Dan Snow's History Hit - Origins of Scottish Independence

Episode Date: June 14, 2023

For the first time in 18 years, the Declaration of Arbroath - an iconic document in the story of the struggle for Scottish independence in the 14th century - will go on public display. Dated 6 April 1320, and written by the barons and freeholders on behalf of the Kingdom of Scotland, the Declaration asks Pope John XXII to recognise Scotland's independence and to persuade Edward II of England to end hostilities against the Scots. In this episode of Gone Medieval, Matt Lewis finds out more from Dr. Alice Blackwell, Dr. Alan Borthwick and Prof. Dauvit Broun.The Declaration of Arbroath is on display from 3 June until 2 July 2023 at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh: https://www.nms.ac.uk/declarationThis episode was edited by Joseph Knight and produced by Rob Weinberg.Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Dan Snow, Suzannah Lipscomb, Lucy Worsley, Matt Lewis, Tristan Hughes and more. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code DANSNOW. Download the app or sign up here.We'd love to hear from you! You can email the podcast at [e-mail] can take part in our listener survey here.

Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval, I'm Matt Lewis. The Declaration of Arbroath is on display from the 3rd of June until the 2nd of July 2023 at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. Plans to exhibit it for the 700th anniversary in 2020 were scuppered by the pandemic so this will be the first time in 18 years the public will be able to see this landmark document in the story of the struggle for Scottish independence in the 14th century. To explore the declaration and its context I'm spoiling you today with three guests. We have Dr Alice Blackwell who is Senior Curator of Medieval Archaeology and History at the National Museum of Scotland. Dr Alan Borthwick is Head of Medieval

and Early Modern Records at National Records of Scotland, so he's probably the person who is incredibly nervous about this thing heading out into the wild. And Professor Dovett Broon is Professor of Scottish History at the University of Glasgow. Welcome to Gone Medieval, everybody. Great to be here. Thank you very much. Thank you for joining us. Dovett, to start off with, could we try and get a little bit of background? So can we start at the very beginning, which I understand is a very good place to start. Why was there a Scottish War of Independence? Did England and Scotland always have a really fractious relationship?

So the short answer is no, they didn't always have a fractious relationship, but there were tensions. So it wasn't inevitable, but equally, it wasn't a complete surprise. There are two ways to look at this. One is just to think about the previous history in terms of relations between kings. And of course, that goes up and down and depends on personalities. And if you could just play it back 100 years before the war to independence, the big issue for the King of Scots at the time, William the Lion, was the fact that when he was a boy, he had been Earl of Northumberland. His brother had deprived him of this 1157 as part of an arrangement with Henry II of England. And William lived on until he was over 70, and he never let go of this idea. So he died in 1240, still

anchoring on it. So that colored relationships between the kings. But as time moves on, the idea of what it is to be a king does change generally in Latin Christendom and move towards a sense of territorial jurisdiction as defining kingdoms, rather than personality, person of the king, geography, and so on. So when you begin to get this more jurisdictional idea of what it is to be a king, a big change is that it is no longer quite so easy to have a recognition that some kings are superior to others. In the 12th century, that's fine because it's not interfering with your control over your own kingdom. Once we're playing this forward 100 years,

that is not the case. You're either a king or you're not. And if you're a king, you aren't under another king. And why I'm saying that is because kingship is now about jurisdiction. This means if you're the superior king, you're not really properly recognized unless you actually have jurisdiction over all your realm. You can't just have people under you who

are kings who have completely separate jurisdiction. So that's a slightly simplistic way to put it, of course, but I think it does help to understand how very old ideas about the King of England as the main king across Britain, and equally old ideas about the King of Scots being completely in charge of their own realm, were gradually colliding. For example, the Kings of Scots from Alexander II onwards, he's 1214 to 1449, were very keen to get the sort of top mark of kingship, which is colonization and anointments. Not every European kingdom had this at the time. And the king of England stepped in and said no to the pope.

Please do not do that. We'll be very upset. So what you end up with is the pope recognizing Scotland as an independent kingdom de facto in every practical way, but not this sort of magic thing of anointment and coronation. It's not until actually the week after Robert I dies in 1329 that this is finally given to the King of Scots. So how that relationship plays out will depend on the personality of the king.

