She had no near relatives, and more than a dozen Scottish
or Anglo-Scottish nobles, distantly related to the royal line, put
in a claim to the crown, or at least to a part of the royal heritage.
The board of six regents, who had been ruling Scotland for the
young queen, seeing their own power at an end and civil war
likely to break out, begged Edward of England to arbitrate
between the claimants. The history of the next twenty years
turned on the legal point whether the arbitrator acted—as
he himself contended—in the capacity of suzerain, or—as the
Scots maintained—in that of a neighbour of acknowledged
wisdom and repute, invited to settle a domestic problem. This
question of the relations between the English and the Scottish
crowns had been raised a dozen times between the days of
Edward the Elder and those of Henry III. There was no denying
the fact that the northern kings had repeatedly done homage
to their greater neighbours. But, save during the years when
William the Lion, after his captivity, had owned himself the
vassal of Henry II. for all his dominions, there was considerable
uncertainty as to the exact scope of the allegiance which had
been demanded and given. And William’s complete submission
had apparently been cancelled, when Richard I. sold him in
1190 a release from the terms of the treaty of Falaise. Since that
date Alexander II. and Alexander III. had repeatedly owned
themselves vassals to the English crown, and had even sat in
English parliaments. But it was possible for patriotic Scots to
contend that they had done so only in their capacity as English
barons—for they held much land south of Tweed—and to point
to the similarity of their position to that of the English king
when he did homage for his duchy of Guienne at Paris, without
thereby admitting any suzerainty of the French crown over
England or Ireland. On the last occasion when Alexander III.
had owned himself the vassal of Edward I., there had been considerable
fencing on both sides as to the form of the oath, and, as
neither sovereign at the moment had wished to push matters to a
rupture, the words used had been intentionally vague, and both
parties had kept their private interpretations to themselves.
But now, when Edward met the Scottish magnates, who had
asked for his services as arbitrator, he demanded that they
should acknowledge that he was acting as suzerain and overlord
of the whole kingdom of Scotland. After some delay, and with
manifest reluctance, the Scots complied; their hand was forced
by the fact that most of the claimants to the crown had hastened
to make the acknowledgment, each hoping thereby to prejudice
the English king in his own favour.
This submission having been made, Edward acted with honesty and fairness, handing over the adjudication to a body of eighty Scottish and twenty-four English barons, knights and bishops. These commissioners, after ample discussion and taking of evidence, adjudged the crown to John Baliol, the grandson of the eldest daughter of Earl David, younger brother of William the Lion. They ruled out the claim of Robert Bruce, the son of David’s second daughter, who had raised the plea that his descent was superior because he was a generation nearer than Baliol to their common ancestor. This theory of affinity had been well known in the 12th century, and had been urged in favour of King John when he was contending with his nephew Arthur. But by 1291 it had gone out of favour, and the Scottish barons had no hesitation in declaring Baliol their rightful king. Edward at once gave him seizin of Scotland, and handed over to him the royal castles, which had been placed in his hands as a pledge during the arbitration. In return Baliol did him homage as overlord of the whole kingdom of Scotland.
This, unfortunately, turned out to be the beginning, not the end, of troubles. Edward was determined to exact all the ordinary feudal rights of an overlord—whatever might have been the former relations of the English and Scottish crowns. The Scots, on the other hand, were resolved not to allow of the introduction of usages which had not prevailed in earlier times, and to keep the tie as vague and loose as possible. Before Baliol had been many months on the throne there was grave friction on the question of legal appeals. Scottish litigants defeated in the local courts began to appeal to the courts of Westminster, just as Gascon litigants were wont to appeal from Bordeaux to Paris. King John and his baronage, relying on the fact that such evocation of cases to a superior court had never before been known, refused to allow that it was valid. King Edward insisted that by common feudal usage it was perfectly regular, and announced his intention of permitting it. Grave friction had already begun when external events precipitated an open rupture between the king of England and his new vassal.
Philip III. of France, who had always pursued a friendly
policy with his cousin of England, had died in 1285, and had
been succeeded by his son Philip IV., a prince of a
very different type, the most able and unscrupulous of
all the dynasty of Capet. In 1294 he played a mostEdward I. and
Philip IV.
dishonourable trick upon King Edward. There had
been some irregular and piratical fighting at sea between English
and Norman sailors, in which the latter had been worsted.
When called to account for the doings of his subjects, as well
as for certain disputes in Gascony, the English king promised
redress, and, on the suggestion of Philip, surrendered, as a
formal act of apology, the six chief fortresses of Guienne, which
were to be restored when reparation had been made. Having
garrisoned the places, Philip suddenly changed his line, refused
to continue the negotiations, and declared the whole duchy
forfeited. Edward was forced into war, after having been tricked
out of his strongholds. Just after his first succours had sailed
for the Gironde, the great Welsh rebellion of 1294 broke out, and
the king was compelled to turn aside to repress it. This he
accomplished in the next spring, but meanwhile hardly a foothold
remained to him in Gascony. He was then preparing
to cross the Channel in person, when Scottish affairs began
to become threatening. King John declared himself unable to
restrain the indignation of his subjects at the attempt to enforce
English suzerainty over Scotland, and in July 1295 leagued
himself with Philip of France, and expelled from his realm the
chief supporters of the English alliance. Finding himself involved
in two wars at once, Edward made an earnest appeal to
his subjects to rise to the occasion and “because that whichThe “model parliament” of 1295.
touches all should be approved of all” summoned the
celebrated “model parliament” of November 1295,
which exactly copied in its constitution Montfort’s
parliament of 1265, members from all cities and
boroughs being summoned along with the knights of
the shires, and the inferior clergy being also represented by their
proctors. This system henceforth became the normal one, and
the English parliament assumed its regular form, though the
differentiation of the two houses was not fully completed
till the next century. Edward was voted liberal grants by
the laity, though the clergy gave less than he had hoped;
but enough money was obtained to fit out two armies, one
destined for the invasion of Scotland, the other for that of
Gascony.
The French expedition, which was led by the king’s brother
Edmund, earl of Lancaster, failed to recover Gascony, and came
to an ignominious end. But Edward’s own army
achieved complete success in Scotland. Berwick was
Invasion
of
Scotland.
stormed, the Scottish army was routed at Dunbar
(April 27), Edinburgh and Stirling were easily captured,
and at last John Baliol, deserted by most of his adherents,
surrendered at Brechin. Edward pursued his triumphant march
as far as Aberdeen and Elgin, without meeting further resistance.
He then summoned a parliament at Berwick, and announced
to the assembled Scots that he had determined to depose King
John, and to assume the crown himself. The ease with which
he had subdued the realm misled him; he fancied that the slack
resistance, which was mainly due to the incapacity and unpopularity
of Baliol, implied the indifference of the Scots to the
idea of annexation. The alacrity with which the greater part
of the baronage flocked in to do him homage confirmed him
in the mistaken notion. He appointed John, earl Warenne,
lieutenant of the realm, with Hugh Cressingham, an English
clerk, as treasurer, but left nearly all the minor offices in Scottish
hands, and announced that Scottish law should be administered.
