By this one act King Edward unravelled for ever the web of cooperation he had sought to create by the conciliatory settlement of 1304 and his subsequent measures.
In the spring of 1305 he had appointed Robert Bruce, the Bishop of Glasgow and Sir John Mowbray to draw up a report on the future settlement of Scotland. Their recommendation was that the community of the realm should be summoned to elect ten persons to attend the next English parliament to help draw up a new constitution for their kingdom. On receiving the King’s acceptance, they convened a Scottish parliament at Perth in May, at which the ten were duly chosen. Representing the earls, the bishops, the barons, the abbots and the lay community, the elected members attended the Westminster parliament in September 1305 and in company with twenty English colleagues drew up an ordinance for the government of the land – no longer the realm – of Scotland.
On the surface this appeared to give a form of self-government to the Scots. The viceroy, it is true, was to be the King’s nephew, the Earl of Richmond, and the chancellor and the chamberlain were to be English, but they were to be advised and assisted by a Scottish council of twenty-two members, consisting of four bishops, four abbots, five earls and nine barons, among whom were three former guardians, Robert Bruce, Bishop Lamberton and John Comyn the Red. In spite of the number and eminence of these advisory councillors and the fact that, apart from the southeast counties, most of the sheriffdoms in the country were to be held by Scotsmen, the ultimate power was nevertheless concentrated in the hands of the viceroy, who had the authority vested in him to dismiss and replace officials on his own initiative and to maintain in such strategic castles as he thought fit English garrisons and English governors.1
However, King Edward believed that the iron fist was sufficiently covered by the velvet glove for the Scots, tamed by their many defeats, to acquiesce in the new arrangements and combine peacefully to put them into operation.
So confident was he that, pending the arrival of the new viceroy, he appointed a committee of four to administer the country in his stead, headed by no other than William Lamberton, Bishop of St Andrews. It was an ironic choice for the bishop was already organizing in secret a combination for the recovery of Scottish independence.2
For eight years the Scottish Church had been the coordinating factor behind the Scottish resistance and Bishop Lamberton had been the architect of that coordination. He had supported the Comyns, he had used his powerful influence to reconcile the factions of Bruce and Comyn but his instruments had broken in his hand. When he returned from France after the settlement of 1304 and paid his homage to King Edward, he thought deeply on what potentialities for freedom remained.
During his sojourn in Paris he had realized that, while the French were lavish in their promises, they were too exercised by their own problems to give any active help to Scotland and that their protégé, the abdicated King, John Balliol, had neither the ambition nor the wish to forsake his sequestered rural existence for the hurly-burly of dynastic struggle. Yet in that hierarchical age only a king could inspire and synthesize the deep felt desires of prelate, knight and common man. Wallace had not had the qualifications, the Comyn figurehead was discredited. Only one man remained who had a justifiable claim to the throne and the personality, ambition, skill, prowess and magnetism to achieve that end: Robert Bruce.
Between his surrender to King Edward in 1302 and the fall of Stirling Castle, Robert Bruce had maintained a cautious and diplomatic stance giving lip service to the English monarch but quietly rendering nugatory any demands for his military support. As early as 11 March 1302 he had written to the monks of Melrose Abbey:
Whereas I have often vexed the abbey’s tenants on their grange of Maybole by leading them all over the country in my army of Carrick although there was no summons of the common army of the realm, troubled in conscience I shall never again demand such an army service neither of many nor of few, unless the common army of the whole realm is raised for its defence when all inhabitants are bound to serve.
