THE CONTENT OF THE
DECLARATION
The document is divided
into twelve clauses, a number with an inherent Christian meaning and the last
two embody the normal courtesies, leaving ten active clauses. The first opens with the formal courtesy
necessary to such an address, and then continues to list the signatories.
It is a pity that
commentaries on the Declaration do not list the names of others that are
missing In State papers what and who is
left out, sometimes, can be of as much interest than the actual content.
Clause One
The Signatories
The trouble with genealogy
is that it has several dimensions of time, space (location), family, marriage,
community, and migration. A great deal
of reliable information is needed to begin to understand who connects to who
and how, and the perceptions and beliefs of the Medieval mind are a world away
from ours. A great deal of the family
information alone is lost to us from the early 1300’s even amongst the great
men of their time.
The Declaration is a major
document, and it is a pity there is limited direct information available on
which to base a full-scale analysis of the signatories. In the formula, Who, What, When, Where, Why,
we are left with a number of questions about the background and connections of
the Who.
Any analysis has to be
tentative and proceed on the basis of what is known, rather than being
conjectured from the deeper past.
Looking at the known families of the men listed it is hard to come to a
conclusion other than the main thrust of their ancestry was the Northmen of
old, not so much the domineering Norman French, but their close and distant kin
from the several parts of Scandinavia, and notably the Viking Earls.
So behind a good many of
the Scots nobles lie the figures of Hrolf The Ganger, the Norse and Swedish
Kings, and the names of the Icelandic Saga’s, men who had carved out
territories for themselves, their kin, and their friends. Who they had sired their children from, and
what sexual associations they had made amongst the women of other tribal
groups, and to what effect can only be guessed at, let alone what the full extent
and implications of the traffic in human flesh that were part of their life’s
game and sources of wealth.
There is a mix of
connections from the old Lords of the Isles, the early Kings of Scotland, the
Normans and the Kin of The Conqueror, the Norse, Northumbrians, and the
consequences of marriages to the chiefs, princes, thanes, earls, and rest of
the many and various groups that had exercised governance over one part or
another of the lands that came to be Scotland from the mid sixth century
forward.
If the scientists are
correct and there were major population reductions in the earlier part of the
sixth century due to geo-physical events and then epidemics and longer periods
of crop failure at times, then what remnants may have remained of the previous
populations in what would have been a cold wet tundra and how far any of these
were able to remain as a major tribal chiefdom is an open question.
By the 1320’s their memory
would have been a collection of traces in the DNA, with nothing written and
much lost in translation, whatever the minstrels might have sung in the spin of
their propaganda. The Scottish nobles
were not a distinct ethnic group, still less the genetic inheritors of a single
ancient tribe. They were armed,
organised, war lords with their personal war bands who had asserted personal
control over whatever land could be taken and whoever could be coerced into
their service or serfdom.
They may have assumed the
role of tribal leaders, but they may have had little familial connection with
those over whom they came to rule. The
consent of the ruled amounted to an agreement within the war band that the lord
was the man to deliver on his promises and only if he delivered.
As far the rest of the
population, one can only speculate what groups from all the demographic events
were able to hang on in the scattered valleys and communities of a much
disputed stretch of land and waters. Then
there were the effects of centuries of slaving transactions by tribal chiefs
and others operating in and around the Atlantic Archipelago. In Iceland much of the male DNA is Viking but
a lot of the female Irish.
One name does catch the
eye, that of Roger Mowbray. Like the
family history of most of the nobles this is a complicated tale, and one of the
usual bath of blood. There were two
Houses of Mowbray. The first ended with
Robert de Mowbray, Earl of Northumberland, in 1125 who died without issue, and
his wife, Matilda, heiress of Richer de L’Aigle (de Aquila) remarried to Nigel
D’Albini, founder of the Second House of Mowbray.
His son, Roger had two
sons, Nigel, his heir, and Robert. Nigel
was on the point of taking seisin to become Earl of Northumberland when he
died, and the title, in abeyance, remained in the hands of the King of England.
Nigel had four sons, the
first of which, William, inherited as Baron, Lord Mowbray. The third son, Philip de Mowbray went north
to Scotland and took the lands of Barnbougle in Lothian. Between the Second House and the First House
there was a discrepancy of 280 Manors, so Philip may have taken some of the
Scottish manors from the First House as well as the lands of his wife, Galiena,
the daughter of Waldeve, Earl of Dunbar.
