A History of England, Period I. Mediæval Monarchy

by J. Franck Bright

Death of the Queen.

Meeting at Norham. 1291.

It was not exactly thus that Edward understood the treaty. He at once despatched Anthony Beck, Bishop of Durham, to act in unison with the guardians of Scotland, as Lieutenant of Queen Margaret and her husband, at the same time demanding possession of the royal castles, ostensibly for the purpose of preserving the peace of the kingdom. The governors of the castles declined to give them up, but seven great Earls wrote to Edward, as though to a superior, begging him to curb the power of the regency, while, on the other hand, a member of the regency, the Bishop of St. Andrews, also wrote, begging Edward to approach the border to assist in keeping order, and to appoint a king if the rumour which had been spread of the death of the Maid of Norway should prove true. The report was true, Margaret had died on her journey from Norway in the Orkney islands; and acting on these two letters, which he construed as an invitation, Edward summoned a meeting at Norham, to be held after Easter 1291. The delay was probably occasioned by a heavy blow which had fallen on Edward. In November he had lost his much loved wife Eleanor. It is one of his titles to our respect, that in a licentious age he was remarkably pure, and that no word was ever breathed against his perfect fidelity as a husband. After a period of bitter sorrow, and a pompous funeral, each stage of the journey being subsequently marked by a beautiful cross, he returned again in the following year to his Scotch plans. At that meeting he put forward his claim as superior and overlord of the kingdom, saying that it lay with him in that capacity to put an end to discord. He ended by asking that his title should be acknowledged, in order that he might act freely. A delay of three weeks was demanded, at which time the assembly met again on Scotch ground opposite the Castle of Norham. An answer seems to have been meanwhile sent, but the King had regarded it as not to the point; and at the assembly itself no objections were raised to his claim. All the competitors acknowledged his authority in set words, and the case was put into Edward’s hands.

Edward’s supremacy allowed.

The claimants.

Edward gives a just verdict. 1292.

Balliol accepts the throne as a vassal.

Scotland appeals to the English Courts. 1293.

The appeals not pressed to extremities.

There were a great number of claimants; but three only established a case worth consideration. These were Bruce, Balliol, and Hastings. The claims of all these went back to David I. This king had three grandsons; Malcolm IV., who was childless, William the Lion, whose direct descendants had just come to an end, and David, Earl of Huntingdon, from whom all three claimants were descended. He had had three daughters; Margaret, the eldest, whose grandson was Balliol, Isabella, the second, whose son was Bruce, Ada, the third, whose grandson was Hastings. Besides these three, Comyn was also a grandson of Margaret, but being a son of a second daughter, his claims were obviously inferior to those of Balliol.[47] To decide these claims, Edward, as lord superior, established a great court; forty of Bruce’s friends, forty of Balliol’s, and twenty-four members on the part of Edward, were to constitute it. Edward seems to have proceeded with the full intention of giving a just and legal judgment, and after several meetings, in November 1292, a decision was arrived at in favour of John Balliol. Meanwhile, during the settlement of the question, Edward had taken possession of the Scotch castles, had appointed the great officers of the kingdom, and had caused the regents to exact an oath of fealty to him as superior lord. The new King accepted the throne distinctly as a vassal of England, and finally, to make his dependence perfectly clear, did homage after his coronation. He did not find his new position free from difficulty. He found that the letter of the feudal law to which he owed his elevation could be turned against himself. It was indeed unnatural to expect the Scotch to submit to the inconveniences without claiming the advantages of that law. Balliol had not been long on the throne before they asserted that, if he was a vassal, appeals would lie from his judgments to the English courts. In the following year two or three such appeals were made, one from a goldsmith, and one from Macduff, Earl of Fife. When summoned to appear before the English courts, Balliol refused to come. He made his appearance however at the Parliament held in the autumn of 1293, and there declared that, as King of Scotland, he could not act without the advice of his people. A delay was given him for the purpose of consulting his parliament; he did not take advantage of it. The case of Macduff was therefore given against him by the English baronage in his presence. He was fined to Macduff 700 marks, to Edward 10,000. On the protest of Balliol, a fresh delay was allowed, nor does Edward seem to have been in any way disposed to do more than make good his legal position. It is plain, however that the position of vassal king, with its awkward and probably unexpected incidents, disgusted Balliol; and political events soon enabled him to make his displeasure felt.