The Wars of Scottish Independence: From Toom Tabard to Loudoun Hill

1. From Falaise to a Golden Age: Scotland, 1153–1296

The century before the wars set the constitutional stage. Malcolm IV "the Maiden" (reigned 1153–1165), grandson and successor of David I, came to the throne as a boy of about twelve; in 1157 he was compelled to surrender to Henry II the northern English counties his grandfather had gained during England's civil war. His brother William I "the Lion" (reigned 1165–1214) suffered a graver humiliation: captured at the Battle of Alnwick in 1174, he was forced to accept the Treaty of Falaise, explicitly recognising Henry II as feudal overlord of Scotland and surrendering key castles to English garrisons. That subjection lasted fifteen years until the Quitclaim of Canterbury (5 December 1189), when Richard I — needing money for the Third Crusade — released Scotland from Falaise entirely for 10,000 marks, restoring its independence.

Alexander II (reigned 1214–1249) consolidated royal authority and, by the Treaty of York (1237), settled the border with England close to its present line, from the lower Tweed to the Solway Firth; he died in 1249 on the island of Kerrera, near Oban, while campaigning to wrest the Hebrides from Norwegian control. His son Alexander III (reigned 1249–1286) presided over a period later idealised as a "Golden Age" of peace and prosperity, and in 1263 decisively checked Norwegian ambitions in the west.

The idyll ended abruptly. On the night of 19 March 1286, Alexander III, having spent the evening at Edinburgh Castle, insisted on riding through storm and darkness to reach his new young wife, Yolande de Dreux, at Kinghorn in Fife. He became separated from his guides; his horse is presumed to have lost its footing, and he was found dead the next morning with a broken neck. He was 44.

2. The Succession Crisis and the Maid of Norway

Alexander III had outlived all three of his children. His heir was his infant granddaughter, Margaret, the "Maid of Norway," daughter of King Eric II of Norway. A marriage was arranged between Margaret and Edward I's son, and in 1290 the child was finally sent west. But storms drove her ship to Orkney, where — sometime between 26 and 29 September 1290, aged just seven — she died, probably of the effects of the voyage, before ever reaching the mainland or being crowned. With the direct line of the House of Dunkeld extinguished, Scotland faced a full succession crisis with no obvious heir.

3. The Great Cause and Edward I's Overlordship (1291–1292)

Thirteen "Competitors" came forward. Fearing civil war between the two strongest — John Balliol and Robert Bruce, 5th Lord of Annandale (grandfather of the future king) — the Guardians of Scotland invited Edward I of England to arbitrate. Edward seized the opening: before proceeding, he insisted on being recognised as feudal overlord ("Lord Paramount") of Scotland, with an army standing by. Nine of the claimants acknowledged his superiority.

The field narrowed to three descendants of David, Earl of Huntingdon: Balliol, Bruce and John Hastings. A commission of 104 auditors weighed the arguments. Under the developing rules of primogeniture, Balliol won: he descended from the eldest daughter of Earl David (a senior line, though one generation further removed), whereas Bruce argued the older Celtic principle of proximity of blood. Balliol was awarded the crown and enthroned at Scone in November 1292.

4. King John's Reign and Humiliation (1292–1296)

Edward I made Balliol's position untenable. He treated Scotland as a vassal state — hearing appeals from Scottish courts in England, summoning King John to answer cases in person, and demanding Scottish military service for England's war with France. Pushed beyond endurance, a parliament at Stirling in July 1295 set negotiations with France in motion — English chroniclers claimed that a "Council of Twelve" took government out of Balliol's hands, though this is disputed (see below) — and on 23 October 1295 the Scots concluded a treaty of mutual assistance with Philip IV of France — the origin of the "Auld Alliance." Its terms provided that if either kingdom were attacked by England, the other would act against England; in practice the treaty favoured France, but it aligned Scotland with a great power. Balliol renounced his homage to Edward. Edward's response was invasion.

5. Was King John really useless? The making of "Toom Tabard"

Balliol's reputation as a weak puppet king has been accepted for seven centuries, but Fiona Watson argues that much of it was manufactured. The image of a king stripped of power by his own nobles in 1295 comes from English chroniclers: Langtoft, Lanercost, the Flores Historiarum and Rishanger, who called John "a lamb among wolves". Even these sources disagree on the details. Langtoft and the Flores make the "Twelve" responsible for negotiating the French treaty rather than governing Scotland, and the actual embassy to France had only four members. Watson suggests that the wide consultation at the Stirling parliament of July 1295 was prudent in the face of a near-declaration of war on England, rather than proof of royal incapacity. She notes that no medieval Scottish chronicler mentions a deposition in 1295 at all.

