A Short History of Scotland by Andrew Lang

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THE YEAR OF WALLACE.

In May the _commune_ of Scotland (whatever the term may here mean) had
chosen Wallace as their leader; probably this younger son of Sir Malcolm
Wallace of Elderslie, in Renfrewshire, had already been distinguished for
his success in skirmishes against the English, as well as for strength
and courage. {36} The popular account of his early adventures given in
the poem by Blind Harry (1490?) is of no historical value. His men
destroyed the English at Lanark (May 1297); he was abetted by Wishart,
Bishop of Glasgow, and the Steward; but by July 7, Percy and Clifford,
leading the English army, admitted the Steward, Robert Bruce (the future
king), and Wishart to the English peace at Irvine in Ayrshire. But the
North was up under Sir Andrew Murray, and "that thief Wallace" (to quote
an English contemporary) left the siege of Dundee Castle which he was
conducting to face Warenne on the north bank of the Forth. On September
11, the English, under Warenne, manoeuvred vaguely at Stirling Bridge,
and were caught on the flank by Wallace's army before they could deploy
on the northern side of the river. They were cut to pieces, Cressingham
was slain, and Warenne galloped to Berwick, while the Scots harried
Northumberland with great ferocity, which Wallace seems to have been
willing but not often able to control. By the end of March 1298 he
appears with Andrew Murray as Guardian of the Kingdom for the exiled
Balliol. This attitude must have aroused the jealousy of the nobles, and
especially of Robert Bruce, who aimed at securing the crown, and who,
after several changes of side, by June 1298 was busy in Edward's service
in Galloway.

Edward then crossed the Border with a great army of perhaps 40,000 men,
met the spearmen of Wallace in their serried phalanxes at Falkirk, broke
the "schiltrom" or clump of spears by the arrows of his archers;
slaughtered the archers of Ettrick Forest; scattered the mounted nobles,
and avenged the rout of Stirling (July 22, 1298). The country remained
unsubdued, but its leaders were at odds among themselves, and Wallace had
retired to France, probably to ask for aid; he may also conceivably have
visited Rome. The Bishop of St Andrews, Lamberton, with Bruce and the
Red Comyn--deadly rivals--were Guardians of the Kingdom in 1299. But in
June 1300, Edward, undeterred by remonstrances from the Pope, entered
Scotland; an armistice, however, was accorded to the Holy Father, and the
war, in which the Scots scored a victory at Roslin in February 1293,
dragged on from summer to summer till July 1304. In these years Bruce
alternately served Edward and conspired against him; the intricacies of
his perfidy are deplorable.

Bruce served Edward during the siege of Stirling, then the central key of
the country. On its surrender Edward admitted all men to his peace, on
condition of oaths of fealty, except "Messire Williame le Waleys." Men
of the noblest Scottish names stooped to pursue the hero: he was taken
near Glasgow, and handed over to Sir John Menteith, a Stewart, and son of
the Earl of Menteith. As Sheriff of Dumbartonshire, Menteith had no
choice but to send the hero in bonds to England. But, if Menteith
desired to escape the disgrace with which tradition brands his name, he
ought to have refused the English blood-price for the capture of Wallace.
He made no such refusal. As an outlaw, Wallace was hanged at London; his
limbs, like those of the great Montrose, were impaled on the gates of
various towns.

What we really know about the chief popular hero of his country, from
documents and chronicles, is fragmentary; and it is hard to find anything
trustworthy in Blind Harry's rhyming "Wallace" (1490), plagiarised as it
is from Barbour's earlier poem (1370) on Bruce. {38} But Wallace was
truly brave, disinterested, and indomitable. Alone among the leaders he
never turned his coat, never swore and broke oaths to Edward. He arises
from obscurity, like Jeanne d'Arc; like her, he is greatly victorious;
like her, he awakens a whole people; like her, he is deserted, and is
unlawfully put to death; while his limbs, like her ashes, are scattered
by the English. The ravens had not pyked his bones bare before the Scots
were up again for freedom.

