Robert the Bruce and the struggle for Scottish independence/Death of Robert de Brus. Review of his Work and Character
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| Sir Hugh de Mortimer, Earl of March. |
John, Earl of Warenne and Surry. |
CHAPTER XVI.
DEATH OF ROBERT DE BRUS, REVIEW OF HIS WORK AND CHARACTER.
A.D. 1329.
ROBERT DE BRUS had now accomplished his great work, and there was nothing in his age of two score and fourteen years to forbid the expectation of his living to confirm it before the kingdom should pass to his son. But the fates decreed otherwise. He was a physical wreck, and in the spring of 1329 Douglas, who was constantly in attendance at Cardross, began to despair of his restoration to health.
Not that the King was wholly bedridden or confined to the house. He continued to move about his kingdom, as occasion required, till within a few weeks of his death. He paid one more visit to Galloway, the scene of so many of his early adventures, resting at Glenluce on March 29, 1329.[1] Thence Douglas travelled with him to Cardross, and both were aware that, to use Froissart's words, "there was no way for him but death." The King spent the last weeks of his life in setting in order his private affairs and those of his kingdom and subjects. On May 11th he granted a protection to the Abbey of Melrose, forbidding all men, on pain of forfeiture, to injure the monks. On the same day he dictated what is known as his death-bed letter, addressed to Prince David Earl of Carrick, and his successors; and here again special injunction was made for the protection of Melrose Abbey and the completion of the new church, "in which," said the King, "I have directed that my heart shall be buried."
Barbour and Froissart both give a narrative of the death-bed scene, and, though differing in some details, these two authorities agree in the main. Of the two one naturally inclines to credit the prose writer with greater accuracy, as being free from the exigencies of rhyme and metre. The chief difference between them lies in the account of how Douglas came to be charged with his famous mission. Barbour says that the King having sent for his chief baron to his death-bed told them how, remembering that there had been much innocent blood shed in his cause, he had resolved, when fortune favoured him, to make an expedition against the Saracens—the foes of God. But seeing that his strength had failed—
"Sa that the body may na wis
Fulfill that the hart can devis,"
he now desired them to choose one of their number to carry his heart to the Holy Land.
"Quhen saul and cors disseverit ar."
Froissart, however, makes the King himself name "the gentle knight Sir James of Douglas" as the one to carry out his will; and, little as one may rely on the letter of historical speeches, no doubt the French historian gives pretty accurately the sense of what the dying monarch said. There were so many experienced witnesses present that the substance must have been accurately reported.
"Then," says Froissart, "calling to his side the gentle knight Sir James of Douglas, he thus addressed him before all the lords:
"'Sir James, my dear friend, you know well that I have had much ado in my days to uphold and sustain the right of this realm, and, when I had most difficulty, I made a solemn vow, which as yet I have not accomplished, for which I am right sorry. That vow was, that if it was granted to me to achieve and make an end of all my wars, and so bring this realm to peace, I would go forth and war with the enemies of Christ, the adversaries of our holy Christian faith. To this purpose my heart has ever intended. But our Lord would not consent thereto: for I have had so much to do in my life, and now, in my last enterprise, I have been smitten with such sickness that I cannot escape. Seeing, therefore, that my body cannot go to achieve what my heart desires, I will send my heart instead of my body, to accomplish my vow. And because I know not in all my realm a knight more valiant than you, or better able to accomplish my vow in my stead, therefore I require you, my own dear special friend, for your love to me, and to acquit my soul against my Lord God, that you undertake this journey. I confide so thoroughly in your nobleness and truth, that I doubt not what you take in hand you will achieve: and if my desires be carried out as I shall explain to you, I shall depart in peace and quiet.
"'I wish as soon as I be dead that my heart be taken out of my body and embalmed, and that, taking as much of my treasure as you think necessary for yourself and the company suitable to your rank which shall go with you on the enterprise, you convey my heart to the holy sepulchre where our Lord lay, and present it there, seeing my body cannot go thither. And wherever you come, let it be known that you carry with you the heart of King Robert of Scotland, at his own instance and desire, to be presented at the holy sepulchre.'"
