The Guardian (63 page)

Will nodded. “So be it, then. Now let us see about finding some food, and then we’ll get to work.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

THE PERTH ASSEMBLY

D
espite his lack of training and experience, Will showed an amazing aptitude for the task to which he had newly turned his hand, and in the course of the ensuing four days he achieved much, mentored and guided by the willing Earl of Carrick. I watched them as their relationship quickly became easy and natural, and they worked together smoothly, with Will spending most of his time listening and asking questions that Bruce seemed happy to answer at length. Will was twenty-seven that year, and Bruce was four years younger, but the mentor-to-student relationship was unstrained despite the disparity. Will was eager to learn, his attention captured and his imagination challenged by the magnitude of the task facing him—and not merely him, but all of us who took part in that exercise, Andrew included. Bruce, for his part, appeared to be comfortable in the task of teaching, and he was more than merely familiar with much of the subject matter, for in his relatively short lifetime he had absorbed a profound understanding of the mechanics of both government and governance, having learned the basic elements of both at his father’s knee. And then later, when he had begun to grow towards manhood, he had been shown the finer points from the perspective of his formidable grandsire and namesake, the Noble Robert, Bruce of Annandale who, at the age of more than seventy, had come within hand’s grasp of wearing the crown itself.

I served as notary for everything that was discussed among the three of them during that time, and for days my fingers were in a constant state of cramp, black with ink, and painfully tight and knotted from the effort of writing without respite for hour after hour,
for the list of things to be addressed grew bewilderingly once we had begun to apply ourselves. The truly daunting part of what we were doing, though, was our awareness that we were merely identifying things that needed to be attended to; we were doing nothing at all to deal with them.

There had been no formal gathering of parliament or governing authorities for years, since the dispossession of King John, and the country was in chaos, close to anarchy and on the edge of famine. All of that was bad enough, but now with the flight of Surrey’s army, the English administration itself had come to a halt; local officials everywhere were scrambling to escape and save themselves from an angry and vengeful populace, and there was no one, anywhere, with the authority or ability to step forward and replace them.

With Wishart, Fraser, and Crambeth out of the picture, even the Church was in disrepair, the normally firm grip of the bishops effectively annulled. Alpin of Strathearn, the recently appointed Bishop of Dunblane who was the sole Scots bishop not to have been forced to swear allegiance to Edward Plantagenet, was unable to provide much help, being too new to his post and consequently lacking the power and influence to assert himself sufficiently. And Archibald, the Bishop of Moray, although a formidable presence in earlier days, had held his seat now for forty-four years and was palsied and increasingly infirm. The only other man who might have been expected to contribute to the struggle was Nicholas of Brechin, bishop of the powerful east coast diocese of Dundee, but he, too, was newly consecrated, little known, and reputed to be in ill health.

Elsewhere in Scotland, the prelates were a lacklustre crew, reluctant to take an open stance for or against the English claims, save for Thomas of Kirkcudbright, the Bishop of Galloway, who had never made any secret of his loyalty to the English Archbishop of York, and Henry de Cheyne, the Bishop of Aberdeen, detested by the people of his diocese, who had never concealed his allegiance to Edward of England and anyway was now a fugitive, hiding somewhere in the northern mountains in fear for his life.

After Bishop Wishart’s imprisonment, the occupying English
had focused upon harassing and oppressing the parish priesthood throughout the realm. As a result, more than half the parishes of Scotland had no priest, an intolerable situation that deprived the people of the comforts and necessities of their religion in their daily lives. Ordained priests are the only people who can administer the sacraments of God’s Church, so it followed inevitably that half the people of the realm were therefore forced to live without the blessings of the divine sacraments: marriage, baptism, confirmation, confession, the Holy Eucharist, and the Holy Anointments or last rites. It was a situation that screamed for redress yet was incapable of being quickly resolved, since, without the presence of active bishops, no new priests could be ordained in Scotland.

