henry Bolingbroke, 249, 250, 251, 253 invades Scotland, 1400, 3, 115, 227 claims overlordship of Scotland, 4, 95, 114, 225, 228 spares Scottish monasteries, 231 Henry V of England (1413–22), 4 Henry VII of England (1485–1509), 6 Hepburn, Sir Patrick of Hailes, 241 Hereford, earls of, see Bohun, Humphrey de Hermitage castle, 212 Herons of Kirrouchtree, 119 of Ford, 119n Thomas de, 125 Gerard, 119 Roger, 125 Herries, Sir John of Terregles, 146 Heton, Thomas de, 125 Hexham, 217 Holand, John, earl of Huntingdon, 245, 246n Holmcultram abbey, 137, 146, 154, 155 Holtby, Nicholas de, 31n William de, 31n Holy Land, 157, 158, 159, 162, 220, 237, 239 Holyrood, abbey, 137, 148, 231 abbot, 238, 239 Holy See, 162 Holystone Convent, 137 Horsley, Alan Richard de, 122 Roger de, 127 Humbleton Hill, battle of (1402), 3, 5, 219 Huntingdon, earls of, see Holand, John

Inchcolm, monastery on, 54, 55 Inglethorpe, Thomas de, 36n Ingleton, Hugh de, 37n Ireland, 173, 174, 178, 179, 192, 196, 203, 246, 249 Isabella of France, Queen of England, 86, 88, 163 Isle, Robert del, 21n James I of Scotland (1406–37), 69, 70, 71, 153, 231, 232, 233 captured as James Stewart, Prince of Scotland, 3, 60–1 marries his daughter to the French dauphin, 234 marries Joan Beaufort, 232 James II of Scotland (1437–60), 69, 70, 71, 153, 234 James III of Scotland (1460–88), 6, 69, 153n, 234, 234 James IV of Scotland (1488–1513), 6 James VI of Scotland (1567–1625), 1 Jean, Gaucelin de, Cardinal, 159, 160 robbed by Gilbert de Middleton, 205 Jedburgh, 156 abbey, 139, 142, 143n, 147, 150, 155, 185 abbot, 126, 137, 144 canons, 137 dependent cells, 143 castle, 120, 147 garrison, 101–2, 150 Forest, 147 ceded to Edward III, 138 John I of England (1199–1216), 223 John II of France (1350–64), captive of Edward III, 4 John XXII, 12, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171 death, 170 places an Interdict on Robert Bruce, 205 Keith, Sir Robert, 97, 127 William, 46 Kelso abbey, 12, 139, 140, 142, 143, 147, 150, 155, 185 abbot, 137, 139, 144, 153 Kent, earls of, see Edmund de Brotherton Kerrs of Selkirk Forest, 130, 131 John, 123, 124n



index

Kilbride, 105 Kildrummy castle, 46 Kincardine, 100 Kinghorn, 40 Kingston, 93 King’s Langley, 80, 93 Kingston, John de, 19n Kinross church, 56 Kircudbright, 50 Kirkby, Bernard de, 19n Kirkgunzeon, 146 Kiryel, Nicholas de, 36 Knighton, Henry, 150 Knighton’s Chronicle, 217, 226 Königsberg, 245 Kyle, 43, 45, 46, 106, 144 Lacey, Henry de, earl of Lincoln, 17 death, 26 Lacy, I. de, prior of Merton, 75 Lamberton, William de, bishop of St Andrews, 53 138, 166, 168 Lanark, 105 Lancaster, earls of Edmund, 79n Henry, 79n, 85n Thomas, 10, 17 79, 84, 85n Landallis, William, bishop of St Andrews, 139, 141 Lanercost chronicle, 24, 25, 27n, 48, 51, 54, 55n, 62, 125n, 127, 131, 208, 209, 211, 217, 221, 224, 234 Langford, Peter de, 33 Langley, Edmund duke of York, 242, 246 Lannoy, Ghillebert de, 252 Lanton, 142 Lammermuirs, 139, 144, 145 Latimer, Thomas le, 21n, 22n, 28n Laurison, Twynam, 90 Leader, 147 Leicester castle, 250 Lennox, earls of Malcolm, 97, 103, 109 Leslie, John, bishop of Ross, 61 Walter, lord (or earl) of Ross, 237, 239 Lesmahagow church, 55 Lethams, 98 Sir Edward, 110, 113, 124, 125 Leuchars castle, 63 Leyburn, William de, 36 Henry de

