And so Scotland celebrates the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn that made the Scottish people free. As if !
The fact that the Scoto-Norman nobles of Scotland beat the Anglo-Norman nobles of England, and drove them south of what historically was a frequently-shifting border, has come to instil a sense of independence among the Scots.
To imagine that our ancestors felt patriotic pride in the way that we do is to make the cardinal error of all amateur historians - it is to impose our own values and beliefs on the people of a past era who lived in a society which was radically different from our own where people had an outlook on life which was radically different from that of a modern Scot. Scotland as a nation was an alien concept in the Middle Ages, as was the concept of any nation as a separate entity worth fighting for.
Robert the Bruce was lauded as savior of the Scots, and Scotland finally shook the shackles of English dominance to gain true national independence. That's certainly one interpretation of the events However, we can also look at this not so much as a nationalist war for independence, but a struggle among Norman lords. After the Norman invasion of England in 1066, Normans/Anglo-Normans spread in one way or another throughout the British Isles (even Ireland; Fitzgerald and Butler, for instance, were originally Anglo-Norman surnames). In Scotland, Robert the Bruce came from the Brus family, whose origins were in Normandy, France. Edward II was the sixth king of the Plantagenet line (the Plantagenet line was founded by Henry II, whose other titles included Count of Anjou, Duke of Normandy, Duke of Aquitaine...). While it doesn't appear that William Wallace had any French in him (granted, very little is known of his origins), it seems that his co-Guardian at Stirling Bridge, Andrew Moray, came from a family that may have been Norman or Flemish in origin. So, the Scottish Wars of Independence: a power a struggle between a group of French elites on the isle of Britain. Even Tottenham in north London had a Bruce castle.
The Bruce family in the male line was not of native Scots origin, but had its roots in Normandy, a Robert de Brus had come over to England with the army of William the Conqueror. William had rewarded De Brus by granting him lands in Yorkshire but the family had added to this inheritance by acquiring considerable lands in Huntingdonshire and in Annandale, Scotland. Robert's mother's family was of Scots Gaelic descent. The eldest son of Robert and Marjorie, Countess of Carrick. Robert was born at Turnberry but grew up in Antrim, Kintyre, Aberdeen as well as his father's other estates in England. At 18 he took over from his father as Earl of Carrick. He changed sides five times, in 1297 he sided with William Wallace and is quoted as saying "No man holds his flesh and blood in hatred, and I am no exception. I must join my own people and the nation in whom I was born". He was back with the English a few months later.
The Scots nobility had a shared system of values with the nobility in England and France where many of them held lands. At least one of the signatories to the declaration of Arbroath fought for the English at Bannockburn as did the kinsmen of John Comyn. People's loyalties were to their local lords rather than their country-many of them,perhaps a majority would not travel outside of their local neighbourhood during their lifetimes. Anyone who believes that during the Wars of Independence the Scots were all patriots avidly sacrificing themselves for their nation should consider this fact. Wallace had a gallows erected in every Scots town just in case the inhabitants should show any unwillingness to fight the English, so clearly the population were not all anti-English "patriots".
This was not the war of national liberation and Bruce was not a freedom fighter that some would have us believe. It was simply a royalist dynastic struggle to place the Bruce family-line on the throne of Scotland (and also that of Ulster which is often overlooked as it failed to succeed.) Within Scotland, the importance of Bannockburn was in its strengthening of the Bruce dynasty. Popular perception is one of the barriers to understanding history and many prefer an image of Bruce the patriot rather than Bruce the plotter. Bannockburn was a battle in the world of fourteenth-century power politics. Bruce motivated by his personal ambition. The Bruce had originally sworn allegiance to the English King too but changed sides as Wallace became recognised as the leader of the Scottish armies after his victory at Stirling Bridge. As the success of Wallace waned, Bruce once again switched his allegiance, along with many more of the Scottish Lords who had originally joined Wallace, back to the English King. When Wallace was out of the country and Edward I was warring in France, the way was open for Bruce to take the initiative.
