A battle which begins with the Oath of the Swans and ends with a full commitment to guerrilla tactics: this is the Battle of Methven, a disaster in the short run for Robert the Bruce, but perhaps a learning experience for him that eventually led to much greater disaster for England.
On February 10, 1306, Bruce killed John Comynbefore the altar of Greyfriars Kirk. (To be absolutely accurate, he struck the first blow, but his followers went in to finish the job.) In a race against time, he sped to Scone to be crowned King of Scots before messengers could reach the Pope and the Pope’s ex-communication decree could reach Scotland. This was vital, as an ex-communicated man could not be crowned King. Thirteen days after the event, word of the murder reached Edward I at Winchester.
Within two months, on April 5, 1306, Edward I, now 67 years old, suffering partial loss of use of his limbs, and unable to lead his army himself, appointed Aymer de Valence, a major English player in the Wars of Independence and later Earl of Pembroke, as his representative, with full powers, to Scotland, including the power to ‘raise the Dragon Banner.’ The dreaded raising of the Dragon Banner meant that no quarter would be given.
On May 20, Edward held a banquet at Westminster, in which two decorated swans were served to the King and 250 new knights, including the Prince of Wales. Edward vowed ‘by the God of Heaven and these swans’ to avenge the death of John Comyn, and what he called the treachery of the Scots. Each of the 250 new knights took a similar oath. (A note here that other sources put the number at 300 new knights.)
By summer, de Valence had his army in Perth, north of Stirling and Edinburgh, where friends of the murdered John Comyn joined him in waiting for Bruce to come from the west. When Bruce arrived with 4,500 men, still ready to fight by conventional standards, he challenged Valence to battle. Valence refused, saying the night was too far gone, but that they would fight in the morning.
Bruce took his army several miles away to the woods of Methven to camp for the night. Valence, however, had not planned on meeting Bruce in conventional battle, and what happened next can only be accounted for by Bruce implicitly trusting the word of his enemy that battle would occur the next morning. Rather, before dawn on June 19, he attacked Bruce’s camp. (History of Scotland, published in 1841 by Patrick Fraser Tytler, reports that Valence attacked in the evening while Bruce’s men were making their dinner.)
Valence’s army, according to Tytler, outnumbered Bruce’s by 1,500. Other sources state that it was the Scots who outnumbered the English by that number. The battle was nearly a rout from the start. Bruce went straight for Valence, killing his horse, but afterward, was unhorsed three times himself, and nearly captured by Philip de Mowbray. Sir Christopher Seton, Bruce’s brother-in-law, felled de Mowbray, and got Bruce back on his horse, thus saving his life.
The men rode from the field, to Loch Doon Castle. There, the commanding governor, Gilbert de Carrick, handed Seton over to the English. Christopher Seton, like many Scots in the aftermath of Methven, was hanged, drawn, and quartered.
Bruce and his brother Edward, the Earl of Atholl, James Douglas, Gilbert de la Haye, the historical Niel (or Nigel) Campbell (as opposed to Niall Campbell of The Blue Bells Trilogy), Sir William de Barondoun, and some 500 men escaped. Many of Bruce’s close friends and loyal followers were not so fortunate. Sir David Berklay, Sir Hugh de la Haye, Sir Alexander Fraser, Sir John de Somerville, Sir David Inchmartin, and Thomas Randolph, Bruce’s nephew, were all captured. Despite orders from Edward to execute them all immediately, Valence did not do so. Thomas Randolph was pardoned and for a time deserted Bruce. (He would later return to Bruce’s peace and become one of the heroes of Bannockburn, fighting for the Scots.)
Bishops Lamberton and Wishart, the great Scots patriots and fighting prelates, were seized after this battle, and taken to England in chains. Their status in the Church saved them from hanging.
Bruce himself fled into the Highlands. One source says they were guided by monks sent by Abbot Maurice of the Inchaffray Abbey. For a time, he and his few surviving followers were reduced to living in the caves of Deeside, Atholl, Breadalbane, and Argyll, finally making their way to Rathlin Island, where the story continues.