As a Scottish historian pertinently remarks, ‘Bruce’s conscience did not trouble him until the beginning of Lent 1302, just in time to ensure that his army would be of less use to Edward than it had been to the Scots.’3Again, when asked by King Edward in the spring of 1304 to forward the English siege engines for the attack on Stirling Castle, he duly complied but omitted to include the vital part of the machinery necessary for their function,4 and yet again when called upon to supply troops for the same purpose, he wrote personally to the King on 4 April 1304 that ‘he has been in London and Essex where his lands lie and is still there endeavouring in every possible way to procure horses and armour for himself and his people but … has had no success whatever in his attempts to borrow for the purpose or get a penny of his rents’.5
During King Edward’s invasion of Scotland in 1303 he had been with the Prince of Wales and his father-in-law, the Earl of Ulster, on the western route which was no more than an unopposed military parade and was left in charge of Ayr Castle. From there he was ordered to join Sir John Segrave in February 1304 to make a mounted raid on Wallace and Simon Fraser in Selkirk forest, but it is significant that while some of their followers were captured both these leaders had prior warning and escaped, for which Bruce was gently chided by King Edward with the words ‘as the cloak is well made, also make the hood’.6
It was a difficult and uneasy role to play, but until the autumn of 1305 it succeeded. Not only he, but members of his family, obtained the favours and dangerous friendship of the monarch. Edward Bruce, his brother next in age, was placed in the Prince of Wales’s household and a younger brother, Alexander, after a brilliant career at Cambridge University – ‘no one,’ wrote a contemporary, ‘who read arts at Cambridge before or since his time ever made such progress’ – was granted by royal favour the living of Kirkinnen near Wigtown and made Dean of Glasgow.7 Bruce himself had already been given the guardianship of his young nephew, Earl Donald of Mar, with all the benefits of the great Mar estates in the northeast and the control of the formidable stone-built fortress of Kildrummy, as well as the wardenship of three royal forests.8 In March 1305 he asked for and obtained the de Umfraville lands in Carrick9 and in the same month was entrusted in company with Bishop Wishart and Sir John Mowbray to ordain in what manner the guardians of Scotland should organize its defence.10
He was indeed ‘a favourite son’ and it is understandable that he should be so. Long ago, when Prince of Wales, Edward had assessed the fine temper of the family when Bruce’s grandfather and father had been his companions in arms in the heat and dust of the Holy Land. Now in their descendant he saw all those qualities that he most admired, sagacity, endurance, courage and skill in arms. So, in his relationship with Bruce there was something deeper than a politic wooing of a powerful Scottish magnate. And on Bruce’s side too there must have been a respect for the determination and abilities of the older man, for in his future kingship he was to model much upon the royal pattern he had observed.
So, when his father died in March 130411 and, at the age of thirty, Bruce succeeded to the vast family estates in the counties of Essex and Huntingdon, Dumfries and Aberdeen, there was every worldly reason why he should pursue the path of conformity and enjoy the pleasure of married life in the courtly circles of the Crown.
But the Celtic blood of his mother pulled him towards Scotland. The ‘Community of the Realm’, that conception to which every Scottish document had referred during the years of struggle, had become to him over the past decade a living entity and overriding all affinity to the English King was the profound conviction that he and he alone was the rightful monarch of the northern realm whose mission it must be, when the time was ripe to recover its ancient independence.
After obtaining probate of his English estates in May 130412, he travelled north to King Edward’s camp outside Stirling Castle at the same time as Bishop Lamberton reached it from France. There King Edward was indulging an old man’s vanity by showing off his virile prowess before his young Queen. Mounted on horseback, he rode so close beneath the walls of the besieged castle in order to direct operations that on one occasion a javelin hurled from the ramparts lodged in the steel plates of his armour and on another a huge stone fell so near that his horse reared and overturned with its master, who was lifted up, dazed and shaken, and carried by soldiers to his tent.13
When the old friends, prelate and earl, observed or heard of these proceedings, the same thought must have come to them both: the King was an old man who by the hazard of war or by sickness must soon die and when he was succeeded by the Prince of Wales, of whose vacillating character they were both aware, a new opportunity for Scotland’s freedom could arise. On 11 June 1304 at the Abbey of Cambus Kenneth they signed a bond:
that they should mutually help each other in all their several businesses and affairs at all times and against all other persons whatever without any deceit and that neither of them should undertake any important business without the other of them. They will mutually warn each other against any impending danger and do the best to avert the same from each other and for the full performance of the agreement they bound themselves by oath and under the penalty of the sum of £10,000 to be applied for the recovery of the Holy Land.14
No more was written, but there can be little doubt that from that time plans were quietly being prepared through the network of the Church for decisive action in the event of King Edward’s death. One major problem that had to be solved was the attitude of John Comyn ‘the Red’. For nearly seven years he had been in the forefront of opposition to the English but, brave and pugnacious as he was, his efforts had been amateur and ineffective and at the end had left the kingdom as much a conquered province as she had been in 1296. Nevertheless, even if he had lost the confidence of the Church, he was still the head of one of the most powerful families in Scotland and either his full support or his elimination was essential to the success of any revolt.