The Scottish side of the myth was manufactured by Robert Bruce's government. The Declaration of the Clergy (St Andrews parliament, March 1309) contains, in Watson's summary of G. W. S. Barrow, "the earliest appearance of the powerful myth that John Balliol was merely an English puppet". It was issued when Balliol, then living on his family lands in Picardy, had recently enjoyed some papal support for his restoration. By 1320 the Declaration of Arbroath ignored him entirely, presenting Bruce as heir of Alexander III. Yet in the Great Cause it was Balliol who tried to avoid swearing homage to Edward I. The Bruces were happy to submit, and they fought on Edward's side against Balliol's army in 1296.

Watson finds a more positive Balliol surviving within the medieval Scottish chronicles themselves. John Barbour wrote that John was deposed "for little or no reason… Whether that was right or wrong, God knows". Fordun, Wyntoun (who still coined "Tome-Tabart") and Bower show a king who renounced his homage after being humiliated at Edward's parliament, with his nobles behind him. Fordun even records that Bruce supporters were regarded as "traitors to their king and country" during Balliol's war. The nineteenth-century historians Patrick Fraser Tytler and John Hill Burton, working from English archives, finally adopted the English chroniclers' version. Hill Burton conceded that "Bruce's party have the last word in the dispute". Watson's verdict is that the "patriotic" label went to the winning side.

6. The Invasion of 1296: Berwick, Dunbar, the Empty Coat, and the Stone

Edward marched north and, on 30 March 1296, stormed Berwick-upon-Tweed, then Scotland's richest town. A massacre followed. Medieval chroniclers give wildly divergent and unreliable figures — the Lanercost Chronicle claims 15,000 dead, Bower's later Scotichronicon names 7,500, and other accounts cite up to 17,000 — so any precise death toll should be treated with caution; what is certain is that the killing was severe enough to shock contemporaries and to serve as deliberate terror.

At the Battle of Dunbar (27 April 1296), an English cavalry force under John de Warenne, Earl of Surrey, routed the Scots. The action was brief; English chronicle claims of 10,000 Scottish dead are probably a confusion with Berwick, and the more reliable picture is of light casualties but many captured nobles. Resistance collapsed. John Balliol was forced to abdicate in July 1296; in a ceremony of ritual degradation, the royal arms were torn from his tabard, earning him the enduring nickname "Toom Tabard" ("Empty Coat"). Edward carried off the symbols of Scottish sovereignty — most famously the Stone of Destiny (Stone of Scone), installed beneath the Coronation Chair at Westminster Abbey — and at his Berwick parliament of 28 August 1296 compelled the Scottish political community to swear fealty in the documents known as the Ragman Roll. The rolls record a total of 1,870 people submitting to Edward through homage and/or fealty (not counting King John himself), of whom 1,741 did so at the Berwick parliament — a comprehensive submission of the nobility, landholders and clergy.

7. Wallace and Moray: The Rising of 1297 and Stirling Bridge

Within a year, Scotland rose again — and crucially, in two places at once. In the south, William Wallace — not the peasant of legend but a younger son of the lesser gentry (his own seal names his father as Alan Wallace) — killed William de Heselrig, the English Sheriff of Lanark, in May 1297, an act generally taken as the spark of his armed resistance. (The romantic tradition that this avenged the murder of Wallace's wife, Marion Braidfute, derives from Blind Harry's late-15th-century poem and has no contemporary documentation.) In the north, Andrew Moray, heir of a leading landed family, escaped English captivity and raised his own rising from Avoch Castle on the Black Isle, swiftly clearing English garrisons from much of the north.

The two armies merged. On 11 September 1297, at the Battle of Stirling Bridge, they trapped Surrey's army as it crossed the narrow wooden bridge over the River Forth. The Scots waited until a substantial portion — including the treasurer Hugh de Cressingham — had crossed into the confined loop of the river, then attacked, cutting them off with no room to manoeuvre or retreat. The result was a devastating English defeat that shattered the myth of English invincibility. (In a grisly aftermath, the Lanercost Chronicle records that Cressingham's skin was flayed and a strip taken to make a sword-belt for Wallace.)

Andrew Moray must be given his due. In popular memory he is a footnote to Wallace; in the judgement of historians he was an equal partner and, in some assessments, the senior one — his northern campaign had done more damage to Edward's interests than Wallace's in the south. The joint "Lübeck letter" of 11 October 1297, urging Hanseatic merchants to resume trade with a Scotland "recovered by war from the power of the English," was issued in both their names as leaders of the army of Scotland — and it names Moray first. But Moray had been mortally wounded at Stirling Bridge; he died of his wounds, most probably in November 1297 (tradition holds he was buried at Fortrose Cathedral, though this is not firmly documented). Had he lived, Wallace might not tower so singularly over the period. Wallace was knighted, made sole Guardian of Scotland, and led a winter invasion of northern England.

