Pod Insights Dan Snow's History Hit The Battle of Bannockburn About this episode Scotland’s struggle for independence was marked by rebellion, betrayal, and remarkable victories. In this episode, we trace the story from William Wallace’s uprising against English rule, through the rise of Robert the Bruce, to the decisive Scottish triumph at Bannockburn in 1314.
We're joined by Helen Carr, author of 'Sceptred Isle', to explain the century that changed the course of English-Scottish history.
Produced by Mariana Des Forges and edited by Dougal Patmore.
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Transcript 11,534 words · 8 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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3:12 Dan Snow? Hi, everyone, and welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. Today, I'm afraid I'm going now. I'm touching the third rail of British history. I'm talking about the eternally thorny subject of England and Scotland. Now, for listeners that are not from the UK, you might think that England and Scotland are separate. And they are, sort of. But on the macro level, they are one. They're part of the United Kingdom. They are bound by the Union of 1707. You have Scottish MPs and peers that sit in the UK Houses of Parliament, in the UK capital, London. Scotland used the same currency. The interest rates controlled by the UK Central Bank, which confusingly and helpfully is called the Bank of England.
3:56 Dan Snow? People move back and forward over the border. They have the same representation at the UN. They have the same Olympic team. Team GB, which does not include people from Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom. Anyway, never mind. But you might be forgiven for thinking they are separate because they have strong separate identities. They have slightly different legal systems. They do have different football teams, rugby teams. And that reflects the fact that before 1707, they were two different kingdoms. And like all neighbours, these two have had an intense relationship. Sometimes they've been friends. They've nearly always been competitors. And they've often been outright enemies. And their borderlands from time to time have been wasted war zones. English armies have marched north and Scottish armies have returned the favour. It's a troubled history.
4:40 Dan Snow? It's marked by constant attempts at conquest or domination by the English, fierce resistance by the Scots. And this really reached a climax. The really important period is the early 14th century. And things at that point could have gone either way. Talk about those decisive years. We're joined by Helen Carr. I'm very pleased to say she's been on the pod many times. She's an award nominated historian. She specialises in medieval history. She's presented many history hit TV documentaries. Make sure you go and check them out. And she's just written a book called Sceptred Isle, A New History of the 14th Century. It's all about this period. So here we go, folks. Enjoy.
5:13 Speaker 04 T minus 10.
5:14 Speaker 05 The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. God save the king. No black-white unity till there is first and black unity.
5:22 Speaker 04 Never to go to war with one another again. And look off, and the shuttle has cleared the tower.
5:32 Dan Snow? Helen, good to see you.
5:33 Speaker 06 Good to see you. Thank you for having me.
5:35 Dan Snow? It's a great pleasure. So we've got England at the end of the 1200s. They've just conquered Wales. So England and Wales as we know it are brought under, roughly speaking, one king, King Edward. What's going on in the north? Is it just a full, independent, separate country?
5:48 Speaker 06 So by the end of the 13th century, the middle to the end of the 13th century, things are kind of okay between England and Scotland. The king on the throne in Scotland is Alexander III, and he is a relatively successful king. He's a popular king. He's managed to pacify the clans. There's less clan warfare than there used to be. But then there is this catastrophe that changes everything for the future of Scotland. Until this point, Alexander has been, he's been friends with Edward I. They're on good terms, they're allies, they're political allies. But there is a sense that Edward is still this sort of feudal overlord, though it's more in sense rather than actual name. There's a wonderful manuscript image of Edward presiding over parliament.
6:31 Speaker 06 And to one side, he's got Llewellyn Appgufford from Wales as the Prince of Wales. And then he's also got Alexander III of Scotland on his other side. But Edward is front and centre.
6:41 Dan Snow? It's interesting about this period that people seemed a little bit chill with the idea of sort of, you know, I'll pay homage to you, I'm pretty relaxed, let's keep that relationship ambiguous. But on the ground, Edward doesn't really rule Scotland, does he?
6:55 Speaker 06 No, he doesn't rule Scotland. Alexander is King of Scotland. He is the, he's the nominal King of Scotland. He's the accepted King of Scotland. He was crowned at Scoon like former kings. But the problem is for him, he hasn't got an heir. And in 1286, there is a catastrophe for the future of Scotland because Alexander, who has just become married, he's got a new young wife. He's a bit drunk. He leaves Edinburgh on a stormy night and he's riding out to try and have sort of a night of passion with his new queen. And we don't know exactly what happened, but he seems to have taken a tumble off his horse and he is found sort of down a ravine with a broken neck the following day. And this plunges Scotland into a bit of a succession crisis because the only heir that he has is Margaret, the maid of Norway.
7:39 Speaker 06 But what happens next is Margaret is sent over from Norway to come and effectively rule Scotland.
7:44 Dan Snow? She's a young woman.
7:45 Speaker 06 She's a young girl. She's not even a woman yet. And at this point, Edward I is in England. He's thinking, well, maybe I can betroth my son, Edward, the future Edward II, to this maid of Norway, as she was known. And obviously, that never really manifests. But she's on her way over to Scotland and then she dies, which means that Scotland is plunged into a full-on succession crisis because there is no one else to ascend the throne. And this becomes known as the Great Cause.
8:10 Dan Snow? Can we just talk a little bit about medieval Scotland? I'm so interested in this sort of ambiguous relationship with England because when the Normans arrive in England... Sort of Norman ideas and some Norman nobles have spread north into Scotland. There is a link between the two kingdoms, isn't there? I mean, the Scottish nobles, do they speak English? They speak French? They speak Scottish Gaelic? Like, what's their identity?
8:30 Speaker 06 Yeah, that's a really interesting question because actually, we think of the vernacular being maybe a bit different. We think of dialect being different, but actually, it was quite similar. It was more dependent on the region of which you were existing within. So if you were in the far north of Scotland, you probably would have more of a Gaelic language and dialect. But if you were on the borders, you'd be sharing the same sort of language as the English. And the dialect would be very similar, whether you were on the English side of the border, you know, in the north, or whether you were on the sort of southern side of Scotland. So it was very difficult to tell who belonged to where. It's interesting that you mentioned the conquest, because I think what you got in Scotland around the Middle Ages, the High Middle Ages, is this sense of what you had in England before the conquest.
