The Path to the Throne

by H A CULLEY

  ~#~

  In the absence of a Chancellor, the Bishop of St. Andrews elect took the chair. The previous bishop, the leading prelate in Scotland, had died in France in August and the new bishop, William Lamberton, had yet to be approved by the Pope. The Comyns had opposed Lamberton’s election by the Chapter of St. Andrews as all recent holders of the bishopric had either been Comyns or supporters of the family. However, Lamberton had Wallace’s support as well as that of Bishop Robert Wishart of Glasgow. He was an interesting choice, being only twenty years old at the time of his election.

  Lamberton thumped his bishop’s crook on the floor of the great hall of Stirling Castle to silence the hubbub of conversation all around him. Most of the bishops were present as well as over half of the nobles of Scotland. Once the gathering was relatively quiet he took his seat on a raised dais at one end of the hall.

  It was a relatively warm day for the end of October but the bare walls of the hall were cold and made the room distinctly chilly, something that the two roaring fires, one on each of the long walls of the hall, did little to alleviate. Robert Bruce had been tempted to stay with his fellow earls who were hogging the area near one of the hearths but he gave up the warmth they offered in order to stand near the bishop’s chair.

  With a start he recognised the young squire who had stepped forward from the shadows to take Bishop Lamberton’s crook as he sat down. It was the same boy who had tried to lead his own squire astray on the night of his wedding to Isabella. James Douglas had gown a little but Robert reckoned he couldn’t be more than twelve now. He wondered why Lamberton had chosen him to be his squire, and at such a young age. The boy glanced at the man who was studying him so intently, recognised him and gave him a cheeky grin. Robert was initially affronted - the lad should have known his place and kept his eyes averted - but he realised that his cheek appealed to something in him and smiled back briefly before looking away.

  This parliament was as tedious as every other one. The nobles and prelates jostled for status and advantage and their personal desires and ambitions overrode the national interest; indeed few there would have identified with the idea of Scotland as a country. The one person who did was Sir William Wallace. Eventually he had heard enough bickering and petty mindedness and got to his feet. At first he said nothing, but just stood and glared around the hall. Slowly the raised voices quietened until the only sound to be heard was the crackling of the flames in the hearths and the uncomfortable shuffling of feet.

  ‘I for one have heard enough of this blathering. All you nobles seem to want is to gain another manor here and another profitable sinecure there; and you don’t care whether it’s in England or Scotland. Did Stirling Bridge teach you nothing? Your people and mine won a great victory over the damned English and sent them packing over the border again with their tails between their legs.’

  He paused for a minute. ‘You need to build on the tremendous advantage young Murray and I gained you and expel the remainder of the English dogs from the few castles they still hold and carry the fight south of the border to give them a taste of the medicine they have been dishing out to us for the past decade. However, to do that we need a ruler the country can unite behind. King John is in the Tower of London as Longshank’s prisoner so we need a viceroy, a single Guardian, to lead us. The bickering committees of the past are no use in war. We need someone under whose leadership others will unite. Now you are the leading nobles of our country, which of you can provide that inspiration, that leadership, that unity?’

  At first Wallace’s words produced a stunned silence, then everyone started talking at once. No-one disagreed with Sir William; they just couldn’t agree on who the Guardian should be. Eventually Bishop Lamberton stood up, took his crook back from James Douglas and banged the point down on the stone flagged floor. Slowly the gathering grew quiet again. Then Robert Bruce spoke.

  ‘My lords, this is getting us nowhere. There is only one man who has led our country to victory against the English: Sir William Wallace. He is the only one of us who has any chance of uniting Scotland and so is the obvious choice to become sole Guardian. I so move.’

  This proposal was so unexpected that it was followed by a stunned silence, which was broken by the Earl of Buchan, the senior member of the Comyn family present at the parliament.

