A Great and Terrible King

by Marc Morris

  But by this date, if not before, news of Stirling Bridge had arrived in London, and immediately the situation was transformed. A disaster on this scale demanded a united response and made it imperative that the government settle with the opposition. Obtaining a settlement still took some time: the earls, fearing a trap, refused to enter the capital until their own guards had been posted on the gates. At length, however, thanks to the mediation of Archbishop Winchelsea, an agreement was reached, and the threat of civil war was averted.

  The basis of the agreement was Magna Carta, the 'great charter' famously wrung from King John over eight decades before. That the earls and the regents should have turned to such an apparently distant precedent might seem surprising, but in fact their response was entirely to be expected. For one thing, the political situation in 1297 was in many respects similar to that of 1215. King John had fought an unpopular war against France and made intolerable demands on his subjects in order to pay for it. Taxation had been heavy and unreasonably frequent; military service had been demanded overseas; political opponents had been broken by distraining them for debt. The circumstances that had produced Magna Carta, in short, were almost identical to those that had produced the current crisis.

  There was, however, a more obvious reason why men in 1297 should regard the ancient charter as the answer to their present woes, which was that, during those eight intervening decades, it had become the touchstone of good government. Throughout the reign of Henry III the rebel manifesto of 1215, revised somewhat in favour of the Crown, had been repeatedly confirmed and reissued. The same was true of a subsidiary document developed to deal with the highly contentious jurisdiction known as the Royal Forest. Together, the Great Charter and the Forest Charter had become the best known and most totemic of all royal promises, and hence the usual first recourse at times of political contention. Whenever folk felt that their rights and liberties were under threat, the cry would go up for 'the Charters'. For the same reason, if the government could see no other way out of a crisis, a regrant of'the Charters' could be offered as a popular panacea.

  This, indeed, had been the scenario earlier in 1297. When, in July, the earls had drawn up a written statement of their grievances (the so-called Remonstrances), they had complained that Magna Carta was being neglected 'to the great loss of the people' and that the Forest Charter was 'not kept as it used to be in the past'. Edward, around the same time, had offered to confirm both Charters in return for a new grant of taxation.

  On this occasion, however, the king's opponents clearly felt that the Charters, while important, would not by themselves be enough. The Remonstrances also complained about the extortionate levels of prise, and the punitive 'maltote' on wool — matters for which Magna Carta, because of its age, offered no remedy. Nor did the Charter have anything helpful to say about taxation. For decades it had been assumed — and Edward I had done much to encourage the assumption — that tax could be collected by the Crown only if consent had been given by parliament. But in 1297, much to the anger of his opponents, the king had imposed a levy of an eighth, having obtained nothing more than the approval of 'the people who stood about in his chamber'.

  When, therefore, they sat down to negotiate in the autumn, the earls demanded — and received - more up-to-date assurances. Although the agreement they reached with the regents became known as 'the Confirmation of the Charters' (Confirmatio Cartarum), it actually included several new clauses, which promised that the maltote would be abolished altogether, and accepted that any future prise or taxation could be taken only 'with the common assent of the realm'.These were major concessions, and met most of the opposition's demands. The government's only victory lay in having moderated some of the language, and in having kept the new clauses separate and distinct from Magna Carta itself. Nevertheless, the regents could also feel pleased with the deal they had struck, for it re-established the much-needed political consensus. When the Confirmation of the Charters was sealed on 10 October, the mutual feeling was one of immense relief. Soon afterwards parliament gave the necessary 'common assent' for a new tax, and the magnates agreed that together they would set out against the Scots. 'Everyone was glad that day,' wrote Walter of Guisborough, adding that Edward of Caernarfon and his counsellors'remitted to the earls and their followers all rancour of spirit and ill will'.

  But all of this, of course, depended on the approval of their absent king.