In the late summer of 1305, while the ten Scottish commissioners were making their way to London to attend the September parliament and draw up an ordinance for their country, Robert Bruce and Bishop Wishart, who had deliberately excluded themselves from that body, remained in Scotland. It is reasonable to surmise that during that period parleys with John Comyn began. News in October that King Edward lay sick in bed gave urgency to the proceedings and Bruce offered Comyn a simple choice: Help me to be King and I will give you my estates or give me your estates and I will help you.
John Comyn preferred possessions to the Crown, and an exchange of signed and sealed documents was made between them to that effect.15
It is possible that John Comyn would have adhered to his commitments if King Edward had not recovered from his sickness, but unfortunately for all, the monarch regained his health with a mind already burgeoning with suspicion.
Correspondence with certain Scottish nobles had been found on William Wallace when he was seized. Nothing is known of its content but almost immediately the smiling face of the King towards Robert Bruce began to darken. On 15 September 1305 he gave orders, ‘Let it be commanded to the Earl of Carrick that he place Kildrummy Castle in the keeping of a man for whom he shall answer’,16 and on 10 October he revoked the gift of de Umfraville’s lands to Bruce that he had made six months before and returned them to their owner.17 Both Kildrummy Castle and the de Umfraville lands were in sensitive areas where resistance to his rule was most likely to erupt. Kildrummy was the key to Moray, in whose mountains the Bishop of Moray still lurked, outside the King’s peace, with a body of turbulent followers, and men everywhere in Carrick had a close association with Bruce through his mother’s side.
King Edward smelled mischief, but he was too shrewd a ruler to show his hand until he could discover how far the ramifications of conspiracy extended, if conspiracy there was. Robert Bruce and John Comyn still remained on the advisory council for Scotland, and during the winter of 1305–6 Bruce must have visited his English estates for he was at the English court in January 1306.
Whether because he lost his nerve as the King’s spies went to work, or out of jealousy of his coeval or in the hope of material reward, John Comyn informed King Edward of the covenant into which he had entered, and told him that he would produce as proof the document signed and sealed by Bruce. King Edward kept his own counsel and, while he was awaiting delivery of documentary proof, assumed again his friendliness to Bruce. But one evening while he was entertaining an inner circle of his friends and the wine was circulating freely, he grew expansive and let fall that on the morrow he had in mind to arrest the Earl of Carrick and try him for treason.
Among his guests was the Earl of Gloucester, whose family had, for generations, been linked in friendship with the Bruces. Hastily he sent the keeper of his wardrobe to Bruce’s lodging with twelve pence and a pair of spurs, which the keeper presented to Bruce with the words, ‘My lord sends these to you in return for what he on his side got from you yesterday.’
