A Short History of England, Ireland and Scotland

by Mary Platt Parmele

The historic point selected by Shakespeare has an important significance of a different sort. It was the dividing line between the old and the new. Macbeth's reign marks the close of the Celtic period. With the advent of Malcolm III., there commenced that infusion of Teutonic political ideals which was destined at last to merge the Anglo-Saxon and the Scottish Celt into one political organism. Malcolm's mother was the sister of the Earl of Northumberland. So the son of Duncan was half-English; and he became more than half-English when, somewhat later, he married Margaret, sister of his friend and guest, "Edgar the Atheling," last claimant of the Saxon throne, who had taken refuge with him while vainly plotting against William the Conqueror. This was in 1067, the year after the conquest. So at this critical period in English history, the door leading to the South, which had until now been kept bolted and barred, except for hostile bands, was left ajar. A host of Saxon nobles, following their leader, Edgar, streamed into Scotland, and soon formed the most powerful element about the throne, bringing new speech, new ways, new customs; in fact, doing at Scone precisely what the Norman nobles were at the same time doing at London, substituting a more advanced civilization for an existing one. The manners of the Norman nobles were not more odious to the Saxon nobility in England, than were those of the Saxons to the proud thanes and people in Scotland. Then Malcolm began to bestow large grants of land upon his foreign favorites, accompanied by an almost unlimited authority over their vassals, and feudalism was introduced into the free land. With these changes there gradually formed a dialect, a mingling of the two forms of speech, which became the language of the Court, and of the powerful dwellers in the Lowlands. And so, in succeeding reigns, the process of blending went on, the wave of a changed civilization driving before it the Celtic speech, manners, and habits, into their impregnable fastnesses in the Highlands, there to preserve the national type in proud persistence. Such was the condition for one hundred and fifty years, the Crown in open alliance with aliens, subverting established usages and fastening an exotic feudalism upon the South; while an angry and defiant Celtic people remained unsubdued in the North.

It was a favorite amusement with the Scottish kings to dart across the border into Northumbria, the disputed district, not yet incorporated with England, there to waste and burn as much as they could, and then back again. In one of these forays in 1174, the King, "William the Lion," was captured by a party of English barons. Henry II. of England had just returned from Ireland, where he had established his feudal sovereignty by conquest. Now he saw a chance of accomplishing the same thing by peaceful methods in Scotland. He named as a price of ransom for the captive King an acknowledgment of his feudal lordship. The terms were accepted, and the five castles which they included were surrendered. Fifteen years later, his son Richard I., the romantic crusader, gave back to Scotland her castles and her independence. But what had been done once, would be tried again. So while it was the steady policy of the English sovereigns to reduce Scotland to a state of vassalage to England, it was the no less steady aim of the Scottish kings to extend their own feudal authority to the Highlands and the islands in the north and west of their own realm, where an independent people had never yet been brought under its subjection.

In the year 1286 Alexander III. died, and only an infant granddaughter survived to wear the crown. The daughter of the deceased King had married the King of Norway, and dying soon after, had left an infant daughter. It was about this babe that the diplomatic threads immediately began to entwine. A regency of six nobles was appointed to rule the kingdom. Then Edward I. of England proposed a marriage between his own infant son and the little maid. The proposition was accepted. A ship was sent to Norway to bring the baby Queen to Scotland, bearing jewels and gifts from Edward; but just before she reached the Orkneys the "Maid of Norway" died. Edward's plans were frustrated, and the empty throne of Scotland had many claimants, but none with paramount right to the succession. In the wrangle which ensued, when eight ambitious nobles were trying to snatch the prize, Edward I. intervened to settle the dispute, which had at last narrowed down to one between two competitors, Bruce and Baliol, both lineally descended from King David I.

But the important fact in this mediatorial act of Edward was, that it was done by virtue of his authority as Over-Lord of Scotland. We are left to imagine how and why such a monstrous and baseless pretension was acknowledged without a single protest. But when we reflect that the eager claimants and their upholders represented, not the people of Scotland but an aristocratic ruling element, more than half-English already, it is not so strange that they were willing to pay this price for the sake of restoring peace and security at a time when everything was imperilled by an empty throne. There was no organic unity in Scotland; only a superficial unity, created by the name of king, which fell into chaos when that name was withdrawn. It was imperative that someone should be crowned at Scone at once. And so, when Edward, by virtue of his authority as Over-Lord, gave judgment in favor of John Baliol, without a single remonstrance Baliol was crowned John I. at Scone, rendered homage to his feudal lord, and Scotland was a vassal kingdom (1292). This whole proceeding, thus disposing of the state, had in no way recognized the existence of a nation. It was an arrangement between the Scottish nobles and clergy, and the King of England. When the heralds had, with great ceremony, proclaimed King Edward Lord Paramount of Scotland, the matter was supposed to be ended, and it was forgotten that there was beyond the Grampians a proud people, whose will would have to be broken before their country would become the fief of an English king. But Baliol soon discovered how empty was the honor he had purchased. There was now a right of appeal from the Scottish Parliament and courts to those of Edward I. Such appeals were made, and King John I. was with scant ceremony summoned to London to plead his own cause before a Parliament which humiliated and insulted him.