9:10 Speaker 06 So it's not quite followed the same pattern as after all of these Norman lords came in and sort of took over pockets of England and were given land by William the Conqueror. A few of them did go into Scotland, but you still get more of a sense of what England was like before that. So the clans still had a lot of power and they were feudal overlords over various regions. But in England, before the conquest, you had that sort of sense of Mercia and Wessex. I think it was quite similar. But under a king like Alexander III, you still had a hierarchy. So you still had the king at the top and then these clans kind of underneath him.
9:46 Dan Snow? If you're a Scottish aristocrat, you might go down to London, you might get a Norman wife, you might, you know, import some castle building techniques. So there's a sort of, there's a cultural exchange going on.
9:56 Speaker 06 Absolutely. This is a very permeable border. It's not a firm border. It's not a political border yet. It's what you call a porous border. There's a lot of exchange going on. Communities are coexisting. It's not a sense that you've got Scotland here and England there and that you stay in your lane, so to speak. It's very much a case that people are moving within each other's lands. You had a lot of Scottish nobility holding land in England. It was far more political. It was all allegiance-based, rather than necessarily about land and sort of tenure.
10:26 Dan Snow? So it's quite hard for us to understand in a world of hard borders and passports and sovereign states, isn't it?
10:31 Speaker 06 Exactly.
10:32 Dan Snow? So if you'd asked the kings of England, they would have said, yeah, we're kind of overlords of Scotland, but realistically, they've never tried to sort of go in with an army and really, really prove that, have they?
10:43 Speaker 06 No, they hadn't at this point, and I don't think it was in Edward's favour to do that either, because he's at the time, you know, before, before the English Scottish Wars of Independence, so they were later called, he was conquering Wales, he was focusing on the Welsh, he also had problems in France with Gascony, he didn't want to start making enemies with Scotland. And there was no real reason at that point for them to be enemies. Scotland were in allegiance with the English. He wanted Scots to help him with the wars in, in France, he needed those men.
11:12 Dan Snow? So the King of Scotland is gone, nature abhors a vacuum, who is going to rule Scotland?
11:19 Speaker 06 That's the big question at this point. In the late 13th century, the great cause is a real problem, and Edward I comes, is invited to arbitrate.
11:27 Dan Snow? He's invited.
11:28 Speaker 06 He's invited to arbitrate, he doesn't sort of wade in, he is actually asked to come and resolve this.
11:33 Dan Snow? So reflecting the fact that he's a powerful neighbouring guy with a sort of little bit of an overview of Scotland.
11:38 Speaker 06 He's got swag, whatever Edward generally says goes. So there are two major rivals for the throne at this point, there's the Ballyles and the Bruces, so there's John Ballyl and Robert Bruce. And this isn't Robert Bruce that we're going to talk about, this is his grandfather. Okay, so this is going a little bit back from, from Bannockburn. And to cut a long story short, John Ballyl is chosen, Edward I chooses him and says, you are going to be the rightful successor to the Scottish throne. So he's crowned.
12:06 Dan Snow? Has Ballyl made a bit of a deal? Has he agreed to be a bit of a puppet?
12:08 Speaker 06 Yeah, it's kind of like the ultimate IOU. So Edward has chosen him, and as a result, this means Ballyl is his puppet. He's in his pocket, he needs to do as Edward wishes him to do. And Edward starts sort of flexing his muscles a bit from this point. He wants to reclaim lands in Gascony, he's having real troubles with the French king, and he starts trying to get a lot of the Scottish nobility to come and fight his wars. And they're not really happy with this, and Ballyl's not happy with this, and he starts to push back against Edward's authority, and that's where the real problems start to occur, when you get the rise of the wars.
12:43 Dan Snow? Edward's beginning to treat Scotland as if it really is part of his kingdom.
12:46 Speaker 06 Yeah, he considers himself by this point a true feudal overlord of Scotland. So Ballyl is is king in Scotland by name, but Edward is the ultimate authority in the Isles.
12:56 Dan Snow? Right, and when does the fighting break out?
12:58 Speaker 06 So Ballyl does the worst thing in Edward's mind is that he goes and into an alliance with the French. And it's called the Old Alliance, spelt A U L D, the Old Alliance. And you couldn't do anything worse in the eyes of Edward the First. And Edward the First has this real reputation. He is a formidable king, he's a warrior, he's a very angry man. That sort of plantagenet fury is definitely present in Edward the First's personality. And it's this act that Edward responds to so dramatically. It's not so much that Ballyl shows any sort of sense of independence. It's not the fact that the Scots don't necessarily want to come and fight his wars in France.
13:38 Speaker 06 It's the fact that Ballyl goes behind his back that makes Edward so furious. And I don't think up until this point he had considered taking over Scotland and a conquest as he had done in Wales. I think he was quite happy with the arrangement, but he's so furious. One of the first things he does is he marches his army up to Berwick and he takes Berwick on tweed. And he has all of the men of the city who put up with the defence of this formidable garrison on the border. He has them all killed. So it is the start of this incredibly bloody war in twelve ninety six. And eventually Ballyl is captured and he is richly humiliated by Edward before being taken down south and put in prison in the Tower of London.
14:21 Speaker 06 And Edward has this clothing made for him, this tabard made exactly for this occasion. For Ballyl to be taken out in front of the public, it was a great spectacle. He was ripped of his his tabard and he was called sort of tomb tabard, that's without clothes. So it's this display of sort of ignominy, he is richly humiliated. And that's what Edward wants. He wants to make sure that he is seen as the most powerful person, the most powerful lord within the Isles.
14:48 Dan Snow? And he takes the Stone of Destiny.
14:50 Speaker 06 He does. He goes up and he's like, you're not having that anymore. He takes it and he has this special throne.
14:54 Dan Snow? This is the Stone of Scun, which is the stone on which Scottish kings are crowned.
14:58 Speaker 06 Every Scottish king has been crowned and Edward has it taken down to Westminster and he has the coronation chair, the Westminster chair, made to fit around the stone. And Edward never sits on this. It's mostly made for future kings. So for the coronation of future kings, particularly his son Edward the Second going forward.
15:17 Dan Snow? But this is a full-scale invasion of Scotland there. Since 2006, Edward's done something that English kings have been dreaming about since Athelstan. He has actually conquered the whole of Britain.
