A People's History of Scotland (3 page)

Initially feudalism was restricted to the royal heartlands of Lothian, but David I's successors extended these grants to Strathclyde, Angus, Perth and eventually Aberdeen and Moray at the expense of the older, Celtic nobility. Even so, by 1286 five earldoms were in the hands of newcomers but eight were in native hands, their lands now operated on the basis of a feudal relationship.

Some of these barons were appointed royal sheriffs, administering the king's law, collecting rents and maintaining order and the defence of the realm. The new royal army prevented the Norse-Celtic chief Somerled from taking control in 1164. It conquered Caithness from the Norse and defeated a Norwegian invasion at Largs in 1263. By the close of that century the kingdom of Scotland more or less corresponded to the country we know today, except for Orkney and Shetland, which remained under Norse control.

Galloway, Buchan and other areas had been brought under nominal royal control, and the new nobles such as the Bruces in Galloway, quickly asserted a degree of independence. In the north-west and the islands, royal control was weak and a Gaelic culture tied to Ireland held sway.

The new burghs were small in size. Edinburgh in the late
fourteenth century had just 400 homes, and as late as 1550, Stirling had a population of only 405 adult males. These were described by one chronicler around 1200 as ‘English', meaning this was the language spoken there.
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David I had also created a royal mint and began producing silver pennies around 1140.

One key reason for inviting Norman and Flemish knights to Scotland was to give the Scots kings heavy cavalry. The Canmore dynasty had been raiding and plundering the south, taking slaves and hostages, with their lightly armed forces that could move quickly. But by the late eleventh century the English kings began fortifying the border, building castles at Durham (1072), Newcastle (1080), Carlisle (1092) and, at the beginning of the next century, Norham on the Tweed.

In 1138, King David invaded England and reached Northallerton in Yorkshire, where an English army was waiting. The ‘Scottish' army was at odds; David's Norman and English advisers wanted to put the heavy cavalry and archers in the front line, facing like with like. The Galloway contingent, which lacked armour and carried merely spears and cowhide shields, protested, reportedly telling the king: ‘Why, O king, are you afraid and why do you fear those iron coats you see afar … we have conquered mail-clad men.'

A Scottish earl then piped up, stating: ‘O king, why do you agree to the wishes of foreigners when not one of them, with their armour, will be before me in battle today, although I am without armour.'

David finally agreed to put the Galwegians in the front line. They attacked the English force but were cut down by heavily armoured knights and archers. David's army then began to disintegrate.

Thirty-seven years later, David's grandson William the Lion invaded Northumberland again, hoping to annexe it with an army of knights and Flemish mercenaries, but was defeated and captured at Alnwick. When the news reached Galloway the population rose up and destroyed the castles that had been built to guard them, killing as many incomers as they could.

But what did such wars mean for the ordinary people? The vast majority were subsistence farmers, living on the verge of starvation and frequently plagued by famine and disease. Tiny numbers lived in the royal burghs, market centres established by the Crown, where the
writ of the nobility did not run and serfdom did not exist, but which were controlled by an elite of wealthy merchants, the burgesses or burghers, who were answerable to the king.

The Church was free to impose all sorts of irritating taxes for the upkeep of church buildings, for the cost of ceremonies and for simply saying mass on a Sunday. From the very start kings and nobles would vie to secure bishoprics and other lucrative positions for their sons, legitimate or not, because the Church was by now one of the biggest landlords and was no better than the nobility. Within the Church were those who opposed the lay power of the Pope, a king in central Italy in his own right, and the wealth and avarice of the Church, but it wasn't until the fourteenth century that the Church experienced a full-scale rebellion, with the Lollards in England, for instance.

The nobles maintained the myth of common kinship between themselves and their tenants because it strengthened feudal ties and also helped undercut any possible acts of revolt. One result of this was that formal, written tenantships were rare, with both sides relying on verbal agreements. Formal feudalisation was something that had to be introduced over time, because of opposition from a section of the old Scottish-Pictish nobility, as well as those in the Church who disliked Margaret's reforms, and ordinary people who clung to the remnants of the old clan system.

