Biographies & Memoirs

Chapter 13

Edward II had begun the marshalling of his great army soon after Sir Philip Mowbray, under the chivalrous grant of a safe conduct, had arrived in London and informed him of the terms of the treaty he had made with Edward Bruce. For him, unlike the Scottish King whose policy had been recklessly contravened, it was a godsent opportunity to bring to battle the elusive Scots and overwhelm them with the superiority of his arms and numbers. ‘The relief of Stirling’ was a bugle call offered to his uncertain lips with which to rally his nation behind him and bring harmony to his jangling barons.

Throughout the spring and summer of 1313 Prince Louis, brother of King Philip IV of France and uncle of Isabella, Edward II’s Queen, had been trying patiently to achieve a settlement between the English King and those of his magnates who had been responsible for the execution of Piers Gaveston. The challenge of Stirling provided the final pressure to bring the two parties together. On 13 October 1313 in Westminster Hall the Earl of Lancaster and his confederates admitted that they were guilty of Gaveston’s death and made a humble apology to the King for their misdeed and he, in turn, graciously granted a general pardon to them and to their followers. Two banquets were then given by the King and the Earl of Lancaster respectively to celebrate their accord1 and the full attention of the hierarchy of England could now be directed to the destruction of Scotland.

The odds in their favour were very great. They could draw on a manpower five times as large as that of their enemy and from a country which, apart from the northern counties, had been untouched by war and was ranked as the most prosperous in fourteenth-century Europe. Ireland and Wales were quiet; the papacy favourable; France for the time being friendly and internally there was such peace as had not been known since the beginning of the reign. Against these advantages Scotland, ravaged by nine invasions and eighteen years of warfare, could only offer the genius of the King and the ardour of his followers.

On 28 November 1313 Edward II wrote to the Earl of Dunbar that he would bring an army north before midsummer.2 On 23 December he sent out writs to eight earls and eighty-seven barons summoning them to appear with their contingents at Berwick on 10 June 1314. In February 1314 he reiterated to his supporters in Scotland that he intended to lead an army against Bruce. In March he made the Earl of Pembroke once more Viceroy of Scotland,3 and from 9 March onwards a stream of executive orders for the mobilization of men and supplies issued from the royal headquarters. The Earl of Ulster was deputed to raise and transport troops from Ireland: 16,000 foot were levied from thirteen English counties in the north and Midlands; 5000 archers and spearmen from north and south Wales; numerous ships and sailors from the seaports of England to provide transport for the provisioning and equipment of the land forces; and throughout Europe, by word of mouth, a general invitation for the attendance of all knights in search of chivalric fame or the spoils of fortune.4

Early in May an embargo was put on the export of foodstuffs and 106 four-horse and no eight-oxen carts were drafted from various sheriffdoms to provide the wagon train of the army.

As Edward II awaited at Berwick the arrival of the different contingents he was in an expansive mood. To Hugh Despenser the younger, the son of his closest adviser Sir Hugh Despenser the elder, he allotted the spacious lands of Thomas Randolph, Earl of Moray, and to others of his following he handed out the patrimonies of Scottish gentry which he was confident would fall into his hands. His optimism was shared by knights and barons in his train, many of whom brought with them tapestries, plate and furniture to furbish the houses which the king had promised them in advance.5

The only shadow on his euphoria was the sullen refusal of the Earls of Lancaster, Warwick, Surrey and Arundel to answer to his summons in person. Although, in accordance with their feudal obligations, they sent their quota of cavalry and footmen, they cloaked the personal animosity which had motivated their own nonattendance by claiming that the consent of parliament should have been obtained before making war.6

However, the Earls of Gloucester, Pembroke and Hereford were at his side and among the veterans of his father’s Welsh and Scottish campaigns were Sir Ralph de Monthermer (formerly styled the Earl of Gloucester before the succession of his stepson to the title), Sir Robert Clifford, Sir Henry Beaumont, Sir Maurice Barclay, Sir Marmaduke Tweng and Sir Giles d’Argentan, described as the third best knight in Christendom.7 Edward II had recently ransomed d’Argentan from the Emperor of Byzantium who had seized him on his way to aid the knights of Rhodes against the Saracens.

Also serving in his army were Scotsmen who still opposed Bruce, among them John Comyn, son of the murdered ‘Red’ Comyn, Sir Ingram de Umfraville, one-time Scottish guardian, his brother the Earl of Angus, and a host of knights from France, Brittany, Poitou, Guienne and Germany.8

As the contingents from different directions came marching in and set up their tents at Wark-on-Tweed, hard by Berwick, there had assembled by 10 June the greatest army that a king of England had ever commanded. Foremost in splendour and force were some 2500 heavy cavalry furnished by the nobles and knights. Each horseman was clad in chain mail overlaid by a surcoat with his armorial bearings. His horse, thickset and strong as a percheron, had flowing blankets about its body – ‘trappings’ – to trap and entangle the thrusts of sword and spear, and the rider when he was in the saddle carried with him a twelve foot lance and a battle axe, sword or mace. His squire was in attendance upon him and one, two or three mounted armoured men at arms. The brutal impact of a thousand knights charging in thunder together could appall the bravest and never had the English rank and file had such confident expectation of success as when they saw so great a force of cavalry.

Next in deadly execution, some 3000 in number, were the corps d’élite of the Welsh archers who had become so expert in the use of the longbow that they could loose their shafts with such speed that five arrows would be airborne at the same time. And lastly the main body of foot soldiers, 15,000 in all, in quilted coats and steel helmets armed with spear, shield and sword.

