(Medieval World) Michael Brown - Disunited Kingdoms - Peoples and Politics in The British Isles 1280-1460 (2014, Routledge) PDF

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D ISUNITED K IN GD O MS
The Medieval World
Series editor: Julia Smith, The University of Glasgow
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Violence in Medieval Europe Justinian

Warren Brown John Moorhead
Ambrose
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John Moorhead
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The Devil’s World
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Andrew P. Roach
Trevor Dean
The Reign of Richard Lionheart
Charles I of Anjou Ralph Turner/Richard Heiser
Jean Dunbabin
The Welsh Princes
The Age of Charles Martel Roger Turvey
Paul Fouracre
English Noblewomen in the Late
Margery Kempe Middle Ages
A.E. Goodman J. Ward
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for the print edition is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Brown, Michael, 1965-
Disunited kingdoms : peoples and politics in the British Isles 1280-1460 / Michael Brown.
p. cm. -- (The medieval world)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4058-4059-0 (pbk.)
1. Great Britain--History--Medieval period, 1066-1485. I. Title.
DA175.B76 2012
941.03--dc23
2012032273
Set by 35 in 10.5/13pt Galliard

CONTENTS
A B B RE VI A T I O N S vi
FI GU RE S vii
MAPS xiii
I NT RO D U C T I O N : WA RL ORDS AN D
S O VE RE I GN L O RD S 1
chapter one ED WA R D T HE CO N Q U E RO R 10
chapter two R O BER T BR U CE 34
chapter three SO V ER EI G NT Y A ND W A R 55
chapter four R U L ER S A ND R EA L MS 81
chapter five PEO PL ES, CR I SES A N D C O N F LI C T S 108
chapter six EL I T ES A N D I D EN T I T I E S 139
chapter seven BO R DER L A ND S: L O R D S A N D

R EG I O NS 165
chapter eight HU N DR ED YEA R S WA RS : T H E

EU R O PEA N CO N T EXT 194
chapter nine PO L I T I CS A ND PO WER I N T H E

BR I T I SH I SL ES (c . 1 3 6 0 – 1 4 1 5 ) 220
chapter ten FO U R L A ND S: T HE BR I T I S H I S LE S
IN T HE EA R L Y FI FT EE N T H C E N T U RY 251
CO N C L U S I O N S : N A T I O N S AN D
UNIONS 271
BI B L I O GRA P H Y 279
I ND E X 305
·v·
ABBREVIATIONS
ALI Acts of the Lords of the Isles, ed. J. Munro and R.W. Munro,
Scottish History Society (Edinburgh, 1986)
CACW Calendar of Ancient Correspondence concerning Wales, ed.
J.G. Edwards (Cardiff, 1935)
CDI Calendar of Documents relating to Ireland 1171–1307, ed.
H.S. Sweetman, 5 vols (London, 1875–86)
CDS Calendar of Documents relating to Scotland, ed. J. Bain et al,
5 vols (London, 1881–1986)
NHI A New History of Ireland, II, Medieval Ireland, 1169–1534,
ed. A. Cosgrove (Oxford, 1993)
RPS Records of the Parliament of Scotland, ed. K. Brown et al
(St Andrews, 2007)
· vi ·
FIGURES
1 The Kings of England (1272–1461) viii

2 The Kings of Scots (1292–1460) ix
3 Aristocratic inheritances in the fourteenth century x
4 The Clan Donald Lords of the Isles xi
· vii ·
HENRYlII (1216-72)
EDWARD I (1272-1307) Edmund Earl of Lancaster

(d,1296)
EDWARD IT (1307-1327)
EDWARD 1II (1327-1377) Thorn.. Earl of Lancaster (d,1322) Henry Earl ofLanOillter (d,1345)
Henry Duke ofLanc'"'ter (d,1361)
Edward Prince lionel Duke of John of Gaunt Edmund Duke Thomas Duke
· viii ·
of Wale, (d,1376) Clarence (d,1368) Duke of Lancaster of York of Gloucester
(see Figure 3) = Blanche of Lancaster
RICHARD IT HENRY IV Richard Earl of Anne Mortimer
(1377-1399) (1399-1413) Cambridge (great-granddaughter of
DISUNITED KINGDOMS
Lionel Duke of Clarence)

RENRYY
(1413-1422) Richard Duke of
York, Earl of March and Ulster (d,I460)
HENRYV1
(1422-1461) EDWARD IV
(1461-1483)
Figure 1 The Kings of England (1272–1461)

WILLIAM I (1165-1214) David Earl of Huntingdon (d.1219)
ALEXANDER II (1214-49)
Margaret Ada Isabel
ALEXANDER III (1249-86)
Dcrvorgill. (d.1290) Henry Hastin(l' Robert Bruce M
= John Balliel of Barnard Castle Lord of Annandale
Margaret:::: Eric II King of Norway
JOHN (1292-) d.1313x14 John Hastings of Robert Bruce (VI)
MARGARET Lady ofSeotlarni (d.1290)
Abcrgavenny Earl of Carrick (d.1304)
EDWARD (Balliol) (1332- ) d.1364
ROBERT I (1306-29) = 1) Isabel of Mar

= 2) Elizabeth Burgh (see Figure 3)
1) 2)
· ix ·
Walter Steward of Scotland = Marjory DAVID II (1329-71)
FIGURES
ROBERT II (Stewart)
(1371-1390)
ROBERT !II (1390-1406) Robert Duke ofAlbmy (d.1420) Alexander Lord of Badenoch
Earl of Fife, ('~vernor of&otland (1406-20) (d.HOS)
David Duke ofRothesay JAMES I MlHdoch DDk<: of Albany (d.1425) Alexander Earl ofM", (d.1435)
(d.1402) (1406-37)
JAMBS II
(1437-60)
Figure 2 The Kings of Scots (1292–1460)

Robert (V) Brnec = Isabel Clare Richard Clare

Lord of Annandok Earl ofG1oucestcr (d.1262)
(d.1295) Lord of Kilkenny and Glamorgan
Robert (VI) Bruce Gilbert Clare

Earl of Carrick (dI304) Richard Burgh Earl of Gloucester (d.1295)
= Marjory Countess of Carrick Earl of Ulster (d1326) = Joan daughter of Edward I
FAward Bruce Robert I = 2) Eli,,,beth John (d.1313) Maud = Gilbert Clare Rw-,!~I;l_g!~~_
K of Ireland K of Scotland - Elizabeth Qarc Earl of Gloucester (d.ISI4) (q.v.)
(d.1318) (1306-29) (q.v.) Lord of Glamorgan and
Kilkenny
David II William Burgh
·x·
K of Scotland Earl of Ulster
(1329-71) (d.1333) ~~~_ = 1) Piers Gaveston
El~~~ = Hugh Despense.r
(d.1326) (dI312)
2) Hugh Audlcy
Lionel Duke of Clarence (d.1368) = Edw.rrd Despcnscr (d.1M7) Earl of Gloucester
DISUNITED KINGDOMS
Elw",beth (d.1363) (d1347)

Edward Lord Desperuer (d.1375)
EdmtmdMortimer Earl of March (d.1381) = Margaret =
Philipp. Ralph Earl ofStaffurd (d.1372)
Thomas Despcruer
Earl of Gloucester (d1400)
Roger Mortimer Earl of
Hugh Earl ofStaffi",l (d.1386)
March and Ulster
Lord of Trim (d.1398)
Figure 3 Aristocratic inheritances in the fourteenth century

Somerled (Somhairle)
Ranald
Donald
Angus Mor Lord ofIslay (d.1292)
Alexander (d.1299) Angus Og (dI318?) 1) =Ainc 6Cairan = 2) Muirchc.tach 6 Ncill

I
(Hne ofC:raIJogiass in Ireland) John M6r Lord of the Isles (d.1387)
=
1) Amy MacRuairi sister ofRanald Lord ofGannoran and Uist
= 2) Margaret daughter of Robert Steward ofSeorland (later King Robert II)
· xi ·
FIGURES
Donald' ofHarlaw' John M6r Lord ofDuniveig AJexander

Lord of the lsks (d.I420) and the Glens ofAntrim (d.1428) Lord ofLochaber (d.e.1406)
;:::; Mary Leslie Countess afRoss = Marjory Bisset of the ('-dens
I I
Alexander Ead of .Ross and Donald Halloch (d. post 1476)
Lord of the Isle, (d.I449)
Elizabeth Haliburton
I
John Earl ofRo.. and
Lord of the Isle, (forii:ited 1475 and 1493)
(d.c.l503)
Figure 4 The Clan Donald Lords of the Isles

