Robert S. Rait - An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500 1707)

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AN OUTLINE OF THE

RELATIONS BETWEEN

ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND
(500-1707)

BY

ROBERT S. RAIT
FELLOW OF NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD

LONDON
BLACKIE & SON, LIMITED, 50 OLD BAILEY, E.C.
GLASGOW AND DUBLIN
1901

PREFATORY NOTE

I desire to take this opportunity of acknowledging valuable aid derived
from the recent works on Scottish History by Mr. Hume Brown and Mr.
Andrew Lang, from Mr. E.W. Robertson's _Scotland under her Early Kings_,
and from Mr. Oman's _Art of War_. Personal acknowledgments are due to
Professor Davidson of Aberdeen, to Mr. H. Fisher, Fellow of New College,
and to Mr. J.T.T. Brown, of Glasgow, who was good enough to aid me in
the search for references to the Highlanders in Scottish mediaeval
literature, and to give me the benefit of his great knowledge of this
subject.

R.S.R.

NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD,
_April, 1901_.

CONTENTS

Page

INTRODUCTION ix

CHAP. I. RACIAL DISTRIBUTION AND FEUDAL RELATIONS,
_c._500-1066 a.d. 1

" II. SCOTLAND AND THE NORMANS, 1066-1286 11

" III. THE SCOTTISH POLICY OF EDWARD I, 1286-1296 31

" IV. THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE, 1297-1328 41

" V. EDWARD III AND SCOTLAND, 1328-1399 64

" VI. SCOTLAND, LANCASTER, AND YORK, 1400-1500 80

" VII. THE BEGINNINGS OF THE ENGLISH ALLIANCE,
1500-1542 101

" VIII. THE PARTING OF THE WAYS, 1542-1568 116

" IX. THE UNION OF THE CROWNS, 1568-1625 141

" X. "THE TROUBLES IN SCOTLAND", 1625-1688 157

" XI. THE UNION OF THE PARLIAMENTS, 1689-1707 180

APPENDIX A. REFERENCES TO THE HIGHLANDERS IN
MEDIAEVAL LITERATURE 195

" B. THE FEUDALIZATION OF SCOTLAND 204

" C. TABLE OF THE COMPETITORS OF 1290 214

INDEX 215

INTRODUCTION

The present volume has been published with two main objects. The writer
has attempted to exhibit, in outline, the leading features of the
international history of the two countries which, in 1707, became the
United Kingdom. Relations with England form a large part, and the heroic
part, of Scottish history, relations with Scotland a very much smaller
part of English history. The result has been that in histories of
England references to Anglo-Scottish relations are occasional and
spasmodic, while students of Scottish history have occasionally
forgotten that, in regard to her southern neighbour, the attitude of
Scotland was not always on the heroic scale. Scotland appears on the
horizon of English history only during well-defined epochs, leaving no
trace of its existence in the intervals between these. It may be that
the space given to Scotland in the ordinary histories of England is
proportional to the importance of Scottish affairs, on the whole; but
the importance assigned to Anglo-Scottish relations in the fourteenth
century is quite disproportionate to the treatment of the same subject
in the fifteenth century. Readers even of Mr. Green's famous book, may
learn with surprise from Mr. Lang or Mr. Hume Brown the part played by
the Scots in the loss of the English dominions in France, or may fail to
understand the references to Scotland in the diplomatic correspondence
of the sixteenth century.[1] There seems to be, therefore, room for a
connected narrative of the attitude of the two countries towards each
other, for only thus is it possible to provide the _data_ requisite for
a fair appreciation of the policy of Edward I and Henry VIII, or of
Elizabeth and James I. Such a narrative is here presented, in outline,
and the writer has tried, as far as might be, to eliminate from his work
the element of national prejudice.