CHAPTER VIII. BRUCE AND THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE.

The position towards France of Edward I. made it really more desirable
for him that Scotland should be independent and friendly, than half
subdued and hostile to his rule. While she was hostile, England, in
attacking France, always left an enemy in her rear. But Edward supposed
that by clemency to all the Scottish leaders except Wallace, by giving
them great appointments and trusting them fully, and by calling them to
his Parliament in London, he could combine England and Scotland in
affectionate union. He repaired the ruins of war in Scotland; he began
to study her laws and customs; he hastily ran up for her a new
constitution, and appointed his nephew, John of Brittany, as governor.
But he had overlooked two facts: the Scottish clergy, from the highest to
the lowest, were irreconcilably opposed to union with England; and the
greatest and most warlike of the Scottish nobles, if not patriotic, were
fickle and insatiably ambitious. It is hard to reckon how often Robert
Bruce had turned his coat, and how often the Bishop of St Andrews had
taken the oath to Edward. Both men were in Edward's favour in June 1304,
but in that month they made against him a treasonable secret covenant.
Through 1305 Bruce prospered in Edward's service, on February 10, 1306,
Edward was conferring on him a new favour, little guessing that Bruce,
after some negotiation with his old rival, the Red Comyn, had slain him
(an uncle of his was also butchered) before the high altar of the Church
of the Franciscans in Dumfries. Apparently Bruce had tried to enlist
Comyn in his conspiracy, and had found him recalcitrant, or feared that
he would be treacherous (February 10, 1306).

The sacrilegious homicide made it impossible for Bruce again to waver. He
could not hope for pardon; he must be victorious or share the fate of
Wallace. He summoned his adherents, including young James Douglas,
received the support of the Bishops of St Andrews and Glasgow, hurried to
Scone, and there was hastily crowned with a slight coronet, in the
presence of but two earls and three bishops.

Edward made vast warlike preparations and forswore leniency, while Bruce,
under papal excommunication, which he slighted, collected a few nobles,
such as Lennox, Atholl, Errol, and a brother of the chief of the Frazers.
Other chiefs, kinsmen of the slain Comyn, among them Macdowal of Argyll,
banded to avenge the victim; Bruce's little force was defeated at Methven
Wood, near Perth, by Aymer de Valence, and prisoners of all ranks were
hanged as traitors, while two bishops were placed in irons. Bruce took
to the heather, pursued by the Macdowals no less than by the English; his
queen was captured, his brother Nigel was executed; he cut his way to the
wild west coast, aided only by Sir Nial Campbell of Loch Awe, who thus
founded the fortune of his house, and by the Macdonalds, under Angus Og
of Islay. He wintered in the isle of Rathlin (some think he even went to
Norway), and in spring, after surprising the English garrison in his own
castle of Turnberry, he roamed, now lonely, now with a mobile little
force, in Galloway, always evading and sometimes defeating his English
pursuers. At Loch Trool and at London Hill (Drumclog) he dealt them
heavy blows, while on June 7, 1307, his great enemy Edward died at
Borough-on-Sands, leaving the crown and the war to the weakling Edward
II.

