CHAPTER IV.
THE INDEPENDENT KINGDOM.
Robert I. (1)—Chapter of Mitton (2)—Peace of Northampton (3)—Robert's parliaments (4)—his death (5)—David II. (6)—Edward Balliol's invasion (7)—battle of Halidon Hill (8)—capture of the King (9)—Robert II. (10)—the French allies (11)—Raid of Otterburn (12)—Robert III. (13)—Clan battle on the North Inch (14)—relations with England (15)—Albany's regency (16)—battle of Harlaw (17)—Scots in France (18)—death of Albany (19)—summary (20).
1. Robert I., 1314-1329.—The independence which Scotland had lost was won back on the field of Bannockburn. She was to live on as an independent kingdom, not to sink into a mere province of England; but, as the English refused to acknowledge her independence, the war was carried on by repeated invasions and cruel wastings of the northern counties. Douglas, who was so popular that he was called the Good Lord James, and Randolf, whom Bruce created Earl of Moray, were the chief heroes of these raids. Edward was attacked too in another quarter, in Ireland, whither, at the call of the Celtic chiefs, Edward Bruce had gone, like his brother Robert, to win himself a crown by valour and popularity. King Robert himself took over troops to help him. Edward was crowned King of Ireland, but he was killed soon after. Meanwhile the war on the Border still went on. Each side was struggling for Berwick. The Scots won it back, and the English did all they could to retake it, but in vain.
2. Chapter of Mitton.—While the siege went on, the Border counties were so sorely harried by the Scots that at last the Archbishop of York and the clergy took up arms in their defence. But they were thoroughly beaten, and this battle was called the Chapter of Mitton, from the number of clerks left dead on the field. Edward could have ended all this by acknowledging Robert as King, but he would not. A two years' truce was made in 1319, but, as soon as it was ended, he once more invaded Scotland with a large army. He found nothing but a wasted country, for the Scots had carried both provisions and cattle to the hills, nor would they come out to fight, though they harassed the rear of the retreating army. At last the people of the northern counties of England grew weary of the constant struggle. They had suffered so much loss from the inroads of the Scots that they at last resolved that, if the King would not make peace for them, they must come to terms with the enemy on their own account. Edward, who feared that he might thus lose a part of his kingdom, agreed to a thirteen years' truce, which was concluded in 1323. In this treaty Robert was allowed to take his title of King, though the English would not give it him. But when a few years later Edward was deposed and his son Edward the Third placed in his stead, his government would not confirm the truce in the form at first agreed on. The Scots upon this made another raid upon England, swept the country, and carried off their spoil before the eyes of a large English army. The Scots had in their plundering expeditions a great advantage over the English in the greater simplicity of their habits. They were mounted on small light horses, which at night were turned out to graze. They carried no provisions, except a small bag of oatmeal, which each man bore at his saddle, together with a thin iron plate on which he baked his meal into cakes. For the rest of their food they trusted to plunder. They burned and destroyed everything as they passed, and, when they seized more cattle than they could use, they slew them and left them behind on the place where their camp had been.
3. Peace of Northampton.—As by this time Robert's title had, after much strife, been recognized by the Pope and other foreign powers, the English saw that they must acknowledge it too. Therefore a treaty was confirmed at Northampton in 1328 between Robert, King of Scots, and the English King. The terms of this treaty were, that Scotland as far as the old boundary lines should be perfectly independent; that the two Kings should be faithful allies, and that neither should stir up the troublesome Celtic subjects of the other, either in Ireland or in the Highlands. As a further proof of good will, Joan, Edward's sister, was betrothed to Robert's infant son. By this treaty the original Commendation of 924, and all the subsequent submissions to England, whether real or pretended, were done away with. It placed the kingdom on quite a new footing, for now Lothian and Strathclyde were as independent of England as the real Scotland had originally been. The long time of common suffering and common struggles had done for the nation what the good time before it had failed to do. It had knit together the three strands of the different races into one cord of national unity too strong for any outer influence again to sever. But during the long war there had also arisen that intense hatred of everything English which warped the future growth of the nation. This hatred drove Scotland to seek in France the model and ally that she had hitherto found in England, and the influence of France can from this period be distinctly traced in the laws, the architecture, and the manners of the people. Robert's treaty with France was the beginning of the future foreign policy of Scotland. This was to make common cause with France against England, which country Scotland pledged herself to invade whenever France declared war against it.
