Thomas Randolph, Earl of Moray (d.1332): Bruce's Nephew and Lieutenant

Each major claim carries one of three labels. established means supported by primary records, official bodies or several independent reliable sources. shared means the core fact is sound but sources disagree on details, dates or interpretation. traditional means widely repeated but not traceable to a primary or independent source.

Randolph's offices, lands and diplomatic missions are well recorded in royal charters, English government records and papal letters. Many of the best-known stories about him, including his capture by Douglas, his scorn for guerrilla warfare and the rebuke he received at Bannockburn, come from John Barbour's poem The Bruce, written about 1375. Barbour had good sources but wrote as a poet celebrating heroes. His mother's name, his birth date and the cause of his death are all uncertain.

Family

established Randolph's father, also Sir Thomas Randolph, held lands at Stichill in Roxburghshire and the barony of Morton in Nithsdale. He was chamberlain of Scotland under Alexander III and a councillor of King John Balliol, and he had been an executor of Dervorguilla Balliol. In December 1292 he was one of the four magnates who protested on Balliol's behalf against Edward I's hearing of Scottish appeals.

shared His mother was a daughter of Marjorie, countess of Carrick, by her first husband, Adam of Kilconquhar, who died on crusade at Acre. That made her a half-sister of Robert Bruce, and Randolph the king's nephew (nepos in the records). Her name is not securely known. Older works call her Isabel, a name some historians now reject; others give Martha. Barrow noted that through his mother Randolph was a potential heir to the earldoms of Fife and Carrick.

shared His date of birth is unknown. The Scots Peerage suggested about 1278, which the frontmatter range here follows, but several modern writers prefer the mid-1280s.

Capture and English service, 1306–1308

established Randolph was among the Nithsdale men who joined Bruce in the spring of 1306, and he was with him at Methven, near Perth, where Aymer de Valence surprised and routed the new king's army on 19 June 1306. Randolph was taken prisoner. English records show him in Edward I's custody between July and September 1306. Unlike many captives, he was not executed. He entered English service, and his own lands were later forfeited by Edward II.

traditional Barbour says Randolph was captured with Alexander Stewart of Bonkle by James Douglas, who brought him before the king. When Bruce greeted him, Randolph reproached his uncle for fighting by stealth instead of in open battle like a knight. The king replied that it might yet come to that, and had him kept under restraint until he changed his mind.

shared Barrow accepted the substance of this story: Randolph "despised Bruce's policy of guerrilla warfare as being unworthy of a gentleman" and said so, and was held for a time before rejoining the king. The capture is usually dated to 1308, although some accounts put it in 1307. By 16 March 1309, when he attended Robert I's first parliament at St Andrews as lord of Nithsdale, he was firmly on Bruce's side.

Lieutenant and earl

established Randolph rose fast. By 1309–10 he was acting as the king's lieutenant north of the Forth. In 1312 Robert I created him earl of Moray. The earldom was made up of most of what the Crown had held in Moray since the twelfth century, together with the Comyn lordships of Badenoch and Lochaber. He was styled earl of Moray by October 1312, when he sealed the renewal of the treaty with Norway at Inverness. He was also given the lordship of Annandale and, after the Scots recovered it, the Isle of Man.

shared The historian G. W. S. Barrow, in Robert Bruce and the Community of the Realm of Scotland (1965; 4th edn 2005), described the earldom of Moray as Bruce's "sole innovation among earldoms" and argued that Randolph's descent made his promotion legitimate. He also judged that granting Moray as a regality, in which the earl exercised almost all royal powers, was an unfortunate step that weakened the Crown in the long run. The earldom owed the service of eight knights, which Barrow saw as evidence that Bruce took military feudalism seriously.

Edinburgh Castle, 1314

established In the winter of 1313–14 Bruce's men attacked the last great English-held castles. James Douglas took Roxburgh on the night of 19–20 February 1314. On the night of 14 March 1314 Randolph took Edinburgh. A diversion at the East Port drew the garrison, while a small party climbed the steep north face of the rock and scaled the wall with rope ladders. They opened the gate to the main force. Most of the defenders were killed. Bruce had the castle slighted, as he did with every castle he took.

shared The climb was guided by William Francis, a local man whose father had served in the castle and who had learned the route as a youth slipping out at night to see a girl in the town. The story comes from Barbour, but Robert I's later grant to Francis of forfeited lands at Sprouston supports his part.

