History Of Scotland Vol. 1 - Part 6

( Originally Published 1909 )

Schemes of Edward I.—Death of the Maid of Norway—John Baliol: his War with England; and his Defeat at Dunbar, and Dethronement

BY the untimely decease of Alexander III., in 1290, the Maid of Norway, his granddaughter, remained sole and undoubted heir to the throne. Edward I. of England, the near relation of the orphan queen, instantly formed the project of extending his regal sway over the northern part of Britain by a marriage between this royal heiress and his only son, Edward, prince of Wales. The barons of Scotland testified no dislike to this alliance, the most natural mode, perhaps, to effect a union between two kingdoms which nature had joined, though untoward events had separated them. The great nobles of that country were, we have seen, Normans as well as the English lords : many held land in both kingdoms; and therefore the idea of an alliance with England was not at that time so unpopular as it afterward became, when long and bloody wars had rendered the nations irreconcilable enemies. The Scottish took, on the other hand, the most jealous precautions that all the rights and immunities of Scotland, as a separate kingdom, should be upheld and preserved; that Scottishmen born should not be called to answer in England for deeds done in their own country ; that the national records should be suffered to remain within the realm; and that no aids of money or levies of troops should be demanded, unless in such cases as were warranted by former usage. These preliminaries were settled between King Edward and a convention of the Scottish estates, held at Birgham, July, 1290. Edward promised all this, and swore to his promise; but an urgent proposal that he should be put in possession of all the Scottish castles alarmed the estates of Scotland, as affording too much cause to doubt whether oath or promise would be much regarded.

In the meantime Margaret, the young heiress of Scotland, died on her voyage to Scotland. A new scene now opened; for by this event the descendants of Alexander III., on whom the crown had been settled in 1284, were altogether extinguished, and the kingdom lay open to the claim of every one, or any one, who could show a collateral connection, however remote, with the royal family of Scotland.

Many pretensions to the throne were accordingly set up; but the chief were those of two great lords of Norman extraction, Robert Bruce and John Baliol. The former of these was lord of Galloway, the latter of Annandale in Scotland. Their rights of succession stood thus.

William the Lion had a brother David, created Earl of Huntingdon, who left three daughters : namely, first, Margaret, married to Alan, lord of Galloway; second, Isabella, to Robert Bruce of Annandale; third, Ada, to Henry Hastings. John Baliol claimed the kingdom as the son of Devorgoil, daughter of Margaret, the eldest daughter of David; Bruce, on the other hand, claimed, as the son of Isabella, the second daughter, pretending that he was thus nearer by one generation to Earl David, through whom both the competitors claimed their relationship. The question simply was, whether the right of succession which David of Huntingdon might have claimed while alive descended to his grandson Baliol, or was to be held as passing to Bruce, who, though the son of the younger sister, was one degree nearer to the person from whom he claimed, being only the grandson, while Baliol was the great-grandson of Earl David, their common ancestor. Modern lawyers would at once pronounce in Baliol's favor; but the precise nature of representation had not then been fixed in Scotland.

Both barons resolved to support their plea with arms. Many other claims, more or less specious, were brought forward. The country of Scotland was divided and sub-divided into factions; and in the rage of approaching civil war, Edward I. saw the moment when that claim of paramount superiority which had been so pertinaciously adhered to by the English monarchs, though as uniformly refuted by the Scottish, might be brought forward as the means of finally assuming the direct sway of the kingdom. He showed the extent of his ambitious and unjust purpose to his most trusty counsellors. "I will subdue Scotland to my authority," he said, "as I have subdued Wales."

The English monarch, one of the ablest generals and the most subtle and unhesitating politicians of his own or any other time, assembled an army on the borders, and communicated to the clergy and nobles of Scotland a peremptory demand, that, as lord paramount of the kingdom, he should be received and universally submitted to as sole arbiter in the competition for the crown.

If immediate feuds and quarrels could have permitted the Scottish magnates to see more distant consequences, it is probable that with one voice they would have resisted this demand by an express denial of the right of supremacy, which, though a claim to it had been often both insidiously and covertly and more openly brought forward, had always been repelled and resisted by the Scottish kings, except after the treaty of Falaise, in 1174, when the supremacy was distinctly surrendered, until 1189, when the right was renounced, on payment of a sum of money, by Richard I. But split into a thousand factions, while twelve competitors were struggling for the crown, even the best and most prudent of the Scots seem to have thought it better to submit to the award of one of the wisest and most powerful monarchs of Europe, although at some sacrifice of independence, which they might regard as temporary and almost nominal, than to expose the country at once to civil war and the arms of England.

