by Morris, Marc
To many modern ears, this may sound like a ridiculous suggestion. The textbooks tell us that England and Scotland were enemies for much of their history, and we are inclined to believe that it was ever thus. ‘March straight back to England,’ says Mel Gibson’s William Wallace to his English opponents in Braveheart, ‘stopping at every home you pass by to beg forgiveness for a hundred years of theft, rape and murder’. But this is the biggest of the film’s many nonsenses. Not only had there been no armed conflict between the two kingdoms for eighty years before 1296; during those eighty years, and for many decades beforehand, the English and Scots had been getting on like a house on fire.
This was largely because, since the twelfth century, Scotland been busy approximating itself to England. The Scots, led by the example of their kings, had embraced social, economic and moral standards that were normal south of the Border. At the same time, Englishmen – merchants, labourers and monks – began emigrating to Scotland in their thousands, helping to found new towns, or to establish new religious communities which retained their links with England. Meanwhile Scottish aristocrats built castles (such as Caerlaverock, near Dumfries) after the English example, and intermarried with their English counterparts. And this was also true of their respective royal families. Edward I’s aunt, Joanna (d. 1238) had been married to Alexander II (d. 1249), and his sister, Margaret (d. 1275) had been the first wife of Alexander III. Nothing could have been more natural, therefore, than another Anglo-Scottish royal wedding in 1290. In March that year, the magnates of Scotland assembled on the Border at Birgham, and unanimously agreed that the match should go ahead.
The only difficulty lay in deciding how the new relationship would work in practice. The Scots wanted a powerful protector for their infant queen, and Edward I was certainly that. But they were concerned that he might prove too powerful, and might make demands that would compromise Scotland’s independence. Thus, during the spring of 1290, there was much discussion between the representatives of the two nations. On many points they were able to reach agreement, but when it came to control of Scotland’s royal castles, there was deadlock. Edward was determined that the right to appoint their keepers should belong to him alone, and the Scots were equally adamant in their refusal to accept his demand.
For a while, therefore, the projected marriage hung fire, and Edward proceeded with other momentous business. In April he took the remarkable step of safeguarding England’s future stability by fixing the English succession on his daughters, should he and his namesake son die without other heirs. At the end of the month, one of these daughters – Joan – became the first of the king’s children to marry, taking as her husband the earl of Gloucester. A few weeks later Edward caused the body of his father, Henry III, to be moved to a new tomb in Westminster Abbey, subsequently decorated with the magnificent gilded-bronze effigy that can still be seen today. Later, on 9 July, there was more ceremony in the abbey when another of the king’s daughters, Margaret, was married with great pomp to the duke of Brabant. Lastly, on 18 July, Edward committed one of the most notorious acts of his entire career when, in return for a generous grant of taxation, and to the universal delight of his other subjects, he ordered the expulsion of all the Jews from England. It would be more than three centuries before they were allowed to return.
At length, as the summer drew to a close, there was a breakthrough in negotiations with the Scots, though not because either side had abandoned their earlier contrary positions. What seems to have happened is that, around the end of August, Edward learned that the Maid had set sail from Norway and was en route to Scotland, and that this intelligence obliged him to settle. The crucial question of castles was fudged; the Scottish envoys contented themselves with the statement that their keepers would be appointed ‘on the common advice of the Scots and the English king’. In return they received a clear statement safeguarding their country’s independence. In the most resonant phrase of the agreement, Edward promised that Scotland would remain ‘free in itself, and without subjection, from the kingdom of England’.
With the third royal wedding that year seemingly just weeks away, Edward sent his own envoys into Scotland, bearing jewels with which to welcome the Maid on her arrival. At the same time, he prepared to finalize his crusading plans. By this stage he had received a final offer from the pope to which he was ready to commit, and a small parliament of magnates was summoned to meet in Sherwood Forest in October in order to witness its approval. In the meantime, Edward took himself into Derbyshire and the Peak District for a spot of hunting.