Such was the army that Edward II had at his disposal: but if the body, more than 20,000 in numbers, was strong, the single head was weak. Although Stirling had to be reached by 24 June to observe the terms of the challenge, it was not until 17 June that the King began to march from Berwick, with his forces arranged in ten divisions.9 ‘He hastened,’ writes a contemporary chronicler, ‘day by day to the appointed place, not as if he was leading an army to battle but as if he was on a pilgrimage to St James of Compostella. Brief were the halts for sleep, briefer still for food: hence horses, horsemen and infantry were worn out with toil and hunger.’10

By 21 June he had only reached Edinburgh. Here the army was revictualled by twenty-three ships which had sailed up the coast of England to the port of Leith and on the next day, to catch up in time, they made a forced march to Falkirk, 22 miles through the dust and heat of a scorching summer’s day. There they bivouacked, parched and exhausted, with still ten miles and thirty-six hours to go in which to meet the provisions of the challenge.

Ahead in Torwood lay the Scottish army.

Torwood was a vast forest with rocky outcrops lying across the ancient Roman road from Edinburgh to Stirling some five miles north of Falkirk. Here by the end of April 1314 Bruce had made his headquarters and begun to assemble his army.

He called a halt to all subsidiary expeditions and to him came Edward Bruce and his men fresh from their invasion of Cumberland, and Douglas and Randolph with theirs from Lothian, elated by the captures of Roxburgh and Edinburgh. Summonses for military service had been sent throughout the kingdom, and as the days lengthened and the weather became milder, groups of men under their knights, lairds or chiefs or on their own made their way at fitful intervals to the Scottish camp from the farthest reaches of the country. As they came in they were welcomed by the King and allotted for their training to one of the four divisions into which he had ordered his battle array.

Of these the vanguard was commanded by Thomas Randolph, Earl of Moray. At the end of its training period it consisted of about 500 men from his earldom of Moray, from Ross and the far north and burghers from the towns of Inverness, Elgin, Nairn and Forres. The second division, led by Edward Bruce, drew on the men of Buchan, Mar, Angus, the Mearns, Menteith, Strathearn and Lennox, with a small contingent from Galloway, to make up a roll call of 1000. The third division of a similar size was under the nominal command of the High Steward, Walter the son of Brace’s old friend James Stewart who had died in 1309, but as Walter Stewart was a minor the control was actually in the hands of his cousin, James Douglas. Their men came from Lanark, Renfrew and the Borders.

The fourth division had the double strength of 2000 and was commanded by the King himself. Here under his banner were gathered from western Scotland Highlanders from a score of different clans,* muting their feuds beneath his chastening eye and in the face of the common enemy. Bruce’s own men from Carrick, Kyle and Cunningham were there and Angus Macdonald with his liegemen from the Western Isles.11

Lastly there were 500 light horse under the Marischal Sir Robert Keith and a small company of archers from the Ettrick forest.

Altogether the Scottish army amounted to between 5000 and 6000, little more than a quarter of the English host.

During the two months he had in hand, Bruce’s main preoccupation was the training and discipline of his disparate forces. He knew that he had neither the horses, equipment nor numbers to fight the English cavalry with cavalry of his own. His army must fight on foot and be based on the schiltron: the hedgehog of spears. But he realized, and this was his brilliance as a tactician, that the schiltron must not be merely static and defensive but be able to act on the offensive as a mobile battering ram. Considering that the majority of his troops were Highlanders accustomed rather to the wild charge or the ambuscade, the astonishing coherence and control shown in the movement of the schiltrons on the battlefield of Bannockburn argues not only how thorough must have been their training but how remarkable the personal ascendancy of the King for chiefs and people so independent to accept the discipline entailed.

He was helped in this by the different relationship from England existing between master and man in Scotland. The gradations of wealth were less steep. Whereas in England the natural leaders were high on their horses remote from the humble foot soldiers, in Scotland the chiefs, burghers and landowners, with leaner purses, were accustomed to fight side by side with their own men on foot. When they did so they wore lighter armour than when on horseback and their followers steel helmets and steel gloves and either back and breast pieces or padded leather jackets. All were armed with twelve-foot spears and swords or axes.

Like many of the great commanders who followed him in history, Bruce took pains to make himself known to all his men, ‘ever, as he met them, he greeted them cheerfully, speaking an encouraging word to one or another and they, seeing their King welcome them in so forthright a manner, were greatly heartened and were ready to fight and die to uphold his honour.’12

During this period he selected the site of the battlefield on which he would oppose the English. That which he chose was ‘almost the copybook military position for the strategic defence of Stirling Castle’.13

About two miles north of Torwood, the Roman road dipped down to the valley of the Bannock burn. Rising in the hills to the west the burn descended through wooded slopes and meadows to the ford which served the road and then plunged into a deep gully by the hamlet of Bannock and cut its way through the boglands in an arc to the northeast to debouch into the Firth of Forth. North of this natural obstacle there was to the left of the road the New Park, a moderate area of undulating grassland backed by thick woods which had been enclosed by Alexander III as a royal forest: to the right of the road a narrow stretch of meadow which ended abruptly at its eastern edge in a steep bank, dropping down into the Carse of Balquiderock, a flat plateau of clayland embraced by the arms of the Pelstream and the Bannock burn. Beyond these, marshlands, intersected by streams, extended to the Firth of Forth.

