LITMIR.BIZ

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      NATIONAL THEFT & RECOVERY

       or,John and William go to Westminster

      WHEN FEUDAL INVADERS had subdued the native peasants they could only fight each other, so France had Europe’s richest soil, poorest peasants, grandest nobility and endless warfare. In 1095 Pope Urban directed this belligerence into the first crusade. As French lords mustered their troops they were surprised to be joined by soldiers in outlandish armour. These were Scots who no lord had summoned or expected, because Scotland was still outside feudalism.

      It was brought there thirty years later by David I, a Scots king who had helped Anglo-Norman barons in one of their civil wars. He saw how feudal law could be used to subdue unruly clans, so declared himself not just ruler but owner of Scotland, and in return for their oaths of allegiance, gave his chieftains title-deeds to their clan territories. This altered nothing until he invited in some Norman barons and gave them Scottish estates in return for their oath of allegiance. The estates were in fertile plains and valleys often raided by highlanders. These barons (Baliol, Bruce, Comyn and others) still owned English estates in return for their allegiance to the Sassenach king. English speech now spread steadily through the Scottish lowlands, though proximity and intermarriage made most Scots bilingual. The Scottish court had two poet laureates, one for each language. But no king could have held Scotland together without the Church.

      Before the sixteenth century Scotland’s population was about half a million – less in time of plague. There were no towns in the highlands and those in the lowlands were too small to support a secular middle class of the sort developing in England with nearly eight times as many people. The Scottish middle class was its clergy. They had religious houses throughout highlands and lowlands. Their preachers lent the king a broadcasting network that spoke to places his heralds could not reach. David I bought their support with larger grants of land than he gave his Anglo-Normans. The Church repaid him with two fifths of the royal revenue, for the abbeys farmed good land by the newest methods, growing more grain and wool than other communities. The earliest recorded coal mining and whisky distilling in Scotland was by monks of Dunfermline. The Church kept schools, hostels, hospitals and funds for relief of the poor. Only through the Church could the clever son of a labourer achieve the social power of a lord.

      For nearly a century the nation thrived for a while under kings who kept peace by negotiation more than warfare, and by marrying the princesses of Scotland’s potential enemies, English and Norwegian. Their courts moved in a yearly circuit between Edinburgh in the main approach to the English border, Stirling in the gateway to the highlands, Dunfermline north of the Forth. In 1286 Alexander III died leaving no heir and peaceful growth gradually stopped. Thirteen nobles claimed the throne but the claims of Baliol, Comyn, Bruce were strongest and equally so. A strong, impartial adjudicator was needed to prevent civil war – Edward I of England.

      When Edward was young his father had given him Gascony in France, Chester in England and as much of Wales as he could conquer. He had conquered a lot of it, and helped his dad defeat rebellious barons, and fought in the Holy Land on a crusade of his own. As England’s king he had curtailed Church property (he thought it owned too much) and deported all England’s Jews in ships that landed them on Dogger Bank to be drowned by the rising tide. (He thought they owned too much.) In 1295 he established Britain’s first modern government, convening at Westminster a parliament of lords, clergy, and representatives of shire and town to raise money for his wars. His legal and fiscal civil service was there to help them. This left Edward free to handle military business – he held Gascony as vassal of French King Philip and meant to break that vassalage, but first he accepted the Scottish invitation to choose a new king, and met their nobles at the frontier.

      Before choosing he asked them all to swear allegiance to him. This would make the next Scottish king his vassal, but all the most powerful claimants swore at once because (1) they would lose their chance to be king if they did not; (2) because he would support the winner if the others ganged against him; (3) because they were used to swearing allegiance to him in England where he could deprive them of their English estates. The other nobles followed their example because (1) some of them had English estates too; (2) because earlier Scots kings had sworn allegiance to English ones for the sake of peace without making a difference to how Scotland was ruled; (3) because Edward had arrived with a large, well-equipped thoroughly disciplined army, which Scotland lacked.

      The king Edward chose was John Baliol, later nicknamed Toom Tabard, Scottish for Empty Coat. In the records of his first parliament he appears to be an effective king, but the English legal system soon scooped him hollow.

      After Baliol’s coronation Edward announced that, to ensure justice in Scotland, from now on Westminster was the supreme court of appeal. In 1293 Macduff (descended from the thane who defeated Macbeth) lost a case in Scotland so took it to Westminster where lawyers and judges

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