Bruce may have sensed a duplicity in the King and arranged with his friend to give this signal if danger was imminent, or he was quick to take an unpremeditated hint. He handed back the twelve pence with thanks to the keeper and sent his squire secretly to saddle two horses. Then he told his staff not to disturb him as he had much work to do in his chamber and quietly slipped out to join his squire and ride through the night towards his castle at Lochmaben, where his wife and brothers were in residence.18
By day and night the two rode northward, and as they neared the border they met a Scotsman travelling south, a rare sight at that time of the year. Bruce stopped to ask to what destination he was bound and something uneasy in the man’s behaviour aroused his suspicions. So he had him searched and on his person was found a letter from John Comyn to King Edward enclosing the bond which Bruce had signed and sealed. Having disposed of this ill-fated man, Bruce reached Lochmaben on the fifth day after his departure from London and told his brothers of all that had occurred.19
At that time King Edward’s justices were holding their sessions in the nearby town of Dumfries to which the local magnates would normally repair. John Comyn was at his castle of Dalswinton nine miles away, so Bruce sent him a message requesting that they should meet on 10 February at Greyfriars Church on their way to the sessions.
When he appeared the two withdrew for privacy to the high altar, and there Bruce drew forth the bond and taxed John Comyn with his treachery. Angry words ensued and daggers were drawn, but Bruce got his blow in first and Comyn fell wounded on the altar steps.20 His uncle, Sir Robert Comyn,21 who was nearby, sprang forward and struck Bruce on the breast with his sword, but his blade was deflected by Bruce’s armour and he in turn was cut to the ground by Christopher Seton, the husband of Bruce’s sister Christina.22 In haste the two men left the church to join the followers of Bruce who were waiting outside. Calling for his horse, Bruce was about to mount when one of them, Roger Kirkpatrick, seeing his commander’s agitation and the blood upon his clothes, asked what had occurred.
‘I doubt,’ said Bruce, ‘that I have slain Red Comyn.’
‘Do you doubt?’ replied Kirkpatrick, ‘then I’ll make sure,’ and, followed by James Lindsay, he ran into the church and dispatched the wounded man.23
The bloody deed was done and Bruce had now to risk his all or run for shelter to his sister’s court in Norway. His choice was instant. Hailing his men at arms, he rode so fast to Dumfries castle that the garrison, taken by surprise, surrendered quickly and their constable, Sir Richard Siward, was made captive. The startled justices, who were holding their sessions in the great hall, barricaded the doors, but given by Bruce the choice of having the castle burned about them or a free passage to England, they preferred to preserve their lives.24
* * *
As word spread of Bruce’s success, the Scots began to flock to his banner but the odds against him were enormous. The plans on which he and the Church had been working were based on the premise of King Edward’s death. Now they had been precipitated by the murder of Comyn and their chances of success were immeasurably diminished. The formidable monarch was still alive and in command of superior forces: the powerful relatives of the dead Comyn were roused to savage vengeance against his assassin and the bloodstains on the altar steps filled with a superstitious terror the simple minds of the common people. All depended upon the reaction of the Scottish Church.
But the Scottish Church was staunch to the single principle which had animated its actions during the years of strife: the independence of Scotland. When Bruce hurried from Dumfries to Bishop Wishart in Glasgow and kneeling before him made confession of his violence, the little bishop shrived him of all his sins and gave him absolution for the sacrilege he had committed.25 The clergy throughout the country were so informed and adjured in the name of their bishops to rally to Bruce as to a sacred cause.26 Bruce in return swore a solemn oath to preserve and defend the liberties of the Scottish Church.27