No advance by the English could be made from the east across this spongy area; nor could they make a detour to the west where the Torwood and the New Park stretched in an unbroken forest. Their only means of approach towards Stirling were along the Roman road through the New Park or somewhat to the east of the gully where by fording the Bannock burn where its banks were lower and taking the public track, they could pass outside the New Park under the lea of the escarpment at the Carse’s edge.

Bruce must have reconnoitred the ground on many occasions with his lieutenants for when the time came to take up their positions there the move was made with great smoothness. In the meantime, to prevent the English cavalry deploying onto the open ground either side of the Roman road, if they crossed the ford, he honeycombed the area with pits dug a foot in breadth and knee deep camouflaged with brushwood and grass and had trees felled and placed in barricades across any tracks through the forest which might be accessible to horsemen.

While the work was being carried out he sent James Douglas and Sir Robert Keith with a small mounted patrol to monitor the progress of the English army.

On 22 June they returned with the news, which they reported to the King in private, that the English were on the move from Edinburgh in immense numbers, for the whole landscape was covered by mounted men with waving banners, columns of foot soldiers and archers and lines of wagons stretching into the distance. Never before had they seen such a multitude and splendour. Bruce told them to keep this knowledge to themselves but to spread it abroad that the English were advancing in great disorder so that the men might not be discouraged.14

He now gave orders that the camp followers, grooms, ‘small folk’ and others too ill-armed to be included in his schiltrons should retire with the wagon train of food and equipment to a valley hidden behind Gillies Hill and that the straggling bands who, though adequately armed, had arrived too late for enrolment in his trained formations should accompany them and wait there until summoned.15

Next he dispatched the vanguard and the other two divisions to their prepared positions north of the Bannock burn: the vanguard, under Thomas Randolph, to St Ninian’s Kirk to watch the track along the Carse, with the divisions of Douglas and Edward Bruce echeloned to his right in that order while he, with his division, remained as rearguard in Torwood to cover their withdrawal. When this had been completed he brought his men across the burn and took his place to the right of his brother’s division. The whole army was now in line facing southeast down a gradual slope which gave them observation both of the entry to the New Park and the Carse. And there, after placing sentries, they slept.16

Next morning, 23 June, soon after sunrise, the army heard Mass and prayed to God for their cause, and since it was the vigil of St John the Baptist they observed it as a fast, taking only bread and water. And when they had armed and taken their stations the King had it proclaimed to each division that if any were of faint heart let him depart at once, at which a great shout arose from the assembled troops that all would conquer or die.17

Meanwhile the English army were approaching from Falkirk and about midday had reached Torwood, where they halted. Here they were met by Sir Philip Mowbray, the Governor of Stirling Castle, who had made a wide detour of join them. He pointed out that there was no need for a battle to take place, for under the laws of chivalry the English had fulfilled their obligation by arriving within three leagues of their objective and therefore the castle must remain in their hands.18 But Edward II had not brought his mighty army so many miles to let his enemies once more elude him, but to overwhelm them and march in triumph to the gates of Stirling Castle which he could see in the distance high on its upthrust of rock against a cloudless sky.

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A consultation was held among the leaders at which Sir Philip, who had been able to observe the preparations of the Scots from the battlements of the castle, warned that the English could not attack from the western flank as the bridle ways through the forest had been barricaded and that elsewhere the growth was too thick, and that to the immediate front the Scottish forces were drawn up in the New Park. It was decided then that the vanguard should advance along the Roman road under the King’s nephew, the Earl of Gloucester, with the expectation that the power of his army would cause the Scots to retire. If not Gloucester would sweep them away with a charge of his heavy cavalry. At the same time, Sir Robert Clifford and Sir Henry Beaumont should take a picked body of 600 knights along the public way at the edge of the Carse and get behind the Scots to cut off their anticipated retreat. Some delay was caused by the intervention of the Earl of Hereford, who claimed that as High Constable it was his hereditary right to lead the army: but this was shortly resolved by making him joint commander of the van with Gloucester.

As the English cavalry emerged from Torwood onto the green meadow which sloped down to the Bannock burn, their many coloured banners and armour glittering in the sun could be seen clearly from across the valley by the Scots who stood to arms.

The English vanguard came down across the meadow and their lines gradually contracted into a column as they approached the ford over the burn with the Earls of Hereford and Gloucester in the lead. The Earl of Hereford’s nephew, Sir Henry de Bohun, rode some fifty yards in front, clad in full armour on a powerful horse with his spear in his hand. As he came through the belt of trees on the north bank of the burn he saw on the open ground before him a single rider inspecting the serried ranks of Scotsmen half-hidden in the woodland. He was on a grey palfrey with an axe in his hand and a golden circlet around his helmet. Recognizing the King of Scots, de Bohun without more ado couched his lance and spurred towards him.