The book has also another aim. The relations between England and
Scotland have not been a purely political connexion. The peoples have,
from an early date, been, to some extent, intermingled, and this mixture
of blood renders necessary some account of the racial relationship. It
has been a favourite theme of the English historians of the nineteenth
century that the portions of Scotland where the Gaelic tongue has ceased
to be spoken are not really Scottish, but English. "The Scots who
resisted Edward", wrote Mr. Freeman, "were the English of Lothian. The
true Scots, out of hatred to the 'Saxons' nearest to them, leagued with
the 'Saxons' farther off."[2] Mr. Green, writing of the time of Edward
I, says: "The farmer of Fife or the Lowlands, and the artisan of the
towns, remained stout-hearted Northumbrian Englishmen", and he adds that
"The coast districts north of the Tay were inhabited by a population of
the same blood as that of the Lowlands".[3] The theory has been, at all
events verbally, accepted by Mr. Lang, who describes the history of
Scotland as "the record of the long resistance of the English of
Scotland to England, of the long resistance of the Celts of Scotland to
the English of Scotland".[4] Above all, the conception has been firmly
planted in the imagination by the poet of the _Lady of the Lake_.

"These fertile plains, that soften'd vale,
Were once the birthright of the Gael;
The stranger came with iron hand,
And from our fathers reft the land."

While holding in profound respect these illustrious names, the writer
ventures to ask for a modification of this verdict. That the Scottish
Lowlanders (among whom we include the inhabitants of the coast
districts from the Tay to the Moray Firth) were, in the end of the
thirteenth century, "English in speech and manners" (as Mr. Oman[5]
guardedly describes them) is beyond doubt. Were they also English in
blood? The evidence upon which the accepted theory is founded is
twofold. In the course of the sixth century the Angles made a descent
between the Humber and the Forth, and that district became part of the
English kingdom of Northumbria. Even here we have, in the evidence of
the place-names, some reasons for believing that a proportion of the
original Brythonic population may have survived. This northern portion
of the kingdom of Northumbria was affected by the Danish invasions, but
it remained an Anglian kingdom till its conquest, in the beginning of
the eleventh century, by the Celtic king, Malcolm II. There is, thus,
sufficient justification for Mr. Freeman's phrase, "the English of
Lothian", if we interpret the term "Lothian" in the strict sense; but it
remains to be explained how the inhabitants of the Scottish Lowlands,
outside Lothian, can be included among the English of Lothian who
resisted Edward I. That explanation is afforded by the events which
followed the Norman Conquest of England. It is argued that the
Englishmen who fled from the Normans united with the original English of
Lothian to produce the result indicated in the passage quoted from Mr.
Green. The farmers of Fife and the Lowlands, the artisans of the towns,
the dwellers in the coast districts north of Tay, became, by the end of
the thirteenth century, stout Northumbrian Englishmen. Mr. Green admits
that the south-west of Scotland was still inhabited, in 1290, by the
Picts of Galloway, and neither he nor any other exponent of the theory
offers any explanation of their subsequent disappearance. The history of
Scotland, from the fourteenth century to the Rising of 1745, contains,
according to this view, a struggle between the Celts and "the English of
Scotland", the most important incident of which is the battle of Harlaw,
in 1411, which resulted in a great victory for "the English of
Scotland". Mr. Hill Burton writes thus of Harlaw: "On the face of
ordinary history it looks like an affair of civil war. But this
expression is properly used towards those who have common interests and
sympathies, who should naturally be friends and may be friends again,
but for a time are, from incidental causes of dispute and quarrel, made
enemies. The contest ... was none of this; it was a contest between
foes, of whom their contemporaries would have said that their ever
being in harmony with each other, or having a feeling of common
interests and common nationality, was not within the range of rational
expectations.... It will be difficult to make those not familiar with
the tone of feeling in Lowland Scotland at that time believe that the
defeat of Donald of the Isles was felt as a more memorable deliverance
even than that of Bannockburn."[6]