Sir James at once pledged himself to the task, by the faith he owed to God and to the order of true knighthood. "Then I thank you," said the King, "for now I shall die in greater ease of mind, seeing I know that the most worthy and sufficient knight in my realm shall achieve for me that which I could not myself perform."
King Robert expired on June 7, 1329, aged fifty-four years and eleven months.
His heart was taken from his body, embalmed, placed in a silver casket, and given in charge of the Lord of Douglas. This was a breach of the rules of the Church, for in 1299, Pope Boniface VIII. had issued the Bull Detestando feritatis abusum, forbidding the mutilation of the dead, even from pious motives, decreeing to excommunication those who should do such things, and prohibiting ecclesiastical burial to any corpse so treated. But, as it is doubtful whether Douglas and all others concerned in this transaction had ever been formally absolved from the excommunication under which they had lain for so many years, probably it did not disquiet them unduly that they should incur fresh disgrace. Nevertheless, two years later, in August, 1331, Pope John, on the instance of the Earl of Moray, granted absolution to all who had taken part "in the inhuman and cruel treatment" of the body of King Robert.
The body itself was embalmed and taken to Dunfermline, where that of the Queen had gone before. Through the dry records of the chamberlain's accounts the sorrowful procession may be traced, winding its way past the foot of Loch Lomond to Dunipace, thence to Cambuskenneth, and so to the last resting place of the King of Scots. It seems that the King had, about a year before his death, ordered a marble monument to be made in Paris. The sum of £12, 10s. was paid for its carriage, through Bruges and England to Dunfermline, and the mason who set it up over the tomb received £38, 2s. An iron railing was put round the monument at a cost of £21, 8s. 2d. in addition to the gift of a robe worth 20s. to Robert of Lessuden, charged with the work. John of Linlithgow was commissioned to paint the iron work, and 1100 books of gold leaf, bought at York, were used in its decoration. A temporary chapel of Baltic timber was set up over the grave on the day of the funeral, and large sums were disbursed in vestments for the ecclesiastics and mourning for the Court. It may seem rather trivial to dwell on these details, but, in the absence of information of greater moment, every circumstance which reveals the means taken by the Scottish people to do honourable obsequies to their departed hero, acquires an interest which it would not otherwise possess.
It might have been expected that the Scottish nation, which owes its very existence to the strong will and ready arm of Robert the Bruce, would have guarded his tomb with sleepless vigilance, so long as marble and mortar would cling together and that in all the coming virulence of faction and bitterness of ecclesiastical strife, this spot of ground would never have been violated—this memorial of the Great King would have been proudly preserved.
Even had there been found a Scotsman so alien from the spirit of his race as to hold the memory of Robert the Bruce as a common thing, unworthy of honour, surely there were noble ashes enough besides in that abbey ground to make it forever sacred. For, so soon as the different peoples inhabiting Scotland had united to form one nation under one monarch, Dunfermline succeeded Iona as the sepulchre of the Scottish kings. Here were laid Malcolm Canmore, his Queen Margaret, and their sons Edward, Edmund, and Ethelbert; Alexander I. and Queen Sibylla; David I. and his two consorts; Alexander III., his Queen Margaret, and their sons David and Alexander. Hither also, in the days that followed the reign of Robert the Bruce, had been carried almost all that Scotland had to cherish of wise and great and good among her rulers: surely her sons would hold the place sacred for all time.
Not so.
On March 28, 1560, the choir, transepts, and belfry, as well as the monastery of Dunfermline, were razed by the Reformers, and the nave was refitted four years later to serve as a parish church. Ruin—ruthless, senseless ruin—fell upon the monument of Scotland's greatest ruler, just as at that time it fell upon countless other relics of irreparable value. So that it came to pass when, in 1821 foundations were being cleared for a new church, 
DUNFERMLINE ABBEY FROM THE NORTH-EAST.
(From a photograph by Valentine Bros., Dundee.)
no man could point with certainty to the place where Robert the Bruce had been laid. A grave was found, it is true, near where the high altar of the abbey church once stood, and in the grave the bones of a man, one of which, the breast bone, had been sawn asunder, as one should do who had to remove the heart of a man. Fragments of fine linen, with a gold thread running through it, lay round the remains, and all about lay shattered morsels of black and white marble, carved and gilt, probably the remains of the Paris sculptor's handiwork. A skull lay with the other bones, but who can say for certain that it was the same that the great Plautagenet had desired so eagerly to see fixed to London Bridge, a desire, which, had he lived a few years longer, it is only too likely would have been gratified. All that can be said is that it is possible and not improbable that these remains are those of Scotland's greatest king.
