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Melrose Abbey and the Heart of the Bruce In August,1289 the quiet Spanish town of Teba in Andalusia was invaded by a Scottish force led by the Earl of Selkirk and bearing a one-ton slab of Dumfriesshire marble. The Earl is chieftain of the Clan Douglas and the slab commemorates the valorous death of Sir James Douglas, the Black Douglas, at the Battle of Teba on 25th August,1330. The Douglas was bearing the heart casketed in enamelled silver of King Robert I, the Bruce, on crucade to the Holy Land. With feasting, piping and dancing, the stone was installed in the Plaza d'Espana, now Plaza Douglas.
On July 11th 1274 Marjorie of Carrick, wife of Robert Bruce the younger, bore Robert Bruce the 6th of that name, thereafter Earl of Carrick 1292-1309, Guardian of Scotland 1298-1300, King Robert I of Scotland 1306-1329. He was 55 years old at his death.
In February 1296 the Scots parliament was again convened and ratified the treaty with France, thus declaring war on England. Edward's demand of October 1295 that the castles of Berwick, Roxburgh and Jedburgh be handed over for the duration of the war with France, and other restraints, were rejected. A number of English merchants in Berwick were reported to have been killed. The feudal host of England, returned from the war in France, met at Newcastle on 1st March. In late March of 1296 John Comyn of Badenoch, the Guardian's son, and seven earls, crossed the Solway, and burned the villages from Arthuret to Carlisle, not a great enterprise. The city garrison, commanded by Robert Bruce, lord of Annandale, in company with his son, the young earl of Carrick, Robert I of Scotland to be, repulsed the attacking force. In April the same Scottish earls left Jedburgh to devastate Redesdale, Coquetdale and Tynedale, burning Corbridge, and Hexham and its abbey. The raid failed in its purpose, if it ever had one, of diverting Edward. Attrocities by the Scots were alleged, no doubt with some foundation, and probably in retaliation for the sack of Berwick.
In the same late March of 1296 the abortive Scottish attack on Carlisle, Edward I stormed and sacked Berwick upon Tweed killing some 10,000 of its common people but sparing the nobility. The wars in France had brutalised the English army, and a feudal nobility lacking man-power was impotent. On 27th April the Earl of Warenne, besieging Dunbar, was attacked by the Scottish feudal host. The host had not been excercised in battle since 1235, when used by Alexander II against rebel Carrick. The Scots suffered total defeat with heavy casualties to the foot soldiers. Numerous Scots lords surrendered. Scottish resistance collapsed, excepting that by Alexander Macdougall, Lord of Lorn. It was one of the tragedies of the War of Independence that Lorn and the Bruce found themselves in conflict, to the lasting forfeiture of the Macdougalls.
Two years earlier still, in July, 1295 the Scottish leaders, sick of Edward I's humiliations, had convened a Parliament at Stirling at which King John Balliol (Toom Tabard) was effectively deposed and a Council formed comprising four earls, four barons and four bishops. The closest precedent for such a council was the regency council of six, the Guardians of 1286. In its broad composition it expressed the 'community of the realm' of Scotland (Barrow 1988), a unique concept for the times. A treaty with France was a priority. Robert Bruce and John Comyn were appointed Guardians, essentially Field-Marshalls.
In 1302 Bruce married Elizabeth de Burgh, daughter of the Earl of Ulster. The Earl was a staunch supporter of Edward I. Bruce submitted to Edward and acted as his advisor on Scotland. King Robert the Bruce had placed his wife, Lady Elizabeth de Burgh and his stepdaughter Lady Marjory in the sanctuary of St. Duthac's Church at Tain. By 1318, King Robert the Bruce captured Berwick on Tweed and Edward Bruce, brother of Robert the Bruce, was killed in a battle near Dundalk, Ireland.
Despite these acts of homage and service, Bruce thus strengthened the link between Carrick and Ulster, and the latter as a base for operations against Edward I in both Scotland and Ireland. The Anglo-Scottish Wars were essentially an 800-year long tussle of kings and lairds on both sides for the dismembered carcase of sister kingdom Northumbria.
