The work of the meeting finished, the king fed his councillors and plied them with wine. Nor did he stint himself with food or drink. As night drew on, the king’s thoughts turned from matters of state to the attractions of his young wife, Yolande, daughter of the count of Dreux, whom he had married in October of the previous year. Alexander was then forty-four years of age and in robust health. He resolved that he would no longer be separated from his French wife. Yolande was at Kinghorn, a distance from Edinburgh of some twenty-two miles. Alexander was not deterred by the thought of a difficult journey made worse, not to say dangerous, by the darkness and the truly appalling weather. Perhaps the wine had affected his judgement. He referred with a joke to the universal despair which the year had engendered in his subjects. Dismissing the concerns voiced by the more timorous and superstitious among his councillors, he set out from Edinburgh that very evening for Kinghorn. Both at the ferry crossing at Dalmeny and, again, once over the Firth of Forth, he chose to disregard the urgent pleas of loyal servants and pressed on. With three esquires as companions and two local men acquired as guides, he rode impatiently along the coast road towards Kinghorn. Neither man nor nature could restrain him. The king had surely by this time forgotten what the humblest of his subjects could have told him: that this was the Day of Judgement. And so it was to be, not only for Alexander but for the country over which he ruled. The disaster which so many had foretold now came about. In the darkness Alexander disappeared from the sight of his companions. The king who had so rashly ignored all the omens and scorned the elements fell to his death from the cliffs. We can imagine the consternation of those who had ridden with him, but nothing could be done that night. His body was found the next morning, his neck broken, on the shore of the Forth.3 His subjects mourned his death and feared for the future. The words attributed by Fordun to Walter Comyn, earl of Menteith, in 1249, when Alexander succeeded to the throne, would now appear prophetic. For him, ‘a country without a king was, beyond doubt, like a ship amid the waves of the sea, without rower or steersman’.4
Thus perished Alexander III, king of Scots since the age of eight.5 With him passed what in retrospect would be considered an age of peace, prosperity and stability. One commentator at least found that the dead king had shared similar characteristics to his father. Where the father had been ‘compassionate to the unfortunate, generous to those in need, lenient to the just, but strict towards the arrogant, alarming to malefactors and merciful towards the defeated’,6 the son is described as ‘gifted in wisdom, famed for his moderation, unshakeable in his inner strength … unwavering in the severity of his justice … and fair in all things’.7 Both men had not hesitated to make an example of those who broke their peace. Where Alexander II mutilated the murderers of Bishop Adam of Caithness, his successor ‘repressed the madness of rebels … with a rope round their necks and ready to be hanged’.8 Whether or not we accept such reports, Alexander III was successful. Under him the nobles, many of them fractious, self-seeking and temperamentally violent, had become quiet, although, as became evident after his death, still alert to opportunity or perceived insult.9 The country had been rendered safe from external pressures. The threat from Norway receded after the confrontation at Largs in October 1263 and the death in the Orkneys of the redoubtable Hakon IV.10 Though neither a grand encounter nor the victory for Scottish arms that Fordun would later suggest,11 Largs is note-worthy as the last battle on Scottish soil before the military disasters of 1296. The Norwegians, mourning the loss in December of their heroic king, were not long in seeking an accommodation with the Scots.12 Despite an initial rebuff, the Norwegians persevered and the Treaty of Perth in 1266 gave Alexander possession of the Western Isles in return for an initial payment and an annual rent.13 The marriage of his daughter, Margaret, to Hakon’s successor, Eric II, in 1281, and the birth of their child, another Margaret, drew the former enemies closer together. Queen Margaret’s influence on her Norwegian husband was reported to be a good one; she ‘bore herself so graciously toward the king and people that she changed [sic] manners for the better; taught him the idiom of France, and of England; and raised him to a more honourable level in regard to food and clothes’.14 Their union was a brief one, but after her death in 1283, he took as his second wife another Scot, Isabella Bruce, sister to the future Robert I. Eric’s interest in Scotland was not to be limited to marriage; like another Bruce, Robert, lord of Annandale, he would become a competitor for the throne left vacant by the death of his daughter, Margaret.