4. Robert's Parliaments.—Two of the meetings of the Estates or Parliaments of this reign deserve notice. That of 1318 settled the succession to the crown: first, on the direct male heirs in order of seniority; next on the direct female heirs; failing both, on the next of kin. An Act was also passed by this parliament forbidding all holders of estates in Scotland from taking the produce or revenues of these lands out of the kingdom. This law acted as a sentence of forfeiture on the so-called Scottish barons who had larger estates in England than in Scotland, and who preferred living in the richer country. In the parliament of 1326, held at Cambuskenneth, the third Estate, that is, the members from the burghs, was first recognized as an essential part of the National Assembly.
5. His Death.—King Robert owed his crown to the people and to the clergy; of the nobles but few were with him. His reign made a great change in the baronage, for with the forfeited estates of his opponents he laid the foundation of other families, the Douglases for instance, who in after-times proved the dangerous rivals of his own descendants. This was partly owing to his mistaken policy in granting royalties or royal powers within their own domains to certain of his own kindred and supporters. This practice, though at the time it strengthened his own hands, in the end weakened the power of the Crown. He died at Cardross in 1329, leaving one son. He was greatly mourned by the people, for he had won their sympathy by the struggles of his early career, and had become their pride by his final victories. They were justly proud of having a king who was no mere puppet in the hands of others, fit only to wear a crown and to spend money, but a brave, wise man, who had shown himself as able to suffer want and to fight against ill-fortune as the best and bravest among themselves. After King Robert's death, Douglas, to fulfil his last wish, set out with his heart for Spain with a gallant following of the best gentlemen in Scotland. In a skirmish with the Moors, he was surrounded by the enemy, while hastening to the help of a brother knight. When he saw his danger, he took from his neck the silken cord from which hung the Bruce's heart, cast it on before him into the thickest of the fight, crying out, "Pass first in fight as thou art wont to do, and Douglas will follow thee or die." True to his word, he fell fighting valiantly, and his body was found near the casket, which held the heart of the friend and leader whom in life he had loved so well. Douglas was tall and strong, and his dark skin and black hair won him the nickname of the "Black Douglas." The English hated and feared him, but his own people loved him well and remembered him long after his death.
6. David II., 1320-1370.—David, who was only eight years old when his father died, was crowned at Scone and anointed which no King of Scots had ever before been, as this was considered the special right of independent sovereigns only. The government was in the hands of Randolf, who had been appointed Regent by the Estates before the death of the late king. In the early part of the reign the country was torn by a struggle which, as it was really a civil war, was more dangerous to its independence and more hurtful to the national character than the long war with the English had been. This war was caused by those barons who, holding large estates in England, had, by marriage or by inheritance, become possessed of lands in Scotland, which they lost by the Act of the last reign against absentees. Hitherto the so-called Scottish nobles had been Norman barons, with equal interests in both kingdoms, but this act forced them to decide for one or the other. Hence it was the mere chance of the respective value of their lands that decided whether such names as Percy and Douglas should be feared north or south of the Border.
7. Edward Balliol's Invasion.—These disinherited barons gathered round Edward Balliol, the son of King John, and determined on an invasion of Scotland on their own account, giving out that they came to win back the crown for him. Just at this time of threatened danger the Regent died, and was succeeded in his trust by Donald, Earl of Mar, another nephew of King Robert. The invaders landed on the coast of Fife, and at Duplin in Strathearn they defeated a large army under the command of the Regent, who was slain. They then took possession of Perth, and crowned Balliol at Scone, September 24th, 1332. He acknowledged himself the vassal of Edward of England; but the latter did not openly take a part in the war, until the Scots, by their frequent raids across the Border, could be said to have broken the Peace of Northampton.
8. Battle of Halidon Hill.—In the spring of 1333, Edward the Third invested Berwick, and the governor agreed to give it up if it were not relieved by the Scots within a given time. The new Regent, Archibald Douglas, brother to the Good Lord James, marched to raise the siege. It was very much the case of Bannockburn reversed, for now the English had the advantage of being posted on Halidon Hill, close by the town, while the Scots, the assailants, had to struggle through a marsh. The English archers won the day; the Regent was killed; Berwick was forced to yield; and Balliol gave it over to the English, and placed all the strongholds south of the Forth in their hands. For three years longer there was much fighting on the Border with pretty equal success, until the French wars drew the attention of Edward the Third from Scotland, and then the national party began to get the upper hand. David, Earl of Athole, Balliol's chief supporter, was defeated and slain at Culbleen, in the Highlands; and when Robert the High Steward became Regent in 1338, he won back the strongholds. Soon after, Balliol left the kingdom, and in 1341 David and his Queen Joan of England came home from France, where he had been sent to be out of the way of the troubles. Five years of comparative peace followed. A succession of truces were made with England, but they were not strictly kept on the Border.
