His son, determined not to compromise his claim to the throne by doing homage to Balliol, departed in 1292 on a long visit to King Erik of Norway, accompanied by his eldest daughter Isobel.36 Within a year she was married to her host and her father remained at their court until he returned, on his own father’s death, to succeed to the lordship of Annandale and the English estates. In October 1295 he was appointed Governor of Carlisle by King Edward.37
In his absence his son and heir, Robert Bruce, the future king, to whom he had handed over the earldom of Carrick in November 1291, had become the virtual head of the lively and united family which remained in Scotland, consisting of his four brothers, Edward, Thomas, Alexander and Nigel, and his four sisters Mary, Christina, Matilda and Margaret. During this time, he would have been in close contact with his grandfather, Robert the Competitor, and, on his behalf, visited the family possessions in the Midlands and Essex and paid his respects at the English court. There it must be assumed he found favour with King Edward for loans from the Royal Exchequer were put at his disposal. It is probable that it was from London in September 1293 that he despatched his magnificent wedding gift to his sister Isobel of blue, scarlet and fur-trimmed gowns, bed linen, coverlets of gold and green, silver plate and dishes for the table.38
Soon after his father’s return in 1295 Robert married Isabella, daughter of the tenth Earl of Mar, whose great lands lay along the northeastern coast of Inverness; but it was a short-lived marriage, for after giving birth to a daughter, Marjorie, in 1296, Isabella died.39
When the call to arms was issued by King John, the conduct of the Bruces was clear and consistent. They had never recognized his coronation. They had never given up the hope of their succession to the Scottish throne. They had never paid homage to him. They abode by the vows of fealty they had made to King Edward in 1292 and reiterated in 1296 and he, in turn, to fasten their loyalty and excite their hopes, had promised that if the revolt was crushed and Balliol deposed, the elder Bruce, now Governor of Carlisle, should succeed to the Scottish throne.40 So they ignored the summons as did the Earls of Angus and Dunbar and many other magnates who followed their lead. In consequence all were instantly deprived of their Scottish possessions. That those of the Bruces were handed out by Balliol to his kinsman, John Comyn, Earl of Buchan, only intensified an already bitter feud.41
The Scottish and English forces were gathering their strength when a love affair sparked off the conflict. Robert de Ros, an Englishman, Lord of Wark on Tweed, had fallen in love with a Scottish girl. As an earnest of his wish to marry her, he joined forces with her countrymen and promised to deliver to them his castle. His brother, hearing of his purpose, sent an urgent request to King Edward for his help. An advance guard of the English was promptly dispatched, but Robert de Ros with men from Roxburgh fell upon them as they lay camped for the night and cut them to pieces. The first blood had been shed. ‘By God’s blessing,’ exclaimed Edward when he heard the news, ‘as the Scots have begun, so shall I make an end.’42
His army made a rapid advance to relieve Wark and on 17 March 1296 King Edward made his quarters there and remained until after the celebration of Easter on 25 March.
Elevated by this greatest of Christian festivals, both sides immediately proceeded to acts of unnecessary barbarity. On 26 March, leaving their country’s eastern approaches unguarded, the Scots, under the Earl of Buchan, poured over the border at its western end, put to sword and flame the scattered villages on the English side and swept to the walls of Carlisle in an attempt to take it by storm. But the gates were fast bolted by the Lord of Annandale and the ramparts manned by the citizens under the command of his son, the Earl of Carrick.43
The Scots, having no siege engines, retraced their steps and a few weeks later turned east over the Cheviots and ravaged far and wide into Northumberland, burning churches, nunneries and villages and crowning their aimless exploits by the incineration of two hundred little scholars in a school at Corbridge.44 From a military point of view these raids were useless and did nothing to distract King Edward from his advance up the main eastern route to Scotland.
As it was, he was able to transport his army unopposed over the Tweed, twenty miles upstream from Berwick, and invade the town. An initial assault was made from the sea but the four leading ships went aground and the defenders, sallying forth, set them on fire and slew their crews. Elated by their success, they manned their precarious defences of earthen mound and palisade and jeered at the English and their King. But their confidence was ill founded. Under King Edward’s lead, his armoured knights crashed through the rotting timbers and drove their adversaries in disorder into the narrow streets and closes of the town. The foot soldiers followed and dreadful slaughter ensued. On the orders of the King that none should be spared, men, women and children were hewn down in their thousands and their corpses gave out a stench so overpowering that when all was over, deep pits had to be dug to bury their remains. For two days the massacre continued until Edward, riding among his men, observed a woman in the very act of childbirth being put to the sword, and at last called off the carnage.
Among the dead all honour must be given to the thirty Flemish merchants, who, in strict compliance to their ancient treaty with the Scottish Crown, resisted fiercely in their depot, ‘the Red Hall’, until it was engulfed by flames and all were burned.
The citadel alone remained intact; but the governor, Sir William Douglas, agreed to surrender himself as hostage so that the garrison might depart unharmed.45
The sack of Berwick, the pearl of Scotland’s commerce, was a crippling blow to her revenues and trade. Never again was the town to recover its ancient eminence. Edward at once had marked it down as the headquarters of his Scottish administration. With feverish energy he collected a vast work force from the neighbouring counties to surround it with massive fortifications – Edward himself set an example by personally shifting earth in a wheelbarrow46 – and brought up from the south English clerks and English merchants to replace the inhabitants who now lay cluttered in a common grave.47
By a macabre coincidence, while the smoke still rose thinly from the smouldering ruins a letter was brought by the Abbot of Arbroath to King Edward in which King John renounced his fealty.48 So late and so ineffective. ‘O foolish knave! What folly he commits!’ exclaimed the English King, ‘if he will not come to us, we will go to him.’49
Learning that the Countess of Dunbar had handed over its castle to a Scottish force while her husband was with the English and that the Earl of Buchan was gathering a powerful host on the heights surrounding the town of Dunbar, he ordered his army, under the Earl of Surrey, to march northwards.
The disciplined columns of the English came up with their opponents on 27 April and began to deploy in the deep valley beneath the slopes of the Lammermuirs, on which the Scots were massed, in order to cross the intervening burn. Stalwart though the Scottish knights had shown themselves in many a tiltyard, they had no experience of the tactics of serious warfare. As the English began to disappear into the dead ground below, they assumed they were seeking to escape. Breaking their ranks, they charged down the hillside in a tumultuous
