The Life and Reign of Edward I.

by Robert Benton Seeley

Lived at theeves’ law, and robband always.

They had no sustenance, the war to maintaine;

But skulked upon chance, and robbed all betwene.”

The few nobles, however, who yet stood out, could not allow themselves to sink to the level to which Wallace had fallen. They saw the necessity for an absolute and final termination of this great struggle. Accordingly, on the 9th of February, 1304, “the earls of Pembroke and Ulster, with Sir Henry Percy, met Comyn at Strathorde, in Fife, and a negotiation took place, in which the late regent and his followers, after stipulating for the preservation of their lives, liberties, and lands, delivered themselves up, and agreed to the infliction of any pecuniary fine which the conqueror should think right. The castles and the strengths of Scotland were to remain in the hands of Edward, and the government was to be administered at his pleasure.”[122]

Those who thus made their peace with the king, saving both their lives and their estates, probably performed their part, of entire submission, honestly. But there was a single instance of obstinate resistance, which, in its result, places in a strong light Edward’s patient forbearance and his clemency: and yet, like many other actions of his life, it is perverted by some writers into a proof of his want of generosity.

The treaty made by Comyn and his coadjutors was the final submission of that which assumed to be the Scottish government. Peace was to be restored; and the castles and all the powers of government were in future to be Edward’s. It followed of necessity, that any one who chose, after this, to maintain war against the king, took the position of a rebel. This has been an admitted law, in all nations, and in all times. We can easily call to mind the period, when it was suspected that Soult had fought the battle of Toulouse after receiving the intelligence of Napoleon’s abdication; and when it was generally felt, that if such were really the case, death would be his fate, or, at least, his desert. And, unquestionably, after Napoleon’s departure, and the establishment of Louis XVIII., any one of Napoleon’s commanders who had chosen to hold a fortress against the king, would have found the punishment of a rebel awaiting him.

But in Scotland, although the late regent and his coadjutors had agreed to deliver up the castles to the king, there was one commander who resolutely refused so to surrender his charge.

The castle of Stirling, during one of Edward’s absences in England, had been invested by the Scottish forces, and starved into a surrender. The regents had garrisoned it with three hundred men, and had placed it under the command of Sir William Oliphant.

By the treaty recently made, this castle became Edward’s, and any man holding it against him was as justly liable to suffer the death of a rebel, as if he had held against the king the Tower of London. In fact, all men who continued a fruitless resistance, had been formally declared outlaws in a Scottish parliament held at St. Andrew’s.[123]

Yet Oliphant refused to submit. He at first tried the device of asking for time to send to Sir John Soulis, one of the late regents, who had fled to France. But the castle was not Soulis’s, nor had Oliphant received the charge of it from Soulis in his private capacity, but as one of the regents; and the regents and all the lords of Scotland had now abandoned their resistance. This transparent device, therefore, could not deceive Edward, who indignantly exclaimed, “Am I to wait for his pleasure? No; if you will not surrender the castle, defend it if you will, and abide the consequences.”