9. Capture of the King.—While Edward was busy with the siege of Calais, David, to keep up the spirit of the alliance with France, broke the truce between England and Scotland by invading England. He was defeated and captured by the Archbishop of York at the head of the force of the northern counties in 1346. The battle in which he was taken was called the battle of Neville's Cross, from a cross afterwards put up to mark the field by Sir Ralph Neville. For eleven years David remained a captive, and Scotland was governed by the former Regent, the Steward. During that time Berwick was won and lost again. Edward, to whom Balliol had handed over his claim to the kingdom for a pension of two thousand pounds, brought an English army as far as the Forth. As they could neither find provisions to sustain them nor an enemy to fight with, they were forced to return; but they had left such traces of their progress on churches and dwelling-houses that their inroad was remembered as the "burnt Candlemas." In 1347 David was released, the ransom being fixed at 100,000 marks. He made many after-visits to England, and proposed to the Estates, that Lionel, the second son of Edward, should succeed him, but to this they would not agree. He died in 1370, and left no children. After the death of Joan he had married Margaret Logie, a woman of obscure birth.
10. Robert II., 1370-1390.—David was succeeded by his sister's son, Robert, the Steward of the kingdom. This office was hereditary, and it gradually passed into the surname of the family who held it and became common to the different branches. The stewardship was first granted to Walter Fitz-Alan, a Breton baron, by David. Robert was allowed to mount the throne unopposed. It had been feared that William Lord Douglas, who through his mother, a sister of the Red Comyn, represented the claim that had been resigned by the Balliols, would have disputed his right to the throne, but he did not. Robert was twice married. His first wife was Elizabeth More, by whom he had four sons and several daughters. After her death he married Euphemia, daughter of the Earl of Ross, and had two sons and four daughters. The descendants of this second marriage claimed the crown on the ground that the dispensation from Rome had not been obtained, which, as Robert and Elizabeth were near of kin, was needful to make the marriage valid, and the children legitimate. Dispensations for each marriage have since been discovered, which decide the right of Robert's first family.
11. The French Allies.—At the end of the truce with England, in 1385, war broke out again. The French sent a body of 2,000 men, 1,000 stands of armour, and 50,000 gold pieces to the aid of their allies the Scots. Sir John de Vienne, Admiral of France, was the leader of the French auxiliaries. Richard the Second of England, with an army of 70,000 men, invaded Scotland, and marched as far north as the Forth. But the country had been wasted before him, so that the only harm he could do was to destroy Melrose Abbey. Meanwhile the Scots had harried the northern counties of his own kingdom with their French allies. The French afterwards said that in the dioceses of Carlisle and Durham they had burned more than the value of all the towns in Scotland. But the Frenchmen despised the poverty of the Scots, and were disgusted with their way of fighting; and as the Scots in return were uncivil and inhospitable to them, they went away before long, and were as glad to get back to their own land as the Scots were to get rid of them.
12. Raid of Otterburn.—A few years later the Scots barons made another raid on the north of England. An army 5,000 strong mustered at Jedburgh. By the capture of an English spy, they learned that the English meant to keep out of their way, and, while they entered England, to make a counter-raid on the south of Scotland. To defeat this plan the Scots parted their force into two bands, one of which was to enter England on the east, the other on the west. The eastern division, under the Earls of Douglas, Dunbar, and Moray, swept the country as far as Durham. As they were returning laden with spoil, they tarried three days near Newcastle, where were gathered the English barons under Ralph and Henry Percy, sons of the Earl of Northumberland, the Warden of the Marches. Many skirmishes then took place between the two forces. In one of these Douglas took the pennon of Sir Henry Percy, surnamed Hotspur, and challenged him to come to his tent and win it back. The next day the Scots moved off and encamped near Otterburn Tower. Percy hurried after them and attacked them in the night. The Scots, though fewer in number, had the advantage of being in a well-defended camp. They won the day, but the victory was dearly bought, for Douglas was slain in the fight. This battle, in which many lives were lost without any real cause, and without doing any good whatever, was reckoned one of the best fought battles of that warlike time. It was all hand to hand fighting, and all the knights engaged in it on both sides showed great valour. Their feats of arms have been commemorated in the spirit-stirring ballad of Chevy Chase. The Scots came back to their own land, bringing with them Hotspur and more than forty English knights whom they had taken prisoners. This fight, which was called the Raid of Otterburn, took place in August 1388.
