‘Sua fele thar mellyt wer’: the ‘Douglas Larder’ and the Apparent Transgression of Moral Boundaries in Barbour’s Bruce

Callum Watson - PhD History

On Palm Sunday 1307 – according to John Barbour – James Douglas led an attack on the garrison of Douglas Castle while they were hearing Mass. Having taken the unarmed garrison captive, Douglas and his men took them back to the castle, slaughtered them in the cellar, plundered the castle’s stores, poisoned the well, and burned the entire structure to the ground. This act of brutality – subsequently known as the Douglas Larder – is extreme even by the often gory standards of medieval warfare. Its inclusion in a work like The Bruce – in which Douglas is portrayed as a paragon of chivalry, alongside the likes of Hector – is remarkable. My purpose here is to explore the ways in which Barbour attempts to justify Douglas’ actions with reference to his obligations as a loyal knight in the service of King Robert, and what this tells us about Barbour’s understanding of chivalry more broadly.

Image One: Harold swears an oath on holy relics (Bayeux Tapestry, ca. 1070. Tapestry. Musée de la Tapisserie de Bayeux, Bayeux, France).

The first of these obligations results from an exchange between Douglas and the king, which takes place immediately before the events of the Douglas Larder. Douglas seeks permission from the king to visit his lands, which are currently occupied by the English. King Robert is initially unwilling to let Douglas go due to the danger involved, but responds:

“He said, ‘Schyr, nedways I will wend 

And tak that aventur will giff 

Quhether-sa it be to dey or lyff.’”

J. Barbour, The Bruce, Bk. 5, ll. 242-244

This declaration echoes a formula employed repeatedly in Barbour’s Bruce in which characters express the seriousness of their intentions by swearing to carry them out even at the cost of their life. Oath-making was a key part of political life in medieval Scotland, and thus was taken very seriously. Almost every social contract involved the exchange of oaths, and often this was done while touching the Gospels or other holy items. Thus, by having Douglas express himself in these terms, Barbour reinforces Douglas’ resolve.

Image Two: The Bute Mazer (c.1314-1318), a communal drinking vessel decorated with a lion – thought to represent King Robert himself – and the heraldic devices of six of his vassals from the Stewartry, reflecting some of the historical relationships explored in The Bruce. From left to right: Sir Walter Stewart (between the lion’s paws, reflecting his status as the king’s son-in-law), Menteith (a Stewart cadet branch), Susannah Crawford, an unknown FitzGilbert cadet, Sir Walter FitzGilbert of Hamilton, and Sir James Douglas himself.

However, King Robert not only gives Douglas permission to go, he also offers to assist Douglas in the recovery of his lands if Douglas should find anything ‘anoyis or scaithfull’ (distressful or hurtful, Bk. 5, ll. 249) there. This offer is a potentially huge concession on the king’s part, and can be best explained with the reference to the friendship between the two men. Bruce and Douglas’ friendship is the most important relationship in The Bruce (far more important than the one between Bruce and his poor wife, who only appears when she is captured by the English and again when she is released!). Friendship in the medieval period was a formal arrangement that placed specific responsibilities on the individuals involved – including the provision of mutual assistance in the settlement of disputes. Friendship with the king in particular also offered lucrative opportunities for patronage, as well as influence at a governmental level – as is seen repeatedly throughout The Bruce in Douglas’ influence on the king’s decisions, thanks to their closeness. It is Douglas’ friendship with King Robert that enables him to secure permission to visit his lands, but Bruce’s promise to fulfil his duties as Douglas' friend potentially jeopardise Bruce’s recovery of his own inheritance – which is no less than the entire kingdom. Douglas thus finds himself obliged to find a way to relieve the king of this burden, based on the same principle of mutual assistance that led to Bruce’s promise of aid.

Image Three: The Battle of Otterburn (1388) from a fifteenth-century manuscript of Froissart’s Chroniques (Bibliotheque Nationale MS Fr. 2645, fol. 351). Later Scottish chroniclers such as Andrew of Wyntoun blamed this defeat on a lack of prudence on the part of James, 2nd earl of Douglas – the Scottish commander.