263

his brothers, 75 Lewes, battle of (1264), 74 Liber Vitae, Durham, 120 Lichfield diocese, 82n Liddel Peel, 130 Lincoln, bishops of, see Dalderby, John diocese, 137 earls of, see Lacey, Henry de Lindores abbey, 137 Lindsays, 13, 242 John de, bishop of Glasgow, 168n, 169n Sir Alexander, 241, 245, 247 Sir David, of Glen Esk, 243, 245, 247, 248 Sir James, 240, 241, 244, 245, 248 Linlithgow, 23, 25 constabulary, ceded to Edward III, 138 Linton, Bernard de, bishop of Sodor, 167 Lochindorb campaign (1336), 46, 48, 50 Loch Leven castle, 56, 100 priory of St Serf’s, 56n, 224 Lochmaben, 109, 133 Lochult, 65 London, 2, 27 78, 80, 93, 202, 229, 237, 242, 243 Tower of, 61 Lorraine, Eustace, 97, 106, 107, 110 James, 107, 113 Lothian, archdeaconry of, 139 Loudon Hill, battle of (1307), 2 Louis X of France, 80 Louis XI of France, 242 Lovel, Richard, 19n, 22n, 35 Lowestoft, 247 Luttrell Psalter, 218 Luttrell, Sir Geoffrey de, 219 Lyndesey, John de, 121 Lyns, Robert de, 31n Roger de, 31n MacDougalls, 95 MacDowell, Duncan, 44, 47n John of Argyll, 109n Mary, 109n Malcolm III of Scotland (1058–93), 225 Malcolm IV of Scotland (1153–65), 224 Malkarston, Stephen de, abbot of Holyrood, 237 Malmesbury, abbot of, 32, 33 Maltby, Robert de, 36

264 england and scotland in the fourteenth century William de, 36 Malton, Ralph of, 141 Man, Isle of 155 Manners, Robert, 120 Joan, 124 John, 124 Manuel priory, 53 Mar, earls of Donald, 66, 85, 90 marries Isabelle Balliol of Cavers, 110 regent for David II, 89 Thomas, 112 March, earls of, see Dunbar, George, ninth earl; Patrick de, seventh earl; Patrick de, eighth earl March Days, 118, 119 March Law, 134 Mare, Sir John de la, 37 Martin V, 154, 232 Maurice, bishop of Dunblane, 167, 168, 169n Maurice the gunner, 64 Mauley, Edmund de, 28n Maxwell, vill of, 122 Maxwells, 98 lords of, 142 Sir John, 142, 143 of Caerlaverock, 142 Eustace, 50, 83, 111, 143 keeper of Caerlaverock castle, 47 sheriff of Dumfries, 105 John, 103 McCullough, Michael, 124n Thomas, 110, 124n Mearns, the, 46 Melrose abbey, 12, 25, 139, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 151, 185, 237 abbot, 120, 137, 144, 147, 148, 151 monks of, 150, 153 Melton, William, archbishop of York, 159 Melville, Richard, 56 Menteith, earls of Alexander, 96, 97, 103 see also Graham, Sir John John, keeper of Dumbarton castle, 108 granted earldom of Lennox, 109 Merlay, Roger de, lord of Morpeth, 140n Merse, 140 Methven, battle of, (1306), 24 castle, 70

