stirling-1963-vol-1/05_216

Transcription

CASTLES AND TOWER-HOUSES

A Jacobin friar, a monk as counsellor,
and thirteen gentlewomen with their laundress;
No more persons they were numbered there.
They had an engine, and brought it out to cast;
The rod broke, afterwards it was no use.
The engines without are put to work,
And cause the stones to pass walls and towers;
They overthrow the battlements around,
And throw down to the ground the houses inside.
In the midst of these doings the king causes to be built of timber
A terrible engine, and to be called Ludgar;
And this at its stroke broke down the entire wall.
Three months and eight days, reckoning by days,
Lasted the storm; the endurance was hard
To wretches within, who had noting to eat.
From no side came to them succour or power,
Wherefore they desire much to have the king's peace;
By intermessengers they often solicit him.
The king sends them word that he will not grant it so soon.
So long the conference for peace dragged out,
That I know not nor can I record the half of it;
But I have heard well, in the sequel,
The castle was surrendered to the king at his will."

The Castle proved a harder nut to crack than Edward
had expected, but he pressed the siege with energy. In
June he ordered the immediate delivery at Stirling of
fodder, of all stores lying at Berwick, and of forty
carpenters and cross-bow men from the Sheriffdom of
York, together with quarrels and other necessaries for
cross-bows. ¹ John de la Mullier threw Greek fire ² into
the Castle, ³ and in addition to the thirteen siege-engines
reported by Langtoft there was another one of novel
construction called War Wolf. ⁴ In the end the Castle
surrendered on St. Margaret's Day, 20th July 1304.
Twenty-five of the garrison marched out with the
constable, Sir William Oliphant, ⁵ and were sent to
various prisons in England, but others were left inside.
Edward gave orders that none of his men were to enter
the Castle until it had been struck with the new weapon
"War Wolf" - the Scots inside being left to defend
themselves from the Wolf as best they could. ⁶ Not
unnaturally, William Byset, the English constable,
found occasion to report in 1304-6 that the gate was "a
great deal" broken. ⁷
For the next decade the Castle remained in English
hands, and the fact that, throughout this occupation, its
garrison included many Scotsmen provides an interesting
side-light on contemporary politics. As the Lanercost
Chronicle reminds us, ⁸ a father might be serving England,
while his son fought for Scotland, and in fact the same
individual might well serve first one country and then
the other. Such action was natural enough in the case of
men who held land in both Scotland and England, and
again a large number of Scotsmen were personally
hostile to Bruce. With the improvement of Bruce's
fortunes, and largely as a result of Edward II's neglect,
one after another of the principal castles in Scotland were
taken from their English governors, Perth being the first
to fall, and by 1313 the only important castles still held
for England were Berwick, Bothwell and Stirling. In that
year Edward Bruce, brother of the king, besieged Stirling
Castle from Lent until midsummer; and it was the
promise then made by the English constable, to surrender
the Castle, unless it was relieved by Midsummer Day
1314, that brought about the Battle of Bannockburn with
all its consequences. Once in his hands, the Castle was
levelled by Bruce. As Barbour puts it ⁹

"The castell and the towrys syne
Richt to the grund doune gert he myne."

With the treaty of Northampton in 1328 hostilities
ceased, but only for a brief interval, as in the following
year, after the death of the King of Scots, disputes once
more arose between the two kingdoms which culminated
in the defeat of the Scots in 1332 at Dupplin Moor,
and in 1333 at Halidon Hill. In the summer of 1336
Edward III was in Scotland from June until October;
accompanying him was Sir Thomas Rokeby with a
retinue of five esquires and nine archers. In October 1336
Rokeby is on record as Warden of Stirling Castle, with
three knights, eighty esquires, a clerk of the victuals,
twenty-two watchmen and eighty archers under him; and
in 1337 as having beheaded four Scots "for treason against
Stirling castle". ¹⁰ In this latter year Andrew of Moray,
Guardian of Scotland, began a siege of the Castle, which
he prosecuted with vigour and ability for the months of
April and May, but he then withdrew, fearing the English
king's arrival with his army. ¹¹ Froissart ¹² implies that
cannon were used in a siege of Stirling Castle at this
period; if this record is correct, this must have been one
of the earliest occasions on which the new arm appeared
in Scotland. ¹³
While Warden, Rokeby carried out a good deal of
building at Stirling Castle. In his account ¹⁴ for the period
26th October 1336 to 30th August 1337, he includes the
expenses of such new buildings as a hall, two chambers, a
pantry, buttery, kitchen, brewhouse, bakehouse, larder
and storehouse, all built of wood from Gargunnock, about
six miles away. The partitions and ceilings of these
buildings were of wattle-and-daub and the roofs were

1 Cal. of Docts., ii, Nos. 1552-1556.
2 A combustible preparation composed of native sulphur,
resin, oils, pitch, bituminous earths, oakum, salts etc., used
to consume palisades and buildings. Arch. Journ., lxvi (1909),
145.
3 Cal. of Docts., ii, No. 1569.
4 Ibid., No. 1560 "le Lup de guerre"; cf. Langtoft's "Ludgar"
(supra).
5 Ibid., No. 1562.
6 Ibid., No. 1560.
7 Ibid., iv, No. 1825.
8 P. 217.
9 The Bruce, S.T.S. ed., i, 348.
10 Cal. of Docts., iii, No. 1236.
11 Scotichronicon, ii, 326.
12 Kervyn de Lettenhove, Œuvres de Froissart, Chroniques,
iii, 429.
13 Cf. Simpson, W. D., Dundarg Castle, 20 f.; Cruden , S., The
Scottish Castle, 198 ff.
14 Cal. of Docts., iii, 364 ff.

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