Fortune had turned. We cannot follow Bruce through his campaign in the
north, where he ruined the country of the Comyns (1308), and through the
victories in Galloway of his hard-fighting brother Edward. With enemies
on every side, Bruce took them in detail; early in March 1309 he routed
the Macdowals at the west end of the Pass of Brander. Edward II. was
involved in disputes with his own barons, and Bruce was recognised by his
country's Church in 1310 and aided by his great lieutenants, Sir James
Douglas and Thomas Randolph, Earl of Murray. By August 1311 Bruce was
carrying the war into England, sacking Durham and Chester, failing at
Carlisle, but in January 1313, capturing Perth. In summer, Edward Bruce,
in the spirit of chivalry, gave to Stirling Castle (Randolph had taken
Edinburgh Castle) a set day, Midsummer Day 1314, to be relieved or to
surrender; and Bruce kept tryst with Edward II. and his English and Irish
levies, and all his adventurous chivalry from France, Hainault, Bretagne,
Gascony, and Aquitaine. All the world knows the story of the first
battle, the Scottish Quatre Bras; the success of Randolph on the right;
the slaying of Bohun when Bruce broke his battle-axe. Next day Bruce's
position was strong; beneath the towers of Stirling the Bannockburn
protected his front; morasses only to be crossed by narrow paths impeded
the English advance. Edward Bruce commanded the right wing; Randolph the
centre; Douglas and the Steward the left; Bruce the reserve, the
Islesmen. His strength lay in his spearmen's "dark impenetrable wood";
his archers were ill-trained; of horse he had but a handful under Keith,
the Marischal. But the heavy English cavalry could not break the squares
of spears; Keith cut up the archers of England; the main body could not
deploy, and the slow, relentless advance of the whole Scottish line
covered the plain with the dying and the flying. A panic arose, caused
by the sight of an approaching cloud of camp-followers on the Gillie's
hill; Edward fled, and hundreds of noble prisoners, with all the waggons
and supplies of England, fell into the hands of the Scots. In eight
strenuous years the generalship of Bruce and his war-leaders, the
resolution of the people, hardened by the cruelties of Edward, the
sermons of the clergy, and the utter incompetence of Edward II., had
redeemed a desperate chance. From a fief of England, Scotland had become
an indomitable nation.

LATER DAYS OF BRUCE.

Bruce continued to prosper, despite an ill-advised attempt to win
Ireland, in which Edward Bruce fell (1318.) This left the succession, if
Bruce had no male issue, to the children of his daughter, Marjory, and
her husband, the Steward. In 1318 Scotland recovered Berwick, in 1319
routed the English at Mytton-on-Swale. In a Parliament at Aberbrothock
(April 6, 1320) the Scots announced to the Pope, who had been
interfering, that, while a hundred of them survive, they will never yield
to England. In October 1322 Bruce utterly routed the English at Byland
Abbey, in the heart of Yorkshire, and chased Edward II. into York. In
March 1324 a son was born to Bruce named David; on May 4, 1328, by the
Treaty of Northampton, the independence of Scotland was recognised. In
July the infant David married Joanna, daughter of Edward II.

On June 7, 1329, Bruce died and was buried at Dunfermline; his heart, by
his order, was carried by Douglas towards the Holy Land, and when Douglas
fell in a battle with the Moors in Spain, the heart was brought back by
Sir Simon Lockhart of the Lee. The later career of Bruce, after he had
been excommunicated, is that of the foremost knight and most sagacious
man of action who ever wore the crown of Scotland. The staunchness with
which the clergy and estates disregarded papal fulminations (indeed under
William the Lion they had treated an interdict as waste-paper) indicated
a kind of protestant tendency to independence of the Holy See.

Bruce's inclusion of representatives of the Burghs in the first regular
Scottish Parliament (at Cambuskenneth in 1326) was a great step forward
in the constitutional existence of the country. The king, in Scotland,
was expected to "live of his own," but in 1326 the expenses of the war
with England compelled Bruce to seek permission for taxation.

CHAPTER IX. DECADENCE AND DISASTERS--REIGN OF DAVID II.

The heroic generation of Scotland was passing off the stage. The King
was a child. The forfeiture by Bruce of the lands of hostile or
treacherous lords, and his bestowal of the estates on his partisans, had
made the disinherited nobles the enemies of Scotland, and had fed too
full the House of Douglas. As the star of Scotland was thus clouded--she
had no strong man for a King during the next ninety years--the sun of
England rose red and glorious under a warrior like Edward III. The
Scottish nobles in many cases ceased to be true to their proud boast that
they would never submit to England. A very brief summary of the wretched
reign of David II. must here suffice.

First, the son of John Balliol, Edward, went to the English Court, and
thither thronged the disinherited and forfeited lords, arranging a raid
to recover their lands. Edward III., of course, connived at their
preparations.

