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 In riposte the seven Earls of Angus, Atholl, Lennox, Mar, Menteith, Ross and Strathearn rallied to the side of Bruce and claimed that they alone had the ancient right of instituting a king and had invited Edward of England to arbitrate.2
No wolf invited by a flock of sheep to nominate their leading ram could have felt more satisfaction at this juncture than Edward I. In response to their appeals he set in train his movement northward. But at Hardby in Lincolnshire his beloved consort Eleanor fell ill and in November 1290 died of fever.3 All matters of state were immediately put aside. Although his marriage to this half-sister of the King of Spain at the age of fifteen had been one of dynastic convenience arranged by his father, he had for thirty-five years devoted himself to her with a fidelity and attachment notable in any class and rare indeed among monarchs. ‘I loved her dearly during her lifetime,’ wrote Edward, ‘I shall not cease to love her now that she is dead.’
Her body was borne in stately progress to its last resting place in Westminster Abbey, and at every nightfall stopping place a cross was erected in her memory, the last at Charing Cross.4 Her death wrought an evil change in Edward’s nature. The savage streak, inherited from his Angevin ancestors, ‘the Devil’s breed’, which had expressed itself in his youth by acts of wanton cruelty, had been tamed and softened by her gentleness. From now on, without her restraining influence, it was to break out in barbarous reprisals against those who thwarted his purpose.
Raw from his bereavement, he delayed no longer to reveal his ambitions. Confidentially informing his barons in council that he intended to subjugate