15:27 Speaker 06 Yeah, well, did he conquer Scotland? That's the big question.
15:29 Dan Snow? Yes, well, you tell me.
15:30 Speaker 06 So, no, he tries to conquer Scotland and then he's successful. It's a bit of a sort of push-pull. And it's a case of, it's a bit like whack-a-mole. He sort of feels like he's done something, everything's under control and then another rebel pops up again.
15:43 Dan Snow? So he's sort of, he's got the big stronghold, big castles are under his control.
15:46 Speaker 06 Yeah, yeah. So what he does, he starts taking Scottish garrisons castle by castle. He installs English officials in them. He makes sure he's got a military presence in Scotland. He creates Berwick as this centre of administration. He ensures that Berwick is well-fortified. It's incredibly strong. It's a garrison. It's a centre of politics. It's the hub of England within, is it England or Scotland? That's the question, depends who holds it. But it is the hub of Englishness on the border and that is where all of the armies marching through into Scotland will go through. They'll go through Berwick, they'll often muster at Berwick and they'll go north. And then a lot of the action also happens around Stirling because that Stirling Castle is really the gateway to the north of Scotland.
16:28 Dan Snow? If you want to go from the, what we call the Central Belt, Glasgow, Edinburgh today, if you want to go north, you've kind of got to go via Stirling.
16:34 Speaker 06 Yeah, exactly. And that was the same then.
16:36 Dan Snow? So mega castle on a very imposing feature. Okay. But he's got Stirling, he's got all these castles. So at this stage, briefly, it does look like the English, having conquered the Welsh, they have brought places like Cornwall under their control. It does look like Edward's on the way to creating a British state across the whole of the island of Britain.
16:53 Speaker 06 Yeah, there's a few years where the Scottish are pacified. There's small rebellions that are happening, but it's nothing particularly large.
17:01 Dan Snow? Is Edward king of Scotland at this point? Did he put up another puppet or is he, he's the king of Scotland?
17:05 Speaker 06 He considers himself to be King of Scotland, but it's still the case that there's not really a King of Scotland. Well, Balliol is technically still King of Scotland because he's alive. But Edward would consider himself to be the feudal overlord, the great lord of Scotland as well as England.
17:20 Dan Snow? So you mentioned a few rebellions, and one rebellion comes along more serious than the others. Tell me about that one.
17:25 Speaker 06 So this one's famously under William Wallace. He's the most famous person, but I feel like his friend and ally, Andrew Moray, doesn't really get much of a look in to Hollywood. But it was the two of them together that created this movement against the English. And there were some things that the famous movie Braveheart, which is 30 years old, I think, is it this year, maybe 30 years old this year, that it did get right. It said that Wallace was spurred into action after the murder of his fiance. And this is all taken from a 15th century chronicle. It's like a kind of romantic poem about Wallace's actions.
18:00 Dan Snow? Do we know if it was a girlfriend situation?
18:03 Speaker 06 We're not really sure. This is based on this chronicle account. It could have been a romanticisation of it all, like trying to make him seem a bit more human.
18:10 Dan Snow? But for some reason, he goes on the tear. And talk about his background. Where's he from? Is he a sort of member of the elite?
18:16 Speaker 06 There's not a lot that we really know about him early on. He's a minor nobleman. He's not sort of one of these great clan leaders, the son of a minor nobleman. He's a second son, so there's not really a lot going for him. It's not like he's going to inherit his father's mantle. Really, second sons have a life of war, battle and fighting, or a life in the church. And he goes for the former, clearly. But he really comes to fame at the Battle of Stirling Bridge, which is with Andrew Moray. And Andrew Moray is a more elevated nobleman.
18:43 Dan Snow? What's the first action? When does the English state in Scotland realise they've got a problem?
18:47 Speaker 06 Stirling Bridge, I think. So some of these battles are organised, but some of them are just, they just happen as consequence of two armies meeting each other. And I think that Wallace is stirring up discontent across Scotland. They're starting to get rumblings of discontent. You're starting to get Scots rallying and joining behind him.
19:07 Speaker 06 He's a charismatic figure for sure, definitely. He's also a patriot. He's dogmatic in his cause. He's very passionate and that's something that you do get a sense of. Whereas I think someone like Moray is probably more of the military leader and the pragmatist. But Wallace is the passion. He's the verve. He's the one who's never going to bend the knee to Edward the first. And so he's got this army that's growing behind him. And then he meets the English at the Battle of Stirling Bridge, which isn't on a battlefield. It is actually over this quite narrow bridge crossing.
19:37 Dan Snow? You can still go and see it today. The river's right there. The English screw up badly.
19:41 Speaker 06 Yeah, the English screw up badly. And what's interesting about these bridges, and I think this is a bit of trope in medieval military history, isn't it? That there's a lot of battles over bridges. There's the Battle of Borough Bridge. There's the Battle of Stamford Bridge. It's a case that you've got one army on one side, an army on the other. Someone's got to come over and how are they going to do that? And when you've got these narrow bridges, you can really only get maybe two to three horses abreast crossing the bridge at a time. So how are they, how are they going to to deal with that? And when you've got the English, whose major strength is archers or their, or their heavy cavalry. A bridge is not really the most effective means and space to have a battle. Because you've got nowhere for your cavalry to draw back and really do their, their ultimate damage.
20:21 Speaker 06 And so the English really screw up because this is the first case of Scottish warfare where the shiltrons are applied, which work very well.
20:29 Dan Snow? Tell me what a shiltron is.
20:30 Speaker 06 A shiltron is like a combined body of soldiers who create a sort of armadillo or hedgehog effect with their spears. So quite an imposing, terrifying situation to be faced with if you're an English soldier. And it's a mass of spears and you've got the Scottish soldiers on foot, hiding behind their shields with their spears pointing up. And they stay together. And it's quite similar, I suppose, to some of the more ancient techniques of, of military warfare. You all know.
21:00 Dan Snow? Macedonians.
21:01 Speaker 06 Yeah, it's the Macedonians, exactly. It's that sort of, is it a phalanx?
21:04 Dan Snow? Yeah.
21:04 Speaker 06 Yeah, it's a phalanx effect where it's a defensive mechanism. And it means that nobody can really get to the person underneath the shield because they're faced with this wall of sharp, pointy things. And it's also something horses don't like to go anywhere near. So when you've got heavy horses sort of hurtling up towards this wall of spears, they're not going to want to leap straight into them. Funnily enough, they do have an instinct to say, absolutely not.
