KEY QUESTIONS TO ANSWER
The assembly at Arbroath
was framed in terms of others that had come to be a regular practice on the
continent, parallel to, and seeking to have the status of other assemblies
addressing similar questions. The debate
over similarities with earlier purely English charters or methods is
misleading, and has distracted attention from the more important arenas of
political and theological activity at that time. The 1215 Magna Carta of King John of England
may be a stylish document, but in essence was a set of property arrangements
between a landless King and his obstreperous Barons.
Because of the role played
by the Religious interests, their function, and the purpose of the Declaration,
it could not be a purely ad hoc Scottish formula. It had to be consistent with the established
procedures with which the Pope was familiar and by which the regular business
of the Curia was conducted in the period.
The events on the continent in the immediate preceding period created a
many and varied precedents for an event and a plea of this kind, and therefore
the Declaration that resulted.
The key question is what
was realistic for the Scots at the time.
Did they believe that the Declaration of itself was enough to assure the
French of a continued close association in terms of Scotland being a wholly
independent entity? But was that really
possible in the European economic conditions of the period with much of Scotland
being an impoverished upland grazing ground at the end of the Atlantic Archipelago,
bereft of either bullion or an established merchant class of any size?
Then there was the
difficult theological question, that no temporal ruler or principality, or even
Empire, could be independent. God ruled,
through his Word, and the Church was the means of delivery. So did the Scots in
real terms opt for the indirect status, effectively, of a Papal State via the
Magistracy of the Papacy, itself then a satellite of France?
The Scots elite did not
want to be as they were at the time, a small entity under permanent threat from
its larger southern neighbour. They were
also vulnerable. The Great Famine of
1315-1317 had left its mark across Northern Europe, more so in the poorer less
fertile areas than the richer. The
failed attempt to extend authority in Ireland, 1316-1318, and defeat at
Dundalk, had reduced their military capability.
The confusion of the
period has several conflicting possibilities.
It may be that not one, but all could have been in play in the shifting
politics and anxiety of the age. And,
there was still Norway to the north, and in possession of the Shetland
Isles. The ice was moving south as the
climate deteriorated and forcing the sons of Vikings to look at their options.
The global cooling was
having its effects across Europe, bringing hunger and storms and the loss of
more than crops. In the 1320’s, the sea
took almost all the great port of Dunwich in Suffolk; where a local Scott
family were leading merchants. An
isolated untroubled wholly independent status was not a realistic option. Protection and moral authority had to come
from somewhere and the King and main body of nobles did not want to associate
with the flawed, unpredictable, violent monarchy of England, its magnates, and their
hired mercenaries.
The potential problems in
the continuing dispute between France and England were a witches brew, a
maelstrom of ambition for territory, for revenues, for power, mingled with a
hatred for The Other whether foe or family. There is little to be certain
about. Isabella, the daughter of King
Philip IV The Fair, as an ambitious Queen of England and becoming distant from
King Edward II, had her own furrow to plough, that was not parallel to that of
her husband’s. In 1314 it had been
necessary for the King of England to attempt to secure Scotland before
proceeding to take on France over the quarrels that concerned the Fief of
Gascony, then held by the Kings of England under homage to the King of France.
By 1319 one serious
possibility she had to consider was that her French brother with his urgent
reforms was planning to intervene in Gascony or England itself if the situation
deteriorated there to the point of chaos.
It would not be a new idea. In
1215 during the crisis of the final years of the reign of King John of England,
the Prince Louis of France, heir to the throne of France, had landed in
England, established himself in Kent, and had been offered the throne of
England by a number of Barons.
In the same year the
Barons of Northumberland had offered to change their allegiance from King John
to Alexander, King of Scots. It was
feasible that a similar venture could be undertaken with the Scots support and
their price for the head of King Edward II being that they would retain their
self governing status as a Quasi Papal State similar to others in Europe but in
tutelage and under subsidy to the French.
