The Three Edwards (9 page)

The members of the board and the rival claimants then appeared before Edward in a magnificently staged reception in the great hall of the castle. The English king had summoned all of his leading barons and bishops to attend, and the flash of the jewels they wore was more noticeable than the touch of sunlight on steel. The atmosphere was one of friendliness, and Edward’s smile was as warm for the Scots as for his English subjects.

Baliol was crowned at Scone on November 30, 1292. He appeared later at Newcastle to do homage to Edward as his liege lord. Here an incident occurred which caused a darkening of faces among the followers of the new king. Edward took the old seal of Scotland and broke it into four pieces, which were then deposited in a leather bag, to be placed finally in the treasury of England as proof of the significance of the ceremony. There was thoroughness in everything the English king did.

Thus a solution of the succession problem had been reached without any shedding of blood. But Scotland was not happy about it. The king of the Sassenach, the most determined ruler in all Europe, had placed his armored foot across their threshold. Even the nobles and the great chiefs, most of whom had landholdings in England, were apprehensive. Back at home the common people were openly antagonistic to the settlement. They would never place their confidence in, nor have any feeling of loyalty for, King Toom Tabard.

K
ING JOHN of Scotland soon found that he had paid too high a price for his crown.

Six months after his coronation, a citizen of Berwick, Roger Bartholomew by name, appealed to the English courts in a civil action having to do with shipping losses. Berwick was on the Scottish side of the border, but the plaintiff’s determination to carry the case to Westminster was allowed. King John was summoned to appear in a case involving a wine bill of the late king and to serve in a Yorkshire court. Soon afterward one of the Scottish earls, Macduff of Fife, whose brother had been killed by Lord Abernethy, felt that the hearing of the case in the Scottish courts showed an edge of favoritism on the king’s part for the defendant. Macduff took his case to Westminster, and King John was summoned to appear there. When he refused, he was judged guilty of contumacy and an order was issued for the seizure of three of his castles. Lacking the courage and will to stand his ground, John gave in and agreed to appear in person at the next meeting of the English Parliament. When he arrived in London, however, he found that his presence there was likely to have consequences of a much more serious nature. Edward was preparing for war with France, and it was made clear to the Scottish monarch that he would be expected, as a vassal king, to take troops to the continent in aid of the English.

The two kings quarreled bitterly. It was pointed out to Edward that the triple agreement reached at Salisbury before the death of the Maid of Norway had specifically denied the right to try Scottish actions at law in English courts. Edward brushed this aside and stood on the decision at Norham, where his suzerainty had been acknowledged without reservations. John complained that he was being forced to come into English courts with his hat in his hands, figuratively speaking, and that his demand
to have a prosecutor appear for him had been denied, so that he had found it necessary to rise and take his place before the bar like any mercer or vintner. The result was that the empty-jacketed lord of the north, wrapping himself in such poor shreds of dignity as were left him, made a secret exit from London and rode hurriedly north to his own land.

The summoning of kings to appear before courts in other lands was not a new departure. The English kings, from the time they acquired possessions in France through marriage, had sworn fealty to the rulers of France, but only in respect to these holdings. A particular case was the summoning of John of England to answer for the murder of his nephew, Arthur, before the peers of France; a demand which that belligerent monarch ignored. The treatment of the new Scottish king was on an entirely different basis. Never before had a sovereign ruler been expected to plead before a foreign court in such purely internal matters as the Macduff case. Two explanations only could be seen for the course Edward was following. He may have been so deep in his preparations for the invasion of France that he left such matters in the hands of his high officials, who proceeded according to the letter of the law, or he may have been deliberately goading the new Scottish ruler into a refusal that would provide a pretext for an armed invasion of the northern country. The second explanation seems the likelier of the two. Certainly it was the view that the people of Scotland held.

While the question of the English king’s right to try cases from Scotland in his courts was thus disturbing the relations between the two countries, there was continual trouble on the high seas. Scottish ships plying between Berwick and the continent were seized and their crews were imprisoned. No redress could be obtained, although the losses to the owners were ruinous.

