Nigel Tranter - The Price of the King's Peace

The Prior positively gobbled.

“No, no, Sire-not so! It was not me. It was my Lord Percy. My lord of Northumberland He it was.

He insisted that we provide a troop of men. Under his banner. He is a hard man…”

“I know Henry Percy passing well, Sir Prior. But also I know your Priory’s banner and livery! I hold that banner, sir, a Saltire Or on Azure, captured amongst a thousand others. It lies at Stirling still. Perhaps I should have brought it back to you?” He shrugged.

“But that is not my concern today. I am here on kindlier business. My herald would inform you, last night? I am come to lift the burden from your shoulders. The burden of Henry Percy and his like! You say that he is a hard man. Then, my friend, you may find me kinder! For I have come to resume this Honour and Lordship of Tynedale into the Scots crown. Percy is no longer your lord. I am. The King of Scots.”

The Prior stared, biting his lip. But he risked no words.

“How say you, sir? Is not this good news? A king to protect you, not a robber lord who cares nothing for Holy Church!”

“Ah… yes, Sire.”

* “Is that all you can say, my Lord Prior?

“No, Sire. I… I am overwhelmed. It is too much for me. Give me time, Your Majesty …”

“Aye. But only until tomorrow. Tomorrow you, and all Tynedale, shall swear fealty to me. Not here. At Wark, the ancient seat of this lordship. You will see to it. You understand. You and yours.

Meanwhile-my lord of Moray, take these keys. I place the town in your charge. See that my lord Prior, the magistrates, and all men of substance, present themselves before my royal presence at Wark by noon tomorrow, to take the oath of fealty. No excuses will be permitted. Bringing their tokens of service and allegiance.

Detach sufficient men for this duty, nephew. The Prior will give you all aid. I will not enter Hexham today. When I do, I expect to be received fittingly. Bells ringing, streets garlanded, townfolk out and in their best. Is it understood? Very well. Let us return to Wark, Your Grace, my lords and ladies. We rest there hereafter.”

With no further leave-taking of the unhappy Prior, the King led his great company round and back whence they had just come, northwards. He signed to the instrumentalists.

“Let us have music …” he called.

Back at Wark, the Scots settled in for a stay of days. The working-party had been busy erecting streets of tents, field-kitchens, horse-lines and watering-points, a tourney-ground, even a temporary market-place- since the existing one in the village was small and inadequate-on the level meadows to the south of the township. For a few days at least, little Wark was to become a worthy capital of the historic and once illustrious Honour and Liberty of Tynedale -in the interests of political strategy.

The Tynedale lordship was important from any point of view.

For one thing, it comprised no fewer than thirty-eight manors, many of them rich ones, and included its own royal forest and numerous special and hereditary privileges. Its significance as a Scottish crown holding within the realm of England was self-evident.

Alexander the Third, of blessed memory, had almost come to blows with

the young King Edward the First over it, in 1277; and, as events turned

out, it might have been better had he in fact done so, while he and

Scotland were still strong, and his realm united, and Edward was not

yet intolerably puffed up with grandeur and successful conquest in

France, Wales and Ireland. As it was, to keep the peace and promote

good relations, Alexander had consented, against better judgement, to

do fealty to Edward for this ancient Scottish crown heritage,

inherited from an ancestress, Matilda of Northumberland, wife of David the First and grand niece of William the Conqueror. Alexander, needless to say, had drawn the line at going in person and kneeling before Edward to take the feudal oath of homage, and had actually sent Robert Bruce, Lord of Annandale, Bruce’s grandfather, to do it for him one of the few weak and unwise acts of a puissant monarch; though it falls to be remembered that Scotland and England were then on excellent neighbourly terms, with no bad blood between them. Edward Plantagenet changed all that. Consumed by his ever-growing lust for power and domination, he used this proxy act of homage for the Tyndale lordship, and other of Alexander’s English estates, as excuse for the subsequent claim for over lordship over all Scotland.

When Alexander fell to his untimely death over Kinghom cliff, and his grandchild heiress, the Maid of Norway, died on her way to Scotland to take up her kingdom, Edward declared that he was suzerain of all Scotland, Lord Paramount, since the King of Scots had done homage to him, the King of England. The fact that the homage had been done only for lands in England, and that Alexander had proclaimed that Tynedale was a detached part of Scotland and therefore not a subject for homage anyway, was ignored.

Edward used one of the greatest armies in Christendom to back up his claim. Tynedale, then, was one of the basic causes of the long and bloody Wars of Independence.

Bruce now planned to give a different twist to the screw.

That evening was passed in feasting, music and a torchlight and bonfire festival of dance and song, after the Highland fashion that Bruce had learned to appreciate during his campaigns in the North. Sundry of the local folk were constrained to attend, and treated kindly-to their manifest wonder and suspicion. Tynedale these last twenty years, was more used to being a battleground than a royal playground.

In the morning, happily, the sun shone. All forenoon, while a programme of horse-and foot-racing, wrestling and manly sporting contests proceeded, people kept arriving from all the castles, manors and villages of the lordship, doubtfully, reluctantly, in obedience to the imperious summons of heralds and messengers. All were courteously received by various officers of state, dined and looked after-but none were presented to the King and Queen, however lofty their status. The royal family kept their distance in a special elevated enclosure of silken awnings and banners which crowned a green mote-hill where once the timber castle of Wark had risen.

A carefully-calculated few minutes before noon, the Prior of Hexham arrived, in very different state from his yesterday’s appearance.

He came in full canonicals, under a resplendent cope, at the head of quite a lengthy procession, with singing choristers and men-at-arms, mounted on a white jennet and with a silken canopy of the Priory colours of blue and gold held over his head by four mounted acolytes. Holy Church had apparently decided that some display was in order.

The Church had dominated Tynedale, of course, since Alexander’s day. On King Edward’s unilateral assumption of suzerainty over Scotland, he had casually handed over this lordship to Anthony Beck, Bishop of Durhamwhom he had promoted to that princely see from being one of his wardrobe clerks. And that bullet headed militant clerk had naturally used Hexham, the ecclesiastical centre, rather than Wark, to control his new domain, ruling Tynedale through the Priors thereof, and with a rod of iron as he did all else. So, for twenty years, successive monkish incumbents had lorded it in the name of their episcopal master, as well as owning great Church lands of their own-and scarcely gained in local popularity in the process.

At midday exactly, a fanfare of trumpets gained silence for the herald King of Arms, who then called on all present to draw near, in orderly fashion, to the mote-hill, into the presence of the most puissant and mighty prince, by God’s grace, Robert, King of Scots.

Thereafter, himself proceeding halfway up the grassy mound, he declared: