Under the Hammer: Edward I and Scotland

By Fiona Watson

War truly begins when the invading army, conquest complete, goes home. It is the relationship between the native population and those remaining behind as part of the new administration which holds the key to our understanding of not only the mechanisms of conquest, but also the fundamental elements of government desired by societies. Nowhere is this more convincingly demonstrated than in the attempted annexation of Scotland by Edward I of England, already conqueror of Wales. The Scotland of Wallace and Bruce nearly succumbed, having wrestled with contradictory desires for independence, and for stability and united government, for nearly a decade. The fact that, ultimately, she did not give in illustrates that patriotism does indeed play a central role in discussions of war and conquest. Fiona Watson examines the process of conquest and attempted colonisation of one medieval kingdom by another, concentrating on that most vital aspect of conquest: the maintenance of garrisons. She shows how the kingdom of Scotland was able to marshal its resources and create a coherent and cohesive national front to deal with a more powerful enemy.Under the Hammer provides a much clearer picture of medieval Scotland - its varying component parts; its sense of self, its strengths and weakness. Much of this will surprise.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Mar 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9781907909191

Fiona Watson

Fiona Watson is a medieval historian and writer specialising in medieval warfare in particular, and Scottish History more generally. Among her many publications are Macbeth: A True Story (2010), A History of Scotland’s Landscapes (2018), Traitor, Outlaw, King. Part One. The Making of Robert Bruce, (2018) and Scotland’s History (2020). A former senior lecturer in History at the University of Stirling and presenter of the 2001 TV series, In Search of Scotland, she is now venturing into historical fiction to make the most of the limited evidence for medieval Scotland.

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Fiona Watson is a medieval historian and writer specialising in medieval warfare in particular, and Scottish history more generally. Among her many publications are Macbeth: A True Story (2010), A History of Scotland’s Landscapes (2018), Traitor, Outlaw, King. Part One. The Making of Robert Bruce (2018) and Scotland’s History (2020). A former senior lecturer in History at the University of Stirling and presenter of the 2001 TV series In Search of Scotland, she is now venturing into historical fiction to make the most of the limited evidence for medieval Scotland. Her novel Dark Hunter is published by Polygon in Summer 2022.

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This edition first published in 2022 by

Birlinn Ltd,

West Newington House

10 Newington Road

Edinburgh

www.birlinn.co.uk

First published in Great Britain in 1998 by Tuckwell Press

Subsequently published by John Donald in 2005

Copyright © Fiona Watson, 1998, 2022

ISBN 978 1 78885 493 1

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available on

request from the British Library

The right of Fiona Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patent Act 1988

Typeset by Hewer Text Ltd, Edinburgh

illustration

Printed and bound by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A.

