A Short History of England, Ireland and Scotland

by Mary Platt Parmele

Whatever the process, a change was going on in his soul. He wavered, sometimes inclining to the party of Wallace, and sometimes to that of the King, until the year 1304. In that year, the very one in which Wallace died, he made a secret compact with the Bishop of Lamberton, pledging mutual help against any opponents. While at the Court of Edward, shortly after this, he discovered that the King had learned of this compromising paper. There was nothing left but flight. He mounted his horse and swiftly returned to Scotland. Now the die was cast. His only competitor for the throne was Comyn. They met to confer over some plan of combination, and in a dispute which arose, Bruce slew his rival. Whether it was premeditated, or in the heat of passion, who could say? But Comyn was the one obstacle to his purpose, and he had slain him, had slain the highest noble in the state! All of England, and now much of Scotland, would be against him; but he could not go back. He resolved upon a bold course. He went immediately to Scone, ascended the throne, and surrounded by a small band of followers, was crowned King of Scotland, March 27, 1306. He soon learned the desperate nature of the enterprise upon which he had embarked. There was nothing in his past to inspire the confidence of the patriots at the North, and at the South he was pursued with vindictive fury by the friends of the slain Comyn. Edward, stirred as never before, was preparing for an invasion, issuing proclamations; no mercy to be shown to the rebels. Bruce's English estates, inherited from his mother, were confiscated, and an outlaw and a fugitive, he was excommunicated by the Pope! Unable to meet the forces sent by Edward, he placed his Queen in the care of a relative and then disappeared, wandering in the Highlands, hiding for one whole winter on the coast of Ireland and supposed to be dead. His Queen and her ladies were torn from their refuge and his cousin hanged.

Had Robert Bruce died at this time he would have been remembered not as a patriot, but as an ambitious noble who perished in a desperate attempt to make himself king. But his undaunted soul was working out a different ending to the story. In the spring of 1307 he returned undismayed. With a small band of followers he met an English army, defeated the Earl of Pembroke at Ayr, and with this success the tide turned. The people caught the contagion of his intrepid spirit, and in the seven years which followed, he shines out as one of the great captains of history. By the year 1313 every castle save Berwick and Stirling had surrendered to him. Vast preparations were made in England for the defence of this latter stronghold.

It was on the burn (stream) two miles from Stirling that Bruce assembled his 30,000 men, and made his plans to meet Edward with his 100,000. On the morning of the 23d of June, 1314, he exhorted his Scots to fight for their liberty. How they did it, the world will never forget! And while Scotland endures, and as long as there are Scotsmen with warm blood coursing in their veins, they will never cease to exult at the name Bannockburn! Thirty thousand English fell upon the field. Twenty-seven barons and two hundred knights, and seven hundred squires were lying in the dust, and twenty-two barons and sixty knights were prisoners. Never was there a more crushing defeat.

Still England refused to acknowledge the independence of the kingdom, and Bruce crossed the border with his army. The Pope was appealed to by Edward, and issued a pacifying bull in 1317, addressed to "Edward, King of England," and "the noble Robert de Bruis, conducting himself as King of Scotland." Bruce declined to accept it until he was addressed as King of Scotland, and then proceeded to capture Berwick. The Scottish Parliament sent an address to the Pope, from which a few interesting extracts are here made:

"It has pleased God to restore us to liberty, by one most valiant Prince and King, Lord Robert, who has undergone all manner of toil, fatigue, hardship, and hazard. To him we are resolved to adhere in all things, both on account of his merit, and for what he has done for us. But, if this Prince should leave those principles he has so nobly pursued, and consent that we be subjected to the King of England, we will immediately expel him as our enemy, and will choose another king, for as long as one hundred of us remain alive, we will never be subject to the English. For it is not glory, nor riches, nor honor, but it is liberty alone, that we contend for, which no honest man will lose but with his life."

The spirit manifested in this had its effect, and the Pope consented to address Bruce by his title, "King of Scotland." After delaying the evil day as long as possible, England at last, in 1328, concluded a treaty recognizing Scotland as an independent kingdom, in which occurred these words: "And we renounce whatever claims we or our ancestors in bygone times have laid in any way over the kingdom of Scotland."

Concerning the character of Robert Bruce, historians are not agreed. To fathom his motives would have been difficult at the time; how much more so then after six centuries. We only know that he leaped into an arena from which nature and circumstances widely separated him, gave a free Scotland to her people, and made himself the hero of her great epic.

When we see the spiritless sons of Bruce in the hands of base intriguing nobles, trailing their great inheritance in the mire, we exclaim: Was it for this that there was such magnificent heroism? Was it worth seven years of such struggle to emancipate the land from a foreign tyranny, only to have it fall into a degrading domestic one? But the reassuring fact is, that the governing power of a nation is only an incident, more or less imperfect. The life is in the people. There was not a cottage nor a cabin in all of Scotland that was not ennobled by the consciousness of what had been done. Men's hearts were glad with a wholesome gladness; and every child in the land was lisping the names of Wallace and of Bruce and learning the story of their deeds. But for all that, the period following the death of the great King and Captain is a disappointing one, and we are not tempted to linger while the incapable David II. wears his father's crown, and while the son of Baliol, instigated by England, is troubling the kingdom, and even having himself crowned at Scone; and while Edward III., until attracted by more tempting fields in France, is invading the land and recapturing its strongholds. The limit of humiliation seems to be reached when David II., in the absence of an heir, proposes to leave his throne to Lionel, son of Edward III.!

When Robert Bruce bestowed his daughter, Marjory, upon the High Steward of Scotland, he determined the course of history in two countries; in England even more than in Scotland. The office of Steward was the highest in the realm. Since the time of David I. it had been hereditary in one family, and according to a prevailing custom, to which many names now bear testimony, the official designation had become the family name. The marriage of Robert Stewart (seventh High Steward of his house) to Marjory Bruce was destined to bear consequences involving not alone the fate of Scotland, but leading to a transforming revolution and the greatest crisis in the life of England. As the Weird Sisters promised to Banquo, this Stewart was "to be the fader of mony Kingis," for Marjory was the ancestress of fourteen sovereigns, eight of whom were to sit upon the throne of Scotland, and six upon those of both England and Scotland (1371 to 1714, three hundred and forty-three years).