Consequently, Douglas is forced to employ unorthodox tactics in order to achieve his ends. To do so, Douglas must apply to the situation what Barbour refers to as ‘worschip’. For Barbour, ‘worschip’ means using ‘wyt’ (intelligence) to govern one’s ‘hardyment’ (boldness), in order to find the most prudent course of action and make the best of the current circumstances. Barbour devotes considerable space in The Bruce to promoting this principle, elevating martial prudence to the level of a chivalric virtue. In an earlier part of the poem, Barbour places a speech in King Robert’s mouth in which he declares that a prudent knight should ‘ay thynk to cum to purpos’ (Bk. 3, ll. 263), meaning that he should always seek success in his military endeavours. It is this principle that guides Douglas’ behaviour while he is visiting his hereditary lands. Barbour even explains Douglas’ specific concerns when slighting the castle (Bk. 5, ll. 268-270, 415-428). On arriving in Douglasdale, he quickly realises that he cannot compete with the English in terms of manpower, so he resolves to combat them with guile. After taking the castle, Douglas recognises that he cannot garrison the castle and hold it himself, and so he destroys it as completely as he can – thereby denying the English the use of it in the future. Douglas thus ensures the best possible outcome, while putting himself and his men in as little danger as possible, and at the same time absolves the king of any obligation to intervene in the situation.

Image Four: Sir James Douglas’ tomb in St Bride’s Kirk, Douglas. This may very well have been the kirk in which Douglas found the English garrison on the day of the Douglas Larder!

In The Bruce, the Douglas Larder is not presented as a vicious act of sacrilege, nor is it presented as an unusually bloody incident in a wider campaign. Rather, Barbour presents it as the tale of a noble knight, alone in enemy territory, drawing on all of his personal resources to fulfil his obligations as a chivalric hero and achieve success in the face of seemingly overwhelming odds.

Works Cited

J. Barbour, The Bruce, (A.A.M. Duncan ed. & trans.), (Edinburgh: Canongate, 1997).

S. Boardman, The Early Stewart Kings: Robert II and Robert III 1371-1406, (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 1996).

M. Brown, The Black Douglases: War and Lordship in Late Medieval Scotland, 1300-1455 (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 1998).

S. Cameron, ‘Chivalry and Warfare in Barbour’s Bruce’, in M. Strickland (ed.), Armies, Chivalry and Warfare in Medieval Britain and France: proceedings of the 1995 Harlaxton Symposium (Stamford: Paul Watkins Pub., 1998).

A. Classen, ‘Friendship – The Quest for a Human Ideal and Value from Antiquity to the Early Modern Time’, in A. Classen and M. Sandridge (eds.), Friendship in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age: Explorations of a Fundamental Ethical Discourse, (Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 2010).

R. Hyatte, The Arts of Friendship: The Idealisation of Friendship in Medieval and Early Renaissance Literature, (Leiden/New York: Brill, 1994).

'Many have loved treachery, but none the traitor': Identity and Allegiance in Barbour's Bruce and Hary's Wallace

Callum Watson - PhD History

Treachery was one of the most serious social taboos in the kingdoms of north-western Europe in the medieval period. Consequently, the harshest punishments were reserved for traitors and oath breakers. For Scottish writers in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, this problem grew all the more acute due to the nature of the conflict between the kingdom and its southern neighbour. As is often observed, Scotland had far fewer resources to draw upon than England, which meant that not only could Scotland not afford to lose assets to England, but also that serving English interests could offer more lucrative rewards than remaining loyal to the King of Scots. For instance, when Archibald ‘the Grim’ secured the earldom of Douglas in 1389, disaffected members of his predecessor’s affinity offered their services and local expertise to Richard II. Barely ten years later, George Dunbar, earl of March, who had been instrumental in the prosecution of the war in the 1380s, was incensed by the increasing political closeness of the duke of Rothesay and Dunbar’s local rival the earl of Douglas. He not only defected, but also led cross-border raids against his former adherents on behalf of Henry IV. The responses of late medieval Scottish writers to the problem of shifting aristocratic allegiance can thus be quite illuminating, as in the case of John Barbour – whose long narrative poem The Bruce, recounting the life and career of King Robert I and his chief lieutenants, was composed in the mid-1370s (Barbour 1997) – and Blind Hary – who borrowed heavily from Barbour when producing a poetic biography of William Wallace around a century after Barbour was writing (Blind Hary 1968-69).