Bannockburn, 23–24 June 1314

established The Scots army at Bannockburn was divided into four brigades. Randolph, now earl of Moray, commanded the vanguard, posted near St Ninians kirk, about a mile from Stirling Castle, to stop any English attempt to reach the castle round the Scottish flank. The other brigades were led by Edward Bruce, by Douglas in the name of the young Walter the Stewart, and by the king.

established On the afternoon of 23 June a force of English cavalry under Sir Robert Clifford and Sir Henry Beaumont rode round below the New Park towards Stirling. It passed St Ninians before Randolph's men moved. Randolph led his spearmen out into the open in a schiltrom, a dense hedgehog of long spears. The knights charged again and again, throwing swords and maces when their lances failed. The schiltrom held, then pressed forward, and the English broke and fled. Sir William Deyncourt was killed and Sir Thomas Grey captured.

traditional Barbour says Bruce rebuked Randolph for letting the English get past, telling him that "a rose of his chaplet was fallen", and that Douglas asked leave to help him but held back when he saw Randolph winning so as not to take his glory. These details are Barbour's, though they fit the rest of the evidence.

shared Barrow called the fight between Moray and Clifford "the crisis of the whole battle". He argued that it proved that a schiltrom could attack armoured cavalry as a mobile unit, kept the English from relieving Stirling Castle, and lifted Scottish morale. The location of the main battle the next day is still debated, but the St Ninians setting of Randolph's fight is not.

established On 24 June Randolph's brigade advanced on the left of Edward Bruce's, and with Douglas's brigade attacked the mass of English cavalry crowded on the low ground. The English army broke. The earl of Gloucester, Sir Robert Clifford and Sir John Comyn, son of the man Bruce had killed in 1306, were among the dead.

Ireland and the raids

established In 1315 Randolph went to Ireland with Edward Bruce, whose campaign aimed to open a second front against England. When the invasion stalled in Ulster, Randolph returned to Scotland in December 1315 to fetch reinforcements, which allowed the Scots to push south into Leinster. In early 1317 he went back with Robert I, while Douglas was left as warden in Scotland. Edward Bruce was defeated and killed near Dundalk in 1318, ending the venture.

established Robert I had granted Randolph the lordship of Man. In July 1317 Randolph was reported to be threatening Man and Anglesey, and the island was under Scottish rule from about 1317 until 1333.

established Randolph and Douglas led many of the raids that took the war into northern England after 1314. Barrow described their troops as lightly armoured men on sturdy ponies, each carrying an iron girdle to bake oatcakes, who lived rough, fought on foot when needed and extorted large payments from northern communities in return for truces. On 1–2 April 1318 the king entrusted the capture of Berwick to Randolph and Douglas jointly; the town fell after a night assault and the castle surrendered about eleven weeks later.

established In September 1319, while Edward II besieged Berwick, Randolph and Douglas raided Yorkshire. At Myton-on-Swale, east of Boroughbridge, they routed a force of townsmen and clergy raised by Archbishop William Melton of York. So many clergy were killed that it was called the "Chapter of Myton". Edward II abandoned the siege of Berwick.

The Declaration of Arbroath and the papal court

established Randolph's name comes second among the earls in the letter of 6 April 1320 now known as the Declaration of Arbroath, after Duncan, earl of Fife.

established In late 1323 Randolph went to the papal court at Avignon. Barrow wrote that he argued Bruce's case skilfully in the pope's presence. On 13 January 1324 Pope John XXII told Edward II that he would address Bruce as king in future, since doing so could neither diminish Edward's right nor add to Bruce's. It was a major diplomatic gain at a time when Bruce was still excommunicate.

established In 1326 Randolph led the Scottish embassy to France that concluded the Treaty of Corbeil (April 1326), under which each kingdom promised military help to the other against England. He carried the ratification later that year.

