Sir Andrew Murray
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Sir Andrew Murray or Moray was the son and namesake of William Wallace's companion-in-arms. Although less well known than his father, Andrew Moray, his career in many ways was of greater significance. He was Guardian of Scotland in 1332, and again from 1335 until his death in 1338, and was instrumental in organising resistance to Edward Balliol and Edward III of England during the Second War of Scottish Independence.
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[edit] Fractured peace
In 1328 the Treaty of Northampton brought to an end the 'thirty years war' between Scotland and England. It was a moment of personal triumph for Robert Bruce, now recognised as the rightful and legitimate king of Scotland. Yet the peace, whatever its merits, left many issues unresolved. It was concluded during the minority of Edward III, and he was known to resent the national humiliation entailed in the acceptance of a turpis pax-a shameful peace. His resentment was equalled and exceeded by a group of Anglo-Scots nobles known as 'the disinherited', men with Scots titles and lands but who had fought against Robert Bruce on the side of the English. Northampton seemed to end forever any prospect of these men recovering their lost inheritance.
The death of Bruce in 1329 brought a dead cause back to life. With the Scottish throne now occupied by the infant David II, Henry Beaumont, 4th Earl of Buchan, with the tacit approval of King Edward, brought Edward Balliol, the son of the former King John Balliol, to England and set him up as an alternative candidate to the Scottish throne. In August 1332, again with the silent cooperation of the English king, Beaumont and Balliol led a seaborne invasion of Scotland, defeating and killing the Guardian, Donald, Earl of Mar at the Battle of Dupplin Moor. Soon after Balliol was crowned at Scone. Scotland now had two kings.
[edit] A new guardian
In the tense period after Dupplin the first task facing the Bruce loyalists was the selection of a new Guardian. Andrew Murray, lord of Bothwell in Lanarkshire and Avoch in Ross, was the obvious choice. As a patriot he had impeccable credentials: his father had fought with Wallace against Edward I, and was one of the architects of the victory at Stirling Bridge. He was also married to the Lady Christian Bruce, sister of King Robert, and thus the uncle of his young successor. The first task before him was dealing with an uprising in Galloway, the old patrimony of the Balliols, and the only part of Scotland to come out in favour of the new 'King Edward', locked in sullen isolation in the centre of the country.
From Perth Balliol and his part came south, in the first part to aid his beleaguered supporters in Galloway, and in the second to re-establish contact with England. After relieving Galloway Balliol advanced to the fortress of Roxburgh, closely shadowed by Murray. There was a brief skirmish at Jedburgh, from which the Guardian had to withdraw. A further opportunity to take the offensive came just before the disinherited reached Roxburgh. In the mistaken belief that Balliol had gone to Kelso, leaving the bulk of his army behind, Murray tried to cut him off by destroying the bridge across the River Tweed. The plan backfired and Murray was taken prisoner, eventually being taken south to Durham, where he remained for some time.
[edit] Murray returns
In his place came Sir Archibald Douglas, the brother of the Black Douglas. It was to be a disastrous choice coming at a difficult time. Although Balliol and his supporters had been chased from Scotland at the close of 1332, King Edward decided to drop the pretence of neutrality and made ready to assist the disinherited with all the power of England. While the Balck Douglas had been a guerilla leader of genius, following the military precepts of Robert Bruce, Sir Archibald led and fought an entirely conventional campaign, which climaxed in July 1333 in a catastrophic defeat for the Scots at the Battle of Halidon Hill, just outside Berwick-upon-Tweed. It was, in a sense, the Scottish Cannae. Edward Balliol returned to his unhappy kingdom. The following year David II was sent to France for safety, as the Bruce cause tumbled ever nearer to extinction.
In 1334 Murray was allowed to ransom himself from English captivity, a remarkable example of greed taking precedence over good judgement and political sense. He returned to Scotland ready to take on the role of Fabius Maximus, and reaquaint the country of the importance of war by degrees. At an early stage things worked in his favour: Scotland was seething with discontent and the Balliol party was fragmenting in a dispute over land. Under attack in central Scotland, Edward Balliol, for the second time in his life, was forced into an ignominious flight to England. Murray then turned north, besieging Henry Beaumont in the old Comyn stronghold of Dundarg in Buchan. Under continual attack, running short of supplies and with no sign of relief, Beaumont was compelled to surrender on 23 December. After a brief imprisonment he was ransomed, returning to England for a new summer offensive, the greatest Edward ever made for his client king.