  Edward had landed safely in Flanders six weeks earlier, but thereafter his fortunes had resumed their familiar downward trajectory. Soon after their landing his troops had fallen to fighting among themselves, further reducing the strength of an already inadequate army. Some of his allies, he discovered, had been defeated by the French the previous week; others meanwhile, despite the enormous sums they had been paid, had not yet materialised. The count of Flanders himself had turned out, and had escorted the English to Bruges, but the locals there had proved altogether less welcoming, and the threat of insurrection had forced the king and his host to flee to the more defensible city of Ghent, where they had remained ever since. Edward, it is true, had succeeded in putting some pressure on Philip IV: his ally and son-in-law, the count of Bar, had led some Welsh troops on plundering raids into French territory. As one chronicler attests, however, 'the king was surrounded by perils'. It must have come as a considerable relief when, on 9 October, the French agreed to a two-month truce.

  Nevertheless, Edward was not about to abandon his Continental campaign, nor was he going to be distracted by events back home. By the time the truce was sealed, for example, he must have known of Warenne's defeat at Stirling Bridge, yet when he wrote to the regents a week later, it was to urge them to send more money to Flanders, so that his still-absent German allies might be induced to appear. Soon after this (for news could travel between London and Flanders in under a week) he must have been presented with the deal that had been reached in England. It can hardly have pleased him. Before leaving for Flanders his own attitude towards his opponents had been uncompromising; now, it seemed, he was expected not only to bow to their demands but also to forgive them their trespasses. According to Walter of Guisborough, the king hesitated for three days before eventually making his decision, but in reality there was only one viable option. The Scots, he knew from experience, could easily be subdued at some later date; similarly, he could revisit the debate with his English subjects when circumstances were more propitious. But for the time being, it was imperative that he should keep up the pressure on Philip IV, for otherwise Gascony might be lost forever. The truce with France had only one month left to run. On 5 November, therefore, Edward did what expediency dictated and ratified the Confirmation of the Charters. As his messengers departed to carry his sealed approval back to England, the king looked expectantly to the east for the arrival of his German allies.

  While the political leaders of England laboured to resolve their differences, their countrymen in the north had been left exposed to unaccustomed suffering and terror. The Scots had followed up their victory at Stirling Bridge with assaults on every town and stronghold in southern Scotland; by early October only a few embattled outposts, such as the castles at Berwick and Roxburgh, still remained in English hands. By this date, too, the people of northern England had already been sent into a panic by sporadic Scottish raids. Yet worse was still to come. In early November William Wallace — now in sole command following the death of Andrew Murray from wounds sustained at Stirling — led his army across the Border and subjected the populations of Cumbria and Northumbria to a harrying on a scale they had not experienced in living memory. 'In all the monasteries and churches between Newcastle and Carlisle,' wrote Walter of Guisborough, 'the service of God totally ceased, for all the canons, monks and priests fled before the Scots, as did nearly all the people.' Carlisle itself came under siege, and at the nearby priory of Lanercost the chronicler accused the invaders of indulging in 'arson, pillage and murder'. The fury of the Scots was soon spent — by the end of November th
ey had returned home, laden with spoil — but the devastation they had caused was long remembered, and served to cement Wallace's reputation in England as a bloodthirsty bogeyman.

  As the north burned, significant developments were occurring on other fronts. Back in Westminster, the regents had received the king's ratification, and the earls had resolved to march against the Scots. In Flanders, meanwhile, there had been a discreet but dramatic shift away from the idea of military action. Edward had now learned that his principal ally, the king of Germany, would definitely not be joining him, and this intelligence dashed any hopes of mounting a major campaign against France. As he explained in his letters home, the truce had lately been extended for three more months, and the plan now was to push for a permanent peace. This, however, meant it was even more imperative that he should seem strong in the coming weeks, and the king therefore concluded by instructing his regents to send additional troops over from England in advance of the final negotiations.