We venture to plead for a modification of this theory, which may fairly
be called the orthodox account of the circumstances. It will at once
occur to the reader that some definite proof should be forthcoming that
the Celtic inhabitants of Scotland, outside the Lothians, were actually
subjected to this process of racial displacement. Such a displacement
had certainly not been effected before the Norman Conquest, for it was
only in 1018 that the English of Lothian were subjected to the rule of a
Celtic king, and the large amount of Scottish literature, in the Gaelic
tongue, is sufficient indication that Celtic Scotland was not confined
to the Highlands in the eleventh century. Nor have we any hint of a
racial displacement after the Norman conquest, even though it is
unquestionable that a considerable number of exiles followed Queen
Margaret to Scotland, and that William's harrying of the north of
England drove others over the border. It is easy to lay too much stress
upon the effect of the latter event. The northern counties cannot have
been very thickly populated, and if Mr. Freeman is right in his
description of "that fearful deed, half of policy, half of vengeance,
which has stamped the name of William with infamy", not very many of the
victims of his cruelty can have made good their flight, for we are told
that the bodies of the inhabitants of Yorkshire "were rotting in the
streets, in the highways, or on their own hearthstones". Stone dead left
no fellow to colonize Scotland. We find, therefore, only the results and
not the process of this racial displacement. These results were the
adoption of English manners and the English tongue, and the growth of
English names, and we wish to suggest that they may find an historical
explanation which does not involve the total disappearance of the
Scottish farmer from Fife, or of the Scottish artisan from Aberdeen.

Before proceeding to a statement of the explanation to which we desire
to direct the reader's attention, it may be useful to deal briefly with
the questions relating to the spoken language of Lowland Scotland and to
its place-names. The fact that the language of the Angles and Saxons
completely superseded, in England, the tongue of the conquered Britons,
is admitted to be a powerful argument for the view that the Anglo-Saxon
conquest of England resulted in a racial displacement. But the argument
cannot be transferred to the case of the Scottish Lowlands, where, also,
the English language has completely superseded a Celtic tongue. For, in
the first case, the victory is that of the language of a savage people,
known to be in a state of actual warfare, and it is a victory which
follows as an immediate result of conquest. In Scotland, the victory of
the English tongue (outside the Lothians) dates from a relatively
advanced period of civilization, and it is a victory won, not by
conquest or bloodshed, but by peaceful means. Even in a case of
conquest, change of speech is not conclusive evidence of change of race
(_e.g._ the adoption of a Romance tongue by the Gauls); much less is it
decisive in such an instance as the adoption of English by the
Lowlanders of Scotland. In striking contrast to the case of England, the
victory of the Anglo-Saxon speech in Scotland did not include the
adoption of English place-names. The reader will find the subject fully
discussed in the valuable work by the Reverend J.B. Johnston, entitled
_Place-Names of Scotland_. "It is impossible", says Mr. Johnston, "to
speak with strict accuracy on the point, but Celtic names in Scotland
must outnumber all the rest by nearly ten to one." Even in counties
where the Gaelic tongue is now quite obsolete (_e.g._ in Fife, in
Forfar, in the Mearns, and in parts of Aberdeenshire), the place-names
are almost entirely Celtic. The region where English place-names abound
is, of course, the Lothians; but scarcely an English place-name is
definitely known to have existed, even in the Lothians, before the
Norman Conquest, and, even in the Lothians, the English tongue never
affected the names of rivers and mountains. In many instances, the
existence of a place-name which has now assumed an English form is no
proof of English race. As the Gaelic tongue died out, Gaelic place-names
were either translated or corrupted into English forms; Englishmen,
receiving grants of land from Malcolm Canmore and his successors, called
these lands after their own names, with the addition of the suffix-ham
or-tun; the influence of English ecclesiastics introduced many new
names; and as English commerce opened up new seaports, some of these
became known by the names which Englishmen had given them.[7] On the
whole, the evidence of the place-names corroborates our view that the
changes were changes in civilization, and not in racial distribution.

We now proceed to indicate the method by which these changes were
effected, apart from any displacement of race. Our explanation finds a
parallel in the process which has changed the face of the Scottish
Highlands within the last hundred and fifty years, and which produced
very important results within the "sixty years" to which Sir Walter
Scott referred in the second title of _Waverley_.[8] There has been no
racial displacement; but the English language and English civilization
have gradually been superseding the ancient tongue and the ancient
customs of the Scottish Highlands. The difference between Skye and Fife
is that the influences which have been at work in the former for a
century and a half have been in operation in the latter for more than
eight hundred years.