When John returned from his humiliating experience at Westminster he found his country in an uproar. His compliance had been resented and the leaders were no longer prepared to leave matters of policy in his feeble hands. A board of twelve men was appointed to act as his advisers or, if need be, to control the policy of the state. It consisted of four earls, four barons, and four bishops.

The members of this board, with the Scottish Parliament to back them up and the sentiment of the nation strongly with them, began to take vigorous action. A meeting of the Parliament was held at Scone, where a formal demand from Edward for troops to be sent to France was rejected. The Scottish leaders knew they were inviting armed retaliation, but the national ire had been raised to the point where the people were prepared to fight for their liberty. All English officeholders, including those appointed by Edward, were summarily dismissed and all lands held in fief by English subjects were declared confiscated.

The next step taken by the Scottish leaders was a bold one. They decided
to seek an offensive and defensive alliance with France. The King of France at this time was a remarkable individual about whom much will be written later, Philip IV, known as Philip the Fair because he was acknowledged to be the handsomest man in Europe. There was something sphinx-like about this imposing monarch who sat silently on his throne and allowed his ministers, mostly lawyers of comparatively low degree, to make all announcements of policy. It was generally believed that he was slow of wit and lethargic of person (he became immensely corpulent in his middle years), but all the time he was king remarkable things were happening in France. It was to this impassive but inflexible king that the Scottish Parliament, realizing they had a death struggle on their hands, sent emissaries to propose an alliance against the extremely able and violently active English king. Philip the Fair listened and, according to custom, had almost nothing to say. He was shrewd enough to see, however, that he had little to lose and much to gain in the proposed alliance, and undoubtedly it was on his instructions that his legal advisers decided to take advantage of the chance to place a check on Edward. An agreement was reached between the two nations by which each promised aid to the other in case of English invasion. It was further arranged that a bride for King John’s son and heir, Edward, would be found among the beautiful daughters and pulchritudinous nieces who surrounded the handsome monarch. A niece, Isabel de Valence, the daughter of the Count of Anjou, was the one selected.

The alliance with France proved fatal to the Scottish cause. As soon as he learned what had been done, Edward demanded that all the fortresses along the border be placed in his hands until the finish of the war with France. When this was refused, he decided to postpone action against the French until he had dealt with what he termed the insurrection of the Scottish people. This decision was partly the result of a rash and unsuccessful invasion of the northern shires of England undertaken by the Scots in fulfillment of their promises to Philip the Fair. They sent an army down into Cumberland led by the seven Scottish earls. The system of divided command which the Scots found necessary because of the pride of the clan heads and their unwillingness to accept orders from one supreme commander, and which was destined to lose them many battles, made this attack an abortive one. They ravaged the countryside until they reached the fortified city of Carlisle. Here they suffered a sharp reverse and found it necessary to retreat to their own territory.

The only assistance lent them by France was a reopening of an attack on English-held Gascony.

Edward lost no time in moving to the invasion of Scotland. He raised an army of five thousand horse and thirty thousand foot and shoved northward to the Tweed. The palatine Bishop of Durham had collected the armed levies of the north and with them he crossed the Tweed near Norham while Edward was crossing at the ford of Coldstream with the main part of the army.

Berwick was the first point of attack, lying on the other side of the Tweed in Scottish territory. It was the great port of Scotland, being the funnel through which the trade of the nation flowed. It is sometimes claimed that Berwick was the richest seaport in the whole island; at any rate, the customs receipts were one fourth of the total revenue of all English ports. The Tweed had cut a deep channel where the city perched on the north bank behind its fortifications. The inhabitants of the city, with the arrogance of their wealth and their vast trade alliances, believed themselves safe from aggression. This opinion grew when the English fleet, which sailed in to attack them from the sea, was repulsed with a loss of many ships. William the Douglas, a stout fighting man, commanded the garrison. The defenses consisted of a stockade surrounded by a ditch. The stockade was not high and it was not in good condition, and the ditch was not wide. Nevertheless, when Edward moved up to the assault, the citizens lined the top of the stockade and jeered at him, chanting a bit of doggerel at his expense:

It seems rather trivial, but Edward was infuriated. It is probable that the name of Longshanks, which history elected to apply to him, dates from this episode. His legs were not unnaturally long. He stood six feet two in his prime, but when his tomb was opened long after his death it was found that he had been perfectly proportioned.