  Thus, as the tumultuous year 1297 drew to a close, the atmosphere everywhere was one of anxious anticipation. The earls and barons of England readied themselves to ride north, and the Scots steeled themselves for the oncoming assault. In Wales large numbers of men were recruited to provide the English with the necessary infantry, and in Flanders their king waited to see whether the essential diplomatic breakthrough could be achieved.

  For Edward, the anxiety ended on 28 January 1298, when an agreement with France was finally reached. Under its terms, both sides agreed to suspend hostilities for a further two years, and to put their quarrel over Gascony to the judgement of the pope. If this was not the permanent peace that the English king had hoped for, it was nevertheless about as good a deal as he could reasonably expect in the circumstances. His legal and moral case for retaining the duchy was likely to be far more persuasive than the distinctly limited military pressure he had been struggling to apply for the past three-and-a-half years. In the immediate term, moreover, the new truce meant that he could stand down his forces in Handers and return home: a week after it was sealed, the king ordered a hundred ships to come and carry him back to England.

  A ceasefire with France also meant a rethink for Scotland. As soon as the truce was in place, Edward sent letters postponing the planned invasion until his return. On the face of it this was a terrible waste of resources: by the time the royal messengers arrived, the English army, 16,000 men strong, had already relieved Roxburgh and Berwick, and was just about to advance into the Scottish interior. From the king's point of view, however, it was more important that he should lead the assault in person. An under-resourced or ill-commanded effort (and, though Edward can hardly have known it, the earls' army was already facing shortages) ran the risk of another failure and that was a completely unconscionable prospect. By the same token, the thought of victory being achieved in his absence was not an altogether happy one either. The diminished army now paused on the Border was composed in large part of men who had opposed him the previous year, and he did not wish to hand these individuals any further political advantage. When Edward returned from Flanders — he landed at Sandwich on 14 March 1298 — it was with a determination to reassert his authority not only in Scotland, but in England as well.

  But Scotland had to come first, which meant that for the time being the king had to continue to appease his English critics. Roger Bigod and Humphrey de Bohun were equally determined to defend the guarantees of good government they had obtained the previous year, and so the parliament that was summoned for York at the end of May could well have proved contentious. (It would be the first occasion that Bigod and Edward had stood face to face since their row at Salisbury fifteen months earlier.) In the event, though, the meeting seems to have passed without incident; it may have helped that, immediately after his return, as was his wont, the king had launched a major inquiry into ministerial abuse. Soon the assembly at York was over, and an ostensibly united English army rode out from the city to deal with the Scots. Some suspicion still lingered within their ranks. As they rode north, Bigod and Bohun heard it whispered that Edward was secredy planning to disregard the Confirmation of the Charters on the grounds that his ratification had been given overseas; when they reached the Border, the earls refused to go further without reassurances that this was not the case. Once again, the king adopted a conciliatory line, and induced four other magnates to swear on his soul that, once the Scots had been defeated, he would address his critics' concerns. Bigod and Bohun declared themselves satisfied, and the army began its advance.

  It was massive. The infantry alone, as their pay rolls attest, amounted to almost 26,000 men; the cavalry, numbering perhaps as many as 3,000, was also mightily impressive. Clearly, Edward had been wise to postpone: the French truce had not only allowed him to redeploy his forces from Flanders; the spring had also witnessed the return of the English veterans from Gascony, led by the earl of Lincoln, who now rejoined the king. Patriotism, too, goes some way to explaining the large cavalry numbers, for the English military classes burned to avenge Stirling Bridge. The main reason, however, for the exceptionally high turnout probably lay in the nature of the campaign, as confirmed in the recent parliament. The Scottish nobility - many of whom had been released in return for fighting in Flanders - had also been summoned to appear at York. But inevitably they had failed to do so, and as a result had been declared disinherited. The English were setting out, said Peter Langtoft.'to take vengeance, and to deprive the Scots of land and tenement'. This, in other words, was not a punitive campaign like that of 1296, intended to bring errant vassals back into line: it was a new war of conquest, of the kind that had led to the carve-up of Wales. Victory in Scotland now held out to the English aristocracy the enticing prospect of rich and (to judge from Dunbar) easy pickings. They had been summoned to fight by virtue of their fealty, but they turned out in great numbers in expectation of gain.