After Randolph's death (July 20, 1332), when Mar--a sister's son of
Bruce--was Regent, the disinherited lords, under Balliol, invaded
Scotland, and Mar, with young Randolph, Menteith, and a bastard of Bruce,
"Robert of Carrick," leading a very great host, fell under the shafts of
the English archers of Umfraville, Wake, the English Earl of Atholl,
Talbot, Ferrers, and Zouche, at Dupplin, on the Earn (August 12, 1332).
Rolled up by arrows loosed on the flanks of their charging columns, they
fell, and their dead bodies lay in heaps as tall as a lance.

On September 24, Edward Balliol was crowned King at Scone. Later, Andrew
Murray, perhaps a son of the Murray who had been Wallace's companion-in-
arms, was taken, and Balliol acknowledged Edward III. as his liege-lord
at Roxburgh. In December the second son of Randolph, with Archibald, the
new Regent, brother of the great Black Douglas, drove Balliol, flying in
his shirt, from Annan across the Border. He returned, and was opposed by
this Archibald Douglas, called Tineman, the Unlucky, and on July 19,
1333, Tineman suffered, at Halidon Hill, near Berwick, a defeat as
terrible as Flodden; Berwick, too, was lost, practically for ever,
Tineman fell, and Sir William Douglas, the Knight of Liddesdale, was a
prisoner. These Scots defeats were always due to rash frontal attacks on
strong positions, the assailants passing between lines of English bowmen
who loosed into their flanks. The boy king, David, was carried to France
(1334) for safety, while Balliol delivered to Edward Berwick and the
chief southern counties, including that of Edinburgh, with their castles.

There followed internal wars between Balliol's partisans, while the
patriots were led by young Randolph, by the young Steward, by Sir Andrew
Murray, and the wavering and cruel Douglas, called the Knight of
Liddesdale, now returned from captivity. In the desperate state of
things, with Balliol and Edward ravaging Scotland at will, none showed
more resolution than Bruce's sister, who held Kildrummie Castle; and
Randolph's daughter, "Black Agnes," who commanded that of Dunbar. By
vast gifts Balliol won over John, Lord of the Isles. The Celts turned to
the English party; Edward III. harried the province of Moray, but, in
1337, he began to undo his successes by formally claiming the crown of
France: France and Scotland together could always throw off the English
yoke.

Thus diverted from Scotland, Edward lost strength there while he warred
with Scotland's ally: in 1341 the Douglas, Knight of Liddesdale,
recovered Edinburgh Castle by a romantic surprise. But David returned
home in 1341, a boy of eighteen, full of the foibles of chivalry, rash,
sensual, extravagant, who at once gave deadly offence to the Knight of
Liddesdale by preferring to him, as sheriff of Teviotdale, the brave Sir
Alexander Ramsay, who had driven the English from the siege of Dunbar
Castle. Douglas threw Ramsay into Hermitage Castle in Liddesdale and
starved him to death.

In 1343 the Knight began to intrigue traitorously with Edward III.; after
a truce, David led his whole force into England, where his rash chivalry
caused his utter defeat at Neville's Cross, near Durham (October 17,
1346). He was taken, as was the Bishop of St Andrews; his ransom became
the central question between England and Scotland. In 1353 Douglas,
Knight of Liddesdale, was slain at Williamshope on Yarrow by his godson,
William, Lord Douglas: the fact is commemorated in a fragment of perhaps
our oldest narrative Border ballad. French men-at-arms now helped the
Scots to recover Berwick, merely to lose it again in 1356; in 1357 David
was set free: his ransom, 100,000 merks, was to be paid by instalment.
The country was heavily taxed, but the full sum was never paid. Meanwhile
the Steward had been Regent; between him, the heir of the Crown failing
issue to David, and the King, jealousies arose. David was suspected of
betraying the kingdom to England; in October 1363 he and the Earl of
Douglas visited London and made a treaty adopting a son of Edward as king
on David's demise, and on his ransom being remitted, but in March 1364
his Estates rejected the proposal, to which Douglas had assented. Till
1369 all was poverty and internal disunion; the feud, to be so often
renewed, of the Douglas and the Steward raged. David was made
contemptible by a second marriage with Margaret Logie, but the war with
France drove Edward III. to accept a fourteen years' truce with Scotland.
On February 22, 1371, David died in Edinburgh Castle, being succeeded,
without opposition, by the Steward, Robert II., son of Walter, and of
Marjorie, daughter of Robert Bruce. This Robert II., somewhat outworn by
many years of honourable war in his country's cause, and the father of a
family, by Elizabeth Mure of Rowallan, which could hardly be rendered
legitimate by any number of Papal dispensations, _was the first of the
Royal Stewart line_. In him a cadet branch of the English FitzAlans,
themselves of a very ancient Breton stock, blossomed into Royalty.

