The Steps to the Empty Throne

It was strange to ride through the countryside, Lanarkshire and Ayrshire, and find the English gone—for here in especial their rule had been most complete, all-embracing, with every town and castle garrisoned. Now, like snow in the smile of the sun, they had quietly withdrawn, disappeared—and in their place many of the tollbooths had small portions of Cressingham’s skin nailed to the English gibbets. Bruce was now able to ride, for the first time for years, to his own birthplace, the principal seat of his earldom, Turnberry-in-Carrick, home of his Celtic ancestors for generations.

Typically, the English had left it in good order, not burned or

destroyed-for they would soon be back, they declared.

But the Bruce brothers had barely disposed themselves in Turnberry Castle, and commenced the process of stocking up with winter fodder for man and beast, than they were rudely jolted. An exhausted messenger came from Annan, via Stirling, from Thomas and Alex Bruce. Annandale was in smoking ruin, sacked, devastated. Sir Robert Clifford had come north, with a great host of Cumberland men, and laid all the Bruce lands waste.

Ten townships were destroyed, hundreds slain, Annan itself sacked—though the castle had held out—the harvest all burned and the cattle driven off or slaughtered. Clifford had left again, with his booty—but the lordship was in dire distress.

So Turnberry was abandoned again, and the Bruces spurred southwards in wrath. But some of the wrath, the brothers well knew, was now directed against themselves, as their men contemplated broken homes, ravished women, and widespread ruin to return to—done while they had been held by their young lords kicking their heels in the north. Defiant gestures were all very well for lord lings but Annandale had ever been too vulnerable to English attack to hazard. The old lord had known that well. But the old lord was gone, apparently, none knew where. And his sons had failed Annandale … Bruce himself was not unaffected by a sense of guilt. He would be the seventh Bruce lord of Annandale, and the first to allow it to be cruelly ravaged. As he rode furiously through the devastated land and saw the burned homesteads, desecrated churches, the corpses of men, women and children choking wells and ditches, hanging from trees, crucified on gates, a great weight of responsibility settled upon him—allied to a cold hatred. It was on his account that these people had suffered. But woe to those who had caused the suffering.

At the douce red-stone town of Annan, blackened and charred now, below the castle that still stood intact on its mote, they learned the full grim details from Thomas, Alex and Mary. Clifford had come raging from Carlisle with thousands, mainly foot—although they had returned to England mounted. It had not been any military campaign but purely a savage punitive onslaught.

Indeed Clifford’s orders to his men had been every man for himself, no quarter to be given, no prisoners taken, all booty and plunder to remain the property of whoever could take it. The Bishop-Governor of Carlisle had lent him troops for the outrage, offended by Bruce the Elder having bargained Annandale men for his own freedom and then seen them change sides. As a consequence, hell had been let loose on Annandale.

Robert Bruce had now more than enough to keep him busy, without concerning himself overmuch with affairs of state. It was a notably hard winter, setting in early with snow and ice and gales, and folk in no state to cope. The needs of his own people took up all his wrathful energies. He set himself to organise the transfer of grain and cattle from Carrick to Annandale, re housing and rehabilitation of refugees and homeless, rebuilding and repairing whole townships and villages. He had never applied himself like this in his lire, and was glad enough to tire himself out day after day. This he could do, must do. The rest could wait.

Thoughts of Elizabeth de Burgh came to him not infrequently, but she seemed to occupy a different world to his.

Occasionally word of the doings of men outside this South West reached them. William Wallace had indeed invaded the North of England, and a bitter and harsh retaliatory campaign he appeared to nave waged, giving the Northumbrians and Cumbrians precisely the same sort of treatment that had been meted out to the Scots. Tales of savagery, violence and slaughter percolated through to Annandale—and though, in his present mood, Bruce was not inclined to feel squeamish towards the English, part of his mind told him this must result in a hardening of the enemy’s determination, a uniting of fronts, and ultimate fury of attempted reprisals. There were ten times as many English as Scots, and this simple truth was something that they had to live with, to ever take into account. Their every effort, therefore, should be to divide and disunite, not to unify. This campaign, however justified, would have that effect, for certain.

Great convoys of grain and cattle and sheep were said to have been sent back to Scotland. This at least was satisfactory. But the cruel weather triumphed over cruel warfare, and the now distinctly undisciplined Scots army was forced back across the Border before Christmas. Wallace, it was said, had retired to his favourite refuge in Ettrick Forest, and his mixed host had largely dispersed to their homes all over the land.

Then came the first and inevitable counter-attack. Surrey drove north again, on the east side, and retook Berwick and Roxburgh.

But the weather was too much for the English likewise. The advance

could not penetrate the snow-blocked passes of the hills which guarded

most of Scotland’s southern counties, and ground to a halt. It was

stalemate, meantime, in the worst winter of living memory.

It was late February before the icy grip began to relax—and with it came word from the south that King Edward, from France, had commanded that there be no major invasion of Scotland until he came in person to lead it—ominous tidings. When that would be was not revealed, but rumour said in the late spring. Perhaps spurred by this grim warning, movement stirred again in Scotland. Wallace sallied forth from the Forest, to besiege Roxburgh Castle, and his emissaries were once again going through the land calling men to his standard. None came to Annandale.

But in early March a courier arrived from James the Steward, to announce a great assembly of the magnates and community of the realm to be held in Ettrick Forest, at Selkirk, in the middle of the month, and requested the Earl of Carrick’s presence thereat.

Bruce considered well. He recognised that important decisions could not be put off for much longer. If Edward was coming, then the ranks had to be closed and vehement steps taken. He himself could not hide away here in Annandale indefinitely. And he might usefully influence the steps that might be taken. The fact that the assembly was being held in the Forest, in Wallace’s own chosen haunt, not in Stirling or Edinburgh or at Scone, was surely significant. It meant in large measure an acceptance of Wallace as leader. The lords were to come to him, not he to the lords. Bruce decided that Annandale might now be left to his brothers’ care.

He would go to Selkirk.

It was hills and passes for every mile of the fifty that stretched between Annan and Selkirk, and the snows and floods. still blocked much of the way, impeding and delaying Bruce and his small escort more seriously than he had anticipated. He was hours later than intended in reaching the venue of the assembly, in that fair hub of green valleys where Ettrick, Yarrow and Tweed all joined, amongst the oak, ash and pine glades of the greatest forest south of the Highlands. The gathering was being held in the ruins of what had once been the Abbey of Selkirk, a Tyronensian foundation of David the First’s, which 170 years before, had been removed twenty miles further down the Tweed, to Kelso, for convenience.