At the same time, England was seen neither as a problem nor as the enemy it had once been. Here, again, in this happy state of affairs, marriage played a part. With Edward I, brother of his first wife, Margaret, Alexander enjoyed an agreeable relationship. Even after Margaret’s death in 1275, cordial relations between the two royal houses were maintained. Ownership of the northern counties had ceased to be an issue likely to lead to conflict. The borderline between the two countries had been settled in the reign of Alexander’s father by the Treaty of York.15 The question of English suzerainty over Scotland, like the borderline so long a cause of friction, lay dormant if not forgotten by the English king. To the royal connection could be added the factor of Anglo-Scottish landholdings among the magnates. The Bruces and Balliols for example owned land on both sides of the border. The English Umfraville family had gained the earldom of Angus through marriage in 1243. The Quincys, first noted in Northamptonshire, later had substantial territory in Scotland, including part of Galloway. Some Scots had a close relationship with the English king. Robert Bruce, lord of Annandale and grandfather of Robert I, had fought on the royalist side against Simon de Montfort in the 1260s and was with Edward’s brother, Edmund, on the crusade of 1270. The lord of Annandale’s son, Robert, likewise participated in the crusade, although not apparently in the elder Robert’s company. More closely associated with Edward in this venture, and previously against Simon de Montfort, was Alexander Balliol, brother of John, later king of Scots.16 These, and many others, helped to maintain the friendly relationship between Scotland and England which distinguished the reign of Alexander III.
Distance did not isolate Scotland from the rest of Europe. Where once the infiltration of Anglo-Norman families into Scotland under David I and Malcolm IV had ensured continued contact with the Continent, so, in the time of Alexander III, did trade, especially with those countries which lay on the North Sea.17 Scotland in 1286 could therefore look to the future with confidence. It was, it has been written, ‘a country which was being gradually welded together, a country under law and order, with a strong government ably served by an efficient local administration’.18
The belief that the death of Alexander III on the night of 18–19 March 1286 marked the end of an era, that it occurred on what might truthfully be called a Day of Judgement, had not faded in the fifteenth century. It found expression in the words of Andrew Wyntoun:
Quhen Alysandyr our King was dede
That Scotland led in lure and le
Awaye was sons of ale and brede
Of wyne and wax, of gamyn and gle
Our gold was changed into lede
Chryst born into vyrgynte
Succour Scotland and remede
That stad is in perplexite.19
The transformation of Scotland after Alexander’s death was not by any means, however, as abrupt or as complete as the plaintive, familiar words of Andrew Wyntoun might lead us to believe. The country survived, despite the opportunity Alexander’s death offered, in the first instance, to the forces of disorder and disintegration already present within its borders and, in the second, to an astute and patient monarch in the kingdom to the south.
It is a measure of the basic achievement of Alexander’s reign that the survival of Scotland was possible at all, for he had failed in one of the primary tests of a ruler’s value. Alexander had not provided Scotland with a legitimate male heir capable of outliving him. He had twice married. Through his first marriage, in 1251 at the age of t
en, to Margaret, daughter of Henry III of England, herself a year older, he had three children. The younger son, David, died in 1281 at the age of eight. The other son, named for his father, died in January 1284, a little past his twentieth birthday. The daughter, Margaret, who had become the wife of Eric II of Norway, died in 1283, at or soon after the birth of her daughter, also called Margaret. For ten years after the death of his wife, Alexander remained a widower, if not celibate.20 Whether he married Yolande of Dreux from love or through the need to produce an heir we do not know. Time, in any case, was not given him.
