12
The life of Robert Bruce was not the unqualified success which propagandists for his dynasty have represented. In particular, Barbour, Fordun and Bower exaggerate the degree to which Scotland united behind Robert. The strength of anti-Bruce feeling in Scotland is revealed by the dogged resistance of John of Argyll, by the treason trials of the Black Parliament that reveal enduring pro-Balliol sympathies and by the sudden collapse of the Bruce powerbase within a few years of Robert’s death. Undoubtedly too, Robert Bruce had been fortunate. He appears to have acknowledged readily that the incompetence of Edward I’s successor enabled him to recover the kingdom of Scotland. Also readily apparent is Robert’s good fortune in the powerlessness of English government that occurred in the decade after Bannockburn, caused partly by strife between the English king and his barons, and partly by the natural catastrophes of famine and disease of animals.
It is not surprising that Robert failed to achieve sainthood, that ultimate accolade of popular medieval kings, from either Church or people. Sainthood was associated with cases when the body did not, for one reason or another, decay, but Robert’s body – whether leprous or not – was already manifestly in decay long before his death. Besides, Robert died an excommunicate, though this might not have been generally known in Scotland at the time. ‘Canonisation by popular demand’, or ‘political canonisation’, was accorded to certain popular lords in the Middle Ages, and contemporary examples of this occurred in England. After his execution in 1322 Earl Thomas of Lancaster was widely recognised as a martyr and saint, and pilgrimages were made to the site of his grave. Edward of Caernarfon, Robert’s contemporary and old adversary, had a lively ‘afterlife’. Stories about how Edward II escaped murder in 1327 and wandered far and wide until as late as 1338 were sufficiently convincing and numerous to cause the magnificent tomb in Gloucester Cathedral to be opened in October 1855 to establish the existence of a coffin, and to have sown doubt in the minds of some modern historians as to whether Edward was murdered as reported. The z of invented afterlives and popular canonisation was to salvage sullied reputations and lacklustre careers to the embarrassment of political authorities. But to his supporters Robert’s reputation among Scots was unsullied – despite the murder and sacrilege of 1306 – and to contemporaries his career lacked no lustre. Canonisation and ‘afterlife’ were unnecessary and inappropriate.
The truly great are never allowed to rest in peace. During the Protestant Reformation, Dunfermline Abbey was attacked by Calvinist reformers and the marble tomb with gold-leaf decoration was smashed, probably for no other reason than it represented a graven image, forbidden by Old Testament stricture. But centuries later, in 1817, magistrates of the burgh of Dunfermline decided to build a new church on the site of the abbey, and the land had to be cleared to allow rebuilding. Robert Bruce’s tomb was one of many discovered – others included those of St Margaret and Malcolm Canmore. Such was the fascination of contemporaries with the Middle Ages that, after the new church had been built around it, Robert’s remains were exhumed in November 1819, measured, and left above ground for five days to allow for thorough examination.
There is no doubt that the remains belonged to Robert Bruce: the breastbone had been sawn to allow for the removal of the heart. A plaster of Paris cast of the skull was made, during which two or three teeth may have come out. Examination yielded considerable evidence of injury to the head. The official report read, ‘There is a kind of mark on the right side of the sagittal suture, most probably the consequence of a severe injury, and of subsequent exfoliation.’ It is also of interest that a considerable portion of the left zygomatic arch, on the side of the skull, is missing from the cast. According to Pearson, who wrote in 1924, ‘The cast lacks the left zygomatic ridge, whether broken off in the skull or more recently from the cast is not clear … detailed analysis of the cast strongly suggests that this deficiency was present when the cast was made, and the two ends of the arch appear to show evidence of healing …’ In life, then, Robert had sustained a severe blow on the top of his skull, and another on the left side of the head, exactly as we might expect of a warrior king. He will have been badly scarred, and it may be that such scarring gave rise to the notion entertained by his detractors that he had contracted leprosy.
