- CHAPTER 2
1 Barrow, 37
2 Balfour Paul, 433–4
3 ibid., 428–30
4 Palgrave, 29
5 Stones, 79
6 Lanercost, 111-12
7 ibid., 112–13
8 MacKay, 19
9 Barrow, 38
10 Pluscarden, 194
11 Jenkins, 105
12 ibid., 98
* cf note I
3
The year 1286 was ushered into Scotland by storms so thunderous and recurrent that many a wiseacre shook his head and doleful men predicted the imminence of calamity. A strengthening rumour rippled through the countryside that 18 March was to be the Day of Judgement. On that very day Alexander III called together at Edinburgh Castle the lords of his council in conference and after the meeting entertained them at dinner. The feast was long, the Lanercost Chronicle relates, the cups were filled, the King was in tearing spirits, chaffing his companions about the prophecies of doom, passing to one of his barons a dish of lampreys, bidding him to eat and make merry for he should know that this was judgement day, to which the baron replied, ‘If this be judgement day we shall arise with full bellies.’
As the red wine of Gascony mounted in his veins, the vision of Yolande, the young bride he had left in the royal manor of Kinghorn, twenty miles away, became more and more alluring. In spite of the tempestuous weather outside and the remonstrances of his nobles, he called for his horse and followed by three squires made haste along the road to the ferry at Dalmeny. When he reached the village the ferry-master urged on him the hazards of the crossing and begged him to return to Edinburgh.
‘Are you afraid to die with me?’ asked the King.
‘By no means,’ replied the ferry master, ‘I could not die better than in the company of your father’s son,’ and forthwith rowed them across the two miles of turbulent water to the burgh of In verkei thing.
Landing in profound darkness they were met by Alexander, the royal purveyor, who, recognizing the King’s voice, called out, ‘My Lord, what are you doing here in such storm and darkness? How often have I not tried to persuade you that these midnight rambles will do you no good? Stay with us and we will provide you with all that you want until the morning light.’
But the King, still impelled by the dual urge of royal duty and private pleasure, asked only for two countrymen to guide him and set off with his escort along the coast road to Kinghorn. In the howling wind and darkness the little party soon lost all contact with each other and next morning the King was found dead on the seashore below the cliffs, his neck broken.1
A great grief fell upon the kingdom and apprehension for the future. The heir apparent was a small girl in a foreign land, and although at Scone in 1284, in the presence of Alexander III, the magnates of the realm had promised, failing his direct issue, to recognize his granddaughter Margaret, the Maid of Norway, as ‘their liege lady and sovereign Queen’, many who had so promised under the eye of their King when the possibility seemed remote, now that the King was dead began to have reservations. No woman had ever before become the ruler of Scotland. Some harked back to the old Celtic tanist tradition under which when a king died, the nearest male relative took over the reins of power: others began to edge closer to one or other of the two powerful families, the Comyns and the Bruces, who numbered among their members males of the royal blood. Like two stiff-legged dogs circling with hackles raised the two families eyed each other ready to launch into action if any move was made by their rival. The whiff of civil war was in the air.
But Alexander III had left behind him a firm infrastructure of government. The chancellery, the civil service of the time, was largely manned by clerics. The Church had her fingers on the pulse of administration and the Church was the one single coherent institution which covered the whole country. Next to the Crown she was the largest landowner in the kingdom. Her many tenants – lairds, thanes and smallholders – were men of the native race, rooted deep in the soil, a solid substratum of Scottish men beneath the shifting oligarchy of Normans whose lands and loyalties were split between Scotland and England. With undeviating purpose, but often by devious means, she was determined to preserve the independence of Scotland and the Scottish Church.
As soon as the royal funeral had taken place on 29 March 1286, Bishops Wishart of Glasgow and Fraser of St Andrews dispatched two Dominican friars to Edward I, brother-in-law of the late King and hitherto a good friend to their country, to inform him of the event.2 A month later, when Queen Yolande’s claim to be pregnant proved illusory, they summoned to Scone the bishops, abbots and priors, the earls and barons and good men of the country to pledge their fealty to the young Queen over the water, Margaret of Norway, the last survivor of the House of Canmore, and to swear, on pain of excommunication by the bishops, to protect and uphold the peace of her land.3 To this end a regency was appointed to represent the community of the realm, communitas regni Scotie, the whole body of the free subjects of the Crown.
The regency consisted of six guardians of whom two were earls, those of Buchan and Fife, two were churchmen, the Bishops of St Andrews and Glasgow, two were barons, James Stewart and John Comyn.4 Of these the first-named three were responsible for Scotland north of the Forth and the other three for the south. Deliberately, neither Robert the Competitor nor John Balliol of Galloway, both of whom had pretensions to the throne, was elected but of the guardians the Earl of Buchan, the Bishop of St Andrews and John Comyn were there to safeguard the interests of John Balliol, whose sister was married to John Comyn. The others were supporters of Robert Bruce.
It was in all a carefully thought-out constitutional compromise and, as a neighbourly gesture and diplomatic courtesy, three envoys, the Bishop of Brechin, the Abbot of Jedburgh and Sir Geoffrey de Mowbray, were commissioned by the Scone parliament to seek out Edward I in Gascony and acquaint him with the arrangement. In the meantime a seal was struck for the guardians without which no ordinance in the future would be accounted valid.
Edward I received the envoys early in September 1286 at the town of Saintes. He was then actively engaged in arriving at an agreement with the King of France over various disputed territories in Normandy, Limousin and other areas, defining the boundaries of Gascony and reforming its government: enterprises which were to occupy his attention until his return to England in August