This page intentionally left blank

MAPS
1 The British Isles 1290 xiv

2 The Kingdom of Scotland xv
3 The Lordship of Ireland (c.1300) xvi
4 The Bruce Wars (1314–1323) xvii
5 France c.1335 xviii
6 The Kingdom of England c.1360 xix
7 Realms and borderlands c.1400 xxi
8 Post-conquest Wales xxi
· xiii ·
DISUNITED KINGDOMS
ROSS
ROSS
BUCHAN
BUCHAN
MORAY
MORAY
_eon
Aberdeen
ATHOlL
ATHOLL
THE
THE
WESTERN
WESTERN
ISLES
ISLES ARGYLL
ARGYLL Perth
Perth Dundee
Dundee
Stlnlng
Stirling
ISLAY
ISLAY Edinburgh Berwick:
Edinburgh Berwick
LOTHIAN
LOTHIAN Alnwlck
Alnwlck.
CARRICK
CARRICK
EARLDOM
EARLDOM GALLOWA
GALLOWAYY
OF
OF
ULSTER
ULSTER canlsls
carlisle
O'Neills
O'Con""",
MAN
Roscomm
Roscommon
on Yo""
CONNACHT
CONNACHT MEATH
MEATH
LOUTH
Dublin p
lEINSTER
LEINSTER caemarfo n
Ga.ernarfon
O'Briens Bunratty
Bunratty WICKLOW
p
Umerick Kilkenny
POWYS KINGDOM OF
MUNSTER
p ENGLAND
PEMBROKE
PEMBROK E
BRECON
London
London
GLAMORG AN
GLAMORGAN
PP Principality ofWalas
Principafrtyof Walas
Ammooutside
Areas outsideeffactiva
effretivaEnglish
English
lordship
lordshipin
in Ireland
Ireland
Map 1 The British Isles 1290
· xiv ·
MAPS
Englishgarrisons
English garrisons
trM
KY!...E Lands
Landsheld orclaimed
heldor byStewarts
claimed by Stewarts
DOUGLAS Lands
DOUGLAS of Earl
Lands of ofDouglas
Earl of Douglas
MUlL
MUI...L Lands of
Lands of John
Johnof the Isles
ofthe Isles
CNrHNESS
'"
LEWIS
LEWlS
SUTHERLAND
iEl
ROSS
iEl
SKYE
SKYE I~
"'ROSS)
",ROSS) Lochlndorb
UrquhW1:
Urquhart
MORAY
(E) K1ldrummy
Klldrommy
~~~I:l MAR
,.."..,,"
LORDSHIP OF iEl
GJlRMORAN LOCHABER
GARMORAN \11
THE
11-IE
ISLES ARDNAMURCHAN
ARDNAMURCrw<
t'!'U:!9.w,.,
AlHOLL
----iE}-----
""""""
MO"",," (E)
MULL
M"""'"
Mattwen _h
Perth
STRA.THEARN
STRATHEARNI
(E)
JURA --,--
M8'<lETH
~-~
Stirling
stirling
fl8;;(1;l
Lochleven
Loehleven
LENNOX(E)
LENNOX{E) Tantallon
COWAL Dumberton
Dl.lmbei1on Dunbar
WLAY
WIJ\Y
RENFREW Edinburgh
MARCH
t!l,!n: Bothwell lAUDERDALE ~
LAUDERDALE IE} f38rwlck
Berwick
CUNNINGHAM
DOUGLA'3(E)
DOUGIAS{E)
ARRAN SELKIRK Roxburgh
RwWurgh
KYLE SELKlRK
~NrfflE f<)REST
fOREST Jedburgh
Aye JEDFOREST
JEDFOREST
ANNANDALE
ANNANDALE UDDESOALE
UDDESDALE
CARRICK
CARRICK
NfTH~
NmiSDALE (Li ESKDAI..E
'"
(4 ESKnALE
tEl I).)
Loo:hmablm
GALLO\'VAY
Stl.LLOVIAY
WIOTOWN
WIGTOWN
'"
tEl
Map 2 The Kingdom of Scotland
· xv ·
DISUNITED KINGDOMS
EARLDOM
:~:::)J:'_: Ca~G[i;fefg1J$
C/--;,~\
O'Neill
of
Tlr Eoghaln ~UJe~!:~;?J
ULSTER
__Dundalk
O'Connor
ILoFftJ-SHHi]
LORDSHIP
IQE
OF
L~:~~I1:i'
LOUTH
MEATH
')
CONNACHT
LIBERTY
ROS- OF TRIM Trtm
COMMON DUBLIN
KILDARE
Dublin
Offaly
O'Brien Lelx Wlcklow

Mountains
THOMOND
KIL~
CARLOW
TIPPERARY
Umsrlck
KENNY
LIMERICK WEXFORD
KERRY
w_
CORK WATERFORD
MacCarthy
"',,'
Royal Counties CORK
Uberties aM CARLOW
Major Lordships
Irish DynaatBe:s O'Brien
orAreuof
Loo.iship
Looiship affair
Qffalr
Map 3 The Lordship of Ireland (c.1300)
· xvi ·
MAPS
Edward II's
advance
advan09 (1322)
(1322)
1'5
Robert I's
Irish Campaign
(1317)
(13m
st Andrews
T._
1332
ISLAY
'SLAY
Dumtwtor!
Dumbarton
1314
1:314-
Edinburgh
.,.,,,'"
"on",m
1333
....
Berwick
Berw'ii:;k
Jedburgh Dunstanburgh
0'_
ULSTER
Gerr1Ckfergllll
Cen1cldergus ,,.,. au_
,"'" ""-
CerlIsI$
Cerlli!lle
NiIflI\ICSStle
Newcastle
Appleby
0 _
0'Connon Rlchroond
Rlchmond
1318
GONNAGHT
-
GONNACHT
Dundalk
MAN 13"
lEINSTER '"""""~ Yo",
O'Brimm
Trim
ANGLESEY
ANGLESEY -''''
Dublin
THOMOND
T HOMOND
-
limerick
lImarlck 1; ••" Burton-upon-TrerrI:
BINIon-upon-Trent
K1ll«inny
Kilkenny ~
~
if e BridgnDl'ttt
"
£~
Brldgnorth
f{f"" !l
MUNSTER jj ~
",,"
Co"
Glo!.!oestef
Gloucester
.""""
GLAMORGAN
Caerphilly
Cfl8rph111y
8e:ttles
Battles
Bannockbum
1314 Bannockburn
1318 Fochart
1322 Byland
1332 Dupplln Moor
i1333
333 HaJidon
Halidon Hill
1346 Neville's Cross
CIP$$
Map 4 The Bruce Wars (1314–1323)
· xvii ·
DISUNITED KINGDOMS
Royal
Royal lands
lands
Lands
Lands of
of Edward
Edwald III
!II
in France
France
Other great fIefl!I
Boundary I!IOVM!Ilgn
Bounds.I)' of S4.'lVOOiIlgn CO. OF
Duchy of Aqutmlne
Aquttalne C9ded
ceded FLANDERS
to Edward III
minIn 1360
ARTOIS
PONTHIEU
Roo",
NORMANDY
Pmi,
Paris
CHAMPAGNE
DUCHY OF
BRITTANY MAINE 00.
CO.
ANJOU OF
TOURAINE BLOIS DUCHY
NEVERS
OF
BURGUNDY
BOURBON
POITOU
LA
MARCHE
SAINTONGE
Bordeaux
DUCHY OF
GASCONY LANGUEDOC
.Toulouse
BEARN
B~RN
FOIX
Map 5 France c.1335
· xviii ·
MAPS
Palatinates
Major liberties
KINGDOM
Shires under
OF
L authority of
SCOTS
palatine earl
Newcastle L Lancastrian
liberty
Carlisle PALATINE
COUNTY OF
DURHAM
RICHMOND
L
L
York
PALATINE
Hull
COUNTY OF
LANCASTER L
P PALATINE
COUNTY OF
CHESTER
Derby-
shire
PRINCIPALITY Shrop-
shire
OF ELY NOIwich
MARCH
Hereford Worcester
WALES OF
-shire
WALES
Gloucester
Westminster
Bristol
London
DUCHY
OF
CORNWALL
Map 6 The Kingdom of England c.1360
· xix ·
DISUNITED KINGDOMS
ORKNEY
(to K of Denmark
""d_
and Norway)
ROSS
MORAY
Lordship LOCHABER
BADENOCH Ab._
.. Aberdeen
oitha
of the KINGDOM
Isles
isles
ARGYLL
ARGYll
OF
LORDSHIP
Isley
Islay
SCOTS """',01<
OF Scottish
Glens Marches
IRELAND 01
of English
Antrim Marches
O'Nama
Q'Connors
O'Connors
Burkes
E. of
Kildare
Dublin
M Principality
O'Brians
O'Briens Wicklow of Chester
Mountains
E. of KINGDOM
Ormond PRINCIPALITY
E. of
Desmond OF OF
. WALES
M
ENGLAND
CAlAIS
CAlA'S
Conjec1ural
Con)aclural
Boundary between
Gaelio and English speech
Gaelic
in Scotland c. 1400
Area of mixed legal custom

oustom in Ireland
M Walsh Marcher lordships

Welsh
arid Scottish March Wardenshlps

English and
Map 7 Realms and borderlands c.1400
· xx ·
MAPS
ANGLESEY Conway Jt''(/<1t;- Flint

"","marl,
DENBIGiH
Caernarfon
DYfFRN
':f\\~«j;. CLYWD
r.:O~S BROMFIELD
AND YALE
",'<'" ..'<'
0" Hal1ach :(t.\<?-~ CHIRK
If+'"
lI<~~\O~
--
lpQWY~l
i'"'"
MORTIMER
LORDSHIPS
",'"
~/J>"- BUILTH
0"'1'
~"{~€.~SH\RE
O..",>I>~ BRECON
Carmarthen
PEMBROKE
KlDWELLY
GOWER
GLAMORGAN
Principaltty'
Marcher lordships (main lordships named)
Edward 1'8 Castles
Map 8 Post-conquest Wales
· xxi ·
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INTRODUCTION:
WARLORDS AND SOVEREIGN LORDS
I n the early years of the fourteenth century there was a single king in
the islands which lay off the north-western coast of continental Europe.
To his contemporaries, Edward I of England appeared as the sovereign
lord of all the lands of the British Isles. The monks who composed the
chronicle of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds in East Anglia and the writer
whose work was preserved in the annals of Gaelic Ireland both agreed
that ‘Edward the Great’ was ruler over England, Wales, Scotland and
Ireland. Most strikingly, the king had restored ‘the former monarchy of
the whole of Britain, for so long truncated and fragmented’.1 This
achievement was a product both of displays of royal legal authority and
of the military and financial resources of the Plantagenet monarchy. The
king claimed and exploited powers of sovereignty over Welsh and
Scottish rulers which provoked conflicts. In these conflicts, in Wales in
1282–3 and 1294–5 and in Scotland from 1296 to 1304, Edward sought
to uproot native structures of monarchy from both Wales and Scotland.
His efforts extracted the submissions of the leaders and communities of
these lands to the direct rule of the English king.
Edward demonstrated the change in the status of ancient kingdoms by
issuing legislation which sought to settle the law and government of his
new dominions. These statutes displayed the reach of Edward’s adminis-
tration, which stood at new heights in terms of intensity and geographical
range. As king of England, lord of Ireland, conqueror of Wales and
apparent master of Scotland, Edward I possessed rights of sovereignty,
revenues and services from all the lands of the British Isles. He had also
strengthened the position of the king of England at the head of the
political hierarchy of the islands. As the contemporary chronicler, Piers
Langtoft, wrote, ‘Now are the islanders all joined together . . . there is
neither king nor prince of all the countries except King Edward who has
united them.’2 Only the English king possessed the powers and prestige
of monarchy in the British Isles. The king of Scots, the Welsh princes and
the kings of Man, the Hebrides and the Irish, who all used royal titles
fifty years before, had been removed or reduced in rank. Networks of
land, homage and lordship meant that Edward held sway over Gaelic
Irish lords, Scottish earls, Welsh gentry and English nobles in Ireland, the
Welsh marches and in the kingdom of England. Though Edward’s authority
·1·
DISUNITED KINGDOMS
had fringes, amongst the Irish of the west and north and the Hebrides,
where his sovereignty was distant and nominal, it seemed clear to all that
the English monarchy possessed the means and will to shape political
relationships and structures across the whole archipelago.
Edward’s successes over the king of Scots and prince of Wales were
understood as both personal victories for the king and victories for the
English people. An English poet writing in the 1290s praised ‘our King
Edward’, ‘who puts to flight his enemies like a leopard’. These enemies,
the Scots and the Welsh, were described in the poem as wolves who wished,
not simply to defeat Edward, but to tear England apart.3 The island of
Britain was depicted as a land of different hostile peoples and the king
had fulfilled the triumph of the English as well as his own sovereignty.
This was not mere propaganda. Edward and his English subjects were
united in the view that Englishness provided models of law and govern-
ment, of cultural and economic behaviour, and of political allegiance
which were superior to, and models for, the practices of other peoples.
Native custom in Wales, Ireland and Scotland was regarded by the king
as ‘displeasing to God and reason’.4 This was indeed an ‘English Empire’.
Though Edward had no vision of his lands as a united kingdom, treating
them as a series of personal dominions, the pull of a common focus of
allegiance and patronage and a common administrative and cultural
model might have been expected to erode differences between the peoples
of the British Isles.
Langtoft and his contemporaries lacked the prophetic gift. The 150 years
after 1300 would not be dominated by the completion and maintenance
of a unitary ‘English Empire’. The figures and events which have been
identified with this late medieval era stand in opposition to the imperial
ambitions pursued by Edward I. Robert Bruce’s status in Scottish his-
toriography has depended on his restoration of Scotland’s monarchy and
his overthrow of Edward’s Scottish regime. The parallel efforts of Owain
Glyn DWr in Wales after 1400 may have failed to secure a sovereign Welsh
principality, but his rebellion against the English king and people has
symbolised the lingering resentment within Wales towards the English
conquest. In Ireland the idea of a ‘Gaelic resurgence’ which eroded the
confidence and primacy of the English colonists on the island has long
been promoted by historians who regarded the era as one dominated by
the development of a distinct Anglo-Irish identity, separated from their
compatriots in England by geography and environment. Beyond the
south and midlands of England, the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
have also been regarded as the era of the overmighty subject. Aristocratic
dynasties left their marks on the histories of the late medieval British
Isles, either as semi-independent rulers, like the MacDonald lords of the
·2·
INTRODUCTION
Isles in the Hebrides and western Highlands of Scotland, or magnates,

like the Douglases and Percies on the Anglo-Scottish borders or the
Butlers and FitzGeralds in Ireland. Castles like Warkworth, Tantallon,
Cahir and Askeaton symbolise the power of families whose activities are
associated with a whole era of war and disorder in wide regions of the
British Isles.
Through this period, as we shall see, the king of England remained by
far the most powerful figure in the British Isles. However, between 1340
and 1460 the involvement of English kings with events in the lands and
regions beyond their realm tended to be indirect and reactive. A focus on
the actions of the Plantagenet monarchy in this period does not suggest
any sustained or widely-applicable set of themes or issues, as it can do for
the later thirteenth century. In the absence of an English royal focus, the
picture seems a much more fragmented and regionalised one, where the
initiative lay with more immediate figures and communities. Among
these were the English kings’ royal rivals in the British Isles, the kings of
Scots, and a plethora of regional lords and leaders, from the Gaelic world
of Ireland, the Hebrides and western Scotland and from the fringes of the
English aristocratic network. This appears to be a world of separate com-
munities, interconnected but distinct. The heartlands of the English realm,
the crown and marcher lands of Wales, the two worlds of English and
Gaelic Ireland and the kingdom of Scotland with its own increasingly-
expressed division into Lowland and Highland all seemed to possess their
own rules and realities.
In the later Middle Ages trends towards a common hierarchy spanning
the British Isles were largely halted. Instead the isles would continue to
be characterised by realms and peoples of differing loyalties and customs.
This view of the islands has provided the, largely assumed, basis for his-
torical writing about the late medieval British Isles. Narratives and analysis
of the archipelago in this period have been only slightly influenced by the
development of the new ‘British History’ since the 1970s. This term has
been used, with only partial accuracy, to describe the consideration of the
archipelago, which contains Great Britain, Ireland and numerous smaller
islands, as a single geo-political region of Europe. Stress has been placed
on the interconnected development of the communities in the islands
and their shared or related political and social experiences.5 There are
some reasonable objections to this approach. The distaste for some Irish
historians for terms like ‘British history’ and ‘the British Isles’ represents
an understandable sensitivity towards the incorporation of their island
into a political narrative dependent on a wider and, perhaps, externally-
centred, model.6 There is a danger in pressing the ‘British history’ model
which derives from the temptation to project or impose an unwarranted
·3·
DISUNITED KINGDOMS
unity on events in very different parts of this island group. However it has
produced extremely valuable developments in the treatment of many
periods of insular history, breaking down the barriers between narratives
organised according to modern national boundaries and moving the wider
study of the British Isles beyond the framework of Anglocentric approaches.
The value of broad, insular studies has been particularly evident for
the periods preceding and following the later Middle Ages. It has been
demonstrated that the two and a half centuries up to 1300 were charac-
terised by the impact of similar forces and developments. The introduc-
tion of northern French populations and methods of landholding, the
reform of native churches in accordance with papal strictures and the
intensification of the authority of royal lords left their mark on regions
from Kent to Connacht and Ceredigion to Caithness. Such trends can
also be understood as the manifestation of developments at work across
Northern and Western Europe played out in the context of the British
Isles.7 The effect of a similar, broad context has also proved fruitful for
historians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The movement
towards, and then the establishment of, a multiple monarchy encompass-
ing England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland, and its further development
into a United Kingdom provides a central core to examinations of events
and relationships between and within these lands. The ‘Three Kingdoms’
approach, focused on the ‘British Civil Wars’ of the mid-seventeenth
century has demonstrated the critical importance of interrelated crises in
religion and politics of the whole archipelago. The whole period from the
1530s to 1700s has been couched in terms of ‘The British Problem’ and
common debates have been identified around the themes of state develop-
ment, religious debate and colonisation.8 These are not so far removed
from the general themes of the high medieval period, though in the early
modern era they are built around the framework of the establishment of
a unitary ‘British state’, a much more concrete entity than the earlier
‘English Empire’.
As has been mentioned, the late medieval period in the British Isles
cannot provide the same kind of themes of state development or linked
social and religious experience spanning the whole archipelago. In their
absence both focused works and attempts at broad analysis remain almost
wholly concentrated on the four ‘historic nations’ and their separate
experiences. It should be stated that, in all periods (and especially before
1700), the consideration of the individual countries has always been the
principal focus of study for historians of Britain and Ireland. Even in
broad studies of the high medieval and early modern eras across the isles,
doubts have been expressed about any shift away from such nation-centred
discussions.9 However, the relative lack of sustained analysis of the late
·4·
INTRODUCTION
medieval British Isles is matched by the dominance of national histories

of the period. This can be, slightly unfairly, illustrated by reference to
two of the best of the numerous studies of individual realms in the
late medieval British Isles. The titles of Alexander Grant’s study of late
medieval Scotland, Independence and Nationhood, and of G.L. Harriss’s
volume in the New Oxford History of England, Shaping the Nation, bear
testimony to the primacy of national history in the period.10 A study
of recent surveys and monographs on late medieval politics tends to con-

firm the sense that the development of England, Wales, Scotland and
Ireland formed narratives which remain essentially separate. In particular,
English and Scottish historians have tended to consider their subjects
as national communities with strong and developing consciousness of their
identities. They have focused their efforts on the institutions of monarchy,
parliament and government and on the character of the nobility within
these kingdoms. By comparison, in recent decades, work on Wales and
Ireland has shown a greater sense of relationships and comparisons
beyond modern national boundaries. Relations with a largely absentee
monarch and between English and native communities have often pro-
duced a broader perspective, though older debates, for example about a
‘separatist’ Anglo-Irish community, still carry elements of a determinedly
national outlook.11
As this suggests, beyond the borders of nation-centred historical study,
most work has been bi-lateral in character. Relations between the English
realm and people and those of their neighbours have long been a matter
of study. War and diplomacy between Scotland and England, relations
between the English crown and its Irish lordship and the place of the
Welsh march and principality in English politics have all been examined
to good effect. However, attempts to identify and assess wider points of
contact and comparison have been much more limited. In many ways this
is natural. It has been pointed out that ‘an attempt to write a unified his-
tory of the islands in this period would be an impossible and meaningless
task’.12 In the sense of a combined narrative, this cannot be denied. The
principal developments and events of the isles do not suggest that the
archipelago should be regarded as the sole or primary framework for
an understanding of the political character of England and Scotland in
particular. Much recent work has, instead, made clear the extent to which
England’s political class remained closely linked to that of France. This
was the age of the Hundred Years War. Between the 1340s and 1450s
continental warfare and politics provided the principal focus for the pol-
icies and resources of the English crown. It is certainly arguable that this
series of conflicts, interspersed with periods of diplomacy, and involving
questions of sovereignty, government and cultural contact, provides a
·5·
DISUNITED KINGDOMS
much stronger framework for consideration of the English and Scottish

polities than did their relationships across the British Isles.13
What then can an examination of the British Isles as a political region
of Europe reveal in the era of the Hundred Years War? Some excellent
pointers have been laid down by recent work. For example, the highly
influential research of Rees Davies and Steven Ellis, though dealing with
the period covered in this volume as either the end or starting-point for
analysis, has, nevertheless, drawn useful conclusions about the fourteenth

and early fifteenth centuries.14 For direct discussion of this period, it is
necessary to look at the shorter, but hugely perceptive, surveys produced
by Alexander Grant, Ralph Griffiths and Robin Frame. These provide
clear lines of consideration and models for discussion of the British Isles
as an increasingly fragmented and diverse, but still useful, focus of discus-
sion.15 Frame and Davies both illustrate that the importance assigned
to insular developments and themes before 1300 and after 1500 mean
that the intervening period of apparent disengagement and variation
still merits examination and explanation as part of this wider process of
debate. The only dedicated book-length study of this period is provided
by the volume on the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in the Shorter
Oxford History of the British Isles edited by Ralph Griffiths. This multi-
authored work provides new approaches to consideration of the isles
in social, religious, economic and political terms.16 However, the only
sustained discussion of political relationships spanning the late medieval
British Isles remains Robin Frame’s The Political Development of the
British Isles 1100–1400 published in 1990.17 This ground-breaking analysis
concludes with a section on the fourteenth century which draws a useful
distinction between core communities and ‘margins’. However, this last
section of the book is noticeably less integrated than the chapters dealing
with the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and considers each country in
turn. This reflects the strong pull of ‘four nations’ history in the late
Middle Ages but, nevertheless, Frame’s book (and wider contribution)
has been crucial in informing attempts to look over the walls of the nation-
centred approach in this period. More detailed research on different parts
of the isles has shown an increased awareness of the importance of the
archipelago in providing models of comparison on a range of political
topics. Such cross-border studies and references make it important to
seek a more extensive assessment of the political structures of the late
medieval British Isles and the relationships between its component parts,
not just realms or nations but the regions which lay within them.
Disunited Kingdoms: Peoples and Politics in the British Isles 1280–1460
is the first full-length discussion of political relationships and communities
in the later Middle Ages. It is designed, not simply to fill a historiographical
·6·
INTRODUCTION
gap, but to demonstrate the importance of this period in the history of the
archipelago. The book examines the importance of common experiences
and developments which impinged on many parts of the Isles. It will
suggest that, while themes of centrally-driven conformity and authority
were lacking by comparison with earlier and later eras, the years between
the late thirteenth and mid-fifteenth centuries have a crucial place in the
development of the British Isles. This importance was in the perpetuation
and confirmation of the isles as a European region characterised by multiple

identities and political centres. Examination of this will begin with a dis-
cussion of the crucial decades between the 1280s and 1350s which
witnessed the fullest extent of English royal authority in the isles and then
its contraction and fragmentation. Subsequent chapters will examine the
themes which shaped this period and set the character of the later four-
teenth century. These include the means by which war was waged and
its relationship to structures of government, issues of sovereignty and
community and the fragmentation of the aristocratic world which had
developed up to 1300. The development and significance of regional
societies are also discussed as a key feature of late medieval polities,
especially those whose character was defined by questions of divided
allegiance or identity or by private lordship. The role of Anglo-French
conflict and continental influences and contacts in shaping the character
of the British Isles provides a vital point of reference and comparison for
consideration of the archipelago as a distinct unit of study. Alongside
this, the period from 1389 to 1413 will be considered as an era when
political developments in different parts of the isles interacted with con-
sequences beyond any individual country. The book will conclude with a
consideration of the isles in the middle decades of the fifteenth century
when they seem to many historians to have been at their most politically
fragmented. Rather than an attempt to suggest that the late medieval
British Isles were a unitary world or can be dealt with by reference to a
few common themes, this is intended as an exploration of the nature and
consequences of diversity and disengagement in this era and the layered
and conflicting structures of politics and identity this produced and
confirmed.
Notes
1. Annals of Connacht, ed. A.M. Freeman (Dublin, 1944), 72–3; The Chronicle
of Bury St Edmunds, 1212–1301, ed. A. Gransden (London, 1964), 133;
R.R. Davies, The First English Empire: Power and Identities in the British Isles
1093–1343 (Oxford, 2000), 32–3, 172–3.
2. The Chronicles of Piers de Langtoft, ed. T. Wright (London, Rolls Series,
1866–8), 2 vols, ii, 266–7.
·7·
DISUNITED KINGDOMS
3. The Political Songs of England, ed. T. Wright (Camden Society, London,

1839), 160–79.
4. This quotation comes from Edward I’s ordinance for the government in
Scotland issued in 1305 (Anglo-Scottish Relations, ed. E.L.G. Stones (Oxford,
1965), 240–59).
5. J.G.A. Pocock, ‘British History: A Plea for a New Subject’, Journal of
Modern History, 47 (1975), 601–28; R.R. Davies, ‘In Praise of British
History’, in R.R. Davies (ed.), The British Isles, 1100–1500: Comparisons,
Contrasts and Connections (Edinburgh, 1988), 9–26. For an excellent recent

discussion see B. Smith, ‘The British Isles in the Late Middle Ages: Shaping
the Regions’, in B. Smith (ed.), Ireland and the English World in the Late
Middle Ages (Basingstoke, 2009), 7–19.
6. The term ‘British Isles’ is employed here as a neutral description of this
book’s principal geographical framework and because I find the alternatives
unbearably long or gratingly artificial.
7. R. Bartlett, The Making of Europe (Harmondsworth, 1993); R.R. Davies,
Domination and Conquest: The Experience of Ireland, Scotland and Wales,
1100–1300 (Cambridge, 1990); Davies, The First English Empire; B. Smith
(ed.), Britain and Ireland 900–1300: Insular Responses to Medieval European
Change (Cambridge, 1999).
8. B. Bradshaw and J. Morrill (eds), The British Problem, 1534–1707: State
Formation in the Atlantic Archipelago (Basingstoke, 1998); S.G. Ellis and
C. Maginn, The Making of the British Isles: The State of Britain and Ireland
1450–1660 (London, 2007); S.G. Ellis, Tudor Frontiers and Noble Power:
The Making of the British State (Oxford, 1995); S.G. Ellis and S. Barber (eds),
Conquest and Union: Fashioning a British State, 1485–1725 (London, 1995);
C. Russell, The Fall of the British Monarchies 1637–1642 (Oxford, 1991).
9. See for example B. Harvey , ‘Conclusion’, in idem (ed.), The Twelfth and
Thirteenth Centuries (Oxford, 2001), 243 and J. Morrill, ‘The British
Problem, c.1534–1707’, in Bradshaw and Morrill, British Problem, 1–38, 1.
10. G. Harriss, Shaping the Nation: England 1360–1461 (Oxford, 2005);
A. Grant, Independence and Nationhood: Scotland 1306–1469 (Edinburgh,
1984). Use of these authors is unfair because Harriss includes a chapter on
England’s neighbours in the British Isles and Grant has produced several
interesting discussions dealing with Scotland’s relations with the rest of the
archipelago.
11. See for example M. Lieberman, The March of Wales 1067–1300: A Borderland
of Medieval Britain (Cardiff, 2008); S. Duffy, ‘The Bruce Brothers and the
Irish Sea World, 1306–1329’, in Cambridge Medieval Studies, no. 21 (1991),
55–86; R. Frame, English Lordship in Ireland, 1318–61 (Oxford, 1981).
12. T. Thornton, Review of S. Rigby (ed.), A Companion to Britain in the Later
Middle Ages (Oxford, 2003), Welsh History Review, 22 (2004–5), 373–4
(Quoted in Smith, ‘Shaping the Regions’, 8).
13. See for example, M. Vale, The Origins of the Hundred Years War: The
Angevin Legacy, 1250–1340 (Oxford, 1996); C.T. Allmand, Lancastrian
Normandy, 1415–50: The History of a Medieval Occupation (Oxford, 1983);
N. Macdougall, An Antidote to the English: The Auld Alliance, 1295–1560
·8·
INTRODUCTION
(East Linton, 2001); D. Green, ‘Lordship and Principality: Colonial Policy

in Ireland and Aquitaine in the 1360s’, Journal of British Studies, 47 (2008),
3–29.
14. Davies, English Empire, 172–90; R.R. Davies, ‘The Peoples of Britain
and Ireland, 1100–1400. I: Identities’, TRHS, 6th series, 4 (1994), 1–20;
S.G. Ellis, Ireland in the Age of the Tudors: English Expansion and the End of
Gaelic Rule (London, 1998); S.G. Ellis, ‘From Dual Monarchy to Multiple
Kingdoms: Unions and the English State, 1422–1607’, in A. MacInnes and
J. Ohlmeyer (eds), The Stuart Kingdoms in the Seventeenth Century (Dublin,

2002), 330–40. Rees Davies’s final book, R.R. Davies, Lords and Lordship
in the British Isles in the Late Middle Ages, ed. B. Smith (Oxford, 2009) does
deal with the late medieval period directly.
15. A. Grant, ‘Scottish Foundations: Late Medieval Contributions’, in A. Grant
and K. Stringer (eds), Uniting the Kingdom? The Making of British History
(London, 1995), 97–108; R. Griffiths, ‘The English Realm and Dominions
and the King’s Subjects in the Later Middle Ages’, in J.G. Rowe (ed.),
Aspects of Late Medieval Government and Society: Essays Presented to J.R.
Lander (Toronto, 1986), 83–106; R. Frame, ‘Overlordship and Reaction,
c.1200–c.1450’, in Grant and Stringer, Uniting the Kingdom?, 65–84.
16. R. Griffiths (ed.), The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (Oxford, 2003).
17. R. Frame, The Political Development of the British Isles (Oxford, 1990).
·9·
chapter one
EDWARD THE CONQUEROR

T he key political relationships within the late medieval British Isles were
products of a period of major warfare and upheaval which ran from the
1280s to the 1350s. This era witnessed the outbreak of the long wars which
cast their shadow over the whole period. The English crown’s conflicts
with the French and Scottish monarchies influenced the character of politics
and political society in all parts of the British Isles. In these decades the
French and Scottish wars also formed part of a network of conflicts which
have often been regarded as separate but which, together, marked the end
of old continuities and relationships which had characterised the politics
of the British Isles for well over a century. This ‘age of war’ was bound
up with the character and policies of two rulers within the isles.1 The first of
these was King Edward I of England (1272–1307) whose pursuit or defence
of what he perceived as his rights lay behind conflicts in Wales, Scotland
and on the Continent. The other was his former subject and enemy,
Robert Bruce, King Robert I of Scotland from 1306 to 1329. Bruce’s
efforts to secure the Scottish throne re-ignited warfare which spilled out
from Scotland to encompass many parts of the British Isles. The legacy
of these two kings was lasting division and disengagement between the
different lands and realms of the archipelago. The period they presided
over, from the 1270s to the 1330s, was the most violent period in the
history of the isles between the arrival of the Normans and the civil wars
of the seventeenth century. It was an era brought to an end, not by clear
victories or even by compromise settlements, but by a gradual reduction
in the intensity of warfare in the isles during the 1340s and 1350s. The
resulting unresolved conflicts, animosities and disruption would do much
to define the late medieval British Isles as a political region of Europe.
The English Crown and the British Isles in the late 1270s
In the opening years of his reign, Edward I’s position in the British
Isles followed patterns which had developed during the preceding two
· 10 ·
centuries. These patterns are nicely illustrated by the events of autumn

1278. After holding parliament at Gloucester in August, on 13 October,
Edward presided over the marriage of the Prince of Wales, Llywelyn ap
Gruffudd, at Worcester Cathedral. The bride was the king’s cousin, Eleanor
de Montfort. The ceremony was a display of the king’s goodwill to a
former opponent. The previous year, after a short but sharp war, the Welsh
prince had been forced to seek Edward’s ‘grace and mercy’, accepting
a loss of territory and influence to the English king. In attendance at

the marriage were many great lords, headed by Edward’s brother-in-law,
King Alexander III of Scotland. In subsequent weeks, Alexander met
with Edward and attended a new meeting of parliament at Westminster.
During this, the Scottish king performed homage for his lands in England
but rejected a request that he acknowledge the sovereignty of the English
crown over the realm of Scotland.2
The events of these few weeks illustrated the key political relationships
on the island of Britain. They confirmed that King Edward was by far the
most powerful figure in both Britain and Ireland as king of England, lord
of Ireland, the sovereign lord of Wales and the personal lord of the
Scottish king. However, in the 1270s the lands of the archipelago were
nothing like a unitary realm or even a clearly-defined political hierarchy.
The power of the English kings in the isles was a product of ideological
claims to empire and sovereignty, of political pressure and direct warfare
during the preceding centuries. Demonstrations of such power had forced
the other rulers and lands of the archipelago to recognise the pre-eminence
of the English crown to some extent but did not mean that Edward and
his predecessors were the only princes of ambition and authority in Britain.
Both King Alexander and Prince Llywelyn represented dynasties which
had successfully increased their status and territory since the late eleventh
century. The work of a line of effective rulers had made Alexander III
king of a realm which covered the northern third of Britain. This king-
dom had been forged and held together from disparate provinces by the
physical power and successful ideology of the kings of Scots. Alexander
inherited and continued the process of building a sense of Scottishness
from a shared allegiance to the crown. Llywelyn held a primacy in Wales
which was much less secure and extensive. His family were princes of
Gwynedd, the region of north-west Wales centred on Snowdonia and
Anglesey. From 1200 they, rather than the other princely houses in
Powys and Deheubarth, were established as the leaders of the native
Welsh. In his career since 1249 Llywelyn had gone beyond his predecessors
in his efforts to turn powers of leadership into effective monarchy. His
efforts had been bound up with the latest phase of warfare between the
Welsh princes and the Anglo-French lords who held lands in the south
· 11 ·
DISUNITED KINGDOMS
and east of Wales. These lords of the Welsh march were backed by the
power of the English crown. The decades before 1280 had witnessed a
series of conflicts between the princes of Gwynedd and the English
crown whose outcomes appear as swings of the pendulum in terms of
territory and authority. The outcome of the war of 1276–7 had swung
the balance in Edward’s favour, extending his rule at Llywelyn’s expense.
However experience had shown that previous settlements were just the
prelude to new warfare in Wales. In comparison, relations between the

English and Scottish kings appear stable. No war had been fought
between the two realms since 1217 and relations were mostly cordial.
However, Edward’s claim to sovereignty and Alexander’s response were
an indication that not all was settled.
The English king’s dealings with Llywelyn and Alexander in 1278
indicate that, even when apparently stable, relations between rulers and
their lands were not static. Disputes and open conflicts concerning the
nature of the English crown’s authority over the rulers and communities
of the isles had been a longstanding and regular feature of politics in the
archipelago since the mid-eleventh century.
There was, however, a stable core to Edward’s primacy, in the territories
he ruled directly as king, duke and lord. Above all, this primacy rested
on the traditional authority and material power provided by the English
realm. Since the loss of Normandy and Anjou to the French crown in
1202–4, England had been the principal dominion of the Plantagenets.
As well as being the source of their royal status, England became the prin-
cipal residence of Edward’s grandfather and father, John and Henry III,
and the main focus of their political activities. The kingdom was also
the principal source of their wealth. Since the start of his reign in 1272,
Edward had been able to draw heavily on these financial resources. A
decade later his normal income from England would be assessed at over
£26,000 per year, but this could be vastly increased by securing a grant
of taxation from his subjects. In 1275 Edward secured a grant which
yielded £80,000 to replenish the royal treasury. The king’s income was
raised by, and partly spent on, an impressive, professional bureaucracy.
The legacy of the wide geographical interests of the Angevin kings was
a two-tier central government, which had developed since 1066 to deal
with the long periods when the kings of England were in their continental
lands. As well as a developed royal household with its own financial and
secretarial offices, there were fixed royal courts of justice and finance and
the chancery (secretariat), almost permanently located at Westminster.
After 1204 both household and fixed courts operated within England,
resulting in a royal administration capable of massive interventions across
the kingdom. In 1279, for example, King Edward would set in motion
· 12 ·
the massive Quo Warranto inquiry into the judicial powers held by
private landowners and ordered a full recoinage of the currency. Four
years earlier, in his statute of Westminster, the king had issued legislation
designed to reform justice at a local level. This bureaucracy and revenue
could be translated into military interventions too. For the brief war
against Llywelyn in 1277, Edward had raised over 800 cavalry and mustered
15,000 foot soldiers, spending some £23,000 on the campaign.3
Though such numbers would seem small in coming decades, they

demonstrate resources far beyond any other ruler or lord in the British
Isles. Measuring this wealth and the population from which it was derived
in the late thirteenth century is very difficult but figures drawn from the
papal taxation of the church in the early 1290s have been used to suggest
taxable values for the different lands in the archipelago. These show the
value of the English church to be roughly six times higher than that of
the Scottish province, ten times greater than that of Ireland and richer
than the Welsh dioceses by a multiple of twenty-five. This wealth rested
on a massive disparity in population. Again, there are no wholly accepted
figures for this but all estimates suggest that the population of England
was nearly twice as large as that of the other lands of the British Isles
put together. Calculations of urban population and circulating coinage
provide evidence that the English economy was not simply larger but was
also more developed and more capable of responding to the demands of
their government in the form of large-scale contributions of cash. The
size and material wealth of England, long proverbial in the minds of his-
torians and administrators, was the basis of the sovereignty claimed by its
kings in the surrounding lands.4
England was not Edward’s only possession or source of wealth. Long
before he became king of England, Edward had received a grant of other
territories from his father, Henry III, in 1254. This apanage had included
the dominions of the Plantagenets beyond England. As well as the Channel
Islands and the lordships held directly by the crown in Wales, this grant
conferred on Edward the duchy of Aquitaine and the lordship of Ireland.
While the lands assigned to Edward were clearly regarded as secondary
to the English realm, Henry was insistent that they remain bound to the
line of kings as key parts of the royal dignity. Aquitaine, in particular, had
a special significance for Edward and his family. The southern part of
Aquitaine, often referred to as Gascony, lay in south-western France and
was the last of the great continental dominions of Henry II to be retained
by his descendants. Its possession gave Edward the, not always easy,
status of a French prince and Gascony posed serious problems of govern-
ment which involved relations with his lord and rival, the king of France.
Personal supervision of the duchy was provided by Edward’s visits to
· 13 ·
DISUNITED KINGDOMS
Gascony in 1254, in the early 1270s and again between 1286 and 1289,
showing the concern of the king-duke for his rights.5 This concern would
exercise a major influence on events in the British Isles during the next
sixty years. Since 1171, Ireland had formed the second realm of the
English crown in the islands.6 The problems of government it presented
were no less than those of Gascony, but Edward’s possession of the lord-
ship from 1254 did not lead him to cross the Irish Sea. Instead, his
authority was exercised via an administrative structure modelled on that

of England, headed by a justiciar acting as the king’s lieutenant. The
main job of the king’s officials was to maintain Edward’s authority in
an environment defined by the limits to the conquest and settlement of
Anglo-French invaders in the later twelfth century. This partial conquest
left a legacy of localised but continuous warfare between English and
Irish lords and communities. English lordship, in one form or another,
extended over the richest and most populous parts of Ireland, and the
royal administration produced a financial surplus for Edward’s coffers,
but issues of war, allegiance and identity were a source of problems for
his justiciar. Though Ireland was lower in his priorities than Gascony or
Wales, Edward did not ignore it and maintained close contacts with
the lordship.7
The list of territories and administrations belonging to the English
crown does not fully express the nature of Edward’s rule. The events of
October 1278 show Edward exercising authority not in terms of govern-
ment but of lordship. His relations with the king of Scots and the prince
of Wales hinged on the relations between himself as a superior lord and
the other rulers as his vassals. Such vassals had obligations which were
personal, involving loyalty and counsel, and related to the lands they held.
Though he had spent much of his career at odds with English kings,
Llywelyn of Wales acknowledged that Edward was his lord, following his
predecessors and contemporaries amongst the Welsh princes. By contrast,
Alexander of Scotland, whose relations with Edward were generally cor-
dial, did not accept that the lordship of the English king extended over
the Scottish realm. Like his predecessors, however, Alexander paid hom-
age to Edward for lands he held within England. This ensured that, while
he accepted the personal lordship of the English king, he ruled in Scotland
without any earthly superior. The status of rulers had implications for
their lands which would have critical importance in the coming years.8
Edward’s relations with King Alexander and Prince Llywelyn were the
pinnacle of a network of connections which also defined the political
hierarchy beneath the English king. His predecessors had exercised authority
via the personal submissions and services of great lords and noble lineages
from across the British Isles. The formation of an interlinked aristocratic
· 14 ·
world which encompassed all the realms and regions of the islands had
been produced by processes of colonisation and cultural change since the
late eleventh century. This reshaping of elites had been closely bound up
with the extension of the lordship of the English crown into Wales and
Ireland. Edward’s forebears had sought to manage developments which
saw lords from England achieve new lands and power beyond the king-
dom. The result by the 1270s was that the king of England had an estab-
lished place as superior lord or patron recognised by rulers and magnates

in all parts of the Isles.9
There were considerable variations in the character and strength of the
English king’s superiority according to region and tradition. The authority
of the crown over its chief English vassals had been closely defined since
the Norman Conquest and was enmeshed with the extensive administra-
tive reach of the king in his kingdom. Though, as Edward’s father and
grandfather had discovered, the baronage could challenge royal authority
if antagonised, most lords recognised that their rights and fortunes were
subject to the king’s scrutiny and direction.10 Beyond England such close
management was unusual. In Ireland, where English lords were subject
to the king’s justiciar and government, earlier patterns of conquest and
continued ‘lands of war’ between English and Irish fostered a looser style
of royal authority both in law and in practice. The marches of Wales,
where such conditions had existed for even longer, was a land where
aristocratic rights over justice and war were jealously guarded and the
kings accepted more restricted powers.11 The final area of English aristo-
cratic activity, the realm of Scotland, where Anglo-French settlement
had been managed by the Scottish kings to produce a nobility of mixed
origins but common allegiance, was outside the direct lordship of the
Plantagenets. Scottish lords were, however, susceptible to the pull of this
powerful neighbouring ruler, especially at times of difficulty in their
own realms, as the early years of Alexander III’s reign had demonstrated.
With their king a child, the magnates looked to Henry III of England as
a source of protection and aid.12
Their readiness to accept the English king’s leadership was also a product
of connections within the aristocratic communities of the different lands
in the British Isles. The nobilities of England, the Welsh march, the lord-
ship of Ireland and Scottish realm were not separate groupings. Including
many families whose origins lay in northern France, they were part of a
closely linked world. The processes of migration, inheritance and patron-
age had spread the interests of individual lords and families across dif-
ferent lands. By the mid-thirteenth century almost all the marcher lords
were also English barons, while the links between the march and the
formation of the lordship of Ireland extended these connections over the
· 15 ·
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Irish Sea. The patronage of the Scottish crown to English landowners and
continued intermarriage and inheritance also meant that a significant
group of Scotland’s magnates, led by their king, held estates in England.
Such possessions increased the wealth and status of those who held them,
while for Edward they provided formal links to the leading lords of
Scotland.13
On the fringes of the English king’s lordship and this aristocratic world
were the leaders of the Welsh and Irish. They lacked links of landholding
with nobles of Anglo-French origin. Despite marriage connections,
like that of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd with Eleanor de Montfort, the Welsh
princes, the Irish kings and the kings of Man and the Hebrides were less
integrated with their English neighbours. In the preceding century, these
lords had been recognised as under kings. Welsh princes and, with less
regularity, Irish kings did homage for their lands and title to the king of
England or his representative. Edward’s predecessors had been generally
content to allow them to rule their lands, as long as they refrained from
open challenges to the English king’s authority or to the stability of
march or lordship. There were signs that the readiness of the English
kings to accept such limited lordship or accord their vassals royal status
was diminishing. It remained the case however that Edward’s position in
the British Isles involved lordship expressed in less formal ways than
homage and service. It was as a lord that Edward presided over Llywelyn’s
marriage, and as Alexander III’s brother-in-law that he dealt with the
Scottish king. In a similar fashion, in 1276 Edward had granted Thomas
Clare the lordship of Thomond in south-west Ireland. Like many earlier
royal grants in Ireland, Thomas was expected to carve out this lordship
from lands held by Irish dynasties. It was the act of a ruler who recog-
nised that his authority functioned in different ways and had to relate to
different traditions and conditions.14
If Edward was the ruler of several realms and exercised lordship over
Welsh, Irish, Gascons and, arguably, Scots, there was an increasing strength
and significance in the king’s identification with England and the English.
This was, in part, a reflection of the longstanding importance of the
kingdom to the Plantagenets. However, it was also a product of changes
since 1200. The thirteenth century had witnessed a growth in the polit-
ical importance ascribed to ideas of nations and communities. There was
a widening sense that, acting as ‘the community of the land’, peoples,
however defined, enjoyed collective rights and liberties. For a range of
reasons, the most coherent and precocious sense of identity as a people
in the British Isles developed amongst the English. A tradition of strong,
monarchic government, a lack of internal geographical boundaries and a
common language had all produced a consciousness of shared institutions,
· 16 ·
laws and culture which amounted to a medieval national identity. The

Norman Conquest had disrupted but not destroyed this identity and
by the mid-twelfth century distinctions between an elite of Norman
‘invaders’ and the ‘oppressed’ English had largely retreated into the his-
torical memory. The loss of Normandy and the severing of most landed
links between the nobility of England and northern France completed this
process. In the 1250s a ‘commune of England’ embodying nobles, clergy
and people was appealed to as a means to counter royal misrule and resist
the introduction of ‘foreign’ lords and clergy into the English realm.
That the leading figure in this communal movement was the French-
born Simon de Montfort (father of Llywelyn’s bride) is a warning not to
think in terms of an exclusive national community, but a growing sense
of Englishness exercised a growing influence on the character of the
British Isles.15
By 1200 English writers described the other peoples of the archipelago
as inferior in terms of their social, political and military practices and as
treacherous and savage by nature. As well as developments in England,
this can be linked directly to the existence of English communities beyond
the homeland. Since the late eleventh century, areas of English lord-
ship had been carved out in Wales and Ireland. These areas were settled
by English immigrants in new boroughs or in rural manors, governed
by English officials according to English law. The colonists’ senses of iden-
tity and superiority were increased by proximity to native peoples whose
legal and social status had been reduced by the invader. For the native
Welsh and Irish, both under direct English rule and on its fringes, the
impact of conquest and settlement was deeply traumatic. The experience
produced statements about struggles for national liberty which reflected
deep-rooted senses of identity in cultural terms, but in a world where pol-
itical structures were traditionally fragmented and regional, such senti-
ments fed through less effectively into concerted political action. As Prince
Llywelyn’s defeat in 1277 had shown, Welsh and Irish communities
tended to adhere to the causes of their own immediate prince or king,
rather than any unified political allegiance. Scotland did not correspond
to the same model. Crucial to the difference was the early development
of unitary kingship. The settlement of English nobles and non-noble
colonists in many regions of twelfth-century Scotland did not challenge
royal authority but was used by an Anglicised royal dynasty to extend its
authority. It was largely due to the strong links of allegiance fostered by
the Scottish crown and its own aristocratic supporters which meant that,
while native and newcomer existed side-by-side, there was no develop-
ment of ‘the English of Scotland’ to match the English communities of
Wales and Ireland. By the 1270s, lords and local populations in northern
· 17 ·
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Britain seem to have perceived themselves as Scots despite the diversity

of the kingdom.16
As king, Edward demonstrated a greater understanding of the growing
sense of English identity and its political implications than his father. This
understanding was a hard-won lesson of the political crisis in England
during the 1250s and 1260s. In 1258 Edward and King Henry had been
forced to recognise the complaints of the ‘commune of England’ about
the king’s misgovernment. For the next nine years Henry faced chal-
lenges to his authority which peaked in the civil war of 1264–5. Central
to these claims were that the king should seek his subjects’ consent for
his government in council and in regular meetings of the commune in
parliament. It was also asserted that England should be governed by
‘native-born men’ and that Henry’s foreign favourites should be expelled.
Though the crisis ended with a royal military victory, Edward absorbed
its lessons. The early years of his reign in England showed the new king
consciously taking the head of his English community. In the opening
parliament of the reign in 1275 it was stated that the statutes were made
with the consent of clergy, nobles and community. In 1278 the king
allowed his subjects to present their grievances in parliament. Both were
signs of Edward’s concern to link his kingship to ideas about the com-
munity of the realm. A consequence of this, though, was that Edward
presented himself as an English king who identified with the English
community and nation. It was a stance which had advantages in terms of
conflict with the other realms and peoples of the isles, but would have
major implications for relationships and power structures across the
archipelago in coming decades.17
The ceremonies of autumn 1278 show King Edward in a variety of
roles, as ruler of the Plantagenet dominions, overlord of princes and
magnates and king of England. They also show him at a point when he
could be regarded as having resumed his full rights. The reform crisis of
1258–67 had eroded the authority and influence of the English crown.
While this may have included the usurpation of royal rights by English
barons, such erosion was clearest in the other parts of the British Isles
where the English kings acted as overlords. The clearest sign of this had
been Henry III’s recognition of Llywelyn of Gwynedd as prince of Wales
in the treaty of Montgomery of 1267. Llywelyn, who had exploited the
civil war in England, had received rights as lord of all of native Wales,
receiving the homage of the other princes in Powys and Deheubarth.
Though Llywelyn was still a vassal of the crown, this marked a major
concession by King Henry. A second example was the submission of the
kingdom of the Isles to Alexander III of Scotland in 1266. The isles of
the Hebrides and Man had been under the distant lordship of the kings
· 18 ·
of Norway but the Manx kings also looked to the Plantagenets as patrons.
Both cases demonstrate that the English kings were not the only rulers
seeking to maintain and extend their lordship over neighbouring com-
munities. Since his assumption of the crown in 1274, Edward had given
reminders of the powers he possessed. He had asserted his authority in
England, reminded King Alexander of English claims to lordship over
Scotland and, most forcibly, humbled Llywelyn in the war of 1276–7.
The treaty which ended the conflict left Llywelyn with the title of prince
of Wales but little else of the gains he had made since the 1250s. Such a
reassertion of the English crown’s authority was not without precedent.
It was another shift in the fluctuating political balance of a world in which
the kings of England exercised their primacy in a tiered but multi-centred
environment underpinned by networks of government, lordship and com-
munity. While it was not a peaceful or fixed world, especially in Wales
and Ireland, the British Isles of the 1270s operated by rules which had
been formed gradually over two centuries.18
Conqueror of Wales, Lord of Scotland (1280–1294)

In the fifteen years after 1278, King Edward’s actions changed these
rules. Though this process involved no obvious master-plan, the changes
occurred on the English king’s initiative. They rested on Edward’s view
of the rights and status of his monarchy and an intolerance of claims from
other rulers and communities which competed with his own. It was in
the unstable environment of Wales, where the extent of English royal
authority had been a matter of frequent warfare, that the first demonstra-
tion of this occurred. For all Edward’s displays of goodwill to Llywelyn
at his marriage, the king saw his recent war in Wales as the basis for
extended royal lordship in that land. Even on the day of the wedding,
Edward informed the prince of new limits on his independence. Such
limits had been stated in the treaty of Aberconwy which had ended the
war of 1277. In this, as well as losing lands and his rights of lordship over
almost all the other princes, Llywelyn accepted extended royal powers
over justice and new financial charges. His own people were made to
swear that, should Llywelyn break his obligations as vassal, they would
support Edward against their prince. These terms were part of a more
general policy. Edward had already appointed royal justices whose powers
to judge cases included both the marches and native Wales. Llywelyn
and the other Welsh princes and local populations found their rights
under close scrutiny. This was carried out by English officials with little
sympathy for Welsh laws or for Edward’s earlier promises to respect
them. Men like Reginald Grey, justiciar of Chester in north-east Wales,
· 19 ·
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stirred up widespread discontent. The anxiety of Welsh princes and com-

munities and even marcher lords was expressed in secret alliances with
Llywelyn.19 In similar circumstances in the 1250s Llywelyn had led a
successful war against the English crown, but the character of his recent
defeat and the terms he had accepted made him reluctant to make any
open challenge. His own relations with Edward became centred on a
legal dispute with his Welsh enemy, Gruffudd ap Gwenwynwyn of Powys,
over the district of Arwystli. The dispute dragged on from 1278 to

1282 and became a test of key issues: of royal jurisdiction in Wales and
the status of Welsh law. It also showed Edward’s readiness to use his
position as judge in a legal case as a means of exercising sovereignty and
as a weapon against a vassal he mistrusted.20
While Llywelyn mounted a legal defence of his rights, others were less
patient. In March 1282 the princes of Deheubarth in south-west Wales
and Llywelyn’s brother Dafydd in the Four Cantrefs of the north-east
rose in war. Driven by a sense that their rights and those of their people
were being undermined by the actions of the king’s officials, these leaders
seem to have launched co-ordinated attacks on royal castles and boroughs
which symbolised the English presence in Wales. There was a popular
element to these uprisings. For many Welsh, this war was a defence of
their customs and rights as a nation. Though he had not started it,
Llywelyn could not stand aside. By June 1282 he had assumed the lead-
ing role in the rebellion. The rebels faced a grim prospect. Edward’s
response to the revolt displayed both the resources of his kingdom and
his own strength of will. During the summer English armies advanced
through both north and south Wales and a fleet captured Anglesey.
Despite scoring local successes, the Welsh were penned back on the
defensive. However, as winter approached, Edward had not won a
decisive victory and negotiations were opened. These only served to
show to Llywelyn that no acceptable settlement was possible and in
November he led an attack into the middle marches. It was a gamble
which led to disaster when the prince was defeated and killed at the river
Irfon in December.21
Llywelyn’s death proved decisive. Edward immediately ordered new
offensives and Welsh resistance began to collapse. By spring 1283 the war
was over. If the course of this conflict was not radically different to earlier
campaigns, its outcome was. King Edward had already determined that
his victory would mark the end of the long traditions of princely rule in
Wales. To him, his enemies were traitors who had forfeited their lands
and status. After Dafydd was captured he was condemned to a traitor’s
death of hanging, drawing and quartering. His head joined his brother’s
on London’s walls, their family was kept in custody and the regalia and
· 20 ·
relics of the house of Gwynedd were carried off to England. The princely
dynasties of Powys and Deheubarth suffered similar disinheritance and
loss of rank. Edward’s victory involved both the legal punishment of
rebel subjects and the absorption of one realm by another.22 Native Wales
was treated as a conquered land. Edward did create new marcher lord-
ships for his English supporters, principally in north-eastern Wales, but
the heartlands of Gwynedd and Deheubarth were annexed to the crown.
Their government was modelled on English practice and the new regime
was symbolised by the network of great castles constructed by Edward I
at huge cost. While Welsh custom was allowed to survive in certain areas,
crimes were to be judged according to the laws of England. The Welsh
law and Welsh race were treated as inferior to those of the conqueror.
This was shown most clearly in and around the new boroughs which
were founded in the shadow of the king’s castles. The Welsh were
excluded from living in these towns, yet forced to trade in their markets.
Their relations with the staunchly-English burgesses proved to be a
flashpoint in coming years.23
The conquest of Wales was the product of an increasingly demanding
approach to royal lordship which had provoked the reaction of a com-
munity who saw this undermining their established rights. This conflict
ended with the effective destruction of an ancient tradition of Welsh
monarchy, redrawing the political structures of the country in a revolu-
tionary fashion. However, the conquest was also the culmination of com-
petition between the Welsh princes, and especially the house of Gwynedd,
and the English kings. It would have been much harder to predict that
relations between the English and Scottish realms would alter in an
equally dramatic fashion during the decade after the Welsh conquest.
Without the sudden death of Alexander III in March 1286, it is unlikely
that there would have been such a break with the past dealings of the two
realms, as recently illustrated by the events of 1278. Edward did not rush
to exploit news of Alexander’s death but, as in the 1250s, the Scottish
political elite sought the help and goodwill of the English king. They also
sought to ensure a renewal of personal monarchy in Scotland. The Scottish
‘community of the realm’, led by six chosen guardians, recognised
Alexander’s young granddaughter, Margaret of Norway, as their future
queen. They wished her father, King Eric of Norway, to send the princess
to Scotland and, to overcome his reluctance, turned to Edward. As the
girl’s great-uncle and an ally of both Scotland and Eric, Edward brokered
an agreement which would see Margaret sent to Britain. Linked to this,
however, were plans for a marriage between Margaret and the English
king’s son, Edward. This match would bring Scotland into the domin-
ions of the Plantagenets. It was accepted by the Scottish community
· 21 ·
DISUNITED KINGDOMS
though, in August 1290, they extracted Edward’s agreement that he

would respect the status and customs of the kingdom of Scotland.
This peaceful acquisition of Scotland by Edward I’s line depended on
personal union. All plans were shattered by the death of Margaret on the
voyage to her kingdom in September 1290. In Scotland, the guardians
were faced with the threat of violent competition for the throne between
the partisans of rival claimants, Robert Bruce and John Balliol. The
claimants and the guardians all looked to King Edward as a figure with
the status and power to settle the royal succession and prevent conflict.
In May 1291 the English king met the Scottish community on the Anglo-
Scottish border to take up this role. In these circumstances, Edward
determined to renew the claim, last made in 1278, that he was the over-
lord of Scotland. The Scots, who merely wished Edward to arbitrate
between claimants, initially rejected the king’s demand but, without a
royal leader, they were coerced into recognising his claim. It was as
Scotland’s ‘superior lord’, in direct control of the kingdom, that Edward
judged the ‘Great Cause’ over the Scottish throne. Following his judge-
ment in November 1292 in favour of John Balliol, Edward received the
homage of the new king at Newcastle over Christmas. Without war,
Edward I had secured recognition of his claims to be lord over Scotland,
dismantling the apparently-secure status of Alexander III and his line as
fellow sovereigns alongside the rulers of England.24
While leading Scots may have hoped that the inauguration of Balliol
as their king would mark a return to previous patterns inside and outside
the kingdom, Edward was determined to exercise his full powers as
sovereign. In this he was assisted by disputes from within Scotland. These
were the routine products of rivalries over land but now proved crucial.
On the one hand, as a new king with political debts to pay, John’s judge-
ments favoured his partisans, like the powerful Comyn family and their
kin. On the other, those judged against in the Scottish king’s court
could now appeal to Edward’s justice. A small but significant number of
appeals, headed by the case of Macduff of Fife, were brought to Edward.
John was summoned before Edward in 1293 and, despite his objections,
Balliol was forced to accept the authority of the English king over his
royal court. The Scottish king, until recently a sovereign ruler in his
realm, was now placed clearly under the rule of King Edward, as another
vassal of the English crown.25
The fundamental redrawing of political relationships between Edward I
and the other rulers and realms of Britain in the space of a decade was
mirrored in the king’s handling of English political elites. In the Welsh
marches this was directly linked to the conquest of native Wales. Even
before this, in 1275, Edward had asserted his judicial authority to hear
· 22 ·
complaints from the march in his Statute of Westminster. Though the

conquest brought no immediate intervention, from 1290 there was a
series of royal actions which amounted to a campaign against the full
powers of the marcher lords. Several lords, among them the Mortimers,
had lordships taken into temporary royal custody for perceived abuses,
while others had the records of their courts scrutinised. The strongest
displays of Edward’s reach involved the traditional right of marchers to
wage private war. A dispute between two powerful English barons and
marcher lords, Gilbert Clare earl of Gloucester and lord of Glamorgan
and the lord of Brecon, Humphrey Bohun earl of Hereford, was used by
Edward to haul both lords before a royal court which imprisoned them
and confiscated their marcher lands.26
If these cases were all based on individual issues rather than a defined
royal policy, they are further evidence of the intolerance of King Edward
towards perceived usurpations and abuses of power by his vassals.
Similar motives were evident in the Quo Warranto inquest which Edward
initiated in his parliament of August 1278. The inquest scrutinised the
right or warrant by which liberties and private jurisdictions were held in
England. It was driven, in part, by Edward’s belief that barons and others
had exploited the crisis years after 1258 to usurp or extend powers over
justice. Once again, the earl of Gloucester, a major figure in the crisis,
found his rights as a magnate challenged and was forced to relinquish
liberty powers in several estates. Most other earls got off lightly in a pro-
cess which was slow, patchy and brought to an end in 1290. Despite this,
Quo Warranto ruffled noble feathers and reminded the great barons of
England that, even in liberties, their authority derived from the king.
Gloucester, who was allowed to marry Edward’s daughter in 1290, was
being made an example by a king who wanted no magnates able to cast
too long a shadow.27
Gloucester also held Kilkenny as a liberty in the king’s lordship of
Ireland, where the great, private jurisdictions of English magnates were
a major feature of political geography. In the parts of Ireland under the
lordship of the English king, over half the land was made into liberties
rather than royal shires. In their status and rights, the Irish liberties were
modelled on the more limited powers of English jurisdictions rather than
Welsh marcher lordships. As in England, Edward showed an initial desire
to identify and recover any usurpation of royal rights. However, Ireland
experienced no version of the Quo Warranto proceedings and indivi-
dual cases of royal interference in the 1280s and 1290s were few. Rather
than neglect, this approach probably recognised the different priorities
in Ireland. These are illustrated by the activities of Edward’s justiciar,
John Sandford archbishop of Dublin, in 1290. Sandford held courts and
· 23 ·
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oversaw the local government of the royal shires. However, much of his
energy was expended in waging war on the Irish. Especially in Leinster
the problems of war and diplomacy with Irish kindreds were becoming
the main duty of the justiciars and increased the need elsewhere for
aristocratic leadership. Whether holding liberties or not, the English
nobles of Ireland were accustomed to military roles and, like the marcher
lords, saw warfare in terms of their own lordship over English and Irish.
This fostered rivalries between the great families who were resident in
Ireland, like that between the Burghs and FitzGeralds of Offaly. In the
1290s this erupted into open conflict between Richard Burgh earl of
Ulster and John fitz Thomas of Offaly, destabilising the whole lordship.
Even the justiciars could be drawn in. Sandford’s successor, William
Vesci, lord of Kildare, became embroiled in a feud with John fitz Thomas
which paralysed the royal government. Edward sought to manage this
unstable and competitive environment from a distance and, in contrast to
his actions in other parts of his dominions, seemed reluctant to interfere
with established elites.28
King Edward’s interference with the rights of English magnates in his
dominions paled by comparison with the conquest of Wales and the
homage of the Scottish king. However, all these displays of royal superi-
ority and authority added to the impression of Edward as a ruler whose
power surpassed all his predecessors. The extension of the king’s lordship
over princes and magnates was mirrored by efforts to strengthen his grip
on his administrations throughout his dominions. This may have been
prompted by the desire to use the resources of all the Plantagenet lands
for royal activities. The king’s famous castle-building programme in
Wales cost some £80,000 up to 1300, of which £30,000 was raised from
the revenues of Ireland. In 1290 Edward received a huge subsidy of
£116,000 from the English parliament, allowing the king to recover
his financial position after incurring major debts during his stay in the
duchy of Gascony between 1286 and 1289. The king also continued to
demonstrate his reforming instincts. His three-year presence in Gascony
maintained his personal rule of the duchy and allowed him to overhaul
his administration there. More sweeping were the parallel campaigns in
England and Ireland which followed Edward’s return to England
in 1289–90. These targeted royal officials accused of corruption, mostly
at the instigation of the English communities of the two realms. Some of
the main legal and financial agents of the king suffered fines and impris-
onment, with Edward receiving approval and pocketing payments. It
demonstrated too the king’s concern to scrutinise the workings of his
different realms. This goal was made explicit in 1293 when an ordinance
ordered the treasurers of Ireland and Gascony to present their accounts
· 24 ·
to be audited by the English exchequer. The ordinance was intended to

prevent embezzlement in these dominions but was also a statement of
the primacy of the English administration and King Edward’s desire for
closer personal and institutional control of his lands. It was one further
mark of Edward I’s attempts to tighten and concentrate authority.
With Balliol’s appearance in parliament at Westminster to answer for his
judgement in the Macduff case in autumn 1293, King Edward’s primacy
and the dominance of the English crown in the British Isles seemed to
be secure.29
King Edward’s Wars (1294–1307)

The relative speed and ease with which the king had brought about the
destruction of the great princely dynasty of Gwynedd and made the kings
of Scots accept his rights as sovereign lord created an aura of success
around Edward. However it also obscured the depth of resentment
created in elites and communities across the isles. Edward’s forceful and
assertive kingship left bitter legacies in the attitudes of Scottish lords and
prelates, Welsh nobles and English magnates. However, such tensions
might not have turned into crises without the intervention of the French
king. This intervention was unpredictable but not unrelated to events in
the islands. Like Edward, Philip IV of France was a sovereign determined
to display his full authority over his vassals. Edward had performed hom-
age to Philip for Gascony in 1286, but Edward’s status as a king with a
European reputation made him a problematic vassal. The tensions between
the subjects of the two rulers in clashes at sea created circumstances in
which Philip suddenly confiscated the duchy of Gascony in 1294. He
demanded the English king’s attendance at his court in Paris. In response
Edward renounced his homage and both kings prepared for war. These
preparations marked new heights in royal warfare in the medieval west.
In 1294–5 Edward produced some £250,000 for the war, but the
defence of Gascony alone cost £150,000 and most of the rest went as
subsidies to the king’s ineffectual continental allies. Edward also sought
to muster armies of tens of thousands of men to match the forces raised
by his enemy.30
In terms of men and money the burdens of this warfare fell on
the king’s subjects in the British Isles, straining the king’s authority to
breaking point. The first challenge came from the Welsh. There had been
a minor rising by a south Welsh prince in 1287, but this had not stopped
Edward from imposing increased demands on the men of the royal shires
and marches. Even before the war, Edward had begun to apply English
traditions of taxation to the Welsh. The 1290 subsidy was extended to
· 25 ·
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Wales and set at levels which took no account of the relative poverty of
the country or the lack of precedents for such a demand. The tax was still
being paid in 1294 when Edward issued fresh demands, this time for
military service. The king saw the Welsh as a valuable source of infantry
for his host and summoned large numbers for an expedition to Gascony.
The summons was a spark for revolt. This erupted across the marches and
in the new counties of north and south-west Wales. The revolt was led
by men of princely descent, one of whom, Madog ap Llywelyn, claimed

to be prince of Wales. The rising was locally-based but inspired by
general hostility to foreign rule and settlement. As in 1282, however,
Welsh anger was no match for English resources and organisation.
Despite the shock, Edward and his officials diverted major resources to
Wales. During the winter of 1294–5, English garrisons were supplied by
sea and, though Edward himself was blockaded in Conwy, in the spring
the rebellion was crushed. Passing further draconian laws, Edward turned
back to the French war.31
As he would seem to do repeatedly, Edward ignored wider points
about his lordship. Like the Welsh, the Scottish king and barons had
been ordered to provide contingents for Edward’s expedition to Gascony
in 1294. For many summoned, this demand provided a stark display of
their overlord’s attitude towards Scotland. Though the Welsh lacked the
connections and structures to sustain war with Edward, the Scottish
kingdom was different. In October 1295 an alliance was agreed against
the English king by Philip of France and John of Scotland. The next
spring, war began between English and Scottish realms. Though the war
was over in four months, this outbreak marked a watershed in the history
of the isles, replacing a largely peaceful relationship with one of war and
hostility. Some Scottish landowners with English interests sided with
Edward, but most of the political elite in the northern kingdom took
a different view of the English king. While Edward regarded himself
as taking forceful action against a rebellious vassal, the Scottish leaders
saw themselves defending a sovereign realm against a foreign invader. In
response to Scottish raids, Edward’s host sacked Berwick, then Scotland’s
largest town, routed King John’s army at Dunbar and proceeded to
force the surrender of castles, lords and communities in a fourteen-week
campaign. The captive Scottish king and the regalia and records of his
office were carried south by Edward, who left behind English officials and
a conquered land rather than a kingdom.32
Edward’s displays of strength were impressive but they had prevented
him from campaigning against the French king in 1295–6. In 1297 he
made ambitious plans for expeditions to Flanders and Gascony. These
ignored the problems caused by previous demands. The large subsidy
· 26 ·
raised in 1290 was now followed by repeated requests to both the laity
and clergy for taxation between 1294 and 1297. The sums raised from
the laity brought in large but diminishing returns, while the church
agreed to make unprecedented payments. Edward’s officials augmented
such sums by seizures of wool exports and a new customs duty, termed
maltolt. In addition, from 1294, Edward summoned his tenants in chief
to serve on continental campaigns. Such issues of finance and military
service had previously caused dissent between king and community in

England. The levels of royal demands in the 1290s created deep resent-
ments. While Edward largely overrode the complaints of the clergy, his
characteristic disregard for the grievances of his barons invited trouble.
When, early in 1297, Edward asked barons to serve in Gascony, he met
with stark refusal. His opponents were led by the earls of Norfolk and
Hereford, both of whom had experienced their king’s strong hand as
English barons and marcher lords. Significantly, the opposition met in
the Welsh march and, when Edward sailed for Flanders with a small
force, civil war seemed possible. The officials Edward left behind were
able to reach a settlement with the barons and avert conflict but it was a
sign of the strains which war had placed on England.33
The speed of the settlement was influenced by events in Scotland.
Early in 1297 risings occurred in northern and south-western Scotland.
Though prompt action by Edward’s men forced the noble leaders in the
south, Robert Bruce, James Stewart and Bishop Robert Wishart of
Glasgow, to submit, they allowed a member of a knightly family, William
Wallace, to raise an army. Meanwhile, another host led by Andrew
Murray took isolated English garrisons in the north. Most of the Scottish
nobles remained in Edward I’s allegiance during the summer, but
Wallace and Murray gathered lesser men, described in one account as
‘the retinues of the magnates’. In September these two leaders joined and
defeated the army of Edward’s lieutenant at Stirling Bridge. By the end
of the year, ‘the army of Scotland’ had restricted Edward’s men to the
castles of the south-east and raided into Northumberland. Wallace was
appointed as guardian for the captive King John and announced that
Scotland had ‘been recovered by war from the power of the English.’34
By early 1298, Edward’s single-minded pursuit of his war with the
king of France had been a political and military disaster. His warfare and
diplomacy on the Continent had achieved nothing. Their costs had
caused a Welsh rebellion, created a legacy of English resentment and
initiated a war with Scotland which would dog him and his heirs. His
focus on the French war had led Edward to throw away the chance of an
easy conquest of Scotland. Rather than securing his rapid victory during
the summer of 1296 with a planned and well-supported settlement, like
· 27 ·
DISUNITED KINGDOMS
that in Wales, Edward left inadequate forces and imposed demands for
revenue and military service on the Scots. These demands fuelled the
resentments of the Scots about the way the rights and customs of their
king and land had been trampled by Edward and led to the risings of
1297. The success of these risings, in turn, demonstrated the compla-
cency of the Edwardian regime and King Edward himself. In the years up
to 1294 Edward sought to increase the authority of the king of England
in terms of geographical reach and administrative control. The French

war tested this increased authority and it buckled under the strain. The
last years of Edward’s reign were in a new political environment in the
British Isles, which would play out during the coming decades.
In early 1298, whilst still in Flanders, Edward finally recognised the
strains which the French war had created on his lordship. He entered a
truce with Philip IV which left him able to concentrate on the renewed
war with the Scots. In 1298 Edward gathered a massive army, of over
2,000 horse and 20,000 foot, for a Scottish campaign. Despite major
problems of supply, the king’s host defeated a Scots army under William
Wallace at Falkirk. However, the victory brought no mass submissions.
Edward instead found himself engaged in a war of attrition against a
determined enemy. Under new guardians, initially Robert Bruce and
John Comyn, the king’s Scottish opponents fought a defensive war which
forced Edward to maintain expensive garrisons in Scotland and raise field
armies to support them. The Scots’ long-term hopes were pinned on the
support of the French king and the pope, both of whom pressed Edward
to reach a settlement with his enemies. Edward was vulnerable to such
pressure. He faced the legacy of 1297 in the reluctance of his English
subjects to finance the war. This forced Edward to abandon a planned
campaign in 1299 and led to the loss of two major castles. However, his
personal commitment to the conflict did not waver. In 1300 and in
1301–2, Edward led campaigns in southern Scotland which slowly forced
magnates and communities to submit. The real change in the course
of the war only came in May 1303 when, following his defeat by the
Flemings at Courtrai, Philip IV of France made a peace which abandoned
the Scottish alliance. Freed from wider restraints, in June 1303 Edward
launched a new campaign in Scotland. He stayed in the field for over a
year and his efforts finally broke the resistance of the Scottish leaders.
When the king’s engines took Stirling Castle in June 1304, the war was
at an end.35
The next year Edward issued an Ordinance for the government of
Scotland. This gave the customs of that realm a limited recognition but
made clear Edward’s direct rule over Scotland as one of his dominions
and penalised his leading enemies. It was, for Edward, an attempt at
· 28 ·
compromise designed to make the Scottish community accept his lord-

ship.36 This relative moderation was a sign of the ageing king’s desire for
a resolution of the Scottish war. Though costing less than the French
war, the struggle with the Scottish guardians from 1297 to 1304 can
be seen as Edward’s greatest endeavour. He raised the men and money
for an eight-year conflict. He led a series of campaigns and faced the
problems of wearing down an elusive enemy which exploited the hills and
moorlands of Scotland. His officials overcame the huge demands of sup-

plying the king’s garrisons and armies even through the Scottish winter.
Coming after the crisis of 1297, Edward showed a renewed ability to
draw on the resources of his dominions. His English vassals served in
unprecedented numbers in the army at Falkirk alongside over 10,000
Welsh foot soldiers. Though problems of service and desertion dogged
later campaigns, the Scottish war did not produce the reluctance of the
Flemish campaign. Edward even drew on the limited resources of his
Irish lordship, raising sizeable expeditions from the island to support
his campaigns of 1296, 1298 and 1303. Such support was a product of
several factors. As the events of 1297 showed, the English community
regarded a call to serve in war against the Scots as a legitimate demand
of their king. Secondly Edward showed a, not wholly sincere, readiness
to offer concessions to his critics who in turn seemed unwilling to renew
their challenge to a king of such stature. Finally, Edward waged war
without the level of direct taxation he had sought up to 1298. Aside from
a grant in 1301, Edward chose to finance the conflict by running up
debts which by the end of the reign had reached £200,000.37
Victory over the Scots had come at a price but, in 1305, the king must
have felt satisfied with his achievements in this stormy decade. He had
recovered Gascony from the French king, crushed Welsh rebels and
forced Scottish opponents to submit, all in the face of the reluctance of
his English subjects. The praise of chroniclers and poets reflected the
dominance of this masterful old man. However, Edward had cowed dis-
content rather than removed it. In England, his reign would leave a
legacy of mistrust towards the monarchy and a heavily indebted crown.
In Wales his administration continued to fear the hostility of the native
population. The king’s use of Irish revenues and manpower in the
Scottish war drained valuable resources from his officials and limited their
ability to maintain the peace of the lordship. Gascony remained a source
of conflict and difficulty with the French king.
He may have deserved the accolade of the Irish annalist as ‘Edward the
Great’ and, as Piers Langtoft said, had removed kings and princes, but
Edward had not united the islanders.38 Instead his reign had widened
divisions and left deep flaws in his lordship. It was in Scotland that the
· 29 ·
DISUNITED KINGDOMS
flaws in Edward’s dominion were most rapidly exposed. Robert Bruce’s

killing of his rival, John Comyn, and his seizure of the Scottish throne in
early 1306 was a challenge to the English king’s peace and lordship.
Edward responded with characteristic anger to what he regarded as trea-
son and a threat to his hard-won settlement of Scotland. Despite forcing
Bruce into exile in 1306, the crisis was not over. In 1307 the ailing
Edward watched in frustration as his commanders failed to defeat Bruce’s
small army. When Edward died in July 1307, these officials were express-
ing open fears that Scotland would be lost. It was an accurate assessment
of things to come.
Notes
1. Frame, Political Development, 129– 41.
2. Davies, The First English Empire, 22–5; A.A.M. Duncan, The Kingship of the
Scots 842–1292: Succession and Independence (Edinburgh, 2002), 160–3;
J.B. Smith, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd Prince of Wales (Cardiff, 1998), 448–9.
3. M. Prestwich, Plantagenet England 1225–1360 (Oxford, 2005), 55–77,
131–8, 157–9; M. Prestwich, Edward I (Oxford, 1988), 233–66; J.E. Morris,
The Welsh Wars of Edward I (Oxford, 1901).
4. B.M.S. Campbell, ‘Benchmarking Medieval Economic Development: England,
Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, c.1290’, Economic History Review, 61 (2008),
896–945.
5. M. Vale, The Origins of the Hundred Years War; A. Ruddick, ‘Gascony and
the Limits of Medieval British Isles History’, in B. Smith, Ireland and the
English World in the Late Middle Ages (Basingstoke, 2009), 68–88.
6. The lordship of Ireland had been granted to Henry II king of England by
the papacy.
7. J. Lydon, ‘Ireland and the English Crown, 1171–1541’, IHS, 115 (1995),
281–94; R. Frame, ‘England and Ireland, 1171–1399’, in M. Jones and
M. Vale (eds), England and her Neighbours, 1066–1453: Essays in Honour
of Pierre Chaplais (London, 1989), 139–55; B. Hartland, ‘The Household
Knights of Edward I in Ireland’, Historical Research, 77 (2004), 161–77.
8. R.R. Davies, The King of England and the Prince of Wales (Cambridge,
2003); Duncan, Kingship of the Scots, 160–63.
9. R.R. Davies, Domination and Conquest; R. Frame, ‘Aristocracies and the
Political Configuration of the British Isles’, in R.R. Davies (ed.), The British
Isles, 1100–1400 (Edinburgh, 1988), 142–59.
10. M. Clanchy, England and its Rulers 1066–1272 (London, 1983); R. Bartlett,
England under the Norman and Angevin Kings, 1075–1225 (Oxford,
2000).
11. M. Lieberman, The Medieval March of Wales: The Creation and Perception
of a Frontier, 1066–1283 (Cambridge, 2010); J.R.S. Phillips, ‘The Anglo-
Norman Nobility’, in J. Lydon (ed.), The English in Medieval Ireland
(London, 1984), 87–104.
· 30 ·
12. Though this was not without anxiety and tensions in its implications: see M.
Brown, ‘Henry the Peaceable: Henry III, Alexander III and Royal Lordship
in the British Isles, 1249–1272’, in B.K. Weiler and I. Rowlands (eds),
England and Europe in the Reign of Henry III (Aldershot, 2002), 43–66.
13. For the De Clares and Bigods see M. Altschul, A Baronial Family in
Medieval England: The Clares 1217–1314 (Baltimore, 1965); M. Morris,
The Bigod Earls of Norfolk in the Thirteenth Century (Woodbridge, 2005).
For Anglo-Scottish landowners see K. Stringer, Earl David of Huntingdon,
1152–1219: A Study in Anglo-Scottish History (Edinburgh, 1985); R.M.

Blakely, The Brus Family in England and Scotland, 1100–1295 (Woodbridge,
2005); A. Beam, The Balliol Dynasty, 1210–1364 (Edinburgh, 2008).
14. C.W. Lewis, ‘The Treaty of Woodstock, 1247: Its Background and
Significance’, Welsh History Review, 2 (1964–5), 37–65; R. Frame, ‘England
and Ireland’, 20–4; B. Hartland, ‘English Lords in Late Thirteenth Century
and Early Fourteenth Century Ireland: Roger Bigod and the de Clare Lords
of Thomond’, English Historical Review, 122 (2007), 318–48.
15. J. Gillingham, The English in the Twelfth Century: Imperialism, National Identity
and Political Values (Woodbridge, 2000); Clanchy, England and its Rulers.
16. R.R. Davies, ‘The Peoples of Britain and Ireland, 1100–1400’; R.R. Davies,
‘Law and National Identity in Thirteenth-Century Wales’, in R.R. Davies,
R.A. Griffiths, I.G. Jones and K.O. Morgan (eds), Welsh Society and
Nationhood: Historical Essays Presented to Glanmor Williams (Cardiff, 1984);
M. Brown, The Wars of Scotland 1214–1371 (Edinburgh, 2004), 89–113;
D. Broun, Scottish Independence and the Idea of Britain: From the Picts to
Alexander III (Edinburgh, 2007).
17. J.R. Maddicott, Simon de Montfort (Oxford, 1994); R.F. Treharne, The
Baronial Plan of Reform (Manchester, 1971); M. Prestwich, English Politics
in the Thirteenth Century (London, 1990).
18. Smith, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, 90–186, 338–450; M. Brown, ‘Henry the
Peaceable: Royal Lordship in the British Isles, 1249–1272’, 58–62; Prestwich,
Edward I, 89–107, 177–82.
19. The secret alliance between Llywelyn and his former enemy Roger Mortimer
was probably not directly against the king but does suggest the marcher
lord’s anxieties (Smith, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, 491–6).
20. J.B. Smith, ‘England and Wales: The Conflict of Laws’, in M. Prestwich,
R.H. Britnell and R. Frame (eds), Thirteenth Century England, 7 (1999),
189–206.
21. L.B. Smith, ‘The Death of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd: The Narratives Reconsidered’,
WHR, 11 (1982–3), 200–13.
22. A.D. Carr, ‘The Last and Weakest of his Line: Dafydd ap Gruffydd, the Last
Prince of Wales’, WHR, 19 (1998–9), 373–99; L.B. Smith, ‘The Statute of
Wales, 1284’, WHR, 10 (1980–1); I. Rowlands, ‘The Edwardian Conquest
and its Military Consolidation’, in T. Herbert and G.E. Jones (eds), Edward
I and Wales (Cardiff, 1988). Of the other princes most were treated simi-
larly. Only the line of Gruffydd ap Gwenwynwyn of southern Powys survived
as major figures after the conquest, though they were considered marcher
lords not princes.
· 31 ·
DISUNITED KINGDOMS
23. L.B. Smith, ‘The Governance of Wales’, in Herbert and Jones (eds), Edward
I and Wales. Amongst the early administrators was Edward’s continental
friend, Otto de Grandson.
24. A.A.M. Duncan, ‘The Community of the Realm of Scotland and Robert
Bruce’, SHR, 45 (1966), 185–201; A.A.M. Duncan, ‘The Process of
Norham’, in Coss and Lloyd (eds), Thirteenth Century England, v (1995);
N. Reid, ‘The Kingless Kingdom: The Scottish Guardianships of 1286–
1306’, SHR, 61 (1982), 105–29; G.W.S. Barrow, Robert Bruce and the
Community of the Realm of Scotland (1988), 39–59.

25. Beam, The Balliol Dynasty, 119–42; Brown, Wars of Scotland, 169–78; A.
McQueen, ‘Parliament, the Guardians and John Balliol’, in K. Brown and R.
Tanner (eds), The History of the Scottish Parliament 1: Parliament and Politics
in Scotland, 1286–1567 (Edinburgh, 2008), 29–49; M.H. Brown, ‘Aristocratic
Politics and the Crisis of Scottish Kingship, 1286–96’, in SHR, 90 (2010), 1–26.
26. R.R. Davies, Lordship and Society in the March of Wales, 1282–1400 (Oxford,
1978), 257–69; Morris, Welsh Wars of Edward I, 220–39.
27. D.W. Sutherland, Quo Warranto Proceedings in the Reign of Edward I
1278–1294 (Oxford, 1983); Prestwich, Edward I, 261–3.
28. Calendar of Documents relating to Ireland 1171–1307, ed. H.S. Sweetman,
5 vols. (London, 1875–86); J. Lydon, The Lordship of Ireland in the Middle
Ages (Dublin, 2003), 91–104; B. Hartland, ‘Edward I and Petitions relating
to Ireland’, Thirteenth Century England, ix (2003), 59–70; E. O’Byrne,
‘The Mac Murroughs and the Marches of Leinster, 1170–1340’; L. Doran
and J. Lyttleton (eds), Lordship in Medieval Ireland (Dublin, 2007); P.
Crooks, ‘ “Divide and Rule”: Factionalism as Royal Policy in the Lordship of
Ireland, 1171–1265’, Peritia, 19 (2005), 263–307.
29. A.J. Taylor, The History of the King’s Works in Wales 1277–1330 (London,
1973); Prestwich, Edward I, 305–7, 339–55; M. Ormrod, ‘The English
State and the Plantagenet Empire, 1259–1360: A Fiscal Perspective’, in
J.R. Maddicott and D.M. Palliser, The Medieval State: Essays Presented to
James Campbell (Oxford, 2000), 197–214.
30. M. Vale, The Origins of the Hundred Years War, 175–215; Prestwich,
Edward I, 376–400; J.R. Strayer, ‘The Costs and Profits of War: The Anglo-
French Conflict of 1294–1303’, in H.A. Miskmin, D. Herlihy and A.L.
Udovitch (eds), The Medieval City (New Haven, 1977), 269–91; M. Vale,
‘Edward I and the French: Rivalry and Chivalry’, in Coss and Lloyd (eds),
Thirteenth Century England, ii (1988), 165–76.
31. A.D. Carr, ‘Crown and Communities: Collaboration and Conflict’, in
Herbert and Jones, Edward I and Wales, 123–44; J. Griffiths, ‘The Revolt
of Madog ap Llywelyn in 1294–95’, Transactions of the Caernarvonshire
Historical Society (1955).
32. M. Prestwich, ‘The English Campaign in Scotland in 1296 and the Surrender
of John Balliol: Some Supporting Evidence’, Bulletin of the Institute of
Historical Research, 49 (1976), 135–7; F. Watson, Under the Hammer:
Edward I and Scotland, 1286–1307 (East Linton, 1998), 23–7. There is
strong chronicle evidence that the French treaty was negotiated, not by
John, but by a council of barons and bishops.
· 32 ·
33. G.L. Harriss, King, Parliament and Public Finance (Oxford, 1975), 49–74;
M. Prestwich (ed.), Documents Illustrating the Crisis of 1297–8 in England
(Camden Society, 1980). Edward’s financial reliance on his subjects was
increased by the failure of his Italian bankers, the Ricciardi family, partly as
a result of his own actions.
34. F. Watson, ‘Sir William Wallace: What We Do and Don’t Know’, in E.
Cowan (ed.), The Wallace Book (Edinburgh, 2007), 26–41; A.A.M. Duncan,
‘William Son of Alan Wallace: The Documents’, ibid, 42–63; M. Prestwich,
‘The Battle of Stirling Bridge: An English Perspective’, ibid, 64–76.

35. Watson, Under the Hammer, 138–96; M. Haskell, ‘Breaking the Stalemate:
The Scottish Campaign of Edward I, 1303–4’, in M. Prestwich, R. Britnell
and R. Frame (eds), Thirteenth Century England, vii (Woodbridge, 1999),
223–42.
36. F. Watson, ‘Settling the Stalemate: Edward I’s Peace in Scotland, 1303–
1305’, in M. Prestwich, R. Britnell and R. Frame (eds), Thirteenth Century
England, vi (Woodbridge, 1997), 127–43.
37. H. Rothwell, ‘Edward I and the Struggle for the Charters’, in R.W. Hunt,
W.A. Pantin and R.W. Southern (eds), Studies in Medieval History Presented
to F.M. Powicke (Oxford, 1948), 319–32.
38. Annals of Connacht, ed. A.M. Freeman (Dublin, 1944), 72–3; The Chronicles
of Piers de Langtoft, ed. T. Wright (London, Rolls Series, 1866–68), 2 vols,
ii, 266–7.
· 33 ·
chapter two
ROBERT BRUCE
T he killing of Sir John Comyn by Robert Bruce earl of Carrick in the

Franciscan Church at Dumfries in February 1306 has long been
regarded as a pivotal event in the history of Scotland.1 The killing, and
Robert’s seizure of the throne of Scotland which followed, also had deep
significance for the whole of the British Isles. The reign of Edward I had
seemed to demonstrate that the English monarchy was not simply the
most powerful force in the archipelago but an institution whose material
resources were allied to an ideological authority capable of reshaping the
political structures and relationships in these lands and realms. As the
previous chapter suggested, it was the character and actions of Edward
which provided the obvious core to any narrative of political events. These
actions suggest Edward’s general desire to accumulate tighter and more
extensive authority in the hands of the English king and his officials. While,
as has been shown, this met with wide and varied forms of resistance and
Edward was forced into compromises especially from 1297 onwards, it
formed the dominant theme of his reign in the British Isles. With hindsight,
events in the first half of the fourteenth century would show shifts in the
political dynamic of the British Isles. Such shifts were bound up with
complex, diverse and long-term developments in different lands. They went
far beyond the actions or aims of any one lord. However, the career of Robert
Bruce was linked to many of these fourteenth-century themes, and his
campaigns in the north and west of the islands provide a useful focal
point to consider the character of the era between 1300 and 1350.
The Bruces of Annandale

Robert Bruce was, at first sight, an unlikely instigator of these develop-
ments. The history of the Bruces up to the end of the thirteenth century
suggests nothing exceptional about the family. Their activities seem to
show them to be lords who derived their status and identity from structures
· 34 ·
ROBERT BRUCE
of royal patronage and service. The origins of the family amongst the
eleventh-century Norman aristocracy and their rise in importance via
the support of Henry I of England in the early twelfth century make the
Bruces typical members of the higher nobility like the Clares, Bigods and
Warennes. Of lesser standing than these English earls, the Bruces stood
in the second rank of Anglo-French aristocratic lineages in the British
Isles. Robert’s family’s principal estates were the lordships of Hartness in
north-east England and Annandale in south-west Scotland.2 The latter

had been granted by David I of Scotland in the 1120s and marriages in
subsequent generations accrued new lands and influential connections
for the family. The Bruces were leading members of the group of nobles
with significant holdings in both the English and Scottish realms and
maintained their obligations to both royal houses.3 In October 1278
Robert Bruce (V) lord of Annandale (grandfather of the future king)
stood in for Alexander III when the Scottish did homage to Edward I for
his lands in England. It was a sign of the family’s place in the service of
the two kings of Britain. The record of Robert’s father, Robert (VI), who
remained loyal to Edward I from 1296 until his death in 1304, does not
indicate any obvious break in these long-established bonds of allegiance
to the kings of England.4
However, the events of 1306 and their aftermath were also a product
of other elements in the background of Robert (VII) Bruce and his wider
environment. These did not centre on the ideals of royal service and
authority. Anglo-French barons like the Bruces might have benefited
from the patronage of kings but they also regarded their powers as
self-won. The defence of these powers and the pursuit of fresh claims was
a duty of a nobleman. In a well-known episode during Edward I’s Quo
Warranto inquiry an English magnate responded to the crown’s demand
that he prove his rights to private jurisdiction by brandishing a rusty
sword which he claimed had been carried by his forefather in the Norman
Conquest of 1066. This attitude informed aristocratic behaviour in many
regions. The traditions of private conquest were strongest in the Welsh
marches, but the holders of liberties in Ireland (where such private con-
quests were still under way) and England and the earls and great lords of
Scotland, like the Bruces, also shared the same outlook. The family’s
acquisition of new lands and usurpation of royal rights had caused fric-
tion with Alexander III of Scotland in the 1270s, most notably when
Robert’s father married his mother, Marjory of Carrick, without royal
permission. The match which secured the Bruces an earldom was
initiated, not as royal patronage but as a private alliance.5
The acquisition of Carrick in the early 1270s provided another signi-
ficant element in the background of Robert (VII) Bruce. His mother’s
· 35 ·
DISUNITED KINGDOMS
province drew the Bruce family into parts of the British Isles where the
authority of the English and Scottish kings tended to be less direct
and the traditions of aristocratic and provincial politics were strong. The
earldom of Carrick had originally been part of the great province of
Galloway. It lay on the east shore of the Firth of Clyde and looked across
narrow seas to the promontories of Argyll, the Hebridean islands and
Ireland. In the 1200s the earls of Carrick had been given Irish lands by King
John of England for leading galleys against the rebellious earl of Ulster.6
Though these lands had been surrendered, contacts between western
Scotland and Ireland remained. In September 1286 a bond, or private
agreement, was made at Turnberry Castle in Carrick. It bound the
Bruces and a group of other Scottish barons to support Richard Burgh
earl of Ulster and Thomas Clare, two of the leading English lords
in Ireland. The aim of the bond was probably to prevent the flow of
mercenary soldiers from the Hebrides to the Irish kings who opposed
Clare and Burgh. The agreement suggests shared objectives between
vassals of the English and Scottish realms and may have had Edward I’s
support. However it also indicates that the fulfilment of these objectives
rested, not on royal officials, but on magnates.7 This was a basic reality in
a wide arc of the British Isles from Munster in south-western Ireland,
through Connacht and Ulster to the Hebrides and the provinces of
western and northern Scotland. Politics in these regions revolved around
the activities of lords and their ability to extract adherence. English lords
in Ireland, Irish kings, Hebridean leaders and Scottish earls and barons
were the key figures in these varied regions. Even after his apparent con-
quests of Scotland in 1296 and 1304, Edward I could exercise only an
indirect and limited overlordship in the Isles and the coastlands of the
west of the kingdom. This corresponded to the power of the English
crown in much of western Ireland. Robert Bruce’s connections with the
lords of these regions would prove to be of vital importance and lasting
significance in his efforts after 1306.
However, the key to the actions of Robert Bruce (VII) lay in his family’s
claim to the throne of Scotland. Like Carrick, this had been established
through a marriage, in this case to one of the daughters of David earl of
Huntingdon. David was the younger brother of King William of Scotland
(1165–1214) and this match brought Bruce’s grandfather, Robert (V)
Bruce, into the royal line of succession. After the death of Alexander III,
Robert (V) pursued his claim to the Scottish kingship energetically by a
variety of methods. Despite failing to secure the title in Edward I’s judge-
ment of the ‘Great Cause’, the Bruces did not abandon their claim. In 1296,
after Edward I had stripped John Balliol of the Scottish crown, Robert
(VI) requested the throne, only to be contemptuously rebuffed. The acts
· 36 ·
ROBERT BRUCE
of his son, Robert (VII), in the decade before 1306 were heavily influ-
enced by the same goal. His support for the Scottish cause, ostensibly on
behalf of the exiled John Balliol, and his homage to Edward I in 1302,
were both done with an eye to the maintenance of the Bruce claim. The
apparent victory of Edward in 1304, and the indications of the English
king’s suspicions towards Robert, threatened to provide a final and
permanent check to Bruce hopes. The killing of John Comyn, motivated
by personal antagonism and political rivalries, precipitated Bruce into

action. Six weeks later he was crowned king.8
The Bruce family’s pursuit of the throne of Scotland was born out of
the attitudes of their class and cultural background. The struggle over
rights of inheritance was a staple of aristocratic behaviour in the high
Middle Ages. Their pursuit, by war as well as law, was an inbuilt feature
of magnate society. Later Scottish accounts of these events present them
as the consequence of Edward’s denial of the Bruce’s legitimate claim to
a lordship. However, the Scottish kingdom was no ordinary lordship. In
the years of crisis after 1286, the maintenance of government, political
resistance to the lordship of King Edward and the efforts to defend the
realm, all in the absence of a royal leader, were indicative of shared com-
munal values within the Scottish elite. Ultimately, in his 1305 Ordinance,
Edward himself had tried to work with these values. Ideally, such actions
would be the role of the king of Scots. With the support of the hierarchy
of the church in Scotland, the Scottish kings had consciously fostered a
distinct sense of religious and historical identity and a common (though
not exclusive) allegiance to the crown. Edward had struggled to break
this down. By taking the throne, Robert sought to reclaim these struc-
tures in his own cause.
The Wars of the Bruces (1306–1328)

The initial result of Bruce’s actions was to open deep divisions in the
Scottish community. John Comyn had a wide network of kin and allies,
who had led the fight to defend Scotland and Balliol’s kingship. To these
people, Bruce had committed unforgivable crimes of usurpation and
sacrilege. Edward I similarly regarded Bruce’s breach of his oath of fealty
and attempt to revive the kingship as acts of treason. Many Scots must
have shared these doubts but, in 1306, Bruce was able to recruit support
from more than just his own power base. This suggests a level of support
for any effective royal claimant. Despite this, Robert’s army was defeated
in summer 1306 and he was pursued from the Scottish mainland.9
In this crisis Robert turned, out of necessity, to his family’s connec-
tions in the west. However, though the principal contacts of the Bruces
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in the region had been with fellow lords of Anglo-French ancestry,

culminating in Robert’s own marriage in 1302 to the daughter of Richard
earl of Ulster, he did not look to such families for assistance. In a war
with the king of England, Robert sought allies amongst the non-English
lords of the west. He spent the winter of 1306–7 in the Hebrides seeking
the support of two of the leading magnate families, Clan Donald on Islay
and the MacRuaries in Garmoran. Robert also sent his brothers to the
Irish of Ulster with letters asking for help as kinsmen against a common
enemy. For the Norman-descended son-in-law of the English earl of
Ulster to make this claim may be regarded as propaganda, but it also
suggests that Bruce was aware of the arguments which could be made in
resistance to the claims of Edward I to hold sway over the whole of the
islands. It also indicated the way the Scottish war would increasingly spill
out into a much larger part of the British Isles in the coming decades with
long-term effects.10
Whether it was by such arguments or the prospect of plunder, in early
1307 Robert was able to return to Scotland with a small army, much of
which was recruited from the men and galleys of Ulster and the Hebrides.
Using his own province of Carrick as a base, Robert eluded and harried
the enemy forces sent by Edward I to crush him. In the aftermath of the
old king’s death in July, this pressure slackened. By the autumn Robert
was able to take the initiative. He led a force northwards into the pro-
vince of Moray and, during the next six months, secured control of much
of northern Scotland. From this region, Robert was able to draw reve-
nues and recruits to wage a more extensive campaign and by 1309 had
won or coerced support and recognition from much of the kingdom
north of the Tay. During a truce, Bruce had even held a parliament at
St Andrews, the ecclesiastical centre of Scotland, in spring 1309. This
proclaimed his legitimacy to the many Scots who had not responded to
his claims, and to the pope and French king, the allies of the previous
Scottish regime.11
Unlike the guardians before 1304, Bruce could not hope for external
aid. However, also unlike them, he did not face an implacable English
opponent, fully-committed to the Scottish war. The new king of England,
Edward II, seemed to enjoy advantages in his war with Scotland. He was at
peace with Philip IV of France and many of the leading Scottish magnates
remained implacably opposed to Bruce. These advantages were, though,
balanced by underlying weaknesses. To the debts of the crown were
added the expectations of the English community for a changed political
atmosphere after the domineering rule of the old king. Even more
damaging was Edward II’s own lack of political skill or intent beyond the
satisfaction of a series of favoured friends. The first and most notorious
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ROBERT BRUCE
of these was Piers Gaveston, a Gascon knight, to whom Edward granted

the earldom of Cornwall and a marriage to his niece. The politics of the
opening six years of the reign were dominated by the issue of Gaveston
and his proximity to the king. The complaints of the baronage about the
king’s favouritism escalated into a general critique of royal misrule. This
was embodied in a set of Ordinances in 1311 and, as in 1258, efforts were
made to bind the king to them. Edward’s resistance to this demand and
his determination not to be separated from Gaveston brought England

close to civil war, especially after Gaveston was killed by his noble enemies.
This group was now headed by Edward’s cousin, Thomas earl of Lancaster,
a determined if not particularly able leader of the opposition. The result
was paralysis in English politics.12
Like the reform crisis of the 1250s, the disputes of English politics had
an impact on the Plantagenet dominions as a whole. The favour shown
to Gaveston’s family in Gascony aroused parallel tensions between the
royal administration and the leading noble in the province, the lord of
Albret.13 Edward also saw Ireland in terms of the interests of his favour-
ite. When he was forced to send Gaveston out of England in 1308,
Edward made Piers his justiciar in the lordship. Though Gaveston was
active in his duties, the decision ruffled the feathers of the earl of Ulster,
the greatest English lord in Ireland, and revealed the king’s warped
priorities in regard to the management of his realms.14 Most seriously,
the fixation with Gaveston and the Ordinances dictated the involvement
of Edward II and his English subjects in the Scottish war. While his father
had led armies to Scotland on six occasions during the last decade of his
reign, Edward II only campaigned there once between 1307 and 1314.
It was suggested that even this expedition, in 1310–11, was motivated by
the king’s desire to avoid the demands of his English critics, and only
three of the English earls served in the small force. Though the campaign
briefly put Bruce on the defensive, it was too little to change the direction
of the war and, in the years which followed, the lack of further royal
campaigning allowed Robert to take the main burghs and castles of
central and south-west Scotland in 1312–13 and ravage Lothian and
even the far north of England. In late 1313 Bruce prepared the ground
for the establishment of his rule over the whole Scottish realm. As in
1297, the prospect of the loss of Scotland encouraged a patching up of
disputes in England. Edward II summoned a major host to campaign in
Scotland in the summer of 1314. Lancaster and his closest allies refused
to aid the king, fearing that a royal victory would lead to Edward seeking
revenge for Gaveston’s death. The English king’s army numbered over
2,000 horse and perhaps 15,000 foot but it was hampered by divisions
and outmanoeuvred by Robert’s smaller host. In a two-day battle just to
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the south of Stirling at Bannockburn, Edward’s army was routed. In the

months after Bannockburn, the remaining Scottish opponents of Robert
Bruce paid homage to him as their king or abandoned their lands in
Scotland. Except for Berwick, Bruce had made himself the master of the
kingdom. For the next eighteen years, Scotland experienced only limited
warfare on its soil. Robert used this situation to remodel the political elite
of the kingdom.15
Though it neither ended the war nor acted as a turning point,

Bannockburn had an impact well beyond Scotland. Edward’s humiliation
in battle was exploited by Lancaster to take over the government of the
English realm, an event which escalated the tensions between the king
and the earl. It also changed the ground on which the war was fought.
With the aim of forcing Edward II to acknowledge his kingship, Robert
took the war into the dominions of the English king. From late 1314
until 1322, Scottish armies repeatedly harried the north of England.
Though they stayed for only short periods and travelled rapidly, these
armies penetrated deeper and deeper into England, plundering livestock,
destroying property and extracting protection payments. Attempts to
confront the Scots were eluded or defeated. Such campaigns and the
capture of Berwick in 1318 continued to show the inadequacy of King
Edward and his opponents in the defence of the realm. They created
misery in the north and a desire for a lasting peace or truce. They also
hampered Edward’s campaigns into Scotland in 1319 and 1322, both of
which ended in further setbacks for the ‘chicken-hearted and luckless’
king.16
The second arena for King Robert’s armies after 1314 may have
produced a shorter period of intervention and was less militarily success-
ful but, in political terms, was much more ambitious. In May 1315 a
Scottish army of about 5,000 men was landed on the coast of eastern
Ulster. Though a case can be made for this expedition as a means of
cutting off the flow of men and money from the lordship of Ireland to
aid King Edward’s campaigns in Scotland, the stated aims went much
further. The goal was to establish Robert’s brother, Edward Bruce, as
king of Ireland. A letter sent to the pope on his behalf in 1317 (often
termed the Irish Remonstrance) argued that by his neglect and the
actions of his English subjects in Ireland, Edward II had forfeited all
rights of lordship in the island. This bold project was also designed to
satisfy Edward Bruce’s ambition. It was another example of the conquest
mentality possessed by great lords and, though the scheme seems
unrealistic to modern historians, fitted in with the connections and infor-
mation available to the Bruces. Since the 1290s there had been growing
signs of anxiety from the English of Ireland. Gaveston and the other royal
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ROBERT BRUCE
justiciars had to spend increasing time campaigning against local lords

and kindreds in Leinster and beyond. While most of these were Irish,
there were also continued problems with English lords. In 1311 a full-
scale battle had been fought at Bunratty in Thomond between the Clares
and the Burghs with their Irish allies. The drain of men and money for
the king’s use in his war was also seen as increasing, to the weakness of
the lordship.17
Edward Bruce arrived in Ireland accompanied by his brother’s power-

ful allies from the Hebrides and in expectation of support from Irish
leaders, led by Donal O’Neill of Tir Eoghain in Ulster. Though firm Irish
support would prove elusive, Edward entered Ireland at the head of
the coalition of lords who had aided the Bruces in 1306 and who were
opposed to the Anglo-Irish administration. The Bruces’ campaigns in
Ireland were primarily aimed at the English community and provoked
Irish uprisings in the areas they entered. Earl Richard of Ulster, though
he was Robert Bruce’s father-in-law, was the principal victim of these
attacks. He was driven from his earldom, which became Edward Bruce’s
base in Ireland. Despite only limited support from their king, the English
of Ireland proved resilient opponents. Though the Scots won several
encounters and in 1317, under both Bruce brothers, marched as far as
Limerick, they won few allies outside Ulster. In 1318 Edward was defeated
and killed in battle at Fochart near Dundalk and his kingdom of Ireland
died with him.18
The campaigns of the Bruce brothers in England and Ireland demon-
strated the extent to which Edward II had lost the military dominance in
the British Isles which seemed so apparent under his father. However,
King Robert’s campaigns failed to achieve any real shift in the loyalties or
political balance of the lands in which he had campaigned since 1314.
Nor did his efforts force Edward II to recognise Robert as sovereign king
of Scots. Indeed, the defeat at Fochart revealed the continuing insecurity
of Bruce’s kingship within Scotland. The war did have an impact. In
Ireland it accelerated the anxieties of the English about their vulnerability
and isolation, feelings increased by the collapse of the lordship of
Thomond after its lord was killed in battle with the O’Briens in 1318.
In northern England too there was a war-weariness and a sense of aban-
donment by their king which led to local truces and even submissions
to Bruce.19
Such problems fed into the wider political crisis for Edward II and his