In 1295, so intolerable had his position become, that Baliol threw off the yoke of vassalage, secured an alliance with France, and gathered such of his nobles as he could about him, prepared to resist the authority of Edward; whereupon that enraged King marched into the rebellious land, swept victoriously from one city to another, gathering up towns and castles by the way; then took the sacred Stone of Destiny from Scone as a memorial of his conquest, and left the penitent vassal King helpless and forlorn in his humiliated kingdom. It was then that the famous stone was built into the coronation-chair, where it still remains.

We have now come to a name which, as Wordsworth says, is "to be found like a wild flower, all over his dear country." Everywhere there are places sacred to his memory. The story of Wallace is a brief one—an impassioned resolve to free his enslaved country, one supreme triumph, then defeat, an ignominious and cruel death in London, to be followed by imperishable renown for himself, and for Scotland—freedom. Sir William Wallace belonged to the lower class of Scotch nobility. He had never sworn allegiance to Edward I. His career of outlawry commenced by his making small attacks upon small English posts. As his successes increased, so did his followers, until so formidable had the movement become, that Edward learned there was a rising in his vassal kingdom. But it could not be much, he thought, as he had all the nobles, and how could there be a rising without nobles? So he despatched a small force to straighten things out. But a few weeks later, Edward himself was in Scotland with an army. Wallace was besieging the Castle of Dundee, when he heard that the King was marching on Stirling. With the quick instinct of the true military leader, he saw his opportunity. He reached the rising ground commanding the bridge of Stirling, while the English army of 50,000 were still on the opposite side of the river. When the English general, seeing his disadvantage, offered to make terms, Wallace replied that his terms were "the freedom of Scotland." The attack made as they were crossing the bridge resulted in the panic of the English and a rout in which the greater part of the fleeing army was slain and drowned (1297). Baliol had been swept from the scene and was in the Tower of London, so Wallace was supreme. But in less than a year Edward had returned with an army overwhelming in numbers, and Wallace met a crushing defeat at Falkirk. We next hear of him on the Continent, still planning for Scotland's liberation, then hunted and finally caught in Glasgow, dragged to London in chains, there to be tried and condemned for treason. Had they condemned him as a rebel and an outlaw there would have been justice, for these he was. But a traitor he never was, for he had never sworn allegiance to Edward. He had fought against the invaders of his country, and for this he died a felon's death, with all the added cruelties of Norman law. He was first tortured, then executed in a way to strike terror to the souls of similar offenders (1304). But his work was accomplished. He had lighted the fires of patriotism in Scotland. The power of his name to stir the hearts of his people like a trumpet-blast, is best described by the words of Robert Burns: "The story of Wallace poured a Scottish prejudice into my veins, which will boil along there till the flood-gates of life shut, in eternal rest." To be praised by the bards was the supreme reward of Celtic heroes. What did death matter, in form however terrible, to one who was to be so remembered nearly five centuries later by Scotland's greatest bard?

We are accustomed to regard the name of Bruce as the intensest expression of a Scottish nationality, and of its aspirations toward liberty. But it had no such meaning at this time. The ancestor of the family was Robert de Bruis, a Norman knight who came over with the Conqueror. His son, Robert, was one of those hated foreign adventurers at the Court of David I., and received from that King a large grant and the Lordship of Annandale. The grandson of this first Earl of Annandale married Isabel, the granddaughter of David I., and so it was that the house of Bruce came into the line of royal succession. It was Robert, the son of Isabel, who competed with Baliol for the throne of Scotland.

Robert Bruce, who stands forth as the greatest character in Scottish history, was twelve years old when his grandfather was defeated by Baliol in this competition. No family in the vassal kingdom was more trusted by England's King, nor more friendly to his pretensions. The young Robert's father had accompanied King Edward to Palestine in his own youth, and he himself was being trained at the English Court. His English mother had large estates in England, and, in fact there was everything to bind him to the King's cause. He and his father, and the High Steward of Scotland, together with other Scottish-Norman nobles, had been with the King in his triumphal march through Scotland when Baliol was dethroned, and at the time of the rising under Wallace, Robert Bruce had not one thing in common with him or his cause. And as for the people in the Highlands, if he ever thought of them at all, it was as troublesome malcontents, who needed to be ruled with a strong hand. Wallace was in rebellion against an established authority, to which all his own antecedents reconciled him. How the change was wrought, how his bold and ardent spirit came to its final resolve, we can only surmise. Was it through a complicated struggle of forces, in which ambition played the greatest part? Or did the splendid heroism of Wallace, and the spirit it evoked in the people, awaken a slumbering patriotism in his own romantic soul? Or was it the prescience of a leader and statesman, who saw in this newly developed popular force an opportunity for a double triumph, the emancipation of Scotland, and the realization of his own kingship?