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The Declaration of Arbroath
6 April 1320
["Although the English armies under Edward II were routed
at Bannockburn in 1314 and by 1319, with the recapture of Berwick,
effectively expelled from Scottish soil, they continued to mount attacks
into
Robert the Bruce's Scotland over the succeeding years. The Pope had
not accepted Scottish independence, perhaps partially because Robert the
Bruce had been excommunicated for killing John Comyn in a church in
Dumfries in 1306 (Comyn had formed an alliance with Edward, but perhaps
had more of a right to be King than Bruce). Thus the
Declaration of Arbroath was prepared
as a formal Declaration of Independence. It was drawn up in
Arbroath Abbey
on the 6th April 1320, most likely by the Abbot, Bernard de Linton, who
was also the Chancellor of Scotland. The Declaration urged the Pope to
see things from a Scottish perspective and not to take the English claim
on Scotland seriously. It used stong words, indicating that without
acceptance of the Scottish case that the wars would continue and the
resultant deaths would be the responsibility of the Pope. The
Declaration was signed and bore the seals of 38 Scots Lords. It was
conveyed to Rome and the Pope accepted the Scottish case." Courtesy
Gateway to
Scotland]
"It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours
that we are fighting, but for freedom -- for that alone, which no
honest man gives up but with life itself.."
| From
The Lion in the North: One Thousand Years of Scotland's History,
John Prebble, Penguin Books:
"The Declaration of Arbroath was and has been unequalled in its
eloquent plea for the liberty of man. From the darkness of
medieval minds it shone a torch upon future struggles which its
signatories could not have foreseen or understood. The author of
this noble Latin address is unknown, though it is assumed to
have been composed by Bernard de Linton, Abbot of Arbroath and
Chancellor of Scotland. Above the seals of eight earls and
forty-five barons, it asked for the Pope's dispassionate
intervention in the bloody quarrel between the Scots and the
English, and so that he might understand the difference between
the two its preamble gave him a brief history of the former...
...two things make the Declaration of
Arbroath the most important document in Scottish history.
Firstly it set the will and the wishes of
the people above the King. Though they were bound to him
'both by law and by his merits' it was so that their freedom
might be maintained. If he betrayed them he would be removed and
replaced.... This unique relationship of king and people would
influence their history henceforward, and would reach its climax
in the Reformation and the century following, when a people's
Church would declare and maintain its superiority over earthly
crowns.
Secondly, the manifesto affirmed the
nation's independence in a way no battle could, and justified it
with a truth that is beyond nation and race. Man has a right
to freedom and a duty to defend it with his life. The natural
qualifications put upon this by a medieval baron are irrelevant,
as are the reservations which slave-owning Americans placed upon
their declaration of independence. The truth once spoken cannot
be checked, the seed once planted controls its own growth, and
the liberty which men secure for themselves must be given by
them to others, or it will be taken as they took it. Freedom
is a hardy plant and must flower in equality and brotherhood." |
To the most Holy Father and Lord in Christ, the Lord John,
by divine providence Supreme Pontiff of the Holy Roman and Universal Church,
his humble and devout sons Duncan, Earl of Fife, Thomas Randolph, Earl of
Moray, Lord of Man and of Annandale, Patrick Dunbar, Earl of March, Malise,
Earl of Strathearn, Malcolm, Earl of Lennox, William, Earl of Ross, Magnus,
Earl of Caithness and Orkney, and William, Earl of Sutherland; Walter,
Steward of Scotland, William Soules, Butler of Scotland, James, Lord of
Douglas, Roger Mowbray, David, Lord of Brechin, David Graham, Ingram
Umfraville, John Menteith, guardian of the earldom of Menteith, Alexander
Fraser, Gilbert Hay, Constable of Scotland, Robert Keith, Marischal of
Scotland, Henry St Clair, John Graham, David Lindsay, William Oliphant,
Patrick Graham, John Fenton, William Abernethy, David Wemyss, William Mushet,
Fergus of Ardrossan, Eustace Maxwell, William Ramsay, William Mowat, Alan
Murray, Donald Campbell, John Cameron, Reginald Cheyne, Alexander Seton,
Andrew Leslie, and Alexander Straiton, and the other barons and freeholders
and the whole community of the realm of Scotland send all manner of filial
reverence, with devout kisses of his blessed feet.
Most Holy Father and Lord, we know and from the chronicles
and books of the ancients we find that among other famous nations our own,
the Scots, has been graced with widespread renown. They journeyed from
Greater Scythia by way of the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Pillars of Hercules,
and dwelt for a long course of time in Spain among the most savage tribes,
but nowhere could they be subdued by any race, however barbarous. Thence
they came, twelve hundred years after the people of Israel crossed the Red
Sea, to their home in the west where they still live today. The Britons they
first drove out, the Picts they utterly destroyed, and, even though very
often assailed by the Norwegians, the Danes and the English, they took
possession of that home with many victories and untold efforts; and, as the
historians of old time bear witness, they have held it free of all bondage
ever since. In their kingdom there have reigned one hundred and thirteen
kings of their own royal stock, the line unbroken a single foreigner.
