For Freedom Alone by Edward J. Cowan

Author:Edward J. Cowan [Cowan, Edward J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780857906700
Publisher: Birlinn

A partial and passionate summary to be sure, which is neatly complemented by the quaintly gratuitous yet beguilingly honest admission that ‘this letter ought to have come before all the Instructions’ (i.e., to Baldred Bisset et al). That the scribe was following a different version from the original draft is indicated by the reference in the historical section to the Scots departing from ‘the borders of Greece and Egypt’ rather than from Greater Scythia. A version of the Irish letter to the pope appears in its proper place. When ‘Arbroath’ receives a second airing, it breaks off after the ‘poor little Scotland’ passage with the sentence indicating Scottish willingness to do anything to bring about peace, noting that the full text will be found in an earlier chapter. The best of the rhetoric is thus reinforced through repetition.10

The anonymous abridger’s intemperate language indicates that he was the first individual, so far as we know, to contribute to the legend of the Arbroath Declaration. The two versions he reproduced were not even identical. The first text (Plusc A) adds to the list of the senders ‘all the burgesses’, omnes burgenses, a neat touch to make the community seem more all-inclusive but, like his notions of the Three Estates, somewhat anachronistic. In both versions the ‘magnificent, magnificus, Edward’ of the original (Tyn) becomes malificus Edwardus, a much stronger adjective than the translation, ‘mischievous’, provided by Pluscarden’s editor, suggestive as the word is of maleficence or evil. At the point where the pope is warned to beware of ‘the tales the English tell’, Plusc A provides adjectival reinforcement in the form of fictis et falsis, dismissing such stories as ‘false and trumped up’. On the other hand the copyist somehow manages to include two words which are in the original but not in Scotichronicon, which suggests the latter was not the only text on which he depended: further evidence, if it were required, that a proper edition of the document is urgently required, taking full account of all the variants.

There is thus very good evidence that a fair number of manuscript copies transmitted not only the ideas, but the text, of ‘Arbroath’ to the fifteenth century. As Dr Simpson points out, there is a copy of Tyn in a St Andrews formulary (a compilation of set forms or formulas used by lawyers or scribes) put together by prior James Haldenstone between 1417 and 1443, though as he further sensibly suggests, Haldenstone may have been more interested in the style than the content. The survival is of great interest as possible evidence that ‘Arbroath’ was being copied before Bower set to work. It is also summarised in a compilation of about 1500 known as Extracta e Variis Cronicis Scocie.

It is perhaps surprising that despite the good evidence for a reasonable number of manuscripts which contain ‘Arbroath’ surviving into the fifteenth century, commentators such as Roger Mason are extremely unwilling to see any evidence of a parallel survival so far as the ideas which the

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