Phrenology was a pseudo-science much in vogue in the nineteenth century, and the skull was subjected to examination by phrenologists who claimed to read character traits from the shape of the head. Phrenological observations were published, and though couched in ‘scientific’ terms it is clear that they were heavily dependent upon written accounts for their assessment of Bruce’s personality. A curious story exists that, during this time, a local dignitary entered the church at night and removed a toe, together with a piece of the shroud and fragments from the coffin. Although these items are preserved in the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow, it has been impossible for the museum authorities to verify that particular piece of antique flesh as Robert’s toe: it is too decayed for DNA tests or carbon-dating. A finger was also retained by a souvenir hunter, as referred to in the previous chapter. Other reputed bone fragments are held at St Conan’s Kirk at Lochawe, and also in the museum of Dunfermline Abbey. When the scientists – and the souvenir hunters – had completed their work, the body was returned to the lead coffin. Molten pitch was poured into the coffin, a measure intended to preserve the skeleton, and then a number of articles were placed in it, among them a copy of the 1714 edition ofThe Bruce, one of Kerr’s History of Scotland and seven gold and nine silver coins. The tomb was then rebuilt and resealed, and a superb Victorian brass now marks the place of burial.
Further exhumations took place in the twentieth century. A conical lead container, ten inches in height and believed to hold Bruce’s heart, was discovered beneath the floor of the Chapter House at Melrose Abbey in March 1921. It was confirmed that a heart was enclosed, and the container was reburied. The same container was found a second time in 1996 and investigated using fibre optic cable. This revealed an inner casket, also of lead. Since however there was no doubt it contained the much-decayed heart of Robert Bruce, nothing was to be gained by penetrating it and the container was reburied intact in 1998. On that occasion the secretary of state for Scotland unveiled a plaque on the floor over the place where the heart is buried. The inscription on the stone is taken from Barbour, and reads ‘A noble hart may have no ease, gif freedom failye.’ The plaque bears a simple carving of a heart entwined with the St Andrew’s Cross.
Fascination with the subject’s corporal remains is only one of a number of yardsticks by which the significance of an historical figure may be assessed. Another test of ‘greatness’ is how long after death the individual’s achievements last. A third is his contribution made to the host society. A fourth indication of significance might be the degree of interest taken in the subject since his death. There are yet others still: what place the subject holds in the popular pantheon of heroes, and whether the subject has any relevance for contemporaries.
In so far as Robert helped to preserve a distinct and vibrant Scottish identity, his contribution survives the test of time; however, his particular achievement, the political settlement of 1328, was doomed to last less than four years. Aware that no scrap of parchment was any real guarantee of his son’s throne, Robert had built into his settlement such safeguards as were available to him: installation of his most trusted and able lieutenant, Moray, as regent; marriage between the royal families, designed to lock the kingdoms together in harmony; and payment of a very large sum of money spread out over the three years following. These terms however were not nearly sufficient to reconcile the English to the treaty they dubbed the Shameful Peace. English chronicles uniformly denounce the Treaty of Edinburgh–Northampton as a sell-out. Realising the depth of its unpopularity, the English regime did not even publish its terms, and the secrecy surrounding the agreement served only to attract further vilification. Young Edward III, however, being under-age, was absolved from the opprobrium: ‘accursed be the time that this parliament was ordained at Northampton, for there through false counsel the king was there falsely disinherited; and yet he was within age’. That king had made no secret of his displeasure at the settlement, and when the time came Edward III used this pretext to avoid honouring the agreement.
On 19 October 1330 Edward III carried out a daring coup d’état, overthrowing the government which his mother and her lover had carried on in his name. Mortimer he executed; Isabella he sent into honourable confinement; and so at the age of eighteen he grasped the reins of power. Waiting in the wings were the Disinherited, led by Henry Beaumont and Thomas Wake, who felt themselves cheated by the peace of titles, lands and incomes in Scotland. Beaumont’s claim to the earldom of Buchan was through his wife, Alice Comyn; Wake claimed the barony of Kirkandrews and the border lordship of Liddesdale through his great-grandmother, Joan d’Estuteville. Among the other Disinherited lords were Gilbert de Umfraville, whom Robert had disinherited of the earldom of Atholl and half the lands of John Comyn, whom Robert had killed at Dumfries. The other half of those lands was claimed by Richard Talbot, who had married the other co-heiress. Edward III now lent unofficial English royal support to the demands of the two most powerful of the aggrieved lords. The Scots paid no attention to his advocacy of the Disinherited cause; they might have been wiser to buy off Beaumont and Wake, the two most dangerous, as Robert had virtually promised them restoration in any case. On Midsummer’s Day the last instalment of the promised £20,000 was paid, and Scotland lost the security that the promise of payment had afforded. Beaumont began to organise the Disinherited lords for an expedition to Scotland to realise their claims by force, and in an astute move he brought over to England Edward Balliol, the son of King John, to lead the expedition. The invaders would then be able to tap into legitimist sentiment that was still strong in Scotland. Edward Balliol secretly did homage to Edward III for the kingdom of Scotland, and Edward III lent Balliol and the Disinherited his tacit co-operation.