subjects. This was not simply an English crisis. During Edward Bruce’s
Irish war even the security of the Welsh conquest seemed shaky. One of
the influential group of north Welsh nobles important in the running of
the principality, Gruffudd Llwyd, was imprisoned in 1317 for treasonable
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correspondence with Edward Bruce. The letters’ talk of action by the

‘Scots and Britons’ against the ‘Saxons’ fuelled anxieties amongst the
English administration but did not represent a real challenge. Instead,
the difficulties posed to Edward II from Wales stemmed from less
general, but equally dangerous, issues of good government. In Wales, the
main outcome of Bannockburn had been the death of the young earl of
Gloucester in the battle and the end of the Clare line. The great lordship
of Glamorgan came into royal custody while the claims of the earls’
sisters were confirmed. The misrule of the king’s officials aroused the
hostility of the local Welsh and, led by a minor noble, Llywelyn Bren,
they rebelled in 1316. The aim of the rebels was not to end English rule
but to secure better rule by their English lord. Fearing escalation, Edward
and the other marchers responded with both force and promises.20
The rebellion’s links with the Clare inheritance signified that Welsh
politics were still shaped by aristocratic power structures. This was
especially true in the marches, where the lords retained their special rights
to hold and run their lordships. Typically, Edward II challenged these
rights, less in an attempt to renew his father’s efforts to claim greater
royal rights, but more to allow his favourites, the Despensers, to develop
their private interests in Wales with the crown’s backing. The younger
Hugh Despenser was allowed to secure the whole Clare inheritance in
south Wales and terrorise his neighbours in the march, while his father
was made justiciar in the royal lands of the principality. This dominance
aroused an inevitable reaction from the other marcher lords. Led by
Humphrey earl of Hereford, Roger Mortimer of Wigmore and his uncle,
the former justiciar, the marchers expelled the Despensers from south
Wales in early 1321.21
Events in Wales did not occur in isolation. An attack on the Despensers
was an attack on the king and those involved were also English lords. It
could not be claimed as simply a private war between marchers. Instead
this ‘Despenser War’ was part of the ongoing tensions between Edward
II and his baronial opponents led by Lancaster. The Scottish war was also
linked to these tensions. Edward’s demands for men and money were
compounded by his lack of success in the struggle with the Bruces and
undermined his authority. The resulting problems in England reduced
the king’s ability to wage war. In turn, Lancaster, the greatest magnate
in northern England, feared success against Bruce would release Edward
to crush his aristocratic critics. The earl was accused of treasonable con-
tacts with the Scots from 1319 onwards, ultimately with some truth. The
personal antagonism between Edward and his cousin and an atmosphere
of failure and disloyalty coloured English politics, but the real problem
was the king’s inability to separate his rule of the realm from the interests
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ROBERT BRUCE
of his favourites. That the first armed challenge to the king and his
favourites came in the Welsh march was a product of the established
traditions of that region, but it is striking how quickly the violence spread
to England to spark the first open civil conflict for half a century. Unlike
Wales, the war in England was instigated by the king. Exploiting
divisions between his enemies, Edward campaigned against his different
noble opponents in turn. Between October 1321 and February 1322 the
king dealt with his enemies in Kent, and then turned against the marcher
lords in the Severn valley before moving north into the Midlands against
Lancaster. These opponents proved reluctant to fight the king in open
battle. Lancaster and Hereford moved north, reportedly to meet up with a
Scottish force. However their route was blocked by a force of northerners
under Andrew Harclay at Boroughbridge. This force routed the rebels.
Hereford was killed and Lancaster captured.22
The defeat was followed by the execution and forfeiture of Lancaster
and many of his noble allies. After years of opposition Edward and the
Despensers were exacting revenge and making a point about the authority
of the king. In May 1322 a statute was enacted in parliament at York
which annulled the Ordinances of 1311 and made clear the dominance
of the royal will in the government of England. It was natural for Edward
to proceed from victory over his English baronial enemies to a new
attempt to end what he regarded as Bruce’s rebellion. A massive army
was gathered from England, Wales and Ireland and was led into Scotland
in August 1322. Robert’s defensive strategy and English supply problems
meant that Edward’s army was forced to retreat and disperse. Robert
retaliated and pursued Edward and his household deep into Yorkshire,
routing the remnants of the English king’s host at Byland before ravag-
ing the East Riding. This humiliation prompted Andrew Harclay to seek
peace terms from Bruce in early 1323 on his own initiative. His action
was punished as treason by Edward but the king himself negotiated a
fifteen-year truce with Robert in May.23
The struggle between Robert Bruce and Edward II had been longer
and more destructive than any previous war between rulers in the British
Isles. Since 1307 military conflict had spread from Scotland into all the
English shires north of the Humber and across Ireland from Ulster to the
far south-west of the island. The rebellions and civil war of 1321–2 had seen
fighting in the Welsh marches, in Kent and in the Midlands and north of
England. This was hugely destructive but, like much of the warfare to
come, in strictly military terms, it produced no decisive outcome. Robert
Bruce had not forced Edward to recognise his title or sovereignty but
showed his ability to defeat any efforts to remove him as king of Scots.
In 1316–17 a major shift in the political framework of the British Isles
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may have seemed possible. Propaganda about an alliance between the

Scots, Irish and Welsh against the English was produced which suggests
fears and hopes that the primacy of the king of England in the British
Isles was at stake in the conflict. A collapse of English royal lordship in
Wales, Ireland and even the far north of England was never on the cards.
In 1322, when faced with the rebellion of powerful English barons,
Edward II obtained vital support from native Welsh leaders (including
Gruffudd Llywd) and from northern English knights, while Ireland was
secure enough to send a contingent to the king’s expedition to Scotland.24
However, such signs of support for Edward II hardly amount to
the authority held by his father in the realms of the British Isles. Most
obviously, he had lost Scotland. For all he refused to accept Bruce as king
of Scots many of his subjects recognised the reality. One northern chron-
icler, writing in the frontline of the conflict, stated that Bruce ‘was com-
monly called king of Scotland because he had acquired Scotland by force
of arms’.25 The continuing conflict also meant that the long-established
ties of landholding between the elites of England and Scotland were
severed by the war between their royal lords. The English king’s failure
against Bruce contrasted with his treatment of many of his own subjects
and, after 1322, Edward II was regarded as a tyrant. He had brutally
disposed of his opponents, disinheriting many noble families and enrich-
ing only a small group of supporters. This group was led by the Despensers,
who added many of the marcher lordships forfeited by rebels like Hereford
and the Mortimers to their dominant position in Wales. Though effective
at reforming the problems of royal finance, the king’s government
remained narrowly-based and discredited. To its failures in Scotland were
added an unsuccessful war over Gascony with the French king.26
The fall of this unappealing regime came not from within England
but the other parts of the Plantagenet dominions. In Paris to resolve
the dispute over Gascony, Edward’s queen, Isabelle, gathered a group of
exiles. Backed by her brother, Charles IV of France, she mounted an
invasion of England in late 1326 in the name of her teenage son. In the
face of this, the regime collapsed. The leading figure in the queen’s party
was her lover, Roger Mortimer of Wigmore, who had escaped from
captivity and fled into exile. Mortimer’s hostility to Edward II stemmed
from the dominance of the Despensers and their allies in Wales. The
Mortimer line had been leading figures in the middle marches of Wales
since the eleventh century and had played a key role in the conquest of
1282–4. Roger had also acquired lands in Ireland and, while his uncle
was justice of north Wales, he had been justiciar of Ireland during the
critical years of the Bruce invasion and its aftermath. His flight to France
caused the king anxiety about the security of both these lands and, when
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Mortimer returned at the head of the queen’s forces, he set in train a

political crisis across the British Isles.27
It was not Mortimer who spread the crisis but the desperate Edward
II. He had fled westwards with Despenser into Wales with the reported
goal of taking ship to Ireland. He also sent his friend, the Scottish exile
Donald earl of Mar, to the court of Robert Bruce (Mar’s uncle). Mar
probably took an offer of Edward’s recognition in return for military
assistance against his enemies in England, Ireland and Wales. The capture
of Edward II and his deposition or forced abdication in early 1327 did
not end these plans. The rule of an ambitious marcher lord in control of
the royal government did not appeal to many people in Wales and Ireland
while Robert was keen to exploit political divisions for his own ends. By
April, after receiving letters from the justiciar of Ireland, Robert had
himself arrived in Ulster. Once again he was activating his family’s con-
tacts in the isles and coastlands west of Scotland. The death of Earl
Richard Burgh in 1326 meant his earldom lacked an adult lord and
Robert, the earl’s son-in-law, established himself without a struggle. He
remained through the summer, ready to intervene in the heartlands
of the lordship further south. Meanwhile, as Mortimer took power as
justiciar of north Wales, a group of native Welsh nobles, once again
including Gruffudd Llwyd, plotted with Donald of Mar to rescue Edward
from prison. Linked to this a Scottish army, including Mar, entered
northern England in June. The Scots remained until August and success-
fully outmanoeuvred the efforts of the young Edward III to meet and
defeat them. However, the death of Edward II and the recognition of his
son in Ireland in May 1327 ended the possibility of conflict within the
English crown’s dominions. Bruce rapidly switched strategy. Exploiting
the weakness of the new king and his keepers, Robert offered peace terms
in October. The following March these were debated in the English
parliament at York. The next month the treaty was ratified at another
parliament at Northampton. The English king finally recognised the
Bruce claim to be kings of Scots and renounced his own lordship in that
realm. King Robert’s long war was over.28
Long Wars and Adventurers

The warfare and political troubles of the 1320s drew in all the realms of
the British Isles. The Anglo-Scottish peace treaty reflected this. Its terms
were not confined to England and Scotland but extended to the western
dominions of the two monarchies around the Irish Sea. The king of
England promised not to interfere in Man and the Hebrides while
Robert agreed to give no help to the enemies of the English crown in
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Ireland.29 This creates a picture of the archipelago firmly divided between

the two monarchies. Also included in the treaty was a promise to restore
the lands forfeited by lords because of their choice of allegiance in the
war. In 1328, when King Robert travelled to Ulster he went to support
his nephew, William Burgh, the new earl. Unlike his family’s intervention
in 1315 he was not acting as an enemy seeking to destroy or dismantle
the authority of the English king, acting in alliance with the Irish of
Ulster. Instead, Bruce’s presence suggests a return to the alliances behind

the Turnberry Band, with Anglo-French dynasties working together using
their influence with Islesmen and Irish. The visit was a hint at efforts to
renew the pattern of friendly rulers and interconnected elites from the
previous century.30
Such a reversal of recent trends proved illusory. King Robert only
accepted the idea of restoring the ‘disinherited’ lords with great reluct-
ance. Bruce regarded these former enemies as threats to his dynasty and
kingdom. He was not prepared to reverse the main grants of land and
status he had made from their lost estates, which had been used to endow
his own key supporters between 1312 and 1328. The recipients were the
mainstays of his cause, like Thomas Randolph, James Douglas and the
Stewart family. Despite the peace treaty, there would be no return to old
relationships in the British Isles. When King Robert died in July 1329,
leaving Scotland to his six-year-old son, David II, the two realms remained
separate and suspicious.31
The importance of aristocratic ambition in the shaping of the British
Isles was a key element after 1328. It was embodied, most obviously, by
Roger Mortimer. His predominance in the government of the young
Edward III of England saw the promotion of magnate interests, espe-
cially his own. His assumption of the title earl of March reflected the
concentration of territorial gains he made in Wales and the Anglo-Welsh
border shires. The events of 1326–7 had shown antipathy towards
Mortimer from Ireland. There had also been escalating conflict between
English magnates during the 1320s. Mortimer recognised the need for a
settlement and that any agreement rested on relations with these English
magnates. The establishment of the new earl of Ulster was part of this,
but more striking were new creations further south. Two lords from
well-established English families in Ireland were made earls. James Butler
became earl of Ormond and Maurice fitz Thomas was made earl of
Desmond. Along with the creation of Maurice’s FitzGerald cousins as
earls of Kildare a decade earlier, this provided a newly defined leadership
in the Irish lordship. However, though he was an adventurer whose
ambitions can be compared with those of Bruce, Mortimer’s authority
was as custodian of Edward III and rested on English politics. His actions
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aroused considerable hostility and in 1330 he was overthrown and

executed by the young king himself.32
The events surrounding his father’s tyranny and fall and the rule of
Mortimer meant that, like his grandfather, Edward III assumed power
with a sense that royal authority needed to be re-established across his
dominions. In England, this restoration was handled with general skill
and effectiveness. Ireland seemed a more difficult proposition. Edward’s
response was to dispatch a justiciar from England, backed with an armed

force, to re-assert royal authority via displays of strength against trouble-
some English nobles in the lordship. The way was also prepared for an
expedition by the king himself, the first for 120 years. This was designed
to unite the English and cow the Irish. The plans were complete for the
king’s voyage in October 1332 when the intentions of King Edward
changed suddenly and permanently.33
The events responsible for the change occurred in Scotland. The
summer of 1332 saw renewed warfare in the northern kingdom. This
warfare was not the work of either the English or Scottish kings but of
the ‘disinherited’ lords. Led by Edward Balliol, son of King John, and the
French-born lord, Henry Beaumont, the ‘disinherited’ were barons with
considerable influence in England. They acted without the formal
support of Edward III and reached Scotland by sea with a small army.
Against the odds they won a spectacular victory at Dupplin Moor near
Perth, killing Donald of Mar, the guardian for King David. Soon after-
wards Balliol was crowned king of Scots. Balliol’s exploit had similarities
to Bruce’s coup in 1306. Like Bruce, Balliol was soon forced to flee
Scotland and look for external allies. Balliol naturally turned to Edward
III and in late 1332, in return for English support, he promised to
perform homage for the throne to the king of England. The resumption
of a war which had proved so disastrous in the previous two decades was
not welcome to many of Edward’s English subjects. However, the
English king may have regarded it as an opportunity to recover lost land
and prestige which took precedence over the Irish expedition. The terms
agreed with Balliol involved, not the direct lordship claimed by his
predecessors from 1296 to 1328, but the superior lordship over Scotland
which had been established in 1292. This concession was sweetened by
Balliol’s promise to cede to Edward III the eight sheriffdoms of southern
Scotland.34
The two Edwards achieved striking military successes. In 1333, out-
side Berwick, a second Scottish host was defeated and two years later,
with a major army supported by a fleet from Ireland, Edward III and
Balliol advanced to Perth. On both occasions David Bruce’s cause seemed
close to collapse. However, Edward III was no more able to transform
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military ascendancy into lasting conquest than his grandfather. Despite

devastating losses, the leaders of the Bruce party maintained their resist-
ance to the English king and Balliol’s adherents. From late 1335, the
Bruce king’s uncle, Andrew Murray, waged a relentless sequence of
campaigns from the north-east, through Angus and Fife, into Lothian
and Clydesdale and even across the border. The military results of these
efforts were mixed but they indicated Edward’s failure to establish secure
lordship even in his own lands in the south-east.35

The significance of the conflict was not confined to the northern
British Isles. As in the 1290s there was a connection between the contin-
ental interests and possessions of the Plantagenets and their lordship in
the British Isles. However, unlike the events after 1294, in the later 1330s
this worked both ways. The status of Gascony remained the point of
direct friction between Edward III and his French counterpart, Philip VI,
but Philip had his own obligations in the British Isles. In 1326 an alli-
ance had been agreed between Philip’s predecessor and Robert king
of Scots. This committed Philip to support the Scots in a war with the
English king, and in 1334 David Bruce was given shelter in France. Philip
sought to protect David’s interests. He refused to finalise any agreement
over Gascony whilst Edward continued his war in Scotland. By 1335–6
Philip had gone further. He gathered shipping in the Channel for an
expedition to Scotland. Though this did not sail, the ships raided the
coasts of southern England instead. The growing threat of Philip’s inter-
vention on behalf of David was a major factor in Edward’s own decision
to launch a war against the French king. Though the Scottish war con-
tinued, from 1337 this Anglo-French conflict was the main focus of
Edward III’s efforts and ambitions.36
Edward III began his French war with a strategy modelled on his
grandfather’s in the 1290s. In 1339 and 1340 he campaigned in Flanders
and sought to assemble a network of princely allies. The costs of this
strategy also replicated the problems of the 1290s. Up to 1340 Edward
spent an estimated £665,000 on the war, amassing £300,000 worth of
debts. In that year, the king was forced to make major concessions to
parliament in return for fresh financial help. When the funds raised
proved inadequate, the angry king purged his officials. Opposition to
royal demands was led by Archbishop Stratford of Canterbury and in
1341 the king was forced to accept terms by which his critics, like those
of his father in 1311 and grandfather in 1297, attempted to increase
communal scrutiny of his government. However, with greater success
than his father and without the tensions aroused by either Edward I or
Edward II, Edward III escaped from these limitations and the potential
for political disruption created by the French war.37
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ROBERT BRUCE
However, like earlier crises, the problems of 1340–1 were not confined
to England. Edward’s search for funds and exasperation with officials
extended to his dominions in Wales and, especially, in Ireland. The
cancellation of the planned royal expedition in 1332 meant that Edward
had to depend on the leadership of the English magnates of Ireland. He
secured their service and the lordship’s financial contribution to his wars
but also received complaints about the misrule of his officials and the
favour shown to magnates. The Irish revenues of the crown also con-
tinued to decline. Such issues fed into the crisis of 1340–1. The king
ordered a general inquiry into his government to be carried out by
officials from England. He also ordered the revocation of all royal grants
made since 1307, a category including the new earldoms. A contempor-
ary Anglo-Irish chronicle recorded that this planned revocation ‘aroused
a great dispute’ which created a ‘great . . . division between the English
raised in England and the English raised in Ireland’. The English of
Ireland resisted royal demands, and in a parliament held without the
justiciar in November 1341 the community sent a petition to the king,
complaining about his officials from England and his recent policies. As
in England, Edward III backed down, but his actions suggested a more
active royal policy. He betrothed his second son, Lionel, to the heiress of
the earldom of Ulster and sent this child’s stepfather, Ralph Ufford, to
Ireland as justiciar in 1344. Ufford took a forceful line with the English
magnates there but his efforts demonstrated a longstanding reality, that
these magnates and their connections were an integral part of the run-
ning of the lordship. The next fifteen years would witness Edward relying
on Anglo-Irish magnates, and especially the earls of Kildare, Desmond
and Ormond, as the basis of his management of Ireland.38 A similar
readiness to placate magnate interests was evident in Wales where Edward
restored the heir of Roger Mortimer to almost the full extent of his
father’s lands. He would go on to maintain a relaxed hand on the march-
ers even if it meant reversing the judgements made by the officials of his
son, Edward prince of Wales. The events of the 1320s had shown that
the Welsh march could still destabilise English politics. Edward III did
not wish disputes in the region to sour relations with a group which
included his greatest English subjects, especially as the ability of these
magnates to provide large contingents for the king’s army was of major
importance to Edward.39
In Scotland too, the period from 1338 to 1346 was crucial in setting
long-term patterns. Already facing diminished prospects of success,
Edward III’s diversion of resources to his continental ambitions accelerated
the loss of lands and adherents. The fall of Perth in 1339, of Edinburgh
in 1341 and of Roxburgh in 1342 were landmarks in the recovery of
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DISUNITED KINGDOMS
Scotland for David II. The Bruce king himself was not a key figure in this.
Instead leadership was provided by the lieutenant Robert Stewart and
captains like William Douglas and Alexander Ramsay, but David’s return
from exile in 1341 was a further mark of success. However, subsequent
years were characterised by tensions between the king and this war lead-
ership which contributed to a new military disaster. In 1346 David led
an invasion of northern England whose aim was to relieve pressure on his
ally Philip of France after his defeat at Creçy. Dissension in the Scottish
host was one factor in David’s defeat and capture in battle at Neville’s
Cross. However, the aftermath of the battle confirmed the existing
situation. The battle brought no renewal of English royal interest towards
the Scottish war. Neither did it witness a collapse of allegiance to the
Bruce regime, now headed again by Stewart. The lack of major results
after such a victory and the gradual reduction in the scale and spread of
warfare in the north during the subsequent decade was the product of
the diminishing intensity of the Scottish war.40
The events of the 1330s and early 1340s seem to show the renewed
primacy of the Plantagenet king in the shaping of political relationships
in the British Isles. Edward III’s changed priorities, from his planned
expedition to Ireland, to his intervention in Scotland, to the French
war formed the most important markers for all the communities of the
archipelago in this period. The impetus provided to the war in France
by Edward III’s claim to the French throne and by English military
successes from 1345 onwards would confirm this as the central activity
of the Plantagenet monarchy for these two decades. The Scottish war,
initially a key factor in Anglo-French tensions, would continue in the
shadow of this conflict as one of a number of secondary theatres of the
struggle between Plantagenet and Valois. Edward III’s attitude to his
claims to Scotland was demonstrated by his readiness to treat the captive
David Bruce, not as the heir to a usurper and rebel, but as a legitimate
king whose release could be the basis for a diplomatic settlement of the
Scottish war. The placatory attitude shown by the English king to the
leading lords in Wales and Ireland in the 1340s and 1350s can be linked
to the same desire to preserve the peace and access the resources of the
Plantagenet dominions with a limited level of royal intervention.41
However, it is misleading to see the key changes in the polities of
the British Isles in the mid-fourteenth century as being driven by the
ambitions of Edward III and the needs of his warfare. Equally important
shifts took place in the political structures of the northern and western
British Isles which were driven by more regional concerns. While these
will be examined more fully in a later chapter, they need to be related to
the themes of this period. Nowhere is this more evident than in the
· 50 ·
ROBERT BRUCE
maritime regions of the northern Irish Sea and Atlantic which had been
so significant in the activities of Robert Bruce. The death of Robert in
1329 and the murder of his nephew, William earl of Ulster, four years later
were major regional events. They reduced the strength of communities
and lords who were responsive to royal governments and allowed Clan
Donald in the Hebrides and several branches of the O’Neills in Ulster to
develop their pre-eminence from the 1330s onwards. In other parts of
Ireland, Irish dynasties like the MacMurroughs in Leinster sought greater

status and more extensive lordship within their provinces, meshing their
actions with those of the great English comital houses. While this was the
reality in Ireland before the 1330s, there were parallel, but more novel
developments in southern Scotland and northern England. Here, the
needs of warfare and the stark issues of allegiance to conflicting monar-
chies turned a cross-border landholding world into a land of war. The
result was the rise of noble houses, like those of Percy in northern
England and Douglas in southern Scotland, whose activities and family
identity revolved around war against the enemy. The slackening of royal
direction of this war during the 1330s and 1340s was a crucial phase in
the development of these lords and in the development of a marcher
zone around the Anglo-Scottish border.
The lords of such families had a crucial impact on the character of the
British Isles in the fourteenth century. Lords like Murtough O’Brien,
whose victory over Richard de Clare led to the collapse of the English
lordship of Thomond, and John of Islay, the first Clan Donald lord of
the Isles, brought about major shifts in regional power structures.
Similarly Maurice fitz Thomas earl of Desmond in Munster and William
Douglas of Liddesdale in the Scottish marches exploited disturbed political
environments to extend their lands and followings. The actions of these
magnates were shaped by the same impulses as lords whose careers were
apparently more central or had wider consequences. The search to make
good claims to land and lordship lay behind the efforts of the Disinherited
in 1332 which had such broad consequences. The dominance of the
Despensers and Roger Mortimer over royal government in the Plantagenet
dominions during the 1320s was also directed towards the goals of family
status and possessions. Even the Bruces fit into this world. Robert
Bruce’s seizure of the Scottish throne and the success with which he won
his realm severed most of the connections of land and family between
England and Scotland and created hostile relations between their com-
munities. The wars waged by Robert and Edward Bruce influenced the
development of government and society in Ireland and northern England.
However, the motives of the brothers were driven by the aristocratic
impulse which would act as a key determinant on the political structure
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DISUNITED KINGDOMS
of the isles in the fourteenth century. Central to this structure was the
stalemate which had developed in the warfare between English and Scottish
realms by the 1340s. This ‘royal’ war was only one of a network of con-
tinuing conflicts in ‘lands of war’ found across the archipelago. The era
of conquest initiated by Edward I had produced, not unity, but a number of
deeply-rooted antagonisms involving issues of allegiance, custom and race.
It would be the tensions and open conflicts which were produced by these
antagonisms which would define the British Isles in the next century.
Notes
1. A. Grant, ‘The Death of John Comyn: What Was Going On?’, SHR, 86
(2007), 176–224.
2. Robert was descended from a junior branch of the Bruce family. The senior
line, which retained the main Yorkshire estates of the family after a partition
in the 1140s, died out in 1272 (R.M. Blakely, The Brus Family in England
and Scotland, 1–88).
3. For example in 1264 Bruce’s grandfather, Robert V, fought for Henry III
and Edward against their opponents at Lewes and in 1270 went on crusade
with Edward (A.A.M. Duncan, ‘The Bruces of Annandale, 1100–1304’,
Transactions of the Dumfriesshire and Galloway Natural History and
Archaeological Society, 69 (1994), 89–102).
4. The use of the name Robert for the eldest son in successive generations since
1100 has confused historians since the thirteenth century. To try to avoid
such confusions here, their numbers as lords of Annandale will be used. King
Robert is Robert (VII), his father, Robert (VI), and grandfather (also termed
the Competitor), Robert (V).
5. Scottish accounts suggest the initiative actually came from Countess
Marjory, who abducted the handsome Bruce lord (John of Fordun’s Chronicle
of the Scottish Nation, ed. W.F. Skene, 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1872), ii, 299).
6. S. Duffy, ‘The Lords of Galloway, Earls of Carrick, and the Bissetts of the Glens:
Scottish Settlement in Thirteenth-Century Ulster’, in D. Edwards (ed.), Gaelic
Ireland: Regions and Rulers in Ireland, 1100–1650 (Dublin, 2004), 37–50.
7. Blakely, The Bruce Family, 86; Hartland, ‘English Lords’, 343–4; Brown,
Wars of Scotland, 159, 256–7.
8. Grant, ‘The Death of John Comyn’; Barrow, Robert Bruce, 145–50; Brown,
Wars of Scotland, 199–201.
9. A.A.M. Duncan, ‘The War of the Scots, 1306–1323’, TRHS, 6th series, ii
(1992), 125–51.
10. S. Duffy, ‘The Bruce Brothers and the Irish Sea World, 1306–1329’,
Cambridge Medieval Studies, 21 (1991), 55–86; A. McDonald, The Kingdom
of the Isles: Scotland’s Western Seaboard, 1100–1336 (East Linton, 1997),
173–5.
11. Duncan, ‘War of the Scots’; M. Brown, Bannockburn: The Scottish War and
the British Isles, 1307–1323 (Edinburgh, 2008), 24–42; P. Barnes and
G.W.S. Barrow, ‘The Movements of Robert Bruce between September 1307
· 52 ·
ROBERT BRUCE
and May 1308’, SHR, 69 (1970), 46–59; A.A.M. Duncan, ‘The Declarations
of the Clergy’, in G. Barrow (ed.), The Declaration of Arbroath: History,
Significance, Setting (Edinburgh, 2003), 32–49.
12. J.R. Maddicott, Thomas of Lancaster (Oxford, 1970); R.M. Haines, Edward
II: Edward of Caernarfon, his Life, his Reign and its Aftermath, 1284–1330
(Montreal, 2003); J.S. Hamilton, Piers Gaveston Earl of Cornwall, 1307–1312
(Detroit, 1988); J.R.S. Phillips, Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke 1307–
1324 (Oxford, 1972); M.C. Prestwich, ‘The Ordinances of 1311 and the
Politics of the Early Fourteenth Century’, in J. Taylor and W. Childs (eds),

Politics and Crisis in Fourteenth Century England (Gloucester, 1990), 1–18.
13. Vale, The Origins of the Hundred Years War, 164–74.
14. J. Otway-Ruthven, A History of Medieval Ireland (London, 1968), 219;
Hamilton, Piers Gaveston, 82–5.
15. D. Simpkin, ‘The English Army and the Scottish Campaign of 1310–1’, in
A. King and M. Penman (eds), England and Scotland in the Fourteenth
Century: New Perspectives (Woodbridge, 2007), 14–39; Brown, Bannockburn,
104–35; Duncan, ‘War of the Scots’, 149–50; Prestwich, Plantagenet
England, 188–91; Maddicott, Thomas of Lancaster, 77–159.
16. C. McNamee, The Wars of the Bruces: Scotland, England and Ireland 1306–
28 (East Linton, 1997); J. Scammell, ‘Robert I and the North of England’,
EHR, 73 (1958), 385–403.
17. R. Frame, ‘The Bruces in Ireland, 1315–18’, IHS, 19 (1974), 3–37; S.
Duffy (ed.), Robert the Bruce’s Irish Wars: The Invasions of Ireland 1306–29
(Stroud, 2002).
18. R. Frame, ‘The Campaign against the Scots in Munster, 1317’; R. Frame,
Ireland and Britain 1170–1450 (London, 1998), 99–112; P. Dryburgh,
‘Roger Mortimer and the Governance of Ireland, 1317–1320’, in B. Smith
(ed.), Ireland and the English World in the Late Middle Ages: Essays in
Honour of Robin Frame (London, 2009), 89–102.
19. K. Simms, ‘The Battle of Dysert O’Dea and the Gaelic Resurgence in
Thomond’, DAl gCais, v (1979), 59–66; A. King, ‘Schavaldours, Robbers
and Bandits: War and Disorder in Northumberland in the Reign of Edward
II’, in M. Prestwich, R. Britnell and R. Frame (eds), Thirteenth-Century
England, ix (Woodbridge, 2003), 115–29.
20. J.B. Smith, ‘Gruffydd Llywd and the Celtic Alliance’, Bulletin of the Board of
Celtic Studies, 26 (1976), 463–78; J.B. Smith, ‘Edward II and the Allegiance
of Wales’, WHR, 8 (1976–7), 139–71; J.B. Smith, ‘The Rebellion of
Llywelyn Bren’, Glamorgan County History, iii, ed. T.B. Pugh (Cardiff,
1971); R.A. Griffiths, ‘The Revolt of Llywelyn Bren, 1316’, in R.A. Griffiths,
Conquerors and Conquered in Medieval Wales (Stroud, 2004), 84–91.
21. N.B. Fryde, The Tyranny and Fall of Edward II (Cambridge, 1979); J.C. Davies,
‘The Despenser War in Glamorgan’, TRHS, 3rd series, 9 (1915), 21–64.
22. Maddicott, Thomas of Lancaster, 268–312; C. Valente, The Theory and
Practice of Revolt in Medieval England (Aldershot, 2003), 138–62.
23. Fryde, Tyranny and Fall, 97–110, 123–30; M. Prestwich, ‘Military
Logistics: The Case of 1322’, in M. Strickland (ed.), Armies, Chivalry and
Warfare in Medieval Britain and France (Stamford, 1998), 276–88.
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DISUNITED KINGDOMS
24. R. Frame, English Lordship in Ireland, 1318–61 (Oxford, 1981), 135–7;

Smith, ‘Edward II and Wales’, 161–3.
25. The Chronicle of Lanercost, ed. H. Maxwell (London, 1913), 210.
26. M. Buck, Politics, Finance and the Church in the Reign of Edward II: Walter
Stapledon, Treasurer of England (Cambridge, 1983). The Gascon war also
encouraged the French king to make a formal alliance with Robert I of
Scotland.
27. Fryde, Tyranny and Fall, 154–6; C. Valente, ‘The Deposition and
Abdication of Edward II’, EHR, 113 (1998), 854–71.

28. Smith, ‘Edward II and Wales’, 167–70; P. Dryburgh, ‘The Last Refuge of a
Scoundrel? Edward II and Ireland, 1321–7’, in G. Dodd and A. Musson
(eds), The Reign of Edward II: New Perspectives (Woodbridge, 2006), 119–139.
29. R. Nicholson, Edward III and the Scots (Oxford, 1966), 42–56. For the text
of the treaty see Foedera, ii, part ii, 740–2.
30. R. Nicholson, ‘A Sequel to Edward Bruce’s Invasion of Ireland’, SHR, 42
(1963), 30–40.
31. M. Penman, David II (East Linton, 2004), 14–36.
32. Frame, English Lordship in Ireland, 174–95.
33. Frame, English Lordship in Ireland, 197–202, 214–15; W.M. Ormrod, The
Reign of Edward III: Crown and Political Society in England, 1327–1377
(London, 1990), 97–102; J.S. Bothwell, Edward III and the English Peerage
(Woodbridge, 2004), 17–27; Prestwich, Plantagenet England, 266–9.
34. Nicholson, Edward III and the Scots, 57–104; A. Ross and S. Cameron, ‘The
Treaty of Edinburgh and the Disinherited (1328–1332)’, History, 84
(1999), 237–56.
35. C. Rogers, War, Cruel and Sharp: English Strategy under Edward III,
1327–1360 (Woodbridge, 2000), 48–84; I. MacInnes, ‘Shock and Awe: The
Use of Terror as a Psychological Weapon during the Bruce–Balliol Civil War,
1332–1338’, in King and Penman (eds), England and Scotland, 40–59.
36. Penman, David II, 62–5; Rogers, War Cruel and Sharp, 92–7, 112–13;
J. Sumption, Trial by Battle: The Hundred Years War I (London, 1990),
124, 13, 137.
37. G. Harriss, King, Parliament and Public Finance in Medieval England to
1369 (Oxford, 1975), 231–312.
38. Otway-Ruthven, A History of Medieval Ireland, 256–61; Frame, English
Lordship in Ireland, 218–78; R. Frame, ‘English Policies and Anglo-Irish
Attitudes in the Crisis of 1341–42’, in R. Frame, Ireland and Britain,
1170–1450, 113–30; R. Frame, ‘The Justiciarship of Ralph Ufford: Warfare and
Politics in Fourteenth-Century Ireland’, Studia Hibernica, xiii (1973), 7–47.
39. Davies, Lordship and Society, 269–73.
40. A. Grant, ‘Disaster at Neville’s Cross: The Scottish Point of View’, in D.
Rollason and M. Prestwich (eds), The Battle of Neville’s Cross (Stamford,
1998), 15–35; C. Rogers, ‘The Scottish Invasion of 1346’, Northern
History, 34 (1998), 51–82; M. Penman, ‘The Scots at the Battle of Neville’s
Cross, 17 October 1346’, SHR, 80 (2001), 157–80.
41. Rogers, War, Cruel and Sharp, 335–7; J. Sumption, Trial by Fire: The
Hundred Years War II (London, 1999), 291–2.
· 54 ·
chapter three
SOVEREIGNTY AND WAR

Age of Conquest
A fascinating perspective on the land and peoples of the island of

Britain in the fourteenth century is provided by the Gough Map.
The map is a visual representation of Britain which marked a new level of
sophistication in the mapping of the island. The coastlines of eastern and
southern England are accurately depicted and numerous towns, roads,
rivers and provinces are shown throughout the island. The map was
probably produced during the 1360s but relied on an earlier model from
the reign of Edward I. Though it has distances between towns written in,
this was not intended as a guide for travellers. Instead the Gough Map
was probably the work of a clerk in the English king’s service. Its purpose
was ideological rather than navigational. The presentation of the island
as a single entity without internal political boundaries was a clear statement
about the authority which legitimately belonged to the king of England
over the whole of Britain. The rights of the Plantagenet kings were
expressed in a variety of ways. By identifying the landing place of Brutus
the Trojan, the mythical founder of the British kingdom, and key sites in
the legend of King Arthur, the map linked concerns of geography to the
claims that King Edward was the heir to Arthur and the kings of Britain.
A reference to recent events has been read into the depiction of a wrecked
ship and a prone figure off Orkney. This may show the fate of Margaret
of Norway, the lady of Scotland, who died there in 1290. The ship could
be intended as a reminder that the Scottish kingdom had been left
rudderless without its royal line and thus came under Edward’s lordship.
More generally, the Gough Map was intended to communicate the
administrative and territorial mastery of the English crown across Britain.
Towns, roads and anchorages show the grasp of the royal government on
the centres of the realm. Nowhere is this more obvious than in Wales.
The roads drawn here depict the advance of King Edward against his
Welsh enemies in 1294–5. The sites named are dominated by the king’s
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DISUNITED KINGDOMS
new castles and boroughs. This is a map of a conquered Wales defined by

the administrative centres of English rule. However, in Wales and Scotland
the Gough Map concedes the limits to its image of Edwardian rule. Both
lands contain far less detail than is provided for England. Scotland’s
shape is merely sketched in and the map falls back on labels identifying
wolves and deer-hunting. Much of Scotland remains terra incognita
for the map makers of the English royal bureaucracy, a reflection of the
limits to the territorial reach of their king and the ultimate failure of any
claims to a monarchy over the whole island.1
The Gough Map depicts the way in which, driven by events, English
royal ambitions and policy in Britain were formed into an imperial project
by kings, clerks and chroniclers. In this regard, the noting of sites relating
to Arthur and Brutus cannot be written off as decorative additions to the
map’s primary purposes. Both figure in the History of the Kings of Britain
written in the mid-twelfth century by Geoffrey of Monmouth. Though
dealing with a mythical past, this work was the strongest influence on
ideas about the political traditions of Britain. Above all, the History
stressed the ancient existence of a united British monarchy and the
primacy of the rulers of England over it.2 Such ideas were current well
before the 1270s, but Edward I’s conquest of Wales and his extension of
lordship over Scotland excited a wave of statements justifying the king’s
efforts by reference to the Brutus legend and to Arthur. Chroniclers like
Piers Langtoft praised Edward as a second Arthur who had re-united the
monarchy of Britain by his conquests. Langtoft’s phrases reflected ideas
at work within the king’s own circle. A model for the Gough Map com-
posed around 1300, with its interest in Brutus and Arthur, would have
been one of a number of official or semi-official statements which used the
idea of a British monarchy to justify Edward’s primacy. Edward certainly
recognised the value of such precedents. In 1291 he had monastic
chronicles scrutinised by his clerks for evidence supporting his claim to
sovereignty over Scotland. A decade later, Edward sought to resist papal
criticism of his treatment of Scotland by drawing on this material to make
his case to be rightful lord over the Scottish realm. This employed the
stories of Brutus’s division of Britain between his sons and of Arthur’s
monarchy to demonstrate Scotland’s subjection to England. These
letters made no distinction between what a modern reader might regard
as legend and precedents from the more recent past. It was claimed that
the superiority of the kings of England had been recognised in the sub-
missions of Scottish kings between 1072 and 1174 and by letters from
previous popes which appeared to acknowledge the subordination of the
rulers of Scotland to the English crown derived from royal archives.3
Similar material was collected with regard to Wales in the 1270s and
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SOVEREIGNTY AND WAR
1290s, demonstrating the nature of English royal authority over native

Wales in the thirteenth century.4 There was evidence enough of this
authority in Wales without the need for appeals to Arthur or Brutus and
the comparison highlights the relative weakness of Edward’s claims on
Scotland.
What was the function of such material? In 1301 it was the basis of a
diplomatic effort to justify Edward’s treatment of Scotland at the papal
curia.5 Appeals to British ideology were hardly meant to provide a basis

of authority acceptable to either the Welsh or the Scots. Though clearly
attractive to some amongst the king’s servants and contemporaries, direct
evidence of Arthurian or imperial symbolism in Edward’s conquests was
limited to expressions of taste such as the king’s visit to Arthur’s reputed
grave, the holding of ‘Arthurian’ tournaments and the design of Caernarfon
Castle.6 The official titles used by Edward make no reference to any
British kingship. Though he created his son as Prince of Wales in 1301,
Edward remained simply king of England and made no claim to embody
either separate Scottish or Welsh monarchy. The prologue to Edward’s
Statute of Wales of 1284 made clear his understanding of his own
authority in Britain. In this the ‘land of Wales’ was ‘wholly and entirely
transferred under our dominion’ and ‘annexed and united’ to the crown
of England. Similarly, in 1305, the king’s Ordinance for the Good Order
of Scotland referred to Scotland throughout as a land not a kingdom.
The single use of the word roiaume is as part of the phrase ‘the other
good folk of his (Edward’s) realm and of his lordship’. This too indicates
that Scotland and its people were considered part of a single kingdom,
that of England, though, like the Welsh, with distinct laws and govern-
ment. Edward’s sense of the British identity was that ‘the kingdom of the
English’ stood for what had once been ‘the kingdom of Britain’.7
In itself this was hardly revolutionary. English claims to British sover-
eignty had been expressed since well before the Norman Conquest. The
precedents collected by Edward I’s clerks were evidence of the efforts by
his predecessors to exert some form of lordship over other rulers in
Britain. However, events from 1280 onwards put these claims in a different
context, that of conquest and absorption. This shift cannot simply be
ascribed to the character of Edward I or to the opportunities which
were presented to him. Instead Edward’s actions were also influenced
by developing ideas about kingship and the state during the thirteenth
century. Theologians and legal writers put forward theories which stressed
the authority of rulers and the obligations placed on their subjects. The
work, On the Rule of Princes, which was written by Giles of Rome
for Edward I’s rival, Philip IV of France, presented the kingdom as the
ideal unit of government and kingship the model form of rule. Similar
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DISUNITED KINGDOMS
conclusions could be drawn from legal writings. The tag, ‘the king is
emperor in his kingdom’, first coined in the later thirteenth century,
inferred that rulers of kingdoms could claim the powers accorded to the
Emperor in Roman law. Treatises like the English text known as Bracton
placed the king’s authority under the law but at the same time made clear
that the king was the source of that law and all jurisdictions in the realm.8
Such ideas clearly influenced Edward I’s kingship with regard to his
English realm. For instance, the Quo Warranto inquiry into private rights
of justice drew its justification from Bracton’s view of the king’s legal
supremacy in his realm. However, these ideas also had a major effect on
the relationships between the English king and the leading figures and
communities of the rest of the British Isles. This was most obvious
in respect of English magnates in the lordship of Ireland and march of
Wales. In Ireland there were efforts to limit the number and judicial
independence of private liberties. In the reign of Edward I six of the eight
aristocratic liberties came into temporary royal custody or were abolished.
Even more striking were the series of interventions by the king and his
officers in the march during the decade after the conquest of native
Wales. Nine holders of marcher lordships, among them great English
earls and close royal supporters like Gilbert Clare, Humphrey Bohun and
the Mortimers, experienced challenges to their traditional impunity.
These interventions were not presented as a general assault on the liberty
of the march. Instead they relied on the assertion of less sweeping royal
rights; to hear cases, to deal with displays of disrespect to royal injunc-
tions and officials or to receive appeals from vassals of marcher lords. Yet
within such cases, the king’s clerks advanced ideas about Edward’s rights
as sovereign, that ‘by his inner judgement’ he upheld what was ‘useful
and necessary for the realm and people’ and ultimately that ‘the king for
the common good is by his prerogative in many cases above the laws and
customs used in his realm’.9
These statements drew directly on theories of monarchy and had clear
implications for the relationships between the English king and the non-
English lords in the British Isles. Even during the reign of Henry III
there were signs of changes to the looser, less formal style of overlordship
traditional in such relationships. At the height of Henry’s authority
during the 1240s he extracted fuller recognition of his rights as lord from
the Scottish king and Welsh princes. In the treaty of Woodstock of 1247,
the princes of Gwynedd did homage in terms which included military
service, an obligation to answer appeals from their own jurisdiction in
royal courts and the recognition that any future war against Henry would
be punished with their disinheritance. Such terms were the shape of
things to come. In much more limited language, in 1244 Alexander II
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king of Scots issued letters which called Henry ‘our liege lord’ and prom-
ised not to make any alliance which would harm the English king. This
represents an admission of Henry’s status which stemmed from Alexander’s
possession of English estates. The terms had parallels with the liege hom-
age paid to the French king from 1259 by Henry as duke of Aquitaine.
The tightening of sovereignty from the mid-thirteenth century onwards
meant that even kings could face restrictions in the making of alliances
by their obligations as vassals.10

The way Edward I treated the Welsh princes, the Scottish king and
Irish leaders was an intensification of long-term patterns. However, the
pursuit of exacting, uniform imperium over royal and princely neigh-
bours based on expressions of legal sovereignty was the hallmark of
Edward’s reign. The political crises of Henry III’s latter years had limited
English royal lordship beyond the kingdom. This was clearly demon-
strated in the treaty of Montgomery, where ‘to exalt . . . and honour’
Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, Henry recognised him as prince of Wales with the
‘fealty and homage of the Welsh barons of Wales’. Llywelyn remained the
English king’s vassal but his new status restricted the direct authority of
the crown in native Wales. Edward reversed this. His war with Llywelyn
in 1276–7 was over the issue of the prince’s homage, and the treaty of
Aberconwy which ended the conflict effectively dismantled Llywelyn’s
position as lord over the Welsh princes. Edward was confirmed as the
ultimate source of justice in Wales and, during the next five years,
the king’s jurisdiction was demonstrated to a much greater extent than
previously. Royal commissions were empowered to judge cases from
both native and marcher Wales and could summon princes and lords to
answer charges brought against them. Some of the judges were Welsh
and Welsh law remained in place for cases within native Wales, but it was
clear that the king was no longer a distant overlord but an immediate
and overriding source of legal judgement. Resistance to this justice, in
the shape of the uprising of men who felt their rights had been trampled
by the king’s commissioners, was treated as rebellion. The conquest
of 1282–4 completed this process. Most of the lands held by the Welsh
princes were brought under the direct authority of the king. The
Statute of Wales was one part of the process. It divided the northern
lands into royal counties under sheriffs and other English-style officials
and imposed English criminal law on them. While Welsh law was pre-
served in matters of land and disputes between Welshmen (and Welsh
legal officers like the rhaglaw were appointed), it was now inferior to
English legal and judicial practices. The changes in law and jurisdiction
demonstrated the full absorption of native Wales into the realm of the
English king.11
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It is hard not to regard the similarities between Edward’s conquest of

Wales and the king’s pursuit and exploitation of powers as sovereign lord
over the Scottish kingdom as evidence of fixed intentions. At the least
they display how the attitudes of Edward I and his advisers were shaped
by ideas about kingship and royal jurisdiction. In regard to Scotland, the
key moment came in May 1291 when Edward met the Scottish com-
munity at Norham on the Anglo-Scottish border. The king’s chief justice
told the Scottish lords that Edward had come north to resolve the suc-
cession to the Scottish throne ‘by virtue of la soveraine seigneurie which
belongs to him’ and requested that they recognise this right or prove that
he did not possess it. Under pressure, the Scottish community agreed to
give Edward the custody of the Scottish realm whilst he judged the royal
succession. In December 1292 John Balliol swore homage to Edward
‘lord superior of the realm of Scotland’ for his kingdom. In terms of
contemporary ideas about sovereignty, this was a decisive act. Edward
was able to claim that John was simply another magnate of his realm,
owing services and under the full jurisdiction of the English crown. The
Scottish king was required to attend the English parliament and answer
appeals from his own court to Edward’s judgement ‘as our subject, like
others of our realm’. While these appeals were few in number they
allowed Edward to demonstrate the meaning of his sovereignty. To
answer the appeal made by Macduff of Fife against his judgement, King
John was forced to travel to Westminster. Edward placed the appellant
under his protection and took custody of the lands of the under-age earl
of Fife. John’s ultimate failure to attend parliament to answer the case
was a cause of the war between the kings which broke out in 1296.12
The establishment of Edward’s sovereignty in 1291 and the defeat and
forfeiture of John in 1296 provided the basis for later English claims to
rule Scotland. These were subject to far greater resistance than in Wales
and were never securely established. In 1328 the young Edward III re-
nounced the ‘rights of rule, dominion and superiority’ which he and his
predecessors had asserted but, within five years, the Scottish claimant,
Edward Balliol, was writing that Scotland ‘ought, and in all times past has
been, . . . held from the kings of England by liege homage and fealty’.
This would remain the stated position of the English crown for most of
the next century and a half. In 1356 Edward Balliol resigned his claim
to the Scottish throne to Edward III, who issued letters confirming
the rights and laws of his Scottish subjects. In 1400, during an invasion
of south-eastern Scotland, Edward III’s grandson, Henry IV, called on
the nobility of Scotland to perform homage to him as their lord while
English chroniclers claimed that the captive Scottish king, James I, paid
homage to Henry V in 1420. As late as 1449 English diplomats were
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stressing that truce negotiations with the Scots in no way represented a

renunciation of the rights which the English king claimed in Scotland.
The ‘stability of perpetual peace’ between English and Scottish realms,
hoped for in the treaty of 1328, would prove elusive. The principal ob-
stacle to a final peace after 1332 was the issue of the sovereignty which
Edward I and his successors believed they had established in 1291. The
maintenance of this claim prevented the formal recognition of the line of
kings from Robert Bruce onwards by the English crown. The authority
of the Scottish royal line was, in turn, bound up with the rejection of
English sovereignty.13
This rejection was not solely due to the hatreds stirred up by long
periods of sustained warfare after 1296. It was also a product of the way
in which sovereign lordship was extended and interpreted by Edward I.
The legalistic and intrusive approach of the king towards the other lead-
ing lords in the British Isles created a new political atmosphere. As we
have seen, Edward and his officials showed a general intolerance of claims
by other rulers and magnates to enjoy special status and rights in the
running of their realms or territories. In his dealings with Llywelyn of
Wales and John of Scotland, Edward offered to grant them earldoms in
England in exchange for their royal and princely dominions. Such offers
expressed Edward’s lack of sympathy for traditions of princely and royal
rule in these lands. They provide further evidence of the English king’s
goal of eroding such traditions and the trappings of monarchy with
which they were bound up.14 Though less dramatic than events in Wales
and Scotland, the way in which the heads of the leading Irish dynasties
were treated by the English crown showed the same erosion of status. In
the early thirteenth century the heads of the MacMurrough, O’Neill,
O’Connor and O’Brien families were generally referred to as kings in the
records of the English government. They enjoyed a degree of personal
contact with their superior lord, the English king, via letters or, much
more rarely, attendance at court and, unlike other Irish lords, were en-
titled to use English law. Their position was not unlike that held by the
Welsh princes. Like the princes, by 1300 this standing was much reduced.
Instead of kings these figures were termed leaders or nobles and dealt not
with the English king’s court but with his officials in the Irish lordship.
Communications from the English administration – for example, sum-
monses to serve in Edward’s Scottish campaigns – tended to be sent to
long lists of English and Irish lords. The old royal dynasties were grouped
with other leaders, reflecting a decline in their status and their treatment
as ordinary, if often recalcitrant, tenants of the English crown.15
The determination to make clear that previously royal rulers were to
be regarded as members of the wider aristocratic groupings was linked to
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the heightened status accorded to monarchy. The words of the chronicler

Piers Langtoft that ‘there is neither king nor prince of all the countries
except King Edward, who has thus united them’ were a reflection of a
conscious goal of the English monarchy. The way in which Edward I had
the trappings of kingship stripped from John of Scotland graphically
demonstrated his authority to unmake his royal vassal. The removal of
the records of Scottish government and the destruction or appropriation
of the symbols of Welsh and Scottish monarchy in the aftermath of Edward’s

conquests symbolised the new reality. The relic of the true cross held by
the princes of Gwynedd and the stone seat on which the Scottish kings
were crowned were removed by Edward, while the princely coronet of
Gwynedd and the great seal of Scotland were destroyed. Such acts dis-
played the termination of monarchical traditions in the other realms of
Britain and the annexation of their authority to the English crown.16
They were products of the ultimate display of sovereign authority. In
Wales in 1283–4 and in Scotland in 1296 Edward I presented his actions
as the punishment of rebellious vassals. The Scottish king and Welsh
princes had forfeited the lands and titles they held as a result of their
breaches of sworn homage to the English king. Though John had sent
Edward letters renouncing his homage, this formal defiance cut little ice
with the English king. Unlike opponents of royal authority in earlier
periods, John was stripped of his regalia and titles in July 1296 and sent
into imprisonment. He did, at least, escape the penalty suffered by
Dafydd of Gwynedd in 1283. Dafydd was executed as a traitor and his
head and that of his brother, Llywelyn, were publicly displayed. Edward
was slower to bring charges of treason against his Scottish opponents
between 1296 and 1304, hoping to obtain their submissions. However,
following the general surrender in 1305 William Wallace was tried and
executed. The next year the same fate was meted out to a number of
Robert Bruce’s supporters, including the earl of Atholl, a kinsman of
Edward I.17 In 1346 and 1402 Scottish lords accused of breaking oaths
of allegiance to the English king were treated as traitors. Such treatment
was directed at Scots who had previously done homage to the English
kings but was a sign of wider attitudes about monarchy. Treason was the
crime of damaging the crown’s authority, and the increased status
accorded to kings under the influence of Roman law widened the use
of such charges against rebels. The condemnation of Welsh princes and
Scottish lords as traitors was a means of demonstrating the full exercise
of sovereign rights in lands beyond England. However, such acts
also carried a powerful message about Edward’s possession of public
authority as the rightful lord of these individuals which had implications
in England too.
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The claims of the English crown to exert unified monarchical authority

rested on its ability to mobilise the material resources needed to enforce
these claims against non-English rulers and communities. Both were
products of the administrative machine at the disposal of the king of
England. This allowed Edward I and his successors to wage warfare on a
scale and at lengths far beyond any of his opponents in the British Isles.
This scale was demonstrated by the size of the armies put into the field
by the English crown in Wales and Scotland. The numbers of soldiers

mustered by Edward I in the 1290s represented a medieval peak and
were all the more remarkable for the fact that the king was not just
campaigning in Wales and Scotland but also in Flanders and Gascony
during the period 1294–8. The forces which Edward raised to defeat the
rebellion of Madog ap Llywelyn in 1294, for example, peaked at about
30,000 men, while 25,000 foot served in the host which the king led to
Scotland in 1298. Edward’s successors could also muster large armies.
Edward II had over 20,000 men in his 1322 campaign, while there were
10,000 soldiers in Edward III’s Scottish expedition of 1335. The quality
of such forces was mixed. Up until the late 1330s English foot were
raised by calling on local communities to levy contingents of poorly
trained and equipped men. Yet, for all this, the numbers were impressive
and suggest kings believed that massive displays of manpower could cow
the opposition in Scotland and Wales; though with the gradual move
towards armies recruited by contracts with captains rather than by mass
levies and the onset of major continental warfare from the late 1330s
armies of this size were raised much less often for war in Scotland. Only
Richard II in 1385 and Henry IV in 1400 took the field with forces
numbering around 10,000 men.18
The infantry forces raised by the Plantagenets have been seen as the
deliberate effort of the crown to mobilise the English ‘nation in arms’.
However, this underestimates the extent to which the Plantagenets called
on the resources of their other dominions in warfare. A contingent of
cavalry and crossbowmen from Gascony served in the campaign against
the Welsh in 1282, but it was Wales itself which provided the king with
his largest and most frequently-mustered non-English troops. This was
the case even in the Welsh wars of 1277, 1282 and 1294 when thousands
of Welsh foot, both from the marches and princely Wales, served in
English armies. In 1298 over 10,000 Welsh were in the royal army at the
outset of the Falkirk campaign. Though their mutiny on the campaign
indicates doubts about their enthusiasm, Wales remained a key recruiting
ground for English kings during the fourteenth century and, as will be
discussed, the needs of military service shaped the government of the
country. Contributions from Ireland were also sought by the English
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kings. In 1296, 1301 and 1303–4 companies of 2,000–3,000 men served

in Scotland, while about 1,600 Irish cavalry and foot joined Edward III’s
campaign of 1335. These were composed of English from Ireland, though
summonses were also issued to Irish leaders as in 1310 and 1314.19
In addition to numbers, the English normally possessed advantages
in open battle. The heavy cavalry contingents raised by Edward I and
Edward II for war in Scotland could number 2,000–3,000 and clearly
intimidated their opponents. At Falkirk in 1298, the Scottish cavalry fled

when confronted by the much larger numbers of English horse. Robert
Bruce was reluctant to risk facing enemy cavalry in the open, even
refusing battle with a company of a few hundred horse in 1311. Though
Bannockburn has been presented as proof of the growing strength of
infantry, it was in reality the product of exceptional circumstances and
Bruce’s exploitation of them. Even if this ‘infantry revolution’ is taken at
face value, by the 1330s English armies had developed an alternative
means of dominating the battlefield. The defeats inflicted on the Scots
at Dupplin Moor and Halidon Hill in 1332–3 were the first battles won
by the effective use of massed archery and dismounted men at arms.
The crushing setbacks experienced by the Scots at Falkirk, Dupplin and
Halidon taught them the lessons long learned by Welsh and Irish leaders,
that open battle against English field armies was to be avoided.20
For the English this meant that battles were rare and that, with the
exception of Dunbar in 1296, they rarely delivered the key to military
success. Instead, Edward I and his heirs developed strategies designed to
wear down opposition in Scotland and Wales. Part of this was achieved
by leading these large field armies into the heartlands of the enemy’s
realm. In 1277 and 1282 Edward I led armies into Gwynedd without
facing a pitched battle. The same king’s Scottish campaign of 1296 was
a march through all the main royal centres of southern and eastern
Scotland, while in 1301, against a more determined foe, Edward sent one
army through Galloway while he advanced up the Tweed, down Clydesdale
to Glasgow, capturing the nearby castle of Bothwell. His grandson,
Edward III, also employed two armies in Scotland in 1335. The hosts
met up at Perth, which the king subsequently fortified.21 There was
a conscious link between advances by armies which the enemy were
unwilling to face and the capture or fortification of strongpoints. In
Wales the success of Edward I’s campaigns was cemented by his famous
castle-building programme. The construction of a chain of powerful
castles from Aberystwyth to Flint served multiple purposes. These castles
provided the king’s forces with secure bases in the areas of likely Welsh
unrest which could act as refuges or as supply points for advancing
armies. In winter 1294, when he was cut off by a Welsh host, Edward I
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avoided disaster thanks to the shelter provided by Conwy Castle.

However, in purely military terms the castles were a case of overkill. Their
cost was out of proportion to the ability of the Welsh to wage formal
siege warfare and their concentric walls and keep gatehouses did not
render them invulnerable to surprise attack. The size and design of the
castles related instead to the role they played as centres of authority and
settlement in the new shires of the principality and as symbols of con-
quest. In Scotland the link between warfare and strongpoints was more
immediate. The existence of a good number of royal and baronial castles
allied to problems of finance and the matter of ongoing fighting meant
Edward I did not attempt to construct castles on a par with Wales in
Scotland. However castles were still a vital element in English strategy.
Both Edward I and his grandson did build functional defences of earth
and timber and undertook work on existing Scottish fortresses. From late
1296 until the mid-fifteenth century the English crown maintained gar-
risons within Scotland. At the height of English authority there were as
many as thirty castles containing between twenty and several hundred
soldiers. The purpose of such garrisons was to provide the basis of an
Edwardian administration in Scotland, backing the English king’s offi-
cials and keeping the local population in English allegiance. Around
Lochmaben in 1299, Cupar in 1308 and Edinburgh in 1337–8, these
small forces fought equally-sized bands of Scots in localised conflicts.22
Such warfare, as typical of the Scottish wars as major royal campaigns,
had similarities with the activities of the English government in Ireland.
Warfare was a major part of such activities. This fighting was localised but
endemic. During 1290, for example, the king’s justiciar, Archbishop
Sandford of Dublin, engaged in warfare with the Irish in Desmond,
Tipperary, Offaly and Leix, Connacht and Meath. These campaigns were
very brief. They relied on calling out the king’s English vassals to perform
military service to a maximum of forty days. The forces involved were
generally small, but at Easter 1290 in an expedition against the Irish near
Roscommon, Sandford mustered an army of 100 horse, 4,500 foot and
Irish allies. The force was only retained for four days and had limited
goals. The duration of the campaign was not atypical, though the size of
the force was larger than most. Even against the Bruce brothers in 1317
the English force peaked at just under 1,000 horse and foot. The justiciar
also assessed the readiness of the king’s tenants to serve. Statutes issued
in the Irish parliament in 1297 dealt at length with the obligations of the
English to muster to defend their locality, on horse or foot according to
their wealth. While similar statutes were issued in England and Scotland,
the evidence of 1290 shows how regularly the English of Ireland had to
serve. Some military service was paid. Justiciars, especially those sent from
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England, were allowed to maintain paid retinues and forces. The largest
of these before 1361, led by Ralph Ufford in 1345, mustered over 2,000.
Payment was also made for longer-term defence. In 1290 Sandford paid
for small bodies of soldiers to guard the marches north of Kilkenny
against the Irish. These ‘wards’ often centred on a small castle and their
functions could include the blockade of hostile Irish in conjunction with
a larger expedition.23
The ability of the kings of England to wage war in this co-ordinated

and ambitious manner (though by no means always successfully) was
about more than just leaders and manpower. As always, the sinews of war
were provided by money but also by the royal departments and officials
which directed its flow. The detailed breakdown of payments and orders
needed for even routine military operations is impressive. The transport
of supplies for the garrison at Lochmaben in 1299 just the ten miles
from Annan required payments for boats, carts, watchmen and guards
and shows the daunting nature of the crown’s task and the means at
its disposal. The efforts of royal officials to feed armies based in Scotland
through the winter in 1301–2 and 1303–4 were even more complex
and impressive. The funds required for these tasks represented a major
challenge. Even leaving aside the costs of continental warfare, which
caused the political crises of 1297 and 1341, major expenditure was
needed for royal enterprises in Wales and Scotland. Payments for wages,
victuals, fortifications, equipment and horses amounted to huge totals for
each campaign. The Welsh war of 1282 cost around £150,000 and the
castle-building which accompanied it required £90,000 spent over several
decades. The cost of a short Scottish campaign in 1300 was probably
over £30,000 while the upkeep of the king’s garrisons in the same year
required £13,500. Such expenses mounted up in the course of the longer
war and, despite the obvious strains, the conflict was prosecuted to a suc-
cessful conclusion in 1304. The means by which the costs of war were
met signify the financial strengths of the English crown. The use of direct
taxation, the exploitation of England’s wool trade, either by increasing
the maltolt or customs tariff, or by the seizure of wool for sale to profit
the crown directly, and the reliance on the credit provided by Italian
banking houses, which advanced the sums needed for war finance in
return for access to royal revenues, all allowed the English kings to pur-
sue their ambitions. Though England was the principal source of such
finance, in 1314 Edward II assigned the revenues of Gascony to the pope
in return for a cash payment of £25,000 for his Scottish campaign while
the sums collected by the king’s officials in Ireland contributed to the
costs of the Welsh castles and financed the dispatch of men and supplies
for the Scottish campaigns of the three Edwards.24
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Turning the military efforts of the English crown into conquest depended
on the subjection and submission of non-English elites in Scotland,
Wales and Ireland. The success of royal expeditions was measured in
terms not simply of the fall of castles or defeat of enemy forces but in the
capitulation of opposing rulers or lords. Thus, despite the victory at
Falkirk, Edward I’s campaign in 1298 did not represent a major success.
Scottish resistance to Edward continued in the south-west and north for
years to come. It was the acceptance of the English king’s lordship that
made his Welsh expeditions in 1277, 1282 and 1295 so decisive, while
the main achievement of the campaign of 1301–2 was the submission of
several Scottish lords, including Robert Bruce. Three decades later, a
similar effort by Edward III in 1335 forced the temporary surrender of
Bruce’s grandson, Robert Stewart. Perhaps the high point of English
royal activity in the British Isles was achieved by the campaign of 1303–4.
Edward I stayed in the field with an army for over a year, sustained by his
officials’ efforts. This enduring presence, rather than any outright victory,
brought a flow of Scottish submissions culminating in that of the guard-
ian, John Comyn, in February 1304. Comyn’s submission was expressed
by an oath of fealty to King Edward. The formal acceptance of sovereign
lordship had been extracted by Edward and his officials many times dur-
ing the preceding years. Major oath-takings were not confined to periods
of warfare. In 1291, Edward I secured oaths from Scots recognising his
position as lord superior of their realm, while in 1301 oaths were taken
by numerous Welsh lords to their new prince, Edward’s son.25
Demands made for the homage of communities in the aftermath of
war were points of major symbolic and legal significance. In 1277 oaths
were taken from leading men in Gwynedd which required them to serve
Edward against their own prince should Llywelyn break the terms he had
agreed. Five years later, in the aftermath of the war of 1282–3, Edward
took this further. He required ‘six of the more honest, noble and trust-
worthy men’ from each district (cantref ) to ‘bind themselves to the
lord king and his heirs’ and keep his peace. The largest example of such
oath-taking came in 1296, following the king’s conquest of Scotland.
Over a thousand landowners, earls, barons, clergy, knights and burgesses
had their homage to Edward recorded on the Ragman Roll. Such collec-
tive acts of homage bound not just rulers and magnates but the wider
political class to their new royal lord by personal homage. Eight years
later Edward was again in a position to extract the submission of the
Scottish community. In 1304 (and in 1302 and 1335), the terms in
which homage was offered were the result of negotiations between the
English king and his opponents.26 Though the submissions of most Scots
to the Plantagenets proved temporary, they allowed Edward I and his
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heirs to claim Scottish consent for their rule. Continued opposition to

English sovereignty had to deal with these ‘letters in time past, sealed and
containing the consent of the people and the community’ and in 1309 it
was argued that they had been obtained by ‘force and violence which
could not, at the time, be resisted’.
In Ireland, too, such submissions were a key goal of the warfare waged
by the king’s justiciar. In 1290 Archbishop Sandford sought with limited
success to bring Irish leaders and kindreds in many districts to ‘the king’s
peace’ by war and diplomacy. The acceptance of royal justice and authority
by hostile Irish was seen as a promise of future good behaviour. In 1295
Muiris MacMurrough agreed to keep the king’s peace and to pay a fine
of 600 cows in damages, while in 1347 Conall O’More accepted a fine
of 1,000 cows (800 of which were remitted for good behaviour), prom-
ised he and his men would keep the peace and acknowledged he was the
king’s subject. The extraction of submissions from the lords of the
Leinster Irish mirrored the terms imposed on Scottish and Welsh rulers
and lords. Though these submissions proved temporary, they too marked
the recognition of the sovereign authority of the English crown and the
acceptance of obligations of loyalty.27
For Edward I it was natural to proceed from general submissions to
the re-ordering of these realms. The clearest statement of this approach
was made in the so-called Statute of Wales issued at Rhuddlan in 1284.
In the opening to this, Edward proclaimed his intention that like the
other lands ‘subject to his power’, Wales
should be governed with due order . . . to the advantage of justice, and that
the people or inhabitants of those lands who have submitted themselves to
our will, and whom we have accepted should be protected in security within
our peace under fixed laws and customs.
The administration and laws of the king’s new lands in north Wales were
altered to reflect Edward’s interpretation of these objectives and in ways
which imposed English legal and governmental practices on the com-
munities of these districts. There was no parallel statement of Edwardian
objectives with regard to Scotland, even when English rule appeared to
have been established in 1296 and 1304–5. The Scottish Ordinance of
1305 instead stressed the involvement of leading Scots in drawing it up.
It did however display similar concerns, stating the need to ‘reform and
amend the laws and customs which are displeasing to God’ and specify-
ing the personnel of the king’s government. Though this gave Scottish
lords custody of many local posts, as in Wales it was made clear that law
and government was at the will of the English king.28 It was a natural part
of conquest to proceed to the reordering of laws. By such royal orders,
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and by granting and restoring estates in his dominions to lords in his

peace and encouraging the settlement of English colonists in Wales and
in the Scottish town of Berwick, Edward I was seeking to strengthen the
bonds between the different lands under his rule. The personnel of their
governments and the use of manpower from all these lands in the king’s
wars speak of Edward I’s imperial approach to the rule of his dominions.
This applied to the funding of royal wars as well. From 1294 to 1297
Wales and Scotland were expected to contribute financially to Edward’s

wars in Gascony and Flanders, while money for the Scottish conflicts was
sought by taxation obtained from the Irish parliament as well as draining
the ordinary revenues of the lordship. The scrutiny of the finances of
Gascony and Ireland before these wars suggests the king’s attempt to
centralise his administrative grip. The values and claims pressed by this
‘second Arthur’ passed to his successors and in the 1330s Edward III
seemed intent on the restoration of the English crown’s authority in
Ireland and Scotland.29
The King’s Enemies: The Limits of English Royal Authority

The conquest of Wales and the Scottish wars were the greatest demon-
strations of the military and political resources of the English crown in
the British Isles before the sixteenth century. They were also defining
episodes in the development of political structures and relationships
across the isles during the century and a half from 1300. They did not
result in the secure establishment of an ‘English Empire’. Instead,
beyond England, the authority of the English crown continued to meet
with resentment, resistance and defiance from the non-English com-
munities of the archipelago. Given what we have seen about the apparent
ideological and material strength of the Plantagenet monarchy relative to
other rulers in the archipelago, the limits to the authority of Edward I
and his heirs require explanation. This explanation can be made in terms
of the resilience of communal or national identities. The reluctance of
non-English communities to accept the direct rule of an English king and
the resulting tensions were major issues in the late medieval British Isles.
Such questions of nation and community will be discussed in the next
two chapters. However, there is no easy division between questions of
communal activity and the traditions of self-government which provided
the framework for them. The cohesion of political communities centred
on the power and status of rulers. Both Scotland and Wales possessed
ideologies of monarchy which used mythical history to justify contem-
porary positions. During negotiations which occurred in the war of
1282, Llywelyn of Gwynedd referred to the Brutus legend in Geoffrey
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of Monmouth. He claimed that his authority derived from the grant of

Wales (Cambria) by Brutus to his younger son, Camber. This reflected
the acceptance of the superior lordship of the English crown by all Welsh
princes, but maintained their rightful possession of the lands which
Edward I challenged. By contrast, Scottish historical tradition rejected
the validity of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s version of events. The Scottish
case made to the pope in 1301 presented the kingship as deriving its
origins and legitimacy from a distinct historical process. In this material

the Greek prince, Gathelos, and his Egyptian queen, Scota, began a line
of rulers of the Scots without ties to the British monarchy.30
The arguments of 1301 came from Scottish historical narratives
written in the thirteenth century which served the purposes of the
Scottish monarchy. The claims of Scotland’s thirteenth-century kings for
full sovereignty were also reflected by efforts to secure papal permission
to receive the rite of coronation and by changes in the style of their
documents. This quest for enhanced status and authority was reflected
within their kingdom. Alexander III’s establishment of his lordship over
the Hebrides was the end of a long-term process, but the way in which
Alexander took Man into direct royal control, ending its royal dynasty
and suppressing rebellions on the island, expressed a conscious promo-
tion of the crown’s rights, even in dealings with subordinate royal figures.
In general, the expectations and traditions of Scottish kingship remained
comparatively limited and accepted variations in the nature of royal
authority in different parts of the realm, but the kings before 1286 were
keen to extend and strengthen their lordship.31 The same was true for the
princes of Gwynedd. The treaty of Montgomery fulfilled efforts to turn
the loose superiority of the dynasty over the other princely families into
formal lordship. Rather than doing fealty to the English king, other
princes were to pay homage to Llywelyn ap Gruffudd. Llywelyn sought
extended powers within Gwynedd. After his death, complaints against
the prince accused him of seizing lands, extending his judicial authority
and extracting payments from his people in money and stock without
precedent. These actions show a ruler intent on breaking custom in the
search for the kind of administrative powers enjoyed by kings elsewhere.32
The treatment of these monarchies by Edward I represented a test of
their power and stability. In 1277 and 1282 the Prince of Gwynedd
found it impossible to maintain resistance to the English crown. The
open hostility of other princes, like Gruffudd ap Gwenwynwyn of Powys,
to Gwynedd’s superiority and the limits to Llywelyn’s material resources
added to the other weaknesses of his position. However, the idea of a
Welsh prince of Wales did not wholly disappear. In 1294, it was natural
for Madog ap Llywelyn to proclaim his rebellion by adopting the title
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and, despite his defeat, the appeal remained. The body of Welsh writing
after 1284 which sought deliverance from foreign rule focused on
the restoration of Llywelyn’s line. His great-nephew, Owain Lawgoch,
encouraged such hopes in the 1370s. A soldier in the French king’s
service, Owain planned an expedition to Wales but was assassinated by an
English agent in 1378. Three decades later, another figure of princely
descent, Owain Glyn DWr, ‘was put forward by the men of North Wales
to be their prince’. As Prince of Wales, Glyn DWr would secure most of

the royal principality and marches for a time and seek to form Wales into
a distinct realm. The idea of native monarchy in Wales lived long after the
conquest of 1284.33
In its contest with the English crown, Scottish monarchy proved to
have the resilience to survive, albeit barely. In 1296 and 1304–5 contem-
poraries reported the near or total collapse of support for the king of
Scots, while between 1291 and 1295 and then in 1333–5 there seemed
to be widespread acceptance of English royal sovereignty over the realm.
However, the reactions and warfare which followed these periods of
apparent subjection are indicative of the strength of royal traditions in
Scotland. The contrast with the Welsh princes is informative. The prin-
cipality of Wales was both won and lost in a generation. Though Llywelyn
ap Gruffudd’s achievements were built on the efforts of previous rulers of
Gwynedd, it was his successes which had secured the title and authority
by 1267 and his failure which saw its collapse. The Scottish monarchy
rested on deeper foundations. During the era of political and military
crisis which ran from 1286 to 1357, royal government in Scotland was
able to operate in the absence of undisputed personal monarchy. The
deaths of Alexander III and his granddaughter, Margaret, the capture of
John Balliol and the minority and then captivity of David Bruce, denied
Scots the royal leadership which had been so important in the formation
of the Scottish kingdom. In these conditions, monarchy was not always
a source of political unity. The rivalry of Bruce and Balliol weakened
Scottish responses to Edward I and peaked in widespread Scottish
support for English kings in their struggles with the Bruces from 1306
and again after 1332. However, the conflict over the kingship reflected
the central significance of that office as the focus of an established
political hierarchy. It was Robert Bruce’s attempt to secure the throne in
1306 which renewed the war against the English crown, and his use
of the royal office allowed him to build support for his rule against his
opponents.34
This resilience was also reflected by the response to the repeated
failures of personal monarchy. In 1286 six guardians were chosen from
the kingdom’s magnates and prelates to run the royal government. They
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achieved relative success and the office of guardian was revived to provide
military and political leadership between 1297 and 1304. Its value was
suggested by the nomination of guardians in the succession plans of
Robert I, and from 1329 a series of individual guardians maintained David
II’s government against Edward III and Edward Balliol. In the face of
major attacks and divisions of allegiance, Scottish kings and guardians
preserved the image and reality of the realm. Perhaps the most important
aspect of this was the ability of kings and guardians to put armies into the
field. The gruelling defensive war of the guardians from 1298 to 1304,
Robert I’s wars in three realms from 1306 to 1323 and the recovery
of the Bruce party from catastrophic defeats in the 1330s wore down
the efforts of English kings to conquer Scotland. The Scottish approach
to war differed from that of the English. Rather than being sustained
by taxation, Scottish hosts depended on traditional obligations to
serve in the ‘common army’ for a short period. However, the intensity
and duration of the wars between 1296 and 1357 placed unparalleled
demands on this system. Robert I maintained his almost constant cam-
paigning from 1307 to 1323 by plundering enemies and taking supplies
from his supporters. He probably also summoned small parts of the host
in turn for attacks on different targets and many of his forays were as brief
as those of the English justiciar in Ireland, also dependent on unpaid
military service. Bruce may also have been able to rely on the willingness
of a core of veterans, many provided from the retinues of his leading
supporters, accustomed to long periods of campaigning. The loss of
many of these veterans at Fochart in 1318 caused Robert to reform the
rules of army service. The demands of war placed strains on Scottish
government, but also demonstrated the strength of its administrative and
political organisation. This was true, not just in central government,
but also in a regional context. North-eastern Scotland provides a good
example of this. Between 1297 and 1303, from 1308 to 1313 and in the
mid-1330s, this region was a vital source of resources and manpower for
the Scottish crown, while much of the south was in English allegiance.
Its lords and royal officials provided these resources and showed how local
administration functioned in a divided realm. This too was a product of
the cohesion and solidity of the Scottish realm. Though less centralised
in its structures of government and political culture, thirteenth-century
Scotland was a kingdom on the same lines as England and, for this
reason, was less susceptible than native Wales to conquest.35
This regional example illustrates further factors, those of geographical
scale and physical terrain. The north-east of Scotland’s importance was
a product of its location. For the English crown and its agents, to reach
the region it was necessary to cross the natural hurdles created by the
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southern uplands, the Forth, the Tay and the Grampians. English armies
only managed this in 1296, 1303 and 1336 and found it impossible to
maintain a secure hold on the region. At the same time, however, the
north-east was not a peripheral part of the Scottish realm. It contained
numerous royal centres, most prominently the major burgh of Aberdeen,
as the basis for its government. While English kings found it easier to win
submissions and rule in southern Scotland, here too there were difficul-
ties caused by the landscape. Galloway, Ettrick Forest and the Pentland
Hills all formed regions of difficult land, used by Scottish forces to dis-
rupt any English administration. It also became accepted strategy to
withdraw to these uplands in the face of major incursions into the south-
east. In 1322, 1356, 1385 and 1400, large English armies found the
lowlands stripped of supplies and the Scots elusive. Facing starvation,
they were forced to retreat. Logistical, as much as military, failures pre-
vented the establishment of English lordship in Scotland. Beyond the
areas of royal residences and direct jurisdiction, mostly located in the
lowlands of the south and east, issues of authority and allegiance were
dominated by magnates like the earls of Ross, the lords of Badenoch or
the lords of Lorn. The presence of direct royal authority, English or
Scottish, was a rare factor in these north-western regions which were well
beyond the reach of English campaigns. The scale of the Scottish king-
dom and its loose-limbed but resilient political structures were key fac-
tors in preventing an English conquest in the sixty years from 1296.36
Though its geography appeared forbidding to English observers
throughout the Middle Ages, Wales lacked the same security of scale.
The marcher lordships in southern and eastern Wales meant that princes
and nobles in Powys and Deheubarth were isolated and exposed to
attack. Gwynedd itself was more secure, behind mountains and estuaries,
but Snowdonia and Anglesey represented a small core to the prince’s
possessions. In 1277, 1282 and 1294, Edward I pursued virtually iden-
tical strategies. Multiple armies took the field. While campaigns were
launched against Powys and Deheubarth, the king advanced along the
north coast towards Snowdonia and Anglesey, which was occupied by a
fleet. The Welsh found it impossible to counter such an approach. The
disruptive attacks which had deterred earlier kings of England did not
work and in 1282, when Llywelyn attempted to launch such a foray into
the middle march, it led to his death in a skirmish. The success of
the Edwardian conquest and the settlement which followed was made
possible, not only by the fragility of Welsh political unity, but by the
small size of Gwynedd. The investment in castles and boroughs by
Edward I instead provided an English administrative structure through
which he was able to dominate the country.37
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Ireland witnessed no parallel attempts at English conquest during the

decades after 1280. As shown above, English military efforts in Ireland
involved almost constant, but small-scale, warfare whose aim was not
conquest but defence. The burden of this was borne by the English
inhabitants of Ireland. The dispatch of forces from England was rare and
on a smaller scale than contingents sent from Ireland for royal expedi-
tions to Scotland. Justiciars did arrive with retinues, the largest of which
before 1360 comprised fewer than 300 men, and even in 1317–18, at
the crisis of the Bruces’ campaigns, the actual (as opposed to promised)
military assistance was minimal. Edward Bruce’s challenge to the lordship
of the king of England provided the major attempt to alter the political
status quo on the island. The campaigns of these Scottish forces were the
only island-wide warfare to set alongside Plantagenet campaigns in Wales
and Scotland. Edward Bruce campaigned in Ulster, Meath and Leinster
in 1315–16 and, with his brother, Robert, marched through Munster as
far as Limerick in 1316–17. This warfare inflicted considerable damage
on the areas of English lordship and settlement in eastern Ireland but did
not really threaten the stability or allegiance of English Ireland. On an
island where sharp divisions existed between English and Irish, the Bruces’
efforts to win Irish allies made it very hard to win more than a few
English submissions. Robert and Edward Bruce also failed to secure any
stable body of Irish adherents. This failure was an indication that, despite
the long traditions of Irish kingship, there was no large-scale political
framework in Ireland beyond the administration of the king of England.
The high kingship claimed by Edward Bruce did not entitle him to any
real power. Instead he was drawn into conflicts within and between Irish
dynasties, which meant that English forces could back rival factions.
Conflict between the leaders of different branches of the O’Briens, for
example, in 1317 denied Bruce any effective support from Munster. In
normal circumstances, such rivalries could pull in competing English
lords, as in 1310 when the Burghs and Clares clashed during the ongoing
feud within the O’Brien dynasty, or allow the extension of English lord-
ship. In 1316, at the height of these campaigns, the English of Connacht
were able to recruit considerable Irish support to defeat Felim O’Connor
and deny Bruce possible allies in the province. Despite longstanding
antagonisms and evidence of mistrust amongst the leading Anglo-Irish
magnates, which led to the arrest of the earl of Ulster in 1316, the
English community worked with relative unity to check Bruce’s advances
and, ultimately, defeat him.38
The political fragmentation amongst the principal Irish dynasties, if
anything, increased during the period between 1280 and 1360. During
this period too, the old royal dynasties lost influence to lesser kindreds
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SOVEREIGNTY AND WAR
who had been their followers. In Munster, for example, the O’Briens
worked hard, but with limited success, to maintain their lordship over
their former satellites, the MacNamaras. However, this fragmentation did
not result in a further retreat of Irish lordship. By 1300 it was the English
government and community which felt itself to be under threat. The
Dublin parliament of 1297 showed concern about attacks on English
communities by Irish leaders and bands. This so-called ‘Gaelic resurgence’
was not a unified phenomenon and is best understood in its regional

contexts. However, as in Scotland and Wales, geography was a factor in
matters of government and warfare. The half century after the formation
of the Lordship of Ireland in 1170 had seen English lords and settlers
established in the best quality and most accessible land. Irish leaders
remained in upland districts and marsh, less desirable for settlement and
less susceptible to military control. The repeated campaigns of the king’s
justiciars into the Wicklow Mountains and the bogs of Leix and Offaly
from the 1280s failed to end the raids launched by the Irish of these
areas, which were a matter of economic need as well as ethnic hostility.
In western Munster, parts of Connacht and much of Ulster similar pat-
terns developed between English officials and lords and local Irish mag-
nates. The lands inhabited by the two peoples influenced their approach
to war and reveal different physical environments. The 1297 parliament
reported that ‘the Irish, trusting in the thickness of woods and the depth
of the adjacent bogs, quickly become more daring in committing
offences’, using such ground as refuges from pursuit. The king’s tenants
were ordered to keep the highways clear of ‘quickly growing wood’ and
in 1290 the aim of one of the justiciar’s campaign was to ‘make a pass’,
open a road, between Roscommon and Meath.39
The landscape was only one factor in the increased effectiveness of
Irish leaders in warfare. The century since the arrival of the English in
1169 had seen the adoption of many of the invaders’ methods of warfare.
The use of cavalry (admittedly without saddles and stirrups) and of armour
by Irish nobles were features of this, while the employment of castles
from about 1250 was possible, not just because of the importance of such
centres in English lordship, but also because of the ability of Irish nobles
to garrison them. This ability stemmed from the growing employment of
bands of professional soldiers by these nobles. The traditional means of
raising an army was a summons to all freemen said to be ‘under’ a king
or lord. This produced a poorly-equipped host insufficient to meet the
warfare of the English. From the mid-thirteenth century, however, leaders
could call on bands of foot soldiers, called kerne (Gaelic ceithearn), still
lightly-armed but effective in the raids and ambushes practised in Irish
warfare. These were frequently retained by billeting them on peasants,
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allowing for the maintenance of semi-professional forces. The same

method was used to retain a second class of soldier. From about 1250
the galloglass (Gaelic galloglaich) appeared in Ireland as an identifiable
group of soldiers. Armoured and carrying axes and spears, the galloglass
provided a core of heavy infantry able to face English forces in the field.
They came from the gall or foreigners of the Hebrides, representing
the contacts between different parts of the Gaelic-speaking world. The
military value of these new types of soldier in Ireland was indicated by

their employment from 1300 by English lords.40
This change in the flow of military influence in Ireland was part of
wider shifts which went far beyond methods of fighting. That these were
not confined to Ireland is demonstrated by the importance of the same
Islesmen who provided the galloglass in Scottish warfare. After 1307
soldiers from the Western Isles provided the core for many of Bruce’s
armies in Scotland, Ireland and northern England, playing a vital role in
his successes of these campaigns. Alongside the ‘common army’, Robert
depended on these mercenary soldiers from the Gaelic world, rewarding
them with the profits of war and with new lands. As in Ireland the military
skills of the Hebrideans would play a part in changing the internal
character of Scotland.41
The relative abilities of leaders in Wales, Scotland and Ireland to resist
the English crown depended on the solidity of political structures allied
to matters of geography and military method. The submissions of Welsh
elites in 1277, 1283 and 1295 brought short periods of warfare to a close,
requiring finite resources in men and money. The conquest of Wales was
achieved at a period when Edward I’s administration was free from other
demands. By contrast, the wars of attrition which English kings waged in
Scotland proved to be longer and thus placed far more pressures on the
royal administration. In the 1290s and 1330s this was further com-
pounded by the much greater demands of war against the French king.
While amounts spent on war in Ireland were far smaller, they were rarely
subsidised from their lord’s wider dominions before 1360. Instead, Irish
revenues and men were directed to Scottish, Welsh and French conflicts,
leaving limited, arguably insufficient, resources for the defence of English
Ireland. Ongoing warfare created political problems. The crisis of 1297,
the ongoing tensions of Edward II’s reign, culminating in the civil war
of 1322, and the difficulties faced by Edward III in 1340–1 related, in
differing ways, to the strains on English royal authority and administra-
tion caused by warfare and its demands. These in turn weakened the
crown’s hold on its outer possessions. The situation is illustrated most
clearly by Edward II’s failure to maintain his father’s level of engagement
in Scotland at a point when Robert Bruce faced widespread opposition
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SOVEREIGNTY AND WAR
from within the Scottish nobility. Robert’s success in winning his king-
dom in the period between 1306 and 1314 would prove, with hindsight,
to be the decisive phase of the Anglo-Scottish conflict. Its outcome was
the result of Bruce’s successful exploitation of the political structures and
the geography of Scotland but depended too on the fact that, after a
sustained period of massive royal demands to sustain its wars, the royal
administrative machine and the English community could not continue
the process of conquest. In Scotland, and in Ireland, the limits of English

authority had begun to contract.
Notes
1. R.A. Pelham, ‘The Gough Map’, The Geographical Journal, 81 (1933),
34–9; E.J.S. Parsons, The Map of Great Britain circa AD 1360 Known as the
Gough Map (Oxford, 1958); D. Birkholz, The King’s Two Maps: Cartography
and Culture in Thirteenth-Century England (New York, 2004), 113–14,
135–46.
2. Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain (Harmondsworth,
1966); J. Gillingham, ‘The History and Context of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s
History of the Kings of Britain’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 13 (1991), 99–118.
3. Chronicle of Pierre de Langtoft, ii, 265–7; R.A. Griffiths, ‘Edward I, Scotland
and the Chronicles of English Religious Houses’, in Griffiths, Conquerors
and Conquered in Medieval Wales (Stroud, 1994), 148–56; Stones, Anglo-
Scottish Relations, no. 30; Davies, First English Empire, 41–2.
4. Littere Wallie preserved in Liber A in the Public Record Office, ed. J.G.
Edwards (Cardiff, 1940), xxvii–xxxiii; R.I. Jack, Medieval Wales: The Sources
of History (London, 1972), 49–51.
5. For this debate see R.J. Goldstein, ‘The Scottish Mission to Boniface VIII:
A Reconsideration of the Context of the Instructiones and Processus’, SHR,
70 (1991), 1–15.
6. R.S. Loomis, ‘Edward I, Arthurian Enthusiast’, Speculum 28 (1953), 114–27;
J.P. Carley, ‘Arthur in English History’, in W.R.J. Barron, The Arthur of the
English: The Arthurian Legend in Medieval English Life and Literature
(Cardiff, 1981), 47–57; Davies, First English Empire, 31–3.
7. English Historical Documents, iii, ed. H. Rothwell (Oxford, 1975), no. 55;
Davies, Age of Conquest, 386; Stones, Anglo-Scottish Relations, no. 33.
8. J. Dunbabin, ‘Government’, in J.H. Burns (ed.), The Cambridge History of
Medieval Political Thought c.350–c.1450 (Cambridge, 1988), 477–519;
Davies, Domination and Conquest, 112–15.
9. B. Hartland, ‘The Liberties of Ireland in the Reign of Edward I’, in
M. Prestwich (ed.), Liberties and Identities in the Medieval British Isles
(Woodbridge, 2008), 200–16; Davies, Lordship and Society, 264.
10. Littere Wallie, 7–8; Lewis, ‘Treaty of Woodstock’, 37–65; A.O. Anderson (ed.),
Early Sources of Scottish History 500–1286, 2 vols (London, 1908), ii, 351–8.
11. Littere Wallie, 1–4, 118–22; English Historical Documents, iii, no. 55; Smith,
Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, 451–506.
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12. Stones, Anglo-Scottish Relations, nos 15, 16, 20, 21; Duncan, The Kingship
of the Scots, 197–324; Davies, Domination and Conquest, 124.
13. E.L.G. Stones and M.N. Blount, ‘The Surrender of King John of Scotland
to Edward I in 1296: Some New Evidence’, Bulletin of the Institute of
Historical Research, 48 (1975), 94–106; Stones, Anglo-Scottish Relations,
nos 24, 41; Foedera, ed. Rymer, ii, 847–8; ibid, xi, 236–8; S. Boardman,
The Early Stewart Kings: Robert II and Robert III (East Linton, 1997),
230–2.
14. Smith, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, 542–4; Beam, Balliol Dynasty, 154–61.

15. Frame, ‘England and Ireland, 1171–1399’, 20–5.
16. Smith, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, 580–1; Davies, Age of Conquest, 355–6;
Stones, Anglo-Scottish Relations, no. 25; Watson, Under the Hammer, 26;
M. Strickland, ‘“All brought to nought and thy state undone”: Treason,
Disinvestiture and the Disgracing of Arms under Edward II’, in P. Coss and
C. Tyerman (eds), Soldiers, Nobles and Gentlemen: Essays in Honour of
Maurice Keen (Woodbridge, 2009), 279–304, 288–96.
17. Stones, Anglo-Scottish Relations, no. 23; J.G. Bellamy, The Law of Treason in
England in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1970), 24–46, 53–4; Walter
Bower, Scotichronicon, ed. D.E.R. Watt, 9 vols (Aberdeen, 1987–98), viii,
47–9; M. Strickland, ‘Treason, Feud and the Growth of State Violence:
Edward I and the “War of the Earl of Carrick”, 1306–7’, in C. Given-Wilson,
A. Kettle and L. Scales (eds), War, Government and Aristocracy in the British
Isles, c.1150–1500 (Woodbridge, 2008), 84–113.
18. M. Prestwich, War, Politics and Finance under Edward I (London, 1972),
67–113; M. Prestwich, Armies and Warfare in the Middle Ages: The English
Experience (New Haven, 1996), 115–46; A.L. Brown, The Governance of Late
Medieval England 1272–1461 (London, 1989), 85–99; Nicholson, Edward
III and the Scots, 192–202; N.B. Lewis, ‘The Last Medieval Summons of the
English Feudal Levy, 13 June 1385’, EHR, 73 (1958), 1–26.
19. Prestwich, War, Politics and Finance, 93–5, 108, 109–12; J. Lydon, ‘Irish
Levies in the Scottish Wars, 1296–1302’, Irish Sword, 5 (1961–2), 184–90;
J. Lydon, Edward I, Ireland and the War in Scotland, 1303–4’, in J. Lydon
(ed.), England and Ireland in the Later Middle Ages (Dublin, 1981), 43–61;
McNamee, Wars of the Bruces, 61–2; Brown, Bannockburn, 79–84.
20. M. Prestwich, ‘Cavalry Service in Early Fourteenth Century England’, in
J. Gillingham and J. Holt (eds), War and Government in the Middle
Ages (London, 1984), 147–58; Watson, Under the Hammer, 67; Brown,
Bannockburn, 41–2, 98; K. DeVries, Infantry Warfare in the Early
Fourteenth Century (Woodbridge, 1996).
21. Rowlands, ‘Edwardian Conquest’, 41–72; Haskell, ‘The Scottish Campaign
of Edward I, 1303–4’; Watson, Under the Hammer, 121–9; Prestwich,
Armies and Warfare, 196–7; Brown, Wars of Scotland, 238–9.
22. Taylor, The History of the King’s Works in Wales; M. Prestwich, ‘Colonial
Scotland: The English in Scotland under Edward I’, in R. Mason (ed.),
Scotland and England 1286–1815 (Edinburgh, 1987), 6–17; D. Cornell, ‘A
Kingdom Cleared of Castles: The Role of the Castle in the Campaigns of
Robert Bruce’, SHR, 87 (2008), 233–57.
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23. CDI, iii, no. 559; R. Frame, ‘The Campaign against the Scots in Munster,
1317’; R. Frame, ‘English Officials and Irish Chiefs in the Fourteenth
Century’, EHR, 90 (1975), 748–77; R. Frame, ‘Military Service in the
Lordship of Ireland, 1290–1360: Institutions and Society on the Anglo-
Gaelic Frontier’, in R. Bartlett and A. Mackay (eds), Medieval Frontier
Societies (Oxford, 1989), 101–26.
24. Calendar of Documents relating to Scotland, ed. J. Bain et al, 5 vols (London,
1881–1986); Prestwich, War, Government and Finance, 114–36, 175–6;
R.W. Kaeuper, War, Justice and Public Order: England and France in the
Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1988), 11–133; M. Prestwich, ‘The Victualling
of Castles’, in Coss and Tyerman (eds), Soldiers, Nobles and Gentlemen,
169–82.
25. Carr, ‘Crown and Communities’, 136 (E. 14); Watson, ‘Settling the Stalemate’,
140–3; Watson, Under the Hammer, 30–37, 214–17; CDS, ii, nos 1022–4,
1032, 1049.
26. Littere Wallie, 118–22, 154–5; CDS, ii, no. 823; Stones, Anglo-Scottish
Relations, no. 32; Adam Murimuth and Robert Avesbury, Chronica, Rolls
Series (London, 1889), 298–302.
27. CDI, iii, no. 559; Frame, ‘English Officials and Irish Chiefs’, 759.
28. English Historical Documents, iii, no. 55; Stones, Anglo-Scottish Relations,
no. 33.
29. Ormrod, ‘The English State and the Plantagenet Empire’, 208–10, 214.
30. The Register of John Pecham Archbishop of Canterbury, 1279–1292, 2 vols
(London, Canterbury and York Society, 1968–9), ii, 468–71; J.B. Smith, The
Sense of History in Medieval Wales (Aberystwyth, 1989), 14–15; Bower, Walter,
Scotichronicon, ed. D.E.R. Watt, 9 vols (Aberdeen, 1987–98), vi, 135–89.
31. Broun, Scottish Independence, 161–234, 249–63; Brown, Wars of Scotland,
84–5, 145–8; McDonald, Kingdom of the Isles, 103–26, 135–49.
32. L.B. Smith, ‘The Gravamina of the Community of Gwynedd against Llywelyn
ap Gruffudd’, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, 31 (1984–5), 158–76.
33. J.G. Edwards, ‘Madog ap Llywelyn, the Welsh Leader in 1294–5’, Bulletin
of the Board of Celtic Studies, 13 (1948–50), 207–10; A.D. Carr, Owain
of Wales: The End of the House of Gwynedd (Cardiff, 1981); The Chronicle of
Adam Usk, 1377–1421, ed. C. Given-Wilson (Oxford, 1997), 101.
34. Brown, Wars of Scotland, 291–300.
35. Reid, ‘Kingless Kingdom’, 105–12; Watson, Under the Hammer, 116;
Duncan, ‘War of the Scots’, 142–5; A.B. Webster, ‘Scotland without a King,
1329–41’, in Grant and Stringer (eds), Medieval Scotland, 223–38.
36. Prestwich, ‘Military Logistics’, 276–88; A.L. Brown, ‘The English Campaign
in Scotland, 1400’, in H. Hearder and H.R. Loyn (eds), British Government
and Administration: Studies Presented to S.B. Chrimes (Cardiff, 1974),
40–54; A. Macdonald, Border Bloodshed, Scotland, England and France at
War, 1369–1403 (East Linton, 2000), 89–91.
37. Prestwich, Armies and Warfare, 193–8.
38. R. Frame, ‘War and Peace in the Medieval Lordship of Ireland’, in J. Lydon
(ed.), The English in Medieval Ireland (London, 1984), 118–41; Frame,
‘The Bruces in Ireland’, 16–26.
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39. R. Frame, ‘Power and Society in the Lordship of Ireland, 1272–1377’, Past
and Present, 26 (1977), 3–33; Lydon, Lordship of Ireland, 115–18, 151–2;
Frame, English Lordship, 78–9, 263–78; Duffy, Robert the Bruce’s Irish Wars,
36–8; E. O’Byrne, War and the Irish of Leinster (Dublin, 2003), 58–86;
P. Connolly, ‘The Enactments of the 1297 Parliament’, in J. Lydon (ed.),
Law and Disorder in Thirteenth-Century Ireland (Dublin, 1997), 139–62.
40. K. Simms, From Kings to Warlords (Woodbridge, 1987), 116–28; K. Simms,
‘Warfare in the Medieval Gaelic Lordships’, Irish Sword, 12 (1975–6),
98–108; K. Simms, ‘Gaelic Warfare in the Middle Ages’, in T. Bartlett and

K. Jeffrey (eds), A Military History of Ireland (Cambridge, 1996), 99 –115;
K. Nicholls, Gaelic and Gaelicised Ireland in the Middle Ages (Dublin,
1972), 84–90.
41. McDonald, Kingdom of the Isles, 174–87.
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chapter four
RULERS AND REALMS

‘Our Proper Dominion’: Royal Governments in the British Isles
A t Easter 1297 the justiciar of Ireland, John Wogan, summoned the

leading English clergy and barons on the island to attend a ‘general
parliament’ at Dublin. The justiciar, who headed Edward I’s government
in the lordship of Ireland, also ordered the royal sheriffs and the seneschals
who ran the great private franchises held by English lords to attend and
to bring representatives from their local areas. The assembly was a meet-
ing of the king’s council at its fullest extent. Its business began with the
reordering of local government, creating three new royal shires around
Dublin. However, the principal concern of those present was with the
defence of the English ‘land of peace’ against damage by Irish and English
‘felons’. Parliament already combined the roles of royal court and council
with those of the body which was regarded as representing the will and
consent of the political class. While these two roles sat comfortably
together in the parliament of 1297, this would not always be the case. As
has been seen, between the mid-thirteenth and mid-fourteenth century
there was the development of ideas about monarchy which stressed the
heightened status and authority of kings over their subjects. The same era
saw a corresponding and occasionally conflicting development of ideas
about the rights which pertained to peoples acting as communities. This
was an era in which relations between rulers and their realms, as well as
between neighbouring lands, were redrawn.1
From 1291 it was the kings of England who claimed to be the sovereign
lord of all the realms of the British Isles. Though, as discussed above,
these lands were never fused into a single entity, there was an established
sense that they formed a set of dominions bound together by the person
of the English king. This was clear from the grant made to Edward I by
his father in 1254. This included Ireland and the last dominions of the
Plantagenets in France, Aquitaine and the Channel Islands. It was stated
that ‘these lands may never be separated from the crown of England
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and . . . remain wholly to the king of England forever’. Edward’s own

creation of his son and heir as Prince of Wales in 1301 extended the same
principle to the new royal conquest and the 1305 Ordinance for Scotland
indicated that the king intended to rule ‘la terre d’Escoce’ as a separate
dominion of his house. Even in the 1330s, when Edward III claimed
direct lordship over only the southern sheriffdoms of Scotland resigned
to him by Edward Balliol, he did not regard them as annexed to England.
Instead Edward’s letters termed them ‘our lands in Scottish parts’, con-
firming that these embattled outposts of English lordship, like England,
Ireland and the Welsh principality, were the personal property of the king
and bound to the English crown.2 English royal pretensions to include
Scotland in these dominions were successfully resisted but Scottish kings
in the century from 1250 had a similar view of the unity of their realm.
This view had developed since 1200 when Lothian could still be con-
sidered a separate, alienable province. This view may not have extended
to the Isles, which the crown had only brought under its lordship in
1266. Alexander III’s eldest son was given Man as an apanage suggesting
similar treatment to the earldom of Chester in England and later the
principality of Wales.3
From this perspective, the government of royal dominions was also the
personal business of the king or his son. Each realm or land possessed
its own administration, primarily as a means of fulfilling the roles and
exercising the rights of its lord. Not surprisingly England had provided
the model for these governments, even in Scotland. England’s status as
a kingdom, its long traditions of central government, its wealth and
population and the spread of English or Anglo-French influences in
various forms since 1100 all made this inevitable. The styles, methods
and principles of English government were applied in some form in the
other lands of the British Isles. However, England was abnormal in the
complexity of its administrative machinery, the numbers of paid royal
servants (probably around 800 in the household and central offices of
government) and in the extent to which royal government impinged on
all its inhabitants. This last element came via the pull of central and local
courts held by royal ministers and by the crown’s power to levy financial
subsidies from local communities. Up to 1290 the character of govern-
ment in the king’s lordship of Ireland and in the Scottish kings’ realm
instead remained closer to the twelfth-century Anglo-Norman models
which they had originally been based upon.4
However, there were considerable common features. The role of the
justiciar was central in both Scotland and Ireland. The model in Ireland
was clearly that of the English justiciar who had headed the royal govern-
ment during the king’s absence. In England, where the loss of Normandy
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made such royal absences far less regular, this powerful office was abolished
in 1230. However, in Ireland, where no English king visited between
1210 and 1394, the justiciar was the head of the royal administration,
acting in the king’s place and sworn to preserve his rights and dignities
and do justice to the king’s subjects. The Scottish king’s justiciars had
more limited powers. They dealt with the most serious cases pertaining
to the crown and heard appeals from local royal and baronial courts in
their region of the realm. Up to 1296 these regions were described as

Lothian, Galloway and Scotland (north of the Forth), indicating the
continued internal divisions of the realm. After 1320 two justiciars were
appointed, one for Scotland north of the Forth and one for the south.
The justiciars, especially of Scotland, were apparently regarded as the king’s
deputies, giving the office a special significance in times of minority or
royal absence. Similarly the exchequer developed in both Ireland and
Scotland as the chief financial court of the realm, but both remained
smaller in size and scope than the English exchequer, though in Ireland,
where English practices and personnel still acted as influences, the exchequer
continued to develop along English lines. In terms of political geogra-
phy, the most important English administrative influence came in local
government. The sheriff, who acted as the collector of royal revenues,
held local royal courts and functioned as the principal connection between
the central government and local communities, was exported to both
Ireland and Scotland. As the 1297 Dublin parliament showed, the
administrative map of the Irish lordship was divided into counties each
under a sheriff. So too was Scotland, where over twenty sheriffdoms were
created by the crown between 1100 and 1300. In both lands the role of
the sheriff retained more of the independent authority held by English