There was no shortage of priests in England, and the Archbishop of York had already professed, to all who would listen, his devout willingness to provide an unstinted supply of fresh new priests to fill the vacancies that existed throughout Scotland. To allow York to supply English priests to Scotland, though, was unthinkable, tantamount to surrendering all authority to England, since it would permit the unrestricted dissemination of England’s wishes, viewpoints, and dictates among Scotland’s faithful.

In the hope that Bishop Wishart’s deputy would be able to aid us in addressing this dire situation, I had written to Canon Lamberton on the night of our first discussions, inviting him to join us or to send us some assistance. I told him about Bruce’s participation, and outlined our concerns and our activities to that point, and I had sent the letter off to Glasgow by fast courier. What would come of that remained to be seen, but there was no doubt in my mind that the perilous health of Scotland’s Church was of overriding import to everything we were discussing.

The layman’s world was equally endangered: the land was infested with army deserters, outlaws and thieves who roamed unchecked, pillaging and killing at will because they knew there was no one to arrest or punish them. The law courts were no longer operable, for the English had usurped their function. Scots judges, magistrates, and lawyers had been imprisoned, dismissed from their
positions, or in some instances simply made to vanish. In some parts of the country plague and pestilence were widespread, and there were reports of entire communities that had simply disintegrated, their occupants scattered, homeless, and destitute. On the eastern coast, the centres of maritime trade and commerce had suffered widely. Piers and docks, warehouses and storage areas, harbour-works and flood-banks had all been either badly damaged or dangerously neglected, and inland bridges and fords everywhere were largely in disrepair, abused and, in the case of the river fords, almost obliterated.

We were confronting a disaster of overwhelming magnitude, and it seemed that the closer we looked, the more we discovered and the worse the situation appeared. And yet we achieved much within a very short time. We had no shortage of supporters waiting to be put to use, for all of Scotland, it seemed, was flocking to Stirlin’ toun. All of Scotland, that is, except those of the nobility too proud or yet too stubborn to acknowledge what had taken place.

At Bruce’s suggestion, beginning on the morning of the second day of our talks, and using the copying resources of the secretariat at Cambuskenneth Abbey and the exact inscription of Will and Andrew as leaders of the army of Scotland and the community of that realm, invitations had been sent out to that community by courier to attend a gathering that would be held at Perth on the twenty-fifth day of September. The location of the event would be the Blackfriars Monastery. This was a sometime royal residence and the traditional site of such major events as church councils and national gatherings, since it housed the largest public chambers in the region, dwarfing those of the neighbouring Scone Abbey. Of necessity, the summons was of short notice, but there was no other option, and such a gathering was long overdue. An assembly, they called it, for it could not be called a parliament, lacking a royal command, and the legally required forty days’ notice for a convention of the estates was out of the question, given the circumstances in effect. And so an assembly it was deemed to be, convened to examine the immediate needs of the realm in consequence of the
recent victory at Stirling. It was agreed that every noble family in Scotland should receive an invitation.

“And what will we do if they don’t come?” Andrew asked, and we all looked at him in surprise.

“Who?” Bruce asked.

“The magnates. What if they stay away?”

“Oh, they’ll not stay away.” Will’s voice was a low, rumbling sound filled with disgust. “They’ll come running, never fear about that. They’ll be afraid not to, lest they miss some chance of profiting from what comes next. The English are gone, but they’ll be back, and when they come next time, they’ll come in earnest. But that’s a year away at least, depending upon how Edward’s wars in France progress, and in the meantime there’s not a magnate in the land who won’t be wanting to know what
we
intend to do to change things between now and then. They won’t think to take the responsibility upon themselves, but they won’t hesitate to foist it onto us. But that doesn’t answer your question, does it?” He made a harrumphing sound, but he was smiling. “If they should fail to come, we will do exactly what we would have done had they been there—we’ll get on with addressing the needs of the realm. For it is the realm that is important here, not the hurt feelings and posturing puffery of offended, foolish folk who should know better.

“But they will come, believe me,” he went on. “And they’ll be no more tolerant or considerate of anyone else than they have been in the past. They’ll whine and cavil and carp and complain and try to browbeat one another and everyone else nearby”—he switched to broad, exaggerated Scots in mid-sentence—“but they canna browbeat you and me, young Murray, for we’re the chiels wha won the Stirlin’ fight, and our army’s our ain. They canna touch it or lay claim to it, and God knows they winna daur dispute it.

