Why Scots Should Rule Scotland. Alasdair Gray
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The Westminster court summoned John Baliol before it to defend the Scottish court’s decision, treating him like the sheriff of an English county. Baliol came to Westminster and said English judges had no legal authority over Scotland’s king. The judges offered to adjourn the case. Baliol refused the offer because accepting it meant accepting the authority of the court. The judges said refusal showed contempt of court and sentenced Baliol to a fine of his three chief castles and towns. He changed his mind, accepted the adjournment, returned to Scotland.
Which proves you can’t resist London inside London.
I will not give the dreary details of how Baliol signed a defensive alliance with Philip of France – how Edward attacked and butchered the people of Berwick and the Scots earls ravaged Tyneside – how the small Scottish army was smashed – how Baliol retreated as all his castles and towns were taken – how he surrendered, apologized, was publicly uncrowned and sent south with the official Scottish king-making apparatus: sandstone block to sit on, crown for head et cetera. Under feudal law Edward was now the only legal king of Scotland and therefore king of all Britain. But the Scots had only been lightly feudalized.
Edward put English regiments in the main Scottish castles, put governors he could trust in the main towns, provided English garrisons to defend them supported out of local taxation. He ordered all Scotland’s nobility to not just swear but sign a huge oath of allegiance to him which acknowledged they would be wicked traitors if they broke it. They signed. So did the chief citizens of the towns. Only three bishops signed and as Scotland had eight bishops this showed the Church could not be trusted. In Westminster Edward made a law that all vacancies in the Scottish church should henceforth be filled by Englishmen, then he felt free to tackle France.
Robert Wishart, bishop of Glasgow, was a churchman who had signed the grand declaration of loyalty. According to a contemporary reporter a year later he and other signers “caused a certain bloody man, William Wallace, who had formerly been chief of brigands in Scotland, to revolt against the king, and assemble the people in his support”. Wallace was a small landowner driven to revolt by one of the injustices which are bound to happen under military occupations. Taking advantage of the geography that made Scotland poor – the wilderness between fertile districts – he attacked English garrisons one at a time, helped by the common people . . .
PUBLISHER: Please stop, I’ve seen the film –
AUTHOR:. . . and helped by the churchmen, spiritually and materially. Before Wishart emerged as a supporter of independence Edward gave him timbers to build a steeple for Glasgow Cathedral. Wishart gave them to Wallace for use as battering rams. Wallace cleared English garrisons from the lowlands while Moray, another young guerilla fighter, did so in the north. When nearly all the English soldiers had retreated into the big royal castles Wishart got Wallace knighted and proclaimed Guardian of the Scottish Commons. Had Scotland’s nobility now joined Wallace wholeheartedly the fight for independence would have been won in two or three years. Snobbery, ambition and greed made it last sixteen.
Bruce and Comyn supported Wallace half-heartedly because he was a commoner leading an army of commoners. Wallace was fighting to restore John Baliol to the throne, and Comyn and Bruce wanted to be king. And of course they were likely to lose their English estates! Edward arrived with his usual professional army which soon smashed the front lines of Wallace’s commoners. The noble cavalry officers behind them retreated, sent their apologies to Edward, were forgiven and swore allegiance to him a third time – English rulers often forgave treason when committed by one of their own class, a charming trait that persists to this day. Wallace was captured, tried for treason at Westminster, found guilty (though he had never sworn allegiance to Edward) and slowly tortured to death in accordance with an Anglo-Norman legal recipe. For a third time Edward went off to France thinking Scotland was finally his.
Scotland made it impossible for Edward to concentrate on his French business. The pope declared Scotland was a separate nation which Edward should leave alone. Bruce and Comyn now knew that if one stood aside the other could gain the whole kingdom in place of his English estates. They met to discuss the matter in Dumfries High Kirk. Bruce settled the argument by stabbing Comyn to death and six weeks later had himself crowned king of Scotland at Scone. Edward could never forgive him now! Bruce lost his English estates for ever, had to abandon his Scottish ones, for years had no chance of fighting on horseback like an Anglo-Norman nobleman. But he was Scottish born and his mother had been a Gael. He knew the language and went native, fighting a guerrilla war like Wallace and Guevara, avoiding pitched battles but steadily recapturing English garrisons with local support. He had an advantage over Wallace: noblemen could serve him without shame. Edward was told that, despite vengeance taken on Bruce’s followers “the multitude wishing to confirm him in his kingship was increasing day by day”. The clergy were supporting Bruce all over the north. The bishop of Moray said it was as virtuous to fight the English for Bruce as to fight the Saracens in the Holy Land.
No wonder Edward lost his temper and burned Scottish abbeys, unusual conduct then for a Christian king. He died leading another invasion force into the north. Extorting promises to the bitter end he made his son swear to carry his bones with the army until Scotland was finally conquered. Instead Edward II had his father suitably buried in Westminster Abbey under a monument with MALLEUS SCOTORUM carved on it, meaning Hammerer of Scots.
PUBLISHER: Why should such mediaeval politics matter today?
AUTHOR: Because our Scottish MPs are in the same state as the Scottish barons who swore allegiance to King Edward.
PUBLISHER: Explain that!
AUTHOR: For years Bruce, Comyn, Baliol and the others co-operated with Edward, Hammerer of Scots, because it gave them secure places and incomes in England. They also trusted him to keep Scotland for them. He commanded England, Ireland, Wales and much of France – surely he could keep Scotland for them? He could not. As the Scots commoners broke away it gradually became clear that the Scots barons would lose their Scottish property unless they joined them.
Today many Scots MPs (chiefly Labour ones) have enjoyed good salaries for years by their attachment to Westminster Palace (sometimes called “the best club in Europe”) in jobs which allow them cosy adjacent apartments. By supporting a Great British Political System they have had to exercise their brains less than English MPs who are pestered, bullied and bribed to work for English constituents, deputations and the City of London. Scots MPs now know most of their electorate want home rule – they can no longer ignore it. Their problem is now to keep their seats in the best club in Europe without losing ground in Scotland. For nearly twenty years Scottish barons hung around Edward’s court at Westminster with a similar problem, and Bruce was one of these hangers-on.
4
A KIND OF FREEDOM
THE KINGDOMS OF EUROPE belonged to a few great families who gained territory through marriage, inheritance and warfare, making the continent a political patchwork whose joins ignored the common sense of geological, linguistic and cultural frontiers. Owners of this patchwork stopped Germany and Italy getting territorial unity until well into the nineteenth century. The Bannockburn victory of 1314 made Scotland the first European state to have territorial unity under one ruler chosen by his subjects.
The novelty of this is shown in the Declaration of Arbroath, a letter to the pope. In 1320 he was a Frenchman from Guyenne, then an English territory, and excommunicated everyone in Scotland who would not take Edward II as their overlord. The Abbot of Arbroath wrote a reply on behalf of the “barons and freeholders and the whole community of the realm of Scotland”. It was signed on behalf of the community by the noble families who had signed oaths of allegiance to Edward I, and by highland chiefs and Scandinavian Earls of Orkney and Caithness who had never signed.
The Declaration said that since ancient times the Scots had been free to choose their own kings; that this freedom, like all freedoms, was a gift of God; that if Robert Bruce were ever weak enough to swear allegiance to the English king they would dismiss him and choose someone else. It also