Scotland the Brief

Part 1: The Community of the Realm
3 Living with Norman England

With Malcolm and Margaret she was later canonised and her tomb at Dunfermline became a great place of pilgrimage and their son David I Scotland moved towards a more centralised, religiously-sanctified monarchy, with a southern border waxing and waning between the Cheviots and the Tyne. But it was still one distanced from the pattern prevailing in England, in which the Normans rapidly pushed out the old Saxon nobility. The gradual immigration of Anglo-Norman nobility or merchants from France, Brittany and Flanders (many of whom also held land in England, and were vassals to the English king) was partly countered by the Scots kings careful cultivation of the church through building monasteries. This was at a time when the power of the Papacy was growing, expressed in the First Crusade (1095) and steadily developing in the twelfth century. In 1175, a particularly weak moment for the Plantagenets, the Norman rulers of England, following the murder of Thomas à Becket, the Scots persuaded the Pope to recognise the Archbishopric of Glasgow as a special daughter: directly under Rome instead of under the English Archbishop of York. They would make much use of this in future.

At this date more than half of the population spoke Gaelic, with Inglis confined to the south-eastern part and the more northerly coasts with which it communicated. Berwick, on the English border was the largest town, one of eighteen given the status of burghs by King David, chiefly as a means of raising royal revenue from an establishment of immigrant merchants. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries were a period of peaceful coexistence between the two countries, although the Scots nobles found themselves being embroiled in the unstable politics of the south through their English possessions (just as the English kings were constantly distracted by their lands in France and interventions in Ireland). They usually adhered to the anti-monarchic element and, for example, favoured Archbishop Thomas a Becket in the struggle with Henry II that ended with his murder in 1170. The concession by King John to his nobility of Magna Carta (1215) was also a response to Scots interventions in English affairs. But the weakness of the English monarchy meant a long peace, in which Scots nobles, merchants and scholars could gain property and careers in the south and in the flourishing culture of twelfth century Europe. The latter part of the thirteenth century, however, saw a new purposiveness in English policy, with the career of Edward I.

Edward had crusaded, and had stabilised his Norman inheritance in Gascony (South-Western France). In the 1280s he conquered the Welsh. He was an archetype of modernising, integrative nationalism and he did not intend to stop at Wales when he was given his chance by the accidental death of Alexander III in 1385. Alexanders heiress was the daughter of the Norwegian king, but she died on the sea crossing. He was then asked to arbitrate between the various claimants to the Scots throne and chose the pliable John de Balliol. The nobility then treated for alliances with France and Norway. The French alliance of 1296, later denoted the Auld Alliance, would last until the Reformation of 1560.

The kingdom of France had been, around 1200, not much bigger than Scotland, whittled down by English and Burgundian aggression to a parcel of land around Paris. It was rapidly expanded thereafter, but was unable to do much to help the Scots, then or later. Edward invaded in 1296 and made rapid progress. Not least because the nobles were divided, many fancying their own families chances under Edwards suzerainty. Edward had a basic problem, however. War was all right when it paid for itself, but once an army had to be kept in the north, the exchequer was under pressure both from parliament and from shipowners and contractors. Probably for this reason, Edward was particularly drastic, seeking a rapid knockout before he ran into more trouble in France, and prepared to spend heavily to this end.

At this point the Scots 'national army' under Sir Andrew de Moray and William Wallace, and inflicted a severe defeat on Edwards army at Stirling Bridge in September 1297, the key junction-point between lowlands and highlands. Moray represented the north, Wallace Lanarkshire: they indicated that the struggle was not a family one, but something like a national resistance. Wallace was subsequently given the style of Guardian of Scotland, a national hero while de Moray died of wounds and was forgotten.

Two further invasions took place, Edward throwing in troops from Gascony and Wales. His longbowmen defeated Wallaces schiltrons (packed masses of spearmen) at Falkirk. Wallace was subsequently hunted down, betrayed in 1305, and brutally executed in London. Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick, then claimed the Scots throne from Balliol. Edward retaliated against Bruces kinsmen. What had started as a family feud became, through Bruces tactical skills and highland alliances, a conflict raging throughout the country.

Edward organised a final invasion in 1309, but died at Burgh-by-Sands, near Carlisle. His son Edward II, first Prince of Wales, called it off, but returned in 1314 to relieve his garrison at Stirling Castle. Bruce had by then either defeated or converted his rivals in the north and Hebrides, and just south of the fortress, at Bannockburn, defeated the somewhat larger Edwardian force by making skilful use of terrain and traitors in the enemy ranks.

The War of Independence would go on and only be concluded after Bruces death in 1328, a process which stopped the Scots nobility from holding land in England. It produced in 1320 a literary monument which would denote the timbre of the countrys politics far beyond its boundaries. The letter of the Scots nobles, clergy and community of the realm to Pope John XXII, called the Declaration of Arbroath, endorsed King Robert, but ended with the ringing words:

For we fight not for honour or glory but for freedom, which no good man gives up but with his life.

ts ideas came from the supporters of Thomas a Becket against King Henry II, and the stirring passage above may be from Dantes contemporary Purgatorio, but it seemed to symbolise a new and more democratic idea of nation and liberty. The new Pope ignored it, but it was translated into Scots and incorporated into his epic The Brus by Archdeacon Barbour in 1375 to become part of the countrys heritage, along with regular parliaments, law courts and a central administration, increasingly based on Edinburgh.