What then were the influences which, between 1066 and 1300, produced in
the Scottish Lowlands some of the results that, between 1746 and 1800,
were achieved in the Scottish Highlands? That they included an infusion
of English blood we have no wish to deny. Anglo-Saxons, in considerable
numbers, penetrated northwards, and by the end of the thirteenth
century the Lowlanders were a much less pure race than, except in the
Lothians, they had been in the days of Malcolm Canmore. Our contention
is, that we have no evidence for the assertion that this Saxon admixture
amounted to a racial change, and that, ethnically, the men of Fife and
of Forfar were still Scots, not English. Such an infusion of English
blood as our argument allows will not explain the adoption of the
English tongue, or of English habits of life; we must look elsewhere for
the full explanation. The English victory was, as we shall try to show,
a victory not of blood but of civilization, and three main causes helped
to bring it about. The marriage of Malcolm Canmore introduced two new
influences into Scotland--an English Court and an English Church, and
contemporaneously with the changes consequent upon these new
institutions came the spread of English commerce, carrying with it the
English tongue along the coast, and bringing an infusion of English
blood into the towns.[9] In the reign of David I, the son of Malcolm
Canmore and St. Margaret, these purely Saxon influences were succeeded
by the Anglo-Norman tendencies of the king's favourites. Grants of
land[10] to English and Norman courtiers account for the occurrence of
English and Norman family and place-names. The men who lived in
immediate dependence upon a lord, giving him their services and
receiving his protection, owing him their homage and living under his
sole jurisdiction, took the name of the lord whose men they were.

A more important question arises with regard to the system of land
tenure, and the change from clan ownership to feudal possession. How was
the tribal system suppressed? An outline of the process by which
Scotland became a feudalized country will be found in the Appendix,
where we shall also have an opportunity of referring, for purposes of
comparison, to the methods by which clan-feeling was destroyed after the
last Jacobite insurrection. Here, it must suffice to give a brief
summary of the case there presented. It is important to bear in mind
that the tribes of 1066 were not the clans of 1746. The clan system in
the Highlands underwent considerable development between the days of
Malcolm Canmore and those of the Stuarts. Too much stress must not be
laid upon the unwillingness of the people to give up tribal ownership,
for it is clear from our early records that the rights of
joint-occupancy were confined to the immediate kin of the head of the
clan. "The limit of the immediate kindred", says Mr. E.W. Robertson,[11]
"extended to the third generation, all who were fourth in descent from a
Senior passing from amongst the joint-proprietary, and receiving,
apparently, a final allotment; which seems to have been separated
permanently from the remainder of the joint-property by certain
ceremonies usual on such occasions." To such holders of individual
property the charter offered by David I gave additional security of
tenure. We know from the documents entitled "Quoniam attachiamenta",
printed in the first volume of the _Acts of the Parliament of Scotland_,
that the tribal system included large numbers of bondmen, to whom the
change to feudalism meant little or nothing. But even when all due
allowance has been made for this, the difficulty is not completely
solved. There must have been some owners of clan property whom the
changes affected in an adverse way, and we should expect to hear of
them. We do hear of them, for the reigns of the successors of Malcolm
Canmore are largely occupied with revolts in Galloway and in Morayshire.
The most notable of these was the rebellion of MacHeth, Mormaor of
Moray, about 1134. On its suppression, David I confiscated the earldom
of Moray, and granted it, by charters, to his own favourites, and
especially to the Anglo-Normans, from Yorkshire and Northumberland, whom
he had invited to aid him in dealing with the reactionary forces of
Moray; but such grants of land in no way dispossessed the lesser
tenants, who simply held of new lords and by new titles. Fordun, who
wrote two centuries later, ascribes to David's successor, Malcolm IV, an
invasion of Moray, and says that the king scattered the inhabitants
throughout the rest of Scotland, and replaced them by "his own peaceful
people".[12] There is no further evidence in support of this statement,
and almost the whole of Malcolm's short reign was occupied with the
settlement of Galloway. We know that he followed his grandfather's
policy of making grants of land in Moray, and this is probably the germ
of truth in Fordun's statement. Moray, however, occupied rather an
exceptional position. "As the power of the sovereign extended over the
west," says Mr. E.W. Robertson, "it was his policy, not to eradicate the
old ruling families, but to retain them in their native provinces,
rendering them more or less responsible for all that portion of their
respective districts which was not placed under the immediate authority
of the royal sheriffs or baillies." As this policy was carried out even
in Galloway, Argyll, and Ross, where there were occasional rebellions,
and was successful in its results, we have no reason for believing that
it was abandoned in dealing with the rest of the Lowlands. As, from time
to time, instances occurred in which this plan was unsuccessful, and as
other causes for forfeiture arose, the lands were granted to strangers,
and by the end of the thirteenth century the Scottish nobility was
largely Anglo-Norman. The vestiges of the clan system which remained may
be part of the explanation of the place of the great Houses in Scottish
History. The unique importance of such families as the Douglasses or the
Gordons may thus be a portion of the Celtic heritage of the Lowlands.

