Medieval Scotland 3: War Were Declared

folks, we reach the end of our series on Medieval Scotland, in which war were declared. at long last, we finally meet Scotland proper, just in time for them to fight for their very lives. a succession crisis in the Kingdom of Alba gave way to English impositions, which forced the Scots to wage the First War of Scottish Independence to break from the tyrannical English yoke and then a Second War of Scottish Independence, which began a short time later and then became a theater of the Hundred Years War. By 1358, Scotland had its independence, which it would retain through the end of the Middle Ages, proudly defiant against the hated English. sadly, however, the Early Modern Period and the House of Stuart would really fuck them over when it came to independence.

Gaza charities mentioned:

Sameer Project linktree: https://linktr.ee/thesameerproject

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, friend, Hey, how's it go? Yeah, it's all right.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
How are you?

Speaker 1 (00:07):
Pretty good? Pretty good? Just uh just running around? What
what's going on with you?

Speaker 2 (00:13):
I don't know, you want to like participate in some
like mild lib based, I don't know, conspiracy theories about
Donald Trump?

Speaker 1 (00:26):
Sure? Yeah, what do you think? What?

Speaker 2 (00:29):
What do you think his deal is? What's his deal?
What's homies deal? In your opinion, something's going on.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
I never thought he was dead because first of all,
there would be a lot more freaking out by a
lot more people. And second of all, there would that's
not something that they would really be able to keep
under wraps very long. There that that that place leaks
like a sieve.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
That's true.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
Anyway, he he had something. Uh, they seem to be
moving to the Joe Biden model of he is seen,
uh speaking very little. The fact that he went like
a week without speaking on camera, which I can't remember

(01:19):
that ever happening since since like sometime in twenty fifteen,
that I know, you know, something's wrong. I like, I
I thought it was a stroke, but it was it
was extremely mild. But like I mean, in the big

(01:39):
one comes he Yeah, but he's also like he's also
saying shit that like is not like he said. He
gave a quote to someone the other day he's like, yeah,
you know it. Israel is very powerful. They you know,
they're the biggest lobby They they had control over Congress
until very recently. And it's just like, yeah, I mean

(02:03):
that's true, and I think you know, most people are
aware of that, but you don't. That's not really something
that they just come out and you know, talk about
very often. So yeah, I just something's going on. I
don't know, like I mean it. It would be great

(02:25):
if he died, both because it would be a lot
of fun to celebrate, but also because I mean, I
don't know. They're breaking up under jd. Vance.

Speaker 2 (02:34):
There's oh god, yeah, there's too much fun.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
I mean, like, there's too much fighting there to continue
very long. I don't think he Vance can't hold that together.
He's just straight up like in the Teal camp and uh,
so many of so much of the rest of the
Republican Party is not And uh yeah, I think that

(02:58):
would be good because it would be very funny if
both of them go through the uh the uh crack
up process in like twenty twenty six, because that's coming
for Democrats next year regardless, Like that's there is, there's
no escaping it there they yeah there that. I don't

(03:19):
I don't know what happens. I don't know how it works.
I don't know, like I don't know what they do
or you know, like what they try or anything like that.
But it's good. I mean it's happening. Like that's not
a you know that. Yeah, the you have to have

(03:40):
there's a political reshuffling coming there. It's not I hope.
So yeah, I mean I don't I don't even think
it's much of I don't think there's much of a
debate about it because of the because of the uh.

Speaker 2 (03:56):
Contradictions.

Speaker 1 (03:57):
Yeah, just the contradictions and everything. Yeah, I don't know what.
What do you think is going on with Trump? I
like it's I don't know, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
I think that's something happened and he had putting brain
for you know, a while. I think that he was
walking funny and I think and also I think that
if something hadn't been up, he would have because of
how his ego works, shown up before this. Yeah, so
like something's up. But mostly I just really enjoyed, like

(04:25):
laughing about it. I didn't think he was dead, but
it was really fun to pretend that he was.

Speaker 1 (04:31):
You know, yeah, I can't. I can't stress enough that,
like you know, uh, this is a good dry run
for the thing. Like you gotta, you know, you gotta,
you know, if we put it in sports terms, you
gotta you gotta practice, you gotta have your fundamentals down,

(04:51):
you gotta have everything ready to go. You gotta be
at the proper pitch and and tenor you gotta hit
all your marks, as they say, And uh, you know,
I think we were really doing that. I saw you know,
a lot of glorying, a lot of uh a lot
of hopefulness, and uh yeah, I think, uh I think
that's what we need. I would if I were you,

(05:14):
I would think that he's dead until uh like you know,
you need operation for that. But like you know, if
he's not being seen very much that at the very moment,
that at the at the very least means there is
like some kind of liked he's seeing more of the

(05:35):
elderly mental decline that that Biden was also experiencing. So yeah,
I uh, you know, here's hoping, uh the thing happens
and uh yeah, I don't Uh, I don't think that
they're going to, uh it's gonna be like, I don't

(05:58):
know it's gonna be fun because I don't think they're
like I don't think they're going to uh, they're not
gonna have a lot of fun in twenty twenty eight regardless.

Speaker 2 (06:06):
So I think that they're having to put him through
like the medical stuff that mister Burns does that makes
him close in the dark every week.

Speaker 1 (06:14):
Yeah, maybe that's.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
What's going on. They got the convarior broiled out, they
got them. They're putting drops in his eyes the whole
nine yards.

Speaker 1 (06:21):
Yeah, yeah, crushing his spine and then readjusting it out
like an accordion. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, you know, yeah uh
Inchila the thing happens. But yeah, I uh, you know, folks,
sometimes it's just good to uh to you know, to

(06:42):
have a little bit of fun. But like we're you know,
this weekend, like this weekend when like people were really
speculating that something was wrong, like that was just fun.
Like everybody the post is good. Everybody's having fun. Like
that's not harmless fun.

Speaker 2 (06:57):
It's good, good, clean fun.

Speaker 1 (07:00):
Good harmless fun. And you know, people just got to
realize that it's nice to you know, to do that,
like you know, like people like, oh, he's not dead,
like okay, so.

Speaker 2 (07:12):
You know what, Yeah, we get to do it all again, had.

Speaker 1 (07:17):
Some laughs, killed some time. You know. That's what we're here,
that's what we do. You know, you can't, you can't.
You can't be acting like that all the time. Like
I mean, I don't know if he's dead or not,
like if he is, like you know it it's just
you know, it's just a huge mess. Like the whole
like you know, this whole thing is just uh, it
keeps it keeps uh, it keeps changing from day to day.

(07:42):
He says he's going to send people into Chicago, which
is dog that eat.

Speaker 2 (07:46):
Dog have fun.

Speaker 1 (07:48):
A terrible idea. I'm not saying that people in Chicago
are like Bill different or harder than like anyone else
or any good people, like any of the people who
are in d C or whatever, but like it is,
those streets are a lot closer together, they are not.
There are a lot of extremely tall buildings there that

(08:12):
DC does not have because you can't have a building
taller than the uh the Congress. You can't. You can't
have a building that's like taller than Congress there because
of you know, airspace rules and everything like that. So yeah,
good luck with that if they.

Speaker 2 (08:28):
Do, just you know, shout out to my good people
in Chicago, one of America's premier cities, you know, my
one time home. And I got to say a thing
about Chicagoans is that they're really about that life, you know,
and they're really about being Chicagoans very specifically. And I

(08:48):
don't know, I think if they try to do this
and some lessons are going to get learned, that's all.

Speaker 1 (08:53):
Yeah, I mean, I think it would be an escalation
for them in a very bad way. Same thing with
New York. It's the Chicago problem, but even worse because
the population density is far far worse and there are
far far more just giant buildings, you know, Like, you know,

(09:15):
it's good luck you could do that shit in La
because La there's a ton of sprawl out there, and
like the people might not see that very much if
you try to. If you if you seen the National
Guarden in New York and try to get them to
clean up the streets while like the unionized trash collectors
are in there or in Chicago, those trash collectors are

(09:37):
going to have fucking fits like the Yeah, it's not
like where are you.

Speaker 2 (09:42):
Going to station the mall? Babel College, it's like an
hour and a half outside of town.

Speaker 1 (09:47):
Yeah, where Like, where are you going to station mall?
What are you going to do? I mean when they
were stationed in LA, they had to keep moving them
further and further and further out because people would find
out where they were and then just immediately like either
start picketing the place or call like just tie up
the phone lines and make it such a pain in
the ass the hotels like you guys got to get
the fuck out it, Like, you know, you we can't

(10:08):
do that. They're gonna burn the building down. You know.
It's like a you know, uh, it's not good if
it happens. Uh, people will be hurt, people will be killed,
people will be displaced. Uh. But you know anywhere anywhere
they go d C, l A, New York, Chicago, fucking Ranson, Missouri.

(10:35):
Who I don't care, don't they they that that you know,
federal occupation of any town in this country you know,
is not uh is not is unacceptable for a lot
of reasons. It's not how you do shit. And uh yeah,
so don't you know not. I'm not. I'm not gonna

(10:58):
say anything you should specifically do, but yeah, I would
make your voice heard in the way that you do that.
However that is you know voice, I say voice nothing,
you know nothing else? Probably maybe anyway, let's talk about
something else before this gets out.

Speaker 2 (11:15):
Ah, let's talk about Scottland.

Speaker 1 (11:20):
Baby, Let's talk about something that cannot be actionable. It
gets me because you cannot make threats or be super
defamation about dead people. Hello, welcome back to We're Not

(12:06):
So Different podcasts about how we would never defame the
dead even though they couldn't do anything about it, even
if they wanted to. You hear that motherfucker's ah, you're
all in How I can say you're all in hell
and you can't even though I don't believe in it? Hey,
folks were back. It is the third of our series,
the third episode of our series on Scotland. But before

(12:27):
we get there, we've got a couple of questions from
our patrons. First one from Olie Kant, who says, was
there ever a practice of giving a lock of hair
to one's perspective lover? If so, how did it become
a thing and why and what was the symbolic significance
of it?

Speaker 2 (12:41):
There is, But Victorians are doing that shit. Yeah, Medieval
people give presents, and there's a lot of talk about
this in courtly love literature, Like there's a lot of
a lot of giving gloves, a lot of giving sleeves,
a lot of giving girdles and belts, things like that, purses.

(13:03):
So you give people small things that they can wear
on their persons that their like husband can't ask about
right where. It's like it's it's tiny enough that it's
like they're not gonna be like, where'd you get the
money for that purse? And she'll be like, why it's
cheap best, you know, no good son of a bit,
you know. Like it's so you give things like that
that people keep on their person. The Victorians are big

(13:26):
ones for this, and they're they're into making jewelry out
of the hair. They will also do it as like
a funerary thing. They will kind of keep it around
their persons. No, am I saying that no medieval person
ever ever gave their lover a lock of hair. No,
that's not what I'm saying. But if favors tended to
be like clothing, clothing based or jewelry based, and a

(13:49):
lot less your hair because it's like what are you
gonna do with that? Bro? Like, you know, I think
that for Victorians it was like, oh, I'm gonna like
pat the hair and crank it because you know that's
what they do or whatever. But yeah, Victorians just have
like a lot of a lot of like doing bizarre
stuff with like hair and jewelry. Like you can go

(14:10):
to antique chops and you can see like bracelets made
out of people's hair and stuff that still exists.

Speaker 1 (14:14):
Yeah, so yeah, yeah, that's.

Speaker 2 (14:17):
A workable material.

Speaker 1 (14:19):
Yep, it is, uh yeah that uh well, they should
have been doing that, even though I did like the
idea of like it that it was like quasi socially
acceptable to just give a woman who was married that
you were lusting after, like a girdle, like here's some
one gerie baby. It's just like there you get, like okay, cool.

Speaker 2 (14:41):
Yeah, you know, like a lot of talk about sleeves,
very specifically love sleeves.

Speaker 1 (14:47):
Gotta get those gloves so you know, you don't get
your hands dirty when you're committing the sodomy of a
hand job.

Speaker 2 (14:54):
Yeah, that's right, that's right. Girl leave the gloves on.

Speaker 1 (14:58):
Calling the hand job sodomy just I know that's correct.
I know it's historically correct, but it doesn't change people
love hand jobs anything. It doesn't. Yeah, the active sodomy,
the hand the hand job off, the discrete finger bang. Yeah,
that's right, it's beautiful.

Speaker 2 (15:18):
It's part of our beautiful culture. It is uh, we
must return to get jacked off while wearing gloves, you know,
but get jacked off by someone else's wife while she
wears gloves. That's you know, then I believe in traditional marriage. Okay,
so thank you.

Speaker 1 (15:35):
So the gloves get jizz all over them and you
have to wash it out any yeah, like like, no,
we can't get it on my hands, which are easily
washed with water. I have to get it on these gloves.
Treatment yeah, no doubt there.

Speaker 2 (15:51):
There's no time. There's no time to take the.

Speaker 1 (15:53):
Gloves off, gloves off, Like no, I have to finger
you with the glove on, like wait what no? Whoa,
oh hey, I know we were doing that. Olly, Thank
you very much for the question. Next, we got one
from miss It.

Speaker 2 (16:09):
Was about jacket off.

Speaker 1 (16:10):
It was about jacking off as as you do. Are
there any accounts of court tasters dying for some unrelated reason,
like you know, in allergy, you're already sick. They got
them wrongfully axed. Anyway, what methods were used to actually
determined if the cause of death was poison and uh,

(16:32):
you know, to what extent did people talk about or
document food allergies?

Speaker 2 (16:36):
Yeah, so that we don't know what a fucking food
allergy is, so if anybody died of it, they'd be like, damn,
that person was poisoned. But like, yeah, also, if you've
got a food allergy, odds are that you lived long
enough to have a position as a court taster or
slim to nil. Yeah, like you probably encountered that food
as a child and just died. You know. Granted, a

(16:57):
lot of the things that kill people not like around
so much of the time, like you're not gonna get
peanuts or whatever, but you would have just already been dead,
so like less of that. I mean, maybe you went
your entire life without encountering shellfish, but that would be
weird because of like what a staple shellfish is in
the medieval diet, Like they just eat so many oysters

(17:19):
that you wouldn't believe it. Lucky bastards.

Speaker 1 (17:23):
I guess. I guess if you were just really far
inland and you were in a place that didn't have
access to like the rivers that were you know, that
were more stocked with fish and everything and game, I mean, yeah,
I guess you know, you could have something like that,
but it would it would still be pretty hard I think,
to never like you know, to never even be around

(17:46):
like a shrimp or a an oyster or you know,
something like that.

Speaker 2 (17:52):
Yeah. Yeah, it's like just food patterns kind of are
what they are, so things are a little bit different.
To be fair, there's no way for them to also
tell the difference between being poisoned and you know, going
into ataphylactic shock, and in many ways that is just
a form of being poisoned. You know, it's just like,
well your body had hope, was it so so you're
gonna die? But yeah, you know, like we don't. You

(18:17):
have to wait till a lot later before you've got
like forensic science, So they're just not going to be
able to know about that. I would also say that
one thing is we just don't even have that like
many great records about like court tasters. Really you know,
it's like do they exist, Sure, you're way more likely
to find them in places with like massive amounts of
intrigue though, And you know it's it's not do they exist, Yeah,

(18:44):
not everybody has one. Yeah, Like it's not like every
single king has a court taster and the court taster
goes with him everywhere. Like I think Emperors of Rome
had a lot of them, because you know, those bitches
was wildly but there's a lot less of that by
the time you hit the medieval period, so you know that,
like we don't really have great records even of like

(19:06):
court tasters saving the life of someone. You know, Like
all the times I'll be like when they talk about
like a miracle or something, it'll be like, oh, and
then a dog ate it and died. Like I think
Charles the Fourth in his autobiography talks about like someone
trying to poison him, and it's like it's not like
a court taster who finds it. It's like some miracle
knocks the thing on the floor or some shit, you know,

(19:27):
Like he doesn't. So he's a person who sees himself
as a theoretical target for political assassinations via poison, and
he's not like and then luckily my court taster prompted it,
you know, and he was the holy Roman fucking Emperor.
So like, you know, I think that it's like one
of those things where we quite like the role of
the court taster, who is a guy who exists, but

(19:48):
it's just like not everybody has one, right, like.

Speaker 1 (19:51):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that that one seems like it's that's
more of a literary uh an easy life to rary trope.
Instead of you know, going to the go, instead of
going to other lengths to show that someone was poisoned,
you can have the you can have this court taster
who does this, who takes it to the poison and

(20:13):
then everyone goes and then you know, and that's because
you don't because for whatever reason in your story, you
don't want to kill the king yet or at all
or whatever. So yeah, yeah, that's it does stink though,
because it's like it's one of those things that you know,
like you it's fun, it's fun, and uh yeah, like

(20:33):
it like there there is supposed to be a bit
more intrigue like in all of this, and then sometimes
it's just like no, it's just you know, boring, the
boring life of a noble for forty years, you know,
and you're just like, well, time to bring the time
to bring the the gesters out again, the traveling troop
of you know whatever, and it's like cool, great, yeah, missy,

(20:59):
thank you very much for the question. We answer questions
like these from our patrons at the beginning of every episode.
And uh, if you would like to ask us question,
ask us these questions or join our discord or hear
bonus episodes, UH, you can do so by going to
patreon dot com slash wnstpod. It's five dollars a month

(21:19):
and you can give us money and feel better about yourself.
Or you can also and preferably give money to people
in Gaza who are in need. The excuse me, the
fuck my mind has gone completely brank blank.

Speaker 2 (21:42):
So we got medical aid for policy.

Speaker 1 (21:44):
For Palestidians and the Shaher Project and we will have uh,
we will have links to those in the show notes
as we have.

Speaker 2 (21:55):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (21:55):
But yeah, check that out. Give the money, give money
to any local or you know, personal campaign that you
see that is in need of it. It is very
good and helpful for everyone. Anyway, onto the main show. So,
you know, national unification is a tricky thing and it's

(22:18):
a process that plays out in many different ways where
various timelines, and finding the direct or even approximate causes
of such comings together is difficult, even with advantage of
hindsight and historical materialism. Sometimes a kingdom solidifies rapidly thanks
to a new pressure that unifies people out of necessity,

(22:38):
or it's a drawn out process that lasts for centuries
and is only accomplished via the slow entropy of time.
Then this is our case today. A slow process that
plays out over centuries is thrust in to overdrive by
an external existential threat that forces everyone to shut up
about why their dads fought each other. Such is the
case with the Third Period of many Well Scotland. Previously

(23:01):
in the series, we've seen how the heterogeneous ethnic groups
and clan affiliations that dominated the northern end of Britain
have been forced into an uneasy coexistence with one another
things to outward enemies invading and attempting to subjugate them.
How even after a coherent Kingdom of Alba formed up north,
various clans and geographic regions such as Moray and the

(23:23):
farthest hinterlands fought back against this in ways both great
and small. That was all well and good for the
first two periods, as the threats were coastal raids from
Vikings and English political intrigue. It wasn't really England for
most of the time anyway. It was you know, everything

(23:43):
that was before England. But those old habits had to
fall away in the third period when war were declared.
Not content to simply influence events in Alba or wait
for the inevitable but slow process of Normanization to fully
play out, those swine from the south of Britain initiated
a war of conquest against what had been the Kingdom

(24:05):
of Alba. Suddenly, whether your family held from Autclute for
Trio or the Pictish clans of the Highlands was irrelevant.
It didn't matter that Scots was a term imposed on
them from the outside. They would adopt it all the same,
just as long as they weren't lumped in with the
English or whatever they were calling themselves. Nowadays, either we

(24:26):
find a way to form the Kingdom of Scotland into
a real thing, or its forced assimilation for the whole
lot of us. And so, through many twists and turns,
the Scottish Wolf fight two successful wars of independence, unifying
themselves into a true kingdom and what we now recognize
as a nation state, one that will last through the
ravages of the One hundred Years' War to end the

(24:47):
Middle Ages as they stand tall and resolute in their
hatred of the English. Yet as proud as the Scots
must have been at their heart fault victory, they had
no way of knowing that the traje victory of history
would sift shift so drastically, and that England's power would
be so great that forced assimilation into the evil Empire

(25:08):
would happen regardless. Sometimes you do everything right, you create
your own identity, but it's just not enough to achieve
permanent victory. What are you to do when your neighbor
becomes the greatest world bestriding colossus to exist up to
that point in history? There's strange ideas of unity override yours,
turning you from an implacable foe into the mob, wives

(25:28):
and forcers and engineers of the evil empire you despise.
National unification is quite tricky, after all, folks. Today we're
closing out our series on medieval Scotland with the Scottish
Wars of Independence and Scotland and the Kingdom of Scotland's
role in the One Hundred Years War. This is the
third period of medieval Scotland, stretching from twelve ninety six

(25:50):
to fourteen fifty three. And this is when the Scotland
that we have in our minds becomes a reality. A
place called Scotland will come into being. The people will
call themselves Scots, and they're going to give the English hell.
In fact, they're going to in the Middle Ages proudly independent.
It's just that, like for many other people, the early

(26:12):
modern period's really really going to fuck them over.

Speaker 2 (26:18):
James the first, I'm looking at your ass.

Speaker 1 (26:22):
Oh, we'll get to the House of Stuart. Oh. Oh.
As we noted in our last episode, the House of
Dunkekel ruled the Kingdom of Alba from the fall of
King Macbeth and his step son until twelve eighty six,
when the line failed. Alexander the Third died without a

(26:43):
direct male heir, leaving only a three year old granddaughter, Margaret,
the Maid of Norway, to inherit the throne. A council
of Alban nobles were assigned as guardians for the realm,
serving as her regents. Sadly, Margaret died in twelve ninety
on the way to be crowned Queen of Alba, and
this is when the trouble really started. No less than

(27:05):
thirteen nobles had legitimate albeit most of them were strained
claims to the throne, a situation that threatened to tear
the realm apart at the scenes. So the Guardians, fearing
internal conflict, did what people often do. They appealed to
big Brother, and that was a bad idea. They appealed
to King Eber the First of England to sort out

(27:28):
the succession, and yeah, that was a mistake. Before even
agreed to this, however, he made the claimants swear fealty
to him as the Lord Paramount and the English Throne
as their superior. Two years later, Edward crowned John Balliol,
who was viewed as the most legitimate claimant, and immediately

(27:49):
began treating King John and his subjects like shit. After
four years of this shabby treatment, in which John King
John was forced to dawn peasants clothes to go before
to bring a claim before Edward, uh John Bailliel got
tired of the shabby treatment and all of his subjects

(28:11):
being like, hey, fucking pussy, why are you going up
there dressed like a dressed like a mud farmer like me,
what's it? What is your what is the purpose of
your existence? So John renounces his homage to the English crown.
Any four first Foist The Foist War War of Scottish
independence began in twelve ninety six. Eleanor you know, just

(28:33):
in your opinion, is it better to have your own
internal civil war or invite in your big neighbor who
has big ideas and let them impose something on you.

Speaker 2 (28:43):
I just wouldn't do that. I greted, like, I obviously
this is my answer as a student of history, but
I've never really seen it go well.

Speaker 1 (28:53):
Right, I cannot think of yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:56):
Yeah, I mean I guess that what they were kind
of hoping for was some kind of situation in which
they can then kind of like downplay this. They're hoping
perhaps that England is distracted. You know, England's got a
lot going on, right, Engle's got a lot going on.

(29:17):
There's a lot of stuff going on down in France
to kind of look into there is like rather a
lot of attempting to consolidate power. You know, they're they're
fucking around in Ireland doing evil things. So I think
that they were hoping like we are just going to
be something that flies under the radar and then we

(29:39):
can kind of make a decision here. I'm not a
fan of civil war myself, but it's not as though
this like stops war from happening, I guess is the thing.

Speaker 1 (29:52):
Seems more yeah, yeah, because yeah, I mean, they're gonna
have these wars of independence and then have that also
have like many civil wars within them, and yeah, you know,
I mean, and I'm you know, this is hindsight obviously,
the guardians of the realm at the time, did you know,

(30:13):
I mean, they probably if you're faced with those two options,
you're probably going to be like, I mean, yeah, I
guess like otherwise you have the Bayleiols and the Bruces
and everyone else like tearing each other apart, and then
England probably just jumps in anyway, you know, so like
what do you do? But yeah, not the best idea, now,

(30:33):
eleanor I you know, the cynical answer is perfectly fine here.
But what exactly were the English hoping to get out
of Scotland at this point? Was it just land resources levees,
big dicking, some guys that they thought were uh were
hill buildings who couldn't even write. I think one of the.

Speaker 2 (30:52):
Big things that they want is for them to stop
reading over the border. I think that they're kind of
hoping that this is going to establish a contiguous set
of borders and lines that is going to keep the
Scottish people from coming to fucking them up, because there's
been so much back and forth for so long, and
I think they just don't want that headache. So I

(31:15):
think a big part of what happens for Edward the
first is he's like, I would just like to take
this off my desk. I don't want to think about
it anymore. I've got to deal with like Baron's rebellions
and what have you, So the last thing I need
is to also be worrying about Scottish people. So I
think that one of the things that they want is
just peace to a good extent, and you know, obviously

(31:39):
to do some extracting as well. But I don't think
he wants direct rule or anything like that. He just
wants to be able to kind of fleece him, you know,
which is rather the thing at the time, isn't it.

Speaker 1 (31:51):
Yeah, See seems to be the way of things. And yeah,
before we get into it, we don't as long times
as long time listeners know, we don't do a ton
of military history here. No offense to the medieval tacticians
and everything, but medieval warfare is kind of boring compared

(32:14):
to other warfare. But that doesn't matter because it is
sometimes necessary to give the full pictures, So eleanor what
can we expect from thirteenth century medieval European warfare here?

Speaker 2 (32:28):
You know, there's rather a lot of storming each other's castles.
There's rather a lot of running at each other in
battle and trying to kidnap someone. There's rather a lot
of making this peasants problem for example. Or it's like,
you know, it sucks. I hate it because it's like
one of the reasons we don't do a lot of

(32:49):
talking about battle tactics or any of that or any
of the military history is because like, fuck all these guys.
You know, like what war sucks like for any reason,
And it definitely sucks when it's just about like the
interests of one rich guy versus another. You know, there
are no good guys here. It's all just ricks. So

(33:09):
you know, I don't like bigging them up because I
don't like saying that that's what history is, or you
know that all any of these guys are loudable because
you know, everywhere everyone's a prick who rules at all
in the Middle Ages, So yeah, I'm I tend to
not be into it, but like, yeah, you know, we

(33:30):
still got your pretty standard rich guy tag warfare happening
at the time. So guys on horses are gonna try
to kidnap other guys on horses. A lot of peasants
are gonna get mowed down. In the meantime, large trebuchetes
will be.

Speaker 1 (33:45):
Built, Large tribuches will be built.

Speaker 2 (33:50):
The largestche is about to get built.

Speaker 1 (33:52):
Yep, yeah, they're gonna roll They're gonna roll out a
real version of grand essentially called the war Wolf. But
it yeah, you know, it's very few actual pitched battles.
The pitch battles are small, usually almost always having fewer

(34:15):
than you know, thirty thousand combatants at the most between
all sides. And you know, sieges counter sieges. You know,
typically if you surrender the castle for a siege, you
get looted, but they will let you live. But they

(34:38):
also ignore that nicety during this thing too. So yeah, it.

Speaker 2 (34:44):
Really all depends who's asking, right, It's like, how long
did you hold out for? Whose castle is this? What
concessions are you offering? Do they see this as a
potential point for further rebelliousness, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 1 (35:02):
Yeah, and yeah, so the uh, I mean that's pretty
much it. These Uh, most of these aren't battles, they
are skirmishes. We will I mean, we'll talk about a
couple of the battles. But yeah, so the First War
of Scottish Independence and uh, basically, I mean this all

(35:23):
really started because Edward I was just a huge fucking dick.
Like he's an asshole.

Speaker 2 (35:29):
H He's one of the biggest pieces of ship this
country's ever seen. And that's saying something.

Speaker 1 (35:35):
Yeah he he, I mean he treated these people. I
mean like, like it's one thing to like make someone
subservient to you and make them and treat them as
a vassal, which was not uncommon, but like making the
king of this land, uh like come to you and
essentially like sackcloth and ashes is dog. I don't know

(35:58):
about that. That seems uh, it seems like a bit much.
And this is also, hey, something that's gonna be real
important to this whole thing. In twelve ninety five, John Balliol,
searching for allies, was like, uh, what's the biggest country

(36:18):
that hates England who cannot get And he looked around.
He looked at Ireland and he was like, well, I'm
sure they're very nice. You know, we took a lot
of culture from them, but they don't have a ton
of armies, kind of small. And then he looked over
and he went, oh, yeah, France, the people who all
think that they're better than England, and you know the

(36:38):
English or just like Barbarian vikings who kind of come
from one of their lines or whatever. And so they
signed up. They signed the Old Alliance in twelve ninety five,
which was renewed in perpetuity, and even though it stopped
really having effect in like the fifteen or sixteen hundreds,
I believe it's still technically on the books. So there

(37:00):
you go, the Old Alliance that they're gonna sign and yeah,
uh yeah, Baliol breaks the uh he breaks the uh
the homage he did. He he renounces it, and uh
they go into revolt the uh the English send in troops.

(37:26):
Uh an amount of troops. The amount is unknown. And
uh they fought the first few fights that happened, you
know in in uh in southern Scotland. Uh. They they
were they were losses for uh, for for the Scottish,
because it was it was tough. They lost it at
Berwick and and Dunbar and uh. Then they had a

(37:49):
couple of victories at a place called Lanark and at Scone,
which is very important because they have a stone and everything.
But and then we get to a little thing called
the Battle of sterling Bridge, and we get to introduce
a real person who is nothing like you will see

(38:10):
in any movie about him and has one William Wallace
now eleanor the historical William Wallace was a Scottish patriot,
was a Scottish national hero, but was nothing like the movie.
So what are we looking at here with this guy?

Speaker 2 (38:28):
Oh yeah, he's a member of the lesser nobility first
of all, Like he's not some romantic farmer or whatever
the shit. Like this is a rich boy. Granted he
is not like as fency as it comes by. You know,
we know that he's like well enough connected for example, too,

(38:49):
like when he's looking for aid when he's at war,
he's like writing off to like Lubec because they're hans
a city and he knows who has money, right, you
know that that sort of thing. We don't know a
whole fucking ton about him because he's not important until
he starts up against England. But we think that maybe

(39:15):
he's from like Ayrshire thing. We know that his family's
got a states that are kind of like around in
East Lothian, and we know that they kind of have
connections to the Stewarts later on. Right, Wallace is a

(39:37):
surname usually comes from the Southwest, maybe we think, and
we think that it might be a reference to the
fact that the family was originally Welsh, because it might
be like Willswoolish and then that becomes like Wallace kind
of a thing, so you know, fine, whatever, But basically

(40:01):
the point is there isn't much for a reason to
know about him in his early life, right, Like you know,
he's he's born under Alexander the Third's rule, which was
a pretty good time to be alive if you're Scottish,
so you know, but then you know, the unpleasantness happens.

Speaker 1 (40:19):
Blah blah blah.

Speaker 2 (40:21):
Yeah, and so so we get to the great Cause, right,
and here is John on the throne blah blah blah.
And basically because Edward is being such a dick about
John and trying to say that he's got suserenity over it,
that's when everything sort of kicks off. We don't really

(40:45):
know much of anything until about twelve ninety seven about him, maybe,
I mean, because he's a member of the lower nobility
and things, he's got military experience maybe baby, you know.
And but and a lot of the stuff that gets

(41:06):
written about him gets written after the fact, you know,
when people are trying to like wax rhapsodic about him
and then they're like, oh, he was a giant to
know all of these things and his sexy hips or whatever, right,
and you're like, okay, I please please calm down.

Speaker 1 (41:22):
Right.

Speaker 2 (41:22):
So, you know, we just don't know that much about
him until things actually kick off, because like, why would
we like, why would we know that much about a
member of the lesser nobility in a relative time of peace?
You know, you need you need bad things to happen
to bad people. So basically you have the beginning of

(41:44):
the uprising in twelve ninety seven and we know that
Wallace is involved. We know that, like he is joined
up under William the Hardy, which is a great name,
so like shout out. But then there are a series

(42:08):
of setbacks the English kind of comeback for them, but
then he really kind of comes into his own when
you hit the Battle of Sterling Bridge.

Speaker 1 (42:18):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wallace is one thing. One thing about
him is that he people apparently liked him a great deal.
He commanded a lot of respect and loyalty. But he
was apparently not a great military leader or a tactician,

(42:39):
which is fine. Uh, you know most people aren't. But
that's going to come in more to play at the
Battle of Falkirk in a moment. Sterling Bridge is basically
in uh uh so, god damn it, I had I had.

(43:05):
This whole thing was so basically the Sterling Bridge crosses
the River Forth near the new Sterling and the Castle Sterling,
and uh, the British wanted to cross the bridge and
take Sterling and the Scottish did not want to let them.
And the only way to pass this river, because it's

(43:26):
fairly wide, is a bridge that is not terribly wide itself.
So you the British coming coming to it, and they're like, well,
we gotta you know, we got to cross it. So
they line up, they get their shields up front and everything,
and they march across the bridge. And the most obvious

(43:49):
tactic to do and someone is crossing a bridge is
you wait until they get part way across it and
then you attack them, because it throws the whole thing
into disarray, cuts off the front of the people that
it cuts off the front as people like either die
and fall out on the bridge and the people in
the back either surge ford and cause a crush or

(44:10):
pull back, and you know, the whole thing falls apart.
And that's what they did. The Scottish. They had a
bunch of spearmen and they ran down the hill and
they made a mess of it, and the British were led.
Only getting into this because I just this name is amazing.
The British were led across the bridge by a man

(44:31):
named Sir Marmaduke Thwing.

Speaker 2 (44:35):
Shout out.

Speaker 1 (44:36):
If you ever think to yourself, you know, I think
George Martin he just wasn't he He went to goofy
with the heraldry and the names. Here's a perfect example
of why that's not the case, because Sir Marmaduke Thwing,
who would later become Barren Marmaduke Thwing, his heraldry was
three parrots on field of white intersected with a red

(45:03):
fest across the middle, which is just a red bar
or stripe. But if you know anything about medieval England,
they didn't actually have a bunch of parrots around, which
means this guy's sigil was either a bird like that
maybe someone in his family had seen like once or twice,
or like, you know, a mystical bird from a far

(45:26):
away land that they were like, yeah, and it talks
like you do, and he's like, oh, that's so cool. Anyway,
he put it on his heraldry. But regardless, Marmaduke Thwing
and his soldiers were routed crossing the bridge, they were
thrown back. Marmaduke survived because he would go on to
be a baron in Yorkshire. But yeah, they you know,

(45:50):
it was a defeat. It was a stinging defeat for
the English. I would give you troop numbers, but those
do not exist for this stuff because unless the English
write them down, these Scottish still weren't huge fans of it.

Speaker 2 (46:05):
And even then, like whenever you get numbers written down.
It's like people.

Speaker 1 (46:11):
Yeah, it's either it's either yeah, it's either like the
most inflated numbers ever or you know, it's like it
names like the most important people there and then they're
like and there were some people behind them. I guess maybe.

Speaker 2 (46:22):
Other special guests.

Speaker 1 (46:24):
Yeah. Uh so this continues. You have sterling Bridge and
then uh next after that you have thin called Falkirk.
And at Falkirk. Uh, it's really important for two reasons. One, uh,
the English win a big victory, but two, William Wallace's

(46:51):
his martial abilities were so poorly done at this battle.
He was he proved so chap poor field commander at
this point that it shamed his reputation as a military
commander forever. He resigned the guardianship of the Realm, which
he had been given the year before. And uh, I

(47:17):
mean he he put himself into like essentially like self
imposed exile along the island. Now he was still respected
enough to be used as like a diplomat because he
sent to France and as Eleanor said, he uh there
are surviving letters from uh haanseiotic cities where they had
written saying, you know, William Wallace and another guy uh

(47:40):
named Andrew and Andrew day Murray had written him. They
were like, hey, we freed ourselves from the tyrannical English.
Could you send us money? Thanks?

Speaker 2 (47:50):
And which is funny because lou Becker a like, who
the fuck are these bers? How about sheep? They got
the sheep? Oh okay, yeah, fair enough.

Speaker 1 (48:04):
And they're friends with friends now hey, hey, hey, hey,
what's up? Friends has a lot of sheep, they have
a lot of markets. Yeah. Anyway, Uh, William Wallace is
h his his his reputation is sullied.

Speaker 2 (48:20):
But not.

Speaker 1 (48:22):
You know, not fully undone. But uh. Then we run
into a rather colorful character of dubious often of dubious intentions,
and that is one Robert the Bruce future Cave of Scotland.

(48:43):
Uh yeah, and he is at the beginning of this
he is uh he is one of the uh friends
to the to the English crown, and he's going to
go down and help them, but apparently has a road
to demand ask this moment along the way and is like,
I have to fight for my own people and blah

(49:03):
blah blah, and uh so he switched asides and he
makes secret deals with other nobles. But the secret deals
are weird because he makes them and then the other
person reveals them and it's like, why do you keep
doing this?

Speaker 2 (49:19):
Like curses, Yeah, well ahead.

Speaker 1 (49:22):
Yeah, full I can't believe this thing. Yeah, he keeps
doing this, He's gonna switch sides. But it is also
remembered as one of their you know, greatest leaders. I
guess it doesn't really matter how you fake it, you know,
as long as you make it in the end. Also
incredibly important to getting the Scottish Church on their side.

(49:42):
He had some kind of relationship with that, and the
Scottish Church either cared enough about like Scotland as a
place or we're still you know, sore about continental and
English impositions on them that they're going to be a big,
big part of this. But basically after Falkirk there's a

(50:04):
huge back and forth that goes on, and it largely
if England's view is turned towards France, Scotland can make headway,
and if it's not, they can't. It's nothing. It it's
the Scottish as warriors or anything like that. But there
are way more English they have, you know, you know,

(50:27):
they they have better trained armies and you know, I
mean they just have far more equipment, war material, et cetera,
et cetera.

Speaker 2 (50:35):
But yeah, it's like fundamentally, frances is a bigger kingdom
than Scotland and it's got a lot more people. So
they just are a more formidable foe because of how yeah,
numbers work, you know.

Speaker 1 (50:47):
Pretty much in this whole thing goes back and forth
for a while. In thirteen oh three, the English kind
of tie up. They kind of resolve some things with
France and begin to turn their view north. They had

(51:10):
made a huge invasion, their sixth into Scotland in thirteen
oh one, which had gone pretty well, gone okay, but
then started to fall apart and they had to sign
a truce. But as soon as that truce was over,
they had concluded their stuff with France, and they basically

(51:31):
just ran rough shot over the country starting in about
thirteen late in thirteen oh two, and it's going to
the point that by thirteen five they will have essentially
full control over over Scotland, to the point that every

(51:56):
noble except for two would uh would would bend the
need to them. And I mean this is just uh,
you know, they just Edward the first did like a
royal procession all the way through. He went Dundee, Montrose,
bricken Aberdeen, baden Bach and then back down to Dunfermline

(52:19):
and it's like, you know, he just they were stunting
on the Scots like when they had uh, when they
had the full view. Uh it went when the Pope
and the French were like, hey, leave Scotland alone. Eedward
like you know he would send in rating parties or whatever,
but that would be about it. But then after you know,

(52:41):
the hostilities concluded for the time, they just fucking ran roughshot.
And the only two nobles who didn't uh, who didn't
been the knee were William Wallace, who continued his gorilla activities,
and John de Soulis, and you know they basically everyone

(53:02):
else was forgiven, but they were, you know, put under
the King's ill will or whatever they want to call it.
And yeah, they in May of thirteen oh four, they
rolled the war Wolf Tribuche up to Stirling Castle and

(53:23):
fucking annihilated it. Just just tore it down brick from brick,
no quarter given. Even though the castle line had said, hey,
can we surrender your network was like no, no, thanks
for asking.

Speaker 2 (53:36):
It's such a dick move where they're like, you know,
but we surrendered, and he's like, yeah, cool, I'm gonna
try this out though, Yeah, I'm gonna.

Speaker 1 (53:43):
Try this out. I got your fucking surrender right here. However,
things were not as they seem as they seem because
Robert the Bruce was up to his old tactics. He
had a bent kny to Edward, but was also at
the same time secretly meeting with other nobles to gauge things.
He had secretly gained the alliance of the Scottish Church.

(54:08):
And yeah, it's in thirteen oh five, Edward, you know,
he's they started amalgamating parts of the kingdom. It was
not it was not great, and it got even worse
when William Wallace's family finally captured in a raid near

(54:28):
rob Royston, and yeah, man, they took him to London.
There was a show trial. They you know, hanged drawing quarter,
the whole deal. He was on a spike on London Bridge.
They sent the rest of his body elsewhere.

Speaker 2 (54:44):
But fun fact, we don't know where they did it.
It's like, because they're so circumspect about that, they're like,
we don't know whether he gets hung, drawn and quartered
like here right by my flat over at Smithfield where
which is where the Wiam Wallace Memorial is, Like people
go leave thistles on it and stuff, and you'll always
see like tour groups of tourists getting taken past it.

(55:06):
But he also might have got done over at the
Tyburn and we don't know because the lake the language
is so vague. So it's just like he's he gets
his body gets dragged through the streets for a shorter
or longer period of time when we heard the other
because it's like if it's at Smithfield, like probably like
a twenty five minute walk over to London Bridge Tyburn,

(55:30):
more like an hour.

Speaker 3 (55:31):
Yeah, I'm say so, yeah, yeah yeah, And I mean
so it would seem that Edward had Scotland at his
you know, he had his boot on the throat.

Speaker 1 (55:44):
But uh, the Scottish nobility wasn't too happy. Robert the
Bruce certainly wasn't happy because his family had a bunch
of lands and uh basically he I mean, all of
his family would be killed if you know, all this
if it went bad. But at the same time, uh

(56:07):
he couldn't. Uh this whole thing wasn't it wasn't going
to to to work because people were pissed like you like,
like they they bent the knee. But everybody was mad.
And so Robert uh does one of his little uh
one does one of his little side agreements with the

(56:27):
guy with another noble name, John Coleman, and Coman of course,
immediately spills the beans to Edward uh because he's a bitch.
And uh in Dumfries uh where the Bruce found Coleman.
There Coleman was uh. He took sanctuary in a place
called Greyfriars Church and uh as was off in the

(56:49):
case that sanctuary did not help Robert. The Bruce beat
Coleman senseless and then his uh coterie came in and
stabbed him to death, and Bruce ran for the church.
He you know, was going to be excommunicated because it's
real bad to kill someone into church and they were

(57:10):
going to kill all his family, so you know, die
was cast across the rubicon blah blah blah. And he
put them in He got crowned in Glasgow. He put
them into revolt. The Scottish church took his side against Rome.
They were like, yeah, they killed comyn it was fine.

(57:32):
Who gives a shit?

Speaker 2 (57:33):
It was like just so you know up here that
shit's legit. That's fine, Yeah, you can do that.

Speaker 1 (57:39):
Yeah. And then Robert the Bruce just he is like, okay,
we've got this, and then immediately just goes out and
loses a battle. His like all of his family is
captured by the English in thirteen oh seven, his three
brothers were executed. He finally came out of hiding and

(58:01):
they did a bunch of skirmishes, a bunch of light fighting,
until a place called the Battle of Bannockburn in thirteen fourteen.
The Battle of Bannicburn is just it's very big. It
is one of the biggest. There were probably thirty to
thirty five thousand total fighters. The Scottish head were much smaller,

(58:25):
just like you know, they were probably a third maybe
less the size of it. But the English they did
didn't do so good and uh uh funnily enough, yeah,

(58:45):
they defend like there were there were key defections. The
English camp was like this fucking sucks. I hate this.
And Robert the Bruce and his crew launched a full
scale like attack the very next day and ran them
off in a pitch battle. Most of the English weren't
able to, you know, fully muster and yeah, that was

(59:08):
the facto independence for Scotland. So like there you go,
thirteen fourteen, there is Scotland. They continue fighting for a
little while, but England gets real distracted with France. Like
because you know, if you're thinking about it, this is
real close to when we get to the one hundred
Years' War. There was a basically I think the first

(59:36):
scott the first Scottish parliament happens at thirteen twenty five.
They get right with the Pope sometime before then, and yeah,
I mean I think the Pope kind of sees the
writing on the wall at this point in time, like
the church is nothing if not elastic.

Speaker 2 (59:56):
Right because like they're like, oh, this is all very
bad until like the king starts winning a lot, and
then they'll be like, oh is it. Yeah nothing A
sizable donation wouldn't smooth over, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:00:09):
Yeah. In thirteen twenty seven, Edward the Second was then
King of England, but he was killed and in the aftermath,
Robert the Bruce and his forces led some raids into England,
and England's like fuck this, no more of this right now. Thanks,

(01:00:29):
They signed the Treaty of Edinburgh Northampton in May of
thirteen twenty eight, and David's Robert's son David, married the
sister of the new King, Edward the Third, and that
is the First War of Scottish Independence, which, yeah, I

(01:00:52):
would love to tell you what else was going on
in Scotland at this time, but I don't know. I
don't know. It's I know were extremely caught up with
fighting England and that happened. There were deals, there was stuff,
but you know, they're not it's not there. It's not

(01:01:16):
their thing yet riding. They're still not big fans of it.
But don't worry they there would be another bite at
the independence apple, because four years later, thirteen thirty two,
there would there be another another go at it. Thirteen
thirty two, King Edward the Third of England backed an

(01:01:41):
invasion by Edward Balliol, the son of John Balliol, against
King David the Second, who was the new King of
Scotland after his dad had died the previous year. David
the Second was at this time a teenager. I think
he was about thirteen or fourteen at the time. And

(01:02:03):
the English when this happened, they just fucking they ran
it over. They won the bat Dublin more handily. Edward
Baileiol was crown King of Scotland and uh he you know,
he did immediately did homage Ever the Third. But as

(01:02:26):
soon as the English went back south again, the Scottish
nobles was just like, that's cool. Fine. They kicked Edward
Baileol out again. And ever the Third came back in
thirteen thirty three and decided that they were done with
this charade. That at the Battle of Halladin Hill the
Scottish were absolutely decimated. Edward Balliol took back the crown again,

(01:02:50):
immediately seated eight southeastern counties part of Lothian to England,
and did homage to Third as a vassal. So like
not just like, we're not just doing this as a vassal.
We have seeded, immediately seeded territory to England. And you know,

(01:03:11):
it appears that they were going to try to just
fully amalgamate Scotland into England and you know, just just
make the whole island one thing. But there were a
couple of problems. First, again, nobody liked Edward Balliol and

(01:03:31):
none of the nobles liked him. He didn't and I
mean giving away southeastern counties to England made them dislike
him far more. And also the French got back up
to meddling because Philip the fourth, you know, he had
he he or I'm sorry, this is Philip the sixth.
By now, Philip the six had had enough of this

(01:03:52):
English nonsense. He was he was tired of them, you know,
just throwing their weight around and being dicks. And they
so they sent David the Second back with all of
his troops and some other people. They retook Scotland in
thirteen thirty four, and France stepped in and was like,

(01:04:12):
we're going to broke her a piece. Everyone calmed down.
Nothing came of it, mostly because either Edward the Third
nor Philip the sixth really wanted peace with each other.
They had a lot of things to work out, and
in thirteen thirty seven war were declared once again when

(01:04:32):
the Hundred Years War happened, and Scotland became a theater
of the war, albeit in a one that the English
couldn't really pay much attention to. They by the early
thirteen forties, the scott the Scottish had cleared the English
basically out of the whole thing, and they had taken

(01:04:57):
back control David the Second attained a majority already and
was crowned and by thirteen thirty. By thirteen forty two,
the English had been pushed south of what was the
Scotch English border of thirteen thirty two. The Second Scotish
War of Independence basically, you know, it turns into a

(01:05:18):
secondary theater of the One Hundred Years War. Who you know?
You you remember, folks, you remember the one Hundred Years
War started in thirteen thirty seven England and France. They
decided they were gonna work out all those pesky issues

(01:05:40):
about who controlled which crown and for what reasons, and
you know, we decided they just really needed to fight
about Calais a lot, and uh yeah. In thirteen forty six,
David the second writ Letter raade down into England, but
he was captured at the Battle of Nevill's Cross, which

(01:06:02):
kept Scotland pretty peaceful until thirteen fifty five when a
huge Scottish raid, a huge Scottish raid happened, and ever
the Third was like, fuck it, We're going north. I
don't care. It was initially successful, but was later decimated

(01:06:23):
by the storm by winter storms, and after that they
were unable to make war on two fronts. So yeah.
In thirteen fifty seven they made peace at the Treaty
of Berwick. Ever, the third made peace with David the
Second and basically the English promised to leave Scotland alone.

(01:06:48):
Scotland was like, yeah, we owe you some kind of
vague not overlordshadow are they like some like vague you
guys kind of protect us sometimes from things? Maybe, I guess,
I don't know, you know, it doesn't it doesn't seem

(01:07:10):
to be something that was that big a deal. And
I mean the treaty or you know, something that that
the Scottish were taking too seriously. I mean, the Treaty
of Berwick lasted. It lasted for for a pretty a
pretty decent clip. David the Second return to the throne
he was He ruled for another few years. In fourteen hundred,

(01:07:37):
Henry the Fourth would lead an army up into Lothian,
but that didn't amount too much. And yeah, the the
rest of the rest of the Scottish Middle Ages is
taken up by a little group known as the House
of Stuart. They're married into the line of kings, and

(01:08:03):
one of them took kingship in thirteen seventy one. After
David the Second's death, and they just takes a long
they suck. It takes a long time for them to
consolidate power because everybody's fighting about what it means to
be you know, Scottish, and you know the old problems

(01:08:27):
that they've been having people you know, recriminations of people
who joined the English or didn't join the English or
blah blah blah. And I mean the House of Steward
almost failed because one of them they had, whose name John,
who was sick and died very quickly, and they were

(01:08:49):
kind of, you know, a laughing stock for a while
until James the First and James the second got things
in order and they started, you know, solidifying. They solidified Scotland,
the entirety of what we know is Scotland minus the
islands in by fourteen forty nine that had been fully

(01:09:13):
solidified under Stuart rule. And you know, just after the
Middle Ages ended they finally formally acquired the Orkneys and
the Shetlands, which we're given to James the third is
a dowry when he became engaged to Margaret of Denmark.
So yeah, that is how you get Scotland. But the Stuarts,

(01:09:36):
the House of Stuart eleanor will they play any future
role in any Scottish endeavors after the Middle Ages? Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:09:47):
Well, one of the you know, in some ways you
could say that the House of Stuart take over England,
right like that that's one way of looking at it.
But the trouble is with this, that that big you know,
the tale the head eats the tail, right, I mean,
there's an argument to be made that James the Fourth

(01:10:07):
of Scotland who becomes James the First of England in Scotland.
You know, it's like this is a Scottish takeover of
the crown, thank you very much, after the Tudor line
fails in England. Right you can you can go ahead
and say that trouble with that is that the consolidation
of the kingdoms under James the Fourth or James the First,

(01:10:27):
depending on who you're asking, it means that England just
gets controlled Scotland. Yeah, and like that's it, you know,
And that's that's why you have the lion in the unicorn,
right like, that's that is how you get this state
of affairs where Britain ends up getting ruled by one family, right,

(01:10:50):
you know, there are all the Welsh incursions early on.
You know, everyone always calls you know, Edward the first
the hammer of the Scots, but also like his subjucation
of the Welsh is someone else as well that we
couldn't even really get into. But basically it's just by
dint of being the larger kingdom, you know, with a

(01:11:11):
larger economic base, there simply are more people. All of
these things, the English just kind of end up eating
the Scots. I mean, like to the point that you know,
now if I say someone is British, most people who
are not from here, they're not going to understand that
that just means someone from this island. Like I mean,
I could they could mean that they're Welsh. It could

(01:11:32):
mean their Scottishi could mean their English. People think that
it's interchangeable with English, and it's fucking not right, Like
I'm talking about an the amalgamation of people, and you know,
so it's it's one of these things where you could
say that the Scottish decisively win this thing, but I
don't really think so.

Speaker 1 (01:11:52):
I mean, no, they yeah, they don't. They decisively win independence.
They decisively do that, but I mean the independence comes
at a cost, and it's not really like the English
ever stopped wanting to do this. There was the rough Wooing,
which just what a name? What a name for a

(01:12:18):
historical event where you're like, hey, do you guys want
to incorporate with us? And they're like no, and they're
like but what about now? And you like keep poking
you with a halberd like no, stop it, leave me.
I don't want that. And yeah, the I mean the
thing is you can you can be the guys from

(01:12:40):
up north. And I mean maybe there is a maybe
there is an alternate history where Scotland remains fully independent
because for whatever reason, England doesn't become the Hedgemond of
the world. Like maybe maybe there is, but I don't.

(01:13:05):
But I mean, but like if England attains even you know,
a fraction of the power that it gets, I do
not understand how Scotland with stands that being on the
same small island with no real natural full barrier. Now,

(01:13:25):
like if there was some kind of huge like mountain
range in between the two that made that would have
made it like almost impossible to get through something like that, yeah,
you probably could. Or if it was something so vast
you know kind of like uh, how America, you know,
can never fully amalgamic Canada if if we wanted to,

(01:13:48):
because it's just so big and you know everything. But
like when you're that small and you're on a small
island and you share a small island with a big bully,
it like, yeah, I don't, I don't know how on
a long enough timeline where England gained, like you would

(01:14:10):
need England to be at like War of the Roses
type internal conflict levels for like hundreds upon hundreds of
years for that for Scotland to maintain that independence. City
gains nothing against Scotland, you know. They they fought off,
they fought off these assholes, you know, and and one

(01:14:31):
two wars of independence against them, which is more than
you know, the English. The Americans went against the English,
but we only won, won and then lost the War
of eighteen twelve. But you know, yeah, I.

Speaker 2 (01:14:43):
Think that it's fundamentally you have to appreciate that it
is a more sparsely populated place. A lot of it
is pretty wild even still it's one of the only
places where we still kind of have wilderness on Britain anymore.
Like you can't do very much with the Highlands and
so you're never going to get a population density that

(01:15:04):
is able to fight off the English. I mean, I
also think that once the English lose the One Hundred
Years War, they're like they're looking to prove something, you know,
and it's like, oh, okay, well if we've lost all of
our French territories, then like how can everybody know that
we have big swing in dicks and so they've got

(01:15:25):
to go attack Scotland repeatedly. I don't think they would
have ever left it alone.

Speaker 1 (01:15:30):
Is the thing. Yeah, And I mean the fact that
the fact that it held out until it was like
it's like seventeen hundred before the United became the United
Kingdom became a thing. And I mean obviously James the
sixth and first was a little before that, but like
holding out for over you know, for two hundred years

(01:15:52):
after the end of the Middle Ages or about two
hundred years, like that's impressive, especially after England and you
know kind of got there. You know, Imperial they're they're
they're getting ready for the Imperial Act together. Uh, you
know when the Tutors came in and everything like that.

(01:16:12):
It's you know, you held off for a long time,
and you know, you you created this beautiful lasting culture
in you know, a land that is gorgeous. I've always
wanted to go to Scotland. I think it is just
some of the most beautiful land I've ever you know,
seen pictures of in my life. It's I I love Scotland.

Speaker 2 (01:16:37):
I love Scottish people.

Speaker 1 (01:16:39):
I do love how much it reminds me of the
way the Appalachians look at the parts of the Appalachians
in America that aren't touched by you know, modernity and
all this sort of stuff. It reminds me a lot
of that, and it does it does, uh somewhat make
me feel at home when I see it, uh in
a in a weird sort of way. But you know,

(01:17:01):
it's they didn't. They didn't. I'll say this for the Scottish. Uh.
They ended up differently from the Irish. And but that's
because the Irish had their own island and that makes
the conquest, and that makes the conquest more difficult and
different and harder to maintain, you know. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:17:22):
I think there's also the Protestantism and it's well, I mean, fundamentally,
Scotland doesn't lose this militarily, it's not it's not a
military loss. It's just that James the sixth was like, hell, yeah,
dog all take that. I've realized I said James the
fourth earlier.

Speaker 1 (01:17:35):
Because I didn't. I didn't. I didn't because it's like.

Speaker 2 (01:17:39):
I guess, but that that's a really interesting point, right
because it's like, after all these centuries of warfare, it's
not like they get done in because the English are triumphant.
It's because they're ruling class cells about, you know, and.

Speaker 1 (01:17:51):
It's a it's a fade a company. In the end,
they don't get they don't even get done in by
a coup or a stab. Like they don't get done
in by a metaphorical staff in the back by like
you know, uh by, you know, the English they get
stabbed in the back by their own king. He's like,
you know, James, the James the six is the one

(01:18:12):
like he he takes you know, he agrees to take
the crown, he agrees to do all this and like,
I mean, he could have he was he was born
in Scotland. The Stuarts are Scottish, you know, Scottish, and
he could have he could have kept them.

Speaker 2 (01:18:25):
Separated, or he could have been like, yeah, I'll take England.
Edinburgh's the Capitol. Yeah, by the way, now, yeah, like
that's I mean, I think that that would have made
a difference, right if what he's done is said it. Yeah, okay, cool. Yeah,
I'm the King of England too, so yeah, we are
going to completely reorder where royal power is held. I

(01:18:47):
think that would be fine. But he was too busy
worrying about witches or whatever the ship, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:18:52):
But yeah, have.

Speaker 2 (01:18:53):
You seen I put this in the chat. Have you
seen the homo erotic angels at the Royal Stuart Monument
in Saint peter Is Basilica? Because they're homo erotic as hell,
and they're like they're like, give me, I need a
gayer angel.

Speaker 1 (01:19:08):
They're like I needed to be gayer. His ass is
not perky enough. Those asses better be fucking perky.

Speaker 2 (01:19:14):
Why did they look so oily?

Speaker 1 (01:19:16):
Yeah? How like how how did you preserve this oily
look throughout history? Like they're constantly greased up by Jesus
or something.

Speaker 2 (01:19:25):
Yeah, they've like they've granted like a perpetual sum to
the people at Saint Peter's to oil the angels every morning.

Speaker 1 (01:19:33):
Yeah, it's a twink. Death will never come for these two.
I mean, can you I mean, I guess you can't
be a twink if you have a big ass. I
don't know, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:19:42):
I means you're the troops.

Speaker 1 (01:19:48):
I leave I leave that to uh to the people who. Yeah,
can we argue.

Speaker 2 (01:19:53):
That the amalgamation of Scotland into the British crown is
a form of twink death discuss?

Speaker 1 (01:19:58):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:19:59):
Yeah, I mean, I mean, I guess we're about to. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:20:03):
No, I've made you know, I make jokes about Scotland
because you know, I mean, it's what happened. You know,
it's what happened to all of us. You know, like
you're either you know, it's it's the old cliche you
let you you know, either die hero or you live
long enough to you know, be amalgamated into this and
become the villain. And but I mean this is not

(01:20:25):
like this is this is not something where they were like,
oh we see, we see what England did we want
to do that we did? You know, It's like they
get taken into this and I mean the Scottish people
weren't weren't huge fans of this, and it took them
like four different tries to actually get United Kingdom to

(01:20:47):
become a thing, even with like the crown bearing down
on everyone to actually do it. It's just like, you know,
you get hit by all this stuff, you get hit
by the the the Reformation and especially the English Reformation,
and just you know, once they're stuck on the island

(01:21:09):
by themselves, the insanity has to go somewhere, and the
insanity if you don't i if the ships aren't big
enough yet, if you don't have all that stuff yet,
the first thing you do is you lash out it,
you know, the people at home, and that's what they did.
And the Scottish fought it off until they had a

(01:21:31):
king who was like, no, that's fine, fuck it, let's
let's all go be English together. And everyone else is like, wait,
what why did we do all this? Why did my
why did my forefathers and their forefathers and my fore mothers,
and like what why did they fight? Why did they
you know, why did they treat wounds? Why did they
do all this stuff? Just you know, just to be
amalgamated into this fucking demonic shithold that like didn't like

(01:21:58):
they didn't have a monarch at the time. He like, yeah,
England doesn't have a monarch, and like James. James could
have done a lot, and he's like, no, it's fine,
we'll just all be English. Who gives a ship? This
is great. Let's just erase all this history. Who cares?
Fuck it? Yeah, anyway, Uh folks, Uh Scotland, Yeah, national identity,

(01:22:24):
national unification. Its very tricky, and I don't I don't
want to go out on a sad note. But you know,
because medieval Scotland, uh it is. It's a lovely and
proud place. And I wish I wish that we knew
more about I really really wish there were just some

(01:22:46):
like first hand accounts of this stuff that survived to us.
I'm sure some of them did exist at one time,
but but you know, it's just we don't have it.
Most of our sources come from you know, the Irish
English or the French looking in looking from outside on them,
and you know, writing about it that way, and you

(01:23:08):
have some monks writing stuff and everything like that. But
you know, it's just it's a story of a perseverance
against you know, against the encroachment of your big bad
neighbor who sucks. And then sometimes you do everything right
and you get a king who's like yeah, but I
kind of like being English. Plus there are demons after
when you go fuck off, man, fuck off. Yeah. Anyway,

(01:23:35):
Medieval Scotland, beautiful place, lovely, lovely. Uh thank you to
our patrons who suggested the series on media of Scottlanlet
me hope you liked it, and uh yeah, if you
are Scottish and want to uh message us and tell
us what you think about the English I will.

Speaker 4 (01:23:58):
We will probably I agree with you, probably agree with you,
probably read it, you know, and uh yeah it's folks.

Speaker 1 (01:24:09):
Sometimes just tore is the land of contrast and you
just get fucked regardless. Sometimes you know, you were never
you never had a chance, you were fucked from the
start kind of thing. Yeah, but yeah, that is going
to do it for our series on Scotland and for
this episode. Next week we will have a bit of
a different episode from doing some more stuff from the

(01:24:35):
Crusades series. Yeah, but after that, who knows, maybe we
will do some things and talk about some stuff and
yeah we'll figure it out from there. But eleanor what
what's going on with you? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:24:51):
Not a whole ton. I mean, I guess if you're
in London and you hear this on Wednesday, I'm doing
a live show at the London Podcast Festival on my
mate Kate Lister's show Betook the Sheets. We still got
a couple of tickets left for that because they moved
us into the Big Theater, which is nice. So yeah,

(01:25:11):
like literally, if you hear this before Thursday the fourth
and you live in London, you can come along to that.

Speaker 1 (01:25:21):
I think I.

Speaker 2 (01:25:22):
Haven't done anything that you guys wouldn't know about since
last week. I'm trying to think.

Speaker 1 (01:25:28):
I don't.

Speaker 2 (01:25:28):
I don't think I have. I don't think anything new
is out so but you know, to keep abreast on
all my bullshit. You can find me on the socials
at Going Medieval obviously, but yeah, that's what's up. That's
what's up.

Speaker 1 (01:25:42):
Yeah, you can find me. Luca is amazing on the socials.
You can find an old show, People's History of the
Old Republic if you want to hear me chat about
Star Wars. But yeah, that is going to do it
for us today. Thank you very much for listening, and
we'll see you next time. Bye.

Speaker 2 (01:26:02):
I can find but