The Steps to the Empty Throne

I say talk, then. These terms will keep us talking for long. Go you, if you will…”

Bruce’s strategy of talk, and more talk, was more successful, almost crazily so, than he, or anyone, could have hoped. A month later, no less, they were still talking at Irvine.

It was not all merely effective delaying tactics, of course, though

played its part. Events and conditions far from Ayrshire had the

greater effect. And the fact no one really wanted to fight was highly

relevant—for Clifford the fire-eater was despatched on the more

congenial and active duty of chasing Wallace. Indeed, if in Bruce was

the initial designer of what became known, and chuckled over, as the Capitulation of Irvine, the most long-drawn capitulation in Scotland’s story, Wallace was the true protractor of it. With Edward Plantagenet’s help.

Wallace disappeared from Irvine into the fastnesses of the Ettrick Forest, his favourite refuge and a notorious haunt of broken men. From there, in an extraordinary short time, he emerged again with a tough and highly-mobile cut-throat band of perhaps two hundred. Avoiding embroilment with English garrisons in Lanarkshire, he made a lightning descent upon the town of Glasgow, where Bishop Anthony Beck had gone to collect the cathedral relics and to initiate a campaign for English hegemony over the Scots Church. Taken completely by surprise, the English in Glasgow were overwhelmed, and Beck was forced to flee, a salutary experience for that exponent of the Church Militant.

Wallace well knew that this kind of warfare depended for. its success on continual movement and surprise. He did not stay at Glasgow but, reinforced considerably, moved north into the Lennox where the earl aided and abetted him, being no Norman but of the old Celtic stock. Clifford was now tailing him, but far behind.

Wallace made a swift and unexpected dash right across Scotland, to Perth, and at Scone managed to surprise Edward’s Justiciar of Scotland, William Ormsby, holding harsh courts, who escaped with his life but left behind much valuable booty. Then, by tremendous forced marches across the mountains Wallace descended upon the English-held towns of Brechin, Forfar and Montrose, to wipe out what Edward had done there to John Baliol.

All fell He linked up here with Andrew Moray, who had hastened north to lead his father’s people of Moray and the Black Isle, and could now claim the enemy-held castles of Inverness, Urquhart, Elgin and Banff. Together they turned south for Dundee.

This was a brilliant campaign for the summer of 1297. But it was, of course, superficial. Nothing was consolidated behind this guerilla fighting, and it could not be claimed that the so-called rebels held the territory they so vigorously swept through. But it all had an enormous effect, nevertheless, on the Scots people. The name of William Wallace was on every lip. Their lords had failed them, but the common folk saw Wallace as their saviour. Young men flocked to him from far and near, from highlands and lowlands from east and west and north—many of them against the wishes of their own feudal superiors. He had an army now, even though a rag-tag one. And some barons were supporting him, other than Graham and Moray—for word had gone out from the talkers at Irvine, privily, to rouse the land. With this host, Wallace attempted what he had not hitherto risked, the siege of a major fortress and garrison town—Dundee, where he had been educated, and whence came Scrymgeour and many of his band.

If all this had its inevitable effect on Percy’s negotiating position, affairs in England had almost more. Edward, with his ally Guy, Count of Flanders, was attacking Philip the Fair, of France, with doubtful success—and at the same time fighting something like a rear guard action with his own recalcitrant barons at home. Many others had joined Norfolk and Hereford in refusing foreign service, some of them of lofty rank indeed. The King could do little against them without coming home, but what he could he did.

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.