Robert died in 1390. He left the country at peace; for a truce between England and France, taking in Scotland as an ally of the latter, had been made the year before.
13. Robert III., 1390-1406.—The eldest son of the late King was John, but, as Balliol had made this name odious to the people, he changed it at his coronation to Robert. The country was in a miserable state. The nobles had been so long used to war with England that they could not bear to be at peace. They fought with one another, and preyed on the peasants and burghers. As the King was too weak both in mind and body to restrain them, the Estates placed the sovereign power in the hands of his son David, who was created Duke of Rothesay. This is the first time the title of Duke appears in Scottish history. Rothesay was to act as the King's Lieutenant for three years, with the advice of a council chosen by the Estates. Meanwhile the real rulers were the King's two brothers, Robert, Duke of Albany, and Alexander, Earl of Buchan, who was master of the country north of the Firths, where his ferocity won him the surname of the Wolf of Badenoch. Albany, anxious, as he gave out, to restrain the wild follies of his nephew Rothesay, seized him and confined him in Falkland Castle. There he died. Albany said that he had died from natural causes, but the people believed that he had been starved by his uncle. After his death, Albany, with his associate Archibald, Earl of Douglas, was cleared of suspicion by an act of the Estates. He was afterwards appointed Governor.
14. Clan Battle near Perth.—During this reign there was a deadly combat between two bands of Highlanders on a meadow by the Tay, called the North Inch of Perth. The King and his nobles, and a vast crowd of persons of all ranks, gathered to see them fight. There were thirty chosen men on each side, and they fought as was their wont, with axes, swords, or bows, and wore no armour. Before the fight began one man left the ranks, swam the Tay, and fled. One Henry Wynd, called "Gow Chrom," or the "Crooked Smith," was hired to fill his place. They fought with fury, and did not leave off till ten men, all wounded, were left on the one side, and one only upon the other. Gow Chrom did such good service that he is said to have won the victory for the clan that had enlisted his services, though it is said he knew so little about the matter that he was quite uncertain which side he was fighting for. Like Otterburn, this slaughter simply showed the skill of the combatants in killing one another. The name of the clans engaged, and their cause of quarrel, if they had any, have been alike forgotten.
15. Relations with England.—In 1400, soon after the end of the truce, Henry the Fourth, who by a revolution had been placed on his cousin Richard's throne, revived the old claim over Scotland in order to make himself popular with the English. He announced his intention of coming to Edinburgh to receive the homage of the King and of the nobles, and to enforce his demand he marched as far as Leith at the head of an army. This was the most harmless invasion on record, for, as usual, the Scots had got out of the way, and the English had to retreat without finding an enemy to fight with. About this time George of Dunbar, Earl of March, shifted his allegiance to Henry. He was offended because Rothesay married a daughter of his great rival Douglas, instead of his own daughter Elizabeth, to whom he was betrothed. In 1402 he joined Sir Henry Percy, surnamed Hotspur, and defeated an invading body of the Scots under Douglas at Homildon. This was much such an affair as Otterburn, only this time the English won and Douglas was taken prisoner. He afterwards joined the Percies in their rebellion against Henry and fought with them at Shrewsbury. Albany had an army on the Border ready to help the rebels, but their defeat and dispersion brought his plan to nothing. But Albany hit on another way of threatening Henry. He entertained at the Scottish court a person whom he received as the dethroned Richard, who had been discovered in disguise, so the story ran, a fugitive in the Western Isles. In 1405, however, chance threw into Henry's hands an important prize. This was James, Earl of Carrick, second son of the King, and heir to the throne. He was captured by the English, in time of truce, while on his way to France, whither he was sent, nominally to be educated, but really to be out of the reach of his dangerous uncle. Thus, as the head of each government had a hostage for the good behaviour of the other, there was no open war between the two nations. In 1406 Robert died.