  ‘I endorse the Bruce’s proposal that Sir William be appointed sole Guardian in the name of John, King of Scots.’ He gave Robert a look of triumph. He thought that he had forced Bruce to accept John Balliol as king, despite his abdication and present status as Edward Longshanks’ prisoner in the Tower of London.

  In fact Robert had already accepted that there was no current alternative to Balliol as the nominal monarch. He was not yet in a position to make an attempt for the throne himself and so he was content at regaining power and status as the man who had knighted William Wallace and then sponsored him as the de facto ruler of Scotland. It was certainly better than being regarded as an anglophile with little support amongst either the nobles or the people.

  After the parliament was over and Robert joined John Comyn, Earl of Buchan, who was also the Constable of Scotland, Thomas Randolph, Earl of Moray and Lord Chamberlain, James Stewart, the High Steward, and the Bishop of St. Andrews on Wallace’s council. The other members were the new Guardian’s captains, including Malcolm Cowan. Wallace had wanted Mary as well, but he knew that the nobles would never have accepted her.

  ‘We need to build on our success at Stirling Bridge and carry the fight into England,’ Wallace began.

  ‘We should take Carlisle and burn it to the ground,’ the Earl of Buchan suggested, knowing that its governor was still Robert Bruce’s father.

  Before Robert could respond, Wallace cut in hastily. ‘I want this campaign to unite Scots, not divide them into Comyn and Bruce camps.’ He glared at John Comyn and then at Robert Bruce.

  ‘Well then,’ Thomas Randolph interrupted, ‘we need to strike down through Northumberland and Durham into Yorkshire.’

  ~#~

  King Edward was fuming. The war against France was not going as well as he had hoped. So far it had lasted three years and he had lost Gascony to Philip of France. Initially Holland and Flanders had sided with their liege lord, Philip, but Edward had won them over to his side by a mixture of cajolery, bribery, threats and judicious marriage of two of his daughters to the Counts of Flanders and of Bar.

  Although Edward had built up an impressive alliance of states stretching from the Channel down to Savoy all along the eastern borders of France, getting the various dukes and counts to act in concert was proving difficult. Philip had struck first, invading Flanders and laying siege to the key town of Lille. When the news of the debacle at Stirling Bridge reached him the English king was in no position to deal with the rebellious Scots. Philip of France had the upper hand in Flanders and Edward’s carefully, and expensively, constructed alliance was about to fall apart.

  He did the only thing he could do in the circumstances. He sent envoys to King Philip to sue for peace. At the same time he released certain of the Scots hostages he had taken with him to Flanders, including John, Lord of Badenoch, known as the Red Comyn, on condition that they returned to Scotland to hunt down and eliminate William Wallace.

  Edward was impatient to return to England and mobilise an army to invade Scotland and return it to his rule, but the negotiations with Philip dragged on and on. Philip knew the quandary his enemy was in and prevaricated in the hope that Edward would give in and give Philip everything he wanted in order to return to England with all speed.

  The main sticking point was the status of the Duchy of Gascony. Philip was prepared to recognise Edward as its duke again, but only as his, Philip’s, vassal. Edward, on the other hand, demanded autonomy for his duchy. Eventually the matter was referred to the Pope. His Holiness decreed that Gascony should return to its status before the war started. This wasn’t terribly helpful as the conflict had started over precisely that status. In the meantime
he declared it to be a Papal fief. To cement the treaty Edward agreed to marry Margaret of France and his son, Edward, Prince of Wales, was betrothed to Philip’s daughter, Isabella. One further term of the treaty was that John Balliol was to be handed over to the French King so that he could end his days peaceably in freedom in France.

  Finally Edward was free to return and tackle the intractable problem of Scotland. He arrived at York in Early April and promptly moved his centre of administration there, including the Chancery, the Treasury and the Royal Courts of Justice.

