Royal Mercy in Later Medieval Scotland

Abstract

Towards the end of October 1308, following a campaign that saw Robert Bruce secure his hold over the region of Moray, William earl of Ross found it wise to abandon the support he had to date given to Edward I of England in favour of the new king of Scots. The earl’s treason against the latter was notorious and of long standing: he had refused to recognize Bruce’s seizure of the throne in the summer of 1306, had carried fire and sword to the king’s supporters and the women of his kindred, and had been in correspondence with the enemy English as recently as the previous spring. The singular harshness and “terrible completeness” that marked Bruce’s “herschip” of the province of Buchan after the victory of royalist forces near Inverurie stands in marked contrast to the magnanimity that the king demonstrated towards Earl William himself in a public assembly held at Auldearn Castle. Here, before a large crowd of secular and ecclesiastical magnates the earl of Ross publicly confessed his offences; with joined hands and on bended knee he performed homage to Bruce and swore a solemn oath henceforth “faithfully to give [him] service, aid and counsel.” Bruce’s return gesture was an open offer of his “innate goodness, inspired mercy and special grace” and the remission of “all rancour of spirit” towards the traitor.