Given England’s superior military resources, Scottish fighting men, nobles and soldiers alike, had the strongest reasons to question how anyone could do better against such adverse odds.
Section One: The Path to Battle
CHAPTER ONE
SCOTLAND UNDER SIEGE
(Edward I) ‘decided with an oath that he would lay the whole of Scotland waste from sea to sea and force its people into submission.’
Chronicle Rishanger
IN THE LATE THIRTEENTH century Scotland faced a challenge to its continuing survival from a strong and acquisitive English king who as early as 1291 told his privy council that he had it in his mind ‘to bring under his dominion the king and the realm of Scotland’.1 While Scottish monarchs had always in some respects held subordinate positions compared with their more powerful English counterparts (the Pope, for instance, withheld their right to be anointed at their coronations) they had consistently rejected any suggestions that they could be considered vassals of the English crown. In accordance with this tradition, on 29 October 1278 King Alexander III stood before the Court of Westminster and denied that his brother-in-law Edward I had any degree of feudal superiority over him. ‘(Although) I become your man for the lands which I hold of you in the Kingdom of England for which I owe homage … No one has a right to homage for my Kingdom of Scotland save God alone, and I hold it only of God.’2
Notwithstanding such close family ties and the generally friendly relations between the two countries, Edward, who by the 1280s had become the most respected monarch in Europe, became obsessed with extending his own claims of suzerainty over Scotland. Such a challenge could not be taken lightly for Edward was a monarch whose ambitions were matched by endless energy and single-minded ruthlessness. He had, for instance, already codified English law to his own pattern, justifying the changes by citing previous cases of corruption and miscarriages of justice, and had gone on to abrogate Welsh powers of jurisdiction in those parts of the principality brought under his control.
Whether a subtle-minded reformer or not (particularly when it was to his own advantage), this tall, commanding figure was essentially a warrior king who was quite prepared to achieve his objectives by mounting a military challenge to Scotland. However, with his on-going conquest of Wales, and almost continuous warfare with France, a third military front seemed very likely to place almost unbearable strains on the English exchequer.
Edward could never have doubted that Scotland, with its unbroken line of kings stretching back to before William the Conqueror and its geographical remoteness, represented a quite different and more difficult proposition than Wales. Apart from the amicable relations between the two crowns many of Edward’s powerful and ambitious nobles, such as Balliol, Bruce and Umfraville, held lands on both sides of the border and their allegiance was therefore divided. Edward needed a strong pretext to involve himself in the affairs of Scotland and to justify despatching an English army into that country.
Such an opportunity presented itself through what many men in medieval times considered a stroke of fate. In March 1286 Alexander III met with a sudden and untimely death; on a storm-swept night he was hurrying to join Yolande, his new French wife, at Kinghorn by the Firth of Forth when in blizzard conditions he outdistanced his escort and his horse carried him over a steep crag along the foreshore. The role of the monarch was pivotal in the affairs of a medieval state and the tragedy for Scotland was that Alexander had no living male issue. A strong, wise king was succeeded by his four-year-old granddaughter, Margaret, the Maid of Norway, the only child of Alexander’s daughter Margaret, who had died giving birth, and Eric II of Norway.
Alexander had shown himself well aware of the dangers that could come from internal unrest in the event of his death and he had arranged that prior to the Maid’s enthronement, no fewer than six men should act as joint guardians of the kingdom made up from two representatives of the country’s senior nobles, its earls, two representatives of the bishops and two representatives of the barons. The two most likely contenders for the Scottish throne, Robert Bruce, known as the Competitor, and John Balliol, were not included because the king foresaw a very real threat of civil war between their two factions. However, he had seen that support for Bruce and Balliol was evenly divided among the six guardians.
Bruce was much the older of the two men. By 1286, in spite of his continuing ambitions and still abundant energy, he was fully seventy-five years of age. Even in the event of his claim to the throne proving successful he was unlikely to have reigned for long. Fortunately for the Bruces their male line was well represented. The old Competitor’s eldest son, another Robert Bruce, was Lord of Annandale, a vast estate in the Scottish southwest. Bruce of Annandale was forty years of age at this time and his eldest son also carried the family name of Robert Bruce. Although still a boy of twelve he was destined to become King Robert I. In 1286 John Balliol too, had a son, called Edward, from his marriage during 1281 to Isabel, daughter of John de Warenne, Earl of Surrey.
One of the guardians’ first actions was to inform their seemingly friendly senior monarch, Edward I, of the plans being made to govern Scotland in the absence of the Maid. It is also likely they initiated the arrangements for a marriage to be negotiated between Edward Caernarvon, Edward I’s heir, and Margaret, the Maid, for with Edward I acting as her guarantor the guardians could feel sure Margaret’s succession would be implemented. Their concerns seemed justified for while their envoys were in England the Competitor and his son seized the two royal castles of Dumfries and Wigtown along with the Balliol fortress of Buittle in a bid to strengthen their position in the southwest against John Balliol. Through their concern for internal stability, however, the guardians seemed willing to ignore the even greater advantages of the union to the English king, including his use of it as a first step towards assimilating Scotland. Any such plans fell through when, in 1290, Margaret died as she made her way to Scotland.
With thirteen men possessing some sort of claim to the vacant Scottish throne the English king was given a fresh, and potentially more dangerous, opportunity to exert his control over the country. One of the guardians, Bishop William Fraser (Bishop of St Andrews and a Balliol supporter), fearing with some justification that the Bruces would make a full bid for the crown, wrote to Edward I asking him to come to the border to prevent bloodshed. In response, working on the assumption that he was their feudal superior, Edward issued a summons for the Scots to meet him – not in Scotland but at a parliament across the English border at Norham. While they had expected Edward to act as arbiter he came as overlord and judge demanding the claimants to recognise him as both their feudal superior and Lord Paramount of Scotland. To support his dictates he brought troops at his back calling up English levies from the northern counties to meet him at Norham on 3 June 1291. Nine of the claimants quickly acknowledged him as their feudal superior and on 11 June, avowedly to avoid internal unrest, Edward ordered all Scottish castles to be turned over to him until two months after the succession had been decided. He then proceeded to replace many Scottish officials with Englishmen.
Edward adopted a measured and unhurried approach to the so-called ‘Great Cause’ of deciding who had the best claims to the Scottish throne, and eighteen months passed in deliberation (during which Edward enjoyed considerable control over Scotland) before John Balliol was declared the strongest candidate. Unlike his main rival, the belligerent Competitor, Balliol was a younger son so probably destined for a church appointment and therefore unprepared for such elevation.3 The Lanercost Chronicler for instance dismissed him as brainless.4