  ~#~

  Wallace had thoroughly despoiled Northumberland and parts of Durham and Cumbria the previous autumn and winter. Only Newcastle escaped unscathed, though none of the major castles were taken. Several hundred villages, manors, religious houses and towns were looted and burned and William Wallace returned to Scotland with enough money to raise an army to meet the inevitable invasion once Edward returned from Flanders. However, Wallace wasn’t worried. Stirling Bridge had proved that the English weren’t invincible and, if he was honest with himself, William was eager to again enjoy the euphoria that victory brought with it.

  Whilst William Wallace was raising men to meet the expected invasion Robert Bruce had returned to his lands to defeat a punitive incursion into Annandale by Robert Clifford, English Lord Warden of the Marches. Having raised as many men as he could at short notice from his Carrick lands he sent out scouts to find out Clifford’s location and strength before leading his small army to a rendezvous in the Lowther Hills at the northern end of Annandale. He had knighted both Neil and Edward before setting out, though at eighteen and seventeen respectively, they were young for the honour. Both his brothers rode proudly at his side as they entered the Lowther Hills.

  ‘Clifford had some four hundred men with him, my lord,’ one of the scouts told him. ‘There are a few knights but most are mounted serjeants and local Cumbrians mounted on garrons. They have set up camp for the night at the small village of Moffat, about seven miles from here.’

  After Robert had thanked him, he called a meeting of his senior knights and captains. He had gathered some five hundred men together and so had the numerical advantage, but many of his men were villagers and farmers, inexperienced in the use of weapons. He therefore decided to use his knights, serjeants and men-at-arms as a strike force and deploy the rest north and south of Moffat to prevent escape.

  As soon as dark fell his small force set out, guided by the scout. Luckily they soon hit a well-worn drove road down the glen and three hours later, just after midnight, the column halted half a mile north of the village. Robert was relieved to find that he had only lost a few men in the darkness.

  He left Neil in charge of the cut-off group in the north and sent Edward, who he thought had more initiative than his elder brother, to take up position to the south of the valley in which Moffat lay. He had to allow enough time for Edward to skirt the town to the west before launching his attack.

  An hour later he led a hundred mounted soldiers into the village, yelling to wake Clifford’s men from their drunken slumber, and then cutting them down as they emerged semi-clothed and half-asleep from the village houses. Inevitably one or two villagers were killed in the general confusion but most had the sense to remain inside. Once the Englishmen had fled, either up or down the valley, Bruce ordered a systematic search of the houses. Everyone found in the buildings was herded together in the centre of the village and then the villagers pointed out Clifford’s men, who were summarily executed there and then.

  As dawn broke over the hills to the east of Moffat, Neil and then Edward led their men into the village to meet up with their brother. Most of the fleeing soldiers had been killed or captured but a few had escaped up the hillsides to the east and west. Unfortunately one of these must have been Lord Clifford as he wasn’t amongst the slain or the prisoners. There were a few knights who had surrendered and Bruce agreed to keep these for ransom, but he turned the common soldiers and the men from Cumbria over to the villagers to deal with. Well satisfied with the night’s work, he turned his horses head and headed back towards Turnberry.

  ‘What next brother?’ Edward, his eyes still aflame with excitement after his first action, asked Robert as he rode alongside him.

  Instead of answering him, Robert asked him a question. ‘How do the English keep a stranglehold on us?’

  Edward thought for a moment. ‘I suppose it’s because they can sit safe and secure in their strongholds and sally out from them to plunder the countryside if we step out of line.’

  ‘So what’s the solution? How do we destroy their grip on us?’

  Edward’s face lightened with understanding. ‘We capture their castles and either hold them against the English or, if we can’t hold them, we destroy them.’

  ‘Precicely! Firstly I need to take back Lochmaben and Turnberry and hold them and then destroy Ayr Castle. Wallace will do the same in the Borders.’

  That was the plan but it didn’t quite work out like that.

  ~#~

  William Wallace questioned the scout closely. At first he didn’t believe his statement that Edward Longshanks was on the move at long last. Nine months after the stunning Scots victory at Stirling another English army was on the way north again. William, having expected such a move at some time, had nevertheless hoped that Edward’s treasury had been exhausted by the recent war in France. Somehow Edward seemed to have been able to raise a force of some twenty thousand foot and three thousand horsemen.