To Mum and Dad

A small thank you for so very much

CONTENTS

Illustrations

Map

Tables

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

Dramatis Personae

INTRODUCTION: IN PRAISE OF FACT AND FICTION

1  THE LION AND THE LEOPARD

2  THE RESISTIBLE RISE OF EDWARDIAN GOVERNMENT

3  A KINGDOM DIVIDED

4  STALEMATE

5  TURNING THE SCREW

6  CHECKMATE

7  ‘EDWARD THE FAIR’? THE SETTLING OF SCOTLAND

8  LESSONS IN CONQUEST

Endnotes

Bibliography

Index

ILLUSTRATIONS

  1. Edward I

  2. John Balliol and Edward I

  3. Slaughter at Berwick

  4. Warrant of Edward I

  5. Remains of Berwick Castle

  6. Siege of Bothwell Castle

  7. Siege of Caerlaverock Castle

  8. Dumbarton Castle

  9. Dirleton Castle

10. Stirling Castle

11. Kildrummy Castle

12. Urquhart Castle

13. Inverlochy Castle

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TABLES

Table 1: Edinburgh, Roxburgh, Jedburgh and

Stirling garrisons, 1298–1303

Table 2: Linlithgow, Selkirk and

Peebles garrisons, 1301–1303

Table 3: Carstairs, Kirkintilloch, Strathgryfe and

Ayr garrisons, 1301–1303

Table 4: Berwick

Table 5: Purveyance 1300 – demand and supply

Table 6: Berwick store, 1300

Table 7: Carlisle store, 1300

Table 8a: Sheriffs in 1304

Table 8b: Sheriffs of the ordinances

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book is largely based on the research I did at Glasgow University many moons ago for my Ph.D., updated with further research (my own and others’) during the intervening decades. I was incredibly fortunate to have Archie Duncan as my Ph.D. supervisor. His iconoclastic approach to anything which lesser mortals might regard as cast in stone provided the ideal training for a young and far too biddable would-be historian. By treating my views with respect, but at the same time requiring always that such respect be earned through the use of firm evidence and a coherent argument, he essentially taught me to think. His great gift has been to inspire. I will always be profoundly grateful to him and deeply saddened by his death in 2017.

I have found my own generation of medieval historians to be most caring and supportive. My understanding of medieval history has been much improved by countless passionate discussions through the years, even if, having left academia now, they are much fewer than I might wish. I would still like to thank Steve Boardman, Dauvit Broun, Michael Brown, David Ditchburn, Theo van Heijnsbergen, Ally MacDonald, Richard Oram and Matthew Strickland for hours of endless disputation, even if increasing responsibilities, professional and personal, put that more in the past than the present. I would also like to acknowledge the influence of Norman MacDougall, who taught me as an undergraduate at St Andrews. His patience, good sense and canny intellect, combined with an unfailing enthusiasm for the later middle ages, has served as a quiet inspiration over the years. I am not sure what conclusion to draw from the fact that we are also Archie Duncan’s first and last research students respectively.

There are a number of others who have been hugely influential on my own views on medieval history generally and this book in particular – Michael Prestwich, who has provided much of the example behind the approach to this period in history, Sandy Grant and Ted Cowan. I also owe a huge debt to John and Val Tuckwell, who originally published this book, patiently, firmly, but always with an infectious sense of fun, teasing the manuscript out of me. Please forgive me if I have missed anyone out.

Finally, this book is dedicated to my mum and dad who have given me a lifetime of love and support. Since my dad is no longer with us, I hope it also stands as a small memorial to all that he was and the many things he was not permitted to be, thanks to the times in which he lived. He certainly always believed I could be anything I wanted to be.

ABBREVIATIONS

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

Unless otherwise stated, all military/administrative offices were held by the above as part of Edward’s government of Scotland.

I venture to say no war can be long carried

on against the will of the people

Edmund Burke

INTRODUCTION

IN PRAISE OF FACT AND FICTION

The death of rulers is traditionally accompanied by much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. Cynics might say that in many – most – cases, this should be interpreted as a display of political acumen in the face of changing political circumstances, or a rededication of adherence to the regime, rather than genuine emotion. The tears shed at the funeral of Alexander III of Scotland would no doubt have been similarly expedient had it not been for the dreadful shock of his untimely death and the knowledge that there was no male heir to succeed him. But Scotland’s leaders were more than capable of guiding the ship of state for as long as necessary until the next monarch was ready to take the helm. They’d done it before, and would no doubt have to do it again. But in only a decade, when Edward I of England invaded and conquered his northern neighbour, it became clear that 19 March 1286 had ushered in a period of great misfortune for Scotland and the writers of history soon began to feel a profound nostalgia for Alexander and his reign. The traumas of the wars with England bit deep into the Scottish psyche, casting sweetness and light on to what came before:

When Alexander our king was dead

That Scotland led in love and security

Departed was abundance of ale and bread

Of wine and wax, of games and glee.1

Indeed, succeeding events have provided Scottish history not only with a supposed thirteenth-century Golden Age, but also advanced the cause of the later medieval Scottish kings – at least in their own propaganda – by rendering them essential to the survival of the nation itself; ironically, much later politicians of a Whiggish persuasion turned to the same period for evidence of a popular sovereignty restraining the monarchy.2

