Were Robert the Bruce and his captains fighting for freedom?

Someone recently put it to me that Robert the Bruce and his captains were fighting for power, not for freedom. He commented that it was just something that Gibson put in Braveheart. Considering that Gibson got almost nothing right about William Wallace, Robert the Bruce, or the start of the Wars of Scottish Independence, I can understand that skepticism. Certainly, William Wallace did not go around screaming "Freedom!" while wearing blue face paint. But is it just possible that they were fighting for freedom? And if so, what did they mean by 'freedom'? (For that matter, what do we mean by it?)

Well there were certainly mentions of freedom in the writings of the time. The first I am aware of was in the Declaration of Arbroath written in 1320. The word is part of the most famous paragraph of that historic letter, written to Pope John XXII and signed by eight earls and forty barons. It made a profound argument for the recognition of Scotland's independence from English rule and Robert the Bruce as Scotland's lawful king.

It was written in Church Latin, as one would expect in a document to be presented to the pope, and contained one of the most quoted sentences in Scotland's history.

Non enim propter gloriam, diuicias aut honores pugnamus set propter libertatem solummodo quam Nemo bonus nisi simul cum vita amittit. 

Translated into English, it reads: It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom, for that alone which no honest man gives up but with life itself.

There are other 14th century references to freedom.

Freedom is mentioned a number of times in the iconic narrative poem The Brus written by Johne Barbour in 1370 about four decades after King Roberts' death, when some of his followers were still alive and had spoken with Barbour, as he actually mentions in the poem. One of the best known references from Barbour's work is on a plaque over where the king's heart is buried in Melrose Abbey. The plaque entwines a carving of a heart (which you also see on the Douglas coat of arms) with a Saltire, Scotland's national flag.

In the original Early Scots it reads: "A noble hart may have no ease, gif freedom failye."

Translated, this reads: "A noble heart shall have no ease if freedom fails." 

However, that is only one line of Johne Barbour's paean to freedom.

Because of its length I will only include my own translation into English, but you can find it in the original Early Scots here.

Ah! Freedom is a noble thing.

Freedom gives man happiness,

Freedom all solace to man gives.

He lives at ease who freely lives.

A noble heart may have no ease,

Nor nought that may him please,

If freedom fail; for freedom to please oneself

Is loved above all other things. 

No, he who has ever lived free

Can not well perceive the nature,

The affliction, no, the miserable woe

That is coupled to foul servitude.

But if he had put it to the proof

Then he would learn it all by heart,

And would think freedom more to prize

Than all the gold in the world there is.

(This translation is my own work, so any errors are totally on me. If you believe you have a correction, please let me know.)

Thus, Barbour expressed pretty clearly what he thought freedom was, at least in part, the ability to please oneself or do as one pleases, although he certainly also believed in duty to lord and monarch. Probably like most of us who have duty to family and bosses as well as nations to which we are loyal, he and other medieval Scots had a somewhat confused definition of the word. But whatever they believed it was, freedom was a concept many must have fought and died for.

Just where did the Douglases come from?

 By the time of the death of King Robert the Bruce, his great captain, James, the Black Douglas, was one of the most powerful and richest men in Scotland. But even in James' father's time they were neither rich nor particularly powerful, and it is an good question where they came from and how they ended up so powerful they were seen as a threat to the monarch.

Like a great many medieval families, the surname Douglas was originally a place name and title. It came from the river Douglas. In Scots Gaelic 'dubh' means black or dark and glas means grey-green. Near the banks of that river the first of the Douglases known to history, named not surprisingly William of Douglas, built his castle and took the name as a title. But where did he come from? 

It is notable that the Douglas escutcheon and that of the very important Murrays are nearly identical, three white stars on a blue band. (In heraldry azure, three mullets argent) That has led to speculation that the two families were related, but speculation is not necessary. In 1362 when Archibald the Grim was preparing to marry the Murray heiress, he had to send to the pope for a dispensation because they were related within six generations which confirms that they were related. It is known exactly where the Murrays, or Morays as they were known earlier, came from. They were originally Flemish and fought as mercenaries for King David I in his war to claim the crown of Scotland. He rewarded them with lands and they became an important family in the Scottish court. 

