Scotland: The Story of a Nation. Magnus Magnusson
widower king had now lost all three of his children, and Scotland had lost all the immediate male heirs to the throne. But tragedy has to be overcome, and Alexander and his nation set about picking up the pieces. On 5 February 1284 the magnates of Scotland, meeting at Scone, acknowledged the infant Princess Margaret, the Maid of Norway, as heir presumptive to the Scottish throne, failing any further issue of her grandfather. Some of the nobility were unhappy about it, however: not only was she an infant, she was also a girl – and there was no precedent for a female ruler of Scotland. Besides, many of them felt that they themselves had a better claim to the Scottish throne. They comforted themselves with the thought that Alexander, who was still in his early forties, had plenty of time in which to produce another son.
Alexander recognised that he had to marry again. The bride he chose was Yolande, Comtesse de Montford, daughter of Robert IV, Comte de Dreux, a vassal of Edward I of England. They married in Jedburgh Abbey on 14 October 1285. But once again tragedy struck, the worst tragedy of all. Only five months after the wedding, Alexander III’s thirty-six-year reign came to an abrupt end.
The death of Alexander III
It is now no less than five hundred and forty-two years since Alexander’s death, yet the people of the country still point out the very spot where it happened, and which is called the King’s Crag.
TALES OF A GRANDFATHER, CHAPTER VI
On 19 March 1286 the king held a session of his council in Edinburgh. It became a convivial affair. The weather grew boisterous as the evening lengthened, but after supper Alexander insisted on setting out to spend the night with his young wife, who was staying in a royal castle at Kinghorn, on the east coast of Fife. It meant crossing the Firth of Forth in the teeth of a northerly gale heavy with snow, and a hazardous journey on horseback through the stormy dark. The boatman at South Queensferry at first refused to sail, but complied after being taunted with cowardice. When they landed at Inverkeithing on the north shore the king was urged to stay there overnight, but he refused and took horse to ride to Kinghorn.
On the seaward side of the busy A921 coastal road between Burntisland and Kinghorn there stands a tall memorial, surmounted by a cross, dedicated to the memory of Alexander III. It was unveiled on 19 July 1886 ‘before a huge concourse of spectators – a red letter day in the history of Kinghorn’, according to the Fifeshire Advertiser of that week. Today few motorists take advantage of the small lay-by next to it to stop to have a look at the memorial and read its inscription:
To the Illustrious
ALEXANDER III,
The Last of Scotland’s Celtic Kings,
Who was Accidentally Killed
Near this Spot
March XIX, MCCLXXXVI
To one side of the road lie the broad sands of Pettycur Bay; on the other stand the shrub-shrouded cliffs along which the king was riding that night. No one knows what happened. The surmise has always been that he became separated from his guides in the darkness, his horse stumbled, and Alexander was thrown and fell to his death at the foot of ‘King’s Crag’, as it was later named, where his body was found next morning. He was buried in the south aisle of Dunfermline Abbey, and all Scotland mourned its king. A scrap of verse, preserved in Andrew of Wyntoun’s Original Chronicle of Scotland (c.1400), records the profound general sense of loss:
Quhen [when] Alexander our kynge was dede,
That Scotlande led in lauche [law] and le [peace],
Away was sons [plenty] of alle [ale] and brede [bread],
Of wyne and wax, of gamyn [sport] and gle [glee],
Our gold was changit into lede [lead].
Crist, borne into virgynyte
Succoure Scotlande, and ramede [remedy],
That stade [placed] is in perplexite.
Alexander’s fatal night-ride is often portrayed as the result of romantic impulse: the ardour of an impetuous lover in the prime of life (he was only forty-four years old) eager to return to the arms of his bride in order to father a son. Be that as it may, his untimely death brought an abrupt end to the mini Golden Age, and plunged Scotland into a fearful constitutional crisis which would lead inexorably to the Wars of Independence with England.
Chapter 9 JOHN BALLIOL – ‘TOOM TABARD’
The full consequences of the evil were not visible at first; for, although all Alexander’s children had died before him, yet one of them, who had been married to Eric, King of Norway, had left a daughter named Margaret …
TALES OF A GRANDFATHER, CHAPTER VI
Rail travellers who alight at Berwick-upon-Tweed are stepping straight into the cockpit of the troubled history of Anglo – Scottish relations; whether they know it or not, they are standing on the threshold of the so-called Wars of Independence led first by William Wallace (see Chapter 10) and then by Robert Bruce (see Chapter 11). The notice above Platforms 1 and 2 explains:
This station stands on the site of the Great Hall of Berwick Castle. Here on the 17th November 1292, the claim of Robert Bruce to the crown of Scotland was declined and the decision in favour of John Baliol was given by King Edward I before the full parliament of England and a large gathering of the nobility and populace of both England and Scotland.
Across from the platforms the gaunt remains of the west wall of the old castle define one side of the station.1 Not much else is left, apart from the curtain wall which King Edward built from the castle to the shore of the Tweed below after his savage sacking of the town in March 1296 (see below). A steep path leads down from the station forecourt, past a quatrefoil lily-pond, until you emerge on the shingle foreshore of the broad river. To your right, the noble Royal Border Bridge carries rail traffic rumbling and hooting its way across the Tweed; on the far side of this great viaduct Edward’s ‘White Wall’ crow-steps its way right down to the water’s edge.
It is a curiously desolate spot. There is a tang of seaweed in the air, and the melancholy cries of seabirds and waders. The ruined walls and their abandoned defensive works speak sad volumes. And all because a little princess named Margaret, who held the destiny of Scotland in her palm, had died.
The Maid of Norway
The death of Alexander III in March 1286 was a devastating blow for Scotland – but it is only in hindsight that we can see just how devastating it was. The immediate effect was simply a dynastic crisis, because the sole heir of Alexander’s body, and the only surviving descendant in the direct line of the MacMalcolm dynasty, was his granddaughter Margaret, the Maid of Norway, who had been acknowledged as heir presumptive in 1284 (‘our lady and rightful heir’). To fill the sudden vacuum in the business of government, a committee of six Guardians was elected at an assembly or parliament of the ‘Community of the Realm’ at Scone the month after Alexander’s death; the Guardians comprised two bishops (William Fraser of St Andrews and Robert Wishart of Stirling), two earls (Alexander Comyn, Earl of Buchan, and Duncan MacDuff, Earl of Fife) and two barons (James the Steward and John Comyn, Lord of Badenoch). The Bruces, although a powerful family in the south-west of Scotland, were not represented. The seal which the Guardians created for their use showed the royal arms on one side and the image of St Andrew on