PARLIAMENT AND THE CROWN.

With the coming of a dynasty which endured for three centuries, we must
sketch the relations, in Scotland, of Crown and Parliament till the days
of the Covenant and the Revolution of 1688. Scotland had but little of
the constitutional evolution so conspicuous in the history of England.
The reason is that while the English kings, with their fiefs and wars in
France, had constantly to be asking their parliaments for money, and
while Parliament first exacted the redress of grievances, in Scotland the
king was expected "to live of his own" on the revenue of crown-lands,
rents, feudal aids, fines exacted in Courts of Law, and duties on
merchandise. No "tenths" or "fifteenths" were exacted from clergy and
people. There could be no "constitutional resistance" when the Crown
made no unconstitutional demands.

In Scotland the germ of Parliament is the King's court of vassals of the
Crown. To the assemblies, held now in one place, now in another, would
usually come the vassals of the district, with such officers of state as
the Chancellor, the Chamberlain, the Steward, the Constable or Commander-
in-Chief, the Justiciar, and the Marischal, and such Bishops, Abbots,
Priors, Earls, Barons, and tenants-in-chief as chose to attend. At these
meetings public business was done, charters were granted, and statutes
were passed; assent was made to such feudal aids as money for the king's
ransom in the case of William the Lion. In 1295 the seals of six Royal
burghs are appended to the record of a negotiation; in 1326 burgesses, as
we saw, were consulted by Bruce on questions of finance.

The misfortunes and extravagance of David II. had to be paid for, and
Parliament interfered with the Royal prerogative in coinage and currency,
directed the administration of justice, dictated terms of peace with
England, called to account even hereditary officers of the Crown (such as
the Steward, Constable, and Marischal), controlled the King's expenditure
(or tried to do so), and denounced the execution of Royal warrants
against the Statutes and common form of law. They summarily rejected
David's attempt to alter the succession of the Crown.

At the same time, as attendance of multitudes during protracted
Parliaments was irksome and expensive, arose the habit of intrusting
business to a mere "Committee of Articles," later "The Lords of the
Articles," selected in varying ways from the Three Estates--Spiritual,
Noble, and Commons. These Committees saved the members of Parliament
from the trouble and expense of attendance, but obviously tended to
become an abuse, being selected and packed to carry out the designs of
the Crown or of the party of nobles in power. All members, of whatever
Estate, sat together in the same chamber. There were no elected Knights
of the Shires, no representative system.

The reign of David II. saw two Scottish authors or three, whose works are
extant. Barbour wrote the chivalrous rhymed epic-chronicle 'The Brus';
Wyntoun, an unpoetic rhymed "cronykil"; and "Hucheoun of the Awle Ryal"
produced works of more genius, if all that he is credited with be his
own.

CHAPTER X. EARLY STEWART KINGS: ROBERT II. (1371-1390).