There was, however, an heir to the throne of Scotland in 1286. This was Margaret of Norway, Alexander’s granddaughter. The king had acted quickly – it might be said, ruthlessly, given the circumstances in which he found himself – upon the death of his son and heir in January 1284. Whatever grief he must have felt at the loss of the third and last surviving child of his marriage to Margaret of England, Alexander had not neglected the duty forced upon him to guarantee the succession. At Scone, therefore, in the month after the death of his namesake, Margaret of Norway, it was stipulated, would be ‘our lady and rightful heir of our said lord the King of Scotland, of all the kingdom …’21 By this tailzie, Alexander had rendered an exceptional service to his people. Alexander caused his subjects, solemnly and in due form, to recognise his granddaughter as his heir, failing other children born to him.22 If in March 1286, at the time of her grandfather’s death, Margaret of Norway was no more than three years old, in poor health, and a stranger to her new subjects, her claim to the throne was nevertheless upheld. An oath of loyalty to her was sworn and an undertaking given that her inheritance should be protected and kept in peace for her.23
That Margaret’s claim to the throne was upheld indicates the general determination within Scotland that continuity should be paramount. The funeral of Alexander III and the subsequent gathering of the foremost in the land at Scone towards the end of April permitted discussion of policy for the period up to the coronation of the young queen, whenever that should be. The government of Scotland was therefore placed in the hands of six men, chosen by common consent as being representative of the nation as a whole.24 They were termed ‘custodes’, which today is customarily rendered as ‘guardians’ rather than ‘wardens’. In one account of the events of 1286,25 they are referred specifically as ‘custodes pacis’ or ‘guardians of the peace’, a more accurate description, at the beginning, of their primary and overriding function.
The peace of the kingdom was, indeed, soon under strain. Alexander III had hoped to ensure an undisturbed transfer of power by the oath of 1284, and that of 1286 had the same purpose. While there is no reason to doubt that those who gave their word on those occasions did so in sincerity, not all of them showed themselves capable of keeping it in the event. The centre of trouble was the southwest, inevitably, because of the relationship there of the Bruce and Balliol families. In what would today be called ‘a pre-emptive strike’, Robert Bruce the Competitor, lord of Annandale, and his son, Robert, earl of Carrick, seized the royal castles of Dumfries and Wigton as well as Buittle, which belonged to Balliol.26 Further, at Turnberry, on 20 September 1286, the Bruces, father and son, joined with Angus Macdonald, lord of the Isles, the earl of March, the earl of Menteith, James the Stewart, himself one of the Guardians, and other interested parties, in a pact, the meaning of which has been the source of much discussion.27 Whatever the precise intention of the agreement or ‘Band’ of Turnberry, it and the disturbances which accompanied it, foreshadowed the more crucial readiness of the magnates to act as their interests dictated.28 The strife in the south-west faded as quickly as it had appeared without further complications. The action of the Bruces was a warning, a rehearsal, of the inevitability of another Day of Judgement for Scotland.
The concept of the Guardianship stood the test of the troubles in the south-west, as did the authority of the six men who held the office during the crisis. It was to this office that William Wallace would later succeed on his own merits, and if we consider the names and titles of the first six Guardians, appointed after the death of Alexander III, we may begin to understand something of his achievement. Two bishops, William Fraser of St Andrews and Robert Wishart of Glasgow, were named. With them served two of the earls of Scotland, Duncan of Fife and Alexander Comyn of Buchan, and two men drawn from the ranks of the barons, John Comyn of Badenoch and James the Stewart. Such men, unlike William, belonged to the class which was accustomed to playing a part in the governing of Scotland. The choice of the six reflected both the realism of the nation and its politics. In essence, the groupings within the Guardians balanced the forces most capable of defending Scotland but, conversely, most likely, if unrestrained, to destroy it. Bruce and Balliol were the two most powerful families in the country; each family had its supporters among the Guardians. Of the bishops, Fraser favoured Balliol, Wishart Bruce. If the Comyns held to the former, James the Stewart, as the Band of Turnberry showed, leaned towards Bruce. Nor was experience neglected. The bishops were well versed, by the nature of their profession, in administration, as was the Stewart. The Comyns for their part were not inferior in this regard: they had served in the minority of Alexander III. If Duncan of Fife was but a stripling by comparison, he was the senior earl of Scotland and therefore, for that if no other reason, not to be despised. The six carried on the government of Scotland for three hazardous years;29 their success in that period tells us as much of their ability and their dedication to the task given them in 1286 as of the wisdom of them who chose them. It also tells us much of the true greatness of William Wallace that, in circumstances at least as difficult for Scotland, he was able to assume the office of Guardian with such unchallenged authority. If the choice of the six in 1286 reflects the need for a corporate management, that of William twelve years later indicates how far the situation had changed and the stature of the unique individual who, alone, was judged fit for the office.
