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Most Holy Father and Lord, we know and from the chronicles and books of
the ancients we find that among other famous nations our own, the Scots,
has been graced with widespread renown. They journeyed from Greater
Scythia by way of the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Pillars of Hercules, and
dwelt for a long course of time in Spain among the most savage tribes, but
nowhere could they be subdued by any race, however barbarous. Thence
they came, twelve hundred years after the people of Israel crossed the Red
Sea, to their home in the west where they still live today. The Britons they
first drove out, the Picts they utterly destroyed, and, even though very often
assailed by the Norwegians, the Danes and the English, they took possession
of that home with many victories and untold efforts; and, as the historians
of old time bear witness, they have held it free of all bondage ever since.
In their kingdom there have reigned one hundred and thirteen of their own
royal stock, the line unbroken by a single foreigner.
The high qualities and deserts of these people, were they not otherwise
manifest, gain glory enough from this: that the King of kings and Lord of
lords, our Lord Jesus Christ, after His Passion and Resurrection, called
them, even though settled in the uttermost parts of the earth, almost the
first to His most holy faith. Nor would He have them confirmed in that
faith by merely anyone but by the first of His Apostles by calling-though
second or third in rank - the most gentle Saint Andrew, the blessed Peter's
brother, and desired him to keep them under his protection as their patron
for ever.
The Most Holy Fathers your predecessors gave careful heed to these
things and bestowed many favours and numerous privileges on this same
kingdom and people, as being the special charge of the Blessed Peter's
brother, Thus our nation under their protection did indeed live in freedom
and peace up to the time when that mighty prince the King of the English,
Edward, the father of the one who reigns today, when our kingdom had no
head and our people harboured no malice or treachery and were then unused to wars or invasions, came in the guise of a friend and ally to harass
them as,in enemy. The deeds of cruelty, massacre, violence, pillage, arson,
imprisoning prelates, burning down monasteries robbing and killing monks
and nuns, and yet other outrages without number which he committed
against our people, sparing neither age nor sex, religion nor rank, no one
could describe nor fully imagine unless he had seen them with his own eyes.
But from these countless evils we have been set free, by the help of Him
who though He afflicts yet heals and restores, by our most tireless Prince,
King, and Lord, the Lord Robert. He, that his people and his heritage
might be delivered out of the hands of our enemies, met toil and fatigue,
hunger and peril, like another Maccabaeus or Joshua, and bore them cheerfully. Him, too, divine providence, his right of succession according to our
laws and customs which we shall maintain to the death, and the due consent,
and assent of us all have made our Prince and King. To him, as to the man
by whom salvation has been wrought unto our people, we are bound both
by law and by his merits that our freedom may be still maintained, and by
him, come what may, we mean to stand.
Yet if he should give up what he has begun, and agree to make us or our
kingdom subject to the King of England or the English, we should exert
ourselves at once to drive him out as our enemy and a subverter of his own
rights and ours, and make some other man who was well able to defend us
our King; for, as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on
any conditions be brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory,
nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom -for that
alone, which no honest man gives up but with his life itself.
Therefore it is, Reverend Father and Lord, that we beseech your Holiness
with our most earnest prayers and suppliant hearts, inasmuch as you will in
your sincerity and goodness consider all this, that, since with Him Whose
vice-regent on earth you are there is neither weighing nor distinction of
Jew and Greek, Scotsman or Englishman, you will look. with the eyes of a
father on the troubles and privations brought by the English upon us and
upon the Church of God. May it please you to admonish and exhort the
King of the English, who ought to be satisfied with what belongs to him
since England used once to be enough for seven kings or more, to leave us
Scots in peace, who live in this poor little Scotland, beyond which there is
no dwelling place at all, and covet nothing but our own. We are sincerely
willing to do anything for him, having regard to our condition, that we can,
to win peace for ourselves.
This truly concerns you, holy Father, since you see the savagery of the
heathen raging against the Christians, as the sins of Christians have indeed
deserved, and the frontiers of Christendom being pressed inward every day;
and how much it will tarnish your Holiness's memory if (which God forbid)
the Church suffers eclipse or scandal in any branch of it during your time,
you must perceive. Then rouse the Christian princes who for false reasons
pretend that they cannot go to the help of the Holy Land because of wars
they have on hand with their neighbours. The real reason that prevents
them is that in making war on their smaller neighbours they find quicker
profit and weaker resistance. But how cheerfully our Lord the King and we
too would go there if the King of the English would leave us in peace, He
from Whom nothing is hidden well knows; and we profess and declare it to
you as the Vicar of Christ and to all Christendom.
But if your Holiness puts too much faith in the tales the English tell and
will not give sincere belief to all this, nor refrain from favouring them to
our prejudice, then the slaughter of bodies, the perdition of souls, and all
the other misfortunes that will follow, inflicted by them on us and by us on
them, will, we believe, be surely laid by the Most High to your charge.
To conclude, we are and shall ever be, as far as any duty calls us, ready
to do your will in all things, as obedient sons to you as His Vicar; and to
Him as the Supreme King and judge, we commit the maintenance of our
cause, casting our cares upon Him and firmly trusting that He will inspire
us with courage and bring our enemies to nought.
May the Most High preserve you to His Holy Church in holiness and
health and grant you length of days.
Given at the monastery of Arbroath in Scotland on the sixth day of the
month of April in the year of grace thirteen hundred and twenty and the
fifteenth year of the reign of our King aforesaid.
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