Then the wheel of fortune turned and the king’s plans collapsed. When he arrived in Sherwood in mid-October, it was to the news that the Maid of Norway was dead. Probably she had been inadvertently poisoned by eating decayed food during her voyage. A fortnight later and the next blow fell. Eleanor of Castile, who had contracted a lingering malarial fever on the Continent the previous year, suddenly became seriously ill. Despite desperate efforts to save her, the queen died at the end of November. Edward had her body carried from Lincoln to London in a slow, mournful procession – every stop would later be marked with an ornate monumental cross – and buried in Westminster Abbey on 17 December. The king then retreated into a religious house at Ashridge in Hertfordshire, to spend Christmas and New Year in the deepest sorrow.
Eleanor’s death was more devastating in personal terms, but it was the death of the Maid that altered the course of history. Had the girl lived, the union of the crowns would have taken place in the autumn of 1290, and England and Scotland could have been peaceably united for generations to come. Edward might well have gone on crusade for a second time (in spite of the bad news from the north, he did ratify the pope’s offer), with Scotsmen fighting by his side, as had been the case during his first expedition. Closer to home, too, there would have been ample scope for Anglo-Scottish co-operation. Together, the English and the Scots, led by a single monarchy and their intermarried aristocracies, might have directed their energies into subjugating the peoples who dwelt in the northern and western extremities of the British Isles – the ‘wild Scots’ of the Highlands and Islands, and the ‘wild Irish’ – resulting in a single kingdom that was precociously united.
But none of this was to be. The Maid’s death left the Scots unable to agree on who should wear their country’s crown, and the king of England was invited to come and arbitrate between the two most obvious candidates. But when Edward emerged from his mourning at Ashridge, it was to announce a disastrous Plan B, ‘to reduce the king and kingdom of Scots to his rule’. To the Scots’ dismay, he came north insisting that he was Scotland’s rightful overlord. By coercion and intimidation he persuaded the two principal claimants, plus a host of other less credible contenders, to admit his superiority. At length he found in favour of John Balliol, who was forced to perform an unambiguous act of homage, to annul the guarantees of independence that had been given in 1290, and to travel to Westminster whenever the king of England demanded.
In this way, Edward I turned the Scots, who had long been friends and allies of the English, into their most embittered enemies. When, in 1294, war unexpectedly broke out between England and France, Scotland for the first time allied itself to the latter. The trend towards convergence in the British Isles was thereby arrested and thrown into reverse. Edward spent the last ten years of his life hammering away at the Scots, devastating their country with fire and sword in an effort to persuade them to accept his authority. In so doing, he established the hostile relationship between the two countries that persisted for the rest of the Middle Ages and beyond, and which in some respects persists even in our own day. Scotsmen had once striven to make themselves more like their cousins south of the Border; in the years before 1290, many of them had been pleased to christen their sons ‘Edward’. They would not do so in the future. ‘As long as a hundred of us remain alive’, they famously wrote to the pope in 1320, ‘we will never on any conditions submit to the dominion of the English’. It was a change
of heart that had been caused by the death of a seven-year-old girl from Norway, and the terrible miscalculation of Edward I.
15. Lanercost Priory and Edward I
By the start of 1306, Edward I had lived longer, travelled further, and achieved more than any previous king of England. At sixty-six years old, he had visited not only every corner of Britain but also France, Belgium, Italy, Sicily, Spain, Sardinia, Cyprus, North Africa and the Holy Land. And, in the eyes of his contemporaries, he had performed the most praiseworthy deeds. He had fought against the infidels on crusade; he had, as one chronicler put it, ‘expelled the faithless multitude of Jews from England’, and he had – also to the great rejoicing of his English subjects – conquered Wales.
The great chain of castles that the king constructed to cement his victory over the Welsh are his most enduring architectural legacy. Caernarfon, Conwy, Harlech and Beaumaris, to name just the four most famous, are collectively recognized today as a World Heritage Site, and are a must-see for anyone even marginally interested in the medieval past. They are not, however, the focus of this present story, which is devoted to the last few months of Edward’s life, and a ruined monastic church in Cumbria, now in the care of English Heritage.
