The Dangers of Manly Women: Late Medieval Perceptions of Female Heroism in Scotland’s Second War of Independence

Abstract

William Wallace and Robert Bruce, heroes of the First War of Independence, are known throughout Scotland and beyond, but other heroic figures from the tales of the Second War of Independence (1333–41) are less well known. According to historians writing in late medieval Scotland, just as Wallace and Bruce defied Edward I and II, so Lady Seton of Berwick and Agnes, Countess of Dunbar, defied Edward III. Lady Seton was the wife of Sir Alexander Seton, captain of Berwick, when it was besieged by Edward in 1333; Seton, giving his son as hostage, agreed to render up the town if it were not relieved by a certain date. On the approach of a Scottish army, Edward threatened to execute his hostage if Seton did not surrender, but Lady Seton’s courageous words to her husband kept him from yielding. Similarly heroic, Countess Agnes, in her husband’s absence in 1338, successfully defended the castle of Dunbar against the English for five months. The vast expenditure England required for that siege helped convince Edward to withdraw from Scotland.1