[edit] Culblean
Scotland was ill-prepared for Edward's great invasion. The country had not yet recovered from the upheavals of 1334, and government authority was weak. Robert Stewart, the future king, and John Randolph, Earl of Moray, who had replaced Sir Andrew as joint Guardians after his capture in 1332, had drifted apart and gathered rival parties around them. In April 1335 a parliament was held at Dairsie near Cupar in Fife, to try to agree a common strategy to deal with the expected summer invasion. Instead latent political tensions were allowed to come to the surface. The divisions were such that Scotland was to face Edward without a united leadership. Parliament did at least agree to return to Robert Bruce's neglected scorched earth policy, and avoid direct contact with the superior English forces. The people of southern Scotland were told to take their livestock and moveable goods and seek refuge in the hills. Scotland's military forces would do no more than shadow the enemy, seeking an opportunity to attack as the occasion offered.
Edward began his advance in July. He progressed rapidly into central Scotland, frustrated by his inability to bring the elusive enemy to battle. Under the leadership of the Earl of Moray things initially went reasonably well for the Scots, who even managed to intercept and defeat English stragglers at Bouroughmuir near Edinburgh. Soon after, however, Moray was taken prisoner. Robert Stewart was the most obvious replacement; but he made his own separate peace with Edward.
At the end of September 1335 those who remained loyal to David Bruce gathered at Dumbarton Castle. The situation was grim: the English and their allies controlled almost all of central and southern Scotland. In this area it was said that only children at play admitted to being King Davy's men. National government had virtually ceased to exist. In this atmosphere of crisis Murray was chosen, for the second time in his career, as Guardian of Scotland. The first task he set himself was to deal with David de Strathbogie, the titular Earl of Atholl, and Edward Balliol's chief lieutenant in northern Scotland.
By the end of the summer Balliol and the English king returned south, leaving it to Strathbogie and others to continue mopping up operations in the north. Strathbogie was pursuing a particularly vigorous campaign in the north-east, dispossessing all those with any Bruce associations. He crowned his efforts by laying siege to Kildrummy Castle in Aberdeenshire, held for King David by Christian Bruce, the Guardian's wife. Murray gathered a small force and hurried north to her aid. On 30 November 1335 he met and defeated Strathbogie's army at the Battle of Culblean. Although small in comparison with the other great battles of the Wars of Independence, Culblean had an immediate and wide-ranging impact. It nullified the effects of Edward's great summer progress, and left Edward Balliol, once again, as a king without a kingdom.
[edit] Retreat and conquer
Murray's strategy from this point forward was the reduction of the various strongholds still held by the English and their supporters, pursued systematically throughout the winter of 1335-6. At Lochindorb in Cromdale he laid siege to the castle held by Katherine de Beaumont, the daughter of Lord Henry and widow of Strathbogie, killed at Culblean. Edward came north yet again in the summer of 1336 with the ostensible purpose of assisting the beleaguered Kathrine, but with the real aim of laying waste to the north-east of Scotland, and thus forestall any attempt by the French to aid the Scots. He had hoped to trap to trap Murray, who had based himself in the wood of Stronkalter, near Lochindorb Castle. The Guardian allowed the English to come close enough to engage in some skirmishing, and then used his superior knowledge of the countryside to withdraw to safety. Edward concluded his campaign by constructing a new chain of fortresses, from Dunnotar Castle in the north-east to Bothwell in the south-west. But no sooner had he gone than Murray emerged from hiding, recommencing the work of destruction. Before the end of the year he had captured the outposts of Dunnotar, Lauriston and Kinneff. He continued his rutheless guerilla war throughout the winter of 1336-7. The attacks and counter-attacks were so savage that the whole of Gowrie, Angus and the Mearns were reduced to a virtual desert, so the chroniclers report.
