Declaration of Arbroath

Based on Wikipedia: Declaration of Arbroath

The Letter That Defied a Pope

In April 1320, fifty-one Scottish nobles gathered their wax seals—the medieval equivalent of signatures—and attached them to a piece of parchment addressed to the most powerful man in Christendom. The letter was audacious. It essentially told Pope John the Twenty-Second that he had gotten Scotland completely wrong, that the English were the aggressors, and that the Scots would fight to the last hundred men standing rather than submit to foreign rule.

This was the Declaration of Arbroath.

What makes this document remarkable isn't just its defiance. It's that buried within its Latin prose lies an idea so radical it wouldn't become commonplace for another four hundred years: that a king rules only with the consent of his people, and that the people have the right to replace him if he fails them.

Why Scotland Needed to Write a Very Persuasive Letter

To understand why Scottish nobles felt compelled to send mail to the Pope, you need to understand how badly things had gone wrong in the previous thirty years.

In 1286, King Alexander the Third of Scotland died after his horse stumbled over a cliff on a stormy night. His only surviving heir was his granddaughter Margaret, a child living in Norway—hence her nickname, the Maid of Norway. When she died in 1290 at just seven years old, Scotland faced a crisis. The throne sat empty, and more than a dozen noble families claimed the right to fill it.

Enter Edward the First of England, a king so relentlessly aggressive toward Scotland that he earned the nickname "Hammer of the Scots." The Scottish nobles made the catastrophic decision to ask Edward to arbitrate their succession dispute. He chose John Balliol as king—and then treated Balliol as a puppet, demanding Scottish soldiers for English wars and generally behaving as if he owned the place.

When Balliol finally resisted, Edward invaded. He stripped Balliol of his crown in 1296 and began treating Scotland as conquered territory. This sparked what historians call the First War of Scottish Independence, a brutal conflict that would rage for decades.

Robert Bruce: Hero, Murderer, Excommunicate

Robert Bruce came to the Scottish throne through a combination of noble lineage and shocking violence.

His family had been rivals to the Balliols for generations. When the succession crisis began, Bruce's grandfather had been one of the leading claimants. Now, in 1306, the younger Robert saw his chance. His main rival was John Comyn, head of a powerful family that had supported Balliol. The two men met at Greyfriars Church in Dumfries to negotiate.

They argued. Bruce stabbed Comyn before the altar.

Murdering a man in a church was about as serious a sin as medieval Christianity recognized. Pope Clement the Fifth excommunicated Bruce almost immediately. But Bruce pressed forward anyway, getting himself crowned King of Scots at Scone just weeks later. He spent the next several years fighting desperately to hold onto a crown that most of Europe considered illegitimate.

His fortunes turned in 1314 at the Battle of Bannockburn, one of the most decisive military victories in Scottish history. A much larger English army under Edward the Second—son of the Hammer of the Scots—was routed so completely that Edward barely escaped with his life. Bruce's position as king was suddenly secure within Scotland itself.

But internationally, he remained a pariah. The Pope still considered him excommunicated. England refused to recognize Scottish independence. And the papacy, based at this time in Avignon in southern France and heavily influenced by English interests, kept demanding that Bruce make peace on English terms.

The Problem with Excommunication

To modern readers, excommunication might sound like a minor inconvenience—being kicked out of a club you didn't particularly want to join. In the fourteenth century, it was devastating.

An excommunicated person couldn't receive any of the sacraments. No confession, no communion, no marriage blessed by the Church, no last rites when death approached. In an age when people genuinely believed their eternal souls hung in the balance, this was terrifying. But the political implications were equally severe. Other Christian rulers could refuse to deal with an excommunicate. Treaties and marriages became impossible. An excommunicated king ruled under a cloud of illegitimacy that his enemies could exploit at any moment.

Bruce's excommunication had been lifted in 1308, but in 1317 the Pope demanded a truce with England. Bruce ignored it. The wars continued. By 1320, the Pope had excommunicated him again.

Something had to be done.

Crafting the Declaration

The man generally credited with writing the Declaration of Arbroath was Bernard of Kilwinning, who served as both Chancellor of Scotland—the kingdom's chief administrator—and Abbot of Arbroath Abbey. Bernard was learned, politically sophisticated, and had access to classical texts that he would weave into his argument.

The Declaration was actually one of three letters sent to the Pope around the same time. King Robert wrote his own letter. Four Scottish bishops wrote another. But only the letter from the nobles survives, which is fortunate, because it contains the most interesting ideas.

The document opens with an audacious claim about Scottish history. It asserts that the Scots originated in Scythia Major—roughly modern Ukraine and southern Russia—and migrated through Spain before arriving in Britain "one thousand two hundred years after the Israelite people's crossing of the Red Sea." This timeline would place their arrival around 300 BCE. The Declaration boasts that the Scots drove out the native Britons, completely destroyed the mysterious Picts, and resisted invasions by Norsemen, Danes, and English alike.

