24. Literature and Architecture.—No chronicles of this period, written by natives of Scotland, have come down to us. But there was one poet who was held in great repute, not only for his verses, but for his prophecies. This was Thomas Learmouth of Ercildoun, called "Thomas the Rhymer," and "True Thomas," from the general belief in the truth of his predictions. He is said to have foretold that great national calamity, the King's death, under the figure of a great storm that should blow "so stark and strang, that all Scotland sall reu efter rycht lang." Another Scotsman of note was Michael Scot, the famous wizard. He travelled much in foreign lands, and was greatly renowned in them, as in his own country, as a scholar, an astrologer, and magician. The buildings of this period were chiefly the churches and abbeys founded by Margaret and her descendants. They were all in the same style as contemporary buildings in England. There were as yet very few castles, that is fortified buildings of solid masonry, in the kingdom. The great strongholds, such as Edinburgh, Stirling, and Dunbarton, were steep rocks, made so inaccessible by nature that they needed but little strengthening from art. Dwelling-houses seem to have been generally built of wood.
25. State of the Kingdom.—The second period of the national history breaks off abruptly with the death of Alexander. It had begun with the dethronement of Donald Bane, the last Celtic King, nearly two hundred years before, and during that time the boundary of Scotland had been extended by the annexation of Argyle and of the Isles, while her two dependencies of Lothian and Galloway had been drawn more closely to her, though they still remained separate and distinct. Throughout this period the influence of England, though peaceable, had been stronger than it was ever to be again. English laws and English customs had been brought in, and had, in many cases, taken the place of the old Celtic usages. The Celtic maers had been removed to make way for the sheriffs of the Crown. But, as Scotland was not divided like England into shires, the sheriffs were not, as in England, the reeves of the already existing shires, but officers who were placed by the King over certain districts. These districts or sheriffdoms became the counties of later times. Feudalism after the Norman model, with all its burthensome exactions and oppressions, had been brought in and had taken firmer root in Scotland than it ever did in England. The native chiefs had been displaced by foreign nobles, so that a purely Norman baronage held the lands, whether peopled by a Celtic or a Saxon peasantry. In some cases the new owners founded families afterwards known under Celtic names; for, while the Celts gave their own names to the lands on which they settled, the Normans took the names of the lands conferred upon them and bore them as their own. The long peace with England, which had lasted unbroken for nearly a century, had been marked by great social progress. The large proportion of land that was now under the plough proves that during this untroubled time husbandry must have thriven, roads and bridges were many and in good repair, and the trading towns had made great advances in riches and power. Hitherto no one town had distinctly taken its place as the capital. Saint John's Town, or Perth, had, from its connexion with Scone, some claim to the first place, but the King held his court or his assize indifferently at any of the royal burghs. These burghs were of great importance in the state, and, as the burgesses of the royal burghs were all vassals holding direct from the Crown, they acted in some sort as a check on the growing power of the nobles. The burghers had the right of governing themselves by their own laws, and were divided into two groups. Those north of the Scots water or Firth of Forth were bound together by a league like the great continental Hansa, and known by the same name; while those in Lothian, represented by the four principal among them—Roxburgh, Stirling, Edinburgh, and Berwick—held their "court of the four burghs," which is still represented by the "Convention of Royal Burghs" which meets once a year in Edinburgh. Nor were the Scottish towns of this period in any way behind the cities of the Continent. Berwick, the richest and the greatest, was said by a writer of the time to rival London. Inverness had a great reputation for shipbuilding. A ship which was built there called forth the envy and wonder of the French nobles of that time. But this happy state of things was brought to an end by the death of the King, and the long years of war and misery that followed went far to sweep away all traces of the high state of civilization and prosperity that had been reached by the country in this, the golden age of Scottish history.
CHAPTER III.
STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE.