“This assembly is for the
community
.” He flicked a finger towards Bruce. “That same community o’ the realm that you’re aey harpin’ on about, Rob. So it should be open to that community and whaever else wants to come, forbye the gentry an’ nobility. The high kirkmen will a’ be there, needless to say—the bishops and abbots
and priors and deacons o’ a’ the great kirks—but we should hae the common parish priesthood, too. They’re the ones wha stay amang the ordinary folk an’ dae maist o’ the work, anyway. And then there’s the burghs—a’ the provosts and councillors should be there, forbye the magistrates. And the trade guilds, as well. And even the minor local gentry, knights and sodgers.”

“What about county sheriffs?”

The question came from Bruce, and Will curled his lip. “Are there any left? Scotch ones, I mean? Maist o’ them were either Englishmen or English lapdogs.” He hitched one shoulder in a dismissive shrug. “I suppose ye’re right, though. Gin there’s any sheriffs left in place, they should be invited, though the thought o’ creatures like yon crawlin’ thing Stewart o’ Menteith bein’ there to thumb his nose at us makes me want to vomit. His heel crushed mair Scotch necks than the English did while he was sheriff o’ Dundee.”

“Menteith won’t come,” Andrew said. “Not after what he has done in England’s name. He wouldna dare to show his face. They’d hang him.”

“Who would hang him? The Dundee folk?” Will’s scorn was withering. “I doubt that. There’s no’ a man among them wi’ the balls for that job. Don’t you delude yersel’. The man’s a barefaced turncoat and a scoundrel, but he isna short o’ backbone, and he’ll no’ be scared by threats. He’ll be in Perth, gin he hears o’ it in time. But half the counties in the land will need new sheriffs now, so we’ll hae to appoint them durin’ the assembly.” He shook his head tersely. “The truth is that there’s nae lack o’ people to invite, and they a’
should
be invited. An gin the great lords of the realm come to speak sensibly, their voices will be heard. On the ither hand, gin they elect to stay away, folk will tak note o’ it.” He continued in churchly Latin. “In the meantime, though, we have little more than a week to prepare, and we have other things to occupy us.”

It was true. Word had come that day, from the castle on the rock above our heads, that Sir William Fitzwarren wished to negotiate terms for surrender, claiming he had insufficient supplies of food to sustain his garrison. Will had expected that and was unsurprised; he
knew that two large supply trains had been intercepted in Selkirk Forest no more than a month earlier by his own people and that no effort had been made since then to replace the lost provisions. He delegated several of his lieutenants, among them Sir Neil Crambeth of Dunkeld, to dictate
his
terms to the English commanders, and they were blunt and not negotiable: surrender and leave immediately, or stay and die of starvation.

The English hauled down the royal standard over Stirling Castle’s keep the following day, and the garrison troops were permitted to depart.

The day after the surrender of the castle, just as the four of us were starting to prepare for the thirty-mile journey to Perth, Canon Lamberton arrived from Glasgow, bringing tidings from France. Bishop William Fraser, who had served the realm of Scotland long and well in many capacities, including years as one of the joint Guardians in the interregnum after King Alexander’s death, had died near Paris on August twentieth, and had been buried in the Dominican church there. The news could scarcely have come at a worse time, given the present state of the Church in Scotland, for now, in addition to finding the resources to staff the land’s parishes with priests, the realm was faced with an urgent need to replace one of its staunchest and most loyal servants: the bishop of the see of St. Andrews, the oldest and most influential shrine in Scotland.

The unexpected news distressed us all, for when Lamberton was ushered in, we had been discussing what to do about the situation within the Church. Our collective chagrin upon hearing the news of Bishop Fraser’s death must have been obvious, for the canon stopped what he was saying and looked around the table, eyeing each of us in turn before he shook his head and held up one hand with two raised fingers, as though he were about to bless us.