So that's, of course, why we end up having a war in 1296. I think there are two dimensions. That's the kings, but there is also the people. Now, that's a complicated matter, of course. But two things I just want to highlight is there's the border context in which people on the ground with their daily lives, trading, just having families, having friends, that stretches across the border. The border really doesn't mean terribly much. It's

becoming more and more important as this sense of territorial jurisdiction takes shape. But 1296 is a big shock for that. And for example, Amanda Beam has shown that there is a very high proportion of the freeholders who should have served in the English Army whenever they first marched into Scotland in 1296, and they didn't turn up and they lost their lands as a result. It was just such a horrible break with what they were used to, that it was too difficult for them to contemplate. So there's that, but most important of all, I think, is the elite, not just your ordinary freeholders, but your major lords. And for them, there was a very fundamental dynamic why this changing idea of jurisdiction and kings having jurisdiction in their kingdoms mattered.

And the crucial context here is that at that level of society from the mid-12th century, many of them had lands, significant amounts of lands, and certainly family connections in both kingdoms. That meant that they were acutely aware of what was happening in England, where royal jurisdiction was eroding and interfering with their own jurisdiction in their own lands, their baronial jurisdiction. That was undermined by the fact that it was very easy for people to go straight to the king's court and ignore their lord's court. This was not the case in Scotland. And in fact, Scotland remains, through till after the Second Jacobites' Rebellion of 1245-6, a country where baronial jurisdiction continues to be a fundamental part of the social makeup. So from the point of view of these major lords, it made sense for them to maintain Scottish independence. And that becomes a very serious issue once we get into 1296.

And so what draws then, I guess, Edward I's attention to the Scottish crown? We then move into this period, you say 1296, there's the invasion and the war is ongoing. So the declaration of Arbroath comes in 1320. So kind of between those dates, roughly what's happening in that relationship? So there's quite a lot lot of course, different phases. And to begin with, it's actually going in completely the opposite direction. I'm going to say to begin with, I'm going to take you back to March the 19th, 1286, which is when Alexander III dies in the night. And this is a bit of a crisis because he's had children, they've all died. His only living descendant is his

granddaughter Margaret, who's in Norway, she's just a child. So who's going to be king is a live question. And it's quite impressive how the government responds to this because they waste no time in giving out the issue for what is effectively a parliament. They come together and they elect seven guardians, and they were going to run the country as best they could until the battle was sorted. But once that had happened, the granddaughter was the obvious person who was going to become the next monarch. And it was a matter of getting her back to Scotland from Norway. And that's when Edward really takes a close interest because he's got this plan, which makes perfect sense to everybody,

that his son Edward will marry Margaret and there'll be a union of the kingdoms. So for the next few years, that's the direction of travel. And in that context, Edward gives written guarantee of Scottish independence. There's quite a detailed list of how the country's going to be governed. The kingdom, the realm is going to be two separate kingdoms with two separate governments. That's all delineated very carefully. There is a problem, however, and that is that Margaret dies en route. She gets as far as Kirkwall, which is part of Norway at that stage, not yet part of Scotland. And therefore, that really is a total crisis now. Who on earth is going to be the next monarch?

It's also really unfortunate because those guarantees that Edward gave were the context of building up to a marriage treaty. There hadn't actually been a fully-fleshed marriage treaty signed and sealed yet. So it was just a desperately unfortunate situation because on the one hand, of course, the Scottish government said, we've got this in writing. You've guaranteed our independence. And from Edward's point of view, he said, well, that was only a necessary step at the time to get towards something that never happened. So we're deep in the territory of very different points of view of the status of the kingdom and the way forward years before we get to the war.