War is the natural environment of propaganda, whether to confound the enemy or to bolster morale. Periods of conflict between nations provide particularly fertile ground for polarised, black-and-white versions of events as governments seek to justify opposing military positions. As time passes, and such conflicts enter both history and folklore, new political agendas are given a wider context and legitimacy by harking back to an already simplified past. This is as true for the present as it is for the middle ages. In this way the past, or at least the currently acceptable version of it, is transformed to meet the needs of the moment, and crystallises to become a cast-iron truth. The results often have little to do with the beliefs and aspirations of the protagonists in the original conflict.

Having said that, there is no need to deny the importance of the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries to the development of both a Scottish and an English national consciousness (albeit for slightly different reasons); nor does an acknowledgement of the role of propaganda and mythology in the creation of versions of the past undermine any general discussion of the prosecution of, or resistance to, a war of conquest. The history of the struggle between Edward I and the Scots is comparatively well-known at both an academic and a popular level. After all, the period produced two of Scotland’s greatest heroes – William Wallace and Robert Bruce – and eventually earned King Edward the soubriquet of ‘Hammer of the Scots’.3

However, the history of the middle ages, and of medieval Scotland in particular, remains stubbornly imprisoned in the popular mind as dark, dreary and violent, and, more importantly, as comparatively undocumented and therefore unknowable. Certainly, the fact that the history of this struggle must be constructed largely from English sources – mostly official government records and contemporary English chroniclers – has, understandably, given undue emphasis to Edward’s government of Scotland. This is all the more unfortunate given that much of Scotland was not under English control between 1297 and 1303. Nevertheless, historians have already done much to illuminate this first phase of the Anglo-Scottish wars. Such studies fall into two main categories: to shed as much light as possible on the activities of the Scots, or to analyse the English war machine, but particularly the army, as part of studies of Edward I’s government and military activity generally.4 In both cases, the milestones on the way have tended to be the military ‘highlights’ – battles and sieges. This is natural; after all, there were campaigns every year during the period from 1296 to 1304, with the exceptions of 1299 and 1302, and battles will probably always fire the imagination to greater effect than descriptions of administration.

However, these explosions of military activity form, at best, only half the story. Since the success of any conquest does not rely ultimately on victory in battle, but on the ability of the occupying regime to transform such victories into an effective and accepted administrative system, it is of paramount importance that Edward’s government of Scotland should be returned to centre stage. By shifting our attention on to the day-to-day activities of Edwardian officials, the process of conquest and attempted colonisation of one medieval kingdom by another can be brought more firmly into focus. Correspondingly – though still frustratingly inadequately – the means whereby the kingdom of Scotland was able to marshal its resources and create a coherent and cohesive national movement to deal with an enemy much more powerful than itself also become clearer.

I have taken the decision to end this book with Edward presiding over the final settlement of Scotland in September 1305, the point at which he surely believed he had succeeded in bringing his northernmost conquest under firm but fair control, rather than at his death two years later when it was clear that he had not. Within only a few months of that 1305 settlement, Robert Bruce killed John Comyn and seized the Scottish throne, precipitating the two nations back into conflict as well as starting a civil war within Scotland itself. But those hostilities continued, off and on, for another twenty-six years until the temporary respite brought about by the Anglo-Scottish peace treaty of 1328. It seemed wise, therefore, to focus on the period of warfare between 1296 and 1304, as well as the mopping-up period immediately thereafter, rather than opening a new can of worms that would have to be left largely unexamined.