Mézières, Phillipe de, 246, 247 Order of the Passion, 246, 247 Middleton, Gilbert de, 128, 129 robbery of the cardinals, 205 Millemete, Walter de, 65 De Nobilitati Sapientiis et Prudenciis Regum, 65 Minot, Laurence, 219, 224, 234 ‘The Battle of Halidon Hill’, 219 ‘The Battle of Neville’s Cross’, 219 Mohaut, Robert de, 21n Moigne, Hugh, 238 Monboucher, Bertram de, 130 Montacute, William de, 19n Montagne, John de, earl of Salisbury, 249 Montague, William, 51, 52 Monthermer, Ralph de, 21n, 28n Mary, 110 Montrose, 79n Moravia, Andrew, 169n Moray, 46, 47n bishop of, see Murray, David; Pilmor, John earls of, see Dunbar, John; Randolph, John; Randolph, Thomas Moray, Andrew de, 76 Morley, Sir Robert, 245, 246, 247 Thomas, lord, 246, 247 Morte D’Arthur, 219 Mortimer of Chirk, Roger de, 19, 20n, 21n, 28n Roger, 86, 88, 163 Roger recognised as Richard II’s heir, 251, 252 Mortimer regime, 10, 137 Mortlake, manor of, 75 Mousfield, Gilbert de, 237, 238 Mowbrays, 97 Alexander, 45, 103, 114, 121, 123 Geoffrey, 45, 104 marries Isabelle Balliol of Cavers, 110 sheriff of Roxburgh, 121 John, 97, 103, 104, 105, 114 Phillip, 103, 112 Philippa, 112 Roger, 83, 110, 111, 121 Thomas, earl of Nottingham, 243, 244, 245, 246, 247 exiled, 249 Murray, Andrew, 41, 46, 47, 48, 63, 67, 109



index

of Tullibardine, 49 David, bishop of Moray, 161 Maurice, 46, 106 Musgrave, Thomas, 118 Nenthorne, lordship of, 148 Nessfield, William de, 129 Nevilles, 5, 10 Alexander, archbishop of York, 243n Ralph, lord, 243n, 245 Neville’s Cross, battle of (1346), 2, 3, 47n, 55n, 101, 106, 118, 120, 122, 134, 140, 143, 212, 225 Newark, 238 Newbattle abbey, 53, 149, 150 Newcastle, 9, 54, 115, 177n, 189, 192, 193, 243 Norfolk, earls of, see Thomas de Brotherton Norham, 25 castle, 63 garrison, 124 Northumberland, earls of, see Percy, Henry Norwich, bishop of, see Salmon, John Nottingham, earls of, see Mowbray, Thomas Nowers, Nicholas de, 33 Okesham, John de, 32 Ordainers, 14–15, 16, 85n Ordinance of 1293, 178, 179 ‘Ordinance for the Government of the Land’ (1305), 184, 208, 210 Ordinances, 17, 20, 84 Orreton, Sir John de, 121 offices in Cumberland, Northumberland and Roxburgh, 126 Oseney, 93 Otterburn, battle of (1388), 1, 116, 118, 120, 122, 151, 219, 233 Outremer, 157 Oxford University, 229, 233, 237, 238 Paisley abbey, 238 abbot, 238 prior, 238n Paris, 2 Parlement, 174, 175, 182 University, 229

265

Paris, Matthew de Chronica Majora, 38 Paule, John, Master of the King’s Machines, 69 Peebles, 120, 139 sheriffdom, ceded to Edward III, 138 Pembroke, earls of, see Valence, Aymer de Pencaitland Kirk, 142 Percies, 5, 10, 98, 225 Henry de, 19, 21n, 26, 30, 38, 86, 98 Henry ‘Hotspur’, 116, 122, 243, 251, 252 rebels against Henry IV, 8, 11 Henry, first earl of Northumberland, 119, 122, 246, 248, 251 flees to Scotland, 8 Perth, 15, 26, 41, 48, 49, 50, 53, 55, 56, 62, 65, 100, 121, 221, 242 burgesses, 187 church, 230 garrison, 105 Peter’s Pence, 169 Phillip IV of France (1285–1314), 15, 80, 174, 182 Phillip VI of France (1328–50) 61, 87, 88 Picard, Peter, 36 Picardy, 82, 88 Picquigny, Reginald de, 80 Pik, John, 80n Pilmor, John, bishop of Moray, 167 Pinkie, battle of (1537), 1 Pius II as Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, 234, 251, 252 Plumbar, Nicholas, 70 Pluscarden chronicler, 69–70, 90 Pocklington, John de, 137 Pointz, Nicholas de, 34 Poitiers, battle of (1356), 3, 216n, 224 Pomorze, 157 Pontefract castle, 250 Pontefract, Richard, 168 Popes, see Benedict XIII; Boniface VIII; Boniface IX; Clement V; Clement VII; Martin V Potesgrave, Richard de, 19n Prenderleith, barony of, 122 Presfen, William de, 120 Prussia, 238 Prussian crusade, 61, 227 Punchardon, William de, 35