Robert II. was crowned at Scone on March 26, 1371. He was elderly,
jovial, pacific, and had little to fear from England when the deaths of
Edward III. and the Black Prince left the crown to the infant Richard II.
There was fighting against isolated English castles within the Scottish
border, to amuse the warlike Douglases and Percies, and there were
truces, irregular and ill kept. In 1384 great English and Scottish raids
were made, and gentlemen of France, who came over for sport, were
scurvily entertained, and (1385) saw more plundering than honest fighting
under James, Earl of Douglas, who merely showed them an army that, under
Richard II., burned Melrose Abbey and fired Edinburgh, Perth, and Dundee.
Edinburgh was a town of 400 houses. Richard insisted that not more than
a third of his huge force should be English Borderers, who had no idea of
hitting their Scottish neighbours, fathers-in-law and brothers-in-law,
too hard. The one famous fight, that of Otterburn (August 15, 1388), was
a great and joyous passage of arms by moonlight. The Douglas fell, the
Percy was led captive away; the survivors gained advancement in renown
and the hearty applause of the chivalrous chronicler, Froissart. The
oldest ballads extant on this affair were current in 1550, and show
traces of the reading of Froissart and the English chroniclers.

In 1390 died Robert II. Only his youth was glorious. The reign of his
son, Robert III. (crowned August 14, 1390), was that of a weakling who
let power fall into the hands of his brother, the Duke of Albany, or his
son David, Duke of Rothesay, who held the reins after the Parliament (a
Parliament that bitterly blamed the Government) of January 1399. (With
these two princes the title of Duke first appears in Scotland.) The
follies of young David alienated all: he broke his betrothal to the
daughter of the Earl of March; March retired to England, becoming the man
of Henry IV.; and though Rothesay wedded the daughter of the Earl of
Douglas, he was arrested by Albany and Douglas and was starved to death
(or died of dysentery) in Falkland Castle (1402). The Highlanders had
been in anarchy throughout the reign; their blood was let in the great
clan duel of thirty against thirty, on the Inch of Perth, in 1396.
Probably clans Cameron and Chattan were the combatants.

On Rothesay's death Albany was Governor, while Douglas was taken prisoner
in the great Border defeat of Homildon Hill, not far from Flodden. But
then (1403) came the alliance of Douglas with Percy; Percy's quarrel with
Henry IV. and their defeat; and Hotspur's death, Douglas's capture at
Shrewsbury. Between Shakespeare, in "Henry IV.," and Scott, in 'The Fair
Maid of Perth,' the most notable events in the reign of Robert III. are
immortalised. The King's last misfortune was the capture by the English
at sea, on the way to France, of his son James in February-March 1406.
{52} On April 4, 1406, Robert went to his rest, one of the most unhappy
of the fated princes of his line.

THE REGENCY OF ALBANY.

The Regency of Albany, uncle of the captured James, lasted for fourteen
years, ending with his death in 1420. He occasionally negotiated for his
king's release, but more successfully for that of his son Murdoch. That
James suspected Albany's ambition, and was irritated by his conduct,
appears in his letters, written in Scots, to Albany and to Douglas,
released in 1408, and now free in Scotland. The letters are of 1416.

The most important points to note during James's English captivity are
the lawlessness and oppression which prevailed in Scotland, and the
beginning of Lollard heresies, nascent Protestantism, nascent Socialism,
even "free love." The Parliament of 1399, which had inveighed against
the laxity of Government under Robert II., also demanded the extirpation
of heresies, in accordance with the Coronation Oath. One Resby, a
heretical English priest, was arraigned and burned at Perth in 1407,
under Laurence of Lindores, the Dominican Inquisitor into heresies, who
himself was active in promoting Scotland's oldest University, St Andrews.
The foundation was by Henry Wardlaw, Bishop of St Andrews, by virtue of a
bull from the anti-pope Benedict XIII., of February 1414. Lollard ideas
were not suppressed; the chronicler, Bower, speaks of their existence in
1445; they sprang from envy of the wealth, and indignation against the
corruptions of the clergy, and the embers of Lollardism in Kyle were not
cold when, under James V., the flame of the Reformation was rekindled.

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