Details of the lives of ordinary Scots in the medieval period are notoriously difficult to reconstruct. The fragmentary nature of the surviving records from the period presents a wide range of problems for our understanding of the day-today life of non-noble Scots and the roles they played in the key events that shaped the course of Scotland’s medieval history. Most narrative sources tend to celebrate the achievements of kings, earls and lords, largely ignoring the contributions of the Scottish commons in all but the most general sense.
One striking exception to this rule is The Bruce, a long narrative poem written in the 1370s by John Barbour, archdeacon of Aberdeen. The poet’s primary aim is to celebrate the chivalric adventures of the lordly heroes of the First War of Scottish Independence – chiefly King Robert I and ‘the Good’ Sir James Douglas, but also the king’s nephew Thomas Randolph, earl of Moray, the king’s brother Edward Bruce, earl of Carrick, and various other early-14th-century Scottish war leaders. However, Barbour repeatedly acknowledges the part that ordinary Scots played in the events he recounts. On occasion, he is even willing to ascribe some of the knightly characteristics shared by his noble heroes to non-noble Scots.
We can be sure that ordinary Scots actively participated in the early-14th-century warfare that Barbour seeks to celebrate. The only surviving ordinance detailing the raising of an army from Robert I’s reign was produced at a parliament at Scone in December 1318. The document describes the lowest-ranked soldiers as men with ‘the value of one cow in goods’ (valorem unius vacce in bonis). Such men were expected to serve with a ‘good lance’ (bonam lanceam) or a ‘good bow’ (bonum arcum) with 24 arrows, and were not apparently required to equip themselves with any armour at all.
Further clues to the mixture of noble
