Life of Sir William Wallace of Elderslie, Vol. 1 (of 2)

by John D. Carrick

William also entered the lists with the Roman Pontiff,—before whose threats and anathemas Henry had so ignominiously crouched:—Yet though all the thunder of the Vatican was levelled against him,—and the Archbishop of York, armed with Papal authority, had not only excommunicated him, but placed the kingdom under an interdict; still he maintained his point with inflexible resolution, till the judgment of the apostolic father was annulled, and an honourable compromise obtained. The contrast thus exhibited by his vassal could not be very consoling to the feelings of the English monarch.

In the year 1178, William, in the same spirit, founded and amply endowed an abbey at Aberbrothick, in honour of the holy martyr, Thomas à Becket,—a saint who had been thrust down the throat of his liege-lord with the salutary application of the whip. It would be doing William injustice to doubt the sincerity of the gratitude which instigated him to this act of munificence.

In 1189, Henry II. died, and was succeeded by his son Richard Cœur de Lion. Unlike his father, Richard, though haughty and imperious, was alive to all the noble and virtuous qualities which ought to constitute the character of a king. As soon after the obsequies of his father as decency would permit, he invited William to his court at Canterbury, and magnanimously restored Scotland to her independence. The important document runs thus—“That Richard had rendered up to William, by the grace of God, King of Scots, his castles of Rokesburgh and Berwick, to be possessed by him and his heirs for ever as their own proper inheritance.”

“Moreover, we have granted to him an acquittance of all obligations which our father extorted from him by new instruments, in consequence of his captivity; under this condition always, that he shall completely and fully perform to us whatever his brother Malcolm, King of Scotland, of right performed, or ought of right to have performed, to our predecessors.”[29] “Richard,” says Lord Hailes, “also ordained the boundaries of the two kingdoms to be re-established as they had been at the captivity of William.” He calls them, “the marches of the kingdom of Scotland, (marchiæ regni Scotiæ.”)

“He became bound to put William in full possession of all his fees in the earldom of Huntingdon or elsewhere, (et in omnibus aliis), under the same conditions as heretofore.”

“He delivered up all such of the evidences of the homage done to Henry II. by the barons and clergy of Scotland, as were in his possession, and he declared, that all evidences of that homage, whether delivered up or not, should be held as cancelled.”

“The price which William agreed to pay for this ample restitution, was ten thousand merks sterling.”

It is with difficulty a smile can be suppressed when we find, even in the 19th century, an author of such learning and talents as Dr Lingard, endeavouring to fritter away the meaning and import of the above deed of restitution, by such fallacious reasoning as the following: “The King’s” (Richard I.) “Charter to the King of Scots may be seen in Rymer, i. 64. It is NOT, as sometimes has been supposed, a FORMAL RECOGNITION OF THE INDEPENDENCE OF SCOTLAND, but a recognition, on the part of Richard, of all those RIGHTS which Henry had extorted from William for his RANSOM. In lieu of them he received ten thousand pounds, probably the sum which William would have given to Henry. The respective rights of the two crowns, are now replaced on the same footing as formerly. William was to do to Richard whatever Malcolm ought to have done to Richard’s predecessors, and Richard was to do to William whatever they ought to have done to Malcolm, according to an award to be given by eight barons, to be equally chosen by the two Kings. Moreover, William was to possess in England the lands which Malcolm had possessed: and to become the liegeman of Richard for all lands for which his predecessors had been the liegemen of the English Kings. The award was afterwards given, by which it appears that the words libertates, dignitates, honores, debiti, &c. mean the allowances to be made, and the honours to be shewn, to the King of Scots, as often as he came to the English court by the command of his lord the English King, from the moment that he crossed the borders till his return into his own territories, Rym. i. 87. This will explain the clause of Salvis dignitatibus suis, in the oath taken by the Scottish Kings, which some writers have ERRONEOUSLY CONCEIVED TO MEAN, SAVING THE INDEPENDENCE OF THEIR CROWN.”[30] If William was already the vassal of Henry, where was either the policy or the necessity of the latter bringing his right of homage into question, by making it again a subject of negociation? and if it was not for “A FORMAL RECOGNITION OF THE INDEPENDENCE OF SCOTLAND” that William paid the ten thousand pounds (merks) to Richard, for what purpose was that sum paid? Henry extorted no money from William for his “RANSOM;” his vanity being amply gratified by the deed of homage. Richard had no claim to 10,000l. from William, without granting him what he considered an equivalent. This equivalent could not have been the independence of the Scottish church; for even during the reign of Henry, we find, by a note appended by the learned author to his work, (vol. ii. p. 397, 3d Edit.), that when the obedience of the Scottish church was demanded by the Archbishop of York, “it was answered that none was due; and the answer, after a long controversy, was confirmed by Pope Clement III. in 1188.”

How “Salvis dignitatibus suis” can be explained so as not to include the independence of the monarch’s crown, we are much at a loss to perceive. One thing, however, is sufficiently apparent, that the sophistry we have quoted ought not to have found a place in a publication of such acknowledged merit as that of Dr Lingard.

As he has evidently allowed the prejudices of the old English chroniclers to warp his judgment in this affair, we may be permitted, in order to place the question on its proper basis, to quote the following short passage from his own work, by which it will be seen that the Lion of England, showed as little pluck as HE of Scotland, when placed in a similar situation.—“In an assembly of the German Princes and English envoys, by the delivery of the cap from his head, he [Richard I.] resigned his crown into the hands of Henry; who restored it to him again to be held as a fief of the empire, with the obligation of a yearly payment of five thousand pounds.”[31] Had this claim been prosecuted against England with the same pertinacity as England advanced her absurd pretensions against Scotland, it is presumed they would have been repelled with similar scorn and derision.