“Robert’s conduct over the previous two decades had not been consistent in the sense of supporting the ‘patriotic cause’.” Chris Brown, author of ‘Bannockburn 1314' and 'Robert the Bruce: A Life Chronicled.’, writes, “he had murdered his chief political rival and he was most certainly a usurper so long as there was a legitimate heir of the Balliol family.”
In 1304 it appears that he was coming round to the Scottish cause for good when he made the Bond of Cambuskenneth with Bishop Lamberton of St Andrews, the head of the Scottish church. If Robert wished to claim the throne then the backing of the church was important and this Bond would help in that respect. In February 1306, after Wallace had been executed, he met John, 'the Red Comyn', in the Greyfriars church, Dumfries. It is not known what happened between them but the final result was that Comyn was dead, stabbed in front of the alter by Bruce. The Comyns were the most powerful baronial family in 13th century Scotland, yet they have long been overshadowed by the legendary heroes of Scottish medieval tradition, Bruce and Wallace.
With the outbreak of war between England and Scotland Comyn, his father and his cousin, John Comyn, Earl of Buchan, crossed the border and attacked Carlisle, defended for King Edward by Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick, the father of the future king. The Wars of Scottish Independence thus began in a clash between the Bruces and Comyns.
Robert was unsatisfied to have taken Scotland and he had spent the year pushing south with attacks into northern England, to Yorkshire (where previous generations of Bruces had been granted lands, and founded at least one priory, at Gisborough) and the Furness district of Lancashire, seizing iron ore which was brought back to Scotland. His army launched a seaborne attack on Hartlepool in 1315, torching the town. As late as 1322, Robert the Bruce's army fought the English at the Battle of Old Byland in Yorkshire, and burned Preston in Lancashire and wasted much of the north of the county.
In May 1315, that Robert's only surviving brother Edward was authorised to take the 6000-strong Bannockburn army to Ulster, with the aim of forging an alliance with the powerful O'Neills (who some scholars say were blood relatives of the Bruces) and other lesser Gaelic clans to replicate what had happened in Scotland - to drive out the Anglo-Normans. Edward was crowned King of Ireland by his Irish supporters, probably in Carrickfergus at early June 1315 (although some other traditions say it was Dundalk in May 1316)The initial phase of the campaign was brutally successful with victory after victory in Ulster, Louth and Meath.
The Annals of Ulster mentions the hostility to Edward Bruce felt by many :-
"Edward de Brus, the destroyer of Ireland in general, both Foreigners and Gaels, was killed by the Foreigners of Ireland by dint of fighting at Dun-Delgan. And there were killed in his company Mac Ruaidhri, king of Insi-Gall Hebrides (i.e. Ailean mac Ruaidhri) and Mac Domhnaill, king of Argyll, together with slaughter of the Men of Scotland around him. And there was not done from the beginning of the world a deed that was better for the Men of Ireland than that deed. For there came death and loss of people during his time in all Ireland in general for the space of three years and a half and people undoubtedly used to eat each other throughout Ireland."
Sir Gruffydd Llwyd, leader of the Welsh, was bent upon rebellion and he invited Edward Bruce to come to Wales. Flushed with his successes in Ireland, Edward Bruce's reply informed the Welsh that he would come and help them... as long as they made him their new leader. They declined.
“Edward Bruce, notwithstanding his Norman blood, agreed to the proposal on condition that he was to have such command and such lordship over the Welsh, ‘prout alius hactenus princeps vester liberius habere consuevit.’ These were bright visions for the Earl of Carrick's younger son, the proud and overbearing Edward Bruce; he had been crowned King of Ireland, he had a near prospect of the crown of Scotland, and he now dreamed of the crown of Britain …’
- Annales Hiberniae by James Grace of Kilkenny (c. 1537).
Had the Bruces had their way, they would have become rulers of all of the British Isles. It is a story which, in different ways, Scotland, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, Wales, England - and even the Isle of Man - all share.
The lion and the unicorn
Were fighting for the crown;
The lion beat the unicorn
All round about the town.
Scotland’s coat of arms feature an imaginary beast - a unicorn. Nationalists have us believe in an imaginary country as Benedict Anderson may have said.
