So the Scottish commissioners conducted their negotiations with all the caution of a reluctant virgin in the presence of an ardent suitor, and when the Treaty of Birgham was signed on 18 July 1290 in the village of that name, there had been written in specific conditions for the protection of Scotland’s independence as strong as any parchment could create.
The laws, liberties and customs of Scotland were to be observed at all times. The great offices of state were to be held only by Scotsmen. No writ of common law or letter of special favour could be issued except by the ‘King’s Chapel’, the royal chancellery. No taxation of the Scots should be levied except for the needs of the Scottish kingdom. No vassal of the Scottish Crown was to do homage for his Scottish lands outside the kingdom. No Church matters were to be subject to interference outside the kingdom. No Scottish subject was to be answerable at law outside the kingdom. No parliament dealing with Scottish affairs was to be held outside the kingdom.
The whole emphasis was on the separateness of the Scottish kingdom from that of England. There was to be a union of the Crowns indeed, but the two countries were to remain as distinct sovereignties ruled respectively by their native queen and king.17
Agreement to these terms was endorsed by Edward I at Northampton on 28 August 1290 and many historians have applauded his statesmanship in showing such consideration to the demands of the weaker party. On the surface this would appear to be so. But it is noticeable that after the resounding affirmation that the Scottish kingdom should be ‘separate, apart and free in itself without subject to the English Kingdom’, there is slipped in a clause ‘saving the rights of the King of England … which may justly belong to him’:18 a clause identical to that he inserted in the Forest Charter Laws forced upon him by his barons and on the strength of which he claimed legal justification when he reneged on his undertakings. Even while the commissioners were still discussing the Treaty of Birgham Edward I sent Walter Huntercomb with an armed force on 4 June 1290 to seize the governorship of the Isle of Man. An integral part of the Scottish realm, of strategic importance, was thus transferred into an English protectorate.19 In August he attempted still further pressure by asking the Scottish regency to allow Antony Bek, his chief negotiator at the Treaty of Birgham, to be viceroy in Scotland for Queen Margaret and her husband designate and to accept his ruling in all matters appertaining to the ‘governance and peaceful state of the realm’ – yet another pointer to the fact that however accommodating his reaction to the Treaty of Birgham, his settled purpose remained the subservience of the Scottish kingdom to the national interest of England.
Nevertheless, for the moment the Scottish rulers conditioned themselves to see only his Janus face of peace and throughout September, that best of months in Scotland, a mood of optimism spread through the country at the prospect of the royal marriage. A voyage by sea of the Maid of Norway to the Orkneys was put in hand and to that outlying possession of the Norwegian Crown a deputation from the kingdoms of Scotland and England made their way while other magnates began to gather at Perth to await her progress south and her inauguration at Scone.
But all was for nothing. The little Queen Margaret fell ill on the voyage from Norway to Orkney and soon after landing there, on 26 September 1290, she died in the arms of the Bishop of Bergen. The succession to the throne was now wide open.20
NOTES - CHAPTER 3
1 Lanercost, 40–42
2 Cal. Doc. Scots, ii, 292; Stevenson, i, 4
3 Palgrave, 42
4 Fordun, 305
5 Cal. Doc. Scots, ii, 305; Stevenson, i,21
6 Song of Lewes, 42
7 Cal. Doc. Scots, ii, 293; Stevenson, i, 22
8 ibid., ii, 298; ibid., i, 35
9 Palgrave, 42
10 Stevenson, i, 22
11 Lanercost, 59
12 Cal. Doc. Scots, ii, 386, 388
13 Dickinson, 105–7
14 Cal. Doc. Scots, ii, 392; Stevenson, i, in
15 ibid., ii, 416
16 ibid., ii, 464
17 Dickinson, 107–9
18 Stevenson, i, 162
19 ibid., i, 172
20 Dunbar, 416
4
No sooner did the news of the Queen’s death reach Scotland early in October than Robert the Competitor, although in his eightieth year, gathered a strong force of armed men together and hastened to Perth where the Scottish Council was in session, with the intent to overawe them against any action inimicable to his interests. The Earls of Mar and Atholl were rumoured to be mustering their forces in his support and few can doubt that in his train was a young squire of sixteen years, already trained in weaponry and well aware of his family’s claims, his grandson Robert Bruce.
Down in the south, John Balliol, Lord of Galloway since his mother’s death earlier in the year, with the connivance and encouragement of his neighbour and friend Antony Bek, Prince Bishop of Durham and right hand man of Edward I, declared himself ‘heir to Scotland’. A swarm of other claimants dusted their pedigrees and burnished their arms. But none was preponderant enough to gain the Crown by force and all eyes turned towards the English King whose apparent consideration for the independence of Scotland had so recently been shown and whose reputation for impartiality had been recognized by the Crowns of Europe when he was appointed arbiter between the conflicting claims of Peter of Aragon and Charles of Anjou to the kingdom of Sicily.
Bishop Fraser urged him by letter to move to the border in force to prevent bloodshed and pressed the claims of John himself.1