So Edward's solution to this difficulty eventually is he's invited by the government to arbitrate between the two main claimants, John Balliol and Robert Bruce, the grandfather of the future king. And Edward eventually turns up. The delay is partly because his wife dies, Eleanor of Castile, but he made the absolutely been wafting about in the background, is fully integrated and, from Edward's point of view, is treated as a self-evident fact, which runs against everybody's actual experience. So of course, there's resistance. And as I was explaining, the Scottish leadership at the time don't see this just as a little interesting point

of jurisprudence. This matters because being under the jurisdiction of the English crown is something they know about and they don't like. They'd like to have the much more right touch style of government. So John Balliol becomes king in this situation where Edward is then keen to assert the fact that Edward has jurisdiction, whereas the Scottish leaders are keen that he does the opposite and that he asserts the fact that John has jurisdiction and not Edward. And Edward, by the way, is having a war with the King of France, and that provides the Scottish leadership the opportunity to have a treaty with France against Edward I. And Edward I, meanwhile, is expecting John Balliol and the Scottish

knights to turn up and serve in his army. And they don't. And they say, I'm afraid our homage is now cancelled. Our loyalty to you is now rescinded. And that triggers the invasion. And we, at last, you might say, get into a situation of war, which gets very horrible with the sack of Berwick in March 1296. That was a brilliant answer to a really unfair question, so thank you very much, Dovett. And just out of interest, is that original treaty there that you mentioned between Scotland and France, is that the origin of the old alliance, or was it going on before that? Well, it's a very good question, and there used to be a sort of sense, oh yes, yes, that's with it.

And you could say that's when it really gets formalised. But the truth is that obviously things are always more complicated. And there's been a long standing and growing connection between not so much kings of France, but France and kings of Scotland. And the fact that both Alexander II and Alexander III, were their second wives, went to France is significant. or their second wives, went to France is significant. Alice, so by the time we get to 1320, when the Declaration of Arbroath is written, Robert the Bruce has been King of Scots for kind of 14 years, but he's having trouble being recognised by anybody else outside of Scotland as King. Why does he have that trouble?

Are the English crown just simply continuing to refuse to acknowledge him because of what Dovett's outlined there? Essentially, yeah. So here we've got England weighing in, refusing to acknowledge Robert as king, but we've also got the papal authorities refusing to acknowledge Robert as king. And that is a really important fact because the popes here are motivated really by a desire to go on crusade. They want to crusade and their best ploy of doing that is to support England in its interests against Scotland and France. And so the popes really here are intervening and refusing to acknowledge Robert as king. But there's a series of events that have happened after Bannockburn. So we hold Bannockburn up as a magnificent victory by Robert I, but it's complicated.

After Bannockburn, Robert seizes captives and they give the potential for redeeming significant amounts of payment. They capture the English baggage train, but he wants to capture Edward and fails and his own family's in captivity. And so there's a sense that although this is a victory, it hasn't leveraged, it hasn't brought the leverage against Edward that it should, that Robert wants it to. So in order to try and put more pressure on Edward in the years after Bannockburn, he increases the amount of border raiding down into England. And in order to try and maintain pressure and request peace talks, but that position wasn't powerful enough, the blow wasn't hard enough to be able to exert demands for recognition as king in terms of the pre-1286 territory.

And as a result, there are no sort of quick or substantial concessions from England. A number of other things then happen into the mix. So with the death of John Balliol in autumn 1314 in France, followed by Philip IV of France. Both of them are succeeded by their sons. And Edward requests Edward Balliol to be allowed to stay in England rather than travel to France to do homage. And I think he wanted him close because Edward Balliol here represents a rival for Robert with the potential to act potentially as a vassal king under Edward. And so for the next few years, Edward Balliol travels back and forth between France and England, proving an ongoing threat for Robert and for the stability of his reign.

But then around this time, Scotland loses the control of the Isle of Man. And that opens up the risk of attack to the West Coast and the Western seaboard of Scotland. And so from then we begin to see military preparations for war to the West to invade Ireland with the aim of overthrowing the English administration there and opening a war effectively against England on two fronts. And there's been various suggestions for the motivations behind this. It's obviously a very difficult, challenging thing to do to open conflict on such a large scale. There is a sense that there may have been a sort of what you might call a pan-Celtic alliance between Scotland and Ireland at this time. Edward the Bruce himself,

his influence and his sort of portrayed later as a headstrong character seeking a throne of his own. That's an important factor. There are also repeated poor harvests and famine at this time and blockades of ships orchestrated by England that mean that Scotland in particular is facing famine. And so access to Irish resources might have been part of motivation. But the main reason surely has to be that Robert is seeking military gain and regional destabilisation sufficient to compel Edward to recognise Robert's kingship and conclude peace terms with the sovereign kingdom of Scotland. Fascinating that there's so many different angles. Probably I'm guilty

