A replica of the ‘Stone of Destiny’ on which the Kings of Scotland were traditionally crowned, at Scone (pronounced skoon) Palace in Perth and Kinross, Scotland. In 1296, Edward I of England brought the original stone to England and placed it under the throne in Westminster Abbey to symbolise what he regarded as the subordination of Scottish kings to the English crown. Robert de Brus’s grandson Robert I of Scotland forced the English to promise the stone’s return by the Treaty of Northampton in 1328, but the promise was not fulfilled until 1996. It is now kept in Edinburgh Castle.
Part 1 of 2
AH! freedom is a noble thing. Freedom makes a man to have zest in life, and gives him all comfort. He that lives free, lives at ease. A noble heart can have no ease, nor aught else to pleasure it, if freedom fail. For liberty to please oneself is desired above all things.
Nor may he who has always been free well know the actual state, the suffering and wretchedness, that are coupled with foul thraldom. But if he had made trial of it, then should he know it all by heart, and should think freedom more to be prized than all the gold in the world. Thus ever more do untoward things make evident their opposites. He that is thrall has nought his own; all that he has is abandoned to his lord, whoever he be. He has not even so much freedom as to leave alone, or do, the desire of his heart.
Précis
Fourteenth-century poet John Barbour broke off from his retelling of the life of Robert the Bruce to reflect on how noble freedom is, giving both spice and comfort to life. He guessed that only those who had tasted slavery really knew how precious freedom was, and that nothing would induce them to part with it again. (56 / 60 words)
Part Two
A bridal crown made by G. Hagstrom in 1797, kept today at the Nordiska Museet in Stockholm. Barbour, who was Archdeacon of Aberdeen and well versed in matters of theology, let it be known that for him a King’s first and sacred duty was to his people; whatever treaties, alliances or fealties he may take upon himself in law, they must come second to this holy bond — and ideally, he will not burden himself with them at all.
CLERKS may question,* when they fall into debate, whether, if a man bid his thrall do aught, and at the same time the thrall’s wife come to him and demand her due, he should leave undone his lord’s behest, and first pay his debt, and afterwards fulfil his lord’s command, or leave his wife unpaid, and do what he is ordered. I leave the solution to them of more renown. But since they make such comparison between the duties of marriage and a lord’s bidding to his thrall, ye may see verily, though none tell you, how hard a thing this thraldom is. For wise men know well that marriage is the strongest bond that any man can undertake.*
But thraldom is far worse than death. As long as a thrall lives it mars him, body and bones, while death troubles him but once.
* Barbour was Archdeacon of the Kirk of St Machar in Aberdeen, and himself a clerk of audit to the Royal Household.
* Barbour’s argument is that if a serf owes a duty to his lord akin to the marriage bond, a married serf is in a terrible position because he must decide whether his first duty is to his lord or to his wife. John Balliol was on the horns of the same dilemma: whether his first duty was to his master Edward I, or to his wife the Scottish people. For Barbour, no King or State should ever drift into such a conflict of loyalties. Scotland’s king must be sovereign, and not subject to a foreign lord. (Barbour’s argument is a little blurred today because ever since Scotsman James VI became James I of England in 1603, the King of Scotland and the King of England has been the same person; the modern parallel with Barbour’s argument is not really independence from England, but independence from the European Union.)
Précis
Barbour noted how some lawyers equated duties to a feudal lord with the duties of marriage. But what about a married serf: where does his first loyalty lie? Barbour said a Scottish king under English lordship had a similar conflict of loyalties, one so intolerable and so insoluble that his condition was worse than death itself. (56 / 60 words)