In February 1337 Murray carried his war almost to the gates of Perth, when he captured Kinclaven Castle. Leaving a force to cover the enemy garrison in the city, he then joined William Douglas of Liddesdale and the earls of Fife and March in an attack on the English strongholds in Fife. The garrisons were isolated and without hope of reinforcement, for Edward was now too preoccupied with France to come to their assistance; and the English forces elsewhere in Scotland were of little use, for the king had stretched his power too thinly. Even the English chronicler, Sir Thomas Gray, who had first-hand experience of the Scottish war, ventured a criticism of his royal master -King Edward lost...all the castles and towns, that he had forfeited for lack of diligent pursuing of his victory.
Murray's campaign in Fife brought quick success. Falkland Tower and Leuchars soon fell. St. Andrews Castle held out for three weeks, before being taken on 28 February with the aid of a wooden tower called 'Boustour', which appears to have been the kind of siege engine known at the time as a malvoisin-bad neighbour-which enables the besiegers to attack the battlements from above, while undermining the walls from below. From St. Andrews Murray turned west, taking Boustour to the walls of his own castle at Bothwell, captured in March after a short siege, in mockery of all of Edward's efforts only a few months before.
Even before the usual campaigning season began the English had lost nearly all of northern Scotland. Balliol's holdings now amounted to little more than Perth and the garrisons of Stirling and Cupar. Clearly it was becoming too uncomfortable in Scotland, as he left for England in May to make yet another appeal for help. As he did so Murray began another assault on Galloway, and the Lanercost Chronicle lamented that he: once more destroyed the wretched Galwegians...like beasts, because they adhered so firmly to their lord, King Edward de Balliol.
In the end all of Murray's efforts were crowned by one significant factor that was completely beyond his control, and rendered all of Edward Balliol's past efforts and future pleas worthless. For as the Scottish Chronicler John Fordun reports; ...happily for the Kingdom of Scotland there was begun a very fearful war between England and France.
Now enjoying virtually a free run in Scotland Murray began to raid northern England, in imitation of the policy pursued in times past by Robert Bruce. His raids into Cumberland and Northumberland were an embarrassment to Edward, busy preparing for his first Continental expedition. The isolated garrisons in Scotland were clearly no deterrant to the Guardian, and the communities of northern England were now faced with the same dangers they had after Bannockburn. Sir Thomas Gray, himself a northern knight, was later to condemn Edward for wasting resources on building up an expensive anti-French alliance without first securing his northern border, and completing the conquest of Scotland.
Andrew Murray, the chief architect of Scotland's recovery, finally died in his castle of Avoch in 1338. He was buried at the chapel of Rosemarkie, but his remains were afterwards moved to Dunfermline Abbey to rest alongside those of Robert Bruce.
[edit] References
PRIMARY
- Bower, Walter, Scotichronicon, ed. D. E. R. Watt, 1987-1993.
- Fordun, John of, Chronicles of the Scottish Nation, ed. W. F. Skene, 1872.
- Gray, Thomas, Scalicronica, ed H. Maxwell, 1913.
- The Lanercost Chronicle, ed. H. Maxwell, 1913.
- Wyntoun, Andrew, The Original Chronicle of Scotland, ed. F. J. Amours, 1907.
SECONDARY
- Campbell, T., England, Scotland and the Hundred Years War, in Europe in the Late Middle Ages, ed. J. Hale et al, 1970.
- Douglas-Simpson, W., Campaign and Battle of Culblean, in Proceedings of the Society of Antiquarians in Scotland, vol 64 1929-30.
- Hailes, Lord (david Dalrymple, The Annals of Scotland, 1776.
- Nicholson, R., Edward III and the Scots, 1965.
- Reid, R. C. Edward de Balliol, in Transactions of the Dumfriesshire and Galloway Antiquarian and Natural History Society, vol. 35 1956-7.
- Webster, B., Scotland without a King, 1329-1341, in Medieval Scotland: Crown, Lordship and Community., ed. A. Grant and K. J. Stringer 1993.