  Before this redistribution of wealth could occur, however, there was a dragon to be slain in the form of the Scottish army and its undisputed leader, William Wallace (or rather Sir William Wallace, for the people's champion had since been knighted and named as his country's sole Guardian until John Balliol could be restored). The only problem lay in locating the beast. As the English advanced into Scotland, burning and wasting as they went, no sign of the enemy was seen, and no intelligence could be had. After a week of fruitless provocation they paused at Kirkliston, a few miles west of Edinburgh, where supplies were expected by sea. But another week passed with no word of Wallace and, worse still, no food from England. Contrary winds prevented the majority of ships from getting through; those that did arrive were mosdy carrying wine. Drunken fighting soon broke out between the English and Welsh infantry, and the latter withdrew, threatening to side with the Scots. According to Guisborough, Edward showed only cool disdain, saying, 'Who cares if our enemies joined together? We shall beat them both in a day' But there could be no disguising the fact that his campaign had run into serious difficulty.

  Then, suddenly, on the morning of 21 July, the longed-for news arrived. The king was about to retire to Edinburgh to reconsider his strategy when a spy reported that the Scots were just twenty miles to the west, readying themselves to attack the English army as it retreated. 'Praise God, who up to now has delivered me from all difficulties,' said Edward. 'They shan't have to follow me, for I shall go to meet them this very day.'

  It was not, in fact, until the dawn of the next day that the king finally caught up with his quarry, whose spears were spotted on high ground close to the town of Falkirk. For the English this brought a welcome end to weeks of uncertainty, and an especially restless twenty-four hours. They had spent the previous night camped at nearby Linlithgow in fearful expectation of a Scottish ambush: every rider -including Edward himself — had slept on the ground next to his standing horse ('with their shields as pillows,' said Guisborough,'and their armour as bedclothes'). For one fraught moment it had seemed that their foes were indeed upon them; a rumour that the kin
g had been wounded had caused an abortive rush to arms. Edward, it turned out, had been hurt in the night, but by rather more prosaic means. His horse, carelessly kept by its groom, had trodden on him.

  Now, in the clear light of day, it was apparent that the Scots had abandoned all thought of ambush; in the distance they could be seen arraying themselves ready for battle. To compensate for his inferior numbers, Wallace had adopted a defensive strategy. His army was drawn up on the side of a small hill, at the foot of which ran an insubstantial stream. His greatest asset, the massed pikemen of his infantry, were arranged in four great circular brigades, or 'schiltroms', as the Scots called them. With their bristling spears turned outwards, these giant hedgehogs would give the foot soldiers a fighting chance against a cavalry charge. Nesded between them for protection were the archers of Selkirk Forest, while the Scottish cavalry were stationed at the rear. Both these contingents, however, were tiny in comparison with their English counterparts.

  The strength of Wallace's formation is well attested by the reaction of his opponent. Edward, when advised of it, was inclined to be cautious: superiority in numbers only counted for so much. The last time he had charged uphill at a supposedly inferior foe, the result had been a disastrous defeat. That, of course, had been at Lewes, well over three decades earlier, and was, to be fair, his first taste of battle. But when one remembers that the king's most recent battlefield experience was the almost equally distant engagement at Evesham, the reason for his caution becomes even more apparent. Edward was now in his sixtieth year; his hair, once blond, had turned to snowy white. In general terms he was in remarkably robust health, but on this particular morning, thanks to his night-time mishap, he was nursing two broken ribs. Having arrived at Falkirk, he proposed pitching camp, and allowing his tired and hungry troops to feed themselves and their horses. His commanders, however, would have none of it: hesitation, they argued, would leave them once again exposed to attack. The king in due course agreed. The order to advance was given, and the Battle of Falkirk began.