sometimes of just thinking, you know, Edward I turned up and attacked and it was just kind of confined to the kings of England and Scotland fighting each other around the border. It's interesting that there's all of this stuff going on in a big theatre around it and lots of poking and prodding in different directions to try and achieve various aims. For the next three years, sorry, so 1315, 1318, there's alternate campaigning in Ireland led by Robert's brother Edward, as well as raiding across the Anglo-Scottish border. And that's a huge risk because the king, his heir presumptive in his brother, and the nominated guardian of the kingdom in the event of both of their deaths, they're all seeing active service. It's quite a position of peril. And at this point, opponents to Bruce could point to a lack of real political gains since Bannockburn,

the loss of man, the rumours around Edward Balliol, and this enormity of splitting a war across two fronts, across the Anglo-Scottish borders and Ireland. But Robert comes back to Scotland in May 1317, having failed to make a decisive breakthrough in Ireland and came quite close to death. And there's a sense of growing papal pressure, I suppose, via papal interventions, petitioning by Edward II to try and force a breakthrough. So Robert continues cross-border action,

renews the siege of Berwick. Berwick holds out. The Pope, encouraged by Edward II, sends further emissaries to Robert to confront him with a new papal truce. He's turned away. The papal emissaries are turned away without safe conduct and robbed on their way south. are turned away without safe contact and robbed on their way south. And it took another six months for Berwick to fall in June 1318, during which the Scots continued action as far south as Ripon, taking other important Northumbrian castles on the way. But the taking of Berwick in June 1318 prompts really a barrage of communications from the Pope, a barrage of papal bulls. really a barrage of communications from the Pope, a barrage of papal bulls. And so we see in the months that follow his excommunication, the original one for the murdering his rival in a church in 1306 is renewed, church services are prohibited,

and crucially, he absolves the Scots subjects of loyalty to Robert. And there's a sense here that this focus on Berwick and on the Anglo-Scottish border, theatre of war, is to the detriment of support for his brother in Ireland, because in October in 1318, disaster strike and Edward Bruce is killed. His body's decapitated, drawn and quartered, and parts are mounted on Dublin's walls and his head's delivered to Edward II. It's really awful stuff. And this brings about the death of Robert's heir and effectively the failure of what was most likely a really costly overseas campaign that had drained resources from the Anglo-Scottish border. So yeah, a lot of tensions. It prompts an emergency parliament at Schoonen 1318 to address the issue of succession, at which point they proclaim Robert Stuart as heir, but he's just a toddler, he's a few years old.

And there's also a sense at this point that there's growing discontent, a law proclaimed at this parliament against the spreading of rumours or lies against Robert or his government, which is a sure sign that there are problems amongst the nobility. And indeed, we know with some hindsight that conspiracy was afoot. It was revealed very shortly after the dispatch of the Declaration of Arbroath to Avignon. Later sources tend to downplay the significance of this series of events and scapegoat one of the conspirators, William Soules, as the main kind of mover in this plot against Robert, motivated by seeking the throne for himself. But the real threat really is Edward Bailey, all backed by Edward II and the disinherited and disenfranchised, disenchanted Scottish barons. And this plot then isn't just a blip in the road,

in a way, I suppose, of a kind of natural progression of Robert's assertion of royal power. It's a really messy episode that bubbles on for several years, and which many of the nobles named in the Declaration were in some way connected with. So Edward II fails to retake Berwick in autumn 1319. And that means, I think he shifts pressure back onto a diplomatic front, renews complaints to the Pope. And as a result of that, the Pope summons Robert and three of his bishops to Avignon to explain themselves. And Robert doesn't attend Avignon. Instead, he summons a council at Newbattle Abbey, about seven miles southeast of Edinburgh. And the result of this council was the dispatch of further letters to Avignon,

including the letter that we know today as the Declaration of Arbroath. Join me, Dallas Campbell, on Patented, a podcast by History Hit, where we bring you the fascinating histories of the world's most impactful inventions. We uncover the exceptional stories behind everyday objects. Snakes and Ladders is really a game about a karmic journey through stages of existence towards liberation. Look back in time to understand technologies of the future. One of the really interesting things about it is that it showed just how hard

