The Royal Stuarts: A History of the Family That Shaped Britain Read Free Page A

head of an extensive family connection, with estates scattered across central and southern Scotland. He was king by hereditary right, but he was never to be more than first among equals.
    All medieval monarchies were partnerships. It couldn’t be otherwise. No king could govern without the acquiescence of the nobility and the Church. Indeed he required more than acquiescence; he needed collaborators. Kingship might be hereditary; it was also, if only informally, contractual. In Scotland the idea of contractual monarchy had been made explicit in the Declaration of Arbroath, addressed in 1320 to the Pope by ‘the Community of the Realm’. Composed in an attempt to persuade the Pope to lift the sentence of excommunication imposed on Robert the Bruce after he murdered his rival John Comyn in Dumfries Abbey before he was crowned king of Scots, it set out its authors’ understanding of monarchy. It first recited the pseudo-historical (in truth, utterly mythical) origin of the Scots, who, having come from Scythia by way of Spain and Ireland, had then overcome Picts, Britons, Angles and Norsemen to establish the independence of Scotland under a succession of 113 native kings (most of whom were imaginary). His Holiness was then informed that the Scots had been rescued from the violence of the English by their chosen king, Robert, now compared to the biblical heroes Joshua, son of Nun, and Judas Maccabeus. He was king by the choice of the community of the realm as well as by hereditary right, but the authors of the declaration boldly announced that, should he prove faithless, he would be set aside and replaced by another king: ‘for so long as a hundred of us remain alive, we shall never submit or be subject to the English’. This was fine rhetorical stuff, to be regarded in later ages as the definitive statement of Scotch nationality; but in truth all medieval monarchs were in a like position, required to govern in a manner agreeable to the great men of the realm, and might be removed if they failed to do so. In England Edward II would be deposed seven years after this declaration was addressed to the Pope, and Richard II would be replaced by Henry IV in 1399.
    For the fact is that, without a regular army, without a police force, medieval government depended on two things: the personality of the monarch and his ability to obtain the consent of the barons, knights, churchmen and merchants who constituted the political class. In this respect Scotland was no different from other countries. Nevertheless, in Scotland the Crown was indeed weaker than in England, principally because the administrative apparatus of the state was far less developed. Building on the organisation of the Anglo-Saxon monarchy, with its effective system of royal writs directed to sheriffs and local magnates, the Norman and Plantagenet kings of England had established a form of government that, in the hands of a capable ruler, was the most efficient in Europe. There was nothing comparable in Scotland. The monarch – King of Scots, rather than of Scotland – was the leader of a tribal nation. His power was even more dependent on his personality and prestige than was the case in England. It rested very largely on his ability to command respect and approval.
    The power of the Crown was indeed very limited. It scarcely existed north of the River Tay, except up the eastern seaboard to Aberdeen and the Moray Firth. The Highlands were largely self-governing, inasmuch as they were governed at all. The Lord of the Isles, controlling the Hebrides and much of the north-west Highlands, was a quasi-independent sovereign, any allegiance to the king being merely verbal. Orkney and Shetland were not yet part of the kingdom, and in name at least were Norwegian dependencies. The Border counties, ravaged by intermittent war with England, were wild and unruly, a debatable land of frontier brigands, scarcely governable, controlled only in part by the heads of the great families