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This Day in Scottish History: The Abdication of John Balliol

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July 10 is a date that was to have great impact on the Scottish Wars of Independence.  Before Robert the Bruce became one of Scotland’s greatest kings, there was John Balliol, king of Scots.  In the wake of Alexander III dying without a clear heir, the Scottish lords, fearing bloody disputes among the 13 competitors for the throne, called in Edward I of England to settle the matter.  The strongest claims to the throne came from John Balliol and Robert the Bruce, grandfather of the later king of Scots who fought at Bannockburn.

 

Edward chose John Balliol.  Even today, historians discuss who had the stronger claim, and many do say that he did.  However, Edward’s motives were not so pure.  He had declared himself overlord, or Lord Paramount of Scotland, and believed Balliol would be a suitable puppet king.

 

Almost immediately upon the new king’s coronation on November 30, 1292, Edward I began a series of actions designed to undermine and humiliate Balliol.  In 1294, Edward demanded that Scotland send troops to help fight England’s war against France.  King John refused.  Rather, his council of twelve made a treaty with France known as the Auld Alliance.

 

Edward, on finding out, took a break from fighting the French to march north and sack the town of Berwick on March 30, 1296, killing thousands of men, women, and children over the course of three days.

 

Very shortly after his men finished their bloody massacre, Edward received a message from King John, renouncing his homage to the English king.  Edward is reported to have said, O foolish knave!  What folly he commits!  If he will not come to us, we will go to him.

 

And so Edward turned his army on the Earl of March’s castle at Dunbar, just north of Berwick.  The Earl of March sided with Edward, but his wife, Marjory Comyn, sister to the Earl of Buchan, felt otherwise, and allowed the Scots to use the castle.

 

On April 27, the English defeated the Scots at Dunbar.  In the following months, more castles fell to England, and finally, on July 10, John Balliol was captured by the English in a churchyard in Strathaco.  There, Anthony Bek, Bishop of Durham, tore Scotland’s red and gold arms from Balliol’s surcoat, and Balliol was forced to abdicate the throne of Scotland and sign documents admitting to allying with Edward’s enemies, and giving the kingdom of Scotland to Edward.

 

It was a dark day for Scotland.

 

But it was not the end.

 

Perhaps Edward would have done better to allow John Balliol some nominal kingship, for from this void rose the great heroes of Scotland’s Wars of Independence: William Wallace, Andrew de Moray, James Douglas, Robert the Bruce, and many more.

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9 Jul 2011
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Posted in Andrew de Moray, Battles, blog hops, castles, Churches, Dunbar, Dunbar, Edward I, Great Figures of Medieval Scotland, James Douglas, Robert Bruce, Stracathro, William Wallace | Comments Off

The Not Quite Battle of Irvine

Throughout history, the story of the American colonists’ fight for freedom has been repeated: small and weak countries fighting against those bigger and larger.  The Scottish Wars of Independence are one such example.

Since 1286, Edward I, king of England, had involved himself in Scotland’s affairs, claiming to be overland of the country.  With the death of Alexander III, king of Scots, and in the absence of a clear heir, Edward chose John Baliol as the new king, thinking to have himself a puppet on the throne.  However, after a string of offenses and humiliations, Baliol refused to send troops for the English king’s war against France.  This provoked the sack of Berwick in March 1296, the vicious murder of the men, women, and children of the town of Berwick, that is said to have ended only when Edward saw his troops butchering a woman in the very act of giving birth.  (Good to know he had some standards.)
By 1297, open revolt was spreading across Scotland.  During the winter of 1296-97, Andrew de Moray, the younger, had escaped captivity by the English and begun raising men against them.  In May 1297, William Wallace killed the English sheriff in Lanark, gathered like-minded men to join him, and received the blessings of Bishop Wishart, the bishop of Glasgow, in his stand against the English.  Around the same time, Edward discovered that William Douglas had defected to the Scottish cause, and sent Robert Bruce, the young Scottish Earl of Carrick, to attack Douglas’s castle.  Instead, Bruce joined forces with Douglas and others standing against England.
He soon found himself side by side with several Scottish lords, William Douglas, James the Steward, Bishop Wishart, and William Wallace.  On July 9, 1297, they gathered on the northern banks of a loch near Irvine, prepared to fight the oncoming English.  The English army, led by Henry Percy and Robert Clifford, gathered on the southern banks.
The fun and frustration of research is the many versions of an event which are told.
One colorful, but unlikely, version of the Capitulation at Irvine is that the bickering of the Scottish troops became so intolerable to the English that they simply left the field.
A more common story of what happened at Irvine is that the Scottish lords objected to being led by one they considered their social inferior.  Infighting broke out among the Scottish ranks, resulting in the Scottish lords capitulating to the English, rather than being led by their inferior.  Wallace, unable to fight without the lords, disappeared into the north.
G.W.S. Barrow, in Robert Bruce and the Community of the Realm of Scotland paints a somewhat different picture, reporting that Douglas, as soon as English troops were seen, sent envoys asking if they were authorized to accept surrender.  One Richard Lundie was so disgusted with this immediate capitulation that he changed sides then and there and joined the English.
However, Barrow points out that the Scots spun out surrender negotiations for a month, during which, Wallace, unhindered by the English, was busy elsewhere laying more plans and gathering men.  The end result was that the nobles once again agreed to swear allegiance to Edward I.  You’d think by now Edward would understand that forcing oaths of allegiance from the Scottish nobles was an exercise in futility.
However the events of Irvine are interpreted, the Scots went on, as the American colonists would four hundred years later, to successfully fight off the much stronger country of England.
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1 Jul 2011
Posted in Bishop Wishart, blog hops, Edward I, England, Just for Fun, Medieval Weapons and Warfare, Robert Bruce, Scottish History, The Capitulation of Irvine, William Wallace | 4 Comments »

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