But if his people have suffered the Bruce's mortal parts to be lost, how dearly they keep his memory. So dearly, that there is no exploit so heroic, hardly any miracle so incredible, as not to have attached itself to his story; so that the chief difficulty in writing it has not been found so much in collecting facts, as in refusing credence to fictions which have gathered round his name.
There is much that even the most devoted Scotsman could wish to see wiped out from the earlier pages of the record. His Norman lineage, his hereditary homage to the English King, disgust with the feeble administration of John of Balliol, might palliate—they might even go far to excuse—Bruce's indifference to Wallace's enterprise. It might be pardoned to him that, having once embarked in treasonable designs against his King, he repented and renewed his oath of fealty. Less can be said in defence of the sorry surrender of Irvine, when, at the first glitter of English spears, the confederacy fell asunder, and Wallace was left to go forward alone. But even here there may—there must—have been circumstances beyond our understanding. Between de Brus, the Norman knight, and Wallace, the outlawed Scottish brigand, there need have been little harmony of habit and feeling—so little as to make co-operation between them impracticable. De Brus may have realised that to persevere at that time without hearty alliance with William Douglas and the other barons who had joined him, would have been simply to march the shortest way to the scaffold. Therefore even in the capitulation of Irvine he may be leniently judged.
But the darkest part was to come.
Renewing his fealty to Edward and ratifying it by the most solemn adjurations known to a Christian, what can be said in defence of Bruce's repeated presence in Edward's Parliament and Council, about the time when Wallace was hurried to death? He was an English subject, it is true, and, as such, bound to regard Wallace, his former comrade, as a rebel, and to serve King Edward faithfully in all things. But if that is held to justify his indifference to Wallace's fate he was involved in the greater dishonour by the secret treaty then existing between him and 
DUNFERMLINE ABBEY, NAVE, LOOKING EAST.
(From a photograph by Valentine Bros., Dundee.)
William de Lamberton. Of treachery to King, to comrade, or to both, Robert de Brus can scarcely be acquitted.
Of the more violent crime in Greyfriars Church there is less occasion to speak. It was a brutal, bloody murder, aggravated, as there is too much reason to suspect, by its being committed under trust. The blackest part of it, according to the creed of that time, was that it was committed in a church, thereby making the murderer guilty of sacrilege. In the middle ages that was considered the central feature in the tragedy: to modern minds it appears a comparatively trifling detail. We have come to look on murder as equally heinous whether it be committed in the green-wood, in the streets, or in a place of worship. Men's judgment on the assassination of John Comyn is the same now, though on different grounds, as was King Edward's nearly six hundred years ago—namely, that a worse deed could not have been done.
But whatever may have been his guilt or shortcoming as a man—as a King, Bruce never gave his subjects cause to blush for him. From the moment the Countess of Fife placed the golden diadem on his brow at Scone, he followed a single purpose with unwavering courage and extraordinary sagacity.
By personal charm of manner and address and by a remarkable power of sympathy with men of every degree, he attached those around him and secured their devotion. Perhaps the most direct evidence of this is to be found in his influence over his nephew, young Thomas Randolph, who was taken prisoner by Douglas on Lyne Water. Violently opposed as was Randolph to the Scottish cause, rudely as he spoke to his uncle when brought before him, he soon became the rival of Douglas in affection for the King, as he remained to the last his rival in knightly service. To this personal influence of the King must be attributed in great measure, not only the fidelity with which he was served, for although many English knights came over to his side, there is not a single authentic instance of one deserting him in favour of King Edward.
