The Irish Remonstrance: Prototype for the Declaration of Arbroath

Abstract

It has long been known that there are similarities between the Declaration of Arbroath and the text known as the Irish Remonstrance which antedates it by three years and survives only in Scottish sources. Both are letters to Pope John XXII complaining of injustices the senders experience at English hands, asking him to intervene that they may be left in peace having a prince of their own ruling over them, the Declaration asserting that the Scots have chosen Robert I as their king, the Remonstrance that the Irish have selected his younger brother, Edward Bruce. Being diplomatic letters both naturally follow a set formula but this paper argues that, when broken into their constituent parts, they make (most notably in their exordium and narratio) a series of about a dozen important points in support of their case, in such a matching sequence as to indicate that the author of the Declaration relied heavily on the text of the Remonstrance. Given the high regard in which the Declaration is justifiably held, and the rather poor opinion modern scholarship has had of its Irish exemplar, the paper advocates a re-evaluation of the latter.