As already mentioned, one of the most frustrating aspects of the study of this period of Anglo-Scottish warfare is the lack of surviving evidence from Scotland itself. This is particularly irritating when it comes to assessing the extent and effectiveness of the Scottish administration set up by Wallace and continued by a series of guardians after the latter’s fall from power. It is not truly possible to gauge exactly what the English administration in Scotland was up against, especially in terms of the military and fiscal organisation of the enemy. Equally, we have no way of knowing what overall policies and specific military stratagems the various Scottish leaders attempted to implement over these years. Actions and results will largely have to speak for themselves.

In any case, even the comparatively full English sources provide only a very narrow focus. We are thus very well informed about the response of Edward’s government and its various departments to the war, both at home and abroad; we also have the reactions of a number of monastic and other commentators to such activities at varying distances from them. However, we have few direct reactions from either the English or the Scots in general, though we know that its cost was disliked in England and that xenophobia rose up like a Hydra on both sides of the border within a short space of time.

But the problems posed by questions of evidence should not stop us trying to understand what happened by the criteria which contemporaries would themselves have applied both to their own actions and those of their political leaders, so far as we can uncover them. The kingdom of Scotland was certainly not isolated from the wider medieval world; indeed, the extent of its involvement – trade and diplomacy are only the most obvious elements – is one of the more striking features of this period. This was a complex society, which was neither monolithic at any one time, nor static.

Part of the historian’s job is to understand how versions of the past have come about in order to separate fact from fiction, while acknowledging the role of both. Fact is, of course, multi-faceted – there is no one version of events even as they are occurring. Fiction, ironically, has a closer relationship to ‘truth’ than history ever can: its creators do not have to cover all the options or point out the difficulties with the sources as the historian does.

Then there is the twilight zone between the two; works such as Barbour’s Bruce and Blind Harry’s Wallace, and even the 1995 film Braveheart, which, while based on a modicum of fact, are primarily a reflection of the events and agendas of their own times. It is only recently, indeed, that historians have realised the extent to which our understanding of the Anglo-Scottish wars is a product of the comprehensive propaganda campaign conducted by King Robert Bruce against not only his predecessor, John Balliol, but also his arch-enemies, the Comyns, leaders of the Scottish political community before 1306. Analysis of the war has also been coloured by the commonly held and disparaging view of Scotland’s medieval political system (still believed by some Scots), in contrast to that of England particularly. This has obscured the fact that that system was both sophisticated and appropriate to a kingdom that was not England; it has also made it more difficult to understand how resistance to Edward could have been so successful.

This whole spectrum of fact and fiction informs each generation’s perceptions of the past and each of us must choose what makes most sense. We cannot alter what happened, nor know ‘the truth’ of it, but we can certainly be aware of what has brought us to our conclusions.

At the same time, if we did not believe that events of many hundreds of years ago had some resonance for our own times, we would surely take little interest in them. While the inhabitants of the middle ages certainly did things differently, we can still identify with the basic human motivations common to all eras – the desire to protect one’s family, to live as normal a life as possible and, if we are honest, to strut on a wider stage from time to time than that allotted to us. It also seems to be human nature to subsequently portray decisions taken in accordance with these basic desires as noble and glorious, when – as we will see – they are more often mundane, contingent and myopic. That is perhaps the basic, symbiotic relationship between fact and fiction and, as Napoleon Bonaparte reputedly remarked: ‘What is history but a fable agreed upon?’

CHAPTER ONE

THE LION AND THE LEOPARD

Where stood Scotland at the end of the thirteenth century? That is the question we must ask, so that we might better understand not only why Edward I went to such lengths to add his northern neighbour to his portfolio of acquisitions, but how resistance to his conquest proved so successful (up to a point).

Then, as now, Scotland was a land of formidable contrasts, ancient seismic forces having created great mountain barriers, particularly between Highlands and Lowlands. Soils were often poor for growing crops, but there was good arable land in the south and east and the uplands can sustain sheep and cattle and all manner of wild beasts. There was coal, lead, silver and gold in the ground, as well as valuable commodities like timber and salt above it.