[ca. 1286 A.D.]

to which the king's immediate authority and the influence of the more modern system and manners extended. This was exclusive of the whole Highlands and isles, of Galloway, and Strathclyde, till these two last provinces were totally melted into the general mass of Lowland or Scoto-Saxon civilisation; and probably the northern provinces of Caithness and Moray were also beyond the limits of regular government. In other words, the improved system prevailed, in whole or in part, only where men, from comparative wealth and convenience of situation, had been taught to prefer the benefits of civilised government to the ferocious and individual freedom of a savage state. The mountaineers, as they did not value the protection of a more regular order of law, despised and hated its restraint. They continued to wear the dress, wield the arms, and observe the institutions or customs of their Celtic fathers. They acknowledged, indeed, generally speaking, the paramount superiority of the kings of Scotland; but many of their high chiefs, such as Macdonald of the Isles, Macdougall of Lorne, Roland of Galloway, and others, longed for independence, and frequently attempted to assert it. The king, on the other hand, could only exercise his authority in these remote districts directly by marching into them with his army, or indirectly by availing himself of their domestic quarrels, and instigating one chief to the destruction of another. In either case he might be the terror, but could never be esteemed the protector, of this primitive race of his subjects, the first, and for many years the only tribes over whom his fathers possessed any sway. And thus commenced, and was handed down for many an age, the distinction between the Celtic Scot and the Scoto-Saxon, the Highlander, in short, and Lowlander, which is still distinctly marked by the difference in language, and was long apparent by the distinction of manners, dress, and even laws.

Such was the singular state of Scotland, divided betwixt two separate races, one of which had attained a considerable degree of civilisation, and the other remained still nearly in a state of nature, when the death of Alexander III exposed the nation to the risk of annihilation as an independent people and kingdom.d

In contemplating the history of Scotland it may be truly said: Had there been no Wallace, there would have been no Bruce; had there been no Stirling Bridge, there would have been no Bannockburn; and, it may be added, had there been no Bannockburn, there would, humanly speaking, have been no John Knox and no Scottish Reformation.-WILLIAM BURNS.

THE MAIDEN OF NORWAY AND THE DISPUTED SUCCESSION (1290 A.D.)

By the untimely decease of Alexander III, the Maiden of Norway, his granddaughter, remained sole and undoubted heir to the throne. Edward I of England, the near relation of the orphan queen, instantly formed the project of extending his regal sway over the northern part of Britain by a marriage betwixt this royal heiress and his only son, Edward prince of Wales. The great nobles of Scotland were, we have seen, Normans as well as the English lords: many held land in both kingdoms; and therefore the idea of an alliance with England was not at that time so unpopular as it afterwards became, when long and bloody wars had rendered the nations irreconcilable enemies. The Scottish took, on the other hand, the most jealous precautions that all the rights and immunities of Scotland, as a separate kingdom, should be upheld and preserved; that Scottishmen born should not be called to answer in England for deeds done in their own country; that the national records should be suffered to remain within the realm; and that no aids of money or levies of troops should be demanded, unless in such cases as were warranted by former usage. These preliminaries were settled between King Edward and a convention of the Scottish estates, held at Birgham, July, 1290. Edward promised all this and swore to his promise; but an urgent proposal that he should be put in possession of all the Scottish castles alarmed the estates of Scotland, as afford

[1290-1291 A.D.]

ing too much cause to doubt whether oath or promise would be much regarded.

In the mean time Margaret, the young heiress of Scotland, died on her voyage to Scotland. A new scene now opened, for by this event the descendants of Alexander III, on whom the crown had been settled in 1284, were altogether extinguished, and the kingdom lay open to the claim of every one, or any one, who could show a collateral connection, however remote, with the royal family of Scotland. Many pretensions to the throne were accordingly set up; but the chief were those of two great lords of Norman extraction, Robert Bruce and John Baliol. The former of these was lord of Galloway, the latter of Annandale in Scotland. Their rights of succession stood thus:

William the Lion had a brother David, created earl of Huntingdon, who left three daughters; namely, 1. Margaret, married to Alan, lord of Galloway; 2. Isabella, to Robert Bruce, of Annandale; 3. Ada, to Henry Hastings. John Baliol claimed the kingdom as the son of Devorgoil, daughter of Margaret, the eldest daughter of David; Bruce, on the other hand, claimed as the son of Isabella, the second daughter, pretending that he was thus nearer by one generation to Earl David, through whom both the competitors claimed their relationship. The question simply was, whether the right of succession which David of Huntingdon might have claimed whilst alive descended to his grandson Baliol, or was to be held as passing to Bruce, who, though the son of the younger sister, was one degree nearer to the person from whom he claimed, being only the grandson, while Baliol was the great-grandson of Earl David, their common ancestor. Modern lawyers would at once pronounce in Baliol's favour, but the precise nature of representation had not then been fixed in Scotland.

Both barons resolved to support their plea with arms. Many other claims, more or less specious, were brought forward. The country of Scotland was divided and subdivided into factions; and in the rage of approaching civil war Edward I saw the moment when that claim of paramount superiority which had been so pertinaciously adhered to by the English monarchs, though as uniformly refuted by the Scottish, might be brought forward as the means of finally assuming the direct sway of the kingdom. He showed the extent of his ambitious and unjust purpose to his most trusty counsellors. "I will subdue Scotland to my authority," he said, "as I have subdued Wales."

The English monarch, one of the ablest generals and the most subtle and unhesitating politicians of his own or any other time, assembled an army on the borders, and communicated to the clergy and nobles of Scotland a peremptory demand, that, as lord paramount of the kingdom, he should be received and universally submitted to as sole arbiter in the competition for the crown. Split into a thousand factions, while twelve competitors were struggling for the crown, even the best and most prudent of the Scots seem to have thought it better to submit to the award of one of the wisest and most powerful monarchs of Europe, although at some sacrifice of independence, which they might regard as temporary and almost nominal, than to expose the country at once to civil war and the arms of England.

The nobility of Scotland therefore admitted Edward's claim, and accepted his arbitration. Twelve competitors stepped forward to assert their claims, and Edward, though he stated a right to the kingdom on his own part, as to a vacant fief which reverts to the sovereign, yet waived his claim with a species of affected moderation. Unquestionably his views were better served

[1291-1293 A.D.]

by dealing the cards, and sitting umpire of the game, than if he had mixed with the players. And there is little doubt that, far from desirous to insist on a claim which would have united all the competitors against him, he was sparing of no art which could embroil the question, by multiplying the number of claimants and exasperating them against each other. [Fuller details of these transactions have already been given in our History of England, Vol. XVIII, chapter 10.]

EDWARD I MAKES JOHN BALIOL KING; HIS REVOLT

The candidates solemnly acknowledged Edward's right as lord paramount of Scotland, and submitted their claims to his decision. The strengths and fortresses of the kingdom were put into the king of England's power (1291) to enable him to support, it was pretended, the award he should pronounce. After these operations had lasted several months, to accustom the Scots to the view of English governors and garrisons in their castles, and to disable them from resisting a foreign force, by the continued disunion which must have increased and become the more embittered the longer the debate was in dependence, Edward I, November 17th, 1292, preferred John Baliol to the Scottish crown, to be held of him and his successors, and surrendered to him the Scottish castles of which he held possession, being twenty in number.'

It was soon evident that the admission of the supremacy was only a part of Edward's object, and that he was determined so to use his right over Baliol as might force either him or Scotland into rebellion, and give the lord paramount a pretence to seize the revolted fief into his own hand.

In order to accomplish this, the king of England encouraged vexatious lawsuits against Baliol, for compelling his frequent and humiliating appearance as a suitor in the English courts of law. A private citizen of Berwick having appealed from a judgment of the commissioners of justice in Scotland, of which that town was then accounted part, Baliol, on this occasion, remonstrated against the appeal being entertained, reminding Edward that by the conditions sworn to at Birgham it was strictly covenanted that no Scottish subject should be called in an English court for acts done in Scotland. Edward replied, with haughty indifference and effrontery, that such a promise was made to suit the convenience of the time, and that no such engagements could prevent his calling into his courts the Scottish king himself, if he should see cause. His vassal, he said, should not be his conscience-keeper, to enjoin him penance for broken faith; nor would he, for any promise he had made to the Scots while treating of his son's marriage with Margaret, refrain from distributing the justice which every subject had a right to require at his hands. Baliol could only make peace with his imperious master by yielding up all stipulations and promises concerning the freedom and immunities of Scotland, and admitting them to be discharged and annulled.