Philip’s grandson Galfrid,
the 3rd of Barnbougle, married a sister of Black John Comyn, and the daughter
of the Red John Comyn, Lord of Badenoch and Lochaber, murdered at Grey Friars,
the Franciscan House at Dumfries in 1306, the event that led to King Robert de
Brus being excommunicated, wrongly or rightly.
The Comyns’ had a claim to
the Throne of Scotland, and were candidates when King Edward I chose John
Baliol. When King Robert de Brus acted
against the family many of the Comyn lands were given to the Douglas’s.
Galfrid Mowbray had five
sons, the two eldest dying young. The
third was the Roger Mowbray of the Declaration of 1320. Later in the year he was arraigned for
conspiracy, and executed, his land going mostly to the Douglas’s. The fourth son, Sir Philip Mowbray fell at
Dundalk earlier during the Irish venture serving Edward Bruce. The remaining son was Galfried, who had
issue.
Meanwhile in England the
Mowbrays continued as one of the major magnate families. They were involved in the Magna Carta revolt
against King John; they rebelled against King Henry III, and the in period
after Bannockburn they were prime opponents of and movers against the Despencer
favourites of King Edward II.
One of these opponents was
Roger Mortimer, Lord of Wigmore and after 1328 Earl of March, and the partner
of Queen Isabel. It was in 1318 that
Roger commanded the forces in Ireland in the campaign in Ireland in which
Edward de Brus was killed. His head was
brought to England, and to quote Leland “unexpectedly laid, with other heads,
on a table before King Edward II while seated at a banquet, with ambassadors
from Scotland."
The Scotch ambassadors,
rising from the table, hurried horror-stricken from the apartment. The King of England received the head with
great delight, and was “right blithe of the present, glad to be delivered of a
felon foe.” This occasion might be the
point at which negotiations between England and Scotland broke down, and that
King Robert I felt that it was time to review his options.
In 1318 at this point Roger Mortimer was a member of the Middle
party still seeking an agreement with King Edward, as opposed to the more
extreme Ordainers, led by the Lancaster’s and the Mowbray’s who were anxious to
bring the King and the Despecencers under close control. In that year the Treaty of Leake was agreed
between the various parties, but it proved only an interim measure.
Partly, this was because
Roger Mortimer had returned to Ireland in 1319 and from that point
relationships between the Crown and Court and the Lancaster’s and the Mowbray’s
deteriorated steadily due to the King’s mishandling of the territorial
ambitions of the rising Despencers. By
the middle of 1320 it was clear that armed conflict was impending and this
broke out at the beginning of 1321. The
rebel Lords lost, but one effect was to bring Roger over to the opposition to
the King and his favourites.
It was in March 1322 that
John, the Baron de Mowbray was drawn by horses and left to hang in chains at
York by Hugh Despencer under the warrant of King Edward II. His son, John, was betrothed to and married
Joan, the youngest daughter of Henry, 3rd Earl of Lancaster. Henry’s elder brother, Thomas the 2nd Earl,
was beheaded outside Pontefract Castle in the same week in 1322.
They were grandsons of
King Henry III by Edmund Crouchback, 1st Earl of Lancaster. By their mother, Blanche of Artois, of the
French Royal House; widow of Henry, King of Navarre before marriage to Edmund;
they were the great grandsons of King Louis VIII of France, the Prince Louis
who in 1215 had been offered the throne of England by some of its leading
barons and the opportunity to supplant King John.
There are a number of
possibilities. John de Mowbray, based in
the Royal Honour of Pontefract, then a large part of mid Yorkshire was kin to
most of the major families in England.
Given the extent, nature, and influence of their family connections,
were some of the Northern Earls of England and their affiliates were willing to
make an alliance with King Robert de Brus, however temporary, as a security in
the pursuit of their own disputes with King Edward II and his Despencer
favourites?
The Earldom of
Northumberland was a major prize, despite the wreckage of the territories it
encompassed, irrespective whether it came from the hands of the King of England
or the King of Scots. The boundaries
between Scotland and England were still then open to dispute, would any of the
Mowbray family receive it as his fief and as his price?
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