In the French bracket of
the equation of power is another element, the issue of the invocation of the
Salic Law in France in 1317 when King Philip V, then without issue himself,
took steps to set aside the claims of his infant niece, the only surviving
child of King Louis X. This applied not
only to her prospective children, but also to his sister, Queen Isabella of
England, and to her son the future King Edward III of England, incidentally
protecting the claims of the then Comte de Valois, uncle to King Philip V. Looking at their genealogies if the Salic Law
were applied retrospectively then a great many further complications could
arise.
For example, King Henry II
of England, the founding King of the House of Anjou, the Plantagenets, had
inherited through his mother, and so King Edward II arguably could be a false
King. In the later parts of the 14th
Century the business and arguments over the Salic Law formed one of several
casus belli in the Hundred Years War between the Norman-French in England and
the French-Normans in Paris.
Also, the events of the
three years to 1317 had changed the game and Queen Isabel could be just a
heartbeat from the throne of France in her own right and so the right of her
son. If France fell to Isabel were she
to overturn the new implementation of the Salic Law, then Scotland could be
dealt with on her own terms and in her own time. What would have been the options of the
Valois claimants to the throne of France to deal with this continuing
threat? The Valois may have needed the
Scots as much as King Philip V, a useful conjunction of interests in the
debates over the Declaration. The fog of
politics leads to the fog of war.
It is impossible to be
clear about which great matter might have been the key to policy, nor should
one assume consistency or rationality in policy making or responses. If there seem to be conflicting issues, this
would have been the way of the times. In
the 21st Century, even with modern communications and systems,
governments are still prone to incoherence in their business. In 1320 there was clearly a complete lack of
coherence of any sort in England, but one should not assume that this implies
the opposite in Avignon, Paris, or Arbroath.
For France links and
alliances with Scotland were necessary to the curbing of the Kings of England
and their ambitions to recreate the Empire of the Angevins, and to assert their
claim to France. But it was a separate
Scotland they wanted, within their influence and control, although perhaps
augmented by the lands of the ancient Kingdom of Northumbria. What they did not want was a King of Scots to
take control of England, and then assume the ambitions and policies of its
Norman Kings.
If a militarily capable
entity such as the King of Scots was able to persuade those magnates of England
who were locked in dispute with their King to support him, then England could
be taken in a single campaign, especially if the Merchants in London backed
them.
A forgotten factor is
that, as well as the descent from King Henry I through his bastard son Robert,
Earl of Gloucester, and being Kin of the Conqueror through the De Clare
connections, King Robert de Brus had a claim by a series of legitimate births
to the Throne of England by his descent from St. Margaret, Queen of Scotland
and wife of King Malcolm III, Caennmor.
But the ambitions of King
Robert de Brus and his supporting nobles may have been more limited than to
attempt the eventual takeover of England.
An attempt to dismantle the existing structure in England (the Scottish
Stuarts and their cronies tried to do this in the 17th Century with
disastrous results for the political structure and the economy of both Scotland
and England) to impose the Scottish vision of Liberty; the absolute rule of the
territorial baron, would have been beyond them.
Man for man, the Norman
magnates in England could field many more mercenaries and men than the Scots
and any takeover in England would have to be on their terms. They were not men who were easily
controlled. But there was still
opportunity within the lands of the King of England. The Declaration states that once England was
enough for several Kingdoms. King Robert
de Brus, among others, had a claim to the Earldom of Northumberland, then in
abeyance, through his descent from Henry, a previous Earl and a son of King
David I of Scotland.
After 1066 William The
Conqueror had pursued his claims to the North of England and Northumbria with a
singular ruthlessness, a vicious, destructive, devastating, depopulating
campaign that is amongst the worst known in the gruesome history of Medieval
Britain, and exceeded the vileness of the later atrocities by others on both
sides. As a Baron in the Borders my Liberty
meant your serfdom or slavery for the taken peoples.
A later French invader
might have been content to stop at the line of the Humber and the Ribble, keep
the richer and productive part, and leave the scattered uplands and shattered
ancient Kingdom of Northumbria as a buffer state or Scottish fiefdom.
So is the Declaration,
among other things, a Scottish offer to the French of the dismemberment of
England under the authority of a Pope to take advantage of the continuing
weakness of King Edward II?
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