During the long warfare he waged, from 1306 to 1327, very few chroniclers attempt to fix the charge of cruelty upon King Robert. It has been shown above that, judged according to the custom of war and the civil code prevailing in the 13th and 14th centuries, Edward I. was far from deserving the outrageous character given him by certain Scottish historians. A similar dispassionate view will reveal Robert de Brus as not only negatively, but actively, humane. In all his many raids in England, it is testified, by English writers of the time, that he never permitted people to be slain, except when they stood on their defence. To prisoners of war he was always indulgent, and sometimes very generous, as in the case of Sir Marmaduke de Twenge, on the morrow of Bannockburn. The nature of the warfare King Robert had to wage was inevitably cruel. The repeated raids on English soil, the destruction of buildings and growing crops and the ruin of private owners, were the only means at his hand of enforcing his will against a foe far more powerful than himself. The least fascinating page of his warfare was the melancholy expedition to Ireland.
Lastly, he was always exceedingly anxious to be at peace with England, though inflexible in the terms on which alone he would consent to it.
As a civil ruler Robert I. had scant time to develop a policy, but enough remains to show that, had he been longer spared to his country, he would have displayed the same energy in the affairs of peace, which had been so conspicuous in warfare.
During the reign of David I. and Alexander III. the burghs of Scotland had attained a considerable degree of wealth and importance. Though not represented in Parliament until the Cambuskenneth session of 1326, there never had arisen between them and the feudal owners of the soil any of that jealousy and discord which is such a marked feature in the early history of some other countries. The code of chivalry was as scrupulously observed and honoured among the Scottish barons as in any other European court, but it never prevailed to set up a cold barrier of caste between the seigneury and the burgesses. The cadets of noble and knightly families were not held to forfeit their rank if they engaged in trade, and successful merchants sometimes became the founders of noble families. There is good reason to suppose that even the gentle knight, Sir James of Douglas, was descended from a wealthy Flemish merchant, Freskin, to whom David I. granted extensive lands in the conquered province of Moray; though it suited Hume of Godscroft, writing in the 17th century, to please his powerful patron, the Earl of Angus, by declaring that the House of Douglas was of such antiquity that its origin was incapable of "an exact and infallible demonstration," and to proceed to deduce it from a great warrior under an apocryphal King Solvathius in the 8th century. Sir James Douglas himself, if he ever bothered himself about a remote pedigree, would probably have been the first to laugh at such a legend. The original nationality of the powerful family of Flemings, Earls of Wigtown, is evident in their surname.
The relations between the feudal and burghal magnates in Scotland during the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries have been aptly compared to those prevailing in the republics of Genoa and Venice. This spirit King Robert fostered by his care for the townspeople.
Unluckily, at the time when peaceful relations between England and Scotland came to an end in the reign of John Balliol, Berwick, the wealthiest and busiest town in the northern kingdom, was precisely the one most exposed to injury from the southern. The chronicler of Lanercost, writing from the comparative seclusion at Carlisle, describes it as so populous and industrious (negotiosa) as to deserve the title of a second Alexandria "whose wealth was the sea, and the waves the walls thereof."[2] Some idea of the extent of the trade of Berwick may be gathered from the fact that, at a time when the whole customs of England amounted to no more than £8411, 19s. 11½d., those of Berwick were accepted by a Gascon merchant in 
CAMBUSKENNETH ABBEY.
(From a photograph by Valentine Bros., Dundee.)
security for a debt of £2197, 8s, due by Alexander III. for corn and wine. It is true, indeed, that the debt had not been liquidated when that king died. Upon Berwick fell the most grievous affliction of the War of Independence, for the first act of that war was its sack by Edward I. when the inhabitants were slaughtered and the streets ran with blood for two days. No similar instance of severity happened to any other city.
The Scottish burghs derived great benefit from the wise policy of the Scottish kings, who, when Henry II. drove all foreigners out of England, encouraged these industrious traders and mechanics, especially the Flemings, to settle in their dominions.