In Feb.1307, Bruce, then in rebellion against the English occupation, had landed with a force of Scots and Ulstermen in Carrick and commenced a campaign of guerilla warfare which was to continue for seven years. In July of the same yeare 1307, en route to restore order in Scotland, Edward I died and was buried in Holmcultram abbey, Cumbria. The war of liberation and unification continued. In 1308 Bruce led his army in a savage campaign against the Comyns and their supporters. The MacDougalls were defeated in the Pass of Brander and the Comyns at Inverurie. The chiefs of both houses went into exile and returned. The Earl of Ross capitulated in 1309 and in the same yeare a parliament in St Andrews proclaimed Bruce King of Scotland. His status was recognised by all except the Pope and Edward II.
Edward II's intrusion in the winter of 1310-11 failed as Bruce avoided open battle. While no damage to Border abbeys is specifically recorded they can hardly have escaped unscathed. On the 24th June 1314 Bruce accepted battle at Bannockburn, There the English under Edward II numbered some 20,000 foot and 3,000 knights, the Scots 17,000 and 500 foot and horse respectively. The English, overconfident and on unsuitable ground, were disasterously defeated. The English host had entered and left Scotland by way of Lauderdale, and again the Border abbeys must have suffered. At 1315 Melrose Abbey and its granges were no doubt in need of repair and restocking after the passage of English armies in 1310 and 1314. The gift was generous, at best to God's servants in gratitude for the victory of Bannockburn, at least a share of the spoils of war, Edward's treasury and noble ransoms. Melrose Abbey was given a 20-year gift of revenue from a parish, not named, for pittance for the monks.
Early in January of 1316 Bruce had brought a considerable force to Berwick in an unsuccessful attempt to re-take that town. A charter of 8th.June,1316 (RRS 95) shows him to have been at Melrose Abbey at that date. At Kilwinning on 28th.June,1316 he granted letters patent 'of three clauses', to Melrose Abbey (RRS 96). On the 21st.Nov.1316 Bruce was again at Melrose for he signed a brieve there to James, Lord of Douglas (RRS 108). On the 6th.Oct.1316, the Abbot of Melrose was provided with an English safe-conduct to go into England, no doubt bearing Bruce's safe-conducts for English negociators to come north, for on 21st. November two English envoys arrived at Jedburgh to negotiate a truce. Meantime Edward II lodged at York. These activities at and concerning Melrose took place in the euphoric climate of the English expulsion from Scotland in 1314 and their serious defeats and weakening in Ireland during 1315 at the Battles of Connor and Dunscull. But famine stalked the land in Ireland as in much of Europe, and the starving Scottish army had moved back to Ulster.
In May, 1316 Edward Bruce, brother of Robert I, was inaugurated King of Ireland, though with less than full Irish support. The English stronghold of Carrickfergus fell after a year-long seige. Famine became desperate in parts of Ireland. Robert Bruce, with reinforcements, joined Edward in Ireland in December.1316. The sea routes to Ireland were evidently under firm Scottish control. Robert Bruce moved into Meath in February 1317 and threatened Dublin. He avoided a seige, but wasted English estates throughout Kildare, Carlow, Kilkenny and Tipperary. Even the churches of Kells and Cashel did not escape destruction, acts throwing some doubt on his pan-celtic ambitions. O'Brian did not greet him at Castleconnel on the Shannon and neither Munster nor Connacht rose for him. Mortimer with fresh English forces threatened. In May of 1317 the starving Scottish army made the long 200 mile retreat through a famine-stricken land from Castleconnel on the lower Shannon to Ulster, with heavy losses. Robert left Ireland, never to return, but he remembered the weapon of starvation. Edward Bruce rashly moved out of Ulster in October 1318 to defeat and death at Fochart near Dundalk. A Gaelic confederation may have been among Robert Bruce's motives for the invasion of Ireland, as suggested by McNeil and Nicholson,1975 but he left instead a bitter memory of Edward Bruce as 'the destroyer of all Erin in general and the worst man since Herod'.