8. Falkirk and Wallace's Decline (1298)

Edward I returned in force. At the Battle of Falkirk (22 July 1298), his army — spearheaded by Welsh and English longbowmen — broke Wallace's schiltrons (dense circular hedgehogs of spearmen). The archers thinned the static formations before cavalry exploited the gaps. Wallace escaped, but his military reputation was destroyed, and he resigned the guardianship later that year, succeeded by Robert Bruce and John "the Red" Comyn as joint Guardians. Wallace turned to diplomacy — travelling to France to plead Scotland's case — and later to guerrilla resistance.

9. Wallace's Capture and Execution (1305)

Wallace evaded capture until 5 August 1305, when he was taken at Robroyston, near Glasgow, and handed to the English by Sir John de Menteith, a Scottish knight in Edward's service. Menteith is often branded a "betrayer," and while it is true he delivered Wallace, much of the venom attached to his name is later embellishment; he was an officeholder acting for the crown he served, and the sensational details should be read with caution. Taken to London and tried at Westminster Hall on 23 August 1305, Wallace reportedly denied treason on the grounds that he had never sworn allegiance to Edward. Convicted, he was hanged, drawn and quartered at Smithfield the same day; his head was set on London Bridge and his quarters displayed at Newcastle, Berwick, Stirling and Perth. It was a death designed as a warning — and it helped make him a martyr.

10. Robert the Bruce's Path to Kingship (1306)

With Balliol in exile and Wallace dead, two rivals remained: Robert the Bruce (grandson of the Competitor) and John "the Red" Comyn, Balliol's nephew. On 10 February 1306, the two met at the Greyfriars church in Dumfries. The meeting turned violent: Bruce stabbed Comyn before (or near) the high altar, and Bruce's companions finished the killing — an act of sacrilege on consecrated ground. It is unlikely Bruce arrived intending murder, but the deed left no way back.

Bruce moved with astonishing speed. Absolved by Robert Wishart, Bishop of Glasgow, he was crowned King of Scots at Scone on 25 March 1306. For killing Comyn in a church, he was excommunicated by the Pope. His early reign was a disaster: at the Battle of Methven (19 June 1306) he was surprised and routed by Aymer de Valence, and he became a hunted fugitive, his womenfolk captured and his brothers executed. He disappeared from the records over the winter of 1306–07.

11. The 1307 Resurgence: Glen Trool and Loudoun Hill

Bruce returned to the mainland in early 1307 and switched to the guerrilla methods Wallace had used before Falkirk. In April 1307 his men won a sharp action at Glen Trool in Galloway, ambushing an English force in narrow terrain. Then, on 10 May 1307, at the Battle of Loudoun Hill in Ayrshire, Bruce chose his ground carefully — narrowing the battlefield with ditches so that Valence's heavy cavalry could not deploy — and won his first major victory. Weeks later, on 7 July 1307, Edward I died on his way north to crush the revolt, leaving the war to his less formidable son, Edward II. The tide had turned. The road now led toward Bannockburn (1314) — the subject of Card #8 — and the Declaration of Arbroath (1320) — Card #9.

12. Braveheart and the Real History

Mel Gibson's Braveheart (1995) won five Academy Awards and did more than any book to shape the world's image of this period — and much of that image is wrong. In keeping with this site's principle of accuracy over patriotism, here are the film's major distortions:

- Wallace was not a peasant. He was of the minor gentry (the knightly class); his own seal names his father as Alan Wallace. His ability to lead armies and hold the office of Guardian fits his social standing. The film's landless-commoner-as-everyman is a romantic invention. - The "right of the first night" (jus primae noctis / droit du seigneur) is a myth. As the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica put it, "For the existence of the custom in a legalized form there is no trustworthy evidence… the jus, it seems, is a myth, invented no earlier than the 16th or 17th century." No evidence supports its practice in medieval Scotland or Europe generally; in the film it is a pure plot device to blacken Edward I. - The romance with Isabella of France is chronologically impossible. Isabella was born in Paris around 1295 (the evidence narrows it to May–November 1295) and was a young child in France during Wallace's career; she did not marry Edward II until 25 January 1308 at Boulogne-sur-Mer, arriving in England aged twelve — over two years after Wallace's execution in 1305. She never met him, and the implication that she carried his child is fantasy. (Blind Harry described a meeting with Edward I's young wife, Margaret of France — itself embellishment — which the film transposed onto the wrong queen.) - The costumes are wrong by centuries in both directions. The belted plaid / great kilt does not appear in the written record until 1594 (in an Irish account of Scottish Highland mercenaries) and became common only across the 16th–17th centuries — roughly 300 years after Wallace. Thirteenth-century Scots wore tunics (the léine) and cloaks like other medieval Europeans. The blue woad face-paint belongs to the ancient Britons and Picts of the Roman era — roughly a thousand years too early — not to Wallace's contemporaries. - The Battle of Stirling Bridge has no bridge. The film stages the fight on an open field, discarding the single tactical feature that made the real victory possible: the narrow bridge over the Forth, which forced the English to cross in a vulnerable column.

Braveheart is best enjoyed as stirring historical drama, not as history.