Uplifted and strengthened by this spiritual help, Bruce acted with rapidity and strategic skill. The castles of Dunaverty, Rothesay and Ayr, which commanded the Firth of Clyde and could keep open the way for reinforcements and supplies from Ireland and the Outer Isles, were occupied by his supporters through force or by agreement, and those of Tibbers and Dalswinton were seized28 and, with the castles of Dumfries and Lochmaben already in hand, effectively dominated the western route to Scotland. Orders were issued placing all persons on twenty-four hours’ notice of mobilization and a formal demand was sent to King Edward that he should recognize Robert Bruce as King of Scots. The response, not unexpectedly, was that Bruce should return to the English Crown all the castles he had seized, to which in return he replied that he would continue to capture castles until his demand was met and would defend himself ‘with the longest stick he had’.29
Mindful of his bond with Bishop Lamberton, Bruce had conveyed to him a message that he was to have himself crowned at Scone on 25 March 1306, ten years to a day since the outbreak of war between English and Scots. Lamberton was then at Berwick in his capacity as president of the council acting on behalf of the absent English viceroy of Scotland, to which he had been entrusted by King Edward. Under cover of darkness, when the opportunity came, he slipped away and hastened to Scone to be present at the ceremony.30 As harbinger of his coming, he had sent secretly to Bruce his young squire, James Douglas. Some time after the boy’s father, the irascible Sir William Douglas, had died in the Tower of London and his lands had been given to Lord Clifford by King Edward, the bishop had taken James into his household. Now, as Barbour writes, all alone
he took the road to Lochmaben and near Arickstone he met the Bruce riding with a great company to Scone to be enthroned and made King. And when Douglas saw him coming he rode forward in haste and greeted him and made obeisance very courteously and told him all his conditions and who he was and how Clifford held his inheritance. Also that he came to do homage to him as his rightful King and was ready in everything to share his fortune. And when Bruce had heard his desire he received him with much pleasure and gave him men and arms. For he judged that he would be worthy of his fathers who were brave and able men. Thus they made their acquaintance that never afterwards by any chance of any kind was broken while they lived. Their friendship increased ever more and more for Douglas served always loyally and Bruce so wise, strong and valiant gladly and well rewarded his service.31
On 25 March 1306 in the Abbey of Scone, Robert Bruce was crowned King of Scots with all the formality and solemnity that could be achieved. The kingly robes and vestments which Bishop Wishart had hidden in his treasury against this longed for day were brought out by the old man and set upon King Robert, and a circlet of gold was placed upon his head;32 while the great banner of the kings of Scotland, with its lion and scarlet lilies, that had lain so long concealed, was planted behind his throne. Three bishops, of Glasgow, St Andrews and Moray, were there, and four earls, of Atholl, Lennox, Menteith and Mar; but noticeably absent was the Earl of Fife. He was still a youth and held in England as a ward of court and thus unable to perform his hereditary office in the ceremony. But his nineteen-year-old sister, Isabel, who was married to the Earl of Buchan, now an ally of King Edward and close kinsman of the dead Comyn, got knowledge of the coronation. To her the call of Scotland and her youthful hero-worship of Bruce proved greater than her wifely duty. Seizing her husband’s finest horses, she rode with utmost speed to Scone to act on her brother’s behalf. She arrived a day too late, but so that the rites of ancient tradition might be served, a second ceremony was performed – on Palm Sunday, forty-eight hours after the first – in which the golden circlet was lifted in her youthful hands and once more placed upon the brow of Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick, Lord of Annandale, King of Scots.33
NOTES - CHAPTER 7
1 Cal. Doc. Scots, ii, 1691
2 ibid., ii, 1745
3 Barrow, 175
4 Cal. Doc. Scots, ii, 1510; Stevenson, ii, 482
5 ibid., ii, 1495
6 ibid., ii, 1465
7 Barrow, 203; Langtoft, 262
8 Cal. Doc. Scots, ii, 1708, 1736
9 ibid., ii, 1657
10 Barron, 176
11 Cal. Doc. Scots, ii, 1493
12 ibid., ii, 1546
13 Flores Historiarum, ii, 572, 573
14 Cal. Doc. Scots, ii, 1817
15 Fordun, 330; Barbour, 13
16 Cal. Doc. Scots, ii, 1691
17 ibid., ii, 1696
18 Pluscarden, 174; Fordun 331
19 ibid., 175
20 ibid., 175
21 Lanercost, 176
22 Barrow, 208
23 Pluscarden, 175 and oral tradition
24 Cuisborough, 366
25 Stones, 267
26 Palgrave, 348
27 Stones, 267
28 ibid., 261, 263
29 ibid., 267
30 ibid., 273
31 Barbour, 21
32 Cal. Doc. Scots, ii, 1914
33 Walsingham, 108; Flores Historiarum, ii, 584