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Normans. Kings and popes. Who were rarely the best of friends. Murder. Rebellions. And crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. that's wonderful background to everything that's going on and i'm aware that i'm having to speed a

little bit through some really complex history here to get to the declaration of arbroath in 1320 but alan what does the declaration of arbroath actually say what do they ask for when they write it okay maybe i'll start off with a slightly tangent to your question there and say that, particularly for me and my colleagues in National Records of Scotland as archivists and conservators, it is fascinating for us that it's an archive document which is the focus of so much attention. I'm not dismissing at all those like Alice, the creators of objects and museums, but it's really nice that it is actually a document that is the focus of so much attention.

And I think that the period of the wars of independence can in many ways be thought of as a war of words as much as a war of battles, and Alice and Dobbit have talked very forcefully about those particular sides. There's an extraordinary number of documents being produced in this period. And some of them make fascinating reading. And the Declaration of Abroath is one such. It's a short document. It's only around about a thousand words. But what the writer or writers of the document have tried to do is to encapsulate

for a learned audience, as it would be, the reasons why it is that, if you like, the Big Brother has gone far too overboard in asserting some sort of right of lordship over the Scots. Very briefly, it rehearses some of the old antagonisms between the Scots and the English. It explains something of the mythical background to the Scots arriving in Scotland and setting up as an independent kingdom. And then it forcefully asserts the right of the Scots to accept and fall in line behind Robert Bruce as their lawful king. Despite, as what Alice said, the refusal of the FEPC in particular to recognize Bruce as the rightful king. And again, Alice mentioned very well the fact that in letters sent by the Pope to Robert I, Robert wasn't being styled King of Scots. He was being styled as the governor of the kingdom or something like that.

And there was various, very specious ways of addressing Robert. Furthermore, what the Scots say in the letter is that they are determined to support Robert as their king. If it turned out that he was actually to, in effect, turn face altogether and cease to protect them against English incursion, in other words, to be, in effect, just agree to the lordship of English, then they would elect another in his place as king, which is a remarkable statement for them to make. They then go on just to explain that, really underlining the fact that they really are wanting the Pope to put pressure on Edward II to back down, to stop harassing them in

the ways he has done, by saying that they would be very happy to go on crusade if only Edward II would leaves them alone. And they end with an interesting message to the Pope saying that if the Pope doesn't assist them in this way, it will be his fault. It won't be anybody else's. And so there really is a lot of stress on the fact that the Pope can do something to reduce the conflict, to allow The Pope can do something to reduce the conflict, to allow peace to be drawn up, and then to allow the Scots and the English to go off on crusade, which is what the Pope would undoubtedly have wanted. And then there is the usual sort of address clause. And that's the address clause, which of course gives us the date, 6 April 1320, and the place date. There's some fascinating things going on there. It sounds like the Scots had really well positioned that document to play into everything the Pope wanted. The idea that they would go on crusade if only he'd sort this out. You know, what Pope doesn't want a big crusading

army united and heading east behind him. But also the idea that the Pope has some kind of authority to arbitrate in these big secular matters is something that Rome was always trying to gather for itself. So the Scots were quite cannily, I think, playing into that, almost flattering the Pope and saying, well, you are the ultimate arbiter, so why don't you sort this out? Yeah, very much. And the Scots had for some time wanted to stress that the Scottish church was a special daughter of Rome, that this went back again into mythical periods. I wouldn't have expected, and Dobbett will be much more expert

on this than I am, that this would have been acceptable to an English audience by any means. And this was, again, it was part of the documents which were being produced earlier in late 1290s, early 1300s, where there was a lot of argument about the status of the Scottish church. But the Scots were certainly determined to stress once again that because of the status of the Scottish church. But the Scots were certainly determined to stress once again that because of the status of the Scottish church, it really was for the Pope to intervene and to take concerns much more seriously than he had been doing up to that point. And in terms of the actual document itself, how big is it? What does it look like? What can people expect to see if they go and visit this at the museum?