Who knows what thoughts passed through Bruce’s mind? The prudent course was to fall back within the ranks of his soldiers, but perhaps he was influenced by seeing the crest of the de Bohuns on the surcoat of his assailant. For it was to the de Bohuns that, when he was a fugitive, his lands in Annandale and Carrick had been handed over by Edward I,19 and it was to the de Bohuns that Edward II had given the Bruce domains in Essex.20 And then again, how could he, the victor in a hundred tournaments, retreat from such a challenge before the eyes of Scotsmen prepared to lay down their lives on his behalf? So he turned his horse and cantered towards de Bohun, and as the thunderous charge came near swerved to one side and rising in his stirrups brought down his axe with such force on his opponent’s head that he cut through helmet, skull and brain and his axe handle shivered in two.21

For a minute there was a stunned silence on both sides, and then with a wild cry the Highlanders of the King’s division climbed over their fieldworks and charged on the English cavalry who were trying to line up on the open ground below, confused by the hidden pits into which many of them had fallen. The Earl of Gloucester was flung from his stumbling horse and only rescued by his squires and the rest took flight. Bruce stopped the pursuit at once, an eloquent tribute to his training and brought his Highlanders back to their lines.

His brother and his commanders crowded round him and, as far as they dared, upbraided him for so rash an act which might have been the ruin of them all, but he made no answer: only looked sadly at his broken axe handle.22 Then turning aside from them he scanned the surroundings and almost at once saw the body of horse led by Clifford and Beaumont, which had been riding under cover of the bank along the Carse, appear in sight towards St Ninians Kirk. Roughly he called to Thomas Randolph as he pointed out the horsemen, ‘A rose has fallen from your chap let,’ at which Randolph, in consternation, galloped to his division and, marshalling them in a schiltron, took them onto the open ground over which the English would have to pass. 23

When Sir Henry Beaumont saw the Scots approach he cried, ‘Let us halt a little; let them come on; give them room,’ meaning that he wished to have space to manoeuvre around them.

Sir Thomas Gray, as his son wrote later, replied, ‘Whatever you give them I doubt not that they will have all soon enough.’

‘Very well,’ exclaimed Sir Henry, ‘if you are afraid, be off.’

‘Sir,’ answered Sir Thomas, ‘it is not from fear that I shall fly this day.’ So saying, he spurred in between Sir William Deyncourt and Sir Henry and charged into the thick of the enemy. Sir William was killed. Sir Thomas Gray was taken prisoner as his horse, speared by the pikes, fell headlong and hurtled him to the ground.24 Observing this, the rest of the squadron approached more cautiously, and surrounding the schiltron attacked it from all sides. But they had been sent as a flying column unaccompanied by archers, and without their hail of arrows, which had been so devastating at Falkirk, they could not break the hedge of spearmen. Every now and then one of these would lunge forward from the ranks and stab a horse so that it fell to the ground leaving its heavily armed rider flat and helpless at his comrades’ feet. In frustration the cavalry, circling the schiltron, threw at their assailants battle axes, swords and maces so that a great mound of weapons arose in the hollow centre of the formation. Still the battle went on with the defenders hard pressed, the sun blazing down on them so that they were drenched with sweat and the air thick with dust.

When James Douglas saw how Randolph was surrounded and hidden from sight by the superior numbers of the mailed knights, he went to Bruce and asked if he might not go to his aid; but Bruce, uncertain whether or not the English would renew their frontal attack, forbade him to leave his post. A little later Douglas, with increasing anxiety for the fate of his comrade, came again with his plea to Bruce and this time was given leave to go to Randolph’s rescue. So he marched his men to the fray but as he came closer he saw that the English were beginning to waver and, calling his men to a halt, exclaimed, ‘The Earl of Moray has gained the day and since we were not there to help him in the battle let us leave to him the credit of the victory.’ And indeed Randolph had taken advantage of an opening between the cavalry to drive his schiltron forward so that it split the enemy in half, some flying north to Stirling and some south to join the main host.

When the enemy had fled, Randolph’s men sat on the ground and took off their helmets to fan themselves, for they were weary and soaked in sweat; and after a little while they followed their commander to Bruce’s headquarters, and there the men of the other divisions crowded round them with their congratulations.25

When Bruce saw them all assembled there in so confident a mood, induced by his own exploit and Randolph’s victory, he was silent for a little and then spoke to them-briefly of the dismay that would be caused among the English by the double defeat of powerful knights by men on foot, but that nevertheless, if they felt they had shown mettle enough and wished to retire, the decision was in their hands. To which they replied, ‘Good King, order us to battle tomorrow as soon as it is light for we shall not fail you for fear of death but persevere until our land is free.’ So he dismissed them to their stations with the words, ‘Sirs, since you will it so, make ready in the morning.’26

That evening he held a conference with his chief commanders, whose experience of warfare enabled them to assess the enormous disparity between the two forces, to consider whether he should not, like Kutusov in Russia five centuries later, make it his main object to preserve the only Scottish army in being by retiring to the wild country of Lennox and beyond and leave starvation and the scorched earth to fight for him rather than risk the annihilation of Scotland’s manhood. But while they were debating, Sir Alexander Seton, who was serving in the English army, came secretly to him through the night and said to Bruce, ‘Sir, if you ever intend to reconquer Scotland now is the time. The English have lost heart and are discouraged,’ and he pledged his life on pain of being hanged and drawn that if Bruce attacked them on the morrow he would surely win.27

His description of the English was very accurate. Edward II and his army had been so confident that the mere weight of his heavy cavalry would cow the Scots into submission that, when the news spread that a seasoned campaigner like Sir Robert Clifford had been driven from the field by a parcel of footmen, and a champion in the lists had been slain by a man on a pony, the reaction of the rank and file, already dispirited by two forced marches under blazing sun on successive days, was as inordinate as had been their previous assurance. ‘From that moment,’ according to the Lanercost Chronicle, ‘began a panic among the English and the Scots grew bolder,’28 and in the vivid words of Barbour, ‘in five hundred places and more the English could be seen whispering together and saying “our Lords will always use their might against the right and when they wage war unrighteously God is offended and brings misfortune and so it may happen now”.’ So widespread was the defeatism that Edward II ordered heralds to go to and fro throughout the army to explain that the events of the day had been mere skirmishes and that in the major battle to come victory was certain and rewards great.29