Soon after this Duncan, the earl of Fife, being a minor, Macduff, his granduncle, made a temporary seizure of some part of the earldom. Macduff, being summoned to answer this offence before the Scottish estates, was condemned

[1"So far as we can gather from the terms of the documents, it never seems to have occurred to the greedy litigants or their astute legal advisers that there was a fierce, self-willed people, nourished in independence and national pride, who must be bent or broken before the subtleties and pedantries of the lord superior's court could be of any avail. Totally unconscious, also, they seem to have been that the intricate technicalities which dealt with a sovereign independent state as a mere piece of property in search of an owner, formed an insult never to be forgiven, whatever might be the cost of repudiation and vengeance."-BURTON.c]

[1293-1296 A.D.]

by Baliol to a slight imprisonment. Released from his confinement, Macduff summoned Baliol to appear before Edward, and, in October, 1293, Edward directed that the Scottish king should answer by appearance in person before him. He came, but refused to plead. The parliament of England decreed that Baliol was liable to Macduff in damages, and for his contumacy in refusing to plead before his lord paramount, declared that three principal towns in Scotland, with their castles, should be taken into the custody of Edward until the king of Scots should make satisfaction. Severe and offensive regulations were laid down concerning the Scottish king's regular attendance in future on the courts of his suzerain in England. In a word, Baliol was made sensible that though he might be suffered for a time to wear sceptre and crown, it was but so long as he should consider himself a mere tool in the hands of a haughty and arbitrary superior, who was determined to fling him aside on the first opportunity, and to put every species of slight and dishonour on his right of delegated majesty till he should become impatient of enduring it. The Scottish king, therefore, determined to extricate himself from so degrading a position, and to free himself and his country from the thraldom of a foreign usurper. The time (1294) seemed apt to the purpose, for discord had arisen betwixt the realms of France and England concerning some feudal rights, in which Edward had shown himself as intractable and disobedient a vassal to Philip of France, as he was a severe and domineering superior to Baliol. Catching this favourable opportunity, Baliol formed a secret treaty of alliance with France, signed at Paris, October 23rd, 1295.

Burton says of this treaty:

"This was a bargain for wasting, destroying, and slaying, rendered in terms which sound savage through the diplomatic formalities. The engagement was but too literally kept. One rabble army swept the western, and another the eastern border counties, pillaging, destroying, and burning, after the old fashion. Both returned without any achievement to give the mark of soldiership to their expedition. A course more wantonly impolitic for a country in Scotland's position could not well be devised." Burns, in answer, points to the notorious preparations of the English for an invasion of Scotland.a

The Scottish nobles joined in the purpose of resistance, but declined to place Baliol at the head of the preparations which they made for national defence: and having no confidence either in his wisdom or steadiness, they detained him in a kind of honourable captivity in a distant castle, placing their levies under the command of leaders whose patriotism was considered less doubtful.

Edward, in 1296, put himself at the head of four thousand horse and thirty thousand infantry, the finest soldiers in Europe, and proceeded towards Northumberland. Anthony Beck, the military bishop of Durham, joined the royal host with a large body of troops. They besieged the town of Berwick, and took it by storm (March 30th), though gallantly defended. Thousands of the defenceless inhabitants were slain in the massacre which followed, and the town (a very wealthy one) was entirely plundered.' A body of thirty Flemish merchants held a strong building in the town, called the

['Accounts of contemporaries differ widely on the number of slain. Langtoft d puts it at four thousand, Fordune at seven thousand, Hemingburgh ƒ at eight thousand, Knighton g at seventeen thousand, and Matthew h of Westminster at sixty thousand, which Hailes wisely accepts as a copyist's error for six thousand. The massacre is recorded by the English chroniclers of the time as well as by the Scotch.]

H. W.-VOL. XXI. F