The fact that the Scoto-Norman nobles of Scotland beat the Anglo-Norman nobles of England, and drove them south of what historically was a frequently-shifting border, has come to instil a sense of independence among the Scots.
To imagine that our ancestors felt patriotic pride in the way that we do is to make the cardinal error of all amateur historians - it is to impose our own values and beliefs on the people of a past era who lived in a society which was radically different from our own where people had an outlook on life which was radically different from that of a modern Scot. Scotland as a nation was an alien concept in the Middle Ages, as was the concept of any nation as a separate entity worth fighting for.
Robert the Bruce was lauded as savior of the Scots, and Scotland finally shook the shackles of English dominance to gain true national independence. That's certainly one interpretation of the events However, we can also look at this not so much as a nationalist war for independence, but a struggle among Norman lords. After the Norman invasion of England in 1066, Normans/Anglo-Normans spread in one way or another throughout the British Isles (even Ireland; Fitzgerald and Butler, for instance, were originally Anglo-Norman surnames). In Scotland, Robert the Bruce came from the Brus family, whose origins were in Normandy, France. Edward II was the sixth king of the Plantagenet line (the Plantagenet line was founded by Henry II, whose other titles included Count of Anjou, Duke of Normandy, Duke of Aquitaine...). While it doesn't appear that William Wallace had any French in him (granted, very little is known of his origins), it seems that his co-Guardian at Stirling Bridge, Andrew Moray, came from a family that may have been Norman or Flemish in origin. So, the Scottish Wars of Independence: a power a struggle between a group of French elites on the isle of Britain. Even Tottenham in north London had a Bruce castle.
The Bruce family in the male line was not of native Scots origin, but had its roots in Normandy, a Robert de Brus had come over to England with the army of William the Conqueror. William had rewarded De Brus by granting him lands in Yorkshire but the family had added to this inheritance by acquiring considerable lands in Huntingdonshire and in Annandale, Scotland. Robert's mother's family was of Scots Gaelic descent. The eldest son of Robert and Marjorie, Countess of Carrick. Robert was born at Turnberry but grew up in Antrim, Kintyre, Aberdeen as well as his father's other estates in England. At 18 he took over from his father as Earl of Carrick. He changed sides five times, in 1297 he sided with William Wallace and is quoted as saying "No man holds his flesh and blood in hatred, and I am no exception. I must join my own people and the nation in whom I was born". He was back with the English a few months later.
The Scots nobility had a shared system of values with the nobility in England and France where many of them held lands. At least one of the signatories to the declaration of Arbroath fought for the English at Bannockburn as did the kinsmen of John Comyn. People's loyalties were to their local lords rather than their country-many of them,perhaps a majority would not travel outside of their local neighbourhood during their lifetimes. Anyone who believes that during the Wars of Independence the Scots were all patriots avidly sacrificing themselves for their nation should consider this fact. Wallace had a gallows erected in every Scots town just in case the inhabitants should show any unwillingness to fight the English, so clearly the population were not all anti-English "patriots".
This was not the war of national liberation and Bruce was not a freedom fighter that some would have us believe. It was simply a royalist dynastic struggle to place the Bruce family-line on the throne of Scotland (and also that of Ulster which is often overlooked as it failed to succeed.) Within Scotland, the importance of Bannockburn was in its strengthening of the Bruce dynasty. Popular perception is one of the barriers to understanding history and many prefer an image of Bruce the patriot rather than Bruce the plotter. Bannockburn was a battle in the world of fourteenth-century power politics. Bruce motivated by his personal ambition. The Bruce had originally sworn allegiance to the English King too but changed sides as Wallace became recognised as the leader of the Scottish armies after his victory at Stirling Bridge. As the success of Wallace waned, Bruce once again switched his allegiance, along with many more of the Scottish Lords who had originally joined Wallace, back to the English King. When Wallace was out of the country and Edward I was warring in France, the way was open for Bruce to take the initiative.