Though the period from Malcolm Canmore's accession to the death of Alexander III and the subsequent occupation by Edward I of England is often portrayed as some sort of golden age in Scottish history, it's worth spelling out the reality of feudal Scotland. The socialist historian Thomas Johnston wrote:

Famines and starvation ensued; none but the serfs would cultivate the land, and they only with whip over their heads … the process of slow robbery went on steadily and effectively. The barons were given full powers of jurisdiction over their domains … In their courts they tried every sort of case … They had the rights of
Fossa
and
Furca
, i.e. pit and gallows. By the latter they could gibbet any vassal: by the former they could immure in pit or dungeon, or, as they usually did with women, drown. Torture they specialised in.
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O
n a stormy night on 18 March 1286, King Alexander III fell off a cliff near Kinghorn in Fife and broke his neck. Earlier that evening he had left Edinburgh Castle, where he had been wining and dining with his cronies, to spend the night with his new wife across the Firth of Forth in Fife. The next day was her birthday. All three of his children by his first marriage had died, leaving no direct heir, and Alexander was keen to rectify that and had re-married. His courtiers and the ferryman who took him across the Forth advised him not to travel, but he ignored them. En route along the coastal path he lost his guides. The next morning he was found on the seashore. One of the earliest recorded Scottish poems, collected by Andrew of Wyntoun over a century later, described the event thus:

Alexander was a strong ruler but his death heralded the most tumultuous years in Scottish history. In the event, the nation's place in history was secured, but it was a close-run thing.

The final decade of the thirteenth century and the first three decades of the fourteenth were the years of Scotland's War of Independence against England, when resistance was kept alive by great leaders, above all William Wallace and Robert the Bruce. These men fought back against English occupation until freedom was finally won on the field of battle at Bannockburn in 1314.

The people united to rid themselves of the yoke of English oppression. At least that's the accepted view of the fight for independence. Today the National Memorial to Wallace overlooking Stirling Bridge, scene of his greatest battlefield victory, Bannockburn Heritage Centre with its statue of Bruce on horse holding his trusty axe, and the Borestone, supposedly his command post during the fight, have become places of pilgrimage.

But the story is not quite as simple as one of a nation united in common struggle against an oppressive occupier. In feudal Scotland the ruling class was comprised of the nobility and the Church hierarchy. The nobles held their lands from the king in return for providing military service. When the king was strong they generally held to that contract, but when the monarch was weak or an infant (as was often the case in Scotland, where kings could expect a short life) they did not, and looked to increase their land holdings by whatever means. The nineteenth-century Scottish historian Thomas Johnston described the Scottish nobility as ‘… a selfish, ferocious, famishing, unprincipled set of hyenas, from whom at no time, and in no way, has the country derived any benefit whatsoever'.
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The great families, like the Bruces and their rivals the Balliols and the Comyns, also owned lands in England for which they pledged loyalty to the English monarch; this situation undoubtedly complicated the picture still further.

The crisis of succession that followed Alexander III's death triggered a series of events that would lead to a war against English occupation, as well as a civil war between rival Scottish noble families. Their record in the fight against King Edward I of England,
Longshanks as he was nicknamed because of his height, and his son and successor Edward II was far from distinguished.

The only heir to Alexander was his granddaughter, the Maid of Norway, daughter of the king of Norway. However, the Maid died in the Orkneys en route to her new kingdom and the throne was laid claim to by a number of nobles, but the effective choice lay between two contenders, John Balliol and Robert Bruce (grandfather of the victor of Bannockburn). Both were from Norman families invited north in the twelfth century by King David I, with the Balliols granted land in Galloway and the Bruces in Annandale.

Fearing civil war, the Bishop of St Andrews invited Edward I of England to adjudicate on the matter. He was the dead king Alexander's brother-in-law and must have seemed a suitable choice to give judgement on this matter. Unfortunately, Edward I was one of the most capable and ruthless rulers of medieval England, and he planned to expand his realm by any means necessary. It was his good fortune that he was invited to judge who should succeed to the Scottish throne. One can only wonder what was expected of Longshanks when the invitation was issued; nevertheless, Bruce and Balliol agreed to abide by his decision as to which would be king.

