The Declaration of Arbroath
by Bernard de Linton, Abbot of Arbroath and Chancellor of
Scotland
[the 6 April 1320 Declaration of Arbroath, prepared at Arbroath
Abbey as a formal declaration of independence and signed by
thirty-eight Scots lords, urged the Pope to recognize Scotland]
To the most Holy Father and Lord in Christ, the Lord John, by
divine providence Supreme Pontiff of the Holy Roman and Universal
Church, his humble and devout sons Duncan, Earl of Fife, Thomas
Randolph, Earl of Moray, Lord of Man and of Annandale, Patrick
Dunbar, Earl of March, Malise, Earl of Strathearn, Malcolm, Earl
of Lennox, William, Earl of Ross, Magnus, Earl of Caithness and
Orkney, and William, Earl of Sutherland; Walter, Steward of
Scotland, William Soules, Butler of Scotland, James, Lord of
Douglas, Roger Mowbray, David, Lord of Brechin, David Graham,
Ingram Umfraville, John Menteith, guardian of the earldom of
Menteith, Alexander Fraser, Gilbert Hay, Constable of Scotland,
Robert Keith, Marischal of Scotland, Henry St Clair, John Graham,
David Lindsay, William Oliphant, Patrick Graham, John Fenton,
William Abernethy, David Wemyss, William Mushet, Fergus of
Ardrossan, Eustace Maxwell, William Ramsay, William Mowat, Alan
Murray, Donald Campbell, John Cameron, Reginald Cheyne, Alexander
Seton, Andrew Leslie, and Alexander Straiton, and the other
barons and freeholders and the whole community of the realm of
Scotland send all manner of filial reverence, with devout kisses
of his blessed feet.
Most Holy Father and Lord, we know and from the chronicles and
books of the ancients we find that among other famous nations our
own, the Scots, has been graced with widespread renown. They
journeyed from Greater Scythia by way of the Tyrrhenian Sea and
the Pillars of Hercules, and dwelt for a long course of time in
Spain among the most savage tribes, but nowhere could they be
subdued by any race, however barbarous. Thence they came, twelve
hundred years after the people of Israel crossed the Red Sea, to
their home in the west where they still live today. The Britons
they first drove out, the Picts they utterly destroyed, and, even
though very often assailed by the Norwegians, the Danes and the
English, they took possession of that home with many victories
and untold efforts; and, as the historians of old time bear
witness, they have held it free of all bondage ever since. In
their kingdom there have reigned one hundred and thirteen kings
of their own royal stock, the line unbroken a single foreigner.
The high qualities and deserts of these people, were they not
otherwise manifest, gain glory enough from this: that the King of
kings and Lord of lords, our Lord Jesus Christ, after His Passion
and Resurrection, called them, even though settled in the
uttermost parts of the earth, almost the first to His most holy
faith. Nor would He have them confirmed in that faith by merely
anyone but by the first of His Apostles — by calling,
though second or third in rank — the most gentle Saint
Andrew, the Blessed Peter's brother, and desired him to keep them
under his protection as their patron forever.
The Most Holy Fathers your predecessors gave careful heed to
these things and bestowed many favours and numerous privileges on
this same kingdom and people, as being the special charge of the
Blessed Peter's brother. Thus our nation under their protection
did indeed live in freedom and peace up to the time when that
mighty prince the King of the English, Edward, the father of the
one who reigns today, when our kingdom had no head and our people
harboured no malice or treachery and were then unused to wars or
invasions, came in the guise of a friend and ally to harass them
as an enemy. The deeds of cruelty, massacre, violence, pillage,
arson, imprisoning prelates, burning down monasteries, robbing
and killing monks and nuns, and yet other outrages without number
which he committed against our people, sparing neither age nor
sex, religion nor rank, no one could describe nor fully imagine
unless he had seen them with his own eyes.
But from these countless evils we have been set free, by the help
of Him Who though He afflicts yet heals and restores, by our most
tireless Prince, King and Lord, the Lord Robert. He, that his
people and his heritage might be delivered out of the hands of
our enemies, met toil and fatigue, hunger and peril, like another
Macabaeus or Joshua and bore them cheerfully. Him, too, divine
providence, his right of succession according to or laws and
customs which we shall maintain to the death, and the due consent
and assent of us all have made our Prince and King. To him, as to
the man by whom salvation has been wrought unto our people, we
are bound both by law and by his merits that our freedom may be
still maintained, and by him, come what may, we mean to stand.
Yet if he should give up what he has begun, and agree to make us
or our kingdom subject to the King of England or the English, we
should exert ourselves at once to drive him out as our enemy and
a subverter of his own rights and ours, and make some other man
who was well able to defend us our King; for, as long as but a
hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be
brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor
riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom —
for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life
itself.
Therefore it is, Reverend Father and Lord, that we beseech your
Holiness with our most earnest prayers and suppliant hearts,
inasmuch as you will in your sincerity and goodness consider all
this, that, since with Him Whose Vice-Regent on earth you are
there is neither weighing nor distinction of Jew and Greek,
Scotsman or Englishman, you will look with the eyes of a father
on the troubles and privation brought by the English upon us and
upon the Church of God. May it please you to admonish and exhort
the King of the English, who ought to be satisfied with what
belongs to him since England used once to be enough for seven
kings or more, to leave us Scots in peace, who live in this poor
little Scotland, beyond which there is no dwelling-place at all,
and covet nothing but our own. We are sincerely willing to do
anything for him, having regard to our condition, that we can, to
win peace for ourselves. This truly concerns you, Holy Father,
since you see the savagery of the heathen raging against the
Christians, as the sins of Christians have indeed deserved, and
the frontiers of Christendom being pressed inward every day; and
how much it will tarnish your Holiness's memory if (which God
forbid) the Church suffers eclipse or scandal in any branch of it
during your time, you must perceive. Then rouse the Christian
princes who for false reasons pretend that they cannot go to help
of the Holy Land because of wars they have on hand with their
neighbours. The real reason that prevents them is that in making
war on their smaller neighbours they find quicker profit and
weaker resistance. But how cheerfully our Lord the King and we
too would go there if the King of the English would leave us in
peace, He from Whom nothing is hidden well knows; and we profess
and declare it to you as the Vicar of Christ and to all
Christendom. But if your Holiness puts too much faith in the
tales the English tell and will not give sincere belief to all
this, nor refrain from favouring them to our prejudice, then the
slaughter of bodies, the perdition of souls, and all the other
misfortunes that will follow, inflicted by them on us and by us
on them, will, we believe, be surely laid by the Most High to
your charge.
To conclude, we are and shall ever be, as far as duty calls us,
ready to do your will in all things, as obedient sons to you as
His Vicar; and to Him as the Supreme King and Judge we commit the
maintenance of our cause, casting our cares upon Him and firmly
trusting that He will inspire us with courage and bring our
enemies to nought. May the Most High preserve you to his Holy
Church in holiness and health and grant you length of days.
Given at the monastery of Arbroath in Scotland on the sixth day
of the month of April in the year of grace thirteen hundred and
twenty and the fifteenth year of the reign of our King aforesaid.
Endorsed: Letter directed to our Lord the Supreme Pontiff by the
community of Scotland.
[Additionally signed on seals:] Alexander Lamberton, Edward
Keith, John Inchmartin, Thomas Menzies, John Durrant, Thomas
Morham, [illegible].
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