A Great and Terrible King: Edward I and the Forging of Britain (60 page)

To do so they had to enter northern Scotland, and that meant crossing the River Forth – a feat easier said than done. The Forth rises in the west, near Loch Lomond, and flows east to meet the sea, thus effectively cutting the country in half. Moreover, for much of its eastern length it forms a broad tidal estuary, or firth, which could not be crossed except by boat. In fact, in the thirteenth century the Forth was referred to as ‘the Scottish Sea’, and on contemporary maps, northern Scotland was designated as
Scotia ultra Marina
– Scotland beyond the Sea.
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Warenne therefore marched his army towards the first place that the Forth could be bridged, which at that time was the royal burgh at Stirling. As the principal gateway between northern and southern Scotland, Stirling had a unique strategic importance (indeed, on one thirteenth-century map, the town’s bridge is shown as the
only
link between the two halves of the country). It was also a brilliantly defended gateway: half a mile from the bridge, on the river’s southern shore, stood Stirling Castle. Nothing survives of the original medieval fortress, but it was almost certainly built of stone, and (like its latter-day replacement) rendered all but impregnable from its situation atop a great outcrop of volcanic rock.

When the earl arrived at Stirling in early September he discovered that Wallace and Murray were waiting for him on the opposite side of the Forth. By all accounts the Scots were greatly outnumbered, and thus the English commanders naturally assumed that, as at Irvine, their enemies would wish to negotiate. On this occasion, however, the negotiators were turned away with a celebrated rebuke. ‘Go back and tell your people that we have not come for the benefit of peace,’ said Wallace, ‘but are ready to fight, to avenge ourselves, and to free our kingdom.’

According to Walter of Guisborough, who preserved these attributed words, this was invitation enough for the more hot-headed in the English camp. But wiser heads, the chronicler added, had surveyed the surrounding terrain and foreseen the danger. The bridge, their only way forward, was also their major obstacle, for it was only wide enough for men to cross in two-by-two formation. In addition, there was not much room to manoeuvre once they reached the other side. At Stirling the Forth meanders in large, lazy loops, and consequently the northern end of the bridge connects not to an open plain but to a narrow tongue of land. ‘There was no better place in the kingdom of Scotland,’ Guisborough was later told, ‘to put the English into the hands of the Scots – the many into the hands of the few.’

Nevertheless, in the final council of war, the voices of caution were overruled. Cressingham, conscious of the enormous daily cost of fielding the army, argued for an immediate advance. Warenne, once woken from a long lie-in, agreed, and the order was duly given. It was late in the morning of 11 September 1297, and events that day unfolded with all the inevitability that had been predicted. The English began to cross the bridge and array themselves on the northern shore, but were attacked while their host was only half-formed. The Scots rushed towards the river, seized the bridgehead and so divided their enemies. Those English who had already crossed – Cressingham was among their number – were surrounded and killed. Those stranded on the southern shore – who included Warenne – could only watch the slaughter as it happened. Eventually the earl came to his senses, ordered the bridge to be destroyed, and rode hard in the direction of England. From Stirling to Berwick it is nearly a hundred miles. The old man, says Guisborough, did not rest until he reached the Border.
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As Warenne’s forces were being wiped out by Wallace and the Scots, the greatest political crisis that England had faced for thirty years was also fast approaching its apparently unavoidable climax. A parliament had been summoned for the end of September, but it seemed that the time for talking had already passed. Royalist knights were assembling at Rochester in Kent to strengthen the hand of the regency government, and the regents themselves, nominally led by the thirteen-year-old Edward of Caernarfon, had moved from Westminster to within the walls of London, ‘on account of the danger of sedition’. Their fear was readily understandable. On 21 September, the aggrieved earls of Norfolk and Hereford, Roger Bigod and Humphrey de Bohun, met with their supporters at Northampton, and found that they were many. Guisborough, with some exaggeration, estimated that they had 1,500 horse, and also added that they had a large force of foot.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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’.
¹⁷

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’.
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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.
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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.
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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 they 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.
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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.
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