Most remarkably, it claims that one hundred and thirteen kings had ruled Scotland in unbroken succession, "without interruption by foreigners."

Much of this is myth. The Scots actually originated in Ireland—the name "Scot" initially meant Irish Gaels who settled in western Scotland. The Picts weren't destroyed but gradually merged with the Scots over centuries. And the number of kings is a considerable exaggeration. But the purpose wasn't historical accuracy. It was to establish Scotland as an ancient, independent kingdom that had never legitimately been subject to England.

The Radical Heart of the Document

After establishing Scotland's ancient independence, the Declaration turns to praising Robert Bruce. It compares him to the Biblical warriors Joshua and Judah Maccabee—heady company for a man the Pope had excommunicated for murder. It argues that Bruce delivered Scotland from English tyranny and deserves loyalty for that reason.

Then comes the passage that would echo through centuries:

To this man, in as much as he saved our people, and for upholding our freedom, we are bound by right as much as by his merits, and choose to follow him in all that he does.

The key word is "choose." The nobles weren't claiming they followed Bruce because God had placed him on the throne. They followed him because he had earned their loyalty by defending Scotland. This was already unusual for medieval political thought, which generally held that kings ruled by divine right.

But the Declaration went further. It continued—and here I'll paraphrase the Latin—that if Bruce were ever to abandon their cause and submit Scotland to English rule, the nobles would drive him out as an enemy and choose another king. The king's authority, in other words, depended on fulfilling his duty to the nation. Fail that duty, and the people could replace him.

This is an early statement of what political philosophers would later call the social contract: the idea that government exists by consent of the governed and can be legitimately overthrown if it betrays its purpose. Thomas Hobbes wouldn't publish Leviathan for another three hundred years. John Locke's Two Treatises of Government lay three hundred and seventy years in the future. Yet here were Scottish nobles articulating something remarkably similar in a letter to the Pope.

Or Was It Just Propaganda?

Some historians urge caution about reading too much into the Declaration. They argue that the nobles weren't articulating a theory of popular sovereignty—a concept they wouldn't have recognized. Instead, they were making a practical argument to justify supporting Bruce over John Balliol, who technically still lived as a prisoner and had never formally renounced his claim to the throne.

The Declaration needed to explain why the Scots had abandoned their previous king. The answer it gave was simple: Balliol couldn't defend Scotland, and Bruce could. This was less a philosophical statement about the nature of government than a pragmatic explanation for why the nobles had switched sides.

There's probably truth to both interpretations. The nobles likely weren't thinking in terms of constitutional theory. But ideas have a way of outgrowing their original contexts. Whatever Bernard of Kilwinning intended, he put into writing a principle that would prove powerful: that a king serves his people, not the other way around.

The Irish Connection

Scholars have recently noticed striking similarities between the Declaration of Arbroath and another document: the Irish Remonstrance of 1317, sent to the Pope just three years earlier protesting English treatment of Ireland.

The connection makes sense. In 1315, Bruce had sent his brother Edward with an army to Ireland, attempting to open a second front against the English and possibly to unite the Celtic peoples against their common enemy. Edward Bruce was actually crowned High King of Ireland, though he died in battle in 1318 without consolidating his rule.

The Irish Remonstrance, like the Declaration of Arbroath, detailed English atrocities and asserted the ancient independence of its nation. The Scottish nobles would certainly have had access to it. Some historians now consider the Remonstrance a "prototype" for the Declaration, suggesting cooperation between Irish and Scottish leaders in their campaigns of resistance.

The Most Famous Passage

The Declaration's most quoted lines come from a passage that Bernard of Kilwinning adapted from the Roman historian Sallust, who had written about the Catiline conspiracy against the Roman Republic in the first century BCE:

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.

The use of Sallust was clever. By echoing classical Roman rhetoric, Bernard lent his argument the weight of ancient authority. The papacy was headquartered in Avignon but considered itself heir to Rome. An argument that sounded Roman might carry more weight than one that sounded merely Scottish.

And the passage works beautifully as rhetoric. The progression from "a hundred of us" to "freedom alone" to "with life itself" builds with the inevitability of a wave breaking. Small wonder it has been quoted for seven hundred years.

The Seals and Signatories

The Declaration lists thirty-nine names at its head: eight earls and thirty-one barons. Each would have attached his wax seal to the document, probably over a period of weeks as nobles sent their seals to Arbroath to be affixed. The surviving copy shows physical evidence that at least eleven additional people—including some freeholders who weren't noble at all—also attached their seals, though their names weren't listed in the text.

Today only nineteen seals remain on the document, and only twelve of those belong to people actually named in the text. Time and handling have taken their toll.

The list of signatories reveals the complicated loyalties of medieval Scotland. Thomas Randolph, Earl of Moray, was Bruce's nephew and would serve as Guardian of the Realm after Bruce's death—a staunch loyalist. But William, Earl of Ross, had earlier betrayed Bruce's wife and daughter to the English. John de Menteith had infamously handed over William Wallace—Scotland's greatest hero before Bruce—to the English for execution. Ingram de Umfraville had actually fought against Bruce at Bannockburn before switching sides.