Edward came north to Norham Castle on the English bank of the Tweed and summoned the Scottish nobility to meet with him. There he informed them that he now had sovereignty over Scotland and asked them to acknowledge this. When they did so, he then chose John Balliol as king. Balliol took the throne, but he had pledged his subservience to Edward, who subjected him to constant demands and instructions. Finally, in 1296, when he was told to send troops to assist in Edward's wars of conquest in France, he rebelled and withdrew his allegiance, seeking an alliance with France instead.

Edward hurried north in response, forded the Tweed and sacked the then Scottish town of Berwick, butchering the civilian population before advancing north to lay siege to Dunbar Castle. Balliol summoned the nobles to rally to him with their soldiers, but the Bruces and their supporters would not fight for him and joined with Edward. Balliol's army advanced on Dunbar, but Edward's, steeled in
long wars in France, routed it within minutes and captured many nobles who then had to pledge loyalty to him.

After the Battle of Dunbar, the Earl of Carrick approached Edward to ask if his son, Robert the Bruce, could now be king. Both had fought for Longshanks. His reply was scathing: ‘Have I nothing to do but conquer kingdoms for you?'
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Balliol fled north but eventually surrendered, was stripped publicly of all the robes and trappings of monarchy and dispatched into captivity in England. After that, every noble, landlord, senior clergyman and head of the religious houses was required to place his seal on a document acknowledging Edward as their liege lord. Some 1,900 did so, and it became known as the ‘Ragman's Roll'. With that in his baggage, Edward returned to his wars with France. As he left Scotland, Longshanks joked: ‘He does good business, who rids himself of shit.'
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The subsequent English occupation of Scotland was enforced by that section of the nobility who decided their fortunes would gain most by pledging loyalty to Edward of England. But the English occupation was hampered by ‘financial difficulties, shortage of supply, overextended lines of communication [and] local hostility'.
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Edward's focus was on conquering France – he claimed to be its rightful king – and the priority for his troops and funds was always there, not Scotland. That also meant the English authorities levied extra taxes and demanded conscripts for the English army in France, which created anger among the peasantry on whom the burden fell.

In May 1297, William Wallace of Elderslie, a minor noble, not even a knight, killed the English Sheriff of Lanark and began a rebellion in the name of John Balliol. Little is known about what drove Wallace into rebellion but we do know that the nobility were suspicious. Even two of the most steadfast opponents of the English occupation, Sir William Douglas and Bishop Wishart of Glasgow, were quick to assure the English general, Warenne, that they had no part in the rising.

We can guess that Wallace was able to gain support because he opposed the taxes and conscription imposed by the English but which were also often collected by the feudal overlord. The rebellion, however, could be seen to threaten the Scottish nobility. Wallace's
army was made up of the ordinary people, peasant farmers who faced paying more in tax or being forced to fight in Edward's army.
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To the north in the Black Isle, Andrew de Moray was also taking to the field.

Some idea of what Wallace's message comes from a poem attributed to John of Fordun, in which Wallace is portrayed as saying:

Meanwhile, the young Robert the Bruce, who until that moment had served Edward, James the Stewart, the High Steward of Scotland, and the Bishop of Glasgow also raised an army to resist Edward, but when it was confronted with an English force its noble leaders asked for terms rather than fight. The negotiations dragged on for a month, giving Wallace and Moray time to raise a stronger army.

By the late summer both men lay siege to the English garrison at Dundee. Learning that an army had been sent north to crush this rebellion, they guessed correctly that it would have to cross the River Forth at Stirling. On 11 September, Wallace and Moray gathered their men on the Abbey Craig, a hill overlooking a narrow bridge the English army had to cross, and at the foot of the hill on a causeway leading across marshy ground. The soft ground of the fields to either side were unsuitable for the English heavy cavalry, while a bit farther on the river looped around both sides of the battlefield.
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Wallace and Moray allowed enough of the English army to cross until they were crowded into a small area of dry ground and were thrown into confusion, unable to deploy their heavy cavalry. Then the Scots infantry attacked, downhill. They cut off the English access to the bridge and then butchered the trapped men. The English commander of the forces on the north side of the river was cornered, pulled from his horse and flayed alive.