sheriffs before 1200 and, in particular, had a continued responsibility for
mustering the royal tenants for warfare.5
The policies of Edward I seemed likely to extend and intensify the
administrative relationship between the English realm and its methods
and the other realms of the isles. The formation of an administration for
Edward’s new Welsh conquests imported English models of rule. The king’s
chief ministers were three justiciars. One was for north Wales based in
Caernarfon and a second for the south (effectively the south-west) based
at Carmarthen. In north-eastern Wales authority was assigned to the
justiciar of Chester, the head of a palatine earldom itself bound into the
royal family from 1237. These officials headed regional administrations.
The justiciar of north Wales was made responsible ‘for the keeping and
administration of our royal peace in Snowdon’. He was assisted by a
chancellor and chamberlain (or treasurer), the latter heading an exchequer.
Beneath these figures, the ancient local divisions of native Wales were
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shoehorned into an English framework. The Statute of Wales established

sheriffs at Caernarfon, Merioneth and Anglesey under the justiciar of north
Wales, and another at Flint ‘subordinate under us to our justice of Chester.’
In the south, by 1300 there were sheriffs of Cardigan, Carmarthen and
Builth. Though these shires were formed from existing land units, cantrefi
and commotes, for administrative purposes these were treated as hundreds,
the English subdivisions of shires.6
The same period witnessed an apparent expansion of royal government

in Ireland. The formation of three new shires in 1297, making ten in all,
demonstrated an intention to extend the reach and effectiveness of royal
justice and authority in English Ireland. It also reflected the subdivision
and absorption of several great private liberties which left the royal govern-
ment to provide an administrative focus in local communities. In Scotland,
the extension of English royal government was dependent on warfare.
The submissions of 1296 led to a short-lived Edwardian administration
which showed its English character by the appointment of a lieutenant,
chief justice and treasurer, none of them part of Scottish practice. Edward’s
efforts to cement his authority after 1304 produced a more thoughtful
attempt to amalgamate Scottish and English custom. Though headed by
a lieutenant, four pairs of justiciars were appointed with powers drawn
from Scottish models, though the importance given to coroners in local
government suggests an attempt to introduce English offices.7
However, as much as models and practices, the character of these
administrations was set by their personnel and relations with the English
king. Though the kings were infrequent visitors to Wales, appeared in
Scotland only at the head of an army and were absent from Ireland, Edward
I and his successors expected to provide personal monarchy in these
lands, as in England and Gascony. Accusations of royal neglect towards
Ireland, for example, are undermined by the frequency of the kings’
interventions there, in terms of orders and responses to petitions from
their subjects in the lordship. The Irish justiciars’ vice-regal powers did
not extend to grants of royal lands or other acts of major patronage. As
in Wales and in Scotland in 1305, these naturally remained the king’s
business, allowing him to retain control of the political management of
these dominions. Just as importantly, English kings called on all their
administrations to provide them with resources for their major policies.
In 1297 the new Scottish administration was ordered to provide money
for Edward I’s planned continental campaigns while the Irish justiciar
shipped twenty-four shiploads of grain to Gascony, spending roughly
half the revenue of the lordship, estimated at about £6,000 per annum,
on the king’s expenses. The English king’s subjects in both Wales and
Ireland could be asked for financial contributions. In Ireland these took
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RULERS AND REALMS
the form of scutages (payments in lieu of military service) as well as grants

of taxation and up to the 1330s these were frequently assessed for royal
warfare in Scotland and France. In Wales, taxation was less frequent
and produced lower yields and the crown’s income came mostly from
the extensive profits of justice available from the Welsh community. The
regularity of such demands between 1280 and 1340 stressed that the king’s
administrations in Wales and Ireland were subordinated to the offices
of his household and at Westminster. The exchequers at Caernarfon and

in Ireland were required to send their accounts to Westminster to have
them scrutinised by the English exchequer. Similarly, royal writs from the
English chancery had authority within the other royal dominions and
much of the legislation applied within the lordship of Ireland was formu-
lated in the English realm. This was a source of occasional disquiet on the
part of the Anglo-Irish during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.8
The dependent character of these administrations also rested on their
personnel. The men charged by Edward I with running his new Welsh
conquests were selected from within the king’s circle of companions and
trusted servants. The Savoyard knight Otto Grandson and the experienced
English sheriff, John Clavering, were the first justiciars. They and their
colleagues knew and understood Wales solely as conquerors. Their expecta-
tions of government were based on English models. The same was broadly
true of the administrators left to run Scotland in 1296. The English
magnate, John Earl Warenne, was lieutenant and the treasurer, Hugh
Cressingham, had been in the queen’s household. Despite some Scottish
support for Edward’s campaign, the English king rapidly removed Scots
from influential posts. Instead, all the main central and local officials of
the regime were English, a major reason for Scottish hostility towards
them. The appointment of John Wogan as justiciar of Ireland in 1295
may indicate a similar attitude to that lordship. Wogan replaced William
Vesci, lord of Kildare, a baron with estates in England and Scotland as
well as Ireland. Vesci’s feuds with other Anglo-Irish lords had led to
considerable administrative disruption. Wogan, an outsider with no Irish
interests, was probably appointed to restore order and to guarantee the
lordship’s contribution to Edward I’s wars, roles he played with reason-
able success for over a decade. Even under Edward I, this colonial approach
was not total. The English of Ireland, headed by the king’s friend Richard
earl of Ulster, still had a powerful voice in the running of the lordship
and strong contacts with the government and community of England.
As discussed below, the alternatives of relying on the leading English
magnates in Ireland or a royal servant from England continued to be
adopted by rulers through the next century. The 1305 Scottish Ordinance,
whilst it appointed a central government headed by the English king’s
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nephew, John of Brittany, and staffed by English clerks, gave Scots major
roles on the council and in local administration. In Wales during the
years after 1300, Welshmen were appointed to be sheriffs in the prin-
cipality. In both Scotland and Wales this use of native officials was
pragmatic, designed to win acceptance of Edwardian rule in Scotland and
to use the influence of Welsh nobles with their compatriots to reduce
administrative frictions. It did not disguise that the aim of the king was
the incorporation of these elites into an English administrative structure.9

The settlements and reforms of Edward I did not result in integrated
royal administrations in the lands of the British Isles. In the case of Scotland
this was mostly the result of continued, ultimately successful, resistance
to the legitimacy of Plantagenet authority in that kingdom. However, in
Wales and Ireland too, there were fundamental differences in the character
and conditions of these political societies which meant the workings of
government within them would always follow distinct paths. It seems
likely that the differences between the four lands became more marked in
the century from 1280 and, ironically, this divergence owed something
to the strains placed by the kings of England on their dominions in their
pursuit of extended lordship inside and outside the British Isles. In this
respect, it was England which was an unusually centralised and integrated
political unit, closely governed by the crown. One traditional view has
suggested that the early reign of Edward I marked the summit of such
powers. His series of statutes in the 1270s and 1280s showed central
royal authority at its fullest extent. However, it is suggested that, from
1294, royal priorities shifted away from justice and towards warfare.
Demands for finance and military service and the criticism they caused
led Edward I and his successors to accept a less centralised approach to
justice, illustrated by the use of local justices of the peace in place of
centrally-appointed judges on circuits or eyres. Recent studies have coun-
tered that such a contrast is too sharply drawn. Instead, whilst warfare
was a major influence on administrative change, the key theme of the
fourteenth century was the growth in the range and intensity of royal
administration.10
This growth was most obvious with regard to royal finance. The amounts
spent on the wars in Wales, Scotland and France have already been men-
tioned. The result of this expenditure was a massive increase in the
crown’s dependence on contributions from its subjects. While three taxes
were collected in the twenty-two years of Edward I’s reign up to the
outbreak of the French war in 1294, grants of taxation were made on six
occasions during the next twelve years. During the next century royal
requests for taxation changed from an exceptional event to a regular part
of the crown’s finances. The spikes in these demands, in the 1290s,
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RULERS AND REALMS
around 1340 and in the 1370s, were to do with the greater costs of
warfare in France, rather than Scotland. The frequency with which requests
for finance were made encouraged the widening of those required to pay
to a much larger proportion of the population from the 1330s onwards.
This development, in the form of the poll taxes of the 1370s, was a major
element in the outbreak of the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381. Taxation, which
did much to define the relations between the crown and parliament, was
also a factor in the even closer integration of the kingdom. Outside a few
palatinates, like Chester and Durham, the whole of England was liable to
meet their assessed payments and the collection of money was handled
by local elites as part of the king’s government.11
Similar patterns can be observed in terms of justice. War certainly
placed strains on the system in terms of disorder and corruption. The
level of criticism experienced by royal courts and judges reflected this as did
demands made in parliamentary petitions linked to requests for taxation.
It was however only one of several factors at work and the loss of royal
authority, which resulted from this, has been overplayed. Justices of the
peace drawn from local elites were only one part of resulting develop-
ments and stemmed from failing in the existing structure of the judiciary.
The general eyres, which involved centrally-appointed justices hearing
cases on circuits of the kingdom, were seen as an inadequate method of
providing justice in local communities. Their inadequacy was a result of
increased litigation amongst the population and the growing demand for
quick and effective royal justice. This suggests an extension in the use of
royal courts rather than a decline in royal authority. Similarly, the result-
ing use of local elites mirrored their employment in matters of finance
and, rather than a loss of central control, should be seen as the widening
of those employed in royal government. If anything, the process
enhanced the scope of this administration and its integration with local
communities, a process further extended by the mechanisms for the
enforcement of such social legislation as the Statute of Labourers which
followed the plague of 1349.12
A related development can be discerned in attitudes towards political
opposition within England. The key period in this respect was the dis-
astrous reign of Edward II. The civil war of 1321–2 ended with the king’s
aristocratic opponents being treated with a brutality not seen in England
for 200 years. The leading rebel and the king’s cousin, Thomas earl of
Lancaster, was executed with over twenty of his noble confederates,
while even those who submitted on terms were condemned to long
periods of imprisonment. These executions and imprisonments shocked
contemporaries and marked a change in political behaviour. Previous
English kings had generally acted with moderation against aristocratic
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revolt, preferring to avoid the disruption of wholesale deprivations of

lands and titles. The different approach in 1322 was influenced by the
earlier execution of Edward II’s favourite, Gaveston, by Lancaster but also
by the treatment of Welsh and Scottish enemies as traitors. This increased
sense of political crimes providing a basis for execution was used in 1326,
when Edward’s own supporters were brutally eliminated by reference
to previous condemnations, and in 1330, when Roger Mortimer was
summarily executed at the will of the young Edward III. The killing of
opponents, initiated in regard to ‘rebellious’ Scottish and Welsh leaders,
had become a staple of English politics. The deposition (or abdication) and
subsequent death of Edward II in captivity was a product of a political
atmosphere in which the use of treason charges had raised the stakes of
civil conflict. Edward III’s Statute of Treason in 1352 was designed to
cool the political temperature and limited treason to direct crimes against
the king. However, it still suggested that rebellion was such a crime,
punishable by death and the forfeiture of lands. As the reign of Richard
II would confirm, this did not necessarily protect the king or his friends
from attack. The law of treason was another indication that the centrality
of the crown and royal government in matters of politics, law and finance
in fourteenth-century England had become even more pronounced.13
Despite the extent of English influence on their administrative struc-
tures, it makes much less sense to look for the same kinds of pervasive
engagement from the centre in the other lands of the British Isles. Wales,
Ireland and Scotland were not unified realms in the same way. This
should not be seen as a negative feature but a product of their individual
geography and development which placed government in distinct con-
texts. Thus, though he claimed that ‘the land of Wales’ was ‘wholly and
entirely transferred under our proper dominion’, Edward I recognised
the varied character of his authority there. Even the new royal principality
did not have a single administration but was divided into three blocs.
Admittedly between 1301 and 1307 and from 1343 to 1376, these blocs
were all under the authority of the king’s heir as Prince of Wales and, on
occasion, the same man was justiciar in both the northern and southern
shires of the principality but, even then, unity remained limited. Although
Edward I demonstrated the crown’s ability to intervene in the march of
Wales, neither he nor his successors ignored the distinct status of its
lords. The closest to a unified structure came with Edward III’s grant of
the Principality of Wales to his eldest son, Edward in 1343. This extended
not just to his principality but conferred all royal rights in Wales on the
prince. Claims were also made to all lands held by the princes of Gwynedd
which were now in the march and Prince Edward secured custody of a
number of lordships. In a challenge to one marcher, the prince spoke of
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RULERS AND REALMS
‘his lordship of Wales and . . . the dignity of his coronet’. Such claims
provoked a reaction from the marchers and in 1354 their ancestral rights
were upheld by Edward III. The powers of the lords over their lands were
maintained and direct royal authority was restricted to the principality.
Wales remained divided, not simply between march and principality but
also between English and Welsh. As will be examined in the next chapter,
although there was an increasing class of Welshmen involved in the
running of the principality up to, but not including, the level of justiciar,
the existence of two peoples with distinct legal standing and rights
remained a central factor in fourteenth-century Wales. However, despite
the different character of its government, Wales in the fourteenth century
was more closely integrated into English politics. The political swings of
the 1320s, the victory of Edward II, his downfall and then Edward III’s
seizure of personal authority were reflected directly in Wales. The forfei-
ture of English magnates and the re-distribution of their lands and offices
had an even more obvious effect in Wales. The accumulation of marcher
lordships and offices in the principality by, first, the Despensers and their
ally, Arundel, and then Roger Mortimer allowed them to dominate the
whole of Wales for brief periods.14
The internal divisions within the lordship of Ireland were even deeper
and more fundamental than those in Wales. The parliament of Easter
1297 recognised these divisions in two ways. Its opening statute sought
to reform problems of local government ‘by which the king’s orders and
those of his court are less effectively obeyed, and his people are less
capably governed’. The act appointed new sheriffs in Ulster, Meath and
Kildare but also distinguished between these royal counties and liberties,
county-sized districts held as private jurisdictions by great nobles and run
by their officers. In 1280 there were six great liberties which covered at
least as much land as was administered by royal sheriffs. The holders of
these liberties did not possess the same administrative freedoms as the
marcher lords in Wales. As the 1297 statute re-affirmed, sheriffs possessed
powers over church lands in the liberties and to act in the event that the
justice provided by the lord’s seneschal ‘is found to be deficient’. In the
reign of Edward I these powers were used extensively and the rights of
lords in these liberties were placed under increased scrutiny. In 1297 the
liberty of Kildare was turned into a royal county and several others placed
in temporary royal custody before 1307. Even in Ulster, where the earl,
Richard Burgh, was the greatest lord in English Ireland, the creation
of a royal sheriff signalled closer royal supervision. However by the
1330s this situation had changed. The grant of liberty powers in Kildare,
Louth, Tipperary and Kerry to Anglo-Irish magnates between 1315 and
1329 reduced the number of royal counties. This shift should not be
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exaggerated. In 1348 the liberty of Trim was confiscated by the king’s

officials in Ireland, who wrote that the same could be done to other
liberties. A few years earlier the justiciar Ralph Ufford had challenged the
rights of the earls of Kildare and Desmond to their liberties (Kildare and
Kerry) and arrested both men. However in the late 1340s the earls were
restored to favour and re-granted their liberties. Edward III proved less
keen than some of his ministers to extend royal administrative rights in
Ireland at the expense of English magnates.15

The king’s reluctance was a reflection of the second set of divisions
within Ireland. This too was explicit in the statutes of the 1297 parliament.
Many of these made distinctions between ‘the land of peace’ and the ‘lands
in the marches near the Irish’. Not mentioned by name but implied in
this legislation were the lands of the Irish. Unlike Wales the distinction
between the marches and the land of peace continued to reflect areas of
active warfare and administrative disorder after 1300. They provided a
neat classification for a shifting and complex set of regional environments.
The actual locations of these marches are hard to define. In many localities
from Meath to Cork ‘lands of peace’ must have been intermingled with
‘the marches’. The impact of local warfare on some of these regional
societies will be discussed in Chapter Seven. The defence of English com-
munities in them was increasingly the main concern of the king’s govern-
ment. The statutes from 1297, which involved the obligations of English
to defend the marches, are one sign of this concern. The leaders in this
warfare were royal sheriffs, lords and their seneschals or keepers of the
peace, local figures appointed to defend their districts. Their actions
demonstrate that war and justice were interlinked and, even in ‘the land
of peace’, examples of major violence, like the killing of the sheriff of
Louth in 1311, are not hard to find.16
The same issues influenced financial structures. The crown’s revenues
from the lordship of Ireland fell from the 1290s onwards. By 1315
income had reduced by half to just under £3,000 and dropped to around
£2,000 from 1320 onwards. Decline on this scale must relate to the
reduced ability of the administration to collect revenues due to the spread
of warfare and the reduced responsiveness of both Irish and English
tenants to royal officers. It is reasonable to think that the level of support
provided by the Irish exchequer for royal wars in Wales, Scotland and
France from the 1270s limited the resources available to the justiciar
within Ireland and contributed to this rapid reduction in income. This
meant that, instead of the lordship being asked to contribute its surplus
for such enterprises, from the 1340s onwards attempts at a significant
recovery of royal authority had to be funded from England. From this
point too, taxation raised in Ireland, which earlier had been used to fund
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royal enterprises in Scotland and Wales, was used to finance warfare in

the Irish lordship. This was based locally. In 1354, for example, a con-
tribution was collected from Kildare to pay 624 men to defend the county
against the local Irish. Both political tradition and contemporary reality
made Ireland a fragmented land in which war and government operated
at regional or local levels.17
As was shown in the previous chapter, the justiciar spent considerable
time mustering the English lieges in war and seeking to bring Irish leaders
to settlement. Between 1320 and 1360 the justiciar led such expeditions
in all but two years. The locations of these campaigns are revealing. Well
over a third were in eastern Leinster and, while the justiciars’ campaigns
in Munster, Ulster and Meath became rarer in the 1350s, only Connacht
was clearly beyond the range of such expeditions. The sessions of the
justiciars’ court similarly showed that Leinster was the focus of royal
government but Munster too was regularly on the circuit of the justiciar.
These activities suggest no collapse of the English administration but
do indicate the need for almost constant campaigning in all regions to
maintain this situation. Connacht, western Munster and Ulster very
rarely saw the justiciar, corresponding to the regions where Irish nobles
were most strongly entrenched. The king’s officials dealt with such lords
and their kindreds by seeking to bind them into obedience to the crown
through war or negotiation or, more normally, by relying on great
English magnates to perform this function. It was the roles played by the
earls of Ulster and later by the earls of Kildare, Ormond and Desmond
in drawing Irish and English kindreds into their structures of lordship
which made them a vital element in the management of the lordship.18
This reality also conditioned a different attitude to political opposition
and disorder within Ireland from that of England. The English magnates
of Ireland had long been allowed to employ more direct methods in
pursuing disputes with each other. Though Edward I’s treatment of William
Vesci in 1295 may suggest a characteristic desire to halt such feuds, if
pressed too far this could create problems. The reliance on justiciars drawn
from the king’s service beyond Ireland on occasion opened up tensions
between the rules understood by different English communities. Justiciars
like Anthony Lucy, Thomas Rokeby and Ralph Ufford were English
knights who had served in their king’s wars in Scotland and France.
Tough and loyal and provided with paid retinues, they took a hard line
with Anglo-Irish magnates, like Maurice earl of Desmond, whose self-
aggrandisement brought major disruption within the lordship. Ufford’s
arrests of Desmond and, with less cause, the earl of Kildare, in the early
1340s were actions designed to reduce, and possibly remove, such power-
ful magnates as part of a wider campaign to re-assert royal authority. It
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was clearly actions of this type which encouraged tensions between the
English of Ireland and royal officials from across the Irish Sea. Instead of
following up Ufford’s actions, Edward III released the two earls, recog-
nising the dangers facing his English lieges if the leadership provided by
these magnates was disrupted. In the later 1350s, at a time of growing
difficulties for the English of Ireland, Edward appointed both Desmond
and Kildare for terms as justiciar, relying on their influence as magnates
to bolster the administration of his dominions. It was a pragmatic

approach, relied on during previous decades, which did not require the
financial support of the crown to the same extent and worked with the
structures of the lordship rather than confronting them. However by
the 1370s even these great lords were reluctant to take the office, citing
its costs and the dangers posed to the lands and interests of their families
by absences on the business of royal government and defence.19
The Scottish kingdom which endured and emerged from the wars of
the early fourteenth century shared some of the features found in Ireland
but had its own distinct character. Most obviously, it was outside the
sovereignty of the English crown. Attempts to remodel Scottish govern-
ment under English authority and institutions were repelled. Instead the
practices of Scottish government were based on those of the preceding
centuries as developed under its own kings. While, as discussed, these
drew on English models, by 1296 English officials may well have seen the
Scottish royal administration as old-fashioned and amateurish. It relied
on the nobility and a small cadre of paid clerks for personnel. For example,
up to 1350 the office of justiciar tended to be held by great magnates.
Moreover, Scotland did not have the exceptional administrative unity of
England. Like Ireland, areas of direct royal authority had never amounted
to the majority of the realm. The sheriffdoms of the south and east pro-
vided the king with his financial and political base. To the west and north
were numerous provincial earldoms and lordships where the exercise of
justice, the levying of resources and the raising of men for war was the
responsibility of magnates like the earls of Fife and Lennox or the lords
of Renfrew and Badenoch. Though the authority of Alexander III in his
mainland dominions was accepted and stable, he ruled a composite realm
of different legal and linguistic structures with a relatively light hand.20
The crises and wars which buffeted the kingdom between 1286 and
1357 left their mark on this structure. The strength of allegiance to the
Scottish kings was a central element in the realm’s survival and the status
of the monarchy was enhanced by the papal grant of coronation to
Robert I’s heirs. However, there was a difference between the attachment
of Scots to the idea of sovereign kingship and the material power of their
rulers. Much of this can be related to the long breaks in personal monarchy
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after 1286. For more than half of the seventy years up to 1357 the rule of
an adult king was suspended by an interregnum or through the captivity,
minority or exile of the king. As has been mentioned, during these royal
absences royal authority was exercised by one or more guardians (a term
alternated with those of keeper or lieutenant in contemporary sources).
The committee of six chosen in 1286 was not maintained in wartime,
when between one and three individuals held the office. The tensions
between joint guardians, graphically illustrated by the physical scuffle

between John Comyn and Robert Bruce in 1299, may have led to the
appointment of single guardians in the late 1330s and between 1346 and
1357. Those chosen after 1298 were not royal servants but magnates and
war leaders. In 1332 Archibald Douglas was elected by the army as ‘the
principal adviser’ in expelling Edward Balliol and as the leader of a ‘band
of men’. The guardians who followed Douglas, Andrew Murray, John
Randolph and Robert Stewart, were all great barons closely linked by
blood or marriage to the young king, David Bruce. The principal job of
the guardians of the 1300s and 1330s was to maintain the Scottish Cause
in the face of English attacks. However, this entailed the collection of
royal revenues and receiving the submissions of Scots leaving the English
king’s allegiance, as well as the upholding of justice in the kingdom. All
these powers were exercised by guardians, who lacked the full authority
of the king. The frequent need for a vice-regal figure to exercise the
king’s powers left its mark on the political life of the realm. Though
developed to replace an absent ruler, there were implications for kings
should their actions be deemed unjust or ineffective. In 1359 David II
may have been temporarily replaced by three lieutenants and from 1384
the exercise of their powers was repeatedly taken from kings and assigned
to guardians as a result of domestic politics.21
The needs of running a realm beset by war also encouraged the develop-
ment and creation of offices which provided regional leadership, whilst
the attention of king or guardian was elsewhere. Robert I appointed his
nephew and close supporter, Thomas Randolph, as his lieutenant in
northern Scotland in about 1309, and in the 1350s the guardian, Robert
Stewart, commissioned his kinsman, Thomas Stewart earl of Angus, as
‘his lieutenant in Angus and the Mearns’. The northern lieutenancy,
extending from the Grampians northwards, was revived in the 1370s as
a response to the growing problems of peace and law enforcement in that
region, blurring the functions in regional law enforcement held by the
northern justiciar. The development of march wardens in the 1340s and
1350s, as well as being a response to the English office, also showed the
tendency towards the formation of offices combining judicial and military
powers, like the Irish justiciar and keepers of the peace.22
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Along with these regional offices, the Bruce kings, like their English
rivals in the Lordship of Ireland, created new private jurisdictions. The most
important of these new regalities reflected similar concerns to those
behind the creation of liberties in Ireland in the same period. In 1312
Robert I created Thomas Randolph earl of Moray, giving him powers
over a province which spanned northern Scotland. Robert also gave
extensive new lands to another follower, James lord of Douglas, which
David II created into a regality and earldom for his nephew, William, in
the 1350s. The earldom of Douglas included five lordships along the
English border, two of them formed from royal forests, while the earldom
of Moray absorbed three royal sheriffdoms within its boundaries. These
grants served as rewards to key supporters of the embattled Bruce regime,
but were also intended as the basis for regional political leadership in
sensitive areas of the kingdom. Though making sense in this light, they
also reduced royal lands and were part of the erosion of the thirteenth-
century structures of the kingdom.23
The fourteenth-century Scottish kings faced more challenging prob-
lems than their predecessors before 1286. As well as issues of legitimacy,
the war with England severed the relatively stable links between the
realms and, just as importantly, transformed the south from a rich, royal
heartland into a disputed war zone. By the 1360s, for reasons which will
be discussed in subsequent chapters, the means by which earlier kings
had been able to exercise authority in the Highlands and Isles had broken
down, creating an additional set of difficulties in northern Scotland. In
the face of these, efforts to create regional deputies and make grants
of private jurisdictions were realistic. They did, however, create issues of
their own. Up until 1360, the march wardenships, justiciarships and
lieutenancies were held, almost exclusively, by great magnates who were
hard to remove from office. In the early 1340s, David II had made efforts
to recover control of the northern justiciarship from the earl of Ross and
to demonstrate his authority in the Borders. Both efforts foundered after
the king’s capture by the English in 1346, and at David’s release in 1357,
Ross was again justiciar of the north and Douglas combined duties as a
march warden with those of southern justiciar.24
However, the weakness of the crown should not be exaggerated. In a
parliament held in 1326 ‘it was declared by the lord king that the lands
and rents which used of old to belong to his Crown had, by diverse dona-
tions and transfers made on the occasion of war, been so diminished
that he had not maintenance becoming his station’. Robert I’s plea of
poverty, whilst supporting the idea of reduced royal resources, secured
him an unprecedented (and never repeated) grant of taxation for life. In
1328 the king was able to raise another contribution to pay £20,000 for
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the peace with England. After his release from captivity, David II was
also able to extract considerable funds from the community. His ransom
justified regular grants of taxation and he exploited the booming wool
trade to raise greatly increased sums from customs duties. David also
resumed some royal estates and pensions and from 1360 was able to
assert control of the regional offices. He relied on a body of household
knights, appointing them as march wardens and justiciars. Such actions
indicate the potential for tensions between the king and his officials and
the great lords who had run the realm for most of the preceding period.
In 1363, three of these magnates, the earls of Douglas and March and
Robert Stewart, rebelled against the king. Their easy defeat by David’s
retainers confirmed the king’s ascendancy but the lenient treatment of
the rebels, who were pardoned in return for promises of future loyalty,
indicates the character of Scottish politics. Though Robert I had tried a
group of noble conspirators as traitors in 1320, several escaped convic-
tion or the full penalties of treason. Until well after 1400, Scottish use of
treason charges remained limited while David and his successors also
tolerated more opposition than English kings.25
In 1369, for example, David II accepted the submission of the leading
noble of the Hebrides, John lord of the Isles, releasing him in return for
hostages. As well as displaying the king’s authority, this also showed the
limitations on royal government. Like Irish lords in western Ulster or
Connacht, John of the Isles was to be dealt with by war or the threat of
war, or by diplomacy and hostage-taking. As will be discussed, this repre-
sented a contraction of government with major implications in a large
part of the Scottish realm. It confirms the sense that fourteenth-century
Scotland was defined by apparently contradictory processes. Kingship
remained the focal point of government and justice and kings retained
the power to call on their subjects’ contributions. At the same time
warfare had altered the political hierarchies in the kingdom in ways which
limited the authority of the crown in outlying regions of the realm. The
tensions between these processes were real. It was David II’s inability to
levy financial contributions from the Highlands and Isles in the later
1360s which prompted the earliest identification by a Scottish govern-
ment that the inhabitants of these regions represented a particular prob-
lem. The contrast between newly-restored and effective royal justice and
administration in some parts of the kingdom and the changing society of
Gaelic-speaking Highland provinces clearly antagonised the king.26
Similar tendencies in the lands of the Plantagenet king can be identified.
Edward I had seemed intent on creating, not just a single monarchy in
the British Isles, but a centralised administrative hierarchy, in which his
officials moved between posts in various realms and their actions were
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scrutinised by Westminster and the royal household. Even though these

efforts became less intense from 1307, the demands of war and the
changing nature of English society extended the role played by the king’s
officials in England, making it appear an even more integrated realm.
However, even within England, such unity was not total. While the south
and midlands had few large-scale liberties, further north these formed a
significant element of the administrative picture. In Yorkshire, the core
region of northern England, major private franchises predominated. The

earls, and then dukes of Lancaster, held the large lordships of Pontefract,
Tickhill, Knaresborough and Pickering, while the North Riding was
dominated by the lordship of Richmond. The holders of these honours
possessed considerable rights of justice over their lands which reduced
the role of the crown’s officials. Even more extensive were the palatine
powers held by the bishops of Durham and earls of Chester. The bishops’
palatinate covered almost all of modern County Durham with outliers
including Holy Island and Norham near the Scottish border. Chester was
also county-sized and formed part of the endowment assigned to the heir
to the English throne connecting it to the Welsh principality. Like the
bishops of Durham, the earls of Chester possessed full financial and judicial
powers over their palatinate, exercising them through their own officers,
in Chester the justice and chamberlain. To all purposes, these areas lay
outside the reach of the English king’s government. The existence of
these large, private jurisdictions was not a matter of concern for the English
king. In 1343 Edward III added to the authority of his son, Prince
Edward, with a grant of powers of justice, though not liberty rights, over
the other shires along the Welsh border. The same king also erected the
earldom, later duchy, of Lancaster into a third, great palatinate for his
cousin, Henry of Lancaster, making him sheriff for his lifetime in
Lancashire and Derbyshire. Such grants provide a cautionary note to the
apparently uniform and centralised character of England’s government,
showing that in England too magnates possessed considerable rights in
the royal administrative system. In Wales, and even more in Ireland, such
internal variations provided the defining character of Plantagenet rule.27
Communes and Conflicts

In the spring of 1320 a letter was dispatched from Scotland to the papal
curia as part of an effort to assuage the hostility of Pope John XXII to
King Robert. The letter, known as the Declaration of Arbroath, was sent
in the name of ‘the barons, freeholders and whole community of the
realm’. It has been regarded as both a key expression of Scottish political
identity at the height of the struggle with England and as an indication
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of ideas about nations and communities in the fourteenth century. It

justified Scotland’s existence as a sovereign realm by reference to the
common, if mythical, origins of the Scottish people, their ‘uninterrupted’
line of ‘native’ kings and their status as a distinct province of the Christian
church. The struggle against the ‘innumerable oppressions’ inflicted on
the Scots by the English kings was waged by Robert both to establish ‘his
right’ to the kingship but also ‘for the people’s safety in defence of their
liberties’. Should Robert accept the people’s ‘subjection’ to ‘the king or

people of England we will . . . expel him as our enemy and the subverter
of his and our rights’. This articulate and forcefully-argued text com-
bined old and new ideas. The claims about the status of the Scottish
realm had featured in earlier diplomatic efforts and other kings, including
Edward I, had produced statements of support from their subjects to
defend themselves against papal criticism. However, the declaration
made an explicit link between the rights of the king to his throne and of
the people to their freedoms. Even though it was essentially a defence of
Bruce’s kingship, by stating that a ruler’s failure to protect his subjects
allowed his expulsion, the letter suggested that the recent experiences of
the Scots had prompted new, even radical, ideas about the relations
between king and people.28
The Declaration of Arbroath was issued in the name of ‘the commun-
ity of the realm,’ a phrase accorded a special significance by historians.
In truth, while historians of all periods have overused the word ‘com-
munity’ as a collective noun, it was also a fashionable word in the
thirteenth century. Though, as in the Declaration of Arbroath, it was
employed in statements drawn up on behalf of royal governments, this
too reflected a shift in the way kings had to deal with their people and
the way subjects regarded their roles.29 It is not surprising that it was in
England that the language and concept of the community was employed
most clearly during the thirteenth century. This development can be
related to heightened ideas of monarchy which, as has been discussed,
made older concepts of noble defiance to the king a dangerous basis for
resistance. In the face of royal demands and misgovernment, the English
political class sought ways to justify placing restraints on their king’s
actions. Though the best-known of these attempts was Magna Carta in
1215, the defining period was the political crisis of Henry III’s reign
between 1258 and 1267. In 1258 a baronial coalition acted against the
king, and a wide group, including Henry and his son Edward, took an
oath of mutual support on behalf of ‘the commune of England’.30
Despite Henry’s eventual defeat of his opponents, the idea of the com-
munity as an active element in the running of the kingdom retained
an importance which Edward I was forced to acknowledge. As well as
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having a strongly reformist element in his kingship, some of Edward’s

early statutes referred directly to the community. However, appeals to
the community were still used most stridently in opposition to kings. In
1297, Edward I’s leading critics, Norfolk and Hereford, attacked royal
demands on behalf of clergy and people, speaking for ‘all the community
of the land’ and appealing to Magna Carta. In 1311, the Ordinances
drawn up by a large group of Edward II’s magnates, though they did not
use communal language, also referred to the Great Charter and placed
restraints on the king’s patronage, financial management and choice of
councillors.31
The use of communal language in England was bound up with the
development of parliament. Though it originated as a royal court and its
growing formality as an institution was partly a product of the extension
of the king’s government, parliament was also the key setting for the
activities of the community. There was a growing tendency for meetings of
parliament to include, not just magnates and prelates, but representatives
of shires and boroughs. Parliament’s powers developed to reflect this
communal identity, as the source for consent to royal requests for taxa-
tion and as the arena in which the king was presented with petitions from
his subjects. There was also a developing expectation that parliament
would meet regularly. The Ordinances specified annual meetings as the
means of resolving grievances against the king’s officials. The increased
formality of such meetings was suggested by the composition of Modus
Tenendi Parliamentum, probably in Edward II’s reign. This much-
debated text laid down a hierarchy of different groups but did not divide
parliament into two separate houses, Lords and Commons, a feature
which developed in the reign of Edward III. A bicameral division occurred
in conjunction with the increasingly regular demands for taxation and the
right of the community, now meaning the Commons, to petition the
king. It was the king’s need for taxation to fund warfare in Scotland and,
above all, France which was the key both to the holding of parliaments
and their ability to influence the activities of the royal government.32
It has been argued that the increased role of the Commons in parliament
resulted in the decline of an inclusive sense of an English community
from 1300. Instead magnates and prelates spoke less as the heads of a
unified political class but left such language to an articulate and politically
conscious Commons. However, parliament as a whole became a focal
point for the kingdom’s politics, where swings of political fortune were
confirmed. In 1322, Edward II used his victory over his baronial enemies
to strike the Ordinances from the statute books. However, he did so with
the consent of ‘the community of the realm’ gathered in parliament and
recognised that parliament was to be consulted in future on changes to
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the king’s ‘estate’. In 1341 it was ‘the peers and the community of the
realm’ sitting in parliament who petitioned Edward III to keep Magna
Carta and agree to scrutiny of his officials, which the king eventually
conceded. Most significantly of all, a meeting of parliament in January
1327 replaced Edward II as king with his son. Even though Edward had
not attended, parliament was regarded as having the authority to proceed
with the removal of the anointed ruler. The deposition of Edward II,
accused of breaking his coronation oath to protect his people, demon-

strated the use of communal ideology against the failures of a ‘useless’
king.33
While the radical nature of such changes should not be exaggerated,
they must be regarded as representing a shift in the language and focus
of English politics between 1250 and 1350. These developments had
parallels in neighbouring lands. The role of communal ideas was clearest
in Scotland, where the concepts expressed in the Declaration of Arbroath
drew on precedents since the death of Alexander III in 1286. The lack of
any agreed royal heir in the kingdom threatened a failure both of govern-
ment and legitimate authority. Government was supplied by the choice
of six guardians but they linked their authority to the consent of the com-
munity of Scotland or of the realm. In the troubled years ahead, the value
of drawing legitimacy from communal support continued. In 1291 the
Bruce faction cited the ancient ‘right’ of ‘the seven earls of Scotland’ to
choose the king ‘with the community of the realm supporting them’.
Similar support was claimed by Robert Bruce after his seizure of the
throne in 1306. In 1309, letters were issued supporting his kingship in
the names of the clergy, lords, the ‘communities of the . . . earldoms’ and
the kingdom’s ‘inhabitants’. These championed Robert’s rights as their
defender, as rightful heir and as the recipient of the people’s consent and
support. Problems with Bruce’s legitimacy and opposition from Scots
who had supported Balliol made these claims of consent particularly
important for Robert but they also demonstrate an understanding of the
importance of such backing in general.34
If communal language was initially adopted as a source of legitimacy
not, as in England, as a means of resisting royal misrule, the Scots also
grasped its function in defining their collective rights. The treaty of
Birgham, drawn up in 1290, secured Edward I’s recognition of the dis-
tinct status of Scotland, and its legal, ecclesiastical and administrative
customs. As it was intended that their next king was to be Edward’s son
and heir, the treaty defined relations between ruler and people and sought
to prevent Scotland’s absorption into the structures of the English realm.
This was not about conflicting nations. Many leaders of the Scottish
community were also landowners in England. The Scottishness they
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sought to defend was a protection of distinct approaches to government

and law, entailing more limited financial, judicial and personal obliga-
tions to the crown. A more overt challenge to royal government occurred
in 1295 when numerous chroniclers record King John being removed
from the rule of his realm by a council of twelve lords, an echo of
England in 1258. The actual deposition of John by Edward I in 1296
was as central an issue in Scotland as Edward II’s removal in England.
When the Declaration of Arbroath spoke of the people’s right to depose

a king who failed to defend their liberties against the English, the argu-
ment related to John not Robert. It provided a way of justifying Robert’s
taking the throne (while John still lived) without accepting the right of
Edward I to depose Balliol and thus tacitly accepting the English king’s
sovereignty.35
Arguments resting on the rights of the people do not necessarily
indicate a more popular approach to government. However, in Scotland
too, the development of parliament was an indication of the need for
formal means of counsel and consent involving the wider community.
The Scottish parliament was another response to the challenges of the years
after 1286 and owed much to English assumptions. John called parlia-
ments between 1293 and 1295 to deal with judicial business. Parliament
acted as the highest court in his kingdom and a forum in which John
could consult his people in response to Edward I’s exercise of his jurisdic-
tion. It was under Robert I that parliament developed a fuller role. While
Robert’s first parliament in 1309 served as a means of claiming the sup-
port of the community, from 1314 onwards meetings of parliament were
held which issued legislation and consented to royal plans for the succes-
sion and requests for support. The grant of an annual tax to Robert in
1326 was made in an indenture between king and community which
suggests a process of negotiation in parliament. It specified the attend-
ance of nobles and of the ‘burgesses and other free tenants of the king-
dom’. The free tenants seem not to have been called as a group from the
1360s and the burgesses sat in a single chamber with clergy and nobles.
Renewed warfare and royal absences from 1332 disrupted the holding of
parliament but not the place of the institution or its broad functions in
late medieval Scotland. In 1364 a parliament at Scone refused its consent
to plans to name a Plantagenet heir to David II, and in 1384, 1388 and
1402 meetings of the estates would be the means to legitimise alterations
in the exercise of royal authority, replacing adult kings and lieutenants.36
A third parliament developed in the late thirteenth century, in the
English king’s lordship of Ireland. This met regularly from the 1270s
onwards, but owed its identity much more clearly to Edward I’s central-
ising tendencies than as a response to a crisis in government. The king’s
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officials in the lordship played a leading role in the body, and its con-
cerns, expressed in legislation in 1278 and 1297 for example, were with
the defence of English lands and administration. Many of the statutes
applied to the English of Ireland came directly from Westminster and the
Irish parliament was generally accepted as subordinate to that of England.37
This administrative connection to England was an important element in
the identity of this community of English beyond the Irish Sea. Despite
the claims made in the Remonstrance of 1317, a letter written on behalf

of the Irish to the pope, that the Anglo-Irish were a ‘middle nation’, in
reality this group were strident about their Englishness. Their adherence
to English laws and political loyalties to the English king were key fea-
tures of this. However, in the fourteenth century there were indications
of a growing sense that the English of Ireland saw themselves as a distinct
group amongst the subjects of this king. The clearest expression of this
came in 1341. Edward III ordered his officials to revoke all grants made
by the crown since 1307. This policy met with a furious response. A
contemporary annal reported that ‘never before that time had there been
so clear and open a division’ between English and Anglo-Irish. Nobles
and burgesses met in parliament at Kilkenny in the absence of the justi-
ciar and other royal ministers. The assembly dispatched a petition to the
king which attacked the revocation and the failings and corruption of
his officials which threatened the survival of the lordship. However, the
petition also protested the loyalty of the English of Ireland to the king,
which was contrasted with the rebelliousness of the king’s subjects in
Wales, Gascony and Scotland. The protest was not a challenge to
Edward’s authority but a demand for his recognition of the special rights
and needs of the Anglo-Irish. Both the petition and narrative accounts
from the lordship stress the need for the king’s ministers to know and
work with the English there. Those officials whose approach challenged
the interest of Anglo-Irish magnates were denounced, like Ralph Ufford
in 1344, as an ‘aggressor’, ‘robber’ and ‘defrauder’ of the English ‘people
of Ireland’. The petition of 1341 was followed by similar letters from the
parliament in Ireland in 1360 and 1380. These expressed a rising level of
threat from the Irish to the extent and then survival of the lordship which
suggests not just a growing sense of anxiety amongst the English of
Ireland but an awareness of the need to win the king’s concern and com-
mitment. These petitions sought royal support for the English against
their Irish neighbours and against royal officials through the fourteenth
century and increasingly requested that the king, one of his family or a
great English magnate be sent with an army to run the lordship. Such
requests indicate a community which was capable of dealing with its
rulers in an effective manner.38
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The ability to speak as a community did not depend on parliamentary

structures or unitary government. Despite the administrative divisions of
Wales after the conquest and the lack of representation in parliament,
both English and Welsh inhabitants regarded themselves as operating
within communities. The English, especially in the new boroughs of the
north and west, shared elements of their outlook with the Anglo-Irish.
In 1345, for example, ‘the community of the town of Rhuddlan’ wrote
to Edward prince of Wales to complain about the behaviour of the local

Welsh. They reminded the prince that their ‘franchises’ came from the
charter of ‘Edward the conqueror of Wales’ who ‘established towns and
castles there (and) caused them to be inhabited by Englishmen’. Unless
the prince helped, ‘all the English will be destroyed out of the land’.
Appeals to history, loyalty, English identity and the safety of the realm
matched those made in the Irish petition of 1341.39
The English of Wales were, at least, a favoured group. However, their
Welsh neighbours, despite the inferior status they held, also had means
of seeking redress from their rulers. The grievances expressed against Llywelyn
ap Gruffudd’s rule by the local communities of Gwynedd in 1283 indicate
that there were established elites able to negotiate with their princes and
express discontent. The conquest created new difficulties in this process,
demonstrated by the rebellions of 1287, 1294 and 1316. These risings
represented the breakdown of relations between the English crown and
the Welsh. In 1294 rebellion was caused by the demands of Edward I for
taxation and military service which drove Welshmen in both march and
principality to take up arms. In 1316 the revolt was more localised. Under
Llywelyn Bren, a Welsh official in Glamorgan, it was a response to the
actions of the king’s officials in the lordship after the death of its marcher
lord. Llywelyn took up arms following the failure of other approaches.40
In normal circumstances, these channels were effective in dealing with
grievances and avoiding major conflict. Welsh communities in the prin-
cipality were allowed, and on occasion encouraged, to present petitions
to the king or Prince of Wales. In 1305 a body of petitions was presented
to the future Edward II at Kennington and subsequently he received lists
of grievances from the Welsh in 1309–10, 1315 and 1318. The bulk of
these complaints concerned the legal status of the Welsh after the con-
quest, but in 1310 and 1315 they included attacks on the harsh govern-
ment of the king’s justiciar, Roger Mortimer of Chirk. In 1322, as a
result of the loyal support given by many Welsh nobles in Edward’s war
against his opponents, including the Mortimers and other marcher lords,
many petitions were presented. The king responded to these with letters
to ‘the community of the Welsh, both north and south Welsh’. This
community could contrast their loyalty with the rebellion of the marchers
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but within the march the same rules were at work. In 1301 the earl of
Hereford countered efforts by royal officials to win support within his
lordship of Brecon by ordering his own bailiffs to hold meetings with the
Welsh. At these the laws and rights of local communities were confirmed
by a ‘good charter’.41 Not all lords were as sensitive to the interests of
their Welsh tenants. Edward II’s surprisingly sure touch with the Welsh
was not inherited by his grandson, the Black Prince, and Hereford’s
ability to maintain his tenants’ loyalty can be contrasted with the hostility
shown towards Mortimer of Chirk and Hugh Despenser lord of Glamorgan
by their Welshmen. These examples show that relations between English
lords and Welsh subjects, ostensibly between conquerors and conquered,
also ran by rules of good and bad government, the latter bringing risks
of increased alienation and opposition.42
From the later thirteenth century this was the case in most parts of the
isles, even amongst the politically-fragmented Irish. In 1277 a petition
was sent to Edward I from ‘the community of Ireland’ seeking to purchase
access to English law. The significance of this offer will be considered
later, but the use of communal language by leaders of this group did not
come from Irish rulers, like the O’Briens or O’Neills. These ‘royal
bloods’ could already claim English status in law. Instead the request
came from the clergy led by the Archbishop of Cashel and, had it been
granted, would have had most effect for the Irish population within
English shires and liberties. The Irish Remonstrance of 1317 claimed to
be from Donal O’Neill and ‘the under-kings and magnates’ and ‘the Irish
people’. The letter argued that through their actions the English kings
had denied the Irish their ‘native freedoms’ and, ‘as a result of the inad-
equacy of the prince’, O’Neill and the Irish ‘unanimously established’
Edward Bruce as their ‘king and lord’. The language used indicates that
the document’s author was aware of ideas about communal rights,
though the actions of the Irish ‘magnates’ hardly suggests a sense of
these as providing a basis for their behaviour in these years.43
By the opening decades of the fourteenth century the language of com-
munity was employed in all the lands of the British Isles. Statements which
rested on the concept that the subjects of a ruler formed communities
with their own rights and liberties were issued in contexts which suggest
the importance of these ideas in shaping relations between governors and
governed. This is supported by the greater formality accorded to processes
of consent, petition and complaint especially within institutional frame-
works of parliament and council. These processes influenced the ways in
which heightened claims of royal authority were applied. However, as with
the practice of government, beneath the shared ideas and language of
community there were wide variations in the way such concepts related
· 103 ·
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to different lands and their inhabitants. Social structures, historical tra-

ditions and recent experiences produced communities of very different
character and status. Moreover the ways in which this language of collec-
tive identity and right was used sharpened senses of difference and defini-
tion between communities. Communities were defined in terms of their
shared position as subjects of a ruler but were also labelled in terms of
race. In Wales and Ireland the rights of English and native inhabitants
were not pooled but existed in competition. In Scotland the strident

identification of the community developed after 1286 as a means of
stressing shared rights in the face of the growing intrusion of English
royal interference. As such, concepts of community formed a key element
in the wars and antagonisms of an era in which the conflicts of kings and
princes were also presented and waged as struggles between peoples.
Notes
1. J. Lydon, ‘Ireland in 1297: “At peace after its manner”’, in Lydon (ed.), Law
and Disorder, 11–24; J. Lydon, ‘Parliament and the Community of Ireland’,
ibid, 125–38; Connolly, ‘Enactments’, 151; H.G. Richardson and G.O.
Sayles, The Irish Parliament in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia, 1952), 70.
2. Prestwich, Edward I, 10–12, 226–7; W.H. Waters, The Edwardian Settlement
of Wales in its Administrative and Legal Aspects (Cardiff, 1935), 31–4; A.
Ruddick, ‘Ethnic Identity and Political Language in the King of England’s
Dominions: A Fourteenth-Century Perspective’, The Fifteenth Century vi
(Woodbridge, 2006), 15–31; Rotuli Scotiae, i, 381, 384, 525, 567.
3. In the 1190s there was a plan to grant Lothian to King William of Scotland’s
eldest daughter as part of a proposed marriage to Richard I of England’s
nephew (Duncan, Kingship of the Scots, 105–7; D. Broun, ‘Defining Scotland
and the Scots before the Wars of Independence’, in D. Broun, R. Finlay
and M. Lynch, Image and Identity: The Making and Remaking of Scotland
through the Ages (Edinburgh, 1998), 4–17).
4. W.L. Warren, The Governance of Norman and Angevin England, 1086–1272
(London, 1987), 65–88, 125–70; Brown, The Governance of Late Medieval
England, 23–8, 44–6, 54–6; A.A.M. Duncan, Scotland: The Making of the
Kingdom (Edinburgh, 1975), 595–616; H.G. Richardson and G.O. Sayles,
The Administration of Ireland, 1172–1377 (Dublin, 1963).
5. G.W.S. Barrow, The Kingdom of the Scots (Edinburgh, 1973), 68–111;
A.A.M. Duncan, ‘The Laws of Malcolm MacKenneth’, in Grant and Stringer
(eds), Medieval Scotland, 239–73; Otway-Ruthven, Medieval Ireland,
145–8; A.J. Otway-Ruthven, ‘Anglo-Irish Shire Government in the
Thirteenth Century’, IHS, 5 (1946–7), 1–10.
6. Waters, Edwardian Settlement, 7–30; English Historical Documents, iii,
no. 55; Smith, ‘The Governance of Wales’, 73–5.
7. G. McGrath, ‘The Shiring of Ireland and the 1297 Parliament’, in Lydon (ed.),
Law and Disorder, 107–24; Watson, Under the Hammer, 30–5, 214–20.
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RULERS AND REALMS
8. Frame, English Lordship, 106–14; Watson, Under the Hammer, 35–40;

Lydon, ‘Ireland in 1297’, 11–13; Waters, Edwardian Settlement, 20–2;
Richardson and Sayles, Irish Parliament, 43–51, 68, 81–4, 92–3; Hartland,
‘Petitions’, 59–70.
9. Waters, Edwardian Settlement, 11–14, 19–24; R.A. Griffiths, The Principality
of Wales in the Later Middle Ages: The Structure and Personnel of Government:
South Wales, 1277–1536 (Cardiff, 1972); Stones, Anglo-Scottish Relations,
no. 33, p. 245.
10. For the shift from law state to war state see Kaeuper, War, Justice and Public
Order, especially 117–33, 266–8, 383–90. For alternative views about the
late medieval English state see G. Harriss, ‘Political Society and the Growth
of Government in Late Medieval England’, Past and Present, 138 (1993),
28–57; C. Carpenter, ‘War, Government and Governance in England in the
Later Middle Ages’, The Fifteenth Century, viii (2007), 1–22.
11. W.M. Ormrod, Political Life in Medieval England, 1300–1450 (London,
1994), 89–95; Kaeuper, War, Justice and Public Order, 34–6; G. Harriss,
Shaping the Nation: England, 58–65; Harriss, King, Parliament and Public
Finance, 49–74, 231–93; T. Thornton, ‘Taxing the King’s Dominions: The
Subject Territories of the English Crown in the Late Middle Ages’, in W.M.
Ormrod, M. Bonney and R. Bonney (eds), Crises, Revolutions and Self-
Sustained Growth: Essays in European Fiscal History, 1130–1830 (Stamford,
1999), 97–109.
12. A. Musson and W.M. Ormrod, The Evolution of English Justice: Law, Politics
and Society in the Fourteenth Century (London, 1999), 75–160; B.H.
Puttnam, The Enforcement of the Statute of Labourers (New York, 1908).
13. Bellamy, Law of Treason, 48–54, 59–101; M. Strickland, ‘Treason, Feud
and the Growth of State Violence’, 84–113; C. Valente, ‘The Deposition and
Abdication of Edward II’, EHR, 113 (1998), 852–81; W.H. Dunham and
C.T. Wood, ‘The Right to Rule in England: Depositions and the Kingdom’s
Authority, 1327–1485’, American Historical Review, 81 (1976), 738–61.
14. Calendar of Ancient Correspondence concerning Wales, ed. J.G. Edwards
(Cardiff, 1935), 225–6; Davies, Lordship and Society, 27–8, 269–73; Waters,
Edwardian Settlement, 31–44; D.L. Evans, ‘Some Notes on the History of
the Principality of Wales in the Time of the Black Prince’, Transactions of the
Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion (1925–6), 28–40.
15. Otway-Ruthven, Medieval Ireland, 181–7; Frame, English Lordship, 47,
119–20, 220, 234, 250, 276, 283–5; Hartland, ‘The Liberties of Ireland’,
201–10; Connolly, ‘Enactments’, 151.
16. Connolly, ‘Enactments of the 1297 Parliament’, 151–7; B. Smith,
Colonisation and Conquest in Medieval Ireland: The English in Louth 1170–
1330 (Cambridge, 1999), 131–2.
17. Lydon, Lordship of Ireland, 97, 100–1, 103, 122–5; Lydon, ‘Edward II and
the Revenues of Ireland’, IHS, 14 (1964), 39–57; Frame, ‘Military Service’,
287–95; R. Frame, ‘War and Peace in the Medieval Lordship of Ireland’,
118–41.
18. Frame, English Lordship, 7–87; Frame, ‘Power and Society in the Lordship
of Ireland, 1272–1377’.
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DISUNITED KINGDOMS
19. R. Frame, ‘The Justiciarship of Ralph Ufford: Warfare and Politics in

Fourteenth-Century Ireland’, 7–47; Frame, English Lordship, 87–106;
Lydon, The Lordship of Ireland, 164–5.
20. N. Reid (ed.), Scotland in the Reign of Alexander III (Edinburgh, 1990); Brown,
Wars of Scotland, 89–113; C. Neville, Native Lordship in Medieval Scotland:
The Earldoms of Strathearn and Lennox, c.1140–1365 (Dublin, 2005).
21. Reid, ‘The Kingless Kingdom’, 104–13; G.W.S. Barrow, ‘A Kingdom in
Crisis: Scotland and the Maid of Norway’, SHR, 69 (1990), 120–41;
Brown, Wars of Scotland, 235–43; Penman, David II, 49–50, 55–61,

198–200, 221–35; S. Boardman, The Early Stewart Kings, 124–31.
22. Boardman, Early Stewart Kings, 72–6; Penman, David II, 58–9, 108, 180;
M. Brown, ‘The Scottish March Wardenships, c.1340–c.1480’, forthcoming.
23. A. Grant, ‘Franchises North of the Border: Baronies and Regalities in
Medieval Scotland’, in Prestwich (ed.), Liberties and Identities, 155–99; M.
Brown, The Black Douglases: War and Lordship in Late Medieval Scotland
(East Linton, 1998), 22–8, 47–9.
24. Penman, David II, 89–116, 140–6, 158–60, 199–200; Brown, Black
Douglases, 41–3, 46–7; S. Boardman, ‘Lordship in the North-East: The
Badenoch Stewarts, I, Alexander Earl of Buchan and Lord of Badenoch’,
Northern Scotland, 16 (1996), 1–30.
25. N. Reid, ‘Crown and Community under Robert I’, in Grant and Stringer
(eds), Medieval Scotland, 203–22; M. Penman, ‘A fell coniuration again
Robert ye douchty king: The Soules Conspiracy of 1318–20’, Innes Review,
50 (1999), 25–37; Penman, David II, 34, 283–95.
26. Penman, David II, 347–53, 380–2, 390–2; Boardman, Early Stewart Kings,
71–9.
27. For the palatinates of Durham and Chester see C. Liddy, The Bishopric
of Durham in the Late Middle Ages: Lordship, Community and the Cult of
St Cuthbert (Woodbridge, 2008); P. Morgan, War and Society in Medieval
Cheshire, 1277–1403 (Manchester, 1987), 63–5. For the power and
resources of the houses of Lancaster see S. Walker, The Lancastrian Affinity
1361–1399 (Oxford, 1990); K. Fowler, The King’s Lieutenant: Henry of
Grosmont, First Duke of Lancaster (London, 1969), 404; A. Goodman, John
of Gaunt: The Exercise of Princely Power in Fourteenth-Century Europe
(London, 1992); W.M. Ormrod, ‘Edward III and his Family’, Journal of
British Studies, 26 (1987), 398–422 at 404; R. Somerville, History of the
Duchy of Lancaster, 2 vols (London, 1963), i, 31–110.
28. G.W.S. Barrow, The Declaration of Arbroath: History, Significance, Setting
(Edinburgh, 2003); G. Simpson, ‘The Declaration of Arbroath Revitalised’,
SHR, 56 (1977), 11–33; A.A.M. Duncan, The Nation of Scots and the
Declaration of Arbroath (London, 1970).
29. S. Reynolds, Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe 900–1300
(Oxford, 1984), 250–331.
30. English Historical Documents, iii, 341–7, 361–7; D.A. Carpenter, ‘What
Happened in 1258?’, in J.B. Gillingham and J.C. Holt (eds), War and
Government in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 1984), 106–19; R.F.
Treharne, The Baronial Plan of Reform 1258–63 (Manchester, 1971);
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RULERS AND REALMS
Clanchy, England and its Rulers, 263–83; Valente, Theory and Practice of
Revolt, 237–42.
31. English Historical Documents, iii, 469–87, 527–39; Prestwich, English
Politics in the Thirteenth Century, 136–45; Prestwich, ‘The Ordinances of
1311 and the Politics of the Early Fourteenth Century’, 1–18.
32. M.C. Prestwich, ‘Parliament and the Community of the Realm in Fourteenth
Century England’, in A. Cosgrove and J.I. McGuire (eds), Historical Studies
XIV: Parliament and Community (Belfast, 1983), 5–24; J.R. Maddicott,
The Origins of the English Parliament, 924–1327 (Oxford, 2010).

33. English Historical Documents, iii, 543–4; ibid, iv, ed. A.R. Myers (London,
1969), 70–2; J.R. Strayer, ‘The Statute of York and the Community of
the Realm’, American Historical Review, 47 (1941), 1–22; Harriss, King,
Parliament and Public Order, 294–312; Valente, ‘Deposition and Abdication
of Edward II’; Fryde, Tyranny and Fall, 195–200; B. Wilkinson, ‘The
Deposition of Richard II and the Accession of Henry IV’, EHR, 54 (1939),
215–39; B. Wilkinson, ‘The Coronation Oath of Edward II and the Statute
of York’, Speculum, 19 (1944), 445–69.
34. Stones, Anglo-Scottish Relations, no. 14; A.A.M. Duncan, ‘The Declarations of
the Clergy’, in Barrow (ed.), Declaration of Arbroath, 32–49 (text at 44–5).
35. Barrow, ‘Kingdom in Crisis’, 135–6; Duncan, The Kingship of the Scots,
187–94; McQueen, ‘Parliament, the Guardians and John Balliol’, 46–7.
36. A.A.M. Duncan, ‘The Early Parliaments of Scotland’, SHR, 45 (1966),
36–58; M. Penman, ‘Parliament Lost – Parliament Regained? The Three
Estates in the Reign of David II, 1329–71’, in K. Brown and R. Tanner
(eds), The History of the Scottish Parliament (Edinburgh, 2004), 74–101;
S. Boardman, ‘Coronations, Kings and Guardians: Politics, Parliaments and
General Councils, 1371–1406’, ibid, 102–22.
37. Richardson and Sayles, Irish Parliament, 68, 92–3.
38. Statutes, Ordinances and Acts of the Parliament of Ireland, 333–64; R.
Frame, ‘ “Les Engleys nées en Irlande”: The English Political Identity in
Medieval Ireland’, in Frame, Ireland and Britain, 131–50; R. Frame,
‘Exporting State and Nation: Being English in Medieval Ireland’, in L.
Scales and O. Zimmer (eds), Power and the Nation in European History
(Cambridge, 2005), 143–65; J. Lydon, ‘The Middle Nation’, in Lydon,
English in Medieval Ireland, 1–26.
39. Calendar of Ancient Correspondence concerning Wales, ed. J.G. Edwards
(Cardiff, 1935), 231–2.
40. Griffiths, ‘The Revolt of Madog ap Llywelyn’; R.A. Griffiths, ‘The Revolt
of Rhys ap Maredudd, 1287–8’, WHR, 5 (1970–1), 366–76; Smith, ‘The
Rebellion of Llywelyn Bren’; Griffiths, ‘The Revolt of Llywelyn Bren, 1316’.
41. CACW, 101.
42. Smith, ‘Edward II and Wales’, 144–5, 153–64; A.D. Carr, ‘Crown and
Communities: Collaboration and Conflict’, in Herbert and Jones (eds),
Edward I and Wales, 123–44.
43. Duffy, Robert the Bruce’s Irish Wars, 179–86 (for the text of the
Remonstrance); A.J. Otway-Ruthven, ‘The Native Irish and English Law in
Mediaeval Ireland’, IHS, 7 (1950), 1–16.
· 107 ·
chapter five
PEOPLES, CRISES AND

CONFLICTS
Communes and Nations
T he language of community was closely related to ideas about nations

and peoples. While claims to collective liberties were deployed by
political classes in terms of relations with rulers and governments, the
rights belonging to a political community were frequently expressed as
those of a community based on shared descent and ethnicity. The Irish
Remonstrance was a letter sent to the pope in 1317 on behalf of ‘the
Irish people’. It argued that the English kings had violated the terms by
which they had received Ireland as a lordship from the papacy in the twelfth
century. Because of this the Irish sought papal sanction to make Edward
Bruce their king. The language of resistance to misrule was employed in
the criticism of the English kings and their ‘wicked ministers’ but greater
weight was given to the behaviour of the English people in Ireland.
These English of Ireland were said to describe themselves as ‘a middle
nation’ but ‘are so different in behaviour from the English of England . . .
that they can be most properly called a nation, not of middling but of
extreme perfidy’. The letter catalogues the actions of these English, in
both laws and deeds, which is said to have corrupted the ‘dove-like’ sim-
plicity of the Irish, excluded them from lands and church and slain them
with impunity. The sense conveyed is of a land of two distinct peoples,
each with their own characteristics, an impression shared by the English
of Ireland.1
The Irish Remonstrance combined arguments which placed the rights
of a community subjected to tyrannical misrule alongside those of antagon-
isms defined by the actions of distinct nations. Such a basis for conflict
was characteristic of the decades from 1280 onwards. Many of the con-
flicts of the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries contained an element
of friction between ruler and subjects, the latter seeking to defend or
recover their rights against unacceptable royal government. In the case of
clashes between rulers and groups of their subjects drawn from the same
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PEOPLES, CRISES AND CONFLICTS
community the identification of the conflict as a struggle over the quality

of governance is clear-cut. The wars in 1321–2 between Edward II and
his baronial opponents revolved around the actions of the king and his
ministers within these dominions. Similarly the rebellion of three leading
magnates against David II of Scotland in 1363 was an armed protest
against that ruler’s financial and political actions. Issues of ethnic identity
were not central to conflicts which typically receive the label of ‘civil war’.
However, the major warfare of the period was waged between English
kings and opponents whose resistance was defined by political traditions
and claimed ethnic identity which marked their separation from England
and Englishness. In the wars of Edward I and his successors in Wales and
Scotland and in the ongoing warfare in Ireland differences of nation were
key factors in the character and goals of conflict. Despite this, these wars
still involved issues of government and community. English kings con-
sistently presented their opponents in Scotland, Wales and Ireland as
both ‘enemies and rebels’ whose actions, as we have seen, were treated
as the illegal denial of their sovereign lord. Opposition was also framed
in terms of the quality of royal rule. The decision of many Welshmen to
take up arms against Edward I in 1282 and 1294 came in resistance to
the demands of royal officials. In the same way, anxiety over Edward’s
extension of military service and financial exactions into Scotland was a
key element in the rebellions there in 1297. The vital role played in the
rising by mesnie or ‘middle folk’ has been ascribed to the vulnerability of
freeholders and burgesses to such demands. In both realms, though,
critical impetus was provided to the call to arms by the fact that the ruler
and officials involved were foreigners. Edward I and his agents were
regarded as aliens whose actions had infringed the rights which these
communities had held under their own native lords. In Scotland, at least,
English kings did recognise the need to acknowledge these rights. In the
Birgham treaty of 1290, the Ordinance of 1305 and in Edward III’s
attempts to secure Scottish recognition through war in 1335 and by
diplomacy in 1363–4, Plantagenet kings promised to observe the access
of Scots to their laws, lands and to the offices of church and realm.2
As well as expressing opposition to royal demands, arguments were
also employed which made the efforts of rulers to defend their rights a
matter for the common concern of their subjects. In the 1290s Edward I
presented his war against Philip IV of France, which was principally
caused by a dispute over the status of the duchy of Aquitaine, as involving
issues much closer to the concerns of the English people. A number of
contemporary sources repeat the idea that the war was an attempt by the
French to destroy the English lingua, probably meaning nation rather
than language. This scaremongering may well have been generated in an
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DISUNITED KINGDOMS
attempt to make a relatively distant conflict a matter of collective survival.

The need for such propaganda was indicated by the criticisms levelled
against Edward’s decision to dispatch armies to Gascony and Flanders in
1297 while Scotland rose in rebellion. In contrast to continental warfare,
it was much easier for English kings to present their wars against Welsh
and Scottish enemies as being waged as part of their duty to defend their
English subjects. Thus in 1283 Edward wrote to the English nobility that
‘the tongue of man can scarcely recount the evil deeds committed by the
Welsh upon the king’s progenitors and him by invasions of the realm’.
Warfare against the Scots was similarly immediate, especially during periods
of major incursions into northern England. Royal letters sent by Edward
II to muster troops for these wars began by arguing that the enemy’s
attacks were inflicting ‘murders, arson, robberies and other crimes’ on
‘our people’ and it was even claimed that the Scots aimed to ‘destroy us
and the people of our kingdom of England’. Such language was used to
strengthen efforts to secure the support and participation of English lords
and local communities in royal warfare against other peoples. The same
approach was followed by Scottish leaders. In 1326 Robert I’s request for
financial support from the Scottish parliament stated that ‘he had sus-
tained many hardships for the recovery and protection of the liberties of
them all’. Bruce’s wars, which were initiated in 1306 to secure him the
Scottish throne, had been effectively translated over two decades into a
struggle for the rights and freedoms pertaining to the ‘community of the
realm’.3
This identification of a Bruce cause with the Scottish cause was
expressed most clearly in letters sent outside the realm to papal curia and
church council. This was not confined to Scotland. Just as the Declaration
of Arbroath stated that the community of Scotland would remove a ruler
who surrendered their liberties to ‘the English king and people’, so in
1301 letters were issued which stated that the English barons would
prevent Edward I from abandoning his rights in Scotland under papal
pressure. A similar expression of conditional backing for their ruler was
contained in the response issued on behalf of ‘the Welsh people’ in 1282.
This maintained that the Welsh were not bound by any peace which
Llywelyn made with Edward I which surrendered his and their rights and
especially if it subjected them ‘to any foreigner wholly ignorant of their
language, nature and laws’. Such words bring us back to the point that
these statements all rested on an understanding of shared rights based
around identification with the elements of a common nationhood. The
most ambitious expressions of this came in the letters sent by Robert and
Edward Bruce to seek support from Ireland and Wales. In a letter written
in late 1306 Robert addressed the Irish as kinsmen from ‘one branch of
· 110 ·
a nation’ who should act together so that ‘our ancient nation can be
restored to freedom’. The approach to the Welsh squire Gruffudd Llwyd
spoke in similar terms about the joint recovery of their ancient liberties
by Welsh and Scots.4
However, caution must be taken in considering the evidence for this
‘Celtic alliance’ and the other well-known declarations of the will of the
community with regard to their existence and rights as nations. All of
the examples in the preceding paragraph were products of royal initiative.

They were produced as part of the furthering of the policies of rulers like
Edward I, Robert I or Llywelyn of Gwynedd. Their expressions about
the cohesion and unity of nations in the form of communities ignored
immediate conditions in the various lands and regions of the British Isles.
For example, if Gruffudd Llwyd considered seeking support from the
Bruces in 1316, his consistent aim was to secure the good lordship of the
English king and not that ruler’s expulsion from Wales. Similarly, Irish
interest in allying with Edward Bruce focused on his support in their
regional power struggles, and the Scots ended by being regarded in the
words of Irish annalists, not as kinsmen, but as ‘the common ruin of the
Gaels and the Galls’, an external enemy.5 The treatment of these two
groups within Ireland, the Irish Gael and English Gall, could not simply
be reduced to nations of defined and distinct character and community
as the Remonstrance suggested. In Ireland, records and narratives after
1300 make increasing references to ‘English rebels’ or ‘felons’ operating
in either temporary or longstanding defiance of the king’s officials, fre-
quently in alliance with ‘Irish enemies’. In the same way, many Irish lived
in the king’s peace. They may be the group identified as peaceful non-
English subjects of the king in phrases like ‘English and peace lovers’
used by the Anglo-Irish chronicler John Clyn, who wrote in the 1340s.6
The statements of support for Robert Bruce issued in the name of his
community also obscured sharp divisions. While Robert I claimed to act
as the ‘faithful leader’ of the Scottish ‘people and community’ in 1309,
another ‘commune of Scotland’, hostile to Bruce, wrote seeking Edward
II’s protection against his attacks. Between 1306 and 1314 and again in
the 1330s there were periods of effective civil war in Scotland. In lands
divided by internal conflict and shaped by concerns of security and
patronage, confident statements about the primacy of national identities
need to be set alongside contradictory evidence.
The way in which ideas of nations formed part of the political land-
scape in the era of intensified conflict after 1280 drew on longstanding
perceptions and equally longstanding qualifications to them. For centuries
before this date the British Isles, like the rest of Europe, had been written
and thought about in terms of its peoples. In the fourteenth century
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Ralph Higden prefaced his widely-read history, Polychronicon, with descrip-

tions of the lands, origins and national characters of the Irish, Scots,
Welsh and English.7 These descriptions drew on sources and traditions
which characterised the isles in terms of four lands and their inhabitants.
By the end of the thirteenth century, works which identified or assumed
their existence as distinct peoples had been produced in each of these
lands. In Wales and Ireland, despite their political fragmentation, there
was a powerful sense of the Welsh and Irish as nations who were defined
by language and by their possession of common histories and their own
ancient corpus of law and custom. Though material claiming a common
Scottish identity was more recent and problematic, the diplomatic writings
produced by the envoys of the Scottish guardians in 1301–2 employed a
narrative of national origins and histories probably produced during the
preceding century.8
It was England and the English which provided the most complete
evidence of the existence of a common sense of nationhood in the late
thirteenth century. The precocious cohesion of England in terms of its
government and identification as a people dated back centuries. This
cohesion survived the cataclysms of the eleventh century, which had
twice delivered the kingdom up to foreign rulers and elites, so that by the
later twelfth century there was a clear sense that England was defined by
its uniformity and by a strong thread of continuity which survived these
crises. The existence of a ‘Common Law’, whose roots were seen to rest
in the codes of West Saxon kings, and of a deeply-rooted administrative
unity which similarly stretched back to the tenth century shaped the sense
of the English as a single constituency subject to a common range of
obligations to their rulers.9 Such internal values were stressed in relation
to the actions of foreigners. Political verse, a medium designed for wide
circulation, frequently launched attacks against the continental favourites
of Henry III or against the ‘black . . . Scots’ and the ‘inconstant Welsh’.
The hostility of English writers towards the Scots, Welsh and Irish had
increased since the eleventh century, with these peoples described fre-
quently as barbarians, beasts, pagans and practisers of adultery and incest.
These views were connected with efforts to establish uniform rules of
moral and religious practice as part of the Gregorian reform movement,
but such ideas were linked to contrasts between the superior laws,
customs and character of the English and those of their neighbours. They
coloured the attitudes of the English king and people towards the other
peoples of the isles in ways which informed government and politics.10
A sense of classification by nation had developed as an important
determinant in questions of political behaviour and relationships by the
later thirteenth century. However, care must be taken with efforts to
· 112 ·
define the isles in these terms. The values expressed were those of a small,
literate, largely ecclesiastical class and their characterisations do not
reflect the full reality of political identities in the thirteenth century. The
division of the isles between four races ignored the layered nature of
political society in many lands and the way in which the events of the
preceding centuries had blurred and shifted key elements in the identities
of these peoples. An obvious example of this is the English language. The
use of English in the government, church and literature of England ended

after the Norman Conquest and the establishment of a francophone
political elite represented a major change. Though the descendants of
these lords presented themselves as ‘native-born Englishmen’, their con-
tinued use of French meant that language was not a defining feature of
Englishness in the thirteenth century.11
Despite this, between 1100 and 1300 the English tongue did not
merely survive, it extended its geographical range. The migration of
English-speaking settlers into Wales, Scotland and Ireland occurred in
the wake of English royal and aristocratic interventions in those lands.
These linked processes had a major effect on the make-up of the British
Isles. They shattered the idea that Wales and Ireland could simply be
identified as the homelands of a single nation. The distinction between
‘pure Wales’, still ruled and inhabited by the Welsh, and the march, lord-
ships governed by English nobles and with mixed populations, marked
Wales as a land divided between peoples. In theory, Ireland remained a
single political unit. However this ‘lordship of Ireland’ was held by the
king of England as a vassal of the pope. By the end of the century English
officials stated a difference between ‘the land of peace’, where English
social and administrative rules prevailed, the ‘marches’, where practices
were mixed, reflecting the realities of local conditions, and the ‘Irishry’,
where lordship, law and culture retained its Irish character. In Scotland,
while grants of lands to nobles and the settlement of English-speaking
populations were under the control of a native royal dynasty, shifts in the
character of many parts of their kingdom were comparable with those in
Ireland and Wales.12 In all three lands, the balance of the population and
the character of society were significantly altered. In districts as far apart
as Louth in eastern Ireland, Pembroke in south Wales and Clydesdale in
southern Scotland both landscape and settlement patterns were recon-
structed by incoming elites and lesser folk. These settlements were worked
by non-native peasantry or by natives operating on new terms. Colonisation
by English-speaking peasants was a product of a generally expanding
population which encouraged migration and the bringing of new lands
under the plough. This occurred both in terms of new, manorial settle-
ments and by the cultivation of marginal ground in uplands, forests and
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DISUNITED KINGDOMS
marshes, near to existing fields. The other feature of this colonial age was
the foundation of new urban centres with predominantly English-speaking
populations. These boroughs (burghs in Scotland) possessed their own
trading monopolies, or liberties, which made them the sole markets for
the surrounding districts. Most of these towns were small in size and
were new foundations, drawing their initial settlers from beyond their
region. Their laws and government reflected this colonial character,
drawing on codes followed in English towns. The use of the English

language in their markets and the pull they exerted on local rural popu-
lations made these boroughs centres of English influence in Scotland
beyond the Forth, the Welsh marches and parts of Ireland.13
The process of English settlement was a determining factor in the
other parts of the isles. Even in Scotland, where these changes involved
fewer questions of political allegiance, they had a massive impact. The
new towns or burghs facilitated the extension of the English language,
previously spoken in the south-east, into the west and north-east of the
kingdom. Since its formation c.900, Scotland had developed as a com-
posite kingdom, made up of a variety of different linguistic and ethnic
groups. Contacts with Irish Gaels, which were reminders of the true
origins of the Scots, were maintained by such means as the patronage
of Irish poets and elements of traditional law persisted too. However,
settlement by English-speaking populations was accompanied by the
widespread adoption of Anglo-French practices in law and administration
by kings, church and nobility to extend this hybrid character. It was
revealing that by the 1290s the Scots talked of ‘the laws of King David’
as the basis of their legal custom. David I (1124–53) was the architect of
Anglo-French Scotland and the use of his name indicated that the judicial
system in the kingdom rested primarily on legal models imported in the
previous century and a half.14 In this context, statements about a Scottish
nation were produced in the thirteenth century as a conscious attempt to
form a sense of political identity from early materials. This was sponsored
by the kings of Scots, whose long-term goal was the consolidation of the
various provinces under their lordship into a unitary realm. Several of
these provinces, like Lothian in the south-east and Strathclyde in the
south-west, had no place in the national history being formed. The process
had the support of clerical elites, whose promotion of a Christian tradi-
tion, around the cult of St Andrew for example, was part of their efforts
to cement their status as an ecclesiastical province, distinct from the
claims of the archbishops of York.15 In a parallel process, the thirteenth-
century princes of Gwynedd sought to make Wales synonymous with
their rule. Rather than an extension of the idea of the land, this meant
that Wales contracted to the lands of the princes. Llywelyn ap Gruffudd
· 114 ·
hammered home his title of ‘prince of all Wales’ by referring to his

officials as justiciars or bailiffs ‘of Wales’. He basked in the praise of poets
as ‘great head of Wales’ but, in reality, the solidity of his monarchy was
limited. It is ironic that it fell foul, in part, of the laws and customs of the
Welsh which Llywelyn claimed to defend and which were a far more
central part of Welsh identity than the regnal solidarity which he
attempted to construct.16
The flaws and limits of Llywelyn’s monarchy were not solely to do with
the limited rights of rulers in Welsh law. They were also to do with the
strong attachment felt by Welsh freemen to their own province and dis-
trict as well as any sense of common Welshness. At its broadest level, this
was expressed via the fissure between north and south Wales. In the
chronicle, Brut y Tywysogyon, which was produced at Strata Florida Abbey
in Deheubarth, the princes of Gwynedd were presented as external figures
and expressions of active approval limited to local rulers. The men of
Powys similarly understood their rights in the context of their own
princes rather than any ruler of Wales, as shown in the poem Brentiau
Gwyr Powys which expounded local virtues and identity.17 The unity of
Ireland was equally a poetic wish rather than a political aspiration. The
provinces of Ireland had always possessed strong and distinct cultural and
political identities, and English invasion and settlement had further frag-
mented any sense of Irish unity. The word nation was frequently used
in English sources to mean lineage or kindred, reflecting the type of
lordship based on real or imagined family relationships which was the key
level of political activity for most Irish. Irish allegiances revolved around
the, often disputed, leadership of regional kings, like the O’Briens in
Thomond, and the kindreds who followed them. The sense of difference
between Gael and foreigner remained very real, and in some spheres
would become starker but, as mentioned above, the labels which defined
these groups were far from being the only determinant in the loyalties
and attitudes of either Irish or English on the island.18 Even though
Scotland possessed a well-established unitary monarchy, it is hard to miss
the regionalised character of the kingdom. It was only around 1200 that
the idea of Lothian and Galloway in the south, and Moray and Argyll in
the north and west as lands beyond Scotland was replaced by a sense that
they were Scottish provinces, and the Western Isles remained a separate
land for both their inhabitants and their Scottish overlords in 1280.
Distinctions between Galloway, Lothian and Scotland continued to be
reflected in the separate justiciars appointed for these areas and the
provincialised character was also evident in the earldoms and lordships
which dominated much of the kingdom. The acceptance of customary
legal arrangements in Galloway and Fife continued without any pressure,
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while a manuscript copy of c.1270 survives of the customary law-code

called the Laws of the Scots and Brets translated from Gaelic into French,
suggesting a concern that non-Gaelic speakers could understand this
text, which was based on the payment of fines. Scottish legal practice
clearly retained elements which pre-dated Anglo-French influence and
reflected internal diversity.19
Such evidence means that it is right to be cautious about interpreta-
tions of events from 1280 onwards which assume that the highest level
of political or social identity, the kingdom or people, predominated over
lower tiers. Even in England, with its centralised structures of political
authority and law, regional and local identities and variations had signifi-
cance for the inhabitants. This could be based on private jurisdictions,
like the earldom of Chester or palatinate of Durham, or on regional
outlooks. The distinct perspective of the baronage of northern England,
less tolerant of royal interference and possessing ties of land and family
with Scotland, has been noted in the thirteenth century.20 For the English
in Wales and Ireland, ideas of their own common political and cultural
values had to be mapped onto environments in which mixed populations
and regionalised political traditions were deeply rooted. The result, as
shown by the marcher lordships of Wales each with their own separate
governments, proved that Englishness did not always mean unity of law
and authority. The same applies to the English of Ireland, who expressed
their identity in terms of history, laws and institutions which were con-
sciously English and not Irish, but which also reflected their geographical
separation from England and the development of the Lordship of
Ireland. The British Isles in the later thirteenth century were composed
of kings, lands and peoples but the structures these contained were not
monolithic, exclusive or hard-edged. The pull of provincial loyalties and
customs, the impact of settlement and partial conquest as well as the
attachments of elites to the wider structures of the Christian church and
a common aristocratic culture all served to make issues of identity a mat-
ter of complexity and continuing change in the later thirteenth century.
The Four Horsemen: Crises and their Effects

The era of intense warfare and political change in the British Isles from
1280 to 1340 did not fundamentally alter this sense of nations and
peoples as expressed before this period. The conquest of native Wales, the
Scottish wars and the unceasing warfare in Ireland were largely regarded
by contemporaries as conflicts between communities based on common
language, law or political allegiance. As was discussed in the previous
chapter, even the Welsh, despite their political subjection, continued to
· 116 ·
act as a community or group of communities distinct from their English

lords and neighbours. However, in terms of the relationships between
the peoples of the isles, the years from just before 1300 until the later
fourteenth century were ones of major change. They witnessed the pass-
ing of the high point of the sense of English legal and ethnic superiority
and the fullest extent of settlement by English-speaking communities
before the onset of a growing crisis of confidence and control which
marked the ebbing of high medieval trends. The factors behind these
changes were complex. They involved the growing demands and prestige
of sovereign rulers and the development of conscious communities of
lands and peoples. However, another set of circumstances influenced the
character of much of the archipelago in at least equal measure but did not
stem from deliberate political action. Changes in social and economic
conditions after 1280 resulted from both general events and from varied
regional environments. These regional environments will be analysed
more fully in Chapter Seven, but the influence they had on conditions
and relationships in many realms needs to be considered here.
Edward I’s conquest of Wales in 1282–4 may have inaugurated an age
of imperial ambition for the English monarchy but it was also the end of
an era. It provided the last example of the rural and urban colonisation
which characterised the preceding two centuries. In the royal principality
eleven boroughs were founded or re-founded by Edward I while three
boroughs were established in the marcher lordships which the king had
granted out to English magnates in north-east Wales. All were given
trading liberties within which the population was required to come to the
borough market to buy and sell. That of Caernarfon extended eight miles
from the borough, while the burgesses were also given 1,500 acres of
land for pasture and crops. Beyond the walls of Caernarfon and the other
boroughs of the north-west, there was virtually no colonisation, but to
the east in the new lordships like Denbigh, Ruthin (Dyffryn Clwyd) and
Chirk, considerable rural settlement occurred. The new burgesses and
rural proprietors were Englishmen drawn to Wales by the prospect of
land and status. Many were servants of the new lords, like Adam Verdon,
squire of Reginald Grey lord of Ruthin, or the cook of Henry Lacy lord
of Denbigh. Others came from the estates of these figures or from the
English shires closest to the Welsh border, receiving sizeable holdings in
the form of burgages or rural land.21
Such opportunities came at the expense of the Welsh. The Welsh
borough of Llan-faes on Anglesey was forced to make way for the royal
centre at Beaumaris. Its population was transplanted a dozen miles to a
new site. A similar fate was experienced by the Welsh of Denbigh. Accused
of rebellion, of failing to perform new services or subjected to compulsory
· 117 ·
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exchanges, the free inhabitants of the rich arable lands of the Clwyd
valley were deprived of their holdings. These were given instead to
English colonists while the Welsh tenants who retained landholdings
were confined to poorer quality lands, some high in the mountains.
Denbigh was divided into an ‘Englishry’ and a ‘Welshry’, distinct districts
within the lordship. While such hard divisions were the exception, they
merely gave a geographical clarity to the sharp differences between the
two peoples within Wales. This was most forcefully expressed with regard
to the English boroughs of the principality. Statutes issued after the
shock of the 1294–5 rebellion forbade the Welsh from buying land inside
‘English walled boroughs’, from dwelling in them or from bearing arms
within the walls but, at the same time, confirmed that all trading outside
them would result in the loss of goods. The apparent compromises of the
Statute of Wales of 1284 did not help. The areas in which the use of
Welsh law was allowed tended to disadvantage the Welsh population.
The rights of royal officials to collect fines in a range of customary areas
were maintained to the crown’s profit, while restrictions in Welsh law on
the buying and selling of land hindered Welsh access to the land market.
The existence of separate courts for the two peoples meant that disputes
between English and Welsh litigants were heard before juries of Englishmen.
In this context the growing requests for English law made by Welshmen
after 1300 are readily explicable as a means to escape their inferior status.
Relationships between English and Welsh may have been less stark in
some of the older marcher lordships of south and east Wales but the
general rule was clear.22
The Edwardian settlement of Wales harnessed the longstanding sense
of English superiority to the developing ideas and machinery of royal
government. The same combination can be identified at work in Ireland.
The way in which the leading Irish dynasties were denied royal status has
been mentioned already. However, these ‘five bloods’ were recognised as
royal tenants in chief under English law from a grant by Henry III. The
context of this grant was the growing authority and uniformity of English
law in Ireland. Both Henry and his father had made unequivocal state-
ments that ‘all the laws and customs which are observed in the realm of
England should be observed in Ireland’. This coincided with the growth
of the king’s administration in Ireland through the century which brought
more of the lordship under direct royal justice. There was, amongst the
officials of the crown, a clear sense that English law pertained to the free,
English tenants of the king and that the majority of Irish were excluded
from this group. The results of this exclusion were damaging for the
Irish. In 1277 an attempt was made by the Irish to obtain access to
English law by purchasing it from the king. Though Edward I regarded
· 118 ·
Irish laws as ‘detestable to God and contrary to all laws’, the effort failed,
probably due to the refusal of the English of Ireland to allow equal status
to the Irish. Evidence of this attitude can be found in the statute of the
1297 parliament which laid down that ‘the killing of Englishmen and
Irishmen requires different modes of punishment’. In the Irish Remon-
strance of 1317 it was complained that the Irish could not bring an
Englishman to court and that no penalty was imposed on an English
killer of an Irishman. The Remonstrance cited the assassinations of

Brian Rua O’Brien by Thomas Clare in 1277 and Murtough O’Connor
by Piers Bermingham in 1305 as proof of the limited legal protection
afforded to Irish, even those of royal blood, in the face of the treachery
of ambitious English lords. The continued appropriation of lands
from lesser Irish tenants in areas of English settlement, as observed in
County Waterford up to 1300, and the holding of royal courts applying
English common law in areas like the Wicklow Mountains just south
of Dublin during the 1270s would have made their inferior status appar-
ent to an extended group of Irish. The division between English and
Irish could be blurred in practice and was hard to police, but it was still
real. It was extended by the monopoly over government offices enjoyed
by the English. The sense of two peoples, one enjoying superior rights
and status, characterised English attitudes in Ireland at the close of
the century.23
The prevailing conditions up to 1300 underlay the dominance,
both military and administrative, of English (or Anglicised) structures
of authority and the settlement of English-speaking populations with
superior legal and economic status. However, from the last years of the
thirteenth century onwards, the ground was shifting. The Scottish Wars
from 1296 were an element in this. They presented different challenges
for English royal government from those faced in Wales and Ireland. As
already suggested, the wars were between two Anglo-French monarchies
and English attitudes reflected this. While abuse was heaped on the Scots
as savage and semi-naked barbarians in popular verses, Edward I and his
officials did not seek to establish any formal distinction in law between
English and Scots. Similarly, his handling of Scottish law was more
limited than the wholesale changes made in his settlement of Wales. The
1305 Ordinance appointed a panel which would review Scottish law but
direct criticism was reserved for custom not drawn from Anglo-French
legal models, like the Law of the Scots and Brets, which was specifically
mentioned.24 Edward I and his heirs were even ready to confirm the laws
of Galloway, albeit for political motives, and preserved the access of the
Scottish elite to courts and offices in their realm. Such approaches stemmed
from the similarities and contacts between the political classes of the two
· 119 ·
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realms. Southern Scotland was hard to distinguish from northern England

in language and law. As will be examined, the two regions shared an
overlapping and interconnected landholding elite and patterns of govern-
ment and settlement were broadly similar. As a result, the value and
possibilities of English settlement in the adjacent parts of Scotland were
limited. Edwardian colonisation was limited to the burgh of Berwick,
where English burgesses were established in 1296, were rooted out in
1318 and restored in 1333. Beyond this there were no efforts to create a
new English community in Scotland. Whether this would have changed
had secure Plantagenet lordship been established is uncertain, but the
need and possibilities of such a process were much more limited and were
thwarted by English military and political failures.25
It is possible that colonial moves in Scotland would, in any case,
have proved more difficult to sustain in the changing conditions of the
fourteenth century. These were the product of a complex range of factors.
The warfare of the English kings from the 1290s onwards against the
French king, Scottish opponents and enemies and rebels in Ireland was
part of this. The combination of heavy and sustained taxation, the force-
ful collection of royal debts, the commandeering of food and transport
for the use of the king’s armies and the need for local communities to
provide foot soldiers for these hosts all added up to a major burden on
the rural inhabitants of England. In particular, taking food and draught
animals, known as purveyance, had the potential to impoverish the peas-
antry, as testified in songs of complaint like The Song of the Husbandman.
At the height of the Scottish wars, from 1297 to 1323 and again in the
1330s, such burdens fell most heavily on the shires north of the Trent, the
poorer part of the realm. These pressures were not confined to England.
In Ireland, Edward I’s wars of the 1290s initiated a period of growing
royal demands. Payments made in the form of rents, judicial profits and
of lands taken into crown hands (including from Irish holders), as well as
general taxation were extracted from Ireland to fund Scottish campaigns.
Irish manpower, shipping and, especially, supplies of food were also
ordered by royal officials. Such demands fell on the English community
and on the shires and towns of the east and south in particular. By 1311
the draining away of the revenues of the Irish lordship had been identi-
fied as damaging the ability of the king’s officials to maintain his author-
ity in the island. This authority required royal warfare against the king’s
Irish enemies. The growing need to fund this was supplied by additional
taxation, purveyances and scutages (payments in lieu of military service).
The Scots must have experienced similar demands. A number of statutes
and promises were issued by Robert I limiting his subjects from the seizure
of goods by his officials and soldiers. These suggest that such practices
· 120 ·
were a widespread feature of the king’s war effort and were resented by
many landowners and their tenants and by burgesses.26
To these demands must be added the direct impact of warfare which
fell on many of the same areas. Northern England experienced several
periods of repeated Scottish attacks during the century from 1296. These
were mostly confined to the English border shires but in the period
between 1311 and 1323 penetrated deep into Yorkshire and Lancashire,
causing major damage to the whole region. Repeated, brief but effective,
campaigns extracted payments totalling over £20,000 in protection
money from local communities. Livestock was driven off and barns, mills
and orchards deliberately targeted from York northwards. In the deanery
of Carlisle in 1319 over half of the churches were destroyed and all stood
vacant, while in the 1320s land values in Northumberland were at half or
less of their peacetime value. Renewal of warfare in the 1330s led to
indications of fresh damage to land values in the next two decades as a
result of Scottish attacks. It has been suggested that the reduced levels of
taxable income asked for from English border shires also reflected efforts
by influential local figures to protect their vulnerable communities from
heavy financial burdens. Though the evidence of damage and of financial
demands is more limited, Scotland can hardly have fared better. In 1313
the communities of the south-east claimed that they had suffered
£20,000 worth of damage inflicted by Bruce and by English garrisons,
while the campaigns of Andrew Murray in Angus and the Mearns were
said to have caused widespread starvation in 1337. The south remained
vulnerable to war. In early 1356 Edinburgh and Haddington were
burned by Edward III’s campaign which had forced the rural inhabitants
to seek refuge in the hills or across the Forth. During the long truce from
1357 the values of estates in the Scottish borders remained well below
their peacetime assessment.27
In Ireland war had always presented challenges to local societies, but
the period brought an extension of its impact beyond the ‘marches’. The
campaigns of the Bruces were the most striking example of this exten-
sion. Their armies targeted English manors, towns and even religious
foundations. Settlements in eastern Ulster, Meath and Leinster were
plundered and burned between 1315 and 1318, including towns like
Dundalk, Kells and Naas, while Dublin was damaged by the fire set by its
citizens to destroy the suburbs as Bruce approached in 1317. The losses
experienced are suggested by the fall in tax valuation placed on the
archdiocese of Dublin from £2,800 to £800 between 1300 and 1320.
However, this fall cannot be solely ascribed to the Bruces. Starting before
1315 there are numerous references to manors near to the centres of
English administration in western Leinster, in Wicklow, in Kilkenny and
· 121 ·
DISUNITED KINGDOMS
Tipperary and elsewhere as losing some or all of their value due to war.
This was primarily a result of the actions of Irish leaders and kindreds,
often figures of growing power like Laoighseach O’More, but also of the
ambitions of English lords such as Maurice fitz Thomas earl of Desmond,
who waged intermittent warfare against his rivals in Munster between
1329 and 1345. With manors in sight of Dublin, like Saggart, Tallaght
and Rathcoole, laid waste by the Irish, it was clear that the ‘land of peace’
was shrinking.28
This fall in land values indicates a crisis in rural society in which warfare
was only one factor. The height of the Scottish wars between 1314 and
1318 coincided with the failure of harvests across a wide area of northern
Europe. Numerous chroniclers report dramatic rises in the price of grain.
For the poor these costs reduced many to begging and meant famine,
disease and starvation. In conjunction with the plundering armies – and
in both Ireland and northern England the Scots were specifically blamed
– hunger reportedly reduced men to eating dogs or cannibalism. Even
after the good harvest of 1318 the outbreak of disease amongst sheep
and cattle continued the hardship. Debates persist about whether this
‘Great Famine’ was an individual crisis or the beginning of a long-term
economic contraction. The run of poor harvests was blamed on heavy
rainfall, and it is clear that from the later thirteenth century the climate
was turning damper and cooler. While there is evidence of the famine
causing a fall in population in southern England, this climatic change is
seen to have had only a minor impact on the farming of good quality land
at low altitude. However, on more marginal lands, of lower fertility or at
higher altitude, the effects would have been more marked. Evidence from
Dartmoor, Northumberland and the southern hills of Scotland reveals
that the ploughing of lands above 1000–1300 feet (300–400 metres) ceased
around the year 1300. Where the proportion of such marginal lands was
higher, in the English north, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, the change in
climate would have had a greater impact. Famines were recorded in
Scotland and Ireland in the 1270s and 1290s along with numerous
reports of heavy storms and snows. Within these lands it was the inhabit-
ants of these marginal lands, upland and marsh, who were most affected.
The result was depopulation but perhaps also a shift from agriculture
towards a reliance on the herding of animals. In many districts such
changes would have a major political impact.29
The period of famine was followed, three decades later, by a cataclysm.
In June 1348 the plague reached south-west England. By August it had
struck the ports of eastern Ireland. It was not until the following year that
the inhabitants of Wales and Scotland began to suffer from the disease.
The plentiful evidence from England allows a detailed, if still confusing,
· 122 ·
picture of the numbers who succumbed to the disease in 1348–9. Major

variations are apparent from this, both by locality and by social class, but
it is realistic to see the population of England falling by between a third
and a half in the middle years of the century. It is much harder to assess
the mortality in the other lands of the isles. There is insufficient reliable
data and the estimates of chroniclers reflect fear rather than a sober
calculation. Perhaps the most revealing judgement was that made by
Archbishop FitzRalph of Armagh, who reported that the plague had

devastated the English population but not harmed either the Irish or the
Scots to the same extent. He added that the disease struck heaviest along
the coast. From this it might be deduced that the disease which spread
along trade routes and was most virulent in more densely-settled districts
had a greater impact on the towns and manors of Anglicised commun-
ities than in the more dispersed populations of the Irish and, by implica-
tion, upland parts of Wales and Scotland. If this cannot be proved, it
certainly suggests that English communities perceived themselves as
being weakened by the plague relative to their neighbours. The more
low-key treatment of the plague given by Scottish chroniclers may also
support the view that the disease was uneven in its impact on the peoples
of the archipelago.30
Taken together these factors represented a fundamental alteration
of prevailing conditions in the British Isles. The failure of harvests in
marginal lands demonstrated that the sustainable limits of arable farming
had been reached and were now contracting in new, less favourable
circumstances. The falls in population caused by war, famine and, above
all, plague removed the pool of surplus English peasantry which in pre-
ceding centuries had been drawn to take lands in the other realms of the
British Isles and bring marginal land into cultivation. The Scottish wars,
especially up to 1329, and the warfare in Ireland further damaged the
stability and confidence of the Anglicised parts of Scotland, northern
England and Ireland. The impact of these new, more threatening times
altered relationships between the communities of the British Isles.
Peoples and Politics in the Fourteenth Century

Nowhere was this clearer than in Ireland. Here, between 1270 and 1370,
the confidence and security of the English inhabitants was eroded. The
best-known expression of this was issued in 1366 in a parliament held by
Edward III’s son, Lionel duke of Clarence. The Statutes of Kilkenny
sought the means to maintain and defend the English and their values on
the island. The problems it identified had, in some form, been apparent
to earlier parliaments, like those in 1297 and 1341, but the 1366 statutes
· 123 ·
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represented the development of English fears. Chief amongst the concerns

were relations between themselves and their Irish neighbours. Significantly
these were mostly considered in terms of war and truce-making. There
had never been settled peace across Ireland, but the extent and duration
of warfare had increased since 1270. The English no longer possessed an
obvious military superiority in the type of warfare being fought. The defeats
inflicted by Edward Bruce’s army on larger English forces at Connor and
Skerries and his marches through the heartlands of the lordship dealt
major blows to the confidence of the English in Ireland. However, the