In early 1318 (CDS iii 605) Edward II 'considering that the abbey of Holmcultram, a daughter house of Melrose, required to elect a successor to its late abbot Robert, but could not do so without the presence of the abbot of Melrose, therefore grants a safe-conduct to the latter, together with two fellow monks,to attend the election'. This seems like a conciliatory gesture on the part of Edward II, taking account of the burial at Holmcoultram of the fathers of both monarchs, and deference shown to the rights of a mother house even in an enemy land, for a truce had not yet been acheived. The response of the abbot of Melrose is not recorded but the approach did not soften Bruce's attitude towards either Edward II or to Pope John XXII. In March 1318 continued attempts by the Pope to secure a truce were halted by Bruce's taking of the town and castle of Berwick. Bruce lodged there briefly before appointing son-in-law Walter, Steward of Scotland, as governor. By the end of May the English castles of Wark (on the Tweed), Harbottle (Coquetdale), and Mitford (nr.Morpeth) had fallen and Douglas had plundered Northallerton, Boroughbridge, Ripon and Scarborough. Ripon Abbey was spared, for a blackmail.
In June of 1318 Edward II assembled his army at York but could not, for internal problems, bring them to Berwick until September. Heavy attacks by land and sea sustained until mid-1319 failed to take the town. The seige was lifted when In mid-1319 a raid by Douglas and Murray into Yorkshire was opposed by a tumultuary army of towmsfolk of York with many clerics in its ranks lead by Archbishop William de Meton. At Milton on the Swale the Scots cavalry broke the rabble and slaughtered four thousand of the innocents in the rout. The raiders withdrew with their loot. In a later raid in the same yeare Douglas wasted Gillesland (south Tyne and upper Tees) to Brough on Stainmore. Returning by way of Westmorland and Cumberland he looted and utterly destroyed the abbey of Holm Cultram, sepulchre of Edward I and Bruce's father, an act that may have sealed the fate of Melrose abbey, destroyed three years later.
With the failure of the seige of Berwick and with the devastating Scots raiding, Edward II sought and obtained a two-year truce. The brief period of peace was used by the Scots to attend to domestic affairs neglected during the war. In 1319 Robert I granted Stocket forest and fishing on the Don and Dee to the city of Aberdeen. Bruce was Lord of Garioch only 20 miles away. His sister was Countess of Mar with Kildrummy Castle the main seate of the earldom. Daughter Marjory was often at Kildrummy as a child. In 1320 either Bruce or Bishop Cheyne of Aberdeen ordered the Brig O' Balgownie to be built. On the 6th. of April,1320 the Declaration of Arbroath, was signed by eight earls and thirty-one other nobles. This famous document, unique in its time, contains an affirmation of Scottish independence and a statement of the duties of a king. In the latter it appears to revive and codify an ancient Celtic form of kingship. In June of the same year, 1320 the Bishops of St Andrews, Dunkeld, Aberdeen and Moray were ex-communicated for their refusal to appear before Pope John XXII to answer for their insubordination. These years of peace and politics did not last long.
In January 1322 the two-year truce ended. Douglas, Moray and Walter Stewart raided into Northeast England. Tees-side, Darlington, Hartlepool and Cleveland were plundered and Richmondshire, 75miles from the border, blackmailed. The Scots retired without challenge. On July 1st 1322 Bruce led a raid down the Cumberland coast to Furness. The Cistercian abbey there was blackmailed but then plundered, a sad lapse. Bruce then led his force over the Kent estuary to burn out Lancaster and Preston, 90 miles south of the modern border. Edward had his troubles at home. Edward II's court favourites, the Despensers, had provoked the marcher earls Hereford and Lancaster to rebellion. Lancaster betrayed Edward II by failing to counter the Scots raid on the Northeast, but in a march to join the raiders was defeated at Boroughbridge by Andrew Harcla and his Cumberland and Westmorland levies. The rebel earls were killed or later executed.
With Edward in retreat Bruce sought to cut him off by a strike through the Eden valley into north Yorkshire with a host drawn from the Forth valley and the Isles. In 1322 Edward triumphant at home and resentful of the Scots raiding, campaigned deep into Scotland to the gates of Edinburgh. With Edward at Rievaulx abbey only a few miles away Bruce's army over-ran a large English force under Richmond on Scawton Moor, 1322. Richmond and many other nobles were captured. Edward escaped but left his treasure to the Scots for the second time in eight years. Despite the Scots' capture of this treasure at Rievaulx after the battle the abbey appears to have been spared.