Sir Robert Clifford had returned to the English headquarters with news of his defeat late in the afternoon, and it was clear that no further action could take place that day. The main problem now facing the English command was where to bivouac for the night, and in particular to water their innumerable chargers, draught horses and oxen as well as their manpower and yet be in a position the next day to deploy their cavalry in the open ground against the Scots. Many of their commanders knew the terrain from previous campaigns, and the decision taken to move from Torwood to the middle reaches of the Bannock burn was a practical one. The foot soldiers and the supply column laagered on the south bank while the cavalry crossed over the burn onto the level carse with open country between them and the Scottish positions. Both the Bannock burn and the Pelstream are tidal rivers, and in the early evening of 23 June the tide was right out30 so that, with the help of doors and beams from the barns and houses of Bannock, all the cavalry found their way from the boggy areas along the south and east of the burn to the hard clay of the carse. By the time the movement of men and horses had been completed, the short summer night was almost over: there was no time to rest and the knights stood to arms with their horses bitted.31

The disposition of the English army was based on the assumption that the Scots would remain behind their fieldworks to receive the cavalry attack. But when Bruce learnt from his scouts the siting of his enemies he made the daring and momentous decision to take the offensive himself. Never before had foot soldiers marched forward to meet the might of chivalry, but it was to this end that he had directed the training of his men and in miniature it had proved its worth under Thomas Randolph a few hours earlier.

The English cavalry were enclosed on three sides by the Pelstream and the Bannock burn, within, as it were, the arc of a bended bow. These streams in the early hours of 24 June would be at half tide and impassable.32 He would advance his army so that it formed the taut string between the two ends of the bow and would thus confine the cavalry in so cramped a space that they would be unable to manoeuvre.

Accordingly, he called the officers of his divisions together and explained to them the action he was going to take and gave them their order of battle. When he had finished, according to Barbour, he addressed them in the following words:

‘Sirs,’ he said, ‘we have every reason to be confident of success for we have right on our side. Our enemies are moved only by desire for dominion but we are fighting for our lives, our children, our wives and the freedom of our country. And so I ask and pray that with all your strength, without cowardice or alarm, you meet the foes whom you will first encounter so boldly that those behind them will tremble. See that your ranks are not broken so that, when the enemy come charging on horseback, you meet them steadfastly with your spears; and do not let any seek for booty or prisoners until the field is surely ours. Think on your manhood and your deeds of valour and the joy that awaits you if you are victorious. In your hands you carry honour, praise, riches, freedom and felicity if you bear yourselves bravely, but altogether to the contrary if your hearts fail you. You could have lived quietly as slaves, but because you longed to be free you are with me here, and to gain that end you must be valiant, strong and undismayed.

‘I know not what more to say. You know what honour is. Bear yourself in such fashion as to keep your honour.

‘And I promise you by virtue of my royal power that for those who fight manfully I will pardon all offences against the Crown, and for those who die I will remit all feudal dues upon their heirs.’33

The officers then returned to their men to tell them what the King had said and to prepare for the morrow.

On midsummer day, 24 June 1314, dawn broke at 3.45 a.m. to usher in a bright and sunny day. Its first rays touched the plumes and trappings of the English cavalry on the carse and brought a slight warmth to the footsore and sodden infantry who were scattered on whatever firm patches they could find in the marshes beyond the Bannock burn. Westwards it picked out the dark mass of trees in the New Park where the Scots were already astir.

It was the feast of St John the Baptist.

The Scottish priests in each division had celebrated Mass, reading in high tones for all to hear the lesson of the day: ‘Comfort ye, comfort ye … Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem and cry unto her that her warfare is accomplished.’

The men had then eaten a slight meal and begun to range themselves in their divisions, carrying many banners as their King had bidden. When they were all assembled he called forth and knighted in the field, as was the custom of the day before a battle, all those who had been chosen for that honour, among them Walter Stewart as knight and Sir James Douglas as knight banneret.34

The new knights and the whole host were then blessed by the Abbot of Inchaffray, who held in one hand a casket containing the most sacred relics of the kingdom.

When these ceremonies had been concluded, Bruce gave the order to advance. Three divisions moved off in echelon: first Edward Bruce with his right flank protected by the Bannock burn, then, a little back to his left, Thomas Randolph, and then, in the same manner, James Douglas: all in schiltron formation. The fourth division and the cavalry remained in reserve on the lower slope of the New Park.

When Edward II saw the Scots coming forward on foot over open ground he cried in amazement, ‘What, will yonder Scots fight?’

To which Sir Ingram de Umfraville replied, ‘Surely sir: but indeed this is the strangest sight I ever saw for Scotsmen to take on the whole might of England by giving battle on hard ground,’ and even as he spoke the Scots, who were now some hundred yards away, knelt down and made a short prayer to God to help them in the fight; at which the English King exclaimed triumphantly, ‘They kneel for mercy.’

Again Sir Ingram replied, ‘For mercy yes, but not from you: from God for their sins. These men will win all or die.’

