Battle Of Flodden Research Articles

Scripting the Nation: Court Poetry and the Authority of History in Late Medieval Scotland by Katherine H. Terrell

Reviewed by: Scripting the Nation: Court Poetry and the Authority of History in Late Medieval Scotland by Katherine H. Terrell Joanna M. Martin katherine h. terrell, Scripting the Nation: Court Poetry and the Authority of History in Late Medieval Scotland. Interventions: New Studies in Medieval Culture. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2021. Pp. viii, 232. isbn: 978–0–8142– 1462–6. $99.95/£94.95. Katherine Terrell’s Scripting the Nation is a detailed, engaging, and authoritative account of the relationship between late medieval Scottish historiography and courtly poetry. This book takes a fresh approach to the well-established subject of Anglo-Scottish literary relations by considering how these two apparently distinct strands of Scotland’s literary culture interweave with one another and with analogous English traditions to define a sense of Scottish nationhood. Terrell observes that ‘the very nature of a border implies a relationship between sides; borders are points of interaction as well as separation’ (p. 49), and the monograph skilfully maps the appropriation and repudiation of English sources in the development of the two Scottish genres. Her detailed account covers chronicle literature composed in the aftermath of the ‘Wars of Independence’ (1279–1328, 1332–1357), in which Scotland’s political integrity was constantly under threat from English aggression, and the vernacular verse of the early sixteenth century, composed before the defeat of James IV by the English at the Battle of Flodden in 1513. The first three chapters of this book focus on the development of Scottish historiography and its methods of shaping, and indeed ‘actively promoting,’ national identity and ‘Scotland’s political destiny’ (p. 10). Chapter One considers the patronage of historiography as England and Scotland embarked on an ideological battle to define their borders. This chapter shows how English and Scottish records of the past were ‘interdependent’ (p. 14): Scotland’s chroniclers set about refuting the narratives of their English forebears by also co-opting their rhetorical strategies in an act of ‘writing back’ (p. 4). Terrell also argues for the prominence of the ‘genealogical mode . . . in Scottish historical writing, which, like much medieval history writing is often more concerned with the present-day uses of the past than with establishing an accurate record of past events’ (p. 35), and later in the study she identifies these same genealogical tropes in Older Scots courtly poetry. Chapter Two explores the influence of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s narratives of national origin in his Historia Regum Brittanie on Scottish historians, including Baldred Bisset and John of Fordun. Terrell shows how Fordun, in his Chronica Gentis Scotorum, negotiates the contradictions of his English sources and challenges their authority, much in the way that Robert Henryson, an important link between the scholastic tradition of the chroniclers and Older Scots verse, does in his critical evaluation of Chaucer’s authority in Testament of Cresseid. Chapter Three is an exploration of Walter Bower’s influential Scotichronicon, an expansion of Fordun’s text, which Terrell characterises as ‘a compendium of Scottishness that will facilitate nationalist sentiment’ amongst his readers (p. 80). After this comprehensive guide to the development of nationalist sentiment in Scottish history writing, Chapter Four turns to Older Scots vernacular literature and the often-paradoxical relationship to English texts it shares with Scotland’s Latin chronicle tradition. She explores the increasingly ‘grandiose’ (p. 94) nationalistic [End Page 106] claims made by the authors of vernacular offshoots from Bower’s Scotichronicon, such as the Scottis Originale, and the dynamics created by their co-existence in manuscript anthologies such as the Asloan Manuscript with texts of English origin or those which express enthusiasm for the Chaucerian tradition: ‘the result is a curious dichotomy, in which English culture is both denounced and venerated’ (p. 101). Chapters Five to Seven turn to the most technically brilliant of the Scottish poets, William Dunbar and Gavin Douglas. Identifying the shared concerns of poets and chroniclers with ‘ancestral’ narratives (p. 128), Terrell offers detailed and perceptive close readings of many of Dunbar’s poems. She suggests convincingly that Dunbar’s poetry mirrors the tensions at the heart of James IV’s reign as the Anglophile impulses of his court were tempered by deteriorating relations with Henry VIII...

The Duke of Albany's Invasion of England in 1523 and Military Mobilisation in Sixteenth-century Scotland

In November 1523 a Scottish army, led by John Stewart, duke of Albany, invaded England for the first time since the battle of Flodden. While this was a major campaign, it has largely been ignored in the extensive literature on Anglo-Scottish warfare. Drawing on Scottish, French and English records, this article provides a systematic analysis of the campaign. Although the campaign of 1523 was ultimately unsuccessful, it is the most comprehensively documented Scottish offensive against England before the seventeenth century and the extensive records detailing the expedition advances broader understanding of military mobilisation in medieval and early modern Scotland. While the national mobilisation drive which sought to gather men from across the kingdom was ultimately unsuccessful, the expedition witnessed the most extensive number of French soldiers yet sent to Scotland. Finally, the article considers how an examination of the expedition enhances understanding of regency rule and the political conditions in Scotland in the years after Flodden.

‘The Spearhead of the Pennon …’

In 1999, the late Professor Charles Thomas donated a Middle Bronze Age spearhead to the National Museum collection. This spearhead came with a label indicating that it was part of the pennant taken into the Battle of Flodden by Robert Chisholme in 1513. This paper investigates the likelihood that such a claimed association could have any basis in truth, as well as briefly contributing some thoughts on the discovery of already ancient objects in the past.

Walter Scott and the Reform of the Scottish Judicature 1806–10

The significance of the effort to reform the Court of Session in the early nineteenth century lies in the fact that it represented the first time Westminster had proposed to alter a key Scottish institution protected by the articles of the 1707 Act of Union. Scott as a Clerk of Session played a crucial role in the process, initially resisting reform and then undertaking to shape it. At the same time, his literary patriotism as Britain's best-selling poet was criticized by Britain's most famous cultural critic, Francis Jeffrey, a fellow member of the Faculty of Advocates. Jeffrey as editor of the Edinburgh Review wrote a controversial review of Scott's best-selling poem about the Battle of Flodden, Marmion, which accused Scott of being too ‘English’ in his treatment of this Scottish tragedy. And yet, more than Jeffrey, Scott was opposed to the Whig project of reforming Scottish law to make it more ‘constitutional’ or ‘English’. Using original documents held by the National Archives of Scotland, the Advocates Library, and the National Library of Scotland, this article examines Scott's role in making this controversy a matter of interest for both British literature and legal history.