If, then, it was not by a displacement of race, but through the subtle
influences of religion, feudalism, and commerce that the Scottish
Lowlands came to be English in speech and in civilization, if the
farmers of Fife and some, at least, of the burghers of Dundee or of
Aberdeen were really Scots who had been subjected to English influences,
we should expect to find no strong racial feeling in mediaeval Scotland.
Such racial antagonism as existed would, in this case, be owing to the
large admixture of Scandinavian blood in Caithness and in the Isles,
rather than to any difference between the true Scots and "the English
of the Lowlands". Do we, then, find any racial antagonism between the
Highlands and the Lowlands? If Mr. Freeman is right in laying down the
general rule that "the true Scots, out of hatred to the 'Saxons' nearest
to them, leagued with the 'Saxons' farther off", if Mr. Hill Burton is
correct in describing the red Harlaw as a battle between foes who could
have no feeling of common nationality, there is nothing to be said in
support of the theory we have ventured to suggest. We may fairly expect
some signs of ill-will between those who maintained the Celtic
civilization and their brethren who had abandoned the ancient customs
and the ancient tongue; we may naturally look for attempts to produce a
conservative or Celtic reaction, but anything more than this will be
fatal to our case. The facts do not seem to us to bear out Mr. Freeman's
generalization. When the independence of Scotland is really at stake, we
shall find the "true Scots" on the patriotic side. Highlanders and
Islesmen fought under the banner of David I at Northallerton; they took
their place along with the men of Carrick in the Bruce's own division at
Bannockburn, and they bore their part in the stubborn ring that
encircled James IV at Flodden. At other times, indeed, we do find the
Lords of the Isles involved in treacherous intrigues with the kings of
England, but just in the same way as we see the Earls of Douglas
engaged in traitorous schemes against the Scottish kings. In both cases
alike we are dealing with the revolt of a powerful vassal against a weak
king. Such an incident is sufficiently frequent in the annals of
Scotland to render it unnecessary to call in racial considerations to
afford an explanation. One of the most notable of these intrigues
occurred in the year 1408, when Donald of the Isles, who chanced to be
engaged in a personal quarrel about the heritage which he claimed in
right of his Lowland relatives, made a treacherous agreement with Henry
IV; and the quarrel ended in the battle of Harlaw in 1411. The real
importance of Harlaw is that it ended in the defeat of a Scotsman who,
like some other Scotsmen in the South, was acting in the English
interest; any further significance that it may possess arises from the
consideration that it is the last of a series of efforts directed
against the predominance, not of the English race, but of Saxon speech
and civilization. It was just because Highlanders and Lowlanders did
represent a common nationality that the battle was fought, and the blood
spilt on the field of Harlaw was not shed in any racial struggle, but in
the cause of the real English conquest of Scotland, the conquest of
civilization and of speech.