In view of the growing threat posed by the Disinherited, Moray, Guardian of Scotland, brought forward the date of the coronation of Robert’s son as David II, and on 24 November 1331 the seven-year-old David was crowned and anointed in a parliament at Scone. He was the first King of Scots to be accorded the full rites of royal inauguration; for decades Scots had been lobbying the papacy for the rights to coronation of their kings, and the solemnities and festivities on this occasion may be considered as the last triumph of Robert Bruce. Yet Scotland had been profoundly weakened by the deaths of many of her leading magnates. King Robert’s death had been followed by that of James Douglas, Walter the Steward, the former chancellor Bernard of Arbroath and bishops David of Moray and William Lamberton of St Andrews. This string of catastrophes concluded with the death of the guardian, Moray himself, at Musselburgh on 20 July 1332, while organising the defences of southern Scotland against the anticipated onslaught. It is alleged that he was poisoned at the command of Beaumont, though the evidence for that is unconvincing.
Hearing the news of Moray’s demise, the Disinherited were quick to set sail, and they landed at Kinghorn on 6 August with 500 men-at-arms and 1,000 foot. Invasion by sea was a master stroke: it was intended to allow Edward III deniability in the event of a debacle, it kept the Scots guessing as to where they would land, and finally it deprived the Scots of the opportunity to retreat behind scorched earth. The invaders vanquished the first Scottish force that met them, and thus gained a foothold. The enormous Scottish army which then confronted them was poorly led and disorganised. The leaders squabbled: Donald of Mar, recently elected guardian in place of Moray, fell out with Sir Robert Bruce, the late king’s illegitimate son, on the day of confrontation with the invaders. The battle at Dupplin Moor on 11 August should have been won easily by the Scots, but the Scottish host showed lack of discipline and its commanders completely mismanaged the encounter. Defeat of so many by so few was widely interpreted as a mark of divine favour, and when the Disinherited captured Perth, Scottish nobles began to defect to Balliol’s side. The coalition of noble interests that Robert had welded together by force of personality and by fear now strained and cracked: incredibly, Duncan, Earl of Fife, led Balliol to the throne at Scone on 24 September 1332, and Bishop William Sinclair of Dunkeld – whom King Robert had fulsomely praised as ‘his own bishop’ – crowned Balliol King of Scots at Scone. Thus the stage was set for a renewal of that Scottish civil war which Robert I had all but won at Bannockburn.
The rewakening of the Bruce-Balliol civil war, fuelled by Edward III’s support, and the unravelling of Robert’s plan for dynastic union on an equal basis between the kingdoms were catastrophes for England and Scotland alike. Though Balliol was driven out of Scotland before the year 1332 ended, he returned, this time with England’s declared backing. An army headed by English magnates captured Berwick and won a signal victory at Halidon Hill on 19 July 1333, and Balliol was re-installed in Scotland. But Edward III soon lost interest in Scotland, as from 1336 Scotland became a sideshow in England’s Hundred Years War against France. King David’s fortunes ebbed and flowed: from 1334 to 1341 he was exiled in France; in 1346 he had recovered sufficiently to raid Northumberland and Durham; then, having been captured at the Battle of Neville’s Cross, was from 1346 to 1357 a prisoner in English jails. Edward Balliol enjoyed a similar ebb and flow of fortune; but eventually, having lost his last foothold in Scotland in 1356, he resigned to Edward III his claim to the kingship. This claim to Scotland Edward and his successors pursued during respites from the French war. Scotland and England became locked into a futile cycle of violence, in which each kingdom could inflict great harm on the other, but neither could win decisive victory. The Scots raided the English border counties periodically, devastating the countryside and wasting the labour of centuries; the English marched expeditions to Edinburgh virtually whenever they wished, forcing the Scots into temporary retreat north of the Forth. The Anglo-Scottish border, a precisely defined and mutually agreed line that in 1296 crossed the countryside from one landmark to the next, blurred, expanded in width, and became a broad tract of bandit country, where clans of raiders rode at will, and where the writ of neither king ran.
