Robert II. was crowned at Scone on March 26, 1371. He was elderly,
jovial, pacific, and had little to fear from England when the deaths of
Edward III. and the Black Prince left the crown to the infant Richard II.
There was fighting against isolated English castles within the Scottish
border, to amuse the warlike Douglases and Percies, and there were
truces, irregular and ill kept. In 1384 great English and Scottish raids
were made, and gentlemen of France, who came over for sport, were
scurvily entertained, and (1385) saw more plundering than honest fighting
under James, Earl of Douglas, who merely showed them an army that, under
Richard II., burned Melrose Abbey and fired Edinburgh, Perth, and Dundee.
Edinburgh was a town of 400 houses. Richard insisted that not more than
a third of his huge force should be English Borderers, who had no idea of
hitting their Scottish neighbours, fathers-in-law and brothers-in-law,
too hard. The one famous fight, that of Otterburn (August 15, 1388), was
a great and joyous passage of arms by moonlight. The Douglas fell, the
Percy was led captive away; the survivors gained advancement in renown
and the hearty applause of the chivalrous chronicler, Froissart. The
oldest ballads extant on this affair were current in 1550, and show
traces of the reading of Froissart and the English chroniclers.
In 1390 died Robert II. Only his youth was glorious. The reign of his
son, Robert III. (crowned August 14, 1390), was that of a weakling who
let power fall into the hands of his brother, the Duke of Albany, or his
son David, Duke of Rothesay, who held the reins after the Parliament (a
Parliament that bitterly blamed the Government) of January 1399. (With
these two princes the title of Duke first appears in Scotland.) The
follies of young David alienated all: he broke his betrothal to the
daughter of the Earl of March; March retired to England, becoming the man
of Henry IV.; and though Rothesay wedded the daughter of the Earl of
Douglas, he was arrested by Albany and Douglas and was starved to death
(or died of dysentery) in Falkland Castle (1402). The Highlanders had
been in anarchy throughout the reign; their blood was let in the great
clan duel of thirty against thirty, on the Inch of Perth, in 1396.
Probably clans Cameron and Chattan were the combatants.
On Rothesay's death Albany was Governor, while Douglas was taken prisoner
in the great Border defeat of Homildon Hill, not far from Flodden. But
then (1403) came the alliance of Douglas with Percy; Percy's quarrel with
Henry IV. and their defeat; and Hotspur's death, Douglas's capture at
Shrewsbury. Between Shakespeare, in "Henry IV.," and Scott, in 'The Fair
Maid of Perth,' the most notable events in the reign of Robert III. are
immortalised. The King's last misfortune was the capture by the English
at sea, on the way to France, of his son James in February-March 1406.
{52} On April 4, 1406, Robert went to his rest, one of the most unhappy
of the fated princes of his line.
THE REGENCY OF ALBANY.
The Regency of Albany, uncle of the captured James, lasted for fourteen
years, ending with his death in 1420. He occasionally negotiated for his
king's release, but more successfully for that of his son Murdoch. That
James suspected Albany's ambition, and was irritated by his conduct,
appears in his letters, written in Scots, to Albany and to Douglas,
released in 1408, and now free in Scotland. The letters are of 1416.
The most important points to note during James's English captivity are
the lawlessness and oppression which prevailed in Scotland, and the
beginning of Lollard heresies, nascent Protestantism, nascent Socialism,
even "free love." The Parliament of 1399, which had inveighed against
the laxity of Government under Robert II., also demanded the extirpation
of heresies, in accordance with the Coronation Oath. One Resby, a
heretical English priest, was arraigned and burned at Perth in 1407,
under Laurence of Lindores, the Dominican Inquisitor into heresies, who
himself was active in promoting Scotland's oldest University, St Andrews.
The foundation was by Henry Wardlaw, Bishop of St Andrews, by virtue of a
bull from the anti-pope Benedict XIII., of February 1414. Lollard ideas
were not suppressed; the chronicler, Bower, speaks of their existence in
1445; they sprang from envy of the wealth, and indignation against the
corruptions of the clergy, and the embers of Lollardism in Kyle were not
cold when, under James V., the flame of the Reformation was rekindled.
The Celtic North, never quiet, made its last united effort in 1411, when
Donald, Lord of the Isles, who was in touch with the English Government,
claimed the earldom of Ross, in right of his wife, as against the Earl of
Buchan, a son of Albany; mustered all the wild clans of the west and the
isles at Ardtornish Castle on the Sound of Mull; marched through Ross to
Dingwall; defeated the great northern clan of Mackay, and was hurrying to
sack Aberdeen when he was met by Alexander Stewart, Earl of Mar, the
gentry of the northern Lowlands, mounted knights, and the burgesses of
the towns, some eighteen miles from Aberdeen, at Harlaw. There was a
pitched battle with great slaughter, but the Celts had no cavalry, and
the end was that Donald withdrew to his fastnesses. The event is
commemorated by an old literary ballad, and in Elspeth's ballad in
Scott's novel, 'The Antiquary.'
In the year of Albany's death, at a great age (1420), in compliance with
the prayer of Charles VII. of France, the Earl of Buchan, Archibald,
Douglas's eldest son, and Sir John Stewart of Derneley, led a force of
some 7000 to 10,000 men to war for France. Henry V. then compelled the
captive James I. to join him, and (1421) at Bauge Bridge the Scots, with
the famed La Hire, routed the army of Henry's brother, the Duke of
Clarence, who, with 2000 of the English, fell in the action. The victory
was fruitless; at Crevant (1423) the Scots were defeated; at Verneuil
(1424) they were almost exterminated. None the less the remnant, with
fresh levies, continued to war for their old ally, and, under Sir Hugh
Kennedy and others, suffered at Rouvray (February 1429), and were with
the victorious French at Orleans (May 1429) under the leadership of
Jeanne d'Arc. The combination of Scots and French, at the last push,
always saved the independence of both kingdoms.
The character of Albany, who, under his father, Robert III., and during
the captivity of James I., ruled Scotland so long, is enigmatic. He is
well spoken of by the contemporary Wyntoun, author of a chronicle in
rhyme; and in the Latin of Wyntoun's continuator, Bower. He kept on
friendly terms with the Douglases, he was popular in so far as he was
averse to imposing taxation; and perhaps the anarchy and oppression which
preceded the return of James I. to Scotland were due not to the weakness
of Albany but to that of his son and successor, Murdoch, and to the
iniquities of Murdoch's sons.
The death of Henry V. (1422) and the ambition of Cardinal Beaufort,
determined to wed his niece Jane Beaufort to a crowned king, may have
been among the motives which led the English Government (their own king,
Henry VI., being a child) to set free the royal captive (1424).