The overall English commander, Warenne, ordered the bridge to be destroyed, sent reinforcements to Stirling Castle and then fled to Berwick. It was a stunning victory.
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Following this win Murray died of his wounds but Wallace was made Guardian of Scotland, charged with protecting the kingdom until John Balliol could return to resume royal rule. Wallace raided into northern England before winter forced him to retire northwards. Formally, Wallace had the support of the majority of the nobility, though not of Bruce and his supporters, and the Church leaders, but in reality they mistrusted him and his common supporters.

Edward I determined to avenge the defeat at Stirling Bridge and led his army north. In July 1298, Edward came across Wallace's army at Falkirk, where it was assembled in schiltrons: rings of spearmen protected by wooden stakes and with short-bow archers in support. However, the Scottish cavalry, made up of the nobility, quit the field before battle was joined, either as a result of treachery or as a refusal to fight such an enemy. The spear rings drove off the English cavalry but eventually Edward ordered his archers into action. They killed many Scots and broke the rings, which allowed the English cavalry to disperse the Scots. It was a bloody battle that ended in Wallace's defeat.
¹⁰

Deserted once more by the nobility, Wallace would go to Europe in the wake of his defeat to try unsuccessfully to enlist support from the king of France, before returning to wage guerrilla warfare, raising his troops from among the ordinary people. In March 1304, Edward ordered a parliament to be held at St Andrews, at which the assembled nobles and senior churchmen once again accepted Edward as their king.

Wallace was now on the run; he had been deserted by ‘all men who had property at stake'.
¹¹
He sought shelter at the home of Sir John of Monteith at Robroyston, now part of Glasgow. His host betrayed him and handed him over to Edward. Wallace was brought to London charged with treason, though as he rightly pointed out he had never given homage or pledged loyalty to Edward. He was made to construct a crown of laurel leaves, in mockery of his supposed ambition to be king of Scotland. At his trial the verdict was never in doubt. On 23 August 1305, Wallace was found guilty and carried off to the Tower of London from where he was dragged naked through the streets to Smithfield, his place of execution. He was hung, drawn and quartered, before he was finally beheaded. His head was put on display above London Bridge while his limbs were displayed in four
cities, Newcastle upon Tyne in England, and Berwick upon Tweed, Stirling and Perth in Scotland, as a warning to any who might consider opposing Edward.
¹²

The film
Braveheart
portrays the brutality of his execution and gives a good account of Wallace's life. Wallace was not a commoner but he was not a noble either; later he would have been described as a laird. He is the nearest to the ordinary people of Scotland we have come.

Never mind the fiction, the success of Mel Gibson's 1995 film, with the dying hero crying ‘freedom', created another legend that spoke to those fighting for liberation across the globe, and who probably could not point to Scotland on the map. But no matter, a legend was created and handed down to us. In the nineteenth century Wallace would be an inspiration to the Chartists, fighting for a radical form of democracy we are still denied today.

However, there is a gulf between the fiction and the fact. G. W. S. Barrow was probably nearer the truth when he wrote: ‘Wallace was a conservative, quite as much part of the life of feudal society and breathing its air as the English king against whose might he pitted his own limited strength. Surely, the real tragedy of Wallace lay in this, that he was thwarted by the very same structure of society which he accepted without question.'
¹³

In truth, war in Scotland was a distraction. The war with France was far more important to Edward and his successors. Ironically, however, having alienated many of the Scottish nobility, Edward was forced to rely on them to rule the land but found he had to return to impose order. Between 1300 and 1304, Edward waged a series of campaigns in Scotland. The two guardians of the kingdom were Robert the Bruce and John Comyn, a supporter of John Balliol. It was an unlikely alliance. Tensions between them led to Bruce's resignation and then his going over to Edward in early 1302.