Robert – no more responsible than Edward I or his son for unleashing war – can scarcely be blamed for the well-nigh perpetual hostility between England and Scotland in the Middle Ages. Before his death he had done everything in his power to promote lasting peace between the kingdoms. It is true that he had ordered and participated in the impoverishment of northern England, yet by doing so he demonstrated to Scottish kings who came after him how Scotland might withstand its hostile neighbour. Good King Robert was traditionally said to have bequeathed to the Scots the example of how she might best defend herself. The popular belief that Robert’s innovations in tactics and strategy assisted later generations of Scots to resist foreign occupation is reflected in the verse known as ‘Good King Robert’s Testament’. Penned by an unknown author in the mid fourteenth century, it represents the folk memory of Robert’s response to the invasions of 1319 and 1322:
On foot should be all Scottish war
Let hill and marsh their foes debar
And woods as walls prove such an arm
That enemies do them no harm.
In hidden spots keep every store
And burn the plainlands them before
So, when they find the land lie waste
Needs must they pass away in haste
Harried by cunning raids at night
And threatening sounds from every height.
Then, as they leave, with great array
Smite with the sword and chase away.
This is the counsel and intent
Of Good King Robert’s Testament.
These strictures amount to commonsense for a small nation faced with a mighty enemy, but there is justice in the claim that Robert pioneered the methodology of resistance and shattered chivalric taboos against guerrilla warfare.
Paradoxically perhaps, Scots of the later Middle Ages also claimed that Robert was a paragon of chivalric virtue. The myth of himself was perhaps Robert’s main legacy to the kingdom of Scotland; as we have seen, he represented himself as the most gallant of knights, a crusader, ‘another Maccabeus or Joshua’ who had saved his people from servitude. In his own lifetime Robert had become a legend of chivalric valour. Jehan le Bel, the Hainaulter mercenary who in 1350–58 wrote of his own experiences in the Weardale campaign of 1327, recounted some of the stories of Robert’s career that were current. This passage from le Bel implies that Robert himself contributed to the legend: ‘One time, it is said, and found in a story told by the said King Robert, that the good King Edward had him chased through these great forests for the space of three or four days, by dogs and leash hounds to blood and train them, but he could never find him, nor, whatever the miseries he endured, would he obey this good King Edward.’
Whether Robert himself actively contributed to his myth, his legend grew and grew. Robert represented his career in glowing terms as is evidenced by the Declaration of Arbroath. But an altogether separate aristocratic dynasty founded its fortunes on the Bruce legend: the Black Douglases incorporated ‘the Bludy Hart’ into their heraldic arms, and made the most of the propaganda afforded them by the participation of Good Sir James in King Robert’s heroic achievements.
The Bruce legend was most famously expounded in Barbour’s The Bruce, composed around 1375, but was also popularised by Fordun, written after 1363, then in the fifteenth century by Walter Bower. Barbour describes Giles d’Argentine as the third-best knight of his day; later, in his narration of the Battle of Bylands in 1322, he indicates that Sir Ralph Cobham was esteemed the best knight in all England, but that from that day forth his companion at Bylands, Sir Thomas Ughtred, was esteemed above Sir Ralph. Who then was the pick of the chivalric crop? An anecdote is retailed by Bower, that at the court of Edward II the question of who was the greatest knight in Christendom was put to a herald, who ‘said openly before everybody that the most peerless and gallant, the most daring and mightiest in warlike deeds, was that invincible prince King Robert Bruce; and this he openly supported and made good by many arguments, and he offered to defend his opinion with his body. Hence he incurred the great displeasure of the English; but he earned the respect and good word of the strangers who loved the truth.’