I think we can safely conclude that the Douglases were a cadet branch of the Murrays. It is likely that William of Douglas set off to build his own power base. He signed various charters as a witness between 1175 and 1215, so he is firmly placed in history.

However, they had neither their relatives wealth or status, and were not of great significance on the national stage. They worked to build their power base, which was land in medieval Scotland, but little is heard of them. In 1263, William of Douglas, known by the sobriquet 'Longlegs', fought for the Scots at the Battle of Largs, in 1263, a battle between the Norwegian army and the Scots which the young Scottish king Alexander III won. It would surprise many that Scotland was at peace with England but fighting the King of Norway who wanted to claim western Scotland. 

It was Longleg's son, yet another William of Douglas referred to as William le Hardi (William the Bold) who began the family's real climb to prominence. In 1270 and still in his twenties, he accompanied David, Earl of Atholl, and many other Scottish nobles on the Eighth Crusade. By 1289, the ambitious young man was styling himself Lord of Douglas, the first time that title was used. He had become important enough to marry Elizabeth Stewart, daughter of the High Stewart of Scotland. She died shortly after giving birth to James of Douglas, probably of complications of child birth.

At about that time King Alexander, after a long and successful reign, died when thrown from his horse. 

William le Hardi was not a man to let the grass grow under his feet. Pretty shortly after his first wife's death, he laid siege to Castle Fa'side and kidnapped Eleanor, widow of William de Ferrers, a considerable landowner in both England and Scotland. The Scots arrested him but then released him, and the two were married. She obviously could have escaped his grasp while he was imprisoned so one must make of that what you will. At any rate, King Edward I of England was enraged as usual and demanded that William be turned over to him, a demand the Scottish guardians of the realm chose to ignore.

Sadly the long peace between England and Scotland was rapidly coming to an end. It was the mistake of the Scots to think that they could trust Edward of England. They should have taken his brutal conquest of Wales as an example but did not.

When King Alexander's last direct heir of his body, his granddaughter Margaret, died on her way to Scotland, there was no clear heir to the throne. The Scots asked King Edward to mediate between the several claimants, prominently Robert the Bruce, called the Competitor and grandfather of Scotland's hero king, and John of Comyn. Primogenitor had still only been loosely adopted in Scotland and laws of inheritance in Scotland differed from those in England. Because of later events, it is largely assumed that King Edward decided to declare John the king because he was a weakling. Edward may have believed that. Certainly, in Scottish tradition, which Edward ignored, Robert the Bruce had a better claim. He was closer by one generation to the late king.

Edward lost no time in trying to force King John and the Scots into subservience to him and his rule. He even overturned a ruling by a Scottish court and demanded that King John appear before him in England. John at first gave way, but the Scottish nobles forced him into defiance. Thus began the war. After the disastrous Battle of Dunbar in which thousands of Scots died and hundreds taken prisoner, King Edward stripped King John of the throne of Scotland and declared Scotland his personal possession by conquest.

It did not take long for rebellion to rise. Douglas's cousin in the north of Scotland, Andrew de Moray, son of the Lord of Petty, raised his banner in rebellion while in the south of Scotland, the more renowned William Wallace did the same. William the Hardi promptly joined with Wallace in fighting the English. He was twice taken prisoner. The second time, he died of maltreatment in the Tower of London, but the English had failed to gain possession of William's young son. James of Douglas was safely in France, but he soon joined the household of Bishop Lamberton as a squire. 

When Robert the Bruce, Earl of Carrick, raised his banner and seized the throne, young James threw his lot in with the new king.

It was James who earned the title of Black Douglas and fought, side by side, through the long years of struggle and war with King Robert the Bruce. In that was richly rewarded with vast land holdings and powers as they pushed the English out of Scotland. King Robert on his deathbed tasked James with carrying his heart on crusade. James died doing so and ever since the Douglas escutcheon has shown a heart below the three stars. 

Only three years after James's death, the English once again invaded Scotland, for a time pretending to do so on behalf of the son of the man they had stripped of the crown. James's only legitimate son, young William, died on the field as a squire to his uncle Archibald. Through forty more horrendous years of fighting, the Douglases led the fight for Scotland's freedom, but with great power and wealth too often comes arrogance. It was unweaning arrogance that was a few decades later their downfall.

Coming Soon: Not for Glory, Book 3 in The Black Douglas Trilogy

An excerpt from Chapter One:

A pale-faced lad dodged backward. "The king sent me. He wants you."