Lanercost Priory lies on the Anglo-Scottish Border, close to Hadrian’s Wall, which might seem a foolhardy place for anyone to have planted a religious community. Most people assume that during the Middle Ages England and Scotland existed in a state of perpetual hostility. But, in fact, for a century and more after Lanercost was founded in 1169, the two kingdoms had been getting on famously. English merchants and monks had emigrated to Scotland, helping to found new towns and monasteries; the aristocracies of the two realms had intermarried, and so too had their royal families: Edward I’s aunt, Joan, and his sister, Margaret, were both married to consecutive kings of Scots. The line of the Border on which Lanercost lies was fixed by treaty in 1237. Far from being a hostile frontier, this was a place where two cultures met and merged on peaceful terms and for mutual profit.
But all this changed in the 1280s, when a series of tragic deaths wiped out the Scottish royal family, leaving the Scottish throne with no obvious heir. Edward I was invited to help decide between the various claimants, but used the opportunity to browbeat the Scots into accepting him as their superior lord. Having found in favour of one candidate (John Balliol), he forced him to perform a humiliating act of homage, and repeatedly required him to appear in Westminster. Eventually the new Scottish king and his subjects decided that they would stand for no more, and sought to reclaim their lost independence. For the first time in over eighty years, the two countries went to war.
Naturally, this was bad news for those living at Lanercost. Within days of the war’s outbreak in 1296, the priory had been raided by the Scots – ‘dastardly thieves’, as the local chronicler described them – and the following year it was attacked again, this time by none other than William Wallace (‘that bloody man’, said the same chronicler). In general, however, this was a war in which the English had the best of the fighting. In 1304, after eight years of devastating English invasions, the Scots surrendered. The following year Wallace was captured and sent to London to be executed. Edward erected a new government in Scotland, to be overseen by an English governor. Scotland was declared to be a kingdom no longer, and was to have no new king.
Which brings us back to the start of 1306. Just when Edward thought his life’s work was complete, news came out of the north of a new Scottish rebellion, led by Robert Bruce, who resurrected his country’s claim to independence by having himself crowned king. Inevitably this meant the resumption of war, and within weeks a new English army was advancing into Scotland. But Edward I was not there to lead it. News of Bruce’s revolt coincided with (and thus possibly triggered) a sharp decline in his health. When the English king eventually set out northwards that summer, he had to be carried on a litter. His intended destination was Carlisle, but after three agonizing months he was forced to stop just twelve miles short of the city – at Lanercost Priory.
Religious houses were accustomed to receiving the kings of England from time to time as they toured their domains. Such stays, however, were always kept short, for the royal household was a monstrous and all-devouring beast. Edward arrived at Lanercost on 29 September 1306 with almost 200 people in tow – mostly grooms, cooks, carters, clerks and huntsmen – and that was just the core of his entourage. He would have been attended in addition by military men coming and going from the field, and also by the merchants, beggars and prostitutes that his household invariably drew in its wake. Lanercost had been once again been invaded by an army, albeit a friendly one.
But it was quite clear that, on this occasion, the army was going nowhere. Edward’s condition meant that he could not be moved, so his household proceeded to ensconce itself in the priory for the long haul. Soon teams of carpenters, plumbers and glaziers were arriving to build new chambers for the king, the queen and their manifold servants. Surviving household rolls reveal the considerable extent of the work. The priory precinct may appear peaceful and empty today; but in the winter of 1306 it must have resembled nothing less than a small town, crammed with new timber buildings and innumerable tents.
Edward’s household rolls also reveal something of his existence that winter. He travelled with vast quantities of gold and silver plate, including a pair of table knives with crystal handles. Food was obtained in huge quantities: scores of oxen and pigs, and cartloads of almonds, rice, sugar and bread. The other great expense was medicine: the king’s doctors ordered a cornucopia of spices, herbs and oils in their effort to prolong his life. Edward also had the benefit of the chests of holy relics with which he habitually travelled – a hoard that included a fragment of Christ’s cross appropriated from Wales, a piece of St Andrew’s cross taken from the Scots, as well as a saint’s tooth ‘effective against lightning and thunder’.