Long after the Middle Ages, the memory of Robert Bruce remained a powerful symbol of patriotism and political independence. There is a sense in which Robert defined the Scottish identity: his career determined that Scottish identity would henceforth to a large extent be defined in, and associated with, opposition to England. One of the practical implications of this was that it was no longer possible for landowners to hold land in both kingdoms. Secondly, he revived the Scottish monarchy, which the Edwardian settlement of 1305 had placed in abeyance and might well have abolished. That is why, again and again, from his death until the present, the memory of the self-declared heroking has been pressed into service to inspire Scotland to cherish her independence and separate identity. From the early nineteenth century, public meetings have been held annually on the site of the Battle of Bannockburn to celebrate the victory of 1314. It is surely the most frequently re-enacted battle of the Middle Ages. Magnificent statues have been erected in Robert’s memory. In the later twentieth century Robert’s memory, and his mission statement, the Declaration of Arbroath, were freely availed of by Scottish nationalists and figured prominently in the devolution debates. Throughout the centuries to the present day Barbour’s The Bruce has enjoyed continuing and widespread popularity; the stirring rhetoric of the Declaration of Arbroath has been recited wherever threats to the Scottish identity have been perceived.
Yet in some ways it is surprising that Robert has not achieved warmer recognition from subsequent generations of Scots. In Scotland his memory is revered, rather than cherished. His career was one of several factors which ensured that Scotland’s ‘national question’, the issue of whether her identity was to be merged with that of her southern neighbour, was settled early – much earlier than most other European nationalities, and, indeed, well before modern nationalism itself was born in the French Revolution. Robert’s part in the early settlement of Scottish identity effectively meant that his own reputation, glorious in the Middle Ages while there was an external threat, would grow stale when that threat receded. Consequently, when in 1603 the throne of England passed to the King of Scots and the crowns were united in the person of James VI and I, Scotland no longer had need of a mythic hero-king, or an ideology of resistance. The images of Robert, Bannockburn and the Declaration rapidly became hackneyed, stock epithets, recalling past glories which often contrasted ruefully with present adversity. When, in 1707, union of the two kingdoms and parliaments was debated, the duke of Hamilton tried to stir Scottish peers into resisting the Union by asking, ‘Are none of the descendants here of those worthy patriots who defended the liberty of their country against all invaders, who assisted the Great King Robert Bruce to restore the constitution and revenge the falsehood of England and the usurpation of Balliol?’ George Lockhart of Carnwath remarked that Hamilton ‘outdid himself in his patheticall remonstrance’. The pre-Victorian and Victorian learnèd elites, fascinated by all things Gothic, showed considerable interest in the figure of Robert Bruce following the exhumation of 1819, but their conception of him appears to have lingered overlong with us, and now his image appears often as stuffy, moribund and of merely antiquarian interest. In many minds Bruce, Bannockburn and the Declaration of Arbroath belong, as it were, to the outmoded history of ‘dates, kings and battles’ rather than to the trendier histories of ideas, of perspectives and social relations. Furthermore, Robert’s reputation has been one of the casualties of the division of history into narrow national perspectives. Fresh approaches to history have recognised his place in the history of northern England, of Ireland, of the ‘Irish Sea Province’, of the Gaidhealtachd, of the British Isles, of the ‘North Sea community’ and indeed of Europe.
Robert rarely stands on his own: he is habitually mentioned in the same breath as Sir William Wallace and often appears somewhat in Wallace’s shadow. This situation dates from the early nineteenth century, when the martial virtues shown jointly by Wallace and Bruce were extolled as anticipating the contemporary exploits of the British army in empire-building. The selfless, patriotic and uncomplicatedly martial figure of Wallace was more easily absorbed into the ideology of Britain and the Empire than that of the wily soldier-politician who had himself made king. From 1800 to 1858 over sixty works on the life of Wallace were published, and statues to Wallace sprang up at Dryburgh, Falkirk, Ayr and Craigie in Ayrshire, before the Wallace monument at Stirling was constructed. There was not the same interest in Bruce. In the 1859 design for an Edinburgh monument to the Wars of Independence, the figure of Bruce was included as representing Perseverance, while that of Wallace was presented as the epitome of Patriotism. It is interesting to note, in this and similar designs, that mid nineteenth-century tendency to commemorate the Wars of Independence, not because they secured Scottish independence from England, but because they ultimately enabled Scotland to enter on an equal basis into peaceful and prosperous union with England five hundred years later! The career of Robert Bruce was difficult to accommodate within such an historical overview.