21:30 Dan Snow? And the English army finds itself trying to cross the river and just caught.
21:33 Speaker 06 Yeah, exactly. And so the English army are just pushed into the river. So you've got these horses being pushed into the river as the Scottish Shiltrons put up the most formidable defence. And so in the end, it ends up being quite a lucky victory for the Scots. And it is a one-off victory for William Wallace, but it is one that solidifies his reputation and mythology going forward. And afterwards, he becomes a guardian of Scotland. You know, in the absence of a king, they appoint these great lords as guardians. But it's not so good for Andrew Murray because he actually is injured at the Battle of Stirling and dies of his wounds, which is probably why he's not so memorialised.
22:11 Dan Snow? Is the myth true that William Wallace turned the English commander into a piece of clothing?
22:17 Speaker 06 Hugh de Cressingham, yeah. Okay, so there is this wonderful anecdote that Wallace was this vicious butcher and he got hold of the treasurer of England, Hugh de Cressingham, who had caused all sorts of financial problems for the Scots over the years. The legend has it that he created his sword belt out of Cressingham's skin. So is this true? I would say unlikely because at the same time in England, there's other propaganda that is coming out about William Wallace. There is this wonderful document called the Luttrell Salter and it's made for a lord who fought Edward the First during the Scottish Wars of Independence.
22:57 Speaker 06 And on one of the margins of this salter is a lot of Scots painted in blue woad, à la Braveheart, butchering babies and doing all sorts of terrible things. And the claim is this is William Wallace, who's come over the border on one of his raids and he's massacring innocents. And really, it's a sort of memetic story. It's very much like Herod and the massacre of the innocents. They're trying to get a sense of this is a villain. We've all got to be behind Edward and his wars because there's this great villain who's rising up in Scotland. And isn't he terrible?
23:28 Dan Snow? After the Battle of Stelling Bridge, does William Wallace ravage northern England? Does he defeat some of these British garrisons? Is this a level five crisis for the English state?
23:38 Speaker 06 It begins to be a level five crisis and Edward's over in France at this time and there's not a lot he can do, but he's pretty quick to act when he does realise it's becoming a major problem. So yes, Wallace does come over into the border and he starts raiding. He's quite slow in his raids, so he goes in, he takes a while, he's there up to a week, sort of moving through the north of England. He comes quite far south and one of the most famous accounts is when he allegedly has a group of schoolboys murdered inside a church in Corbridge and he has them shut up in a church and the church set alight. But, you know, there are two sides to every story. Edward does very similar things in Scotland on the other side of the border. It's not a case that Wallace is this sort of evildoer.
24:19 Speaker 06 The atrocities are happening on both sides, as in the same case with every evidence of border warfare.
24:25 Dan Snow? So Edward marches north?
24:26 Speaker 06 Yeah, Edward marches north, he's cross, he's really peeved, he wants to do some damage and this all happens and takes place at Falkirk where everything goes wrong for William Wallace and he loses the battle at Falkirk.
24:38 Dan Snow? And Edward is victorious?
24:39 Speaker 06 Edward's victorious, yeah.
24:41 Dan Snow? So is William Wallace?
24:42 Speaker 06 He, after that, he goes overseas, so he effectively runs away and then eventually he is captured. Well, he's handed in by his own men. The nobility eventually realise that they need Edward on side and his prize is William Wallace and they hand him in to Edward and he is taken a prisoner. And after a show trial, I say a show trial because it was only ever going to go one way, he is butchered, I think is the best way to describe it. He's butchered, he's hanged, drawn and quartered at Smithfield in 1295 and it doesn't go very well for him.
25:16 Dan Snow? I love the way he says, "I could never be a traitor to Edward Flyer, I was never his subject."
25:19 Speaker 06 Exactly, isn't that a great quote? It is a great quote.
25:22 Dan Snow? And did he impregnate Edward the Second's wife and is thus the father of Edward the Third?
25:26 Speaker 06 Oh, what, yeah, I mean, obviously, he's obviously the father of Edward the Third. No, Isabella of France, even though that is such a wonderful storyline to try and pull together because she is obviously this formidable queen, the she-wolf of France as she's called later on.
25:40 Dan Snow? Who ended up in a very unhappy marriage with Edward the Second, so.
25:43 Speaker 06 Um, yeah, unhappy marriage then. She has her own lover, Roger Mortimer later on, so of course. You know, it's Hollywood being, you know, they're taking some licence, but it's kind of there. Let's just blur the lines. Like, no, Isabella was a toddler at the time of Wallace's death. So that's certainly, that's certainly not the case.
26:00 Dan Snow? That's certainly inappropriate. Right. So we're now in, what, the early 1300s?
26:04 Speaker 06 Mm hmm. Yep. Turn of the century.
26:06 Dan Snow? Turn of the century. William Wallace gone. Scottish nobles collaborating again with Edwards. Edwards sort of back in charge of Scotland.
26:13 Speaker 06 He's back in charge in Scotland. Things are looking okay. But then this, as I said, it's like Whackhamall. This new rebel pops up, Robert the First, or later Robert the First, known as Robert the Bruce, but most accurately Robert Bruce.
26:26 Dan Snow? And careful listeners will notice that we mentioned the Bruce family at the beginning. They were up against the Balliels for the, for the throne of Scotland. So they're a grand family.
26:33 Speaker 06 They're a grand family. Yep. They're a noble family. Yes. Bruce certainly has ambitions. Robert Bruce is a very ambitious, charismatic, but very pragmatic leader.
26:42 Dan Snow? And why does he rebel?
26:44 Speaker 06 He rebels because it's this same discontent, this idea that Edward is this feudal overlord. He doesn't want Scots having to go and fight for Edward in his wars in France, which is what Edward is increasingly trying to get them to do. And he sees a vacancy on the throne. He sees an opportunity. He manages to see off his greatest rival, which is a whole other story, John Common. He, there's this story that he has him murdered, or he maybe murders him himself in Greyfys Church. And then he goes off and takes the throne despite being excommunicated for this terrible action of murdering, stabbing Common.
27:20 Dan Snow? You're listening to Dan Snow's History at There's More Coming Up.
