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The Declaration of Arbroath 1320
A declaration of humanity's right to freedom and
self-determination
~ The Divine Right of People ~
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WGFT Editor: The declaration's wording is
subservient in style. However, by getting the Pope
to accept this document, the Scottish people
established their right to have a King and
established the rights of the individual. The
Scottish people were desperate to end the terrible
struggle with England and to establish their
rights as human beings, and to live in peace and
in prosperity. They needed the Pope to accept this
document. It was important to state their history in
this document, because this line of history showed
the Scottish had the tradition and right of
appointing their OWN King -- and that King
would, by law, guarantee the people's rights. |
THE DECLARATION OF ARBROATH - 1320
To the most Holy Father and Lord in Christ, the
Lord John, by divine providence Supreme Pontiff of the
Holy Roman and Universal Church, his humble and devout
sons Duncan, Earl of Fife, Thomas Randolph, Earl of Moray,
Lord of Man and of Annandale, Patrick Dunbar, Earl of
March, Malise, Earl of Strathearn, Malcolm, Earl of
Lennox, William, Earl of Ross, Magnus, Earl of Caithness
and Orkney, and William, Earl of Sutherland; Walter,
Steward of Scotland, William Soules, Butler of Scotland,
James, Lord of Douglas, Roger Mowbray, David, Lord of
Brechin, David Graham, Ingram Umfraville, John Menteith,
guardian of the earldom of Menteith, Alexander Fraser,
Gilbert Hay, Constable of Scotland, Robert Keith,
Marischal of Scotland, Henry St Clair, John Graham, David
Lindsay, William Oliphant, Patrick Graham, John Fenton,
William Abernethy, David Wemyss, William Mushet, Fergus of
Ardrossan, Eustace Maxwell, William Ramsay, William Mowat,
Alan Murray, Donald Campbell, John Cameron, Reginald
Cheyne, Alexander Seton, Andrew Leslie, and Alexander
Straiton, and the other barons and freeholders and the
whole community of the realm of Scotland send all manner
of filial reverence, with devout kisses of his blessed
feet.
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 kings 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 forever.
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 an 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 Macabaeus 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 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
privation 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 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
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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Endorsed: Letter
directed to our Lord the Supreme Pontiff by the
community of Scotland. Additional names written on
some of the seal tags: Alexander Lamberton, Edward
Keith, John Inchmartin, Thomas Menzies, John
Durrant, Thomas Morham (and one illegible). |
http://www.geo.ed.ac.uk/home/scotland/arbroath_english.html
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To be yourself, in a world that tries, night and
day, to make you just like everybody else - is to
fight the greatest battle there ever is to fight,
and never stop fighting. ~ E E Cummings |
The Greatest Battle There Ever Is To Fight
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