‘So be it,’ said the King and ordered the trumpets to sound the assembly.35

The Earl of Gloucester, the previous evening, had urged Edward II to rest his army for twenty-four hours before engaging in battle and, in a heated argument, had been accused by him of disloyalty. Now, still smarting from the unjust attack on his honour, he mounted his horse so precipitately, when he heard the summons, that neither his squires had time to put his surcoat over his armour nor his vanguard to saddle and range behind him before he had charged headlong at Edward Bruce’s schiltron. Unrecognized, he was slain on their spears far in advance of his van36 who, following him piecemeal as fast as they could, lost many of their bravest knights, among them the veteran Sir Robert Clifford, Sir John Comyn, son of the murdered ‘Red’ Comyn, Sir Edmund Manley, steward of the English King’s household, and Sir Pain Tiptoft.37

Vainly the vanguard tried to break the hedgerow of spears but were no more successful than their comrades the previous day. Many of the horses were stabbed and threw their riders who were trampled in the mêlée, and when Randolph came up on the left of Edward Bruce38 and attacked from the flank those who were engaged against him, the whole van broke and wheeled back to join the main body of cavalry who were trying to form up for action, setting off a stampede of wounded riderless horses into the thick of the mustering squadrons.

Douglas now came up on Randolph’s left39 so that the three Scottish divisions covered the whole of the front between the Pelstream and the Bannock burn,40 penning the English cavalry in so narrow an area that they were no better than a seething mass of men and horses effectively blocking any access for the infantry behind them to take part in the battle. Now linked together in serried ranks of spearmen, the Scots pushed forward and became so locked in combat with their foes that the English archers in the rear could not loose their arrows without hitting their own countrymen.

At last someone in command on the English side got the archers over to the north of the Pelstream and there, taking their stance twelve paces apart, they began to pour their arrows into the left of Douglas’s division. But Bruce, from his vantage point on the slope of the New Park, saw what was happening and ordered Sir Robert Keith with his 500 light horse to disperse them, which he did with such effect that those who were not cut down fled back among the infantry causing them in turn to begin to flee.41

But in the loop of the carse the English knights were fighting desperately against the pressure of the Scottish ranks. ‘The battle there was fiercest and so great was the spilling of blood that it stood in pools on the ground. There might be heard weapons striking on armour and knights and horses be seen tumbling on the ground and many a rich and splendid garment fouled roughly underfoot.’42

For a long while the struggle continued in silence, broken only by the clashing of steel on steel, the snapping of spearshafts, the groans of the wounded and the screams of disembowelled horses. But gradually the English began to give ground and Bruce, seeing them waver, sent his reserve division into the fight. Turning to Angus Macdonald he exclaimed, ‘My hope is constant in thee,’43 and the Islemen rushed forward to join the ranks on the left of Douglas’s division which had been much thinned by the English archers. Now the cry was ‘Press on, press on, they fail,’ for behind the forward spearmen with their twelve-foot pikes came the added weight from the increased rear ranks, each man leaning on the man in front so that the whole mass formed an immense human steamroller.44

The Earl of Pembroke and Sir Giles d’Argentan, who were riding either side of Edward II, realizing that the day was lost and that at all costs the King must not be captured, seized each a rein of his horse and, in spite of his expostulations, for he had been fighting with great courage, dragged him away, and with some five hundred knights of his bodyguard pushed and barged through the hurlyburly to the ebbing Pelstream and there crossed towards Stirling Castle. As they fought their way through the press, Edward’s shield bearer was captured with the royal shield and seal. Many Scotsmen tried to seize the King’s bridle and the trappings of his horse, but were kept at bay by his flailing mace. His horse was piked but lasted until he was clear of the throng, when another was found for him. It was then that Sir Giles d’Argentan turned to him and said, ‘Sire your protection was committed to me, but since you are safely on your way, I will bid you farewell for never yet have I fled from a battle, nor will I now.’ He turned his horse and spurring desperately into the Scottish ranks was overborne and slain.45

Edward II continued to the castle but was refused entry by the governor, Sir Philip Mowbray, on the sensible grounds that under the terms of his agreement he would have to surrender the castle and the King would become a prisoner; but he deputed to him a local knight to guide him by a detour round the west of the New Park so that he could bypass the battle area on his way to England.46

When the royal standard was seen to leave the field, the whole English army began to give way. It was at this juncture that Bruce produced that unexpected intervention by which commanders have so often won victory. A signal was given to the watchers on Gillies Hill and over its crest appeared all the camp followers, servants and those who had arrived too late for Bruce to incorporate them in his formations, rank upon rank in massed array, with broad sheets for banners upon poles and spears. As they came down the hill and saw the battle below them and the English beginning to falter, they gave a great shout of ‘Upon them, upon them!’47

When the English saw this vast host approaching, they believed it to be a second Scottish army and all hope left them. Their slow retreat disintegrated into a panic-stricken rout and each man thought only how to flee. Never in the history of her wars had England suffered such a humiliation or exhibited such helplessness in defeat. She had men and material enough to make many an honourable stand. Her infantry had not even been engaged and many of her archers were among them: but not a leader emerged to rally them. Every armoured knight who had not been unhorsed or killed put spurs to his steed. The Earl of Hereford, High Constable of England, with some of the foremost barons, fled, to their shame, along the route which their King had taken and made for Bothwell.48 Others less fortunate, penned in by the Scots, attempted to cross the Bannock burn but got bogged in its muddy depths and were rolled over and crushed by those who were crowding after them. Between its banks the burn became so choked by struggling men and horses that the latest comers could pass dryshod over a causeway of drowned and drowning bodies.49