It is owing to a change in the relations of royal burghs to the Crown which, if not introduced by King Robert, received his sanction and was made universal, that we are able to compare the relative size and importance of the towns as they stood after the cloud of war had rolled away for a time. Under the old system, such burgher paid a fixed yearly rent to the Crown in respect of his separate toft or tenement, and these rents were periodically collected and accounted for by Government officials, together with the fines imposed in the municipal courts and the parva costuma or town duties, all of which formed part of the royal revenue. Under the new system, each municipality received from the chamberlain a lease for a fixed term of years of its rents, fines, and customs, paying a rent adjusted so as to leave an income sufficient to meet the expenses of local self-government. Sometimes a feudal lord interposed between the Crown and the town, and farmed the rents.[3]
One remarkable feature in the fiscal policy of King Robert's government, inherited from his predecessors on the throne, differed from that of foreign countries and may be held to be the earliest authentic example of the practice of free trade. No duty was permitted to be levied on imported goods, except of course the parva costuma levied by each burgh on all produce, whether foreign or native, coming within its boundary. This was a trifling matter; but the national policy of free trade continued in force until the reign of James VI., when an Act was passed in 1597, imposing a duty on cloth and other merchandise. The object of this new departure was not, as might be supposed, the patriotic one of protecting home industries, but, as is set forth in the preamble, the far less worthy one of enabling King James, as the "free prince of a soverane power," to acquire the means "for the enterteyning of his princely port." Allusion is made in the same preamble to the immemorial exemption from duty of all imports into Scotland, which is shown to be contrary to the practice of all other nations. The Convention of Royal Burghs remonstrated strongly against this measure, which, they declared, imposed "ane new and intollerabill custome."
Less intelligible than this free trade policy was that under which, under Robert I., a duty was exacted on the exportation of wool and hides. The tax on wool so exported was half a mark (6s. 8d.) a sack; on wool felts 3s. 4d. a hundred, and on hides one mark (13s. 4d.) on the last.
An Act of great importance to Galloway, a district where disaffection to Bruce lingered more obstinately than in any other part of his realm, was passed at Glasgow on June 13, 1324. It was thereby enacted that every Galloway man charged with an offence should be entitled to choose good and faithful trial by jury, instead of being bound to the old code of trial by battle. Notwithstanding this, as late as 1385, Archibald Douglas, Lord of Galloway, protested for the liberty of the old laws of Galloway at all points.
It is well known that the Scottish coinage, before the union of the two countries, had been debased out of all proportion to that of England, so that in the 17th century the value of Scottish currency was as one to twelve, compared with English. There is an idea current that this originated in the reign of Robert I., but this is so far from being the case that, until the year 1355, Scots money was of equal value with English.
It is true that in the long strain on the national resources which began with the War of Independence and continued until the Union in 1707, may be traced the necessity which drove the Scottish kings, following the example of their allies, the kings of France, to lower the standard of the currency until one shilling Scots was worth no more than one penny English or sterling. But in this vicious policy King Robert and his ministers had no hand.
Art has lent no aid to the imagination in its attempt to realise the outward appearance of Robert de Brus, his companions in arms or his enemies, for the rude profiles on his coins can hardly be regarded as serious portraits. Neither statues nor pictures have preserved their lineaments. John Mair may have been repeating authentic tradition in the following brief passage in his Historia Majoris Britanniæ:
"His figure was graceful and athletic, with broad shoulders; his features were handsome; he had the yellow hair of the northern race, with blue and sparkling eyes. His intellect was quick, and he had the gift of fluent speech in the vernacular, delightful to listen to."
Supposing the remains exhumed at Dunfermline to have been King Robert's, which is very far from improbable, he must have stood about six feet high. In days when deeds of arms formed as much of the everyday life of gentlemen as politics do of their modern counterparts, the union of a powerful body with a strong intellect was sure to bring a man to distinction, provided he escaped violent death on the field or the scaffold. Hence the prominence of men like Moray and Douglas, for before the invention of gunpowder, all combats were hand to hand. Brains were useful, no doubt, but they commanded little respect unless their owner could enforce his opinion by personal prowess. Perhaps no act of King Robert's life contributed so much to his ultimate success as the overthrow of Sir Henry de Bohun on the day before the battle of Bannockburn.