266 england and scotland in the fourteenth century Rae, William, bishop of Glasgow, 139, 141 Ragman Roll, 98 Rand, Robert de, 31n Thomas de, 31n Randolph, John, earl of Moray, 44n, 51 Thomas, earl of Moray, 66, 85, 89, 90, 160, 164, 165, 170 Ramornie, Sir John, 249 Ramsay, Alexander, 114 Redcastle, barony of, 83 Redman, Matthew, 118 Sir Richard, 245 Redesdale, 116, 120, 151 Remonstrances of the Irish princes, 166, 221n Renfrew, 23, 25, 42, 43 Rentham. Henry de, 32 Restenneth, 143n Richard II of England (1377–99), 9, 13, 29n, 113, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 155, 156n, 218, 238, 239, 240, 241, 242, 243, 244, 247, 248, 249, 252 deposition, 250, 253 expedition to Ireland, 246, 249 minority, 236, 239 recognises Roger Mortimer as his heir, 250–1 sacks Scottish monasteries, 224, 231, 237 ‘Mammet’, 11, 228, 253 Richard III of England (1483–85), 6 Richmond, earls of, see Bretagne, Jean de Rivers, Thomas, 166 Robert Bruce (I), 102 Robert Bruce (II), 78n, 82, 223 earl of Carrick, 97, 98, 99, 101, 109 marries Elizabeth de Burgh, 110 swears allegiance to Edward I, 96, 102, 108 Robert I of Scotland (1306–29), 2, 5, 7, 12, 15, 15, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 40, 41, 42, 53, 62, 67, 80, 89 97, 104, 107, 111, 112, 114, 118, 121, 120, 128, 131, 137, 138, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 187, 195, 204, 209, 220, 222, 228, 230, 233 death of, 60, 73, 83, 86 his heart, 90 kills John Comyn, 56n, 103, 160 papal inderdict on, 205 Robert I of Naples, 87

Robert II of Scotland (1371–90), 10, 72, 148, 151, 206, 229, 236, 237, 240, 241, 242 Robert Steward, earl of Strathearn, 225, 239 Robert III of Scotland (1390–1406), 8, 10, 72, 152, 153n, 228, 245, 246, 248, 249, 250, 252 earl of Carrick, 68, 239, 240, 241, 242 Rome, 2, 6, 186, 221n, 237 Ros, William de, of Helmsley, lord of Wark, 31, 33 Godfrey (I), 105, 113 Godfrey (II), 44, 45, 106 sheriff of Ayr, 43, 105 sheriff of Lanark, 105 Godfrey (III), 97, 106 Ross, bishop of, see Ballinbreich, Roger de; Leslie, John earls of William, fifth earl, 97, 186 William seventh earl, 46 see also Leslie, Walter Rosselyn, Thomas, constable of Dunottar castle, 52n Rotuli Scotiae, 189, 190, 192n, 197, 203 Rotherford, William, 124n Roule, Adam de, 123 Rous, John le, 22n Roxburgh, 4, 9, 10, 18, 22, 23, 25, 27, 50, 110, 120, 121, 138, 139, 140, 142, 143, 144, 148, 156 Bridge, 41 campaign, 45, 48, 52 captured by the Scots, 140 castle, 15, 68, 69, 70, 123, 140, 147, 234 church of Old Roxburgh, 141, 149 church of St James, 140, 141 garrison, 101, 106, 122, 124, 150 hospital of Rutherford beside, 141 sheriffdom, 97, 111 ceded to Edward III, 138 St James’ fair, 226n St Albans, abbot of, 38 St Andrew, 225 St Andrews, 9, 234 bishop of, 149 see also Bennet, James; Lamberton, William de; Landallis, William; Trail, Walter