The high qualities and deserts of these people, were they not otherwise
manifest, gain glory enough from this: that the King of kings and Lord of
lords, our Lord Jesus Christ, after His Passion and Resurrection, called
them, even though settled in the uttermost parts of the earth, almost the
first to His most holy faith. Nor would He have them confirmed in that faith
by merely anyone but by the first of His Apostles -- by calling, though
second or third in rank -- the most gentle Saint Andrew, the Blessed Peter's
brother, and desired him to keep them under his protection as their patron
forever.
The Most Holy Fathers your predecessors gave careful heed to these things
and bestowed many favours and numerous privileges on this same kingdom and
people, as being the special charge of the Blessed Peter's brother. Thus our
nation under their protection did indeed live in freedom and peace up to the
time when that mighty prince the King of the English, Edward, the father of
the one who reigns today, when our kingdom had no head and our people
harboured no malice or treachery and were then unused to wars or invasions,
came in the guise of a friend and ally to harass them as an enemy. The deeds
of cruelty, massacre, violence, pillage, arson, imprisoning prelates,
burning down monasteries, robbing and killing monks and nuns, and yet other
outrages without number which he committed against our people, sparing
neither age nor sex, religion nor rank, no one could describe nor fully
imagine unless he had seen them with his own eyes.
But from these countless evils we have been set free, by the help of Him Who
though He afflicts yet heals and restores, by our most tireless Prince, King
and Lord, the Lord Robert. He, that his people and his heritage might be
delivered out of the hands of our enemies, met toil and fatigue, hunger and
peril, like another Macabaeus or Joshua and bore them cheerfully. Him, too,
divine providence, his right of succession according to or laws and customs
which we shall maintain to the death, and the due consent and assent of us
all have made our Prince and King. To him, as to the man by whom salvation
has been wrought unto our people, we are bound both by law and by his merits
that our freedom may be still maintained, and by him, come what may, we mean
to stand.
Yet if he should give up what he has begun, and agree to make us or our
kingdom subject to the King of England or the English, we should exert
ourselves at once to drive him out as our enemy and a subverter of his own
rights and ours, and make some other man who was well able to defend us our
King; for, as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any
conditions be brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor
riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom -- for that alone,
which no honest man gives up but with life itself.
Therefore it is, Reverend Father and Lord, that we beseech your Holiness
with our most earnest prayers and suppliant hearts, inasmuch as you will in
your sincerity and goodness consider all this, that, since with Him Whose
Vice-Regent on earth you are there is neither weighing nor distinction of
Jew and Greek, Scotsman or Englishman, you will look with the eyes of a
father on the troubles and privation brought by the English upon us and upon
the Church of God. May it please you to admonish and exhort the King of the
English, who ought to be satisfied with what belongs to him since England
used once to be enough for seven kings or more, to leave us Scots in peace,
who live in this poor little Scotland, beyond which there is no
dwelling-place at all, and covet nothing but our own. We are sincerely
willing to do anything for him, having regard to our condition, that we can,
to win peace for ourselves.
This truly concerns you, Holy Father, since you see the savagery of the
heathen raging against the Christians, as the sins of Christians have indeed
deserved, and the frontiers of Christendom being pressed inward every day;
and how much it will tarnish your Holiness's memory if (which God forbid)
the Church suffers eclipse or scandal in any branch of it during your time,
you must perceive. Then rouse the Christian princes who for false reasons
pretend that they cannot go to help of the Holy Land because of wars they
have on hand with their neighbours. The real reason that prevents them is
that in making war on their smaller neighbours they find quicker profit and
weaker resistance. But how cheerfully our Lord the King and we too would go
there if the King of the English would leave us in peace, He from Whom
nothing is hidden well knows; and we profess and declare it to you as the
Vicar of Christ and to all Christendom.
But if your Holiness puts too much faith in the tales the English tell and
will not give sincere belief to all this, nor refrain from favouring them to
our prejudice, then the slaughter of bodies, the perdition of souls, and all
the other misfortunes that will follow, inflicted by them on us and by us on
them, will, we believe, be surely laid by the Most High to your charge.
To conclude, we are and shall ever be, as far as duty calls us, ready to do
your will in all things, as obedient sons to you as His Vicar; and to Him as
the Supreme King and Judge we commit the maintenance of our cause, casting
our cares upon Him and firmly trusting that He will inspire us with courage
and bring our enemies to nought.
May the Most High preserve you to his Holy Church in holiness and health and
grant you length of days.
Given at the monastery of Arbroath in Scotland on the sixth day of the month
of April in the year of grace thirteen hundred and twenty and the fifteenth
year of the reign of our King aforesaid.
Endorsed: Letter directed to our Lord the Supreme Pontiff by the community
of Scotland.
Additional names written on some of the seal tags: Alexander Lamberton,
Edward Keith, John Inchmartin, Thomas Menzies, John Durrant, Thomas Morham
(and one illegible).
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