Methven was one of Bruce’s first battles as King of the Scots, occurring just three months after his crowning at Scone. It was perhaps the most disastrous of his career, and a great encouragement in future to use William Wallace’s methods of warfare, what we now call guerrilla warfare. He succeeded from that time in fighting the English with ambushes, surprise attacks, scorched earth policies, and destroying enemy strongholds–and avoiding pitched battle until the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314.
Therefore it is, Reverend Father and Lord, that we beseech your Holiness with our most earnest prayers and suppliant hearts, inasmuch as you will in your sincerity and goodness consider all this, that, since with Him Whose vice-gerent on earth you are there is neither weighing nor distinction of Jew and Greek, Scotsman or Englishman, you will look with the eyes of a father on the troubles and privation brought by the English upon us and upon the Church of God. May it please you to admonish and exhort the King of the English, who ought to be satisfied with what belongs to him since England used once to be enough for seven kings or more, to leave us Scots in peace, who live in this poor little Scotland, beyond which there is no dwelling-place at all, and covet nothing but our own. We are sincerely willing to do anything for him, having regard to our condition, that we can, to win peace for ourselves. This truly concerns you, Holy Father, since you see the savagery of the heathen raging against the Christians, as the sins of Christians have indeed deserved, and the frontiers of Christendom being pressed inward every day; and how much it will tarnish your Holiness’s memory if (which God forbid) the Church suffers eclipse or scandal in any branch of it during your time, you must perceive. Then rouse the Christian princes who for false reasons pretend that they cannot go to help of the Holy Land because of wars they have on hand with their neighbours. The real reason that prevents them is that in making war on their smaller neighbours they find quicker profit and weaker resistance. But how cheerfully our Lord the King and we too would go there if the King of the English would leave us in peace, He from Whom nothing is hidden well knows; and we profess and declare it to you as the Vicar of Christ and to all Christendom. But if your Holiness puts too much faith in the tales the English tell and will not give sincere belief to all this, nor refrain from favouring them to our prejudice, then the slaughter of bodies, the perdition of souls, and all the other misfortunes that will follow, inflicted by them on us and by us on them, will, we believe, be surely laid by the Most High to your charge.
In his last written requests as he lay dying at Cardross, on May 13, 1329, Bruce asked that his heart be buried at Melrose Abbey. Does his request have anything to do with the fact that his own father was buried at Holm Coultram, a daughter house of Melrose, in England? After Bruce’s death, as per another request, Bruce’s heart made a brief trip to Spain to fight the Crusades, embalmed in a silver casket. On its return, it was buried at Melrose as requested.
One of these was entitled Oh, Where, Tell Me Where? It was written for the departure of the Marquis of Huntly, with his regiment, to Holland in 1799. (My research suggests he was a member of the Gordon Highlanders, but not what his connection to Mrs. Grant might have been.)
The song was brought to prominence by a Mrs. Jordan. She was actually neither a Mrs. nor a Jordan, but Dorothea Bland, born near Waterford in 1762. She led a colorful life, in ironic contrast to her name, moving from her training as a milliner to life on the stage, and having fourteen children, ten of them with William, Duke of Clarence/ King William IV, although they never married. But she is often remembered for singing Blue Bells of Scotland, at Drury Lane around 1800, set to what she called her own composition. Others describe it as a modified version of the original melody. Ritson later noted on copies of his version that, “The song has lately been introduced upon the stage by Mrs. Jordan, who knew neither the words nor the tune.” 
For those horses who escaped the murder pits, Bruce had another surprise: caltrops. A caltrop is a giant, four-armed jack. No matter which way it lands on the ground, a spike is sticking straight up, waiting to pierce a hoof. If your name is Drummond, they may be part of your family history, as Sir Malcolm de Drymen is credited with strewing them on the ground that day. It is said that the caltrop on the Drummond arms, and the motto Gang warily stem from this moment in history.