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30:53 Dan Snow? So he sets himself up as the true King of Scotland?
30:55 Speaker 06 Yep, yep. He's crowned at Scoon, despite the stone not being there. He's crowned at Scoon. And importantly, it is Isabella Macduff. She's of Clan Macduff. She places the crown on Bruce's head, and it's something she gets in a lot of trouble for thereafter.
31:11 Dan Snow? Okay. This is another, I mean, complete provocation for Edward I. But they choose their timing quite well, because Edward's an old man.
31:17 Speaker 06 Yeah, he is an old man. He's a determined man, but he's an old man. And he says, "I'm going to go up to Scotland. I'm going to take on Bruce. This is going to be a serious campaign." And he starts marching his army north. And Edward, this time, he's not only old, he's in his late 60s. He's quite infirm. He's having to have his legs bound in these tight leather leggings, because they're so sore and difficult, and it's painful for him to ride. And he has to pause for a long period of time in the far north, in Llanacost Priory. And it's so cold up over the winter that his chancery paid for glass panes to be put into the windows to keep the icy wind from the old man's bones. And of course, he never actually quite makes it to Scotland. It's said that he's carrying the banner of the dragon. He's sort of unleashed the dragon banner.
32:02 Speaker 06 He and his son are taking that north. And he never makes it. He goes across to Beron Sands, which is where he dies. And this is an interesting point about Edward, is to why does he do that? Why does he suddenly go to Beron Sands on the coast? Why does he make that decision? And it's this idea that maybe this old king, who has a real love of Arthurian legend and has a real belief in Arthur, this is a king who had Arthur's remains exhumed at Glastonbury earlier on. It's possible that he believed that Buron Sands was actually Avalon and he wanted to die at Avalon.
32:36 Dan Snow? But his dream of replicating Arthur's conquest of the whole of Britain would not come to pass.
32:42 Speaker 06 No, it would not, no.
32:43 Dan Snow? The Scots were lucky when Edward the First, one of the great warlords of medieval, well, really, Western Europe.
32:47 Speaker 06 They really were, yeah.
32:49 Dan Snow? And tell me about his son.
32:50 Speaker 06 Edward the Second. He was not like his father at all.
32:54 Dan Snow? Classic Plantagenets.
32:55 Speaker 06 No.
32:56 Dan Snow? You get a good one, then you get a bad one.
32:57 Speaker 06 I know, it's like a Plantagenet sandwich, isn't it? It's like, what filler are you gonna get?
33:01 Dan Snow? For hundreds of years.
33:02 Speaker 06 Yeah.
33:03 Dan Snow? There's a great one and then a rubbish one.
33:04 Speaker 06 It's totally true. And Edward was, to be fair, a pretty rubbish king, but he wasn't this sort of fop and ascetic people think that he was. He wasn't this very effeminate character. He was very masculine. He loved things like ditch digging and he liked rustic.
33:19 Dan Snow? Classic masculine activity then.
33:20 Speaker 06 Classic masculinity. If in doubt, go and get a spade and help out the locals digging their ditches. No, he loved sport, he was very active, he liked fighting, he was interested in the art of war, but he just wasn't a politician, he wasn't a great king, he wasn't a great military leader, and that is what his father was. He was very much in the shadow of his father, which was a real problem for him going forward. And he did go to North straight away, as soon as his father died, but instead of going north to fight the Scots, his first action was to promote his best mate, Piers Gaveston, to the Eldom of Cornwall. So fresh to the role of king that he had to use his father's seal.
33:56 Dan Snow? And so he's busy rewarding his mates and having a good time.
34:00 Speaker 06 Yeah.
34:01 Dan Snow? He doesn't just go and try and seek and destroy Robert the Bruce.
34:02 Speaker 06 No, he doesn't. And Robert the Bruce, at this time, he has gone into hiding, his family have been captured at Kildrummy Castle. Isabella Macduff, who I mentioned earlier, as well as his wife, Elizabeth de Burgh, and also his daughter and his sisters are all taken from Kildrummy. His brother Neil is murdered brutally and they're taken to Berwick, particularly his sister. And Isabella Macduff at Berwick are suspended in cages by Edward the First before he dies. He orders that they are suspended and one of the chroniclers explains that they're hanging from the castle to the mercy of the heavens. So you can imagine these women trapped inside these cages with the full force of the elements hammering down at them. And Isabella, appallingly, was kept there for about seven years.
34:46 Speaker 06 She didn't live for much longer after she was finally released.
34:50 Dan Snow? Wow. Just quickly talking about Robert the Bruce, he's a really interesting character that reflects lots of this history because he's got English Anglo Norman blood, but he's also got sort of wild Gaelic heritage as well. So he's a cross-cultural figure.
35:04 Speaker 06 Yeah, he's super cross-cultural. And he has, it's important to say, he's fought for Edward before. He's fought against Scotland for Edward before. He went against Balliol when our Balliol went against Edward, and he held land in England. It's not like he was always this Scottish patriot that someone like Wallace was. Did fight for Edward. He bent the knee to the English king. Perhaps more than once, he changed sides a couple of times. As I said, this was political. It's not necessarily nationalistic at this point. He was very interesting.
35:33 Dan Snow? So he is hiding out at this point. He's an outlaw. He's sort of waging an insurgency.
35:37 Speaker 06 Yeah.
35:38 Dan Snow? Has he got many followers?
35:39 Speaker 06 He's starting to grow followers and some of these major clan leaders are following him, namely James Douglas, or otherwise known as Black Douglas. And he's one of my favourite characters in Scottish history because he really is, by every account, just utterly fierce. And he's just such a wonderful character. Everyone's afraid of Black Douglas. And what happens after the death of Edward I, despite the popular account from Jean Fossard, the chronicler of the period, saying that Edward wanted his bones to be boiled and taken to Scotland on the next campaign to conquer the Scots. So he was there in that moment. That never ended up happening. And Edward II was far more occupied with the politics of Westminster and emerging civil war with his nobility, which allowed Robert Bruce to
36:24 Speaker 06 build his forces. It allowed him to start recapturing these castles, which were left as English garrisons, but they weren't continually bolstered. It was not like Edward was investing in the North in the way that his father was. And Bruce began to take back these castles, and he began to conduct a series of raids into the North of England, so punishing England across the border. And it got so bad in the lead up to Bannockburn, and particularly after the Battle of Bannockburn, the North was effectively annexed from the rest of England. Edward just couldn't control what was going on.
