Bannockburn

It is good that history provides us with heroes, people whose courage we want to imitate but, now and then, the images get distorted and it is good to put things in perspective. For me, Bruce was a brilliant and determined general and I admire him for those qualities but a patriotic leader of all Scotland? At Bannockburn, Bruce's men were heavily outnumbered. They were outnumbered because many of the Scottish nobles were with Edward trying to save their hold on to their English as well as their Scottish estates. One report suggests the Scottish nobles, and, by implication their subordinates were so split and disaffected Bannockburn was more the last pitched battle of a civil war between Scots than and invasion by Edward. To back this up, Bruce had some 5000 men - gathered from all Scotland. I've seen more watching Partick Thistle at a midweek game! I've mentioned it before but - If Bruce had accepted Edward's overlordship, the result would have been a united Britain in 1314. It had been arranged that the Maid of Norway would marry the heir to the English throne, which had been accepted by the elder Bruce. There would have been no slaughter at Bannockburn. Bannockburn was not an academic exercise or great poetry, Scots as well as English died in agony from gaping wounds there. There would have been no Flodden, no Culloden. We all bemoan the indiscriminate slaughter that was WW1 yet ... 

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Bruce stirs trouble

Before getting too deep into Bruce, we need to look at the attitude of the Scots towards the proposed merger with the Maid of Norway and the son of Edward of England The Scots don't seem to have had any problems with it, in fact, seemed to welcome the idea. There is no hint in the poem, Sir Patrick Spence, which deals with her death, that the Scots were anything other than looking forward to her arrival. The, after her death, the Scottish nobles, representing the nation, asked Edward to mediate in the dispute over the title. Not only that but the rivals all swore fealty yo him. The resulting dispute was not, therefore, over his overlordship but over his choice of Balliol instead of Bruce. There is, of course, William Wallace's rebellion, a true uprising of the people, but were the people any more severely treated than the English peasants? The English peasants revolted en masse in 1381, so they can't have been any more pleased with their governance than the Scots. From that one moves to think the dispute over who was king of Scots was really just an argument between nobles. Bruce had estates in Wimbledon and Yorkshire as well as Galloway in Scotland, all Sassenach, or as near as made no difference. His brother, named Edward (imagine that),was educated at Cambridge. This was the set up when Bruce murdered Comyn and began to impose his claim on a land, for late thirteenth, early fourteenth century, relatively at peace.

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Bruce's spider

This being hogmanay, I thought a bit of verse wouldn't go wrong.

Bruce and yon spider

Robert the Bruce sat in his cave,

All he could see was the ocean wave.

He’d already been crowned with a crown on a throne

But then he’d been sitting on destiny’s stone.

Since then he’d fought battles six,

Hadn’t won only one and was in a fix.

He’d nothing to read, or games to play,

Only that minstrel who sang all day.

With nothing to do and no paper to write,

A spider came crawling into his sight.

He watched the fool,

As it tried to spool

A web from this side to that

Of the cave wherein he sat.

It tried and tried and he started to add,

The swings it took, the attempts it had.

That’s six he muttered into his beard,

Enough is enough is what I’d feared,

But the spider had more courage than him,

And set off again on another swing.

Just at that the wind gave a puff,

And the spider was carried far enough,

To catch a hold where it wanted to be,

And Robert the Bruce said, I see, I see.

Six is the number of the Bible’s beast,

So seven tries I must make at least.

Bruce went on to win renown,

To sit on the throne and wear his crown.

So whether in word or deed,

You wish to win, succeed,

If time and again you fail the test,

Take a tip from the spider who showed the best,

Don’t sit in a cave and wonder why,

Get out there and try and try.

Happy New Year

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David and the aged warrior

How the Bruce connection at the time of Matilda and Stephen slipped through the net, I do not know but before we get to deeply into the lead up to Bannockburn, let me do a bit of time travel. You'll remember that the Empress of Maud or Matilda was the niece of David 1, King of Scots, and her right to the Throne of england was disputed by Stephen. David gathered a host to invade England in support of his niece. The host, a motley collection, especially the wild men of Galloway, gathered to plunder the north of England. They set off but when they got to Northallerton, according to Sir Walter Scott, an aged warrior by the name of Bruce, who had known David in the past and had estates in both countries, went into the Scottish camp and advised David not to fight. The Galloway men accused Bruce of being a traitor and, when David had second thoughts about fighting, accused him of cowardice and rabble roused the army to charge. Prince Henry of Scotland led the Scottish cavalry, broke through the English lines and started to hack their rear while the Galloway men hacked them at the front. Things were going well when a perfidious Englishman chopped off someone's head, raised it on a pole and shouted it had belonged to the King of Scots. Whether it was Bruce or not, no one seems to have noticed, but the Scots lost heart and, encouraged by the English longbowmen, ran off home. It was this aged warrior who begat the Bruce line.
To show how unpredictable politics can be, when the peace treaty was signed, except for Newcastle and Bamborough, the whole of Northumberland and Durham became Scottish. Which confirms that, sometimes, you get more from losing than winning.
Of course, you could say that, with typical Scots stupidity, David didn't move his capital south, in accordance with English tradition, but kept it at Edinburgh in what was the middle of his realm, and an opportunity to consolidate was lost.

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