Irish also showed an increasing ability to defeat English forces in fights
like Callan in 1261, Ath an Urchair in 1329 and Disert O’Dea in 1318.
This last clash saw the death of Richard Clare and the collapse of his lord-
ship of Thomond, but most battles had only local significance.31
More important, cumulatively, was small-scale but continuous fight-
ing. Chroniclers like John Clyn in Kilkenny record a long sequence of
raids and burnings by both English and Irish captains in his locality. In
Kilkenny, as in neighbouring Laois, Wicklow and Carlow, sustained Irish
raiding had only begun in the 1270s. The reasons for the breakdown of
English authority in this highly sensitive region between the two main
areas of English settlement, one around Dublin and the other in the
south-east, are not wholly clear but may be linked to two elements in the
general crisis. The earliest reported Irish raids coincided with a period of
famine which may have created particular problems for kindreds in the
mountains of Wicklow or the bogs of Laois and Offaly. Kindreds like the
MacMurroughs, O’Mores and O’Tooles perhaps turned to plunder to
support themselves. One of the conditions laid down for making peace
in 1366 was that Irish should not be able to ‘pasture or occupy’ the lands
of English, suggesting that economic motives for incursions were well
understood and connected to the search for good grazing for livestock
and associated migration. However, the lack of access to law or lord-
ship probably also encouraged the leaders of these lineages to launch
increasingly ambitious forays into English-settled areas and to turn, like
Laoighseach O’More ‘from a subject, (to) a prince’.32
With some interruptions, in the 1280s and later 1340s for example,
English justiciars and keepers of the peace had to make repeated arrange-
ments for defence and forays against these Irish leaders and, from the
1290s onwards, this was perhaps the main concern of the English govern-
ment and the local communities of these counties. The Bruce brothers’
campaigns marked an escalation of this. Edward Bruce received support
from local Irish and found a temporary refuge for himself and his Scottish
army in the bogs of Laois in 1316. However, a more serious shift in
the regional balance of power may have been caused by the effects of
· 124 ·
the plague. The decade after 1348 certainly witnessed a growth in the
range and effect of Irish attacks. This owed something to the unusual
co-operation between Art MacMurrough and other leaders but this may
have represented a response to the perceived weakness of the English.
MacMurrough was able to demand tribute from exposed English settle-
ments and to threaten communications between Dublin and the south-
east. The direct role played by the royal government in this region allows
a fuller view of events but it is likely that similar shifts occurred elsewhere.
The petition sent by the English to Edward III in 1341 opened with an
account of the losses of manors and lands in Ulster and Connacht and
reported that ‘the third part of your land of Ireland, which was con-
quered in the time of your progenitors, is now come into the hands
of your Irish enemies’. Such words were part of a targeted manifesto
and must be handled with care, but they convey a sense of retreat and
insecurity about the position of the king’s ‘English lieges’.33
Such insecurity did not always relate to the direct attacks of the
Irish. In areas of apparent English dominance, like Waterford, local Irish
appear prominently in criminal cases, while outsiders like a branch of the
O’Briens from further west received lands in the county in the 1360s,
marking a return of Irish landholding. The emergence of Irish leaders in
Waterford was not the result of independent action. It was by the grant
of an English magnate, the earl of Desmond, in 1369 that the O’Briens
obtained their foothold in Waterford. The earl’s patronage was a reward
to retainers and reflected his family’s reliance on Irish soldiers or kerne as
the basis of their military following. They were not alone in recognising
the skills and resilience of Irish kerne. The use of kerne by English
magnates made sense. It bound Irish soldiers into English lordship and
spared valuable English tenants from campaigning. However, the prac-
tice was criticised in 1297 and 1366, specifically because English lords
frequently provided for their kerne by allowing them to take food and
goods from the English tenants on their own and others’ lands. This was
widely resented by these tenants. In 1329 John Bermingham earl of
Louth was killed by the English of his earldom. They objected to the
earl’s treatment of them and killed over 200 of Bermingham’s followers,
many of them kerne. The activities of this ‘marcher’ magnate which
incensed the English included the quartering of the kerne on the manors
of this heavily-settled district and the damage they had done.34
The statutes of 1297 make clear the immediacy of warfare for the
English of Ireland. Despite the use of kerne, English landowners and
tenants were expected to defend their district from attacks by enemies
and felons. The growing frequency of Irish attacks increased the need for
defence and made such demands more frequent. However, statutes and
· 125 ·
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royal orders suggest that the government faced problems in maintaining

this level of defence. Both in 1297 and 1341 complaints were made about
those who held lands in the ‘marches near the Irish’ but left them waste
and unguarded and lived instead in the ‘land of peace’ in Ireland. By the
1360s this was taken further. In 1361 summons were issued to sixty-four
English nobles with Irish lands who ‘take the profits thereof but do not
defend them’ to accompany the duke of Clarence to Ireland and a general
order went out requiring all Englishmen with Irish lands to return to
them or lose them. This did not only refer to lords with estates in both
realms. In 1351 the Statute of Labourers was applied to Ireland. In England
this was a response to the plague. It sought to deal with the shortage of
labour for working the land by fixing wages and by preventing peasants
from changing masters. In Ireland this latter issue had a specific import-
ance. The Kilkenny statutes reissued laws against those ‘common labour-
ers’ who ‘fly out of the land’ and threatened to pursue all labourers who
passed ‘beyond the sea’. These acts reflect the problem that the attrac-
tions of Ireland for English lords and peasants were much reduced after
1350. The costs of defence now outweighed the profits of landowner-
ship, while the plague meant that there were vacant holdings in England,
with none of the dangers of war faced by English peasantry in Ireland.
References to lands in many districts that ‘lie waste and uncultivated for
lack of tenants’ and that tenants have left because of the Irish and ‘no-
one dares lease them’ are evidence of a crisis which involved war between
communities, economic contraction and a fall in English population.35
The anxieties expressed at Kilkenny were not simply about the Irish as
an external threat. The preamble stated that for a long time after the
‘conquest’ of 1171 the English of Ireland ‘used the English language . . .
and were governed and ruled . . . by the English law’. Now they had
forsaken these and adopted Irish practices and intermarried with the
Irish. As a result the ‘land and the liege people thereof, the English
language, the allegiance due to our lord king and the English laws are put
in subjection and decayed and our Irish enemies exalted’. This was not a
new issue. The parliament of 1297 had tried to prevent English from
adopting Irish dress and the culan or Irish hairstyle. However, the con-
cern then was one of legal status. Difficulties of identifying individuals by
their appearance were creating problems in applying the law as it related
to the two peoples, undermining the government’s efforts to maintain
the legal distinction. In subsequent decades the issue became more prob-
lematic. Social practices, dress, the use of a saddle and pastimes were
bundled up with law, language and loyalty to the king. In reality the English,
especially in the marches, had long been prone to adopt elements of Irish
behaviour, and use of the Irish language and connections of fosterage
· 126 ·
and marriage reflected the need to operate within districts largely in-
habited by Irish. To the royal administration and many others, however,
these things posed a threat to the political and cultural framework of
English Ireland. This was linked to the behaviour of some English lords
and kindreds, like the Berminghams, Burghs and others, whose adoption
of Irish methods of lordship seemed to relate to their growing distance
from English government and political society. The kin-based character
of social organisation was increasingly recognised in English justice, where

leaders, both English and Irish, were made responsible for the behaviour
of extended families. This phenomenon could be found not just in
Connacht but in south-eastern Ireland, where lesser English lineages like
the Poers, Archbolds and Lawlesses acted, and were recognised as, kindreds.
In this respect, the strictures of the Statutes of Kilkenny reflected the
mental effect of changes since 1300 on one group of English on the island.
The grouping together of various different phenomena as representing
the erosion of the political and cultural framework of the English
community was an unrealistic attempt to cling to the clearer sense of
superiority and distinction which was believed to have existed before
1300. Even in 1297 the adoption of Irish dress could be denounced as
‘degenerate’, reflecting a loss of Englishness and, in the context of fresh
difficulties, seemed to show the attraction of Irish law and social custom
and to undermine claims that such things were detestable and inferior to
those of the English. To many English who did adopt Irish custom, such
accusations must have seemed odd. Leading magnates like the earls of
Desmond and Ormond spoke Irish, retained Irish troops and patronised
Irish bards whilst heading the English of Ireland. As will be examined
later, life in the borderlands did not always correspond to centrally-
defined attitudes.36
The language of crisis and threat which emerges from English Ireland
in the fourteenth century does not indicate that the king’s lordship there
faced imminent or total collapse. It is likely that there was a dispropor-
tionate decline in the English peasant population and that some rural
dwellers of English descent were absorbed into a predominantly Irish
world in economic and cultural terms at least. This led to a contraction
of manorial society and an increase in the herding of livestock which
had implications for law and government. However, it was the sense of
danger and anxiety amongst the king’s officials which was the real
change. It indicates the loss of confidence in English domination and
conquest since the previous century.
Irish writers suggest a similar level of hostility towards their English
neighbours. The attacks on the treachery of the English in the 1317
Remonstrance speak clearly of a sense of racial difference as marked as
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DISUNITED KINGDOMS
that in the Statutes of Kilkenny. There are similar sentiments in the mid-
fourteenth-century poem, Caithreim Thoirdhealbhaigh (the Triumphs of
Turlough) written in praise of Turlough and Murtough O’Brien, kings
of Thomond between the 1300s and 1320s. The poem deals with the
O’Briens’ struggle against the Clares in Thomond and hostility to the
family and ‘the stammering English’ is implicit within the work. However,
even greater stress is placed on the struggles of Turlough and Murtough
against their rivals within the dynasty and on the role of allied Irish families.
Concerns about the legitimacy of these kings’ heirs and the maintenance
of support amongst other Irish kindreds were more central to patrons
and poets than any sense of a unified war with the English. While the
Clares were the enemy, other English, the Burgh and Butler families for
example, appear as allies and even lords of the O’Briens. Even in literary
forms, there was recognition of a much more complex political context
which involved but was not solely defined by issues of nation.37
At about the same time as the Statutes of Kilkenny were issued in the
1360s a passage was included in the Chronicle of the Scottish People, attri-
buted to John of Fordun, which suggests a similarity of attitude. This
stated that the ‘manner and customs of the Scots vary with the diversity
of their speech’. Those of the ‘Teutonic’ language (English) lived in the
‘seaboard and plains’ and were ‘domestic and civilised’, ‘decent in attire
and peaceful’. The speakers of the ‘Scottish’ language (Gaelic), who
inhabited ‘the highlands and outlying islands’, were described as ‘savage
and untamed’, ‘unsightly in dress’ and ‘given to rapine’. This passage did
not just differentiate by language. One type of Scot inhabited the low-
lands of the south and up the east coast from the Tay to the Cromarty
Firth. The other dwelt in the mountainous interior of northern Scotland
and in the islands and coasts from Kintyre to Lewis. This sense of internal
difference contrasts with the efforts of Fordun and his precursors to
present the Scots as a unified people and does not come through in the
evidence of government before 1300 or in the importance of both the
highland and lowland parts of north-east Scotland in the wars against
the English crown.38
However, Fordun’s words are early evidence of the division between
Highland and Lowland which would act as a major factor in Scotland’s
development thereafter. The pejorative labels attached to the Highlanders
and Islemen recall English attitudes to the Irish. In Scotland, however,
the difference was not directly about law, language or ethnic origin.
Gaelic continued to be spoken in many lowland areas north of Forth until
at least 1500 and laws based on customary codes were specifically accepted
by the crown in 1384. The key differences were in government and
economy. The Highlands were not under the direct jurisdiction of royal
· 128 ·
sheriffs but were made up of earldoms and lordships. The absence of

burghs from the heartlands of these provinces meant that the economic
changes of preceding centuries largely bypassed them. They remained
Gaelic in speech, primarily pastoral in economy and linked to the king-
dom via the personal lordship of magnate families and the possession of
estates by church and secular landlords.39
While these variations seem to have been unproblematic in 1280, a
century later they were regarded differently. This change can be linked to
the general crisis brought on by war, weather and plague. As in Ireland,
a change to a cooler, damper climate and the fall in population made
cultivation of upland areas more difficult and encouraged the extension
of pastoralism into lower altitudes. Reduced productivity in the Highlands
and the importance of cattle may also be linked to the increase in raiding,
theft and the occupation of estates in the north-east Highlands and into
neighbouring lowland districts. These changes seem to have had an influ-
ence on social organisation. Like English families in Ulster and Connacht,
Scottish noble lineages increasingly modelled their behaviour on Gaelic
patterns. Lords in the Highlands increasingly operated as heads of extended
kindreds rather than landowners. Some of these, like the Grants, were of
Anglo-French origins, while the de Atholl family, who adopted the
Gaelic form Clann Donnachaidh (Duncan’s family), were a junior branch
of the earls of Atholl. These lords headed retinues of lightly-armed
soldiers termed caterans, a form of the word kerne. As with the kerne in
Ireland the activities of these bands was seen as symptomatic of the
breakdown in the structures of royal and aristocratic management in the
north-east.40
This breakdown owed much to the severing of connections between
the Highlands and the elites of the kingdom. The fall of magnate dynas-
ties like the Comyns and Strathbogies as a result of the conflicts of the
early fourteenth century and the effects of war and absentee kingship
disrupted established hierarchies in the region from Argyll to Ross and
allowed effective lordship to pass to a group of lesser kindreds and incom-
ers from the Hebrides. This change developed over sixty years but it was
no accident that the 1360s produced the earliest indications of anxiety
from crown and lowland communities. These were not limited to Fordun.
From 1366 a series of parliamentary statutes made clear that King David
II and his estates regarded the activities of the inhabitants of ‘northern
regions’ or ‘higher parts’ as presenting a problem. Specifically they failed
to come to justice or to make payments to the king. As has been dis-
cussed, the 1360s witnessed a revival of royal authority and David II
sought to extend this into the Highlands. In doing so he was probably
also responding to complaints from lowland clergy, burgesses and others
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DISUNITED KINGDOMS
about the occupation of their lands and the theft of their goods by
caterans. Despite David’s efforts, which involved the taking of hostages
from Highland magnates, the scale of this perceived problem increased
during the later fourteenth century. By the 1400s a short chronicle, pro-
duced in the north and recording the repeated plundering of lowland
churches and burghs by caterans, reported that ‘robbery, manslaying,
plundering and arson and other crimes remained unpunished and justice
was banished like an outlaw from the kingdom’.41

However, though the complaints of crown and lowlanders about the
actions of highland caterans recall English fears of the Irish, ethnic labels
were much less clear-cut. For Andrew Wyntoun, a lowland chronicler of
the 1400s and no admirer of ‘wylde wickyt Helande men’, such Gaelic-
speakers were referred to as ‘Scottis’. They could be a threatening foe
but were still fellow-Scots. Despite the increased use of ‘Inglis’ as the lan-
guage of status in the lowlands, Scottish identity remained closely linked
to a sense of its origins as a Gaelic-speaking polity. This was reflected
in the chronicle tradition maintained by Fordun and Wyntoun and by
the attribution of a fourteenth-century legal text to King Malcolm mac
Kenneth in the eleventh century. Moreover the approach of David II
was followed by the kingship of Robert II, a figure much more sym-
pathetic towards and bound up with the cultural and political world of
Gaelic Scotland. As Fordun implied by concluding his description of the
Gaelic-speaking Scots that they were ‘loyal to their king and country’
and ‘if they be well-governed . . . ready to respect the law’, events in
northern Scotland were as much about problems of government and
lordship as they were about a fundamental divergence within the Scottish
people.42
What defined the Scots most easily in the fourteenth century was the
ongoing conflict with the English king and people. The annals used by
Fordun for events post 1296 depicted the wars as a struggle against ‘the
English nation’ in which the Scots suffered under ‘a dire yoke of bond-
age’ until delivered by the heroic tribulations and efforts of William
Wallace and Robert Bruce. A later chronicler wrote of Fordun as an
individual ‘fired by patriotic zeal’, who worked to reconstitute Scotland’s
past after earlier histories had been stolen or burned by Edward I.
Similarly in the 1370s, John Barbour wrote his verse biography, The
Bruce, which glorified King Robert as the chivalric saviour of his land
against the unjust rule of the English. Yet, while these writers did employ
the language of national antagonism, castigating the ‘faithless English
nation’, the attitudes within these works and amongst their fellow Scots
do not convey a conflict which revolved around ethnic hostility. Almost
all Scottish accounts make the main target of hostility not the English as
· 130 ·
a people but the tyrannical Edward I, who is presented as a treacherous

and pitiless foe. Instead conflict rested on rival structures of political
allegiance, and it was the defence of the rights of the Anglicised commun-
ity in Scotland against the tyrant which was at the heart of the Scottish
cause as understood in the latter part of the century. Despite the way in
which the Scottish historical past was deployed to reject the claims of
English royal sovereignty, it has been shown that Scots did not distance
themselves totally from the language and political debates surrounding

‘British’ material. They even used it to make claims to a British sover-
eignty of their own, derived from the descent of their kings from the
English princess, St Margaret. As will be examined in the next chapter,
the effects of the political division of English and Scottish elites also dis-
played continued engagement as well as fragmentation.43
There is evidence of a parallel variety in English attitudes towards the
Scots. Most writings are hostile. The political songs of Lawrence Minot,
written in the 1330s and 1340s, portray the Scots in terms of bitter
hatred, exulting over their defeats. However, there are some examples of
sympathy and shared values. The chronicle of St Albans Abbey described
the Scots as fighting for their homes and families, ‘judging death as
martyrdom and wounds as salvation in such a cause’. The chronicle had
a tradition of criticising English kings, and the attitude shown to the
Scots can be paralleled by Scottish sympathy for baronial ‘martyrs’ like
Simon de Montfort and Thomas of Lancaster. Even amongst northern-
ers, the hostility of Minot (a Yorkshireman) and the religious authors of
the Lanercost chronicle, whose harshest terms were reserved for Scottish
leaders who plundered church properties, can be compared with the
attitude shown by Thomas Gray. Gray, a Northumbrian knight, wrote a
chronicle which included the experiences of himself and his father in the
war against the Scots between 1296 and 1357. However, the work shows
neither a sense of deep hatred towards the Scots nor sympathy for their
plight. Instead they are the enemy, to be fought but also dealt with as
honourable opponents. While the presence of identifiable Scottish inhab-
itants in northern England indicated that there were ways of distinguish-
ing the peoples of the two realms, the lack of linguistic and social
differences meant that the conflict remained political rather than ethnic
in character.44
There was a clear contrast between these Anglo-Scottish attitudes and
the ethnic classifications which characterised the relations of English popu-
lations with their Welsh and Irish neighbours and tenants. However, by
the mid-fourteenth century there were also growing differences between
Wales and Ireland in these terms. This is shown by the contrasting effects
of economic and demographic crises in the two lands between 1300 and
· 131 ·
DISUNITED KINGDOMS
1350. The effects of harvest failures, animal diseases and, above all, plague
experienced in Wales were apparently similar to those in Ireland. The
plague created a labour shortage, the abandonment of land to pasture
and led to depopulation. This was probably more marked amongst the
English population. In the lordship of Dyffryn Clwyd, the disease cut a
swathe through the rural English community, wiping out major tenants
like the Postern family. Relatively recent arrivals like these had shallow
roots in Wales, which often meant that no heirs could be identified.

There were now plenty of available tenancies not far away in England,
perhaps more attractive to English peasantry. Lands held by English
tenure and even property within boroughs passed with increased fre-
quency to Welsh holders. Another result of the plague was to mark a
further stage in the decline of marchers as personal lords. Problems of
labour encouraged many lords to lease out the demesne lands they
had previously cultivated. Most marcher lords effectively became rent
collectors who rarely visited their estates.45
However, the implications of these comparable changes differed greatly
in the context of Wales. Above all, this context was set by the peace
which had been established by the Edwardian conquest. For English
officials and inhabitants this meant that the physical threat posed by the
Welsh was latent rather than real, reducing though not removing the
xenophobia demonstrated in 1290s. For many Welsh it made it apparent
that English modes of behaviour held advantages in cultural and eco-
nomic terms. The English chronicler Ranulf Higden proclaimed this
change in the years up to 1350. He stated that the Welsh ‘chaunge theire
maneres gretely in to better exercise thro the communicacion of Saxones’
by tilling fields, living in towns, wearing shoes, eating with ‘curtesy’ and
sleeping in beds. His words provide a neat contrast to the Kilkenny
statutes’ fears about Irish influences on the English. Higden attributed
the changes in Welsh behaviour to the desire to acquire and retain the
new levels of prosperity which had followed English conquest.46
Higden’s confident phrases reflected genuine change within both the
marches and principality after 1300. Distinctions in the holding of lands
and the status which went with them were eroded. The Englishry of
Denbigh, established by the dispossession of Welsh landholders in the
1280s, witnessed the gradual acquisition of lands by Welsh tenants in
the subsequent century. The erosion of stark territorial divisions between
the two peoples occurred across Wales. The boroughs, even those in
north Wales which had been founded as islands of English privilege,
acquired significant Welsh populations during the century and men of
apparent Welsh descent managed to acquire the full status of burgesses.
Though this process could be investigated and burgess status denied,
· 132 ·
as happened to forty-three Welshmen in Ruthin in 1364, some other

boroughs in the march did concede access to burgess privilege after the
plague. The attempt to secure advantages by Welsh individuals and com-
munities also led to a further decline in the use and status of Welsh law.
One of the main issues in petitions presented by Welsh to the crown or
to marcher lords was the availability of English law, especially where it
relieved Welsh from native service and fines and in relation to land trans-
actions. The advantages of being able to purchase land and dispose of it

without partition between all legal heirs were vital to the Welsh lesser
nobles and proprietors intent on building their family wealth and status
during these decades. It was to such people that Higden referred. A
number of them adopted English-style surnames rather than patronymics,
such as the Avenes (Afan) family in Glamorgan. However, this was not a
one-way process. English settlers also adopted Welsh forenames, like
Llywelyn de Marreys and Ieuan Stallworthman in Dyffryn Clwyd, and
labels and patronymics, as in the mixed example of William Fychan ap
Gwilym Sourdevall (William the younger son of William Sourdevall).
Such mixed naming patterns were often linked to intermarriage between
English and Welsh landholding families and indicate the erosion of stark
legal distinctions between races from both sides.47
Such features had emerged long before the plague and indicate that in
conditions of peace and co-existence hard divisions based on race were
hard to maintain and were eroded steadily by the actions of both peoples.
Conditions of war and insecurity produced similar results in Ireland, but
the lack of open conflict and the sense that the Welsh were becoming
Anglicised limited the level of official intervention. However, while limited,
efforts to enforce laws about ethnic status did not entirely disappear; nor
did Welsh resentments. There was a strong element of social grievance in
these. The vast majority of Welsh were not able to acquire property and
status. For these the prosecution of breaches of urban liberties, for example
by the burgesses of Caernarfon against local Welshmen in 1374, the col-
lection of fines and dues by absent lords and the disadvantages they faced
in legal disputes with Englishmen continued to be resented as reminders
of foreign rule. These grievances were regarded in ethnic terms. In 1345
boroughs across north Wales wrote to Prince Edward complaining about
the attacks made upon them by local Welsh who aimed to destroy their
franchise and drive them from the country. Such disputes may have
been about Welsh hostility towards the rights of the burgesses but were
associated with the murder of the prince’s attorney near Caernarfon and
presented as conflict and revolt between conquering and subject peoples.48
The tastes of Welsh nobles suggest that the adoption of English practices
could occur alongside a continued identification with Welsh literary
· 133 ·
DISUNITED KINGDOMS
traditions. The copying of histories dealing with the age of the princes,
the patronage of Welsh poets and an interest in prophecy, especially
dealing with the emergence of a deliverer who would restore the Welsh
kingdom, suggest an ideology which was not solely about the acceptance
of English royal authority and superiority. The fear of rebellion by the
Welsh in pursuit of this goal never entirely left English officials and
inhabitants during the fourteenth century.49
Royal wars, famine and plague had a massive impact on England. The
upheaval which resulted had an enormous effect on social relationships
within the kingdom and efforts to control the resulting changes extended
the scale of royal administration and unleashed considerable tensions
between landlords and servants. However, the effects of these events
were arguably even more significant in the other lands of the British Isles
which differed from the homogenous and politically cohesive environ-
ment of England. In these lands social and economic tensions were
bound up with the language of ethnic or political difference. In Ireland,
Wales and Scotland, the early fourteenth century marked the end of the
era of growing English or Anglicised lordship, settlement and influence.
As this stalled and ebbed these lands, and parts of northern England,
were characterised by efforts to define and separate peoples and commu-
nities according to allegiance, race or behaviour. Concerns of English
populations about the Irish and Welsh and of lowland Scots about the
inhabitants of the Highlands reflected anxieties about shifts in prevailing
conditions. Their responses were designed to maintain existing values
and hierarchies in uncertain times. The reality was less easily contained or
categorised. Instead the blurring or crossing of the hard lines identified
by lawyers and commentators created societies which were much more
fluid and difficult to define and in which lordship and law developed to
fit these new contexts.
Notes
1. Duffy, Robert the Bruce’s Irish Wars, 179–86 (for the text of the
Remonstrance).
2. A.A.M. Duncan, ‘A Question about the Succession, 1364’, in Miscellany of
the Scottish History Society, xii (Edinburgh, 1994), 1–57; Nicholson, Edward
III and the Scots, 215–16; Brown, Wars of Scotland, 163–4, 196–7; Smith,
Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, 451–3; J. Griffiths, ‘The Revolt of Madog ap Llywelyn
in 1294–95’.
3. A. Ruddick, ‘National and Political Identity in Anglo-Scottish Relations,
c.1286–1377: A Governmental Perspective’, in King and Penman (eds),
England and Scotland, 196–215; Chron. Lanercost, ed. Maxwell, 96, 121–3;
Herbert and Jones, Edward I and Wales, 60; G. Donaldson, Scottish
· 134 ·
Historical Documents (Edinburgh, 1970), 59–60; Records of the Parliament

of Scotland, ed. K. Brown et al (St Andrews, 2007) [1328/1].
4. Simpson, ‘Declaration of Arbroath Revitalised’; Formulary E: Scottish Letters
and Brieves, 1286–1424, ed. A.A.M. Duncan (Glasgow, 1976), no. 94; Smith,
‘Gruffydd Llwyd and the Celtic Alliance’; Smith, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, 530–5.
5. Nichsolson, ‘Sequel to Edward Bruce’s Invasion of Ireland’, 38–40; Smith,
‘Gruffydd Llywd and the Celtic Alliance’; Annals of Connacht, 252–3.
6. The Annals of Ireland by Friar John Clyn, ed. B. Williams (Dublin, 2007), 86–7.
7. R.R. Davies, ‘The Peoples of Britain and Ireland, 1100–1400, Identities’,

1–20; A. Gransden, Historical Writing in England, ii (London, 1982),
43–52; Ranulph Higden, Polychronicon, ed. C. Babington and J.R. Lumby,
9 vols, Rolls Series (1865–86), i, 328–431.
8. R.R. Davies, ‘The Identity of “Wales” in the Thirteenth Century’, in R.R. Davies
and G.H. Jenkins (eds), From Medieval to Modern Wales (Cardiff, 2004),
45–65; R.R. Davies, ‘Law and National Identity in Thirteenth-Century
Wales’, in Davies, Griffiths, Gwynedd Jones and Morgan (eds), Welsh Society
and Nationhood, 51–69; K. Nicholls, Gaelic and Gaelicised Ireland in the
Middle Ages (Dublin, 1972), 44–67; D. O’Corrain, ‘Nationality and
Kingship in Pre-Norman Ireland’, in T.W. Moody (ed.), Nationality and the
Pursuit of National Independence (Cork, 1990), 99–111; Simms, From
Kings to Warlords, 10–20; G. Mac Niocaill, ‘The Interaction of Laws’, in
J. Lydon (ed.), The English in Medieval Ireland (Dublin, 1984), 105–17;
J.A. Watt, ‘Gaelic Polity and Cultural Identity’, NHI, ii, 314–51.
9. J. Gillingham, The English in the Twelfth Century, 123–42; R.R. Davies, ‘The
Peoples of Britain and Ireland, 1100–1400, Names, Boundaries and Regnal
Solidarities’, in TRHS, 6th series, 5 (1995), 1–20, 10–13; idem, ‘The
Peoples of Britain and Ireland, Laws and Customs’, in TRHS, 6th series, 6
(1996), 1–24, 6–8; S. Foot, ‘The Making of Angelcynn: English Identity
before the Norman Conquest’, in TRHS, 6th series, 6 (1996), 25–50; J.
Hudson, The Formation of the English Common Law (London, 1996), 230–8.
10. Gillingham, The English in the Twelfth Century, 41–58, 93–109.
11. T. Turville Petre, England the Nation: Language, Literature and National
Identity 1290 –1340 (Oxford, 1996); W. Rothwell, ‘The Role of French in
Thirteenth-Century England’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 58
(1975–6), 445–66; Clanchy, England and its Rulers, 253–6.
12. M. Lieberman, The Medieval March of Wales: The Creation and Perception of
a Frontier, 1066–1283 (Cambridge, 2010), 1–55; R. Oram, Lordship and
Domination: Scotland 1070–1230 (Edinburgh, 2011), 197–327; Connolly,
‘Enactments’, 139–62. A possible internal framework for the government
of Ireland was provided by the Treaty of Windsor of 1175. In this, Ruari
O’Connor king of Connacht was recognised as holding authority over Ireland
beyond Leinster and east Munster. However, he still recognised Henry II as
his lord and thus the ruler of Ireland. Moreover the treaty was rapidly over-
taken by the aggression of Anglo-French lords and by the acceptance of this
by the English crown (M.T. Flanagan, Irish Society, Anglo-Norman Settlers,
Angevin Kingship: Interactions in Ireland in the Late 12th Century (Oxford,
1989), 229–72).
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DISUNITED KINGDOMS
13. Smith, Colonisation and Conquest, 51–2; Davies, Lordship and Society,
339–41; C.J. Tabraham, ‘Norman Settlement in Upper Clydesdale: Recent
Archaeological Fieldwork’, Dumfries and Galloway Transactions, 53 (1977–
8); R. Bartlett, Europe in the Making, 167–96; Duncan, Scotland: The
Making of the Kingdom, 127–57.
14. T.O. Clancy, The Triumph Tree: Scotland’s Earliest Poetry (Edinburgh,
1998), 247–83; H.L. MacQueen, Common Law and Feudal Society in Medieval
Scotland (Edinburgh, 1993), especially 86–9; H.L. MacQueen, ‘Scots Law
under Alexander III’, in N. Reid, Scotland in the Reign of Alexander III,

74–102; W.D.H. Sellar, ‘The Common Law of Scotland and the Common
Law of England’, in R.R. Davies (ed.), The British Isles 1100–1500
(Edinburgh, 1988), 82–99.
15. This had received qualified recognition by the pope in 1192 but, tellingly, it
did not include Galloway, which was placed under the archbishop of York
(A.D.M. Barrell, ‘The Background to Cum Universi: Scoto-Papal Relations,
1159–1192’, Innes Review, 46 (1995), 116–38).
16. Davies, ‘The Identity of Wales’, 54–5.
17. Brut y Tywysogyon or the Chronicle of the Princes, Red Book of Hergest Version,
ed. T. Jones (Cardiff, 1955), lii; Smith, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, 268–70.
18. Simms, Kings to Warlords, 10–20; A. Nic Ghiollamhaith, ‘Kings and Vassals in
Later Medieval Ireland: The Ui Bhriain and the MicConmara in the Fourteenth
Century’, in T. Barry, R. Frame and K. Simms (eds), Colony and Frontier in
Medieval Ireland: Essays Presented to J.F. Lydon (London, 1995), 201–16.
19. D. Broun, ‘Defining Scotland and the Scots’, 4–17; A. Taylor, ‘Leges Scocie
and the Lawcodes of David I, William the Lion and Alexander II’, SHR, 88
(2009), 207–88.
20. J.C. Holt, The Northerners (Oxford, 1961), 18–78; K. Stringer, ‘Identities
in Thirteenth-Century England: Frontier Society in the Far North’, in
C. Bjorn, A. Grant and K. Stringer (eds), Social and Political Identities in
Western Europe (Copenhagen, 1994), 28–66.
21. K. Williams-Jones, ‘Caernarvon’, in R.A. Griffiths (ed.), Boroughs of Medieval
Wales (Cardiff, 1978), 72–101; A.D. Barrell and M.H. Brown, ‘A Settler
Community in Post-Conquest Rural Wales: The English of Dyffryn Clwyd,
1294–1399’, WHR, 17 (1995), 332–55; D. Korngiebel, ‘Forty Acres and a
Mule: The Mechanics of Settlement in Northeast Wales after the Edwardian
Conquest’, Haskins Society Journal, 14 (2003), 91–104; Davies, Lordship
and Society, 338–45.
22. D.H. Owen, ‘The English of Denbigh: An English Colony in Medieval
Wales’, Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion (1974–5),
57–76; Carr, ‘Crown and Communities’, 79–80, 88; W.H. Waters, The
Edwardian Settlement of North Wales; D.M. Korngiebel, ‘English Colonial
Ethnic Discrimination in the Lordship of Dyffryn Clwyd: Segregation and
Integration, 1282–c.1340’, WHR, 23 (2006), 1–24.
23. Connolly, ‘Enactments of the 1297 Parliament’, 159; Otway-Ruthven, ‘The
Native Irish and English Law in Mediaeval Ireland’, 1–16; G.J. Hand, ‘The
Status of the Native Irish in the Lordship of Ireland’, The Irish Jurist (1966),
93–115; E. O’Byrne, ‘The MacMurroughs and the Marches of Leinster,
· 136 ·
1170–1340’, 168–74; Irish Historical Documents 1172–1922, ed. E. Curtis

and R.B. McDowell (London, 1943), no. 12.
24. Stones, Anglo-Scottish Relations, no. 33.
25. M. Prestwich, ‘Colonial Scotland: The English in Scotland under Edward I’,
6–17; Brown, Wars of Scotland, 304–5, 308; R. Oram, The Lordship of
Galloway (Edinburgh, 2000), 145.
26. J.R. Maddicott, The English Peasantry and the Demands of the Crown,
1294–1341, Past and Present Supplement 1 (1975); E. Miller, ‘War, Taxation
and the English Economy in the Late Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth
Centuries’, in J.M. Winter (ed.), War and Economic Development: Essays in
Memory of David Joslin (Cambridge, 1975), 11–31; Lydon, ‘Edward II and
the Revenues of Ireland’, 39–43; C. Briggs, ‘Taxation, Warfare, and the
Early Fourteenth Century “Crisis” in the North: Cumberland Lay Subsidies,
1332–1348’, Economic History Review, 58 (2005), 639–72; Duncan, ‘War
of the Scots’, 147–8; Formulary E, Scottish Letters and Brieves, no. 92.
27. J.A. Tuck, ‘War and Society in the Medieval North’, Northern History, 21
(1985), 33–52; McNamee, Wars of the Bruces, 72–115, 139–40; C. McNamee,
‘William Wallace’s Invasion of Northumberland, 1297’, Northern History,
26 (1990), 40–58; Brown, Wars of Scotland, 239–41, 316–18; Brown,
‘Teviotdale’, 231, 235.
28. K. Down, ‘Colonial Society and Economy’, NHI, ii, 439–91, 448–9;
J. Lydon, ‘The Impact of the Bruce Invasions’, NHI, ii, 275–302, 294–6;
R. Frame, ‘War and Peace’, 118 – 41.
29. H.S. Lucas, ‘The Great European Famine of 1315, 1316 and 1317’,
Speculum, 5 (1930), 343–77; I. Kershaw, ‘The Great Famine and Agrarian
Crisis in England, 1315–22’, Past and Present, 59 (1973), 3–50; M. Bailey,
‘Per impetum maris: Natural Disaster and Economic Decline in Eastern
England, 1275–1350’, in B.M.S. Campbell (ed.), Before the Black Death:
Studies in the ‘Crisis’ of the early fourteenth century (Manchester, 1991),
184–208, 185–91; R.E. Glasscock, ‘Land and People, c.1300’, NHI, ii,
205–39, 206–7; N. Mayhew, ‘Alexander III: A Silver Age? An Essay in
Scottish Medieval Economic History’, in Reid (ed.), Scotland in the Reign of
Alexander III, 53–73.
30. M.W. Ormrod and P. Lindley (eds), The Black Death in England (Stamford,
1996); R. Horrox, The Black Death (Manchester, 1994), 81–5; A. Gwynn,
‘The Black Death in Ireland’, Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, 24 (1935),
25–42; Davies, Age of Conquest, 425–6.
31. Irish Historical Documents, no. 17; Connolly, ‘Enactments’; Statutes,
Ordinances and Acts of the Parliament of Ireland, 342–46; J. Lydon, ‘A
Land of War’, NHI, ii, 240–74; Simms, ‘Dysert O’Dea’; Duffy, Robert the
Bruce’s Irish Wars, 17–18, 24.
32. E. O’Byrne, War, Politics and the Irish of Leinster, 58–86; Clyn, Annals, 228–9.
33. Statutes, Ordinances and Acts of the Parliament of Ireland, 342–6; Frame, English
Lordship, 310–21; O’Byrne, War, Politics and the Irish of Leinster, 98–102.
34. C. Parker, ‘The Internal Frontier: The Irish of County Waterford in the Later
Middle Ages’, in Barry, Frame and Simms (eds), Colony and Frontier, 139–54;
Smith, Colonisation and Conquest, 114–15; Connolly, ‘Enactments’, 155.
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35. Connolly, ‘Enactments’, 151–2; Irish Historical Documents, no. 17, p. 58,
no. 18; Lydon, ‘A Land of War’, 269–72; Otway-Ruthven, Medieval
Ireland, 285; B. Hartland, ‘Absenteeism: The Chronology of a Concept’,
Thirteenth Century England, xi (Woodbridge, 2007), 215–29; Down,
‘Colonial Society’, 448–50.
36. J. Lydon, ‘The Middle Nation’, in Lydon, English in Medieval Ireland,
1–26; Frame, ‘“Les Engleys”’, 131–6; S. Duffy, ‘The Problem of Degeneracy’,
in Lydon (ed.), War and Disorder, 87–106; Connolly, ‘Enactments’, 159–60;
Irish Historical Documents, no. 17; C. Maginn, ‘English Marcher Lineages

in South Dublin in the Late Middle Ages’, IHS, 34 (2004–5), 113–36.
37. Caithreim Thoirdhealbhaigh, ed. S.H. o Grady, 2 vols, Irish Texts Society
(London, 1929); A. Nic Ghiollamhaith, ‘Dynastic Warfare and Historical
Writing in North Munster, 1276–1350’, Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies,
2 (1981), 73–89.
38. John de Fordun, Chronica Gentis Scottorum, 2 vols, ed. W.F. Skene
(Edinburgh, 1871–2), i, 38; A. Grant, ‘Aspects of National Consciousness in
Medieval Scotland’, in C. Bjorn, A. Grant and K. Stringer (eds), Nationalism
and Patriotism in the European Past (Copenhagen, 1994), 68–95.
39. Brown, The Wars of Scotland, 102–11.
40. Boardman, ‘Lordship in the North-East: The Badenoch Stewarts, I’, 1–30.
41. Penman, David II, 352, 362, 368, 380–2; Registrum Episcopatus Moraviensis,
Bannatyne Club, 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1837), 197–203.
42. The Original Chronicle of Andrew Wyntoun, 6 vols, Scottish Text Society
(Edinburgh, 1903–14), vol. vi, 371–5; Duncan, ‘The Laws of Malcolm
MacKenneth’, 242–4.
43. Chron. Fordun, ii, 338; Walter Bower, Scotichronicon, 9 vols (Aberdeen,
1987–98), ix, 13–14; S. Boardman, ‘Late Medieval Scotland and the Matter
of Britain’, in E.J. Cowan and R.J. Finlay (eds), Scottish History: The Power
of the Past (Edinburgh, 2002), 65–71; S. Boardman, ‘A People Divided?
Language, History and Anglo-Scottish Conflict in the Work of Andrew
of Wyntoun’, in Smith (ed.), Ireland and the English World, 112–29;
M. Penman, ‘Anglici caudati: Abuse of the English in Fourteenth-Century
Scottish Chronicles, Literature and Records’, in King and Penman (eds),
England and Scotland, 216–35.
44. Gransden, Historical Literature, ii, 6, 12–17; Historical Poems of the XIVth
and XVth Centuries, ed. R.H. Robbins (New York, 1959), 30–4; Thomas
Gray’s Scalachronica, ed. A. King, Surtees Society, 209 (2005); Boardman,
‘A People Divided?’, 124.
45. Davies, Age of Conquest, 425–6; Barrell and Brown, ‘A Settler Community’,
347–9; Davies, Lordship and Society, 112–19.
46. Higden, Polychronicon, 395–6.
47. Davies, Lordship and Society, 443–55; Barrell and Brown, ‘A Settler
Community’, 345, 352–3.
48. CACW, 230–2; Davies, Age of Conquest, 411, 433–4.
49. J.B. Smith, The Sense of History in Medieval Wales; Davies, Age of Conquest,
435–7.
· 138 ·
chapter six
ELITES AND IDENTITIES

False Preachers and Wicked Bishops: Clergy and Communities
T he character of the British Isles in the later thirteenth century was

not simply a result of the actions of royal government and colonisa-
tion by English-speaking peoples. The major changes in political rela-
tionships and structures within these lands between 1050 and 1250 were
also driven by aristocratic and ecclesiastical groups. The clergy and nobility
possessed special status and power within all Christian communities of
the Middle Ages and the changes in the personnel, values and connec-
tions of these elites were part of wider European movements. These can
be crudely characterised as the extension of the norms of a ‘core’ region
of Western Europe, France, Italy and the Rhineland, to the ‘peripheries’
of Iberia, Scandinavia, Central Europe and the British Isles. In the isles,
while nobles of Anglo-French descent were crucial figures in the spread
of a common aristocratic culture and political hierarchy and in the settle-
ment of English populations in other realms, churchmen played an
equally important role in reshaping societies.1
From the mid-eleventh century, a movement of reform sought to bring
uniformity to the practices and organisation of the western Christian
church. Local customs, like married clergy and secular control of ecclesi-
astical offices, were challenged as abuses and a single hierarchy established
which spanned Latin Christendom. The authority of the papacy, sus-
tained by powerful bureaucratic machinery, was extended over the whole
church, which was organised into provinces, dioceses and stretched to
parishes, financed by payments from the laity. The values of reform pro-
vided a religious and moral dimension to shifting attitudes about peoples
and were linked to changes in political structures. The most important of
these was the papal bull Laudabiliter, issued in 1155, which stemmed
from the desire of Irish bishops to secure a powerful secular protector for
reform in Ireland. The bull sanctioned Henry II’s plan to bring Ireland
within his dominions as designed ‘to strengthen the Christian religion’.
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Fifteen years later, the bull was used to justify the foundation of the
Lordship of Ireland and the beginning of English settlement. This inter-
relationship between church reform, secular authority and relations between
peoples was not confined to Ireland. The definition of ecclesiastical hier-
archies meant that the Archbishops of Canterbury and York claimed
jurisdiction beyond England. Canterbury’s rights in Wales were upheld
at the expense of efforts to create a Welsh archbishopric at St Davids, but
claims to include the Scottish dioceses within the archdiocese of York

were rejected by the papacy. In the bull, Cum Universi, issued in 1192,
nine Scottish dioceses were formed into a province under direct papal
authority as a ‘special daughter’ of Rome. These outcomes mirrored
secular hierarchies. The Welsh bishops were subject to an English arch-
bishop, as the princes and lords of Wales were vassals of the English king.
The Scottish church, like Scotland’s kings, was able to avoid subjection
to England. However, while church reform operated within a political
framework, it also opened the whole of the British Isles to new spiritual
movements. The new monastic orders of the twelfth century and the orders
of friars after 1200 found patrons and recruits across the archipelago.
Orders like the Cistercians, Franciscans and Dominicans operated within
their own provinces and networks, separate from the secular church of
bishops and archbishops. However, as these regular clergy became settled
in parts of the different lands within the British Isles, their attitudes too
would be shaped by the political environments which they inhabited.2
The increased intensity and extent of conflict between rulers and com-
munities in the archipelago from the 1280s also affected the activities
of churchmen. The question of ecclesiastical reform remained an issue
in these events. A good example of this is provided by John Pecham
archbishop of Canterbury in Wales. The church in Wales was under the
archbishop’s jurisdiction and Pecham showed concern for conditions in
the country during and after Edward’s conquest. It was this which led
Pecham to try to mediate between Edward and Llywelyn in 1282.
Though this was fruitless and Pecham was critical of Welsh moral stand-
ards, the archbishop was keen to improve Welsh practices by education
and re-organisation. In this light, the archbishop regarded Edward’s con-
quest (like William I in England and Henry II in Ireland) as an oppor-
tunity for the reform of the church. During 1284 Pecham undertook a
visitation of the Welsh church which asserted Canterbury’s rights but also
did much to the benefit of the clergy there. He was concerned to assess
and extract payment for the repair of damages done to churches and
clergy across Wales during Edward’s campaign. Pecham was also deter-
mined to protect the Welsh church from the king’s officials, ‘carnally wise
but spiritually foolish’, whose imposition of the ‘laws of England’ would
· 140 ·
‘destroy and overturn’ the liberties of the Welsh clergy. From the 1280s,
the Welsh church was, in practice, subjected to greater royal control
and financial demands but also benefited from the relative peace which
followed the conquest.3
In Ireland there remained a body of clergy whose anxiety for the
reform of the church cut across ethnic identities. Outside areas of English
settlement, lordship and administration, the practice of church offices
being held as hereditary posts within families remained widespread. For

this, and other reasons, some Irish prelates sought to reform ecclesiastical
behaviour by recourse to the English king, despite a century of war and
conquest. This was part of the motivation for the request, led by David
Mac Cearbhaill archbishop of Cashel and two other Irish bishops, for
English law to be extended to Irish in 1277. This was presented as an
effort to bring ‘an end to evil law’ and, in 1280, the archbishop offered
to use his powers in support of the proposal by excommunicating all who
continued to follow native custom. Into the fourteenth century, some
Irish prelates continued to attend parliament, despite its otherwise wholly
English composition and the character of its legislation. In 1310 a group
of Irish and English bishops threatened excommunication against any
who broke the statutes issued by the parliament at Kilkenny, though
these included many laws directed against the Irish. This suggests that
the concerns of clergy did not simply slot into secular conflicts.4
However, these examples occurred within contexts which were increas-
ingly spoken of in terms of ethnic or political communities. Pecham’s
reforms were informed by his antipathy towards the Welsh, their laws,
their addiction to prophetic writings and their behaviour. It was only by
the English king’s conquest that Pecham believed such failings could be
amended. Similar attitudes were at work in Ireland, where the English
secular and ecclesiastical elites showed a deepening suspicion of the
activities and allegiances of the Irish clergy. In 1310 the Kilkenny parlia-
ment issued a statute against anyone ‘save those of the English nation’
being received into a religious house in the land of peace. Though this
act was repealed, it was later re-issued and, in 1360, a further statute was
passed ‘for clerks of the Irish nation’. This forbade any provision of church
office or living, ‘among the English’, to be made to any ‘mere Irishman’.
Even David Mac Cearbhaill was accused of favouring the Irish of his
diocese to the harm of the English, while in 1284 it was stated that no
Irishman should ever be made bishop as they would preach against the
king and only provide Irish to the churches of their diocese.5
Discrimination or identification by clergy in terms of ‘nation’ was not
confined to English prelates. The leaders of the Scottish church had a
suspicion of their English brethren which pre-dated the outbreak of open
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conflict, stemming as it did from disputes over Scotland’s provincial

status. This was also supported by the desire of the secular authority to
avoid divisions of allegiance amongst the ecclesiastical landowners of their
realm. Alexander III and the bishops of St Andrews sought to detach
English monastic cells at May Island and Coldingham from their English
mother houses. They also secured a papal concession that only Scots
should be appointed to head religious houses in their provinces. Open
conflicts from 1296 sharpened these attitudes. The historical narratives

developed by clerical writers before then provided the material for
Scottish advocates to make their case at the papal curia. The pleadings of
Baldred Bisset, a Scottish teacher of law at Bologna, articulated the rights
of realm, nation and church in the face of English claims to sovereignty.
Scottish bishops provided more direct opposition to Edward I and his
successors. In 1306 two episcopal supporters of Bruce were accused of
preaching Robert’s cause, ‘maintaining the war against the king of
England . . . was [the same] as it was to go in the service of God into the
Holy Land’. In 1324 Edward II would maintain that it was ‘the prelates
of Scotland who encourage the nobility, gentry and people of Scotland
in their evil acts’.6
Scottish concerns for the liberties of the church were expressed in
1364 during Edward III’s effort to secure recognition for a Plantagenet
heir to the Scottish throne. Despite the promise that any English prince
would swear to ‘maintain wholly the liberty of the holy church of
Scotland so that it shall not be subject to any archbishop’, there was a
fear that the Scottish bishops would be subjected to English prelates and
held in the ‘contempt’ shown in England to Welsh bishops. A longer-
standing anxiety concerned the personnel of major church offices. In the
thirteenth century, the bishops of the Scottish church were almost all
drawn from within their king’s allegiance and in the treaty of Birgham of
1290 it was stipulated that elections to these offices would be held in
Scotland in an effort to preserve this. After 1296 Edward I and his son
did seek to provide English clergy to Scottish benefices but without great
success. Reports of English priests and monks being the targets of attack
by Scottish rebels in 1297 both indicate the presence of foreign clergy
and the hostility felt towards them. The link between the identities of
the higher clergy and of their congregations was an issue in Ireland
and Wales as well. By 1280 the bishops of Ireland were clearly divided
by nation. In the archdiocese of Dublin, which covered the heartlands
of English settlement, all the bishops were English. The archdiocese of
Tuam in Connacht had bishops of Irish descent. Armagh in Ulster and
Cashel in Munster were provinces with significant English and Irish com-
munities and the church reflected this division. The archbishops of these
· 142 ·
provinces had to accommodate both communities and maintain relations

with secular lords across their provinces. The holders of church office
reflected the divisions between peoples identified by the secular govern-
ment. This was, in part, a practical issue. Despite the conquest, most of
the bishops in Wales in the early fourteenth century were Welsh. The
efforts by, for example, the Black Prince to secure the election of his
servants ran into opposition not just from within Wales but also from the
papacy. Popes wanted to ensure that bishops could communicate in the

language of their flocks and ruled out English nominees on this account.7
It might be thought that, as an institution whose character was univer-
sal and rested on shared concerns and a common hierarchy, the church
would not be bound up with issues of sovereignty and ethnic difference.
In practice political and ethnic tensions were played out within the struc-
tures of the church. The legal training of many churchmen, their access
to writings which focused on nations and the well-practised need to
defend provincial rights against challenges from inside and outside the
church all meant that clerics actually shaped concepts of nation and com-
munity in this period. This might be expected of the secular church,
which had always been influenced by the processes of royal patronage
and election. However, despite the stronger international ties created by
their distinct hierarchies and defined purposes, similar loyalties can be
identified within religious orders. This was especially the case with the
friars, whose role within the wider world as preachers and teachers
encouraged an identity with political concerns. In particular the Franciscans
in Scotland and Ireland were regarded as closely linked to issues of war
and antipathy. For the Scots Franciscans this may have had its origins in
their incorporation into the English province of the order, which caused
friction even before 1296. During the subsequent wars, English observers
complained of ‘false preachers’, perhaps friars, who encouraged support
for opposition to the English king. In 1333, when he was seeking to
replace the Scottish Franciscans of Berwick with English friars, Edward
III told the pope that the continued wars were due ‘to the preaching of
certain religious Mendicants (friars) of the Scottish nation who, under
the cloak of sanctity, encourage the Scots in their tyranny’. Such national
distinctions within religious orders were even starker in Ireland. The law
forbidding those of the ‘Irish nation’ to enter a religious house or order
‘in English land’ makes clear an effective ethnic division between Irish
and English friaries and abbeys. This reflected existing reality. In 1291 it
was reported that a chapter meeting of the Irish province of the Franciscans
dissolved into violence between English and Irish friars in which ‘many
were killed and wounded to the scandal of the order’. The campaigns
of Edward Bruce marked a further stage in this conflict, with the Scots
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apparently deliberately targeting English friaries and sparing those with

Irish brethren. This reportedly provoked one English Franciscan to re-assert
before Bruce ‘that it is not a sin to kill an Irishman, and that if he himself
were to commit such a deed he would, nonetheless, celebrate mass’. These
attitudes and conflicts led to an investigation by the order in 1324 which
recommended that Irish friars should be dispersed in small numbers to
live with their English brethren and made to swear allegiance to the king.8
It was even more surprising that the monks of the Cistercian order,
whose lives were dedicated to enclosed prayer away from the snares of the
world, showed similar tendencies to identification with one race against
another. The legislation against Irish religious clearly extended to monks
and there was a long history of antagonism between Irish and non-Irish
Cistercians from the earlier thirteenth century. The intervention of the
order’s authorities had largely quietened this by 1300, but in Wales it
was the Cistercians, rather than the Franciscans, who seem to have been
identified by the English as a focus of suspicion. Franciscan quiescence
was partly due to the fact that Archbishop Pecham was from that order,
but the Cistercians of north and west Wales were closely associated with
the princes of Gwynedd in the wars of 1276–83. The abbey of Aberconwy
paid the price for this attachment by being moved seven miles to make
way for Edward I’s castle and borough. Suspicions continued after 1284.
In 1328 the monks of Strata Marcella in Powys were accused of inciting
hostility between Welsh and English and the abbot of Conwy was one
of several Welsh clergy accused of participating in the conspiracy in
which Prince Edward’s bailiff was killed in 1345. By comparison, the
main Scottish monastic houses, many of which now lay in the disputed
southern sheriffdoms of the kingdom, seemed much more concerned to
protect their fabric and properties in an era of intense conflict. English
monks were expelled from religious houses in the 1290s and 1310s, but
this may have been due to external pressure rather than dissent within the
order. The conflict between kingdoms severed links of landholding and
between religious houses of the same order. The treatment of the one
surviving community of English monks at Coldingham near Berwick,
subjected to pressure and attack from Scottish clergy and government,
indicates the way in which ecclesiastical ties across the Anglo-Scottish
border could not be separated from political antagonisms.9
These religious orders, like the secular churches of the British Isles,
formed special communities which were not immune from the pull of
political and ethnic allegiances. The harassment of Coldingham Priory by
Scottish king and church in the late fourteenth century also stemmed
from religious differences. From 1378 the divisions of secular politics
were exacerbated by the effect of the Great Schism in the papacy which
· 144 ·
produced rival papal courts in Rome and Avignon. While the English
crown and church adhered to the Roman popes, Scotland followed its
French ally in recognising the popes in Avignon. The split justified
attacks on ecclesiastical institutions and property in the other realm as the
punishment of schismatics. After 1400 Owain Glyn DWr’s claim to be the
legitimate ruler of a sovereign Welsh principality and his support for an
archbishopric of St Davids as the focus of a Welsh ecclesiastical province
were recognised by the Avignonese pope. Competition between rival

popes fed into the conflicts between realms in the British Isles.
As the activities of Archbishops Pecham and Mac Cearbhaill showed,
the leaders of the church were themselves key players in the politics of
the period. The influence over ecclesiastical appointments possessed by
secular rulers in all the lands of the British Isles meant that there was a
close link between royal service and church hierarchy. In later thirteenth-
century Scotland, successive royal chancellors were rewarded with elec-
tion to the bishopric of St Andrews, the senior and richest diocese. This
tended to produce prelates who were worldly administrators rather than
reformers or spirituals. This suited the needs of secular government.
Archbishops of Dublin, like John Sandford and Alexander Bicknor, were
entrusted by English kings with the demanding role of justiciar of Ireland,
while two bishops headed the list of Scottish guardians after the death of
Alexander III. The classic example of such lordly bishops is Anthony Bek.
Bek began his career in Edward I’s household and was closely connected
to that king’s assertive policies. In 1280 he was elected bishop of
St Davids, placing that important see in the hands of an English prelate
at a sensitive time. A decade later, Bek, now bishop of Durham, was sent
to Scotland as Edward’s lieutenant, later serving on campaign there. He
was still an effective bishop but a highly political one.10
However, there were leaders of the church capable of acting against
royal interests. Pecham’s warning to royal officers in Wales displayed the
archbishop’s concern to protect ecclesiastical liberties. This role was
played even more forcefully by Pecham’s successor. Robert Winchelsey
was a teacher and theologian rather than a royal bureaucrat. He mounted
a defence of the rights of his church in the face of Edward I’s unprece-
dented demands for financial contributions after 1294. This ended with
his suspension in 1305 but showed the possibility of courageous opposi-
tion from within the church. A similar role was played in the crisis of
1341 by a third archbishop of Canterbury, John Stratford, who success-
fully resisted Edward III’s attacks. In the other realms of the isles, defence
of ecclesiastical liberties coincided with wider conflicts. The leadership
provided by Scottish bishops, especially between 1286 and 1306, provides
the best example of this. Attempts by Edward II in 1306 to have the
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bishops of Glasgow and St Andrews deprived of their sees identified

the incumbents, Robert Wishart and William Lamberton, as committed
opponents of English sovereignty. Both acted as guardians and led armies
in this role. Wishart spent two long periods in English captivity, while
Lamberton was released and given access to his diocese. He remained in
the English king’s allegiance but resumed his support of Bruce in about
1312. Like David MacCearbhaill’s advocacy of the ‘community of the
Irish tongue’, all these bishops acted as leaders of their churches and
wider groupings in dealings with secular rulers.11
Breaking the Nexus: The Aristocratic World (1280–1380)

The decades around the year 1300 witnessed a redrawing of aristocratic
identities and allegiances in the British Isles. Before then the greatest lords
were figures of importance across the archipelago. Chroniclers reported
the death of Gilbert Clare earl of Gloucester in December 1295. Earl
Gilbert was remembered as the archetypal great noble, ‘a man prudent in
counsels, strong in arms and most daring in defence of his rights’. He was
also said to have been ‘the highest and unparalleled amongst the mag-
nates of the realm’ and ‘the most powerful after the king’. This verdict
rested on the earl’s marriage to Edward I’s daughter but also on his lands
and rights across the British Isles. In England these included estates in
seventeen counties including the honour of Clare in Suffolk. In Wales he
held Glamorgan and two other marcher lordships and in Ireland he was
lord of the liberty of Kilkenny. Gilbert’s wealth, assessed at £6,000 per
year, was not far short of the Scottish king’s income and his castle at
Caerffili was the largest fortress in Britain. Since the 1260s he had been
a tricky subject for the English crown, both powerful and prickly, and
Edward I may not have shed too many tears at his son-in-law’s death
and the succession of an infant heir. The lands and activities of a magnate
like Gilbert Clare formed a link between the realms of the isles. While
England was the focus of his residence and political life, his Welsh lord-
ships had required his frequent presence in the wars and rebellions from
the 1260s to the 1290s, and in 1293–4 Gilbert and his wife visited the
lordship of Kilkenny. The earl’s father had even been involved in Scotland
in the 1250s and Gilbert retained an interest in that kingdom via a
marriage connection with Robert (V) Bruce. The running of lordships in
different lands and environments required a flexibility of approach but
also saw the employment of officials whose careers took them from estate
to estate, either with their lord or on his business.12
Gilbert Clare was exceptional in his wealth and importance but he was
the pinnacle of a much wider aristocratic society which spanned the
· 146 ·
realms of the British Isles. The families which formed this nexus could
draw on common origins and history. Their original ‘homelands’ lay in
northern France, Normandy, Brittany and Flanders. The Clares, like their
peers the Bigods and Warennes, gained their first English estates from
their participation in the Norman Conquest of England. The formation
of the Welsh march and the ‘coming of the English’ to Ireland which
extended this conquest were driven by processes of private conquest
which saw families of similar backgrounds attain lordships in these lands.

The Norman ‘conquest of the North’ and subsequent aristocratic settle-
ment of Scotland saw French lineages acquire lands through the northern
half of Britain. These eleventh- and twelfth-century aristocratic move-
ments formed networks of land and family which linked different parts of
the British Isles together. Like Gilbert Clare, Roger Bigod, Humphrey
Bohun and William Valence were English magnates, Welsh marcher lords
and, with the exception of Bohun, holders of Irish liberties. A number of
baronial families with northern English estates, like the Bruces, Balliols,
Umfravilles and Comyns, were also earls or great lords in Scotland by
1280. Even amongst families of more limited or focused landed hold-
ings, similar connections are identifiable. The Percy family in northern
England, the Douglases and Murrays in Scotland, the Mortimers in
Wales and the branches of the FitzGeralds in Ireland were all of northern
French descent and their acquisition of land a product of this same
aristocratic expansion.13
Though by 1280 the direct ties of land between these Anglo-French
dynasties and northern France had largely been severed, the shared values
of this francophone aristocratic world retained their strength. As well as
the French language, such lords held common ideas about the behaviour,
symbols and way of life appropriate to a noble man or woman and the
ways in which land could be acquired and held. Such values, or portions
of them, could be extended to lineages whose origins were insular. Welsh
princes, magnates from the Hebrides and Scottish earls all re-modelled
their lordship under such influences. The key to full membership of this
aristocratic society and its workings was land. Aristocratic fortunes and
interests were tied to the possession and passage of lands. William the
Conqueror’s grant of Clare to Richard fitz Gilbert, David I of Scotland’s
grant of Annandale to Robert Bruce (I) and Henry III of England’s
re-creation of the earldom of Ulster for Walter Burgh were all examples
of the importance of royal patronage in providing the basis for the status
of families who would become great magnates. However, royal patron-
age was only one element in this process. Patterns of marriage and inher-
itance were equally important in defining this world and its limits. Welsh
lands, which by law could not be passed by heiresses or granted away,
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prevented the transfer of estates and meant the princes were largely
outside these connections, while Scottish nobles were incorporated into
it. Even though, like Llywelyn of Gwynedd’s marriage to Eleanor de
Montfort in 1278, family ties were formed between princely dynasties
and the Anglo-French aristocracy, there were no Welsh parallels to the
acquisition of Scottish earldoms by Anglo-French lords, like the Comyns
in Buchan and the Bruces in Carrick. As a result, the princes, and Irish
kings, were not integrated into the network of landholding.14

In Scotland, England, the Welsh march and English Ireland, aristo-
cratic marriage alliances had potential implications for landholding. In
the event that a male line failed, the lands of a family faced partition
between heiresses and their husbands. Such events shaped the nobility of
the late thirteenth century. The failure of the Marshal family and the
partition of their great lordship of Leinster gave the Clares, Valences and
Bigods their Irish liberties, widening the number of families with major
stakes in England and Ireland. The death of John earl of Huntingdon in
1237 increased the extent of landholdings across the border between
English and Scottish realms. It would also provide the claims of the
co-heirs, the Balliols, Bruces and Hastings, to the Scottish throne when
the royal line died out in 1290. The political geography of the British
Isles in 1290 was built, not just on kingdoms and communities, but on
aristocratic connections. It is misleading to place these within the frame-
work of a single realm. Nine out of thirteen Scottish earls held some
English lands and seven English earls had holdings in Scotland. Questions
of allegiance and service to two rulers do not seem to have caused crises
of politics or identity before 1296 and nobles and their royal lords saw
the advantages in the existence of an interconnected aristocratic com-
munity. Attempts to sever such links in the thirteenth century would
have seemed unnatural and tyrannical to most contemporaries. They
must, however, make us cautious about parking families like these within
exclusive or rigid communities defined by allegiance or by nation as we
would understand it. It is striking that, before 1300, such definitions
flowed most readily from the clergy and the servants of kings rather than
from noble households.15
What was the impact of the wars of conquest initiated by Edward I
from 1280 on this aristocratic community? Edward I has had a reputa-
tion of being a demanding and ungenerous master to his leading
magnates. As has been discussed above, the king was concerned to
recover rights he regarded as having been usurped by nobles and to make
clear the crown’s authority, even when it came up against established
aristocratic custom. As Gilbert Clare found, the Quo Warranto inquiry,
the numerous royal interventions in the Welsh march after 1284 and a
· 148 ·
similar approach in the lordship of Ireland were all elements of royal

policy which applied to English magnates as much as it did to Welsh
princes or the Scottish king. However, Edward’s ‘masterfulness’ towards
his magnates was only one side of the picture. Like all medieval rulers,
Edward I could not afford to antagonise this powerful group but needed
to work with them. He recognised their rights to hold their lands freely,
merely seeking proof of these rights, and he made no general challenge
to the liberties of the march. In terms of the king’s campaigns in Wales

and Scotland, Edward depended heavily on the service and support of his
nobility. In 1277, 1282 and 1294, marcher lords raised and led armies
which provided decisive support for the king’s own advances into
Gwynedd. In Scotland, the king called on both the feudal service and
voluntary assistance of his nobility to provide his cavalry. As Edward I
found in his planned continental campaigns of 1297 and his son learned
in Scotland in 1310, if the English earls were unwilling to serve in the
royal host, the size of the force would be much reduced.16
The readiness of great lords to participate in the king’s wars depended
primarily on political goodwill and obligation. These elements were also
increased by the possibility of reward. The king’s settlement of Wales
between 1277 and 1284 involved the creation of seven new marcher
lordships in the north-east of the country. The recipients of these
included Edward’s key lieutenants, the Mortimers and Reginald Grey,
and two English earls, Henry Lacy earl of Lincoln and John Warenne
earl of Surrey. The new grants were displays of royal patronage but
also reflected the king’s belief that such lordships remained a natural,
and beneficial, part of the Welsh political and administrative landscape.
Edward did seek to limit the powers that went with these new lordships,
stressing that they came from his personal gift, not from private con-
quest, and were considered to be subject to the new royal principality,
but such restrictions did not last.17
The situation in Scotland from 1286 was more complex. As we have
seen, the Scottish aristocracy was not easily separated from that of England
in terms of land or family. The crises which faced the Scottish king-
dom from 1286 were not those of a foreign land but of direct concern
for many landowners in England. The Scottish succession was disputed
between Anglo-French nobles just like the earlier division of the Marshal
or Huntingdon estates. The possibility of partitioning Alexander III’s
kingdom, whilst it was rejected, does indicate that the rules of noble
inheritance were being considered. The claimants were lords with Anglo-
French backgrounds, John Balliol, Robert Bruce, John Hastings lord of
Abergavenny (in the Welsh marches) and numerous others, almost all
of whom were vassals of Edward I. In this light, the king’s role as judge
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must have appeared natural to most participants and confirms the sense
that family and tenurial networks were an important element in these
events. The decades between 1280 and 1310 continued to extend these
links. Marriages between John Balliol and John Warenne’s daughter,
John Comyn and the sister of Aymer Valence, the Clares and the earls of
Fife and of James the Steward and Robert Bruce into the earl of Ulster’s
family meant that these leading figures in Scotland had close family
ties with the lieutenants and agents of King Edward in the northern
British Isles.18
Long-established and continuing links of land and family spanned the
border between the English and Scottish realms and gave the conflicts
between them from 1296 some characteristics of a civil war. Numerous
magnates and lesser nobles with interests in both kingdoms were forced
to make a choice of allegiance between King Edward and King John. The
choices made depended on a variety of motives and shifted according to
circumstances. The need to confirm loyalties was indicated by reports
that the Scottish government ordered the taking of an oath of fealty in
1296 and confiscated the possessions of those who refused. Some nobles,
for example the earls of Angus and Dunbar and, in 1296, the Bruces,
chose to support Edward I but the majority of the earls and barons of
Scotland opposed the English king. Doing so risked the loss of English
estates. Though the level of royal involvement with noble marriages and
inheritances varied, in the Scottish wars there was a clear relationship
between royal sovereignty and aristocratic society. The marriage of James
the Steward and Robert Bruce to kinswomen of the earl of Ulster fol-
lowed their submissions to Edward I. Bruce’s submissions also involved
the restoration of his English lands. This was a major issue for Scottish
lords seeking reconciliation with Edward and his heirs. In the general
peace offer of 1304 and more limited negotiations of 1335, the recovery
of lands, rights and possessions in the Plantagenet dominions was a
condition of doing homage. Only the king of England could offer such
restoration, and Edward I in 1304 could present acceptance of his
lordship over Scotland as the means to re-establish the pre-war world of
Anglo-Scottish landholding.19
The long wars waged by English kings in Scotland also depended on
the support of English magnates. As in Wales, this support was enhanced
by the prospect of rewards in the form of lands and titles. Magnates like
the earl of Lincoln, Henry Percy and Aymer Valence received major
Scottish lands before 1304, while Percy, his comrade, Robert Clifford
and the earl of Hereford were amongst the beneficiaries from the sentences
of forfeiture passed on Robert Bruce and his allies. However, such grants
conflicted with efforts to negotiate with Scottish magnates. The 1304
· 150 ·
settlement required Lincoln and Percy to resign their new Scottish lands
and Edward had to compensate them. Rather than providing a new
group of lords with interests in both England and Scotland, in the years
from 1306 these grants would be an element in the growing separation
between the nobilities of the two kingdoms.20
The key to this separation was the course of the war. Robert Bruce’s
victory at Bannockburn in 1314 was followed by a statute which deprived
all those who still refused to recognise his kingship of their Scottish
estates. Though Donald earl of Mar and several others were allowed to
recover their possessions later, the long-term effect of the statute was
to end the dual loyalties of landowners in northern Britain. Those who
refused homage to Robert and his heirs were forfeited in Scotland. Those
who did homage to Bruce were regarded as traitors by the Plantagenet
king and lost their estates in his dominions. Those lords forfeited by
Robert and those who had been granted Scottish property by Edward I
and his heirs formed a group of disinherited lords whose ambitions renewed
the war in 1332. Their leader, the royal claimant Edward Balliol, revoked
all grants of land made by Robert I and rewarded the disinherited with
the estates of Bruce adherents. These acts directly threatened the posses-
sions of other noble families and cemented them in their allegiance to the
Bruce dynasty. Robert I had distributed the lordships of his enemies
amongst his own supporters. The new earl of Moray received the northern
lands of the Comyns of Badenoch, while the earldom of Buchan was
shared between the Rosses and Frasers. The Douglas family were rewarded
with estates forfeited by the Comyns, Balliols, Souleses and other dis-
inherited. Between the 1330s and 1350s the Scottish nobility and the
government of the kingdom came to be dominated by families like the
Stewarts, Randolphs, Douglases and Murrays who were bound to the Bruce
cause (if not always King David’s policies). The rights and territories they
had received fixed them in their opposition to the disinherited and to
English lordship.21
The result was a Scottish aristocracy whose leading members had
powerful material reasons to accept the severing of landed ties across the
border. However, the lasting nature of this rupture may not have been
understood immediately. The mutual restoration of disinherited lords
was a key issue in the 1328 peace treaty, and in the succession talks of
1363–4 Edward III used the recovery of English estates to influence
William earl of Douglas. He also attempted to secure the rights of a
group of disinherited enemies of the Bruces. David II’s dealings with the
Plantagenets after 1357 also raised the possibility of new Anglo-Scottish
magnates. Plans to grant Moray and Galloway to members of Edward III’s
family suggest that the kings of Britain had not accepted the permanence
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of any breach. However, none of these proposals reversed the effects of

lasting conflict between dynasties and allegiances. The renewal of war
from 1378 was driven by the aggression of Scottish nobles. The patterns
of the previous century were not resumed and bonds of allegiance to a
king remained exclusive. When a magnate of Scotland did homage to the
English king, like George Dunbar in 1400, it was an act of rebellion
against the Scottish realm and its ruler.22
The breaking of cross-border ties of land and family had implications

which were not confined to Scotland. As mentioned above, there was no
clear distinction between the landed nobility of northern England and
that of Scotland. The years after 1296 had a major impact on the land-
holding of the English shires north of the Humber. The lands of over
fifty noble men and women were seized by royal officials in Yorkshire,
Cumberland and Northumberland in 1296 for adhering to another
northern landowner, John Balliol, as king of Scots. Balliol and other
major figures with northern English lands, like Robert Ros of Wark and
John Comyn, were forfeited, and subsequent events added the lands of
Robert Bruce in Yorkshire and Cumberland and those of the Dunbars in
Northumberland to this list. Other families, like the Umfravilles, remained
or ended in the English king’s allegiance but they too had to make a
choice of side which would result in their loss of estates in Scotland. For
the Grays, a knightly lineage, these choices left a Scottish and English
branch of the family. Within the magnate class such shifts saw the rise
of new families whose identification with one allegiance was fixed and
central to their emergence. The best examples of these, the Douglases
and Percys, would define the engrained conflicts of this new marchland.
As will be discussed, shifts in the aristocracy of the lands on both sides of
the border were part of the wider transformation of this region.23
The severing of the bonds of Anglo-Scottish landholding was the
result of hard political divisions between the two kingdoms. Changes in
aristocratic society in northern Britain also stemmed from the extinction
of cross-border families like the Vescis and Comyns and of many of the
other Scottish dynasties which held the earldoms north of the Forth. This
confirmed the formation of a political elite in Scotland very different from
that of the 1280s. Although there was no comparable break in the links
which connected Ireland with the Welsh marches and England via lead-
ing magnate families, these patterns of aristocratic power also shifted
during the early fourteenth century as a result of the failure of noble
lineages and a shifting political environment. Between 1297 and 1333 all
the English magnate families who held county-sized liberties in Ireland
died out in the male line. This included the four holders of the liberties
in Leinster, the Clare, Bigod, Vesci and Valence families, and, more
· 152 ·
damagingly, the Burgh earls of Ulster, the most powerful and widely-
connected English magnate dynasty in early fourteenth-century Ireland.
The lands these families held, a considerable part of the English king’s
lordship, passed to a single heiress, like Elizabeth Burgh countess of
Ulster, or were divided between kinswomen, like the three sisters of the
last Clare earl of Gloucester.24
Though unusually widespread, such successions were nothing new.
They had provided the route by which magnates had attained these lord-
ships in the 1240s. In Wales and England the partition of inheritances
did cause tensions but in Ireland the consequences seemed more funda-
mental. The succession of heiresses whose husbands came from the
English nobility was not seen in Ireland as maintaining useful links with
the king’s other lands. Though, like Elizabeth Burgh, who held portions
of both the Burgh and Clare estates, they might seek to ensure the good
running of their lands from a distance, such proprietors were seen as a
key part of the growing problem of absenteeism. Outsiders without pre-
vious interests in Ireland inherited estates which were of small financial
value and required careful protection. For nobles like the earls of Norfolk
and Stafford and Richard Talbot, a share of an Irish liberty was not worth
their time and resources. For the English of Ireland, the absence of these
leading landowners risked the loss of land and influence under pressure
from Irish kindreds. They repeatedly complained of this neglect, in 1360
arguing that five-sixths of the king’s lordship was held by absentees.
While the problem was exaggerated in scale and in effect, such petitions
for the support of these lords and ladies indicates the shift in attitude to
cross-channel landholding from before 1300.25
However, a more significant consequence of these changes within the
highest rank of English nobles in Ireland was an increased emphasis on
families whose principal interests lay on that island. These families, the
most prominent of which were the Butlers and the FitzGeralds of Offaly
and Desmond, had roots in Ireland which stretched back to founding of
the lordship in the later twelfth century. Before 1300 they were leading
figures in Irish politics beneath the lords of the great liberties. The Butlers
in particular had English lands and connections, but these families were
entrenched in Ireland and within specific regions of the lordship. Their
regional importance rested on leadership of English communities, but
the Butlers and Geraldines were also major figures amongst the Irish.
As will be discussed, these magnates built up networks of service and
support amongst the leading Irish kindreds in their regions and, while
the stability of such links was limited, they were generally extended in the
fourteenth century. After 1300 the ability of such lords to control or
combat the Irish became increasingly important to the royal government.
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Between 1315 and 1329 four new Irish earldoms were created by the
crown with liberty powers over a former royal county. All were granted
to Anglo-Irish magnates. Each creation had a specific context but together
they represented the recognition of the need for aristocratic leadership
within (and on the borders of) English Ireland. The three lasting cre-
ations, Kildare in 1315 for the FitzGeralds of Offaly, Ormond in 1328
for the Butlers, and Desmond in 1329 for the FitzGeralds of Desmond,
would be the basis for regional lordship by English nobles. This was not
always to the benefit of the crown, but the idea that such families repre-
sented the separation of the Anglo-Irish elite from that of England is
misleading. All three families used their increased status to extend their
connections within the nobility of England and were clear about their
Englishness. However, their elevation did represent the redrawing and
reduction of landed and family links across the Irish Sea, a process which
was increased by the way in which the earls of Desmond and Ormond
targeted the lands and rights of absentees for acquisition by purchase
or pressure.26
In the march of Wales, that traditional stronghold of aristocratic
liberty, the opening decades of the fourteenth century witnessed a turnover
of lords and lordships which surpassed that of English Ireland. To the
failure of marcher families in the male line, the Clares in Glamorgan and
Gower, the Valences in Pembroke, the Lacys in Denbigh and the Bigods
in Chepstow, need to be added the casualties of English politics. The
Mortimers, Lancaster and several other marchers suffered forfeiture in
1322, and the downfall of their enemies in 1326 deprived the Despensers
and the earl of Arundel of their lands in the march. However, this instab-
ility did not result in significant long-term alterations in the personnel
of these lordships or their place within wider aristocratic structures. The
rise and fall of these lords was directly related to the course of English
politics and emphasised the integration of landholding in the march into
that of the kingdom of England. However, Edward III’s efforts to restore
harmony and stability within his nobility led to renewed emphasis on the
special rights of the march and to the restoration of the Despensers,
Mortimers and others to most of their lands in the region. These acts
were one element of the king’s general policy towards the higher nobility
of England between the 1330s and 1350s. By the creation of four new
English earldoms and numerous other grants of lands and revenues Edward
III spread royal patronage amongst a wide group of families in contrast
to his father’s favouritism. The restoration or distribution of marcher
lordships as an integral element in Edward’s actions confirmed their
status, not as frontier jurisdictions, but as estates of special value held by
leading members of the English nobility. Though many of these lords ran
· 154 ·
their Welsh lands from England, this absenteeism did not present the
problems identified in Ireland. The profits of marcher lordship and the
peace of Wales went together for much of the fourteenth century.27
The greatest victims of this era of conflict and upheaval were the Welsh
princes. Ruling dynasties which traced their genealogies back centuries
were deprived of land and lordship in the Edwardian conquest. The
house of Gwynedd was extinguished. Its male members were executed or
exiled and its womenfolk placed in nunneries. The fears of rebellion

aroused in the administration by Owain Lawgoch, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd’s
great-nephew, in the 1370s clearly indicate the motives of the English
crown in its treatment of the family. The houses of Deheubarth and Powys
suffered similar treatment but with exceptions. Gruffudd ap Gwenwynwyn
had been a determined opponent of Llywelyn. His reward was to keep
his lands. However, rather than a prince, Gruffudd and his family were
treated as marcher lords and assumed the name Pole (from Welshpool,
their principal castle). When Gruffydd’s grandson died in 1309, the lands
were inherited by his brother-in-law, the Englishman John Charlton,
confirming Powys as just another lordship. Some minor families of princely
descent did survive. In Glyndyfrdwy, Dinmael and Edeirnion in the
north-east and Is-Coed in Cardiganshire, lords remained whose ancestry
far outweighed their landed resources. They were termed Welsh barons
and, whether tenants of the crown or marcher lords, had rights of local
jurisdiction. Despite their localised possessions and the evidence of their
integration into the English landowning class, these lineages retained a
significance not forgotten in the genealogically-obsessed atmosphere of
Wales. In about 1380 a Welsh poet reminded his audience of the descent
of one such baron from the houses of Powys and Deheubarth. The baron
was Owain Glyn DWr and his descent would be the basis of the most
serious challenge to English lordship in Wales since 1284.28
The general decline of these princely families did not mean that there
was no recognisable Welsh elite after the conquest. In reality the English
royal and marcher administrations needed an elite to provide a point of
contact between conquerors and conquered. Within a generation Welshmen
were acting as sheriffs in the principality and as stewards for marcher
lords. Even earlier and more extensively, the same individuals were given
powers to lead contingents of Welsh soldiers in English campaigns in
Scotland and France. While such roles suggest the patronage and promo-
tion of a native elite by colonial authorities, they were also recognition
that the exercise of justice and the raising of revenues from these lands
functioned more effectively in the hands of Welshmen and that these men
were best equipped in terms of language and status to lead their com-
patriots in English armies. The men employed in these roles were not
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‘raised from the dust’. The majority of them came from an existing class
of officials and servants. Gruffudd Llwyd, who was sheriff of Merionydd
under Edward I, was descended from the stewards of the princes of
Gwynedd. Llywelyn ap Madog of Dyffryn Clwyd was also from a family
of princely servants while the main officials in the Bohuns’ lordship
of Brecon also came from the established curial dynasty of Einion Sais.
These men used their careers in royal or lordly administration to build up
significant estates. This group could include men of princely descent, like
Glyn DWr’s grandfather who was steward of Chirk for the earl of Arundel,
but most were rich freemen who sought heightened status and land.29
Families and Inheritances

The eight decades up to 1360 saw significant shifts in the Anglo-French
aristocratic world in Britain and Ireland. These were primarily driven by
conflicts. The conquest of native Wales, the permanent fissure between
English and Scottish allegiances and the impact of localised warfare in
Ireland altered the ability of magnates to operate effectively in different
lands and led to major changes in the secular elites of these realms. Such
changes occurred not just in terms of the whole magnate class or regnal
communities. The rise and fall of families and the rights of land and lord-
ship they possessed provided another focus for change. A striking illustra-
tion of this is provided by the death of a second Gilbert Clare earl of
Gloucester. The younger earl’s death in 1314, nineteen years after that
of his father, attracted similar attention across the British Isles. One Irish
annalist described Gilbert as ‘he who of all the English was of most nobility
. . . and inherited the greatest estate’. However, the earl’s death came in
a very different atmosphere from his father’s and its effects were a catalyst
for wider changes. Gilbert fell at Bannockburn, abandoned by his knights
to be slain by the army of Robert Bruce. Bruce was the young earl’s
brother-in-law and the two families had long connections. Though
Robert acknowledged such ties by standing vigil over Clare’s corpse, the
earl’s fate graphically showed that aristocratic bonds across the Anglo-
Scottish border could not withstand the conflict for kingship and alle-
giance between Bruce and Plantagenet. The aftermath of Gloucester’s
death also demonstrated the individual importance of such figures in
whole regions and even realms. Gilbert died without a male heir. His
estates in England, the Welsh march and Ireland were taken into royal
hands before being shared between three sisters and their husbands. This
partition, in which Edward II showed favouritism towards one of these
husbands, Hugh Despenser, was an element in English political tensions
between 1314 and 1322. However, it was in Ireland and Wales, where
· 156 ·
the Clare lands were provincial lordships like Glamorgan and Kilkenny,
that the consequences were greatest. They provided the Despensers with
the basis for their short-lived ‘empire’ in Wales, but equally important
was the effect on the tenants and local communities within these prov-
inces. In Glamorgan the loss of established, if not always popular, lords
and the arrival of royal officials provoked a rebellion by Welsh tenants in
1316. Over a longer period, the partition of Kilkenny between absent
heiresses and their husbands led both the royal administration and
tenants to look elsewhere for leadership. The chronicler John Clyn, writ-
ing at Kilkenny, did not mention the heirs of Clare but instead focused
on the activities of local English lords like the la Freigne family and the
Butlers. It was the Butler earls of Ormond who gradually developed a
role as the principal magnates in Kilkenny. In the 1390s they purchased
the castle and the share of Kilkenny held by the Despensers, confirming
a dominance which had been established through the century.30
The death of a single noble in the chaos of battle ended an aristocratic
dynasty of great lands and influence in three realms. Gilbert’s survival and
the continuation of his line would have influenced political relationships
in many regions. However, the end of the senior line of the Clares occurred
within wider political contexts. It was these contexts which determined
the effects of this and other changes in aristocratic landholding. The
death of Gilbert’s cousin, Richard Clare, in battle against the O’Briens in
1318 set in motion events which led to the collapse of his lordship of
Thomond. This failure was confirmed by the death of Richard’s young
son and heir in 1321, leaving his lands to be shared between his aunts.
However, both Richard’s death and its aftermath were products of the
precarious position of English lordship in Thomond and the strength of
Irish kindreds.31 A similar point can be made about the fall of the Comyn
family. Perhaps the most powerful noble family in thirteenth-century
Scotland, the two main branches of the Comyns were regionally powerful
in the north-east, holding the provinces of Buchan and Badenoch, as well
as lands in southern Scotland and in England. In 1308 and 1314 both
branches died out in the male line. Their estates, including claims to the
Valence lands in England, Wales and Ireland, were shared between a
number of kinswomen and their husbands. However, these extinctions
were not simple failures of heredity. The last earl of Buchan died in exile
from his province and the last lord of Badenoch was also killed at
Bannockburn seeking to recover his lands. Both men had been forfeited
of their Scottish estates by the family’s enemy, Robert Bruce. Of the
legal heirs to their lands most, including Henry Beaumont and David
Strathbogie, refused homage to Bruce and their efforts to secure this
inheritance led them to initiate war against Robert’s successor in support
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of Edward Balliol. Of the Comyns’ principal lordships, Buchan was par-

titioned and Badenoch incorporated into the new earldom of Moray.
Uniquely, King Robert allowed their titles to lapse, suggesting a desire to
expunge traditions of Comyn lordship. The family’s lands were assigned
to Bruce adherents. As with the Clares, these changes in lordship had
consequences for regional politics and relationships. The end of Comyn
lordship was a direct product of wider conflicts and divisions in the
aristocratic community of northern Britain. As the goals of disinherited

claimants like Beaumont and Strathbogie demonstrated though, issues of
inheritance and lordship were also a factor in driving such conflicts.32
However, the upheavals of the fourteenth century were not solely
about the end of great magnate dynasties and the break-up or decline of
networks of lordship and land which spanned several realms or regions.
There were winners as well as losers in the era of war and conquest. Some
of these built up holdings and status on a par with any lordly house of
the previous century. In the 1270s the Mortimers were a significant
noble line but they were major lords in only a single region, the middle
march of Wales and the neighbouring English shires. Though the family
benefited in terms of lands as a result of Edward I’s conquest of Wales,
it was the inheritance of the liberty of Trim by Roger Mortimer of
Wigmore in 1308 which provided them with a new area of interests.
However, two exceptional family events elevated them further. Roger’s
dominance of English government between 1327 and 1330 allowed him
to award himself the earldom of March and numerous new estates.
Though these were lost on Roger’s fall, the generosity of Edward III
allowed many of the gains, including the earldom, to be recovered. The
second event was the marriage of Roger’s great-grandson, Edmund, to
the king’s granddaughter, Philippa, the heiress via her mother to a share
of both the Clare and Burgh inheritances. The match meant that by the
1370s Edmund earl of March held fifteen lordships in the Welsh march,
estates across southern England and the earldom of Ulster, the lordship
of Trim, Connacht and other Irish lands. As well as their lands and royal
connections, the Mortimers possessed links to both Wales and Ireland
which meant they were not simply absentees acquiring titles to land in
unknown and unvisited lands. These fitted them for leading roles in these
lands, especially Ireland, where the first four earls of March all served as
justiciar and Edmund and his son both died. The readiness of magnates
like the earls of Ormond and Kildare to serve the Mortimers suggests that
they possessed the standing to act as leaders of the English of Ireland.33
Though on the smaller stage provided by the Scottish realm, a parallel
example of expanding lordship and status is provided by the Stewarts.
Like the Mortimers, the Stewarts were major lords long before 1300.
· 158 ·
The family’s principal lordships lay around the Firth of Clyde in south-
western Scotland and James the Steward was important enough to be
chosen as one of the guardians of the realm in 1286. Like the Mortimers
the growth of the family’s status after 1300 was, in part, due to royal
connections. The marriage of Walter the Steward to Robert I’s eldest
daughter, Margery, made the Stewarts key members of the Bruce regime.
Walter and Margery’s son, Robert the Steward, was heir to the Bruce
kings for over half a century and finally ascended the Scottish throne as
Robert II in 1371. However, the crucial extension of the family’s private
power came in the decades between the 1330s and 1350s. Like Roger
Mortimer between 1327 and 1330, Robert exploited his periods as
guardian between 1338 and 1357 to acquire new lands and followers. In
particular, the losses amongst the earls of central and northern Scotland
allowed the Steward to impose his lordship on provinces like Strathearn,
Menteith, Atholl and Moray. Though David II was reluctant to recog-
nise these gains, Robert quickly ensured their confirmation once he was
king. Rather than keeping them as a great royal demesne, Robert used
them to endow his sons. By 1384 eight earldoms were held by these sons
and another three by his sons-in-law, representing a virtual takeover of
the top rank of the Scottish nobility.34
The importance of such princely magnates was not confined to
Scotland. The marriage of Philippa to Edmund Mortimer was part of a
similar approach by Edward III. Her father, the king’s second son, Lionel
duke of Clarence, had secured his share of the Burgh and Clare lands by
marriage to Elizabeth, daughter of William earl of Ulster. It was this
inheritance which passed to the Mortimers. Lionel’s younger brother,
John of Gaunt, similarly acquired the Lancastrian inheritance from his
first wife, Blanche. Gaunt and Blanche’s son, Henry (later Henry IV),
would marry the co-heiress of the Bohuns, dividing that family’s lands
with his uncle and Edward III’s youngest son, Thomas of Woodstock.
These marriages were instruments of royal policy in the British Isles and
beyond, whose purpose and success will be considered later. They also
suggest that, though Edward III’s new creations restocked the higher
nobility, the royal family was prominent in the top rank of aristocratic
society in England and the other Plantagenet dominions.35 The extensive
lands accumulated by the Mortimers and Stewarts seem different to this
straightforward endowment of Edward III’s sons by marriage. Both
families acted as more than just royal lieutenants in their acquisition
and maintenance of a wide network of lands and connections. However,
the success of both families was exceptional. Neither the Stewarts in
Scotland nor the Mortimers in England, Wales and Ireland represented
the continuation of the kind of landholding networks that existed in the
· 159 ·
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thirteenth century. The Mortimers had the potential to act as leading

lords on both sides of the Irish Sea but they played these roles only briefly
due to the early deaths and long minorities which dogged the family in
the later fourteenth century. The success of Robert the Steward in the
earldoms and provinces of the central Highlands was itself part of the
process by which old patterns of lordship were broken down in this
region from the 1330s. Though both families were successful in the
extension of their lands and influence, they operated as part of an aristo-

cratic world which had changed since the 1290s.
The nature of this change, like many of the shifts in political relation-
ships in this period, was more marked away from the heartlands of the
English kingdom. Superficially, aristocratic society had not altered in
essentials from the previous century. The traditional language of nobility
remained French, though the status of English was clearly growing.
Significantly, the Scottish nobility seem to have shifted to the use of
English as their primary tongue a generation before their southern coun-
terparts. John Barbour, a well-travelled cleric, chose to compose his verse
account of King Robert I’s reign, The Bruce, in English almost certainly
to be more accessible to his aristocratic audience. In the 1400s a Scottish
noble confessed that he wrote in English due to limited understanding
of French. This was despite the growing political alignment of Scotland
with France and suggests that, with some exceptions, the aristocratic
classes of Scotland remained culturally more attuned to their British
neighbours. It is clear that nobles of Anglo-French descent and cultural
values in Britain and Ireland continued to regard themselves as members
of an elite which transcended political allegiances. Such views were endorsed
by the observer par excellence of late fourteenth-century noble society,
Jean Froissart. Froissart visited both England and Scotland between the
1360s and the 1390s. He was entertained by kings and lords and, though
he recounted the negative experiences of French knights in Scotland in
1385, was himself in no doubt that the nobles of both realms were full
members of the world of courts and campaigns which he reported in his
chronicle. Froissart’s view of Ireland, though second hand, is illuminating
in this respect.36 He included an episode in which James Butler earl of
Ormond entertained some Irish lords. Butler instructed the Irish about
their behaviour at table, and a clear comparison is made between Irish
clothing, military behaviour and absence of knighthood. While Ormond
‘knows their language well’, in cultural terms the Anglo-Irish magnate
was a member of this chivalric world while his Irish guests were not.37
Such divisions also applied across social class. In 1381, fearing the hatred
of the rebellious peasantry, John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster was allowed
to take refuge in Scotland where he was entertained by a number of Scottish
· 160 ·
lords. Significantly, in 1400 his son, King Henry IV of England, limited

the damage done by his invading army in Scotland, referring to his own
Scottish blood, derived from his mother’s kinship to the Comyns.38
War did not sever common ideas of aristocracy or social contacts.
Scottish lords continued to meet with their English peers at tournaments,
on pilgrimage and on crusade. However, such contacts were heavily
coloured by animosities which had developed out of the longstanding
conflict between English and Scottish realms. Accounts of Scottish knights

attending English tournaments often involved exchanges of taunts which
drew on this conflict and Froissart’s approval of both the English and
Scots related to their ferocity in battle with each other as well as their
common sense of chivalry. In 1391, in the course of a crusade in Prussia,
the Scottish knight, William Douglas of Nithsdale, was killed in a fight
with English nobles which had started with insults about their respective
races. Though ideas about aristocratic identity remained important in
shaping the behaviour of English and Scottish nobles in the later four-
teenth century, it was the political framework created by antagonistic and
exclusive loyalties to their royal lords which was most important. Families
like the Douglases and Stewarts derived their status and power from
the possession of lands and rights still claimed by ‘disinherited’ nobles
in England. For nobles on both sides warfare was about the pursuit or
defence of family inheritances as well as royal authority.39
In a more limited sense, a related point can be made about the nobil-
ity of English Ireland. As mentioned in Chapter Four, the series of peti-
tions sent by the English of Ireland to their king provides clear evidence
of a growing sense of community. Just as the barons of Scotland were
increasingly defined by their leadership of a community specific to their
realm, so the ‘earls and barons’ of Ireland identified with the ‘community
of the land of Ireland’ and expressed shared concerns. In the 1280s and
1290s, Edward I had been able to call on magnates like the earls of
Gloucester and Norfolk, as great landowners in both his realms, to rep-
resent him in Ireland. By the 1340s such influence had passed to earls
whose interests focused predominantly on Ireland. Complaints about the
king’s use of English knights with no stake in Ireland as his officials in
the lordship reflect concerns that ‘outsiders’ were being given authority
there. Their preference was for a figure like Edward III’s son, Lionel
duke of Clarence, or his heir, Edmund Mortimer, whose lands in Ireland
qualified them to be leaders of the English community in the island, but
it was the earls of Kildare, Desmond and Ormond who, by the 1350s,
represented the most durable source of leadership.40
This aristocratic identification with realm and community, a growing
phenomenon in Ireland, Scotland and England from the later thirteenth
· 161 ·
DISUNITED KINGDOMS
century, was part of the developing ideas of sovereignty and community

which were discussed earlier. However, to understand the roles of magnates
like the English earls of Ireland and their counterparts both in Gaelic
Ireland and in other parts of the archipelago it is necessary to look beyond
realms and communities. In many parts of the isles, the power of great
lords in the fourteenth century was increasingly focused, not just on a single
land, but on a region within it. It is in the examination of these regional
power structures that many of the key developments which shaped political
relationships in much of northern Britain and Ireland become apparent.
Notes
1. Bartlett, The Making of Europe, 5–59.
2. J.A. Watt, ‘Laudabiliter in Medieval Diplomacy and Propaganda’, Irish
Ecclesiastical Record, 87 (1957), 420–32; M. Haren, ‘Laudabiliter: Text and
Context’, in M.T. Flanagan and J.A. Green (eds), Charters and Charter
Lordship in Britain and Ireland (London, 2005), 140–63; F.X. Martin,
‘Diarmait Mac Murchada and the Coming of the Anglo-Normans’, NHI, ii,
43–66, 54–61; Barrell, ‘Cum Universi’; Davies, Age of Conquest, 190–1.
3. Smith, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, 454–6, 534–6, 542–6; G. Williams, ‘The
Church and Monasticism in the Age of Conquest’, in Herbert and Jones
(eds), Edward I and Wales, 97–122, 116–17; G. Williams, The Welsh Church
from Conquest to Reformation (Cardiff, 1962), 35–45.
4. J. Watt, The Church in Medieval Ireland (Dublin, 1972), 114–16; K. Simms,
‘Frontiers in the Irish Church – Regional and Cultural’, in Barry, Frame
and Simms, Colony and Frontier, 177–200.
5. Statutes and Ordinances, 273, 420; Scotichronicon, vi, 393; N. Gallagher,
‘The Franciscans and the Scottish Wars of Independence: An Irish perspective’,
Journal of Medieval History, 32 (2006), 3–17; Watt, Church, 115–16.
6. A.A.M. Duncan, ‘Documents relating to the Priory of the Isle of May,
c.1140–1313’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 90
(1956), 52–80; M. Ash, ‘The Church in the Reign of Alexander III’, in Reid
(ed.), Alexander III, 31–52; Brown, Wars of Scotland, 128; R.J. Goldstein,
‘The Scottish Mission to Boniface VIII’, SHR, 70 (1991), 1–15; Foedera, ii,
part 1, 541.
7. A.A.M. Duncan, ‘A Question about the Succession, 1364’, Miscellany of the
Scottish History Society, xii (Edinburgh, 1994), 1–57, 37; Barrow, ‘Kingdom
in Crisis’, 137–41; Brown, Wars of Scotland, 182; Watt, Church, 87–129;
Williams, Welsh Church, 122–7.
8. W.M. Mackenzie, ‘A Prelude to the War of Independence’, SHR, 27 (1948),
105–13; Watt, Church, 78–82; Gallagher, ‘Franciscans and the Scottish
Wars’, 6–8.
9. Williams, Welsh Church, 19–26, 124, 144; Davies, Age of Conquest, 355;
A.L. Brown, ‘The Priory of Coldingham in the Late Fourteenth Century’,
Innes Review, 23 (1972), 91–101; R. Oram, ‘Dividing the Spoils: War,
· 162 ·
Schism and Religious Patronage on the Anglo-Scottish Border c.1332–c.1400’,

in Penman and King (eds), England and Scotland, 136–56; Stringer,
‘Identities in Thirteenth-Century England’, 55–8.
10. Ash, ‘Church under Alexander III’; J.F. Lydon, ‘The Case against Alexander
Bicknor, Archbishop and Peculator’, in Smith (ed.), Ireland and the English
World, 103–11; C.M. Fraser, The History of Anthony Bek (Oxford, 1957).
11. J.H. Denton, Robert Winchelsey and the Crown 1294–1313 (1980); N.M. Fryde,
‘Edward III’s Removal of his Ministers and Judges 1340–1’, Bulletin of the
Institute of Historical Research, 48 (1975); D.E.R. Watt, A Biographical

Dictionary of Scottish Graduates to A.D. 1410 (Oxford, 1977), 318–25, 585–90.
12. Altschul, The Clares, 31–9, 94–156, 201–6.
13. R. Frame, ‘Aristocracies and the Political Configuration of the British Isles’,
in R.R. Davies (ed.), The British Isles, 1100–1500 (Edinburgh, 1988), 141–
59; K. Stringer, Earl David of Huntingdon (Edinburgh, 1985), 178–98;
M. Morris, The Bigod Earls of Norfolk in the Thirteenth Century (Woodbridge,
2005), 118–30; Blakely, The Brus Family, 8–27, 67–88.
14. D. Crouch, The Image of Aristocracy in Britain 1000–1300 (London, 1992);
R.A. McDonald, ‘Coming in from the Margins: The Descendants of Somerled
and Cultural Accommodation in the Hebrides, 1164–1317’, in B. Smith
Change (Cambridge, 1999), 179–98.
15. Frame, ‘Political Configurations’, 145–54; Stringer, Earl David, 178–89;
Altschul, The Clares, 75–6.
16. K.B. McFarlane, ‘Had Edward I a “Policy” towards the Earls?’, in
K.B. McFarlane, The Nobility of Later Medieval England (Oxford, 1973),
248–67; M.C. Prestwich, ‘Royal Patronage under Edward I’, Thirteenth
Century England, i (1986), 41–52; A.M. Spencer, ‘Royal Patronage and the
Earls in the Reign of Edward I’, History, 93 (2008), 20–46; D. Simpkin,
‘The English Army and the Scottish Campaign of 1310–1311’, in King and
Penman (eds), England and Scotland, 14–39.
17. Davies, Lordship and Society, 26–8.
18. Beam, Balliol Dynasty, 86–7; Young, The Comyns, 131; Barrow, Robert Bruce,
81, 141.
19. Chron. Lanercost, ed. Maxwell, 129; Stones, Anglo-Scottish Relations,
nos 22, 32; Watson, ‘Settling the Stalemate’, 133–7; Brown, ‘Scoti Anglicati:
Scots in Plantagenet Allegiance’, 99–100, 108.
20. Prestwich, ‘Colonial Scotland’, 7–9; J.M.W. Bean, ‘The Percies and their
Estates in Scotland’, Archaeologia Aeliana, 4th series, 35 (1957), 91–9.
21. Penman, David II, 36–193; Brown, The Black Douglases, 24–8; Barrow,
Robert Bruce, 269–92.
22. Penman, David II, 333; McDonald, Border Bloodshed, 136–8; Duncan,
‘Article on the Succession’, 12; S. Cameron and A. Ross, ‘The Treaty of
1328 and the Disinherited’, History, 84 (1999), 237–56.
23. Tuck, ‘Emergence of a Northern Nobility’, 5–10; Stringer, ‘Identities in
Thirteenth-Century England’, 51–2, 65; A. King, ‘Englishmen, Scots and
Marchers: National and Local Identities in Thomas Gray’s Scalachronica’,
Northern History, 36 (2000), 217–31.
· 163 ·
DISUNITED KINGDOMS
24. Frame, English Lordship, 52–74; J.R.S. Phillips, ‘The Anglo-Norman Nobility’
in Lydon (ed.), English in Medieval Ireland, 87–104.
25. F.A. Underhill, For her Good Estate: The Life of Elizabeth de Burgh (London,
1999), 9–12, 64–6.
26. Frame, English Lordship, 13–51, 185–6, 188–9; C.A. Empey, ‘The Butler
Lordship’, Journal of the Butler Society, 1 (1970–1), 174–87; K. Waters,
‘The Earls of Desmond and the Irish of South-Western Munster’, Journal
of Medieval History, 32 (2006), 54–68; R. Frame, ‘Power and Society in
the Lordship of Ireland, 1272–1377’, Past and Present, 76 (1977), 3–33;

B. Smith, ‘Lordship in the British Isles, c.1320–c.1360’, in H. Pryce and
J. Watts (eds), Power and Identity in the British Isles (2007), 153–63. The
fourth earldom, that of Louth, was created in 1318 for John Bermingham
but lapsed on his violent death in 1329.
27. J.S. Bothwell, ‘Edward III and the “New Nobility”: Largesse and Limita-
tion in Fourteenth-Century England’, EHR, 112 (1997), 1111–41;
J.S. Bothwell, ‘Edward III, the English Peerage and the 1337 Earls’, in
J.S. Bothwell (ed.), The Age of Edward III (Woodbridge, 2001), 35–52.
28. A.D. Carr, ‘An Aristocracy in Decline: The Native Welsh Lords after the
Edwardian Conquest’, WHR, 5 (1970–1), 103–29; R.R. Davies, The Revolt
of Owain Glyn Dwr (Oxford, 1995), 129–36.
29. Smith, ‘Edward II and Wales’, 163–5; Carr, ‘Aristocracy in Decline’, 124–9.
30. Brown, Bannockburn, 185–6; Altschul, The Clares, 157–74; Smith, ‘The
Rebellion of Llywelyn Bren’; R.A. Griffiths, ‘The Revolt of Llywelyn Bren,
1316’; Empey, ‘The Butler Lordship’, 181; Clyn, Annals, ed. Williams,
64–7, 74–85.
31. Altschul, The Clares, 196–7; Frame, English Lordship, 159.
32. A. Young, Robert the Bruce’s Rivals: The Comyns 1212–1314 (East Linton,
1997), 200–10; J.A. Tuck, ‘The Emergence of a Northern Nobility, 1250–
1400’, Northern History, 22 (1986), 1–17, 6–7; A. Ross, ‘Men for All
Seasons: The Strathbogie Earls of Atholl and the Wars of Independence’,
Northern Scotland, 21 (2001), 1–16.
33. G.A. Holmes, The Estates of the Higher Nobility in Fourteenth-Century
England (Cambridge, 1957), 10–19; R.R. Davies, Lords and Lordship in the
British Isles in the Late Middle Ages, ed. B. Smith (Oxford, 2009), 45–7;
C. Given-Wilson, The English Nobility in the Late Middle Ages (London,
1987), 151–3, 168–70.
34. Boardman, Early Stewart Kings, 3–17, 50–2, 71–96.
35. Ormrod, ‘Edward III and his Family’, 405, 409–11, 419–20.
36. Froissart, Chronicles, ed. G. Brereton (Harmondsworth, 1968), 335–48;
Boardman, ‘Language, History and Anglo-Scottish Conflict’, 118–19.
37. Froissart, Chronicles, 413–15.
38. Goodman, John of Gaunt, 82–3; Boardman, Early Stewart Kings, 230.
39. McDonald, Border Bloodshed, 123, 181, 191; A. Goodman, ‘Anglo-Scottish
Relations in the Later Fourteenth Century: Alienation or Acculturation?’, in
King and Penman (eds), England and Scotland, 236–54.
40. Ormrod, Edward III and his Family, 413–14; Frame, English Lordship,
323–6.
· 164 ·
chapter seven
BORDERLANDS:
LORDS AND REGIONS
Regional Contexts
I n many parts of Britain and Ireland, political leadership was bound up