index

castle, 63 diocese, 138, 152, 153n, 164 religious house at, 185 St Asaph, bishop of, see Trevaur, John St Columba, 55 St Davids, bishop of, see Gilbert, John St Inglevert, 245 St John, church of, 56, 156n St John, John de, 19 John de, of Lageham, 36 Roger de, 21n St Leger, Edmund de, 36 St Margaret, 225 St Ninian, 225 St Sardos, War of (1323–5), 86 St Thomas of Canterbury, shrine of, 237, 240 St Trinians, barony of, 155n Salisbury, bishop of, see Ghent, Simon of Salmon, John, bishop of Norwich, 30n Sandale, John, bishop of Winchester, 81 Sir John de, 80 Sandal-upon-Ouse, manor of, 88 Sapy, Robert de, 33 Sarquhar, 50 Savage, John le, 34 Say, Geoffrey de, 34, 35 Scales, Ralph de, 36n Robert de, 36n Scone, Scottish parliament at, 183 religious house at, 185 stone of, 202 Seghill, manor of, 129 Segrave, John de, 18, 21, 28n Nicholas de, 28n Selby, Sir Walter de, 121, 128, 129 Selkirk, 120, 139 Forest, 25, 123 men of, 26 sheriffdom, ceded to Edward III, 138 Seton, Christina, 169n Thomas, 51, 52 ‘Shameful Peace’ (1328), 125, 163, 202 Sinclair, Henry, 103 William de, bishop of Dunkeld, 167n Siward, Richard, 96 Skirlaw, Walter, bishop of Durham, 248 Sluis, 68 Sodor, bishop of, see Linton, Bernard de Softlaw, vill of, 122 ‘Song on the Scottish Wars’, 201

267

Soules, William de, 83, 91, 103 Soules plot (1318–20), 80, 125 Spain, 61, 64, 198 Spalding, Piers de, 127 ‘Syme’ of, 127n Spyny, Walter, 233 Stangrave, Robert de, 80n Stewarts, 9, 10, 13, 95, 229, 233, 242 Albany Stewarts, 232 David, earl of Carrick, 245, 247, 248 David, duke of Rothsay, 130 James, 96, 110 John, earl of Angus, 112 marries Margaret Abernethy, 112 Robert, earl of Fife (later duke of Albany and Regent), 72, 68, 151, 153, 247, 248 Robert ‘the Steward’, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 99, 101, 106, 109, 114, 119 Robert, lord of Cunningham, 105 Thomas, archdeacon of St Andrews, 249 Sir Walter, 230, 249 Stirling, 53, 221, 252 castle, 28, 62, 64, 65, 67, 69, 222n parliament at, 176 siege of, 99 Stirling Bridge, battle of (1297), 2, 224 Stirling, John de, 56, 57n, 97, 111, 113, 122, 126 granted Bathgate and Ratho, 109 keeper of Edinburgh castle, 51, 100, 105 marries Barnaba Swinburne, 109n, 125, 128n sheriff of Edinburgh, 100, 125 John (another) sheriff of Perth, 109n Stirling, Eve of, 187 Stivinton, William de, 37n Stonehouse, 106 Stratford, John, 159, 163, 167 Strathbogies, 95, 140n earls of Atholl David (I), 97 David (II), 42, 43, 44n, 45, 46, 85, 86, 88, 90, 99, 106, 108, 109, 114, 136, 137 David (III), 104, 108, 114 John, 103 Strathearn, Agnes, countess of Strathearn, 83

268 england and scotland in the fourteenth century earls of Malise, 105 enters the ‘peace’ of Edward III, 97 see also Steward, Robert; Warenne, John de Strother, Alan del, 119 Henry del, 119 William del, 119 Stury, Sir Richard, 247 Sully, John, lord of, 168 Surrey, earls of, see Warenne, John de, sixth earl; John de, seventh earl Suthely, Stephen de, 19n Sutton, William de, 37 Sweetheart abbey, 185, 238 Swillington, Adam de, 19n Swinburne Sir Adam de, 125, 128 Barnaba 109n, 125 Sir Thomas, 250n Sir William de, 118 Swinehope, Richard de, 141 Swinford, Sir Thomas, 250 Swinton, Sir John, 241, 242, 243 Taranto, Margherita de, 73, 87, 88 Phillip, Prince of, 87 Teba, 61 Templars, 109 Teodericus, 64, 69 Teutonic Knights, Order of, 157 Teviotdale, 4, 97, 102, 110, 111, 113, 115, 122, 130, 131, 138, 139, 140, 142, 143, 145, 146, 147, 148, 150 archdeaconry of, 139 Thirteen Year Truce (1323), 163 Tibetot, Payn, 19, 21, 28n, 30, 35, 36 Tilliol, Sir Peter de, 120, 121 Peter, parson of Cultre, 121 William, canon of Dunkeld, 121 Topcliffe, 85 Towers, Sir John, 241 Trail, Walter, bishop of St Andrews, 152 Sir Thomas, 246 Trevaur, John, bishop of St Asaph, 249, 251 Trowup, 143 Trup, Hamelin de, 187 Tuchet, William, 36 Turnberry castle, 101 Tyes, Henry, 28n