One nobleman alone in this hour of panic preserved his calm and his courage. The Earl of Pembroke, after conducting his monarch to Stirling, threaded his way back through the chaos to where some thousands of the Welsh levies were stationed.50 These were the men from the territories of his vast earldom and were conspicuous from their custom of going to war half-naked. Marshalling them into columns, he set out to guide them over a hundred miles of wild country to Carlisle. All along the route, they were harried by the natives through whose districts they passed, and many who fell out or straggled were killed but the greater part he brought safely across the Solway to the English headquarters Carlisle. at Carlisle.51

But the other infantry had little guidance. Bewildered by the disappearance of the cavalry, they dispersed in all directions. Many of them tried to cross the Forth but were swept away in its swirling currents or sucked into the treacherous swamps within its loops. The majority made for Stirling and took refuge on the crags beneath the castle.

So great were their numbers and so many of the English knights had taken flight in the same direction that Bruce, uncertain of the governor’s reaction, kept his men in formation for fear that if they were to scatter, a counter-attack would be launched from the castle.52

It was this that enabled the English King to escape: for when news was brought that he had been seen riding south, Bruce dared not release his cavalry in pursuit for it seemed to him beyond belief that so powerful an army as the English, with so many seasoned veterans, would fail to rally and renew the conflict. However, at Douglas’s request he allowed him to take sixty horse with which to stalk the King.53

This was an enterprise for which Douglas’s long experience of guerrilla warfare made him peculiarly fitted.

As he passed through Torwood he met, riding the moor beyond, Sir Laurence Abernethy with four score of men come to join the English, but when he heard from Douglas of the day’s work he promptly changed his allegiance and accompanied him in the chase.

They caught up with the King’s troop beyond Linlithgow, 500 armed men riding in close order, and decided that they were too many to attack in a pitched battle, but from that moment they shadowed them like hyenas a herd of wildebeest so that if any fell behind for however short a space he was taken or killed. They harried them so closely and unceasingly that it was said that not one Englishman could stop even to make water and that when they reached Dunbar, whose earl was ready to receive the King, they flung themselves off their saddles and rushed through the castle gates leaving their horses outside. With these Douglas returned to Bruce. Edward II was placed on a boat sailing for Bamburgh and from there made his way to Berwick, and in due course his knights reached him one by one by land.54

Meanwhile Bruce had moved his army before the walls of Stirling in readiness to attack, but at his approach the fugitives clustered there laid down their arms without a struggle and the governor, in formal surrender, handed over the keys of the castle to Bruce and pledged to him his future allegiance: a pledge which, unlike the Earl of Atholl, he fulfilled to his death. 55

The Earl of Atholl, marching south apparently to the aid of Bruce, had suddenly attacked, on the eve of the main battle, the Scottish base camp at Cambus Kenneth Abbey and slain its unsuspecting commander, Sir John Airth.56 This treacherous behaviour was the culmination of the resentment he felt for Edward Bruce who, after seducing the earl’s sister, Isabel, and getting her with child, deserted her in favour of the daughter of the Earl of Ross, of whom he became so enamoured that his affection spread to the whole family. It is recorded that when he heard of the death of her brother, Sir Walter Ross, at Bannockburn, this hard and passionate man, for the first time in his life, wept for sorrow.

But he had little leisure for grief.57 His royal brother, now that all organized resistance had ceased, sent him in pursuit of the English who had been seen streaming towards Both well, with the order that if they had already arrived there he should lay siege to the castle. Then Bruce turned his attention to tidying up the aftereffects of his victory.

On that midsummer day he had established without question his brilliance as a general and his authority as a leader: but beyond these gifts he now displayed in the aftermath of his success a consideration and courtesy towards the defeated which they did not easily forget. The fame of his humanity spread abroad and the harshest of English chroniclers paid an ungrudging tribute to the magnanimity of his behaviour.58

His cousin, Gilbert Clare, Earl of Gloucester, was carried to a neighbouring church and Bruce himself, for part of the night, kept vigil beside his corpse in honour of the family with whom his own had so many close links.59 The earl’s body and that of Sir Robert Clifford were afterwards despatched to their families at the Scottish King’s expense.60 Thirty-four barons and several hundred knights and squires who had fallen in the fray were given honourable burial in sanctified ground. The remainder of the dead were heaped in communal pits. 61

Nearly a hundred barons, baronets and knights had been taken prisoner and these were treated as his guests while their ransoms were being arranged. Among them was Ralph de Monthermer who, in the days when he was styled Earl of Gloucester during his stepson’s minority, had given to Bruce the vital warning in 1306 which had enabled him to evade the vengeance of Edward I. Now with great gladness Bruce repaid his debt of gratitude by entertaining him at his table and then releasing him without ransom.62 A second prisoner to whom he granted the same favour, as one brave soldier to another, was Sir Marmaduke Tweng who, seventeen years before in the same area, had fought his way through the men of Wallace across the bridge they were about to destroy to find refuge in Stirling castle. Unhorsed at Bannockburn, he had crawled into the undergrowth. The next day, having hidden his armour in a coppice, he came out to look for Bruce, clad only in his shirt. Surprisingly, none took any notice as he wandered hither and thither in this simple raiment. At last, espying the Scottish King, he fell on his knees before him. ‘Welcome, Sir Marmaduke,’ said Bruce, ‘to what man art thou prisoner?’ ‘To none would I yield but you,’ replied Sir Marmaduke, at which Bruce raised him in his arms and took him to the royal tent.63