Our argument derives considerable support from the references to the
Highlands of Scotland which we find in mediaeval literature. Racial
distinctions were not always understood in the Middle Ages; but readers
of Giraldus Cambrensis are familiar with the strong racial feeling that
existed between the English and the Welsh, and between the English and
the Irish. If the Lowlanders of Scotland felt towards the Highlanders as
Mr. Hill Burton asserts that they did feel, we should expect to find
references to the difference between Celts and Saxons. But, on the
contrary, we meet with statement after statement to the effect that the
Highlanders are only Scotsmen who have maintained the ancient Scottish
language and literature, while the Lowlanders have adopted English
customs and a foreign tongue. The words "Scots" and "Scotland" are never
used to designate the Highlanders as distinct from other inhabitants of
Scotland, yet the phrase "Lingua Scotica" means, up to the end of the
fifteenth century, the Gaelic tongue.[13] In the beginning of the
sixteenth century John Major speaks of "the wild Scots and Islanders" as
using Irish, while the civilized Scots speak English; and Gavin Douglas
professed to write in Scots (_i.e._ the Lowland tongue). In the course
of the century this became the regular usage. Acts of the Scottish
Parliament, directed against Highland marauders, class them with the
border thieves. There is no hint in the Register of the Privy Council or
in the Exchequer Rolls, of any racial feeling, and the independence of
the Celtic chiefs has been considerably exaggerated. James IV and James
V both visited the Isles, and the chief town of Skye takes its name from
the visit of the latter. In the beginning of the sixteenth century, it
was safe for Hector Boece, the Principal of the newly founded university
of Aberdeen, to go in company of the Rector to make a voyage to the
Hebrides, and, in the account they have left us of their experiences, we
can discover no hint that there existed between Highlanders and
Lowlanders much the same difference as separated the English from the
Welsh. Neither in Barbour's _Bruce_ nor in Blind Harry's _Wallace_ is
there any such consciousness of difference, although Barbour lived in
Aberdeen in the days before Harlaw. John of Fordun, a fellow-townsman
and a contemporary of Barbour, was an ardent admirer of St. Margaret and
of David I, and of the Anglo-Norman institutions they introduced, while
he possessed an invincible objection to the kilt. We should therefore
expect to find in him some consciousness of the racial difference. He
writes of the Highlanders with some ill-will, describing them as a
"savage and untamed people, rude and independent, given to rapine, ...
hostile to the English language and people, and, owing to diversity of
speech, even to their own nation[14]." But it is his custom to write
thus of the opponents of the Anglo-Norman civil and ecclesiastical
institutions, and he brings all Scotland under the same condemnation
when he tells us how David "did his utmost to draw on that rough and
boorish people towards quiet and chastened manners".[15] The reference
to "their own nation" shows, too, that Fordun did not understand that
the Highlanders were a different people; and when he called them hostile
to the English, he was evidently unaware that their custom was "out of
hatred to the Saxons nearest them" to league with the English. John
Major, writing in the reign of James IV (1489-1513), mentions the
differences between Highlander and Lowlander. The wild Scots speak
Irish; the civilized Scots use English. "But", he adds, "most of us
spoke Irish a short time ago."[16] His contemporary, Hector Boece, who
made the Tour to the Hebrides, says: "Those of us who live on the
borders of England have forsaken our own tongue and learned English,
being driven thereto by wars and commerce. But the Highlanders remain
just as they were in the time of Malcolm Canmore, in whose days we began
to adopt English manners."[17] When Bishop Elphinstone applied, in 1493,
for Papal permission to found a university in Old Aberdeen, in proximity
to the barbarian Highlanders, he made no suggestion of any racial
difference between the English-speaking population of Aberdeen and their
Gaelic-speaking neighbours.[18] Late in the sixteenth century, John
Lesley, the defender of Queen Mary, who had been bishop of Ross, and
came of a northern family, wrote in a strain similar to that of Major
and Boece. "Foreign nations look on the Gaelic-speaking Scots as wild
barbarians because they maintain the customs and the language of their
ancestors; but we call them Highlanders."[19]

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