Surprisingly, perhaps, it's not that big a document at all. It's round, about 20 inches, broad, about 22 and a half inches deep. Now, an A4 sheet of paper is about 8 and a half by 11 and a half. So, in effect, it's about twice the size of a standard A4 sheet of paper. It's about a thousand words long. It is extremely well written. It has to be said in terms of the actual writing of the document. It's very typical of documents of the period in the sense that at the foot of the document, the very end of the parchment skin is folded up slightly. Then through that, parchment tags were threaded and seals were appended to the tags. As I say, this is a standard form for medieval documents.

Do those seals give us a list of the people who put their signatures effectively to the document? Yes, very much. One of the odd things about the directuation is that you can come up with different numbers of people who wish to be associated with the document in some form. There is an address clause at the start of the document which names 8 earls and 31 barons. So you could say that that was the initial set of men who certainly must have agreed in some form with the concepts which were being explained in the letter. Secondly though, there are the names which are written on the fold of the document and on some cases on the parchment tags. And then there are some slightly different names which one gets there. And then the third set of names, I think it's about 11

seals attached to the document, which are not of people who are named in the text anywhere. So overall, it's always been difficult to work out how many people we should really say that were properly associated in some form with the document, but it might have been difficult to work out how many people we should really say that were properly associated in some form with the document. But it might have been up to around about 50 that might once have been appended. Unfortunately, only 19 now survive. Seals are very vulnerable to loss. It is the part of any medieval document which is most liable to suffer damage. And this is just what we're left.

We do know that there were definitely more seals appended at one point. There are sort of shadow impressions of seals on some of the tags. Seals long lost, of course. It's extremely difficult to know how many seals were definitely appended to the version that we've got. Maybe I should also say, just to clarify for listeners, that the version that we've got. Maybe I should also say, just to clarify for listeners, that the version that we have got, which is the one which is going on display in the Russian Museum of Scotland, is what is regarded as the file copy. The original version, which was sent

to a Pope, was long lost. It does mean, therefore, that we have to make a lot of assumptions about the document that we have got. And the most obvious one is that it is pretty much the same as one that would have been sent to the Pope in terms of its physical size, word length, the manner of its being sealed, and so on. So we can't do anything about that, because we'll never be able to conjure up the original letter which was sent to the Pope. But it's on its own account a remarkable document and one which National Records has captioned a very pleased to be the Constituency of London. I guess the temptation is to be frustrated about what doesn't survive and forget how lucky we are with some of the things that do survive that we can still see today. If we think about the Declaration as a

political tool, Dovettitt how successful was it how widespread was knowledge of the declaration of arbor for example well that's a very good question one way to approach this is just to dwell a little bit longer on the archival copy that survives which is what we're able to look at but it's quite a story how that survives at all itself because when Cromwell conquered Scotland, he took away all the records. And then an attempt was made to repatriate the Scottish government records on restoration of the crown, and the ship went down. So it wasn't there because Thomas Hamilton, he was looking after the records in the early 17th century. There was work happening in Edinburgh Castle, which is where the document was being kept.

And he must have known about this, you see, because he thought, oh, I'm going to take this home for safekeeping. And it's because he did that that we've got it at all. So the question is, how did he know about it? I mean, it's the file copy. It's not meant to be. Take these things out and read them regularly. know about it. I mean, it's the file copy. It's not meant to be, take these things out and read them regularly. They're stored to be kept safe somewhere, not for public display or general use. And I think the reason is because it was actually quite well known in the Middle Ages by anybody

who had a close interest in the way Scottish history was told in Latin in the Middle Ages, because it became part of, for example, Bower's Scottish Chronicle, written in the 1440s, runs to 16 books. And the definition of both is part of that, you see. So that's not to say it was widely known, but for people who wanted to, were really interested in reading the history of the kingdom from its origins through to the 15th century, they would have come across the full text written out. So that's not a question you ask, which was about the political importance of it, but it is just an interesting preliminary to say it was actually known. And now this is something I should say that hasn't been subject to peer review, which I'm now going to say it now, which is how did they get into the history of the kingdom?

And the answer we give these days is that there was an attempt to put together a history of the kingdom that took it up to the near present day. And this probably was between 1326 and early 1330s. probably was between 1326 and early 1330s. And whoever did this decided to stop and enter the first second conquest. His first conquest is 1296, his second conquest is 1304, and decided to end with a dossier of documents which related to the earlier attempt to involve the Pope and included the Declaration of Abroad. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Eleanor Janaga.