A more bizarre captive was a Carmelite friar called Baston who had been enrolled in the train of Edward II to immortalize in verse the expected triumph of his master. On being taken and brought before Bruce, the Scottish King with gentle humour promised him his freedom if he revised, in favour of the Scots, the epic that, as a practical journalist, he had already written beforehand. With a few adroit transpositions of names he accomplished this task to the satisfaction of his host and was speeded to the land of his fathers by the ironic cheers of his audience. 64

But the greatest catch of all was that brought back by Edward Bruce from Bothwell. Sir Walter FitzGilbert, the constable of the castle, had for some time been sitting gingerly on the fence but, up to the Bannockburn battle, with one foot in the English camp. He received therefore into his halls, at their request, the Earl of Hereford, the Earl of Angus, Sir Ingram de Umfraville, Maurice, Lord of Berkeley, John Lord of Segrave, Antony Lucy and fifty of their followers. The remainder of their party, for whom he had no room, continued towards Carlisle and were almost all destroyed in the course of their journey. When Sir Walter heard from his distinguished guests the reason for their presence, his duty immediately became clear. His men removed their arms and made them prisoners, and on the arrival of Edward Bruce at the castle gates, Sir Walter handed them over to his keeping with protestations of loyalty to his brother.65

The Earl of Hereford was a prize so great that in return for his release his wife was empowered by her brother Edward II to offer fifteen Scottish captives. Among those who were demanded and received by Bruce were his wife, Elizabeth, his daughter Marjorie, his sister Christina, and Robert Wishart, Bishop of Glasgow, now blind and ailing.66 His nephew Donald, the young Earl of Mar, was also given the opportunity to return, but a close personal friendship with Edward II decided him to remain in England.

Mary Bruce, who had been captured in 1306, had been released from her cage in 1310 and removed to Newcastle67 and from there in 1312 exchanged for the brother of Sir Philip Mowbray.68 The Countess of Buchan had been less fortunate. From her cage in Berwick she had been removed in 1312 to the House of the Carmelite nuns in that town,69 and in 1313 handed from there into the custody of Sir Henry Beaumont.70 After that there is silence. As she was not included among those reclaimed by Bruce, it must be assumed, knowing his loyalty to his friends, that by then she had died.

The uplift of morale among the Scots at the presence of so many renowned prisoners from a people who assumed they were a master race was further increased by the prodigious spoil that had been left behind. The whole English baggage train which, according to the Monk of Malmesbury, stretched for twenty miles and was worth £200,000, an astronomical sum in modern currency, was captured intact.71 Among the contents listed were gold and silver vessels belonging to the English King and his nobility, money chests for the payment of troops, siege weapons, arms, hangings, tents, silk and linen apparel, wine, corn, hay, herds of cattle, flocks of sheep and swine and numerous warhorses and their saddlery. There was scarcely a family in Scotland which did not benefit from the generous distribution of these goods which Bruce made among his men.

NOTES - CHAPTER 13

1 Vita Edwardii, 43

2 Cal. Doc. Scots, iii, 337

3 Rotuli Scotiae, i, 119a

4 Barrow, 292, 293

5 Bingham, 97

6 Vita Edwardii, 49–50; Lanercost, 206

7 Barbour, 224

8 Lanercost, 206

9 Barbour, 187

10 Vita Edwardii, 50–51

11 Barbour, 191

12 ibid., 189

13 Christison lecture

14 Barbour, 194, 195

15 ibid., 194

16 ibid., 194

17 ibid., 192

18 Scalaronica, 53

19 Cal. Doc. Scots, ii, 1757

20 ibid., iii, 4

21 Barbour, 200, 201

22 ibid., 202

23 ibid., 197

24 Scalaronica 54

25 Barbour, 198–9, 202–4

26 ibid., 204–5

27 Scalaronica, 55

28 Lanercost, 207

29 Barbour, 209

30 Christison lecture

31 Barbour, 210

32 Christison lecture

33 Barbour, extracts, 205–8

34 Barbour, 210

35 ibid., 210–212

36 Vita Edwardii, 52–4

37 Lanercost, 208

38 Barbour, 213

39 ibid., 216

40 ibid., 216

41 ibid., 217

42 ibid., 216, 217

43 Christison, 25

44 Barbour, 221

45 ibid., 223, 224; Scalaronica, 56; Walsingham, 246

46 ibid., 225

47 ibid., 222

48 Lanercost, 209

49 Barbour, 225

50 Lanercost, 209

51 Barbour, 227

52 ibid., 227

53 ibid., 226

54 ibid., 231–2

55 ibid., 228–30

56 ibid., 229

57 ibid., 229

58 Walsingham, 142

59 Barbour, 229

60 Walsingham, 142

61 Barbour, 234

62 Walsingham, 142

63 Barbour, 230

64 Burton, 270

65 Barbour, 234

66 Cal. Doc. Scots, iii, 393

67 ibid., iii, 131

68 ibid., iii, 244

69 Rotuli Scotiae, i, 85b

70 Cal. Doc. Scots, iii, 313

71 Vita Edwardii, 56

* cf note VIII

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