Most poignantly, several signatories would later be executed or imprisoned for plotting against the very king they praised in the Declaration. David, Lord of Brechin, was executed for treason. William de Soules, who held the hereditary office of Butler of Scotland, was imprisoned for life. Roger de Mowbray was also imprisoned for conspiracy.

Medieval loyalty was a flexible thing.

The Diplomatic Mission

Three men carried the Declaration to the papal court at Avignon: Sir Adam Gordon, Sir Odard de Maubuisson, and a scholar named Kininmund who would later become a bishop. The inclusion of Kininmund suggests the Scots expected theological arguments and wanted someone who could hold his own in Latin debate.

Pope John the Twenty-Second proved receptive—partly because the Scots dangled an enticing offer. They suggested that if the Pope would stop siding with England and recognize Scottish independence, Scottish knights would be available for the crusade the Pope had long dreamed of launching. With England threatening them constantly, the Scots couldn't send their warriors to the Holy Land. Make peace, and perhaps they could.

The Pope wrote to Edward the Second urging him to make peace with Scotland. But he stopped short of recognizing Bruce as king. The following year, English diplomacy won him back, and he issued six papal bulls supporting England's position.

It took eight more years. In 1328, the new English king Edward the Third—just fifteen years old and dominated by his mother and her lover Roger Mortimer—signed the Treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton, renouncing all English claims to Scotland. Later that year, the Pope finally lifted the interdict on Scotland and the excommunication of its king.

Robert Bruce died the following year. He had spent his entire reign fighting for recognition and received it only at the end.

Lost and Found

The original Declaration sent to Avignon has been lost. What survives is a copy that remained in Scotland among the kingdom's state papers. It measures about twenty-one inches wide by twenty-six inches long—roughly the size of a modern poster—including the dangling seals.

For centuries, hardly anyone knew about it. None of Scotland's major sixteenth-century historians mention it. The document languished in archives, its radical ideas forgotten.

Then came the 1680s. Scotland was embroiled in religious and political conflict with England. The Glorious Revolution of 1688 overthrew King James the Seventh (James the Second in England) and brought William of Orange to the throne. Scots began searching their history for precedents of resistance to tyranny and limitations on royal power.

They found the Declaration of Arbroath.

The Latin text was printed for the first time. English translations followed. Suddenly this obscure medieval letter became a founding document of Scottish national identity, cited as evidence that Scotland had always been independent and that Scots had always believed in limited monarchy.

American Echoes

In 1998, the United States Senate designated April sixth as National Tartan Day, commemorating Scottish contributions to American history. The resolution claimed that "the Declaration of Arbroath, the Scottish Declaration of Independence, was signed on April 6, 1320 and the American Declaration of Independence was modeled on that inspirational document."

This is almost certainly false. Historians have found no evidence that Thomas Jefferson or any other Founding Father knew about the Declaration of Arbroath when drafting the American Declaration of Independence. The ideas in both documents—popular sovereignty, the right of resistance—were widespread in Enlightenment political thought. They didn't need to travel directly from fourteenth-century Scotland to eighteenth-century Philadelphia.

But the claim speaks to the Declaration's power as a symbol. People want to connect their struggles for freedom to ancient precedents. The Scottish nobles of 1320, whatever their actual motivations, wrote something that still resonates.

The Document Today

The surviving copy of the Declaration is held by the National Records of Scotland in Edinburgh. In 2016, it was placed on the United Kingdom Memory of the World Register, part of a UNESCO program recognizing documents of outstanding significance.

The seven hundredth anniversary in 2020 was meant to be a major celebration, with the National Museum of Scotland planning to display the document publicly for the first time in fifteen years. Then the COVID-19 pandemic arrived, and the planned Arbroath 2020 festival was postponed.

Perhaps that's fitting. The Declaration was written during one crisis and rediscovered during another. It seems to emerge when people need it.

What Remains

Strip away the mythical history, the political maneuvering, the appeals to papal authority that mean nothing today. What's left?

A statement that freedom matters more than glory or riches or honors. That a hundred determined people can resist an empire. That rulers serve their people, not the reverse. That nations are defined not by kings but by the will of their citizens to remain free.

Whether the Scottish nobles of 1320 truly believed these things or were simply crafting effective propaganda, the ideas took root. They outlived the political circumstances that produced them. They were available when later generations needed them.

The Declaration of Arbroath isn't just a medieval curiosity. It's a reminder that the ideas we consider modern—consent of the governed, limited government, the right of resistance—have deeper roots than we might imagine. Seven hundred years ago, in a stone abbey on Scotland's eastern coast, someone wrote them down and sent them to the Pope.

The Pope didn't listen, at least not right away. But the words survived.