An unhorsed Englishman screamed as his head was crushed by a slashing hoof. He fell atop a knight already dead. James's own men wore helms and studded leather brigandines, marked with the blue and white Saltire of Scotland under the streaks of dirt and blood and gore. The steel tide surged against the crumbling mass of a panicked foe. They heaved forward a step.

Six hours they’d fought, since the cool of dawn, hacking at an army that seemed without number. His arm suddenly was heavy with the fatigue from a day of hack and slash.   

The English war horns shrilled thin. Harooo Harooo… Retire… Retire…

He blinked the sting of sweat from his eyes. Where was Walter Stewart? In the chaos, James spotted Walter’s blue and white checky pennant. He grabbed Iain’s arm and pulled him out of the line of pikesmen. "Find Sir Walter. Tell him he has command." He shoved his sword into his black leather sheath and jerked a nod to the squire. "Lead on."

The lad turned and clamored across the broken sod, past a sprawled body of a knight, his armor still agleam as his blood soaked into the dry earth. For a moment, a wind from the east gust the smell of the salt sea and cut through the fug of blood and shit. Who could have imagined such a battle? A body in a ripped brigandine marked with a Saltire was pierced by the shattered remains of a pike next to a gutted stallion. A corbie, its black feathers gleaming in the sun, took flight from the guts spilled onto the ground with an angry kraaa. They trudged past it all and the uproar faded behind them into a rumble.

Beyond a ragged stand of alder, leaves drooping in summer’s heat, the king’s golden lion banner hung limp in the still air. The lad pointed. James slapped his shoulder and strode through the welcome shade of the trees as he reached up to wrench off his helm.

Robert de Bruce’s hand rested on the hilt of his sword, his head tilted, as he listened to what the Keith was saying. At the Bruce’s feet sat his helm topped by a gold crown. Enemy blood streaked his armor and cloth-of-gold tabard. He ran a hand through fair hair dripping with sweat. "Jamie," the king exclaimed.

James worked some spit into his parched mouth. "Your Grace."

"Bring him water," the Bruce called and the squire scurried away.

The Keith said, "King Edward fled the field and Aymer du Valence with him with five hundred guards."

James felt his eyes widen as he looked from his good-father to the king.

"Come." The Bruce strode a little way through the alders so they could watch the battle. On the distant hill, Stirling Castle loomed gray against a cloudless noon sky. The king shook his head.  "If someone took command they might still turn the battle."

"They’re in full flight." The Keith pointed toward the battle and past to the deep gully cut by the Bannockburn. "They’re forcing their horses down the gully into the Bannockburn. Already it’s mired with bodies. Some are fleeing for the River Forth."

"Our men so weary they can barely lift a pike," the king said, squinting at the roiling mass of the battle. "How many hours can a man fight? If it turned now, we’d be in desperate case."

The squire ran up with a cup and flagon and thrust the cup of water into James’s hand. He gulped it down. It ran down his throat like rain after a drought.  He held out the cup and let the squire re-fill it. "But without their king?"

"I want to pursue Edward," the Keith said. He slid a glance toward the king. "There is no one left who could rally them. We’ve won."

"We don’t know where Gilbert de Clair is or Robert de Clifford is or Humphrey de Bohun or Ralph de Monthermer. Any of those could rally them. Even broken, such a great army is dangerous. Like a wounded boar." His gaze was fixed on the chaos of the battle. The sound was a roar of a distant sea. Remorseless. "I won’t chance it."

"Did King Edward make for Stirling Castle?" James asked.

The Keith jerked a nod. "I pursued him so far. Mowbray must have refused him entrance. They turned south."

"No, Lord Marishcal. I’ll have sixty of your chivalry. That will leave you a full 400 knights if we have need of them." The Bruce skewered James with a look. "You’ll lead the sixty to follow the curst English king. Aught who lag, you will take but the king... Don't waste your life trying to take him."

James blew out a long breath. His whole body was a mass of weary aches. He looked at the cup of water in his hand, lifted it, and dumped the water over his head. It ran through his hair and down his cheeks to drip from his close-cropped beard, mixing with sweat until he shook his head hard like a wet hound.  

The king and his good-father were watching him. "We’ll skirt the battle and take the North Park road."