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And crusades. Find out who we really were. By decided to finish the history of Scotland at that point. And this helps to explain the way the Declaration appears with these histories, because it's actually associated with events of 1304. So it's as if the person who's writing the history of the Reign is to bring it up to the moment of total disaster, and then have this actual moment of glorious prose proclaiming independence. So I feel it does establish itself through these literary means. Politically, it does seem to have had at least one desired effect, which was to ease the pressure of the Scottish government.

And ultimately, of course, we do get to a situation where yet another generation of Edwards, Edward III, recognises Scottish independence fully, the Treaty of Edinburgh, 1328, and that then allows the Pope finally to give coronation and anointment to the Kings of Scots. And as I say, the papal bull on this was dated a week after Robert I's death in 1329. Fascinating. And Alice, if we think about this document is produced in 1320, as Dovitz outlined, then it kind of takes another eight years before peace is really agreed. Does the document have any kind of immediate impact on the course of the war? Should we remember it as a really important document as part of the actual conflict itself? It does ease the pressure. It gives room for discussion.

And it gives a sense that the Pope is now considering the Scottish side. But in itself, I think it can't be said to produce the events that Dovitz just described up until the peace of 1328, which of course didn't last in any case. of 1328, which of course didn't last in any case. What's perhaps more interesting is picking up after where Dovitz left us in the medieval period with the Declaration and multiple documents and histories of Scotland thereafter, because the document continues to be a live thing. It continues to be a thing that is interpreted, read, understood, reinterpreted, read, understood up until today. It's interesting just to sort of have a think about some of the points along the way. So the first English translation comes along in 1689, isn't it, Dobbit? And that brings the document to a wider audience. It's also interesting to reflect on the roles of anniversaries in how our understanding of

these documents has changed and how the document has become an icon in and of itself or something that has set us out from other things. So the role of the 650th anniversary in 1970, and then perhaps the role of the 2020 anniversary, the 700th anniversary, in providing moments where we reflect on these documents and their significance and moments where they're kind of injected into the public consciousness. And the other thing that we haven't spoken about at all is, I suppose, the relationship with the rest of the world beyond Scotland. So the declaration wasn't the first time that any of these arguments had been made, but it was a very powerful, very evocative statement of the case. And it's perhaps because of that language, the success of the composition, that it goes on to have a special significance, not just in Scotland, but around the world, including to many people in North America.

It's been said by some people that there is a direct connection between the Declaration of Arbroath and the American Declaration of Independence. Although historians have looked, and to date, there is no evidence of a direct link between the two. But as a result of that kind of belief and the connection and the sort of strength of feeling, I suppose, about the importance of this document, Tartan Day in first Canada and then North America is celebrated on the 6th of April in recognition of the special place that this document holds to many in those countries. And so although that basis for that association is very shaky or indeed not established, it's clearly a document that has a very special resonance with a lot of people around the world. Yeah, I think it's interesting how some of these

documents that perhaps weren't as impactful in their own day as they might have been, have gone on to have these lives long after the event and come and go out of the collective consciousness as they perhaps tie in with events around the world and attitudes to various other things. They can take on an importance that they simply didn't have in their own day, really. Is that fair enough to say? The benefit of being gone medieval is that we can stay away from modern politics, but Scottish independence is a relevant issue today. And here we have a 700-year-old declaration of Scottish independence. Well, I'd say just the way you put that, there is a direct connection with the American Declaration, and it's the other way around.

Because at the time, it was this letter written by probably the first government, of course, but in the name of the barrels sent to the Pope. In the Latin Histories of the Kingdom I was mentioning, that's how it was labelled, and it was about the barrels complaining about the terrible things that the First was doing to Scotland. It's not until, I'm afraid I can't remember exactly when, like a hundred years ago, but by which time the idea of a Declaration of Independence, which I'm not an expert in American history, but I understand it took a while for the Declaration of Independence to achieve

its iconic status. But in an era, I'm talking about the 18th century and the 20th century, an era which was defined by kingdoms, countries becoming independent and having declarations of independence, this then sets off a train of ways of thinking about independent kingdoms. And then you read the Declaration, as we are calling it, in that light, you think, oh, so I don't think anybody in the Middle Ages, of course, would have understood what you're talking about, referring to a Declaration of Independence. But it is a neat way for us to understand it from our perspective. And just to end on, Alan, I guess my question for