In the spring of 1307, Edward finally left Lanercost, but he never recovered his health. Soon after reaching Carlisle he fell sick again, and the rumour arose that he was already dead. In a grand gesture of defiance, the king gave up his litter, mounted his war-horse and led his army out of the city towards Scotland. Ten days later he died at Burgh by Sands on the Cumbrian coast, having advanced barely six miles.
Lanercost never recovered either. In 1292 its estates had been valued at a healthy £200 a year, but at the time of the Dissolution in 1536 that figure had shrunk to just £85. This decline in prosperity was due in part to the long centuries of hatred that Edward I had engendered by his attempt to conquer Scotland. But the decisive turning point in the priory’s fortunes had come in the winter of 1306–7, when for five months its resources had been decimated by the magnificent court of a dying English king.
Acknowledgements
The essays and articles in this collection were originally published in BBC History Magazine, History Today and Heritage Today (the magazine for members of English Heritage). The author would like to thank the editors and owners of these periodicals for their kind permission to reissue them here. Places of original publication are noted below.
1. Heritage Today, no. 89, March 2010.
2. Living History Magazine, vol. 1, April 2003.
3. BBC History Magazine, vol. 13, August 2012.
4. Heritage Today, no. 75, September 2006.
5. Heritage Today, no. 79, September 2007.
6. Heritage Today, no. 74, June 2006.
7. History Today, vol. 55, December 2005.
8. Heritage Today, no. 82, May 2008.
9. This article appears here for the first time.
10. History Today, vol. 58, March 2008.
11. BBC History Magazine, vol. 12, August 2011.
12. BBC History Magazine, vol. 10, March 2009.
13. History Today, vol. 59, April 2009.
14. BBC History Magazine, vol. 9, March 2008.
15. This article was written for Heritage Today but never published, and so appears here
for the first time.
If you enjoyed Kings and Castles you may like to read:
History Today and Tomorrow
Paul Lay
History, at its best, calls everything into question. It offers no comfort, no shelter and no respite, it is a discipline of endless revision and argument. It forces its students to confront the different, the strange, the exotic and the perverse and reveals in full the possibilities of human existence. It is unafraid of casting its cold eye on conflict, both physical and intellectual. And there is more history than ever. It is his story, her story, our story, their story, history from above and from below, richer, more diverse and increasingly global. It has no end, as the benighted Francis Fukuyama discovered when the permanent present ushered in by the fall of the Berlin Wall came crashing down on September 11th, 2001. History opposes hubris and warns of nemesis. It doesn’t value events by their outcome; the Whig interpretation of history expired long ago.
The discipline has undergone major shifts. It took the pioneering work of Peter Burke in the 1970s and 1980s to make cultural history acceptable, widening the remit of the academy considerably: now there are histories of fashion, of shopping, of the family, even of perfume and the Internet, yet the histories of high politics and military conflict are still evident and more skilfullt researched and written than ever. There are many more female historians: Amanda Vickery and Lucy Worsley reveal the intimate lives of men and women in Georgian England, Helen Castor illuminates the impediments to female rule in the Middle Ages and Juliet Gardiner paints vivid portraits of the home front.
There is a substantial audience for serious history. Programmes such as BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time and The History of the World in 100 Objects have captivated audiences worldwide. Historians outside the academy such as Simon Sebag Montefiore, Antony Beevor and AmandaForeman sell large numbers of critically acclaimed books to readers unafraid of challenging narratives. History Today continues to gain new subscribers and readers from around the world eager to explore history from every continent, encompassing all periods and genres. The reputation of British historians and the history departments in which they work alongside an international cast of excellence, remains high. History departments in universities elsewhere, from Turkey to China, now teach their students in English. The future of the study of the past appears bright. Nevertheless there are problems, imposed largely from without, which threaten the discipline’s well being. This personal account examines history’s current condition and points to its future.