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The
Declaration of Arbroath 1320
Letter
of Barons of Scotland to Pope John XXII
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An
English translation of the original Latin text
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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, csating 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.
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Additional names written on some of the seal tags:
Alexander Lamberton, Edward Keith, John Inchmartin,
Thomas Menzies, John Durrant, Thomas Morham (and one
illegible).
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