“Robert’s conduct over the previous two decades had not been consistent in the sense of supporting the ‘patriotic cause’.” Chris Brown, author of ‘Bannockburn 1314' and 'Robert the Bruce: A Life Chronicled.’, writes, “he had murdered his chief political rival and he was most certainly a usurper so long as there was a legitimate heir of the Balliol family.”
In 1304 it appears that he was coming round to the Scottish cause for good when he made the Bond of Cambuskenneth with Bishop Lamberton of St Andrews, the head of the Scottish church. If Robert wished to claim the throne then the backing of the church was important and this Bond would help in that respect. In February 1306, after Wallace had been executed, he met John, 'the Red Comyn', in the Greyfriars church, Dumfries. It is not known what happened between them but the final result was that Comyn was dead, stabbed in front of the alter by Bruce. The Comyns were the most powerful baronial family in 13th century Scotland, yet they have long been overshadowed by the legendary heroes of Scottish medieval tradition, Bruce and Wallace.
With the outbreak of war between England and Scotland Comyn, his father and his cousin, John Comyn, Earl of Buchan, crossed the border and attacked Carlisle, defended for King Edward by Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick, the father of the future king. The Wars of Scottish Independence thus began in a clash between the Bruces and Comyns.
Robert was unsatisfied to have taken Scotland and he had spent the year pushing south with attacks into northern England, to Yorkshire (where previous generations of Bruces had been granted lands, and founded at least one priory, at Gisborough) and the Furness district of Lancashire, seizing iron ore which was brought back to Scotland. His army launched a seaborne attack on Hartlepool in 1315, torching the town. As late as 1322, Robert the Bruce's army fought the English at the Battle of Old Byland in Yorkshire, and burned Preston in Lancashire and wasted much of the north of the county.
In May 1315, that Robert's only surviving brother Edward was authorised to take the 6000-strong Bannockburn army to Ulster, with the aim of forging an alliance with the powerful O'Neills (who some scholars say were blood relatives of the Bruces) and other lesser Gaelic clans to replicate what had happened in Scotland - to drive out the Anglo-Normans. Edward was crowned King of Ireland by his Irish supporters, probably in Carrickfergus at early June 1315 (although some other traditions say it was Dundalk in May 1316)The initial phase of the campaign was brutally successful with victory after victory in Ulster, Louth and Meath.
The Annals of Ulster mentions the hostility to Edward Bruce felt by many :-
"Edward de Brus, the destroyer of Ireland in general, both Foreigners and Gaels, was killed by the Foreigners of Ireland by dint of fighting at Dun-Delgan. And there were killed in his company Mac Ruaidhri, king of Insi-Gall Hebrides (i.e. Ailean mac Ruaidhri) and Mac Domhnaill, king of Argyll, together with slaughter of the Men of Scotland around him. And there was not done from the beginning of the world a deed that was better for the Men of Ireland than that deed. For there came death and loss of people during his time in all Ireland in general for the space of three years and a half and people undoubtedly used to eat each other throughout Ireland."
Sir Gruffydd Llwyd, leader of the Welsh, was bent upon rebellion and he invited Edward Bruce to come to Wales. Flushed with his successes in Ireland, Edward Bruce's reply informed the Welsh that he would come and help them... as long as they made him their new leader. They declined.
“Edward Bruce, notwithstanding his Norman blood, agreed to the proposal on condition that he was to have such command and such lordship over the Welsh, ‘prout alius hactenus princeps vester liberius habere consuevit.’ These were bright visions for the Earl of Carrick's younger son, the proud and overbearing Edward Bruce; he had been crowned King of Ireland, he had a near prospect of the crown of Scotland, and he now dreamed of the crown of Britain …’
- Annales Hiberniae by James Grace of Kilkenny (c. 1537).
Had the Bruces had their way, they would have become rulers of all of the British Isles. It is a story which, in different ways, Scotland, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, Wales, England - and even the Isle of Man - all share.
The lion and the unicorn
Were fighting for the crown;
The lion beat the unicorn
All round about the town.
Scotland’s coat of arms feature an imaginary beast - a unicorn. Nationalists have us believe in an imaginary country as Benedict Anderson may have said.
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