the envoys courteously with expressions of goodwill to the guardians and the promise, at their request, to shelve a border dispute which was causing friction between the two countries.5 But he kept his own counsel about the future he had already envisaged for Scotland.
Edward I was one of the most able and ably advised of all the monarchs of England. The foundations of English legislature and parliament were laid in his reign: the pretensions of the Church were reduced and contained; the system of feudal levies was adapted and transformed to provide a fighting force of immense flexibility and power.
He was a man of commanding presence, tall, handsome and spare. On the field of battle he was fearless: in his private life chaste. He was sober in his mode of living, dressed simply and was constant in his religious devotions.
But the overriding element in his character was his unquestioning belief that whatever he desired was right and in the interests of all concerned. A contemporary wrote:
He is valiant as a lion, quick to attack the strongest and fearing the onslaught of none. But if a lion in pride and fierceness, he is a panther in fickleness and inconstancy, changing his word and promise, cloaking himself by pleasant speech. When he is cornered he promises whatever you wish but as soon as he has escaped he forgets his promise. The treachery or falsehood by which he is advanced he calls prudence and the path by which he attains his ends, however crooked, he calls straight and whatever he likes he says is lawful.6
When the news had come of his brother-in-law’s death, he pondered deeply on the consequences. Hitherto, if he was involved in continental warfare, he had known that he had a friendly ruler at his back. Now no such certainty obtained. The French already had links with Scotland through Alexander’s widow Yolande de Dreux, and could strengthen them to their advantage. Above all, the Maid of Norway, with the Scottish kingdom as her dowry, would soon excite the interest of royal suitors from the courts of Europe. It was essential that he had as much control of Scotland as he had of Wales.
His first move was to make sure that there should be no consort for the young Queen of Scotland other than his youngest and only surviving son, Edward of Carnarvon, who had been born in 1284. For that end he had already prepared the way. On 29 March 1286, within a few days of Alexander’s death, he had put the Maid of Norway’s father, King Erik, in his debt by making him a personal loan of two thousand pounds sterling7 and had resolved the problem of his own son’s marriage being within the forbidden degrees of the Church by obtaining from the Pope, in May of that year, a bull dispensing with the impediments of affinity and legitimizing any issue that might result.8
The groundwork had been laid but young Edward was barely two years old and the time was not yet ripe for the next move forward.
The return of the Scottish envoys to their country, bringing with them the approbation of Edward I, was a welcome support to the guardians in a critical situation. During the envoys’ absence trouble had flared in the southwest of Scotland. Robert the Competitor and his son the Earl of Carrick, gathering their retainers together, had seized the two royal castles of Dumfries and Wigton and the Balliol stronghold of Buittle,9 and on 20 September 1286 had entered into a sworn agreement with James Stewart, one of the guardians, Angus Macdonald, Lord of the Isles, the Earls of March and Menteith and other noblemen to band themselves together.10
Robert the Competitor had been stirred from his retirement by two strong motives: first, to secure his base by hemming in the Galloway domain of his rival John Balliol and so keeping open the Nithsdale route between Annandale and Carrick; second, by seizing the castles and signing the Turnberry bond to indicate to King Edward, his old companion in arms and fellow crusader, that at a nod from his royal head the Bruces had the potential to take over the government of Scotland.
But no sooner was it known that the guardians had received the backing of Edward I than the raised fists were folded in peace. Robert the Competitor was too shrewd a magnate to pursue his purpose without the support or tacit approval of the English monarch.
A calm descended upon the country and for four years the guardians, backed by a permanent council of magnates, were able to carry out their administration without further incident. In 1289 their number was reduced to four. The Earl of Buchan died from old age and the Earl of Fife, described by the Lanercost Chronicle as ‘cruel and greedy beyond average’,11 was murdered by his kinsmen. It was fortunate that among the survivors were the two bishops. For these were the professionals: trained in law and diplomacy and determined to uphold the national identity of Scotland. Their skills were shortly to be needed in the negotiations with Edward I.
As soon as Edward I returned to England in the late summer of 1289 he moved cautiously towards his objective. Exercising his moral authority as brother-in-law of the dead King and great-uncle of the young Queen, he invited the King of Norway and the Scottish regency to send commissioners to confer on her future. The King of Norway sent ambassadors. Edward himself appointed the Earl of Pembroke, the Bishop of Winchester, the Earl of Surrey and Antony Bek, the militant Bishop of Durham, to act on his behalf, and the Scottish regency empowered three of the guardians, John Comyn of Badenoch and the two bishops, together with Robert the Competitor, to treat ‘with due care, in all possible contingencies, for the honour and liberty of the Scottish realm.’12
The plenipotentiaries met at Salisbury in October and by 6 November had reached an amicable agreement: that the Queen should be sent to Scotland or England by 1 November 1290 but without prejudice to the question of her marriage; that if it was in England she landed she should be delivered to Scotland provided it was in a safe and peaceful condition, and that the Scots should refrain from engaging her in any marriage contract without the consent of her father and great-uncle.13
Encouraged by the smooth passage of these negotiations, Edward I, within a few weeks of the Treaty of Salisbury being signed, brought at last into the open the project on which he had been quietly working over the past three years. He produced a bull from Pope Nicholas IV granting dispensation for the marriage of Margaret, now six years of age, to his five-year-old son.14
This proposal for the union of the Crowns was received in Scotland with wary approval. For a hundred years there had been peace between the two countries and, with that peace, prosperity. The marriage of Margaret and young Edward would give assurance of that peace continuing: the authority of the Queen would be enhanced by her relationship to a powerful monarch and the pretensions of ambitious vassals would be abated. On 17 March 1290, therefore, letters were sent to the Kings of England and Norway in the names of the four guardians, ten bishops, ten earls, twenty-three abbots, eleven priors and forty-eight barons, speaking for the whole community of Scotland, agreeing to the marriage in principle.15
But the churchmen of the chancellery were not unaware that the see of York nursed claims for supremacy over the Scottish bishoprics and the Scottish magnates who had done homage for their English lands to Edward I in person knew well the imperious temper of that monarch and his consolidating ambitions. Even King Erik of Norway had his reservations and when a Yarmouth ship, specially equipped by Edward I with sweetmeats, fruit and gingerbread for the comfort of Maid Margaret, arrived in May 1290 at Bergen to carry her back to England, he dismissed it empty-handed.