Weardale and the peace

established After the deposition of Edward II, Randolph and Douglas invaded England in June 1327. The young Edward III's army hunted them across the Pennines in heavy rain. In early August the Scots took up strong positions above the Wear and then in Stanhope Park. Douglas raided the English camp at night and nearly captured the king. Then the whole Scottish force slipped away by night across a bog. Edward III was said to have wept with frustration. Barrow judged the reverse in Weardale to amount to an English military defeat.

established Randolph was present at Holyrood when the peace of Edinburgh was made on 17 March 1328, confirmed at Northampton by the English parliament, by which England recognised Scotland's independence and Robert I's kingship. He stood surety for part of the payment promised to Edward III.

Guardian, 1329–1332

established The succession acts of 26 April 1315 and 3 December 1318 named Randolph as Guardian of the kingdom and the heir if the king died leaving a child, with Douglas as his substitute. When Robert I died in June 1329, his son David II was five. Randolph assumed office as Guardian, as the settlement of 1326 required, and he was ordering payments as Guardian by 23 June 1329. Douglas, his partner in so many campaigns, was killed fighting the Moors at Tebas de Ardales in Spain on 25 August 1330 while carrying Bruce's heart.

established As Guardian Randolph governed in the name of the young king. On 18 October 1331, with John of Pilmuir, bishop of Moray, he endowed chaplains at Elgin Cathedral to say masses for his own soul and that of "the most noble prince, the lord Robert, of good memory, king of Scotland".

Death at Musselburgh

established In the summer of 1332 the "Disinherited", Scots and English lords who had lost lands under Robert I, prepared to invade with Edward Balliol, son of King John. Randolph gathered forces to meet them, but he died at Musselburgh on 20 July 1332. He was buried at Dunfermline Abbey, near Robert I. Donald, earl of Mar, was chosen as Guardian in his place.

shared Contemporaries believed the English had poisoned him. There is no evidence for this, and modern historians have suggested natural causes, including an illness of the kidneys or bladder. His death removed the last of Bruce's great lieutenants just before Balliol's landing.

established Within weeks Balliol's force defeated the Scots at Dupplin Moor in Perthshire. Randolph's elder son and heir, Thomas, second earl of Moray, was among the dead. The younger son, John, became earl. Randolph's daughter Agnes married Patrick, earl of Dunbar, and through her the Moray inheritance later passed to the Dunbars.

shared Barrow observed that Scotland's enemies found the kingdom so tempting in the 1330s because Robert Bruce, James Douglas and Thomas Randolph had all been removed from the scene and a child was on the throne.

• Randolph fought against his uncle for about two years before changing sides.
• According to Barbour, he told Bruce that his hit-and-run warfare was unworthy of a knight.
• The man who guided his climb up Edinburgh Castle rock had learned the route sneaking out to see a girl.
• The earldom of Moray was the only new earldom Robert I created.
• He was also lord of the Isle of Man under Robert I.
• He persuaded Pope John XXII to address Bruce as king in 1324.
• He and Douglas nearly captured the fourteen-year-old Edward III in Weardale in 1327.
• He kept ships at Cardross on the Clyde, as did the king.

• Myth: Randolph was always loyal to Bruce. He was captured in 1306 and served the English for about two years before rejoining his uncle.
• Myth: Randolph was a Bruce by blood. He was the king's nephew through Bruce's half-sister, whose father was Adam of Kilconquhar, not a Bruce. He had no claim to the throne in his own right.
• Disputed: the name of his mother. She is called Isabel in older works and Martha in others; the records do not settle it.
• Disputed: when Douglas captured him. Most accounts give 1308; some give 1307. He was on Bruce's side by March 1309.
• Disputed: the cause of his death. Poison was alleged at the time but never proved; natural causes are at least as likely.
• Disputed: Barbour's dialogue. The rebuke about the "rose of his chaplet" and his complaint about guerrilla warfare come from Barbour's poem, written about forty years after his death.