Robert The Bruce: King Of Scots. Ronald McNair Scott
to ponder. His father had always been a follower of King Edward, more at home with the civilities of the English court and the blander climate of his English estates than with the roughter life of the north. But Robert Bruce was Scottish born and Scottish bred. With his brothers and sisters he had roamed the Carrick lands of his Celtic mother or ridden beside his tough old grandfather through the hills and valleys of Annandale. He had played his part indeed on the English side and in return had been granted a postponement of his debt repayments to the English exchequer:9 but that was when he was ranged against the Comyns for whom John Balliol had confiscated the Bruce estates in Scotland. Now the Comyns and John Balliol were captives and the leaders who had taken the field against the English in Ayrshire were the very men who had supported his grandfather’s claim to the Scottish throne.
That claim Bruce had never forgotten. Brought up in the knowledge that in his veins ran the royal blood of the House of Canmore, convinced of the injustice of the court decision which had denied his family their regal inheritance, his abiding ambition was to retrieve the crown his grandfather had struggled for and lost. That purpose dominated his actions. Hitherto it had been served by Edward I’s promise to Bruce’s father that the Scottish throne would be his when Balliol was deposed. But Edward had reneged. The Scottish throne had been incorporated in that of England. The single devil of Balliol had been swept away only to be replaced by the sevenfold devil of the Plan-taganet king. By assuming the sovereignty of Scotland, Edward I had become the chief obstacle to Bruce’s objective and the catalyst to fuse the two elements in Bruce’s nature, his love of his native land and his determination to rule it.
So, as he rode up the long valley of Annandale, this young man of twenty-two, already admired by men for his skill at arms and by women for his courtesy, took the crucial decision of his life.
When he reached the castle, which was held by Sir William’s wife, he called his followers around him. ‘No man,’ he said, ‘holds his flesh and blood in hatred and I am no exception. I must join my own people and the nation in which I was born. Choose then whether you go with me or return to your homes.’10
Many of the knights who accompanied him were vassals of his father, who was still pledged to King Edward, and decided that they must abide by their overlord’s allegiance and so departed. But with those who were left and with the men of Douglas and Lady Douglas, who had been advised of his decision, he moved northeastward through his domain of Carrick, gathering recruits as he went, and joined the steward and the bishop at Irvine.
Meanwhile the humiliated Antony Bek had alerted King Edward to the strength of the insurrection. On 4 June the King empowered Henry Percy and Robert Clifford, the two foremost barons in the border shires, to raise levies from Lancaster, Westmorland and Cumberland ‘to arrest, imprison and try all disturbers of the peace in Scotland’, and instructed all sheriffs and castle governors to give them every aid.11
With commendable speed the two commanders collected a powerful body of armed knights and, moving fast along the Annandale and Nithsdale route, reached towards the end of June the English-held castle of Ayr, a few miles south of Irvine where the Scottish forces were encamped.
No battle ensued. Almost as soon as Percy and Clifford had dismounted, envoys arrived under a flag of truce to ask if they had authority to treat with the Scottish leaders.
Dissension had broken out in the Irvine camp between those who supported Balliol and those who supported Bruce. Andrew Moray and William Wallace were fighting in the name of John Balliol whom they still regarded as king, and may well have been sceptical of young Bruce’s sudden conversion to the Scottish cause. Bishop Wishart, James Stewart, his brother John and Alexander Lindsay considered that, by his abdication, John Balliol had renounced his rights and that Robert Bruce’s father was the natural successor to the Scottish Crown and the true focus for the upsurge for independence. Sir William Douglas agreed with nobody.
Moray and Wallace preferred to fight on their own terms and in their own centres of resistance and departed forthwith. Without their support the forces of Stewart and Bruce were in no position to make headway against the English invasion. Their men were mainly foot soldiers: those of the English were armed knights. The contest would be glaringly unequal and a defeat damaging to the growing confidence of the Scottish people.
News had reached Scotland of a clash between King Edward, his Church and his barons. The Archbishop of Canterbury had instructed his clergy to pay no taxes on pain of excommunication, and the two great magnates in England, Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, the Earl Marshall, and Humphrey Bohun, Earl of Hereford, the Constable, had refused to serve overseas, retiring to their fiefs and calling up their vassals. Many other of the barons had followed their example. There was the possibility of civil war in England. The forces of Percy and Clifford were the only English armed troops in the field. It was a time to keep them engaged in negotiations so that Moray and Wallace could pursue their activities undisturbed by attack. Such must have been the reasoning which led the subtle bishop and canny steward to ask for parley.
Percy and Clifford, in their turn, were aware of the uncertain situation in England and had no desire unnecessarily to hazard forces, reluctantly conscripted, which they might desire at home. So talks began.
After days of discussion the English made certain promises, and on 9 July 1297 the Scottish leaders agreed to surrender to King Edward’s pleasure and produce hostages as pledges of good faith.12 Bruce, in particular, was required to hand over his infant daughter, Marjorie, but it is clear that he was unwilling to do this; the bishop, the steward and Sir Alexander Lindsay took it upon themselves to act as sureties on his behalf.13
In the upshot, Sir William Douglas failed to produce his hostages on the appointed day and was imprisoned in Berwick castle, where, wrote Henry Percy, he was Very savage and very abusive‘.14 A year later he died, leaving behind a son of three years, James Douglas, who was to become the most famous and devoted of all the followers of Robert Bruce, the future king.
Sir Alexander Lindsay made his own peace. The bishop was held prisoner. Robert Bruce and James Stewart neither surrendered nor produced hostages, and remained at large deprived of their lands. Bruce’s father was relieved of his post as Governor of Carlisle and retired to his English estates, where he remained until his death in 1304.
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After the capitulation of the nobles at Irvine, the leadership of resistance remained entirely in the hands of Moray and Wallace and their efforts were attended with such success that on 10 July Hugh de Cressingham wrote to the deputy treasurer in London that ‘not one of the Sheriffs, bailiffs or the officials of the Lord King … can at this time raise a penny of the revenues of their bailiwicks on account of the multitude of different perils which daily and continually threaten them’,15 and a fortnight later, in still more urgent tones, to the King:
By far the greater part of your counties in the Scottish Kingdom are still not provided with keepers because they have been killed, besieged or imprisoned or have abandoned their bailiwicks and dare not go back. And in some shires the Scots have appointed and established bailiffs and officials. Thus no shire is properly kept save for Berwickshire and Roxburghshire and they only recently.16
With many of his barons hostile, King Edward was desperately trying to raise an army to cross to Flanders in support of the Count of that country, with whom he had formed an alliance against France.17 When he received Cressingham’s request he had no English to spare for Scotland. He therefore released a number of the Scottish nobles, among