Bruce stirs trouble

Before getting too deep into Bruce, we need to look at the attitude of the Scots towards the proposed merger with the Maid of Norway and the son of Edward of England The Scots don’t seem to have had any problems with it, in fact, seemed to welcome the idea. There is no hint in the poem, Sir Patrick Spence, which deals with her death, that the Scots were anything other than looking forward to her arrival. The, after her death, the Scottish nobles, representing the nation, asked Edward to mediate in the dispute over the title. Not only that but the rivals all swore fealty yo him. The resulting dispute was not, therefore, over his overlordship but over his choice of Balliol instead of Bruce. There is, of course, William Wallace’s rebellion, a true uprising of the people, but were the people any more severely treated than the English peasants? The English peasants revolted en masse in 1381, so they can’t have been any more pleased with their governance than the Scots. From that one moves to think the dispute over who was king of Scots was really just an argument between nobles. Bruce had estates in Wimbledon and Yorkshire as well as Galloway in Scotland, all Sassenach, or as near as made no difference. His brother, named Edward (imagine that),was educated at Cambridge. This was the set up when Bruce murdered Comyn and began to impose his claim on a land, for late thirteenth, early fourteenth century, relatively at peace.