Bygone Scotland: Historical and Social. David Maxwell
as his armorial bearing a red lion—rampant—that is in heraldry, standing upon its hind legs; and this has ever since been the heraldric cognizance of Scottish royalty. In 1174, for the recovery of his ancestral possessions in Northumberland, William invaded England. One day riding in a mist with a slender retinue, he came upon a body of four hundred English horse. At first he thought that this was a portion of his own army; seeing his mistake he fought boldly, but was overpowered and made prisoner. He was taken to Northampton and conducted into King Henry’s presence, with his feet tied together under his horse’s belly. Now Henry had just been to Canterbury doing penance at the tomb of the murdered Thomas à Becket; he had walked barefoot through the city, prostrated himself on the pavement before the shrine, passed the whole night in the church, and in the morning had himself scourged by the priests with knotted cords. And now, as a token that his penance had reconciled him to heaven, and obtained the saint’s forgiveness, here was his enemy, the King of Scots, delivered into his hands.
Henry shewed no generosity towards his captive. He demanded to have homage paid him as Lord Paramount of Scotland. In his prison, first at Richmond, and then at Falaise in Normandy, William’s spirit was so far broken that he acceded to Henry’s demands, and the Scottish parliament, to obtain the release of their king, ratified a dishonourable treaty. At York the required homage was publicly paid; and for fifteen years it continued in full force. But in 1189, Henry’s son, Richard, the Lion-hearted, on the eve of his crusade to the Holy Land—desirous to place his home affairs in safety during his absence, renounced the claim of general homage extorted from William—reserving only such homage as was anciently rendered by Malcolm Canmore.
And in almost unbroken peace between the two countries for upwards of a century, the generous conduct of Richard bore good fruit. Then a course of accidents, which nearly extinguished the Scottish royal family, gave an English monarch the opportunity for reviving old pretensions to supremacy, and was thus the cause of renewed wars and national animosities.
William died in 1214, and was succeeded by his son, Alexander III. He reigned thirty-five years, and being of good parts, and with considerable force of character, did much for the progress of Scotland in the arts of civilization. He was succeeded in 1249 by his son, Alexander III., then only eight years of age. He married the daughter of Henry III., but the children of the marriage died young. The chief trouble of his reign was from Norwegian invasions, but in 1263 Alexander defeated Haco, King of Norway, at Largs, at the mouth of the Firth of Clyde. By this victory Scotland obtained possession of the Hebrides and the Isle of Man. Alexander was accidentally killed in 1263; riding too near the edge of a cliff on the Fifeshire coast, near Kinghorn, in the dusk of the evening, his horse stumbled and threw him over the cliff.
How Scotland became a Free Nation.
We are not attempting to present a detailed history of Scotland: such a history has both a general and a national value, and there has been no lack of writers of ability to give to it their best of thought and of research. But as having been a supreme crisis in this history, and as having placed Scotland high on the list of free nations, we give a brief summary of events at the end of the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth century.
The English King, Edward the First, who has been called the greatest of the Plantagenets, was led to undertake the conquest of Scotland. He found that insurgent spirits amongst his own subjects therein found refuge, and that France—the natural enemy of England—was generally in alliance with Scotland. His designs on Scotland had three separate phases. First: King Alexander the Third of Scotland having died without immediate issue, the crown devolved upon his grand-daughter, Margaret, daughter of Eric, King of Norway. The young princess is called in history the Maid of Norway. Edward proposed a marriage between her and his own eldest son, also named Edward. A treaty for this marriage was entered into. It was one of the might-have-beens of history; had it taken place, and been fruitful, the union of the crowns might have been anticipated by over three centuries, and the after-histories of the two countries very different. But on her voyage to take possession of her crown, Margaret sickened; she landed at Orkney, and there died, September, 1290.
Then there were various claimants to the crown, the rights of the claimants dating back several generations. All having their partizans, and anarchy and conflict appearing imminent, it was agreed that Edward should be arbitrator. He here saw an opening for the revival of what might now have been thought the obsolete claim of the English sovereign to be recognised as Lord Paramount of Scotland. Two of the candidates, Robert Bruce, Lord of Annandale, and John Baliol, Lord of Galloway, were found to be nearer in blood to the throne than all the others. Both of them traced their descent from daughters of David, Earl of Huntingdon, brother of King William, called The Lion. Edward gave his decision in favour of Baliol, as being descended from the elder daughter; but he declared that the crown was to be held under him as feudal superior; and Baliol did homage to Edward as to his lord sovereign, and was summoned as a peer to the English Parliament.
EDWARD I.
Edward soon shewed that his claim was not to be a merely formal one; he demanded the surrender of three important Scottish fortresses. Baliol would himself have submitted to this arrogant demand, but at the instigation of the nobles he sent a refusal, and a formal renunciation of his vassalage. In a war which in 1294 broke out between France and England, Scotland allied itself with France. Then Edward assembled a powerful army and invaded Scotland. He gained a victory near Dunbar, and made a triumphant march through the Lowlands. The country was divided within itself; the powerful Bruce faction was arrayed against that of Baliol. Baliol made a cringing submission to Edward; and Bruce sued for the nominal throne, as tributary sovereign of Scotland. “Think’st thou I am to conquer a kingdom for thee?” was Edward’s stern reply; and he forthwith took measures to make evident his purpose of keeping Scotland to himself. He appointed an English nobleman his viceroy, garrisoned the fortresses with English troops, and removed to London the regalia and the official records of the Kingdom, and also the legendary stone upon which the Scottish Kings had sat on their coronation. It was the very nadir in the cycle of Scottish history.
Then came revolts, with varied measures of success. A notable hero, Sir William Wallace, whose name yet lives in Scottish hearts as the very incarnation of patriotism and courage, took the leadership in an all but successful insurrection. But the larger, better appointed, and better disciplined armies of Edward again placed Scotland under his iron heel. Brave Wallace was, through treachery, taken prisoner, carried up to London, and tried for treason at Westminster Hall. “I never could be a traitor to Edward, for I was never his subject,” was Wallace’s defence: the English judges condemned him to a traitor’s death. With the indignities customary in these semi-barbarous times, he was executed on Tower Hill, 23rd August, 1305.
Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick, a grandson of the Bruce who was Baliol’s rival for the Crown, had been one of Wallace’s ablest lieutenants. He had a fine person, was brave and strong, was moreover prudent and skilful, fitted to be a leader of men, both in the council and on the battle-field. He had the faults of his times—could be passionate, and in his passion cruel and relentless. He now aimed at the sovereignty, and within a year of the death of Wallace, had himself, with a miniature court and slender following, crowned King at Scone. When Edward heard of this he was exceedingly wroth, and would himself again go into Scotland and stamp out all the embers of rebellion. In 1307, he did accompany an army through Cumberland, to within three miles of the Scottish border. But ruthless and determined in spirit, he was now old and feeble in body, and
“Hate and fury ill-supplied
The stream of life’s exhausted tide.”
He was stricken by mortal sickness and died, 6th July, 1307. Before he died he made his son promise to carry his unburied corpse with the army until Scotland was again fully conquered. The Second Edward did not carry out that savage injunction, but had his father buried in Westminster Abbey, where his tomb styles him, with greater truth than is found in many monumental inscriptions, “The hammer of Scotland.”