Scotland: The Story of a Nation. Magnus Magnusson
been a landowner in England under William Rufus and whose son, Guy, came to Scotland in the reign of David I. In 1263 his father, John Balliol the elder, had founded Balliol College, Oxford, as an act of penance for assaulting the Bishop of Durham, and his wealthy mother, Devorgilla, Lady of Galloway, had founded the beautiful and romantic Sweetheart Abbey a few miles south of Dumfries in memory of her husband in 1273 – it is his embalmed ‘sweet heart’ which was buried with her there when she died in 1290.
Robert Bruce was descended from an old Normandy family named de Brus, from Bruis (Brix), who were given lands in north Yorkshire by Henry I; the family came to Scotland in the reign of David I in about 1120, when Robert de Brus was granted the Lordship of Annandale and its attendant castles of Annan and Lochmaben as a military fief in what is now Dumfriesshire.1 Robert de Brus was the ancestor of a long line of Bruce Lords of Annandale, most of whom were called, rather confusingly, Robert. The fourth Robert Bruce, Lord of Annandale, married into the King David dynasty, as did one of the Balliol family: they married daughters of David, Earl of Huntingdon, the youngest son of King Malcolm IV and a grandson of David I.
Robert Bruce (the ‘Competitor’) could claim a greater nearness of degree than his rival John Balliol: he was the grandson, on his father’s side, of Isabella, the younger daughter of David, Earl of Huntingdon. Balliol, the younger of the two men, nevertheless had the senior claim: he was the great-grandson, on his mother’s side, of Margaret, the eldest daughter of Earl David. The argument would centre on which was the more important, proximity or primogeniture.
The competition for the throne has come to be known as the ‘Great Cause’. For a while it threatened to degenerate into civil war between supporters of the two factions. The most powerful family in Scotland were the Comyns, Lords of Badenoch and Earls of Buchan; John Comyn, Lord of Badenoch, who was himself one of the lesser Competitors, was Balliol’s brother-in-law, and there was no love lost between the Comyns and the Bruces.
To avert an armed struggle the Guardians approached Edward I to arbitrate between the claimants. Edward was more than willing to undertake the task of honest broker, and summoned the Scots to a parliament to be held on 6 May 1291 at Norham Castle, the great stronghold of the Bishop of Durham on the English side of the Tweed.
The ‘Great Cause’
Day sat on Norham’s castled steep,
And Tweed’s fair river, broad and deep,
And Cheviot’s mountains lone:
The battled towers, the donjon keep,
The loophole grates, where captives weep,
The flanking walls that round it sweep,
In yellow lustre shone.
SIR WALTER SCOTT, MARMION
Norham Castle had been chosen with great care by Edward I as the venue for the business at hand. Its romantic ruins still superintend the southern bank of the River Tweed, ten kilometres south-west of Berwick-upon-Tweed along the A698 and up the B6470. It was the most impregnable (for a time, at least) of all the mighty fortresses built to defend the ‘debatable lands’ on each side of the border, both militarily and diplomatically. Founded by Bishop Ranulph Flambard of Durham in 1121 and greatly strengthened in the 1160s, it was to withstand three prolonged sieges during the Wars of Independence (see Chapter 11).
Today the solid remains of the Great Hall stand open in moated splendour in a green sweep of manicured English Heritage grass. This was where the business of the Great Cause was conducted over seventeen long months. High up on the back wall you can still see the outline of the fireplace of the first-floor chamber where matters of state were discussed and banquets served.
Edward I arrived at Norham in May 1291 in full panoply, accompanied by the northern levies of England, to be entertained by Bishop Anthony Bek of Durham. The Scots stopped just north of the border, wanting King Edward to cross the Tweed and come to them, but Edward would not shift. When the Scots reluctantly sent a delegation across the Tweed they were met with a demand that Edward must first be acknowledged as the Lord Superior of Scotland before he would settle the succession – as judge, not arbiter; they were given three weeks to make up their minds.
The Scots were deeply affronted by this reiteration of old pretensions, and argued that only a sovereign could commit a realm in this way. But Edward had made his point, and within a matter of days one of the leading Competitors, Robert Bruce, accepted his overlordship and his right to sasine (legal possession of feudal property) of the kingdom. Others followed this lead; a few days later, John Balliol was the last of the Competitors to accept the inevitable. On 12 June the Scottish Community of the Realm finally came to Norham, and the lengthy process of adjudication began; as a favour to the Scots, King Edward allowed some of the meetings to be held in Berwick Castle, which was then on the Scottish side of the border.1
The adjudication of the Great Cause dragged on, with four lengthy adjournments. The Competitors were whittled down to a short-list of two: John Balliol and Robert Bruce. A panel of 104 arbiters or ‘auditors’ was appointed – forty each nominated by Balliol and Bruce, and twenty-four from Edward’s council. Eventually, on 6 November 1292, the court adjudicated in favour of Balliol – indeed, twenty-nine of Bruce’s own auditors voted for Balliol: primogeniture, it was decided, was more significant than proximity.
Was it a perverse choice? Had Edward somehow manipulated the decision to suit his own ends? Fiona Watson has no doubt that it was the correct outcome:
The decision of Edward I to choose Balliol as king has gone down in Scottish history as being a travesty of justice – the justice of the Bruce claim to the throne. But historians are no longer prepared to accept that. In terms of the claims of the two men, Balliol had the most obviously straightforward claim because of the way in which the laws of primogeniture had evolved by the thirteenth century. Bruce’s big claim was that he was a generation nearer to the previous king, but that was irrelevant; so it would not have come as any surprise to anyone that Balliol was chosen as king.
The argument has been advanced that Balliol was chosen because he was the weaker man, the man who would bend the more easily to Edward’s will. In fact it was Robert Bruce the Competitor, not John Balliol, who was the first to accept Edward’s claim to overlordship of Scotland, and who did so at every opportunity thereafter.
Two days after the court’s verdict was announced, Bruce formally resigned his claim to his son and heirs, so that it would not be lost after his death; he retired to his castle at Lochmaben and took no further part in politics (he died in 1295). His son Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick, in turn surrendered his earldom to his own son, Robert Bruce (the future king), who was now eighteen years old. The Bruce claim to the throne was anything but dead.
Now, if not before, Edward I must have realised that he had a golden opportunity to interfere decisively in the future of the northern kingdom, perhaps even to fulfil what may well have been a deep-seated imperial ambition – to be king of all the territories of Britain. Ted Cowan says:
This was Edward’s chance. During or just before the Great Cause, when he sat in the court at Berwick and decided who had the best claim, it must have occurred to Edward that he could manipulate this situation to his own advantage. After all, he had just conquered Wales, and he saw an opportunity of making himself ruler here in Scotland as well, the first ruler of the whole of the British Isles. One can hardly blame him – he was a politician, after all, and a very acute man. Why not exploit the situation to suit himself?
The die was now cast. On 17 November 1292, in the Great Hall of Berwick Castle, Edward formally accepted the decision of the auditors and chose John Balliol as the next King of Scots. Next day, in