Nigel Tranter - The Steps to the Empty Throne

Many were dismissed their offices by hasty decree—including Surrey, who was demoted from being Viceroy of Scotland, and one Brian Fitz-Alan appointed in his stead. But even royal decrees have their limitations, unless backed by force on the spot, and Surrey was still commander of the northern armies, since they were largely composed of the Northumbrian and Cumbrian levies of the Percies and other North-Country lords. Fitz-Alan, then, required Surrey’s cooperation—and got but little.

This bore notably on the spun-out negotiations at Irvine-which, indeed,

neither side was now in any hurry to bring to a conclusion. One defeat

for Edward in France, and the entire dynastic situation in England

would change, and the Scottish position with it. All balanced on a

knife’s-edge, and men marked time, waiting—save for William Wallace,

that is. Percy restored Ayr Castle—which had been only superficially

burned—and lodged there, contenting himself with only occasional

meetings with the Scots lords at Irvine. Or some of them—for Douglas

had soon tired of this, and slipping off to his Nithsdale estates, had

gathered together some men and surprised and taken Sanquhar Castle. He

had not yielded young James Douglas as hostage, either—and so was now

proclaimed out with the King’s peace, outlaw. Bishop Wishart, too,

after Wallace’s raid on Glasgow and Beck’s discomfiture, was declared

responsible for his see, and surrendered into English custody at

Roxburgh Castle, as a sort of personal hostage for Glasgow. But Bruce,

the Steward, Crawford and others continued with the play-acting of

negotiation, their en in the main dispersed, looking over their

shoulders to north and south. All had English estates as well as

Scottish. The fifty thousand foot turned and marched homewards, as

far as Berwick.

So passed an extraordinary summer. Bruce’s two-year-old daughter Marjory remained safely at Kildrummy Castle, in the care of his sister, Christian, Countess of Mar. And his father, the Lord of Annandale, was dismissed from his position as Governor of Carlisle—by express command from France.

Everywhere men waited.

Bruce received a letter—delivered by Percy himself, no less. It was in feminine writing, and was sealed with the arms of Ulster and de Burgh. It read:

My lord, What are you? A loyal man, I understand. A rebel! understand.

But what is a man who sits and talks? A clerk? King Edward thought to wed us. Should I thank God for my escape?

Elizabeth de Burgh.

Bruce, in hot anger, crushed the offending paper into a ball, and threw it from him. Later, he retrieved it and spread it smooth again—and once more crumpled it up. He almost burned it, but did not.

Chapter Seven

As is so often the case, the most carefully thought-out courses, the most masterly inaction and most delicately-balanced fence sitting, can all be brought to naught in a chaos of violence and unprofitable turmoil and often by the merest accident or conjunction of otherwise unimportant events. It was so in late August of 1297. Two unconnected incidents, neither in themselves significant, brought about the collapse of so much that had been patiently contrived. And the men who used their wits were overwhelmed in the consequent conflagration just as surely as were the strong-arm realists and fire-eaters.

Edward Plantagenet won a small and insignificant engagement in the north of France, which became magnified by rumour, in England, into a major victory; and an English knight escaped from beleaguered Dundee, by sea to Berwick, with the word that the great fortress-town would have to capitulate to Wallace within a couple of weeks, for lack of provisions.

It so happened the Earl of Surrey was at Berwick Castle when both tidings arrived, in the process of handing over the civilian duties or Viceroy to Fitz-Alan, Lord of Bedale, in the company of Master Hugo Cressingham, Treasurer and real administrator of Scotland, who made his headquarters at Berwick. It was a humiliating situation for the great Earl of Surrey; moreover he and Cressingham, whom he despised as an up jumped cleric, were on bad terms. Out of this, the entire situation for Scotland suddenly changed. Fitz-Alan, the new broom, wished to prove himself as Viceroy; Cressingham demanded immediate action for the relief of Dundee; and Surrey, with the word from the south a great victory in France secured, Edward would now come home to set his English house in order, panicked. He had a name and reputation to save. He was still commander-in chief in the North; and fifty thousand men still lay encamped near Berwick.

So action, crude and vigorous, took the place of dialectics.

Blood would flow, not words.

The first indication of this dramatic change reached Ayrshire by urgent courier to Sir Henry Percy, in peremptory terms. The High Steward, Crawford and certain other Scots lords, with the main body of the English forces at Ayr, were to be sent to join Surrey’s army forthwith, on its advance on Dundee by Edinburgh and Stirling. But Percy himself was to proceed at once in the other direction, south to Carlisle, taking the Earl of Carrick with him, there to assemble as large a reinforcement army as he could in short time, for the aid of his uncle. Bruce’s father, though replaced as Governor of Carlisle by the Bishop thereof, was still detained at that castle. His great lands of Annandale teemed with men, the richest territory in SouthWest Scotland. The Bruces must provide their thousands from Annandale on pain of treason.

The velvet gloves were discarded now, with a vengeance.

Percy’s cavalry descended upon the unsuspecting Scots, who found themselves under what amounted to arrest, at Irvine. There was no argument or debate now. The Steward and the rest were taken off northwards. Percy and Bruce rode south. The Capitulation of Irvine was over, and the Leopards of England showed their spots again, dark, clear and unchanged.

In the circumstances, Bruce’s reunion with his father at Carlisle was

less than happy. They had never got on well together, the father

finding the son headstrong, independent, and, in especially

extravagant; the younger saw his parent as indecisive, interfering

ineffective, and mean. The son’s expensive ways, as compared with his sire’s parsimony, had been a stumbling-block between them for long. This was why, as much as because he could not bring himself to make an earl’s fealty to his rival John Baliol, the elder Bruce had handed over the old and impoverished Celtic earldom of Carrick, which he had gained by marriage, to his son, and thereafter washed his hands of him—retaining, of course, for himself, the infinitely richer if less lofty-sounding Lordship of Annandale. There was seldom love lost when these two met.

Bruce found his father practically a prisoner in Carlisle Castle though he did not admit the fact—with the Bishop in command.

Percy did not delay in making known his uncle’s demands for a large contingent of armed and mounted men from Annandale, his hesitancy of manner now scant cloak for brusque authority and left father and son to their own company.

“How dare he I How dare that insolent puppy speak me so!”

the elder Robert Bruce cried, trembling with outrage.

“I, who should be King of Scots!”

“Yet you will bear it, Father—since you must. As must I. For you are not King of Scots. And, like me, you are Percy’s prisoner in all but name.”

“I am no prisoner, boy! By envy and malice and Edward’s spleen. I have been superseded as Governor here—that is all. As though I care for that! If Edward Plantagenet does not know his friends, and trusts instead such as Percy and Surrey, the more fool he! I shall not give them one man from Annandale. They may whistle for their men!”