BECOMING SCOTTISH IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY: THE EVIDENCE OF THE CHRONICLE OF MELROSE

Dauvit Broun

The standard answer to the question of how expanded into the country we know today is to give an account of when each part nally and de nitively was incorporated into the Scottish kingdom. According to this view, the only acquisition in the thirteenth century was when, on 2 July 1266 at Perth, a treaty was formally agreed between Alexander III in person and the envoys of Magnús VI whereby King Magnús ‘granted, resigned and quit-claimed . . . for himself and his heirs for ever, Mann with the rest of the Sudreys and all other islands on the west and south of the great sea . . . to be held, had and possessed by the said lord Alexander III, king of Scots, and his heirs . . .’ (APS i, 420; Donaldson 1974, 34–6). A very different answer, however, is given if the question of ‘becoming Scottish’ is determined by when the inhabit- ants of various parts of the Scottish realm began to regard themselves as Scots. Of course, the kind of evidence which might allow a proper investigation of this development does not exist for the thirteenth cen- tury. There is one source, however, the Chronicle of Melrose, which sheds a uniquely signi cant glimmer of light on how some (at least) of the king’s subjects in this period regarded ‘Scotland’ and ‘Scots’. What this reveals is that, until the thirteenth century, people like the monks of Melrose in the South-East viewed themselves as English, and that, for them, becoming Scottish was a gradual process that was not certainly ‘complete’ until a generation after the Treaty of Perth. Although the Chronicle of Melrose does not, of course, offer any evi- dence about when Hebrideans began to think of themselves as Scottish, it does offer a new perspective on the broader issue. Generations of obedience to the king of Scots did not make ‘becoming Scottish’ inevitable, and neither was it an essential prerequisite. The evidence of the Chronicle of Melrose points, instead, to something else as the key to the growth of Scottish identity in the thirteenth century. The vital ingredient was a signi cant change in the nature of the relationship between king and subjects, a change which could, in theory, by the time of Alexander III’s death in 1286, have had the effect of making 20 dauvit broun it meaningful for anyone to become Scottish if they did not already identify themselves as such, regardless of whether they belonged to a region which had acknowledged the authority of kings of Scots for twenty years or two-hundred years. Although some of the Chronicle of Melrose’s evidence for this transition to Scottish identity has been remarked on before (Broun 1998, 4, 7, 9; Broun 1999, 141–2), the discussion which follows is both the fullest account of this aspect of the chronicle, and the rst to bene t from the analysis of scribes and the stratigraphy of the chronicle’s development which has been prepared for a new edition.1 Barbara Crawford’s encouragement and support for the new edition has been vital for its progress, which makes it especially appropriate that this rst glimpse of its fruits should appear in this volume. It also goes without saying that the example of Englishmen becoming Scottish provided by the chroniclers of Melrose is particularly apposite for someone like Barbara, an Englishwoman who has become, in every way, a Scottish historian.

Like the Western Isles, the lower reaches of the Tweed and Teviot were a region which had been culturally distinct from the kingdom’s historic core north of the Forth. When Gaelic reached its greatest extent on the mainland (probably in the mid-eleventh to mid-twelfth centuries), much of the Western Isles was predominantly Norse, while the South- East remained largely English. Socially, too, each region was distinctive: the West with its galleys and seafaring lords, the South-East with its nucleated settlements akin to villages in and so untypical of Scotland as a whole. As far as the experience of Scottish royal govern- ment was concerned, however, the South-East was as different from the Isles as it was possible to be. Not only was Melrose in an area that had acknowledged the authority of kings of Scots for at least two centuries before 1266, but it was within Roxburghshire, which seems to have had one of the earliest attested sheriffs before David I became king in 1124. The Western Isles, in contrast, was the last region to be ‘shired’, when the short-lived sheriffdoms of Skye, Lorn and were estab- lished by in 1293 (APS i, 447). It would be a mistake,

1 Dauvit Broun and Julian Harrison (eds), The Chronicle of Melrose Abbey: a Stratigraphic Edition, vol. i, Introduction and Facsimile Edition, is due to be published soon by Boydell and Brewer for the Scottish History Society. This is the source of all the information relating to the chronicle cited in this article.