with the interests and activities of great lords. While nobles provided
the personnel of royal governments and exercised direction over local
justice throughout the isles, in some lands and regions, the roles and
traditions of private aristocratic figures went much further. In some of these
lands, this regional lordship rested on the great private jurisdictions,
liberties and regalities, which encompassed around half of the territory
of English Ireland, Wales, Scotland and England north of the Humber.
However, there were also regions where less defined, but still potent,
types of lordship operated as the principal determinant of political activity
across significant geographical areas.1 The families who successfully built
or maintained these structures of regional lordship were themselves
defined by the roles they played in lands and localities which had their
own distinct characteristics. In many cases, these reflected the character
of a region as a borderland. In much of Ireland, Scotland, Wales and
the English north regional realities involved mixed ethnicity or divided
allegiance. The way such issues played out encapsulated many of the
defining issues of the fourteenth-century British Isles. Questions about
racial character and political loyalty became part of ‘normal’ social and
political activity. Issues considered in preceding chapters from broad
perspectives actually played out in the contexts of these borderlands,
which were not narrow frontier zones but wide regions. To grasp this
significance, it is important to jettison ideas of ‘margins’ and ‘peripheries’
remote from centres of power and government and with limited influ-
ence on major developments. Instead, areas like the Hebrides, the border
shires of England and Scotland and the western parts of Munster have to
be treated as areas of significance, capable of influencing both attitudes
and events across a wide portion of the isles.2
· 165 ·
DISUNITED KINGDOMS
The Gaelic World and its Borderlands

The most extensive and, perhaps, most important of these borderlands
were those between English and Anglicised societies and the Gaelic
world. As has been discussed, in northern and western Scotland and in
all the provinces of Ireland there was a growing sense amongst English-
speaking communities of the threats, both physical and cultural, posed by
Gaeldom. The unity of this Gaidhealtachd (Gaelic cultural world), though

less bound up with institutional and political structures than those of
English or Anglo-French communities, was nevertheless both imagined
and real. When Robert Bruce sought Irish allies in 1306–7, he presented
the Scots and Irish as ‘one branch of a nation’ united ‘by a common
language as by ancient customs’. For Bruce, whose maternal ancestors
had longstanding links with Ulster, and for many of his supporters this
was not myth but a matter of close connections. Though Gaelic was
spoken in much of rural Scotland north of Forth and in the south-west,
as well as amongst the Irish peasants in English-settled Ireland, the con-
nections which formed the Gaelic world were focused on areas where the
language had a greater political and cultural status. In Ireland this included
areas of Irish and English lordship in western Munster and parts of Leinster
as well as the ‘Great Irishry’, as English records refer to western Ulster
and Connacht. Also included were the Highlands of Scotland from
Argyll to Sutherland and the Hebrides. There were differences between
these regions. Unlike the Irish Gaels’ stress on the struggle against the
English Gall (Gaill) or foreigners, the Gael (Gaidheal) of Scotland did
not refer to their English-speaking neighbours as Gall. This did not pre-
vent the Scottish Gael from stressing their cultural contacts with Ireland.
While Scotland lacked the sharp ethnic and legal divisions between Gael
and Gall found in Ireland, its Gaelic-speaking inhabitants regarded
Ireland as their cultural homeland. Ireland provided models for poetry
and music but models of warfare came from a third region. The Hebrides,
in Gaelic Innsi Gall, the Isles of the Foreigners, had been settled by the
Norse in the ninth century. By 1300 they were Gaelic in speech and well-
connected with Ulster and the western Highlands, providing military
manpower in both.3
This flow of armed Islesmen as Galloglaich from around 1250 repre-
sented a potent link between the Hebrides and Ulster. It was accompan-
ied by marriage alliances and, later, gifts of lands which gave Hebridean
leaders roots within Irish political society. Ideas of a common Gaelic
world were fostered by the works of poets and writers who consciously
expressed the shared values of an elite stretching from Munster to Moray.
These poets sought patrons from both sides of the North Channel,
· 166 ·
LORDS AND REGIONS
moving freely across the sea. However, in political terms, Gaeldom was
always multi-centred and internally divided. Competition between and
within dynasties was a fact of life in Ireland. This fragmentation was
increased by the impact of the Anglo-French. The formation or extension
of Anglicised political structures like the earldom of Ulster, the lordship
of Badenoch in Moray or, indeed, Scottish royal authority meant that
Irish kings, Hebridean lords and native earls in Scotland had to accept
new rules of sovereignty and subjection or face dispossession. As dis-

cussed in Chapter Five, Anglicised political societies in both Ireland and
northern Scotland experienced increased insecurity from the 1290s.
These produced a growing sense of crisis in the face of Gaelic models of
lordship and culture. However, it is not helpful to see these changes as
some form of ‘Gaelic revival’, a single process of change. Instead, as before
1300, alterations in political relationships within Ireland and northern
and western Scotland occurred within regional contexts. Rather than
representing shifts in a simple balance of power between Gael and Gall,
they demonstrated more complex changes.4
One key region in the northern Gaidhealtachd was the Hebrides. The
islands from Man to Lewis had long been regarded as a single kingship,
nominally subordinate to the kings of Norway. In the early 1260s the
leading lords of the Isles were compelled to accept the sovereignty of the
Scottish kings, the culmination of a steady extension of royal government
and lordship into the west and north since the twelfth century. Alexander
III made clear that the Hebridean magnates were now considered barons
of his realm and efforts were made to bind them into the elite of the
Scottish realm and employ them as royal agents. These efforts had some
success, especially with the MacDougall lords of Lorn, but did not
fundamentally change the outlook and activities of the Islesmen.5 They
continued to compete for influence in the Isles and to maintain links with
Ireland. The Turnberry Band of 1286 was an effort by Anglo-French
lords in Scotland and Ireland to prevent Hebrideans, and specifically
Clan Donald, from providing military aid to their allies in Ulster, above
all Donal O’Neill of Tir Eoghain. The effort failed and there was clearly
renewed conflict in the Isles between rival dynasties and with Scottish
magnates like the earl of Ross in the 1290s. Nonetheless, up to 1296, the
trends seemed to point towards the increased assimilation of the Islesmen
into structures of Scottish royal authority and noble society.6
The onset of Anglo-Scottish warfare in 1296, so significant within the
Anglo-French world, had an equal importance in the Hebrides. It brought
an end to the apparent trends of the preceding century. In subsequent
decades attempts to impose and maintain effective royal authority proved
ineffective. As early as the winter of 1296–7, Edward I was forced to rely
· 167 ·
DISUNITED KINGDOMS
on stirring up conflict between Islesmen as a means of establishing his

lordship in northern Argyll and the Hebrides. Though Robert I after
1315 was more successful in exerting his control over the Isles, the renewed
warfare in Scotland from 1332 saw any such influence evaporate. Instead,
the lieutenants of David Bruce and Edward III competed to win support
from the region by recognising the independence and increased territ-
orial ambitions of its leading magnates. This competition was motiv-
ated by the military potential of the Isles. The value of this had been
demonstrated by Robert Bruce. Galleys and heavily-armed soldiers under
Hebridean leaders gave Bruce crucial support in his return to Scotland in
1307 and contingents regularly appeared in his armies until 1322.7
Perhaps the crucial change in these decades was the resolution of
internal conflicts in the Isles which were part of the Scottish wars. The
principal regional antagonists were the MacDougalls and Clan Donald.
The former’s opposition to Bruce was a major reason for the support
Robert received from other kindreds in Argyll and the Isles. The struggle
ended with the exile of John (MacDougall) lord of Lorn and the assign-
ment of part of his lands to lords from Clan Donald. By the mid-1330s
the head of Clan Donald, John of Islay, was the pre-eminent figure in the
Isles, having removed rivals from within his own dynasty. He was able to
use this position to extract formal title to Skye and Lewis and to the
mainland lordships of Lochaber and Knapdale. This recognition, grudg-
ingly given by David II in 1343, was, in reality, a reflection of the reality
on the ground. Efforts to support rivals to John of Islay had failed and,
in 1346, the killing of another Hebridean magnate, Ranald MacRuari, by
the earl of Ross, merely allowed John to extend his lordship over the
Uists and Garmoran. To reflect this hegemony, as early as 1335 John was
employing the title dominus Insularum, lord of the Isles.8
The stability and unitary nature of this lordship of the Isles should not
be exaggerated. It probably most resembled a powerful version of one
of the regional kingships in Ireland. John of Islay exercised superiority
over the junior branches of Clan Donald and other kindreds from the
Hebrides or the western Highlands, like the MacLeans and MacLeods,
demanding service in men or galleys and receiving payments and hos-
tages as expressions of his lordship. Internal rivalries probably did not
disappear, but the reduction in the scale and frequency of warfare within
the Isles was a major change from the preceding century. The upheavals
of the 1260s and the period after 1300 had produced waves of exiles and
mercenaries looking for employers and new lands beyond the Isles. After
the 1340s, the relative absence of internal warfare may have led John of
Islay and other magnates to encourage the junior kinsmen who repre-
sented a surplus of military manpower to do the same. The impact of
· 168 ·
LORDS AND REGIONS
such movements was apparent in the neighbouring regions of the

Gaidhealtachd.9
To the east, the province of Moray, Atholl and Lochaber also under-
went major political and social change in the fourteenth century. These
changes and their probable causes have been discussed in preceding
chapters. They related to general economic shifts and to the political
crises experienced by the Scottish kingdom but, like the Hebrides, change
reflected fundamental alterations in the region’s political hierarchy. The

disinheritance or extinction of the Comyns, the Randolphs and the families
who held the earldoms of Fife, Atholl and Strathearn, represented the
breakdown of structures of lordship which linked these upland, Gaelic-
speaking provinces into the wider political and administrative framework
of the kingdom. In their absence, local leadership passed to lesser figures
who expressed their status, exercised lordship and held land not as feudal
tenants but as heads of kindreds in the style of similar figures across the
Gaidhealtachd. This process was influenced by movements from the
west. Islesmen were active in these provinces. John of Islay’s lordships of
Lochaber and Garmoran provided springboards for his satellites and for
freebooters to push up the Great Glen, occupying lands from Ross to
Atholl. By the 1390s John’s son, Alexander lord of Lochaber, was acting
as a magnate whose reach extended into Moray. The effects of this were
probably a factor in stressing the Gaelicised character of the central
Highlands and, when Robert Stewart and his family sought to establish
themselves in these provinces from the 1330s, they worked with newly-
important leaders, adapting their styles of lordship to the approaches of
the Gaelic world. It was as leaders of bands of ‘caterans’ accused of show-
ing little respect for the rights of ecclesiastical and other landowners, that
Robert’s son, Alexander lord of Badenoch, and his family were identified
by writers from the 1370s.10
The traditional links between Ulster and the Hebrides also had a
role in the equally significant shifts in the north of Ireland. Exiles like
the MacSweens and Mac Alexander branch of Clan Donald became per-
manent figures in regional power structures. To Irish observers, the
campaigns of the Bruces were an escalation of these galloglass activities
involving large contingents from the Isles. These campaigns had their
greatest impact in Ulster where they marked the beginning of the decline
of the ascendancy of the Burgh earls. Between the 1260s and 1315 the
Burghs had been the dominant magnates in northern Ireland. Their
earldom of Ulster was centred on the boroughs and manors in the
English-settled districts in the east and on the north coast of the province.
The earls were also lords of Connacht, where English colonisation was
even more limited. In both provinces much of the power of the Burghs
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rested on their relations with the Irish. These took the form of military
and political management in which Irish chieftains, like the Ó Cahans
and MacCartans, submitted themselves and their followers to the earl’s
lordship, paying rent and providing military service. The earls also main-
tained a standing army, termed the ‘bonaght of Ulster’, quartering these
soldiers on Irish nobles who paid for their keep. The ‘bonaght’ was used
to police and remove Irish leaders, as in 1308 when Aodh Ó Connor was
killed by this band. This kind of overlordship was neither fixed nor stable.
It could be disrupted by minorities or by problems like the feud between
Earl Richard Burgh and John fitz Thomas in the 1290s. It also required
forceful interventions, like the campaigns in Connacht and western
Ulster in 1286 launched by Richard to announce his assumption of per-
sonal lordship. The exercise of the earl’s lordship regularly deteriorated
into struggles between ‘trustworthy’ and ‘rebel’ Irish, with the earl and
his officials seeking to install and support their candidates at the head
of Irish dynasties. In his dealings with the greatest Ulster lineage, the
O’Neills of Tir Eoghain, Earl Richard repeatedly removed his opponent,
Donal, from the chieftainship between 1286 and 1314 before forcing
him to accept a more restricted position.11
Like other Irish leaders Donal O’Neill had to compete with rivals for
the headship of his kindred, struggle to maintain lordship over lesser
families like the Mac Mahons and Ó Cahans and deal with the English
by war or diplomacy. Since the 1290s he had brought in allies from the
Hebrides for support in these goals, and his backing for Edward Bruce
in 1315 can be seen in the same light. The expulsion of Earl Richard
from his earldom was a victory for Donal, but after Bruce’s death O’Neill
was again ousted from his province. Despite this, the earl probably
never recovered his previous authority over the Ulster Irish. The decisive
blow to the earls came, not from the Irish, but from their own family.
The exceptional scale of Burgh lordship meant that Earl Richard had
increasingly relied on his cousin, William Liath, to act as his lieutenant in
Connacht. When Earl Richard’s grandson, William, the so-called Brown
earl, made forceful efforts to remove his cousins from their leading posi-
tions, he was assassinated in 1333. Significantly, on news of the murder,
the earl’s wife and daughter fled to England. Though they would have
powerful sponsorship from Edward III, these women and their husbands
would prove unable to provide lasting protection for their English ten-
ants let alone maintain effective lordship over the Irish kindreds of Ulster
and Connacht.12
In their absence the role of immediate leaders in these provinces
passed to more locally-based leaders, both English and Irish. In Connacht
these included the descendants of both Earl Richard and William Liath.
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LORDS AND REGIONS
The Clanrickard and MacWilliam Burkes were rivals for lordship and, as
their names suggest, they adapted to an environment in which enemies,
allies and dependants, for example the Ó Connors, were overwhelmingly
Irish in speech and custom. Though this was an example of the ‘degen-
eracy’ which worried the English government, the Burghs remained
relatively responsive to the requests of the king’s officials. In Ulster, the
principal beneficiaries were the O’Neill. Earl William’s murder released
them from effective English lordship. The dynasty did remain internally
divided, especially with the rise of the Clann Aodh Buidhe (Clandeboye)
branch from the 1330s, but, in terms of territory and power, the O’Neill
were an expanding force. Clann Aodh Buidhe was based in lands which
before 1333 had been within the earldom of Ulster. The head of the
Tir Eoghain (Tyrone) branch of the dynasty, Donal’s son, Aedh Mpr,
successfully imposed his superiority on the other Irish kindreds of central
and western Ulster and posed a threat to the English of Meath and
Louth. By the 1350s Aedh Mpr had taken over the ‘bonaght of Ulster’,
quartering his army on Irish vassals, and called himself ‘king of the Irish
of Ulster’. Though Aedh’s sons fought over this kingship in the 1360s,
Niall Mpr resumed his father’s predominance and increased pressure on
the English of Ulster. The attempts by the heirs of the Burghs, especially
Lionel of Clarence in 1361 and Edmund Mortimer in 1380, to restore
the earldom as an effective unit produced no more than temporary
settlements with Niall which did not shift the balance of power in the
region. Since 1315 this balance had shifted decisively from the English-
settled parts of Down and Antrim to the Irish of Tir Eoghain.13
Clan Donald’s defeat of its rivals in the Isles and the death of William
earl of Ulster were events which were dynastic and regional in their
causes but which brought significant shifts in the political relationships of
a wide area from the plains of Meath and Louth to the lowlands of Moray
and Angus. Political and social changes in Connacht, Ulster, the Hebrides
and parts of northern Scotland followed similar patterns. In these
regions, much of the authority established and exercised by Anglicised
rulers and magnates rested on expressions of superiority and on a limited
set of demands for obedience and support. The effects of sustained
warfare between English and Scottish realms and dominions imposed
stresses and limitations on both crowns in which this authority was
seriously weakened and even evaporated. Certainly these conflicts within
the Anglo-French world presented opportunities for magnates from the
Gaidhealtachd, like John of Islay and Aedh Mpr, to extend their lordship
and claim titles denoting regional kingship. These figures were also able
to call on military resources, such as galloglass and the ‘bonnacht of Ulster’,
which allowed them to take on Anglicised communities in warfare more
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effectively than before 1300. These shifts in hierarchies were also cul-
tural and linguistic. Lords and communities of an English or Anglicised
character in Connacht, Ulster and in the Scottish Highlands adopted
Gaelic naming patterns and kin-based social organisations. As well as a
reflection of shifts in economic and demographic conditions, these
changes indicated the influence and success of the models of lordship
practised by magnates of the Gaelic world in the fourteenth century.
Changes with clear similarities to these were witnessed by other parts

of Ireland. An obvious parallel to the murder of the earl of Ulster exists
in the death of Richard Clare at the battle of Dysert Ó Dea in 1318. His
lordship of Thomond in western Munster had been established by his
father, Thomas, from about 1280 and rested on a small English-settled
district and on the management of the leading Irish dynasty, the O’Briens.
Like the Burghs, this management involved military support for protégés
amongst the O’Briens and the murder of rivals. Though Clare weathered
an attempt by the Bruces to intervene in Thomond in 1316, the victory
of Murtough O’Brien two years later led to the collapse of the lordship.
However, the aftermath to this collapse differed from events in Ulster.
The O’Briens did not establish a regional primacy like that of the O’Neill.
Ongoing internal conflicts prevented the leaders of the O’Brien from
dominating their Irish vassals. Families like the MacNamaras developed
an independence of action, acting as kingmakers amongst the O’Brien
and entering the followings of other magnates.14
These magnates were English lords who provided the most effective
leadership in much of Munster. In the south-west, the leading English
noble was Maurice fitz Thomas, head of the FitzGeralds of Desmond.
His lands and influence in Kerry and Limerick were the basis for his
developing role in the region between the 1320s and 1350s. This rested
on Maurice’s ability to form political relationships with the leading Irish
kindreds, operating either as their allies, as with the O’Briens, or their
lord, in the case of less powerful families such as the MacCarthys from
west Cork. These bonds were not formed to maintain the peace of the
region but to give Desmond greater military resources in his efforts to
secure increased lands and lordship. His efforts targeted absentee land-
owners like the heirs of Richard Clare and English towns and tenants. By
this coercion and protection Maurice built a similar following amongst
the local English families. This influence across western Munster meant
that, although English governments frequently regarded Maurice as a
disruptive figure and on several occasions threatened him with forfeiture
and waged war against him, he was spared permanent removal. Instead he
was made earl of Desmond and given liberty powers over Kerry. These grants
reflected that, for all the complaints made against him, Maurice and his
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LORDS AND REGIONS
heirs were ultimately a source of effective regional leadership whose removal

would lead to increased instability harmful to the interests of the crown.15
Like Desmond, the other earls created by the kings of England in the
early fourteenth century were promoted, not just to provide leadership
for the English community in general but in relation to specific regional
needs. The beneficiaries, the Butlers as earls of Ormond and the FitzGeralds
of Offaly as earls of Kildare, were families with established interests in
those parts of Ireland termed ‘marches’ in the parliament of 1297. The

first earl of Kildare, John fitz Thomas, was active in sensitive districts of
western Leinster, Offaly and Laois, and had outlying interests in Sligo
and Munster, while the Butlers were lords of Nenagh and Thurles in
Tipperary. The growing importance of these magnate families after 1300
was accompanied by the relocation of their core interests into districts
which were more heavily settled by English populations. The Butlers
shifted eastwards from their liberty of Tipperary into Kilkenny, while the
FitzGeralds of Offaly moved their principal residence from Lea to Kildare
and Maynooth. This process was influenced by the activities of Irish
kindreds and by the opportunities for lordship over English tenants in
estates possessed by absentee proprietors. The leadership of John fitz
Thomas in Kildare, recognised by the grant of his earldom in 1315, had
been foreshadowed in the 1290s by an open clash with his feudal super-
ior, William Vesci lord of Kildare, in which John worked with Irish leaders
from Offaly. The more gradual development of their interests in Kilkenny
by the Butlers was achieved by purchase rather than confrontation.
These moves provided stable bases of lordship and income from man-
orial settlements, but these were used to support the activities of these
magnates further west where their influence depended on relations with
the Irish. Superiority was imposed by warfare but also by the exercise of
lordship, occasionally in the form of written agreements, like those
between the Butlers and O’Kennedys and John fitz Thomas and the
O’Tooles, which included terms formalising the occupation of the
magnates’ lands by an Irish leader in return for military service. This
leadership was assisted in the Irish midlands by the absence of any major
Irish dynasty like the O’Neills or O’Briens. The earls of Kildare, Ormond
and Desmond were all clear about their Englishness but did not under-
stand their lordship solely in terms of the defence of English commun-
ities. Their relations with Irish leaders were not simply for this purpose
but were the means of extending their influence and following within
their regional spheres. That the same kinds of agreements were made
by these earls with English leaders suggests that the sharp ethnic anta-
gonisms expressed in the statutes of the Irish parliament and in the 1317
Remonstrance made much less sense in the marches.16
· 173 ·
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As well as a pragmatic approach to these questions of identity which

seemed so important in some contexts, in regions from northern Scotland
to western Munster it is hard to escape the importance and ubiquity of
power structures which rested on the personal lordship of great nobles.
This was traditional in Gaelic political societies but after 1300 extended
to Anglicised lords, rural communities and to boroughs like Limerick and
Inverness which had to operate within the spheres of great magnates.
How this affected royal government in Ireland and Scotland will be con-
sidered later in this chapter but, in the marches south of Dublin, it
tended to be the king’s justiciar who exercised direct control, acting, in
many ways, like the earls in forming bonds of lordship with Irish and
English lineages in the Wicklow Mountains.17
March and Frontier: The Anglo-Scottish Borders

and the Marches of Wales
In the fourteenth century, much of Ireland and a considerable portion of
Scotland can best be understood in regional terms. Despite differences,
they were lands of war and frequently of mixed ethnicity where power
structures rested on the use of force and where the mechanisms of royal
sovereignty and authority were secondary to those of aristocratic lord-
ship. However, these regions where the Gaelic and Anglicised worlds
intermingled were not the only areas regarded as marches in the late
medieval British Isles. To the kings of England, the borderlands which
drew their attention continued to be those between their English realm
and the lands of Wales and Scotland. In the fourteenth century these
appear to have been very different political environments to the marches
of the lordship of Ireland.
This was clearest with regard to the Welsh marches. From the 1060s
until 1284 this was the defining borderland of Britain and Ireland. It was
an area of semi-permanent warfare and fluctuating lordship and loyalty
where Welsh populations existed alongside English settlers in borough
and manor. The lords of the march possessed powers to make war and
govern which reflected their roles in the subjugation and policing of local
Welsh communities. As we have already seen, Edward I’s conquest of
native Wales removed the military and political raison d’être of the Welsh
march. The king increased the geographical boundaries of the march but
subjected its lords to far greater interference. However, rather than lead-
ing to the end of the marcher lordships, the Edwardian conquest actually
ushered in their golden age. The marches from Pembroke to Denbigh
continued to be a region of compact, distinct and defined private lordships.
Released from the direct threat of the Welsh princes, marcher lords
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LORDS AND REGIONS
proved free to develop their hold on these estates. In the fourteenth

century lords extended their judicial authority and the profits obtained
from their lands and rights. In Brecon, the Bohuns bought out tenants,
and resumed offices and lands for fresh lease to produce an income of
£1,500 per year from a lordship they had been fighting to hold on to in
the 1270s. Lords were also able to impose heavy judicial fines on Welsh
communities which even led to payments being made to secure general
pardons prior to the holding of a session of court.18 Such payments

netted the Bohuns £1,800 from Brecon, while their neighbours, the
Mortimers, received nearly £3,000 from their estates. These sums were
significant proportions of total aristocratic incomes. John of Gaunt duke
of Lancaster, the greatest aristocratic landowner in England, received
15 per cent of his income from his marcher estates. As was mentioned in
the previous chapter, the lords exercised this lordship via the employment
of Welsh squires, like Einion Sais and his descendants in Brecon, who
were rewarded from these profits, and such figures became increasingly
important from 1300 onwards in terms of personal connections and status
within the lordships. The roles of these men and the activities of the
lords continued to involve warfare. The march, like the principality, was
a major recruiting ground for the English kings’ armies, and summons
were issued to each lordship for specified numbers of footmen, often
numbering thousands, for campaigns in Scotland or France, like the
2,000 men called from the marches for the Bannockburn campaign.19
Though such powers demonstrate the continued predominance of
private lordship and the militarised character of the Welsh march, they
also indicate considerable differences from the Irish borderlands in terms
of lordship and society. The lords of the march were essentially absentees.
Families like the Bohuns, Staffords and Fitzalans resided on English
estates and rarely visited their Welsh lands. Though the Mortimers, with
their great accumulation of lands in the march and their strong links with
the region, had closer ties with their Welsh tenants, the other marcher
families relied on their officials to maintain a lordly presence and to
exercise the rights of lordship.20 After 1300 these rights were primarily
regarded in fiscal terms. The profits to be derived from land and seig-
neurial powers were prioritised over approaches to lordship concerned
with securing the submission and service of lesser lords. Though incomes
increased, it seems likely that the personal connections upon which lord-
ship functioned in much of Ireland were allowed to diminish. Such roles
were instead gradually assumed by the rising Welsh families who were
active as officials or in the land market during the fourteenth century.
These connections, useful to their lords in the peaceful decades of the
fourteenth century, would prove to be double-edged in the context of
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widespread rebellion against English rule after 1400. Though warfare

was absent from Wales between 1321 and 1400, the march did not
develop into an English region of law and stability. The events of 1321–
2, when the defence of marcher liberties justified an attack on Edward II
and his friends, showed that the administrative independence of the
marcher lords made the region a base for English magnates at odds with
their king. The concern of lords to maintain the strength of their castles
also indicates continued anxieties about their Welsh tenants. Despite the
years of peace, the military purpose of the march as a means of control-
ling the Welsh would prove to be of significance after 1400.21
The Anglo-Scottish borderlands were another type of march. In the
thirteenth century the border between English and Scottish kingdoms
was purely a boundary between jurisdictions. The extensive family and
landed connections spanning a wider region between the Forth and the
river Tees at many social levels make it impossible to identify distinctions
of language, culture or social activity in these lands. On the Scottish side,
this region included major royal centres like Roxburgh and the richest
burgh in the kingdom, Berwick. As we have seen, war cut through the
area, transforming it into a military borderland. The boundary remained
political not ethnic, however, and, in contrast to the Gaelic world, this
appeared to be a war-zone shaped less by localised conflicts about lord-
ship and law than as a by-product of warfare between kings and realms.
However, the government, politics and society of the lands on both sides
of the border were defined in the fourteenth century by lasting warfare
between the two kingdoms which became increasingly concentrated on
the borders. This was a gradual process. Up until 1310 and in the 1330s
warfare extended through central and northern Scotland. The decade
from 1311 saw the conflict focused on southern Scotland and the north-
ern shires of England. After the 1330s this became the established cock-
pit of the war. The English only maintained garrisons in Scotland at
Berwick, Roxburgh and elsewhere in the marches. Control of these and
the allegiance of surrounding districts became the focus of Anglo-Scottish
warfare for over a century. Added to this was cross-border raiding by
both sides which ranged from small parties led by local captains to full-
blown invasions by kings or great lords. The period from 1378 to 1389
witnessed growing conflict, from raiding to campaigns by Richard II in
1385 and three Scottish invasions in 1388. Such periods of major conflict
were interspersed by truces but warfare became a defining fact of life in
England north of the Tees and in a broad region of Scotland from
Galloway to East Lothian.22
The character and organisation of this march was set in the first
instance by the rival crowns. The policies of the kings of England and
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LORDS AND REGIONS
their Scottish opponents produced major upsurges in warfare in the early

1340s, mid-1350s and 1380s but the structures of royal government also
shaped regional behaviour in periods of truce or less intensive war. The
English crown maintained paid garrisons and small forces for the defence
of the communities under their control and employed sheriffs and
constables as both military and judicial figures. During the fourteenth
century further officers were appointed whose responsibilities included
war leadership but also the keeping of the increasingly-frequent truces

and dealing with cross-border criminality. These march wardens were
initially a panel of lords and clerics but from the 1380s they were indi-
vidual magnates who received substantial payments, as much as £12,000
per year during war, for their duties. The Scottish wardens held similar
powers but, as with much of royal government in Scotland, operated with-
out large salaries and worked with established local or regional interests.
However, in both realms, these wardens acted in their kings’ names,
receiving commissions to accept and maintain local landowners into royal
allegiance as part of the wider conflict for lordship between the two king-
doms. The wardens developed wide powers of justice in their marches,
extending their jurisdiction from cases involving breaches of truces or
cross-border criminality to matters normally dealt with by sheriffs. As the
wardens in both realms often combined the role with other rights of
justice, private and royal, the blurring of powers developed with minimal
friction. This mission creep did however indicate the way in which the
special needs of the frontier came to encompass normal structures of
government.23
War also shaped the landowning classes in the shires and lordships in
the border region. The lesser nobility of Northumberland had a far
higher level of participation in warfare in relation to landed wealth than
any other shire in England. This related directly to the obligations placed
on them to defend their lands against Scottish attacks. In a situation
where the values of estates had been badly affected by war, paid military
service also represented an attractive source of income for northern
knights and squires. In the huge disruption caused by Robert I’s armies
from 1311 to 1323 many Northumberland knights were directly retained
by the crown and through subsequent decades regularly served as captains
or soldiers in the kings’ Scottish garrisons. For knights like Thomas Gray
of Heton, William Felton and John Coupland military office holding
increased both wealth and status. It also caused tensions between such
officers, who used their wealth to acquire new estates, and their neighbours,
as the murder of Coupland by a group of knights in 1363 demonstrated.
Similar pressures were at work across the border in southern Scotland. In
districts like Teviotdale, local landowners had to survive attacks and deal
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with the ongoing struggle for their allegiance. The inhabitants of the
sheriffdom of Roxburgh passed through several such shifts, in 1314, in
1333, twice in the 1340s and gradually from the 1350s to the 1380s,
when the last parts of the sheriffdom finally came into Scottish allegiance.
Local knights like Robert Colville and the Kerrs served in the forces of
their royal lords and by the later fourteenth century lesser nobles in the
marches of both kingdoms developed skills in launching raids across the
border and profiting from the war which dominated the region.24
However, the development of special royal officials and changes in
the character of local communities occurred in conjunction with the
emergence of magnate families who assumed leading roles in the Anglo-
Scottish marches between the 1320s and 1380s. The most important of
these were the houses of Percy and Douglas. Neither family held signifi-
cant estates in the borders prior to 1296 but came from adjacent regions:
the Percies from Yorkshire and the Douglases from Clydesdale. The
origins of both families as major lords in the borders came from service
to their kings and royal patronage. James Douglas, a minor baron, was a
military lieutenant of Robert I who from 1314 played a key role in the
war in the marches and northern England. From 1318 he was rewarded
for this with a number of lordships which lay on or near the border. He
was one of a number of nobles rewarded in this area by a king keen to
use private lordship to bind these vulnerable areas into his allegiance.
Similarly, the service of the Percies in the English crown’s Scottish cam-
paigns between the 1290s and 1350s was rewarded with major estates in
Scotland. These proved impossible to make good, but in 1334 Henry
Percy received Jedforest from Edward III, over which they could hope to
exercise some lordship. Later in the century the special standing of both
families was recognised by their royal lords, who promoted them to earl-
doms. In 1358 David II created the earldom of Douglas for William lord
of Douglas and in 1377 Henry Lord Percy was made earl of Northumber-
land by the English crown.25
Comital rank reflected the status which members of these families had
built up by their own methods. These methods related to the disturbed
conditions of the borders. Within the extremely disturbed conditions
prevailing in the Scottish march for much of the period 1332 to 1357
a succession of Douglas lords built their regional power through the
leadership of followings drawn from their own kinsmen, their tenants and
connections amongst the lesser nobles and burghs of southern Scotland.
They assembled and deployed these retinues in competition, not just
with the English, but also with rivals. The key figure in the family’s rise,
William Douglas of Lothian, a cousin of James Douglas, built a career
on winning back communities from English allegiance in the 1330s,
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LORDS AND REGIONS
subsequently manufacturing official recognition of his landed acquisi-

tions. He directed much of his energy in dealing with similar figures, like
Alexander Ramsay, whom he murdered in 1342. Douglas of Lothian
himself was assassinated by his godson, the future earl of Douglas, to
clear the latter’s path to regional leadership. Whilst lacking much of this
overtly coercive character, the Percies also built their lordship in the
English north by their own efforts. The dubious purchase of Alnwick in
1310, the acquisition of Warkworth in 1328 and the cornering of the

Lucy inheritance in the 1370s were the basis for a major stake in
Northumberland and Cumberland. Such gains were not simply accid-
ents of inheritance but products of growing regional power. In terms of
Percy influence in these counties, the payments made by the crown to
these useful agents made them key employers and retainers of northern
knights.26
The abilities of the Douglases and Percies to deploy their retainers and
influence in the marches made them indispensable to the two crowns.
The frequency with which they were march wardens of their kingdoms
reflected this. From the 1350s the Scottish wardenships seem to have
been permanently attached to specific regional lords. Thus the earls of
Douglas and their neighbours in the east, the Dunbar earls of March,
were wardens in the districts where they were leading lords almost
without a break in the later fourteenth century. Though their retainer,
John Hardyng, said that the Percies ‘have the hertes of the people by
north’ they lacked the dominance over the marches held by their Scottish
counterparts. Rival sources of patronage existed in the shape of the
Neville and Lancastrian families which would ultimately bring about
their eclipse after 1400 and the English kings retained a greater ability to
alter the disposition and payments for the wardenships. However, as the
appointments and salaries made during the warfare of the late 1380s
showed, the Percies could make hard terms in times of crisis.27
The importance of these magnate families did much to define the
character of the Anglo-Scottish borders in the century from 1320. Like
other borderlands, issues of law and warfare provided the basis for the
claiming and exercise of lordship on an extensive scale. However, these
magnates in the borders drew their status and resources from their
defence of Scottish or English allegiance. The Douglases, for example,
made much of their special service to Robert Bruce and their continued
record as the bulwark of Scotland against English rule.28 Within this
framework, however, the defence of community and the extension of
lordship could overlap. Douglas influence in the middle march of Scotland
had stemmed from the submissions they had extracted from local
landowners from the 1330s to the 1380s. In the 1370s, strong strands
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of Anglo-Scottish tension and violence developed from the competing

claims of the earls of Douglas and Northumberland to Jedforest, while
the mistreatment of one of his servants at Roxburgh led George Dunbar
earl of March to initiate attacks on the English king’s subjects. As the
escalating warfare of raid and counter-raid in the marches from 1377 to
1388 showed, it was very often the aims and actions of these great lords
which precipitated and extended the conflict between the two kingdoms.
In the two decades from 1390 this would have implications which would
extend well beyond the borders themselves.29
As will be discussed, the Douglases and Dunbars, Percies and Nevilles
did not limit their activities or influence to the marches. Their roles,
respectively, in Lothian and Yorkshire raise questions about the influence
of border war and society in wider regions. This applies especially to the
English north. The Scottish wars added a further element to the distinc-
tive experience of the shires from Yorkshire northwards. The geography
of the region, its physical distance from the royal court (except during
the brief periods when this was established at York in the 1300s and
1330s) and the number of large, private jurisdictions gave northern
England a different character from southern and midland England. The
existence and then the severing of extensive links across the Anglo-
Scottish border was one consequence of the wars after 1296. Another
was the direct experience of invasions by Scottish forces. Although these
only regularly penetrated south of the Tyne for the brief period between
1315 and 1327, these attacks seem to have had a formative effect on the
late medieval north. Andrew Harclay’s effort to make peace with Bruce
in 1323, which reportedly had the support of the non-knightly inhabit-
ants of the north, may reflect an experience not felt by other parts of
England to the same extent. Over the longer period it was the regular
summons sent to the counties from Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire
northwards to provide men for service against the Scots which delineated
a regional engagement with the war reflected in the interests of northern
English chronicles relative to those produced further south.
A regional perspective was natural but may reflect perceptions of
deeper differences based on speech and relative wealth. It is however
misleading to look for a north–south fault line in fourteenth-century
England. Even allowing for the leading roles played by northern families
in the baronage of the region neither the nobility nor the clergy of
northern England can be regarded as a distinct grouping. Access to the
royal household or to the retinues of princes like John of Gaunt, who, as
duke of Lancaster, was the greatest landowner in Yorkshire, drew knights
and squires from the north, like the chronicler Thomas Grey, into wider
circles. York, a short journey from the Midland manors of the crown, was
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LORDS AND REGIONS
hardly far removed from any ‘core’ region of England. Yorkshire and the
counties further north may have felt different to outsiders but consider-
able internal variations existed within such a large area. Other parts of
England, either regions like East Anglia or individual counties, can be
examined as communities of land and office holding to varying degrees.
However, such local identities did not undermine the unity and cohesion
of England as a whole. In the north, even in the border counties, the
same was true. It was a feature which distinguished England from the
other lands of the archipelago in the fourteenth century.30
Regional Lords and Rulers

The borderlands within the British and Irish archipelago developed
from different starting points and in response to different events yet it
is possible to identify characteristics which distinguished them in both
degrees and fundamentals from other regions. All developed as lands of
war. Conflicts, of differing kinds, were the determining factor in the
political character of these lands and were integral in the power of rising
families. These families were those most successful in adapting to and
shaping military conditions. Some, like the O’Neills or Clan Donald,
were from regions which were already militarised, while the Anglo-Irish
earls successfully exploited shifts in the English aristocracy and in the
dynamics of the Irish marches. The arrival of lasting warfare in the Anglo-
Scottish borders represented a complete transformation of this region,
and those families who best adapted to these conditions emerged as lead-
ing lords. In all these regions, magnate power was developed not simply
through warfare against a defined enemy but in competition with other
lords in environments where issues of landholding and lordship were
fluid. The casualty rate amongst major landowners in borderlands was
high. Lords granted land, office and legal title in these areas frequently
failed to establish lasting roles. The Berminghams as earls of Louth,
Andrew Harclay as earl of Carlisle, and the Flemings as earls of Wigtown
all fell victim to the fortunes of war or the actions of predatory rivals. The
example of Alexander Ramsay shows the risks involved. A leading captain
in the Scottish marches in the 1330s, his ambitions were halted abruptly
by his murder by William Douglas of Liddesdale. The violent deaths of
numerous Douglas magnates in the fourteenth century and shifts in the
leadership of the family in the 1350s and 1380s provide evidence of this
insecurity and its relation to regional power. Douglas of Liddesdale’s
career and his death at the hands of the head of his senior line, the lord
(and later earl) of Douglas, indicates a further common threat. The com-
petition for land and leadership which characterised these borderlands
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frequently led to conflict within kindreds. The Douglases, Clan Donald,

the Burghs and most Irish dynasties all experienced such disputes. It
required strategies like those of the Butlers and John of Islay, who
pushed their junior kinsmen into new areas of lordship, to avoid tensions
of this kind.31
The success of these magnates can be measured in the acquisition of
land and rights to administer it at the expense of neighbouring propri-
etors. This could be a temporary reflection of weakness. In 1394 Thomas

Dunbar earl of Moray, heir of the Randolphs, agreed to pay Alexander of
Lochaber, the brother of the lord of the Isles, an annuity for the defence
of his earldom. Though the grant was temporary, Alexander’s role
marked the handing over of military powers to a Hebridean lord in a
province much of which lay along the east coast. Its terms reflected the
inability of the earl to protect his own estates during a period of regional
conflict which centred on the predations of Alexander Stewart lord of
Badenoch. His refusal to return lands he had leased from lowland lords
provided one of the flashpoints in this conflict.32 Grants of custody over
estates belonging to minors also reflected and extended the power of
leading lords. In 1338 Maurice earl of Desmond was given custody of the
lands of the earls of Ormond in Limerick and Tipperary while James
Butler was a child, and of part of the Clare inheritance in Munster. This
was during a period when Desmond was acting as the main source of
English lordship in Munster and these grants reflected his ability to
defend these lands. However, the attempt of the justiciar to reverse
these grants in 1344 led to major conflict with the earl.33 These examples
demonstrate that the term ‘absentee’ is too simplistic. Grants of custody
or rights to figures like Desmond or Alexander of Lochaber reflected
temporary absences of lordship which occurred everywhere but which
had special significance in regions where there was a need for immediate
protection or leadership caused by local warfare.
Permanent examples of this process can be identified. In 1372 Thomas
Fleming earl of Wigtown in south-west Scotland sold his province to his
neighbour, Archibald Douglas lord of Galloway, for £500. Fleming gave
up his rights because he was unable to enforce them against ‘the great
men of the earldom’. Douglas, famed for his large retinue, had no such
problems. The purchase cleared the way for the re-creation of the great
provincial lordship of Galloway, a region whose separate identity and
hostility to the Bruce dynasty had long caused problems for the Scottish
crown.34 The Butlers’ development of their interests in Kilkenny by pur-
chases from the heirs of the Clares represents a related process which
went along with the increased exposure of that county to warfare from
1320 onwards. The actions of these magnates also reflect conscious
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LORDS AND REGIONS
efforts by noble families to concentrate their landholdings and activities.

The purchase of Alnwick by Henry Percy in 1310 marked the start of that
family’s rise from outsiders to be the principal landed family in North-
umberland. The accumulation of estates across southern Scotland by
William Douglas of Lothian between 1338 and 1342 was bound up with
his role as a leading captain in the Bruce party. His goals were made clear
by an arrangement with Robert Stewart in 1342. In this Douglas
exchanged the rank and rights of the earldom of Atholl for the lesser
status provided by the lordship of Liddesdale. However, Douglas secured
title to an exposed border lordship, while Stewart obtained claims to a
province in the Perthshire Highlands, reflecting the distinct regional
ambitions of the two men.35 Similar approaches to aristocratic power saw
families like the Butlers, Geraldines, Percies, Douglases and Stewarts
extend their interests in disturbed regions across the isles.
The ability to perform these roles related directly to the military
resources of these families, the formation of relationships with other
individuals and groupings which could be called on to provide armed
followers. The size and destructive power of these followings was referred
to by writers in all these lands. Maurice earl of Desmond’s retinue in
Munster was referred to as ‘MacThomas’s rout’ and described as being
composed of ‘robbers, fire-raisers, felons and outlaws’. Similarly, Alexander
Stewart lord of Badenoch led a band described as ‘wylde wickyt Helande
men’ and his son and namesake the earl of Mar began his career as ‘a
leader of a band of caterans’.36 Less pejoratively, the band led by Alexander
Ramsay in southern Scotland in the 1330s was termed a ‘school of
knighthood’, while Archibald Douglas, nicknamed ‘the Grim’, ‘every-
where had in his following a large company of knights and brave men’.37
The means by which such retinues were formed and maintained may have
had common characteristics. The clearest evidence for the relationship
between lord and follower comes from the English earls of Ireland. A
number of agreements survive which set out the terms by which the earls
of Ormond and Kildare extracted the support of lesser figures in the early
fourteenth century. These agreements all included promises by these
lords to serve the earl with members of their ‘nation’, ‘those adhering’ to
them or ‘all those’ they can raise against all enemies ‘English and Irish’,
except the king of England (and, on one occasion, the Mortimers). While
some of these arrangements specified service throughout Ireland, differ-
ences could be identified between ‘the marches’ or the earl’s ‘own coun-
try’ where service was unpaid and other parts of the island where payment
was offered. In return the earls promised ‘to maintain and defend’ their
retainers and frequently included custody or grants of lands. Such terms
were made, without obvious distinction, to nobles of both English and
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Irish descent. As the Burgh’s ‘bonaght’ of Ulster showed, this had been
established practice before 1300 and the relations between the earls of
Desmond and the MacCarthy kindred of west Cork and Kerry revealed
similar methods.38
Such formal indentures of retinue do not survive in Scotland but there
are reasons to think that comparable approaches to lordship applied
there. In the north-east, magnates from Anglicised backgrounds retained
lesser lords from the Gaidhealtachd. Complaints made against John

Dunbar earl of Moray by local clergy specifically mentioned the ‘caterans
of the earl’ being allowed to occupy the lands of the church. More
extensive criticisms of this sort were directed against Alexander Stewart
of Badenoch, whose following consisted of kindreds from the Highlands
and, increasingly, bands led by his sons, born of a Gaelic-speaking mother.
Regarded as bastards in Scots law, these sons did not inherit their father’s
lands. However, one of them, Alexander, who after 1404 was earl of
Mar, succeeded to the leadership of this following. At his death in 1435
his nephews and their followers were still quartered on his estates. In
both northern Scotland and Ireland, the lordship of these earls drew
heavily on the methods of Gaelic magnates with whom they competed
or co-existed. In Gaelic Ireland and the Hebrides this kind of loose,
personal and military-based lordship provided the traditional basis for
political relationships.39 There were parallels with the practices of lords
in the Scottish marches. In the 1330s, when lesser lords like Douglas
of Lothian and Alexander Ramsay developed significant roles in the war
they led bands described as ‘kin, friends and adherents’, largely com-
posed of knights from Lothian. Douglas leaders, from the 1300s to the
1350s, seem to have been able to call on the inhabitants of the upland
districts of Ettrick and Selkirk Forests for support. From the 1370s
Galloway may have provided similar backing. This personal, military lord-
ship was reflected by the inclusion in a royal grant of 1354 to William
lord of Douglas of the leading of the men of the sheriffdoms of Roxburgh,
Selkirk and Peebles and the upper ward of the Clyde. Though the accu-
mulation of lands and rights of lordship by the Douglas family shaped the
nature of their affinity, even at the end of the century they drew followers
from the process of receiving borderers back into Scottish allegiance.40
These networks of allies and dependants were the basis of followings
which provided influence in their regions. In military terms, the magnate
dynasties discussed above were able to put significant forces into the field.
Though the 10,000 men attributed to Donald lord of the Isles in 1411
is probably an exaggeration, the dominant magnate of the Hebrides and
the western Highlands could certainly field an army from his satellites.
Forces numbering thousands were raised and led by the O’Neills of Tir
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LORDS AND REGIONS
Eoghain, the earls of Ormond and the Douglases and Dunbars in cam-
paigns in their regions. The Percies’ ability to bring out their extensive
body of adherents in fulfilment of royal military contracts was the basis
of their value in the Scottish marches.41 In political and administrative
terms, which cannot be neatly distinguished from military issues, the
personal connections which comprised these affinities were the means
to exercise influence beyond the territorial holdings of the lords. The
character of these affinities could vary according to the prevailing con-

ditions within a locality but all the magnates maintained their affinities
by methods which included leadership, protection, blackmail and direct
coercion.
Such approaches did not conform to the practices expected to prevail
according to Anglicised legal and social models. However, they repre-
sented the retention or absorption of ‘border’ characteristics. In Ireland
and northern Scotland, practices identified with Gaelic society were built
into the style of lordship followed by magnates of English or Anglicised
backgrounds. The indentures of the earls of Kildare and Ormond with
lesser lords often specified the service and adherence of the retainers’
‘nation’, understood as kindred. The roles ascribed to kindreds pertained
not just to Gaelic lineages but also to families of English descent in the
march. Throughout the lands of war in Ireland from south Dublin to
Connacht, English noble kindreds acted as social groupings. The law
applied to these regions, often exercised by English earls, mixed elements
of the English common law with Irish practices, the Brehon law. The
result was termed ‘the law of the march’ by the English government and
in 1351 and 1366 was denounced in parliament. However, the adoption
of these legal and social forms reflected the needs and practices of the
march.42 Though less overtly criticised than in Ireland, similar develop-
ments occurred in northern Scotland. Even in the Anglo-Scottish
marches, where there were no such ethnic or cultural divisions, the dis-
ruption caused by warfare saw the appearance of groupings based on
surnames, especially in uplands like Liddesdale, the Forest and Redesdale.
These extended families developed some elements in parallel with kin-
groups elsewhere and were certainly, like English lineages in Ireland,
responses to militarised environments.43 Lords in these borderlands
adapted to and shaped their environments. Though much of this was
pragmatic, elements of personal choice were also at work. The interests
of magnates like the earls of Desmond and the Stewarts of Badenoch
in bardic poetry combined both, tapping into traditional models of
Irish lordship and cultural status.44 The Anglo-Scottish marches lacked
similar issues but here too there existed some sense of a ‘border identity’
in which a cross-border society shaped by warfare shared common
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expectations and values which distinguished them from the heartlands of

their realms. The strong ties across the border which existed before 1296
did not evaporate and ways were found to co-exist in this war zone. If
divisions of allegiance were the defining characteristic of the region, the
militarisation of lordship and society in both kingdoms’ marches meant
these regions were different from the neighbouring parts of England and
Scotland.
However, the significance of these different models of regional lord-

ship in the later Middle Ages stemmed directly from the influence of
these magnates and was not confined to areas of war and divided
allegiance or ethnicity. The efforts of the O’Briens to establish lordship
over the city of Limerick and the parallel way in which the Badenoch
Stewarts eventually succeeded in bringing the burgesses of Aberdeen into
their affinity show magnates moving from the borderlands to assert con-
trol over English-speaking urban communities. The ability of the second
Alexander Stewart to dominate north-eastern Scotland related to his
success in forming links with the lesser lords of lowland Aberdeenshire
and Angus, while the earls of Ormond and Kildare were similarly able to
become leaders of English communities in eastern Ireland. As mentioned
above, these Anglo-Irish earls moved the core of their interests from the
march into these English localities.45 The Douglases and Percies went the
other way and their importance in their respective homelands related
to the combination of their potency as borderers with their influence
away from the Anglo-Scottish marches. Many of the most important
retainers of the Percies came from Yorkshire, where the family held
considerable estates, while Clydesdale and, especially, Lothian were
regions in which Douglas magnates sought to develop their lordship.
This lordship encompassed lesser lords and extended to the burgh and
castle of Edinburgh, which for several periods was in the custody of
Douglas lords.46
Magnates like the Douglases could employ their special military and
political status to develop their lordship in both the borders and in
central Scotland. Up to the 1380s Douglas lords led Lothian knights
in forays into the marches, granting them lands in their estates in the
march. Such landed ties strengthened the family’s influence in Lothian.
In turn, it was possible for Douglas magnates to bring borderers into
Lothian as armed followers, as during a period of feuding in 1397–8.47
These activities demonstrate the ability of all these magnate houses to
both protect and disrupt local communities and landowners. In Moray
during a short period in 1389–90 the bishop and clergy first complained
against the damage done by the earl and then retained his son to protect
their estates ‘against all malefactors, caterans and others’. The response
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LORDS AND REGIONS
of the earl’s regional rival, Alexander Stewart of Badenoch, was to ravage

the lands of church and earl, burning the burghs of Forres and Elgin
and the cathedral of Moray, ‘the glory of the kingdom’. Stewart, the son
of the king, demonstrated his ability as a northern magnate to inflict
damage on his rivals. Not surprisingly, such actions outraged ecclesiastical
and urban opinion. Stewart suffered excommunication, while in Ireland
the bishop of Cloyne expressed similar sentiments. He inserted into the
mass complaints against the earls of Ormond and Desmond and their
followers, ‘who destroy us and our goods’ and ‘whom in the end the
Lord will destroy’.48
Clearly the protection which lords like these provided to their friends
could be withdrawn and the estates of rich, but vulnerable, proprietors,
ecclesiastical, urban or absentee, occupied to support private armies.
The complaints of such landowners, in Ireland, northern Scotland and
the Anglo-Scottish march, influenced the attitudes of rulers and royal
officials to regional magnates. In many circumstances, royal government
preferred to support and rely on powerful nobles who could use their
followings to defend the allegiance and maintain an acceptable level
of order in sensitive parts of the realm. The dominance of the march
wardenship by the Douglases and Dunbars in Scotland and the Percies
and Nevilles in England reflected the normal readiness of both crowns
to employ the regional influence of these lords in their service. The
development of a northern lieutenancy, which was held by the Stewarts
of Badenoch for much of the period after 1371, was a similar effort to
merge private lordship with regional peace keeping, with mixed results.
For the English crown, the reliance on Anglo-Irish earls as regional
keepers of the peace or even as justiciars was a regular feature of govern-
ment in the Irish lordship. Despite previous periods of conflict, Edward
III relied on Maurice earl of Desmond and then James earl of Ormond
as his justiciars in the 1350s. At a time of intense warfare with the Irish,
the leadership and resources of the earls was vital to the defence of the
king’s lands and subjects.49
However, relations between royal governments and regional lords
could also be characterised by suspicion and antagonism. This was clear-
est with regard to the great lords of the Gaidhealtachd. Provincial rulers
like Aedh Mòr O’Neill or John of Islay were beyond the framework of
royal administration or allegiance. The only possibilities of forming
bonds with such lords were by negotiation as neighbours or by punitive
expedition. In 1355, the government sent the archbishop of Armagh to
persuade Aedh Mòr to end a campaign against the English of Meath,
while in 1380 the royal lieutenant and titular earl of Ulster, Edmund
Mortimer, forced the submission of Aedh’s son, Niall, by advancing with
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an army into his province.50 The Scottish crown’s relations with the
lord of the Isles followed similar patterns. In 1343, seeking to gain any
recognition of his superiority over John of Islay, David II confirmed
John’s dominance in much of the Hebrides and in Lochaber in a ‘final
concord . . . negotiated for the good and tranquillity of our realm and
community’. In 1350, further grants were made to John by the lieutenant,
Robert Stewart, in connection with the marriage of John to Stewart’s
daughter. Such dealings are indicative of the strength and geographical

security of John of Islay through most of the century but were clearly
unacceptable to David II. In 1369, David compelled John to come to his
court at Inverness and submit on hard terms. The lord was made to give
redress for past damages, to obey royal officials and to act against his own
‘liegemen’. He also surrendered hostages, including his son and heir, for
good behaviour, a longstanding method by rulers seeking to ensure the
obedience of distant vassals.51
The prospect of such conditions holding in the long term, either
in Gaelic Ireland or the Isles, was limited. Royal interventions against
English or Anglicised magnates tended to be more effective but created
greater political problems. In the early 1340s both Edward III and
David II acted against regional magnates. Edward’s justiciar, Ralph Ufford,
arrested the earl of Kildare at his court and captured the earl of Desmond
after a short period of warfare. In Scotland, David attempted to punish
his powerful adherent, William Douglas of Liddesdale, but having failed
to lay hands on him took his displeasure out on some of Douglas’s
supporters. Both cases were efforts to limit or even dismantle the lordship
built up by aggressive nobles in sensitive regions. Both also demonstrated
the problems with such actions. Douglas found support from other great
lords, amongst them Robert Stewart, and threatened to enter English
allegiance. Desmond’s removal from Munster led to widespread disrup-
tion which revealed the usefulness of the earl’s dominance of parts of
the province. The reduction of an effective lord, however problematic
his lordship was, could weaken rather than strengthen the ability of the
royal government to maintain regions in its orbit. David and Edward may
have recognised this lesson. Edward chose subsequently to work with
his Anglo-Irish earls, while David’s arrest of Robert Stewart in 1368–9
was a temporary measure designed to persuade Stewart to compel the
obedience of his own allies in the Highlands. In the Anglo-Scottish
marches in the 1370s and 1380s the crowns chose to manage the activit-
ies of their wardens, not by any forceful action, but by the appointment
of royal lieutenants. Such efforts to ‘work with the grain’ of regional
aristocratic power structures show a degree of political understanding of
the sensitivity of these borderlands. However, they also confirmed the
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LORDS AND REGIONS
predominance of such structures and the importance of magnate dynas-

ties in lands of war throughout the archipelago.52
To examine the fourteenth-century British Isles in terms of its border-
lands and of regions removed from the centres of royal government is not
to give undue prominence to a subject of marginal importance. The
regions included above were not the most economically developed or
densely populated parts of the archipelago but neither can they be written
off in the search to understand the character of Britain, Ireland and the
other isles in the late Middle Ages. The discussion above has examined
sizeable portions of Ireland, Scotland and Wales and the English north
and shown the way in which marches or lands of war interacted with and
influenced the adjacent lands of peace. Together questions of border
activity had an impact on at least half the insular land mass. Moreover in
the fourteenth century, and especially in the period of intensified warfare
and social and economic crisis from 1310 to 1360, it is important to
recognise the dynamism of these regions in terms of developing power
structures. These were reflected in the efforts of certain magnate families to
create networks of lordship which identified them as leaders of extensive
regions but also in the way that lesser nobles and non-nobles formed
groupings which used ideas of kinship to define their roles and rights.
Such developments drove changes in government, law and landholding in
ways which, though regionally distinct, shared certain characteristics. Taken
collectively, shifts in regional lordship and local elites in these border-
lands may be regarded as equally important as the relationship between
English and Scottish crowns in determining the character of insular politics
in the century from 1350. Indeed, in times of royal crisis, as around the
year 1400, the character of these borderlands could exert a major influence
on the internal politics of the English and Scottish realms as a whole.
Notes
1. K. Stringer, ‘States, Liberties and Communities in Medieval Britain and
Ireland (c.1100–1400)’, in Prestwich (ed.), Liberties and Identities, 6–36.
2. For a vital discussion of the value of regions as the basis of an examination
of the British Isles see B. Smith, ‘The British Isles in the Late Middle Ages:
Shaping the Regions’, in Smith (ed.), Ireland and the English World, 7–19;
Smith, ‘Lordship in the British Isles’, 153–63.
3. W. McLeod, Divided Gaels: Gaelic Cultural Identities in Scotland and Ireland
c.1200–c.1650 (Oxford, 2004), 4–7, 15–33, Nicholson, ‘Sequel to Edward
Bruce’s Invasion of Ireland’; Duffy, ‘The Bruce Brothers’, 66–83; J. MacInnes,
‘Gaelic Poetry and Historical Tradition’, in L. MacLean (ed.), The Middle
Ages in the Highlands (Inverness, 1981), 142–61; K. Simms, ‘Gaelic
Warfare’, 110–12.
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4. McLeod, Divided Gaels, 25–6, 63–99; W. Gillies, ‘Gaelic: The Classical

Tradition’, in R.D.S. Jack (ed.), The History of Scottish Literature. Vol. 1:
Medieval and Renaissance (Aberdeen, 1987); O. Bergin, Irish Bardic Poetry
(Dublin, 1970); K. Simms, ‘Bardic Poetry as a Historical Source’, in T.
Dunne (ed.), The Writer as Witness: Historical Studies 16 (Cork, 1987), 60–7.
5. R.A. McDonald, The Kingdom of the Isles; W.D.H. Sellar, ‘Hebridean
Sea Kings: The Successors of Somerled, 1164–1316’, in E.J. Cowan and
R.A. McDonald (eds), Alba: Celtic Scotland in the Medieval Era (East Linton,
2000), 187–218.
6. McDonald, Kingdom of the Isles, 171; Brown, Wars of Scotland, 256–7; K.
Simms, ‘Late Medieval Tir Eoghain: The Kingdom of “The Great O’Neill”’,
in C. Dillon and H.A. Jeffries (eds), Tyrone: History and Society (2000),
127–51.
7. McNamee, Wars of the Bruces, 32–3, 36–8, 44, 48–9; Brown, Bannockburn,
19–20, 34–5, 39–40, 164; Brown, Wars of Scotland, 265–70; McDonald,
Kingdom of the Isles, 165–6.
8. Acts of the Lords of the Isles, ed. J. Munro and R.W. Munro, Scottish History
Society (Edinburgh, 1986), xxiv–xxxviii, lxiv–lxv; Brown, Wars of Scotland,
263–71.
9. N. MacLean-Bristol, Warriors and Priests: The History of the Clan MacLean,
1300–1570 (East Linton, 1995); Acts of the Lords of the Isles, xlvi–li;
J. Munro, ‘The Lordship of the Isles’, in MacLean (ed.), Middle Ages in
the Highlands, 23–37.
10. Boardman, ‘Lordship in the North-East’, 1–10; Boardman, Early Stewart
Kings, 72–9, 83–9.
11. Simms, ‘Relations with the Irish’, 69–73; Simms, ‘Late Medieval Tir
Eoghain’, 141–3; T.E. McNeill, Anglo-Norman Ulster: The History and
Archaeology of an Irish Barony, 1177–1400 (Edinburgh, 1980); G.H. Orpen,
‘The Earldom of Ulster’, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of
Ireland, 43 (1913), 30–46, 133–43; 44 (1914), 51–66; 45 (1915), 123–
42; Simms, ‘Gaelic Warfare’, 108–10.
12. Simms, ‘Late Medieval Tir Eoghain’, 143–4; McNeill, Anglo-Norman
Ulster; R. Frame, ‘Power and Society in the Lordship of Ireland’, Past and
Present, 76 (1977), 3–33, 8–9; Frame, English Lordship in Ireland, 35, 144–6,
216–23.
13. Nicholls, Gaelic and Gaelicised Ireland, 127–36, 141–8; Simms, ‘Late
Medieval Tir Eoghain’, 144–50.
14. Nicholls, Gaelic and Gaelicised Ireland, 154–57; Nic Ghiollamhaith,
‘Dynastic Warfare’, 77, 86–8; Nic Ghiollamhaith, ‘Kings and Vassals’,
211–16.
15. G.O. Sayles, ‘The Rebellious First Earl of Desmond’, in J.A. Watt,
J.B.Morrall and F.X. Martin (eds), Medieval Studies Presented to Aubrey
Gwynn (Dublin, 1961), 203–29; A.F. O’Brien, ‘The Territorial Ambitions
of Maurice Fitz Thomas, First Earl of Desmond, with particular reference to
the Barony and Manor of Inchiquin, Co. Cork’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish
Academy, 82 (1982), 59–88; Waters, ‘The Earls of Desmond’, 61–5; Frame,
English Lordship in Ireland, 172–3, 178–9, 180–2, 263–75, 286–8.
· 190 ·
LORDS AND REGIONS
16. Frame, ‘Power and Society’, 12–15; The Red Book of the Earls of Kildare, ed.
G. MacNiocaill (Dublin, 1964), nos 139, 165–8; Calendar of Ormond
Deeds, ed. E. Curtis, 6 vols (Dublin, 1932–43), i, no. 682; Empey, ‘The
Butler Lordship’, 185; C. Ó Cleirigh, ‘The Problems of Defence: A Regional
Case-Study’, in Lydon (ed), War and Disorder, 25–56.
17. R. Frame, ‘Two Kings in Leinster: The Crown and the MicMhurchadha in
the Fourteenth Century’, in Barry, Frame and Simms (eds), Colony and
Frontier, 155–76.
18. Davies, Lordship and Society, 95, 176–98.

19. Davies, Lordship and Society, 67–85; R.R. Davies, The Revolt of Owain Glyn
Dwr, 70–1; N. Fryde, ‘Welsh Troops in the Scottish Campaign of 1322’,
Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, 26 (1974–5), 82–9.
20. The Mortimers were unpopular with the Welsh in the 1310s and 1320s
however (Smith, ‘Edward II and Wales’, 163).
21. Davies, Lordship and Society, 84–5; Davies, Revolt of Owain Glyn Dwr,
25–8.
22. For studies of this marcher context see A. King, ‘Best of Enemies: Were the
Fourteenth-Century Anglo-Scottish Marches a “Frontier Society”?’, in King
and Penman (eds), England and Scotland in the Fourteenth Century, 116–
35; A. J. MacDonald, Border Bloodshed; A. Tuck and A. Goodman (eds),
War and Border Societies in the Middle Ages (London, 1992); A. Goodman,
‘The Anglo-Scottish Marches in the Fifteenth Century’, in R. Mason (ed.),
Scotland and England (Edinburgh, 1987), 18–33.
23. R.L. Storey, ‘The Wardens of the Marches of England towards Scotland,
1377–1489’, EHR, 285 (1957), 593–615; C.J. Neville, ‘Keeping the Peace
on the Northern Marches in the Later Middle Ages’, EHR, 109 (1994),
1–25; C.J. Neville, Violence, Custom and Law: The Anglo-Scottish Border
Lands in the Later Middle Ages (Edinburgh, 1998), 46–51; A. Grant, ‘The
Otterburn War from the Scottish Point of View’, in Tuck and Goodman
(eds), War and Border Societies, 30–64; M. Brown, ‘The Scottish March
Wardenships c.1340–c.1480’, in A. King and D. Simpkin, England and
Scotland at War (Woodbridge, forthcoming).
24. J.A. Tuck, ‘Northumbrian Society in the Fourteenth Century’, Northern
History, 6 (1971), 22–39; A. King, ‘“Pur salvation du Roiaume”: Military
Service and Obligation in Fourteenth-Century Northumberland’, in
Fourteenth Century England, ii, ed. C. Given-Wilson (Woodbridge, 2002),
13–31; M. Brown, ‘War, Allegiance and Community in the Anglo-Scottish
Marches: Teviotdale in the Fourteenth Century’, Northern History, 41
(2004), 219–38.
25. Brown, Black Douglases, 18–26, 46–9; A. Tuck, ‘The Percies and the
Community of Northumberland in the Fourteenth Century’, in Tuck and
Goodman (eds), War and Border Societies, 178–95; Bean, ‘The Percies and
their Estates in Scotland’, 91–9.
26. M. Brown, ‘The Development of Scottish Border Lordship, 1332–1358’,
Historical Research, 70 (1997), 1–22; Tuck, ‘The Emergence of a Northern
Nobility’, 9–17; J.M.W. Bean, ‘The Percies’ Acquisition of Alnwick’,
Archaeologia Aeliana, 4th series, 32 (1954), 309–19.
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DISUNITED KINGDOMS
27. A. King, ‘ “They have the Hertes of the People by North”: Northumberland,
the Percies and Henry IV, 1399–1408’, in G. Dodd and D. Biggs (eds),
Henry IV: The Establishment of the Regime, 1399–1406 (Woodbridge, 2003),
139–60; A. MacDonald, ‘Kings of the Wild Frontier? The Earls of Dunbar
or March, c.1070–1435’, in S. Boardman and A. Ross (eds), The Exercise of
Power in Medieval Scotland c.1200–1500 (Dublin, 2003), 139–58.
28. M. Brown, ‘“Rejoice to hear of Douglas”: The House of Douglas and the
Presentation of Magnate Power in Late Medieval Scotland’, SHR, 76
(1997), 161–84.
29. MacDonald, Border Bloodshed, 45–116.
30. A.J. Pollard, ‘The Characteristics of the Fifteenth Century North’, in J.C.
Appleby and P. Dalton (eds), Government, Religion and Society in Northern
England 1000–1700 (Stroud, 1997), 131–42; J. Le Patourel, ‘Is Northern
History a Subject’, Northern History, 12 (1976), 1–12; R. Virgoe, East
Anglian Society and the Political Community of Late Medieval England, ed.
C. Barron, C. Rawcliffe and J.T. Rosenthal (Norwich, 1997); Harriss,
Shaping the Nation, 187–207; H.M. Jewell, The North–South Divide: The
Origins of Northern Consciousness in England (Manchester, 1994), 40–4; M.
Holford, A. King and C.D. Liddy, ‘North-East England in the Late Middle
Ages: Rivers, Boundaries and Identities, 1296–1461’, in A. Green and
A.J. Pollard (eds), Regional Identities in North-East England (Woodbridge,
2007), 29–47.
31. Brown, Black Douglases, 36–7, 42, 63–7; Boardman, ‘Lordship in the
North-East’, 2–3; J. Lydon, ‘The Braganstown Massacre, 1329’, Journal of
the Louth Archaeological and Historical Society, 19 (1977), 5–16; Frame,
English Lordship, 37; H. Summerson, Medieval Carlisle, 2 vols (Kendal,
1993), i, 230–55.
32. Boardman, Early Stewart Kings, 168–73, 184, 209–11, 246; Acts of the
Lords of the Isles, ed. Munro, no. 14.
33. O’Brien, ‘Territorial Ambitions’, 68–74; Frame, English Lordship, 229–30,
271–3.
34. Brown, Black Douglases, 63–7.
35. Bean, ‘The Percies’ Acquisition of Alnwick’; M. Brown, ‘Scottish Border
Lordship’, 13; Penman, David II, 87, 91.
36. Chron. Bower, viii, 293; Chron. Wyntoun, vi, 368; Sayles, ‘Rebellious First
Earl of Desmond’, 203–29; Boardman, ‘Lordship in the North-East’, 8–20;
Brown, ‘Regional Lordship in North-East Scotland’, 32–3.
37. Brown, ‘Scottish Border Lordship’, 6–9; Chron. Wyntoun, vi, 114–23.
38. Red Book of Kildare, nos 139, 165–8; Calendar of Ormond Deeds, ed.
E. Curtis, i, no. 682; ii, nos 34–7, 46, 48, 64, 74.
39. Registrum Episcopatus Moraviensis, 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1837), 197–203;
Boardman, Early Stewart Kings, 170–1; Brown, ‘Regional Lordship in
North-East Scotland’, 42–7.
40. Brown, Black Douglases, 36–7, 166–75.
41. A. Grant, ‘Scotland’s “Celtic Fringe” in the Late Middle Ages: The
Macdonald Lords of the Isles and the Kingdom of Scotland’, in Davies (ed.),
British Isles, 118–41; Acts of the Lords of the Isles, ed. Munro, xxxviii–xlii;
· 192 ·
LORDS AND REGIONS
K. Simms, ‘Warfare in the Medieval Gaelic Lordships’, Irish Sword, 12

(1975–6), 98–108; Brown, Black Douglases, 133–56; Macdonald, Border
Bloodshed, 109–10; Tuck, ‘The Percies and Northumberland’, 182–3;
Frame, English Lordship, 301.
42. Nicholls, Gaelic and Gaelicised Ireland, 44–57; G. MacNiocaill, ‘The
Interaction of Laws’, in Lydon (ed.), The English in Medieval Ireland,
105–17; Duffy, ‘The Problem of Degeneracy’, 87–106; C. Parker,
‘Paterfamilias and Parentela: The Le Poer Kindred in County Waterford’,
Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 95C (1995), 93–117; Maginn,

‘English Marcher Lineages’, 113–36.
43. R. Robson, The English Highland Clan: Tudor Responses to a Mediaeval
Problem (Edinburgh, 1989); Macdonald, Border Bloodshed, 226–9.
44. K. Simms, ‘Bards and Barons: The Anglo-Irish Aristocracy and the Native
Culture’, in R. Bartlett and A. Mackay (eds), Medieval Frontier Societies
(Oxford, 1989), 177–98.
45. S. Boardman, ‘The Burgh and the Realm: Medieval Politics, 1100–1500’, in
E.P. Dennison, D. Ditchburn and M. Lynch (eds), Aberdeen before 1800
(East Linton, 2002), 203–23.
46. Brown, Black Douglases, 175–80; J.M.W. Bean, The Estates of the Percy,
1416–1537 (Oxford, 1958), 3–11.
47. Brown, Black Douglases, 89–90.
48. Reg. Moray, 197–201, Boardman, Early Stewart Kings, 84; Otway-Ruthven,
Medieval Ireland, 314.
49. Frame, English Lordship, 295–7, 299; Boardman, ‘Lordship in the North-
East’, 10–11.
50. Simms, ‘Late Medieval Tir Eoghain’, 146, 148.
51. Acts of the Lords of the Isles, ed. J. Munro and R.W. Munro, Scottish History
Society (Edinburgh, 1986), nos 6, A1–A5; Penman, David II, 98–100,
390–2; Brown, Wars of Scotland, 270–3.
52. Penman, David II, 88–94; Frame, English Lordship, 263–4, 274–7, 301.
· 193 ·
chapter eight
HUNDRED YEARS WARS:

THE EUROPEAN CONTEXT
Duke of Aquitaine and King of France
I n May 1294 Philip IV king of France dramatically entered the chamber

of his parlement in Paris and caused his vassal, Edward I, to be
summoned to appear. Philip made clear his intention to deprive Edward
of his ancestral duchy of Aquitaine, in effect declaring war against the
English king. Some forty-six years later in January 1340, Edward III, the
grandson of both Philip of France and Edward I, assumed the title of
‘king of France’, escalating an existing conflict into a much wider strug-
gle. These events, which occurred in Paris and Ghent respectively, may
have dealt with claims and rivalries in the French realm but they were
seminal in terms of the politics of the British Isles in the later Middle
Ages. The outbreak of warfare between the English and French kings in
1294 ended a half century of peace and ushered in an era of growing
tensions and rivalry which centred on Aquitaine. Edward III’s assump-
tion of the French royal title in 1340 turned these tensions into a much
deeper conflict whose settlement on terms satisfactory to both parties
would prove extremely difficult. The result was conflicts between the
Plantagenets and their French cousins between 1294 and 1303 and in
1324–5, turning into two much longer periods of war from the late
1330s to 1360 and from 1369 to 1389. These did more than provide a
new character for the continental activities of the kings of England. While
they lasted the French wars provided the principal focus for the activities
and ambitions of the English kings’ government and deeply influenced
the way they exercised royal authority in their insular dominions. The
engagement of the most powerful rulers in the isles in continental war
and politics for long periods provides the most important example of the
interconnections between events and relationships within the British Isles
and on the European mainland. An understanding of these connections
is vital to our perception of the archipelago and the changes which
occurred there between the 1280s and 1380s. Consideration of the
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HUNDRED YEARS WARS
wider perspective provided not just by the French kingdom but by a

range of other realms and lands helps to develop a sense of parallel develop-
ments across Europe and of the validity of examining the different lands
and peoples of Britain and Ireland as a European region.
Any starting point for such discussions must involve a clear statement
of the range of connections which linked political societies in Britain and
Ireland to the Continent and especially to France and the Low Countries.
Many of these have been mentioned in preceding chapters. The secular

and ecclesiastical elites of much of the islands moved in circles which
extended to, and centred on, the continental heartlands of Latin Europe.
Though connections of aristocratic landholding between the isles and the
Continent had reduced significantly in the thirteenth century and both
clerical and noble identification with individual realms had grown, any
sense of the English Channel, Bay of Biscay or North Sea marking a
boundary separating off a distinct insular world is misplaced.1 This also
applied to rulers. Up to 1286 the Scottish royal house had formed
marriage alliances which, though they included the Plantagenets and
English baronial lines, also involved the kings of Norway, the counts of
Flanders and Brittany and the French noble houses of Couci and Dreux.
The Balliols who took the Scottish throne in 1292 were not just Anglo-
Scottish barons, but lords of Bailleul-en-Vimeu in Picardy. However, it
was around the person and family of the king of England that the most
important and extensive engagement between the polities of the British
Isles and events on the Continent was constructed. Ties of family and
marriage to the ruling houses of Provence, Castile, Germany, France and
numerous others formed the basis of the Plantagenets’ identification with
the princes and courts across the west. They recruited their familiars and
servants from this family network and from nobles whose origins were in
many different lands. The policies pursued by Henry III, Edward I and
their successors were not confined geographically but represented wide
horizons and a truly European outlook.
Though the English kings maintained a court which was highly
cosmopolitan, it was their status and power as dukes of Aquitaine in
south-western France which provided the focus for much of their activities
on the Continent. The duchy in the late thirteenth century was the
southern portion of the principality acquired by the Plantagenets through
Henry II’s marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine. It was the only major part
of that ‘Angevin Empire’ in western France to be retained by the family
after the losses of John’s reign and the diplomatic concessions made by
Henry III to the French king in 1259. While it lay far from England,
Aquitaine was neither a peripheral concern for Henry’s successors nor
was it anything approaching a colony. Instead it was a valuable and
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politically important part of the Plantagenets’ ancestral inheritance ruled

by them as dukes. The personal character of their rule was maintained in
the thirteenth century by occasional visits. The last of these was Edward
I’s residence in the duchy between 1286 and 1289. This was not repeated,
but Edward III’s son and heir, Prince Edward, resided in Aquitaine as
its duke for periods between the 1350s and 1370s. Like his father, grand-
father and great-grandfather, the prince had been granted the duchy.
These grants of Aquitaine as part of a princely apanage indicate the way

in which the duchy was regarded by the Plantagenets. Like the lordship
of Ireland and the principality of Wales it formed one of the territories of
the family which could be assigned to the heir but could not be alienated
from the senior line of the dynasty.2
As in these other lands, the exercise of their authority as rulers of
Aquitaine was of prime importance to the Plantagenets. Edward I, who
has often been treated as a king with an unusual interest in the pursuit of
greater rights and power in the British Isles, showed similar concern and
pursued similar objectives in the running of his duchy of Aquitaine. The
two visits of Edward I to Aquitaine produced demonstrations of this
concern. In 1273–4 he set in motion an inquiry into the rights of his
vassals in the duchy and in March 1289 he issued an Ordinance for the
government of Gascony. Rather than representing a remodelling of ducal
government like the Statute of Wales, this Ordinance instead codified and
clarified existing practice. It specified the numbers, duties and salaries of
the duke’s officials and, along with parallel ordinances issued for other
parts of Edward’s duchy of Aquitaine, made clear that the seneschal of
Gascony was the head of the ducal administration in all these lands and
his financial deputy was the constable of Bordeaux. The concern for a
clear hierarchy of officers and for their performance of their duties was
characteristically Edwardian. However, these actions were not based
on any attempt to impose uniform structures or practices across his
lands. There were no parallels with Edward’s disdain for some of the legal
practices he discovered in Wales, Ireland and Scotland. Instead his actions
in Gascony and his other lands in south-west France were built on
custom, law and administrative practice which had developed in Aquitaine.
Rather than reflecting the extension of his policies as king of England,
Edward’s actions as duke related to this inheritance and to parallel efforts
by other princes in France to codify their administrative practices.3
However, while the government and political society of Aquitaine
functioned in accordance with its own traditions, the fact that the duke
was also the ruler of other dominions had a direct effect on the way he
dealt with his Gascon subjects. The men appointed by Edward I and
his successors to be their seneschals of Gascony were drawn from the
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HUNDRED YEARS WARS
nobilities and officers of these Plantagenet dominions. The careers of

men like Roger Leyburn and Otto Grandson took them to Wales, Scotland,
England and Ireland as well as Gascony. The Savoyard, Grandson, was
an example of the extent of this network of service, but most of these
officials were English. Knights like Leyburn and John St John and barons
like John Ferrers lord of Chartley were typical of this group but, in times
of military crisis, a great English lord was dispatched to provide leader-
ship. In 1295 Edward I’s brother, Edmund of Lancaster, was sent out
to defend the duchy, thirty years later Edmund earl of Kent, Edward
II’s brother, played a similar role, and in 1345 Edmund of Lancaster’s
grandson, Henry of Grosmont, was made lieutenant of Aquitaine.4 These
princely magnates were sent to defend the duchy in wartime. Their
appointment and powers recall the roles assigned to lieutenants in other
parts of the Plantagenet dominions. They also demonstrate once more
that England was the core of these dominions, the source of the principal
status and resources held by the duke of Aquitaine. A further mark of this
primacy was provided by Edward I’s decision in 1293 that the constable
of Bordeaux, his chief financial officer in the duchy, should present his
accounts to the exchequer at Westminster along with the treasurer of
Ireland and chamberlains of Wales. Introduced to prevent corruption in
these administrations, Edward’s order also demonstrated that he regarded
his officials in Gascony as members of an interlinked set of lands, a fact
already implied by the English origins of most of them. Though never
‘English’ like his insular administrations, Aquitaine was clearly part of a
series of dominions whose centre of political and administrative gravity
was England.
Aquitaine was different from these other lands in a crucial respect. In
1259 Henry III had acknowledged the sovereignty of Louis IX king of
France over Aquitaine. Edward I had performed homage for the duchy
in 1273 and 1286 and his son and grandson had followed suit during
their reigns. However, Edward I was uncomfortable with the status of
vassal and aware of the problems this created for his authority in the
duchy. These problems were different to anything faced in his insular
dominions where, even if his authority was challenged or rejected, he was
a sovereign lord without superior. In Aquitaine, by comparison, Edward’s
status as a vassal placed him in the position of King John of Scotland or
Llywelyn of Wales. Like them, his homage obliged him to be loyal to his
sovereign as well as accepting the right of the French king to hear appeals
from the duke’s lands and courts. Such rights were recognised by Edward
I and his successors as limiting their authority both within Aquitaine and
in his dealings with other rulers. From the 1270s onwards Edward was
hinting at arguments that Gascony south of the river Garonne was not
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DISUNITED KINGDOMS
included in the act of homage as it was not held by feudal tenure. It was
an argument which was used overtly after 1298 when the full dangers of
their homage had been demonstrated to the Plantagenets.5
Though it was not the only cause of conflict between Plantagenets
and Capetians, the question of sovereignty over Aquitaine was vital in
precipitating and shaping the wars which broke out in 1294, 1324 and
1337. All three wars were preceded by disputes which combined issues
of territorial boundaries and jurisdiction involving the position of the

kings of England as dukes of Aquitaine. In 1294 and 1337 the kings of
France responded to what they presented as the failure of the dukes to
attend their court, to abide by their judgements or act as a loyal vassal,
by formally confiscating Aquitaine. Like the wars which Edward I
launched in Britain, against Llywelyn ap Gruffudd in 1276–7 and against
John Balliol in 1296, these conflicts were the prosecution of a legal dis-
pute involving issues of homage and appellant justice. In France, the
English kings were placed in the tricky position of being vassals facing
their sovereigns in war. Though the war of 1324–5, the so-called war of
Saint Sardos, remained focused on Aquitaine, the conflicts which began
in 1294 and 1337 were waged in numerous theatres. They became wars
of unprecedented scale, cost and duration whose effects and importance
were felt across north-western Europe.6
Part of the reason for the spread of these conflicts was the existence of
parallel tensions in other principalities within the French kingdom, like
Flanders in the 1290s and 1330s and Brittany after 1341. However, the
scale of war and diplomacy was also a conscious goal of the Plantagenets.
Edward I and Edward III both aimed to turn a dispute between the duke
of Aquitaine and the French king into a rivalry between the rulers of
sovereign realms. Their strategy involved the formation of grand coali-
tions of princes from the Low Countries and Rhineland in particular and
the mustering of armies of unprecedented size. As well as this, both kings
sought ways of freeing themselves from their inferiority to the king of
France. In 1298 Edward I’s agents argued that Gascony was not a fief
and that, in any case, Philip IV of France had forfeited his rights by his
abuse of them. Such arguments would not have cut much ice with
Edward I in regard to Scotland.7 They were quietly dropped in the peace
treaty of 1303 with the French king, but the establishment of a sovereign
duchy of Aquitaine would re-emerge as a goal of the king-dukes. Edward
III went much further. His mother was Isabelle, daughter of Philip IV.
Following the death of her brother, Charles IV, in 1328, the throne
bypassed her line and went to her cousin, Philip of Valois. Though
Edward III did homage to Philip VI for Aquitaine in 1329, a decade later
he was embroiled in war against the French king. In these circumstances
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HUNDRED YEARS WARS
Edward activated his claim to the French throne and damned Philip as a
usurper and tyrant. This action raised Edward to direct rivalry with Philip
VI and allowed Edward and his allies from within the kingdom of France
to reject the legitimacy of Philip’s rule and judgements.8
The efforts of Edward III to escape his inferior position and to
challenge Philip of Valois for the throne delivered advantages but also
generated a conflict which would be hard to resolve and placed heavy
demands on both kings’ resources and authority. After two decades of

warfare, Edward did accept the treaty of Brétigny in 1360. Under the
terms of this, Edward renounced his rights to the French crown in return
for a greatly enlarged duchy of Aquitaine to be held by the Plantagenets
in full sovereignty. However, the failure of the French to implement this
treaty led to renewed warfare and renewed claims by Edward and his
heirs to the throne of France in the 1370s and 1380s. Like their claim
to be the rulers of Scotland, the kings of England would persist in the
maintenance of their title to France. This latter right would be further
strengthened by the treaty of Troyes of 1420 under which Henry V of
England was recognised as heir to Charles VI of France. These stated
rights to be kings of France and rulers of Scotland stood in the way of
any permanent end to the wars which in both cases had been initiated
under Edward I and renewed under Edward III.9
The French Wars and the British Isles

The English crown’s wars in France and Scotland would be interlinked
through the fourteenth century and both would be major factors in the
development of the British Isles. However, it would be the conflict with
the French monarchy which took priority for the rulers of England. This
importance was connected to the vulnerability of Aquitaine and the
rivalry with the French monarchy but also reflected a wider sense of the
prestige and potential rewards of this conflict. The clearest indication of
this can be traced via the personal activities of the English kings. While
Edward I did postpone his direct intervention in the war with Philip IV
to campaign against the Welsh in 1294–5 and the Scots in 1296, his
determination to lead an army to Flanders in 1297 overrode political
crises in the insular realms. Edward II managed to avoid major warfare
with his French in-laws until 1324, but in 1312 he visited Paris, placing
good relations with Philip IV above the deteriorating position of his
adherents in Scotland.10
However, evidence of a hierarchy of priorities is most clear during the
decade after Edward III’s seizure of power in 1330. Just as in 1332
Edward III abandoned his planned expedition to Ireland in favour of a
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DISUNITED KINGDOMS
renewal of war against the Bruce dynasty in Scotland, so from 1337 the
king’s personal attention turned to continental warfare and diplomacy.
The Scottish conflict was, as will be stressed, a major factor in Edward’s
deteriorating relations with Philip VI, but once a direct confrontation
had developed between English and French monarchs this struggle
rapidly became the focus of Edward and his ministers. The annual
campaigns which Edward III had led against the Scots, in each of the
four years from 1332 to 1336, would only be repeated by brief winter
forays in 1341 and 1356. Instead in 1338 Edward III led his first con-
tinental campaign. His intention was for a long stay in the Low Countries,
where he was building up a coalition of allies. Plans were laid for English
government to be run by Edward during his absence from his kingdom.
With a few visits to England, Edward remained in Flanders and Brabant
from 1338 until 1341. He campaigned in Brittany in 1342, before lead-
ing the major campaign which culminated at Creçy and the siege of
Calais in 1346–7. Though Edward himself led only a few major contin-
ental expeditions after 1347, his sons provided active royal leadership
on several occasions in the 1350s, most notably in the Prince of Wales’s
victory at Poitiers in 1356. The capture of King John of France in the
battle led to the further elevation of continental priorities in Plantagenet
policy.11 In seeking to exploit the victory to secure the French throne,
Edward was prepared to release his other royal captive, David II of
Scotland, without securing any political advantage in terms of his
relations with the Scots. Even after the treaty of Brétigny, which seemed
to satisfy some of Edward’s goals, the Plantagenets’ ambitions on the
Continent were continued through efforts to secure princely inheritances
for Edward III’s sons. To Prince Edward’s rule in his sovereign duchy of
Aquitaine were to be added John of Lancaster in Castile, Edmund of
York in Flanders and Lionel of Clarence in Italy. Though none of these
other schemes would come to fruition, their pursuit by Edward and his
sons between the 1360s and 1390s speak clearly of the range and scale
of the dynasty’s ambitions in western Europe. They also confirm the con-
tinued priorities of the Plantagenet family well beyond their dominions
and claims in the British Isles.12
These priorities were evident in the scale of resources committed to
warfare and diplomacy on the Continent. The conquest of Wales and the
periods of sustained war in Scotland between 1296 and 1323 and in the
1330s had all required the mustering of large armies and the extensive
financial contributions of the English crown’s subjects from across their
dominions. However, the levels of military service and especially subsidy
which English kings sought for their continental wars easily surpassed the
sums paid on their insular conflicts. As much as £300,000 may have been
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HUNDRED YEARS WARS
spent on the costs of Edward I’s Scottish campaigns from 1298 to 1304,
but military expenditure in the shorter war he waged against Philip IV
has been estimated at £750,000. The brief war of Saint Sardos cost
proportionately less but, in the late 1330s, Edward III and his ministers
sought to raise large sums by a variety of means. Though the revenue
produced by these efforts was less than hoped, it has been estimated that
between 1337 and 1341 around £665,000 was levied by the English
crown. The costs of a single royal campaign in France have been estim-
ated at between £60,000 and £75,000. These sums far outstripped the
money spent on the king’s Scottish campaigns, while the two major expe-
ditions sent by Edward III to Ireland, those of his son, Lionel duke of
Clarence, between 1361 and 1366, and William Windsor in the early
1370s, received payments of, at most, £10,000 per year.13
The disparity between the sums spent on insular expeditions and on
relatively short periods of continental activity indicated the greater costs
which were required to wage war on the Continent. However, they were
also a result of the grand strategy pursued by both Edward I and his
grandson. These two kings envisaged their war against their French
counterparts as part of a European conflict. In the 1290s and 1330s huge
sums were assigned to continental princes, including the counts of Flanders
and Holland, the dukes of Brabant and claimants to the Imperial title.
Edward I spent over £100,000 in attempting to construct a coalition of
allies on the eastern borders of France which would add military and
diplomatic weight to his own campaigns. Despite the lack of results
derived from this policy, it was copied by Edward III after 1337. Huge
sums were promised and partly paid but Edward III received very little in
the way of active support. His war dragged on without any major gains
for the English crown and costs mounted. Expenses during Edward’s stay
on the Continent from 1338 to 1341 reached £400,000. By comparison
the costs of campaigns in 1342, 1345 and 1346, though still placing
demands on his subjects, were lighter. More importantly, in 1346–7 they
yielded significant results in terms of military success and financial returns
provided by ransoms and plunder. Whether such profits from warfare
actually repaid the costs of campaigning is not clear but they did repre-
sent a major break with the expensive and unrewarding campaigns waged
by English kings on the Continent since the 1290s.14 By contrast, the
renewed warfare after 1369 and the collapse of the peace agreed at Brétigny
proved, once again, to be a major financial drain on the crown’s resources.
The war was waged in defence of the lands gained in 1360 and witnessed
the rapid contraction of Plantagenet allegiance. Both facts made this war
expensive, and over £670,000 was spent by the English crown on it between
1369 and 1375, funds raised by a new series of financial demands.15
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The warfare of the 1370s and 1380s provides obvious evidence of the
way in which the French war had become a sustained conflict. As opposed
to the relatively short wars of the 1290s and 1324–5, by the later
fourteenth century a lasting settlement acceptable to both participants
was hard to reach. The cost of the war to the English crown indicates its
commitment to the pursuit and defence of claims to land and title in
France. During the major warfare of the 1340s and 1350s, and between
1369 and 1389, the principal focus of the English king’s government and
English political society was provided by the French war. The course of
the war had a major effect on politics in the British Isles. Most obviously
the financial demands of the English crown to support its ambitions
on the European mainland had the power to bring about resentment,
resistance and even rebellion in England and the other insular realms.
This was nothing new. The great thirteenth-century political crises, in
1215 and 1258, were sparked by the burdens placed on the English com-
munity by their rulers in pursuit of lands and titles in France and beyond.
Edward I’s efforts to raise unprecedented levels of financial subsidy from
his subjects across Britain produced a similar reaction. Demands for
taxation, the seizure of wool for sale and calls for military service on the
Continent were major factors in the rebellions which erupted in Wales
in 1294 and in Scotland in 1297 and led to dissent and defiance from
English clergy and magnates from 1294 to its climax in 1297. The events
of the latter year indicated that, as earlier in the century, English nobles
believed that they had fewer obligations to serve in their king’s wars
across the sea than in his Scottish and Welsh campaigns. The Remonstrance
produced by the baronial leaders made clear their belief that Edward’s
Flemish campaign neglected dangers in realms closer to home.16
The great political crises of fourteenth-century England shared some
of the same features. While the reign of Edward II clearly indicated that
widespread opposition to royal policy could be generated without refer-
ence to a major continental conflict, it was the extent of the financial
demands made by Edward III between 1338 and 1341 which generated
a major backlash in both England and in the lordship of Ireland. The
tensions aroused proved less long-lasting than those of 1297, due in part
to the military successes won by Edward’s forces in France in the follow-
ing years. This relationship between the English community’s willingness
to pay and the relative success of their king in his war was a major factor
in the series of crises in the last years of Edward III’s reign and the open-
ing part of Richard II’s. The huge costs of waging unsuccessful defensive
warfare prompted open criticism and revolt from beyond the ministers,
nobility and prelates of the realm. In 1376 the so-called ‘Good Parliament’
saw the Commons challenge the royal government, while in 1381 rebel
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peasants and townsmen took up arms, motivated in part by the demands

for taxation placed on them via the third of three poll taxes raised since
1377 to fund the war.17
However, unlike 1297, the reluctance of the English military class to
serve on the Continent was not an issue in the crises of 1340–1 and the
1370s. The widely-observed apathy of the English nobility towards their
king’s French ambitions was still in force in the 1330s but declined
rapidly thereafter. The reasons for this change relate to the growing
attractiveness of royal warfare to this military class. The English crown
moved gradually towards raising armies for service across the Channel by
forming agreements with nobles and other captains who would raise
contingents of men at arms and archers in return for pay. From the
late 1330s such paid armies were the normal and accepted basis of royal
expeditions to France. Allied to the payment of wages, the association of
the king’s French war with ideals of chivalric prowess and the cause
of English royal prestige and the possibilities of profiting from ransoms
or plunder increased the willingness of magnates and lesser nobles to
partake in royal warfare. Edward III’s army of 1359 included some 3,000
men at arms, amongst them 700 knights, a fair proportion of the king-
dom’s total number after the plague. The less glamorous and successful
warfare after 1369 attracted fewer knights. However, their place was
taken by larger numbers of men at arms. These were recruited from a
growing class of non-noble professional soldiers whose interest in serving
in France for pay was more fundamental to their economic and social
prospects. The attraction of war to this group and to their magnate com-
manders provided a powerful voice against the resolution or suspension
of the conflict by negotiation in the 1380s.18
The increased readiness of English nobles, knights and men at arms to
participate in and identify with their kings’ wars in France formed a closer
link between events on the Continent and politics in the isles than had
existed since 1200. There is little evidence of any parallel attraction to,
or identification with, the wars or expeditions dispatched by kings of
England to the other realms of the British Isles from the English nobility
as a whole. The magnates and lesser nobles of northern England recog-
nised their duty to defend the north in the face of Scottish attack. The
Northumbrian knight, Thomas Gray, made clear in his Scalachronica that
he regarded the Scots as his natural enemy. Yet Gray also participated in
French campaigns, serving under Henry of Lancaster in 1359. Unlike
this latter service, the armies which defended the north against invasion,
successfully at Neville’s Cross in 1346 and less so at Otterburn in 1388,
mustered without pay. Even when Richard II personally campaigned
against the Scots in 1385, his army was mustered via the old means of
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feudal summons. By this date the English march wardens did receive
large salaries enabling them to maintain paid garrisons and retinues in
local warfare, but the number of these salaried troops was small.19
Similarly the paid retinues which accompanied lieutenants like Clarence,
William Windsor and Ralph Ufford to Ireland numbered hundreds not
thousands. Though the English of Ireland lobbied for greater military
assistance under the leadership of a powerful lord with royal connections,
the efforts to compel the large group of English nobles with Irish lands
to provide for their defence by going to Ireland with their retinues speak
clearly of the lack of enthusiastic participation in Irish warfare. By the
middle of the fourteenth century France, rather than Scotland or Ireland,
had become the principal external focus for the activities of, not just the
English king, but his nobility too. Songs continued to be written which
related to English successes against the Scots but it was the French
war which excited more comments in this form of writing. From the
mid-fourteenth century England’s rights and power as a nation were
measured against the French rather than other insular peoples.20
The effects of the wars in France on the other realms of the British Isles
varied greatly. These variations reflected elements of the wider political
environments at play in Wales, Ireland and Scotland during the decades
after 1340 which have been identified in the preceding chapters. In Wales
the clearest evidence of this impact came in terms of the resources of the
principality and the march being called upon by the English crown and
of the resulting ties of service between the prince and marcher lords
and their Welsh tenants and neighbours. Large-scale military service by
Welshmen in France was a continuation of patterns developed in conflicts
going back to the thirteenth century. As in Scotland, and in Wales itself,
Welsh troops continued to form a significant proportion of the English
king’s armies. In 1346 the march and principality were each called upon
to provide about 3,500 men for Edward III’s expedition and perhaps as
many as 5,000 Welsh soldiers were in his army at Creçy. Smaller numbers
served in the campaigns of the 1350s under Edward and his son, the
prince of Wales, their service fostering links between the prince, and
other marcher lords, and Welsh captains. Captains like Rhys ap Gruffydd
and Hywel ap Gruffydd, also known as Hywel of the axe for his military
prowess, were experienced commanders whose activities in France were
rewarded with offices as sheriffs and castle constables in Wales. The pay-
ments made to ordinary Welsh soldiers and the opportunities for plunder
in continental warfare may have had the effect of making such service an
area of economic possibility for Welshmen and they formed an identifi-
able component of the notorious free companies of disbanded soldiers
who lived off southern France in the years after the treaty of Brétigny.21
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HUNDRED YEARS WARS
The ties of military service which developed in France were part of

processes which pointed towards the increasing assimilation of Welsh
nobles into the structures of English government and lordship. However,
the English kings’ continental wars were also a factor in the continued
anxieties expressed by their officials about the loyalty of the Welsh to
their foreign rulers. In 1345 Welsh contingents complained about the
leaders assigned to them and refused to enter English boroughs to
receive pay. This took place against the background of the killing of
Prince Edward’s steward and other signs of tension and, in these circum-
stances, the appearance of four foreign ships off the north-west coast of
Wales prompted fears of French invasion and Welsh rebellion. These
were unfounded, but thirty years later they re-emerged around the figure
of Owain Lawgoch. Owain, the great-nephew of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd,
had been in the French king’s service since his youth. In the 1360s he
mustered a group of Welsh soldiers to fight in Spain and, when war
renewed, he demonstrated an ability to win over some Welsh captains in
English service. Even more worryingly for the English crown, there were
indications of support for Owain from within Wales. In 1372, claiming
the title of prince of Wales, Owain set sail to reclaim his inheritance with
an army provided by Charles V of France. His force was, however, diverted
to attack Guernsey and the planned French intervention in Wales did not
occur. It had prompted Prince Edward’s officials to strengthen coastal
defences, and continued anxiety about Owain’s ability to win support
amongst the Welsh, both at home and in France, prompted his assassina-
tion by an English agent in 1378. Owain had excited Welsh prophecies
about the recovery of the land from foreign rule but, for the English
crown, it was the association with French support which was most
threatening.22
The effects of sustained Anglo-French war on events in fourteenth-
century Ireland were much less direct. While a series of English nobles
from Ireland did serve Edward III and his commanders on continental
expeditions between 1338 and 1360, these lords brought only small
retinues. There was nothing on the scale of the contingents levied from
the Welsh nor was there anything like the level of participation by
Irish lords and their followers in Scotland. A major reason for this was
obviously geographical. The proximity of Scotland and the value of
bringing armies from the crown’s Irish lordship into western Scotland
created a very different situation from that of continental warfare.
Though in 1345 Maurice earl of Desmond was accused, amongst many
other more plausible misdeeds, of plotting to become king of Ireland
with the aid of both French and Scottish kings, there is no evidence of
anxiety about the French war impinging directly on Ireland. Contemporary
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chronicles from English Ireland give only limited indication of interest

in Edward III’s campaigns on the Continent.23 While the financial and
political crisis of 1341–2 is accorded considerable space in these narra-
tives, no link is drawn between these events and the costs of the king’s
diplomacy and war. It has been suggested that the service performed by
individual English lords in Edward III’s armies was a useful means by
which the king could create personal connections with his leading vassals
in Ireland. However, the limited participation of the English of Ireland

in the principal activity of their king and his ministers might also be cited
as evidence of a widening gap between the concerns of the English and
Anglo-Irish polities between 1330 and 1360. Edward III, like his father
and grandfather, wished to draw on the resources of his Irish lordship to
help finance his enterprises elsewhere. The dispatch of English knights
backed by retinues of soldiers and officials on several occasions in these
decades was done with this goal in mind. However, Edward’s English
liegemen in Ireland had other concerns. This community sought their
lord’s material support against what they presented as the growing threat
posed by Irish enemies and English ‘rebels’. Instead they received royal
officials intent on raising sums from them and taking punitive measures
against Anglo-Irish magnates. The increasingly strident appeals sent to
Westminster can be read as efforts to capture the attention of a ruler whose
focus was elsewhere. The responses they received were not encouraging.
In 1359, answering one such appeal, Edward wrote that, as he was
embarking for France, leaving England ‘empty of armed power and des-
titute of lords, . . . there is no room to send men or money to Ireland at
present, although it is said they are needed there’. Edward III’s attitude
would change in the aftermath of Brétigny. However, in the decades
before 1360 his English vassals in Ireland must have perceived a link
between their king’s pursuit of French titles and territories and the losses
they and he had suffered in warfare in Ireland during the same period.24