The Scottish barons might also remember how lately they had been disposed, by the treaty of marriage between the English prince of Wales and their sovereign Margaret, to place their kingdom under the protection of England, a step little dissimilar from that now proposed by the English monarch. The nobility of Scotland therefore admitted Edward's claim, and accepted his arbitration. Twelve competitors stepped forward to assert their claims; and Edward, though he stated a right to the kingdom on his own part, as to a vacant fief which reverts to the sovereign, yet waived his claim with a species of affected moderation. Unquestionably his views were better served by dealing the cards, and sitting umpire of the game, than if he had mixed with the players. And there is little doubt that, far from desirous to insist on a claim which would have united all the competitors against him, he was sparing of no art which could em-broil the question, by multiplying the number of claimants, and exasperating them against each other.

In 1292, the candidates, called upon to that effect, solemnly acknowledged Edward's right as lord paramount of Scotland, and submitted their claims to his decision. We shall endeavor to explain hereafter why these Norman nobles were not unwilling to consent to a submission which, as children of the soil, they would probably have spurned at. The strengths and fortresses of the kingdom were put into the king of England's power, to enable him to support, it was pretended, the award he should pronounce. After these operations had lasted several months, to accustom the Scots to the view of English governors and garrisons in their castles, and to disable them from resisting a foreign force, by the continued disunion which must have increased and be-come the more embittered the longer the debate was in dependence, Edward I. preferred John Baliol to the Scottish crown, to be held of him and his successors, and surrendered to him the Scottish castles of which he held possession, being twenty in number.

Edward's conduct had hitherto been sufficiently selfish, but, perhaps, not beyond what many prudent persons would permit themselves to consider as just. His pretence to the supremacy, however ill-founded, was no invention of his own, but handed down to him as a right which his ancestors had claimed from a very distant period; and as a time had now arrived when the Scottish were prevailed upon to admit it on their side, most sovereigns would have thought it an opportunity not to be sacrificed to the barren considerations of abstract justice.

But it was soon evident that the admission of the supremacy was only a part of Edward's object, and that he was determined so to use his right over Baliol as might force either him or Scotland into rebellion, and give the lord paramount a pretence to seize the revolted fief into his own hand. In order to accomplish this, the king of England encouraged vexatious lawsuits against Baliol, for compelling his frequent and humiliating appearance as a suitor in the English courts of law. A private citizen of Berwick having appealed from a judgment of the commissioners of justice in Scotland, of which that town was then accounted part, Baliol, on this occasion, remonstrated against the appeal being entertained, reminding Edward that, by the conditions sworn to at Birgham, it was strictly covenanted that no Scottish subject should be called in an English court, for acts done in Scotland. Ed-ward replied, with haughty indifference and effrontery, that such a promise was made to suit the convenience of the time, and that no such engagements could prevent his calling into his courts the Scottish king himself, if he should see cause. His vassal, he said, should not be his conscience-keeper, to enjoin him penance for broken faith; nor would he, for any promise he had made to the Scots while treating of his son's marriage with Margaret, refrain from distributing the justice which every subject had a right to require at his hands. Baliol could only make peace with his imperious master, by yielding up, in 1293, all stipulations and promises concerning the freedom and immunities of Scotland, and admitting them to be discharged and annulled.

Soon after this, Duncan, the earl of Fife, being a minor, Macduff, his grand-uncle, made a temporary seizure of some part of the earldom. Macduff being summoned to answer this offence before the Scottish estates, was condemned by Baliol to a slight imprisonment. Released from his confinement, Macduff summoned Baliol to appear before Edward, and Edward directed that the Scottish king should answer by appearance in person before him. He came, but refused to plead. The Parliament of England decreed that Baliol was liable to Macduff in damages, and, for his contumacy in refusing to plead before his lord paramount, declared that three principal towns in Scotland, with their castles, should be taken into the custody of Edward until the king of Scots should make satisfaction. Severe and offensive regulations were laid down concerning the Scottish king's regular attendance in future on the courts of his suzerain in England. In a word, Baliol was made sensible that though he might be suffered for a time to wear sceptre and crown, it was but so long as he should consider himself a mere tool in the hands of a haughty and arbitrary superior, who was deter-mined to fling him aside on the first opportunity, and to put every species of slight and dishonor on his right of delegated majesty, till he should become impatient of enduring it. The Scottish king therefore determined to extricate himself from so degrading a position, and to free himself and his country from the thraldom of a foreign usurper.

The time seemed apt to the purpose, for discord had arisen between the realms of France and England, concerning some feudal rights in which Edward had shown himself as intractable and disobedient a vassal to Philip of France, as he was a severe and domineering superior to Baliol.