36:57 Dan Snow? So Scotland is almost launching a counter-invasion of England at this point.
37:00 Speaker 06 Yeah.
37:01 Dan Snow? Let's get to the climax of the story. So 10 years sort of goes by. Why does Edward the Second try and bring it all to a head in thirteen fourteen?
37:08 Speaker 06 So there's been a few attempts to go back up to Scotland and recapture Berwick. It's never really worked out. Edward's never got very far and the border is increasingly fragile. But the the real climax is that Robert Bruce, interestingly, creates this sense of national prerogative. He creates a sense of identity between Englishness and Scottishness. He creates this sense that you either for Scotland or you are for England. And he says that any Englishman who has lands in Scotland but do not follow Robert Bruce, or any Scot who has lands in Scotland but is not allied to Robert Bruce, will forfeit their lands after a certain point.
37:50 Speaker 06 And he says, if you haven't allied yourself with me, you will forfeit your lands. And really, he's able to follow this through because of his success at Bannockburn and his victory. So that means if you are not for Robert Bruce and for Scotland, you will lose all of your lands in Scotland. He will disinherit you and you will be forced effectively into exile into England. And that is interestingly really what creates more of this firm border than what was there before, which was this porous border of cross-border landholding, which it didn't exist anymore after this point.
38:22 Dan Snow? So he really starts to carve out Scotland as a very distinct entity.
38:25 Speaker 06 And Edward knows that this is going to happen. And so he also knows that Robert Bruce is starting to lay siege to this wonderful bastion of English defence, Stirling Castle. And if he takes Stirling, it's a real problem. And that means Bruce is reclaiming Scotland very successfully. And for Edward, he knows he needs to march. He needs an army up in Scotland. He needs to counter Robert Bruce's capture of Stirling Castle. So Bruce sends his brother, Edward Bruce, to lay siege to Stirling Castle, which is being protected by the custodian there, John Mowbray. And Mowbray sends a letter to Edward and says, you've got to come because I can't hold out. I'm going to have to do something at some point. So Edward knows that his time's up. He's got to get an army north.
39:08 Speaker 06 The mythology is that Edward Bruce makes an agreement with John Mowbray at Stirling and says, by midsummer's day, if the castle has not been liberated by the English army, which means the army is on the march, I will hand the castle over to you. This is the mythology, whether that's accurate or not, it's unlikely. But Edward does march his army and they've got this deadline of Midsomer's Day. And of course, as we know, the Battle of Bannockburn takes place around Midsomer's Day, the 24th of June.
39:36 Dan Snow? The Battle of Bannockburn, so you've got this big old English army against the Scottish army of Robert the Bruce. Great opening.
39:43 Speaker 06 Yeah.
39:43 Dan Snow? Great first chapter, great prelude to the battle. Just talk me through that.
39:47 Speaker 06 Yeah. So what is wonderful and what we managed to do when filming the documentary for the Battle of Bannockburn on History Hit, which is available to go and watch, and it was very fun making it, is see the Burn, see the Bannockburn, which.
40:01 Dan Snow? Which is, for everyone listening abroad, is Scottish for small stream.
40:04 Speaker 06 It is Scottish for small stream. At the battle itself, there were two streams, but it's become famously known as the Bannockburn. But actually, at the time, contemporaneously, it was known as Stirling. So any accounts that came out after the battle, it was known as the Battle of Stirling. But I guess that's confusing because of the former battle, Stirling Bridge, that we've talked about. So what happens? You've got this English army snaking up the road towards Stirling. And the vanguard of the army, so that's the front of the army, they're usually led by the flower of chivalry, you know, these young buccaneering knights of the time, they're leading the vanguard, they're sort of moving up the front. So one of them is Humphrey de Bowen, he's leading the vanguard. And he rides up the hill ahead of the rest of the army, he crosses the burn, his horse splashes through the water and rides up the hill.
40:48 Speaker 06 And at the crest of the hill, he looks down and he can see sort of the front of the wood, the front of the new park where Robert Bruce has been training his men. And he sees this man on a palfrey, which is a small pony. And he's wearing gold circlet, so he identifies him, this must be Bruce, this is Robert the First, self-titled, King of Scotland. And so he thinks, I'm obviously going to go for gold, this is my moment of glory. And so he hurtles down the hill on his much bigger horse, right towards Robert Bruce, who's, and he's got his line of men at the edge of the wood. And Bruce sees him coming and instead of retreating, he turns around, he spins his horse around and he charges back at him. And Bruce encounters De Boon and.
41:33 Speaker 06 This moment, he stands up in his stirrups and he brings his axe down incredibly hard onto Boone's head, so crushing him through his helmet. And the axe goes through his helmet, pierces his skull and Boone is instantly killed. He is then dragged across the field by his horses. He topples onto the earth. And for Bruce and his men, I mean, this is an incredible moment. I mean, how much are his men buoyed up by seeing this? You know, if they're worried about a battle beforehand and then they see their king take down one of the greatest knights in Edward the Second's army in one fell swoop, they're going to feel pretty spurred on. And so for Bruce, this is brilliant, but for the morale of the English, not so good.
42:13 Speaker 06 Now, the rest of the vanguard come in, there's a bit of a skirmish and then they they retreat. And the English try and find somewhere to rest their army the night before battle takes place and they choose a pretty rubbish site.
42:27 Dan Snow? So and the following day, it's it's one of the bigger battles that the English and Scottish will have a fight.
42:31 Speaker 06 Yeah.
42:32 Dan Snow? And the English outnumber the Scots?
42:34 Speaker 06 Yeah, I mean, there's lots of different ideas of how many English there were compared to how many Scots. I mean, if you read the Scottish account, it's going to be a real David and Goliath thing. Again, when it comes to accounts of medieval warfare, there's a real trope of, oh, they had loads of men, we have so few, but we just, aren't we brave? You know, there's a lot of that. It's it's unlikely that there was much of a disparity, as some of the chronicles like to say, but I think there was certainly more English. I mean, around between fifteen to twenty thousand English and I'd say between ten to fifteen thousand Scots.
43:06 Dan Snow? But Robert makes a bold decision, doesn't he, the morning that second day?