The impact of Anglo-French conflicts on fourteenth-century Wales and
Ireland can be primarily regarded as fitting in with ongoing processes.
However, in Scotland, as in England, the wars between the Plantagenets
and the kings of France after 1294, between 1337 and 1360 and from
1369 to 1389 fundamentally altered both the internal character of the
realm and its external relationships. Of the lands of the isles outside
England only the Scottish kingdom had the status to play an active part
in shaping the character of relations between the English and French
monarchies. These different dimensions were evident in the outbreaks of
warfare in 1294 and 1337. In 1294, as we have seen, Philip IV of France
initiated war by his confiscation of Aquitaine. However, the start of
large-scale conflict provided the context in which the Scottish king and
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HUNDRED YEARS WARS
community felt able to defy Edward I. The Scots must have believed
it would draw Edward’s attention and resources to the Continent and
provide them with a powerful protector. The negotiation of an alliance
between Philip IV of France and King John of Scotland gave the Scots
the confidence to initiate their own campaign. Though the events of
1296 showed deep flaws in this planning with the rapid, though tempor-
ary, subjection of Scotland by Edward, it is clear that, in its origins, the
Scottish war was dependent on the outbreak of Anglo-French conflict. In

the 1330s this dynamic was reversed. Aquitaine and its confiscation may
have been the public declaration of war by Philip VI but the roots of
renewed warfare were more to do with Scotland than Gascony. It was
Philip’s sense of obligation to his ally, David II of Scotland, expressed
in the protection he gave to the young king in exile after 1334, which
generated tensions with Edward III. The French king’s diplomatic efforts
to make Edward end or suspend his war against Scotland turned gradu-
ally into military assistance. It was the plans drawn up by Philip to send
an expedition to take David back to his kingdom in 1336 which
led Edward to begin his search for continental allies and prepare for a
continental war. This war rapidly developed its own momentum and, in
terms of costs and war aims, outgrew the Scottish war. However, it is not
clear that the outbreak of war in 1337, the most significant in terms
of long-term patterns of Anglo-French relations, would have occurred
without the matter of Scotland.25
The events of 1294–6 and of 1334–7 demonstrated the importance
of warfare between the Plantagenet and Capetian monarchies in efforts
to defend the sovereignty of the Scottish realm. This was not simply a
product of the neglect of insular ambitions by the English crown,
the drawing away of resources to the Continent and the succession of
financial crises which undoubtedly did reduce the frequency and impact
of its interventions in Scotland. The successful removal of Edward I’s
administration from most of Scotland in 1297 and the steady fall of
Edward III’s castles and lordships between 1337 and 1343 both reflect
this reality. The patterns of Anglo-Scottish warfare in the 1370s and
1380s display the advantages presented to the Scots by being a secondary
theatre of a wider conflict. While the English government directed huge
resources to its expeditions in France, the Scots were free to breach their
truce for several years without risking harm to their wool exports and
wider security. In 1384, they renewed open war and rapidly recovered
most of the remaining localities under the English king’s lordship. In
1388 three armies were sent to ravage northern England and eastern
Ulster in the most ambitious Scottish offensive for over forty years.
Though the results of these efforts led to a political crisis in Scotland, the
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plan reflected the confidence of leaders which had developed in the

knowledge that major English retaliation to their attacks was rare and
sporadic.26
Scottish confidence did not just relate to the priorities of the English
king. It also reflected knowledge of the alliances between their king and
realm and those of France. These alliances, of 1295, between Robert I
and Charles IV in 1326, and of Robert II and Charles V in 1371, were
much more than just external, diplomatic compacts. Their terms do put
stress on military and diplomatic activities. Like many such coalitions,
their direct military results often appeared disappointing. Plans for a joint
invasion of England in 1385–6 proved as fruitless as similar ideas in
1296, and in 1371 the Scottish king turned down a French request to
embark on war with England even as he renewed the alliance. However,
while the English crown and its ministers feared French landings in Wales
and, with less evidence, Ireland, it was Scotland’s alliance with France
which led to the arrival of such expeditions in the archipelago. In 1339,
1355 and 1385 small French forces were sent to Scotland. Though the
military impact of these bands was limited and relations with their hosts
often strained, the significance of their presence was shown by the reac-
tion of English kings. The three royal-led English campaigns against
Scotland between 1337 and 1389 all took place in the immediate after-
math of the arrival of French forces in the northern kingdom.27
This does suggest that the actual presence of French knights and men
at arms in Scotland may have been a double-edged sword for the Scots
and, diplomatically too, there were clear limits to the partnership. In
these terms, it was of key importance for the Scots that the French kings
agreed to make no truce or peace with England which did not include
the Scottish king and realm. However, in 1303 Philip IV (with the exiled
John Balliol’s permission) made a peace which left the Scottish guardians
isolated in the face of Edward I, while in 1357, David II agreed a long
truce with Edward III at a point when the latter held the French king
captive. That the decisive years of the Scottish war between 1306 and
1323, when Robert I established his kingship, occurred in the absence of
a French alliance, also indicates that the value of such an external contact
can be overestimated. This may not have been so apparent to Scots in
the fourteenth century. There are indications that the relationship with
France had significance as a source of recognition and legitimacy for the
rulers of Scotland. As early as 1309 a letter sent from Robert I’s parlia-
ment to Philip IV called ‘to mind the treaties between the kingdoms of
France and Scotland, made long ago and confirmed’. The alliance finally
agreed by Robert with Philip’s son in 1326 was a crucial breakthrough in
terms of his status beyond Scotland. In the same way, the renewal of this
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HUNDRED YEARS WARS
alliance by Robert II and Charles V in 1371 stemmed from the Scottish

king’s dispatch of an embassy from his coronation parliament. As the
first Stewart king whose accession had not been without opposition,
Robert II’s action may also have been designed to obtain recognition
from the ruler of a great kingdom. In fourteenth-century Scotland,
issues of legitimacy did not just relate to individual monarchs. With the
English crown continuing to claim sovereignty over Scotland, to the
extent of Edward III refusing to address Robert II as king, the language

and terms of the alliance with Charles V was an unequivocal statement of
Scotland’s standing as a sovereign realm with a recognised ruler.28
Robert II would show a lack of enthusiasm for active warfare against
England and for the presence of French knights in his realm in 1385, but
a number of his leading subjects were more active in their support for the
alliance with France. Several major lords had personal links to the French
monarchy. William earl of Douglas was not unique in having spent
part of his youth as an exile in France. He had been knighted by King
John II and fought in the defeat at Poitiers, and in 1388 his son had
French knights in his following. With English universities inhospitable for
Scottish students, there was also a considerable number of Scottish clergy
who had been educated in France, and William Landellis, bishop of St
Andrews between 1342 and 1385, was treated as a friend by the French
king. French governments were keen to maintain these connections, pay-
ing pensions and subsidies to influential Scots, including the Douglas
earls. The army dispatched to Scotland by the French in 1385 was
accompanied by a war chest of 50,000 gold francs which were distributed
amongst the Scottish leadership. In the following century, similar motives
would draw thousands of Scottish nobles and their followers into the
employ of the French king on the Continent. Money and patronage of
this kind was part of a widening and deepening of Scottish links to
France. From political and military foundations, by the late fourteenth
century there are signs of the alliance developing a social and cultural
significance for some members of the Scottish nobility. This group’s
interaction with England had become more restricted and problematic
since 1300 and contacts with France may have played some part in
replacing earlier ties and influences. It is important not to downplay con-
tinued, less obvious contacts with England, as considered in Chapter Six.
For example, Scottish knights did serve in small numbers in English
retinues on the Continent. However, for the kingdom as a whole, by the
1380s the French alliance had become the principal, even the natural,
external bond. It was an alliance which assumed the normality of co-
operation between French and Scottish realms in a shared war against
the English crown and the clearest indication of the extent to which the
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Hundred Years War defined the character of the British Isles in the later
Middle Ages.29
Kings and Princes: France and the British Isles

In the fourteenth century the alliances made between Scottish and
French rulers and the wars waged by the English kings on the Continent
were key elements in the politics of these insular realms. Their im-
portance reflected the fact that neither activity was simply a product of
royal policy. Instead, in different ways they had assumed a considerable
significance for groups within these realms beyond the immediate
royal circle. Participation in, and active engagement with, royal military
endeavours or an alliance with a foreign king could shape decisions which
had major ramifications for internal politics. This was a major change
from the thirteenth century, when any royal involvement in diplomacy or
war in France was a matter of either restricted concern or resentment.
The importance of Anglo-French relations in the politics of the British
Isles was not confined to periods of major warfare. As will be discussed
in the next chapter, the treaty of Brétigny in 1360 and the truce of
Leulighem in 1389 brought periods of peace between England and
French realms. The cessation of continental warfare allowed English royal
governments to take greater initiatives in the running of their insular
dominions, especially with regard to Ireland.
What is apparent from all this is that any broad frame of reference
involving the English realm and dominions and the Scottish kingdom in
the fourteenth century must pay considerable attention to continental
events and connections. It is arguable that, rather than focusing on the
British Isles, a wider world defined by Anglo-French rivalry and conflict
provides an easier basis for understanding relationships and policies from
the 1290s to the 1450s. The whole Plantagenet dominions, in the isles
and on the Continent, would be contained within such a frame, rather
than creating a largely artificial division between Aquitaine and the
English royal dynasty’s realms in Britain and Ireland. An example of the
scale of this framework and its value is provided by Edward III’s policies
from the late 1350s to the 1370s. Beyond his own kingdom of England
and the principality of Wales and the enlarged and sovereign duchy of
Aquitaine re-granted to Prince Edward in 1362, the English king
pursued a wide set of policies. The dispatch of his second son, Lionel
duke of Clarence and earl of Ulster, as justiciar of Ireland in 1361
demonstrated royal intentions to reassert interests and increase rev-
enues from the lordship. Negotiations with the childless Scottish king,
David II, were pursued through the 1360s with the goal of securing the
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HUNDRED YEARS WARS
succession to the throne of Scotland for either King Edward or for one
of his younger sons, probably Lionel or John of Gaunt. But Edward’s
ambitions hardly suggest that the English Channel was a boundary. In
the mid-1360s, parallel negotiations were undertaken with Count Louis
of Flanders for a marriage between Louis’ daughter, Margaret, and
Edward III’s fourth son, Edmund of Langley. This offered the prospect
of a Plantagenet principality in the Low Countries, but these plans failed
to yield results. The Scottish parliament refused to accept an English

prince as their king and papal and French lobbying led to Margaret of
Flanders’ marriage to the French prince, Philip of Burgundy, leading to
the foundation of the line of Burgundian rulers of the Low Countries.
However, the Plantagenets were drawn instead into the Iberian penin-
sula. In the early 1370s John of Gaunt and his brother Edmund married
the daughters of Pedro the Cruel, king of Castile. Their efforts to secure
Spanish titles and territory would prove a dangerous drain on the
resources of the Plantagenet dominions in the next two decades but are
further indications of the need for a wide geographical perspective in
terms of the policies of the rulers of England in the fourteenth century.30
In general it is reasonable to suggest that the relationship between
English and French realms, the onset of sustained warfare and the
involvement in that conflict of other theatres, like Scotland, the Low
Countries and the Iberian kingdoms, provide a narrative of politics and
warfare which is, in many ways, a clearer basis for tracing events than is
provided by the isles alone. Insular patterns of conflict, interaction and
changing attitudes seem sporadic, localised and varied by comparison.
Moreover, the issues at the centre of high political relationships show
clear parallels between the French realm and the lands of the British Isles.
The question of the king of England’s lordship over the Welsh princes
and the Scottish king, what it entailed and how it was imposed provided
a central cause of conflict in Britain from the late 1270s onwards. As has
already been indicated, parallel issues created tensions and then conflicts
between the kings of France and their vassals, the Plantagenet king-dukes
in Aquitaine. However, within the French realm, Aquitaine was far from
being a unique case. The French kings, especially Philip IV, pushed for
greater rights and authority in many of the principalities which were
under their sovereignty. As in Britain, the monarchy was engaged in a
redefinition of what these sovereign powers consisted of. The examples
with clearest relevance for events in Britain are Flanders and Brittany.
Like Aquitaine, these great fiefs were geographically on the fringe of
the French kingdom, and had the strongest traditions of princely self-
government and distinct identity. In the century from 1280, the charac-
ter of their relationship with their powerful sovereign was also redefined
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in ways which led to conflict.31 In both Flanders and Brittany, as with

Scotland, the crucial decade was the 1290s. Flanders, whose precocious
twelfth-century development as a princely state had been undermined by
a series of dynastic crises and their exploitation by the French monarchy
since 1200, was subjected to sustained pressure by Philip IV. Like
Edward I in Wales and Scotland, Philip exploited disputes between
Count Guy of Flanders and his vassals and neighbours to reduce Guy’s
independence of action. In January 1297, like John Balliol a year earlier,

Guy defied his royal lord, placing his hopes in alliance with a powerful
king. In response, the French king overran Flanders. Guy was ultimately
made prisoner, but in the next century Flanders remained a source of
conflict and opposition for the French kings.32 The Breton parallel was
different. In 1297, while Scottish and Flemish leaders defied their foreign
overlords, John II of Brittany willingly accepted the status of a royal vas-
sal, doing homage to Philip IV in return for a ducal title and the rank of
a peer of France. This entitled the kings of France to hear appeals from
the duke’s court and summon military service from Brittany. Though
after King Philip’s death in 1314 the Breton dukes would fulfil their
obligations with increasing reluctance, Duke John II and his heirs pre-
ferred to avoid conflict over such issues with the French monarchy.33
In both Britain and France, the later thirteenth century witnessed the
redefinition of the character of sovereignty and the obligations which
went with it. The fourteenth century showed processes of reaction which
also represented common attitudes to authority and community. The
treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton in 1328 which ended the war between
Robert I of Scotland and Edward III of England and the treaty of
Brétigny were both built around the formal renunciation of sovereign
rights by the English crown over Scotland and by the French crown over
Aquitaine. While neither the counts of Flanders nor the dukes of Brittany
secured similar sovereign status, their rulers were on similar paths in the
fourteenth century. The war of succession in Brittany from 1341 until
1364 ended with the victory of the English-backed Montfort family.
Though the victor, John IV, agreed to perform homage for his duchy to
Charles V of France, he claimed that royal rights involved a much more
limited form of lordship than had been accepted in 1297. The counts
of Flanders, placed at the centre of Anglo-French conflict and ruling a
socially complex and politically divided dominion, enjoyed less freedom
of manoeuvre. However, in Flanders too, efforts were made to reduce or
even deny altogether the rights of the French monarchy in the lands of
the counts.34
In all these cases, Scotland, Wales and the various principalities within
the French realm, claims to their own sovereignty were presented which
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HUNDRED YEARS WARS
were based on parallel ideas of historical tradition and precedent. That

both the Scots and Flemings brought their cases to the papal curia sug-
gests a similar sense of the way their positions fitted into the wider struc-
tures of the Christian polity. In their inherent nature as well as their
presentation, the claims made in these diplomatic arguments appealed to
concepts of distinct peoples having the right to enjoy rule under their
own laws and customs. The conflicts which occurred involving all these
lands in the period 1280 to 1360 were not simply about the jurisdiction
of their princes in the face of the external ambitions of greater kings. Just
like the rebellions of 1297 in Scotland, the risings in Flanders in 1302,
stemming from the so-called Matins of Bruges, were expressions of
hostility to an imposed, alien rule made by a broad section of society. The
urban communes of Flanders, like the ‘middle-folk’ of Scotland, were
acting in the absence of the normal tier of political leadership. Equally
the wars which involved these smaller lands were not simply theatres of
wider conflict. Instead they had their own context and character. The
clashes between cities and the count were a vital element in the course
of war and politics in Flanders. The support which John de Montfort
received for his claim to Brittany from the lesser nobility of the west of
the peninsula reflected attitudes in those districts, while the importance
of families with lands beyond Brittany in eastern areas of the duchy linked
them to the French king and his candidate. The role of cross-border
landholding here is reminiscent of the situation in Scotland. John de
Montfort’s forceful seizure of the ducal title and recruitment of allies in
1341 suggests that, as the cases of Robert Bruce and Edward Balliol in
Scotland also reveal, much depended on the ambition of claimants at
moments of crisis. While all these lands were different in their internal
structure and external relations, it is not difficult to see them as key ele-
ments in a world where initiative has traditionally been assigned to the
great monarchies of France and England. The conflicts of these larger
realms in the fourteenth century were, in cause and course, much more
about issues of sovereignty over rulers of smaller lands than they were
about dynastic rivalry and competition for the French throne.35
To study the political relationships in the British Isles in the century
from 1280 is to do so in the growing shadow of the conflicts traditionally
termed the Hundred Years War. It is not necessary, though, to reject the
possibilities inherent in maintaining focus on Britain, Ireland and the
other isles as a European region. Though the Plantagenet Dominions and
an Anglo-French framework have much to offer, they also have limita-
tions. Their adoption is reflective of a high political standpoint defined
by royal policies and aspirations. In geographical terms, this model of
analysis encourages a concentration on the heartlands of the English
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and French monarchies, with smaller lands like Scotland, Flanders and
Brittany pushed into a secondary place and Wales, Ireland and much of
southern and eastern France marginalised. It is also important to recog-
nise and comprehend the fundamental differences between France and
the British Isles in the later Middle Ages in political terms. France in
1300 had a single king backed by a developed ideology of monarchy
whose rule extended across this Regnum Francie. This kingdom of
France contained both the extensive royal demesne and numerous prin-
cipalities. Aquitaine, Brittany and Flanders were exceptions amongst
these in terms of the status and independence of their rulers. Most of the
others, like Burgundy, Anjou and Artois, were fiefs granted by the French
crown to members of the royal family. These apanages also reflected the
provincialised character of France. Even close to Paris, provinces like
Normandy and Champagne retained their own administrations and legal
customs though under direct royal rule. When widespread protests
erupted against royal demands in 1314–15, grievances were expressed
province by province rather than in a concerted way. The political envir-
onment was clearly very different to England, where such protests would
have been played out in the king’s courts at Westminster or in parlia-
ment. However, if France lacked the unusual centrality of the English
kingdom, the existence of a clear, if not unchallenged royal framework
spanning the realm make it very different to the British Isles as a whole,
where the authority of the English kings was expressed via different titles
and in very different forms from land to land. Moreover, the French
kingdom was not characterised by major differences of geography and
economy between the royal heartlands and those lands furthest from
them. Variations in land, law and language existed, as did the sense of
distinct ‘nations’, French, Normans, Gascons, Poitevins and so on,
within the kingdom. There was, though, nothing like the English people
and kingdom, more numerous, wealthier, and more homogenous than
the other peoples of the isles. The efforts to establish the superiority of
English approaches to law in Wales, Ireland and Scotland, and the
attempts to create sharp distinctions of race and nation by language, cul-
ture or allegiance were consequences of this disparity and of the settle-
ment of English populations and establishment of English political
authority in these other lands. In the twelfth century French writers had
characterised the Bretons in similar terms, but after 1300 such issues did
not have significance in France. As the previous chapters have shown,
such features and the very lack of political cohesion based around an
accepted hierarchy can be regarded as defining characteristics in much of
the northern and western parts of the archipelago. Engagement with the
French realm by the rulers and peoples of the isles was certainly a factor
· 214 ·
HUNDRED YEARS WARS
in the way these features developed in the fourteenth century but need
not make us pull back from considering the British Isles in terms of their
own distinct development in this period.36
Considering the British Isles as a region of medieval Europe does not
mean that they must be regarded as a wholly enclosed or distinct political
arena or to stress the primacy of common themes across the different
parts of the archipelago. Writers in the late Middle Ages did not think of
the ‘nations’ of Christendom in this way. At the great church council of

Constance in 1417 it was suggested that, while language might be con-
sidered as a key feature of a ‘nation’, political unity was not. The example
of Spain was cited, where the authority of Castile was not accepted by the
other four rulers on the Iberian peninsula. Spain, a unit of examination
for contemporaries and later historians, was hugely diverse. As well as
the frontier between Islamic Granada and Christian Castile, Aragon,
and especially its Catalonian provinces, interacted with a wider western
Mediterranean world more than its Iberian neighbours. The divergence
of Castile and Portugal was built around political conflict. Like Scotland,
the smaller realm hardened its sense of identity in response to efforts by
Castilian kings to impose their lordship.37
Though the Low Countries and Scandinavia were not included
amongst the ‘nations’ at Constance, they are treated as European regions
in historical terms. In both cases late medieval political unity, though not
preserved in subsequent centuries, was part of the perception behind this
identification. It was the rule of the dukes of Burgundy between 1363
and 1477 over a widening area of the Low Countries which provided a
common political focus to a region divided between France and the
Empire and between numerous different principalities. Whether this rule
ever created a single entity is debatable, but the single dynasty and the
unusually urbanised character of much of these lands has encouraged
their treatment as a single region by subsequent historians. The three
Scandinavian kingdoms shared language and cultural features. However,
they had developed as separate monarchies with distinct geographical
outlooks, as the involvement of the Norwegian kings with the isles around
northern Britain and in the Atlantic demonstrated. The fourteenth century
was characterised by growing engagement between these realms which
ended with regnal union at the end of the century. The strains on this union,
evident throughout the fifteenth century, ended with the re-establishment
of a separate Swedish monarchy after 1500. Throughout these cen-
turies, interests around the North Sea, settlement and conquest across the
Baltic and interaction with the princes and cities of northern Germany
were major factors in Scandinavian politics. They need not, however,
detract from the perception of these three lands as a European region.38
· 215 ·
DISUNITED KINGDOMS
The point of these brief characterisations of other parts of Europe

in the late medieval period is to illustrate that attempts to examine the
Continent in terms of its regions need not depend on an unchallenged
sense of political identification. Like the British Isles, late medieval Iberia
cannot be regarded as a single political unit, but interactions between its
rulers, in terms of conflict as much as integration, require understanding.
The basis of this validity can be argued in terms of geography; the Iberian
peninsula and Scandinavia, like Britain, Ireland and their surrounding

islands, provide defined physical environments. Though these boundaries
were hardly impermeable and interactions beyond their shores were vital
for the shaping of internal relationships, as we have seen, they provide a
natural, geographical framework with lasting influence on political devel-
opments. This long-term sense of historical interaction, not just within
the period of the later Middle Ages, may be regarded as a further basis
for an examination, even if the key themes are those which point away
from integration. In these terms, it is the gap between the claims of
English clergy that the isles were home to ‘the famous and undoubted
English nation’ and the realities in the different lands which provide the
focus for our attention.39
Notes
1. There were continuing links of aristocratic landholding between France and
the British Isles which persisted through the thirteenth century, represented
by, for example, the Valence, Brittany, Balliol, Couci and Beaumont families.
2. J. Le Patourel, ‘The Kings and the Princes in Fourteenth-Century France’,
in J. Le Patourel, Feudal Empires: Norman and Plantagenet, ed. M. Jones
(London, 1984) XV, 155–83, 160; Prestwich, Edward I, 298–307; Vale,
Origins of the Hundred Years War, 48–79.
3. Le Patourel, ‘The King and the Princes’, 160; Vale, Origins of the Hundred
Years War, 70–1; Prestwich, Edward I, 305–8; J.P. Trabut-Cussac,
L’administration anglaise en Gascogne sous Henry III et Edouard I de 1254 à
1307 (Paris, 1972).
4. Prestwich, Edward I, 150–1, 304–5; Vale, Origins of the Hundred Years
War, 73–6; M. Vale, ‘Nobility, Bureaucracy and the “State” in English
Gascony, 1250–1340’, in F. Autrand (ed.), Genèse de l’état moderne: prosopo-
graphie et histoire (Paris, 1985), 303–12; K. Fowler, The King’s Lieutenant:
Henry of Grosmont, First Duke of Lancaster (London, 1969), 39–74.
Though the seneschals of Gascony and constables of Bordeaux were gener-
ally English, their deputies were recruited from the men of the duchy.
5. Vale, Origins of the Hundred Years War, 48–63; P. Chaplais, ‘Le Duché-
Pairie de Guyenne: l’hommage et les services féodaux de 1259 à 1303’, in
P. Chaplais, Essays in Medieval Diplomacy and Administration (London,
1981), III, 5–38.
· 216 ·
HUNDRED YEARS WARS
6. Vale, Origins of the Hundred Years War, 175–200, 227–44; J. Le Patourel,

‘The Origins of the Hundred Years War’, in K. Fowler, The Hundred Years
War (London, 1971), 28–50.
7. P. Chaplais, ‘La souverainté du roi de France et le pouvoir législatif en
Guyenne au début du xive siècle’, in Chaplais, Essays, V, 449–69; H.
Rothwell, ‘Edward I’s Case against Philip the Fair over Gascony in 1298’,
EHR, 42 (1927), 572–82; C.J. Rogers, The Wars of Edward III: Sources and
Interpretations (Woodbridge, 1999), nos 36, 37, 40; Prestwich, Edward I,
389–93; Le Patourel, ‘Kings and Princes in Fourteenth-Century France’, in

J.R. Hale, J.R.L. Highfield and B. Smalley (eds), Europe in the Late Middle
Ages (London, 1965), 155–83.
8. Rogers, Wars of Edward III, nos 3, 48, 49; J. Le Patourel, ‘Edward III and
the Kingdom of France’, History, 43 (1958), 173–89; Sumption, Trial by
Battle, 109–11; G.C. Cuttino, ‘Historical Revision: The Causes of the
Hundred Years War’, Speculum, 19 (1944), 463–77.
9. C.J. Rogers, ‘The Anglo-French Peace Negotiations, 1353–1360: A
Reconsideration’, in J. Bothwell (ed.), The Age of Edward III (York, 2001),
193–213; J.J.N. Palmer, England, France and Christendom, 1377–99
(London, 1972); M. Keen, ‘Diplomacy’, in G.L. Harriss (ed.), Henry V: The
Practice of Kingship (Oxford, 1985), 193–9.
10. Prestwich, Edward I, 412–35; M. Prestwich (ed.), Documents Illustrating
the Crisis of 1297–98, Camden, 4th series, vol. 24 (1980), 1–5; Phillips,
Edward II, 209–13.
11. W.M. Ormrod, The Reign of Edward III: Crown and Political Society in
England, 1327–1377 (London, 1990), 7–29; Rogers, War, Cruel and Sharp,
68–74, 82–7, 97–100, 116–19, 151–72, 216, 218–72, 296–304, 338–40,
402–21.
12. J.J.N. Palmer, ‘England, France, the Papacy and the Flemish Succession,
1361–9’, Journal of Medieval History, 2 (1976), 339–64; J. O’Callaghan,
A History of Medieval Spain (Ithaca, 1976), 526–8; A.A.M. Duncan, ‘A
Question about the Succession, 1364’, Miscellany of the Scottish History
Society, xii (Edinburgh, 1994), 6–8; Sumption, Trial by Fire, 291–2, 572–3.
13. J.R. Strayer, ‘The Costs and Profits of War’, in Miskmin, Herlihy and
Udovitch (eds), The Medieval City; Prestwich, War, Politics and Finance,
170–6; Vale, Origins of the Hundred Years War, 206–7, 236–7; Rogers,
War, Cruel and Sharp, 132–6; Harriss, Shaping the Nation, 61–3.
14. Ormrod, Edward III, 13–15; Harriss, King, Parliament and Public Finance,
232–6, 254; E.B. Fryde, ‘Parliament and the French War, 1336–40’, in Essays
in Medieval History Presented to Bertie Wilkinson (Toronto, 1959), 250–69.
15. Ormrod, Edward III, 32–9.
16. Prestwich, War, Politics and Finance, 75–7, 251–2.
17. Prestwich, Plantagenet England, 273–8; Ormrod, Edward III, 32–9;
Harriss, Shaping the Nation, 437–44.
18. H.J. Hewitt, The Organisation of War under Edward III (Manchester,
1966); A. Ayton, ‘English Armies in the Fourteenth Century’, in A. Curry
and M. Jones (eds), Arms, Armies and Fortifications in the Hundred Years
War (Woodbridge, 1994), 21–38; A. Ayton, Knights and Warhorses:
· 217 ·
DISUNITED KINGDOMS
Military Service and the English Aristocracy under Edward III (Woodbridge,
1994), 1–25.
19. Scalachronica, ed. King, xli–xlii; Fowler, The King’s Lieutenant, 202, 208;
M. Prestwich, ‘The English at the Battle of Neville’s Cross’, in D. Rollason
and M. Prestwich (eds), The Battle of Neville’s Cross, 1346 (Stamford, 1998),
1–14; J.J.N. Palmer, ‘The Last Summons of a Feudal Army in England,
1385’, EHR, 83 (1968), 771–5; Storey, ‘The Wardens of the Marches’.
20. R. Frame, ‘The Defence of the English Lordship’, in Bartlett and Jeffrey
(eds), A Military History of Ireland, 76–98; P. Connolly, ‘The Financing of

English Expeditions to Ireland, 1361–76’, in Lydon (ed.), England and
Ireland in the Later Middle Ages (Dublin, 1981), 104–21; Robbins,
Historical Literature in the XIVth and XVth Centuries, 30–3 (poems by
Lawrence Minot about Halidon and Neville’s Cross).
21. A.D. Carr, ‘Welshmen and the Hundred Years War’, WHR, 4 (1968–9), 21–46.
22. A.D. Carr, Owen of Wales: The End of the House of Gwynedd (Cardiff, 1991).
23. John Clyn’s Annals of Ireland mentions the outbreak of war, the battle of
Creçy and the siege of Calais, while the so-called ‘Dublin annalist’ only refers
to the siege of Calais at which two Anglo-Irish lords were present. This latter
chronicle showed much more interest in Edward I’s war with Philip IV
between 1294 and 1303 (Clyn, St Mary’s).
24. Frame, English Lordship, 153–6; Otway-Ruthven, Medieval Ireland, 284–5;
Lydon, The Lordship of Ireland, 150, 156–7.
25. Brown, Wars of Scotland, 274–90; R. Nicholson, ‘The Franco-Scottish and
Franco-Norwegian Treaties of 1295’, SHR, 38 (1959), 114–32; J.
Campbell, ‘England, Scotland and the Hundred Years War in the Fourteenth
Century’, in J.R. Hale, J.R.L. Highfield and B. Smalley (eds), Europe in the
Late Middle Ages (London, 1965), 155–83; Penman, David II, 62–5.
26. MacDonald, Border Bloodshed; Boardman, The Early Stewart Kings: Robert
II and Robert III; A. Grant, ‘The Otterburn War from the Scottish Point of
View’, in Tuck and Goodman (eds), War and Border Societies, 30–64.
27. Macdougall, An Antidote to the English: The Auld Alliance, 25–51; Penman,
David II, 67–72; MacDonald, Border Bloodshed, 75–116; Sumption, Trial
by Fire, 152–3, 171–4.
28. Barrow, Robert Bruce, 183; Penman, David II, 185–93, 229–32; Boardman,
Early Stewart Kings, 109–10; MacDonald, Border Bloodshed, 25–6; Brown,
Wars of Scotland, 282–90.
29. Brown, Black Douglases, 150–2, 210–14; MacDonald, Border Bloodshed, 97;
Campbell, ‘England, Scotland and the Hundred Years War’, 155–83.
30. Ormrod, ‘Edward III and his Family’, 409–15; Palmer, ‘England, France,
the Papacy and the Flemish Succession’; Goodman, John of Gaunt, 48–51,
111–43.
31. Le Patourel, ‘The King and the Princes’; M. Jones, ‘The Crown and the
Provinces in the Fourteenth Century’, in D. Potter (ed.), France in the Later
Middle Ages (Oxford, 2002), 61–89.
32. D. Nicholas, Medieval Flanders (London, 1992), 150–230; J.F. Veerbruggen,
The Battle of the Golden Spurs: Courtrai, 11 July 1302 (Woodbridge, 2002),
1–28; F. Funck-Brentano, Philippe le Bel et Flandre (Paris, 1897).
· 218 ·
HUNDRED YEARS WARS
33. P. Gaillou and M. Jones, The Bretons (Oxford, 1991), 199–206; M. Jones,
‘The Capetians and Brittany’, Historical Research, 63 (1990), 1–16.
34. M. Jones, Ducal Brittany, 1364–1399 (Oxford, 1970), 20–2, 45–6, 93–7;
P. Gaillou and M. Jones, The Bretons (Oxford, 1991), 217–29, 234–7; J.B.
Henneman, Olivier de Clisson and Political Society in France under Charles
V and Charles VI (Philadelphia, 1996), 1–54; Nicholas, Medieval Flanders,
195–7, 209–31.
35. Veerbruggen, Battle of the Golden Spurs, 211–21; Nicholas, Medieval
Flanders, 186–97; A. de la Borderie, Histoire de Bretagne, 6 vols (Rennes,

1896–1914), iii, 411–44.
36. D. Potter, ‘Introduction’, Potter, France in the Later Middle Ages, 1–22;
E. Hallam and J. Everard, Capetian France (Harlow, 2001); E.A.R. Brown,
‘Reform and Resistance to Royal Authority in Fourteenth-Century France:
The Leagues of 1314–1315’, in E.A.R. Brown, Politics and Institutions in
Capetian France (Hampshire, 1991), V, 109–37; C.T. Wood, ‘Regnum
Francie: A Problem in Capetian Administrative Usage’, Traditio, 22 (1967),
117–44.
37. C.M.D. Crowder (ed.), Unity, Heresy, and Reform, 1378–1460: The
Conciliar Response to the Great Schism (London, 1977), 24–8, 108–26;
J.N. Hillgarth, The Spanish Kingdoms. Vol. 1: 1250–1516 (Oxford, 1978);
O’Callaghan, History of Medieval Spain, 523–77.
38. H. Schück, ‘The Political System’, in K. Helle (ed.), The Cambridge History
of Scandinavia: Vol. 1: Prehistory to 1520 (Cambridge, 2003), 679–709;
J.E. Olesen, ‘Inter-Scandinavian relations’, ibid, 710–71; Nicholas, Medieval
Flanders, 227, 317–56; W. Blockmans and W. Prevenier, The Promised
Lands: The Low Countries under Burgundian Rule, 1369–1530 (Philadelphia,
1999); R. Vaughan, Valois Burgundy (1975).
39. Crowder (ed.), Unity, Heresy, and Reform, 125.
· 219 ·
chapter nine
POLITICS AND POWER IN THE

BRITISH ISLES (c.1360–1415)
I n 1395 Philippe de Mézières, former chancellor of the crusader

Kingdom of Cyprus, wrote to Richard II of England seeking his
support for an Anglo-French expedition to the Holy Land. Mézières
addressed Richard as ‘gentle and thrice noble King of Great Britain,
Prince of Wales and North Wales, Lord of Great Ireland and King of
Cornwall’.1 The titles used by the diplomat reflected the continued iden-
tification of the English kings as rulers over all the peoples of the British
Isles. They also suggest that, in the last decade of the fourteenth century,
contemporaries sensed a heightened significance to such claims for both
King Richard and those lords and peoples he claimed as his subjects in
the archipelago. This significance can be seen as a reversal of the trends
of the preceding half-century. As we have seen, in the decades from 1340
to 1390 it is possible to compare the resources and energy expended by
the governments of Edward III and his successor on participation in
warfare with France with the limited initiatives undertaken by the English
crown in terms of its rights and authority in the insular lands beyond
England. This relative disengagement by the English crown has led to
connections and patterns of political activity across the British Isles being
relegated to a secondary position in political analysis. However, as has
been examined in earlier chapters with regard to royal governments, to
the ideas of nations and communities, to elites and to regional power
structures, especially those where royal administration was not the
principal political focus, contacts and comparisons across these insular
lands retained importance. Such common themes and interlinked histo-
ries form a vital element in the changes to the internal characters and
external relations of the realms of the British Isles between 1280 and
1340. This chapter will demonstrate that they continued to be of conse-
quence through the fourteenth century and that events in these realms
still need to be placed into the wider context if their full meaning is to
be grasped.
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POLITICS AND POWER IN THE BRITISH ISLES
Peace, Truce and War: 1360–1389

The treaties of Berwick with the Scots in 1357 and of Brétigny with the
French in 1360 were events with major significance in insular politics.
The agreement of a formal peace with the kings of France and the start
of a long period of truce with the Scots influenced not just the policies
of Edward III, but wider political relationships in the archipelago. As
mentioned in the preceding chapter, peace did not end Plantagenet

ambitions and interventions on the Continent. As well as his active, if
largely fruitless, diplomacy with France, Flanders and Milan, Edward’s
sons and captains fought in internal conflicts in Brittany and Castile.
However, peace led to increased activity by the English crown in the
British Isles and new approaches to the pursuit of its goals. The clearest
example of this is provided by the king’s Irish lordship. In 1361 Edward
appointed his second son, Lionel duke of Clarence, as his lieutenant in
Ireland. This was part of a family strategy fostered by the king in the
1360s and it reflected Lionel’s personal stake in Ireland as claimant to the
earldom of Ulster, the lordship of Connacht and a third of Kilkenny. His
royal blood and Irish claims made Lionel a princely figure of the kind
sought as lieutenant by the English of Ireland since the cancellation of
Edward III’s own Irish expedition in 1332. Lionel was also a natural
leader of those other English lords with claims to Irish estates, many of
whom were ordered to travel to Ireland with the duke. Lionel’s authority
was heavily backed by his father. A retinue of 900 soldiers was provided
to Clarence, and during the five years of his lieutenancy the costs of this
force and the duke’s other expenses were supported by over £37,000
raised from English revenues. Though small by the standards of the
French war, in terms of men and money this represented the greatest
investment by the English crown in its Irish lordship since the early
thirteenth century.2
This investment was not primarily designed to bring about a major
military shift in Ireland between English and Irish, let alone lead to a final
conquest. Lionel did campaign against Irish leaders in Leinster and
Munster. He captured the Leinster Irish magnate, Art MacMurrough,
and extracted submissions from the O’Briens and O’Neills, though these
proved to be short-lived. However, the duke’s more important role was
the restoration of the lordship’s ability to sustain itself, financially and
militarily. His arrival came in response to appeals for help from the
English of Ireland and, though these exaggerated the scale of losses to
the Irish, the crown was aware of the decline in its own income from the
lordship. The goal was to foster financial recovery and to return to the
situation of the previous century when Ireland had contributed to royal
· 221 ·
DISUNITED KINGDOMS
enterprises in Scotland and Wales. In association with this, moves were

undertaken either to make absentee lords responsible for their lands or
re-grant these estates to families who would take on their protection.
Lionel’s voyage is best-known for the legislation of his parliament at
Kilkenny in 1366. This repeated earlier statutes, but its significance was
as part of a conscious programme of royal-led reform to strengthen the
English community and government on the island. The success of Lionel’s
expedition was limited but real. Tensions developed around his presence.
These were expressed in a statute forbidding the use of the terms ‘English
hobbe’ and ‘Irish dog’ between the duke’s close associates (including
Anglo-Irish figures like the earl of Ormond) and those English of Ireland
who resented their influence. However, revenues were increased, especially
from south Leinster and Munster, and royal authority had been displayed in
a way which encouraged the English government to repeat the experiment.3
The negotiations between Edward III and the Scots in the 1360s had
direct links to Lionel’s lieutenancy. In late 1363 Edward put peace pro-
posals to David II of Scotland during a meeting between the two kings
at Westminster. These offered a resolution of all disputes between the
realms based on a plan by which either Edward himself or one of his sons,
John of Gaunt or Lionel of Clarence, would succeed to the Scottish
throne if David died childless. As elements in the settlement, Edward
undertook to restore their lost English estates to the Scottish king, to
Scottish religious houses and to the earl of Douglas. Discussions also
considered the restoration or compensation of the Disinherited. These
plans offered a different basis for Anglo-Scottish relations and for wider
relationships in the British Isles. During discussions in 1365 David sug-
gested that an English prince should be put in possession of Man and
Galloway. If this was to be Clarence, it would have added these Irish Sea
lordships to his earldom of Ulster, potentially creating a vast apanage
straddling this maritime region. The possible cession of Galloway to an
English prince was linked to a further offer that troops from Scotland
or the Hebrides be sent to wage war in adjacent parts of Ireland in the
service of Edward III. Such points of discussion reveal a degree of sup-
port from the Scottish king for Clarence’s lieutenancy which may relate
to David’s own efforts to increase his authority in the Highlands and Isles
of his realm. From the mid-1360s the Scottish king identified these
regions and their leading magnates as problematic for their failure to
obey his officials or contribute financially to his regime. In particular,
royal disapproval focused on the wide lordship exercised by John lord of
the Isles. David’s offers of support for the English lieutenant in Ulster
can be seen as part of his moves against the Islesmen, designed to curtail
their own interests in the province.4
· 222 ·
Taken together the policies and proposals of the 1360s suggest a con-
scious desire by both English and Scottish crowns to reverse the changes
of the preceding seventy years. A close relationship between the rulers of
the two realms was clearly central to this new atmosphere. This alliance
would facilitate the extension of royal authority over the furthest parts of
their dominions, where it had declined seriously since 1290. These plans
also involved the revival of landholding links amongst the Anglicised
nobility of the British Isles. The 1360s did see a resumption of social and
economic contacts across the border. The settlement of the claims of
disinherited lords and the restoration of landholding links between
English and Scottish elites was paralleled by efforts to make English lords
resume active management of their estates in Ireland. The overall atmos-
phere is reminiscent of the brief period of Anglo-Scottish peace in 1328–32
when Robert I had acted as patron of the earl of Ulster. However, like
that period, the plans and negotiations of the 1360s foundered on the
changed experiences and expectations of lords and communities. David
pursued negotiations with Edward III in the face of his subjects’ anti-
pathy. In rejecting the proposal for a Plantagenet succession in 1364, the
Scottish parliament argued the king had an heir, his nephew Robert the
Steward, and displayed mistrust for Edward, a proven enemy whose line
had enslaved the Welsh and Irish and would destroy the Scottish nobility
and ‘despoil the people’. Clarence’s efforts in Ireland similarly ran up
against entrenched outlooks and conditions. Amongst these were tensions
between the lieutenant’s English retainers and the English of Ireland which
reflected the established identity of the latter group. Legislation forbid-
ding the use of Irish customs by these Anglo-Irish was also unrealistic
given the nature of society and politics in the numerous borderlands of
the lordship. Most directly, a brief military intervention could hardly alter
the conditions of warfare in these borderlands or the balance between
English and Irish across the lordship. In general, the period of interven-
tion and diplomacy from 1360 to 1369 did not significantly change
patterns and attitudes which had become deeply-rooted.5
The deaths of Clarence in 1367 and David II in 1371 symbolised the
closure of this short period, but the real key to its end lay in the resump-
tion of full-scale warfare between the English and French realms in 1369.
As mentioned in the preceding chapter, unsuccessful, defensive and costly
warfare in France provided the central context for politics in England
between 1369 and 1389. Allied to this were questions about the exer-
cise of royal authority prompted first by Edward III’s rapid decline into
senility from 1370 and then by the succession and youth of his grandson
Richard II. Discontent about the management of politics and the financial
demands made on the community by these kings’ councillors produced
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displays of resistance or rebellion from different groups within the realm.

The meeting of a parliament called in April 1376 to consider a fresh grant
of taxation was dominated by attacks on the circle of courtiers around
King Edward. These were led by the Commons, representatives of the
shires and boroughs, who used their right to petition the crown to
demand the removal of corrupt royal officials and the reform of govern-
ment. The revolts of 1381 represented an even more exceptional chal-
lenge to the king’s government. The demand for a third grant of taxation
assessed by household not property was the spark for a series of uprisings
in many parts of England, but especially the south-east and East Anglia.
This overlay deeper grievances about the efforts of landlords to buck
the economic conditions after the plague and restrict the wages and
mobility of their labourers.6
The English crown’s focus on warfare with France and its fallout in
terms of English political crises suggests a return to the conditions prevail-
ing in the 1340s and 1350s. However, the events of the 1360s had left
a legacy in terms of the decisions made by the government of Edward III.
Just as the French war restarted in spring 1369, Edward appointed
William of Windsor, one of the unpopular circle around the king, as his
lieutenant in Ireland. Windsor travelled to the lordship with a retinue of
500 soldiers and financial assignments totalling £20,000 from England
to last three years. Though growing problems meant full payment of
these sums was slow and incomplete, more money was promised in 1374.
As in the 1360s, the government’s hope was that such military and
political leadership would make the king’s Irish lordship self-sufficient
and, although, like Clarence, Windsor’s period of office only marginally
increased security and revenues for the English, the persistence of the
royal government with this policy is striking. Subsequent lieutenants also
received payments designed to support large retinues but, when Edmund
Mortimer earl of March was named lieutenant in 1379, his terms
involved an additional element. As well as being assigned over £13,000
to support his retinue during his three-year appointment, Mortimer
was also assigned the revenues he could raise from Ireland. Given the fact
that Mortimer was heir to his family’s extensive Irish estates and to the
claims of Lionel of Clarence, these terms indicate a renewed attempt to
provide princely leadership. Though Edmund’s death at Cork in 1382
and the minority of his son removed the Mortimers from this role, the
idea of devolving the rule of Ireland onto a magnate would be given
formal shape in 1386 when the young Richard II gave his favourite,
Robert de Vere earl of Oxford, the titles of duke of Ireland and marquis
of Dublin. De Vere did not visit his duchy and held only briefly the
title and powers he had been given, but his creation was a sign that
· 224 ·
new approaches were being considered towards the dominions of the

English crown.7
The legacy of Anglo-Scottish negotiations did not immediately
evaporate either. The resumption of continental warfare did not produce
an instant return to warfare between the two realms. The new Scottish
king, Robert II (Stewart), ended any rapprochement with the Plantagenets
and rapidly renewed the French alliance. However, he rejected an offer
by Charles V of France of money and military support in return for waging

war against England. He did not break the truce with England and main-
tained payments of David II’s ransom. Significantly, though, during the
1370s major breaches of the truce were committed on the marches. The
march wardens, who were also the heads of the great regional magnate
families, the Percies in England and the Douglases and Dunbars in Scotland,
played leading roles in these breaches. The response of the two realms
was to appoint princely lieutenants to maintain the truce. While the
English appointed John of Gaunt duke of Lancaster, the Scottish lieutenant
was John earl of Carrick, the heir to the Scottish throne. However, by the
early 1380s the Scottish border magnates in particular were pressing for
a renewal of open war. When the truce ended in early 1384, attacks were
launched which recovered border dales to Scottish allegiance. Though
this war was waged with the assistance of French money and men sent to
Scotland in 1385, it was the southern Scottish magnates who provided
the aggression behind these and subsequent campaigns.8
The conflict had direct effects on the government of the whole
Scottish realm. To secure royal support for the war, southern magnates
stood behind the appointment of Carrick as lieutenant of the kingdom in
late 1384, a move which took the exercise of royal justice and war leader-
ship out of Robert II’s hands. The importance of regional concerns in
central politics was not confined to the south. Carrick’s appointment also
reflected the exasperation of many northern magnates with King Robert’s
refusal to control the activities of his son and the lieutenant of the north,
Alexander Stewart of Badenoch. These magnates, led by Carrick and
Badenoch’s brother, Robert earl of Fife, wanted an assertion of royal
authority in the Highlands. The link between central and regional issues
could work both ways. The death of Carrick’s main southern ally, James
earl of Douglas, in battle against Henry Percy at Otterburn in 1388
and the subsequent dispute over his lands undermined the lieutenant’s
authority, already weakened by his failure to remove Alexander from
office. In late 1388 Carrick was removed from the lieutenancy. He was
replaced in an effective coup by Robert of Fife. Fife would retain control
of royal government even after the death of Robert II in 1390 meant that
Carrick became king (taking the name Robert III). In these changes of
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lieutenant, rivalries within the royal family were combined with estab-
lished ideas about guardianship and regional politics to provide for the
marginalisation of adult kings. Similar issues, often driven by concerns
which related to lordship and government in north and south, would
remain key factors in Scottish politics during the next thirty years.9
That the actions of the leading English lords on the borders did not
have such a direct impact on the kingdom’s politics in the 1380s was a
product of its size and the relative distance of the Scottish march from
the royal heartlands. The warfare of the 1380s was significant in English
politics. It allowed the Percy family to dominate the office of march warden,
securing large payments for the defence of the northern border, and to
cement their increased standing in the north as both lords and royal
deputies. The family’s pursuit of its own ends was linked to the military
and diplomatic activities of the English crown. The period beginning
with Henry Percy’s creation as earl of Northumberland in 1377 also saw
this northern family assume importance in central politics in England.10
The Scottish war had a role in these central debates. Richard II’s assump-
tion of personal authority in around 1383–4 coincided with a more
hawkish attitude towards the Scots. In 1385 the king led an army to
Scotland. This was the first royal expedition against the Scots for nearly
thirty years and Richard’s only direct experience of warfare. Its lack of
results, unsurprising given Scottish defensive strategy, signalled a grow-
ing mistrust between the king and many of his magnates. However, war
with France remained the priority in the minds of the English political
class. The royal expedition had been launched after the arrival of a small
French army in Scotland. In 1386 criticism grew over Richard’s wider
approach to the conflict with the French. As well as poor strategic
planning, this criticism already involved royal efforts to secure a cessation
of hostilities. Such moves were opposed by lords like the king’s youngest
uncle, Thomas duke of Gloucester, who saw military command as a
means to wealth and prestige, and a wider military class also committed,
financially and ideologically, to the war.11
Antagonisms also developed over issues which recalled the disastrous
reign of Edward II. Richard’s assertion of authority was accompanied by
the direction of patronage to a clique. The grant of the duchy of Ireland
to Robert de Vere was the most spectacular example of this. Its purpose
was less to do with the needs of Ireland than to raise de Vere’s status
amongst the king’s uncles. As tensions grew between the king and an
aristocratic cabal led by Gloucester, de Vere was also made justiciar of
Chester and north Wales. Here the king’s aims were more direct, seeking
to use the private lordship of the crown in these lands as a source of
military support. De Vere raised an army from Cheshire and marched on
· 226 ·
London in late 1387. His defeat led to Richard being threatened with
deposition and effective power being passed to Gloucester and his allies,
who purged the king’s favourites. In these circumstances, with England
politically divided and the new regime planning a continental campaign,
the Scots launched a major offensive. This caused widespread destruction
in the English borders and the Scots won a messy victory at Otterburn in
August 1388. It also discredited the king’s opponents and ended pro-
spects of a French expedition, facilitating Richard’s assumption of formal

control over his realm in May 1389. The next month a truce was agreed
with Charles VI of France which was extended to Scotland in July.12
The British Isles in an Age of Revolutions (1389–1415)

The truce would run through the rest of Richard’s reign. Though no
final peace was agreed, the absence of open warfare with France would
free the English king from the demands the conflict created. The cessa-
tion of war created its own tensions within the military class, but it is
hard not to see the decade from 1389 in terms of Richard II looking at
alternative ways of exercising lordship across his dominions and the con-
sequences of his actions for the established polities in these lands. The
process was not confined to the British Isles. In 1390 Richard II granted
life tenure of the duchy of Aquitaine to his uncle, John of Gaunt. The
grant satisfied Gaunt but not the Gascons. They regarded the act as a
breach of the charter of 1254 which bound Aquitaine to the direct royal
line. For Richard, the grant devolved the problems of the duchy’s status
and government on to Gaunt. Around the same time, the king consid-
ered a parallel plan by which another uncle, Thomas of Gloucester, was
made lieutenant of Ireland for five years with a large English subsidy and
all the revenues of the lordship. Like Edward III, Richard seems to have
been keen to deploy the royal family to run the Plantagenet lands,
though his motives also included the removal of his influential uncles
from the English political scene.13
However, during the 1390s it would be evident that Richard was not
prepared to follow the approaches adopted by his predecessors in the isles
which essentially had accepted the status quo established in the opening
decades of the century. The clearest indication of the king’s desire to shift
prevailing trends was in Ireland. In summer 1394 preparations were
made for a royal expedition to the lordship. On 1 October Richard
landed at Waterford, accompanied by an army of 8,000 which included
numerous nobles and lesser men who had been ordered to return to their
Irish lands. The king’s presence and the scale of his following indicate
that he aimed at more than a limited recovery of English fortunes.
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DISUNITED KINGDOMS
Instead Richard sought secure and effective lordship over Ireland. His
approach rested on the strength of his army, which was far beyond any
force deployed in Ireland between 1170 and 1550. During late 1394 war
was waged against the Irish of Leinster. This compelled their submission
led by Art MacMurrough, styled king of Leinster. Richard sought more
than the short-lived submissions made by these kindreds to a succession
of royal officials. In February 1395 MacMurrough swore to leave Leinster
and serve Richard against his Irish rebels in other provinces. Through
early 1395, after more fighting, a succession of other Irish magnates also
submitted. Amongst these were leading lords like Niall O’Neill from
Ulster, Turlough O’Connor from Connacht and Mac Carthy and O’Brien
from Munster. Richard indicated that he would recognise these figures in
the lands that he believed rightfully belonged to them if they would
restore rights and territory taken by their kindreds from English owners.
In return, Irish lords like O’Neill proclaimed their readiness to act as
‘true liegemen’ of Richard but also sought the king’s recognition and
protection as a ‘shield and helmet of justice’. Richard seems to have
envisaged a restoration of royal authority as the basis of stable relations
between Irish magnates and English nobles. The plea for protection
made by O’Neill against his nominal overlord, Roger Mortimer earl of
March and Ulster, was not unique and indicated that it would be no
simple task to turn patterns of regional power which rested on warfare
and coercion into a mutually acceptable balance. That Mortimer was left
behind as lieutenant on Richard’s departure in May 1395 suggests that
the king’s expedition had not fundamentally altered the outlook of the
crown towards the two aristocracies of Ireland.14
Richard did place his councillor, William Scrope, as justiciar in Leinster
and Munster as a balance to Mortimer, suggesting some desire to limit
the earl’s actions. Trusted courtiers were also employed by the king in the
northern marches of England. The truce with Scotland reduced royal
dependence on the Percy family as wardens. The earl of Northumberland
and his son, Henry Hotspur, held both offices until 1396 but thereafter
Hotspur was partnered by a series of royal councillors from outside the
region. In 1398 Richard reappointed John of Gaunt as lieutenant of the
marches to renew the truce. The Percies were excluded from the warden-
ship and the king promoted their rival and Gaunt’s son-in-law, Ralph
Neville, to the earldom of Westmoreland, emphasising the limits placed
on the Percy family.15
While consciously restricting the independence of his own wardens,
Richard II may have sought to exploit the entrenched interests of the
Scottish border magnates. In 1393 Richard wrote directly to the Scottish
wardens, Archibald earl of Douglas and George Dunbar earl of March,
· 228 ·
perhaps inviting them to negotiate independently of king and lieutenant.

Three years later, Dunbar briefly sought English protection in the course
of a dispute with his own ruler, Robert III. Though the dispute was
short-lived, similar contacts would prove much more significant in the
next decade. The same is true of links between Richard’s officials and
another great noble connection of the northern British Isles. Due partly
to the king’s intervention in Ireland, renewed contacts developed with
Clan Donald and the lordship of the Isles. During the 1390s, Donald
lord of the Isles’ brother, John, acquired a lordship in north-east Ulster
which was rapidly settled by Hebrideans and provided a point of contact
with Richard’s administration. These dealings provided a latent threat to
the Scottish government in the 1390s, which increasingly identified Clan
Donald as a dangerous entity within the kingdom. The intrusion of
Hebridean lords and bands into the Highlands had replaced Alexander
Stewart’s lordship with that of another brother of the lord of the Isles,
Alexander of Lochaber. A royal campaign to force the submission of
Donald and his brothers in 1398 was heralded as a parallel to Richard’s
Irish expedition but was a fiasco. Robert III, who had only partially
recovered his authority as king, was held responsible. He was, once more,
declared unfit for office and a new lieutenant, his son, David duke of
Rothesay, was appointed to run royal government.16
Despite the obvious differences, there was a parallel between Scottish
and English politics in the late fourteenth century. Both Robert III and
Richard II were kings who struggled to exercise the powers of their office
in the face of their own close relatives acting as leaders of an often critical
nobility. However, while Robert largely succumbed to the dominance of
these kinsmen, Richard, who had not forgotten his humiliation in 1387,
struck back. In 1397 and 1398 he launched a series of attacks against
his opponents. Gloucester was killed and his allies of 1387, the earls
of Arundel and Warwick, the duke of Norfolk and Gaunt’s son, Henry of
Bolingbroke, suffered disinheritance and death or exile. Richard was
probably planning to move against Roger Mortimer, his cousin and heir
presumptive, when news arrived of the latter’s death in war against the
Leinster Irish in 1398. These actions secured Richard a political domin-
ance denounced as tyranny by his opponents. They also brought a great
number of estates into the king’s hands for temporary or permanent dis-
posal. Most of them were used to enrich Richard’s close circle. It was a
process with particular significance in Wales. Between them, the Arundel,
Warwick, Mortimer and Lancastrian families had been the holders of
almost all the marcher lordships. These now passed to royal appointees,
seriously disrupting the structures of lordly administration and service
which were built into the identity of the march.17
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The stresses which this created would develop as part of a wider crisis
during the years after 1397. However, in the immediate term the king’s
forceful redistribution of lands and lordship seemed to provide the basis
for a new territorial focus for the English monarchy. In 1397 Richard
created the principality of Chester, uniting the palatine county to the
north-eastern lands of the Welsh principality and three marcher lordships
taken from the earl of Arundel. The king exploited the military traditions
of Cheshire to build up a retinue of archers and stored a financial reserve

in the principality at Holt Castle. The creation of the principality may be
linked to a sense that Richard was keen to broaden the basis of his per-
sonal monarchy in England, spending more time and recruiting household
servants in the Midlands. Such developments were noted by contempor-
aries from the south-east who showed particular concern about the
king’s interests in Wales and Ireland. That William Scrope was recalled
from Ireland to become justiciar of Chester and North Wales and was also
lord (or king) of Man and custodian of the Mortimer lordship of Denbigh
does point to a deliberate policy to create an administrative bloc across
these regions. When Richard departed for a second expedition to Ireland
in 1399, chroniclers reported rumours that he intended to shift his court
to the lordship permanently, abandoning England to his servants.18
In reality the new expedition was a response to the unravelling of
Richard’s settlement which seriously undermined any claims to Ireland as
a base of the king’s authority. The unravelling was predictable to anyone
versed in Irish politics. Most directly, leaving Roger Mortimer earl of
March as lieutenant invited him to reinvigorate his claims in Meath and
Ulster by waging war against the Irish in those districts, especially Niall
O’Neill. O’Neill, denied any royal protection, fought back. Parallel war-
fare erupted in Leinster, where Richard’s lordship over MacMurrough
also evaporated. This led to Mortimer’s death in 1398. Feuding between
two of the English earls, Ormond and Desmond, had also broken out in
Waterford. Rather than a particular failure of royal authority, these con-
flicts were reflective of the resumption of normal methods and goals after
the king and his army had departed. What was exceptional was that in
May 1399 Richard chose to repeat his venture. He crossed to Ireland
with an army which, though smaller than in 1394, was still large by
Irish standards and included the king’s closest supporters and a strong
Cheshire contingent. Richard’s plans may have been ambitious, even
involving the creation of his favourite, Thomas Holand duke of Surrey,
as king of Ireland, but ignored the vulnerability of his position, not in
Ireland, but in England.19
In late June 1399 the exiled Henry of Lancaster landed in Yorkshire.
The rapid collapse of Richard II’s authority in England which followed
· 230 ·
reflected the extent to which the king had alienated the English nobility
and community. It was also linked to the king’s policies in his wider
dominions and borderlands. The presence of the king and his core adher-
ents in Ireland is evidence of a political unreality which can be seen in
many of his plans. Their absence led to the failure of Cheshire and Wales
to resist the advance of Henry. Equally important were the attitudes of
northern magnates. The Percies and Nevilles had been antagonised by
Richard’s efforts to limit their special status in the march. In early July
Northumberland and Hotspur could have crushed Lancaster but chose
to back him, as did Westmoreland, a Lancastrian retainer. Their support
was crucial to Henry’s momentum and to the success of his campaign
against Richard which ended with the king’s surrender to Northumberland
at Conwy Castle in September. By early October, Richard had been removed
from his throne and Henry IV crowned king of England in his place.20
The events of 1399 have traditionally been regarded as a revolution
in English politics and government. Their impact was equally potent in
terms of the wider British Isles. The usurpation of Henry IV set in chain
a series of events which involved challenges to the power and authority
of the English crown in different lands and regions. The rebellions and
warfare of Henry’s reign cannot be considered in isolation from each
other. Together they indicate the extent to which insular politics remained
interconnected. The new king based his appeal on a return to established
patterns of royal government. However, hopes of an easy resumption
of authority would rapidly be dashed. The revolt of Richard’s closest
supporters in January 1400, though easily crushed, indicated that, within
England, Henry could be challenged as a usurper by dissatisfied nobles.
Even before this, the king had received a report from Ireland whose
panicked tone and news of an alliance between MacMurrough and the
earl of Desmond, of government weakness and of Irish enemies and
English rebels suggests that the unparalleled engagement of Richard
with the lordship had achieved nothing. From Scotland too came signs
of trouble. At the time of the coronation, attacks were launched across
the border by the sons of the Scottish march wardens. These actions may
have had the support of the lieutenant, Rothesay. Scottish letters sent
in late 1399 and early 1400 refused to acknowledge Henry as king of
England, exploiting the usurpation to repay English denials of the royal
title to Stewart kings.21
Henry chose to treat this provocation as the basis for war. War with
Scotland was a powerful method of identifying his kingship with the renewal
of the traditional goals of English monarchy. His policy was encouraged
by divisions in Scotland which, in early 1400, had seen George Dunbar
repeat his tactic of seeking English protection. In August an army of
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DISUNITED KINGDOMS
13,000 was mustered at great cost and led by King Henry through
Lothian to Edinburgh. The language of sovereignty was fully deployed.
Proclamations were made, prior to and during the campaign, calling for
the Scottish king and nobility to submit and perform homage. Though
Dunbar did homage to Henry, the demand for a general submission was
futile. The other Scottish leaders remained out of reach and, like previous
kings, Henry was forced to retreat.22 His invasion had lasted only a
fortnight but the war would continue to shape relations between the
two royal governments and the march wardens. In England, this meant
Henry’s handling of the Percies. Even before he became king, Henry had
re-created the Percy monopoly of the wardenship. It was only the first of
several rewards to the family for their role as kingmakers. Other patron-
age included control of Man, Chester and north Wales, giving the Percies
a leading role in this region.23
However, the focus of the family remained on the Scottish border,
where their ambitions were matched by those of the new earl of Douglas.
It was Douglas who had engineered the expulsion of Dunbar in 1400
and secured custody of his rival’s main estates. Defence of these gains
against Percy and the exiled Dunbar gave Douglas a stake in the con-
tinuation of the war. By 1401 this brought him into dispute with the
lieutenant, David duke of Rothesay. Douglas sought to sabotage Rothesay’s
efforts to negotiate a truce with the English. When Rothesay was arrested
by his uncle, Robert of Fife (now duke of Albany), in late 1401, Douglas
acquiesced in the death of the prince. Albany took over as lieutenant for
the decrepit Robert III and backed the renewal of war against England.
In both realms the intervention of border magnates had brought about
the downfall of royal regimes and an escalation of war. Perhaps not
surprisingly, by 1402 Henry IV was already seeking ways to restrict or
balance the power of the Percy family.24
By 1402 the king’s concerns had grown as a result of events in Wales.
A month after the Scottish campaign in September 1400, a minor Welsh
noble, Owain Glyn DWr, escalated a private dispute with his English
neighbour, Lord Grey of Ruthin. Owain was proclaimed Prince of Wales
and led destructive attacks on Ruthin and other boroughs in north-east
Wales. Henry responded rapidly, marching through the region in October
and dispersing the rebels. Though an apparently minor event, the English
parliament was sufficiently worried by it to pass statutes in 1401 which
renewed and extended restrictions placed on the Welsh. The measure was
badly misjudged. The statutes graphically demonstrated that beneath the
numerous examples of assimilation between races during the fourteenth
century, the official attitude was to regard all Welsh as potential rebels.
Renewed penalisation fed into existing grievances felt in many Welsh
· 232 ·
communities. Amongst these were resentments against the increased

exploitation of legal and fiscal rights by landowners since the plague to
produce growing profits from their Welsh estates. In England these had
been factors in producing the Peasants’ Revolt, in Wales they were fil-
tered into rebellion built around an ideology of nationhood. Central to
this was the survival of a Welsh elite as a focus for the hopes of renewed
native lordship. Owain Glyn DWr was the best example of the duality of
this group. To the English he was a minor squire, in service to a marcher

lord. To the Welsh he was a lord of princely descent, a patron of poets
and a potential leader of his people. Up to 1400 such nobles had been,
most obviously, a vital link between English lords and their Welsh
tenants. However, the political upheavals of the 1390s had disrupted
many of these ties and left major gaps in the fabric of loyalty and leader-
ship in both march and principality. The 1401 statutes which restricted
Welsh land and office holding struck this group most directly. Owain and
his fellow Welsh squires would provide the basis of a major challenge to
English rule in Wales.25
The renewal of the revolt in 1401 was sparked by the spectacular cap-
ture of Conwy Castle on Good Friday (1 April) 1401. This produced a
series of outbreaks in the north-west, Powys and Ceredigion, and even in
the marches of the south and east. In October 1401 Henry led a second
campaign across mid-Wales, installing garrisons from the border to
Aberystwyth and Cardigan. His attempt to damp down and contain the
rebellion had some effect, but fresh impetus was given to Owain by
victories against English forces in early 1402 in which he captured his
enemy, Lord Grey, and Edmund Mortimer, the uncle of the young earl
of March. This success had important consequences. Glyn DWr and his
adherents were able to extend their operations through Wales, keeping
the English on the defensive, despite another royal campaign. By late
1403 English administration had collapsed throughout Wales, and in the
west and many other regions the king’s men were pinned in isolated
castles. It was clear to all that Owain represented a much more complete
and sustained challenge to English authority than had been provided by
any Welsh leader since 1280. As prince of Wales he was able to look for
allies and exploit the wider problems of Henry IV in the complex polit-
ical environment of the British Isles.26
The most immediate source of allies for Owain was from those English
nobles ready to challenge the legitimacy of Henry IV. Owain’s capture of
Edmund Mortimer had given him a valuable asset in English politics.
Mortimer, whose family had a claim to the English throne to rival Henry’s,
was also brother-in-law of Hotspur. The king’s refusal to ransom
Edmund led to the latter’s decision to align with Glyn DWr and marry
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DISUNITED KINGDOMS
his daughter. This match also provided a route between Owain and the
Percies, who, though they had served against the Welsh, had advocated
negotiations with the rebels. By 1403 the Percy family were nurturing
their own grievances. These related to their interests in the Anglo-Scottish
marches and, ironically, stemmed from the victory won by Northumberland
and Hotspur against an invading Scottish army in September 1402 at
Homildon. The leaders of this invasion, Douglas and Murdoch Stewart,
son of the Scottish lieutenant, Albany, and many other nobles were cap-
tured. Henry IV invited the Percies to exploit this victory by granting
them Douglas’s extensive lands across southern Scotland. However, they
remained to be won. Henry, whose resources were stretched by the costs
of the Welsh war, would not provide additional support and even failed
to pay the Percies the sums owed for their wardenships. Financial issues
were one of the grievances held by Hotspur and his father. However, the
decision to rebel was really driven by the belief of the Percy family that
they could bring down the king they had created and use their victory to
win more favours from the crown.27
They overestimated their strength but not by much. Hotspur with a
retinue which included his captive, the earl of Douglas, and a company
of Scots, marched to Chester and raised an army from Richard II’s
supporters in the region. The resulting battle near Shrewsbury was
bloody and close. Henry IV only won following the death of Hotspur.
Northumberland, who had remained in the north, was stripped of his
offices but Glyn DWr exploited the rising to extend his rule in south-west
Wales. A second opportunity was presented to Owain by a fresh English
rebellion in 1405. This uprising was less focused on aristocratic ambition.
Northumberland was plotting with Glyn DWr, Mortimer and others from
early 1405 and a plan to bring the young earl of March to Wales was
narrowly thwarted. However, a popular rising also developed in Yorkshire
against the king’s financial demands under the leadership of William
Scrope archbishop of York. The king dispersed these rebel groups, exe-
cuting the archbishop and forcing Percy to flee to Scotland. The rising
had, though, prevented the launch of a royal campaign into Wales.28
From the outset, Glyn DWr had looked widely for allies. In 1401 he
sent letters to the Scottish king and Irish lords seeking their aid. These
efforts, which were reminiscent of the methods of the Bruce family,
played on other areas of anxiety for King Henry. However, they yielded
no direct results for Owain. The failure of the Scots to give support to an
enemy of their enemy was a product of the kingdom’s political troubles.
Homildon had left many Scottish lords in English captivity and made
open war with King Henry a worrying prospect for their kinsmen. In
1405 Northumberland did receive support from the faction around the
· 234 ·
young heir to the throne, Prince James. These friends warned the exiled
earl of an attempt to exchange him for the captive Douglas, prompting
Northumberland to flee to Wales. One English account described what
followed as a civil war. In this the prince’s councillors were defeated and
James himself fell captive to English shipmen whilst being sent for safety
to France in early 1406. The death of Robert III soon afterwards meant
that Henry now held the young Scottish king, the heir of the kingdom’s
governor and its greatest southern magnate. He used this as a means

of exerting influence and exploiting divisions in Scotland, playing on
Douglas’s anxiety about Albany to secure the earl’s oath of service against
all but King James in 1407.29
Though Douglas broke parole, returned to Scotland and reached a
settlement with the duke of Albany in 1409, Henry had other allies in the
north. During preparations for his Scottish campaign of 1400, North-
umberland had been empowered to negotiate with Donald lord of the
Isles and his brother, John. Contacts with leading Islesmen were renewed
in 1407, using the presence of the captive King James as a justification
for opposition to Albany. The hostility of the Islesmen related to a rivalry
for lands and lordship in northern Scotland between Clan Donald and
the Albany Stewarts. In 1411 this escalated into full-scale war. Donald
of the Isles led an army through the north. His advance was halted at
Harlaw near Aberdeen by a force raised by Alexander Stewart earl of Mar.
Mar was the son of the infamous lord of Badenoch. After the battle he
was made lieutenant of the north by Albany and subsequently harnessed
government support to his extensive following from both lowlands and
highlands. The campaign of 1411, though arguably a private war, was
presented by Albany as a struggle to defend the fatherland against the
Islesmen and conflict rumbled on through the 1410s.30
The activities of Clan Donald and the Islesmen were not confined to
a single region nor were they allies of the English crown. The develop-
ment of John of the Isles’ lordship in Ulster was an element in the
problems facing the English king’s officials in Ireland. In 1404 these men
of the ‘outer Isles’ had combined with the Ulster Irish in harrying the
English tenantry in the eastern parts of the province. This localised
warfare need not be isolated from wider events. The role of the Islesmen,
the presence of Scottish shipping along the coast and the claims to the
earldom of Ulster held by King Henry’s potential rivals, the Mortimers,
all serve as reminders of a broader picture. This was apparent to Irish
annalists who reported in 1405 the ‘great war by the Scotsmen and
Welsh against the English’. Glyn DWr’s letter to the Irish should not
be dismissed as an empty gesture. However, as through the preceding
century, the principal dynamic within Ireland was provided by regional
· 235 ·
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competition and warfare. Henry IV did not have the money to finance
an assertive administration. His dispatch of his second son, Thomas, as
lieutenant in 1401 could not conceal the fact that royal officials had
reverted to the role of making war and peace with the Leinster Irish.
Elsewhere effective power resided in the hands of magnates like the earls
of Desmond and Ormond whose feud in eastern Munster continued for
much of Henry’s reign.31
The crises of Henry’s early reign meant that Ireland slipped back down
the English crown’s priorities. Yet, after 1405, his security from rebellion
in England allowed Henry to move effectively against Glyn DWr. Owain’s
major source of external assistance after 1403 came from the Continent.
The hostility of the French government towards the removal and death
of Richard II and the treatment of his French queen were factors which
led to the dispatch of a small expedition to aid Glyn DWr in 1405–6.
However, after its return, Henry was able to stifle the rebellion. Leading
roles were played in this by the king’s heir and Owain’s direct rival,
Henry prince of Wales, and by a number of marcher lords. As in 1282,
the English conquest of Anglesey in 1406 was a major reverse and in
1407 submissions from the lordships of north-east Wales suggest Owain’s
influence was confined to the west. The English recapture of Harlech and
Aberystwyth castles by early 1409 ended the rebellion as a major military
contest. Though Owain remained at liberty and settlement was still
incomplete at the death of Henry IV, his son was able to bring about the
submissions of most remaining rebels in the early months of his reign.32
During his troubled reign, Henry IV had defeated major challenges to
his rule from aristocratic opponents in England, especially from the north
and from Cheshire. He had also recovered the authority of the English
crown in Wales in the face of the most potent and sustained challenge it
would face in the centuries after the Edwardian Conquest. It can be
argued too that, despite the other crises he faced, Henry’s administration
in Ireland staved off major collapse after the interventions of his predeces-
sor had produced only illusory gains for the crown. The dispatch of
his young son, Thomas, to Ireland was paralleled by the roles given to
Henry prince of Wales in the struggle for his principality with Owain and
to his third son, John, as a warden of the Scottish marches from 1403.
This approach had precedents in the previous half century but, under
Henry IV, it had the appearance of a king seeking to provide foci for loy-
alty in an atmosphere of uncertainty. This uncertainty may have been
over by the accession of his son, Henry V, in 1413. His renewal of the
war with France two years later suggested a return to the priorities of
the mid-fourteenth century and brought a close to the period of intense
insular activity. In many ways the political shape of the British Isles at that
· 236 ·
date was similar to the situation in 1389. However, the intervening quar-
ter century was a period which had illustrated the nature and fluidity of
the conditions established during the fourteenth century and significant
shifts in this status quo.
Princes and Rebels

A text is preserved within a fifteenth-century English chronicle which

purports to be an alliance between three of King Henry’s enemies, Prince
Owain, Henry Percy earl of Northumberland and Edmund Mortimer.
The text of this so-called ‘Tripartite Indenture’ stipulated the division of
the English crown’s dominions between the conspirators. Northumberland
would receive the north of England as far as Norfolk and the Midlands
in full sovereignty. Glyn DWr’s principality would be confirmed and
would include Cheshire and the other English border shires west of the
Severn. Southern England would be held by Edmund Mortimer. If the
document is not a total fabrication, it can probably be dated to February
1405. Its terms are, though, unrealistic, even fantastic, in their confident
dismantling of an English kingdom whose internal unity and cohesion
had been evident since the eleventh century.33
However, in 1405, the stability of the English kingdom and the nature
of its relations with the other parts of the British Isles may not have
seemed so certain. The enforced removal of the anointed king, Richard II,
created an atmosphere of rumour and sedition in England which included
stories of the late king’s survival in Scotland and which encouraged
resistance and rebellion to the new Lancastrian regime. Criticisms of
Henry IV, especially after early hopes vested in his kingship had been dis-
appointed, were exploited by the Percies and members of the Mortimer
family amongst others. Moreover, there existed a potent demonstration
of the way the map of Britain could be redrawn in the shape of Glyn
DWr’s principality. In early 1405 this was at its greatest extent and pres-
tige. The rising had apparently shattered the basis by which the English
crown, marcher lords and inhabitants of Wales had enjoyed legal, eco-
nomic and political predominance for over 120 years. The speed with
which reports from Ireland after the fall of Richard II once again claimed
that ‘the land is in danger of final destruction if it be not quickly relieved’
may point to a similar and renewed sense that English authority was in
flux. Rumour and fear were not confined to English communities. In
Scotland, the death of David duke of Rothesay was followed by orders
that none should ‘murmur’ against those suspected of his death. Later
accounts suggest that the duke’s tomb, like Archbishop Scrope’s in
York, was a place of pilgrimage and, by implication, protest. The fears
· 237 ·
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of lowland Scottish writers also related to external threats. In the two

decades after 1400 these came less from the English crown than from
Donald lord of the Isles. According to the contemporary chronicler,
Walter Bower, Donald’s advance into Aberdeenshire in 1411 ‘with
10,000 men from the Isles and . . . Ross’ ravaging ‘like locusts’ aimed ‘to
subject to his authority the country down to the Tay’. Bower seemed to
envisage a partition of the kingdom like that of the Tripartite Indenture.34
A sense of insecurity about the stability or durability of the political

status quo was a feature of all the lands of the British Isles in the period
between the 1380s and 1410s. This can be related to a crisis of con-
fidence in the authority and legitimacy of rulers. The tyranny and fall of
Richard II, the challenges to Henry IV, the humiliation and eclipse
of Robert III and his sons were defining features of an era of rebellion
and upheaval. These events were insular manifestations of what has been
perceived as a wider crisis of monarchy in the late fourteenth and early
fifteenth centuries. This encompassed many European realms and the
papacy and sparked debates about monarchic authority and the rights of
subjects to resist or unseat rulers. Behind the particular crises of insular
monarchies were a range of factors. Some were the natural products of
personal monarchy. The youth and character of Richard II defined his
reign, as did the infirmity and ineffectiveness of Robert III. Allied to
these were difficulties which were more structural in character. The rela-
tions between the king and the royal family recurred as a key determinant
of political atmosphere. While Edward III had been able to use his sons
as able and responsive deputies, Richard II found the same generation of
princes and their descendants a threatening presence in his realm and on
his council. Anxieties about John of Gaunt, Thomas of Gloucester and
the former’s son, Henry Bolingbroke, led Richard to promote his own
friends and supporters and to the growth of faction. In the same way,
Robert II had used his children to bring the higher ranks of the Scottish
nobility into his family orbit. From 1384, however, this family connec-
tion became the basis through which central and regional rivalries led to
the removal of the king from the full exercise of his prerogatives. Royal
princes were able to use mechanisms which had developed in the preced-
ing century, to challenge an anointed king. In Scotland, the appointment
of a lieutenant to provide a focus for government in the absence of king-
ship during the long crisis of 1296 to 1357 was deployed from 1384 as
a means to sideline rulers in coups d’état. In England, the precedents of
Edward II’s reign were deployed to unseat an adult king and replace him
with his leading opponent within the royal line. These challenges pro-
duced regimes whose initial authority was more conditional and whose
assumption of power encouraged dissent.35
· 238 ·
Dissent revolved around the way in which royal duties were performed.
In Scotland, the removal of Robert III from active government in 1399
was due to ‘the misgovernance of the realm and the default of the
keeping of the common law’, while in the same year in England Richard
II’s dethronement was linked to his refusal to ‘uphold or dispense the
rightful laws and customs of the realm’ and tendency ‘to act according to
his arbitrary will’. Ineffective or arbitrary royal justice served to justify the
removal of authority from a ruler. It also placed greater expectations on

replacement rulers, which tended to be disappointed. Neither Duke
David in Scotland nor Henry IV satisfied their subjects’ search for better
justice. Parallel problems derived from royal leadership in war. Richard
II’s readiness to enter a long truce with France removed a major source
of financial and military problems for the crown, but added to the
estrangement evident between the king and a number of older magnates.
The renewal of Anglo-Scottish warfare served to entrench the delegation
of royal government in the marches to nobles with strong regional roots.
In Scotland, the question of war with England contributed to the removal
of Robert II, Robert III and Rothesay from the running of the realm
between 1384 and 1401–2. For both kingdoms the escalation or suspen-
sion of conflicts whose previous history and current opportunities were
of key importance in terms of both ideology and material gain repre-
sented major issues in political life.36
However, to explain this era of instability it is essential to look beyond
the ‘central’ politics of the English and Scottish realms and adopt a frame
of reference which encompasses and looks beyond the whole archipelago.
Despite the absence of full-scale Anglo-French warfare, the French mon-
archy was still an influence on events in the isles. By allowing Bolingbroke
to sail to England in 1399 the French government precipitated the fall of
Richard II. Their rapid disenchantment with Henry IV led to active sup-
port for Owain Glyn DWr as prince of Wales which was vital in bolstering
and prolonging his resistance to the English king. The support of the
Avignon papacy for Owain was a product of the ongoing schism in the
church. English adherence to the Roman pope led to the readiness of
Avignon to recognise and legitimise Owain’s position. This heightened
the prince’s authority and provided the context for his clerical supporters
to lay out a developed programme of nationhood.37
However, more than any period since the opening three decades of the
fourteenth century, the years between 1389 and 1415 can be explained
in terms of the way English royal hegemony was expressed in relation to
the power structures and identities of its wider dominions and border-
lands. Richard II’s much-debated efforts to elevate and extend the authority
of kingship after the humiliations of the late 1380s did not relate to the
· 239 ·
DISUNITED KINGDOMS
geographical core of his monarchy in southern England. Contemporaries

and historians have remarked on the ways Richard sought to change the
patterns of Plantagenet government with regard to the different lands to
which the family held title. The king’s famous description of himself as
‘entire emperor of the realm of England’ was not meant to be geograph-
ically restricted in its terms. By seeking to create family and favourites as
dukes of Aquitaine, dukes or kings of Ireland and kings of Man and by
forming a principality of Chester, Richard may have envisaged a group of

subordinate rulers in these more distant dominions.38
Whether the thinking went far beyond the king’s pleasure in creating
new titles for himself and his friends is hard to gauge, but the two
expeditions to Ireland provide clear, material evidence of an intention to
alter established patterns of government in the archipelago. Richard’s
personal presence in Ireland and the scale of his following was unprece-
dented and the greatest intervention by the English crown anywhere in
the British Isles since the 1330s. The determination of the king to end
the ‘rebellion’ of the Irish against him fitted in with his wider views of his
subjects’ obligations. However, while Richard may have seen the process
by which Irish ‘rebels’ became his liegemen as the basis for new relation-
ships, the use of force to extract submissions had been used with purely
temporary results by royal officials for two centuries. Lasting change would
have required continued resources and would probably have led, not to
a harmonious co-habitation between English and Irish, but to an escala-
tion of warfare. In these terms Richard’s demands for homage seem less
a peace policy than a renewal of the interventions of his Edwardian ances-
tors. There are hints that the same model applied to the dealings of
Richard with Scotland. Though through the 1390s there was no war, in
1394 Richard had instructed his envoys to offer peace only if Robert III
would do homage, attend the English parliament and restore the lands
given by Edward Balliol to Edward III in 1334. Such terms suggest that
Richard’s concern in the British Isles was less with novel approaches than
with the recovery of rights long claimed by his dynasty.39
When English heralds summoned the Scottish king and his nobles
to perform homage to Henry IV as his army advanced through south-
east Scotland in August 1400, his action was deliberately designed to
recall the campaigns and sovereignty of his royal ancestors. In reality,
both the commitment of the English crown and the vulnerability of the
Scots had greatly diminished in the previous century. Though Henry may
have been encouraged by the defection of George Dunbar, Scottish mag-
nates whose actions brought in an English army were not likely to find
widespread sympathy. Dunbar’s rival, Douglas, entered Henry’s service
in 1407 but, like Dunbar in 1396, did so as a means to more limited ends
· 240 ·
within Scotland. If hardly united in political terms, the Scottish elite had
learned well the lessons of the 1290s and 1330s about internal division
letting in the English wolf. Dunbar himself would negotiate his way back
into Scotland in 1409.40
In the years after 1400, rather than the English monarchy reactivating
its claims to lordship over Scotland and Gaelic Ireland, it was faced with
challenges to its existing authority in Wales. Owain Glyn DWr consciously
framed his position in terms of the traditions of Welsh monarchy. He was

proclaimed prince of Wales in 1400 and, as his success grew in 1402–3,
the outlines of his claim were developed. Owain presented himself as
heir to the house of Gwynedd as princes of Wales, adopting the family’s
arms instead of his own. Most immediately it was presented that ‘he had
succeeded by right of kinship’ to the recent claimant, Owain Lawgoch.
Glyn DWr was only very distantly related to the princes of Gwynedd.
His status derived from descent from the other dynasties, Powys and
Deheubarth. By developing a basis for his principality which included all
three regions, Owain was able to justify claiming authority over all of
Wales, including the march. Rather than the continuity from Llywelyn
ap Gruffudd he claimed to represent, the style of Owain’s documents and
seals, the evidence of his government, even the reports that he held par-
liaments attended from across his principality were suggestive of efforts
to create a monarchy in Wales after a century of conquest. As a means to
impress external allies and encourage the allegiance and support of Welsh
sympathisers, Glyn DWr was trying to form a unified Welsh realm.41
While these efforts can be presented in terms of state-building, the
career of Owain Glyn DWr is perhaps more convincingly understood as
reflecting that aristocratic dynamic that impelled the Bruces a century
earlier. The long-held sense of right, sparked by a personal feud to ignite
a war to win princely power and status, was common to Owain and
Robert I. Similar terms might also describe Henry Bolingbroke in his
descent on England in 1399. Problems of royal government and legitim-
acy made the period 1389–1415 one in which the distinction between
king and noble was blurred and could be crossed. The claims which were
made on behalf of the Mortimers as rightful kings of England by the
Percies and others confirmed this family’s special status across England,
Wales and Ireland. The way in which Robert duke of Albany refused to
acknowledge the royal title of the exiled King James up to 1410 suggests
an attempt by the governor to heighten his own position as ruler of
Scotland. The competition for royal status and connections is further
indicated by the dispute between George Dunbar and Archibald earl of
Douglas for the marriage of their daughters to the heir to the throne
which resulted in Dunbar’s defection to England.42
· 241 ·
DISUNITED KINGDOMS
The pursuit of royal powers and rank by nobles occurred with unusual
frequency and intensity in these years. In many cases it was allied to goals
which may appear to us to have been more limited. These related to
aristocratic concerns with lordship and lands. Private efforts to claim
estates and seek inheritances should, however, not be underestimated.
Both Bolingbroke and Glyn DWr were spurred to initial action by such
concerns. Local or regional rivalries also led to the apparent crisis in
Ireland which drew Richard II to make his second, fateful expedition to

Ireland in 1399. Conflicts over the exercise of lordship in Ulster between
Roger Mortimer and Niall O’Neill and land disputes in Munster between
the earls of Ormond and Desmond were both private feuds and destabil-
ising warfare. It was those noble families, like Glyn DWr’s own, which
had developed as leaders of the Welsh and servants of the English lords
which provided the crucial support for the rising after 1400. The great
battle of Harlaw in northern Scotland in 1411 was, at root, fought over
the rival claims to exercise custody over the earldom of Ross by the lord
of the Isles and the duke of Albany. Similarly the activities of magnates
from the Anglo-Scottish marches like the two Henry Percies, Ralph Neville,
the earls of Douglas and George Dunbar between 1399 and 1409 com-
bined issues of local office and landholding with those of royal govern-
ment and allegiance. As these examples show, the impact of aristocratic
ambition on insular politics was clearest when related to those border-
lands where the power of such dynasties was most strongly developed.43
For much of the previous century, families like Clan Donald, the
O’Neills, the Douglases, the Butlers and the Percies had been left or
encouraged to extend their lordship and influence across these regions.
Though the difficulties which the Percies experienced in obtaining sup-
port from Northumberland in 1403 and 1405 shows that this process
was neither absolute nor uniform, it was the potential these magnates had
developed in raising retinues which gave them a political importance
which extended beyond anything which could be considered a border or
periphery. In this light it is no coincidence that the 1390s and 1400s
witnessed the English crown maintaining large personal retinues after the
model of great private lords. Richard II’s use of his livery and white hart
badge and his formation of a territorial bloc based on Cheshire, from
which he recruited his bodyguard, produced a powerful royal affinity. It
was followed by the decision of Henry IV to build up the Lancastrian
affinity of his father as the basis of his power. The use of aristocratic
methods by the crown was a sign of weakness. This was taken further in
Scotland. As governor after 1406, Robert duke of Albany was a noble
running the kingdom. The result was an apparent acceptance of regional
structures. In 1409 Albany concluded a bond with the earl of Douglas
· 242 ·
which sought to regulate disputes between them and their followers on

terms of equality. Douglas was both justiciar south of Forth and warden
of all three marches and the arrangement was interpreted by an English
observer as giving the earl rule over southern Scotland. As the lord of the
Isles was in conflict with Albany across much of the north, much of the
governor’s authority beyond the Grampians was delegated to his lieuten-
ant, the earl of Mar. Albany’s direct rule rested on the regions between
Forth and Grampians and around the Clyde. Such divisions reflected not
just the power of great lords but regional variations which had developed
during the previous century. As the earldoms and lordships of the north
and south-west lost something of their individual significance, regional
distinctions partly replaced them. The marches and Lothian, Fife, the
upper Forth and lower Tay valleys, the north-east, the Highlands and the
Isles had different concerns and perspectives. To a degree, Scotland in
the 1400s appears to have developed similarities with Ireland. The over-
lap between private lordship and royal government, the limited orbit of
central officials and the regionalised nature of administration and politics
which were hallmarks of fourteenth-century Ireland can also be observed
as an increasing feature of Scottish government.44
Major differences seemed to remain in the way the inhabitants of these
lands identified themselves. The Scots continued to regard themselves as
defined by allegiance to king and realm. Ireland, by contrast, was consid-
ered by contemporaries as a land inhabited by two nations. However,
there are signs of movement in this sharp distinction in the years around
1400. The way Richard II wrote of the ‘rebel’ Irish as subjects with griev-
ances who could secure his protection and justice suggested an approach
which contrasted with the statutes passed since 1297 by Irish parlia-
ments. It should not be taken too far. Even Richard defined the English
as loyal and the Irish as either rebels or enemies. By 1399 the old litany
had been renewed. The Irish enemies were ‘strong and arrogant’, aided
in their attacks on the king’s lieges by the ‘falseness’ of English rebels.
Deliberate attempts to kill Irish bards in the 1400s suggest that in official
quarters there was a hardening hostility towards these representatives of
Irish cultural and social values. From its different starting point, Scotland
may have also have witnessed shifts in internal attitudes. As was discussed
in Chapter Five, growing hostility in official views of the Highlands and
Hebrides can be traced through the period from the 1360s to 1390s.
Though these centred on lawbreaking and violence rather than a sharp
ethnic distinction, the warfare of the 1400s and 1410s developed these
perceptions. The battle at Harlaw was central to this. While Irish annals
referred to this as a battle between Clan Donald and the Gall (English) of
Scotland, imposing Irish definitions on Scotland, the Scottish government
· 243 ·
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took a parallel approach. Although the conflict could be portrayed as a

feud between Donald of the Isles and Albany, the exchequer records
speak of ‘the war against the Islesmen’. The sense of a struggle against an
external invader was implicit in Albany’s decision to free the heirs of
those killed in his lieutenant’s army from payment of succession duties
as they had died for the ‘fatherland’. That this had last been granted by
Robert I at Bannockburn is proof of its association with patriotic sacrifice.
Harlaw was clearly a shock for the crown and lowland community which
Albany exploited to generate support for his war against Donald. Though
Donald, like Mar, was Albany’s nephew and both lords had supporters
from Highlands and Lowlands in their followings, the battle did harden
senses of difference within the Scottish realm.45
The most effective harnessing of collective identity to a political pro-
gramme in this period occurred in Wales. The forces which underpinned
the rapid spread of rebellion in 1401 rested on grievances of various kinds.
As in late fourteenth-century England, unrest was related to economic
grievances. In difficult conditions lords and their officials sought to derive
the maximum income from Welsh estates by the rigorous, even coercive,
enforcement of legal and fiscal powers. The result was the steady increase
in the revenues extracted by marcher lords and the crown from their
lands, in contrast to the situation in England. Similar practices in England
had been a major cause of the Great Revolt of 1381. This was the revolt
of rural peasantry and poor townsmen against their social superiors,
a conflict defined by class. It reflected the integrated and centralised
political environment of southern England. The rebellion of Wales two
decades later had related causes but a very different character. From the
outset, the uprising was defined by the language of nationhood not social
protest. Economic complaints were felt not as a rural peasant class but
as Welshmen, whose legal and economic status was defined by English
lords. The use of Welsh custom to fine the tenants of these lords and the
renewed enforcement of laws separating Welsh and English landholdings
added to a sense of collective grievance connected to race. With the links
between the native elites and their English lords severely strained by the
disruption of Richard II’s tyranny and fall, both Welsh squires and lesser
figures may have turned to alternative structures of leadership. Continuing
interest amongst these squires in both Welsh history and mythology and
in prophecies about the recovery of their rights by a redeemer moved
from being a matter of pride and entertainment to providing the basis for
political action. Crucial roles in this process were provided by the bardic
class but, still more, by the Welsh clergy. As in Scotland a century earlier,
Welsh churchmen were the architects of Owain’s plans for Wales. They
had their own grievances. By the late fourteenth century, the Welsh
· 244 ·
episcopate was dominated by English absentees. Aspiring Welsh clerics,

like John Trefor and Gruffydd Younge, articulated Glyn DWr’s claims
and sought the formation of a Welsh church under an archbishop of
St Davids. The prince’s cause also received support from the Cistercians
and Franciscans. The former had long been identified with dissent by
the English authorities while the latter were accused, like their counter-
parts in Scotland and Ireland, of preaching support for their nation.46
The Glyn DWr rebellion ultimately directed the grievances of different

orders and different regions within Wales into a common effort to create
a principality. Support for the revolt was, though, only provided by part
of the Welsh population. There were many amongst Glyn DWr’s fellow
squires who refused to join him and remained loyal to English lords and
neighbours. Dafydd Gam, for example, adhered to his Lancastrian con-
nections. For some inhabitants of Wales, the rebellion represented their
long-held nightmare. The boroughs founded by the crown and marchers
were frequent targets of rebel attacks from 1400 onwards as centres of
English prejudice. Their inhabitants, mostly English but also many with
Welsh names, proved ready to garrison and defend their borough walls
and safeguard their property. This renewed performance of military roles,
which had been largely neglected for a century, was also experienced by
marcher lords. English magnates with marcher property were once more
expected to play active roles in Welsh warfare and Richard Beauchamp
earl of Warwick, lord of Elfael, Thomas earl of Arundel, lord of Chirk and
Henry prince of Wales performed these duties.47
The reactivation of responsibilities for war was not just about military
necessity. It also reflected wider English attitudes to the conflict. The
English parliament’s dissatisfaction with Henry IV’s requests for sub-
sidies for the war prompted demands that the burden of royal campaign-
ing should fall on the marcher lords rather than the English taxpayer.
The marchers were further criticised for their failure to reside in their
lordships and for their readiness to use their judicial powers to raise
money. The views of MPs can be taken as a perspective drawn from the
English heartlands. They criticised legal practices which contravened
English common law and demanded that the statutes of Edward I be
applied to the running of Wales. The legislation which was issued in 1401
re-drew a hard line between conquerors and conquered. This asserted
that no Welshman could bring charges against an Englishman, or hold
English land, and that any Englishman married to a Welshwoman was
included in the ban on holding office or achieving burgess status. While
hugely damaging in Wales, the statute articulated the sense that English
superiority, legal and racial, needed to be protected and emphasised.
These sentiments were not confined to Wales. In 1398 the terms of a
· 245 ·
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truce with Scotland ordered all those born in Scottish allegiance to

remove themselves from the lands north of the Tyne. In Ireland the
Statutes of Kilkenny were re-issued in 1402 as a symbol of renewed
insecurity, but more revealing was the statement of the Commons at
Westminster in 1406 that they were unwilling to fund warfare in Ireland
due to the lack of results achieved there at huge expense to the taxpayers
of England. The next year the Commons widened this complaint, argu-
ing that the defence of the king’s dominions should be discharged by

those with possessions in each area. These grievances were motivated
by the costs of war in Wales, Ireland and the northern marches and by
problems of royal finance and absenteeism. They also indicated attitudes
within a body dominated by the mercantile and gentry elites of southern
and midland England towards other parts of their king’s dominions. It
may seem to be a contradiction of this that in 1404 the ‘aliens’ in the
king’s service should be sent to serve in the borderlands of the English
realm. However, this was connected to a purge of French and Italians
from the royal household, and those servants sent to the marches were
probably continental in origin. Together these actions are indicative of a
desire to confirm and extend the rights of the king’s English subjects
against the non-English within his dominions. They also suggest a
narrowing of the definition of Englishness in some eyes. Similar values
would give a different feel to the war waged by Henry V and his succes-
sors in France after 1415 from the fourteenth-century conflicts. It was an
atmosphere which was a product of this age of insecurity but which also
foreshadowed the developments of the coming century.48
The years between 1389 and 1413 were characterised by conflict and
insecurity but, unlike the reign of Edward I, they did not represent an era
of revolutionary change in the British Isles. Events and policies which
seemed to aim at achieving major alterations to established political
relationships fell short of their goals. This applied to the efforts of the
English crown to use its material resources to reactivate or complete the
claims it possessed to exercise sovereignty in lands outside England. Both
Richard II in Ireland and Henry IV in Scotland committed major resources
to these ends but the position of the English monarchy in both these
lands was no stronger in 1413 than it had been in 1389. The same point
could be made about major challenges to English royal authority. Owain
Glyn DWr’s rebellion achieved the almost complete disruption of English
lordship in Wales by 1405, but his hoped-for principality could not
survive Henry IV’s recovery of authority in England. Similarly in Scotland,
whilst the kingdom’s elites proved secure from the renewed imposition
of English lordship, they proved unable to recover the last English-held
garrisons, Roxburgh and Berwick. Neither did these decades witness a
· 246 ·
lasting realignment of the priorities of the English state. Had the Percies’
efforts to secure the throne for Edmund Mortimer succeeded, the forma-
tion of a regime headed by families with major stakes in Ireland and in
the Anglo-Scottish and Welsh marches may have led to a shift in English
perspectives towards these regions and lands. Instead by 1412, with the
authority of the Lancastrian regime established, first Henry IV and then,
on a much greater scale, Henry V, redirected their attentions towards
intervention in France.
As in the half-century before 1389, for the forty years from 1413 con-
tinental warfare and politics would loom larger in England than events
elsewhere in the British Isles. From the perspective of English politics the
greater concern with the wider insular world shown by the crown in
the years after 1389 and before 1413 may seem exceptional in the late
Middle Ages. However, the claims and connections which underlay the
events of these years were part of ongoing patterns, of royal authority,
aristocratic power structures, or of regnal or racial identity. The failure of
efforts to reverse or fundamentally re-direct these patterns was a product
of their own resilience and importance within different lands which
would continue to shape the character of the islands into the fifteenth
century.
Notes
1. Philippe de Mézières’ Letter to Richard II: A Plea Made in 1395 for Peace
between England and France, ed. G.W. Coopland (Liverpool, 1975), 101.
2. Connolly, ‘Financing of English Expeditions’, 104–21; B. Smith, ‘Lionel of
Clarence and the English of Meath’, Peritia, 10 (1996), 297–302.
3. Connolly, ‘Financing of English Expeditions’, 107–10; Byrne, War and the
Irish of Leinster, 100–4; P. Crooks, ‘“Hobbes”, “Dogs” and Politics in the
Ireland of Antwerp, c.1361–6’, The Haskins Society Journal, 16 (2005),
117–48.
4. Duncan, ‘Question about the Succession’, 15, 27; Penman, David II, 301–
49, 351–8.
5. Duncan, ‘Question about the Succession’, 39–49; Irish Historical Documents,
no. 17; Statutes, Ordinances and Acts of the Parliament of Ireland, 342–6.
6. G. Holmes, The Good Parliament (Oxford, 1975); R.B. Dobson (ed.), The
Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 (London, 1970); R.H. Hilton, Bond Men Made Free
(London, 1973); R.H. Hilton and T.H. Aston (eds), The English Rising of
1381 (Cambridge, 1984).
7. Connolly, ‘Financing of English Expeditions’, 111–17; S. Harbison, ‘William
of Windsor, the Court Party and the Administration of Ireland’, in Lydon
(ed.), England and Ireland, 153–74; M. Clarke, ‘William of Windsor in
Ireland’, Royal Irish Academy Proceedings, 41, C (1932–3), 55–130; Lydon,
Lordship of Ireland, 161–4.
· 247 ·
DISUNITED KINGDOMS
8. Grant, ‘Otterburn War’, 38–54; Boardman, Early Stewart Kings, 108–29;

Brown, Black Douglases, 68–71, 150–2; Macdonald, Border Bloodshed,
45–116.
9. Boardman, Early Stewart Kings, 123–5, 130–53, 159–86; Brown, Black
Douglases, 64–86.
10. Tuck, ‘The Percies and Northumberland’; Storey, ‘Wardens of the Marches’,
600; R. Lomas, A Power in the Land: The Percys (East Linton, 1999),
65–80.
11. A. Goodman, The Loyal Conspiracy: The Lords Appellant under Richard II
(London, 1971), 58–65, 122–6; N. Saul, Richard II (London, 1997),
135–47; A. Curry, ‘Richard II and the War with France’, in G. Dodd (ed.),
The Reign of Richard II (Stroud, 2000), 33–50.