you is, how hard is it to preserve a document like this 700 years old as you mentioned fragile seals it's almost an accidental survival how do you balance that against the desire for it to be on display and for people to see it yeah it is immensely difficult for me and particularly obviously from my conservator colleagues in exactly the same way that alice as a curator at the museum and her conservation colleagues feel about the objects that they have got in the museum. Any of the people who've watched recent programmes on the Natural History Museum or the V&A Museum in London, how they look after the artefacts that they have got, can get a sense of how difficult that actually is for people charged with looking

after documents like this. Dovett mentioned earlier that the document wasn't in the custody of what we would now call National Archives, National Records of Scotland, for a good couple of hundred years. And unfortunately, during that period, it suffered significant areas of damage, loss of text, which is, I suspect, the thing which would strike people when they first see it if they've never seen it before. But the Declaration of Arboros is an animal skin, so it's an organic item,

an inevitable process of decay underway. And what we're trying to do is to preserve it for posterity, to ensure that its storage complies with best practice for archived documents. That's a stable of humidity and temperature out of natural light and so on. And any exhibition, humidity and temperature out of natural light and so on. And any exhibition, unfortunately, increases the risk of some sort of decay or damage. We are looking at the exhibition next month as being a once-in-a-generation opportunity for people to see it. And I think, as you mentioned yourself, Matthew, in the introduction, this is the first time that it's been on display for 18 years. However, we do very much appreciate that there is a lot of interest in the documents. So we, for many years, had features about the Declaration available on our website,

including there's a suite of new high-quality images that were created for the exhibition. And there's also a short booklet about the Declaration, which includes a couple of the images and a translation, the declaration, which includes a couple of the images and a translation, which can either be picked up at the exhibition or can be downloaded from our website. And when I say are there, of course, that's National Records of Scotland. Maybe the other thing that I can say is that my conservator colleagues in particular are always thinking about just ways that they can find out more about the document as part of the best means of preserving it. They've already been doing a lot of very interesting research into the physical nature of the document, but there is a possibility perhaps that one of the things that we might

be able to do in the future is non-destructive testing of the wax and the seals. And that might, for example, show whether there is a common origin of the wax. And if that is the case, which I suspect is not impossible, that probably has implications for the sealing process. Because if we get to that stage, then we may be beginning to think that the sealing of the document was done in one place. Certainly, I don't think there's any hint that the document might have been touted around the country. Taking the document on a tour to get seals appended, I think that's highly unlikely.

What I suspect will have happened is that the document is in one place where the seals were applied. Now, that may have implications just for the way that we think about the document in the future. This is a bit speculative, but hopefully it's the sort of thing which modern technology allows us to do, which very, very definitely, 50 years ago at the time of the 650th anniversary,

we would never have been able to do that. And there was some really good stuff done by previous scholars in 1970, but it's always a process by which we're building on what has been done before. There's a Dalit and colleagues and myself standing on the shoulders of giants, in effect, looking at the background to the document, how it was created and its impact. Wonderful. Thank you very much. I mean, it's been absolutely fascinating to learn more about this document specifically, but also to learn more about the Scottish War of Independence and all of the context around that. I'm particularly struck by the whole international element to it, the different spheres that were going on and the kind

of ideological war that was going on beneath the surface of the physical battles that we tend to focus all of our attention on. So thank you very much for all of your time. Yes, thank you very much. Pleasure. Thank you. The Declaration of Arbroath goes on display at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh on the 3rd of June and is there until the 2nd of July if you'd like to take a chance to go and see it. Or as Alan mentioned, there is some information available on National Records Scotland's website too. There are new episodes of Gone Medieval every Tuesday and Friday, so please join us next time for more on the greatest millennium in human history.

Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us wherever you get your podcasts from and to tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval. If you have a moment, please do drop us a review or rate us anywhere that you listen to your podcasts. It really does help new listeners to find us. If you're enjoying this and looking for a bit more medieval goodness in your life, then you can subscribe to our Medieval Mondays newsletter by following the links in the show notes below. Anyway, I'd better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis, and we've just gone medieval with history hits. you