43:09 Speaker 06 Yeah, yeah, he does. So Scots aren't fighting on horseback. This is one of the decisions that Bruce makes. He is a military tactician. He's been training his men incredibly effectively for months. You know, they've been forming these shiltron formations and when they get it wrong, he sort of do it again, do it again. He has streamlined exactly how he is going to conduct this battle, this incoming fight. And even men who want to join up at the last minute, he sends them away. He's like, no, I need my army to know what they're doing. I can't have any new recruits. They know what they're doing, they're the ones who have been training. Go away, come back another day. And so they're ready to fight. And they move through towards the battlefield overnight. They camp in the woods above the field and then in the morning they move down the hill
43:54 Speaker 06 and they emerge on the field, on the battlefield, on the in-between two streams. So you've got the Bannockburn to one side and the Pell stream to the other side. And the English, their backs are where the confluence of the two streams come together. So they're sort of penned in, they've chosen this terrible ground. It's castland, so it's kind of boggy, but it's very flat. And the Scots, the woods to their back. And it's this very romantic scene where there is allegedly mist sort of rising from the ground as the sun comes up. And Edward watches as the Scots kneel. He sees them in the distance in the mist kneeling and he says, aha, you know, they, they know that they have been defeated by my formidable army. And one of his men, I think it's Ingram to Unfville, turns to him and says, no, my lord,
44:37 Speaker 06 they're not kneeling for you, they're kneeling in prayer. And so it's this iconic image of the Scots sort of, you know, pious kneeling before their battle. And from the outset, they get into these, these Shiltron formations. And it's the classic wave of the English archers begin, but they, you know, they get somewhere, but they don't get particularly far. And then the English cavalry move in. But the problem is where they've chosen for the battle to take place. The ground the English have chosen is the cavalry can't draw back. They're quite squeezed together because they've got the water on either side. For cavalry, you need space, you need strays to be able to draw back and then hurtle forward. And they can't do that. And because they can't do that, they're squeezed in, they're sort of nudging against each other.
45:19 Speaker 06 And this is where Bruce's greatest device comes into play. Because Shiltrons, under anyone else before, have always been defensive. But Bruce makes them offensive. So he trains them to move forward. And so you have got these series of about 300 men per Shiltron, this incredible armadillo of spikes and spears. And they're coming towards you rather than just staying still. And you're expected to go towards them. And so the horses are bulking and they're moving further and further and further back. And they're getting more and more and more squashed in. And even though the Scots have fewer men. And the English significantly outnumber them. They are squeezed in and they can't do their best. The archers can't even come forward to then rain arrows on the incoming shilterons.
46:03 Speaker 06 And what follows is a bloodbath. The Earl of Gloucester, Edward's nephew, charges into the fray quite bravely to try and break apart these shilterons and instead he's completely massacred on the spears of the Scots. And that happens to so many of the nobility. Bannockburn has been compared to the Battle of Cawdry. It wiped out the flower of chivalry, the knightly class of the English. So that's why it was such a disaster. Edward, to be fair, he did fight. He was in the fray. He was in the thick of the fighting and had to be dragged away when they knew that the battle was lost. And he basically ran hell for leather with Black Douglas on his heels and he fled to Dunbar to take a boat down to Berwick.
46:44 Dan Snow? That's one of those rare things. I mean, it really is a decisive battle.
46:46 Speaker 06 Yeah.
46:47 Dan Snow? Edward the Second, there's not much coming back after that.
46:49 Speaker 06 No, and what's so amusing is Edward the Second really does think he's going to win this battle. He even employs cleric called William Baston to come and sort of write an epic poem about his victory. So there's this sort of bewildered cleric in the retinue of Edward the Second. He's having to watch this battle unfold going, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. He gets captured by Bruce and as punishment Bruce says, you're going to write it for me.
47:11 Dan Snow? And it is a victory that he's keen to celebrate because this really is Scottish independence. It's his crown, isn't it?
47:16 Speaker 06 Oh, he manages to take everything. The English leave their entire baggage train. I mean, even the Great Seal is captured by Robert Bruce. And it's the victory at Bannockburn that enables Bruce to barter his prisoners. He's got some of these great noble prisoners. He's able to make exchanges with his family, these women who have been captured and imprisoned. So he gets his wife back. He gets his daughter back because of his victory at Bannockburn.
47:42 Dan Snow? You're listening to Dan Snow's history hit, The Best Is Yet To Come.
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49:22 Dan Snow? Is that the last real attempt by the English Plantagenet Kings to conquer Scotland?
49:28 Speaker 06 No, I think Edward III, you know,
49:30 Dan Snow? Has a go, does he?
49:31 Speaker 06 He's a good hammer of the Scots, yeah. He has a really good go.
49:34 Dan Snow? So Edward II, after Banockburn, he has not ruled for much longer, does he?
49:37 Speaker 06 He doesn't rule for much longer. I mean, there is argument to be had that Banockburn was the real catalyst for his downfall because it enabled all of the bickering nobles to really get at him afterwards and say, "See, see, we told you. Now you have to sort of sit under our thumbs for a while and then everything goes terribly awry for him."
49:52 Dan Snow? His kingdom is invaded by his wife.
49:55 Speaker 06 It is, I know.
49:56 Dan Snow? Such a, such a tough one, that. And he is killed somehow. Now, his son Edward III is like his grandpa. We talked about plantagenet sandwiching. Very, very able warrior king.
50:07 Speaker 06 Yeah.
50:07 Dan Snow? So he makes a serious attempt to conquer Scotland?
50:09 Speaker 06 Yeah, he does. I mean, he leads against Scotland in a very similar way to his grandfather did. So he's never sort of the king, but he does try to control Scotland. He's the feudal overlord of Scotland. He does manage that. And he even tries to plant one of his sons, John of Gaunt. There is talk of John of Gaunt becoming king of Scotland under David II, who's Bruce's son.
50:27 Dan Snow? So Robert Bruce's son David is on the throne. But he's forced to acknowledge Edward III as a sort of, again, one of these kind of hazy medieval overlords.