Tynedale, 27n, 117, 125 Tynemouth, prior of, 118 Tweedmouth, 33, 34, 35, 38 Tweeddale, 139, 142 Ughtred, Thomas, 105 Ulster, earls of, see Burgh, Richard de Umfravilles, 95 Umfraville, Sir Ingram de, 61, 82, 96, 97, 103, 107 Gilbert de, 120, 151 Robert de, earl of Angus, 17, 19, 21, 30 Thomas de, lord of Redesdale, 120 submission to Edward I, 96 Union of Crowns (1603), 9 Union of Parliaments (1707), 9 Upsale, Geoffrey, 31n John, 31n Urban VI, 149, 150 Urban VIII, 6 Urquhart castle, 63 Usk, Adam, 250 Valence, Aymer de, earl of Pembroke, 17, 24, 79, 84, 98, 103 Valencia, Agnes de, 75, 76 Vaux, William, 28n Verneuil, battle of (1424), 4, 232 Verdon, Theobald de, 22n Vescy, Isabella de, 75, 88 Vienne, Jean de, 68 Vigorous, Thomas, 123 Vita Edwardi Secundi, 15, 24, 26, 79, 163n Wake, Thomas, 85n, 86 Wales, 17–18, 173, 174, 179, 192, 196, 203, 207, 250, 251 Wales, Hugh, 246 Wallace, William, 14, 76, 182, 224, 225 executed, 216 Wallingford castle, 78, 79 Walsingham, 9 shrine of Our Lady at, 246 Walsingham, Thomas, 129 Warchope, 121, 126 Wardlaw, Walter, bishop of Glasgow, 149, 156n Warenne, earls of Surrey John de, sixth earl, 73, 74, 76 John de, seventh earl, 16, 17, 21, 25, 26, 79, 84, 85



index

abducts Alice, wife of Thomas of Lancaster, 84 earl of Strathearn, 85 Wark, 25 castle, 128 Wark-on-Tweed, 142 Warwick, earls of, see Beauchamp, Guy de Waterton, Sir Robert, constable of Pontefract castle, 250 Weardale campaign (1327), 85, 89 Welles, John, lord, 243, 244, 245, 247 Wemyss, David, 56n Michael, 56n Wessington, William, 101 Westminster, 82, 93, 179, 180, 181, 184, 185, 195 abbey, 116 Monk of, 131, 237, 238 Westminster Chronicle, 116, 150 Parliament, 126, 133 Weston, John de, 19n, 80 Whitekirk, 9 Whithorn, 9 priory, 137, 155 Whitwick, 78 Widdrington, John de, 125 William I of Scotland (1165–1214), 223 Wilton Diptych, 247

269

Winchester, bishop of, see Sandale, John Windsor, 93 Wingfield, Roger de, 21n Winston, John de, 19n Wishart, Sir William, 122 John, bishop of Glasgow, 54, 138, 161 Robert, bishop of Glasgow, 53 Woodstock, Forest of, 78 Woodstock, Thomas of, 246, 247 Wright, David, 70 Wyntoun, Andrew, prior of St Serf’s at Lochleven, 8, 43n, 49, 52n, 55n, 56, 67, 222, 225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232, 233, 244, 250, 251 Original Chronicle of Scotland, 90, 220 Cottonian MS, 67 Wemyss MS, 67 Yetholm, 149 York, 65 archbishops of, see Greenfield, William; Melton, William; Neville, Alexander parliaments at, 189, 190 Treaty of (1237), 131 York, Edmund of, earl of Rutland and duke of Aumale, 249 Zouche, William de la, 22n