The Steps to the Empty Throne

Everywhere the acclaim rang out.

Or, not quite everywhere perhaps. In many a castle and manor of the land there were reservations—even in not a few whose owners had won them back, out of English occupation, thanks to Wallace. The nobles saw a little further than the common folk.

They saw the established order endangered. Their men, their own vassals, were everywhere flooding to join this Wallace, quite ignoring their feudal duties and service to their lords, the system on which the entire community was built. Land, enduring, indestructible, viable, calculable land, was the unit on which a realm must be based; not persons, who were ephemeral, unreliable, removable, and who could and did pass away. The land did not die, and the great families who managed the land were not going to pass away either. Yet Wallace held only a miserable few acres of this land, and claimed the people as all-important. And he was not even a Norman, his mother-tongue not French but the Erse gibberish.

Few, of course, even of the most proud, lofty and influential of the lords, denigrated the scale, brilliance or the effect of Wallace’s Stirling Bridge victory. Moreover, although only in a minor capacity and in the later stages, he had been supported in his victory by some of the great ones-the Steward himself, Lennox, Crawford, Macduff, son of the Earl of life; and, of course, the Graham. Sir Andrew Moray of Bothwell had been his principal lieutenant, and had indeed fallen, mortally wounded it was said.

So Wallace could no longer be called outlaw, brigand, claimed as something like a Highland cateran and guerilla fighter. Even men with legitimate doubts had to recognise realities.

Robert Bruce was one of the doubters, of course, although his concern was rather different from the others-not so much for the land, nor yet the people, but for the kingdom. Wallace’s blow had been struck for the people; but it was a blow for the kingdom also, and so must be acclaimed, supported. But Wallace himself did not represent the kingdom’s cause; Wallace might indeed endanger the kingdom. He had fought in John Baliol’s name.

Bruce, that vital September, did not in fact encounter Wallace.

When he arrived at battle-torn Stirling, with his Annandale men, it was to find the Steward and many of the lords assembled there, but Wallace himself gone, pursuing the fleeing English with all his mounted strength. All was falling before him, and he was maintaining the impetus to such an extent he was said to be actually making for Berwick itself. There was even a suggestion that he intended to drive on, down into England.

This would be folly, all the Scots lords agreed, Bruce included.

They sent couriers after Wallace, advising him strongly against any such course. Nothing would be more likely, Bruce pointed out, to reunite the English, at present at sixes and sevens, than an actual invasion of their land.

There was much to do at Stirling, with a whole land, suddenly freed from a fierce and authoritative grip, to be brought under control. The lords and bishops applied themselves to this, under the frowning regard of Stirling’s great fortress, still English-held, but impotent, not really besieged even yet, but contained. Buchan, the Constable, had come south with his cousin, John Comyn, Lord of Badenoch; so that there were two great officers of state to represent the highest authority in the land and take charge of the attempts at administration. Again, in the name of King John Baliol.

Bruce protested about this, declaring that Baliol had abdicated and

renounced the throne. His deposition and humiliation by Edward could

be overlooked perhaps; but not his renunciation and fleeing the country. He was no longer King, in any sense. To act, here, in his name, was not only wrong but folly.

The matter was complicated. In the past, when the Kingdom of Scotland had been without an effective monarch, for one reason or another, a Guardian had always been appointed to act on behalf of the Crown and bear the supreme authority. Obviously such a Guardian should be appointed now. But who should be the Guardian?

Normally it would be one of the great nobles, who should also be a military leader, with powerful forces at his back—since he had to wield the sword of state. The Steward would have been suitable, as to rank and position, but he was no military leader, no leader of any sort, in fact, and his slobbering speech no aid to high dignity. The Earl of Buchan, High Constable, as an earl, could claim seniority in rank, and was indeed a veteran soldier, with large following; but he had played an equivocal part in this rising, had indeed, at Surrey’s command, taken the field against Moray’s rebels in the north, though half-heartedly and ineffectually. His reputation had suffered, and the common folk of Stirling booed him in the streets, the more so as Moray himself lay dying.

There was another candidate for Guardian, however, Buchan’s cousin, the same Sir John Comyn the Red, Lord of Badenoch, who with Bruce had formed part of that unhappy queue to sign the Ragman’s Roll at Berwick a year before. He was ambitious, vigorous and an effective soldier—and the Comyns were undoubtedly the most powerful family in the land. Moreover, his mother was John Baliol’s sister.

Bruce might have claimed the Guardianship for himself—and undoubtedly would have done had he been less of a realist. For he recognised that he was little more popular with the Scots people than was Buchan. Everyone knew that he had been Edward’s man. The Red Comyn even referred to him as Bruce the Englishman.

He had taken no actual part in the recent fighting; alt had been over when he arrived at Stirling with his little host. His youth was no insuperable difficulty—but he could not claim to be a military leader; though he had been knighted, he had won his spurs at joustings in the tilt-yard. He could not command the confidence necessary for a Guardian, he knew.

But of one thing he was determined—the Red Comyn should not be Guardian. It was not only that he hated the man’s arrogant mocking style. John Comyn said openly that if John Baliol had indeed vacated the throne by leaving the country, and taking his young son Edward with him, then he, as his nephew, was next in line to be King.

A more immediate and practical problem than the Guardianship and civil administration, however, quickly made itself evident to the assembled lords-simply that of food. Food for man and beast. The harvest had not been in gathered over much of the land-indeed, because of the English occupation and its harshness, and the removal of wool and grain to England, there had been but little sown, little to reap. Everywhere barns, stack yards and storehouses were empty, and the grim shadow of famine began to grow in war-torn Scotland. No doubt in the more remote parts there was still a sufficiency; but in the areas over which the armies had operated, hunger was growing as the days shortened.

By the nature of things, Stirling district was worst hit. The lords could no longer feed their men-at-arms. A general break-up became inevitable.

Bruce’s fifteen hundred was the largest single contingent there, and consequently required most food and forage. He was faced with the choice of sending them home to Annandale, to disband;

leading them south to join Wallace, who had taken Berwick and was now besieging Roxburgh Castle; or going over to the West with them, to his own area of Carrick, where there was no famine as yet. This last appealed most strongly. A body of fifteen hundred men-in-arms was too useful an asset in the present state of Scotland to disband and throw away, however much of a problem it presented logistically. Wallace was still talking about invading England—now, not only for military and vengeance reasons, but for food; and Bruce had no desire to be involved in any such ill-advised adventure which would only expedite reprisals.

In mid-October, then, the Bruces left Stirling for Ayrshire, glad to be away. Already there had been clashes with the Comyns in the streets of the town. Andrew Moray had died two days earlier, a good man gone.