50:35 Speaker 06 Yeah, he tries to fight against Edward. There's the Battle of Neville's Cross in 1346. And again, the English win that battle. Battle of Hallidan Hill in the 1330s, which Edward is incredibly successful. He manages to recapture Berwick on tweed. It is not then taken by the Scots again in Edward's reign. And he is successful, more successful really than his grandfather in, in taking Scotland and pacifying Scotland. There are always problems with Scotland though. I mean, his son particularly, John of Gaunt, is constantly in negotiations on these March days. He has to go up to Scotland. He has to stay around Berwick and have negotiations with the Scottish lords to secure pieces. Constant treaties and pieces and pieces and negotiations to stop raiding or attacks on the north of England.
51:19 Speaker 06 It is just a constant period of border warfare.
51:23 Dan Snow? But does Edward III accept that Scotland's a separate kingdom at this point? Or is he still thinking he might do what his grandpa did and just absorb it into England?
51:29 Speaker 06 He sees himself as a feudal overlord. I don't think he sort of sees it as a kingdom that is exclusively his. But I think he sees him as somebody who oversees it. He's the ultimate lord of the Isles, rather than being the king of the Isles.
51:42 Dan Snow? And sometimes Scots are prepared to sort of play footsie with him as long as they can. On the ground, they maintain their own sort of autonomy.
51:49 Speaker 06 Yeah, they, they fear him. They fear him in the same way as Edward I was feared. But what they lack during the reign of Edward III is a leader like Bruce. They don't have somebody who is as formidable, as pragmatic as Robert Bruce, to be able to counter such a successful king as Edward. There are instances where they do try to reconnect with the French, reignite the old alliance. But the French don't really like fighting with the Scots. They don't like going to Scotland. They get a bit fed up. They don't like the weather. They don't like the food. So it never really is that successful.
52:20 Dan Snow? What then explains Scottish real independence going forward from the 14th into the 15th centuries? Is it the fact that Edward III also launches England to the Hundred Years' War and everyone gets a bit distracted?
52:29 Speaker 06 Yeah, it is a combination of that. Everyone gets distracted with the Battle of Cressy, the success of his war in France, or lack of success, that's a whole other idea, isn't it? So before Edward III takes the throne, there is negotiation with Bruce and Isabella of France, who has overthrown her husband as king and planted her son on the throne. And there is a truce between England and Scotland, where Isabella does acknowledge Robert as king of Scotland. And so you could see that as the moment where Scots achieved independence in the Middle Ages. But there is border warfare and there's continuing aggression up until the Act of Union.
53:04 Dan Snow? Right, so Edward III is trying to project English influence into Scotland all the way through the British Empire?
53:09 Speaker 06 Yeah, this truce between England and Scotland, and Isabella and Mortimer's acknowledgement of Bruce as king of Scotland, is not popular in England. It's not a popular thing. The Earl of Lancaster is absolutely furious about it. The nobles in England are furious about it. They see it as a stain on everything Edward I tried to achieve. So it's not a popular truce. Warrior kings in this period, conquest makes you a good king, not necessarily peace and treaties and truces.
53:37 Dan Snow? But it seems like in the medieval period that people are more comfortable with ambiguity than we are now. Now it's like, okay, you're an independent country, you've got your own representation at the UN or something, but back then Edward III can kind of think one thing, Scottish nobles can think about something else, and you can sort of muddle along in that situation for generations.
53:54 Speaker 06 Yeah, I think it is, it's true. I think people were more comfortable with ambiguity. Their borders were an emerging thing in the Middle Ages, they were continually being created. The whole idea of borders in this period is a fascinating one. It's like, are they porous? All sorts of communities and identities existed around these regions. They were different to the sort of central locations that a lot of this administrative and action and diplomacy were happening. So they are their own communities, they're their own entities, and you see a lot of cultural change in these spaces as well.
54:25 Dan Snow? I suppose that's true. There are long periods of English distraction when there are English civil wars, of course, like the wars of under Henry IV or Henry VI. But people like Henry VIII are always marching up Scotland and trying to impose English policies.
54:39 Speaker 06 Yeah, but I suppose there's a time when they do try to create some sort of alliance, as they had under the age of Alexander III, because Margaret, Henry's younger sister, is married to the King of Scotland. But then it all goes wrong. There's obviously the Battle of Flodden later on. So there is this constant, it's never, it's never simple.
55:00 Dan Snow? And then 17th century, English Scots fight each other all the time and Cromwell invades Scotland. So really, it's not until the Act of Union that you mentioned, 1707, when the two countries formally join, that the situation is properly resolved.
55:14 Speaker 06 Formally join, I mean, possibly under James, the first of England, James VI of Scotland. There's also this idea of sharing that one king. But that's the first time that Scotland and England really do have the same king and everything but name. But that comes with its own complexities for James as a monarch, I think. He's got a very different kingship in Scotland as he does in England. So yes, really, it's within this Act of Union. But then arguably, even into the modern day, are they the same nation? Are they?
55:40 Dan Snow? But we're dealing with the big questions here.
55:43 Speaker 06 Yeah, exactly.
55:44 Dan Snow? So that's a big thought, that the Scottish Wars of Independence, that's seeing a little bit too black and white. I've always thought Bannockburn was this absolutely vast watershed in British history. Do you think it really matters as a battle?
55:55 Speaker 06 Yeah, I think it really matters. I think it changed the course of Scottish history, national identity, mythology. Going forward, Bruce is this canonical figure in Scottish history, and Bannockburn is this canonical battle. It was a great military victory, one that the Scots hadn't really achieved on the same level. I mean, every nation likes to have their own big success. I mean, we sort of blab on about Agincourt or Cressy, the Scots have Bannockburn. It's part of your cultural fabric, isn't it? Part of national identity. And the 14th century was a period where nationhood and nationalism, national identity started to kind of emerge.
56:33 Dan Snow? Well, Helen Carr, thank you for that exhaustive rampage through English and Scottish rivalry, collaboration, attempts to conquest. Helen Carr, thank you so much for coming on this one. See you next time.
56:48 Dan Snow? Thanks so much for listening, folks. We really hope that this has helped you better understand what's going on, given you a bit of context. And if you think your friends, family, colleagues would enjoy that, then please, please do share with them. Whatever your podcast player, whatever you're listening on, it will let you share this as a link or even a WhatsApp message. That sharing is the lifeblood of this podcast and what keeps us going. So, thank you for listening and thanks for sharing. Join us next time for another episode of Dan Snow's History Head.
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