Robert Bruce’s reputation generally suffers from comparison with Wallace, a fact especially apparent in the wake of the 1996 motion picture Braveheart. An action movie that displayed only a nodding acquaintance with historical accuracy, Braveheart portrayed Bruce as a scheming, turncoat politician. On many levels comparison with Wallace is invalid. We know only a little of Wallace, his background, properties, activities and motives. In fact, we know only the bare highlights of his career; whereas we know a great deal about Bruce, his shortcomings and errors as well as his brilliance. Wallace is thus a simpler character to portray, while understanding Bruce requires a more sophisticated appraisal. Portrayal of Wallace as a proletarian hero, a democratic dynamo who eclipsed the vacillating and timid Scottish nobles of his day is not founded in fact. The son of a squire and thus a member of the genteel classes, Wallace had certainly no more regard for the opinions and welfare of the Scottish people than had Bruce. The popular appeal of Wallace lies in his perceived simplicity: his single-minded devotion to his liege King John and his martyr’s death for what he believed. As far as we know, Wallace had no dynastic or personal interest in the war; no claim to the throne to consider; no lands in England that might be forfeited, and no tenants whose welfare had to be taken into account. Robert Bruce by contrast came with all these complications. Thus it is easy to portray Wallace as an attractive, unselfish idealist who suffered a martyr’s death, while Bruce is vulnerable to caricature as a shifting politician, a pragmatist who compromised and delivered, but who looked after his own interests above all.
Such a contrast between Wallace and Bruce may suit twentieth-century taste in narrative and cinema, but there is no historical basis for it. The truth is that in siding now with Edward I, now with the Comyns as his family interest required, Robert Bruce was behaving in the same way as most of his peers and contemporaries. Probably, as Professor Duncan has neatly expressed it, contemporaries thought none the worse of him for it. The contrast between Wallace and Bruce is therefore superficial. Conversely, Bruce did not ‘succeed where Wallace failed’. Rather, Bruce built upon Wallace’s achievement: many of those who fought at Stirling Bridge fought also at Bannockburn, and shared the same outrage at the English occupation and humiliation of their country.
The best monuments to Robert’s memory are the captivating narrative of Barbour’s The Bruce and the stirring rhetoric of the Declaration of Arbroath. In addition, everyone should read and enjoy, without being duped by, the medieval propagandists for the Bruce dynasty: Fordun, Bower and Wyntoun, who hide Robert’s faults and mask his true goals to generate a crude and unreconstructed nationalistic fervour. Robert himself made no generalisations on the basis of nationality. During his rebellion against the English king in 1306 it is interesting how highly Robert valued his English knights – Yorkshiremen Christopher Seton and his brothers, and, later, the Northumbrian Sir William Burradon, with whom he fled into the mountains. In his letter to the ‘kings prelates and clergy and the inhabitants of Ireland’ Robert understands ‘our nation’ as a pan-Celtic conglomeration, embracing Irish and Scots. His stated concept of nationhood was already archaic, and far removed from the self-contained, homogeneous units that have been understood as nations since the time of the French Revolution. Tempting as it is to portray Robert as a champion of small identities, nations, languages or cultures under threat from the homogenising, destructive forces of globalisation, to do so would be unjust to the Gallovidian and Manx identities which Robert repressed. It is tempting, too, in view of his letter to the Irish, to represent Robert as a champion of Gaelic culture and of the pan-Celtic ideal, yet this was most likely a pose adopted by Robert and Edward Bruce to attract Gaelic support, for their careers showed only superficial commitment to that ideal.
It is, rather, for his leadership of a beleagured people, his revival of the Scottish kingship, his preservation of the Scottish identity in the face of dire external threat, his personal qualities of daring, leadership and determination, that Robert Bruce’s memory should be honoured and cherished. However one pictures Robert – on the run from the tracker dogs in Galloway, wading up to his neck in the icy moat at Perth, manfully dispatching Henry de Boun on the day before Bannockburn, or riding at full pelt across the Pennines in his effort to capture Edward II in 1322 – Robert’s remarkable adventures will never fail to entertain, intrigue and inspire. Valiant knight, great sea-lord of the Gaidhealtachd and triumphant king, his life serves to illustrate that resolute action, determination and perseverance, even in the face of overwhelming odds, can reverse great injustice.