At this remove it is tempting to see the ultimate frustration of the work of the ‘Guardians of the peace’ as inevitable; peace, that is, which was impossible to keep. There was, after all, a villain to hand, ready in the wings, awaiting the opportunity to intervene. There was a kingdom beset by problems, lacking the guiding hand of a mature ruler, with a native aristocracy willing to betray the country for their own ends. There was a potential for civil disturbance, fostered by events or interested parties. But if all that appears to constitute a recipe for disaster, that disaster – war with England – did not come until a decade after the death of Alexander III. And when war with England came, Scotland was united against Edward I, however fragile that unity was to be. If Edward I had, as Scottish tradition certainly tells it, been intent from the beginning on bringing Scotland under his control, he was restrained by a subtle patience and the demands of his involvement in continental affairs from acting at once. If he was relying on the Scottish capacity for self-destruction to ease the accomplishment of a plan for the seizure of Scotland, he was disappointed, for it took the war itself to cause that self-destruction to assume the necessary and desired proportions. The Scots were not yet ready at the death of Alexander III to hand their country over to war and to Edward I. Thus when at Scone in April 1286 they gathered in parliament, they decided to send a delegation to Gascony to seek out Edward, the intention being to inform him of the dispositions made for the government of Scotland in the absence of Margaret of Norway and to ask for his approval. It was not the intention of the Scots to invite his intervention in the affairs of their country. Nor when the delegation, composed of Sir Geoffrey de Mowbray, the bishop of Brechin, and the abbot of Jedburgh, finally came upon the English king at the town of Saintes in the modern department of Charente, in September, did he attempt to suggest any such intervention. He allowed the delegation to return to Scotland, happy in the optimistic belief that he was sympathetic to the work of the Guardians and the continued independence of Scotland.
When exactly Edward I determined upon th
e subjugation to his will of the Scots is a matter for speculation. While Alexander III lived, Edward appeared content with the vague definition of the relationship between the two kingdoms which had obtained for so long. The death of Alexander, as we have seen, did not result in immediate action on the part of the English king. How long he would have waited before taking some form of initiative, political or military, it is impossible to say. With his commitments in Wales and France, he needed to be certain that his northern frontier was secure. Alexander’s death and the minority of Margaret of Norway threatened that security. Even then, Edward, who came back to England from France in the late summer of 1289, made no hostile move against Scotland. His proposal of marriage between his son, Edward of Carnarvon, and Margaret of Norway was, if not disinterested, statesmanlike;30 it would have postponed, if it could not prevent, the collision with the Scots. The Guardians for their part saw the virtue in the proposed union, which was agreed in the Treaty of Birgham in 1290, although they were wary enough to sense a possible trap.31 Edward, his patience, which Wallace was so sorely to test, still intact, confirmed the treaty at Northampton on 28 August. If he accepted that Scotland was to remain free and independent,32 he had not failed, with his usual attention to detail, to restate in the course of the negotiations his view of his own role in the affairs of the northern kingdom.
At least one writer traces the increased likelihood of war between England and Scotland to the aftermath of the Treaty of Birgham.33 It was, in his opinion, ‘from that point onwards that the pressure was on the Scots, gentle at first but persistent’. It is natural, if fruitless, to offer a date as a suitable starting-point for the decline into war. This is especially understandable if based on the theory that Edward was himself planning to subjugate Scotland, by force if necessary, as early as Birgham. We may be nearer the truth if we consider the part played in that decline into war by unforeseen circumstances. The death of Alexander III, and more importantly perhaps, that of Margaret of Norway in September 1290, were events over which neither Edward nor the Guardians had any control. Each offered Edward an excuse for military intervention; he took neither. But each event made the involvement of Edward in Scotland likelier;34 the Scots themselves would be forced to call upon him if the alternative was civil war. Once invited, Edward would know well how to profit from a situation which he welcomed, even if he had not himself created it. To say that is not to exonerate him from responsibility or blame for the tragedy of the war which began in 1296. He lived long enough to see the failure of the policy over which he had laboured before 1296 and, perhaps, to understand that he would leave behind him a legacy of bitterness and hatred greater than any which had previously affected relations between the two kingdoms.
William Wallace Page 4