The Evolution of Edward I's ‘Historical’ Claim to Overlordship of Scotland, 1291–1301

Summary

Edward I's 1301 letter (‘the King's Letter’) to Boniface VIII is widely known. Indeed, it is perhaps the most famous royal letter ever sent by an English king to a Roman pontiff. The document is particularly memorable for its attempt to prove Edward's claim to overlordship of Scotland via an audacious ‘historical’ argument which began chronologically in the time of Brutus, a legendary descendant of Aeneas of Troy. The King's Letter was governed by a simple but remarkably ambitious contention: the kings of England, along with their predecessors and progenitors, had exercised uninterrupted overlordship of Scotland from antiquity to contemporary times. The sheer scale of the task that Edward and his clerks set for themselves, as well as the effect that the text ostensibly had in swaying papal policy, captured the imagination of contemporaries as readily as it has held the attention of modern scholars.

Yet the intellectual origins of the King's Letter remain largely obscured from view. It is little known that the text was the culmination of a long-drawnout process that had begun a decade earlier amidst the Scottish succession crisis. Indeed, it was at the commencement of the Great Cause that Edward had, in a rather rudimentary fashion, first articulated his historical claim to overlordship of Scotland. This paper will trace the evolution of the king's argument from its modest beginnings at Norham in 1291 to its celebrated apogee at Anagni in 1301. It seeks to demonstrate how, in the space of ten years, Edward's contention grew increasingly sophisticated as it responded to various challenges, real and imagined, from the Roman Church and Scots alike. In order to accomplish these tasks, it is necessary to reconstruct the intellectual and political context in which Edward's historical argument was composed. Only then will it be possible to explain why it took the precise shape and form that it did.

From modest beginnings: monastic chronicles at Norham

Edward I chose to pursue his claim to overlordship of Scotland at a time when that realm was in a state of disarray and confusion. Margaret of Norway, the seven-year-old heir to the Scottish throne, died in late September 1290 en route to her own inauguration ceremony at Scone.