Catching this favorable opportunity, Baliol formed, in 1295, a secret treaty of alliance with France, and stood upon his defence. The Scottish nobles joined him in the purpose of resistance, but declined to place Baliol at the head of the preparations which they made for national defence: and having no confidence either in his wisdom or steadiness, they detained him in a kind of honorable captivity in a distant castle, placing their levies under the command of leaders whose patriotism was considered less doubtful.

In 1296, Edward put himself at the head of four thousand horse and thirty thousand infantry, the finest soldiers in Europe, and proceeded toward Northumberland. Anthony Beck, the military bishop of Durham, joined the royal host with a large body of troops. They besieged the town of Berwick, and took it by storm, though gallantly defended. Upward of seventeen thousand of the defenceless inhabitants were slain in the massacre which followed, and the town (a very wealthy one) was entirely plundered. A body of thirty Flemish merchants held a strong building in the town, called the Redhall, by the tenure of defending it against the English: they did so to the last, and honorably perished amid the ruins of the edifice.

Bruce the Competitor, the Earl of March, and other Scottish nobles of the south, joined with King Edward, instead of opposing him. The first of these vainly flattered himself that the dethronement of Baliol might be succeeded by his own nomination to the crown, when it should be declared vacant by his rival's forfeiture; and Edward seemed to encourage these hopes. While the English king was still at Berwick, the Abbot of Aberbrothock appeared before hint with a letter from Baliol, in answer to Edward's summons to him to appear in person, renouncing his vassalage, and expressing defiance. "The foolish traitor!" said the king, "what frenzy has seized him? But since he will not come to us, we will go to him."

Edward's march northward was stopped by the strong castle of Dunbar, which was held out against him by the Countess of March, who had joined the lords that declared for the cause of independence, although the earl, her husband, was serving in the English army : so much were the Scots divided on this momentous occasion. While Edward pressed the siege of this important place, the inner gate, as it might be termed, of Scotland, a large force appeared on the descent of the ridge of the Lammermoor hills, above the town. It was the Scottish army moving to the relief of Dunbar, and on the appearance of their banners the defenders raised a shout of exultation and defiance. But when Warrenne, earl of Surrey, Edward's general, advanced toward the Scottish army, the Scots, with a rashness which often ruined their affairs before and afterward, poured down from the advantageous post which they occupied, and incurred by their temerity a dreadful defeat, which laid the whole country open to the invader.

Bruce, after the victory of Dunbar, conceived his turn of triumph was approaching, and hinted to Edward his hope of being preferred to the throne which Baliol had forfeited. "Have we no other business," said Edward, looking at him askance, "than to conquer kingdoms for you?" Bruce re-tired, and meddled no more with public affairs, in which his grandson, at a later period, took a part so distinguished.

After the battle of Dunbar, scarce a spark of resistance to Edward seemed to enlighten the general despair. The English army continued an unresisted march as far north-ward as Aberdeen and Elgin. Baliol, brought before his victor, in the castle of Brechin, was literally stripped of his royal robes, confessed his feudal transgression in rebelling against his lord paramount, and made a formal surrender of his kingdom to the victor.

The king of England held a parliament at Berwick, in 1296, where he received the willing and emulous submission of Scottishmen of the higher ranks, lords, knights, and squires. Edward received them all graciously, and took measures for assuring his conquest. He created John Warrenne, earl of Surrey, guardian of Scotland. Hugh Cressingham, an ambitious churchman, was made treasurer, and William Ormesby justiciary of the kingdom. He placed English governors and garrisons in the Scottish castles, and returned to England, having achieved an easy and apparently a permanent conquest.

This was not all. Edward resolved so to improve his conquest as to eradicate all evidence of national independence. He carried off or mutilated such records as might awaken the recollection that Scotland had ever been free.

The cartulary of Scone, the place where, since the conquest of Kenneth Macalpine, the Scottish kings had been crowned, was carefully ransacked for the purpose of destroying what-ever might be found at variance with the king of England's pretensions. The Scottish historians have, perhaps, magnified the extent of this rapine; but that Edward was desirous to remove everything which could remind the Scots of their original independence is proved by his carrying to London, not only the crown and sceptre surrendered by Baliol, but even the sacred stone on which the Scottish monarchs were placed when they received the royal inauguration. He presented these trophies to the Cathedral of Westminster.

This fatal stone, as already mentioned, was said to have been brought from Ireland by Fergus, the son of Eric, who led the Dalriads to the shores of Argyleshire. Its virtues are preserved in the celebrated leonine verse :

Ni fallat fatum, Scoti, quocunque locatum
Invenient lapidem, regnare tenentur ibidem.

Which may be rendered thus :

Unless the fates are faithless found,
And prophets' voice be vain,
Where'er this monument is found,
The Scottish race shall reign.