Execution by hanging, drawing and quartering, a punishment commonly reserved for traitors (Bibliotheque Nationale MS Fr. 2643, folio 197v)

For Barbour, loyalty was the most important virtue an individual could possess:

“With a vertu and leawté
A man may yeit sufficyand be,
And but leawté may nane haiff price
Quether he be wycht or he be wys,”
J. Barbour, The Bruce, Bk. 1, ll. 367-370

In The Bruce, villainous characters are frequently portrayed as traitors, and often the greatest disasters that the Scots suffer are the result of treachery. However, switching sides does not necessarily qualify as treasonous behaviour for Barbour, and this has to do with the concept of reciprocal lordship. Ideally speaking, a vassal was expected to subordinate his own ambitions in favour of those of his lord, and be willing to put himself through danger and hardship to accomplish his lord’s aims. In return, a lord was expected to generously reward his followers for their efforts with the fruits of their combined labour. However, if a lord failed to live up to his responsibilities in this regard, a vassal had cause to repudiate a previously sworn oath and seek a lord who would behave in a more proper manner. The key example of this principle at work in The Bruce is Thomas Randolph, earl of Moray. Moray is captured by the English at the Battle of Methven and is ‘made English’. When he is eventually recaptured by Sir James Douglas, he is brought before King Robert and rebukes the king for employing guerrilla tactics against the English, instead of meeting them in open battle. This challenge to Bruce’s preferred tactics – the promotion of which is another major theme of The Bruce – indicates Moray’s dissatisfaction with the king. While he is ultimately proven to be mistaken, this serves to justify Moray’s apparent willingness to switch sides without tarnishing his reputation for loyalty. In practical terms, the appeal of this principle is plain to see. If a powerful individual grew frustrated with a lack of patronage or apparent mistreatment by a social superior, they might legitimately seek redress in the service of another. Furthermore, to do so did not necessarily mean the complete abrogation of the previous arrangement and could serve as a tool to force a renegotiation of the former relationship to the benefit of the offended party. Certainly this principle could be used to defend the actions of the likes of Malcolm Drummond in 1389 or George Dunbar in 1400.

19^th-century representation of some of the key characters from Barbour’s Bruce and Hary’s Wallace (http://www.rampantscotland.com/famous/blfamfrieze.htm)

Hary’s Wallace is notable for, among other things, its vehemently anti-English sentiment. This has been used in support of the notion that The Wallace was written as a piece of anti-English propaganda in response to James III’s overtures for peace with England, possibly in support of the duke of Albany’s attempts to use this anti-English feeling to usurp his brother’s power. However, an alternative interpretation of the poem sees The Wallace as a more conservative work, which in fact encourages its readers to hold to the traditional values for which the Scottish monarchy is supposed to stand in times of crisis. For most of the poem, Bruce is in the service of the English king and is effectively an enemy of the kingdom he should rightfully rule. When Wallace and Bruce finally meet – standing on opposite sides of the River Carron after the Battle of Falkirk – Bruce asks Wallace why he resists the English and Wallace responds that he is only fulfilling the role that Bruce himself should take. This exchange is interesting because it is the most explicit summation of Wallace’s reasoning for his actions, and it seems that this is the attitude that Hary wishes to encourage in his audience. In times of uncertainty, when the king is not fulfilling the responsibilities associated with his role, his subjects should uphold the values for which the king should stand until the king (or his legitimate heir) accepts his proper responsibilities.

Resistance to royal authority in action!

Both writers accept, and even anticipate, a degree of resistance to royal authority, but ultimately they advocate ideas designed to instil greater stability in the Scottish political community. For Barbour, loyalty was paramount, but the relationship between powerful individuals had to be reciprocal in order for them to remain stable. For Hary, the ‘proper’ response to ineffectual kingship was loyalty to the institution of Scottish kingship – if not necessarily to the king himself – particularly in times of crisis and uncertainty.


General bibliography:

J. Barbour, The Bruce, (A.A.M. Duncan ed. & trans.), (Edinburgh: Canongate, 1997)

Blind Hary, The Wallace, (M.P. McDiarmid ed.), (Edinburgh: Scottish Text Society, 1968-69), 2 volumes

S. Boardman, The Early Stewart Kings: Robert II and Robert III 1371-1406, (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 1996)

R. J. Goldstein, The Matter of Scotland: Historical Narrative in Medieval Scotland (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993)