12. Saul, Richard II, 148–96; Tuck, Richard II and the English Nobility,
87–120; Grant, ‘Otterburn War’.
13. J.J.N. Palmer, ‘English Foreign Policy 1388–99’, in F.R.H. Du Boulay and
C.M. Barron (eds), The Reign of Richard II (London, 1971), 75–107;
Curry, ‘Richard II and the War with France’, 33–50; Saul, Richard II,
205–21; J.A. Tuck, ‘Anglo-Irish Relations, 1382–1393’, Royal Irish
Academy Proceedings, 69 (1970), 15–31.
14. E. Curtis, Richard II in Ireland and the Submissions of the Irish Chiefs
(Oxford, 1927), 158–60, 163–4, 168–72, 173–5, 179–80, 190–4, 205–6,
210–16; J. Lydon, ‘Richard II’s Expeditions to Ireland’, Journal of the Royal
Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 93 (1963), 135–49; D. Johnston, ‘Richard
II and the Submissions of Gaelic Ireland’, IHS, 22 (1980), 1–20.
15. J.A. Tuck, ‘Richard II and the Border Magnates, Northern History, 3
(1968), 27–52.
16. Boardman, Early Stewart Kings, 200–4, 209–15; S. Kingston, Ulster and the
Isles in the Fifteenth Century: The Lordship of Clann Domnhaill of Antrim
(Dublin, 2004), 49–50.
17. Tuck, Richard II and the English Nobility, 183–209; Saul, Richard II,
366–404; C. Given-Wilson, ‘Richard II and the Higher Nobility’, in A.
Goodman and J.L. Gillespie (eds), Richard II: The Art of Kingship (Oxford,
1999), 107–28; R.R. Davies, The Revolt of Owain Glyn Dwr (Oxford,
1995), 36–42, 76–86.
18. R.R. Davies, ‘Richard II and the Principality of Chester, 1397–9’, in Du
Boulay and Barron (eds), Richard II, 256–79; M.J. Bennett, ‘Richard II and
the Wider Realm’, in Goodman and Gillespie (eds), Richard II, 187–204;
T. Thornton, ‘Cheshire: The Inner Citadel of Richard II’s Kingdom?’, in
G. Dodd (ed.), The Reign of Richard II (Stroud, 2000), 85–96; Morgan,
War and Society in Medieval Cheshire, 198–207; The Chronica Maiora of
Thomas Walsingham, ed. D. Preest and J.G. Clark (Woodbridge, 2005),
304, 306–7.
19. D. Johnston, ‘The Interim Years: Richard II and Ireland, 1395–9’, in
Lydon (ed.), England and Ireland, 175–95; D. Johnston, ‘Richard II’s
Departure from Ireland, July 1399’, EHR, 98 (1983), 785–805; A. Dunn,
The Politics of Magnate Power in England and Wales, 1389–1413 (Oxford,
2003), 69–70.
· 248 ·
20. C. Given-Wilson, Chronicles of the Revolution 1397–1400 (Manchester,

1993), 192–7; D. Biggs, Three Armies in Britain: The Irish Campaign of
Richard II and the Usurpation of Henry IV, 1397–99 (Brill, 2006); Saul,
Richard II, 405–24.
21. P. McNiven, ‘The Cheshire Rising of 1400’, Bulletin of the John Rylands
Library, 52 (1969–70), 375–96; D. Crook, ‘Central England and the
Revolt of the Earls, January 1400’, Historical Research, 64 (1991), 403–10;
Irish Historical Documents, no. 22; Boardman, Early Stewart Kings, 226;
Macdonald, Border Bloodshed, 133–5.

22. A.L. Brown, ‘The English Campaign in Scotland, 1400’, 40–54; Boardman,
Early Stewart Kings, 227–32; Macdonald, Border Bloodshed, 136–41;
C. Neville, ‘Scotland, the Percies and the Law in 1400’, in G. Dodd and
D. Biggs (eds), Henry IV: The Establishment of the Regime, 1399–1406
(York, 2003), 73–94; A. Curry, A.R. Bell, A. King and D. Simpkin, ‘New
Regime, New Army? Henry IV’s Scottish Expedition of 1400’, EHR, 125
(2010), 1382–1413.
23. J.M.W. Bean, ‘Henry IV and the Percies’, History, 44 (1959), 212–27, 220–1.
24. Brown, Black Douglases, 99–104; Boardman, Early Stewart Kings, 234–47.
25. Davies, Revolt of Owain Glyn Dwr, 65–93f; A. Goodman, ‘Owain Glyn
DWr before 1400’, WHR, 5 (1970–1), 67–70; R.R. Davies, ‘Owain Glyn
DWr and the Welsh Squirearchy’, Transaction of the Cymmrodorion Society
(1968), ii, 150–69.
26. K. Williams-Jones, ‘The Taking of Conwy Castle, 1401’, Transactions of the
Caernarfonshire Historical Society, 30 (1978), 7–43; Davies, Revolt of Owain
Glyn Dwr, 103–5.
27. Davies, Revolt of Owain Glyn Dwr, 106–7, 179–86; Bean, ‘Henry IV and
the Percies’, 221–7; P. McNiven, ‘The Scottish Policy of the Percies and the
Strategy of the Rebellion of 1403’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 62
(1980), 498–530.
28. McNiven, ‘Scottish Strategy’; P. McNiven, ‘The Betrayal of Archbishop
Scrope’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 54 (1971), 173–213; S. Walker,
‘The Yorkshire Risings of 1405: Texts and Contexts’ in S. Walker, Political
Culture in Later Medieval England, ed. M. Braddick (Manchester, 2006),
223–45; T.B. Pugh, Henry V and the Southampton Plot (Stroud, 1988), 64–87.
Northumberland was eventually killed in a third rising in 1408.
29. Davies, Revolt of Owain Glyn Dwr, 188–96; The Chronicle of Adam Usk,
148–52; Boardman, Early Stewart Kings, 288–97; Brown, Black Douglases,
106–8; Walsingham, Chronica Majora, 341.
30. Scotichronicon, ed. D.E.R. Watt, 8 vols (Aberdeen, 1987–98), viii, 75–7;
Kingston, Ulster and the Isles, 33–4, 50–1; M. Brown, James I (Edinburgh,
1994), 19; M. Brown, ‘Regional Lordship in North-East Scotland: The
Badenoch Stewarts II: Alexander Stewart Earl of Mar’, Northern Scotland,
16 (1996), 31–54, 42–7; Registrum Episcopatus Aberdonensis, 2 vols
(Edinburgh, 1845), i, 215.
31. K. Simms, ‘The Ulster Revolt of 1404 – an Anti-Lancastrian Dimension?’,
in Smith (ed.), Ireland and the English World, 141–60; Otway-Ruthven,
Medieval Ireland, 339–47.
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DISUNITED KINGDOMS
32. Davies, Revolt of Owain Glyn Dwr, 122–6; J.B. Smith, ‘The Last Phase of
the Glyn DWr Rebellion’, BBCS, 22 (1966–8), 250–60.
33. Davies, Revolt of Owain Glyn Dwr, 166–9.
34. S. Walker, ‘Political Saints in Later Medieval England’ in S. Walker, Political
Culture in Later Medieval England (Manchester, 2006), 198–222; S. Walker,
‘Rumour, Sedition and Popular Protest in the Reign of Henry IV’, ibid,
154–82; P. Morgan, ‘Henry IV and the Shadow of Richard II’, in R. Archer
(ed.), Crown, Government and People in the Fifteenth Century (Stroud, 1995),
1–31; Boardman, Early Stewart Kings, 244, 283; Scotichronicon, ed. Watt,
vol. 8, 75–7.
35. J.H. Burns, Lordship, Kingship, and Empire: The Idea of Monarchy, 1400–
1525 (Oxford, 1992).
36. Chronicles of the Revolution, 177–8; RPS, 1399/1/2–3.
37. M.J. Bennett, Richard II and the Revolution of 1399 (Stroud, 1999), 152–3,
187; Davies, Revolt of Owain Glyn Dwr, 169–71, 191–5.
38. Bennett, ‘Richard II and the Wider Dominions’, 194–5.
39. S. Walker, ‘Richard II’s Idea of Kingship’, in Walker, Political Culture, 142;
Tuck, ‘Richard II and the Border Magnates’, 46. Richard also sought French
support in a plan to conquer Scotland in 1396 (Curry, ‘Richard II and the
War with France’, 48).
40. Brown, Black Douglases, 99–103; Macdonald, Border Bloodshed, 136–8;
Boardman, Early Stewart Kings, 226–32.
41. Davies, Revolt of Owain Glyn Dwr, 160–3.
42. Brown, James I, 18; Boardman, Early Stewart Kings, 226.
43. For evidence of the feud between Ormond and Desmond and the wider
context of such disputes in the lordship of Ireland see P. Crooks, ‘Factions,
Feuds and Noble Power in the Lordship of Ireland, c.1356–1496’, IHS, 140
(2007), 425–58, 452–3.
44. A. King, ‘ “They have the Hertes of the People by North”: Northumberland,
the Percies and Henry IV’, 139–60; C. Given-Wilson, The Royal Affinity
and the King’s Household (London, 1986); H. Castor, The King, the
Crown and the Duchy of Lancaster (Oxford, 2000), 3–21; Brown, Black
Douglases, 108–18; Boardman, Early Stewart Kings, 312–13; K. Hunt,
‘The Governorship of Robert Duke of Albany, 1406–20’, in M. Brown and
R. Tanner (eds), Scottish Kingship 1306–1488: Essays in Honour of Norman
Macdougall (Edinburgh, 2008), 126–54.
45. Johnston, ‘Richard II and the Submissions of Gaelic Ireland’; Brown,
‘Regional Lordship in North-East Scotland’; Reg. Aberdonensis, i, 215;
Annals of Connacht, 411; Grant, ‘Scotland’s “Celtic Fringe”’.
46. Davies, Revolt of Owain Glyn Dwr, 70–93, 169–72.
47. Davies, Revolt of Owain Glyn Dwr, 221–8, 229–62; Davies, ‘Owain Glyn
DWr and the Welsh Squirearchy’, 164–9.
48. Davies, Age of Conquest, 457–9; A. Rogers, ‘Henry IV, the Commons and
Taxation’, Medieval Studies, 31 (1969), 44–70; S. Walker, ‘Janico Dartasso:
Chivalry, Nationality and the Man-at-Arms’, in Walker, Political Culture,
115–38; A. Cosgrove, Late Medieval Ireland (Dublin, 1981), 30–4.
· 250 ·
chapter ten
FOUR LANDS:
THE BRITISH ISLES IN THE
EARLY FIFTEENTH CENTURY
T he years between the accession of Henry V of England in 1413 and

the removal of Henry VI in 1461 would seem to offer little in terms
of an integrated or interconnected history of the British Isles. From the
perspective of England the period was dominated by the warfare in
France which ended in the loss of Normandy and Gascony in the early
1450s and by the gradual breakdown of political harmony leading to
outbreaks of civil war in 1455 and 1459. While Wales’s history seems to
be dominated by the renewal of processes of assimilation which had been
violently disrupted by the Glyn DWr rebellion, Ireland remained inter-
nally divided between English and Irish lordships, peoples and cultural
models. The history of Scotland in this period consciously followed its
own routes as a fully sovereign realm whose resurgent kings were, from
1424, keen to enlarge connections with continental rulers in ways which
stressed this status. In each land the principal concern seemed to focus on
the specific and distinct character of internal political society and activity.
Common issues or developments, even on a par with those of the period
before 1413, appear as limited and peripheral to these dominant direc-
tions. There were no personal interventions by English kings in the other
lands of the isles, like those of Richard II and Henry IV, nor were there
significant challenges to their rule from these lands. Relations between
realms and peoples in the British Isles followed paths which had been
established by the later fourteenth century.
The period did end with the opening phase of the Wars of the Roses.
Though the breakdown of English political stability leading to bursts of
civil conflict through the 1450s involved all the lands of the archipelago,
it did not concern issues of interlinked authority across the isles in the
way that the events between 1390 and 1410 had done. Instead the
nature and level of engagement in the different parts of the British Isles
was a reflection of their established and distinct characters and relationships.
The conflict developed in response to the failings of English government
· 251 ·
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both in maintaining order inside England and in the loss of the crown’s
French territories. The personal incompetence and incapacity of King
Henry VI and the factional conflicts which this engendered provided the
basis for this collapse.
The core issues were those of the English polity and these were played
out in central politics and in short and decisive military campaigns unlike
the warfare in the other parts of the isles. A special significance may have
been accorded to the north as a region with strong traditions of military

lordship. As in the 1400s these gave northern magnates like the Nevilles
and Percies a disproportionate influence on events. Wales fitted into a
similar pattern. Rather than issues of antagonism towards English lord-
ship, the civil conflicts demonstrated the integration of Wales into the
political patterns of England. Welshmen participated in the warfare and
politics in the service of their lords, reflecting the continuing strength of
structures of military service in march and principality. By comparison
the repeated crises of the 1450s emphasised the distance between Ireland
and the other lands of the English crown. The role of the Irish lordship
in these conflicts was limited. It served as a refuge and base for Richard
duke of York, the leading opponent of Henry VI’s regime, in 1450 and
1459–60. York’s support from the English of Ireland stemmed from his
position as the heir of the Mortimer line, and in 1459 the English gov-
ernment proved unable to exercise authority in the lordship to remove
him. The limited internal fighting which related to the English conflict
was in reality part of the long running private warfare between the Butlers
and the Fitzgeralds of Desmond. The effect of the crises was further to
entrench the control of these great English magnates over the govern-
ment of the lordship. Finally, Scotland’s role in the 1450s was as a hostile,
neighbouring realm. The Scottish king, James II, sought to exploit internal
conflict by diplomacy and war, launching a series of attacks on the border
to take advantage of political divisions.1
The four lands of the British Isles operated by their own rules. These
seemed to indicate differences in the way matters of internal political life
meshed with wider political frameworks either across the archipelago or
at a wider European level. However, this in itself is significant. In terms
of political relationships across the British Isles, these decades from the
1410s to the 1450s should not be ignored. They provide clear evidence
of the ways in which the apparent trends in government, aristocracy and
settlement which, before 1300, seemed to be bringing these lands into a
closer relationship had stalled or been reversed in the century and a half
which followed. However, the apparent absence of strong, shared features
across the isles does not mean a lack of defined characteristics within
more limited contexts. Just as the royal campaigns and rebellions before
· 252 ·
FOUR LANDS: THE EARLY FIFTEENTH CENTURY
1413 had brought no lasting change to the status quo across the British
Isles, so the years that followed reflect the underlying stability of the
conditions within and between the different lands. If these conditions
ultimately rested on the divergent development of multiple polities in the
British Isles then this may be regarded as the legacy of the longer period
we have been examining.
Lieges and Aliens: Identities in the British Isles (1415–1460)

Above all, the first half of the fifteenth century provides ample evidence
of the ways in which expressions and definitions of national identity had
hardened since the 1280s. As we have seen, classifications by race and
country in the British Isles were already well established by that point.
However, the conquest and settlement of Wales, the growing sense of
crisis felt by the English of Ireland in their relationship with the Irish and
the permanent state of war between the Scottish and English realms
during the century after 1280 all heightened the significance attached to
perceived national and ethnic characteristics and distinctions. By the early
fifteenth century such ideas were a fundamental element in the politics of
the archipelago. As throughout the medieval period, it was England
which generated the clearest examples of these processes at work in the
production of an increasingly defined and exclusive sense of nation.
While these developments had major implications for the other peoples
of the isles, the idea of an English nation continued to develop most
obviously in relation to France. The increased employment of English in
legal and literary contexts from 1400 was regarded in England as a con-
scious reduction of the status which had been accorded to the French
language in the preceding centuries. Similarly, statements about English
political interests and attitudes occurred most readily in relation to the war
waged by Henry V and Henry VI on the Continent. These campaigns
were different to earlier Anglo-French conflicts, as were the responses to
them in England. The wars did not centre on the rights of English kings
as dukes of Aquitaine. Instead they were wars of conquest which aimed,
first, at the ‘recovery’ of Normandy and, from 1420, at securing the
French throne. Rather than a revival of Edward III’s claims, this goal
derived from an alliance with one faction in an ongoing civil war within
France. The proximity and shared history of Normandy and England and
the policy of granting lands in the duchy to English nobles and colonists
made this part of the war more comparable to royal campaigns in Wales,
Ireland and Scotland which sought to create English communities as the
basis of royal authority. However, as in those lands, the process of dis-
inheritance and settlement merely strengthened attitudes on both sides.
· 253 ·
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Against a realm as large and rich as France, it was a policy doomed to

ultimate failure which would create a sense of bitterness shared by dis-
placed colonists and their compatriots and directed against royal officials.
Alongside increased invective hurled at the French enemy, the attempt by
the Lancastrian regime to create a dual Anglo-French monarchy also
prompted statements which suggest an increased insularity of identity
within the English polity. These related to attitudes towards the war
itself. Though the victory of Henry V at Agincourt was celebrated widely

in verse and prose and there was a significant group of soldiers and settlers
committed to the war, support for the conflict was patchy and variable.
The idea of their king also reigning as ruler of France created anxieties
about the rights and laws of England comparable with the fears of the
Scottish community in 1290. It has also been observed that, as in the
1370s, aristocratic participation in the war declined rapidly and com-
plaints about its costs and chances of success were expressed by the
Commons even in the reign of Henry V.2
However, the criticisms made by the Commons and in particular by
the urban and mercantile elite within it were also driven by the sense that
the war was not in the interests of ‘oure England’. The fullest expression
of what these interests might be is provided in a tract entitled The Libelle
of Englyshe Polycye which was presented to councillors of Henry VI in
about 1437. The work can be read as a sophisticated contribution to a
debate about England’s political and military interests as its enemies gained
ground in the war. The defence of Normandy is hardly mentioned. Instead
the author advocated directing resources to the safeguarding of Calais
and the narrow seas. This would secure England’s trade and wealth and
harm those of her enemies, most immediately the Flemings rather than
the French. By rejecting continental warfare in favour of a maritime and
mercantile policy, the Libelle was the forerunner of much later debate. Its
novel argument can be linked to the precociously integrated character of
England and to a sense of Englishness which stressed a more insular and
geographically focused idea of the polity and, by implication, the nation.3
The author of the Libelle was also aware of concerns about the position
of England within the British Isles. His strategic view extended to Wales
and Ireland. It was argued that Ireland was in danger of being lost to the
‘wylde Yrishe’, and the writer warned that if that happened then it would
be ‘farewell Wales’ and England itself would be threatened by an alliance
between the Irish, the Welsh and foreign enemies named as Scots,
Spaniards and Bretons, whose ships had recently raided through the Irish
Sea. The Libelle instead quoted a source which argued that the ‘fynall
conquest’ of Ireland could be achieved in three or four years. The costs
of this were said to be equivalent to one campaign in France and would
· 254 ·
bring both wealth and safety to England. Like the concern for the protec-
tion of the nation’s trade, the idea that the security of England could be
threatened by the challenges to royal authority in Wales and Ireland
would become a staple of English strategic thought in coming centuries.
Its genesis here was a product of the crises of the 1400s when a prince in
Wales had sought Scottish and Irish aid and had secured the support of
a French expedition and English rebels.4
Memories of this period of threat were probably a potent influence in

shaping English attitudes during the early fifteenth century. The legisla-
tion passed by the English parliament in the 1400s aimed at reviving and
strengthening the legal rights of the English population relative to other
peoples while at the same time arguing that England’s revenues should not
be required for the defence of the other lands of the crown. Reluctance
to fund royal wars beyond England had been a source of communal
grievance since the thirteenth century, but from the 1400s there is evidence
that such complaints related to a more restrictive idea of Englishness.
This had implications for the English inhabitants of other parts of the
isles. The statute of 1401 which curtailed the rights of the Welsh to land
and office was re-issued three times in the 1430s and 1440s. While sup-
ported by many English in Wales, the labelling of all Englishmen who
were married to, or descended from, a Welsh woman as Welsh created
problems of nationality for a large group.5
Englishness was being subjected to greater scrutiny and qualification.
There were longstanding differences between southern and midland
England and the country north of the Trent or Humber based on geo-
graphy and exacerbated by the wider effects of the Scottish war. These did
not go beyond a degree of suspicion or pride based on regional identi-
fication. The Northumbrian, John Hardyng, related the achievements of
his noble commanders in war against the Scottish enemy, stressing the
lack of help from outside ‘his countre men’ in the north-east. His state-
ment that the ‘northe parte bee your trewe legemen’ and his hostility to
the Scots leaves no doubt about his sense of loyalties. However, the claim
was made in an appeal to the king to restore the Percy earl of North-
umberland and inevitably raised memories about another aspect of the
1400s, when lords, prelates and people from Yorkshire and the north-east
rose in revolt. While there was no active antagonism from southerners to
their northern compatriots in the period up to 1450, the rash of pro-
paganda and horror stories about ‘the misruled and outraged people in
the north parts’ which accompanied the advance of the Lancastrian army
from Yorkshire towards London in 1461 suggested that perceptions of
the northerners as robbers hungry for southern lands and goods lurked
just below the surface.6
· 255 ·
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However, issues of identity were more serious in Ireland. The Libelle

needed to stress to its English readers that ‘Yrichemen have cause lyke to
oures’ and should be as ‘one comonte’ with the English. The Irish referred
to here saw themselves as English, and, in attempting to proclaim this
common cause, the Libelle’s author may have been swimming against the
tide amongst the inhabitants of England. A sense of difference between
the English of England and those of Ireland had been growing since the
early fourteenth century. The legislation of the 1366 parliament at Kilkenny

forbidding the insults ‘English hobbe’ and ‘Irish dog’ indicated the tend-
ency to refer to Englishmen born in the lordship as Irish. Up to the end
of the century, however, the English born in Ireland could access the
society of England without major difficulties. In the early fifteenth century
the gulf widened considerably as a result of a series of new laws. These
were partly a renewed effort to maintain the English population of Ireland,
which, since the first plague, had declined through emigration to England.
The statutes may also reflect a growing perception of these migrants as
foreigners. A law of 1428 prevented these ‘Irish’ from holding civic office
and from entering university or receiving legal training. In 1440 the
Anglo-Irish were included, along with Flemings, Scots and Gascons, in a
tax on aliens. Though vehement protests led to them being exempted
from a second tax in 1442, their classification along with the king’s
enemies and French-speaking subjects as foreign inhabitants of England
was a clear statement of the exclusion of these avowedly English subjects
of the crown from the increasingly confined definitions of the nation
being expressed by some in the mid-century.7
As demonstrated in earlier chapters, through the previous century the
English inhabitants of Ireland had been skilled in proclaiming their loy-
alty as English subjects of the crown whilst adapting to the very different
political environment in which they operated. They would hardly accept
the implied loss of status from these statutes passed in England without
a reaction. After the aliens’ tax a petition was sent to the king claiming
that ‘Englishmen born in Ireland’ were entitled to all rights in England
possessed by its inhabitants. There are, however, indications of a counter
tendency which sought to stress the rights of the Anglo-Irish as a distinct
community with their own customs and privileges. Though these have
sometimes been elevated into an anachronistic ‘Home-rule’ movement in
the fifteenth century, from at least the 1340s there was a sense that, as
lords of Ireland, the kings of England should respond to the petitions of
their liegemen in the Irish parliament. The status of that parliament was
the focal point of debates surrounding the relationship between English
realm and Irish lordship. The most notable display of this occurred in
1460 when the parliament at Drogheda declared that
· 256 ·
the land of Ireland is . . . corporate of itself by the ancient laws and customs used
in the same, freed of the burden of any special law of the realm of England
save only such laws as . . . had been in great council or parliament . . . affirmed
and proclaimed.
This parliament was held by Richard duke of York following his expul-
sion as a rebel from England and can be read as a device to cement his
authority in Ireland. However, the statute was also a reflection of the

attitudes of York’s allies amongst the English of the lordship and resent-
ment at the application of legislation from Westminster to Ireland.
Similar motives lay behind efforts to remove Anglo-Irish religious orders
from subordination to English brethren, and continued complaints that
royal offices were being given to Englishmen with no stake in Ireland
who had secured their posts by ‘sinister’ means at the king’s court in
England. Such concerns are evidence of a perception amongst the English
of Ireland that they were a distinct community operating under their own
rules and rights. However, as the emphasis placed on the primacy of
parliamentary consent for law in 1460 confirms, they were also a group
which retained strong English characteristics in their view of politics and
government. The apparent contradictions of this position, of being Irish
to the English and English in an Irish context, had become more apparent
since the late thirteenth century. Long before 1460 this had come to define
the political class of the lordship of Ireland as part of a wider ethnic group
but at the same time identified by their separation from England, both
geographically and in terms of administrative environment.8
The sense of not being Irish remained the central element of English
identity in the lordship. As we have seen, however, this could be defined
by a range of signifiers of which ethnic origin was only one. The fre-
quency of intermarriage between English and Irish lineages in some parts
of Ireland made distinction by race problematic, as did the number of
Irish obtaining access to English law, which continued to grow in the
early fifteenth century. Complaints against the adoption of Irish fashions
and sports by English lieges, against the use of methods of lordship and
retaining in English communities, and about the disobedience of English
‘rebels’ to royal officials were evidence of continued anxiety about the
lure of Irish practices after 1400. It may be that there was a growing
desire to sharpen the distinction between those areas where English
customs and practices continued to prevail and lands where they did not,
whether their inhabitants were Irish or English. Such a distinction may
lie behind the increasingly narrow definitions of the land of peace made
from the 1430s. In 1435 an area ‘scarcely thirty miles in length and twenty
in breadth’ was said to be ‘out of subjection of . . . enemies and rebels’,
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where the king’s orders were obeyed and a man could ride safely. This
district contained ‘the nether parts’ of counties Dublin, Meath, Louth
and Kildare and is remarkably similar to the area which, at the end of the
century, would be marked out as the Pale. This ‘small corner’ defended
by a fence designed to hinder cattle raiding would become synonymous
with the retreat of English authority and identity in Ireland. However,
such a connection between English social and administrative models and the
district between Dublin and Dundalk excluded the English inhabitants

of south and west Leinster, Munster and elsewhere. While distinctions
between the two nations in Ireland remained important, how the bound-
ary was drawn and how this boundary related to the political structures
of the whole island was not a simple matter.9
In Wales the patterns of the previous century seem to have persisted
in terms of relations between the English and native populations. The legacy
of the Glyn DWr rebellion fuelled antipathy and mistrust. The English
inhabitants of Wales had been targets of attack, and the rural English
population, already decreased by plague and emigration to England, fell
further. As in Ireland, the conditions which had brought major English
colonisation of Wales in the 1280s and 1290s had long been reversed. In
the absence of English tenants willing to take up new lands and in the
face of falling revenues, the officials of the crown and marcher lords
found themselves forced to restore the lands taken from Glyn DWr’s sup-
porters to their families. Mistrust of the Welsh remained axiomatic. The
Libelle of Englyshe Polycye warned its readers to ‘Beware of Walys’ and
guard against a new rebellion there. The re-issuing of the 1401 statute
was designed to keep the Welsh in a subordinate position. As before
1400, the source of much of this antagonism was the English burgess
population in Wales. It was their complaints about Welshmen securing
lands in the boroughs or holding office in breach of these laws which
prompted the enforcement of the legislation. The writings of Welsh
poets give some sense that these feelings were reciprocated. Hatred
sparked by the treatment of Welsh in the boroughs and outpourings of
bile against the English ‘whoresons of Hengest and Horsa’ were accom-
panied by a continued search for a redeemer of the Welsh people and
lingering affection for Owain Glyn DWr. However, his attempt to shake
off English rule would not be repeated. Feuds lingered in Wales from
enmities which had started during the rebellion, and accusations were
levelled in 1427 and 1443 against Welsh clerics suspected of inciting
revolt. These provide evidence of ill-feeling and suspicion, not of actual
moves towards large-scale defiance. Instead, as in much of the fourteenth
century, beneath the official and artistic language there was a slow
breaching of the barriers to status and authority placed on the Welsh.
· 258 ·
Much of this related to economic and administrative needs. In a depressed

environment, Welsh were able to take up vacant plots in boroughs or
purchase lands held by English law, subverting restrictions placed on
them and leading to the decline of native forms of landholding and
customary payments. The result of this was to reduce distinctions
between the races within the landowning class and, even in the boroughs,
to renew the intrusion of men of Welsh descent into these English com-
munities. Yet, while laws might be bypassed and the attempt to recover
lost liberties might be reduced to poetic language, there remained little
sense in which the Welsh did not see themselves, and were not regarded
by the English, as a people of distinct language and outlook.10
The qualifications and contradictions which need to be made when
discussing Wales and Ireland do not apply to Scotland. For The Libelle of
Englyshe Polycye the Scots were simply to be numbered amongst the
external enemies of the English, and in the 1450s the northern English
chronicler, John Hardyng, warned his readers that ‘the Scottes wyll ay do
you the harme they may’. This was the legacy of English royal efforts
to subject Scotland since the 1290s. The failure of those efforts, largely
apparent by the 1370s, confirmed a sovereign Scottish realm and a polity
defined, in part, by its successful rejection of English lordship. Direct
warfare between the two realms became more sporadic in the early
fifteenth century, but this period illustrated Scotland’s separation from
the political structures of the English realm even more clearly. Perhaps
the best way of indicating this separation is the consideration of Scotland’s
role in the Anglo-French conflict from 1415 to 1453. As in the four-
teenth century, Scots overwhelmingly participated in this warfare as the
allies of the French. However, their involvement was not in campaigns
on the Anglo-Scottish marches but on the Continent. Between 1419 and
1429 thousands of Scots fought on behalf of Charles VII of France,
forming an ‘army of Scotland’ which campaigned against the English
along the Loire and in the Ile de France. Many Scots continued to fight
in smaller companies through the 1430s and 1440s and provided the
royal bodyguard for Charles and his successors. Some of the captains of
these bands acquired lands and titles in France. Along with clerics, like
John Kirkmichael the bishop of Orléans during the English siege of
1428–9, and merchants, these soldiers were using the established Franco-
Scottish connection to build their careers. However, their activities pro-
vided a fresh dimension to the connection, and during the 1420s one
French diplomat gave Franco-Scottish friendship a pedigree stretching
back to the reign of Charlemagne. By comparison with the ties of affinity
felt by many Scots to France, links to England were regarded as expedients
and subject to deep suspicion. Returning Scots and the wider population
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saw in the French alliance a way of defining Scotland’s separation from

her insular neighbours. The chronicler, Walter Bower, gave considerable
coverage to the efforts of the Scots in France in his overtly nationalistic
work, Scotichronicon, written in the 1440s. His account of the victory
won by the Scottish army over the English at Baugé in 1421 concluded
with the pope’s comment on hearing this news that ‘truly the Scots are
an antidote to the English’.11
Bower’s view of Scotland was defined less by the antagonism to

England, which he certainly expressed, than by its traditions as a realm
ruled by its own line of kings. In tracing the deeds of these rulers Bower
built on Scottish historiography going back to at least the thirteenth
century which placed monarchy at the heart of Scottish identity. However,
his narrative of more recent events suggested new qualities to his sense
of Scottishness. The last books of Scotichronicon contained accounts of
conflict between the royal government and the lords of the Isles which
expressed hostility to the Islesmen and to Scottish Gaels in general. The
followers of the lord of the Isles were described as ‘locusts’ who reduce
the land to waste, and their defeat by King James I in 1429 was clearly
supported by Bower. In truth, his support was part of the chronicler’s
wider approval of James’s efforts to assert royal authority after his return
from English captivity in 1424. However, these efforts had a special
significance for the Highlands and Isles, which were identified as repre-
senting particular problems of government. A passage in Scotichronicon
reflected this. It argued that as a nation’s law rested on the ‘unanimous
will’ of its people, difficulties were caused by a ‘mixed nation of different
blood’, for example ‘composed of Scots and English or of civilised or
wild Scots’. We have seen that this distinction between the Scots of the
lowlands and their ‘compatriots beyond the Mountains’, as Bower described
them, stretched back to the 1360s, but Bower now seemed to identify it
as a flaw in the unity of the realm. A growing intolerance towards Gaelic
society and custom from both the royal government and lowland Scottish
writers may have been a feature of the fifteenth century. James I was
quoted as regarding his first intervention in the Highlands as a civilising
mission and in the 1440s the lord of the Isles was denigrated as ‘a bard
out of Ireland’ in a poem produced in the north-east lowlands.12
It is clearly possible to find good evidence that in the mid-fifteenth
century writers and legislators took for granted that ethnic identity and
political activity were bound together and that they defined the character
of lands in the British Isles. Renewed or continued distinction and dis-
crimination between peoples and communities suggests the narrowing
and deepening of divisions based on labels of blood, behaviour or
geographical origin. However, it is well to be cautious about rushing to
· 260 ·
conclusions based on literary and legal material. As we have seen, similar,

if less specific, evidence of such distinctions can be found in material from
the thirteenth century which spoke in terms of race and nation. However,
before 1300 the significance of concepts of nation can be set alongside
the clear evidence of the strength of connections between different lands,
especially those relating to aristocratic landholding and royal, primarily
English royal, administration.
Lords and Lieutenants

The Anglo-French aristocratic world of the thirteenth century provided
links of land, family and social contact between different lands. While
Chapter Six above examined the fragmentation and contraction of this
world after 1300, important elements of these earlier contacts remained.
Once again, this did not include the Scottish nobility. The schism
between the aristocracies of the two kingdoms of the British Isles, based
on exclusive political loyalties, remained in place. The extensive landed,
social and family links which had existed before 1306 were never restored.
Apparent exceptions, such as the agreement of Archibald earl of Douglas
to serve Henry V in France in 1421, were rare and tended to be unful-
filled. In this case, Douglas and his family remained attached to the French
alliance and the agreement was probably a device to secure greater
rewards from Charles VII. In 1424 the earl received a French duchy
and led Charles’s army against the English. A generation later the family
gloried in its role as the principal defence of Scotland against the ‘sonnis
of the Saxonis’. The readiness of the Douglas family to deploy the threat
of English support to try to ward off royal pressure in the early 1450s and
their ultimate flight into English exile were evidence of political expedi-
ency not of cross-border identification. Amongst their peers, the ‘in
bryngyng of the Inglismen’ by the Douglases in 1455 confirmed their
treason against both king and realm.13
Instead it is in the different realms under English royal lordship that
continued aristocratic connections persisted. As since the twelfth century,
the leading lords of the Welsh march were the greatest magnates of
England. By the 1440s these included the king’s uncle, Humphrey duke
of Gloucester, and his cousin, Richard duke of York, heir to the Mortimer
lordships in the middle march, as well as the Beauforts, Staffords, Nevilles
and other English earls. More surprisingly, despite the evidence of estrange-
ment between English and Anglo-Irish, the leading English lords in
Ireland were not outsiders to England. The best example of this is pro-
vided by James Butler earl of Ormond. Ormond was the most powerful
lord in English Ireland who had long spells at the head of the royal
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government between 1407 and 1452. In these roles he led the com-
plaints against the identification of his fellow Anglo-Irish as aliens in
England after 1440 and, as this suggests, he viewed himself as part of the
wider English world. Ormond visited the English court and served his
kings in France. His influence in England is suggested by the fact that
he was quoted as the source of the Libelle of Englyshe Polycye’s views
on Ireland. His family’s marriages augmented connections across the
Irish Sea. James’s son inherited extensive English estates and, as earl of
Wiltshire, pursued a career as a courtier of Henry VI.14
However, the Englishness of Ormond related to an Irish context. Earl
James’s goals in visiting England and extending contacts with both the
crown and his peers related to the family interests he had inherited from
his predecessors in the fourteenth century. These interests were not sim-
ply Irish but were focused on a particular region in Munster and south
Leinster. The Butler lordship there was established and maintained by
the active engagement of the earls of Ormond with local English and
Irish through war and politics. The so-called Ordinances of the White
Earl (as James was known) showed a lord expressing his authority via
private statutes in Tipperary which guaranteed the peace of his English
tenantry and maintained his military retinue by payment of a subsidy.
The Ordinances mark a highly developed approach to lordship which still
remained personal in nature. The absence of James’s son in England in
the 1450s left these roles to junior branches of the Butler family and,
after 1460, led to the eclipse of the family by the FitzGeralds. The FitzGerald
earls of Desmond and Kildare possessed much more limited interests
across the Irish Sea but it was these families, and especially that of
Kildare, which would dominate the island in the later fifteenth century.
The ascendancy of these magnates extended not just to English liegemen
but, on an increasing scale, to Irish dynasties. The alliances, marital and
political, formed by James earl of Ormond included the earls of Desmond,
the Burkes and O’Neill of Tir Eoghain. Though the connections had to
be maintained by displays of military force, they, and the similar network
established from the 1470s by Earl Gerald of Kildare, provided the
means by which Ireland was managed in the fifteenth century by its most
effective lieutenants. It was a style of lordship which prioritised activity in
Ireland over participation in a purely English world on both sides of the
Irish Sea.15
The importance of aristocratic structures which straddled areas of
apparently varied ethnic or cultural identity remained a feature of many
parts of the British Isles. This style of lordship was not confined to figures
of English paternal descent. The O’Neills of Clann Aodh Buidhe dom-
inated the English-settled heartlands of the old earldom of Ulster in
· 262 ·
south Down and Armagh, playing off and protecting lesser nobles of
English ancestry like the Savages and Whites. On a much bigger scale
than Clann Aodh Buidhe, the lords of the Isles in the fifteenth century
present a parallel with the Anglo-Irish earls. The power and autonomy of
the lords and their satellites in the Hebrides and, though often semi-
detached from their kin, via the activities of Clann Iain Mór in Ulster, is
obvious. These regions lay beyond the effective reach of either royal gov-
ernment in the British Isles in the fifteenth century. However, the acqui-
sition of the earldom of Ross in 1436, recovered by Alexander of the Isles
after his humiliation at the hands of James I, gave the family a role in
north-east Scotland. From 1439 Alexander was justiciar north of Forth
and was praised by the burgesses of Aberdeen for his obedience to the
king. He and his son remained ready to deploy their military power in
pursuit of private ends but, in this and their broader role, they seem the
equivalent to the earls of Ormond and Kildare in Ireland. Like them
Alexander’s son, John, received the lavish praise of Irish bards, but this
should not lead them to be identified as purely ‘Gaelic’ in outlook or
methods. As through the later fourteenth century, in the 1450s the
lord of the Isles was an exceptional member of the group of magnates
whose power rested on the utilisation of all possible routes to widely-
based lordship.16
While the environment in Wales was very different, the apparent
dominance of the Welsh march by English lords and lordship is also mis-
leading. The fifteenth century witnessed the extension of trends from the
previous century in both march and principality which gave leading roles
to minor nobles of Welsh descent. After the brief period of active involve-
ment in their Welsh estates demanded in response to the attacks of Glyn
DWr, the holders of the main lordships in the march reverted to the
absentee roles adopted by their forebears for much of the fourteenth
century. For the performance of their judicial and financial powers they
relied on a class of officials drawn from the native Welsh squirearchy, like
Gruffydd ap Nicholas of Dinefwr. Gruffydd’s family had served the house
of Lancaster in the lordship of Kidwelly since the 1360s. By the 1440s
Gruffydd had acquired English status and developed a leading role
through parts of south-west Wales, using his official roles for the dukes
of Gloucester and York as the basis of his influence. Another route
was opened for Welsh squires by the renewal of war in France, and a
Welshman, Matthew Gogh, was a leading captain there up to his death
in battle in 1450. Such opportunities marked the revitalisation of earlier
trends but also opened greater prospects for some Welsh lineages which
took them well beyond careers as soldiers or officials. William Herbert
of Raglan inherited a power base in south-east Wales and developed this
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by marriage and service, especially to Richard of York. His support for

York’s son, Edward IV, in the latter’s seizure of the throne in 1461 led
to his promotion to the earldom of Pembroke with the status of a great
lord and landowner in his own right. Herbert was not the first Welsh earl.
The rise of the Tudors, which would have such major and unexpected
consequences, came through very different means. Owain Tudor’s marriage
to Henry VI’s widowed mother made his sons, Edmund and Jasper,
members of the extended royal family. In 1453 the king rewarded his
half-brothers with the earldoms of Richmond and Pembroke. Though it
was the product of love not politics, the match between Owain and
Queen Catherine depended on the access of a Welsh squire, whose father
had supported Glyn DWr, to the English court. The rise of the Tudors is
exceptional evidence of the assimilation of leading Welsh families into
English aristocratic society. At the same time, while magnates like Jasper
Tudor and his rival William Herbert were given English status and were
integrated into English elites, for their followers in Wales they retained
the character of Welshmen. Both were the recipients of poetry proclaim-
ing their Welshness and, though Tudor’s exploitation of this was prag-
matic, the emergence of these figures and the wider significance of Welsh
lords indicate the distinct, if interconnected, character of lordship in
fifteenth-century Wales. Like the English nobility, the fate and fortunes
of Welsh lords like Herbert, Tudor and Gruffydd ap Nicholas depended
on their choices in the short, sharp conflicts which dominated politics
in England, but the emergence of these figures illustrates both the blurr-
ing of boundaries based on race and legal status amongst the elite and
their continued significance in the isles.17
In the late thirteenth century the English king’s government of his
different dominions had provided another means by which the lands
of the British Isles had been held together. The movement of officials
between the administrations of England, Wales, Ireland, Scotland and
Gascony had fostered links based on individual careers and the aims and
mechanisms of government. The scrutiny of financial accounts from
Wales, Ireland and Aquitaine at the English exchequer in the 1290s and
the role of the English parliament in hearing disputes from, and enacting
legislation for, other dominions of the king suggest a developing sense of
administrative hierarchy. Though moves towards any unitary system did
not really survive the reign of Edward I, the dependence of the king’s
Irish and Welsh officials on the will of the king and his ministers in
England remained a staple of government in these lands in the fifteenth
century.
In Ireland, any assertion of rights to self-government was controver-
sial. The declaration by the Irish parliament in 1460 that it alone had the
· 264 ·
authority to pass legislation for the lordship was never wholly accepted
in Westminster and efforts to alter the terms on which the royal justiciar
or lieutenant held office were also challenged. In 1428 it was suggested,
on the earl of Ormond’s behalf, that the lieutenant should retain office
whilst he performed his duties effectively to prevent malicious charges
being taken to the English council and to avoid instability in Ireland.
However, the petition provoked counter-accusations that Ormond sought
to usurp the king’s rights. The exchange was part of a feud over the royal
government in Ireland which pitted Ormond against an influential group
led by John Lord Talbot. In itself this dispute was revealing. Talbot held
the lordship of Wexford but his family had effectively been absentees
from Ireland since the previous century. His style and activities recall
earlier justiciars like Ralph Ufford and Anthony Lucy. Talbot was backed
by his brother, the archbishop of Dublin, and by a group of officials sent
from England. The result was not a dispute over Ireland’s constitutional
status but over possession of the lieutenancy. This, in itself, marked a
change from the late fourteenth century, when magnates like Ormond’s
father, let alone absentees, had been unwilling to take on an office which
took them away from their own lordships and left them out of pocket.
Though the financial rewards had not improved, the criticisms of Ormond
suggested that by the 1420s the lieutenancy was regarded as a route to
greater power across the lordship via influence over justice and patronage
and during the second half of the century it was treated in these terms
by a succession of magnates. However, both Ormond and Talbot were
united in their support for the dispatch of a prestigious figure from
Ireland. In 1424 Edmund Mortimer earl of March briefly took up the
role played by his father and grandfather and in 1449 Richard duke of
York (Mortimer’s nephew) arrived as lieutenant. Though these periods
of vice-regal lieutenancy were both curtailed, March’s by his death and
York’s by English politics, they demonstrate the continued sense that
the solution to the problems of royal government remained that of the
previous century, the dispatch of a great English figure with claims to
wide Irish lands backed by money and manpower from England.18
Surprisingly, in terms of the adoption of Anglicised elements of govern-
ment, the most dramatic developments in the fifteenth century came in
Scotland. Though the administrative model for Scottish royal govern-
ment had been provided by the Anglo-Norman realm, it had always run
in accordance with its own traditions and needs. Since the 1370s, and
arguably the 1330s, these had rested on the limited reach and ambition
of royal government and the dominance of regional magnates with
wide judicial and administrative powers as both private lords and semi-
permanent royal officials. From the 1420s these patterns had changed with
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the increasing assertion of the rights possessed by the crown by a series

of young kings. The process began in 1424 with the release of James I
from English custody. James’s personal rule of thirteen years witnessed
a series of confrontations with his greatest subjects which involved the
full or partial disinheritance of established families. The principal aristo-
cratic beneficiaries of the upheavals of the fourteenth century, the Albany
Stewarts, the Black Douglases, the Dunbar earls of March and the lords
of the Isles, all experienced punishment, forfeiture, exile or execution

between 1424 and 1460. James’s use of treason law and his wider
approach to government reflected his English upbringing. In 1426 a
statute stated that the only law of Scotland should be that of the king.
The act sought to undermine the use of customary and regional legal
methods which had been a staple of Scottish justice and chimed with
Bower’s statement about the need for a realm to have a single law if it
was not to fragment. After a gap since the 1360s, James also reverted to
seeking grants of taxation from his subjects as the basis of his income
as king. Like the previous king to do this, David II, James justified his
call for contributions on the need to pay his ransom. Regular requests
for taxation increased parliament’s significance in royal government and
politics and this may explain the attempt to add shire representation to
the body after the English model. As had occurred in most recent English
reigns, parliament also became an arena for criticism and mistrust of the
king to find expression. Both inside and outside parliament, James I’s
reign, which ended with his murder by an aristocratic faction, provided
the pattern for the rest of the century, with periods of demanding
personal monarchy, often involving confrontations with other groups in
the realm, interrupted by periods of royal minority. The result was in no
sense a replication of the English kingdom but created a stronger political
focus to a realm which remained relatively diverse and regionalised.
Ironically the adoption of English models was part of a tightening of
Scottish royal authority which generated greater claims to sovereignty
and authority over the entire realm, emphasising the division of the island
of Britain between two sovereign states.19
Changes in the realities of insular politics between the high point of
Edward I’s reign in the 1290s and the political and military crises of the
1450s appear most clearly in the terms offered by those writing about the
nature of authority across the British Isles. The triumphalist writings of
Langtoft, the Gough Map and Edward I’s claims in the letters to Pope
Boniface spoke of the near prospect, even the reality, of a single insular
polity. Claims to English royal sovereignty and primacy did not disappear.
Even pursuit of royal rights over Scotland, which had not been pressed
with any persistence for a century, were maintained and articulated.
· 266 ·
In 1456 letters sent on behalf of Henry VI to James II of Scotland

stated that
It is true and well known that the supreme right and rule of the lordship of
the realm of Scotland pertains by right to the king of England, as being the
monarch of the whole of Britain, and the king of Scots as (his) vassal . . . owes
homage (to him).
The Scottish king was then chastised for his rebellion. The next year
Henry was presented with a history by John Hardyng which sought to
prove the rights of English kings over Scotland. Drawing on experience
as an English spy and soldier in Scotland, Hardyng also outlined the way
in which the northern realm could be conquered, appending maps to
assist any aspiring generals. Such plans can be set alongside the idea,
encouraged by the earl of Ormond in The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye, that
with proper resources Ireland might be brought to a ‘fynall conquest’ in
three to four years. After previous failures of English military resources to
produce lasting political authority in either Ireland or Scotland, figures
like Ormond and Hardyng can hardly have believed their claims. The
experiences of the 1300s and 1330s in Scotland and the 1360s and 1390s
in Ireland showed that the English crown lacked the means to bring these
different polities under their full control. The maintenance of conquest
as a possibility by Ormond and Hardyng reflected the different personal
agendas of the two men rather than real hopes of English conquest.
Similarly, the maintenance of the broader idea of English sovereignty
over the whole archipelago was less about the realisation of their titles
than about the prestige of the English crown and nation.20
Yet by the middle of the fifteenth century the credibility of these pre-
tensions must have diminished. Scottish materials which advanced their
kings’ rights to be ‘lord and leader over broad Britain’ were produced
in response to English claims. They cited the inheritance of Scotland’s
rulers as heirs of St Margaret, whose descent from the West Saxon kings
allowed them to broadcast the status of their dynasty and challenge the
identification of Britain with England. Taken together these statements
represent the continued identification of Britain as a framework for
ideological claims, but the prospects of English royal supremacy being
extended to Scotland had receded to a point when it could be countered
by a rival myth of insular rights. Doubts over the reality of English
authority in the British Isles also emerge, unwittingly, in statements of
insular unity. At the great church council which met at Constance between
1415 and 1418 to heal the divisions of the schism, the English clergy
advanced a claim to be one of the nations into which the council was
divided. Their case was challenged by their French enemies, who argued
· 267 ·
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that England was too small to count as one of the five nations of
Christendom. The English responded that this was untrue as ‘the English
nation’ was also ‘the British nation’, including the whole of the isles and
Gascony. They argued that Wales and Ireland were ‘recognised parts of
the English nation’ and dismissed French claims that Scotland’s bishops
‘are not and have no wish to be in the English nation’ by arguing that
‘they have no way of denying that Scotland is a part of Britain’ and spoke
the same language. Such statements continued to reflect the claims made
by English lawyers and chroniclers since the twelfth century about
the rights of the English crown and church. However, by the fifteenth
century there were problems with the position. The response of the
English clergy had to concede that their king did not enjoy the obedience
of all these lands, though arguing that the same was true of the French
king or the king of Castile in Spain. Finally it was argued that within the
‘English or British nation’ there were five languages (English, Welsh,
Irish, Gascon and Cornish) each of which could stand as separate nations.
The point rather undermined the earlier case about the unity of the
nation and yet it reflected reality. It can be read as an indication that the
effort to present Britain as greater England had failed. In the face of so
much evidence, much of it produced by the English state, which reflected
and defined differences of race, allegiance and behaviour, the idea of
the islands embodying a single administrative, ecclesiastical or ethnic
entity was untenable. Though claims of lordship and plans of conquest
would persist, they had ceased to reflect the circumstances in these
different lands.21
Notes
1. R.L. Storey, The End of the House of Lancaster (London, 1967); A.J. Pollard,
The Wars of the Roses (London, 1988); A.J. Pollard (ed.), The Wars of the
Roses (London, 1995); R.A. Griffiths, ‘Wales and the Marches’, in S.B.
Chrimes, C.D. Ross and R.A. Griffiths (eds), Fifteenth Century England,
2nd edn (Stroud, 1995), 145–72; A.J. Pollard, North-Eastern England in
the Wars of the Roses (Oxford, 1990); C. Carpenter, The Wars of the Roses:
Politics and the Constitution in England (Cambridge, 1997); R.A. Griffiths,
The Reign of King Henry VI, 2nd edn (Stroud, 1998), 733–4, 772–3, 810–
14, 854–7; Cosgrove, Late Medieval Ireland, 1370–1541, 47–71; A. Cosgrove,
‘Anglo-Ireland and the Yorkist Cause, 1447–60’, NHI, ii, 557–68.
2. D. Pearsall, ‘The Idea of Englishness in the Fifteenth Century’, in H.
Cooney (ed.), Nation, Court and Culture: New Essays on Fifteenth-Century
English Poetry (Dublin, 2001), 15–27; Allmand, Lancastrian Normandy,
211–40.
3. The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye: A Poem on the Use of Sea-Power, ed. G. Warner
(Oxford, 1926); G. Holmes, ‘The Libel of English Policy’, EHR, 76 (1961),
· 268 ·
193–216; J. Scattergood, ‘The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye: The Nation and its
Place’, in Cooney (ed.), Nation, Court and Culture, 28–49.
4. The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye, 34–41. Interestingly, Calais and Ireland had
been identified as the greatest regular drains on royal income in the financial
report of the treasurer made in 1433 (this did not include the defence of
other French lands) (Griffiths, Henry VI, 107–11).
5. G. Williams, Renewal and Reformation: Wales c.1415–1642 (Oxford, 1987),
11–13.
6. Pollard, North-Eastern England, 16–26; The Chronicle of John Hardyng, ed.

H. Ellis (London, 1802), 380–2.
7. Cosgrove, Late Medieval Ireland, 33 –6; A. Cosgrove, ‘England and Ireland,
1399–1447’, NHI, ii, 525–32; A. Cosgrove, ‘The Emergence of the Pale,
1399–1447’, NHI, ii, 533–56, 548–9.
8. A. Cosgrove, ‘Parliament and the Anglo-Irish Community: The Declaration
of 1460’, Historical Studies, XIV (Belfast, 1983), 25–41; Ellis, Ireland in the
Age of the Tudors, 59–63.
9. Lydon, Lordship of Ireland, 199–201; Cosgrove, Late Medieval Ireland,
44–6; Cosgrove, ‘Emergence of the Pale’, 532–41.
10. Williams, Renewal and Reformation, 20–30, 93–108; Griffiths, ‘Wales and
the Marches’, 145–72.
11. Hardyng’s Chronicle, 410; Brown, Black Douglases, 210–26; Macdougall,
Antidote to the English, 52–96; Scotichronicon, ed. Watt, viii, 119–21;
K. Daly, ‘The Vraie Cronique d’Escoce and Franco-Scottish Diplomacy:
An Historical Work by John Ireland?’, Nottingham Medieval Studies, xxxv
(1991), 106–29, 107.
12. Scotichronicon, ed. Watt, ii, 423–5; viii, 75–6, 267; M. Brown, James I
(Edinburgh, 1994); F. Riddy and P. Bawcutt (eds), Longer Scottish Poems, i,
1375–1650 (Edinburgh, 1987), 76.
13. Brown, Black Douglases, 219–20, 307; Riddy and Bawcutt (eds), Longer
Scottish Poems, i, 68.
14. Williams, Renewal and Reformation, 40–4; Ellis, Ireland in the Age of the
Tudors, 51–69; E. Matthew, ‘Henry V and the Proposal for an Irish Crusade’,
in Smith (ed.), Ireland and the English World, 161–75; E. Matthew, ‘James
Butler, Fourth Earl of Ormond’, in H.G.C. Matthew and B. Harrison (eds),
New Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004).
15. C.A. Empey and K. Simms, ‘The Ordinances of the White Earl and the
Problem of Coign in the Later Middle Ages’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish
Academy, 75 (1975), C, 161–87.
16. D.B. Quinn, ‘“Irish” Ireland and “English” Ireland’, NHI, ii, 619–37, 622;
Grant, ‘Scotland’s “Celtic Fringe”’; Acts of the Lords of the Isles, xxxi–xxxv,
lxiv–lxxi; S.G. Ellis, ‘The Collapse of the Gaelic World, 1450–1650’, IHS,
31 (1998–9), 449–69; Kingston, Ulster and the Isles in the Fifteenth Century.
17. Williams, Renewal and Reformation, 170–9, 186–96, R.A. Griffiths,
‘Gruffydd ap Nicholas and the Rise of the House of Dinefwr’, in R.A.
Griffiths (ed.), King and Country: England and Wales in the Fifteenth
Century (London, 1991), 187–200; idem, ‘Gruffydd ap Nicholas and the
Fall of the House of Lancaster’, ibid, 201–20.
· 269 ·
DISUNITED KINGDOMS
18. M.C. Griffith, ‘The Talbot–Ormond Struggle for Control of the Anglo-Irish
Government, 1414–47’, IHS, 2 (1940–1), 376–97; Griffiths, Henry VI,
162–7, 411–23; P.A. Johnson, Richard Duke of York, 1411–1460 (Oxford,
1988), 51–77.
19. M. Brown, James I (Edinburgh, 1994), 201–8; C. McGladdery, James II
(Edinburgh, 1990).
20. Official Correspondence of Thomas Beckynton, Rolls Series, 2 vols (London,
1872), ii, 141–2; Boardman, ‘Late Medieval Scotland and the Matter of
Britain’; The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye, 34–41.

21. Crowder (ed.), Unity, Heresy, and Reform, 1378–1460, 111–26; J.P. Genet,
‘English Nationalism: Thomas Polton at the Council of Constance’,
Nottingham Medieval Studies, 28 (1984), 60–78.
· 270 ·
CONCLUSIONS: NATIONS AND UNIONS
I n the British Isles, the century and a half from 1300 is not easily
characterised in terms of a single set of processes. After an era of con-
quest and expansion, the later Middle Ages was a period whose defining
features were divergence and difference between the peoples of the archi-
pelago, marking a turning away from common themes to an environment
which stressed the variations between different lands and regions. However,
this shift does not mean that a frame of reference encompassing the
whole of the British Isles has no further significance. There is a direct
relationship between the periods before and after 1300. During the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries the major differences between and within
the realms and lordships of the isles were influenced and altered by the
impact of common developments. The foundation of urban centres and
rural settlement by English-speaking populations, the promotion of
ecclesiastical reform, the extension of the values and personnel of Anglo-
French aristocratic society and the expansion of the authority of royal,
primarily English royal, government reshaped all the political societies
of the British Isles between 1066 and 1300.
What happened after 1300 may be regarded in terms of varied
reactions to these processes. The extension of royal sovereignty and
government strengthened the sense of the isles as a number of defined
units of government and fostered the development of communal bodies
capable of articulating and defending the rights of subjects in relation to
royal demands. Beyond England, the actions of the English crown and
its agents further encouraged appeals to these rights as communities on
the basis of liberties possessed as the inhabitants of distinct lands with
their own laws and customs. The settlement of English communities in
Wales and Ireland led to the formation of mixed populations in which
identification by race and legal status provided the basis by which the
crown dealt with the inhabitants. The maintenance or subversion of these
definitions placed new stress on matters of race and social practice. In
Ireland, Wales, Scotland and the English north, contrasts on the basis of
behaviour were drawn between lands of peace and civility and those
of war and wildness. As in Scotland, such definitions could cut across
pre-existing ideas of ethnicity and the physical distances between the
lands of peace and adjacent borderlands could be small. The proximity
· 271 ·
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and interrelationship of such zones did much to shape regional societies

in the northern and western areas of the archipelago. The increased
importance of identification with race and realm also marked the weaken-
ing of connections between elites, both secular and religious, whose
rights and interests stretched across the archipelago. Most obviously in
Scotland, but also in the other lands, aristocratic and religious identities
were bound up with issues of allegiance to realm and nation to a far
greater extent than had been the case before 1280. Moreover, in lands
where lordship involved questions of war and divided allegiance, the
leading figures increasingly tended to be, not great lords with estates
across several lands, but figures whose leading role was focused on a
single region.
These changes in the character of political societies throughout the
British Isles were also driven by the fundamental shifts in the economic
background which occurred after 1300. Underlying the establishment of
Anglicised government and aristocratic networks in the other parts of the
archipelago was the transformation of economic life. This rested on the
settlement of rural populations and the foundation or resettlement of
urban centres in the Welsh marches and the most fertile regions of both
Ireland and Scotland during the centuries up to 1250. These burgess
and peasant communities provided the basis for royal and aristocratic
administrations and for the extension of English legal and cultural models.
By 1300 this process had reached its limits and, soon afterwards, began
to contract. Contraction was partly due to the limited availability of good
quality land outside England which could support manorial economies.
The colonisation which followed the conquest of Wales was predomin-
antly linked to the establishment of boroughs in the north-west where
good arable land was scarce. Similarly in Thomond and Connacht in
Ireland and in Lochaber in Scotland, Anglicised lordship had extended
beyond the areas capable of supporting manorial economies. The absence
of rural colonisation meant the incorporation of these districts within the
framework of royal or private government rested on shallow roots.
However, the real tipping point in terms of settlement and the struc-
tures which rested upon it came with the series of crises which hit all
the societies of the British Isles between 1310 and 1350. Of these, the
combination of gradual climatic change and the demographic collapse
brought on by the plague had the greatest effects on the political charac-
ter of the isles. Colder, wetter conditions pushed back the limits of arable
cultivation and encouraged the spread of pastoralism in less fertile, wetter
or higher ground. This may have encouraged the departure of English
rural settlers or led them to adapt by the adoption of herding as their
principal economic activity, making them closer to the non-English
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NATIONS AND UNIONS
inhabitants of these lands. The effects of the plague vastly exacerbated

these effects. While mortality amongst more densely settled urban and
manorial communities may have been greater than amongst the dispersed
pastoralists of the uplands, the longer-term significance for English popu-
lations of Wales and Ireland was that it reversed the conditions which
brought them to these lands. Earlier pressures created by a growing
peasant population seeking available land for colonisation were replaced
by a situation in which labour not land was in short supply. In England

this led to social tensions. More seriously in Wales and Ireland it led to a
draining away of English peasantry who returned to the more peaceful
environment of England in search of lands and employment. Concerns
about the protection of English peasantry from the Irish soldiers retained
by magnates were expressed in both royal and aristocratic legislation.
This reflected awareness that this dwindling group provided the real
basis for English identity in Ireland. A decline in the numbers or shifts
in the character of their behaviour undermined the land of peace and
the effectiveness of the English king’s administration. The growing
importance of magnates and their Gaelicised retinues in both Ireland
and Scotland was driven by and contributed to major regional shifts in
these lands. The retreat of the dominant economic, social and cultural
model of the thirteenth century across the British Isles was bound up
with a contraction of English populations most clearly identified with
this model. There was no large-scale collapse of English or Anglicised
government and political society beyond England after 1300. In most
regions English or Scottish royal officials, or nobles within the allegiance
of one or other king remained the basis of political leadership and organ-
isation. However, what had developed further was the sense that both
government and lordship in the later Middle Ages adapted more strongly
to, and was much more identifiable with, the varied conditions of realm
or region.
It is from this that the picture of division and fragmentation derives.
On the one hand this is reflected in the hardening of ideas of national or
corporate realms built on ideologies, allegiances or on geographical and
linguistic communities. At the same time, within and between the super-
structures of realm and nation, there continued to exist regions of divided
or mixed loyalty and identity. In most of these, from the Hebrides and
Ulster to the Anglo-Scottish borders, the Welsh march and Munster, the
direction of political life lay in the hands of regional magnates. A final
element is provided by the survival of claims to sovereignty over the
whole archipelago in the ideology of the English monarchy and people.
Though efforts to fulfil these claims had waned steadily since the 1330s,
their presence in diplomatic and literary material into the late fifteenth
· 273 ·
DISUNITED KINGDOMS
century indicated their continued importance for both the security and
identity of the English royal territories.
These apparently contradictory features are at the heart of the late
medieval legacy in any history of the British Isles. From the perspective
of the century and a half after 1450 this legacy appears limited and
negative. Key developments in the archipelago during the late fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries seem to have involved the dismantling or drastic
reconfiguring of the prevailing conditions of the later Middle Ages. In

the 1600s relations between the different lands of the isles had shifted
onto new ground. The gradual and unsteady process by which the
kingdom of Scotland and the English realms had come into alignment
and then linked in a dual monarchy through the person of their king,
James VI and I, was hardly foreshadowed in the events of the fourteenth
and early fifteenth centuries. The final conquest of Ireland and the full
absorption of Wales into the structures of English government were cer-
tainly part of processes which ran through the late medieval era. However,
the means by which they were achieved and the motives behind them
involved the dismantling of the defining features of these lands as they
had been in the two centuries before 1450.
The political unification of the British Isles, which was well on course
by the early seventeenth century, was hardly a natural development of the
later Middle Ages. The claim to sovereignty inherited and extended by
Edward I and maintained in theory through the next century and a half
was dusted off by later kings. Henry VIII, for example, in his dealings
with Scotland and Ireland in the 1540s used approaches drawn from his
medieval ancestors, his approach in the latter recalling methods tried by
Richard II in 1394. However, the road towards a united kingdom in the
sixteenth century was not that envisaged by Edward I and produced a
different kind of realm. The forces which drove the development of
a single monarchy for the three kingdoms were those central to the
period after 1450. The first of these was the growth of royal government.
From the 1450s in Scotland and the 1470s in the English dominions, the
financial resources of the two crowns and the authority of their gov-
ernments increased relative to those of their greatest subjects. The kind
of crown–magnate conflicts which characterised the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries were now tilted so heavily in favour of royal govern-
ments as to make them much less significant. This change had a special
importance in the borderlands and regions which from 1300 and 1450
had been dominated by aristocratic dynasties. In Wales, the annexation
of most of the marcher lordships to the crown undermined the special
status of this region, allowing the shiring of the march as part of the
union of 1536. In the English north, the power of families like the
· 274 ·
NATIONS AND UNIONS
Percies and Nevilles came under continued scrutiny and control by the
crown. The fall of the Black Douglases and the break-up of the lordship
of the Isles in the later fifteenth century symbolised the Scottish crown’s
reliance on more manageable magnates as their regional agents. Ireland,
where the roles played by great lords in government and politics had
become the basis of any effective government by 1450, saw a more
gradual reduction in the importance of such figures. However, after the
suppression, albeit temporary, of the earls of Kildare in the 1530s, the

crown’s attitude to these English lords was grudging and suspicious. In
all four lands, the reduction of the power and independence of great
regional houses was a feature of royal policy and an element in the wider
development of modern states in both realms.1
These changes might have been predicted in the mid-fifteenth century.
The impact of religious conflict on the British Isles could not have been
foreseen. In political terms, during the later Middle Ages ecclesiastical
structures had often been linked to regnal and communal identities.
Religious developments in the mid and late sixteenth century had a more
revolutionary impact. They redrew and overturned relationships based on
allegiance and ethnicity in favour of attitudes driven by conflicts between
Catholicism and different forms of Protestant worship. The overwhelm-
ing Catholicism of the English of Ireland led to their gradual, though
not total, estrangement from the royal government. Faced by the arrival
of Protestant settlers, termed the ‘New English’, in Plantations on Irish
lands, the ‘Old English’ found their place as loyal subjects of the crown
under challenge. Their identification with their Irish neighbours was a
natural, if slow, consequence of this estrangement which altered the
fundamental character of Ireland from the medieval period. Even more
important was the impact of religious change on Anglo-Scottish rela-
tions. From 1560 onwards both English and Scottish Protestants shared
fears about a Catholic resurgence which encouraged co-operation. For
James VI the hope of the English succession was a further reason to work
with his neighbours, but this hope also related to compatible faiths
between the regimes ruling the two realms. In both lands the need for
security was directed outwards to the Catholic monarchies of France and
Spain. English insularity and Scottish disenchantment with the French
alliance both grew from 1550, in part as a result of religious issues, and
provided the basis for a rapprochement and monarchic union which
marked a radical shift from the early fifteenth century.2
Despite the importance of these changing relations and attitudes in
framing the history of the archipelago, it is important to remind ourselves
that the history of the British Isles is not the history of the United
Kingdom. Under the growing completeness and primacy of the unitary
· 275 ·
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‘British’ state and the identity it sought to foster, there remains the
bedrock, the layers beneath it, provided by the continuing importance of
separate or less integrated outlooks and traditions. This bedrock cannot
simply be buried away. As well as contributing to the construction of the
edifice upon it, it also determines its stability. The centuries from the
1280s to the 1450s form an important part of this. They represent an age
when the imperial ambitions of English rulers and the Anglicisation of
the British Isles faltered in the face of political resistance and economic
crisis. In this period the differences between lands and regions seem more
significant than the links between them. It sometimes strikes English
commentators as odd that the Scots, Welsh and Irish seem to demon-
strate ‘a growing taste for asserting the identities they had before the
United Kingdom was invented’.3 But though this characteristic does
relate very heavily to the late medieval period, it may also be applied to
England. For Bannockburn, there are Creçy and Agincourt, for William
Wallace and Owain Glyn DWr there are Wat Tyler and John Ball, and for
the Declaration of Arbroath, the Irish Remonstrance and the declaration
of the 1460 parliament at Drogheda, there is the elevation of Magna
Carta as the touchstone of English liberties and the emergence of the
parliament at Westminster as the point of contact between government
and national community. In each land a sense of continuity exists which
links modern identities to the distinct, if interrelated, historical traditions
of the late medieval period.
This is a reflection of the era’s importance in shaping these traditions
and stressing their distinctiveness. War with Scotland and France and
colonisation and conflict in Wales and Ireland, as well as the strains
placed on government as a result of these activities, produced statements
of identity which indicate a sense of Englishness which was stronger but,
in terms of geography and culture, more narrowly drawn than it had been
before 1280. As part of this, and as a consequence of their physical loca-
tion, the English of Ireland were moved to the fringes of Englishness.
They were already engaged in a long process which led to the identifica-
tion of a larger proportion of these medieval settlers with Ireland and the
Irish rather than with the inhabitants of England and to their exclusion
from the ‘British’, Protestant elite in the seventeenth century. The result
was the removal of a deeply-rooted English community on the island and
a lasting divergence between Irish (Catholic and separatist) and British
(Protestant and unionist) identities. The Scottish nobility would seem
to move in the opposite direction. However, the character of Scotland’s
participation in both the dual monarchy of 1603 and the United
Kingdom of 1707 was defined by its own history, especially the period
· 276 ·
NATIONS AND UNIONS
between 1290 and 1500. Scotland’s incorporation into a Plantagenet

state in 1290, 1296 or 1304 would have been on very different terms
and had a very different outcome. The next two centuries witnessed the
development of Scottish government, parliament, law and society distinct
from the rest of the British Isles. The legacy of this period for Scotland
is not just symbolic, in terms of Wallace and Bruce, but also involves
fundamental differences of institutions and, arguably, political attitude
which have lasted through the intervening period. The difference

with Wales is informative. The union of 1536 absorbed Wales into the
full structures of English government. It was the culmination of the
Edwardian conquest of 1282. Yet, despite this, a Welsh political elite
had re-emerged after that conquest. Though increasingly Anglicised,
the leading Welsh lords and gentry did much to maintain the character
and culture of Wales through the 250 years after the conquest. While
the union ended Welsh law and was followed by the end of the bardic
tradition, the language and cultural identity of Wales was preserved
into an era of increased literacy and continued interest in the recording
of the past.
The distinctiveness of these late medieval traditions provided an
environment which influenced the formation and shape of the ‘British’
state. They are reflected in the slow and hesitant processes by which the
United Kingdom was developed, from the union with Wales in 1536,
via the union of English and Scottish crowns and parliaments in 1603
and 1707, to the union of British and Irish parliaments in 1801. Over
250 years in the making, this full United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Ireland did not have a long history. The unitary state in the archipelago
with a single parliament at Westminster only lasted for 120 years until the
creation of separate parliaments for Ireland in 1920. Seventeen years later
this dissolution of part of the United Kingdom was cemented by the
creation of a fully sovereign Irish Republic in the southern two-thirds of
the island. Since 1920 developments in the other parts of the archipelago
seem to point towards the contraction and devolution of the authority
previously held at Westminster. The formation of legislative bodies in
each of the four lands of the archipelago reverses or contradicts the acts
of 1536, 1707 and 1801. The end point of this unravelling is hardly
certain but it is already sufficiently advanced to indicate that the forma-
tion and continuation of a United Kingdom covering all, or even most,
of the archipelago cannot be accepted as the principal theme of ‘British’
history. Once again, as in 1400, the prevailing trends of the twentieth
and twenty-first centuries may come to be seen as those of diversity
and disunity.
· 277 ·
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Notes
1. Ellis and Maginn, Making of the British Isles, 27–82; Bradshaw and J. Morrill
(eds), The British Problem; Pollard, North-East England, 401–5; S.G. Ellis,
Reform and Revival: English Government in Ireland, 1470–1534 (London,
1986); Ellis, Tudor Frontiers and Noble Power; Williams, Renewal and
Reformation, 31–54; T.B. Pugh, The Marcher Lordships of South Wales,
1415–1536 (London, 1973); Brown, Black Douglases, 283–311; S. Boardman,
The Campbells: 1250–1513 (Edinburgh, 2005), 104–6, 153–7, 250–5, 280–3;

J. Dawson, Scotland Reformed 1488–1567 (Edinburgh, 2007), 11–16, 43–7.
2. Ellis and Maginn, Making of the British Isles, 121–332; Williams, Renewal and
Reformation, 279–331; Dawson, Scotland Reformed, 208–15, 252–4, 315–
18; Ellis, Ireland in the Age of the Tudors, 265–86.
3. See for example, J. Paxman, Review of S. Jenkins, A Short History of England,
in The Guardian, 10 September 2011.
· 278 ·
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· 304 ·
INDEX
Aberconwy Abbey 14 Artois, county of 214

Aberconwy, Treaty of (1277) 19, 59 Arwystli 20
Aberdeen 73, 186, 235, 263 Askeaton Castle 3
Aberystwyth Castle 64, 233, 236 Ath an Urchair, Battle of (1329) 124
Agincourt, battle of (1415) 254, 276 Atholl, earldom of 129, 159, 159, 183
Albret, lord of 39 earls of see Strathbogie
Alexander II, king of Scots Atholl family (Clann
(1216–1249) 58 Donnachaidh) 129
Alexander III, king of Scots Avenes (Afan) family 133
(1249–1286) 11–12, 16, 18–19, Avignon, Papal Court at 145, 239
21, 22, 35, 36, 70, 71, 82, 99,
142, 149, 167 Badenoch, lords and lordship of see
Alnwick Castle 179, 182 Comyn and Stewart 73, 157–8,
Andrew, cult of 114 167
Anglesey, isle of 20, 73, 84, 117, 236 Bailleul-en-Vimeu (Picardy) 195
Anglo–French warfare Ball, John 276
Anglo–Scottish marches 176–81, 186, Balliol family 148, 151, 195
187, 232, 233, 245–6 Balliol, Edward see Edward king of
wardens of 93–4, 177, 179, 187, Scots
188, 204, 225, 228, 231 Balliol, John see John king of Scots
Angus 93, 121, 171 Bannockburn, battle of (1314) 39–40,
Anjou, county of 12, 214 42, 151, 156, 175, 244
Annandale, lordship of 35, 66 Barbour, John, author of The
Antrim 171 Bruce 130–1, 160
Aquitaine, duchy of (see also Baugé, battle of (1421) 260
Gascony) 13–14, 24–5, 66, 81, Beauchamp, Thomas, earl of Warwick
109, 194–200, 206, 210–12, 227, (d.1401) 229
240, 254 Beauchamp, Richard, earl of Warwick
Aragon, kingdom of 215 (d.1439) 245
Arbroath, Declaration of (1320) 96–7, Beaufort family 261
100, 110, 276 Beaumaris, castle and borough of 117
Archbold family 127 Beaumont, Henry, earl of Buchan
Argyll 36, 115, 129, 168 (d.1340) 47, 157–8
aristocracies of the British Isles 15–16, Bek, Anthony, Bishop of Durham and
34–7, 146–64, 181–9, 195, 223 St Davids 145
Armagh, archbishops of 142 Bermingham, John, earl of Louth
Arthur, mythical king of Britain (d.1329) 125, 127, 181
55–7, 69 Bermingham, Piers 119
· 305 ·
DISUNITED KINGDOMS
Berwick-upon-Tweed 26, 40, 47, 69, Bruce, Edward, earl of Carrick and king
120, 143, 144, 175, 246 of Ireland (d.1318) 40–1, 51, 65,
Berwick, treaty of (1357) 221 74, 103, 108, 110, 111, 121, 124,
Bicknor, Alexander, archbishop of 143–4, 169–70
Dublin 145 Bruce, Margery, daughter of Robert I
Bigod family 34, 147–8, 152, 154 159
Bigod, Roger, earl of Norfolk Bruce, Robert (I), lord of Annandale
(d.1306) 27, 98, 147 (twelfth century) 147
Birgham, treaty of (1290) 99, Bruce, Robert (V), lord of Annandale

109, 142 (d.1295) 22, 35–6, 146, 149
Bisset, Baldred 142 Bruce, Robert (VI), earl of Carrick
Bohun family 156, 159, 175 (d.1304) 35–6
Bohun, Humphrey, earl of Hereford Bruce, Robert (VII), see Robert I king
(d.1298) 23, 27, 58, 98, 147 of Scots
Bohun, Humphrey, earl of Hereford Bruges, Matins of (1302) 213
(d.1322) 42, 43, 44, 103, 150 Brutus, mythical founder of British
Boniface VIII, pope 28, 70, 266 Kingdom 56, 69–70
Bordeaux 196, 197 Brut y Tywysogyon, Welsh chronicle
Boroughbridge, battle of (1322) 43 115
boroughs, burghs 21, 114, 117–18, Buchan, earldom of 148, 157–8
120, 132–3, 186, 205, 245, 271–2 Builth, castle and lordship 84
Bothwell Castle 64 Bunratty, fight at (1311) 41
Bower, Walter, Scottish chronicler 238, Burgh family 24, 40, 49, 74, 127, 128,
260 152–3, 158–9, 169–70, 182, 183
Brabant, duchy of 200 Burgh, Elizabeth, queen of Scots 38,
dukes of 201 150
Brecon, lordship of 102, 156, 175 Burgh, Elizabeth, countess of
Brentiau Gwyr Powys, Welsh poem 115 Ulster 153, 159, 170
Brétigny, treaty of (1360) 199, 200, Burgh, Richard, earl of Ulster
201, 204, 206, 210, 212, 220 (d.1326) 24, 36, 38, 39, 45, 74,
Britain, historical perceptions of 1–7, 85, 89, 150, 170–1
10–19, 55–9, 69–70, 220, 237, Burgh, Walter, earl of Ulster
267–8, 275–8 (d.1271) 147
Brittany, duchy of 147, 198, 200, Burgh, William, earl of Ulster
211–14, 221, 254 (d.1333) 46, 51, 159, 170–1, 223
counts and dukes of 195, 212 Burgh, William Liath 170–1
Brittany, John II, duke of 212 Burgundy, dukes of 211, 214, 215
Brittany, John III (Montfort) duke Burgundy, Philip, duke of 211
of 213 Burkes, Clanrickard 171, 262
Brittany, John IV (Montfort) duke Burkes, MacWilliam 171, 262
of 212 Butler family, earls of Ormond 91, 127,
Brittany, John of, earl of Richmond 128, 153–4, 157, 158, 173, 182,
(d.1334) 86 183, 185, 252
Bruce family 34–7, 99, 147, 148, 150, Butler, James, earl of Ormond
200 (d.1338) 46
· 306 ·
INDEX
Butler, James, earl of Ormond Charles V, king of France

(d.1382) 49, 161, 182, 183, 187, (1364–1380) 205, 208–9, 225
222 Charles VI, king of France
Butler, James, earl of Ormond (1380–1422) 199, 227
(d.1405) 160, 230, 242 Charles VII, king of France
Butler, James, earl of Ormond ‘the (1422–1461) 259, 261
white earl’ (d.1452) 236, 261–2, Charlton, John, lord of Powys 155
265, 267 Chester, earldom of 82, 83–4, 87, 96,
Butler, James, earl of Ormond and 116

Wiltshire (d.1461) 262 principality of 226–7, 229, 231, 232,
Byland, battle of (1322) 43 234, 236
Chirk, lordship of 117
Caerffili Castle 146 Chronicle of the Scottish People,
Caernarfon, castle, borough and attributed to John of Fordun 128
county 57, 83, 84, 117, 133 Cistercian order of monks 140, 144,
exchequer at 84–5 245
Caithreim Thoirdhealbhaigh, Irish Clare family 34, 40, 74, 128, 146–7,
poem 128 148, 150, 152–3, 154, 156,
Calais 200, 254 158–9, 182
Callan, battle of (1261) 124 Clare, Gilbert, earl of Gloucester
Camber son of Brutus, mythical founder (d.1295) 23, 58, 146–7, 148
of Wales 70 Clare, Gilbert, earl of Gloucester
Canterbury, archbishops of 140 (d.1314) 42, 153, 156
Cardigan, county and borough 84, Clare, Richard fitz Gilbert (eleventh
233 century) 147
Carlisle 121 Clare, Richard, lord of Thomond
Carlow, county 124 (d.1318) 51, 124, 157, 172
Carmarthen, county 83, 84 Clare, Thomas, lord of Thomond
Carrick, earls and earldom of (d.1287) 16, 36, 119, 172
(Scotland) 35–6, 38, 148 Clarence, Lionel duke of (d.1368)
Carrick, Marjory countess of 35–6 49, 123, 126, 158–9, 161,
Cashel, archbishops of 142 171, 200–1, 204, 210–11,
Castile, kingdom of 195, 200, 211, 221–3, 224
221, 268 Clavering, John 85
Castile, Pedro the Cruel, king of Clifford, Robert, lord 150
(1350–1369) 211 Cloyne, bishop of 187
Caterans 129, 184–5 Clydesdale 113, 114, 184, 186
Catherine of Valois, queen of Clyn, John, Irish chronicler 111, 124,
England 264 157
Ceredigion 233 Coldingham Priory 142, 144
Champagne, county of 214 Colville, Robert 178
Channel Islands 81 Comyn family 22, 129, 147, 148, 151,
Charlemagne, emperor 259 152, 157–8, 161, 169
Charles IV, king of France Comyn, John, earl of Buchan
(1322–28) 44, 198, 208 (d.1308) 157
· 307 ·
DISUNITED KINGDOMS
Comyn, John, lord of Badenoch Despenser, Hugh (the elder), earl of

(d.1302) 150, 152 Winchester (d.1326) 42, 44
Comyn, John, lord of Badenoch Despenser, Hugh (the younger)
(d.1306) 28, 29, 34, 36, 67, 93 (d.1326) 42, 44–5, 103, 156–7
Comyn, John, lord of Badenoch Dinmael 155
(d.1314) 157 Disert O’Dea, battle of (1318) 124,
Connacht, province of 36, 65, 75, 91, 172
95, 127, 129, 169, 171, 221, 228, Dreux, house of 195
272 Dominican order of friars 140

Connor, battle of (1315) 124 Donnachaidh, Clann 129
Constance, church council at Douglas family 3, 51, 147, 151, 152,
(1414–1418) 215, 267–8 178–80, 182, 183, 187, 225, 261,
Conwy Castle 65, 231, 233 266, 275
Cork, county and city 90, 224 Douglas, Archibald (d.1333) 93
Cornwall, earldom and duchy of 39 Douglas, Archibald, earl of Douglas and
Couci, house of 195 Lord of Galloway (d.1388) 182,
Coupland, John 177 183, 228
Courtrai, battle of (1302) 28 Douglas, Archibald, earl of Douglas
Creçy, battle of (1346) 50, 200, 204, (d.1424) 232, 234–5, 240–3, 261
276 Douglas, James, lord of (d.1330) 46,
Cressingham, Hugh, treasurer of 94, 178
Scotland 85 Douglas, James, earl of Douglas
Cum Universi, Papal bull 140 (d.1388) 209, 225
Cumberland 152, 179 Douglas, William, of Liddesdale and
Cupar Castle 65 Lothian (d.1353) 50, 51, 178–9,
181, 183, 184, 188
Dafydd ap Gruffudd, Prince of Wales Douglas, William, earl of Douglas
(1282–1283) 20–1, 62 (d.1384) 94, 95, 151, 178, 180,
Dafydd Gam 245 181, 184, 209, 222
Dartmoor 122 Douglas, William, lord of Nithsdale
David I, king of Scots (1124–1153) 35, (d.1391) 161
114, 147 Drogheda, parliament at (1460) 256–7,
David II, king of Scots (1329–1371) 276
46–8, 50, 71–2, 93–5, 100, 109, Dublin 75, 81, 83, 119, 121, 122,
129–30, 151, 159, 168, 178, 188, 124–5, 258
200, 207–8, 210–11, 222–3, 225, archdiocese of 121, 142
266 Dumfries 34
Deheubarth, Welsh principality 11, 18, Dunbar, battle of (1296) 26, 64
20–1, 25, 73, 115, 155, 241 Dunbar, family of 152, 179, 180, 187,
Denbigh, lordship of 117–18, 154, 225, 266
174, 230 Dunbar, George, earl of March
Derbyshire 96, 180 (d.1420) 151, 180, 228– 9,
Desmond 65, 91, 127, 154 (Earls of see 231–2, 240–2
FitzGerald) Dunbar, John, earl of Moray
Despenser family 42, 44, 51, 89, 154 (d.1391) 184, 185, 186
· 308 ·
INDEX
Dunbar, Patrick, earl of Dunbar 64, 82, 88, 89, 90, 91, 96, 98,
(d.1308) 150 101, 109, 125, 142, 144, 145,
Dunbar, Thomas, earl of Moray 151, 154–5, 159, 170, 187–8,
(d. 1415) 169, 186 212, 220, 223–5
Dundalk 121, 258 government of Ireland and
Dupplin Moor, battle of (1332) 47, 64 Wales 199–200, 202, 204–6,
Durham, palatinate of 87, 96, 116 221–5
Dyffryn Clwyd, lordship of (see also relations with Scotland 47–8, 49–50,
Ruthin) 117, 118, 132 72, 76, 168, 178, 200, 207–9,
222–3
Edeirnion 155 warfare with France 48, 50, 76, 194,
Edinburgh 65, 121, 232 198–207, 253
castle 186 Edward, prince of Wales, earl of
Edward I, king of England, lord of Chester, duke of Aquitaine
Ireland, duke of Aquitaine (d.1376) 88–9, 96, 103, 133,
(1272–1307) 1–2, 10–29, 35–7, 143–4, 196, 200, 204–5, 210
48, 52, 55–7, 59, 61, 62–3, 67, Edward (Balliol), King of Scots
69, 76, 81, 85, 86, 91, 96, 103, (1332–1356) 47–8, 60, 72, 82,
109, 111, 119, 145, 146, 212, 264 93, 151, 213
and the Conquest of Wales 19–21, Einion Sais 156, 175
22–3, 25–6, 58–9, 69–70, 73, 76, Eleanor, queen of England, duchess of
82, 83–6, 88, 101, 102, 117–18, Aquitaine (d.1204) 195
140, 200 Elgin, burgh and cathedral 187
and the English Nobility 148–51, England, Kingdom of 12, 13, 15, 18,
152, 159 26–7, 48–9, 120, 122, 251
as heir to Henry III 13, 18, 81–2, 97 armies of 63–9, 203–4
Lordship in the British Isles 10–16, church in 141–2, 145, 267–8, 275
23–5, 55–9, 81, 85–6, 89, 95–6, government of 12, 13, 15, 82–3,
109–10, 266, 274 86–8, 200–3
relations with France 25–8, 86, 109, north of 76, 110, 121, 122, 176–81,
194–6, 197–202, 206–8 207– 8, 252, 255, 271, 274–5
relations with Scotland 11–12, 21–2, parliament of 98–9, 202–3, 223,
26–9, 34, 71, 76, 82, 84–6, 245–6, 254, 276
99–100, 119–120, 130, 142, English identity 17, 109–10, 112–13,
167–8, 199–201, 207 245–6, 253–8, 267–8, 271
Edward II, king of England, lord of Eric king of Norway 21
Ireland, duke of Aquitaine Ettrick and Selkirk Forests 73, 184,
(1307–1327) 21, 38–45, 48, 185
57, 63, 64, 76–7, 82, 87–8, 89,
98–9, 109, 110, 111, 142, 145, Falkirk, battle of (1298) 28–9, 63, 64,
154, 199, 202, 226, 238 66
and the Welsh 102–3, 176 Famine, European (1314–1318) 122,
Edward III, king of England, lord 272
of Ireland, duke of Aquitaine Felton, William 177
(1327–1377) 44–52, 60, 63, Ferrers, John, lord of Chartley 197
· 309 ·
DISUNITED KINGDOMS
Fife 115, 169 Flint, castle and county 64, 84

Fife, Duncan, earl of (d.1289) 150 Fochart, battle of (1318) 41, 72
Fife, Duncan, earl of (d.1353) 60 Fordun, John of, Scottish
Fitzalan, family of 175 chronicler 128, 130
Fitzalan, Edmund, earl of Arundel Forres, burgh 187
(d.1326) 89, 154 Forth, firth and river 73, 83, 121, 152,
Fitzalan, Richard, earl of Arundel 175, 243
(d.1397) 156, 229–30 France, kingdom of 25–8, 86–7, 91,
Fitzalan, Thomas, earl of Arundel 109, 139, 147, 195, 198–9,

(d.1415) 245 210–15, 221, 239, 251,
FitzGerald family, of Desmond 46, 91, 253–4, 275
127, 147, 153–4, 173, 183–4, claims of English kings to 194–5,
187, 252, 262 198–9, 253–4
Gerald fitz Maurice, Earl of Desmond expeditions to the British Isles
(d.1398) 187, 230 from 205, 207–9, 225–6, 236,
James fitz Gerald, Earl of Desmond 239
(d.1463) 236, 262 relations with kings of England
Maurice fitz Thomas, earl of 194–5, 197–204, 251, 259, 263
Desmond (d.1356) 46, 49, 51, 90, Franciscan order of friars 140, 143–4,
91–2, 122, 125, 161, 172–3, 182, 245
183, 188, 205, 263 Fraser family 151
Maurice fitz Gerald, Earl of Desmond Freigne family 157
(1399–1401) 231, 242 Froissart, Jean, chronicler 160–1
FitzGerald family, of Offaly (Earls of
Kildare) 24, 91, 147, 153–4, 158, Gaidhealtachd 166–7, 187
173, 183, 185, 262, 263, 275 Galloglass 76, 166, 169
Gerald, earl of Kildare (d.1513) 262 Galloway, lordship of 36, 73, 83, 115,
John fitz Thomas, earl of Kildare 120, 151, 176, 182, 222
(d.1316) 24, 46, 170, 173 Garmoran, lordship of 168, 169
Maurice, earl of Kildare (d.1390) 49, Gascony, duchy of 13–14, 24–7, 29,
90, 91–2, 161, 183, 188 39, 44, 48, 63, 66, 69, 84, 101,
Thomas, earl of Kildare (d.1478) 262 110, 196–8, 207, 256
FitzRalph, Richard, archbishop of loss of (1450–1453) 251
Armagh 123, 187 Gathelos, mythical founder of
Flanders, county of 26–8, 48, 69, 110, Scotland 70
147, 198, 199–200, 202, 212–14, Gaunt, John of, duke of Lancaster 159,
221, 254 160–1, 175, 179, 180, 200, 211,
counts of 195, 201 222, 225, 228, 229, 238
Guy de Dampierre, count of Gaveston, Piers, earl of Cornwall
(d.1304) 212 (d.1312) 39–40, 88
Louis de Mâle, count of Germany 195, 215
(d.1384) 211 Ghent 194
Margaret, countess of 211 Glamorgan, lordship of 42, 102, 146,
Fleming, Thomas, earl of Wigtown 154, 157
(d. after 1382) 181, 182 Gloucester 11
· 310 ·
INDEX
Glyndyfrdwy 155 Henry I, king of England

Glyn DWr, see Owain Glyn DWr (1100–1135) 35
‘Good Parliament’ (1376) 202–3, 224 Henry II, king of England
Gough Map 55–6, 266 (1154–1189) 139–40, 196
Gower, lordship of 154 Henry III, king of England, lord of
Grampian Mountains 73, 93, 243 Ireland, duke of Aquitaine
Granada, emirate of 215 (1216–1272) 12–13, 18, 58–9,
Grandson, Otto, justiciar of north 81, 97, 112, 118, 147, 195–6
Wales 85, 197 Henry IV, King of England, lord of

Grant, family of 129 Ireland, duke of Aquitaine
Grays, family of 152 (1399–1413) 60, 63, 159, 161,
Gray, Thomas, of Heton 131, 177, 229–37, 238, 242, 245, 247, 251
180, 203 and Glyn DWr rebellion 232–5, 236,
Great Schism (1378–1418) 144–5, 239 245
Grey, Reginald, 1st lord of Ruthin, relations with Scotland 231–2, 234,
justiciar of Chester 19, 117, 149 240, 246
Grey, Reginald, 3rd lord of Ruthin 232, usurpation of the throne
233 (1399) 229–30, 237, 238–9, 241
Gruffudd ap Gwenwynwyn, Prince of Henry V, king of England, lord of
Powys 20, 70, 155 Ireland, duke of Aquitaine
Gruffudd ap Nicholas, lord of (1413–1422) 60, 199, 246, 247,
Dinefwr 263–4 251
Gruffudd Llwyd 41–2, 44, 45, 111, as prince of Wales 236, 245
156 war in France 253–4, 261
Gwynedd, Welsh principality 11, 12, Henry VI, king of England and France
20–1, 25, 58, 62, 64, 67, 70, 73, (1422–1461, 1470–1471) 251,
88, 102, 114–15, 144, 149, 155, 252, 254, 262, 264, 266–7
156, 241 war in France 253–4, 263
Henry VIII, king of England and
Haddington 121 Ireland (1509–1547) 274
Halidon Hill, battle of (1333) 47, 64 Herbert, William, of Raglan, earl of
Harclay, Andrew, earl of Carlisle 43, Pembroke (d.1469) 263–4
180, 181 Higden, Ralph, author of
Hardyng, John, English chronicler 179, Polychronicon 112, 132–3
255, 258, 267 Highlands, the 94–5, 128–30, 159–60,
Harlaw, battle of (1411) 235, 238, 166, 168–9, 183–5, 188, 222,
242, 243–4 225, 229, 235, 244, 260
Harlech Castle 236 Holand, Thomas, duke of Surrey
Hastings, Family of 148 (d.1400) 230
Hastings, John, lord of Holland, counts of 201
Abergavenny 149 Holt Castle 230
Hebrides (Western Isles, Innse Holy Island (Northumberland) 96
Gall ) 16, 18–19, 36, 38, 41, 45, Homildon, battle of (1402) 234
70, 76, 82, 94, 95, 115, 128–9, Huntingdon, David, earl of
147, 166–9, 222, 229, 235, 260 (d.1219) 36
· 311 ·
DISUNITED KINGDOMS
Huntingdon, John, earl of James II, king of Scots

(d.1237) 148, 149 (1437–1460) 252, 266, 267
Hywelap Gruffudd (Hywel of the James VI and I, king of Scots and
axe) 204 England (1567–1625) 274, 275
Jedforest, lordship of 178, 180
Inverness 174 John (Balliol), king of Scotland
Ireland, lordship of 13, 15, 35, 39, (1292– ) 22, 25, 26, 36, 47, 60,
40–1, 45, 46, 49, 63–6, 69, 76, 61, 62, 71, 99–100, 149–50, 152,
77, 81, 89–91, 110, 113, 115, 197, 198, 207–8, 212
118–19, 120, 122, 139–40, 147, John, king of England
196, 205–6, 235–6, 240, 251, (1199–1216) 12, 36–7, 118
254–5, 268, 271, 274 John II, king of France
church in 139–40, 141, 142, 143–4, (1350–1364) 200, 208
275 John XXII, Pope 96, 108
English government of 81–3,
84–5, 89–91, 120, 197, 221–5, Kells 121
227–8, 237, 240, 243, 252, Kennington 102
262, 274 Kent 43
English of 17, 23–4, 49, 74, 100, Kent, Edmund, earl of (d.1330) 197
108, 111, 116, 118–19, 123–7, Kerne 75–6, 125–6, 129
152–4, 157, 161–2, 166, 171–4, Kerrs, family of 178
181, 204, 222, 254–7, 262, Kerry, liberty of 89, 90, 172, 184
272–3, 275 Kidwelly, lordship of 263
parliament of 75, 81, 83, 100–101, Kildare, county of 89, 91, 121, 258
119, 123–4, 126–7, 141, 256–7, liberty and earldom of 89, 90, 154,
264–5 173
warfare in 74–6, 90–1, 121–2, Kilkenny, lordship of 23, 124, 141,
125–6, 183, 204 146, 157, 173, 182, 221
Irfon, fight at (1282) 20 Kilkenny, statutes of (1366) 123–4,
Irish, the 16, 24, 38, 74–6, 81, 103, 126–8, 132, 222–3, 245, 256
108, 110–11, 112, 114, 118–19, kindreds 127, 129, 185–6
123–7, 160–1, 221, 228, 235–6, Kirkmichael, John, bishop of Orléans
254, 256–7, 271 259
links with Scotland 110–11, 166–7 Knapdale, lordship of 168
methods of warfare 75–6 Knaresborough, lordship of 96
Isabelle of France, Queen of
England 44, 198 Lacy, Henry, earl of Lincoln and lord
Is-Coed 155 of Denbigh (d.1311) 117, 149,
Islay, island of 38 150–1, 154
Isles, kings of 16 Lamberton, William, bishop of St
lordship of the see MacDonalds Andrews 146
Italy 200 Lancashire 96, 121
Lancaster, duchy of 96
James I, king of Scots (1406–1437) 60, Lancaster, duke of, see Gaunt, John of
234–5, 241, 260, 263, 266 Lancaster, Blanche of 159
· 312 ·
INDEX
Lancaster, Edmund, earl of Lochmaben Castle 65, 66

(d.1296) 197 London 20, 227
Lancaster, Henry, earl of (d.1345) 96 lordship 181–9, 262
Lancaster, Henry ‘of Grosmont’, earl of Lorn, lords of 73
(d.1361) 197, 203 Lothian, province of 39, 82, 83, 114,
Lancaster, Humphrey of, duke of 115, 176, 180, 186
Gloucester (d.1447) 261, 263 Louis IX, king of France
Lancaster, John of, duke of Bedford (1226–1271) 59, 195, 197
(d.1435) 236 Louth, county and liberty of 89, 113,

Lancaster, Thomas, earl of 171, 258
(d.1322) 39–40, 42–3, 87–8, sheriff of 90
131, 154 Low Countries 198, 200, 211, 215–6
Lancaster, Thomas of, duke of Clarence Lowlands of Scotland 94–5, 128–30,
(d.1421) 236 159–60, 166, 168–9, 183–5, 188,
Landellis, William, bishop of St 222, 225, 229, 235, 244, 260
Andrews 209 Lucy, Anthony, justiciar of Ireland 91,
Lanercost Priory, chronicle of 131 265
Langtoft, Piers, chronicler 1, 29, 56
Laudabiliter, Papal bull 139–40 MacCartan, dynasty of 170
law 110, 112–16, 120, 185, 196, 255, MacCarthy, dynasty of 172, 184, 228
256–7, 260 MacCearbhaill, David, archbishop of
Lawless family 127 Cashel 103, 141, 145, 146
Laws of the Scots and Brets 116, 120 MacDonalds, Lords of the Isles (Clan
Leinster 24, 41, 68, 74, 91, 121, 148, Donald) 2, 38, 50, 51, 167–9,
152, 221, 228, 229, 258, 262 181, 182, 235, 260, 266, 275
Leix (Laois) 75, 124, 174 Clann Iain Mór branch of Clan
Leulighem, truce of (1389) 210, 227 Donald 263
Lewis, isle of 167, 168 MacAlexander branch of Clan
Leyburn, Roger 197 Donald 169
Libelle of Englyshe Polycye 254–6, 258, MacDonald, Alexander, lord of the Isles
259, 262, 267 and earl of Ross (d.1449) 260, 263
Liddesdale, lordship of 185 MacDonald, Alexander, lord of
Limerick, county and city 41, 172, 173, Lochaber 169, 182, 229
182, 186 MacDonald, Donald, lord of the Isles
Llan–faes 117 (d.1420) 184, 229, 235, 238,
Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, prince of 242–4
Gwynedd (1247–82), prince of MacDonald, John, of Islay (d.1387),
Wales (1258–82) 11–12, 16, lord of the Isles 51, 95, 168–9,
18–20, 58–9, 61–2, 69–71, 102, 171, 182, 187–8, 222
110, 111, 114–15, 140, 148, 155, MacDonald, John, lord of the Isles and
197, 198, 205, 241 earl of Ross 263
Llywelyn ap Madog of Dyffryn MacDonald, John, of the Glens of
Clwyd 156 Antrim (d.1428) 229, 235
Llywelyn Bren (d.1317) 42, 102 MacDougalls, lords of Argyll and
Lochaber, lordship of 168–9, 272 Lorn 167–8
· 313 ·
DISUNITED KINGDOMS
MacDougall, John, lord of Lorn Montgomery, treaty of (1267) 18, 59,

(d.1315) 168 70
Macduff of Fife 22, 25, 60 Moray, province of 38, 94, 115, 151,
MacLean, family of 168 158, 159, 166, 169, 171, 186–7
MacLeod, family of 168 Mortimer family 23, 44, 49, 58, 102,
MacMahon, family of 170 147, 149, 154, 158–9, 160, 174,
MacMurrough, dynasty of 51, 61, 235, 241, 252, 261
124 Mortimer, Edmund, earl of March and
MacMurrough, Art (d.1361) 125, 221 Ulster (d.1381) 158–9, 161, 171,
Mac Murrough, Art, king of Leinster 187, 224
(d.1416) 228, 230, 231 Mortimer, Edmund, earl of March and
MacMurrough, Muiris 68 Ulster (d.1425) 234, 247, 265
MacNamara, dynasty of 75, 172 Mortimer, Edmund (d.1409) 233–4,
MacRuaris of Garmoran 38 237
MacRuari, Ranald (d.1346) 168 Mortimer, Roger, of Chirk 42, 43,
MacSweens, family of 169 102–3
Madogap Llywelyn, Welsh leader 26, Mortimer, Roger, earl of March
63, 70–1 (d.1330) 42, 43, 44–5, 46–7, 49,
Magna Carta (1215) 97, 98, 99, 276 51, 88, 89, 158, 159
Man, isle of 16, 18–19, 45, 70, 82, Mortimer, Roger, earl of March and
167, 222, 230, 232, 240 Ulster (d.1398) 158, 224, 228,
Mar, Donald, earl of (d.1332) 45, 47, 229–30, 242
151 Mowbray, Thomas, duke of Norfolk
Margaret of Norway, lady of Scotland (d.1399) 229
(1286–90) 21–2, 55, 71 Munster, province of 36, 74, 75, 91,
Margaret, queen of Scotland, saint 121, 122, 166, 172, 182, 221,
(d.1093) 131, 267 236, 258, 262
Marshal, family of 148, 149 lordship in 172–4
Marreys, Llywelyn de 133 Murray, family of 147, 151
Martin V, pope 260 Murray, Andrew (d.1297) 27
Matthew Gogh 263 Murray, Andrew (d.1338) 48, 93,
May Island, priory of 142 121
Mearns, the 93, 121
Meath, county of 65, 74, 75, 89, 90, Naas 121
91, 171, 258 Neville, family of 179, 180, 187, 252,
Menteith, earldom of 159 275
Merioneth 84, 156 Neville, Ralph, earl of Westmoreland
Mézières, Philippe de 220 (d.1425) 228, 231, 242
Minot, Laurence, English poet 131 Neville’s Cross, Battle of (1346) 50,
Modus Tenendi Parliamentum 98 94, 203
Monmouth, Geoffrey of 56, 69–70 Newcastle-upon-Tyne 22
Montfort, Eleanor de, princess of Norfolk, Thomas, earl of (d.1338) 153
Wales 11, 16, 148 Norham 60, 96
Montfort, Simon de, earl of Leicester Norman conquest of England
(d.1265) 17, 131 (1066) 113, 147
· 314 ·
INDEX
Normandy, duchy of 147, 214 Orléans 459

conquest and loss of in fifteenth Ormond, earldom of 154
century 251, 253–4 Ordinance for the Government of
loss of by the Plantagenets Scotland (1305) 28–9, 57, 68,
(1204) 12, 17, 82–3 85–6, 109, 120
Northampton, treaty of (1328) 45, 212 Ordinances, English (1311) 98
Northumberland 27, 121, 122, 152, Orkney 55
177–9, 183 Otterburn, battle of (1388) 203, 225,
Norway, kings of 18–19, 167, 195, 215 227

Nottinghamshire 180 Owain Glyn DWr, prince of Wales
(1400–1415) 2, 71, 145, 155,
O’Brien of Thomond, dynasty 41, 61, 232–5, 236, 237–9, 241, 244–5,
74, 75, 103, 115, 125, 128, 157, 246, 251, 258, 263, 275
172, 173, 186, 221, 228 Owain Lawgoch, claimant to Welsh
O’Brien, Brian Rua (d.1277) 119 principality 71, 155, 205
O’Brien, Murtough (d.1343) 51, 128,
172 Pale in Ireland 257–8
O’Brien, Turlough (d.1306) 128 papacy 108, 110, 112, 113, 139–40,
O’Cahan, Dynasty 170 144–5, 239
O’Connor of Connacht, Dynasty 61, Paris 25, 44, 194, 199
171 parliaments 81, 98–101, 202–3
O’Connor, Aodh (d.1308) 170 Peasants’ Revolt (1381) 87, 202–3,
O’Connor, Felim (d.1316) 74 224, 233, 245, 276
O’Connor, Murtough (d.1305) 119 Pecham, John, archbishop of
O’Connor, Turlough (d.1425) 228 Canterbury 140–1, 144, 145
O’Kennedy, dynasty 173 Pembroke, earldom of 113, 154, 174,
O’More, dynasty 124 264
O’More, Conall 68 Percy family 3, 51, 147, 152, 177–80,
O’More, Laoighseach 122, 124 183, 185, 187, 225, 231, 247,
O’Neill, Clann Aodh Buidhe 252, 275
(Clandeboye) 171, 262–3 Percy, Henry, 1st Lord 150–1, 183
O’Neill of Tir Eoghain, Dynasty 41, Percy, Henry, 2nd Lord 178
51, 61, 103, 170–1, 173, 181, Percy, Henry, earl of Northumberland
221, 262 (d.1408) 178, 180, 226, 228,
O’Neill of Tir Eoghain, Aedh Mór 231–2, 234–5, 237, 242
(d.1364) 171, 187 Percy, Henry, earl of Northumberland
O’Neill of Tir Eoghain, Donal (d.1455) 255
(d.1325) 41, 103, 167, 170–1, Percy, Henry ‘Hotspur’ 225, 226, 228,
184–5 231–4, 242
O’Neill of Tir Eoghain, Niall Mór Philip IV, King of France
(d.1397) 171, 187, 228, 230, 242 (1285–1314) 25–8, 38, 57,
O’Neill of Tir Eoghain, Niall Og 109, 194, 198, 199, 206–7,
(d.1403) 228, 230, 242 211–12
O’Toole, dynasty 124, 173 Philip VI, King of France (1328–1350)
Offaly 75, 124, 173 48, 198–200, 207, 208
· 315 ·
DISUNITED KINGDOMS
Philippa, countess of March, daughter and war with France 202–3, 226,
of Lionel of Clarence 158–9 227, 239
Pickering, lordship of 96 Richmond, lordship of 96
plague, impact of 122–3, 126, 132, Robert I (Bruce), king of Scots
272–3 (1306–1329) 2, 10, 27, 28, 29,
Poer, family of 127 34–47, 48, 51, 61, 64, 65, 67,
Poitiers, battle of (1356) 200 71–2, 74, 76–7, 92, 93–5, 96,
Pontefract, lordship of 96 99–100, 110–11, 121, 124, 130,
Portugal, kingdom of 215 142, 146, 150–2, 156–7, 166,

Powys, Welsh principality 11, 18, 167–8, 177, 208, 212, 213, 223,
20–1, 73, 115, 144, 155, 241, 244, 277
233, 241 Robert II (Stewart), King of Scots
Prussia 161 (1371–1390) 50, 93, 95, 130,
159–60, 169, 183, 188, 208–9,
Quo Warranto inquiry 12–13, 148 223, 225
Robert III (John, earl of Carrick), King
Ramsay, Alexander (d.1342) 50, 179, of Scots (1390–1406) 225–6,
181, 184 229, 232, 234–5, 238–9
Randolph, John, earl of Moray Rokeby, Thomas, justiciar of Ireland 91
(d.1346) 93, 169 Rome, Giles of 57
Randolph, Thomas, earl of Moray Rome, papal court at 145, 239
(d.1332) 46, 93, 94, 151 Ros, Robert, of Wark 152
Rathcoole 122 Roscommon 65, 75
Redesdale 185 Ross, province of 129, 242, 263
Remonstrance, baronial (1297) 27, 98, Ross, earls of 73, 151
202 Ross, William, earl of (d.1323) 167
Remonstrance, Irish (1317) 101, 103, Ross, William, earl of (d.1372) 94, 168
108, 111, 119, 127–8, 173, 276 Roxburgh, castle and borough (see also
Rhineland 198 Teviotdale) 175, 178, 180, 184,
Rhuddlan, castle and borough 101 246
Rhuddlan, Statute of (Wales) 1284 68, Ruthin, lordship of 117, 132–3, 232
118, 196
Rhys ap Gruffudd 204 Saggart 122
Richard II, king of England, lord of St Albans Abbey, chronicle of 131
Ireland, duke of Aquitaine St Andrews (Fife) 38
(1377–1399) 63, 89, 220, 223, bishops of 142, 145
228, 229–31, 234, 236, 237–8, St Davids, diocese of 140, 145, 245
251, 274 St John, John 197
and Ireland 224–5, 227–8, 230, Saint Sardos, war of 198, 201
240, 241, 246 Sandford, John, archbishop of Dublin,
approach to kingship 226, 228–30, justiciar of Ireland 23–4, 65–6,
238–40, 242 67, 145
deposition of (1399) 231, 238–9 Savage family in Ulster 263
relations with Scotland 176, 203–4, Scalachronica 131, 203
208–9, 226, 228–9, 237, 239, 240 Scandinavia 215
· 316 ·
INDEX
Scota, mythical founder of Scotland 70 Stewart, David, duke of Rothesay

Scotichronicon 260 (d.1402) 229, 231, 232,
Scotland, kingdom of 11–12, 18–19, 237, 239
21–2, 26, 47–8, 49–50, 56, 70, Stewart, James, Steward of Scotland
76, 101, 116, 121–2, 200, 202, (d.1309) 27, 150, 159
206–10, 251, 254, 271 Stewart, John, earl of Carrick see Robert
alliance with the French kings III king of Scots
206–10, 225, 259–60, 275 Stewart, Murdoch, duke of Albany
government of 82–3, 84–6, 92–4, (d.1425) 234, 266

238, 243, 265–6, 274 Stewart, Robert, steward of Scotland
nobility of 147, 148–52, 158–60, see Robert II king of Scots
161 Stewart, Robert, earl of Fife and duke of
parliament of 99–100, 266 Albany (d.1420) 225, 232, 234–5,
reasons for survival (1296–1328) 241, 242–4
71–3, 109, 119–20, 213 Stewart, Thomas, earl of Angus
Scottish church 140, 141–3, 144, (d.1362) 93
145–6, 209, 275 Stewart, Walter, steward of Scotland
Scottish identity 96–7, 110, 112, (d.1327) 159
113–14, 119–20, 166–7, 243–4, Stirling Bridge, battle of (1297) 27
259–60, 267 Stirling Castle, siege of (1304) 28
Scrope, William, earl of Wiltshire Strata Florida Abbey 115
(d.1399) 228, 230 Strata Marcella Abbey 144
Scrope, William, archbishop of Stratford, John, archbishop of
York 234, 237 Canterbury 48, 145
Selkirk 184 (Forest of, see Ettrick and Strathbogie, family of 129
Selkirk Forest) Strathbogie, David, earl of Atholl
Shrewsbury, battle of (1403) 234 (d.1335) 157–8
Skerries, battle of (1316) 124 Strathbogie, John, earl of Atholl
Skye, isle of 168 (d.1306) 62
Soules, lords of Liddesdale, family Strathearn, earldom of 160, 169
of 151
Sourdeval, Gwilym 133 Talbot, John, lord and earl of
Snowdonia 73, 83 Shrewsbury (d.1453) 265
Spanish kingdoms 211, 215, 254, 275 Talbot, Richard 153
Stafford, earls of 175, 261 Talbot, Richard, archbishop of
Stafford, Ralph, earl of (d.1372) 153 Dublin 265
Stallworthman, Ieuan 133 Tallaght 122
Stewart family 46, 151, 158–9 Tantallon Castle 3
Albany branch 266 taxation 12–13, 66, 68, 84–7, 90–1,
Stewart, Alexander, lord of Badenoch 94–5, 200–3, 245
(d.1405) 169, 182, 183–4, 185, Teviotdale (see also Roxburgh) 177–8
187, 225, 229, 235 Thomond, lordship of 41, 157, 171,
Stewart, Alexander, earl of Mar 272
(d.1435) 184, 187, 235, Tees, River 176
243–4 Tickhill, lordship of 96
· 317 ·
DISUNITED KINGDOMS
Tipperary, liberty of 89, 121, 173, 182, Wales 11–12, 19–21, 25–6, 41–2,
262 56–7, 63, 70–1, 73, 76, 88, 101,
Trefor, John, bishop of St Asaph 245 114, 200, 204–5, 251, 254,
Trim, liberty of 90, 158 258–9, 268, 274
Tripartite Indenture (1405) 238 church in 140–1, 142, 144, 244–5,
Troyes, treaty of (1420) 199 258–9
Tuam, archbishops of 142 English settlers and settlement in 17,
Tudor family 264 21, 24, 68–9, 102, 116–18, 132–4,
Tudor, Edmund, earl of Richmond 205, 232, 245–6, 258–9, 272–3

(d.1456) 264 March of, and Marcher Lords 15,
Tudor, Jasper, earl of Pembroke 22–3, 27, 35, 42–4, 46, 88–9,
(d.1495) 264 116, 117–18, 147, 148–9, 154–5,
Tudor, Owain 264 174–6, 204, 229, 233, 245, 261,
Turnberry Castle 36, 45, 167 263–4, 272, 274
Tyler, Wat 276 military service from 63–4, 204–5
Principality of 21, 57, 82, 83–4,
Ufford, Ralph, justiciar of Ireland 85–6, 132, 197, 204, 226, 231
49, 65, 90, 91–2, 101, 188, Principality of (Glyn DWr’s) 237–9,
204, 265 241, 244–5, 251
Uists, Isles in Hebrides 168 Pure (native) 18, 19–21, 69–70,
Ulster, earldom and province 36, 38, 113, 115, 147, 155–6
41–2, 45, 50, 74, 75, 89, 91, 95, Wallace, William 27–28, 62, 130, 276,
121, 129, 147, 158, 167, 169–72, 277
207, 221, 222, 228, 229, 235, Warenne family 34, 147
262–3 Warenne, John, earl (d.1304) 85,
bonaght of 170–1, 184 149–50
county of 89 Warkworth Castle 3, 179
Umfraville, family of 147 Wars of the Roses 251–2
Umraville, Gilbert, earl of Angus Waterford, county of 119, 125, 227
(d.1307) 150 Welsh, the 29, 89, 102–3, 110 –11,
United Kingdom of Great Britain and 112–13, 116–18, 132–4, 148,
Ireland, formation of 274–7 155–6, 175–6, 204–5, 244–5,
252, 254, 263, 277
Valence, family of 148, 152, 155 legislation against (1401) 245, 255,
Valence, Aymer, earl of Pembroke 258
(d.1324) 150 Welsh wars and rebellions 13, 19, 20,
Valence, William, earl of Pembroke 58–9, 69–70, 63, 90, 109, 116,
(d.1296) 147 199, 202, 232–5, 258
Verdon, Adam 117 Welshpool 155
Vere, Robert de, duke of Ireland, Westminster, Palace and Abbey of
marquis of Dublin and earl of 12–13, 23, 25, 60, 85, 96, 101,
Oxford (d.1392) 224–6 197, 214, 257, 276
Vesci, family of 152 West Saxon, Dynasty of 112, 267
Vesci, William, lord of Kildare, justiciar White family in Ulster 263
of Ireland 24, 85, 91, 173 Wicklow Mountains 75, 119, 121, 124
· 318 ·
INDEX
William I (the Conqueror), king of Wyntoun, Andrew, Scottish

England (1066–1087) 140, 147 chronicler 130, 183
William I, king of Scots (1165–1214) 36
Winchelsey, Robert, archbishop of York 43, 45, 121, 180, 237
Canterbury 145 archbishops of 114, 140
Windsor, William of 201, 203, 224 York, Edmund of Langley, duke of
Wishart, Robert, bishop of Glasgow 27, (d.1402) 200, 211
146 York, Richard, duke of (d.1460) 252,
Wogan, John, justiciar of Ireland 81, 85 257, 261, 263–4, 265

Woodstock, treaty of (1247) 58 Yorkshire 96, 121, 152, 180, 186, 230,
Woodstock, Thomas of, duke of 255
Gloucester (d.1397) 159, 226, Younge, Gruffudd, bishop of
227, 229, 238 Bangor 245
· 319 ·

(Medieval World) Michael Brown - Disunited Kingdoms - Peoples and Politics in The British Isles 1280-1460 (2014, Routledge) PDF

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Series editor: Julia Smith, The University of Glasgow

Alfred the Great Edward the Black Prince

Christian–Jewish Relations, 1000–1300 Bastard Feudalism

The Western Mediterranean Kingdoms The Formation of English Common

The Godwins Cnut

Philip Augustus The Age of Robert Guiscard

Disunited Kingdoms The English Church, 940–1154

Violence in Medieval Europe Justinian

of this work has been asserted by him in accordance

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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Set by 35 in 10.5/13pt Galliard

chapter two R O BER T BR U CE 34

chapter ﬁve PEO PL ES, CR I SES A N D C O N F LI C T S 108

chapter six EL I T ES A N D I D EN T I T I E S 139

chapter seven BO R DER L A ND S: L O R D S A N D

chapter eight HU N DR ED YEA R S WA RS : T H E

chapter nine PO L I T I CS A ND PO WER I N T H E

1 The Kings of England (1272–1461) viii

EDWARD I (1272-1307) Edmund Earl of Lancaster

Henry Duke ofLanc'"'ter (d,1361)

Lionel Duke of Clarence)

Figure 1 The Kings of England (1272–1461)

WILLIAM I (1165-1214) David Earl of Huntingdon (d.1219)

ROBERT I (1306-29) = 1) Isabel of Mar

Figure 2 The Kings of Scots (1292–1460)

Robert (V) Brnec = Isabel Clare Richard Clare

Robert (VI) Bruce Gilbert Clare

Elw",beth (d.1363) (d1347)

Figure 3 Aristocratic inheritances in the fourteenth century

Angus Mor Lord ofIslay (d.1292)

Alexander (d.1299) Angus Og (dI318?) 1) =Ainc 6Cairan = 2) Muirchc.tach 6 Ncill

Donald' ofHarlaw' John M6r Lord ofDuniveig AJexander

Figure 4 The Clan Donald Lords of the Isles

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1 The British Isles 1290 xiv

Map 1 The British Isles 1290

Map 2 The Kingdom of Scotland

O'Brien Lelx Wlcklow

Map 3 The Lordship of Ireland (c.1300)

Map 4 The Bruce Wars (1314–1323)

Other great fIefl!I

Map 5 France c.1335

Map 6 The Kingdom of England c.1360

Area of mixed legal custom

M Walsh Marcher lordships

arid Scottish March Wardenshlps

Map 7 Realms and borderlands c.1400

ANGLESEY Conway Jt''(/<1t;- Flint

Marcher lordships (main lordships named)

Edward 1'8 Castles

Map 8 Post-conquest Wales

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Isles in the Hebrides and western Highlands of Scotland, or magnates,

medieval British Isles is matched by the dominance of national histories

of recent surveys and monographs on late medieval politics tends to con-

much stronger framework for consideration of the English and Scottish

analysis, has, nevertheless, drawn useful conclusions about the fourteenth

and conﬁrmation of the isles as a European region characterised by multiple

3. The Political Songs of England, ed. T. Wright (Camden Society, London,