The Regency (1)—the Interregnum (2)—Council at Norham (3)—Edward's decision (4)—John (5)—his coronation (6)—French alliance (7)—Edward's first conquest (8)—English government (9)—Wallace's revolt (10)—surrender at Irvine (11)—battle of Stirling (12)—battle of Falkirk (13)—capture of Wallace (14)—attempted union (15)—Bruce's revolt (16)—his coronation (17)—Edward's proposed revenge (18)—Bruce's struggles (19)—battle of Bannockburn (20)—results of the victory (21)—Bruce's comrades (22)—summary (23).
1. Margaret, 1286-90. The Regency.—Within a month from Alexander's death the Estates met at Scone, and appointed six regents to govern the kingdom for Margaret, the Maiden of Norway, a child of three years old, who, on the death of her grandfather Alexander, succeeded to the throne. Three of these regents were for the old kingdom, the land north of the Scots Water, and three for Lothian with Galloway. This division seems to show that the different tenure of these provinces was still understood and acted on. The Scots of the original Celtic kingdom and the Englishmen of Lothian still kept aloof from one another. In the meantime Robert Bruce, a Norman baron whose forefathers had settled in Annandale in the twelfth century, made an attempt to seize the crown by force. He laid claim to it by right of his descent from Isabella, the second daughter of David Earl of Huntingdon, brother of William the Lion, and appealed to Edward the First of England as over-lord to support him in his supposed right. At the same time other appeals against him were made by the seven Earls of Scotland, by Fraser bishop of St. Andrews, and by the Community. Edward did not encourage Bruce, but on the contrary he agreed to the proposal of the Estates that the Lady Margaret should be married to his eldest son Edward. By the treaty of Brigham, in 1290, this agreement was accepted by the Clergy, Nobility, and Community of Scotland. This treaty provided that the rights and liberties of Scotland should remain untouched; that no native of Scotland was to be called on to do homage or to answer for any crime beyond the Border; in short, that Scotland was to keep all the rights and liberties which belong to a distinct national life. This union, if it had been carried out, would have been the best possible settlement for both kingdoms, but it was prevented by the death of the Maid of Norway on her way to Scotland, in one of the Orkneys, September 1290. Edward had himself sent a ship handsomely fitted out to fetch home the Maid.
2. Interregnum, 1290-92.—Margaret was the last of the legitimate descendants of William the Lion. The new King had to be sought among the heirs of William's brother David, Earl of Huntingdon. David had left three daughters, Margaret, Isabella, and Ada, and they being dead were represented by their nearest heirs,—Margaret by her grandson John Balliol, Isabella by her son Robert Bruce, and Ada by her son John Hastings. Besides these there were a host of smaller claimants whose pretensions were quite untenable; but there was one other who, though his claim was very shadowy, was first in power and position among the claimants. This was Florence, Count of Holland, the great-great-grandson of Ada, the daughter of David's son Henry, who was to have had Ross as her dowry. Bruce, supported by his son, by James the Steward and by other nobles, made a bond with Florence by which each pledged himself, in case he got the kingdom, to give the other a third of it. Edward, as over-lord, was appealed to to settle the matter, as it was feared by the regents that Robert Bruce would seize the crown by force, and all the competitors seem to have acknowledged Edward's right of superiority.
3. Council at Norham.—Edward accordingly summoned his barons, amongst whom most of the claimants could be reckoned, to meet him in a council at Norham, on the northern side of the Tweed, in June 1291, to decide this important case. The real contest lay between Bruce and Balliol. Bruce, Balliol, and indeed nearly all the claimants, were Norman barons holding lands of Edward. The family of Bruce came originally from the Côtentin and had been settled in Yorkshire by William the Conqueror, towards the end of his reign. David, who had granted to them the great tract of Annandale, had also granted to the Balliols a manor in Berwick. Bruce's plea was that, though he was the child of a younger sister, still his right was better than that of Balliol, as he was one degree nearer their common forefather, and he brought forward many precedents to prove that in such a case nearness in degree was to be preferred to seniority.