  William immediately abandoned his ideas of recapturing Roxburgh and Berwick and started to raise an army to counter the English attack. He had hoped that the wealthy See of St. Andrews would help fund the mobilisation of a new army, but in May Bishop Lamberton, accompanied by his squire, the young James Douglas, had departed for Rome to be confirmed as the Scottish Primate by the Pope before returning via Paris to solicit French military aid against King Edward.

  The two, accompanied by the Bishop’s chaplain, his secretary and six sergeants as escort, arrived in Paris in the middle of June 1298. They had only been there a week and negotiations with King Philip were at an early stage when a messenger arrived from St. Andrews.

  ‘My Lord Bishop,’ he began. ‘I have an important message from Sir William Wallace for you and another for your squire, James Douglas of Douglasdale.’

  At this James Douglas drew in his breath sharply. His official designation was James Douglas of Douglasdale the Younger. The omission of the last two words could mean only one thing: his father had died in captivity in the Tower of London, and so it proved. The rumour was that Edward Longshanks had caused his death through deliberate starvation. His face crumpled, he had loved his father and the thought of him dying a slow and degrading death was more than the boy could bare. Then his face hardened and he swore to himself that he would devote his life to the cause of Scottish independence from the hated English.

  Meanwhile Robert Bruce was celebrating his recapture of Lochmaben Castle. He had started the campaign by attacking James Douglas’s home of Douglasdale, now given to Robert Clifford by King Edward. The local people had joined his ranks and driven Clifford and his men from the area. This left the English garrison in Lochmaben isolated. The constable had quickly capitulated when faced with the choice of an honourable surrender or being besieged and starved out with no hope of a quick relief.

  ‘Don’t these people realise that we need to stick together!’ Edward Bruce stormed at Robert. The men of Douglasdale and Annandale had refused to join Robert’s march on Turnberry and he was now forced to raise a new force from amongst his people in Carrick.

  ‘Edward, calm down. Venting your frustration like this is helping no-one.’

  Robert was as disappointed as his younger brother but he realised that anger was pointless. One of the problems was that the Scots were very clannish with little sense of national identity. They would fight for their chieftain and defend their homes and families, but they weren’t much concerned with the big
ger picture. Of course William Wallace was different. He had caught the people’s imagination and to them he was a hero. Naturally he had to pay his men, but they would follow him in the same way as they would their local lords and chieftains; in some cases more willingly.

  A month later Robert, Neil and Edward were sitting outside Turnberry Castle with six hundred men from Carrick at their back. The castle was held by forty Englishmen but, unlike Lochmaben, they had been expecting the Bruce’s’ arrival and had provisioned to withstand a long siege.

  The three brothers looked at each other and grinned. They had all been brought up in the castle and knew its secrets. That night Neil and a hundred hand-picked men crept slowly through the shadows towards the small postern gate in the west wall of the castle. As night fell, Robert had visited the priest’s house in the village of Turnberry, where his steward and his family had taken refuge when the English had seized the castle. After recovering from his pleasure at seeing his lord, the steward rummaged in one of the small chests he had carried out of the castle when he fled and handed Robert the key to the postern gate.

  Of course, the key didn’t operate a lock in the door outside the castle; the stout oak of the gate was smooth, apart from the iron studs that dotted the surface, holding the planks it was made of together. Someone had to climb over the wall first. Neil believed in leading from the front but he was no climber. One of the few who had stayed with them from Douglasdale was Robbie Douglas, a fifteen year old orphan with no land of his own and who existed by hiring out his labour to others. As a boy, he wasn’t much in demand except for watching sheep and mucking out byres so he had little to lose by leaving his home glen. One of the ways he survived was by climbing trees and cliffs to take birds’ eggs to eat, usually raw.