Robert de Brus won for himself high rank among famous military commanders. It was owing, no doubt, to want of funds and resources that he came to rely on infantry armed with pikes and on light Border cavalry in encounters with the heavily equipped men-at-arms and famous archers of the English armies. But his repeated success against these, hitherto regarded as indispensable in feudal warfare, brought about a notable reform in tactics. It is true that Bruce was not the first to discover what foot-soldiers could accomplish against heavy cavalry, for, as Sir Thomas Gray reminds us, the example had been set by the Netherlanders at Courtray, when they overthrew on foot the splendid chivalry of France. Moreover, trained as he had been in the knightly school of war, Bruce was ever reluctant to risk a pitched battle against fully equipped and mounted troops, until the lesson of Bannockburn showed him what mighty results might be achieved by good infantry in the hands of a master. Eye witness of the defeat of the squadrons of de Clifford and de Beaumont by the "schiltrome" of Randolph, Bruce was able to enact the same miracle on a far larger scale on the following day. The campaign of 1314 conferred on infantry an importance which the subsequent invention of gunpowder came to confirm.
King Robert left five lawful children. By his first wife, Isabel, daughter of Donald, Earl of Mar, he had one daughter, the Princess Marjorie, who married Walter the Steward, and died in her first-child-bed.
By his second wife, Elizabeth de Burgh, who became Queen of Scotland on her husband's coronation in 1306, he had two daughters, Matilda and Margaret, born after 1316, and one son, David, born March 5, 1324. Subsequently a younger son, John, was born, but he died in infancy and was buried at Restennet.[4]
Princess Matilda married an esquire called Thomas Isaac, whom subsequent Scottish writers have attempted to dignify by calling him de Ysack. But in fact the alliance was not a brilliant one, though it may have been a romantic love affair. Fordun refers to the husband as "a certain esquire," while about the Princess he observes severely: De Matilda penitus taceo, quia nihil dignum egit memoria—"About Matilda I shall say nothing, because she did nothing worthy of record."[5]
Princess Margaret, the younger sister, married William, Earl of Sutherland.
Besides these, King Robert left a number of natural children, of whom the most distinguished was Sir Robert de Brus, who fell at the battle of Dupplin in 1332. He received extensive lands from his father, among others those of Liddesdale forfeited by de Soulis; and in the charters conveying them he is styled by the King filius carissimus or dilectissimus.
Another illegitimate son, Walter, owned the lands of Odiston on the Clyde, and died before his father. Nigel de Bruce, slain at the battle of Durham, was also, it is almost certain, the king's son. Attempts have been made to prove the legitimacy of a third daughter, Elizabeth, who married Sir Walter Oliphant of Gask, but the silence of Fordun about this lady is, as Lord Hailes observes, significant. Fordun could not have been ignorant of the existence of a third Princess of the royal house, especially as four charters, by David II., dated February 28, 1364, are preserved among the Gask muniments, showing that Elizabeth was alive at the time the Gesta Annalia were being written. That King David refers to her in these charters as dilecte sorori nostre does not necessarily imply her legitimacy, any more than that of the base-born Sir Robert de Brus was implied when his father styled him filius carissimus.
Another natural daughter, Margaret, who married Robert Glen, has been confused with Princess Margaret, who has been supposed to have been the widow of Glen when she married the Earl of Sutherland; but as the Chamberlain's accounts show that she was still unmarried in 1343, and Countess of Sutherland in 1345, there was hardly time for a previous marriage, nor does Fordun make any allusion to it.
- ↑ The Douglas Book, i., 172.
- ↑ Lanercost, 185.
- ↑ The fixed rents paid by the several royal burghs in 1327, when peace was concluded with England, are shown in the following table, in which in spite of her many adversities, Berwick still holds the first place:
£. s. d. Berwick, 266 13 4 Aberdeen, 213 6 8 Perth, 160 Inverness, 46 Stirling, 36 Edinburgh, 34 18 8 Ayr, 30 Rutherglen, 30 Haddington, 29 6 8 Peebles, 23 6 8 Crail, 22 9 4 Dundee, 22 Dunbarton, 22 Banff, 21 6 8 Roxburgh, 20 Cullen, 20 Forfar, 18 13 4 Dumfries, 18 13 4 Wigtown, 18 13 4 Inverkeithing, 15 Montrose, 13 2 Lanark, 12 Kintore, 12 Linlithgow, 10 Kirkcudbright, 9 Tyvie, 6 3 4 Mill of Mouskis, 2 - ↑ Acts of the Parliament of Scotland, i., 514.
- ↑ Fordun, lxxviii.