16. Albany's Regency.—The death of Robert made no change in the government, though the young King was acknowledged as James the First. There was nominal peace with England, but the work of winning back the Border strongholds still went on. Jedburgh was retaken and destroyed, as the best means of securing it against foreign occupation in future.
17. Battle of Harlaw.—The kingdom was now threatened on the other border, the northern march which parted the Saxons of the north-eastern Lowlands from the Celtic clans of the mountains. The hatred between the hostile races had been growing more and more bitter, and was fostered by constant inroads on the one hand and cruel laws upon the other. The time seemed now to have come when there must be a trial of strength between them. The head of the Celts was Donald, Lord of the Isles, who, though he had sworn fealty to David the Second, again claimed sovereign power over all the clans of the West, and entered into treaties with England as though he had been an independent monarch. He claimed the Earldom of Ross in right of his wife, as her niece, the heiress, had taken the veil. By getting this earldom, the Lord of the Isles became lord over half the kingdom, and he resolved to invade the territory of the King, whom he looked on as a rival. Now the district that lay nearest him, the Lowlands north of the Forth, as it had not been touched by the Border wars, was at this time at once the richest part of the kingdom and the part least accustomed to self-defence. Great therefore was the terror of the burghers and husbandmen at the news that a horde of plundering savages would soon be let loose upon them. They took up arms in their own defence, and they were fortunate in finding a leader whose experience, gained in similar warfare on his own account, well fitted him to withstand the ambitious Donald. This was Alexander Stewart, Earl of Mar, the illegitimate son of the Wolf of Badenoch. He had won his reputation by valour in the French wars, and his earldom by carrying off and marrying an heiress, who was Countess of Mar in her own right. The rival races met at Harlaw, in Aberdeenshire, July 24, 1411. Here, as at Bannockburn, the determination and stedfastness of each man in the smaller force decided the fortune of the day. For, though the Highlanders, reckless of life, charged again and again, they made no impression on the small compact mass that kept the way against them, and they were at last forced to retreat. This battle was justly looked on as a great national deliverance, greater even than the victory at Bannockburn, and many privileges and immunities were granted to the heirs of those who had fallen.
18. The Scots in France.—During the Regency the Scots did good service to their old allies of France, who were sorely pressed by the English. Henry the Fifth of England had conquered nearly all France, and had been proclaimed heir of the French king. A company of 700 Scots, led by John Stewart, Earl of Buchan, second son of Albany, went to the help of the French. They arrived safely in France, in spite of the careful watch upon the seas kept up by the English in order to prevent them. By their aid the French gained their first victory in this war at the battle of Beaugé in 1421. Buchan was made Constable of France. He was then sent back to Scotland on an embassy to seek the help of Douglas on the part of the King of France. An alliance was made between them in 1423, and Douglas came to France, where the rich Duchy of Touraine and many other lands were conferred upon him. But Douglas was slain not long after at the battle of Verneuil in 1424. Most of the Scots fell with him, for the English refused them quarter, as Henry had James of Scotland in his camp, and he gave orders that all the Scots bearing arms on the French side should be looked upon as traitors fighting against their King. The remnant that were left were formed into a royal bodyguard, the beginning of the famous Scots Guard of the French kings. Archibald, Earl of Douglas, who fell at Verneuil, was called "Tine-man," or lose-man, because in every battle in which he took part he fought on the losing side.
19. Death of Albany.—Albany died in 1419. His son Murdoch succeeded him as Governor, but there is no record of his being confirmed in that office by the Estates. As he had not the talents of his father, he had no control over the barons. Every man was his own master, and the land was filled with violence. The obvious remedy was to bring home the King, and Douglas and some of the other nobles treated with the English government for his release.
20. Summary.—Under the immediate successors of Robert the First, Scotland nearly lost all the advantages which he had won for her. The country was torn by civil strife; the kings were weak and useless; the nobles became so strong and overbearing that their power more than equalled that of the Crown, and they set at nought the King's authority. All social improvement was at a standstill. Still we find during this period the first stirrings of a desire for increase of knowledge and greater liberty of religious thought. Two events mark this: the burning of John Reseby, with his books, on a charge of heresy, at Perth in 1408; and the opening of the first University in Scotland, founded at St. Andrews by Henry Wardlaw, the bishop, in 1410. The history of Scotland was now first written by two natives of the country; John of Fordun, who wrote the "Scotichronicon," and Andrew Wyntoun, who wrote a metrical chronicle.