The confidence of the burghers was sadly misplaced. Enraged by the loss of his vessels and the taunts from the walls, Edward led the attacking party in person. The stockade was so low at one place that the king on his great stallion Bayard leaped over the ditch and then over the stockade. The foot soldiers followed in such numbers that the defenders were easily scattered.

The garrison of the castle surrendered on terms that permitted them to march out, but the poor citizens were less fortunate. The fighting rage in the English king had been increased by the death of his nephew, Richard
of Cornwall, in the struggle, and he gave orders that all the men of the town were to be put to the sword. Sitting in the great hall where he had announced the result of the arbitration, Edward turned a deaf ear to all appeals to stop the slaughter. It was not until a procession of priests came into his presence, carrying the Host, that his mood changed. When the eyes of this strangely contradictory man rested on the Host, he burst into tears and gave orders that the carnage was to stop.

The number of the victims of the butchery of Berwick has been placed at different figures, but the lowest estimate is eight thousand, so it may be assumed that at least that number perished.

The Scottish people retaliated in kind. The Earl of Buchan, constable of Scotland, was leading a foray into the English territory in the west. When the news of Berwick reached these levies, they proceeded to sack the towns that fell into their hands with equal ferocity, and a mutual hatred was engendered which was to last for centuries.

Before proceeding deeper into Scottish territory, the English king set his troops the task of rebuilding the fortifications of Berwick, raising the walls higher and deepening the ditch. To set an example of industry, he himself wheeled out the first barrow, piled high with mortar and stones. He proceeded also to put the affairs of the city on a better basis, improving the laws and appointing capable men to administer them. The citizens, who hated him for his cruelty, were compelled to say later that he had done them a service in the model administration he gave them.

Before attacking Berwick, Edward had sent a summons to the new Scottish king and his lords to meet him at Newcastle. While still engaged in restoring the fortifications of the captured city, an answer was received in which John renounced his fealty and defied the invaders.

“The false fool!” cried Edward, the royal anger rousing again. “What folly is this? If he will not come to us, we will go to him.”

So the English army, horse and foot, reinforced with Welsh bowmen and levies from Ireland, moved up from the Tweed. They crossed the Blackadder and the Lammermuir Hills and met the Scottish army, fresh from its invasion of Cumberland, and defeated it at Spottswood without any difficulty. The castle at Dunbar capitulated, and through the month of May the way to Edinburgh was cleared, Haddington, Roxburgh, and other towns falling to the invaders. On a day in early June, Edward came within sight of the capital city of Edinburgh.

That solid and admirable city, which the inhabitants themselves would later call
Auld Reekie
, was a mixture of splendor and wretchedness at this stage of its history. The castle, which topped an abruptly high hill, was not only a strong fortress but a residence of royal magnificence by the standards of the day. The city, clustering at the base of the hill, had been described some generations before as a small cluster of thatched and mean
houses. David I had laid the groundwork for better things, however, by founding the Abbey of Holyrood on the edge of the town. A connecting link of houses began to grow along a spine of high land, and in time this new section, which was to be known as Canongate, became a prosperous commercial center. When the first Parliament was held in 1215 in Edinburgh during the reign of Alexander II, there was a High Street leading up to Castle Rock, on which clustered busy shops, and there was a section around Candle-makers Row where the artisans found employment. The peaked spires of churches, the swinging signboards of taverns, and the crenelated tops of manorial houses were beginning to lend dignity to the old town.